I'm in Ohio again for work. This time, someone had the bright idea to require that I be charming, efficient, palatable, not swear and not be insane while fearlessly leading a group of people into some deeper forays with children's literature-- for 5 solid days. In my soul of souls, I'm as introverted as a person can get and so, by the end of a day during which I am continually bombarded with the energies, thoughts and arguments of 15 or so other souls, about all I can think to do is stare at a wall.
This is just to say... sparser posting is forthcoming.
Glub.
I am a corporate whore. Get used to it. I am.
(That's a total fucking lie.)
Monday, July 30, 2007
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
What noses do
I've been formulating a theory for a while now. The basic tenet of this theory is that, of our five (six?) senses, the olfactory one is the most important, primarily because pheromones rule the world. I tend to think that it's likely our pheromones serve us in more ways than just helping us choose sexual partners. I mean, sometimes there are people that you encounter and you know, right away, whether you like them or you don't. You may or may not want to have sex with those you like, but my basic conjecture is that the ones you don't like smell bad to you on a subliminal level. But even if pheromones themselves aren't the primary factor at work in all interpersonal relationships, sex, our most fundamental of motivators, most certainly is. And because people to whom we are familially related do not smell as good to us as those who originate from a significantly different gene pool, pheromones do help us figure out with whom we can mate and procreate without making little inbred flipper-babies. So, because pheromones help us decide with whom to have sex, and sex rules the world, I quasi-logically extend the argument that, yes indeed, pheromones rule the world. Tada! Science and logic a la Marjorie. Never mind that there are not yet any conclusive scientific data that could definitively confirm that humans actually create pheromones in the first place (the term most often refers to love potions for bugs)--this is but a small detail.
I suppose I'd been spouting off about this theory to my friend Jen some months ago when she recommended that I read Patrick Suskind's book Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. And so, read it, I did. It's a fun book--speedy reading and full of some delightfully revolting descriptions of the smells of Paris in the 18th Century, of the spoiled dairy odors of humanity, of the escapist purity of lifeless stones. Great light beach reading (by my slightly askew standards, anyway). But my real attraction to this story is that in his character of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, Suskind has created a pretty unique anti-hero. His detachment from all worldly entrapments save his--dare I say--artistic quest lends him a peculiar charisma and a palpable nastiness. And Suskind's writing itself glories in a sardonic cynicism--misanthropy, even. Did I mention it was funny? The book is a couple decades old already and it makes me a little nostalgic for the days when irony was still cool.
(Aside: early on in my graduate studies, my beloved professor, Jane Miller, made a claim that we were entering "the post-ironic era," and finally moving out of the post-modern one, I guess. And then she laughed at herself for her coinage. But then, the other night, on a re-run of an O.C. episode, what did my little ears hear? Rachel Bilson saying, "Oh, I'm post-ironic now." I guess it's entered the lexicon, Jane!) (Shut up. Yes, I'll occasionally watch an O.C. re-run. So, eat me. )
But then Tom Tykwer, the director of the film adaptation, takes the whole thing someplace a little different, someplace a little more...earnest. If Suskind's Grenouille is the consummate anti-hero, Tykwer's Grenouille is a more conventional remorseful villain. In Suskind's version, he is outside the rules of the social order of which he finds himself in the midst and the world, by and large, ignores him. Because he has no unique smell of his own, other humans are mostly unaware of his very existence (very good for sneaking up on people!). And while he does manage to eke out a small crisis about his lack of identity, his is joyously unobservant of even the most basic moralities. He's a curious figure because his is, at once, all id and possessing of a singular purity of soul. He is not subject to regrets and guilts and so, he is able to pursue his particular aptitude/art/science of making perfumes with utter detachment from human sympathies. And yet, his perpetual questing has the character of an instinctual drive, rather than something more high-minded. And so, as a reader, I relished Grenouille's deviance. In Tykwer's movie, however, Grenouille took on the more typically sinister aspect of a bad guy. Not wholly, of course--the actor playing Grenouille (Ben Whishaw) is sinewy and a little rodent-like, but certainly not ugly. And you can't help but root for him, even though completing his project entails the murders of all the most beautiful virgins in the French countryside. But he lacks the wicked sense of humor of Suskind's narration, and, well, I missed that.
Tykwer also made a choice, towards the end of the film, that I think deleteriously affected both the message and the tone of the story. At the climactic scene in the novel, Grenouille douses himself with his fanciful creation, the perfume that would allow him to take over the world (how very Pinky-and-the-Brain of him!). His massive audience, at first, begins groping towards him in adoration. He conducts them as though they're an orchestra. Pretty soon, they are overwhelmed with sensory information and the whole scene devolves into a massive town-wide orgy. So far so good. The movie is pretty faithful up until this point. Now, in the novel, Grenouille becomes completely nauseated by the sea of undulating French bodies before his. From the book: "He would have loved right now to have exterminated these people from the earth, every stupid, stinking, eroticized one of them." Tykwer's Grenouille, on the other hand, takes this moment to engage in a romantic reverie about the very first beautiful-smelling redhead he killed when he was barely more than a boy. He succumbs to an imagined flashback in which, instead of suffocating her, he fucks her. As though a well-timed act of physical love would have colored Grenouille's cold, shriveled soul differently. Ridiculous! What makes Grenouille great is that he is remorseless. And that he gets his jollies through the vehicle of fragrance, his very own little fetish, not through blah ol' vanilla sex. He is not subject to the desires and motivations of normal people-- and I think Tykwer missed that that's what makes him such a compelling and charismatic anti-hero. This little change in message humanizes him in a completely mundane fashion. Suskind's character is weird and driven, singular and freakish, but alluring in his ultimate detachment and asexuality. I think the ACTOR playing Grenouille understood this-- squinty weasel that he is-- but Tykwer made him a flawed pariah, as susceptible to the whims of the body as any of us. How dull.
There's another moment in the film about which I haven't yet made a decision about how I feel about it. Much of the rising action of the story surrounds Grenouille's preparations for the murder of Laure-- the hottest redhead on French legs. In the novel, she reaches the heady peak of her girl-scentedness, her father tries to skip town with her, Grenouille tracks her, Grenouille sneaks into her bedroom, Grenouille bops her on the head and then, Grenouille goes about the business of preserving her scent. In the novel, steps one through four are the same, but at the moment he is to bop her on the head, she rolls over, opens her eyes and looks right at him. I actually think this is an interesting choice because it kinda implies that she's complicit in the part she has to play in his creative endeavor. She's the 13th note in the perfume and she's the prize. She knows it and she doesn't scream or fight him off. In that moment of opened eyes, Laure acquires a particular agency that Suskind never gave her. Pretty clever move, I think.
Now, I know that movie write-ups in the format of a 5-paragraph compare/contrast essay, for the purposes of parsing out those novelistic conceits that are untranslatable to film, are tedious. And I know that that's pretty much all I've been doing here. Alas. But I don't get tp play that game very often anymore. Oh, to be an undergrad English major once more...
And so, in true formulaic essayistic style, I'm going to both tell you that I'm beginning my conclusion ("In conclusion...") and bring this post back around to my introduction. When Grenouille first encounters Laure,--he, of course, smells her long before he sees her-- Suskind's narrator, from his perch inside Grenouille's head, says this:
"In a year or two this scent will be ripened and take on a gravity that no one, man or woman, will be able to escape. People will be overwhelmed, disarmed, helpless before the magic of this girl, and they will not know why. And because people are stupid and use their noses only for blowing, but believe absolutely anything they see with their eyes, they will say it is because this is a girl with beauty and grace and charm. In their obtuseness, they will praise the evenness of her features, her slender figure, her faultless breasts. And her eyes, they will say, are like emeralds and her teeth are like pearls and her limbs smooth as ivory--and all those other idiotic comparisons. And they will elect her Queen of the Jasmine, and she will be painted by stupid portraitists, her picture will be ogled, and people will say that she is the most beautiful woman in France. And to the strains of mandolins, youths will howl the nights away sitting beneath her window... rich, fat old men will skid about on their knees begging her father for her hand... and women of every age will sigh at the sight of her and in their sleep dream of looking as alluring as she for just one day. And none of them will know that it is truly not now she looks that has captured them, not her reputed unblemished external beauty, but solely her incomparable, splendid scent!"
So, think on this: what if I'm right? What if it is our noses, not our eyes or hearts or brains or groins, that guide us towards those we find worthy of bedding? What if those who smell good to us suddenly look a lot better once we've gotten a good strong whiff--better, anyway, than they did when they were standing just out of nose-shot? Don't tell me it hasn't happened to you. Don't tell me you think your lover stinks. I won't believe a word of it!
And now, to break form, I'll offer one final thought. It strikes me that what is so compelling about Grenouille's quest to distill the scents of the bodies of beautiful virgins is that he somehow manages to steal that which is most untheivable. Firstly, in harvesting the body odor of a human, he is taking what is most unique, genetically speaking, about a person. Our stinks are like snowflakes! And in that way, he is stealing the very identities of those girls so that he can wear them to mask his own lack of identity. Beyond that, because he is taking from them that which triggers the most instinctual of attractions in other humans, he is absconding with their sexualities, too. So, it seems that he's managed a particular brand of sexual ownership that isn't really possible in more pedestrian relationships. In the end, I suppose it is the very least he can do, when he offers up his OWN body for a very literal public consumption.
Oh, and P.S.--Christophe Laudamiel and Christophe Hornetz, two fancy French perfumiers responsible for Thierry Mugler's Angel and the like, actually concocted a real coffret inspired by the scents described in the story. If anyone has a spare $700 earmarked to help me support my perfume habit, I'll gladly take it off your hands now. Thank you.
I suppose I'd been spouting off about this theory to my friend Jen some months ago when she recommended that I read Patrick Suskind's book Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. And so, read it, I did. It's a fun book--speedy reading and full of some delightfully revolting descriptions of the smells of Paris in the 18th Century, of the spoiled dairy odors of humanity, of the escapist purity of lifeless stones. Great light beach reading (by my slightly askew standards, anyway). But my real attraction to this story is that in his character of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, Suskind has created a pretty unique anti-hero. His detachment from all worldly entrapments save his--dare I say--artistic quest lends him a peculiar charisma and a palpable nastiness. And Suskind's writing itself glories in a sardonic cynicism--misanthropy, even. Did I mention it was funny? The book is a couple decades old already and it makes me a little nostalgic for the days when irony was still cool.
(Aside: early on in my graduate studies, my beloved professor, Jane Miller, made a claim that we were entering "the post-ironic era," and finally moving out of the post-modern one, I guess. And then she laughed at herself for her coinage. But then, the other night, on a re-run of an O.C. episode, what did my little ears hear? Rachel Bilson saying, "Oh, I'm post-ironic now." I guess it's entered the lexicon, Jane!) (Shut up. Yes, I'll occasionally watch an O.C. re-run. So, eat me. )
But then Tom Tykwer, the director of the film adaptation, takes the whole thing someplace a little different, someplace a little more...earnest. If Suskind's Grenouille is the consummate anti-hero, Tykwer's Grenouille is a more conventional remorseful villain. In Suskind's version, he is outside the rules of the social order of which he finds himself in the midst and the world, by and large, ignores him. Because he has no unique smell of his own, other humans are mostly unaware of his very existence (very good for sneaking up on people!). And while he does manage to eke out a small crisis about his lack of identity, his is joyously unobservant of even the most basic moralities. He's a curious figure because his is, at once, all id and possessing of a singular purity of soul. He is not subject to regrets and guilts and so, he is able to pursue his particular aptitude/art/science of making perfumes with utter detachment from human sympathies. And yet, his perpetual questing has the character of an instinctual drive, rather than something more high-minded. And so, as a reader, I relished Grenouille's deviance. In Tykwer's movie, however, Grenouille took on the more typically sinister aspect of a bad guy. Not wholly, of course--the actor playing Grenouille (Ben Whishaw) is sinewy and a little rodent-like, but certainly not ugly. And you can't help but root for him, even though completing his project entails the murders of all the most beautiful virgins in the French countryside. But he lacks the wicked sense of humor of Suskind's narration, and, well, I missed that.
