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[Editor's Note] I haven't seen Precious yet, but I have read about it endlessly and already cried just reading reviews. One of the most powerful interpretations I have read so far on Precious comes from my good friend, colleague and mentor Malkia Cyril from the Center for Media Justice. With her permission I am posting it in full here (cross-posted from the CMJ blog). It was also posted at WIMNblog.

As I sit against the florescence of the television screen, watching the conservative Fox News pundit Glenn Beck drive political nails into progressive leaders using the fear of U.S. blacks and immigrants of color as his hammer, my memory harkens back to the year in which the book Push was set, 1987. During that time, eugenics theories about the inherent laziness and criminality of black teenagers was rampantly resurgent in the news. Conservative research was cementing stereotypes of the black welfare queen, the crack baby, the HIV infected black woman as the truth that justified the destruction of the safety net as we knew it. Since then, health care has become increasingly privatized. Welfare has turned horrifically to an indentured servitude of workfare. The numbers of black women with HIV have skyrocketed. And the movie Precious, based on the book Push by Sapphire, was released.

Caricatures or Complex Characters?
Clarice "Precious" Jones is an extreme character, meant to shock the senses and unveil the underbelly of the brutality of racism and capitalism in the patriarchal land of the free. In the film and in the book, Precious is a dark-skinned teenaged girl who experiences multiple forms of oppression and violence at the hands of multiple perpetrators. In the movie, her sexually brutal father is an invisible or blurry character at best, while her mother, whose victimization as a woman was only alluded to, is cast as the primary perpetrator. It is only through the extreme telling of an extreme story that this dichotomy of inequity is revealed. There is only one man in the story as told in the movie - a male nurse- and the welfare and education systems which oppress black womanhood and subvert black female resistance are cast as saviors. Questions have been necessarily raised by black audiences -is this story the best way to reveal these contradictions? Is the mother the real villain? Does the story reflect reality or is it more of a caricature? And if a caricature how does that shape the impact of the film on the representations of black women in media and in the public psyche?

Maybe if my hot computer-generated indigenous alien chick is 3D too, I won't have to "deal" with real women either!

Via Gawker, we find James Cameron offering his infinite wisdom to Playboy about being "forced to deal with real women" when discussing the intricacies of creating the perfect computer-generated tits for his upcoming movie, Avatar. It starts out making sense but quickly go downhill:

PLAYBOY: We seem to need fantasy icons like Lara Croft and Wonder Woman, despite knowing they mess with our heads.
CAMERON: Most of men's problems with women probably have to do with realizing women are real and most of them don't look or act like Vampirella. A big recalibration happens when we're forced to deal with real women, and there's a certain geek population that would much rather deal with fantasy women than real women. Let's face it: Real women are complicated. You can try your whole life and not understand them.

PLAYBOY: How much did you get into calibrating your movie heroine's hotness?
CAMERON: Right from the beginning I said, "She's got to have tits," even though that makes no sense because her race, the Na'vi, aren't placental mammals. I designed her costumes based on a taparrabo, a loincloth thing worn by Mayan Indians. We go to another planet in this movie, so it would be stupid if she ran around in a Brazilian thong or a fur bikini like Raquel Welch in One Million Years B.C.

He also excitedly talks about having her nipples being lit by orange firelight in one scene, but unfortunately they had to take it out since the movie is PG-13. Nothing like some good old racist exoticism!

I have to say, talking about "real women" while degrading and dehumanizing them in the process is pretty impressive.

Pic via Screenrant.

Now this is art - a poem by Calvin Trillin at The Nation, titled...

What Whoopi Goldberg ('Not a Rape-Rape'), Harvey Weinstein ('So-Called Crime') et al. Are Saying in Their Outrage Over the Arrest of Roman Polanski

A youthful error? Yes, perhaps.
But he's been punished for this lapse--
For decades exiled from LA
He knows, as he wakes up each day,
He'll miss the movers and the shakers.
He'll never get to see the Lakers.
For just one old and small mischance,
He has to live in Paris, France.
He's suffered slurs and other stuff.
Has he not suffered quite enough?
How can these people get so riled?
He only raped a single child.

Read the rest at The Nation.

I'm showing this amazing film in my class at Rutgers today, so just thought I would share!

Related Posts: Hip-hop, Misogyny and the Beats (we hate to love).
Hypermasculinity, Hip-hop and Lady Rappers fighting Misogyny.

Did anyone see the much-anticipated premiere of Kirby Dick's new film Outrage? It's a documentary about the hypocrisy that is closeted politicians and public figures that not only live double lives, but actively working against LGBT rights. Trailer is below.

One of the biggest targets of the film is current Florida governor Charlie Crist, as well as former U.S. senator Larry Craig and former U.S. rep Edward Schrock of Virginia. From what I could catch of it, it was pretty thought-provoking - between the questions raised around the media's outing of gay politicians, the power folks like Craig have used to take away rights for the purpose of staying closeted, and the feelings of extreme anger (but also sadness) that the film triggers. I haven't seen much coverage of it on the blogs yet though. What did folks think?

Whip It is not deep. It's not complex. It's not going to revolutionize filmmaking. Whip It is just a great female empowerment story with a simple but strong message that's also a lot of fun. And at a time when a lot of mainstream movies targeted at young women and girls are pushing the so-called "family values" agenda (Twilight, High School Musical...) Whip It is a breath of fresh air.

Bliss (Ellen Page) lives in Bodeen, Texas, a very small town where not much happens. Bliss' mother (Marcia Gay Harden) wants her competing in beauty pageants, but when Bliss meets a roller derby team from Austin she finds a new passion. The world of roller derby is full of strong female characters, most notably Bliss' teammates the Hurl Scouts (played by a great collection of actors including Kristen Wiig from SNL, Drew Barrymore, Eve, and Zoe Bell, who was a stunt double for Xena and the Bride in Kill Bill and starred in Death Proof. Real life skaters Rachel Piplica and Kristen Adolfi play the Manson Sisters, who are deaf. Juliet Lewis plays the team's main competition). There are male characters, but most of them are usually being made fun of. This is a film about being your own hero and finding strength among other strong women. It's pretty rare to see a movie where most of the characters are female that's not an exploitation film made for the male gaze. It's also rare to see such a kick-ass cast full of great female actors playing empowered women. Sadly the cast is still mostly white.

I really appreciated the relationship between Bliss and her mother. There is serious conflict, and at one point Bliss tells her mother she doesn't want to be part of beauty pageants that encourage a "psychotic '50s ideal of womanhood." But both characters really do care about and want to support each other - Bliss would have stopped participating in pageants long ago if she didn't care about her mom's happiness. Neither of Bliss' parents are depicted as thin stereotypes of mean parents - they even enjoy having sex with each other. There's a nice inter-generational message about younger and older women both supporting each other's dreams, reinforced by Kristen Wiig's character Maggie Mayhem, who has a child of her own and plays a bit of a mentor to Bliss.

My biggest problem with the movie was the main romantic plot line, which felt out of place given so much of the film shows women who are strong without needing men's validation. Is there a rule that Ellen Page has to lose her (straight) virginity in every movie she's in? I will say I was happy with how this part of the story ended. But I was much more interested in the friendship between Bliss and Pash (Alia Shawkat, Maeby from Arrested Development!).

I was surprised by the lack of queer representation in the film (the scene with Eve in the hot tub is not enough, as her character's sexuality is only implied). The roller derby scene seemed like a place where queer folks would feel comfortable. There are depictions of multiple heterosexual relationships in the film, so leaving out queer relationships is an obvious omission. One of my friends, who is queer, told me he was surprised there weren't a lot of queer folks in our local roller derby scene. I'd be curious to hear from folks involved in roller derby about what the community's actually like.

Whip It is Drew Barrymore's directorial debut, and I'm happy her first movie is so overtly about female empowerment. Hollywood is very much a boy's club so it's great to be able to support a female director. Whip It is a fun flick with pretty good politics for a mainstream movie. I'd recommend it as a good time at the movies with any young budding feminists you know. Whip It opens in theaters today.

Vogue's Grace Coddington and Anna Wintour

From the day I first saw the trailer online, I was super excited to see The September Issue, the documentary about the making of Vogue's thickest issue of the year. I've long been fascinated by the popular portrayal of Vogue editor Anna Wintour as the ultimate ice-queen boss from hell. And fashion is probably my #1 Un-Feminist Guilty Pleasure. So of course I went to see it as soon as it opened.

There are, obviously, a lot of valid criticisms to make of the fashion industry. It's sizist. It's racist. It's classist. And yes, absolutely, Wintour bears some responsibility for that. At one point in the film, they photoshop a whole different neck onto a perfectly lovely cover photo of Sienna Miller. (Quote: "Is this shot with the old neck or the new neck?") On these issues, the editors get no pass from me.

But fashion is also a major (the only?) global industry in which women run the show. Watching The September Issue, I was struck multiple times at how unaccustomed I am to seeing women in charge. Not just one woman in a male-dominated setting, mind you. But women.

Most of the documentary hinges on the relationship (or power struggle) between Wintour and Vogue's creative director Grace Coddington, who have very strong and sometimes opposing views of exactly how they want the magazine to look. When they clash, Wintour usually emerges the victor -- she's higher on the masthead, after all -- but Coddington is one of the few staffers with the gumption to stand up to her. It was, frankly, awesome to watch two women over the age of 50 portrayed as powerful and experienced rather than past-their-prime and shrewish.

Other bloggers have said they were surprised to come away from the film with the distinct impression that Anna Wintour is not a bitch. She's just... in charge. Maybe she was just playing nice while the cameras were rolling, but honestly, I was not at all shocked to see that Wintour's devilish reputation appears overblown. Women managers who are straightforward -- who don't sugarcoat their opinions, and who realize they're your boss, not your mother -- are always seen as irredeemable bitches. 

There's also a common trope perpetuated by anti-feminists (and some feminists, too) that women are inherently more nurturing than men. That women are "naturally" power-averse and non-confrontational and inclined toward niceties. I think that is true for some women. But others who contradict that trope, like Wintour, are frequently declared to be in denial of their femininity or to be suppressing their true essence. That's bullshit.

Maybe Anna Wintour isn't super fun to work for. Maybe she doesn't make time for heart-to-heart chats with her employees. So what? At least in The September Issue, Wintour knows what she likes, knows what she doesn't like, and gets the job done. Even though I don't find the resulting magazine to be all that great (on a feminist level, on a journalistic level, or on a fashion-taste level), I have to say I really admire her for that.

While I too, think that straight men can sadly be intimidated by women who love their vagina, this was upsetting. Another confession Fox divulged in her Rolling Stones interview was that she used to cut herself:

"Yeah...But I don't want to elaborate. I would never call myself a cutter. Girls go through different phases when they're growing up, when they're miserable and do different things, whether it's an eating disorder or they dabble in cutting."(Emphasis mine)

No biggie, just something girls "dabble in" as they grow up. Huh? While I respect her openness about her problem, normalizing pretty serious issues as just somethin' us gals do isn't sending her young emulating fans a good message here.

(Not to mention cutting seems to be more common in general among young actresses lately - and of course the media is eating it up. Heinous.)

My colleague Alexandra Gutierrez reviews the much-anticipated Jennifer's Body and -- surprise! -- concludes that it's not a worthy heir to horror's feminist traditions

In their efforts to create a feminist horror film, [Diablo] Cody and [Karyn] Kusama made a movie that is truthfully neither one of these things. What they missed is that their objective could be accomplished without redefining genre conventions -- horror already has plenty of space for feminism.

After all, one of the major takeaways of horror films is that strong women can stand up to those who would rather control them through fear. The formula of the "Final Girl," as Carol Clover termed it in her oft-cited Men, Women, and Chain Saws, allows "the rezoning of the feminine into territories traditionally occupied by the masculine." In the Final Girl formula, the woman prevails against her antagonist and saves herself -- which neither lead of Jennifer's Body does -- promoting the idea that "triumphant self-rescue is no longer strictly gendered." It's no coincidence that most of horror's memorable heroes are actually heroines.

Read the rest here.

For the Buffy fans in the house, and I know there are a lot of you, a remix. The creator explains it this way:

In this re-imagined narrative, Edward Cullen from the Twilight Series meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It's an example of transformative storytelling serving as a pro-feminist visual critique of Edward's character and generally creepy behavior. Seen through Buffy's eyes, some of the more sexist gender roles and patriarchal Hollywood themes embedded in the Twilight saga are exposed - in hilarious ways. Ultimately this remix is about more than a decisive showdown between the slayer and the sparkly vampire. It also doubles as a metaphor for the ongoing battle between two opposing visions of gender roles in the 21ist century.

Thanks to reader Jerelyn for the heads up.

If you have consumed any amount of pop culture directed at straight women over the past decade, you know of the "gay boyfriend" phenomenon: the superfabulous, showtunes and shopping-loving queer friend who shows up whenever a female lead character needs entertainment, romantic advice, or a plus-one.

Think Stanford in Sex and the City. The eavesdropping assistant in Obsessed. The gaggle of gays who advise Drew Barrymore in He's Just Not That Into You. I could go on and on... Much like the black best friend, the gay boyfriend is the perfect match for a neurotic and insecure (but still skinny, white, beautiful) leading lady because he is depicted as sexually nonthreatening and non-spotlight-hogging. I think Sady summed it up well:

Sadly, not everybody can be a White Heterosexual. However, if you are not, I have good news: you, lucky person, get to aid the White Heterosexuals in their quest for love! Gay folks and/or people of color make fabulous accessories to the single White Heterosexual girl's lifestyle.

Which brings us to Thomas Rogers, who describes his plight in Salon today: He's a gay man who has repeatedly been targeted by straight women looking for a gay boyfriend, despite the fact that he has little in common with these women:

As I moved away from home, to bigger and bigger cities, I discovered that there were lots of scruffy and poorly dressed drone-rock-loving gay men in the world -- especially of my age group -- who had nothing in common with the Sanfords and Wills I'd seen on TV. Just because I was into dudes didn't mean I had to suddenly love dance music or fine furnishings. And yet, despite my continued shortcomings as a stereotypical gay man, I remained a strangely alluring target for a large number of straight women.

