Rory Gilmore as the Feminist Ideal

Rory Gilmore as the Feminist Ideal by Rich of Adonis Mirror.

The CW Network’s Gilmore Girls came to a warm and inoffensive conclusion this past Tuesday. The finale gave everyone pretty much what they hoped for: a chance for the wide pastiche of character actors to take a bow, another windfall of a cameo (Christiane Amanpour), a big kiss, and a goodbye.

Like most fans of the series, I enjoyed the frenetic pace of the dialogue—I have an aunt who loves the show both because of and despite of that, being that she generally has no idea what they’re actually talking about through the tirades of “cultural references.” Indeed, it’s hard to think of a program that rewards watchers more for being plugged-in consumerists.

Like everyone else, I also enjoyed the interplay between the two leads.

When they were together.

Rory was always a touch too perfect to be interesting on her own.

I think Paris was a deliberate commentary on that perfection, or at least its unattainable nature for women: she was the person Rory would have been were it not for the necessities of network marketing. (Liza Weil had originally auditioned for Rory.) If Gilmore Girls was a show about characters, tragically, Rory was never allowed to be one: she was more of a vehicle, a blank slate of quiet, effortless perfection for launching one boring romance after another. That’s what female “stars” exist for, after all; it’s the female “characters” who get to have all the fun.

Her perfection—and the utter imperfection of her suitors, all cast from the underbellies of various fourth grade princess fantasies—made the prospect of any relationship for her an ugly impossibility. As the show was a drama, and mother and daughter could never be lucky in love at the same time, it meant for a lot of adolescent romance that is best fast-forwarded through.

It’s disturbing to think that a show celebrated for a mother and daughter relationship often didn’t really have a daughter in it, but rather someone to set up punch-lines. Some like to blame Alexis Bledel for that. But it wasn’t her fault that Rory was the consistently least interesting female character on the show.

If I were to blame anyone or anything for that, my finger would point first to the ideal of feminism that supposedly progressive types are peddling on cable these days.

Joss Whedon, especially, gets a lot of credit for crafting “feminist-friendly” fare. And to a good extent, it is, even if scare-quotes are still necessary. Thematically, cinematic “feminism” has to differ from its real-life inspiration. Yes, some of these contortions are necessary to get female-centered programming onto the screen at all.

But men like Whedon also have their own ideals of what a “real” feminist is. Whedon’s friend Rob Thomas drives that stake even deeper with his Veronica Mars, where his feisty girl-detective is out tasering the bad guys while the school feminists are navel-gazing over theory and leveling false accusations against frat boys.

Back to Gilmore Girls:

Paris Gellar is the ugly feminist, just funny and vulnerable enough to be palatable, enjoyable in short doses only with Rory as a foil. She is selfish, venal, and pursues her perfection with ruthless diligence.

Rory Gilmore is the post-feminist, plucky like some flapper heroine, who can make the world right just by being herself and bootstrapping her way through it. Somehow she always winds up on top by putting others first.

Gilmore Girls’ creator Amy Sherman-Palladino, notwithstanding, it seems like a lot of men have a vested interest in promoting Rory as the ideal feminist. “Reading is Sexy,” after all. (A hipster t-shirt design she sported on the series once.)

Thankfully, they at least gave Rory the dignity of avoiding a marriage to her gadfly prince-charming, even if the end result made the final few episodes feel more than a little bit like a middle school career-day film: you too can join the fast paced world of journalism! It was sad enough to watch Lane sit on the sidelines of her own dream.

And by “they,” I mean the season’s producer, David Rosenthal, who replaced Sherman-Palladino and her husband. In contrast to Rory and her effortless perfection, always sitting still in class with the posture befitting a Good Girl, Rosenthal is proof that a man can be a living train wreck and still receive the very best of second chances.

Prior to his installation as Gilmore Girls’ show-runner, he reportedly had a past of intense misogyny.

Televisionary.blogspot.com recounts his story as follows,

“The guy quit Spin City in order to concentrate on writing a play about his desire to have sex with Heidi Klum,” Julia told me. “Dropped out of TV completely to do this. He pretty much had a breakdown, dropped out of society, and became the madman writing a misogynist play. He lived like this until his dad read the play and actually had him committed.”What?!? After speaking to Julia, I did some more digging. Rosenthal had in fact written a play called “Love” about his quest to get supermodel Heidi Klum to have sex with him. Reviews of the play, which apparently contained so many profanities that it rated an NC-17, were not kind. The New York Times called Rosenthal’s play “not only offensive but incompetent” and said that the way that Rosenthal talked about Klum—whom he had met during a guest stint on Rosenthal’s show Spin City—was “as cruel and disgusting as actual stalking.”