Tykwer also made a choice, towards the end of the film, that I think deleteriously affected both the message and the tone of the story. At the climactic scene in the novel, Grenouille douses himself with his fanciful creation, the perfume that would allow him to take over the world (how very Pinky-and-the-Brain of him!). His massive audience, at first, begins groping towards him in adoration. He conducts them as though they're an orchestra. Pretty soon, they are overwhelmed with sensory information and the whole scene devolves into a massive town-wide orgy. So far so good. The movie is pretty faithful up until this point. Now, in the novel, Grenouille becomes completely nauseated by the sea of undulating French bodies before his. From the book: "He would have loved right now to have exterminated these people from the earth, every stupid, stinking, eroticized one of them." Tykwer's Grenouille, on the other hand, takes this moment to engage in a romantic reverie about the very first beautiful-smelling redhead he killed when he was barely more than a boy. He succumbs to an imagined flashback in which, instead of suffocating her, he fucks her. As though a well-timed act of physical love would have colored Grenouille's cold, shriveled soul differently. Ridiculous! What makes Grenouille great is that he is remorseless. And that he gets his jollies through the vehicle of fragrance, his very own little fetish, not through blah ol' vanilla sex. He is not subject to the desires and motivations of normal people-- and I think Tykwer missed that that's what makes him such a compelling and charismatic anti-hero. This little change in message humanizes him in a completely mundane fashion. Suskind's character is weird and driven, singular and freakish, but alluring in his ultimate detachment and asexuality. I think the ACTOR playing Grenouille understood this-- squinty weasel that he is-- but Tykwer made him a flawed pariah, as susceptible to the whims of the body as any of us. How dull.
There's another moment in the film about which I haven't yet made a decision about how I feel about it. Much of the rising action of the story surrounds Grenouille's preparations for the murder of Laure-- the hottest redhead on French legs. In the novel, she reaches the heady peak of her girl-scentedness, her father tries to skip town with her, Grenouille tracks her, Grenouille sneaks into her bedroom, Grenouille bops her on the head and then, Grenouille goes about the business of preserving her scent. In the novel, steps one through four are the same, but at the moment he is to bop her on the head, she rolls over, opens her eyes and looks right at him. I actually think this is an interesting choice because it kinda implies that she's complicit in the part she has to play in his creative endeavor. She's the 13th note in the perfume and she's the prize. She knows it and she doesn't scream or fight him off. In that moment of opened eyes, Laure acquires a particular agency that Suskind never gave her. Pretty clever move, I think.
Now, I know that movie write-ups in the format of a 5-paragraph compare/contrast essay, for the purposes of parsing out those novelistic conceits that are untranslatable to film, are tedious. And I know that that's pretty much all I've been doing here. Alas. But I don't get tp play that game very often anymore. Oh, to be an undergrad English major once more...
And so, in true formulaic essayistic style, I'm going to both tell you that I'm beginning my conclusion ("In conclusion...") and bring this post back around to my introduction. When Grenouille first encounters Laure,--he, of course, smells her long before he sees her-- Suskind's narrator, from his perch inside Grenouille's head, says this:
"In a year or two this scent will be ripened and take on a gravity that no one, man or woman, will be able to escape. People will be overwhelmed, disarmed, helpless before the magic of this girl, and they will not know why. And because people are stupid and use their noses only for blowing, but believe absolutely anything they see with their eyes, they will say it is because this is a girl with beauty and grace and charm. In their obtuseness, they will praise the evenness of her features, her slender figure, her faultless breasts. And her eyes, they will say, are like emeralds and her teeth are like pearls and her limbs smooth as ivory--and all those other idiotic comparisons. And they will elect her Queen of the Jasmine, and she will be painted by stupid portraitists, her picture will be ogled, and people will say that she is the most beautiful woman in France. And to the strains of mandolins, youths will howl the nights away sitting beneath her window... rich, fat old men will skid about on their knees begging her father for her hand... and women of every age will sigh at the sight of her and in their sleep dream of looking as alluring as she for just one day. And none of them will know that it is truly not now she looks that has captured them, not her reputed unblemished external beauty, but solely her incomparable, splendid scent!"
So, think on this: what if I'm right? What if it is our noses, not our eyes or hearts or brains or groins, that guide us towards those we find worthy of bedding? What if those who smell good to us suddenly look a lot better once we've gotten a good strong whiff--better, anyway, than they did when they were standing just out of nose-shot? Don't tell me it hasn't happened to you. Don't tell me you think your lover stinks. I won't believe a word of it!
And now, to break form, I'll offer one final thought. It strikes me that what is so compelling about Grenouille's quest to distill the scents of the bodies of beautiful virgins is that he somehow manages to steal that which is most untheivable. Firstly, in harvesting the body odor of a human, he is taking what is most unique, genetically speaking, about a person. Our stinks are like snowflakes! And in that way, he is stealing the very identities of those girls so that he can wear them to mask his own lack of identity. Beyond that, because he is taking from them that which triggers the most instinctual of attractions in other humans, he is absconding with their sexualities, too. So, it seems that he's managed a particular brand of sexual ownership that isn't really possible in more pedestrian relationships. In the end, I suppose it is the very least he can do, when he offers up his OWN body for a very literal public consumption.
Oh, and P.S.--Christophe Laudamiel and Christophe Hornetz, two fancy French perfumiers responsible for Thierry Mugler's Angel and the like, actually concocted a real coffret inspired by the scents described in the story. If anyone has a spare $700 earmarked to help me support my perfume habit, I'll gladly take it off your hands now. Thank you.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Conflations of Crusades
Many thanks to Cindi for bringing Carol Adams' book The Sexual Politics of Meat to my attention. Judging this book by its cover, surely you can see why it's right up my alley.
In the fact that it focuses on sexuality in the marketing of animal food products, I'm quite interested in Adams' thesis. In the fact that it draws a connection between eating and fucking, well, this is not new news and I'm unimpressed. After all, both action verbs tend to dangle from the handle of the Bodily Delights Umbrella, right? In and of itself, though, this connection is juicy and complex and well worth exploring. The notion that the eating of meat is macho and associated with driving big (non-renewable resource consuming) vehicles and other manly activities, while the meat itself is depicted as female and consumable is an important, though obvious, revelation.
But it seems Adams is putting her observations of that relationship in a slightly paleolithic feminist context. I have also grown tired of the concept of "objectification of the female." I mean, I do not feel victimized by a picture of a pig with eyelashes and I'm sick to death of this model of feminism in which every little thing is supposed to creep under the skin of all of womankind. It's coming out of an oversensitive mindset and it's--here's that word again--disempowering. This is kiddie-pool feminism. Surely, by now, we've established a thick enough skin such that a chicken breast joke isn't gonna send us straight into litigation. And surely, by now, we've stopped being appalled that men look at women and sometimes find their outward presentation to be attractive.
Beyond that, it appears Adams has delved into a line of thinking about a dubious concept called "speciesism." While I certainly do not think animals should be abused prior to their journeying down the path to the grocery store, but this notion that animals are somehow oppressed simply because humans eat them? That's taking it a little farther than I want to go. I mean, we're sitting at the top of the food chain for a reason, folks. We're smarter than they are and they don't stand a chance against us. And after all, the human animal is an omnivorous one by design.
In my MFA manuscript, there's a series of poems about proximity to the food chain. The closest most of us get to the food chain is going to Fuddrucker's, where you get to pick your slab of beef yourself (is this still the case? I haven't actually been to a Fuddrucker's in MANY years.). But when I was a kid living in West Tennessee, I got to see, first hand, a couple animal slaughters. My dad got a wild hair to drain the biggest lake, full of catfish, on our farm once. My parents both helped out with a neighbor's pig slaughter once. We've got some amusing pictures of my Chicago Jew dad and a decapitated pig head (I'm so not kidding!). And then there was Dinky, the cow we raised, who tasted just awful. The thing is, I know that it can be done in a manner that provides a great deal of both food and profit and also does not mistreat the animals prior to or during the slaughter because I saw it-- though, to be fair, I saw it all before the age of 9, so my memories might be a touch hazy. I do not eat meat, not because I think eating meat is cruel to animals. It doesn't have to be cruel at all.
There are two primary reasons why I've stopped eating meat. Firstly, digesting animal products is difficult for even a well-functioning human body-- more difficult, anyway, than digesting all the roughage, legumes, fruits, nuts and berries that I do eat. Secondly, the more I learn about the environmental impact of animal agriculture, the less I want to contribute to that system. So, what I'm saying here is, aren't there enough reasons for us to cut back on our animal consumption without having to resort to manipulative, heartstring-tugging notions that allot the ideas of cow- and pig-sentience more credence than they are due?
So, here, I've done something truly reprehensible-- I've torn apart a book, basing my arguments solely on what I gleaned from its website, rather than actually reading the book. To be fair, I don't actually disagree with very many of Adams' arguments-- it's just that the ones with which I do take issue really just stick in my craw. And to continue to be fair, I've zeroed in on some rather small points in her thesis, on the grounds that her overriding sentiment is both valid and sympathetic. I mean, really, what she's getting at is that food marketing is one prominent, fringed rhizoid on the root of all evil. And there's not much with which I can argue there.
In the fact that it focuses on sexuality in the marketing of animal food products, I'm quite interested in Adams' thesis. In the fact that it draws a connection between eating and fucking, well, this is not new news and I'm unimpressed. After all, both action verbs tend to dangle from the handle of the Bodily Delights Umbrella, right? In and of itself, though, this connection is juicy and complex and well worth exploring. The notion that the eating of meat is macho and associated with driving big (non-renewable resource consuming) vehicles and other manly activities, while the meat itself is depicted as female and consumable is an important, though obvious, revelation.
But it seems Adams is putting her observations of that relationship in a slightly paleolithic feminist context. I have also grown tired of the concept of "objectification of the female." I mean, I do not feel victimized by a picture of a pig with eyelashes and I'm sick to death of this model of feminism in which every little thing is supposed to creep under the skin of all of womankind. It's coming out of an oversensitive mindset and it's--here's that word again--disempowering. This is kiddie-pool feminism. Surely, by now, we've established a thick enough skin such that a chicken breast joke isn't gonna send us straight into litigation. And surely, by now, we've stopped being appalled that men look at women and sometimes find their outward presentation to be attractive.
Beyond that, it appears Adams has delved into a line of thinking about a dubious concept called "speciesism." While I certainly do not think animals should be abused prior to their journeying down the path to the grocery store, but this notion that animals are somehow oppressed simply because humans eat them? That's taking it a little farther than I want to go. I mean, we're sitting at the top of the food chain for a reason, folks. We're smarter than they are and they don't stand a chance against us. And after all, the human animal is an omnivorous one by design.
In my MFA manuscript, there's a series of poems about proximity to the food chain. The closest most of us get to the food chain is going to Fuddrucker's, where you get to pick your slab of beef yourself (is this still the case? I haven't actually been to a Fuddrucker's in MANY years.). But when I was a kid living in West Tennessee, I got to see, first hand, a couple animal slaughters. My dad got a wild hair to drain the biggest lake, full of catfish, on our farm once. My parents both helped out with a neighbor's pig slaughter once. We've got some amusing pictures of my Chicago Jew dad and a decapitated pig head (I'm so not kidding!). And then there was Dinky, the cow we raised, who tasted just awful. The thing is, I know that it can be done in a manner that provides a great deal of both food and profit and also does not mistreat the animals prior to or during the slaughter because I saw it-- though, to be fair, I saw it all before the age of 9, so my memories might be a touch hazy. I do not eat meat, not because I think eating meat is cruel to animals. It doesn't have to be cruel at all.