Rogers grants that self-identified "fag hags" were once extremely important: "I'm here, I'm with that queer, get used to it." (He doesn't make this distinction, but in many parts of the country where gay rights are less entrenched, I think this can still hold true.) And he largely credits Will and Grace with mainstreaming the phenomenon. Granted, I have not seen too many episodes of the show, but to me it's very different than the Carrie/Stanford example. Will and Grace's friendship always seemed like a two-way street. After all, the show isn't called Grace, and Will is much more than a background character who pops up for comic relief. Rogers continues,

It was no coincidence that the first wave of gay male TV characters shared most of their screen time with straight women -- it made us palatable to mainstream America. "It was celebrating the feminine side of gay men, not about going into the bar scene," says Pimlott. "It disarmed their potential threat." And this, in turn, made us into every straight girl's best friend. "It made it seem like every straight girl should have these accessories: Manohlo Blahnik shoes, and a fag."

Betty Draper takes aim at stereotypes, thanks to Mad Men's women writers

If you're anything like me, you can barely contain your excitement that season 3 of Mad Men begins on Sunday. It took me awhile to get around to watching the show (I didn't bother to get a converter when TV went digital, and won't shell out for cable), but finally my coworker Dana Goldstein convinced me: "Ann, it's all about sexism and vintage fashion. How can you not watch?"

And indeed, I love how the show paints an unvarnished picture of '50s gender roles and how the female characters are so three-dimensional. They don't easily map onto the sorts of stereotypes prevalent in TV shows and movies set in all decades. The bookish achiever (Peggy) is also kind of a slut. The slut (Joan) is also kind of a bookish achiever. And the devoted wife (Betty) is primed for a feminist awakening. (I've often wondered if the character was named after Betty Friedan.)

So I wasn't surprised to learn that 7 of the show's 9 writers are women, and in this upcoming season, women directed 5 of the 13 episodes. Compare that to elsewhere in Hollywood...

According to the Directors Guild of America, the labor union that represents film and television directors, about 13% of its 8,000 directors are female. Women comprised 23% of television writers during the 2007 to 2008 prime-time season, a 12 percentage point decrease from the same period a year earlier. Nearly 80% of TV programs in the 2007 to 2008 prime-time season had no women writers...

Maybe if all TV shows and movies had a better proportion of women writers, actresses wouldn't be considered past their prime at age 35 and would be given way more substantive leading roles. Turns out women-written movies and shows also tend to be pretty fucking popular.

I did notice that the seven Mad Men writers pictured all appeared to be white. While the show has touched on the issue of race (namely, when lead character Don Draper has an affair with a Jewish woman, and when one of the copywriters dates a black woman), it is a far less common theme than gender. I wonder if that would change, too, if the demographics of the writers did.

Who else is counting the minutes 'til Sunday night?

Related:
Funny ladies of Hollywood discuss getting "old"
An Entourage of Their Own
Unnoticed sexism: Movie Trailer Narrators
Women Make Money at the Movies, But Don't Say Much
On roles for women of color in Hollywood

Also see Amanda's writing about Mad Men, and two posts on Racialicious. (But be forewarned, they're spoiler-ridden!) Plus, watch Jezebel's 15 feminist moments from Mad Men.

Trigger warning and spoilers ahead

Via Lisa at Sociological Images, we're introduced to Deadgirl - a lauded movie making the independent film circuit. Oh yeah, and it's about kidnapping, rape and necrophilia. Good times!

As if the posters weren't enough to give you pause - you really have to love the tagline "You'll never have anything better" and the sideways mouth-as-vagina - the synopsis reveals just how horrifying this movie actually is.

News is out that Universal Pictures and Illumination Entertainment are joining forces to produce a new 3-D version of the Dr. Seuss classic The Lorax(warning: loud circusy music on that link!). From Variety:

"Though published in 1971, "The Lorax" has a timely "green" theme. It is narrated by a greedy entrepreneur who, despite warnings from the tree-loving Lorax, strips a forest of its stock of Truffula trees to manufacture clothing. The results are catastrophic as all the animals leave and nothing's left."

I loved that book, and it's true that the green theme was before it's time. With ever-increasing fears about global warming and environmental impacts the message of this book rings really true. "Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better, it's just not."

Via Variety

17 Again

A reader alerted us to this message at the bottom of the New York Times review of 17 Again, the new, sure-to-be Oscar-winning movie starring Zac Efron:

"17 Again" is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Girls are particularly cautioned.

After a quick plot synopsis (a dude's life was ruined because he turned down a basketball scholarship after his girlfriend got pregnant), reviewer Manohla Dargis notes "the story's obnoxious implications" are that "sex, meaning girls, can ruin your life." She makes clear that the movie's female characters are (surprise!) little more than simple stereotypes. So presumably this is what the "special girl warning" is referring to.

But if that is the case, doesn't sexist content merit a warning for boys AND girls? The assumption that a negative portrayal of women will only affect girls is simply crazy. Young people of all genders are deeply affected by repeated sexist portrayals of women in movies, music, and culture more generally. Yes, it can have very different effects on boys and girls. But how is it worse for a girl to think of herself as having to choose between harpy or sex object than it is for a boy to view all women as harpies or sex objects?

And what if the warning isn't a reference to sexist stereotypes of women? Honestly, I can't think of a single plot element that should prompt a warning for young women but not for young men, for the reasons stated above. Has anyone seen the movie? Any other speculation on what the warning refers to?

Kay Steiger recently interviewed Sarah Haskins, who revealed she has sold a screenplay!

"I just sold a screenplay with my writing partner, a friend I knew from college. That's very exciting. The protagonists are two girls," she said. "That's been awesome and hopefully it'll get made. That's sort of the Hollywood thing and where you don't know if any of that will ever happen."

Here's hoping it does.

I definitely wasn't planning on seeing this movie, but this review makes me want to burn all memory of its trailers from my mind.

Trigger Warning

At some point or another you've probably heard of a Donkey Punch. If not, consider yourself lucky. The basic idea is that a man who is penetrating a woman from behind will punch her in the back of the head or neck as he's having an orgasm. Because beating women about the head is fucking hilarious and sexy, didn't ya know?

Well it seems that somebody thought it was be a genius idea to turn sexualized violence against women into a movie, where a woman gets killed via - you guessed it! - a Donkey Punch. The trailer is above.

It's movies like this one that make me wonder how anyone could ask why feminism is still necessary. We live in a world where sexual violence against women is a joke, an email forward, a fucking movie. This is not the world I want to live in.

Thanks to Maria for the link.

An open thread for those of you who are avid movie watchers. I'm always looking for new ideas for my netflix queue, and it's also an interesting peek into people's lives and tastes.

Currently at the top of my netflix queue:

1. Fire
2. Wonderfalls: Disc 1
3. Chutney Popcorn

So readers, what's at the top of your netflix queue/movie watching wish list?

Image via Guerrilla Girls.

And wouldn't ya know it, not one of them is a woman.

I know I shouldn't be shocked, but it's still fairly irritating. So I figure we can start a list here - who is your favorite woman director? Leave 'em in comments. (Mine is Jane Campion!)

Thanks to Chris for the link.

"You are SO hot! Want to prop up some sexist, racist, and heteronormative stereotypes together?"

This weekend I girded my feminist loins and bought a ticket to see He's Just Not That Into You. You've probably heard the basic criticisms of this movie already. Yes, the film pretty unequivocally portrays women as vapid, needy, and weak. (At one point I whispered to my theater-going companion that the film was making a misogynist out of me because I was identifying with all the male characters, and rolling my eyes at the women.) Yes, it portrays gay people as hollow stereotypes who only exist to provide commentary about heterosexual dating. Yes, it's all high-income white people giving gentrification their best shot. All of this is entirely unsurprising.

To me, the most striking thing was how easy it would have been to make this movie not sexist. In my experience, every relationship scenario experienced by the female characters in the film -- from being cheated on, to getting overly fixated on someone they just met, to misreading "let's be friends" signals as "I love you" -- is a situation that I've known to apply to just as many men as women. (And to just as many queer people and people of color, for that matter.) These stories still would have been compelling if you'd switched the gender on any number of characters in any number of scenes.

Ah, but that's not how media/movie powerhouses are built. As Rebecca Traister writes,

People writing about the "HJNTIY" phenomenon (still No. 2 at the box office, by the way) often make the point that the powerful phrase could have been, "You're just not that into him." But it wasn't, and the Behrendt media rocketship helps to demonstrate why.

Imagine a world in which a person had an opinion that a problem with modern dating could be boiled down to women just not wanting men enough -- maybe "she just doesn't find you attractive," "she's not going to call you," "she doesn't want to go home with you" or something like that. Then imagine that that person was a woman, and imagine her getting a talk show and a couples counseling deal and a book and a movie, all based on whatever vaguely emasculating generalization she'd happen to score with.

Like Latoya, I laughed at all the wrong parts of the movie. Maybe because that's the only way to deal with a gender trainwreck like this.

A few random comments/spoilers after the jump.

So I was really late on the Sex in the City Movie bandwagon. I watched the film many months after it was released, so I didn't bother blogging on my thoughts.

I have to admit that I have a soft spot for cheesy romantic comedies. I think it's an escapist thing for me--the movies have NOTHING to do with my life, so I can detach and just enjoy the simple plot lines and general silliness of the movie. Maybe I'll write an (Un)feminist Guilty Pleasures post about this soon.

Via Bitch Magazine Blog, a sequel to the Sex in the City Movie is in the works. Although I can often shut off my critical feminist voice during these kinds of movies (as I did when watching the entire series), the movie was just too much. Or maybe I've changed. Either way, the fact that the only two people of color in the entire movie were Charlotte's adopted Chinese daughter and Carrie's African-American assistant rubbed me wrong way. In some ways, the complete absence of people of color in the series (with a few small exceptions) didn't highlight it as much as a movie with two people of color playing really minimal rolls.

And that doesn't even begin to cover all the other complaints we could have about Sex in the City. But now that there is a sequel in the making, it presents a new opportunity.

Tammy at the Bitch Magazine blog asks:

What are your hopes for the sequel?

I hope they can address some of the issues around Charlotte's adoption. The series did a good job of showing her struggles with infertility in a relatively realistic manner, but totally dropped the ball on the adoption piece. I also hope they can incorporate some characters of color who are not so marginal or tokenized.

What about you?

For Samhita's take on SATC, go here.

Check out two quick versions of a trailer for this amazing movie my friend Claire told me about.

The website explains it thus:

Pariah is a coming-of-age drama about a lesbian teenager who unsuccessfully juggles multiple identities to avoid rejection from her friends and family.

Set against the kinetic and incongruous social landscape of middle class New York City, Alike vacillates between being a proud and sexually independent woman amongst her openly gay friends and being the feminine, obedient girl that her strict Christian upbringing dictates she be.

Torn by mounting pressure from home, school, and within, the line between her dual personas wears thin with explosive consequences.

It doesn't currently have any theater distribution deals, but you can see it on iTunes and Netflix. The folks behind the film are working on getting funding for a full length feature now, so the more enthusiasm people show for it, the better!

The book, He's Just Not That Into You, inspired me to write a book about dating, because I was deeply disappointed in the messaging geared at young women on what they should be doing to meet a guy, the games we are taught to play and the constant stream of sexist rejection we have to deal with. I realized that there was no language for young feminist women that want to date, but think heteronormativity is bullshit. The most frustrating part of the-he's just not that into you-attitude is that the author of the book, Greg Behrendt, believes he is helping women by reinforcing women's ongoing desire for heteronormativity and men's constant asshole-like tendencies. I guess for some the book is like a bible, but the entire market of books and magazines geared towards young women telling them what they can and should do to meet the "man of their dreams," is at best annoying and at worst leads women to live really unfulfilled lives.

But all of that aside, I am even more shocked that He's Just Not That Into You, has been turned into a movie.

Latoya has more on the reliance of black women's stories as the backdrop of telling the story for the lives of white women.

You best believe I will be writing a long, long review. Will keep you updated. Has anyone read the book? Thoughts?

This is a couple of years old, but just too good to ignore. The Gunn Brothers - a devout duo that produces Christian films - created this masterpiece, The Monstrous Regiment of Women. The title really says it all.

You'll see in the trailer that our favorite female misogynist Phyllis Schlafly kicks things off with her wisdom on feminism, saying the movement tricks women into thinking that they're being victimized. (You know, like women who only think they've been raped by their husbands!)

A couple of other titillating teasers:

• That Hillary Clinton's decision to have one child means she has no sympathy for stay-at-home moms
• Sexual assault in the military means women shouldn't be in the military to begin with
• "Loose"-dressing women shouldn't be surprised they're perceived to be "loose" (my response here)
• The Quiverfull argument that we're children haters for not being willing to offer our uteri to harbor God's army

Can't wait for my copy! By the way, you must see the website banner. Classic.

This last year was an amazing year in art, music, literature and politics, not to mention some serious personal transitions including a 3000 mile coast to coast move back to my hometown in NY. Here are some of the things I loved this last year.

Favorite movie: Milk. You can read what I wrote about it here. I haven't felt so inspired by a motion picture since Ghandi. Honestly, Slumdog Millionare was a close second, but Milk was my favorite because it combined both great film and a brave and beautiful story.

Favorite Album: Benga, Diary of an African Warrior. For those of you who don't know me personally, you don't know that my other personality is that of an electronic music nerd that goes all over the place to dance to new and interesting forms of electronic music. My most recent favorite being a form of music called dubstep. This album got me up and out of my chair consistently and does what we would call, "bring the noise." Check it out if you dare and remember to keep an open mind.

Favorite art exhibit: Josue Rojas, Deporting the American Dream. Yeah, I know Josue personally, that might be part of it, but his short lived art exhibit in San Francsisco was hands down the best art I saw this year which mixed media, images and one of the most powerful stories, not being told in mainstream media.

Favorite book: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz. Diaz won the Pultizer for this this. I can't speak highly enough of this book, I have sat to write reviews about it time and again and I feel I have to read it again to do it any justice. If you are a fiction fan, it is a must read. You can also listen to an interview with him here. The man is an inspiration to the aspirations of immigrant writers and artists.

Favorite live show: Erykah Badu with the Roots. Do I really need to say more?

Favorite city: New York. After 7 years on the West Coast I made the move back to NY and fell in love with this city all over again. San Francisco will always be in my heart, but right now, New York is who I am dating.

Favorite moment of 2008: When it was announced that Barack Obama is to be the 44th president of the United States of America. Yeah, that is cheesy and everyone else's moment, but damn, it was pretty great.

What were your favorite things of 2008?

In this recent Early Show interview with Jennifer Aniston to promote her new flick Marley and Me, co-anchor Harry Smith asked her actually nothing about the film, but managed to - what some are saying "fawn over" - I'd say act pretty damn inappropriately. The best lines:

"You take a pretty good picture. And how old are you now?"
(When she answers) "Well, you wear it well. . .How do you stay in shape?"
"Do people follow you wherever you go?"
"Alright, baby. You look great. It bears mentioning."

