movienotes: footloose and flashdance

This weekend, Hanna and I had a 1980s dance (movie) party with friends A'Llyn, Nathan, and their 1-year-old sprog who -- if his living room moves were any indication -- is going to grow up to be the next generation's Ren McCormack. We watched Footloose (1984), which has stood up surprisingly well, and Flashdance (1983), which has very much not -- although maybe I shouldn't talk since I never saw it in the actual 1980s and this was my first viewing. But those in the audience who had seen it as children confirmed that from an adult perspective it was even creepier than they remembered!

A few observations about first Footloose and then Flashdance. Spoilers below, fairly obviously, if you care.

Footloose I first saw at some point in my pre-adolescent period. The two things I remembered most vividly were John Lithgow's performance as the small-town pastor (whom child-me loved to hate) and the scene where Lori Singer, playing the preacher's daughter, climbs between her friend's car and her boyfriend's truck while they're driving down a two-lane highway. It's a scene meant to impress upon us that Ariel (Singer) is a thrill-seeking teenager, but mostly just terrifies me every time I have to watch it! Still, as I said above Footloose still has charm and, think time around, I was struck by a few things I hadn't noticed, or experienced differently, as a child.

• John Lithgow's pastor, Rev. Moore is less fire-and-brimstone than he is sad as a character. In fact, we took to referring to him as "sad John Lithgow" every time he showed up in a scene. The film-makers couldn't seem to decide whether they wanted to make him a petty tyrant or a fearful father ... and ended up trying to go for both with only middling success.
• Kevin Bacon's Ren is, like, the most polite Big City Rebel ever. Seriously. He wears a suit and tie to school on his first day, and when he decides to enlist the high school seniors to defy the town prohibition against dancing he ... wears the suit and tie to a town council meeting and reads a speech in defense of their case. He refuses to smoke pot, even when a local bad boy foists a joint on him, and chills with his little cousins. 
• Domestic and intimate partner violence get a look-in, although not much of a mention. On the one hand, we have John Lithgow's character smacking his daughter across the cheek for talking back to him (probably part of what cemented him in my childhood head as an Evil Character). On the other, we have Ariel's truck-driving boyfriend who beats her up when she breaks up with him. She takes a pipe out of the back of his truck and smashes his windshield and headlights. He gives her a bloody nose and a black eye. The situation is clearly being set up as the negative contrast to Ariel's eventual relationship with Ren, but it's also treated like a weird side-point that's never substantively addressed.
• The teenagers get a surprising amount of support from the surrounding adults -- for a town where supposedly dancing is Of The Evil. Ren's mother is fired from her job at one point because her son is causing trouble, and the relatives they're staying with get momentarily judgy. But, like, the mill owner Ren works for after school offers his building for the dance, and Mrs. Moore sticks up for her daughter and the other students at a couple of key points. 
• Reverand Moore draws the line a burning books from the library, which is sweet but also makes his prohibition against dancing as a sin nonsensical. He's set up at the beginning of the film as the Big Baddie, only to emerge toward the end as one of the primary advocates for the teens. It's disconcerting.
• And Ren McCormack has more chemistry with his new BFF, Willard, than he ever has with Ariel. The scenes where Ren is teaching Willard to dance have more spark in them than any other scene in the film, frankly, and I'm started to find that there is no fan fiction fleshing this romance out on AO3. Fan writers, you've let me down!

So overall, Footloose is dated and cheesy -- but aged surprisingly well.

The same can most decidedly not be said for Flashdance, which sadly starts out with the promising fact that its female lead, Jennifer Beals plays a welder named Alex Owens who -- in addition to holding down a solid, skilled (and I'd bet unionized) working-class job -- dreams of successfully applying to the Pittsburgh Conservatory of Dance. Even the fact that Alex moonlights as an "exotic dancer" (but OMG not a stripper!!) wouldn't on the face of it be enough to kill the film -- this could have been one of your predictable "triumph over obstacles"-cum-marriage-plot movies, wherein the girl wins the guy and the chance to study ballet at the school of her dreams.

But.

BUT.

• There's this small problem with the love interest being her boss at the building site where she's working. And, like, a major stalker with the world's creepiest vibe ever. Starting with the fact that he approaches her at work the day after having seen her dance at the dive bar where she works. So, you know, his interest in her as a person has this double creeptastic factor of "I've seen you dance practically naked and I thought that was hot, wanna date?" blended with, "I'm your boss and I've just disclosed to you, on the job where I'm supervising you, that I showed up to watch you dance practically naked and I thought that was hot and want to date you."
• Ms. Owens (yay feminism!) tells him quite firmly no, she doesn't date the boss. So he follows her home from the site at night in his car, while she's riding her bike, and propositions her again. When she insists she doesn't date the boss he fires her so they can do on a date together the following night.
• Although she blows him off, she apparently thinks better of it 'cause the following night they're on a date!
• And on that "first date" there's this truly excitingly horrible you-can't-look-away-from-it scene wherein Alex takes Mr. Manager back to her (loft porn!) apartment for pizza and walks back into the living area in a black negligee and grey warm-up sweater (see DVD cover photo) and proceeds to take her bra off from under her sweatshirt. Our entire audience sort of couldn't believe it was happening. Not that slutting it up for your partner isn't fun sometimes, but this was a first date with a stalker boss and the whole thing felt way too close to a professional strip tease. (Needless to say, they proceed to have sex.)
• Long story short, she continues to perform sexually for him (and I'm framing it like this deliberately -- all of their private interludes are echoes of her on-stage performances) and lo and behold he has connections at the Conservatory. So he makes a few calls and she gets an audition!
• Although Alex protests, nominally, over the wheeling and dealing, in the end she goes to the audition anyway and presumably wins a spot in the Conservatory. We never actually get to find out, since the closing shots are of her making out with her sugar daddy.

I think what was so frustratingly, jaw-droppingly bad about Flashdance was that with a few tweaks it could have been a charming, though obviously cliched, romantic comedy. Make the love interest someone other than her boss. Make him someone who didn't proposition her after seeing her perform. Make it clearer what dancing means to her, and dis-entangle the patronage from the romantic relationship. Could her boss at the construction site see her perform and, oh, incidentally, know someone who knows someone ... without sex being used as such overt currency? So it was like two degrees away from being a movie that was meh but not actually cringe-inducing, and ended up just being bad. No cookies, people. No cookies.

Next time around, I think we're gonna go with Alien and Terminator.

movienotes: les miserables

I have some book reviews I need to write for books I've read this month, and a third "why I write fic" post in the queue, but I just got back from a weekend with my sister in the beautiful Austin, Texas, and my brain can't seem to form coherent-yet-complex thoughts. So instead, I'm going to offer up a few observations about the film version of Les Miserables that I saw in the theater the weekend before last.

Javert (Crowe) and Valjean (Jackman)

I saw the musical once before, live, when I was in London in January of 2004. My principle memories at the time involve enjoying the music (I'm a life-long musical theatre fan, so a good musical will always win me over in the end), being distracted by the book I'd picked up that day and brought with me to read during intermission (The Time-Traveler's Wife), and my surprise at the fact that the emotional-relational through-line for the story is not the second act marriage-plot between Marius and Cosette but the connection forged between Jean Valjean and Inspector Javert. It is their dance of power, desperation, obsession, compassion, forgiveness, and despair that drive the plot from start to finish. Hugo's novel is that 19th century classic the Social Problems Novel and, and is -- I'm sure I am far from the first to remark upon this! -- a queer choice for musical theatre.

Fantine (Hathaway) selling her hair.

