Unconscious and Irrational

Monday, January 23, 2012

Sex, Death, and Videotape

I've been in this weird zone recently of both watching Law and Order Special Victims Unit (SVU) and reading this book on Louise Bourgeois called Fantastic Realities for my book club. So basically I've been in the whirlwind of Bourgeois' death drives and part objects and SVU's dismembered limbs and plausible murder motives. Its like this Duchamp piece to the left, Etant Donnes, is following me around.
I went through a phase a few years ago when I was really stressed out and all my dreams kept turning into slasher films. Only they were all like the original Scream, a meta storyline where I know there is no point in running because that's just what the killer wants. Occasionally the tables would turn and I'd be allowed to just kill the killer and put an end to it.

Reading Fantastic Realities and watching SVU have actually been making me think a lot about this state of violence or expected violence that we live with daily. SVU makes it seem like all of New York is just a playground for serial killers but through Fantastic Realities I've been thinking a lot about how so much of this world of violence is actually ingrained in us from our first realization of self. To be a human is messy, to be a woman is arguably even more so.

Anyhow, I was just watching this old clip of Siskel and Ebert giving a feminist break down of slasher pics. I love Ebert so much.
"The moment a woman begins making decisions for herself in one of these movies, you can bet she's going to be paying with her life" - Ebert

Ebert also makes a good point about how strange it is that slasher pics are so often shot from the view point of the killer. As if you're being asked to identify with him.

So I know a lot of this is just ramblings, but I saw a good movie this weekend that touched on this stuff and also felt empowering at the same time. Its called Haywire and is directed by Steven Soderbergh and stars Mixed Martial Arts superstar Gina Carano.

This is pretty much my favorite kind of movie. I love B movies done by A directors. It also does an interesting job reflecting on some of this business of the female condition. While men in action movies are usually trying to take down a foreign drug cartel or stop some impending national threat.... the mission of the female James Bond is to merely stay alive. They say they want her to play eye candy and it turns out that its just a plot to take her out. This is the kind of movie a lesser director would have given to Angelina Jolie. But I don't think anyone would believe Jolie could strangle a man with her thighs. Gina Carano is built for the job and its because she could actually do it.

A reigning champion of mixed martial arts Carano needs no stunt double and the movie doesn't rely on the special effects that are so expected in today's action movies. In some ways this may be the only way to make a feminist action film - to find a woman who is more than eye candy, who could actually take down trained assassins and all the leading men you can throw at her. Its similar in a way to the dignity that Soderbergh allowed Sasha Grey to claim in The Girlfriend Experience by playing a woman that she knew far more about than any red carpet starlet. At times in Haywire it seemed that so much of the fancy editing and special effects had been removed that I wondered if they honestly did just put Carano on a roof and let her figure out the best way to escape from a swat team.

But, to tie this in to those slasher flicks there were a few scenes that I found to be like a slasher film turned on its head. The quintessential horror movie scene where the girl answers the phone only to find out the call is coming from inside the house.... in this movie its 5 men on the phone and they find out the girl is in the house. I don't want too give to much away, just see the movie.

As I was writing this I started wondering why it was called Haywire. Then I looked up the definition.

1. Mentally confused or erratic; crazy:

2. Not functioning properly; broken.

This ties in so directly to the assumed position of female. Of being the second sex, to be other is to be wrong, to be created mentally ill or crazy, to be unconscious and irrational. Carano in this movie embodies the assumed position that if you are a woman you are going to lose your shit. And so in the most controlled and trained way possible she does go haywire, taking out a fleet of men in a way that only a woman could.

Saturday, January 14, 2012

Let Us Help You Pay It Forward

“There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there, good for you. But, I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory and hire someone to protect against this because of the work the rest of us did. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific or a great idea. God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”
-Elizabeth Warren

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

GIRLS on HBO

Why is it not April yet?! I have 4 or 5 reasons why I really wish it was April and not January. This is one of them. GIRLS, created by Lena Dunham and produced by Judd Apatow, is hitting HBO in April. In case you haven't noticed we are in the golden age of television and this show is going to be up there with the best. Like, who ever thought there would be a show that so accurately fits my demographic and yet I'm totally cool with that fact?

Lena Dunham is best known for her film Tiny Furniture. Despite Dunham making the movie in her early 20s and with a super small budget, I can honestly say it was one of the best written and directed movies I've seen in a while. Yea, it's obviously made with the restrictions of age and money but the way 'being female' is portrayed is groundbreaking in terms of the female as the object, subject, and owner of the gaze.

Dunham seems to put all the history of feminist art and performance into her performance - all that is abject, uncomfortable, vulnerable, and resilient. Personally I was always frustrated with how Abramovich, Schneemann, Mendieta, and others had these perfect female bodies. While their work may have been ground breaking I always felt like an idiot for feeling like I should go on a diet while looking at empowering work about the female condition. Dunham goes leaps and bounds in turning this on its head. She manages to portray the female body as a human body- in the times we each personally experience when sharing bathroom time with a close friend, fitting our average bodies into New York expectations, having embarrassing sex, or just plain "sweating the bed". Actually, Dunham even takes this one step further and deals with the postmodern experience of actually being a performance artist and in the contemporary arena of youtube where commentators have no sympathy for your growing pains or those extra pounds.

I'm sure all of this makes no sense for those of you who haven't seen the movie. So go Netflix Tiny Furniture! The script is excellent - I saw it in theaters twice with both my mom and my boyfriend. I wish I'd gone with my sister and best friends too.

I'm looking forward to April! Bring on the GIRLS!

Sunday, January 8, 2012

The Biggest Sin Is Sitting On Your Ass

Sweetie, if you're not living on the edge, then you're taking up space.
-Florynce Kennedy

Flo Kennedy was one of those women who was not well behaved and definitely made history. As in she made shit happen. Born in Kansas City in 1916 she came to New York and began pre-law at Columbia in 1942. When the dean told her that he couldn't admit her to the law school not because she was black but because she was a woman, well she had a little sit down with the dean and she told him "either way it seems the same to me" and then threatened to sue. They admitted her.

Florynce graduated in 1951 and opened her own law office. Along with her partner she managed Billie Holiday and Charlie Parker's estates. She went on to be very active in feminist and civil right activism. Flo founded the feminist party (which ran Shirley Chisholm for president), helped found the Women's Political Caucus and was an early member of the National Organization for Women. She toured with Gloria Steinem doing speaking engagements and when the two encountered annoying reporters wanting to know if they were lesbians Flo would always respond "Are you my alternative?".
Pro Choice activism was a huge part of her work and at one point she even filed tax evasion charges with the IRS agains the Catholic Church saying their pro-life campaign went against church/state separation.

In 1966 Florynce founded the Media Workshop to picket and lobby the media over the mis-representation of blacks in the media. She attended all three Black Power conferences and represented the Black Panthers.

One of my favorite of Flo's political actions was to protest the lack of female bathrooms at Harvard. She lead a mass urination on the grounds.
She also had occasional acting appearances in the cult indie movie Born in Flames and and the 1970 movie The Landlord.

In Flo's own words "I'm just a loud-mouthed middle-aged colored lady with a fused spine and three feet of intestines missing and a lot of people think I'm crazy. Maybe you do too, but I never stop to wonder why I'm not like other people. The mystery to me is why more people aren't like me."

To enjoy more of the flavor of Flo check out this video below. I really enjoy seeing a 75 year old throw around terms like "take names and kick ass" and "if its good and its fun, you do it".