The New York Times reviewer wasn’t the only one perturbed by Rosenthal’s play. Rosenthal had sent copies to his then agents at Endeavor—Ari Emanuel and Richard Weitz—who promptly dropped him as a client. His rabbi father, after reading the play, had Rosenthal briefly committed at UCLA Medical Center. Wait, what?

….

In 2001, Rosenthal appeared on Howard Stern’s radio show and spoke about the incident.

This is the guy they brought in to give Gilmore fans their happy ending.

Comments closed, please comment at writer's blog.

Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room

Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, review by rich from Adonis Mirror.

I recently had the chance to view Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. Like many, I knew the basics of the Enron story, I could be a snide finger pointer at the business world like the average liberal-type, but somehow I thought the nitty-gritty details were beyond my comprehension: why bother? The film did a decent job at explaining why I should bother, why we should all bother.

Plus, there’s enough “how did they get that tape?” moments to keep you enthralled, footage of stuff that you can’t believe there’s footage of, like a video-greeting card that George W. Bush did on behalf of a Ken Lay as a gift for a friend. Things that defy explanation, like a taped self-parody Jeff Skilling did about the company’s bookkeeping policies, or recorded conversations between Enron floor-traders about how they were breaking the California electric grid on purpose.

On the other hand, there’s also some “why did they use that tape?” moments. Primarily, about 45 seconds worth of strip club footage—likely bought from a stock company—that boosted the documentary to an R-rating for no good reason.

The footage in question plays out during a discussion of Lou Pai, the lucky Enron executive who “got out first,” leaving the company and cashing in his stock at Enron’s peak in order to meet the terms of a divorce settlement. Talking heads in the film repeatedly refer to him as “mysterious,” as if he were some sort of shadowy figure that was appeared out of nowhere and vanished just as quickly. They did everything short of calling him a ninja: wouldn’t want to be racist when you’re being racist, after all.

Indeed, much was made of Pai’s patronage of strip clubs (supposedly the cause of his divorce), the humorous trope of the lusty—yet safely tiny and effete—Asian guy being played for all its worth.

Enron folklore claims that Pai once explained that he splashed gasoline on himself before he went home so his wife couldn’t smell the perfume of his strippers: the punch line of the rumor had it that during one such explanation, one of his fellow Enron club-goers retorted “your wife probably thinks you’re fucking a gas station attendant,” causing Pai, in revenge, to ship him off to the far reaches of Canada. Of course, if he was hanging out with his lackeys at a strip club, shooting the shit with them, how mysterious could he really be?

The film does not make it clear whether the footage shown was of an actual club that Pai had visited or if it was just stock footage they had purchased. Alex Gibney, the director, does little elaboration during his commentary track: he seems utterly obsessed with trying to position himself as a music geek and sounds consistently tickled by the cleverness of his choices. He does remark on his selection of Philip Glass’ “Einstein on the Beach” and how he saw the interplay between it, the strip club, and Jeff Skilling’s belief in evolutionary biology. Then he pointed out that the breast implant was invented in Houston, as if that fact was the crowning piece of synergism in his argument.

For all the tsk-tsking the film does about “hubris,” it’s ironic that Alex Gibney’s own fascination with boobs disqualifies it from being played for many audiences. Not only does it become iffy for educational settings, but it almost has the tone of: this is for liberal people who go to far flung indy-film festivals; if you’re not hip enough to get past the boobs and just view them as wallpaper, you’re not cool enough to watch our movie.

Gibney knew he was safe from feminist criticism: a complaining feminist would have to admit that she thought the exploitation of women’s bodies superseded the importance of people knowing about why all kinds of middle-class people lost their pensions. The feminist critic who snubbed the film on account of Gibney’s strip clubs would look like a spoiled child, selfishly obsessed with her own “niche” issues.

On the other hand, it’s fairly safe to point out that anger at Enron is a non-partisan emotion. By taking the hipster pose regarding nudity, Gibney was purposefully alienating conservative viewers who could be best reached by the film, particularly with its footage of connections between Bush and the company’s top executives. Numerous critics have pointed that out, if only in the margins of websites.

One final note on Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room: much is seemingly made of the macho atmosphere at the company, not just the strip clubs, the Darwinian “survival of the fittest” mentality, and even the “extreme” adventure outings that employees took together, racing dirt bikes through bone grinding courses. Jeff Skilling had a phrase he spun about how he appreciated “men with spikes.”