A few thoughts in no particular order:

• Women, work and society. The film version of Les Mis had some really interesting (largely visual) observations to make about women and work. There's Fantine, Anne Hathaway's character, who is working in a factory to pay for her daughter's care. Rumored to be a slut, and punished by the foreman for being a single mother, she's cast onto the streets and sells her hair, teeth, and sex before succumbing to consumption. Her daughter, Cosette, has been boarded out as a laborer herself, working for a couple running an inn (the buffoonish and cruel Thenardiers). While Cosette is rescued by Valjean and ascends to the middle class through marriage (one could argue a certain kind of "wage work" in its own right, certainly an economic decision), her age-mate Eponine Thenardier -- abused by her parents and pining after Cosette's lover -- cross-dresses as a boy to join the revolution and ultimately dies on the barricade. On the periphery of the story drift prostitutes, beggars, and female religious who serve as nurses and also offer refuge for Jean Valjean at various points throughout the story. When the student revolutionaries are shot by French soldiers, the uprising put down, it is women who are left to scrub down the blood-filled streets. Overall, Les Mis hammers home in multiple ways the limited options for the vast majority of women in 19th century France. True, there were limited options for most people living in France at that time -- but this film adaptation does a good job of highlighting the way women's sex/gender limited them in particular ways.
• Futility of revolutionary action? Throughout, the film/musical has a deeply ambivalent relationship to the politics of its student revolutionaries. Marius's boyfriend Enjolras is a charismatic and idealistic young Parisian student who, with a group of peers, orchestrates a violent rebellion (based on a real historical incident) that ultimately fails and leaves everyone -- save Marius, rescued by Jean Valjean for his adopted daughter's sake -- dead. In Hugo's world, the violence of the state (personified by Javert; more below) is responsible for the wretchedness of virtually every character in the story, but political action is depicted as ultimately futile and deadly. Yet the film ends with a triumphant reprise of the rebels call to arms, with Fantine, Valjean, and all of the dead students waving tricolor flags high above the Parisian skyline. Have they ... won? And if so, how? Is the film meant to suggest revolutionary action is ever-needed? If the next generation (Marius and Cosette) have retreated into bourgeois respectability -- Marius' father welcomes them in with open arms and throws a lavish party for their wedding -- should this be considered a win? For whom? I have read some reviews that suggest Hugo's narrative points toward interpersonal love triumphing over political action (again, more below) but if that is the thrust of the plot it is an unsatisfying one: many people, even many "deserving" poor, die or are left in desperate poverty despite benevolence (and occasionally actual care) extended to them by others. If I had to guess, I'd hazard that Hugo might imagine that all attempts to improve the human condition on a large scale are doomed to failure, and that one-to-one interactions are our only -- and ultimately futile -- recourse.
• Letting go of the next generation. As I wrote above, my first impressions of Les Mis is that it is a story about parents and letting go. Fantine, first, must let go of Cosette in order to provide for her (by going to work and leaving her with the innkeepers), and then ultimately must let her go when she dies and entrusts her to Valjean, a man she barely knows. She cannot know what her daughter's future holds -- for good or ill -- and yet must depart. And then in the second act Valjean must let go of Cosette when she falls in love with Marius. While at first this loss is painful to him, and he tries to leave  the country with Cosette in tow, when he intercepts a letter from Marius to Cosette he regrets his actions and rescues Marius from the barricades. After the two children are engaged to be married, Valjean -- his duty to his daughter complete, now she is in another man's care -- he departs to a monastery to die. We also have, of course, all of the children who die: Eponine and the students, including a young street urchin named Gavroche who is the first casualty of the day. The adults may believe these young peoples' actions are foolish and futile, dangerous even, but the young people ultimately must forge their own paths.
• The central romance in the story is between Valjean and Javert. So, okay, you don't have to read their relationship as one long exercise in Unresolved Sexual Tension - but I certainly found it much more satisfying than the Marius/Cosette situation, let me tell you. Inspector Javert spends decades in pursuit of Valjean, obsessed with the man and fascinated/repulsed by the notion that the "criminal" Valjean (imprisoned for stealing a loaf of bread) could ever be anything other than a criminal. Valjean, whose religious conversion shortly after he is paroled helps him rebuild his life, tries to model a more nuanced morality for Javert (while, you know, evading re-arrest!) -- and in the penultimate scene he succeeds. Given the opportunity to kill or capture Valjean, whom he has tracked into the Parisian sewers, Javert lets Valjean go. And is so shattered by his decision to let the rule of law go in the interest of human compassion that he commits suicide.
• Oh, and the acting. I was really impressed with everyone in this cast, all of whom seemed to really be throwing themselves into their work both musically and acting-wise. At times, Hugh Jackman and Russell Crowe really seemed to be struggling with the score which surprised me -- since I know Jackman, at least, is a strong singer. But I think that might have been a function of recording the songs live on-set rather than in a recording studio before or after the shoot. And Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen as the odious Thenardiers were delightfully campy, offering some of the only comic relief around -- and even then, theirs is a story that has a pretty tragic side if you linger more than a moment or two). 

And that's all I got, folks. If you're musical theater fans or fans of the Victorian "social problem" novel, I'd highly recommend seeing the film -- preferably in the theatre since it truly is a spectacle of a movie musical. I know some people were really frustrated by the filming -- the tendency to frame actors in the corner of the screen, or incompletely, but I actually like that technique for the way it makes you notice the composition of the shot, makes you realize a visual image is being constructed for you, rather than allowing you to feel you're simply immersed in the action. Artifice, in this instance I would argue, works well with the musical genre.

movienotes: brave

Teenage Merida and her mother Elinor (via)

To escape the heat on Saturday, Hanna and I went to the movies and saw Brave (Disney and Pixar, 2012) which most of you have probably heard much of a muchness about since it was released back in June. There's been tons of insightful, critical analysis of Brave and what it does and doesn't do to advance our cultural narratives about girls and women. I'm not going to try and reproduce or summarize the conversation here -- but a few of my favorite reviews/reflections come from Amanda Marcotte, Jaclyn Friedman, Heida, and Lili Loofbourow.

What follows are some heat-and-humidity-infused reflections on what moved me about Brave and thoughts about some of the non-Disney cultural narratives the movie may be drawing its inspiration from.

Spoilers below. Also massive rambling.

First and foremost, the most striking thing about Brave -- and I'm far from the first person to point this out -- is that the story centers on a mother-daughter relationship. Let me say this again: The story centers on a mother-daughter relationship. Just last week, my friend Molly tweeted about how her six-year-old son Noah has just started noticing all of the dead and absent mothers (thanks Freud and Jung!) in children's literature. When parents aren't dead, they're most often either out-of-touch with their children's lives or actively malicious. Often, for women, there's a twofer with the dead-mother-evil-stepmother theme.

The lesson in these stories is, so often, that parents and children (and the generations they represent) are inherently in conflict, and that women are naturally rivals with one another -- usually for power as represented by male attention/alliances).

In Brave, Merida and her mother are in conflict to begin with: Merida is a rebellious teenager (very much a modern American construct) and Elinor is a mother trying to do what she thinks is best for her daughter and letting her fear muddle her ability to see clearly what is best for her daughter. The narrative tension of Brave revolves around mother and daughter finding their way back to the quality of relationship they have lost, while incorporating into that relationship a greater -- more adult -- knowledge about themselves and one another.

I think the radical audacity of this storyline finally hit home to me in last act when Merida defends her mother (temporarily turned into a bear) against the clan leaders who believe they're avenging Elinor's death. And then when Elinor-as-bear comes to the defense of her daughter who is nearly killed by the real beast, Mordu. It's a powerful thing to see, on screen, a princess defend her living mother from death rather than speaking in her absent/dead mother's name. And an equally powerful thing to see a living mother, a fierce mother bear, coming to the defense of her girlchild -- not only rescuing her from Mordu, but ultimately listening to Merida's wish to delay any marriage plot until some nebulous future.