Talk about professional.

I've always been a fan of Kate Winslet's acting, and was thrilled when I saw the headline, "Kate Winslet: I'm a Feminist," although her declaration was not as quite cut-and-dry.

In a recent interview, Winslet talks about how she read Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique while preparing for her role in the upcoming film Revolutionary Road, where she plays a 1950s housewife. So when asked the big question,

'I think I probably am, aren't I?' Her assistant hurriedly adds, 'In a loose, unofficial kind of way,' but Winslet continues to ponder. 'I think I probably am. I mean, not in a bra-burning way. But I think I am a feminist, yeah.'

Nice job, assistant. Because loosely and unofficially caring about women's rights makes it acceptable. But as little as Winslet may know about the bra-burning myth, I still give her some props. Not nearly as much as I would give feminist activists like the fabulous Ashley Judd, but still props nonetheless.

I was sick in bed yesterday (actually, still am) so I thought it would be a good opportunity to catch up on some movies I've been meaning to watch: Itty Bitty Titty Committee was one of them.

It was awesome, super fun and interesting. And I have to say, I was really pleased to see it not too far down iTunes "top rented" lists. Nice. C(I)A rules.

This past Sunday I finally got to see Milk at BAM in Brooklyn. It was a late showing so the theater wasn't too packed which made me feel relieved since I am a big cry baby at the movies and I knew with this one I would let it all loose. And it lived up to all the tear jerking I thought it would. I cried so much I think I actually was embarrassing my brother sitting next to me. I couldn't help it, some things are so close to my heart, that crying is the only way I can process them. Plus, I just lived in San Francisco for 7 years and I miss that special place.

Milk is about the later life of Harvey Milk a New Yorker that flees to San Francisco to live life as an openly gay man and ends up as an organizer that builds power in the Castro and beyond. After multiple tries is finally elected to be part of the San Francisco city of Supervisors. It was one of the most brilliant portrayals I have ever seen of a civil rights leader.

I was not taught about Harvey Milk in school. As a school teacher in San Francisco, I had to learn about his life in order to teach my students, but never to the extent that was portrayed in this film. I never understood the depth of his character, just that he had been unjustly murdered and about the bullshit "Twinkie Defense."

Everyone of the actors in this film was on point. Penn killed it, one of the best roles of his life, as did his long time lover in the film, super hunk, James Franco and even the crazy right winger that ends up taking his life, Dan White, played by Josh Brolin. The story was real and it was timely. One of the key things that he fights for after in office is opposition to Prop 6 which at the time was calling to have all out gay teachers and their supporters fired in an effort to get the "perverts" out of the schools. What disturbed was the realization that this struggle was fought the year I was born, 1978, and well, that is just not that long ago. There are multiple scenes protesting different anti-gay legislation throughout the country all shot in the Castro and looked no different from those that only happened a few weeks ago after the passage of Prop 8, where protesters were also asking for the basic civil rights of gay people. As I watched the movie and as I have thought since the election, what will it take for our civil rights leaders to understand that gay rights is an issue of civil rights?

The story told in this movie is timely and relevant and a brilliant portrayal of what it took to build power in a community that had previously been powerless. It also shows how the majority of the organizers for gay rights were white men which is what has led to a predominantly white led movement for gay rights that has often ran in tension with lesbian rights and queer people of color movements for building gay power. The movie is cut with pieces of him recording a tape that is to be listened to if he is to be assassinated and at the end of the movie he declares that it is not just about gays, but also about Asians, blacks, immigrants, workers and the rights of all of what he calls, "us," a brilliant message that shows that the "other" is actually the majority. But Milk's dream of "us" has not been true in queer organizing since then and building an attempts at building international solidarity in building gay power.

So while the story of Milk is amazing, it is important to look at the impact his legacy. The Castro is currently one of the richest, whitest neighborhoods in San Francisco, where its base of gay men, has turned into wealthy gay white men, marginalizing most other types of people. It is known to be a hostile environment for youth of color that are frequently picked up by the cops and has had several of its bars protested for inhospitable treatment of black clientèle. Simply put, I have very few gay friends that hang out in the Castro anymore.

Milk adds to the mainstream dialogue around organizing that popped up after the Obama campaign. People are seeing what it looks like to build power in communities that have been previously unheard or rendered invisible, generally at the mercy of an unjust government and legal system. So then I had to think, what would an inclusive gay rights movement look like today? One that included single moms that are demonized as "welfare queens" and clearly disrupt heteronormativity to "sexual deviants" and radical queers. How do we align around the issue of our rights being protected or guaranteed? There are more of us that disrupt heteronormativity than there are that don't. And frankly, I think the most disturbing for many about the passage of Prop 8 and all the other anti-gay legislation around the country was the display of homophobia, even more so than the actual loss of the rights. What will it take for the majority of Americans to see queer people as deserving of civil liberties?

Go see the movie, it was really inspiring.

Hank Stuever has a good article in the Washington Post today about reporters' love of questioning male actors on their same-sex on screen kisses and the homophobic responses to these queries.

In the relentless publicity interviews [James Franco has] been doing for his new movie, "Milk," there's plenty to ask about his performance as the neglected lover of San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk, the gay rights martyr. So what does every interviewer -- from David Letterman to the Philippine Daily Inquirer to public radio's Terry Gross -- want to discuss most, over and over and over?

The kissing.

Wasn't it really difficult to kiss another man? Implied: Without throwing up, seeing as you're so obviously straight? What were you thinking as you kissed? Did you rehearse it? What was it liiiiiike?

Underlying the questions (and the answers) is this notion that a gay kissing scene must be the worst Hollywood job hazard that a male actor could face, including stunt work, extreme weather or sitting through five hours of special-effects makeup every day. We live comfortably, if strangely, in a pseudo-Sapphic era in which seemingly every college woman with a MySpace page has kissed another girl for the camera; but for men who kiss men, it's still the final frontier.

Judging from their interviews over the years, actors who have filmed scenes in which they have pointed a revolver at someone's head and pulled the trigger still think gay kissing is the grossest thing they've ever had to do for a movie.

Unfortunately this is not surprising. Just another example of how homophobia (particularly targeted at male queerness) is still running rampant. Even professional actors, who do a damn good job of presenting queer characters on screen feel the need to be extremely unprofessional in response to these questions. Take a look at Steuver's piece for some of the more heinous examples. Obviously the media fascination with asking this question only promotes this type of homophobia and posturing as well.

Also interesting is Stuever's explanation of how female actresses responses to these questions differ.

Women actors who've kissed other women in love scenes, meanwhile, sound like an enlightened other species in interviews about kissing. For them, it's no big whoop. The men, on the other hand, talk as if they've outdone themselves and are now ready to accept their golden statue.

Every once in a while (actually, more often than that but I try to stay positive and all) someone brings up an aspect of sexism or a kind of discrimination I hadn't thought about before. This is one of these cases.

I've never really thought about it before, but I don't believe I've ever seen a movie trailer narrated by a woman. Variety has an article which cites a quote from Don LaFontaine, known as "The Voice of the Movie Trailer", who as you might recall, recently passed away:

"I think women are vastly underrepresented in this area," LaFontaine said in 2006. "You'd think that for films directly aimed at women, chick flicks, the logical choice would be for a woman to narrate the trailer. But studios hold focus groups and the people in them, women included, seem to prefer the male voice."

[Reporter Caroline] Ryder also notes that William Morris represents only three female trailer voices, all of whom work primarily in television or scratch (aka temp tracks), compared with 33 male trailer voices.

Is it because male voices are considered more authoritative? What gives?

Thanks to Brad for the link!

One of my favorite things to do on Halloween is to just chill out with my peoples/honey and watch horror movies. I'm a big fan of scary flicks, yet I always run into the obvious - that so many of them are pretty damn sexist.

So yes, I'll admit I've watched some horror films that are a feminist's nightmare - basically those cheesy, old school sexist flicks that are so silly and ridiculous, it's laughable. But I also can't tell you how many times I've had to turn off a movie five minutes in because the glorification of violence against women is so blatant.

Yet every once in a while, I come across a scary movie that actually manages to be sexist-free. I would say one example is The Descent, a scary-ass film with an all-female cast of really strong characters.

So tonight, Jessica and I are getting a bunch of scary movies to watch. Do any buffs have suggestions of some feminist-friendly horror we could get?

This past weekend, after failing to get tickets to see W., I went to see Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist. I mean who can say no to Michael Cera's sarcastic, self-conscious, nerdiness, that makes feminists gush. Yes, I like quiet, shy, nerdy boys. So. What.

I love movies that try and capture youth culture. Maybe because I am obsessed with youth culture, or have participated in almost every sub-culture of my generation, but I am always fascinated with Hollywood depictions of spaces and places, most people don't have access to or know about. I always relate to characters that are underdogs, that don't fit in with the popular kids and choose to hang out with the punk/goth/skater/hip-hop kids. I especially like movies that depict one eventful night where they are spending the whole night chasing a party, band or DJ. Those movies make my heart smile because I spent so much of my youth chasing parties, DJs, bands, boys, or the next fun thing in the night. They allow you to see what I saw-nerdy kids go to parties, we have fun and adventures without the judgment and gaze of the mainstream normative non-queer world.

Alfre Woodard (left) and CCH Pounder (right)

The Oscar-nominated actress Alfre Woodard talked to Premiere magazine:

Do you think African-American women are getting better roles now? You see more African-American [women] onscreen, I guess, but it's hardly anything to crow about. It's not just African-American women -- it's Latinas, Asian-American women. The film business remains the last bastion of close-minded and uncreative behavior in terms of the way we see human beings.

So it was ironic when George Clooney name-dropped Hattie McDaniel [Gone with the Wind] in his Oscar acceptance speech for Michael Clayton.
I don't remember his speech.

He was trying to show that Hollywood has always been ahead of its time.
I don't know what he meant. No other the industry is this backwards in terms of not putting the best person for the task up to the task, rather than assuming you're a specialty act. It's, "I'm not going to let Rosalind Chao play the museum curator unless it says 'Chinese-American woman,'" and then they're going to make her say, at some point, something about some noodles. That kind of bullshit.

This reminded me of something I recently heard the actress CCH Pounder (of the tv show, "The Shield," which I've actually never seen) say on NPR's Fresh Air. She told a story of wanting to read for the part of a judge, but because it wasn't written as "black woman judge," she had to fight for the chance to even audition:

I just saw this new documentary, A Jihad for Love.

Fourteen centuries after the revelation of the holy Qur'an to the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), Islam today is the world's second largest and fastest growing religion. Muslim gay filmmaker Parvez Sharma travels the many worlds of this dynamic faith discovering the stories of its most unlikely storytellers: lesbian and gay Muslims.

Filmed over 5 1/2 years, in 12 countries and 9 languages, "A Jihad for Love" comes from the heart of Islam. Looking beyond a hostile and war-torn present, this film seeks to reclaim the Islamic concept of a greater Jihad, which can mean 'an inner struggle' or 'to strive in the path of God'. In doing so the film and its remarkable subjects move beyond the narrow concept of 'Jihad' as holy war.

It was a really interesting film, heavy subject matter but well executed. It made me realize how much I have to learn about Middle Eastern culture and Islam. It also provoked thoughts about queer activism in the United States and how our concepts "being out" are really specific to our society in many ways. How open people in the US can be about their sexuality (which of course varies widely) isn't necessarily the standard that can be used to judge other countries and communities. Religious and cultural context is really important and shapes how gay and lesbian people see their own identities and desires for their lives.

You should check it out if it's playing in your city.

Check out the list at Cracked. (I know, the site is not exactly a bastion of feminism -- but trust me, the list actually makes some great points about how movies typically portray strong women characters.) Their top five:

5. Eowyn (Lord of the Rings) 4. Padme Amidala (Star Wars prequels) 3. River Tam (Firefly/Serenity) 2. Catwoman (Batman Returns) 1. Elizabeth Swan (Pirates of the Caribbean)

What characters would you add to the list?

This was a great blog by author Kate Bornstein (of My Gender Workbook fame) on this summer's animated blockbuster, Wall-E.

Her blog post, cleverly entitled WALL•E: A Butch/Femme Love Story... or Silly Rabbit! Robots Have No Gender:

I'm completely smitten with WALL•E, this summer's Pixar/Disney offering. But the last thing I expected to see in my friendly, heterosexual upper east side Manhattan neighborhood movie theater was a feature length cartoon about a pair of lesbian robots who fall madly in love with each other. WALL•E is nothing short of hot, dyke Sci Fi action romance, some seven hundred years in the future! Woo-hoo!

I had similar thoughts while watching the movie about how they were obviously attempting to gender the robots--this is a children's movie for godsake! But similar to the political subtext of the film, there was an interesting subtext about gender and romance that Bornstein explains in her post.

The film makers take a great deal of care in pointing out that WALL•E and EVE's notion of butch/femme romance is based in the world and culture of Hello, Dolly. Hello_dolly_3That's supposed to be a cue for the audience to believe they're a "healthy" heterosexual male and female couple. But it's not proof that they are male or female. And anyway, how camp is Hello, Dolly!?

Is it that simply by looking at the robots, we can tell that WALL•E's a boy and EVE is a girl? What was it up on that screen that defined the robots' gender? Both robots were naked, so we could see their entire anatomy, right? Neither of those robots had a vagina or a penis. Did you see one or the other? Neither robot was sporting an Adam's apple. Neither EVE nor WALL•E flashed any tit that I could see. So, we've got no way to spot those robots as male or female by using secondary sex characteristics. But still, most of us would swear on a stack of holy bibles or holy Gender Trouble that those robots are male and female. How did we most of us come to agree on that?

Read the rest for more!

Via Sugarbutch Chronicles

Sometimes I google things like "feminism" or "sexism" and this time via a google search for sexism I came across this gem. It is a series of clips from Disney movies depicting masculinity and then deconstructing the ways these characterizations of manhood deploy as standard.

There are some other ones in the 'related' section such as this one on racism in Disney.

At Salon, Rebecca Traister has a love letter to her favorite sci-fi protagonist, Dana Scully:

In this summer of Dark Knights and Hellboys and Iron Men, it's refreshing to be reminded -- as we will be this weekend, with the opening of "The-X-Files: I Want to Believe" -- that not so long ago, there was a science fiction series with a woman at its core, a heroine whose major goals were more about disproving the existence of extraterrestrial life than marrying Big, a chick who spent more time chasing fluke worms down toilets than trying on shoes.