What interests me—and I don’t say that lightly, I mean, I’m completely interested down to my last molecule right now—is how such gender treatments are so often used in media to give a pejorative view of something that people already have a pejorative view of. In other words, people hate Enron. If we show people that Enron was sexist, they will hate it more and feel safe and informed in their hatred for it.

However, even after seeing that bad things can be sexist and that sexist things can be bad, viewers still don’t have the power to see that sexism, itself, is bad.

I think “media people,” for lack of a better descriptor, are aware of that phenomenon. I think they exploit it. More on this from me in the future.

But really, how effective was the Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room from a feminist perspective if, immediately after viewing it, one self-avowed Leftist blogger wrote:

Jeff Skilling was right about one thing

As much as I despise Enron and injury they perpetrated (although employees could have saved their retirement through diversification!), Jeff Skilling was right about one thing. I also like men with spikes. No, this is not a gay metaphor. It means that men should be men. We should be extreme and we should pursue until we kill or are killed.

Ever see those older men at the mall whimpering around like a castrated dog while they wait for their wives to finish trying on clothes? Kill me if I ever lose that much direction.

The first comment on the post was from a conservative rival who called him a “pussy” for being against the war on Iraq. The blogger called him a “pussy” back.

Please comment directly at authors blog.

Nicholas Cage whirls his MEGA LONG flaming iron chain from waist height

Hello. This is my first review at Leftist Movie Reviews. I was invited months ago or something by AradhanaD to post reviews here, but then I stopped watching movies.

This review has spoilers. Not that it matters.

This is going to be a very short review. I saw the comic-book-based movie Ghost Rider, and was ROTFL the whole way through. What was it? A hypermasculinized mélange of stereotypes wrapped in a nonsensical enigma wrapped in a heavily overwrought resurrection of Faust. We are treated at the beginning to the usual glorified retelling of the White Man's conquest of the desolate, uninhabited West, and then we proceed from there to a tale about a budding motorcycle stunt man's heartbreaking take of a predictable loss caused by a deal with the Devil, a white man on a cane. A fairly good-looking young man eventually grows up to bear, sadly, the droning voice and completely wooden, expressionless face of Nicholas Cage, performing ever more ridiculous stunts to prove himself worthy of his father as well as challenging this limits of his Faustian bargain.

Finally, the Devil comes to take his due, and that involves turning Nicholas Cage into a FLAMING SKELETON IN LEATHER to fight his enemies, who are ghoulish creatures with few interesting characteristics and are all defeated in one way or by Cage waving a giant flaming chain from waist height. In the meantime, his ex-girlfriend, who has gone from alluringly naive but wholesome country girl to glamourous yet completely incompetent sports TV reporter---and is played by someone who must be some exotically objectified Hispanic pop star, I'm sure, I hardly pay attention to these people---endured heartbreak yet again, only to be take hostage by Cage's enemies and freed with minimal effort by the FLAMING SKELETON IN LEATHER.

One scene that particularly struck me was when Cage, in FLAMING SKELETON IN LEATHER mode, decides to rescue a young white woman being mugged by a young white man. Cage uses his Total Perspective Vortex powers on the young perp to destroy him. That really encapsulates what this movie is all about, which is merely the wish that the world would conform to a simple Manichean model, where powerful masculine hero defeats EVIL wherever it may be, with no distinction made between little perps and big perps.

And that, of course, is no different from 90% of superhero movies out there. What were you expecting? I'm sorry to disappoint AradhanaD, but I cannot bring any serious powers of class analysis to bear on this movie---or at least I can't bring anything new to it, because there is nothing new or unusual about this movie. It's primary quality is that it is so badly done, which is also its most redeeming quality: it is hilariously funny. I guess, to be fair to the creators of this movie, they didn't really stereotype dark skinned people, largely because they were absent---unless you count comically stupid supervillains with blue-tinged skin. I apologize to all blue humans if I have not done right by them in this review.

Alright: I will throw you one bone. This movie was clearly made to give voice to one cultural strand in North America: a certain segment of the working-class midwestern/southern white population. If these people exist that way, then the hero is intended to be seen as coming from among them. The chief villain is dressed in Gothwear, so perhaps---stretching it---he is intended to represent the decadence of urban liberal media or something. But that's all I can give you.

Comments happily open. Crossposted at my blog, Politblogo.

How to win a cock-fight: review of the movie 300...