There are two primary reasons why I've stopped eating meat. Firstly, digesting animal products is difficult for even a well-functioning human body-- more difficult, anyway, than digesting all the roughage, legumes, fruits, nuts and berries that I do eat. Secondly, the more I learn about the environmental impact of animal agriculture, the less I want to contribute to that system. So, what I'm saying here is, aren't there enough reasons for us to cut back on our animal consumption without having to resort to manipulative, heartstring-tugging notions that allot the ideas of cow- and pig-sentience more credence than they are due?
So, here, I've done something truly reprehensible-- I've torn apart a book, basing my arguments solely on what I gleaned from its website, rather than actually reading the book. To be fair, I don't actually disagree with very many of Adams' arguments-- it's just that the ones with which I do take issue really just stick in my craw. And to continue to be fair, I've zeroed in on some rather small points in her thesis, on the grounds that her overriding sentiment is both valid and sympathetic. I mean, really, what she's getting at is that food marketing is one prominent, fringed rhizoid on the root of all evil. And there's not much with which I can argue there.
Monday, July 23, 2007
Unforeseen Benefits to Be Gleaned from Watching Crappy Mainstream Movies.
When choosing films to watch, let alone post about, I follow my intuitions and desires. I can predict with pretty great accuracy that if Blockbuster's got a whole wall of something in stock, I won't like it. And running the trailer 19, 000 times during prime-time television is a pretty good way to run me out of the theatre. It's OK, though. These movies seem to do just fine without my support. Keeping me awake through a movie full of explosions, car chases, sloppy romantic endings, gratuitous special effects, fantasy worlds or anything else that takes a lot of money to create-- either through effects or stars' paychecks-- is really quite a feat. It seems there is little I can to do force myself to find "entertainment" entertaining.
For my readers who don't read poetry (*sigh*), Joshua Clover is a pretty great poet. He is what another blogger-poet might (in a totally tongue-in-cheek manner) call a CEP (Culturally Elite Poet). But he likes to post on his blog about the mainstreamiest drivel Hollywood has to offer (in my humble opinion). He talks about all the Transformers and the Harry Potters and the Knocked Ups in the world and he says brilliant things about them. I am totally envious of his blog because he is able to cleverly and insightfully tease out all the ways in which big-budget movies, tried-and-true formulaic movies, and genre films of all sorts are reflective of peculiar American mindsets and other cultural biases.
So, am I having a crisis of project tonight? In posting about nothing but the weirdest, most elitist, most abstract oddball films from the dustiest corners of the video rental store, am I missing out on some major revelations about some intellectual meta-landscape that can only be found in the films to which the masses flock? I suppose I am forced to admit that this is a likelihood. But what's my alternative? Go spend $9 to doze through three thousand fake explosions dubiously attributed to xenophobic robots? I can't help it. That does NOT sound like my idea of a fun night out... especially when I could be watching some penetrating documentary or some twisted arthouse softcore porn!
So, if my weird tastes entertain you, please keep reading. But if you're really starving for some sharp analysis of some tiresome movies (so sharp, in fact, that it makes me ALMOST want to see some of them), please go visit Mr. Clover. And then come right back for some more of my weird taste, OK? I'd miss you if you left me for good, but I highly encourage nonmonogamous, exploratory blog reading.
For my readers who don't read poetry (*sigh*), Joshua Clover is a pretty great poet. He is what another blogger-poet might (in a totally tongue-in-cheek manner) call a CEP (Culturally Elite Poet). But he likes to post on his blog about the mainstreamiest drivel Hollywood has to offer (in my humble opinion). He talks about all the Transformers and the Harry Potters and the Knocked Ups in the world and he says brilliant things about them. I am totally envious of his blog because he is able to cleverly and insightfully tease out all the ways in which big-budget movies, tried-and-true formulaic movies, and genre films of all sorts are reflective of peculiar American mindsets and other cultural biases.
So, am I having a crisis of project tonight? In posting about nothing but the weirdest, most elitist, most abstract oddball films from the dustiest corners of the video rental store, am I missing out on some major revelations about some intellectual meta-landscape that can only be found in the films to which the masses flock? I suppose I am forced to admit that this is a likelihood. But what's my alternative? Go spend $9 to doze through three thousand fake explosions dubiously attributed to xenophobic robots? I can't help it. That does NOT sound like my idea of a fun night out... especially when I could be watching some penetrating documentary or some twisted arthouse softcore porn!
So, if my weird tastes entertain you, please keep reading. But if you're really starving for some sharp analysis of some tiresome movies (so sharp, in fact, that it makes me ALMOST want to see some of them), please go visit Mr. Clover. And then come right back for some more of my weird taste, OK? I'd miss you if you left me for good, but I highly encourage nonmonogamous, exploratory blog reading.
Sunday, July 22, 2007
OK, Cosmos, I get it. Message received, loud and clear.
I'm often impressed with the way the universe decides to drive particular messages home to me. I just put up a post about carbon emissions and animal livestock last Friday. My friend Jai just put up a post on his blog about The Center for the New American Dream's C3 project--a project designed to give people ideas for small ways through which they can reduce their personal carbon footprints-- and subsequently, I put a button for it down there at the bottom of my own blog. And for reasons that really have little to do with ecology, I'd decided to greatly reduce my own intake of animal products a couple of months ago. But it seems the mindful eating and mindful consumerism have become something of a crusade for me. And the universe just keeps putting information in my path that lead me to believe I'm on the right track.
By now, I feel like I've watched a million documentaries about how the American food pipeline is a wonderland of horrors. I can't remember the last time I frequented a McDonald's or a Burger King or a Wendy's or a KFC or a Jack-in-the-Box. The stuff those establishments peddle does not provide nutrition that would support a high-functioning body. Beyond that, contrary to popular opinion, that crap really doesn't even taste good. I know some folks will argue with me there, but if you can accustom yourself to eating a better quality of food, the smell alone of your average BigMac is likely to turn your stomach. But I dutifully watched Morgan Spurlock's Supersize Me and I blogged long and hard about a documentary that I loved, Milk in the Land: Ballad of an American Drink. But I know a documentary is a hard sell for most folks (god knows why! Nonfiction filmmaking is in the middle of a renaissance of some note right now.).
So along comes Richard Linklater's latest ensemble piece, Fast Food Nation, based on the (nonfiction) book of the same title by Eric Schlosser. Somehow, these two, as a writing-directing team, have managed to magically conjure a deeply disturbing realist-fiction feature out Schlosser's exhaustive research on the fast food industry. The phrase "required viewing" or "required reading" has become something of a regular recurrence in my blog. And I realize that I've developed a propensity towards self-righteousness about all things food-oriented. But, holy hell, the message of this movie is scary--and important.
This film elucidates the way this industry abuses its immigrant work force (denying them disability and insurance rights on the merest suspicion of drug use, forcing them to work in a virtual war zone of animal offal and flayed carcases, undertraining them such that they are prone to slicing open the entrails of the animals in such a way that the fecal matter gets spewed all over the meat (and then blaming them for the mistakes), subjecting them to extremely dangerous machinery (that has been known to remove more than a few human limbs--I don't suppose it's surprising to learn meatpacking is the most dangerous job in the country, causing more than 24% of work-related deaths annually) with similarly inadequate and slap-dash training, etc, etc, etc...). It elucidates problems with the ways the industry exploits the primarily teenage workforce in the restaurants themselves. And it elucidates a grand, grand disconnect between the corporate marketers and the veritable sewage that they're selling.
And then the film shows us how unconscionably badly the cattle are treated. They're kept in miserably tight confines (often, there's not enough room for them to turn around) where they get to muck about in their own excrement and are seldom given access to actual daylight. Often, the animals are not only still alive, but STILL CONSCIOUS when the "processing" begins. The film is a top-down cross-section of one of the more corrupt business models in this country. And if you aren't appalled at all points throughout your viewing, I have no qualms with assuming you're a heartless, ethically devoid asshole. So there.
However, among brilliant turns in this film is Lou Taylor Pucci, the kid from one of the best coming-of-age films ever: Thumbsucker. Despite a dyed-black, scraggly-looking wig, it appears that his progressing adolescence is treating him very well. And he also had one of the best lines in the movie--he plays a kid involved in a high school group of environmental activists, and another character has an idea about cutting a hole in the fence that holds all the cattle slated for becoming burger meat. The discussion arises about how such an act could be perceived as an act of eco-terrorism and then all the kids would be subject to sanctions via the Patriot Act. And so, he says something along the lines of "Well, in this case, maybe the most patriotic action we can take is to ignore The Patriot Act!" Hmm-- well, it seems less forceful when I relay it here, but it was darn punchy at its moment in the movie-- and it draws an important and pointed connection between concerns regarding food supply and virtually every other major political issue at play on the American landscape right now. And IMDb tells me that he's in the forthcoming film adaptation of David Foster Wallace's Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (can't wait!). Catalina Sandino Moreno is luminous as ever, though not quite as transcendent as she was in Maria Full of Grace. Wilmer Valderama is entirely too well-groomed and metrosexual to make a convincing bracero, but it's nice to see him as something other than the sibilant Fez from That 70's Show. An unexpected performance from Bruce Willis is another high point. And Ashley Johnson, who was once the youngest Seaver on Growing Pains, seems to have turned herself into a respectably intense young actress.
Also, because the movie is set all along the immigrant's trail between the Mexican border and a fictional Colorado town, Linklater saw fit to include a very nice little local cameo-- Fat Tire beer! For anyone who has ever lived in a Western state, Fat Tire is the quasi-local brew of choice, coming out of Fort Collins, Colorado (they were also the unofficial sponsor of any social event held at my house when I lived in Tucson, even if that event was nothing more than Michelle and I sitting around the mesquite grill, watching the portobellos cook!). In your inevitable (uh--highly encouraged) perusal of their website, please note their commitment to sustainability. It seems particularly significant that all the rebels in this film prominently tote their Fat Tire bottles and six-pack cartons. After all, whoever said eco-conscious activists didn't enjoy their adult beverages, too?
And then, when you've finished watching the film, there are several animated shorts on the DVD's extras menu that are not to be missed. Most of them can be found at this site. But the "Reverse Hamburger" one is probably the most disturbing of them all. This little piece somehow manages to summarize the entirety of Milk in the Land in under 5 minutes. And it does it with a cartoon. Perfectly brilliant.
Now, add all the information about the mainstream food pipeline that is to be gleaned from Fast Food Nation to all the information in my previous post about how animal agriculture is contributing to global warming and how can we all NOT be motivated to cut back on our consumption of meat and dairy? Seriously, readers! You don't have to go all vegan like I have, but maybe eating meat once or twice a week instead of twice a day? Maybe deciding that you really just don't want the folks behind the unethical business practices that control most fast-food restaurant chains getting any more of your hard-earned cash? Maybe signing C3's pledge this month and committing to consuming one pound of locally-grown food, so as to reduce the carbon emissions created by the transport of non-local food? These are such small things.
If you love me at all, you'll at least consider it. Pretty please?
UPDATE: I completely forgot to mention the scene in which Greg Kinnear sniffs chemicals out of bottles that contain the flavorings for all the various products that Fast Food Nation's fictional restaurant chain serves. He nods along saying, "oh, that's delicious!" or "hmm... maybe the customer will expect more lime with a name like 'Calypso.'" To this, an anonymous lap-coated guy rattles off the names of some complicated-sounding chemical compounds that correspond to the "lime" sensors in our tastebuds.
This scene is absolutely factually based. Our idea of "French fry taste" has very little to do with the actual flavor of a fried potato. "French fry taste" is solely a concoction of the behind-the-scenes chemists who work in fast-food restaurant test kitchens. And people doubt me when I say I don't think this stuff tastes like food? I actually DO eat real food. Therefore, I know what food tastes like. I'm tellin' ya-- liquid smoke, beef flavoring and fake lime are a far cry from a real hickory barbecue sauce or a real burger or a real caribbean-flavored anything. This is simply a matter of acclimatization. It is that to which we've all grown accustomed. It creeps me right the hell out.
Doesn't anyone else find the notion that our idea of what foods taste like has been wholly manipulated by a bunch of chemists, rather than determined by what food ACTUALLY tastes like, to be a little more than disturbing? Anyone?