Let's just say that when Merida says to her father and his soldiers, "I will not let you kill my mother!" I could feel the tears spring into my eyes. How often does a girlchild get a chance to say this in our Western fairy tale canon?

This reworking of the mother-daughter relationship speaks not only to our own interpersonal relationships, but also to the broader social narratives of generational tensions. I'm thinking especially here about feminist "waves" and the way we're so often encouraged to think of feminist activism in generational terms, with overbearing, bitter, jealous mothers pitted against bratty, sexually-potent, ungrateful daughters. Brave points out that division between mothers and daughters -- the failure to listen on both sides -- obscures the true villain of the piece: adherence to (patriarchal) tradition borne of fear.* I'd argue that such a message is one we truly can't get enough of in this world obsessed with generational rebellion and rupture. By seeing each generation as a threat to the one that preceded it, we're hobbling our chances for deep, progressive change.

A few more (briefer) observations.

Merida owes much of her adolescent truth-telling, I suspect, to fictional fore-sisters such as Jane Eyre and Psyche. As Carol Gilligan argues in The Birth of Pleasure and more recently in Joining the Resistance, children -- she would argue particularly girl children on the cusp of adolescence -- are bellweathers and truth-tellers, pointing out the deceptions we practice on ourselves and one another, and demanding honesty from themselves and those around them. I'd also suggest that Brave's narrative lineage owes debts to Stephen Sondheim's Into the Woods, and to virtually every film produced by Miyazaki. Particularly Princess Mononoke, Howl's Moving Castle, and (Hanna tells me, since I haven't yet seen it) Nausicaa.

As with Into the Woods, we have themes of parents having to let their children grow up and forge their own path (see: Bernadette Peters' brilliant witch) while not abandoning them wholesale (see: "You Are Not Alone"). The message in Brave as in Into the Woods is that heroes -- regardless of gender -- are strongest when working in cooperation with others, and that this message of community isn't incompatible with forging a new path.

As in Miyazaki's films, the protagonist(s) Merida and Elinor must learn values such as respect for others, harmony with the community, and a balance between the qualities identified as "masculine" and "feminine" in our culture. Merida is fierce and physically fearless, yet needs to learn the art of political persuasion and empathy for others. There is a subtler morality at play in Brave that shares closer kinship with Eastern folk traditions (in my admittedly limited experience) than it does with the fairy tales Disney usually draws on for inspiration.

And, of course, there's the brilliant freedom of watching a film about a teenage girl that is decidedly not a marriage plot. Merida's age is indeterminate, though her body is that of a young woman gone through puberty. She isn't anti-sex, or anti-marriage even -- she's simply not ready to make the choice. As others before me have pointed out, to have a teenage girl in a mainstream film whose sexuality is indeterminate -- meaning she could swing straight, gay, bi, fluid, or something else entirely: We don't know. And, for once, it's immaterial to the plot! -- is a breath of fresh air.

This is the exact opposite of pretty much every princess movie -- and even most YA novels! -- out there on the market, because romance is a driving force in stories about adolescents. I'm not saying that's necessarily a bad thing, but when coupled with heteronormative plots it means that girls look at the narratives about young adulthood and they see that they're expected to be boy-crazy, or at least boy-interested. They could be boy-interested in the most kick-ass, gender-bending guy on the planet -- but boys it almost always is expected to be. And if not boys, then girls (or girls and boys), and it's always, always, always meant to be an all-consuming preoccupation.

Teenagers are expected, in our culture, to be preoccupied -- for better or worse -- with sex and relationships. And as a teenager who wasn't personally driven to explore these things (except in a fictional, future-looking sort of way), I often felt really out of step with stories that depicted my concerns in that way. Merida's maybe someday but certainly not now attitude toward romantic relationships, coupled with her deep, passionate involvement in her familial relationships, show how teenage girls (and, I'd argue, teenagers more generally) are more complex persons than our media so often portrays them to be.

My one frustration with Brave (and then I promise to stop rambling!) was the one-dimensional portrayal of the male characters, particularly Fergus (Elinor's husband, Merida's father). It's understandable in a 90-minute film that some characters get short-shrift, but the buffoonish character of Fergus, coupled with Elinor's  level-headed political thinking and parental role can all too easily be read according to the "smart woman married to a boorish man" trope of situation comedy fame (Simpsons and Family Guy anyone?). While the teenage boys put forward to compete for Merida's hand eventually speak up for their own independent choice of spouse** they are also caricatures clearly meant to communicate "brawn but no brains," "brash, vain hottie," and "sensitive weakling." Since Merida's protests regarding marriage are valid regardless of the merit of her suitors, it seems like a poor choice to recapitulate harmful stereotypes about men in a film that is otherwise quite smart about women and gender.

I suspect that this shortcoming has less to do with Brave in particular than it has to do with the fact that our culture has still not answered the questions of masculinity posed by feminist thinkers and activists. We haven't figured out how to tell a story about fully-dimensional, human women, that also includes fully-dimensional human men. In order to tell a story in which a mother and daughter are the central relationship, Elinor's husband, her (much younger) sons, and Merida's would-be suitors, cannot be taken seriously -- must provide, in fact, the comic relief to an otherwise revolutionary plot. Which leaves open the question, of course, what place fathers, sons, and male lovers might have in this brave new world which Merida and her mother are building for the clans?

Some anti-feminists would argue there isn't a place for men in the world Elinor and Merida seek to build. I'd argue it will be up to the men -- and women alongside them -- to discover and create that place for themselves.

---

*As an aside, the historian and feminist in me would really love to know the details of Elinor's back-story. She and her husband seem to have a loving relationship, yet she clearly sees marriage to some extent as a political alliance. I yearned for a glimpse inside her head, so that we could understand some of the reasons for her fear, and the reasons for the decisions she made -- both in pushing Merida toward a betrothal of political expedience, and then later in choosing to support her daughter's desire to forge her own path.

**And seen through slash goggles, Hanna and I agree that in the final scene it's clear at least two of them have found each other as potential mates!

movienotes: the price of pleasure

Note: This is part two of my series of posts related to a screening of The Price of Pleasure and discussion about pornography that took place at the Boston University School of Public Health on Friday, 10 February 2012. Part one can be found here and my discussion of the post-screening debate can be found here.

The Price of Pleasure: Pornography, Sexuality, and Relationships (2008) is a documentary with a message. Although it can't quite decide what that message is. The many-tentacled porn industry is fucking with our minds and our sexuality? Men who watch porn are more likely to be misogynist racists and sexual predators? All women are victims of porn, both in its production and its consumption? One way or another, pornography -- we gather from the film -- is bad. The Price of Pleasure tells the following story: In the hands of unscrupulous corporations run by men, the "porn industry" exploits female performers and relentlessly pushes a commercialized version of (heterosexual) sex that is, in turn, consumed by (heterosexual) men. The sexuality of male consumers is shaped by the narratives of "porn" -- narratives which are sexist, racist, and violent, in short about different types of domination and control. Then these men turn around and bring pornography's poisonous narratives into their own (heterosexual) sex lives. Individuals in the world of Pleasure -- both porn-watching men and the women these men are in relationship with -- are figured as populations almost totally lacking in self-determination and agency. And the documentary clearly wants us to get upset about this state of affairs -- and I would, if I thought it were true! What the film's audience might do to resist the porn industry's grip on human sexuality is much less clear.

