Scary Sadshaw

I was out of the country for the Sex and the City movie's grand summer-in-the-city opening, but I read Manohla Dargis's review ("All is right in this carefree world until Big casually asks Carrie if she would like to get married, a question that leads to the usual luncheon postmortem (oh my gawd, he proposed) and then the usual rom-com clothing montage and a staggering number of product placements (Louis Vuitton co-stars.)") from the other side of the globe with much amusement and a twang of homesickness. Now that I'm back, I still haven't seen the movie, and today I decided I probably won't, just because I don't think it will make me laugh harder than Anthony Lane's review -- which I finally got around to reading -- did. In the past I've suspected that Anthony Lane is a bit sexist (turns out I'm not alone in this opinion). The thing is, he's also hilarious. (Lane introducing Carrie and her pals: "there are four of them—banded together, like hormonal hobbits, and all obsessed with a ring"). The start of his review below:

Secrecy has clouded “Sex and the City” since it was first announced. When would the film appear? Who would find a husband? Would one of the main characters die? If so, would she commit suicide by self-pity (a constant threat), or would a crocodile escape from the Bronx Zoo and wreak a flesh-ripping revenge for all those handbags? As the release date neared, the paranoia thickened; at the screening I attended, we were asked not only to surrender our cell phones but to march through a beeping security gate, as if boarding a plane to Tel Aviv. There was even a full-body pat-down, by far the biggest turn-on of the night. Not a drop of the forthcoming plot had been leaked in advance, but I took a wild guess. “Apparently,” I said to the woman behind me in line, “some of the girls have problems with their men, break up for a while, and then get back together again.” “Oh, my God!” she cried. “How do you know?”

Additional thoughts: As I was pulling up the links for this post, I discovered that while I was away, the ostensible misogyny of this particular review generated quite a bit of discussion, neatly summarized here in New York magazine. But in this case, I'm inclined to agree with the commenter who writes, "Lane's review is so far from being sexist that it actually supports feminism." Rereading the review, I kind of got the feeling that Lane, in his weird way, actually had my back. After all, he concludes:

... there is a deep sadness in the sight of Carrie and friends defining themselves not as Bette Davis, Anne Baxter, Celeste Holm, and Thelma Ritter did—by their talents, their hats, and the swordplay of their wits—but purely by their ability to snare and keep a man. Believe me, ladies, we’re not worth it.

Imports vs. Exports: Bring it On!

The "Indian Premier League," a brand new 44-day 59-match cricket extravaganza (and "one of the largest and most- promising new business opportunities in India in recent years," according to Bloomberg's Andy Mukherjee) is quickly gaining on "Barack Obama" in Google Trends rankings! This surely in part due to the controversy erupting around the IPL's decision to import cheerleaders -- like those of the Washington Redskins (who apparently, may not even have Indian work permits) -- to spice up the sidelines. "What the cheerleaders are doing during cricket matches is ten times more vulgar than what used to happen in dance bars of Mumbai," Nitin Gadkari, leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Maharashtra told Reuters. (As for "what used to happen in dance bars of Mumbai," well, the BJP worked to ban it.) The counterpoint of course: "Our stars wear skimpy dresses in movies but nobody seems to protest. Why this double standards?" Why indeed? As the spectator interviewed in this Washington Post video puts it, "Sexuality and cricket is the way forward!"

Art Major Mess

All art is quite useless. -- Oscar Wilde

Alright. It's icky, but (for reasons not entirely clear to me), I feel I have the duty to post on Yale student Aliza Shvarts and her senior art project. Shvarts' project was billed as a provocative exploration of the relationship between art and the human body featuring layers of plastic sheeting smeared with the blood from a series of self-induced miscarriages. Shvarts said she filmed these miscarriages over a 9-month period when she alternately inseminated herself and took over-the-counter abortifacient drugs, and that she planned to project the footage onto the plastic sheeting. "Sure, some people will be upset with the message and will not agree with it," she told the Yale Daily News, but it's not the intention of the piece to scandalize anyone." Anyway, some scandalized parties came knocking, and the project was ousted as "creative fiction." Grossed out yet? Slate's Dana Stevens, who knows a thing or two about abortion and all along suspected that this was a scam, has assessed things nicely:

Hoax or not, I guess Shvarts’ installation is an accomplishment by some negative measure: In a single attention-getting move, she’s managed to make the pro-choice movement, feminism, performance art, and Yale all look bad at the same time ... Was Shvarts' point simply to trick people into being horrified that a young woman might really have done this to herself (and, depending on your point of view about abortion, ended the lives of several incipient human beings in the process). And if so, was her piece a success?