By now, I feel like I've watched a million documentaries about how the American food pipeline is a wonderland of horrors. I can't remember the last time I frequented a McDonald's or a Burger King or a Wendy's or a KFC or a Jack-in-the-Box. The stuff those establishments peddle does not provide nutrition that would support a high-functioning body. Beyond that, contrary to popular opinion, that crap really doesn't even taste good. I know some folks will argue with me there, but if you can accustom yourself to eating a better quality of food, the smell alone of your average BigMac is likely to turn your stomach. But I dutifully watched Morgan Spurlock's Supersize Me and I blogged long and hard about a documentary that I loved, Milk in the Land: Ballad of an American Drink. But I know a documentary is a hard sell for most folks (god knows why! Nonfiction filmmaking is in the middle of a renaissance of some note right now.).
So along comes Richard Linklater's latest ensemble piece, Fast Food Nation, based on the (nonfiction) book of the same title by Eric Schlosser. Somehow, these two, as a writing-directing team, have managed to magically conjure a deeply disturbing realist-fiction feature out Schlosser's exhaustive research on the fast food industry. The phrase "required viewing" or "required reading" has become something of a regular recurrence in my blog. And I realize that I've developed a propensity towards self-righteousness about all things food-oriented. But, holy hell, the message of this movie is scary--and important.
This film elucidates the way this industry abuses its immigrant work force (denying them disability and insurance rights on the merest suspicion of drug use, forcing them to work in a virtual war zone of animal offal and flayed carcases, undertraining them such that they are prone to slicing open the entrails of the animals in such a way that the fecal matter gets spewed all over the meat (and then blaming them for the mistakes), subjecting them to extremely dangerous machinery (that has been known to remove more than a few human limbs--I don't suppose it's surprising to learn meatpacking is the most dangerous job in the country, causing more than 24% of work-related deaths annually) with similarly inadequate and slap-dash training, etc, etc, etc...). It elucidates problems with the ways the industry exploits the primarily teenage workforce in the restaurants themselves. And it elucidates a grand, grand disconnect between the corporate marketers and the veritable sewage that they're selling.
And then the film shows us how unconscionably badly the cattle are treated. They're kept in miserably tight confines (often, there's not enough room for them to turn around) where they get to muck about in their own excrement and are seldom given access to actual daylight. Often, the animals are not only still alive, but STILL CONSCIOUS when the "processing" begins. The film is a top-down cross-section of one of the more corrupt business models in this country. And if you aren't appalled at all points throughout your viewing, I have no qualms with assuming you're a heartless, ethically devoid asshole. So there.
However, among brilliant turns in this film is Lou Taylor Pucci, the kid from one of the best coming-of-age films ever: Thumbsucker. Despite a dyed-black, scraggly-looking wig, it appears that his progressing adolescence is treating him very well. And he also had one of the best lines in the movie--he plays a kid involved in a high school group of environmental activists, and another character has an idea about cutting a hole in the fence that holds all the cattle slated for becoming burger meat. The discussion arises about how such an act could be perceived as an act of eco-terrorism and then all the kids would be subject to sanctions via the Patriot Act. And so, he says something along the lines of "Well, in this case, maybe the most patriotic action we can take is to ignore The Patriot Act!" Hmm-- well, it seems less forceful when I relay it here, but it was darn punchy at its moment in the movie-- and it draws an important and pointed connection between concerns regarding food supply and virtually every other major political issue at play on the American landscape right now. And IMDb tells me that he's in the forthcoming film adaptation of David Foster Wallace's Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (can't wait!). Catalina Sandino Moreno is luminous as ever, though not quite as transcendent as she was in Maria Full of Grace. Wilmer Valderama is entirely too well-groomed and metrosexual to make a convincing bracero, but it's nice to see him as something other than the sibilant Fez from That 70's Show. An unexpected performance from Bruce Willis is another high point. And Ashley Johnson, who was once the youngest Seaver on Growing Pains, seems to have turned herself into a respectably intense young actress.
Also, because the movie is set all along the immigrant's trail between the Mexican border and a fictional Colorado town, Linklater saw fit to include a very nice little local cameo-- Fat Tire beer! For anyone who has ever lived in a Western state, Fat Tire is the quasi-local brew of choice, coming out of Fort Collins, Colorado (they were also the unofficial sponsor of any social event held at my house when I lived in Tucson, even if that event was nothing more than Michelle and I sitting around the mesquite grill, watching the portobellos cook!). In your inevitable (uh--highly encouraged) perusal of their website, please note their commitment to sustainability. It seems particularly significant that all the rebels in this film prominently tote their Fat Tire bottles and six-pack cartons. After all, whoever said eco-conscious activists didn't enjoy their adult beverages, too?
And then, when you've finished watching the film, there are several animated shorts on the DVD's extras menu that are not to be missed. Most of them can be found at this site. But the "Reverse Hamburger" one is probably the most disturbing of them all. This little piece somehow manages to summarize the entirety of Milk in the Land in under 5 minutes. And it does it with a cartoon. Perfectly brilliant.
Now, add all the information about the mainstream food pipeline that is to be gleaned from Fast Food Nation to all the information in my previous post about how animal agriculture is contributing to global warming and how can we all NOT be motivated to cut back on our consumption of meat and dairy? Seriously, readers! You don't have to go all vegan like I have, but maybe eating meat once or twice a week instead of twice a day? Maybe deciding that you really just don't want the folks behind the unethical business practices that control most fast-food restaurant chains getting any more of your hard-earned cash? Maybe signing C3's pledge this month and committing to consuming one pound of locally-grown food, so as to reduce the carbon emissions created by the transport of non-local food? These are such small things.
If you love me at all, you'll at least consider it. Pretty please?
UPDATE: I completely forgot to mention the scene in which Greg Kinnear sniffs chemicals out of bottles that contain the flavorings for all the various products that Fast Food Nation's fictional restaurant chain serves. He nods along saying, "oh, that's delicious!" or "hmm... maybe the customer will expect more lime with a name like 'Calypso.'" To this, an anonymous lap-coated guy rattles off the names of some complicated-sounding chemical compounds that correspond to the "lime" sensors in our tastebuds.
This scene is absolutely factually based. Our idea of "French fry taste" has very little to do with the actual flavor of a fried potato. "French fry taste" is solely a concoction of the behind-the-scenes chemists who work in fast-food restaurant test kitchens. And people doubt me when I say I don't think this stuff tastes like food? I actually DO eat real food. Therefore, I know what food tastes like. I'm tellin' ya-- liquid smoke, beef flavoring and fake lime are a far cry from a real hickory barbecue sauce or a real burger or a real caribbean-flavored anything. This is simply a matter of acclimatization. It is that to which we've all grown accustomed. It creeps me right the hell out.
Doesn't anyone else find the notion that our idea of what foods taste like has been wholly manipulated by a bunch of chemists, rather than determined by what food ACTUALLY tastes like, to be a little more than disturbing? Anyone?
Friday, July 20, 2007
If you're gonna have a cow, the least you can do is feed her grass.
A couple of weeks ago, Jon directed my attention toward a blog-post on Liberadio's (Vanderbilt University's left-wing radio show) website about how everybody's favorite eco-documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, had a couple of sizeable holes in its message. The hole about which I found myself feeling a little incredulous, despite my rather gung-ho and monastic views about eco-agriculture and gastronomic consumption, is the one about how animal agriculture is causing about 18% of our current global climate change problems. The study to which Freddie O'Connell (one of the Liberadio commentators) refers in this post is put out by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. Ostensibly, I imagine the UNFAO is a pretty well-funded and relatively objective organization... but 18%? That's, like, a lot, right?
So, I emailed my mom. She's my go-to food guru. She's been a food writer, in some capacity or other, for most of my life and I know that she's probably even more passionate about eating well and eating responsibly than I am. Plus, well, she's like the angel on my right shoulder. Truly, it's difficult having such a damn virtuous mother (especially when one is as deviant and diabolical as I am), but the when I need a reliable source, she's about as immaculate as they come. Mom confirmed that, yes, she's been reading some similar studies that confirmed that all you meat-eaters out there are exacerbating global warming with your food choices as well as your Hummers. Yes. I really do think all meat-eaters drive Hummers. Demons. All of you. But anyway, Mom sent me this link. And indeed, it's another article supporting the notion that cowpies are taking over the world.
And then today, I was slogging through my daily rollcall of blogs and I stumbled upon this article on The Plank, the blog written by contributors to The New Republic. And just when I was resigning myself to the moral turpitude of meat-eaters everywhere, it seems there's hope! If you choose *organic*, grass-fed beef, emissions are significantly reduced! I mean, I'm not sure why anyone would want to eat non-organic meat in the first place... All those antibiotics are busy raising your own body's immunity to antibiotics and that's not real good. And all those growth hormones are busy giving you zits, making girls start puperty earlier, making boys start puberty later, reducing sperm counts, causing several assorted reproductive-organ cancers in humans, making your boobs hurt, making you fat... really, rBGHs are the work of the devil.
I know, people. I know you're gonna tell me that organic beef is too expensive. But wise up! Would you rather leave a liveable, intact planet for your inevitable offspring and enjoy a functioning body well into your golden years, or would you rather save a couple pennies now? Instant gratification ain't all it's cracked up to be, folks-- and I say that as something of a hedonist, albeit one who likes to thwart her own hedonism for the purposes of self-righteousness (and masochism?).
I do so miss being instantly gratified now and again... *sigh*
So, I emailed my mom. She's my go-to food guru. She's been a food writer, in some capacity or other, for most of my life and I know that she's probably even more passionate about eating well and eating responsibly than I am. Plus, well, she's like the angel on my right shoulder. Truly, it's difficult having such a damn virtuous mother (especially when one is as deviant and diabolical as I am), but the when I need a reliable source, she's about as immaculate as they come. Mom confirmed that, yes, she's been reading some similar studies that confirmed that all you meat-eaters out there are exacerbating global warming with your food choices as well as your Hummers. Yes. I really do think all meat-eaters drive Hummers. Demons. All of you. But anyway, Mom sent me this link. And indeed, it's another article supporting the notion that cowpies are taking over the world.
And then today, I was slogging through my daily rollcall of blogs and I stumbled upon this article on The Plank, the blog written by contributors to The New Republic. And just when I was resigning myself to the moral turpitude of meat-eaters everywhere, it seems there's hope! If you choose *organic*, grass-fed beef, emissions are significantly reduced! I mean, I'm not sure why anyone would want to eat non-organic meat in the first place... All those antibiotics are busy raising your own body's immunity to antibiotics and that's not real good. And all those growth hormones are busy giving you zits, making girls start puperty earlier, making boys start puberty later, reducing sperm counts, causing several assorted reproductive-organ cancers in humans, making your boobs hurt, making you fat... really, rBGHs are the work of the devil.
I know, people. I know you're gonna tell me that organic beef is too expensive. But wise up! Would you rather leave a liveable, intact planet for your inevitable offspring and enjoy a functioning body well into your golden years, or would you rather save a couple pennies now? Instant gratification ain't all it's cracked up to be, folks-- and I say that as something of a hedonist, albeit one who likes to thwart her own hedonism for the purposes of self-righteousness (and masochism?).
I do so miss being instantly gratified now and again... *sigh*
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
I'm just gonna say it: "liberal media" is a myth.
Has TV sex become too graphic?
x Yes, it's offensive
x No, I can always change the channel
OK, firstly, yes, AOL sucks. And that's from whence the above survey came.
But honestly. Are these our only options? "Yes, sex offends me," or "no, sex doesn't offend me but because I can get away from it?" Some choice, eh? What kinda nutsoid puritan writes stuff in which the idea that someone might actually want to watch sex on TV is wholly absent? And tonight, they're airing the 11th episode of Dateline's To Catch a Predator, which I have already railed against a-plenty. This deep-down cultural anxiety about sexuality really annoys this piss out of me, of course. Fair readers, you might have taken note of this.