How did The Price of Pleasure make its argument for pornography as harmful to our sexuality? In part through interviews. Women interviewed in Pleasure describe feeling subjected to watching porn with their male partners (or sometimes abusers), or feeling pressure to conform to the hypersexualized imagery of womanhood peddled in consumer culture. Men describe sexual behavior that is shame-ridden, secretive, obsessive. The men and women interviewed about their consumption of pornography were all young Those in the porn industry, interviewed largely at an industry expo in Las Vegas, come across as product pushers, while the anti-pornography talking heads (interviewed against a black backdrop, in professional dress) come across as measured, authoritative experts. The talking heads are, for anyone who follows the discussion of pornography and culture, a cast of usual suspects: Gail Dines, Robert Jensen, Pamela Paul, Ariel Levy. While I've read some of these authors' work, and find much to admire there, I also depart from their final analysis about what porn is and how it works as a cultural medium. So I definitely felt cranky, while watching the film, about how these authors were positioned relative to those in the porn industry -- about the lack of any dissenting voices who were similarly situated as credentialed researchers. I might disagree that an individual with a doctorate and a long list of publications is a more authoritative source than the owner of a porn production company -- but there's no way that the industry insider is going to carry the same weight of someone positioned as an objective researcher.

I found myself noticing the visual choices being made in the film, and how these visual choices worked to support the documentary's main porn-is-a-threat argument. The visuals we got of both the porn itself and of porn producers were rapid out of context clips. As a viewer, I felt visually assaulted by the rapid change of images that lacked any explanation, other than the understanding that these were typical images in porn. The scary voice man hired to narrate the film (if you've wondered what he does between election cycles, now you know) describes what you're seeing -- i.e. a female porn actress sucking off a group of men before the ejaculate on her face. But documentary context is very different from pornographic film context. "Porn" in The Price of Pleasure is synonymous with exploitative working conditions that, in turn, produce visual images and narratives that encourage men (and always men) to replicate those exploitative scenes in their own lives. We're shown what does, much of the time, look like a violent, non-consensual sexual assault or torture scene. And as viewers we're not given the information needed to evaluate the particular example of pornography in any meaningful way.

For example: Was everyone on the set consenting, in a meaningful, non-coerced way, to being there and engaging in the activities depicted? Were the activities specifically negotiated prior to shooting the scene by everyone, and were the activities and conditions agreed to in that negotiation adhered to? Were all of the individuals hired for the production paid a working wage? Were health and safety concerns addressed and ensured throughout production? In terms of the depiction of sex the film conveys, is it clear to the viewer of the film that these activities are consented to and negotiated, that adequate safety measures are being taken? These things matter. Does the woman (or subordinate partner) in the scene enjoy being bound and gagged, in the context of a role-playing scenario, or not? Power play doesn't have to be exploitative as long as it's play, and clearly demarcated as such. But The Price of Pleasure never acknowledges these distinctions, instead choosing to use shocking, non-contextualized imagery in support of its argument about how pornography is, in and of itself, an assault on our sexual selves.

The other, most glaringly obvious, problem with The Price of Pleasure was that the film-makers never defined their terms. What did they mean by "porn"? From the examples shown in the documentary, it was clear that "porn" meant very specific types of pornography videos, usually produced with an archetypal heterosexual male consumer in mind. In the world of Pleasure only men willingly produce pornographic films, only men who desire women consume pornographic films, and any other type of producing/consuming demographic and/or genre of sexually explicit materials is rendered invisible -- because (I would argue) it fails to fit within the scope of the film-maker's argument -- namely, that "the porn industry" is destroying our sexual self-determination and ability to find sexual pleasure in non-destructive, equitable ways. Their argument thus becomes somewhat circular: limiting the discussion of porn to porn which appears, as presented, grounded in narratives of sexual dominance, abuse, and inequality, then it seems self-evident that pornography equals these things. And from there, it is but a small leap of logic to argue that consuming these messages about gender, race, and sexuality inform how we approach race-, gender- and sexual relations in our real lives (though the film makes this seem like a very simple causal relationship, when in fact I would argue the dialogue between fantasy and reality is much, much more complicated!).

Where, in the narrative this film is constructing, are the many genres of gay male and m/m erotica (film, textual, photographic, and otherwise?) Where is the feminist porn, the lesbian porn, the porn created within and for the many sexual identity communities -- from swinging couples to polyamorous lovers to trans-identified queer folk to asexy kink lovers? Where, in this film, is there space to talk about amateur porn, whether in the form of the home videos once circulated via mail-order catalogs or xtube porn videos made by couples of all persuasions who have fun getting it on in front of the camera? What about amateur and professional erotica writers? Textual erotica is the pornographic medium I'm the most personally familiar with, and I can tell you that the variety of flavors is pretty much endless. And while "non-con" and "dub-con" erotica exists, the volume of fiction produced in which people consensually and joyfully get it on attests to our overwhelming desire, as a readership/authorship, to construct sexual worlds in which sexual intimacy most often means a surfeit of needs being met rather than alienation or social control.

There is a very interesting documentary to be made -- or even more than one! -- comparing and contrasting the various pornographic mediums, porn creators, and porn consumers. There are, to my mind, endlessly fascinating questions to be asked about how erotic materials figure into our sexual lives -- whether we're talking about our individual sexual selves or those selves in sexual relationship. Instead, by depicting both pornography and the creators of pornography in a monochromatic, sinister light -- and by depicting male consumers (and all women) as victims of "porn" -- this film closes the door on any conversation about the productive intersection of sexually explicit, erotic materials with human sexual expression. In Pleasure, pornography is constructed in opposition to authentic human sexuality, as the producer of false sexual selves. These false selves then serve to obscure, rather than open a pathway for, our (authentic) desires and the realm of possibility for acting on those desires. I was disappointed (though not surprised) that alternate narratives of pornography as a more positive force in society were absent.

I concur with the film, and with porn's many critics, that there is a serious and urgently important conversation to be had about the economics and politics of sex work, and the exploitation of individuals through the making of pornography. Just like with any other industry, worker exploitation should not be countenanced, and employers should be held accountable by law for ensuring workplace safety and respect for workers rights. However, I don't believe these conversations are at all advanced by positioning all men as the aggressors, all women as the victims, and pornography as the medium through which patriarchal oppression is produced and reproduced in culture. People of all sex, gender, and sexual orientations and identities work in pornographic production, and we should be supporting those workers on a community level to articulate their needs and goals for improvement to their lives. But although The Price of Pleasure makes clear its belief that workers (women particularly) in the porn industry are, as a class, badly done to, there are no solutions put forward in the film about how to go about supporting porn actors who want to change their (individual or collective) situations.

This is perhaps the final problem with The Price of Pleasure: that they fail to offer any sense of direction for change. If the problem, as the documentary film-makers see it, is the strangle-hold of "the porn industry" on our means of sexual expression, as a viewer I would have appreciated more explicit suggestions offered as to what the solution to this problem might be. As it is, The Price of Pleasure leaves us with an ominous sense of pervasive subjection, of helplessness, and no explicit pathways to liberating ourselves. I have my own suggestions, of course, for alternatives to non-consensual, unsafe, and exploitative sexual narratives -- but I suspect the makers of Pleasure would not appreciate them. Thus, this film, in the end, simply reinforces the very sense of victimization the film purports to document.

Cross-posted at The Pursuit of Harpyness.

movienotes: orgasm, inc

During the winter holiday, I finally had a chance to screen Liz Canner's Orgasm, Inc., a documentary which examines the development of "female sexual dysfunction" (FSD) as a disease in need of medical intervention, and the pharmacological and surgical remedies being marketed to the public in often unethical ways.

The full documentary is available via Netflix streaming.