What the #$%& was I thinking you ask, I wasn't... yes, I just witnessed the biggest load of tripe ever.

Short version or long version? Why bother, you can find a detailed review of the movie elsewhere - spoilers and all, in fact it seems many reviewers have already called out this tripe for what it is on rotten tomatoes and Imdb (honestly writing a review for this is just too easy).

Short Version:

Don't waste any money on this overinflated hard-on (I didn't - I watched it for free). I don't know whether it was the rampant Islamophobia (despite Islam forming as a religion 1000 yrs after this war took place!), anti-black racism, white supremacy, the homophobia, anti-disableism, the obvious war-promoting or the spoils of war (i.e. objectified women) which got to me the most. Of course it could be the moral of the story: The only way to win a cock-fight (or "fighting for justice, freedom and humanity") is to get a bigger "stronger, harder" and "harder, stronger" cock (not my words, the movie's - and yes, they did say it TWICE in case I missed it the first time) while wiping out the bad guys i.e. asians, africans and persians (i.e. ANYONE non-white).

Long Version:

The movie's about some war in Greece set in 480BC, Battle of Thermopylae, based on the Frank Miller graphic novel - it's something I won't pretend I even knew about until today, so let's just ignore the 'history' of it and focus on it's cinematic glory. Really, there's no point in discussing the 'history' of this battle because the $&%*ing movie is an American pro-war propagandist movie not about 'the spartans or the greeks' but American-version of this battle which happened nearly 2500 yrs ago.

Basically, the Spartans, led by King Leonidas, have been asked to surrender Sparta/Greece to the Persian empire. A black male messenger informs Leonidas of this. When Leonidas's wife interrupts their discussion - he says "how dare you let your wife speak on these matters?"

Of course the only thing his wife is good for is bearing babies so she says "because only Spartan women BIRTH REAL MEN"...And yes, the 'pro-empowerful' camp of the audience lets out a little cheer when this line is spake (I'm still scratching my head bout that).

The interesting thing about this brief little discussion is that 1)it's an implicit acknowledgement that women in the messenger's country must be treated like dirt - remember the imperialist dynamic of "evil coloured patriarchal cultures?" vs. liberated western women? 2)liberated western women (read white) in Hollywood are generally empowered via their value to men - whether it's as a sex-object, love-interest, their adoption of masculinity or 'traditional' motherhood.

So the stage for white-hetero-male-patriarchal-supremacy is set from the get-go.

So instead of surrendering, Leonidas kills the BLACK Persian messenger and his black allies because they've 'insulted his wife and Sparta'. A violently glorified chopping a black man's head scene follows, really it's grotesque.

A flashback technique is employed to tell the tale of how Leonidas has been trained to be a fierce warrior from the age of seven, when the barbaric/noble Spartans start training their young to be warriors. The flashback of young, pre-pubescent, Leonidas proving his manlihood by slaying a wolf while only wearing a loin cloth in the freezing darkness of winter is referred to several times throughout the movie to reinforce Leonidas' ferocity.

Homophobia:

The movie doesn't even pretend to be anything but white supremacist, misogynist, islamophobic, ableist, or homophobic, in fact it prides itself on all these accounts. If we missed the homophobia at the beginning of the movie when King Leonidas briefly refers to Athenians as "Boy-loving philosophers", we get it again ten-fold repeatedly throughout the movie.

When Leonidas' army of 300 meets a neighbouring Greek city's army of 1000 men, Leonidas justifies the manly-manliness of his army because the "artists, sculptors, and blacksmiths" of the neighbouring city's army do not real manly-men make. The conclusion is that a few good men, are better than the lives of 1000 (this is enforced later on too).

When battle takes off, we find out that the evil Xerxes (god-like emperor of Persia) is an effeminate, heavily ornated, man-woman-transgender-loving horndog.

The funniest thing about my cinematic experience though, was that my companion, in this case evil incarnate; a gay, occupationally effeminate MOC, was drooling over the washboard abs, chiseled thighs and pecs of the uber-manly-man Spartan Army (yeah, okay so was I :P). So, despite it's obvious homophobia (i.e. it's literal message) this movie's reliance on extreme gender conformity was almost a parody of itself visually - i.e. there is no way you could take the narrow gender roles seriously without thinking dirty thoughts about the Spartan's in their loin cloths. At some point there was a duo of two younger Spartan's whom my companion repeatedly wished would make out - of course until one of them was decapitated.