Awhile ago, Starziki6 posted some very similar sentiments on our community blog:

Mostly, my love for the show (and I loved this show for eight seasons) had to do with Scully and how unique her character was. She was introduced to the show as its rational, scientific, and spiritual voice. When Mulder got himself into trouble by following his gut, Scully would reel him into reality by using her head. (It also happened that Scully got into trouble from using her head and Mulder could save her by following his gut, but the roles remained largely consistent.)

I cannot love the show more for the way it depicted a strong, smart, beautiful, and ultimately feminist woman.

I was so excited to go see Sex and the City. Like most feminists with any shred of race or class analysis, I have always had a love hate relationship with Sex and the City. There were things about that show that were so god awful that I literally had to tune them out completely to enjoy the show. As a woman of color inundated by media that fails to ever acknowledge who I am or that what I am is valid, I am used to this type of spectatorship. And Sex and the City has always been one of those shows that always made it worth it, because for better or for worse, the show always made me feel better, especially if I was feeling heartbroken (which has been often!).

So naturally I was most excited to go see the movie with two of my best gal pals. Unfortunately, it did not live up to my lofty expectations. Disappointment would be an understatement. Did I laugh? I sure did, but I am stupid like that sometimes. And honestly, I couldn't tell if I was laughing at the movie or with it for most of it.

Just lovely.

This week, Newsweek covered a new HBO documentary on film director Roman Polanski, in which the infamous case where he was charged with drugging and raping a 13-year old girl is discussed. Interesting language Newsweek decided to use to describe the crime:

There was champagne and a Quaalude for refreshments before a trip to the bedroom. When Samantha's mother found out, she called the police. Polanski never denied he'd had sex with her but maintained it was consensual. Samantha said it was not. She also told detectives she'd been drunk before. And she'd had sex before. (Emphasis mine)

Not surprisingly, the general language of the piece has a similar tone, describing the case as Polanksi being charged for "having sex with" a 13-year old. The article ends with:

This deft and subtle film is a fitting tribute to a man—like him or not—whose life deserves more than tabloid headlines.

It absolutely drives me insane how Polanski and other high profile sex offenders like accused Woody Allen are treated like martyrs for having to endure the tabloids for heinous crimes, and labeled as these brilliant, tragic and fascinating men. Is it just me or is there something really disturbing about this?

I'm a little late on this, but I have to mention it. Did anyone else find it really irritating that Deborah Solomon's Questions with Cynthia Nixon in the last New York Times Magazine seemed like some weird "Ask a Lesbian!" column? Check these questions out (the last one is the kicker)...

A few years ago, you moved in with a woman, after leaving the father of your children. Do you find it easier living with a woman than a man because you have more in common? I think you do have more in common.

You can use the same bathroom in movie theaters, for instance. That’s absolutely true!

Can you share clothes? No. Christine doesn’t wear women’s clothes; she only wears men’s clothes. She won’t even wear any kind of women’s shoes. I bought her a pair of cowboy boots that were from the women’s department, and she was like, “Don’t do this again.�

Does she watch sports on TV? She does. We don’t have a TV. But when there was a World Cup, we went to the local Ruby Foo’s and watched it. And we actually did watch the Super Bowl as well. She tried to explain it to me.

Do you think of her as the male figure in the relationship? No, I don’t at all. Look at what’s happening now. She’s at home with the kids, and I’m the one out pounding the pavement. . . . She’s for Hillary, and I’m for Obama.

I swear, I was waiting for her to ask about scissoring.

Has anyone ever seen the movie Teeth? I know we've blogged about it before, but I finally watched it yesterday and I fucking loved it. Loved.

Anyone else see it? Thoughts?

Martha Ma is a food and media educator and producer, community chef and health counselor. She is the host and producer of "The Tasty Life," a bi-weekly television show on Manhattan Public Access channel 57, and the editor of the e-newsletter, "Eater's Digest."

Martha is also executive producer of the Food for Thought Film Festival. If you're in the NYC area this weekend, check out the last weekend of the festival at Cooper Union's Wollman Auditorium, 51 Astor Place at Third Ave. Feature films include King Corn, Black Gold, and Life and Debt. Shorts include The Meatrix I, II and II 1/2 and The True Cost of Food.

Here's Martha...

The amazing film, NO! The Rape Documentary is being screened tonight in Brooklyn at 7pm. The event is free and open to the public.

Filmmaker Aishah Shahidah Simmons will also be at the screening to answer questions and discuss the documentary, along with anti-violence activist Quentin Walcott and writer Kevin Powell. Seriously, this is not an event to be missed.

Doors open at 6:30 pm
program begins at 7:00 pm

at BROWN MEMORIAL BAPTIST CHURCH
484 Washington Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11238
(at the corner of Gates Ave. | Fort Greene, Brooklyn, NY)
A or C to Clinton/Washington stop

For a Feministing interview with Aishah, click here.

My new crush is Peter Sagal of NPR, who came out of watching the new flick Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who with his daughters pretty pissed off:

In a new subplot added by the filmmakers, the mayor of Whoville has 96 daughters. He has one son. Guess who gets all his attention? Guess who saves the day? Go ahead, think about it, I'll wait.

Check out the whole fantastic, feminist rant. (And thanks to our readers for the tip!)

A random note I learned in this process: anti-choicers apparently stole a line from the original book, "a person's a person, no matter how small," to use as their own. (Despite Seuss' past threat to sue.) Lovely.

Next Tuesday, HBO is featuring a documentary exposing the scope of rape in the Democratic Republic of Congo titled, The Greatest Silence, reports UN Dispatch.

The Enough Campaign and HBO are working together to coordinate house screenings across the country. You can even hold your own screening or take part in a conference call the following day with filmmaker Lisa Jackson, ENOUGH Co-Chair John Prendergast, and Director of Public Policy at the Family Violence Prevention Fund, Kiersten Stewart, to discuss the film and find out about ways that you can help end violence against women in the DRC.

Check out more background on violence against women in the DRC.

Teens beatdown a rapist in my fave feminist flick, Girls Town.

Radar has compiled a list of the decade's most woman-hating movies (some I agree with, some not so much).

But, to get the afternoon started on a positive note...leave your favorite feminist-minded movies in comments. Mine, by a fucking landslide, is Girls Town. Lili Taylor rocks out in this flick, where a group of high school girls hand out some serious justice to rapist assholes. Love.

I love this. Hayley Atwell is starring in Woody Allen's new movie, Cassandra's Dream, but Miramax Films asked her to loose weight.

Says Atwell: "I went round to Emma's one night and she was getting very angry that I wasn't eating all the food she was giving me. I told her why and she hit the roof." The no-nonsense Thompson was so outraged that she called the producers the next day and threatened to resign from the film if they forced Atwell to lose weight. Faced with Thompson - a two-times Oscar winner - on the warpath, Miramax Films swiftly relented.

I heart her.

Miki Fujiwara, aka Urban Envy, is a self-employed visual artist/community activist based in New York City.

Born in Hiroshima, Japan, Miki is known to be one of the original members of the New York Tributary Art Movement. The majority of her work, mostly paintings, has been categorized as "Cultural Surrealism," often said to be in the "tradition of Cynthia Tom and Frida Kahlo."

Urban Envy's works can be seen in local galleries of New York City.

Here's Miki...

Juno star and Oscar-nominated actor Ellen Page isn't afraid of using the f-word.

From an interview with The Washington Post: "I call myself a feminist when people ask me if I am, and of course I am 'cause it's about equality, so I hope everyone is. You know you're working in a patriarchal society when the word feminist has a weird connotation."

And then I swoon.

Thanks to Andrew for the link.

Can I just say that I can't fucking wait for this movie to come out?

Hi Everyone!

I'm really excited to be blogging officially for the crew at Feministing. Since in my other life I write as Radical Doula, I figured this would be an appropriate first post. Everyone should check out this documentary in the making--At Your Cervix and if you happen to be in the DC area this weekend, go to their fundraiser.

This film is all about the oh-so-scary pelvic exam. Or maybe it doesn't have to be? The film is dedicated to "making pelvic exams respectful and pain-free." Sounds right on to me.

At Your Cervix breaks the silence around the unethical methods used by medical and nursing schools to teach students how to perform pelvic exams; the most egregious being on unconsenting, anaesthetized women. At the same time, the film highlights the Gynecological Teaching Associate (GTA) Program in New York City. Fuelled by the spirit of women’s health activism, the GTA program began over 30 years ago and it has been shown to be the most effective way to teach exams and is also the most ethical and empowering to women.

For those of you in the DC area: The filmmaker will be showing a clip of the movie at Joe's Movement Emporium in Mount Rainier, MD February 15, 2008 @ 7pm.

Oh, and if you want to make sure this awesome film gets made, think about donating some money here.

The producer of Superman Returns (of all movies) is being sued by two women for sexual discrimination and harassment.

The most recent case was made by a couple who worked for Jon Peters; when informing Peters of her pregnancy, he recommended she have an abortion or her husband would be fired, in which he was shortly after she refused.

The other pending lawsuit was filed in 2005 when an office assistant claims she was harassed daily and physically threatened by Peters.

What a guy.

I find this to be odd. Apparently, the MPAA has rather inconsistent guidelines for what is considered inappropriate verse appropriate imagery for movie promotions. Via Think Progress, the poster for Alex Gibney's new documentary, Taxi to the Dark Side, has been rejected because it is not "suitable" for all audiences. The poster shown here, is an image of two soldiers walking a hooded person away. Censorship is usually fickle and inconsistent, but for some reason it appears that when torture is fictitious, graphic imagery is appropriate. It is when it represents reality, it must be censored.

For example, can we forget the lovely image for the movie, Captivity?

Amanda at Think Progress has a few more images that also show torture and were approved by the MPAA and frankly they are much more graphic than the above poster that was censored. So I guess, it is OK to show women tortured in movie posters, mainly because we are used to seeing it, but in this case perhaps because it is fiction. However, when images are shown that display the atrocities done by US military forces that are inhumane, unjust and illegal, WELL, that is just too much for the American public to handle.

Check out Meghan O'Rourke's piece on Knocked Up and Katherine Heigl's recent statement that the movie was "a little sexist." O'Rourke delves into the whole women-as-killjoys trend--it's good stuff. What do you think?

While everyone is asking why it took so long for Jodie Foster to come out of the closet (maybe because it's none of our damn business), it's great to see she's gone public regardless.

I also want to take this opportunity to give Foster props for playing such strong feminist characters in her movies (The Accused, Panic Room, and her most recent The Brave One). What's your favorite Jodie Foster flick? (I think mine is Contact.)

Shortly after Katherine Heigl made her statement about Knocked Up saying the movie was "a little sexist," we find that an Jennifer Love Hewitt is now speaking out against social beauty standards. In response to ridicule on the internet regarding an "unflattering" picture of her in a bikini, Hewitt said:

"I've sat by in silence for a long time now about the way women's bodies are constantly scrutinized. . . To set the record straight, I'm not upset for me, but for all the girls out there that are struggling with their body image.

A size 2 is not fat! Nor will it ever be. . . And being a size 0 doesn't make you beautiful. . . To all girls with butts, boobs, hips and a waist. . . put on a bikini — put it on and stay strong."

While I agree with Zuzu (who has a great post on this, by the way) that she seems a wee defensive as being seen as fat, it's great that she's speaking out against this bullshit.

Thanks to Michael for the link.

In a recent interview with Vanity Fair, actress Katherine Heigl says that Knocked Up, was "a little sexist."

"It paints the women as shrews, as humorless and uptight, and it paints the men as lovable, goofy, fun-loving guys," she says. "It was hard for me to love the movie."

Thoughts?

Both to see the movie, and to have a killer vagina.

By the way, I still want to make a Vagina Dentata shirt with the tagline: "Feminists have teeth," but have nary an idea on the design. Any ideas?

The name alone is enough to make me want to see this movie. Add in my love for feminist graffiti, and I'm sold.

Filmmaker Tiona. M. has worked in the educational documentary genre and pulled up her sleeves in the non-profit arena. This time, she has two documentary films that she wants to share with the world. One is on a Black women and her two daughters, and their university experience. The other, which I interviewed her on, is black./womyn.: conversations..., which should be out soon.

Here's Tiona...

Thea at Shameless Mag really gets it right:

This is what really breaks my heart: Wes’ track record with women of colour. Anderson just loves pairing women of colour up with dorky white dudes, shortly after dorky white dudes have been dumped or rejected by white ladies. Even though Rushmore’s Margaret Yang is the fullest of all of Wes’ colour characters, she is still paired up with the loveable/hateable Max after Ms Cross turns him down. It’s the same story with Inez, the lovely Latin American hotel cleaner in Bottle Rocket.

[...] The interracial relationships in Anderson’s films are not radical. They simply reinforce racism’s most current and insidious form - they take cultural appropriation to the ultimate level by appropriating actual women of colour, a la Gwen Stefani.

Read the whole thing.

From the woman who brought you I Was a Teenage Feminist comes a peek into one of my fave topics: virginity.

THE AMERICAN VIRGIN examines the impact of myths, misconceptions and cultural beliefs surrounding virginity.

What is virginity? Who gets to define it? Why do we care so much about it? And how do our sexual choices define our identity, especially for women?

From abstinence-till-marriage programs to teen sex comedies to hymen reconstruction, THE AMERICAN VIRGIN explores the ways in which anxiety and fascination with the concept of the "virgin" are linked to our cultural attitudes towards female sexuality.

Awesome. Also, if you're in New York, there's a fundraiser tonight, cleverly called NYC's First Purity Ball. Go and feel like a virgin again. Whatever that means.

The Los Angeles Times had a piece yesterday about the television and movie trend of the BBF--the Black Best Friend:

Julia Louis-Dreyfus has one. Sandra Bullock had one. So did Jennifer Garner and Katie Holmes. Jennifer Love Hewitt has had two. Calista Flockhart took hers dancing. Kate Walsh had one, lost her, and got another one with a different face but the same name. And Scarlett Johansson got her first one last weekend.

They're stars who have all played lead characters who experience adventure with the help of their BFF (Best Friend Forever). But in many cases, these BFFs might more accurately be characterized as BBFs -- Black Best Friend -- played by an African American actress whose character's principal function is to support the heroine, often with sass, attitude and a keen insight into relationships and life.

Rose Catherine Pinkney, executive vice president of programming and production for TV One and a former Paramount Studios executive, says "...[I]t's a shame that studios also don't have the courage to put these actresses in leads...Historically, people of color have had to play nurturing, rational caretakers of the white lead characters. And studios are just not willing to reverse that role."

Sounds like the "magical black man" syndrome. Charming.