And so here, I try out a new term: sex-negativism. This is a term that is complicatedly entangled with a conservative mindset -- and pervades American news media. Easton and Liszt (The Ethical Slut, again) define the term as a concept comprised of the following notions: "Sex is dangerous. Sexual desire is wrong. Female sexuality is destructive and evil. Male sexuality is predatory and uncontrollable. It is the task of every civilized human being to confine sexuality within very narrow limits. Sex is the work of the devil. God hates sex." I personally find every one of those notions to be pretty scary in and of themselves.
But this thing where the media is shaping our thinking by outlining our very choices in such a reductive and limiting manner seems like a real problem. In the teases for that Dateline bullshit, The Today Show people don't even stop to question the atrociousness of all that vigilante-ism and entrapment (and, yes, I know The Today Show is yet another suspect media outlet... but I like the weather reports in the morning! A curly-headed girl's gotta prepare.) And how is this not all symptomatic of a repressive and retrogressive conservative media? And why do I feel like the prudishness is escalating?
Sooner or later, I'm going to have to write a longer blog about all the ways in which mainstream news outlets are shaping the cultural mindset in increasingly limited ways--and how that's fundamentally conservative, not liberal, not even remotely. For now however, I'm gonna have to limit my fury towards that dumbass AOL survey. And it seems like SUCH a justified fury, seeing that an awful lot of very mainstream folks get their news from sources like AOL and The Today Show.
I'll save that other post for another evening when I'm feeling more inspired than incredulous.
x Yes, it's offensive
x No, I can always change the channel
OK, firstly, yes, AOL sucks. And that's from whence the above survey came.
But honestly. Are these our only options? "Yes, sex offends me," or "no, sex doesn't offend me but because I can get away from it?" Some choice, eh? What kinda nutsoid puritan writes stuff in which the idea that someone might actually want to watch sex on TV is wholly absent? And tonight, they're airing the 11th episode of Dateline's To Catch a Predator, which I have already railed against a-plenty. This deep-down cultural anxiety about sexuality really annoys this piss out of me, of course. Fair readers, you might have taken note of this.
And so here, I try out a new term: sex-negativism. This is a term that is complicatedly entangled with a conservative mindset -- and pervades American news media. Easton and Liszt (The Ethical Slut, again) define the term as a concept comprised of the following notions: "Sex is dangerous. Sexual desire is wrong. Female sexuality is destructive and evil. Male sexuality is predatory and uncontrollable. It is the task of every civilized human being to confine sexuality within very narrow limits. Sex is the work of the devil. God hates sex." I personally find every one of those notions to be pretty scary in and of themselves.
But this thing where the media is shaping our thinking by outlining our very choices in such a reductive and limiting manner seems like a real problem. In the teases for that Dateline bullshit, The Today Show people don't even stop to question the atrociousness of all that vigilante-ism and entrapment (and, yes, I know The Today Show is yet another suspect media outlet... but I like the weather reports in the morning! A curly-headed girl's gotta prepare.) And how is this not all symptomatic of a repressive and retrogressive conservative media? And why do I feel like the prudishness is escalating?
Sooner or later, I'm going to have to write a longer blog about all the ways in which mainstream news outlets are shaping the cultural mindset in increasingly limited ways--and how that's fundamentally conservative, not liberal, not even remotely. For now however, I'm gonna have to limit my fury towards that dumbass AOL survey. And it seems like SUCH a justified fury, seeing that an awful lot of very mainstream folks get their news from sources like AOL and The Today Show.
I'll save that other post for another evening when I'm feeling more inspired than incredulous.
Monday, July 16, 2007
When a bunch of syringes, plastic bottles and cigarette butts get stuck in your net... and nary a fish from the sea to be found
If a friend of yours had a stalker-- even an albeit harmless one-- who annoyed her, mostly by being entirely too presumptuous, how would you tell her to behave? Would you tell her to report the situation to some authority (job-related, law-related...)? Would you tell her that, because he is immune to social cues and oblivious about boundaries, he had the potential to be anything but harmless, thus inciting her fears? Would you tell her that she should ignore the situation and that might make it go away?
On the heels of a post in which I've advertised for the sort of person who would share enough of my values to have read some of the texts that are important to me, I feel I have to acknowledge that sometimes I set a wider net than I intend. I'm striving to be aware that I'm, to some degree, responsible for the attention I attract... and to, above all, not be a friggin' victim of my own psychic emissions. That said, I've had two situations with people-- both of whom happened to be men--who, while not exactly stalking me, did manage to fixate on me in ways that I found unnerving. And I got all of the above advice. None of these guidelines for how to dissuade one's stalker have I find particularly useful.
On the first point, I've tried it. Given, in the curious little fishbowl of my last job, sexual harassment was very de riguer and my supervisors seemed to think I could do my rebuffing for myself. When the returning of inappropriate gifts and unmitigated rudeness do nothing to run these dudes off, and you really do wish someone over your head would just lay down the law, well, don't count on it. If you don't make a move towards retaining an attorney, chances are, your boss isn't gonna think much of your complaints. Especially if you're the girl always getting in trouble for offering all comers glimpses of your exceptionally titillating upper arms. Our legal system supposedly provides a support system such that the person being infringed upon isn't responsible for doing the dirty work when attempting to drive away the infringer. But the system ain't foolproof. And while I'd hate to be the girl cowering behind workplace legal protocol, I also hate to be the girl who has to deal with an irritating situation that she didn't create. So, I would say, when seeking recourse for harassment in the workplace, be prepared that a unfairly large portion of the burden of resolution will still be assigned to the complainer. It sucks, but that's the way it is.
And regarding feeling scared when confronted with stalker-esque scenarios, I think this is also pretty lousy advice. Firstly, the more you fear, the more you draw that which you fear toward yourself. If you stay aware, but assume that the world at large means you no harm, your chances of getting raked over any sort of karmic coals tends to diminish-- or, at least, this is certainly true in my experience. Secondly, learning to trust your instincts is incredibly important. If you find someone annoying and yet you know good and well that person's never gonna track you down and shove the handle of a hairbrush up your ass, well, trust that feeling! Being scared is disempowering. While I would hedge my bets that women and men are equally subject to attracting the attention of unwanted gawkers and stalkers alike, I can't help but feel a little patronized when people feel they should warn me-- something like, "oh, he confessed LOVE for you? You better watch out! Someone like that could mean you harm!" Really, there's a huge difference between someone who is actually psycho and someone who never developed any skills for dealing with people he finds attractive beyond those he'd learned by the time he'd entered the 5th grade. You don't have to be scared of everyone. Some people are stupid, sure, but that doesn't mean they're gonna show up on your doorstep with a meathook and a nasty expression in their eyes.
But, in all honestly, the rule I constantly break in stalker-rebuffing etiquette is that I engage. Yes, fine, it pisses me right the hell off when someone makes the assumption that, because he or she is attracted to me, the chemistry they feel is mutual. A person who pays attention to other people knows when someone is attracted to him or her, and also when he or she has no shot. I have a massive ego and yet, I don't seem to have a problem noticing when someone is completely out of my league. It happens ALL THE TIME. Yes, even I have been attracted to people who are way too hot for me plenty of times. Yes, there ARE actually people hotter than yours truly-- AND I'm even humble enough to acknowledge their existence. Hard to believe? Yeah, I know it is.
But when people are merely polite to me, I do not interpret their actions as flirtations. And so, it really inspires my ire when people who, let's say, happen to have dicks, think something along the lines of "oh, hey, she appears heterosexual and I fit the criterion there. She smiled at me when I said 'good morning,' so clearly she's noticed that I fit the criterion. By criminy! She's aching to rock me ALL NIGHT LONG!" I assure you, when I smile at you and we've exchanged less than 30 words in our entire lives, and it's before 10 AM, I'm probably not thinking about doing much of anything other than not seeming annoyed that someone has butted into my quiet headspace at such an early hour.
So, yeah, I engage and I spout off and it drags it out and I get a sick little thrill that I can illicit a reaction. But dammit, I honestly do think that some folks don't know that what they do crosses lines until you TELL them. And I've learned this, too: you can be as articulate as humanly possible in explaining to that person how they've invaded your space, your life, your head... and how you think it's unfair that you now have to deal with an uncomfortable situation through no fault of your own... and how functioning grown-ups pay attention to the objects of their affection, such that they recognize when said objects just aren't into it, rather than projecting some far-fetched fantasy on the self-same said objects... but there's just no getting through. Some fantasies prove far too impenetrable for even the cold poke of reality to have a fair chance.
But, at least in articulating why I feel infringed upon, I feel as though I can resume some control over the situation. And perhaps that's a false sense of control. But if you don't tell people why they've pissed you off or made you uncomfortable, they're probably not going to take it upon themselves to amend their behavior.
And I don't want to cower. I'm not afraid of you. I'm annoyed by you, yes, but I'm not anybody's victim. All I ask is that you wise up and own your own cluelessness. And not mess with my friends any more.
UPDATE: Here's a link to an earlier chapter in this little mini-drama in my life. It is notable that the date on this post was about a year ago...and its subject matter preceded it by a couple of months. I suppose it's a good thing that I have not actually been present for any of the imaginary excitement this fellow has cooked up about me in his own head. Still, it's time for some getting-over-it, yeah?
On the heels of a post in which I've advertised for the sort of person who would share enough of my values to have read some of the texts that are important to me, I feel I have to acknowledge that sometimes I set a wider net than I intend. I'm striving to be aware that I'm, to some degree, responsible for the attention I attract... and to, above all, not be a friggin' victim of my own psychic emissions. That said, I've had two situations with people-- both of whom happened to be men--who, while not exactly stalking me, did manage to fixate on me in ways that I found unnerving. And I got all of the above advice. None of these guidelines for how to dissuade one's stalker have I find particularly useful.
On the first point, I've tried it. Given, in the curious little fishbowl of my last job, sexual harassment was very de riguer and my supervisors seemed to think I could do my rebuffing for myself. When the returning of inappropriate gifts and unmitigated rudeness do nothing to run these dudes off, and you really do wish someone over your head would just lay down the law, well, don't count on it. If you don't make a move towards retaining an attorney, chances are, your boss isn't gonna think much of your complaints. Especially if you're the girl always getting in trouble for offering all comers glimpses of your exceptionally titillating upper arms. Our legal system supposedly provides a support system such that the person being infringed upon isn't responsible for doing the dirty work when attempting to drive away the infringer. But the system ain't foolproof. And while I'd hate to be the girl cowering behind workplace legal protocol, I also hate to be the girl who has to deal with an irritating situation that she didn't create. So, I would say, when seeking recourse for harassment in the workplace, be prepared that a unfairly large portion of the burden of resolution will still be assigned to the complainer. It sucks, but that's the way it is.
And regarding feeling scared when confronted with stalker-esque scenarios, I think this is also pretty lousy advice. Firstly, the more you fear, the more you draw that which you fear toward yourself. If you stay aware, but assume that the world at large means you no harm, your chances of getting raked over any sort of karmic coals tends to diminish-- or, at least, this is certainly true in my experience. Secondly, learning to trust your instincts is incredibly important. If you find someone annoying and yet you know good and well that person's never gonna track you down and shove the handle of a hairbrush up your ass, well, trust that feeling! Being scared is disempowering. While I would hedge my bets that women and men are equally subject to attracting the attention of unwanted gawkers and stalkers alike, I can't help but feel a little patronized when people feel they should warn me-- something like, "oh, he confessed LOVE for you? You better watch out! Someone like that could mean you harm!" Really, there's a huge difference between someone who is actually psycho and someone who never developed any skills for dealing with people he finds attractive beyond those he'd learned by the time he'd entered the 5th grade. You don't have to be scared of everyone. Some people are stupid, sure, but that doesn't mean they're gonna show up on your doorstep with a meathook and a nasty expression in their eyes.