Now, I don't think this was some clever-pomo-gender-fucking-theory on screen, that would give an otherwise horrible movie too much credit, and besides the lines between good/evil repetitive jabs at gay men in comparison to manly men were stark. I just think it was a series of bad choices made by the movie-makers and ended up reading differently than they expected. But saying this was a 'homoerotic' movie, as many critics have cited it as - would be negligent and would be like saying that football players, basketball players, other 'manly-men' are not really 'violent' but rather enjoy watching each other shower... or some other more clever analogy that I can't think of at the moment.

Sexy Nekkid Chicks, "white" vs. "other":

Yes, this movie has a lot of 'sexy nekkid chicks'. The first scene is where we're entertained by what we find out later to be a "white, nude, drunk, teenage girl". Girls gone wild anyone? Hurrah. And guess what? Said girl is really OWNED by very ugly priests because she is an oracle, and we find out that they get to fuck her too, cause they have "dark manly hearts" and women who are hot "are cursed by their own beauty", talk about victim-blaming...Totally unnecessary scene.

Later on, because manly man, Leonidas is urgin for the plungin, he 'bangs' his wife (Queen Gorgo) every which way to nth-multiple orgasm - to which even the the couple next to me laughed "Okay, we get the point already!" *snarky laugh*.

These former women are both white. One part is revolting, but obviously the way it was shot - it was meant to tantalize the viewer with it's 'mystical' elements, and when we find out this erotic dance is by a drunk, teenage girl, it's well after the scene is over - so what, the main point of it was to objectify...

Both of the white women in the two scenes are 'property' of their rightful owners, the white men in their immediate lives - the priests and husband. Their 'sexuality' is dutiful, non-deviant, conforming and 'moral' whether that is for a group of men who 'facilitate religion' (thus their sexual value is extended for the benefit of the entire community) or whether for their husbands (in this case the KING, and you bet your ass if the King don't get his rocks off... well).

But later, when we are introduced to a whole harem of hot, ornated, tattooed, coloured sexy chicks it's more like we've been thrown into a visual orgy of totally debaucherous sexuality. They are aggressive, forceful, defiant, unaware of their obvious ownership because even though they are owned they are willing participants in their own 'degradation'. We see these women of every single colour, other than white, defiantly throwing themselves at the disfigured/disabled/gollum-like character who is a traitor to Leonidas. They tempt and snare him into being an asshole and betraying his leader while luring him to the 'dark side'.

So basically the set-up of 'the dutiful/sexually moral white woman' vs. 'amoral Jezebel' [link to interesting article] is in place because of the way the women are sexually portrayed. Their sexuality is DIFFERENT. Their all objectified, but are morally different.

Later, Queen Gorgo (Leonidas' wife) is raped by a janus-faced politician. After which she gives a passionate speech in the male council chambers on behalf of the 'mothers/daughters/sisters/wives/families' of the 300 soldiers that have sacrificed their lives for the betterment of the city-state (again their value in relation to men). It is imperative that they send more troops to help them out. Gorgo's morality and better judgement are implicit in her being a 'liberated white woman'.

The thing is - the women in the harem are all SLAVES, we've heard this comment repeatedly via the open-conjectured-threats of what would happen to the women of sparta if the evil Persians got hold of them. One character goes so far to say "the women would become slaves, or much worse" (i.e. sex slaves). I.e. so if the harem consists of SLAVES, they are obviously 'victims of rape'. Yet, the only sympathetic rape(s) here (potential and realized), are those of the moral white women of Sparta - not the coloured women who are not victims but rather 'sexually deviant' from the get go.

Colourism:

Do you see any significant difference between the skin-colour of Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) or Leonidas (Gerard Butler), in this picture here? not really... Throughout the movie it is obvious that the Americans Spartans are all white and the other's are all deviant coloured people... yet, we're also aware of the obvious use of 'brown-face' throughout the movie. Cause Xerxes definitely does not look like Rodrigo Santoro.

Genetic variation and thus skin-colour are more varied within a 'group' than between 'groups'. So it's rather silly for them to consistently employ such stark colour differences anyways.

The Persian army is also substantially disfigured/ugly. The terrorists Persian Army, also employ 'dishonest tactics' to win the war. I.e. by employing sneak-attack strategies, strange monsters and 'magic'...

American-Propaganda - Conclusion:

The only way to win a war is to send in more troops, otherwise we all lose. The closing shot ends with an army of 30K plus who are all willing to 'sacrifice' their lives for the rest of us. They are "brave heroes" who die "a glorious death".

More on the obvious homophobia of the movie, here.