I suspect Shvarts just thought she could get away with pretending she had those abortions in the name of art, but if the deception was part of the project itself I'm a little more intrigued -- her work then becomes more like a highly-effective booby trap for reactionaries on both sides of the issue than just a tasteless and hollow fake-out.

That Model First Lady

This week Hillary Frey advocates for Carla Bruni as a "useful" and "modern" "model of feminism, and femininity." I'm not convinced. Yes, she looks great naked; yes, she's savvy and sophisticated enough to seduce politicians and rockstars alike. But what about the part where Bruni moves in with her French writer lover then goes on to have an affair -- and a child -- with his already-married son? She may be a bold icon of style, but Bruni's not exactly raising the bar for womankind with her accomplishments. As former French Vogue editor-in-chief Joan Juliet Buck says:

Versailles was conceived as a magnificent showroom for French goods, because around 1678, Colbert said to Louis XIV: We have to prove the French do things better than anybody. In 2008, at last, a model is married to the president, which is great PR for the further global extension of French luxury brands.

Or, as NYU European Studies professor Tony Judt puts it, Bruni is a "neat encapsulation of [Sarkozy's] presidency: eye-catching, over-compersatory and more than a little lacking in taste."

Plus! You're Fat! Feed Him Mints!

From Jezebel (click for details, there's a lot to laugh at). 

No, no, no

Charlotte Allen, please go away! Some miserable excerpts from her Washington Post discussion of her miserable op-ed below:

Washington: Why did you write this piece?

Charlotte Allen: Totally for fun.

West Lafayette, Ind.: Your idea of fun is to paint a (horribly inaccurate) picture of your sex as stupid?

Charlotte Allen: How about an accurate picture?

Make it stop!

A Nauseous Bag

The way I see it, the only real reason to bother reading drivel like Charlotte Allen's column in Sunday's Washington Post is for the sheer satisfaction of agreeing with the flood of irate responses it provokes. My favorite such response (from the Huffington Post):

No doubt many of you have had a hundred or so of your friends and colleagues pass along the stunningly inane article written by Charlotte Allen in today's Washington Post, in which she drags out each and every one of her own gender-identity insecurities like Hummel figurines and proceeds to use them as an audience for an embarrassing session of strenuous self-lovemaking. The resulting piece is a nauseous bag, unflinching in it's cliched ridiculousness, that reads like a bad prank.

Girls, They Want to Have Fun

Why is this article in the Fashion & Style -- and not Health -- section of The New York Times? While you ponder that question, an amusing ditty from the Broadsheet archives:

Why block a vaccine? Here's our answer.
Gardasil is no values-enhancer.
To prevent HPV
Causes sex, don't you see?
And quite frankly, we prefer cancer.

Chafing Thighs, Mental Health Days and the Like

Since it's (still) Valentine's Day. A retrospective! Back when I worked on The Dec, I would routinely coerce my friends into writing clever things. I present for your reading pleasure, two gems from February 14, 2002: Miss Ruthie in what can only be described as "not a feminist rant or a diatribe against conformity or a probing and provocative thought piece on modernity’s destruction of our sociopolitical security (sorry to get your hopes up), but rather a long winded question to which I probably won’t offer much of an answer" and Miss Katie on how to "extract a particularly rarefied species of pleasure from this bloated, sickly sweet carnival of misery, and that pleasure is righteous self-pity." Heart-warming!

A Rorschach Test

Leah emailed me this article about NOW and Feministing squaring off over presidential endorsements. Putting aside larger questions about recurring rifts between feminists young and old, I've been struck by how shallow much of the "feminist" discussion (NOW's endorsement included) on this election has been. I think this passage from the New York Observer's review of Thirty Ways of Looking at Hillary says it well:

Let’s imagine this book’s concept—30 well-known women writers talk about how they “feel” about Hillary Clinton—applied to 30 male writers and a male presidential candidate. Adjusting for gender, the essay titles would now read: “Barack’s Underpants,” “Elect Brother Frigidaire,” “Mephistopheles for President,” “The Road to Codpiece-Gate,” and so on. Inside, we would find ruminations on the male candidate’s doggy looks and flabby pectorals; musings on such “revealing” traits as the candidate’s lack of interest in backyard grilling, industrial arts and pets; and mocking remarks about his lack of popularity with the cool boys on the playground (i.e., the writers and their “friends”). We would hear a great deal of speculation about whether the candidate was really manly or just “faking it.” We would hear a great deal about how the candidate made them feel about themselves as men and whether they could see their manhood reflected in the politician’s testosterone displays. … And we would hear virtually nothing about the candidate’s stand on political issues.