But the article is quick to point out that unlike movies or shows where black and white men are shown to be buddies, the relationship between women on screen follows a rather predictable formula:

BBFs vary in personality and looks, but many share the same qualities: They are gorgeous, independent, loyal and successful. They live or work with their friend but are not really around all that much except for well-timed moments when the heroine needs an eating companion or is in crisis. BBFs basically have very little going on, so they are largely available for such moments. And even though they are single or lack consistent solid relationships, BBFs are experts in the ways of the world, using that knowledge to comfort, warn or scold their BFF.

Oh yeah, and they're usually the only person of color around. Way to go, Hollywood.

Racialicious highlights this hilarious MadTV sketch. Amazing.

Remember the guys who have "relationships" with their Real Dolls? Well there's a movie (kinda) about that, Lars and the Real Girl. And it looks really good. (Though my mad crush on Ryan Gosling probably doesn't make me very objective.)

So I don't really know how this would be that different from USC section 2257, but to take an already faulty law to the next level, the US Dept of Justice wants to generate a list of all actors in the porn industry. The desire to do this is of course to prohibit the production of underage porn. However, the reality of 2257 has been that many women have had their identities and personal information revealed to people that shouldn't have access to it. Or rather people we don't want to have access to it, thusly making a potentially preventative measure backfire or often force performers to leave the country.

The new rules, proposed under the Adam Walsh Child Safety and Protection Act, would require blue-movie makers to keep photos, stage names, professional names, maiden names, aliases, nicknames and ages on file for the inspection of the department's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section.

"The identity of every performer is critical to determining and ensuring that no performer is a minor," according to the new proposal.

The adult film industry plans to challenge the new rule as a violation of the First Amendment, said Paul Cambria, a lawyer for Hustler and other adult film companies.

According to one article the key difference will be that this new law covers all sexually simulative acts, not just explicitly sexual acts. There has been some discussion to keep personal information completely private. The pornography industry is already so complicated with respect to the rights of women and attempted protection of underage performers, so I have trouble believing that this would actually help.

Thoughts?

via New York Post.

Apropos of Vanessa's post, the other night I watched 9 to 5 for the first time in several years, and was really struck by how much its depiction of the workplace holds true today (at least before the film sort of goes off the rails halfway through). Sure, in 2007, bosses who are "sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigots" might have to be a little subtler about their views than they were in 1980. But when the Lily Tomlin character gets passed over for a promotion she richly deserves, then essentially gets called a ball-busting bitch for not being happy about it, I thought about that new study showing women face repercussions when they ask for raises.

And that stupid Marie Claire advice column has so many parallels to how the Dolly Parton character is treated in the movie. Rather than stick up for Dolly when she's seriously sexually harassed by her boss, the other women in the office seem to be relieved that someone else is subject to more harassment than they are. They not only keep quiet -- they want nothing to do with her. When Parton finally snaps, she says to her boss, "Look, I put up with all your pinchin' and starin' because I need this job!" I've definitely heard similar sentiments expressed in 2007.

The examples go on and on. Jane Fonda's character is entering the workforce, scared and clueless, after spending most of her adult years as a housewife, only to be divorced for a younger woman. (Gee, that never happens anymore, does it?) Their boss refers to all female employees as "my girls" -- which infuriates Tomlin's character. But I also know a male boss who refers to most of his female employees as "muffin" or "kid." Seriously.

I can't decide what's more amazing: that a movie depicting the rampant harassment and sexism in the workplace was a runaway blockbuster hit, or that the injustices depicted in this movie -- released 27 years ago -- are still very much a part of working life for American women.

Check out the trailer:

In an interesting essay over at The Nation, Annabelle Gurwitch fears she's become a Tipper Gore type because she didn't want her kids exposed to the sexist and disturbing movie posters for Captivity. Gurwitch describes her strong beliefs about free speech, and then this:

But that was all before one fateful morning last March. It was on that day that I was driving a carpool of third graders to school when my son pointed at a large looming advertisement and asked, "What's that, mom?" I craned my neck--it was pretty high up, but still visible from the car--and glimpsed some extremely violent and disturbing images. What was being depicted exactly was hard to make out.... A woman crying, maybe; someone encased in a mask with tubes inserted in the nasal passages; and finally what looked like a female body lying inert, her body draped over a bed. The poster read: "Abduction, confinement, torture, termination." Naturally, as a left-wing liberal, I assumed it was detailing abuses at Abu Ghraib and the anguish this has inflicted on the spouses of the prisoners. But no, it was advertising a movie.

To the children, however, I replied, "That person has just found out she's very ill. She goes to the hospital and is placed in a full-body cast, and when she gets home she sees her medical bills, which are so exorbitantly high that she passes out." Were they convinced, confused, politically indoctrinated? I'm not certain, but the rest of the ride to school was very, very quiet.

So apparently the Captivity poster Vanessa wrote about was the second iteration. The first was even more disturbing. And Gurwitch was not the only feminist mom who was troubled by her kids seeing these ads. Wrote Jill Soloway in the HuffPo:

A couple of weeks ago I was driving my son to school when I took a left onto LaBrea, and, as usual, sat in traffic for a couple of minutes. As we waited for the construction bottleneck to ease up, we sang along with the new Shins CD. And then, at the same moment, we fell silent.

We were both noticing the same thing.

It was a billboard for a movie. There was actress Elisha Cuthbert, super-heavily made up-dare I say whorishly-- being used as the centerpiece of the most repulsive, horrifying, woman-hating, human- hating thing I have ever seen in public. [...]

The next morning I decided to take a different route. Except this time I saw two more of the same billboards. It felt like they were EVERYWHERE, peppered all over my city. That afternoon, after the ride home with two more ten year olds in my car-one, a little girl, whose face I watched in my rearview mirror as she tried to make sense of the billboard. Now I was ready to take action.

Even as the letter-writing campaign to Lions Gate Films succeeded in removing the "Abduction, confinement, torture, termination" ads, Gurwitch writes that the questions kept coming from the kids, even about the new, less graphic ads.

This week, the new posters for Captivity went up in my neighborhood. Right on the bus stop at eye level for the kids to see in our carpool today. The new image is simple. A gorgeous woman's face imprisoned behind a chain-link fence. This time, one can clearly see she's crying and mascara is running down her face.

My son asked me what the girl had done wrong and why she was being punished. I was going to say, "She's crying because she heard about the recent Supreme Court decision limiting a woman's right to choose," but I felt defeated, so I just said, "I don't know."

Even though her first explanation made me laugh, her feelings of ambiguity over opposing these ads struck a much more serious chord with me. I have no children or plans to have them, but I can see the desire to keep these images away from kids. They're different than other types of sexist ads I dislike (say, boob-filled beer commercials, or gender-role-heavy ads for household cleaning products). Sexualized violence against women is a whole new level, and I can see how having to explain it to your kids would bring out the Tipper Gore in almost every free-speech-loving feminist.

So I'm curious, dear readers, how do you talk to your kids (and others') about sexist images in the media, particularly disturbing or violent ones like the Captivity ads?

Brooklyn filmmaker Sarah Schenck’s first feature film, Slippery Slope, bills itself as “a comedy about pornography and feminism.� Those aren’t words you see together every day. All too often, the debates around the topic are polarizing and volatile.

Here, Schenck takes an antiporn feminist who’s trying to get funding so her film Porn for Dummies can go to the Cannes Film Festival, but the only way she can make ends meet is to take a job on the set of a porn flick helmed by a woman. She has to keep her job a secret from her boyfriend while also figuring out the logistics of the genre and what her own politics will let her do. “With hot button issues, humor is often the best way to start a conversation about it,� says Schenck.

The 41-year-old mother of two, who was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for producing 2004’s Virgin, starring Robin Wright Penn and Elisabeth Moss, was inspired by her own potential dip into the world of porn directing, which she ultimately chose not to pursue. While making Slippery Slope, though, Schenck herself got an education in the mock-porn business, shooting mishaps, and learning when to compromise. Her, she delves into the complexity of feminist debates about housework, babies, and smut.

by Rachel Kramer Bussel

Check out this piece on women directors and their experiences trying to make films within a male-dominated field.

Have any favorite female directors?

In an interview with Parade magazine Emma Watson, who plays Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter movies, says that she's a feminist. Nice.

“There are too many stupid girls in the media,� Watson observes, her dark eyes lighting up. “Hermione’s not scared to be clever. I think sometimes really smart girls dumb themselves down a bit, and that’s bad.� Watson admits that there is quite a lot of herself in the confident and bookish Hermione. “I’m a bit of a feminist,� she proclaims. “I’m very competitive and challenging.� Though she resented it at first, Watson has come to appreciate the emphasis on Hermione’s brains rather than her appearance. “When I was 9 or 10, I would get really upset when they tried to make me look geeky, but now I absolutely love it. I find it’s so much pressure to be beautiful. Hermione doesn’t care what she looks like."

Though you have to love how Watson's comment about the way young women are portrayed in the media gets turned into this headline at People: Emma Watson: 'There Are Too Many Stupid Girls'

I saw this ad for a new thriller movie, “Captivity,� on the train the other day and felt the need to bring attention to it.

But why? After all, it’s just a picture of a crying woman’s face behind bars, right? But notice her mouth slightly open and lips pressed lustifully against the bars. Needless to say, it left a seriously bad taste in my mouth. (Because that metal looks so damn yummy...)

If this ad isn’t marketing sex, I don’t know what is. That along with the fact that she’s crying and in "captivity" is really disturbing. Yes, the sex in thriller flicks is generally expected and normally cheesy, but seeing an ad that’s marketing both sex and violence against women on my way to work every day pisses me the fuck off.

The ad has caught a lot of shit from bloggers as well, one of which you can check out here (which includes a letter from my boyfriend Joss Whedon).

Katha Pollitt takes on Knocked Up [SPOILER ALERT] on her new blog (yay!), And Another Thing.

One comment: I'm sorry, but am I the only person in the world who thinks Seth Rogen is frigging adorable?

Check out this interview with the fearless and awe-inspiring activist Malalai Joya. As a vocal advocate for women's rights in Afghanistan, she was elected to parliament, only to be ousted last month after criticizing the government.

Joya calls her suspension "an illegal act" and doesn't regret her harsh words. "I stress that most of these parliament members are worse than an animal stable, because they massacred 65,000 innocent people and [committed] lots of violence against women," she says, referring to fighting that took place in Kabul in the 1990s when ethnic militias battled for control, killing, maiming and raping civilians in the process. Several of those responsible for the violence now hold high-level posts in Hamid Karzai's government.

Joya admits, "it's more risky than ever" for her to return -- one parliament member said he would put a bomb on himself and kill her, she alleges. After at least four assassination attempts, other documented incidents involving threats of rape, murder and water bottles being thrown at her within the Parliament, Joya vows to return.

"Even with these risks that I face -- for example, I'm going outside wearing a burqa, I must have bodyguards, I'm changing houses, I can't live with my family -- but just because of that, I want to go back to this warlord-ism, druglord-ism Parliament to tear their masks off in front of them in their own house, because nobody dares to."

For more on the film about Joya, Enemies of Happiness, click here.

Given my undying love for Freaks and Geeks (and, by extension, Judd Apatow), I'm totally seeing Knocked Up this weekend. In her review for Slate, Dana Stevens answers a question that occurred to me after watching the preview: Do they discuss abortion?

Allow me to briefly divagate here on the nonexistence of abortion as an option in Knocked Up. This omission smells of the focus group, and it's a disappointment in a movie that otherwise prides itself on its unsentimental honesty about the realities of unplanned parenthood. It's just not believable that, in Alison and Ben's upper-middle-class, secular L.A. milieu, abortion would not be matter-of-factly discussed as a possibility in the case of a pregnancy this accidental. If she doesn't want one, great -- obviously, there'd be no movie if she did -- but let's hear about why not. Otherwise, her character becomes a cipher, a foil for Ben's epiphanies about growing up, without being allowed any epiphanies of her own. The biggest unanswered question about Heigl's character is one the movie never tiptoes near -- why does she decide to keep the baby?

Seems like a glaring omission to me. This is the key point in Stevens' excellent critique of Apatow's failure to write female characters who are quite as real as their male counterparts. I'll reserve judgment until I see the movie. But Knocked Up, however touching and entertaining it may be, certainly seems to fit with Hollywood's long history of professing pro-choice beliefs and then writing scripts in which women with minimum-wage jobs and no support system make last-minute decisions to not have an abortion, unplanned pregnancies end with deus ex machina miscarriages, and characters who do choose abortion are killed off in subsequent episodes. Most often, though, the A-word isn't even mentioned.

This is often an unwelcome surprise, but none of these fictional characters, unlike their real-world counterparts who might agonize over the choice to have a baby, will choose to end their pregnancies. In fact, we might as well be living in an era before Roe v. Wade as far as TV is concerned. Characters these days rarely even say the word abortion when confronted with an unplanned pregnancy -- let alone have one.

Premium-cable shows like Six Feet Under have done a slightly better job of portraying women struggling with and making a variety of choices about pregnancy. And it's worth noting that this year's Palme d'Or prize-winner at the Cannes Film Festival was a movie about illegal abortion in Romania. But I have a hard time thinking of many films or TV shows that have realistically portrayed women making choices about unplanned pregnancies -- and living with those choices. Nominations for best/worst portrayals of choice on-screen?

Check out Dane Cook's new movie poster after the jump. I think you'll agree that it's...special.

Apparently the latest Shrek movie has a tad o' feminism in there:

Cameron Diaz has admitted she loves the fact her character Princess Fiona gets all feminist in the latest instalment of hit animation films Shrek.

Shrek The Third sees Fiona team up with other princesses to fight the bad guys, the Daily Express reports. "We get kind of 'bad a**' and burn our bras. Sleeping Beauty and the others decide that instead of being damsels in distress wondering when our prince will come, we band together with the help of Julie Andrews (Fiona's mother) to save ourselves," the star is quoted as saying.

Neat. Did they have to go with the stereotypical bra-burning though?

Anyone who has been tortured by some of the really bad movies getting way too much play at the local theater these days probably wasn't surprised to read the New York Times story yesterday about the shortage of female power in Hollywood. Despite the fact that women make up 51% of movie goers, three of the four women who held top jobs at Hollywood's major studios have left in the past 14 months. All have been replaced my men.

I'm no fan of essentialism (i.e. women always make movies other women like because they share some innate sensibilty a.k.a bad romcoms), but there is something unarguably frightening about one of our nation's most powerful messaging industries being in the hands of only men. There seems to always be a heavy line up of unnecessary sequels, horror and violence at the box office, usually with a little sprinkle of objectification of female bodies throw in for misogynistic measure. Certainly this has something to do with who is holding the purse strings.