I thought Canner's documentary was engaging, thoroughly researched, and managed to be harshly critical of unethical medical practices while not dismissing women's desire for sexual satisfaction. I realize that the issue of medical intervention for women unsatisfied with their sexual response is a highly contentious issue within feminist circles, and I want to say up-front that I am not against medication or surgery per se if it is proven to be effective, responsibly marketed and prescribed, and offered not as a magical fix but as one of a wide array of possible solutions.

The problem with medication and surgery to heighten women's sexual pleasure is that sexual response is complicated and variable (in human beings generally, not just women) and the medical "fixes" so far on offer are high on risk while potential benefits remain unknown. In addition, patients are often seeking medical treatment for something they perceive as broken or wrong with their bodies which, in fact, are well within the range of human variation -- and the doctors treating these patients are (I would argue unethically) using medicine to treat a non-disease. For example, one woman whom Canner follows in the documentary signs up to be part of a clinical trial for an electrical implant in her spine that is supposed to help her achieve orgasm. Let me be clear: invasive spinal surgery.* The potential side-effects and risks are numerous. The woman is physically healthy, not suffering from any sort of nerve or spinal column damage that would cause a loss of feeling in her genitals. In fact, Canner interviews the woman and discovers that she is perfectly capable of reaching orgasm just not during intercourse. Which is a "dysfunction" that roughly 70% of people with clits share. In other words, this woman was accepted as a participant in a clinical trial to a physical deficiency that wasn't actually there.

Canner's perspective as a film-maker is clearly sympathetic to the anti-medicalization camp, whether it's authors skeptical of Big Pharma advertising or activists fighting against the over-medicalization of women's sexuality and elective genital surgery. Her visual technique highlights the production not only of the film but of the medical industry's media message concerning women's sexuality. The company spokespeople, medical talking head "experts" pushing pharmacological and surgical solutions, and other advocates of medical intervention are consistently shown off-balance, evasive, unable to answer critical questions, and glib about women's "choices," even as they admit to uncertain outcomes. In contrast, the sex educators and activists who advocate a more comprehensive approach to sexual pleasure -- one that takes into account emotional well-being, trauma history, relationship health, and sexual knowledge -- come across as trustworthy, knowledgeable and comfortable with the variety of human sexual experience. As the founder of Good Vibrations observes in an interview, many of the women who visit Good Vibes store are so unfamiliar with their own bodies that they can't locate their own clitoris. "Is a drug going to help them?" She asks rhetorically, "Maybe if it has a sex map of the clitoris on the box!" Before we resort to medical intervention -- particularly unproven medical intervention -- Canner's film argues, we might do better to explore non-medical ways of improving our sexual well-being.

On the downside, I feel like this film in some ways perpetuated the widespread belief that Women's Sexuality Is Confusing, in contrast to men's sexuality which can be reduced to erection/orgasm. This framing is somewhat inevitable given that the drug companies developing medical solutions to "female sexual dysfunction" have Viagra as their model for success. And Viagra is marketable precisely because our culture views the ability to reach and maintain an erection as the be-all and end-all of satisfying men's sexual desire. In contrast to this measurable goal of sustaining erections, women's bodies have culturally legible markers of sexual satisfaction. When it comes to women we're going for the much muddier category of "higher sexual satisfaction" rather than "stronger pelvic contractions" or "more vaginal secretions" or "engorged labia." The research surrounding sexual satisfaction is highly subjective, recalling the medical discourse around what is to be considered "normal looking" genitalia. The so-called experts Canner interviews are evasive about their standards of measurement, and when pushed often fall back on the language of proprietary trade secrets. In other words, women are being told they're "normal" or "not normal" based on tests developed by an industry invested in providing (expensive) treatment for women who fall outside the "normal" range.

I would also have been interested in information about the population of women seeking treatment for "female sexual dysfunction." While several individual women are profiled, there is little discussion of the demographic as a whole. I found myself wondering, as I watched, if one would find differences based on age, sexual orientation and/or sexual relationships, and the other usual markers such as race/ethnicity and class background. Obviously the people able to afford medical treatment for sexual difficulties are likely to be economically secure-to-well-off.  But I wonder if women in same-sex relationships, for example, are less likely to seek medical solutions to perceived abnormality, then women in heterosexual relationships -- and if so, what we could discover by exploring that difference. I was also disappointed in the invisibility of trans* women from the narrative, though I understand that this adds a whole different level of complication to the story of women's sexuality. At one point, when an ob/gyn is interviewed about elective genital surgery she says, "I can't think of any rational reason for it," a statement which either puts gender confirmation surgery in the non-elective/medically necessary category or dismisses trans* women's particular needs as "irrational." Likewise, I feel like the discussion of pharmacological treatment might have benefited from a discussion of hormone treatment for trans* folks and their experience of evolving desires as they transition. It seemed, from the documentary itself, that the doctors and companies involved in treating women's sexual dissatisfaction were highly un-interested in gender, sex, or sexual variance of any kind -- and therefore would probably resist learning from the trans* community. On the other hand, I imagine trans* folks might represent a potential market for the medical entrepreneurs, and I found myself wondering if there was any overlap in treatment of women diagnosed with FSD and trans* people. And, if so, what that overlap looks like.

Overall, at a brief 78 minutes I found this a highly watchable documentary that would be a really good jumping-off point for further discussion in a classroom, discussion group, or other discursive setting.

movienotes: calamity jane

Calamity Jane (Day) and Wild Bill Hickok (Keel)
via

Cross-posted at the corner of your eye.

When Hanna and I were visiting her folks back in December, we decided to watch the old VHS copy of Calamity Jane (1953) starring Doris Day and Howard Keel that we found in their video collection. In our defense, may I point out that a) we love making fun of crap movies, and b) Seven Brides for Seven Brothers was a childhood favorite of Hanna's, and c) when I was about eight the original Broadway cast recording of Annie Get Your Gun starring Ethel Merman was where it was at as far as I was concerned. I was the proud owner of a vinyl record (my very first!) and would make my best girl friend at the time play Frank Butler to my Annie Oakley as we sang, "The Girl That I Marry" and "Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better." To this day, I feel our relationship fell apart at least partially because she wanted a girl who was "soft and pink as a nursery" while I was more of a "Doin' What Comes Natur'lly" kinda gal.

Anyway, so we decided to watch Calamity because of these things. And obviously we were anticipatory of the cringe-inducing depiction of Native Americans, the weak plot (this was no Deadwood), and to some extent the weak music and lyrics (Sammy Fain and Paul Webster are no Irving Berlin). What we didn't anticipate was the lesbian (sub)text and the total confusion in the heteroromance department.

See, here's the deal. As the film opens, Calamity Jane and Bill Hickok are pals living and working in Deadwood. They clearly see one another as besties, a situation which lasts through to the end of the film where their platonic friendship is required to morph into a romantic one in order to satisfy the demands of the marriage plot. Until the last-minute deus ex machina, however, Jane overtly professes desire for Lt. Danny Gilmarten (Philip Carey), stationed in Deadwood, and simultaneously acts out a courtship and marriage scenario with the other leading lady, Katie Brown (Allyn McLerie). Katie is a dance hall singer/stripper who Calamity Jane brings to Deadwood from Chicago to help the local saloon owner satisfy his customers. While Katie's role in the movie is very obviously scripted to teach Jane how to be feminine, their relationship plays out as a romance from the very start. When Jane goes to meet Katie backstage in Chicago, Katie first reads Jane's body language and dress as male, and reacts as if Jane is a male intruder. Even after Jane clears up the misconception, the two continue to act out a butch/femme dynamic as Jane shepherds Katie to Deadwood (protecting her from hostile Indians), defends her honor at the saloon, and invites Katie to move in with her. The two set up housekeeping and Katie invites Jane to learn how to behave like a "proper" woman. Interestingly enough, despite Jane's transformation from "one of the boys" into a feminine girl, she persists in wearing her buckskin outfit in all of the scenes not focused on her transformation -- her femininity doesn't require skirts.