But, in all honestly, the rule I constantly break in stalker-rebuffing etiquette is that I engage. Yes, fine, it pisses me right the hell off when someone makes the assumption that, because he or she is attracted to me, the chemistry they feel is mutual. A person who pays attention to other people knows when someone is attracted to him or her, and also when he or she has no shot. I have a massive ego and yet, I don't seem to have a problem noticing when someone is completely out of my league. It happens ALL THE TIME. Yes, even I have been attracted to people who are way too hot for me plenty of times. Yes, there ARE actually people hotter than yours truly-- AND I'm even humble enough to acknowledge their existence. Hard to believe? Yeah, I know it is.
But when people are merely polite to me, I do not interpret their actions as flirtations. And so, it really inspires my ire when people who, let's say, happen to have dicks, think something along the lines of "oh, hey, she appears heterosexual and I fit the criterion there. She smiled at me when I said 'good morning,' so clearly she's noticed that I fit the criterion. By criminy! She's aching to rock me ALL NIGHT LONG!" I assure you, when I smile at you and we've exchanged less than 30 words in our entire lives, and it's before 10 AM, I'm probably not thinking about doing much of anything other than not seeming annoyed that someone has butted into my quiet headspace at such an early hour.
So, yeah, I engage and I spout off and it drags it out and I get a sick little thrill that I can illicit a reaction. But dammit, I honestly do think that some folks don't know that what they do crosses lines until you TELL them. And I've learned this, too: you can be as articulate as humanly possible in explaining to that person how they've invaded your space, your life, your head... and how you think it's unfair that you now have to deal with an uncomfortable situation through no fault of your own... and how functioning grown-ups pay attention to the objects of their affection, such that they recognize when said objects just aren't into it, rather than projecting some far-fetched fantasy on the self-same said objects... but there's just no getting through. Some fantasies prove far too impenetrable for even the cold poke of reality to have a fair chance.
But, at least in articulating why I feel infringed upon, I feel as though I can resume some control over the situation. And perhaps that's a false sense of control. But if you don't tell people why they've pissed you off or made you uncomfortable, they're probably not going to take it upon themselves to amend their behavior.
And I don't want to cower. I'm not afraid of you. I'm annoyed by you, yes, but I'm not anybody's victim. All I ask is that you wise up and own your own cluelessness. And not mess with my friends any more.
UPDATE: Here's a link to an earlier chapter in this little mini-drama in my life. It is notable that the date on this post was about a year ago...and its subject matter preceded it by a couple of months. I suppose it's a good thing that I have not actually been present for any of the imaginary excitement this fellow has cooked up about me in his own head. Still, it's time for some getting-over-it, yeah?
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Hey, there, Robin! Is that the Bat--uh... Bunny... Signal?
In my anniversary post, I stated that I hoped to make my blog into something of a beacon. I've decided to write this current post, in lieu of posting profiles on every cotton-pickin' online dating service the internet has to offer. Quite frankly, I have no interest in wading through tiresome emails from people who *think* they like women with pretentious vocabularies and a particularly quirky variety of brassiness.
This is not to say that I'm starved for romantic attention-- quite the opposite --but I do not seem to be drawing folks who are on the same page that I am... nor do they seem to be showing an interest in reading to see what that page might have to say. I would like for this to change. And for the ones who DO seem to be on a page within the vicinity of my own, well, I'm thinking we both my benefit from your finding yourself within this funnel of light, too.
And so, I'm erecting a metaphysical lighthouse of sorts in this post. Let's see what happens. Welcome to my experiment.
A Proscribed Reading List for Potential Suitors of Me:
1. Killing the Buddha, Jeff Sharlet and Peter Manseau, eds.-- I've posted on this book before and I've linked its website and Jeff Sharlet's (one of its editors) blog ten ways to Tuesday. I don't find any religion in particular to be terribly helpful in my own life, but I find the ways in which this book gauges the temperature of American religiosity to be perfectly fascinating. I think it should be required reading for everyone, not just for Fans of Marjorie. If you doubt that real religious diversity and real thoughtful engagement with all and assorted gods still exists in this country, then doubt no more. Beyond that, Sharlet and Manseau are dynamite and engaging writers, the both of them. And, they've amassed contributions from some of this country's best and brightest novelists, essayists, language-experimenters and word-junkies, such that there's something for everyone. Even if you only get as far as Darcy Steinke's uber-hot Song of Songs contribution. And though I do have my own anarchic, slap-dash variety of perpetual spiritual questing, this book did not, in any way, make me feel alienated from all the folks who are opting for slightly more traditional paths towards The Sacred. That's saying something.
2. Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, Isa Chandra Moskowitz-- A traditional cupcake contains wheat, dairy and sugar... three things that I'm working very hard to minimally include in my diet. But god knows I love me some cupcakes! Now some of my readers-- the ones with whom I exchange frequent gossipy emails-- may think that I'm referring to our code word "cupcake." I am not. That code remains top secret (wink, wink). I really am talking about delicious, frosted, spongy cupcakes. However, if there is a brave one among you who can present me with a homemade vegan Red Velvet cupcake that doesn't taste like health food, you just might be entitled to a larger chunk of my heart that I might be inclined to give you otherwise.
3. The Complete Book of Ayurvedic Home Remedies, Vasant Lad-- It's not that I have an active phobia about doctors trained in the methods of contemporary Western medicine. It's just that every time I go to a conventional doctor, they try to ply me with drugs (for some negligibly minor condition, or some natural state, such as being a woman in the prime my child-bearing years)-- to which I'll generally have a reaction, or suffer from some side effect or other... and it's just not worth it to me, when, in general, I'm blessedly healthy and can rely on my body's natural functions to right themselves in due course. And so, I have found the little tricks in this book to be altogether more helpful than any doctor yet. No, I do not understand why rubbing sesame oil on my feet makes my headache go aways. But it does. And no, I don't fully grasp why touching my forehead to my knees makes my tummy feel better. But it does. And so, I think this is a book that should be in everyone's personal library, not just mine and my mother's.
4. Elements of Style, Illustrated (also known as The Strunk &White)-- There are only so many more emails I can receive in which question marks have been dropped from sentences in which they would have been appropriate before I start taking you to task. I've always assured you that I wouldn't put you in my blog, but you know who you are. I fully respect that you are a lot smarter than me in most ways that count and I like that about you. But if you don't start friggin' putting question marks at the end of your friggin' questions, I'm likely to haul off and spank you. Crap, that's not much of a deterrent, is it? That said, I REALLY do get off on grammar. My favorite part is ensuring all the little prepositions find their way to their rightful homes within any given sentence. I love some goddamn prepositions! And this book is the gold standard... and when they published the version with pictures? And cute little grammar joke captions? It just gives me that special feeling deep down in my...brain.
5. The Synonym Finder, J. I. Rodale-- At work, I carry this book around like Linus with his blanket. It makes me feel powerful and banishes all insecurities. And I spent many happy, procrastinatory afternoons with my copy sitting in my lap during grad school. If you think more associatively than literally when you play with language, this is the thesaurus for you. So many beautiful, beautiful words!
6. Anything bell hooks every wrote-- I don't suppose I ever really thought that much about race, other than in an abstract of-course-I'm-not-a-racist sort of way, before my undergrad sociology professor assigned a bunch of bell hooks' essays that discuss the concepts of "white standard" and "male standard" and all the other arbitrary ways in which some folks have the privilege of not thinking about their respective social standing, while others are forced to deal with such issues every day. She's able to articulate so many ideas that I found so meaningful and resonant that discovering her felt like a homecoming. I want you, dear potential suitor, to understand that I question my racial identity every day, not because I'm part of a stigmatized, marginalized group, but because I DIDN'T EARN my social privilege that allows me NOT to think about it every day. It's not guilt-- it's just that being born a white American is like being given a monstrous trust fund. I didn't do anything to earn that capital myself and so, I feel kinda funny spending it willy-nilly. And bell hooks was able to suckle that idea into my amorphous 19-year-old social conscience in a way that I felt my foundations veritably shaken.
7. I Have Not Been Able to Get Though to Everyone, Anna Moskovakis-- Really, this book is just a place holder. It's a recent favorite and it's a brilliant poetry monograph by an American woman who is both alive and under the age of 60. I do know that pretty much the only folks who read contemporary poetry are other poets. It is not a prerequisite for wooing me that you be a poet. And so, I know it's a tall order to expect anyone to actually, you know, read some damn poems. But it's good stuff and I find value in it. A lot of value. I'll consider this one to be extra credit. How's that?
8. Jelly Roll, Kevin Young-- This is another place holder. Any poetry monograph by a non-white, living American under the age of 60 will do. But I love this one quite a lot. Actually, of the poetry I've read in the last five years or so, I've found that some of the most downright sexy work is being written by African American men. Maybe it's because they seem so joyful and celebratory in their use of dirty words for female anatomy, but these guys-- Tyehimba Jess, A. Van Jordan, Kevin Young and so one-- know their way around some flattering pillow talk, I'll tell you what! But, again, it's extra credit.
9. My blog-- If you want to get to know me, here's where I am. I'll tell you all you need to know, if you're reading closely enough.
10. The Ethical Slut: A guide to infinite sexual possibilities, Dossie Easton and Catherine A. Liszt-- This layperson's guide to polyamory was recommended to me by more than one friend over the course of several years. I recently decided it was time to finally read it. The style is kinda goofy and lingo-ridden, but it clearly and simply articulates all the qualms I have with traditional expectations for relationships and gender roles within those relationships and then offers an alternative. I don't buy all of the arguments in this book... and I think it's rather (sl)utopian in many ways... but it describes an alternative to social constructs that I find to be restrictive beyond the scope of your average human animal. I'm not looking for a wild life of free-wheeling and swinging, but the idea of engaging with other human animals in whatever way feels most unaffected and innate without fear of damaging, manipulating or deceiving other people, well... it's very appealing. And this book describes some tools that might help make it work. And maybe it can. Wanna try?
Happy reading, my loves. Keep me posted on what you learn.
This is not to say that I'm starved for romantic attention-- quite the opposite --but I do not seem to be drawing folks who are on the same page that I am... nor do they seem to be showing an interest in reading to see what that page might have to say. I would like for this to change. And for the ones who DO seem to be on a page within the vicinity of my own, well, I'm thinking we both my benefit from your finding yourself within this funnel of light, too.
And so, I'm erecting a metaphysical lighthouse of sorts in this post. Let's see what happens. Welcome to my experiment.
A Proscribed Reading List for Potential Suitors of Me:
1. Killing the Buddha, Jeff Sharlet and Peter Manseau, eds.-- I've posted on this book before and I've linked its website and Jeff Sharlet's (one of its editors) blog ten ways to Tuesday. I don't find any religion in particular to be terribly helpful in my own life, but I find the ways in which this book gauges the temperature of American religiosity to be perfectly fascinating. I think it should be required reading for everyone, not just for Fans of Marjorie. If you doubt that real religious diversity and real thoughtful engagement with all and assorted gods still exists in this country, then doubt no more. Beyond that, Sharlet and Manseau are dynamite and engaging writers, the both of them. And, they've amassed contributions from some of this country's best and brightest novelists, essayists, language-experimenters and word-junkies, such that there's something for everyone. Even if you only get as far as Darcy Steinke's uber-hot Song of Songs contribution. And though I do have my own anarchic, slap-dash variety of perpetual spiritual questing, this book did not, in any way, make me feel alienated from all the folks who are opting for slightly more traditional paths towards The Sacred. That's saying something.
2. Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, Isa Chandra Moskowitz-- A traditional cupcake contains wheat, dairy and sugar... three things that I'm working very hard to minimally include in my diet. But god knows I love me some cupcakes! Now some of my readers-- the ones with whom I exchange frequent gossipy emails-- may think that I'm referring to our code word "cupcake." I am not. That code remains top secret (wink, wink). I really am talking about delicious, frosted, spongy cupcakes. However, if there is a brave one among you who can present me with a homemade vegan Red Velvet cupcake that doesn't taste like health food, you just might be entitled to a larger chunk of my heart that I might be inclined to give you otherwise.