I want less Steven Seagal and more Jane Campion, Kimberly Peirce, and Zana Briski. Is that too much to ask?

But Mom, if you don't buy him for me who will teach that bitch Barbie that you can't just go around wearing miniskirts and not expect something to happen?

You know what's not funny at all? Rape. So it makes sense that dolls of rapists wouldn't be fun or funny either. But I guess I'm not a movie marketer, so what do I know.

Apparently Quentin Tarantino's character from the new Grindhouse movie Planet Terror, Rapist Number One, is being made into a toy and sold at Toys R Us stores across the country. Seriously.

Garance doesn't buy that the doll will be widely avaiable, and thinks that this is "a manufactured outrage over a disgusting action figure based on a failed movie — all designed to generate publicity at one of Hollywood’s biggest online draws, while also turning rape into a joke."

Well, any way you slice it, my breakfast is still ruined.

Via Perez Hilton.

I know, I know, it's Shakespeare turns teen movie, but I caught it while on my much-needed Beer and Couch Day (self-explanatory) and fell in love. The film, a spin-off of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, addresses a number of feminist issues, from Title IX to gender stereotyping. Oh how I love thee feminist teen movie, let me count the ways...

Anyone seen it?

In honor of this survey showing that corporate types of both genders would rather work for a man than a woman (just check out those quotes -- ugh), I give you a clip from one of my favorite movies of all time, Big Business. Bette Midler's bitchy boss caricature simply blows Meryl Streep's out of the water. Bette did it first and she did it better, Oscar nomination or no.

Back when The Devil Wears Prada came out, Rebecca Traister had the definitive take on how tough-minded career women always get their comeuppance in the movies. It's worth re-reading.

On March 10th, HBO will premiere a film, Life Support, starring Queen Latifah, about a HIV-positive black woman from a low-income community in Brooklyn who becomes an AIDS activist.

As someone who works for an organization in Bedford Stuyvesant that educates girls about HIV prevention, which is the neighborhood that partly inspired the director for this film (the film is based on his sister’s life), it’s great to see the HIV/AIDS crisis in these communities brought to light. (Not to mention with a female protagonist.)

One hope I have is that the film touches not only on the struggle the main character goes through but the larger reasons behind why HIV/AIDS is so prevalent in these communities. It’s seeming to be pitched as a story of redemption, of choices this woman made and how she ended up giving back to her community; I just hope that the lack of choices she had, particularly as a woman, are exposed as well.

Then again, I doubt the movie (nor Latifah) will disappoint me.

From the acclaimed misogynist director of Hustle & Flow comes a new movie in which Samuel L. Jackson chains a skeletal Christina Ricci to his radiator and attempts to "cure her of promiscuity." I saw the trailer a few months ago and found it hard to believe. But seeing the film's website, which is up now, I realize they're completely serious. It's not even done in a pulp-y style.

Ricci told MTV her character is "a girl who suffers physical flashbacks to a childhood rape. Some women and young girls freak out, panic, and need to cut themselves. [My character] needs to cause herself the same kind of pain when she has panic attacks by having anonymous sex."

Sounds like being chained up in only her underwear and then preached to is exactly the kind of healing process this character needs.

The creepiest thing about the movie, or at least its marketing, is that it's not only about selling Ricci's body. It's about selling the idea of sex with a girl who's been abused and who's clearly got a lot of problems. There's even an interactive feature (if you click on "experience" in the upper left corner -- click here for a screenshot) that allows you to drag two pills across the screen and then watch a video of Ricci collapsing. Now she's yours for the violating! Plus, the "page loading" graphics that appear every time you click feature her silhouette struggling against the chain. A recurring image in the film as well, I'd imagine.

A Girl Like Me is a short documentary by teenager Kiri Davis. It's great stuff, but it totally made me cry.

I never really looked to Miss World 1996 and well-known actress Aishwarya Rai for feminist leadership. I mean, she was "the one" South Asian woman to break into the US mainstream and although, I can't relate to her as much as say Harold and Kumar or Parminder Nagra, I took her success for what it was. Clearly, recognizing that for an actress from India to (begin to) make it in Hollywood (and Bollywood), she would naturally have light skin, light eyes and flowing hair.

But now she has Indian feminists upset along with women's activist in the states by supposedly marrying a tree to overcome a curse, after being proposed to by another Bollywood actor.

Via New American Media.

Abhishek, also a film star, proposed to her last month in New York, following the release of their film, “Guru,� there. The wedding is expected to take place later this year.

But Ash is reportedly blighted with what in astrological terms is described as “manglik dosh,� which means that the planet Mars (mangla) and possibly even the planet Saturn are in the seventh house. People with manglik dosh are prone to multiple marriages, according to San Francisco Bay Area Vedic astrologer Pandit Parashar. That means Ash’s marriage to Abhishek could either end in divorce or his death.

Multiple marriages? Imagine the blasphemy! No but really, we all read a little astrology no? (I read a lot.)

In Hindu tradition, in order to offset the evil influence of manglik dosh, a woman should marry a peepal or banana tree before she ties the knot with her fiancé. Or she could even marry a clay urn, which should be broken soon after the nuptial ceremonies, signifying that the bride has become a widow, and the manglik dosh problem has been solved.

Er. Yes it is an old tradition. So the question is, do we expect that Rai, since she has had all this Western success, will no longer follow what she believes is her Hindu traditions? Or that she is somehow absolved from familial pressure?

Probably not. Some Indian feminists however believe that she is setting women back.

Meanwhile, Ash’s actions have invoked the wrath of feminists and women’s rights activists in India. Shruti Singh, a Patna lawyer, filed suit against the two families, saying such ceremonies are in violation of the Indian Constitution and offensive to women.

“I agree with her,� says India-born Berkeley resident Shobha Hiatt, a women’s rights advocate. “It is shocking that people as forward thinking as the Bachchans should engage in such archaic practices. It is like moving back in time.�

Thoughts?

Teeth, which premiered at Sundance this year, is a film about a teenage girl who is "the local chastity group's most active participant"... and then discovers she's living the vagina dentata myth.

A stranger to her own body, innocent Dawn discovers she has a toothed vagina when she becomes the object of violence.

A friend who went to Sundance said this was the film everyone was talking about. Says director Michael Lichtenstein,

I've known about the vagina dentata myth for a long time. Though there are many versions of the myth, the story is nearly always the same: the hero must conquer the woman/creature with the teeth. I thought it would be fun and informative to turn the myth around so that it is the toothed woman who is the heroine. And the story grew out of that "what if..." premise.

I wonder if this is also what inspired the "Rapex" condom? One reviewer wrote,

If you get over the rather distasteful subject matter and focus on what's beneath the surface, you'll find a flick that's got a whole lot to say about young women and their fear of burgeoning sexuality, society's general distaste (and, let's face it, fear) of the female sex organ, and the ways in which men do a serious disservice to womankind by treating their "naughty bits" as if they're something to be ashamed of.

I can't wait to see it. My only problem is that the movie poster seems a little too fluffy-teen-comedy for the real subject matter.

(Still from The Shape of Water)

Contributed by Courtney Martin.

One of the most disappointing things about the way that contemporary feminism is portrayed in the mainstream media, besides plain ol’ dead, is as a strictly American phenomenon. The truth is that there are all kinds of fierce, complex, and effective feminisms being enacted all over the world. But the gatekeepers of big corporate news—all, like, five of them—don’t think that’s news.

Thankfully UC-Santa Barbara sociology professor Kum-Kum Bhavani does. Her new documentary—The Shape of Water—tells the story of five feminist activists in diverse parts of the world, all dedicating their lives to diverse forms of uplift and preservation. A series of journeys through Brazil, India, Jerusalem, and Senegal feel winding to the point of wandering, at times, but all lead to profound epiphanies about social change work.

Bhavani had the wisdom to let the story ebb and flow in a way that mirrors contemporary activism in all its frustrating and sometimes fragmented glory. The viewer can’t help but see that some of the most monumental moments are also small—women sprawled across a living room floor talking about female circumcision in Senegal, a communal prayer among another group of women in India.

The Shape of Water confirms what so many of us suspect is true based on our own lives—that feminisms are happening, as often unseen as they are transformational, all the time, everywhere. It is enough to give a cynical feminist some faith.

(Still from The Shape of Water)

Contributed by Courtney Martin.

One of the most disappointing things about the way that contemporary feminism is portrayed in the mainstream media, besides plain ol’ dead, is as a strictly American phenomenon. The truth is that there are all kinds of fierce, complex, and effective feminisms being enacted all over the world. But the gatekeepers of big corporate news—all, like, five of them—don’t think that’s news.

Thankfully UC-Santa Barbara sociology professor Kum-Kum Bhavani does. Her new documentary—The Shape of Water—tells the story of five feminist activists in diverse parts of the world, all dedicating their lives to diverse forms of uplift and preservation. A series of journeys through Brazil, India, Jerusalem, and Senegal feel winding to the point of wandering, at times, but all lead to profound epiphanies about social change work.

Bhavani had the wisdom to let the story ebb and flow in a way that mirrors contemporary activism in all its frustrating and sometimes fragmented glory. The viewer can’t help but see that some of the most monumental moments are also small—women sprawled across a living room floor talking about female circumcision in Senegal, a communal prayer among another group of women in India.

The Shape of Water confirms what so many of us suspect is true based on our own lives—that feminisms are happening, as often unseen as they are transformational, all the time, everywhere. It is enough to give a cynical feminist some faith.

...what a goddamn great movie Girls Town is. I'm watching it on IFC now; I love it.

I remember seeing the movie when it first came out, it was the year I graduated high school--I thought these girls were so bad ass. Plus it reminded me of of my neighborhood, and I'm a sucker for that kind of shit. Add in some hardcore beatdowns of rapists...I'm sold.

We are so on a first name basis.

I saw a special screening of the film sherrybaby recently, which was hosted by the New York City Alliance Against Sexual Assault (who did a fantastic job, by the way) and featured a Q & A session with Maggie Gyllenhaal.

The movie itself was great; it showed a pretty realistic portrayal of victims of sexual abuse and the struggles that women have to deal with after serving time in prison. Gyllenhaal’s character, Sherry, had to work twice as hard to attempt to redeem herself from her life before prison; between a brother who ignored her father’s sexual abuse, the lack of solidarity among the women in her life, and the lack of trust by her family to be a fit mother, she had little support to help her work towards a better future with her daughter. Sounds pretty depressing, right? While I can say it didn’t end quite as gloomy as it seems, it still kept the reality of her situation at the forefront.

However, the most depressing part of the screening was the Q & A session with Gyllenhaal. The very first question was from a woman who seemed to think that Sherry’s character was “narcissistic� and “self-centered,� and really didn’t seem to have the normal “passive� qualities that a victim of sexual abuse should have. (I didn't know there was proper sexual abuse victim behavior.) Another commenter was almost hostile in her declaration of dislike for the film and the character, demanding to know why a woman would “sexually objectify� herself by giving the job recruiter a blow job in order to get the position she wanted.

Well, let’s think about it. She just got our of prison, doesn’t have a dime, and can’t get a job to take care of her child. So she did what she had to do to get the job she needed. It doesn’t seem too hard to figure out. The lack of understanding of the film and Sherry’s position from these women was just outrageous to me. This particularly hit me hard because in the film, Sherry had a real lack of support from the other female characters. It seemed that was the case outside of the film as well.

As for Gyllenhaal, her super-pregnant self handled it really well, and simply replied that she thought Sherry was well-intentioned and that someone should have compassion to understand why she had made some of the choices she made throughout the movie. She also discussed a bit of her experience in prepping for the role, like visiting women’s half-way houses and her time with the incredibly talented child actress that played her daughter.

I definitely recommend seeing sherrybaby; there’s a lot to be said for it, but in short, I would simply say it’s a necessary film to be out there.

Holy shit. Brad alerted me to this incredibly creepy upcoming film, Children of Men. And not creepy in a sci-fi dystopia kind of way. No, more in the crazy fundamentalist kind of way:

Children of Men envisions a world one generation from now that has fallen into anarchy on the heels of an infertility defect in the population. The world's youngest citizen has died at 18, and humankind is facing the likelihood of its own extinction.

"Really, since women stopped being able to have babies, what's left to hope for?" Clive Owen's character asks in the trailer.

Their only hope is a group called The Human Project, which is working to get women reproducin' again. Or something. (The trailer doesn't really make it clear.) Then a miracle is discovered-- a silent, pregnant woman (she's probably barefoot, too, but the trailer doesn't show her feet). They must rush her to The Human Project in an attempt to save the baby.

"For our future" flashes across the screen. The film's tagline is "NO CHILDREN. NO FUTURE. NO HOPE." The moral of the story? Start having more babies! Or the total breakdown of civilized society will ensue.

Was this movie written by the religious anti-contraception movement? "Children of men" is, after all, a biblical synonym for "mankind." But no, it was actually adapted from a book by British writer P.D. James (who sits in the House of Lords as a conservative).

There would seem to be some upsides to a world where everyone is infertile. For example, no shrieking infants on airplanes. No strollers clogging your favorite brunch spot. And what about pleasurable sex without the risk of pregnancy? Oh, no! At least according to the book, people have barely any interest in non-procreative sex, and women are punished for their infertility with "painful orgasms."

One might think that in 2021 sex has become some sort of national pastime, what with hardly anything else to do and no danger of unwanted pregnancies. However, people have lost interest in sex, and the state has had to open "pornography centres". Apart from phantom pregnancies, more and more women have what they describe as "painful orgasms", i e the muscular contractions without the accompanying feeling of pleasure.

Just look at what happens when you allow women to control their fertility. They'll STOP HAVING BABIES altogether. And they'll stop having orgasms. And the world as we know it will crumble.

Salon and The New York Times both have reviews of Kirby Dick's latest film about the ratings system, censorship, and the Motion Picture Association of America.

Sounds fab, but let's not forget the unfortunate movie poster. (After the jump.)

But please bear with me today as I’m beyond exhausted after a long, long trip back from Pittsburgh last night.

I was there for a training by the Youth Outreach for Victim Assistance project, but ended up sitting in a plane with no air conditioning for over 3 hours before we even took off to return to New York (the actual flight was supposed to be one hour). Damn you, US Airways!

At least the training was amazing, where youth groups from across the nation came together to learn about how to combat teen victimization. One of the groups, the Madras High School Youth Development team from Oregon, made an actual film to bring awareness about child sexual abuse, Silent Message. Check out the trailer; it’s pretty damn amazing what youth can achieve when given the opportunity.