In Defense of Juno

With all the love Juno's been getting (even from those who don't buy its fairy-tale ending), there was bound to be some backlash. Yesterday New Yorker critic Sasha Frere-Jones kicked things off with some inchoate grumblings on his website, citing The Village Voice's review, which frames the problem this way:

Juno's knocked-up 15-year-old is at once provocatively precocious and primly pre-sexual. Her pregnancy is a miracle of bad luck—she simultaneously loses her virginity and conceives a baby. It's all but immaculate ... People love clever little Juno because she isn't really a teenager, let alone a person. Juno is an angel.

Today Frere-Jones follows up with a link to another scowling review; this one claws at the movie by dismantling its chart-climbing (and, according to the Washington Post, "insufferably twee") soundtrack, which it alleges features "the exploitation and fetishization of childlike naivete (and the Unexpectedly Articulate Wisdom there found), moving beyond interesting, beyond cute, into empty and nauseating self-absorption." Huh? The Juno I saw was certainly preciously wry (seeped in all those droll Moldy Peaches witticisms, how could it not be?), but the script and sountrack's stalwart cleverness struck me as good fun -- and hardly tiresome, let alone nauseating. Capped with Ellen Page's jaunty ponytail, even Juno's halo was easy to accept as a practical accoutrement and not a smug accessory. What's going on here? Today David Carr offers this theory on Juno haters in his Carpetbagger blog:

As long as “Juno” sat in the corner and made cute, no biggie. But the $100 million stands as a mark against it and its potential to run up the middle between two serious films that split the best picture vote is sparking a low-level panic ... to suddenly kick something to the curb because it found an audience is the height of “rockism,” a critical mindset that suggests if a lot of people like something, there must be something terribly wrong with it.

Bingo! On that note, stay tuned for the Barry Louis Polisar backlash, which is surely soon to follow.

Say, I Like Farts As Much As the Next Gal

From my email archives. "Alice Wrigley: Gal Reporter," a video by my brother's friend's li'l sis. This one never fails to make me laugh.

Is Caitlin Flanagan Trying to Tell Me Something?

So I thought I had a sense of what to expect from Caitlin Flanagan, that sharp-witted woman-hating Wahoo. But her op-ed in today's New York Times ("Sex and the Teenage Girl") struck me as, well, pretty weird. She transitions from a quick look at Juno to some big talk about "commitment to girls" and then concludes with a bizarre anecdote about something she spotted in a high school girls bathroom: "In the last stall, carved deeply into the box reserved for used sanitary napkins, was the single word 'Please.'" This strange piece of writing stops short of being a full-on critical look at the film, or a flat-out call to action or even a wholesale emotional appeal; it proposes no new solution and offers no new insight into the issue of teen pregnancy. Instead, it's just head-scratchingly fuzzy restatement of a familiar problem. I thought that kind of writing was reserved for blogs?

One Glass Productions

Just a big congrats to the ladies over at the fledgling One Glass Productions. In August, they treated us all to a $7 open bar and screening of a showcase of shorts to mark the launch of their company.  This morning, Valery writes in an email,  "Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that the music video my company (One Glass Productions) made for DAWN LANDES is being BROADCASTED in the UK! At this very moment!" For those of us stuck on this side of the pond, however, YouTube will have to suffice.  Take a look!

Marjane, not Miffy

I had been looking forward to the film adaptation of Persepolis ever since a friend introduced me to Marjane Satrapi's work but Anthony Lane's unimpressed review of the film (he writes, "I was left with the nagging, if ungallant, impression that I had been flipping through a wipe-clean board book entitled 'Miffy and Friends Play with Islamic Fundamentalism") dampened my enthusiasm a bit. That said, I was pretty sure I wanted to see it anyway.  And hey! It was really excellent! Plain and simple.

Savage Love Does Disney Princesses

Sometimes Dan Savage is a bit much, but his response to this question about Disney princess panties is hilariously spot-on.  Read on if you'd like to find out how to subversively "deconstruct a patriarchal heteronormative discourse that reifies female purity" (while more or less naked); don't read on if sex columnists make you squeamish.