3. The Complete Book of Ayurvedic Home Remedies, Vasant Lad-- It's not that I have an active phobia about doctors trained in the methods of contemporary Western medicine. It's just that every time I go to a conventional doctor, they try to ply me with drugs (for some negligibly minor condition, or some natural state, such as being a woman in the prime my child-bearing years)-- to which I'll generally have a reaction, or suffer from some side effect or other... and it's just not worth it to me, when, in general, I'm blessedly healthy and can rely on my body's natural functions to right themselves in due course. And so, I have found the little tricks in this book to be altogether more helpful than any doctor yet. No, I do not understand why rubbing sesame oil on my feet makes my headache go aways. But it does. And no, I don't fully grasp why touching my forehead to my knees makes my tummy feel better. But it does. And so, I think this is a book that should be in everyone's personal library, not just mine and my mother's.
4. Elements of Style, Illustrated (also known as The Strunk &White)-- There are only so many more emails I can receive in which question marks have been dropped from sentences in which they would have been appropriate before I start taking you to task. I've always assured you that I wouldn't put you in my blog, but you know who you are. I fully respect that you are a lot smarter than me in most ways that count and I like that about you. But if you don't start friggin' putting question marks at the end of your friggin' questions, I'm likely to haul off and spank you. Crap, that's not much of a deterrent, is it? That said, I REALLY do get off on grammar. My favorite part is ensuring all the little prepositions find their way to their rightful homes within any given sentence. I love some goddamn prepositions! And this book is the gold standard... and when they published the version with pictures? And cute little grammar joke captions? It just gives me that special feeling deep down in my...brain.
5. The Synonym Finder, J. I. Rodale-- At work, I carry this book around like Linus with his blanket. It makes me feel powerful and banishes all insecurities. And I spent many happy, procrastinatory afternoons with my copy sitting in my lap during grad school. If you think more associatively than literally when you play with language, this is the thesaurus for you. So many beautiful, beautiful words!
6. Anything bell hooks every wrote-- I don't suppose I ever really thought that much about race, other than in an abstract of-course-I'm-not-a-racist sort of way, before my undergrad sociology professor assigned a bunch of bell hooks' essays that discuss the concepts of "white standard" and "male standard" and all the other arbitrary ways in which some folks have the privilege of not thinking about their respective social standing, while others are forced to deal with such issues every day. She's able to articulate so many ideas that I found so meaningful and resonant that discovering her felt like a homecoming. I want you, dear potential suitor, to understand that I question my racial identity every day, not because I'm part of a stigmatized, marginalized group, but because I DIDN'T EARN my social privilege that allows me NOT to think about it every day. It's not guilt-- it's just that being born a white American is like being given a monstrous trust fund. I didn't do anything to earn that capital myself and so, I feel kinda funny spending it willy-nilly. And bell hooks was able to suckle that idea into my amorphous 19-year-old social conscience in a way that I felt my foundations veritably shaken.
7. I Have Not Been Able to Get Though to Everyone, Anna Moskovakis-- Really, this book is just a place holder. It's a recent favorite and it's a brilliant poetry monograph by an American woman who is both alive and under the age of 60. I do know that pretty much the only folks who read contemporary poetry are other poets. It is not a prerequisite for wooing me that you be a poet. And so, I know it's a tall order to expect anyone to actually, you know, read some damn poems. But it's good stuff and I find value in it. A lot of value. I'll consider this one to be extra credit. How's that?
8. Jelly Roll, Kevin Young-- This is another place holder. Any poetry monograph by a non-white, living American under the age of 60 will do. But I love this one quite a lot. Actually, of the poetry I've read in the last five years or so, I've found that some of the most downright sexy work is being written by African American men. Maybe it's because they seem so joyful and celebratory in their use of dirty words for female anatomy, but these guys-- Tyehimba Jess, A. Van Jordan, Kevin Young and so one-- know their way around some flattering pillow talk, I'll tell you what! But, again, it's extra credit.
9. My blog-- If you want to get to know me, here's where I am. I'll tell you all you need to know, if you're reading closely enough.
10. The Ethical Slut: A guide to infinite sexual possibilities, Dossie Easton and Catherine A. Liszt-- This layperson's guide to polyamory was recommended to me by more than one friend over the course of several years. I recently decided it was time to finally read it. The style is kinda goofy and lingo-ridden, but it clearly and simply articulates all the qualms I have with traditional expectations for relationships and gender roles within those relationships and then offers an alternative. I don't buy all of the arguments in this book... and I think it's rather (sl)utopian in many ways... but it describes an alternative to social constructs that I find to be restrictive beyond the scope of your average human animal. I'm not looking for a wild life of free-wheeling and swinging, but the idea of engaging with other human animals in whatever way feels most unaffected and innate without fear of damaging, manipulating or deceiving other people, well... it's very appealing. And this book describes some tools that might help make it work. And maybe it can. Wanna try?
Happy reading, my loves. Keep me posted on what you learn.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
What Not to Wear--in corporate hell
Female body parts that typically elicit chiding when displayed in the workplace:
1. Boobs
2. Asses
3. Bellies/midriffs
4. Upper thighs
Female body parts/aspects of general demeanor for which I've been chided for displaying in the workplace(presupposing all the body parts listed above have already been covered):
1. My clavicle/upper sternum
2. My shoulders/upper arms
3. My knees/calves
4. The shape of my ass through clothing
5. The shape of my tits through clothing
6. The shape of my waist through clothing
7. My ankles when wearing high heels
8. The way I walk
9. The way I stand
10. The way I sit (presupposing my legs are closed)
11. The look on my face that denotes the fact that a sexual thought might have crossed my mind in recent history
So, I'm thinking that when a girl continually gets in trouble for her clothing, again assuming that she does not wear anything that displays any of the parts from the first list up there, it's not so much the clothing as it is the girl inside the clothing. Clearly, there is something about that girl that no burkha on Earth can disguise.
I'm wondering what exactly it is about unashamed, though dutifully contained, female sexuality that is so threatening in the workplace?
At the dawn of the feminist movement, many forward-thinking women felt that dressing and behaving in a so-called "manly" fashion was the only way to be taken seriously as they ventured forth out of their kitchens. This proved to be problematic, seeing as most women (myself included) are pretty darn gender-identified and don't WANT to be man-like. Put another way, that variety of proto-feminist thought presupposes a standard of maleness to which all, male and female alike, should aspire. Well, dammit! I have no desire to look or be male, in any sort of way. Nor do I define the things that make me outwardly feminine (wearing make-up, leg-shaving, wearing bras, etc.) to be things imposed on me by a culture that has developed around men's desire to look at pretty women. I do those things because I feel MORE like myself with make-up on and my legs shaved and my boobs positioned at a flattering angle, such as might be determined by the aforementioned undergarment. My aspirations towards outward girliness do not make me feel "objectified" (to borrow some outdated terminology from my foremothers), but rather, they allow me to own the fact that I feel no shame about my female-hood. Nor do those aspirations prevent me from circumventing other aspects of proscribed gender roles (I've posted on this a-plenty!). So, really, I'm not trying to be overly womanly or manly, either one, but I'm just not interested in following gender-role-related rules that seem ultimately arbitrary.
But, in the interest of getting back to my question about female sexuality in the workplace, I still cannot figure out why it's so scary for so many people in this day and age. In the Middle Ages, the only way a woman got to be a Catholic saint was for her to be sexually mutilated in some way, like, for instance, a brutal rape that rendered her nether-regions useless, the lopping off of her breasts-- or some other horrific event that rendered her completely sexually unappealing to men. And here, I'll offer a sloppy explanation for why this was the case (based on my medieval humanities class in college and the writings of charismatic Catholic, Margaret Starbird): the going philosophy in monasteries (thriving metropolises of medieval queer culture, by the way) dictated that the relationship between priest/monk and God/Jesus was an ecstatic one-- i.e., tinged with sexuality. God was the man and the priest/monk/church-as-a-whole was the woman, in this particular relational theology. Hence, anyone who might deign to tempt the priest/monk away from his devotion to God was monstrous and scary and in desperate need of taming. And aren't women just ripe-to-the-point-of-bursting with temptations? And so, the only way to sanctify a soul tragically trapped inside a female body was to remove, destroy or somehow irreparably damage the outward signifiers of her femininity. Seriously. If you look it up, you'll find that this was the fate of most of the women canonized from 1300-1600 A.D. Does anyone else find this to be really and truly saddening?
And yet, I think the heart of this attitude continues to pervade. And that's really what my problem with being a quasi-cute girl trying to make her way in corporate America really is. I mean, I honestly do put forth an effort to not bash anyone over the head with my sexuality, but, at the same time, I'm wholly unashamed of it, too. And here's the message that is repeatedly dropped on my head, like so many steel anvils*:
1. Hide it.
2. Cover it.
3. Don't intimidate other women.
4. Don't like it when men look at you.
5. Don't do anything to attract attention.
6. Be quiet unless someone speaks to you directly.
7. Don't walk THAT way.
8. Be asexual.
9. Hide your personality, particularly if that personality contains any elements of smart-assedness, feistiness, irreverence or moxie.
10. Be demure and accommodating.
*Follow these ten simple rules and you'll be a successful corporate whore! (but you'll look like the perfect prairie housewife!)
A colleague recently said to me something about how part of my job is to "be an actress--to act the part of the professional." My auto-response mechanism quickly queries back, Who the fuck says a consummate professional is wholly asexual (or need compartmentalize his/her sexuality to such a degree that it is undetectable during work hours)???!! And I can't help but think, NO! That's NOT my job. I'm actually halfway decent at doing the stuff that IS required for my job, and nowhere does my contract stipulate that I must somehow entirely reconfigure my persona so as to perform my job well. And I certainly don't think that feeling comfortable with actually having a sexual identity impedes my job performance in any way. On the contrary, I would argue the pressure to be someone other than myself WOULD, in fact, provide such great distraction that I would NOT perform my job very well at all!
This colleague went on to say, "Well, maybe you're just not cut out for a corporate atmosphere." And, well, I agree with her there... but not because I do not think there is room for a girl to be a girl in the workplace. Truly, there are a million different reason why I'm ill-suited for my current job. But, when I'm not whining about it, I really do appreciate all that I'm learning from it. And among the things that I'm learning is that it still sucks to have to support yourself if you're a woman. Despite whatever social progress we've made on this front since World War II, being a woman and being a professional are most certainly NOT confluent concepts. I can't help but perpetually feel the pressure to forgo one for the other. And that makes me feel angry. And demoralized. And stagnant.
One last list for the record:
Things I really do like about my job:
1. I get to edit stuff-- and not just proofreading and copyediting, but real content editing.
2. I work with a whole gaggle of dynamite, brilliant, capable, funny and caring women.
3. I can pay my rent every month.
4. When I eventually leave this job, I know I will remain friends with several of the people I've met here.
5. This job is helping me with that goal about learning humility that I mentioned a couple posts ago.
And so, I soldier on.
1. Boobs
2. Asses
3. Bellies/midriffs
4. Upper thighs
Female body parts/aspects of general demeanor for which I've been chided for displaying in the workplace(presupposing all the body parts listed above have already been covered):
1. My clavicle/upper sternum
2. My shoulders/upper arms
3. My knees/calves
4. The shape of my ass through clothing
5. The shape of my tits through clothing
6. The shape of my waist through clothing
7. My ankles when wearing high heels
8. The way I walk
9. The way I stand
10. The way I sit (presupposing my legs are closed)
11. The look on my face that denotes the fact that a sexual thought might have crossed my mind in recent history
So, I'm thinking that when a girl continually gets in trouble for her clothing, again assuming that she does not wear anything that displays any of the parts from the first list up there, it's not so much the clothing as it is the girl inside the clothing. Clearly, there is something about that girl that no burkha on Earth can disguise.
I'm wondering what exactly it is about unashamed, though dutifully contained, female sexuality that is so threatening in the workplace?