The romantic cross-currents in the film are terribly confused -- in no small part because the Jane/Katie pairing follows the classic girl-civilizes-boy courtship arc, except that the two characters are both women. The two are initially at odds, but find aspects of the other to appreciate, and settle into a domestic arrangement. Obviously, however, the film-makers needed the marriage plot they'd initiated to end in heterosexual marriage. So: re-enter Hickock and Gilmarten, who come to the women's idyllic cabin in the woods to woo (you guessed it) Katie Brown. Katie, knowing Jane desires Danny, resists initial advances but accepts an invitation to a local ball on the condition that Jane be invited as Bill's date. At this point I count three romantic triangles: (1) Katie and Jane in rivalry for Danny, (2) Danny and Bill in rivalry for Katie, and (3) Bill and Jane in rivalry over Katie.

Obviously, the solution would be for them all to move to Planet O. But barring that, the scriptwriters obviously felt they needed to resolve the plot in a timely and heterosexual manner. So Katie, despite earlier protestations, takes up with Danny at the ball -- causing Jane to storm off in jealousy. Jane later confronts Katie in the midst of Katie's stage show, demanding that she leave town. Bill helps Katie make Jane look foolish (in order to teach her a lesson) and then at the eleventh hour professes his love for Jane. Jane, having resolved her jealousy by transferring her affection for Bill, rides off to collect Katie from the departing stagecoach and the two straight couples have a joint wedding just before the credits roll.

The essential confusion of the show's narrative, I feel, can be summed up in an an exchange between Bill and Jane in which Bill suggests to Jane that her rage at Katie is caused by "female thinking," which clouds her rational mind and stops her from thinking clearly. Since the ostensible thrust of the narrative to that point was to move Jane from an essentially masculine position to a feminine one (from which she can be paired with Bill), the last-minute accusation of too much femininity highlights the nonsensical nature of the plot. Only by reclaiming her active, masculine position in the narrative (riding off in her buckskin to retrieve Katie from the retreating coach), can Jane reclaim her honor and win her place by Bill's side ... even as all of the cues of the narrative put her and Katie together as a butch/femme couple.

In short, don't watch Calamity Jane for the music, the Wild West themes, or the heteroromance. Instead, watch it for the lesbian relationship hiding in plain sight. As Hanna put it, "This isn't subtext, this is just plain old text."

new blog launched: the corner of your eye

I warned you it was coming, and now it's here! Hanna and I have started a new joint review blog, the corner of your eye* , which can be found at corner-of-your-eye.blogspot.com. or via the link on the left-hand sidebar under "find me elsewhere online."

the corner of your eye

I know, I know ... like either of us have scads of free time going to waste. But none of our existing online spaces are really dedicated to arts and culture reviews per se, and we thought it might be fun to experiment with joint blogging. Really, it's pure indulgence for us both in terms of letting us opinionate about the books, movies, and television shows that occupy so much of our discretionary time (when we're not writing fan fiction or trawling the interwebs).

Our goal is to put up two posts a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I'll likely be cross-posting some content here, particularly when the creative juices are running low.

We're still tweaking the visual look of the blog, so please feel free to comment re: accessibility and all the rest.

---

*bonus points for anyone who can identify the allusion

in which I write letters: dear netflix

Okay, so Hanna and I joined the tens of thousands of Netflix customers who expressed their displeasure at the planned price hikes for the popular DVD rental and online video streaming service, and particularly the way in which the company announced the price changes.  I'm not going to replicate the whole thing here, but I have thrown the letter into a PDF document so anyone who's interested can read it and/or steal from it.

Mostly, I wanted to offer the contact details I was given by the customer service representative who answered the phone when I called the 1-800 number. Why did I use the telephone you ask? Because I'm apparently the only Netflix user on the planet who managed to discover and then forget that Netflix doesn't like actually receiving meaningful customer feedback. Nowhere on their site do they have a form for communicating with them about any aspect of their services, nor do they have a customer service email through which to express positive or negative feedback about their company. Instead, I had to call on the phone and insist on obtaining a mailing address where I could direct the letter. I'm serious: the (very courteous) man whom I spoke to really really really wanted to take my feedback via telephone. I explained I already had it all written out and wanted to send it by email or mail thank you very much. He put me on hold and then finally said he'd been given "permission" to give me the corporate headquarters address to send the letter to.

I'm supposed to address it "Attn: Corporate."

WTF.

they don't get it either

I mean, even the Massachusetts Historical Society has someone who handles PR, right? We're an organization of fifty employees! And you're telling me that Netflix doesn't have a Customer Service office staffed by people whose sole responsibility is to field incoming letters, emails, telephone calls, texts, tweets, Facebook messages, you name it?? I'm supposed to send my letter to corporate?

Excuse me while I pause to feel a little teeny tiny bit jerked around.


Anyway, here's the address if you want to lodge a complaint:

Netflix
Attn: Corporate
100 Winchester Circle
Los Gatos, CA
95032

Or, apparently, you can use the popular method of leaving a message on their Facebook page.

ficnotes: my phone's on vibrate for you

Last week, I offered up one of my favorite one-shots by Miss Lucy Jane. This week, we're returning to Miss Lucy Jane for a five-part work in progress that starts out as a lark and ends up ... a bit more serious.

Title: My Phone's On Vibrate For You
Author: Miss Lucy Jane
Pairing: John/Sherlock
Rating: NC-17
Length: currently five parts, work-in-progress
Available At: MissLucyJane.com: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 (navigation links on the right-hand side of each page).

Playing with Sherlock's penchant for texting John instructions, this fic begins with flirtation via phone. Sherlock texts John all the time, for all sorts of reasons ... which is why John isn't quite sure what to make of the text that reads: "When you get home I want to blow you against the front door. SH." Or the following one that reads: "And then I want you to fuck me on the stairs. I can’t wait long enough to get you into bed. SH.”

The relationship begins as a "fuck buddies" sort of arrangement, but it isn't long before both men realize that it means a bit more than that.

(I don't know what it says about me that I'm writing this fic up while listening to Martin Sheen giving John Spencer a history lesson about Galileo in West Wing 2.9. I'm torn between a) assuming that I've finally learned how to multi-task and b) that I find slash fic and American politics equally sexy. Feel free to weigh in.)

ficnotes: kissing john watson

by daisukikawaii 

As predicted, things are a bit scattered this week and blogging time is thin on the ground. But somehow conversation at our apartment wound its way around to the joys of kissing yesterday evening, and that made me think of this little gem of a fic from the superlative Miss Lucy Jane.

Title: Kissing John Watson
Author: Miss Lucy Jane
Pairing: John/Sherlock
Rating: PG
Length: 1900 words (one chapter)
Available At: MissLucyJane.com

Fic authors playing with the BBC Sherlock universe tackle Sherlock's sexual history and inclinations in a number of different ways, each of which presents its own charms and dilemmas for a writer of smut. One of the most charming iterations is a Sherlock who has just discovered, through his relationship with John Watson, a whole new realm of sensual experience that provides him with an explosion of data. Sometimes this Sherlock is overwhelmed by the flood of new information, and sometimes -- as in this fic -- he embraces it with the enthusiasm of a child in a chocolate shop.

live-blogging "downton abbey" (episode no. 4)

So here we are at the last live-blog for "Downton Abbey," Season One. You can read the snark (you know you want to!) in full over at ...fly over me, evil angel....