Cross-posted at Leftist Looney Lunchbox, comments open everywhere.

Myth, Hollywood & White American Conquest

Myth, Hollywood & White American Conquest by Jo Swift.

The White Supremacist Syndrome Hollywood has shaped the "tough guy" image of the USA and exports this "don't mess with me" persona to the rest of the world as its contribution to the advancement of American jingoism and imperialism. The frontiersman represents the epitome of American masculinity. He's everywhere fighting Indians, Nazis,Commies, Arabs, sissies and space creatures, playing out the mythical narrative of American birth and continual rebirth Hollywood loves this guy because nothing is more American than he is.
The myth sells a lot of movie tickets. The Frontier myth is America's secular creation narrative--the story of how the waves of the historical frontier experience simultaneously birthed and cleansed the nation.

In this way European culture was said to be stripped away by the challenges posed on and by the savage frontier; and then, in turn, through an ill-defined, nearly mystical, quasi-magical process of environmental determinism, America was born.

That is, as the inevitable result of this transformation, the prototypical American emerged--Natty Bumpoo, John Wayne, Indiana Jones, the Marlboro Man--take your pick.

Hollywood has played and continues to play an important role in this process for two reasons. First, movies serve as our most influential history teachers, reaching and swaying audiences that the professional historian cannot even dream of.

Just think about it. You know what gladiators, Nazis, the Titanic and cowboys looked like because you've seen them in film (or, possibly worse, on television).

Second, the frontiersman represents the epitome of American masculinity. And he's everywhere fighting Indians, Nazis, Commies, Arabs, sissies and space creatures, playing out the mythical narrative of American birth and continual rebirth. Hollywood loves this guy because nothing is more American than he is (and, for corresponding reasons, he sells a lot of movie tickets).

As a result, Hollywood has been instrumental in promoting America's imperial project. Without domestic support aggressive foreign policy is not workable in the long term (witness George W. Bush).

The formula pays rich dividends, too, whether it's Indiana Jones smacking down Arabs, Hart Solo gunfighting his way across the galaxy, Sigourney Weaver as Ripley playing against gender type by beating up an alien, or the Duke picking off Injuns/ Vietcong in the Green Berets. The choices are nearly endless and the recipe is simple.

All you need is a version of the frontier story and a leading man who can play a plausible frontiersman--in short, a hunk and a few savages.

Visual images are far more effective than words in relating the simple emotive force of myth.

A myth is nothing more than a story that a culture tells to itself about itself in order to portray itself in a positive light. It's all about perception. Physical reality is largely beside the point.

Here's the basic frontier mythical tale. See if you recognize it. A ruggedly handsome, innately clever and athletic white male simply appears on the frontier, where free land abounds.

He's challenged. Maybe it's from Indians, Mexicans, men in black hats, varmints, whatever. Doesn't matter. The point is the setting--civilization versus savagery. And that the white guy prevails.

He saves the day and he sets the standard.

He conquers the land and makes it his own. He makes it fit for civilization, for women and children and decency and apple pie. It's the movie Far and Away, starring Tom Cruise.

It's Richard Harris in Man in the Wilderness. It's Bogart in African Queen. John Wayne in Hondo, in the Man Who Shot Lierty Valance, in Stagecoach. Gary Cooper in The Virginian.

Kevin Costner as the fair-haired saviour of all Indians (except the Pawnee) in Dances with Wolves. Star Wars. Dirty Harry. And on and on.

It's nearly everywhere in American popular culture. And its signifiers are so powerful--tumbleweed, Monument Valley, cowboys, feathered headdresses, gunfighters, saloons, men on horseback.

Clint Eastwood's eyes, that they have the power to invoke the myth in stories that fall well outside the frontier--as in advertising, science fiction, action movies, and the like.

While the symbols may seem innocuous--say, an ad for a jeep sitting atop a mesa in Arizona, or the skin color of the evil lion in Lion King, or the Hispanic accent of the bad bugs in a Bug's Life--they subtly reinforce (or not so subtly in the case of a typical Schwarznegger flick) white American conquest. Mark Anderson

(comments closed, please comment directly at writer's blog)

TV Review: 24

Who’s Your Daddy?! A Terrorist! entry by DesiItaliana from Pass the Roti.

The first time I watched the show “24,” I was with other people. When one of the agents had a brown man on the floor, someone in the room said, “Why does it always have to be Middle Eastern people?” I replied, “I can’t believe you guys are watching this show.” That person responded, “It’s fiction!” Then why would you say that it’s always someone who is Middle Eastern if this fictional show is not reflecting reality?