Just a reminder to go check out Altar magazine's Her Voice, Her View film festival, which kicked off last weekend in NYC and will be featuring fantastic feminist films through this weekend and next.

If you haven't seen NO! The Rape Documentary, directed by Aishah Shahidah Simmons, (whom Celina had the pleasure of interviewing back in May), it will be featured tonight.

This is a feminist film buff’s wet dream.

Altar magazine has organized a fantastic two-week long women’s film festival titled Her Voice, Her View, to kick off July 12th. Over 30 films have been chosen to be shown throughout the following two weeks as a part of the Pioneer Theater’s Female Film celebration.

The festival gives the opportunity for female writers, directors and producers (who are largely unrecognized), domestic and international, to feature their work in NYC. The films address a range of issues, including violence against women, b-girls, prison, eroticism, hip hop and reproductive rights.

I'll be putting up a reminder post closer to festival kick-off, but in the meantime click here for more details on the films and to order tickets in advance.

Ludacris has narrated a new women's basketball documentary, which he says will empower women:

One of my main reasons in doing it is because of how powerful I think it is for ladies to watch it. We have a lot of problems and troubles with the youth, period, but it's the young women who need to be especially strong at this point. [...] I want to empower the young ladies out there. It's about women's battles on and off the court.

Like women's battle not to be seen as meat? The cover of his album Chicken-n-Beer features Ludacris salting a woman's leg and getting ready to bite into it. (Sexual Politics of Meat, anyone?)

He's also said:

"People give hip hop a bad rap. It's the easy cop out. Everybody wants to blame us for everything... By me doing this documentary about empowering women, I can lead by example."

His example? "Bitch your pussy smell like Pepe Le Peu. / You filthy, nasty, sick in the head, / Sittin' in my dressin' room with dick on your breath." Off the court, women are surely empowered by such Ludacris hits as "Hoes in My Room," "Ho" and "Move Bitch."

Ludacris is first and foremost a multi-platinum hip-hop artist, not a professional narrator. His lyrics reach a much wider audience than the documentary ever will, and his involvement in one project that positively portrays women doesn't counteract the overwhelmingly negative messages in his music.

The documentary, "The Heart of the Game," is getting great reviews. Right now it's only showing in New York and LA, but will open in wider release on Friday.

Contributed by Courtney E. Martin.

As long as I’ve been loving hip hop, I’ve also been hating it. Like most female fans, I’m drawn in by the lyricism, good dance beats, protest vibe, and, let’s be honest, the hot rappers. But I’ve also been repelled. The video ho culture disgusts me. The violent lyrics make me want to run right back to the Indigo Girls. Old school music is great; old school misogyny is weak.

That’s why I was thrilled that Byron Hurt’s documentary, Beyond Beats and Rhymes: A Hip-Hop Head Weighs in on Manhood in Hip Hop Culture, was at BAM’s Sundance series last weekend. Hurt was refreshingly earnest, if not a bit overzealous, in his 90 minute exploration of masculinity in hip hop.

The film’s got great footage. Hurt captures Busta Rhymes leaving the interview like a coward the second homosexuality comes up. (To my horror, Mos Def followed right on Busta’s heels.) He’s also got the CEO of BET giving him a pointed brush-off the second he brings up video ho culture and Russell Simmons looking like a fool trying to shrug off his own responsibility. In contrast, Chuck D was so articulate and insightful I wanted to elect him president of something important.

My favorite parts were when Hurt hung around with wantabee rappers outside of BET festivals and the like, recording their tired lyricism, then confronting them directly afterwards about their violent/sexist messages. 17-year-old dudes posing as hard thugs a moment before instantly became sweet-eyed boys admitting that they don’t slang rock, they slang water—that this is the only persona they know will get them noticed. Essentially, a generation of teenage boys has decided that putting on 21st century black face is worth it for a record deal.

Go to www.bhurt.com to learn more. Beyond Beats and Rhymes will definitely be playing on PBS next spring.

I haven't seen this movie yet, but I can't wait since the other two in this series, Earth and Fire, are two of my favorites. Mehta knows how to piss off the Hindu Fundies for bringing up issues like (homo)sexuality, Muslim-Hindu conflict, and this time the politics of widowhood for women, in her ground-breaking, controversial and really pretty films.

via NYT.

Into this milieu now comes the director Deepa Mehta with "Water," a lush new film that opened on Friday, about Chuyia, an 8-year-old widow in the India of 1938. She has barely met her husband but is banished by her parents to a decrepit widows' house on the edge of the Ganges. Chuyia is left there sobbing, in one of the most heart-wrenching scenes in the film, but she insists her parents will soon return for her.

Even as it becomes clear that they won't, Chuyia's spirited, rebellious streak shines through, and she begins to change the way the other widows in the house view the world, as the independence movement of Mahatma Gandhi swirls around them. Chuyia has a particularly powerful effect on two people: Shakuntula, who begins to question a Hindu faith that subjects women who have lost husbands to such degrading lives, and Kalyani, a beautiful young widow who has been forced into prostitution by the head of the widow house. As the film unfolds, Kalyani ignores the taboos to fall tragically in love with a handsome young Gandhi nationalist.

The sorrowful film is nonetheless a triumph of conscience over blind faith, and a powerful message about how much, and how little, has changed in India. "I think it's slightly naïve for me to think that films make a difference," Ms. Mehta, the director, said in a telephone interview from Toronto, where she lives half the year, when she is not in New Delhi. "But what it can do is start a dialogue and provoke discussion."

I think films are a really important medium of communication and often times not only a starting point for discussion, but a starting point for activism. For example, Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price started a tremendous amount of organizing and just last week at the immigration protests the rally was called "A Day Without an Immigrant," from A Day Without a Mexican .

Since I haven't seen it yet, I don't yet know what some of these bigger implications might be, but I am interested to see the difference in reception between Western audiences and those in India. In the last decade, the US in particular has gotten very much obsessed with stories from, about, surrounding South Asia and especially South Asian women. But little of it has been in a radical feminist (third world feminist) way where the West is attempting to understand and support a condition different from their own. More in like a now we have South Asian literature and film to add to our collection of multi-culti *ethnic* and *foreign* stories, (not in any way to discredit the oftentimes VERY feminist authorship of these cultural productions.) Or my favorite, "oh those poor oppressed Indian women..." or what I like to call the Oprah's Book Club attitude.

Discussion, organizing and activism around the treatment of widows in India is an important one and has been on the top of the Indian feminist agenda for some time now. How will this story be received in the US? As a story of a young girl's courage and the recognition for all the moments of feminist practice that go down within the historical context of a very patriarchal India or will it be another way for Westerners to view India as a backwards place?

Anyone seen the flick?

While it was recently announced that Commander in Chief has been pulled from the air, Geena Davis has been working on her own kick-ass project that is gaining much attention.

Davis recently launched See Jane, an organization that addresses the lack of female characters in television, movies and other media, particularly for young children.

A report was just released by See Jane about gender representations in G-rated films, including the portrayal of masculinity in boys and body image. Here are a few findings:

- There are three male characters for every female.

- Fewer than one out of three (28 percent) of the speaking characters (real and animated) are female.

- Less than one in five (17 percent) of the characters in crowd scenes are female.

- More than four out of five (83 percent) of films’ narrators are male.

Who needs Mackenzie Allen when girls have such a dope role model like Geena?

This has absolutely nothing to do with feminism and is totally random and unimportant, but I totally played pool against Seann William Scott (a.k.a. Stifler from American Pie) last night. And kicked his ass.

Hilarious.

It is no suprise that an industry that upholds so many patriarchal beliefs in picture/film and content would in fact be so sexist behind the scenes. I have several female friends that work in film and are constantly talking about how they were never taken seriously in their classes and the sexist/patriarchal structure of the industry itself (ie script writing taught to include hero/heroin, hetersexual romance, woman as damsel in distress, man as hero, etc.)

But this year in particular we see women as absent from any of the top nominations. Martha Lauzen from San Diego State's Comm department elaborates.

'Brokeback Mountain." "Capote." "Crash." "Good Night, and Good Luck." "Munich." This year's Academy Award nominees for best picture offer thoughtful contemplations of the world, past and present. A mostly male world, that is.

Why does it matter that female-driven stories are absent from this year's top-nominated films? For one thing, the combined box office grosses of this year's nominated films lag behind any single summer blockbuster, and this could translate into lower ratings for the Oscar telecast. The overwhelming "maleness" of these films might well be a factor.

Beyond this, the nominations matter because they hint at a larger disparity endemic in the film business: the ongoing underrepresentation of women onscreen and behind the scenes.

It is not like there weren't women acting in movies last year (she uses the examples of North Country and Walk the Line). Lauzen continues...

Our research shows a relationship between the use of women writers and executive producers and the percentages of female characters onscreen. For example, when a film had no women writers, 27 percent of the characters were female. With at least one woman writer, 38 percent were female. This is a byproduct of the creative process, as well as a conscious choice made by filmmakers. Women tend to create female characters; men create male roles. Countless screenwriting workshops and manuals counsel potential screenwriters to "write what you know."

Film is an extremely important cultural medium of communication and does in fact reflect the values of the society within which it is produced. And since our current cultural values are *very* indicative of a decrease in women's rights/participation, well that will obviously be reflected in the film industry.

I do however want to make a note that although Brokeback Mountain did not have lead female characters, I considered it to be a feminist movie because it challenged dominant ideas of maleness and sexuality. Do I wonder would it have made it, if it had been about guerilla minded lesbians of colors? Of course.

via Newsday.

This is just crazy.

While New Line Cinema has its history of some really good and really bad movies (I won’t even get into "The New World"), it looks like its new Paul Walker movie, "Running Scared," is featuring quite a treat (no pun intended) on its website.

Yes, a game on the site lets you go down on Paul Walker’s wife. And it doesn't end there; click here to check out the details and a crazy-ass photo of what it says when you "win." While I feel like I should be glad that she's the one getting head, the shit is pretty trashy. And let's not forget, this is New Line Cinema!

Thoughts?

A movie on censorship and the Motion Picture Association of America? Totally necessary.

A poster depicting a woman getting branded? Not so much.

I have been a fan of the Guerrilla Girls for a hell of a long time, and their latest venture only makes me love them more.

In collaboration with MoviesByWomen.com, the Guerrilla Girls bought a billboard space in Los Angeles down the street from the Kodak theater (where the Oscars take place). The billboard--which is just bad-ass--features some pretty disturbing stats:

Women directed only 7 percent of the top 200 films of 2005. No woman has ever won the Oscar for best director. And only three have been nominated.

Those numbers aren't exactly award-winning. But perhaps what Lori at Broadsheet calls the "glare of Ms. Kong" will change some minds.

Check out this new campaign, Stand Up, which addresses discrimination and violence against women inspired by the new flick, North Country.

The campaign was launched today, and seeks to spread awareness and mobilize before North Country’s opening, which is in a couple of weeks. There's also a campaign blog, which includes our Jessica, Hugo Schwyzer and other nifty peeps.

Make sure to take a look at Participate as well, which is the site that's hosting the campaign. Interesting stuff.

Get thee to the movies! Margaret Cho's flick of her stand-up performance in D.C. this May has opened in select theaters today.

This fantastic feminist has been spreading laughs and political awareness for a long-ass time. She actually got in trouble for a performance at the Apollo Theater a year ago where she said: "Bush is not Hitler...He would be if he applied himself, but he's just lazy."

I'm sure she didn't hold back (and just a few blocks away from the White House) in this performance either.

Click here to check out her blog.

Check out this article from the Guardian on female comedians. Writer and performer Oriane Messina shares her personal favorites.

While there doesn't seem to be too many recognized female comedians out there, this refreshing story gave some props to the funny women that have been around, particularly in Hollywood. Messina's list included Miss Piggy, Margaret Rutherford, Ann Miller, and Madeline Kahn.

While Madeline is definitely a classic favorite of mine ("A wed wose, how womantic." - Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles), I'm quite the fan of Margaret Cho and Ellen Degeneres.

Got any to add to the list?

The Chicago Tribune had an article yesterday on how the killings of hundreds of young women in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico has caught the eye of a number of Hollywood screenwriters.

Now there’s a number of movies currently being filmed starring actors such as Jennifer Lopez, Antonio Banderas and Minnie Driver. Coincidentally, all three are to play U.S. journalists who are sent to Mexico to investigate the slayings.

There has (understandably) been much cynicism from local activists concerning the context of the films. "Where were these journalists when the killings started?" said activist Victoria Caraveo. "If it hadn't been for the mothers, who keep demanding justice, the situation here would still be ignored."

Even the title of the flick with Driver is appalling enough, as “The Virgin of Juarez.” This title reminds me of initial presumption by Mexican authorities that the women murdered were sex workers (or just plain promiscuous), and deemed unworthy of attention. It wasn’t until they discovered that most of the women were working late shifts at maquiladoras (U.S., Japanese, and European-owned industrial labor factories) that they were deemed “off the hook” as untainted vestals and the killings were given recognition.

Additionally, the majority of these films-in-progress have not approached any of the victims’ families for research purposes. "Anyone thinks they can film a movie or make a song or a soap opera about our daughters," said Rosaura Montanez, whose 19-year-old daughter was raped and killed in 1995. "It seems our daughters died so these people would have material for their songs and movies. It's just not fair."

Don’t get me wrong, the injustice of these killings must be acknowledged and the more activism, the better. Yet considering what we know already about these upcoming flicks, I wouldn’t be surprised if these horrifying crimes were exploited as just another way of decivilizing another country to make the U.S. look all the more glorious and good.

Click here for more posts on the Juarez murders.

The producers of Mona Lisa Smile (which dealt with young women/stereotypes in the 1950s) have been accused of discriminating against 19 female musicians who were paid less than their male counterparts. Lovely.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced Tuesday that the producers--Revolution Studios and Smile Productions LLC--agreed to settle a lawsuit accusing them of paying their female musicians less than men for the same work.

The settlement, in which the producers did not admit wrongdoing, called for a payout of $3,500 to each of the female musicians, for a total of $66,500.

...Stella N. Yamada, an EEOC trial attorney, said the case drew the agency's attention to the entertainment industry, where workers such as musicians might work just three days, as did the women who worked on the score for "Mona Lisa Smile."

"It is so ironic," Yamada said of the allegations involving a movie that focused on the ability of women to stand up for their rights.