9.16: [Sybil] A: Someone's got something up her sleeve! M: Someone's not going to a charity. [Lady and Maggie Smith] M: This is that scene! A: The voice cracks... [as Maggie Smith rationalizes house geography] H: It's the delivery... M: It's fantastic... A: I could watch that scene over and over for hours. M: She's all about practicalities. A: Well, it's about image, right? Whatever you do is okay so long as society doesn't find out. M: I wonder if Grandma's going to back Mary so much now.

9.18: [Anna and Bates, 'I'm not sure the world is listening.'] A: Good point. [William and Daisy] A: That's...a stunned look. M: I'm surprised people can't read Daisy like a book!

I have to say I'm sort of ... disappointed in the series as a whole, although invite me back for the visual pleasure any time! And the acting is solid-to-stunning throughout the cast. No; my disappointment comes from what they didn't do with the script. At least in this first season. At its heart, "Downton Abbey" seems to be really invested in the Edwardian aristocrac, and portraying the intact stratified class system as ultimately a good thing. People within the story flirt with challenging it, but they're always won over in the end to this way of life: the lord, the estate, the upstairs/downstairs social organization. None of the women seem to see how to break free of the life-paths they've been set. Very few servants are asking if that's the life they want ... and when they do, they're inevitably brought back into the fold.

It's not that I expected this film to be about socialist revolutionaries. But given that there were radicals in England at the time -- often asking very trenchant questions about the "common sense" assumptions concerning class and gender -- it rings a little false to have those social critiques all but absent in the world of DA. Particularly since it's a show that keeps hammering home in the introductions that it's all about "change."

I'll be interested to see what they do with Season 2.

live-blogging "downton abbey" (episode no. 3)

It's a busy day at work today, folks, and I don't have time for an elaborate introduction / cross-post. Though I will say two things: 1) every line out of Maggie Smith's mouth continues to be pure gold and 2) if Bates the valet and Anna the housemaid fail to have some sexytimes -- or at least implied sexytimes -- by the end of the series, there will be serious dedespondency in our household. You can read our third live-blog of "Downton Abbey" over at ...fly over me, evil angel... and catch up with installments one and two there as well. Spoilers after the jump. You have been warned.

live-blogging "downton abbey" (episode no. 2)

Lady Mary prepares to be unwise in her flirtations.

Following up last week's live-blog of the first episode of Masterpiece Theater's "Downton Abbey,"

Hanna and I, along with our friend Minerva, gave a repeat performance last night for the second episode (we're halfway through the series, people! can you stand the drama?!)  You can read the whole blog post over at ...fly over me, evil angel....

Obviously Spoiler Warning: Downton Abbey, Episodes One and Two. Return after you've seen it if you don't want any plot points to be given away.

A few tantalizing tidbits ...

9.23: [as Bates and Anna giggle] M: Kiss. Each. Other. Please, honey! Make him drop the cane! I'm sorry; I need some smexy times! A: Yeah, he needs to grab her ass... M: There's a table right behind you!

9.24: [Harriet shows up] H: Go, Harriet! M: Oh, I like you!

9.25: [as Maggie shows up] M: Oh, Maggie -- I don't like you now! M: [as wife defends procedure] Oh, good for you! A: She [Maggie Smith] is so good at that "What? People are contradicting me?"-look.

9.26: [as procedure continues] M: Whoa -- that so ain't right! H&A: Hush!

And predictions for the second half ...

Halfway through the show! Guesses all 'round...

A: So the little redhaired girl is going to go off to be a secretary.

M: Bates and whatsherface need to come to some kind of agreement. Understanding.

A: Yeah.

H: Thomas needs...a shagging or a comeuppance...

M: Thomas is going to blackmail his way out of that house.

A: He's going to use that information to get himself leverage somewhere, somehow.

M: I do think it will backfire.

A: Yeah, he's going to try. I don't know what O'Brien wants...but she's going to be there with him.

M: Her motivation, other than being spiteful, is...

A: If she was acting as if the family was under threat...but she hates everyone!

M: I think she just wants to see people ruined.

A: It's a very malicious sort of...youngest daughter needs to find some sort of voice.

M: She's gettin' close. Middle daughter -- all middle daughter is going to end up a little shafted in this story.

A: Which is sad. But yeah. I want to see Maggie Smith and Harriet Jones...

H: Go at it. Oh, god, yes.

M: ...preferably in that little cottage parlor. Epic.

[General agreement and headnodding]

Head on over to Hanna's blog for the full post.

"live-blogging" downton abbey

Hanna and I, along with our friend Minerva, watched the first episode of Masterpiece Theater's "Downton Abbey" last night and live-blogged it for a post that Hanna put up this morning over at ...fly over me, evil angel....

Obviously Spoiler Warning: Downton Abbey, Episode One. Return after you've seen it if you don't want any plot points to be given away.

Because who doesn't want to see Maggie Smith
play Dowager Lady Crawley?

Rather than post the whole thing here, I'm sending the blog traffic her way. But here's a taste of the wit you have in store:

9.20: [Dowager Lady and Lady plotting to save money and estate] M: Granny is manipulative and awesome. A: Yeah, it would be a little frightening to be on her side -- but it would be frightening to be on the side that wasn't her!

9.21: [Daisy mooning over sulky footman] M: Daisy is going to end up in the family way... A: And not quite understand how it happened. H: Does she only have one dress? M: Yeah. She's so going to end up pregnant.

9.22: [lawyer and Lord discussing new heir] Oh god, not Manchester! A: The midlands! "There are worse professions." ".....Yes." M: Oh -- snap!

. . .

9.57: [Duke: "You might tell that footman I've gone up."] H: Well, you're not the game there, honey! M: God, how did women survive this time? H: Vibrators. A: I don't know if vibrators would solve their financial problems...

9.58: [Thomas kneels in front of Duke] Moment of stunned silence. A: This is like slash that gives you the 'no feeling.' M: ...this is still a little hot. This is like Upstairs, Downstairs with a gay twist! H: They're...quite sweet? M: Oh -- not sweet. H: Nope, not sweet. [as threats pass between footman, Duke] M: Oh, wait -- I feel some angry sex coming on...maybe not...maybe...awwww...no slashiness. A: Well, he was being a bit of a bastard. H: Yeah...Maurice without the nice ending. M: Wow... [as footman tries to master his emotions.] H: Yeah...kind of touching.

Read the rest over at ...fly over me, evil angel... and watch for the second installment next Monday.

movienotes: holiday inn

On Christmas Eve, Hanna and I watched Holiday Inn, a 1942 Bing Crosby/Fred Astair/Irving Berlin vehicle that I've heard was a precursor to the enduring classic White Christmas (also starring Crosby, though the 1954 film replaced Astair with Danny Kaye). I thought, vaguely, that I had seen Holiday Inn before.

I was wrong. So wrong.

To give you a taste, here's the original trailer.

For those of you familiar with White Christmas, this earlier film shares relatively little with its "remake" aside from Bing Crosby, the song "White Christmas," and the concept of rescuing a failing tourist hotel through the musical revue. There is much to cirtique in White Christmas if you're in the mood -- from the postwar nostalgia for the heroism of the war to the portrayal of gender dynamics and relationship expectations. I went into Holiday Inn expecting more or less the same, perhaps even a bit less based on my previous experience of late 1930s/early 1940s films -- often, they are slightly less gender essentialist than after the end of the war.

In this case ... not so much.  And in addition, Holiday Inn suffers from the additional problem of having been visited by the racist fairy and the weak plot fairy (yes, you really can have a film with less of a plot than White Christmas).