Anyone with more than two brain cells can tell that this show has a blatant political agenda, with not so subtle arguments which justify racial profiling and the suspension of civil rights for the sake of “national security.” I mean, what do you expect? It’s on Fox, for god’s sake!

So it comes as no surprise that the New Yorker recently featured an article discussing the politics of the show’s producer, Joel Surnow, a self described “right-wing nut job” whose “politics suffuse” the whole show. The article has caused an earthquake in the media because U.S. Army Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan, the dean of the United States Military Academy at West Point, along with three military and FBI interrogators, met with the producers of the show in November- they think that fiction is blurring into reality way too much. Apparently, the show’s gratuitous on screen depiction of torture “hurts” the image of the US and is encouraging torture practice:

…it had become increasingly hard to convince some cadets that America had to respect the rule of law and human rights, even when terrorists did not. One reason for the growing resistance, he [Finnegan] suggested, was misperceptions spread by “24,” which was exceptionally popular with his students. As he told me, “The kids see it, and say, ‘If torture is wrong, what about “24″?’ ” He continued, “The disturbing thing is that although torture may cause Jack Bauer some angst, it is always the patriotic thing to do.”

Gary Solis, a retired law professor who designed and taught the Law of War for Commanders curriculum at West Point, told me that he had similar arguments with his students. He said that, under both U.S. and international law, “Jack Bauer is a criminal. In real life, he would be prosecuted.” Yet the motto of many of his students was identical to Jack Bauer’s: “Whatever it takes.” His students were particularly impressed by a scene in which Bauer barges into a room where a stubborn suspect is being held, shoots him in one leg, and threatens to shoot the other if he doesn’t talk. In less than ten seconds, the suspect reveals that his associates plan to assassinate the Secretary of Defense. Solis told me, “I tried to impress on them that this technique would open the wrong doors, but it was like trying to stomp out an anthill.” [Link]

Yikes.

I agree that this is disturbing- how Hollywood often is the vehicle which mobilizes collective jingoism during war time, and how it justifies, safeguards, and defends the actions of the establishment. And while it is difficult to assess just how much TV fiction can and does seep into reality and vice versa, it is true that the mass media’s has the ability to condition what we think and the way we see things. And ‘24′ is one of the most popular shows on American TV. Scary. Apparently, the show is tapping into the sentiments of the average viewer.

But here is one aspect that many newspapers pick up on that I want to emphasize: racial profiling. And if you are of South Asian descent like I am, you definitely cringe when you hear someone say, “Why does it always have to be the Middle Eastern people?”

On screen torture after September 11, 2001 has multiplied to an excessive rate:

Since September 11th, depictions of torture have become much more common on American television. Before the attacks, fewer than four acts of torture appeared on prime-time television each year, according to Human Rights First, a nonprofit organization. Now there are more than a hundred, and, as David Danzig, a project director at Human Rights First, noted, “the torturers have changed. It used to be almost exclusively the villains who tortured. Today, torture is often perpetrated by the heroes.” The Parents’ Television Council, a nonpartisan watchdog group, has counted what it says are sixty-seven torture scenes during the first five seasons of “24″-more than one every other show. Melissa Caldwell, the council’s senior director of programs, said, ” ‘24′ is the worst offender on television: the most frequent, most graphic, and the leader in the trend of showing the protagonists using torture.” [Link]

USA Today reported in 2005 that “Fictional ‘24′ Brings Real Issue of Torture Home:”

Alistair Hodgett of Amnesty International credits 24 and A&E’s MI-5, which follows the British security service, with realistic depictions that provide “a clearer idea of what torture involves. … They do more to educate than desensitize.” [Link]

“Desensitize”? I’m not sure about that. It seems like it becomes glorified and justified: presumed suspects on the show- who are, of course, weeded out by racial profiling- can be tortured because when they are, they invariably confess to something; that is, they are always guilty (evidently, the show never throws light on the fact that torture can elicit coerced false confessions from an innocent person).

These “suspects” on the show are defined as being of Middle Eastern origin (with accents that are a curious hybrid between Arab, Indian, and Russian). But what happens when the actors who play these suspects are of South Asian background? Kal Penn plays a villain on ‘24′ who is part of an “Islamic” group and may be involved in a terrorist plot. Penn is actually of Indian origin. There are plenty of males in my family and social circle who have his phenotype. But according to ‘24′, people of this phenotype always have something to hide. It’s just a matter of time (or torture technique) that their nefarious plans come to the surface. You can chuck the constitution, civil liberties, and due process of law out the window because they are inconvenient obstacles to getting the job done. Innocent until proven guilty is no longer a legal right.You’re guilty until proven innocent. The principle in practice now is: people of South Asian phenotypes are Muslim and therefore suspects; and these suspects are never innocent. So go ahead and torture them for the collective good- it’s a “necessary evil.”