Check out this New York Post article (free subscription) and interview with former stripper/dominatrix/porn director/performance artist/sex educator Annie Sprinkle. The fabulous sexpert discusses her experiences in the industry as well as her new book, "Dr. Sprinkle's Spectacular Sex: Make Over Your Love Life With One of the World's Great Sex Experts."

Sprinkle on, Annie!

...where abstinence-only education reigns supreme, some high school girls are taking sex-ed matters into their own hands.

Case in point: Two new films, "Toothpaste" and "The Education of Shelby Knox."

"Toothpaste" (a reference to teen slang for condoms) is a 16-minute educational film promoting condom use, produced by four teenage girls from south Texas in response to high teen pregnancy rates at their school. It features two teen girls' decisions on whether to have sex with their boyfriends. One decides to wait. The other has unprotected sex. The film is available to Texas public schools, and has been ordered by schools around the country.

"The Education of Shelby Knox" is a documentary that follows a Texas teenager's transformation from vowing "sexual purity" to realizing that many of her classmates are sexually active. Knox finds her calling: promoting comprehensive sex education in the “abstinence-only” Lubbock public schools. The filmmakers follow Knox as she takes on the town’s officials and religious leaders, challenging them from the bedrock of her own Christian beliefs.

Planned Parenthood of New York is screening "The Education of Shelby Knox" in NYC tonight. It's also airing on PBS on June 21.

"Toothpaste" will be shown at various film festivals and on Showtime.

The recent contraversy over Pakistani actress Meera kissing a Hindu actor in the movie Nazar, has provoked many. Bollywood films are very sexually provocative films, however you will never see characters kiss. They may dance in the rain in a see-through sari, or have gratuitious dance "encounters" with the male kind but that is about it.

The president of Pakistan's response to a Muslim actress kissing a Hindu film star in "public" has evoked a not too desirable response. He says, "people in his country would not like to see their women "dancing or displaying themselves" as it is done in India.

He continues, in an article in Central Times,
While "there was no problem (with Pakistani actresses) working in (Indian) films", Musharraf said."The sentiments of India and Pakistan are different, especially on women...Pakistani society is not as liberal as India and this is reflected in its attitude towards films", he said.

Understanding the different cultural context in which Bollywood films are produced, I see a conflict. Here in the Western world, we fight to change, deconstruct, critique existing images of over-sexualized women in the public sphere, specifically in popular media. Musharraf's comments are clearly coming from the belief that women should not be sexualized, or rather, a more traditional belief that they should not be sexual. To come out and say, we are not as liberal in our view of women, implies a belief that women's agency should be restricted.

But on the other hand, is female agency dependent on women in Pakistan playing roles in films that sexualize them? Naturally, they should have the freedom to choose, but is Bollywood sexual freedom? Or is it similar to Western popular culture which is dependent on over-sexualized images that consolidate norm-based beliefs (often times inaccurate and oppressive) of female sexuality?

And I think it is funny that the above pic is a scene from the flick and the most contraversial thing about it is a kiss!

There was an article from Washington Square News yesterday that caught my eye about an organized event by the National Organization of Women for Women at NYU on the evolution of the women’s porn industry.

Held at NYU last night, the speakers were Candida Royalle, the president of Femme Productions Inc., and Jayme Waxman, a Playgirl columnist and freelance pornographer who are trying to bring their feminist ideology into recent porn projects. “I wanted to give the genre a woman’s voice,” said Royalle. “It didn’t have to be something you would look at and feel dirty about.”

The event included screenings of some of Royalle's flicks, which featured more realistic-looking women and more sophisticated plotlines that appealed to female sexuality. Some of the films like “One Size Fits All” and “Studhunters” include a comedic tone that parodies the over-the-top cheesiness that typical porn flicks tend to have.

Although the event was a celebration of sorts, with a naked torso cake for the audience (yum!), Royalle and Waxman stress that female-friendly porn still has a ways to go. One problem with this type of porn is that it’s often difficult to get funding, as most mainstream movies typically appeal to heterosexual men. Rayelle and Waxman also feel there's a need for more women’s voices in the industry.

“If women don’t seize control of the reigns of production, men will continue to do it for us,” Royalle says.

One person in the audience asked about how Royalle would respond to the argument that all porn is wrong, she said, “It’s not going to go away, so let’s take it back and do it the way it should be done.”

Good job, ladies!

The Brad and Jen break-up may not be on the forefront of every feminist's mind. (I still can't get over that Us Weekly's most recent International News of the Week section featured Brad and Jen's trip to the islands with no mention of the tsunami, but I digress)...

Turns out there might actually be something deeper to glean from the news of this celebrity split. Check out Rebecca Traister's recent Salon.com article, The Not-Good-Enough Girl, dealing with the mass obsession with celebrity pregnancy, and the danger this trend presents for every woman. Traister writes:

"[N]ow that [Pitt and Aniston's] marriage seems to be ending, the press is gleefully dancing on a grave that they have dug: one that contains the corpse of a marriage that does not bear fruit. It's a regressive and scary message to women: No matter how rich, thin, beautiful or talented, what really makes us attractive -- after a few years of marriage anyway -- is our ability and willingness to reproduce on demand!"

There may be something to this, and it's highly disturbing. Think about it - you don't have to be as celebrity-trash-obsessed as I am to notice this recent phenomenon. Courtney Cox, Kate Hudson, Liv Tyler, Reese Witherspoon, Sarah Jessica Parker, Debra Messing, Julia Roberts, Gwyneth Paltrow, Denise Richards, Mira Sorvino, Laura Dern, Christy Turlington, Jennifer Connelly, Heidi Klum, and Catherine Zeta-Jones have all had well-covered pregnancies within the last year or so. Leah Remini from King of Queens even did a VH1 special about conceiving and carrying her baby to term. Eeeek!

A blurb from another (incredibly interesting) Salon.com article, Pregnancy Porn, quotes Lana Thompson, an anthropologist and the author of The Wandering Womb: A Cultural History of Outrageous Beliefs About Women on the issue. Thompson compares the trend to past generations' obsession with royalty. Thompson writes, "They would kill women who were married to kings who didn't produce heirs."

Janice Min, editor in chief of Us Weekly, wrote: "Pregnancy mania is running so high right now that often we get photos in from agencies and the captions from the agencies read, 'Is she pregnant or did she just have a big meal?' It's very Salem witch trials, but in a more positive way of course. We hunt down and find the next pregnant person."

YIKES! What do y'all think?

There’s been quite a bit of buzz going around about Oliver Stone’s newest film, “Alexander.” The New York Times wrote a piece on it this week, and Stone’s portrayal of the fourth-century Macedonian victor, Alexander The Great, as being in love with a man.

Although Alexander (played by my Irish lover, Colin Farrell) is married, there are a number of love scenes in the film between Alexander and his boyhood friend, Hephaistion, who is played by Jared Leto. A hot pair of men in togas? Buy me a ticket!

But alas, it looks like some people aren’t happy about this breakthrough for Hollywood. Apparently a group of Greek lawyers have been threatening to sue Stone for his portrayal of Alexander as gay or bisexual. They are requesting that Stone includes a statement in the credits of the title disclosing that the movie is based on fiction, and not fact. Yet historians believe that Stone’s depiction is accurate, and most also believe that Alexander The Great was bisexual, if not gay.

Some may say this is a huge step for the gay community, and that the film “may redefine what is acceptable to mass audiences when it comes to heroic portrayals on the silver screen.” This is absolutely true, and is absolutely a good thing. Yet we know that it can’t all be good. After all, it is Hollywood.

“Warner, which financed ‘Alexander’ with the German company Intermedia, has taken pains to de-emphasize the film's gay aspect in its advertising campaign - the trailer declares Alexander's ‘passion’ while showing a love scene between Mr. Farrell and Ms. Dawson.”

So even though the love of his life is a man, he still likes women, see?? He’s only half gay, so it’s okay! Sigh.

I've actually heard that the depiction of Alexander's relationship with Hephaistion plays a significantly small part in the movie, and the presence of homosexuality is pretty sparse. So while society applauds the people involved with this film for being sooo brave to approach such a controversial subject, I'd wait until I see the movie before I put any hands together.

As today is the Mexican holiday of The Day of the Dead, a group of activists have been traveling through Mexico, the United States and Canada, demanding justice for the hundreds of young women who have been raped and murdered within the past 10 years in Ciudad Juarez.

A large portion of the activists are the victims’ mothers, who claim that justice has not been brought to their daughters’ murderers. These young women, some in their early teenage years, have been disappearing since 1993. Their bodies are usually found months later in the deserts of Cuidad Juarez. There has been over 340 murders.

I have actually just recently seen an incredible movie on these slayings called “Senorita Extraviada” directed by Lourdes Portillo. This film, although devastating/enfuriating, enlightens us on some of the reasons behind why the culprits of these acts have not been “found”. It offers a very interesting perspective on the cases and how the Mexican police, government, and possibly drug trafficking play into the picture.

I highly recommend this film. If you don't have big plans for today, rent it and hear the women's stories.

If you haven’t heard about the amazing movie Vera Drake yet, it’s about time you did. Coming from filmmaker Mike Leigh (who also did Secrets and Lies), Vera Drake is a seriously heart-wrenching movie about abortion in 1950s England. And I mean seriously—bring the tissue box.

I was lucky enough to catch a screening of the movie in New York a couple of weeks ago, where I met Mike Leigh and Imelda Staunton, who plays the title character.

Staunton plays Vera Drake as a kind, selfless, lower-middle-class mother who works as a domestic and in her spare time (for no money), “helps young girls.”

What I found most striking about this movie was its lack of in-your-face politics. It simply told the story of one woman, and through that story made the issue of choice profoundly clear.

Another incredible fact is that much of the movie was improvised:

On a Leigh set, no one knows what his or her character wouldn't know until absolutely necessary. Staunton called one seven-hour improvisation terrifying. She didn't know the police were coming for the character she had become until they arrived at the family's tiny, crowded apartment, where an engagement party for her daughter was underway.

Staunton, speaking about the movie’s political implications said, "I would hope it makes people go out and think about the moral dilemma we all face…There's no religion in the film. There's no politics in the film, per se. It just manages to look at this complex and personal and extremely difficult topic with compassion. . . . [But] the film is saying if it goes back to being illegal, this is what you'll be left with."

For reviews of Vera Drake, click here, here, and here.

Are you going to be in the NYC area the week of election day? Or do you feel like taking a celebratory trip to da big apple after Kerry is elected to be our next president? If so, you definitely want to check out the BUST Magazine Film Festival.

From November 4-7, BUST will be featuring documentaries, animations, full-length features and shorts in four nights o' fun.

Highlights include:

"YEAR OF THE WOMAN, the infamous 'lost' documentary about the women’s movement filmed during the 1972 Democratic National Convention; MARY JANE’S NOT A VIRGIN ANYMORE, a coming-of-age masterpiece by the late filmmaker Sarah Jacobson; a night of shorts about girlhood featuring the emotional sports documentary GIRL WRESTLER; the controversial strip club expose STRIPPED followed by a Q&A with filmmaker Jill Morley."

You can buy tickets for individual shows for only nine bucks each or get a festival pass that will give you access to all shows, including an invitation of the opening-night partay with the filmmakers, a one-year subscription to BUST magazine, and a VIP gift bag with lots o' goodies.

Click here for more info and to buy tickets!

As this month is what we call Breast Cancer Awareness Month, others have a different name for it -- Breast Cancer Industry Month. Breast Cancer Action (BCA), a grassroots organization of breast cancer survivors and their supporters, thought this particular title was more appropriate for the month of October.

In recognition of this month, BCA has also recently released (with author Barbara Ehrenreich) an online flash movie and email campaign exposing the extreme lack of organization amidst 30 federal agencies and dozens of private foundations and pharmaceutical companies funding research on breast cancer. This campaign is coming from BCA’s Breast Cancer Puzzle Project, which is pushing for more coordination of research funding.

In the flash movie, BCA points out that despite the estimated millions of dollars raised into breast cancer research, it is unknown how much dough is actually being raised and where it’s all going. Since these various corporations created Breast Cancer Awareness Month 18 years ago, breast cancer rates continue to rise. Every 2.5 minutes a woman is diagnosed. Every 13 minutes a woman dies from breast cancer.

The email campaign urges women and men to question how the funding is being used by these companies and agencies, and to mobilize and help them ask research funders to coordinate their undertaking in finding the environmental causes of, and more efficient and less toxic treatments for breast cancer.

Think Before You Pink, another project of BCA, encourages consumers to be smart about who they give their money to in the breast cancer field. The project features the movie on its website. So if you have flash, definitely check it out!

Special thanks to Rebecca for the info.

If you've seen the very funny “Shrek 2”, you might all remember that there was a lot of sexual humor present in the movie. And a lot of that sexual humor included transgendered characters. For example, there is an evil bartender with a five o’clock shadow and boobs -- the voice being that of talk show host Larry King. Well, it looks like some people are making a stink about these “abnormal” characters in the movie. Sigh.

The Traditional Values Coalition have written a report titled, “A Gender Identity Disorder Goes Mainstream”, where there is discussion of the transgender agenda to deconstruct the biological existence of male and female, using “Shrek 2” as a perfect example.

I’m sorry, but give me a fucking break. The report is quite hysterical actually. The horror of Pinocchio wearing women’s underwear! Or a joke made about the wolf wearing granny’s dress and his gender confusion. My favorite is when they describe a scene at the end of the movie where the evil bartender expresses that he’s got the hots for Prince Charming, jumps on him, and they “both tumble to the floor.” Gasp! And we all know what tumbling to the floor always leads to!

They continue with pretty upsetting claims concerning transgender issues that I really can’t even repeat, it’s so infuriating. All that I know is that they’re using a light-hearted, humorous animated movie to make their point -- they’re super smart, those crazies!

Reel Grrls, a program profiled today in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, teaches filmmaking to young women. Reel Grrls was created four years ago by filmmaker Malory Graham when she worked with teens and saw that "the boys grabbed the cameras and wanted to be the producers and editors, and the girls wanted to be the talent--the pretty faces in front of the camera."

Films created by Real Grrls have covered topics such as race, the difficulties of coming out, body image, and what is apparently an annually covered subject, the destruction of a Barbie doll. Now that's what I call a movie!

For more information on discrimination in filmmaking, check out the Guerrilla Girls, a group of women activists who remain anonymous by taking the names of dead women artists as pseudonyms and appear in public wearing gorilla masks. Their poster, "The Anatomically Correct Oscar" is fantastic--though definitely disheartening: No woman has ever won the Oscar for Best Director, 94% of the writing awards have gone to men, and only 3% of all the acting awards have ever gone to people of color.