First, the gender issues. As in White Christmas, there are two women and two men. But instead of sisters, are introduced sequentially to two female entertainers, both of whom are expected to decide which of the two male leads (Crosby or Astair, the crooner or the dance man) she wishes to marry. The first woman, Lila (Virginia Dale) is the third member of Crosby and Astair's act when the show opens, performing on stage the role she has clearly slid into in real life as well: a "who will she pick?" flirt. She is engaged to Crosby, who has plans to marry her and retire to the countryside and run a farm; on the side, she and Astair have made plans to marry instead -- eloping at the last minute and heading off to a life of penthouses and entertainment glory.  The second woman, Linda (Marjorie Reynolds) is the ingénue who, in effect, takes Lila's place when Lila runs off to marry a Texas tycoon ... though Lila returns at the end so that both men have someone to marry and make the story a "happily ever after" tale.

There are some brief proto-feminist moments, such as when Linda tells Crosby off for trying to manipulate her into marrying him instead of just asking for gods' sake.  But on the whole, the women come across as accessories to the friendship of Crosby/Astair, rather than individuals in their own right -- something Rosemary Clooney and Vera Ellen are able to combat much more successfully in the later film, despite a similar trajectory of plot (i.e. that all healthy men of a certain age must be in want of a wife and that all "good" women are desperate to marry well).

After Crosby's venture at the simple life fails, he decides to turn his faltering farm into an inn ... an inn only open on holidays (thus giving him over three hundred days per year to rest and relax).  The two extremely unfortunate bits of the film are located at the Holiday Inn.

One is the 4th of July musical number, which devolves into mainlining propaganda for the war effort. We're talking documentary footage of air raids and everything. Ouch.

The second, much more winceingly present problem is the racism.  First noticeable in the fact that the only black people in the cast is Crosby's cook, Mamie, and her two unnamed children whom she continually orders to stay in the kitchen.

Louise Beavers as Mamie in Holiday Inn

Since watching Holiday Inn, Hanna and I re-watched White Christmas and realized anew how entirely white the cast is. And I mean no one with even a deep suntan. So on the one hand, I suppose you could argue that having an African-American woman in the cast -- even as the housekeeper (a role played by a white woman in White Christmas) -- is better than nothing?

But then there's the blackface. Which was the bit where we just kinda lost it. Why blackface, you say? Well, mostly because they needed a plot device to keep Astair from finding Marjorie Reynolds too early in the film ('cause then the plot would be totally shot) so Crosby puts her in blackface as a disguise.  And then dresses himself up in blackface too, just for good measure.

To sing about Abraham Lincoln's birthday.

*headdesk*

It's just ... not. okay. Not even a little bit okay. And after that, the whole film starts to take on this patina of wrong that it just cannot shake. 'Cause everything trails around it this after-image of Crosby and Reynolds in blackface. And how wrong it all was.

So that's kinda the upshot of my review folks: looking for a Christmas movie? Avoid Holiday Inn. And if you really want to hear White Christmas as sung by Crosby, rent the redux version. Really. You'll thank me.

movienotes: life with father (1947)

Last night, Hanna and I took a couple of hours out of our evening to screen the 1947 William Powell / Irene Dunn film Life With Father. Why did we do this? We were looking for something holiday-centric (Holiday Inn, Miracle on 34th Street) but came up dry ... and decided to give this a try instead. While I can't say it was an unqualified "win," I definitely found myself fascinated by the entire package for a variety of reasons.

First, the original trailer.

This film is wrong on so many levels I'm only going to hit the highlights in hopes of encouraging you to check it out. Why? Because I think films from previous eras, much like our own, are fascinating windows into the normative pressures of certain periods in time.

In this case, the way in which American cinema in the postwar era was enlisted to construct a certain narrative of gender, of family, of class, and of the American past. This film is further complicated by the fact that it is a costume drama: it employees the collective memory of/nostalgia for a bygone era -- in this case, a particular understanding of upper-middle-class New York City in the 1880s.

So, a few observations.

1) According to this film, men make and understand money while women spend money without any ability to understand finance. The titular father of the film (played by William Powell) is a banker and supports his wife and four sons in a luxurious townhouse complete with servants. Nevertheless, he and his wife (Irene Dunn) constantly bicker about the household budget which "mother" is incapable of managing in the manner which her husband believes is appropriate. Some of the best comic exchanges in the movie, in fact, revolve around Father attempting to get Mother to explain how she has spent the money he has given her, and Mother attempting earnestly to account for her purchases. This trope of gender differentiation is employed for comic value without ever being challenged. Neverthess, it's fascinating to watch how blatently the paternalism is.

2) The whole movie is worth watching for the scene where Father explains to Jr. all he needs to know about women. When the eldest son falls in love with a young Elizabeth Taylor (only three years after her breakout role in National Velvet) Father takes him aside to explain a thing or two about women. What follows is instruction in how to avoid women's advances, what to do when they cry, and a stern dismissal of Jr.'s (veiled) questions concerning heterosexual relations. I wish I had been taking notes at the time, because it really was self-parodying.

3) Making and breaking your promises is totally manly as long as you think your wife is dying. The central conflict in the film is, for reasons that defy my understanding, that Father has never been baptized and Mother is convinced this means their marriage is invalid and that he will go to hell.  So she extracts promises from him to be baptized, all of which he breaks until (spoiler) the very end, of course, when he finally capitulates and the whole family goes off together in a horse-drawn cab into the happily-ever-after. The thing that struck me was the fact that every time Father promises to be baptized, he is inevitably extending the promise as a way to get Mother to do something (or stop doing something) he wants (or doesn't want) ... including die. Then, when the situation ceases to irritate him, or distress him, he immediately retracts the promise.  It made me think of Toad of Toad Hall in the Wind in the Willows protesting, "Oh, in there! I would have said anything in there!"

4) Women (and to some extent children) care only about men as providers. This is an extention of the first point about women and math: the narrative of the entire film, to some extent, could be read in terms of consumption. The children want new clothes and toys. The mother wants jewelry. The household must be provided for. Friends come to the city to go shopping. And Father, above all, spends the entire film fretting about how much his family is spending of "his" money. The entire household, he feels (and often says -- though perhaps not in so many words) should be arranged around his needs and desires as the wage-earner. And instead, his life is "controlled" by his wife and children who spend all his money and disrupt his peace, giving him very little gratitude in return. This resentment was at the forefront of postwar gender politics, and I don't think it's a mistake that this narrative is so blatant. I'd argue it says more about the era in which it was made than the era it was made about.

5) Religion is the sphere of women and children. Similar to the narrative of money and gender, the narrative of religion and gender is at once drawing upon 19th-century notions of women's particular piety and purity and twentieth-century, postwar perceptions of religion as a particularly feminine practice.  The central tension in the film revolves around the discovery that Father has never been baptized (into the Episcopal Church ... the main rift in the film appears to be between Methodists and Episcopalians; any holy rollers or other non-mainstream, and/or non-protestant religious groups, including Catholics, are entirely absent).  Mother is appalled and distressed by this revelation, fearing for her husband's immortal soul as well as for the sanctity of their marriage.  Father insists that baptism is a formality, a waste of time, and resists the pressure of his wife for most of the two hours before finally surrendering to her desires and thus restoring unity back to the household.

The centrality of religious practice -- if not the more personalized faith we've become used to in recent years -- is startling to see on the big screen, incorporated into the narrative of what it means to be a White, middle-class, urban family.

That's about all I've got at the moment. You can check the film out on Netflix streaming or free through the Internet Archive's Moving Image Archive: Feature Films collection.