It goes without saying that the fundamental problem is not that people of South Asian descent are getting racially profiled, but that racial profiling exists. No one ever puts up a picture of a white guy when they talk about “terrorism”, even though many of the acts carried out by the US military can qualify as “terrorism” (such as bombing 3 million Vietnamese) and the guys on those “missions” are mostly white. Yet our brown faces serve as the symbolic mugshots of “terrorists.”

So don’t be surprised if FBI agents pay your daddy a visit– if he’s Desi, he just might be a terrorist!

Read the wonderful discussion at Pass the Roti.

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Children of Men (2006)

Excerpt of: Review of Children of Men by Amanda Marcotte, via Pandagon.




I’ve seen some feminist bloggers take on the movie Children of Men, but none so far from an explicitly feminist point of view, so I thought I’d take that on. I expressed anxieties earlier that a film that raised hysteria about underpopulation when we are in fact a world facing overpopulation might be reactionary, but upon seeing the movie last night, I have to state outright that I was utterly wrong. If nothing else, people who express anxieties about “underpopulation” in America and Europe are usually anti-immigration folks, and this film took an unabashed pro-immigrant stance, which I appreciated.

First, a note about the aesthetic value of the film—even if Children of Men were every bit as reactionary as the blurbs make it out to be, it would be a movie worth viewing. It was perhaps the best paced film I’ve seen in a long time, and really captured the feeling that one would have if caught in a situation like the hero’s, where all decisions have to be made on trust and instinct. It was moving and beautifully filmed, and the subplot about the leftist revolutionaries who are so dedicated to ideology that they forget the humanity that made them leftists in the first place could probably fit into a reactionary film. Could, but probably wouldn’t, since the subplot is rather too subtle for your wingnut crowd. After all, there’s a division between the grounded socialists and the People With Egos, a distinction that would be lost in a genuinely reactionary film. In sum, this movie would have been great no matter what the subtle political themes.

With the perfunctory disclaimer out of the way, the film was very pro-feminist on a number of levels, including the fact that it passes the Mo Movie Measure. But what I found really interesting was this—it presents something of a bait and switch to the audience, in terms of gender expectations. The title loudly proclaims the movie to be about the Children of Men (very patriarchal sounding), but the one child in the movie is born to a woman who is dismissive of the idea that the identity of the father is even relevant. And it makes sense, actually, that if there hadn’t been a baby born on earth for an entire generation, the paramount importance of paternity would fade away and the obvious fact that maternity is more time-consuming and immediate would become undeniable. The Christian version of the virgin birth is generally interpreted as super-patriarchal, where god is viewed as so powerful he can impregnate without befouling himself by touching a woman, and women are nothing but vessels. But this movie offers an alternative interpretation of the virgin birth—one where “virginity” is irrelevant and one where a woman’s stake in motherhood is fully respected for the sacrifice and hard work that it is.

In the large sense, this movie isn’t really about fecundity, but about hope. Babies are nothing but a symbol of hope, really. The movie is about what would happen to a world without hope, and the disturbing conclusion is that it wouldn’t be much different than the world we have now. And while both men and women are capable of feeling genuine hope—the sort of hope that rests with a child, which is to say the reality-bound hope, the hope for small joys and long life—the movie rather explicitly frames false hope as a result of male dominance and male control.

There’s a number of different ways the movie critiques male dominance as inherently damaging and egalitarian relationships between men and women as the only real source of hope.

The leftist revolt against female leadership is self-destructive. The movie gets underway when the main character, Theo, runs across his American ex-wife Julian, who is the leader of a pro-immigrant group. You get the strong impression that Julian is a wise, down-to-earth leader and never forgets the love of humanity that brought her to be a human rights activist. Naturally, she’s taken out by a faction of her group that wants to ignore their core humanist values in order to start a violent revolt. The fact that the anti-violence faction has all the women (and some men) and the pro-violence faction is entirely male doesn’t strike me as an accident, but a symbolic alliance with the feminist value of insisting on respect for women, even as some facetiously claim that feminism somehow impedes other struggles for justice.

Read the rest of the article at Pandagon.

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