At the dawn of the feminist movement, many forward-thinking women felt that dressing and behaving in a so-called "manly" fashion was the only way to be taken seriously as they ventured forth out of their kitchens. This proved to be problematic, seeing as most women (myself included) are pretty darn gender-identified and don't WANT to be man-like. Put another way, that variety of proto-feminist thought presupposes a standard of maleness to which all, male and female alike, should aspire. Well, dammit! I have no desire to look or be male, in any sort of way. Nor do I define the things that make me outwardly feminine (wearing make-up, leg-shaving, wearing bras, etc.) to be things imposed on me by a culture that has developed around men's desire to look at pretty women. I do those things because I feel MORE like myself with make-up on and my legs shaved and my boobs positioned at a flattering angle, such as might be determined by the aforementioned undergarment. My aspirations towards outward girliness do not make me feel "objectified" (to borrow some outdated terminology from my foremothers), but rather, they allow me to own the fact that I feel no shame about my female-hood. Nor do those aspirations prevent me from circumventing other aspects of proscribed gender roles (I've posted on this a-plenty!). So, really, I'm not trying to be overly womanly or manly, either one, but I'm just not interested in following gender-role-related rules that seem ultimately arbitrary.
But, in the interest of getting back to my question about female sexuality in the workplace, I still cannot figure out why it's so scary for so many people in this day and age. In the Middle Ages, the only way a woman got to be a Catholic saint was for her to be sexually mutilated in some way, like, for instance, a brutal rape that rendered her nether-regions useless, the lopping off of her breasts-- or some other horrific event that rendered her completely sexually unappealing to men. And here, I'll offer a sloppy explanation for why this was the case (based on my medieval humanities class in college and the writings of charismatic Catholic, Margaret Starbird): the going philosophy in monasteries (thriving metropolises of medieval queer culture, by the way) dictated that the relationship between priest/monk and God/Jesus was an ecstatic one-- i.e., tinged with sexuality. God was the man and the priest/monk/church-as-a-whole was the woman, in this particular relational theology. Hence, anyone who might deign to tempt the priest/monk away from his devotion to God was monstrous and scary and in desperate need of taming. And aren't women just ripe-to-the-point-of-bursting with temptations? And so, the only way to sanctify a soul tragically trapped inside a female body was to remove, destroy or somehow irreparably damage the outward signifiers of her femininity. Seriously. If you look it up, you'll find that this was the fate of most of the women canonized from 1300-1600 A.D. Does anyone else find this to be really and truly saddening?
And yet, I think the heart of this attitude continues to pervade. And that's really what my problem with being a quasi-cute girl trying to make her way in corporate America really is. I mean, I honestly do put forth an effort to not bash anyone over the head with my sexuality, but, at the same time, I'm wholly unashamed of it, too. And here's the message that is repeatedly dropped on my head, like so many steel anvils*:
1. Hide it.
2. Cover it.
3. Don't intimidate other women.
4. Don't like it when men look at you.
5. Don't do anything to attract attention.
6. Be quiet unless someone speaks to you directly.
7. Don't walk THAT way.
8. Be asexual.
9. Hide your personality, particularly if that personality contains any elements of smart-assedness, feistiness, irreverence or moxie.
10. Be demure and accommodating.
*Follow these ten simple rules and you'll be a successful corporate whore! (but you'll look like the perfect prairie housewife!)
A colleague recently said to me something about how part of my job is to "be an actress--to act the part of the professional." My auto-response mechanism quickly queries back, Who the fuck says a consummate professional is wholly asexual (or need compartmentalize his/her sexuality to such a degree that it is undetectable during work hours)???!! And I can't help but think, NO! That's NOT my job. I'm actually halfway decent at doing the stuff that IS required for my job, and nowhere does my contract stipulate that I must somehow entirely reconfigure my persona so as to perform my job well. And I certainly don't think that feeling comfortable with actually having a sexual identity impedes my job performance in any way. On the contrary, I would argue the pressure to be someone other than myself WOULD, in fact, provide such great distraction that I would NOT perform my job very well at all!
This colleague went on to say, "Well, maybe you're just not cut out for a corporate atmosphere." And, well, I agree with her there... but not because I do not think there is room for a girl to be a girl in the workplace. Truly, there are a million different reason why I'm ill-suited for my current job. But, when I'm not whining about it, I really do appreciate all that I'm learning from it. And among the things that I'm learning is that it still sucks to have to support yourself if you're a woman. Despite whatever social progress we've made on this front since World War II, being a woman and being a professional are most certainly NOT confluent concepts. I can't help but perpetually feel the pressure to forgo one for the other. And that makes me feel angry. And demoralized. And stagnant.
One last list for the record:
Things I really do like about my job:
1. I get to edit stuff-- and not just proofreading and copyediting, but real content editing.
2. I work with a whole gaggle of dynamite, brilliant, capable, funny and caring women.
3. I can pay my rent every month.
4. When I eventually leave this job, I know I will remain friends with several of the people I've met here.
5. This job is helping me with that goal about learning humility that I mentioned a couple posts ago.
And so, I soldier on.
Monday, July 9, 2007
Oh, just one more...
It's a bird! It's a hand puppet! No, it's my nephew!
Does the cuteness ever stop?
Sunday, July 8, 2007
Wish the bunny a happy one, will you?
Today, July 8, 2007, marks the year anniversary of my first post on this little blog. I began it without a whole lot of direction, but with the kernel of an idea, which had been conceived during one ride or another, in Jon's dinged-up green Altima, somewhere along the stretch of Franklin Road between where it becomes 8th Avenue and where it intersects with Old Hickory Boulevard. I know that it happened there because, in the nearly three years I lived in Nashville since finishing grad school, I probably traveled the distance between my parents' house and Jon's apartment more than any other stretch in town. And usually, Jon and I were having some ridiculously vociferous argument over whatever film we'd just seen. And so, we cooked up this (rabbit-furred) idea that if we wrote out our differing takes on any given film and presented them as essayistic pairings, well, maybe we wouldn't threaten to not be friends with each other so often. But we never did do it
Eventually, I got sick of talking about how great an idea this was and took matters into my own hands, deciding to start my own little blog of movie musings... and Jon could comment when and if he wanted. So there.
For the record, starting a blog to save a friendship is a rather hare-brained(god, I am SO FUNNY!) idea. As it turns out.. Jon and I? Well, we're just arguers. Nay, tooth-and-nail brawlers, really. I feel pretty confident in offering a smidge of wisdom here: blogs don't fix relationships. It's an awfully good thing that Jon and I actually, you know, like each other. Really, we do! I swear it. 'Cuz, seriously! We'll argue about the color of blood!
But anyway, shortly after I began this blog, I got a job and moved to DC... and lost Jon as my faithful bi-weekly movie-going date. Dammit all. That part of moving sucked. The silver lining here, though, is that we were now able to avoid the pre-movie argument about which movie we should go see... and how I always got to pick the movie... and how he'd entertain my movie-going whims... but when he wanted to see, oh, I don't know, let's just say it might have been that Tom Cruise War of the Worlds puddle of exploitative puke, I was dismissive and snobby and an awful person. OK, so, fine. I'm dismissive and snobby and probably an awful person, too. I'll own that. But now? When I go to the video rental store, I get to rent all the artsy soft porn I want!!!! And so, that's how the focus of my blog got just a little narrower.
Since then, this blog has become such a receptacle for me. Recently, one of my readers asked me how I find the time, given all the usual responsibilities and obligations that accompany being (or trying to be) a grown-up (having a job, having friends, having to feed oneself, having to put oneself to bed, etc...). I answered that, pretty much, this blog is the only thing in my life that I REALLY get excited about. It's a venue for a regular interaction with language and writerly practice. It's a venue for discussion of an art form that I love--film. But most importantly, it's a venue for me to think through contemporary American life and my own particular obsessions through this lens of film discussion. It's a perfect forum for me to marry my assorted fixations to the practice of detachment that comes with critical writing (ok, so, I'm still working on that second part).
And I suppose it's a beacon. I know I'm very consciously shaping my own blogger identity here. For those who read and don't know me very well, this persona that I project here is warty for sure, but have no doubt that I've carefully selected the warts you get to see. In the way that I conceive of the human body as nothing but a big node, designed for the purpose of sending and receiving information (this is why we speak to each other and why we listen; this is what pheromones do; this is why we touch each other and have eye contact and wear certain clothes and walk a certain way; this is what a body IS!), I suppose my blog is just one more way I keep sending up flags.
I'm not entirely sure what sort of responses I'm hoping to receive in return. The deeper my engagement with this writing becomes, the more I find myself burrowing into some weird stuff. Do you know how dogs get those things called hotspots? They're little infections on the surface of the skin... the dog will get a bug bite or some fur will get matted and it'll itch and so he'll chew the spot until he eats all the hair off and it becomes red and bloody and all he can think about is chewing on it some more. This is how my obsessions work, too, I think. Some little arbitrarily imposed social rule will prick at my skin and pretty soon, I'll have worked myself into a lather over it. And because we seem to have so goddamn MANY rules about sex and the social order, it's quite obvious that all things transgressively sexual have become such intense hotspots that no quantity of hydro cortisone on Earth can quiet them down. Am I looking for respondees, or silent readers, even, who buy my arguments and are similarly troubled? Or would I rather have people who would take me to task? A healthy mixture of the two would be nice, I think. But I do know that I want to be talking to more than just myself. That's important. Audience, I mean.
And that's what writing poetry never gave me. Because my poetry was obscured and prettified and sounded like the inside of my head and therefore spoke more to me than to anyone else.
So, I wanted this post to be the mission statement that I couldn't write a year ago. I want to have figured out exactly what my project really is. But it seems I still can't. I know it won't prevent me from fighting with Jon. I know it's often about movies, but not all the time. I know that it's often about social issues that bug me, but not all the time. I know that it's USUALLY about sex and I'm quite pleased about that. I intend for it only to get dirtier (please note the blog-rating button I added to the bottom-- yep, according to Mingle2, my blog contains enough profane language to merit an NC-17. Holy hell, I'm so proud!).
I intend for it to be an outlet for my fixations but in such a way that I can distance myself from them. I intend to find an audience, or expand the one I've got. It's not that I think I have something so important to say that the world's been waiting for my wisdom since the dawn of time... except that I DO think that.
I intend to work on deflating my ego a little. Yes. Right. I intend to cultivate humility.
In the meantime, I say cheers to the brown bunnies!
May they obsess in good vegan, yoga-fied, oversexed health for another year to come!
Eventually, I got sick of talking about how great an idea this was and took matters into my own hands, deciding to start my own little blog of movie musings... and Jon could comment when and if he wanted. So there.
For the record, starting a blog to save a friendship is a rather hare-brained(god, I am SO FUNNY!) idea. As it turns out.. Jon and I? Well, we're just arguers. Nay, tooth-and-nail brawlers, really. I feel pretty confident in offering a smidge of wisdom here: blogs don't fix relationships. It's an awfully good thing that Jon and I actually, you know, like each other. Really, we do! I swear it. 'Cuz, seriously! We'll argue about the color of blood!
But anyway, shortly after I began this blog, I got a job and moved to DC... and lost Jon as my faithful bi-weekly movie-going date. Dammit all. That part of moving sucked. The silver lining here, though, is that we were now able to avoid the pre-movie argument about which movie we should go see... and how I always got to pick the movie... and how he'd entertain my movie-going whims... but when he wanted to see, oh, I don't know, let's just say it might have been that Tom Cruise War of the Worlds puddle of exploitative puke, I was dismissive and snobby and an awful person. OK, so, fine. I'm dismissive and snobby and probably an awful person, too. I'll own that. But now? When I go to the video rental store, I get to rent all the artsy soft porn I want!!!! And so, that's how the focus of my blog got just a little narrower.
Since then, this blog has become such a receptacle for me. Recently, one of my readers asked me how I find the time, given all the usual responsibilities and obligations that accompany being (or trying to be) a grown-up (having a job, having friends, having to feed oneself, having to put oneself to bed, etc...). I answered that, pretty much, this blog is the only thing in my life that I REALLY get excited about. It's a venue for a regular interaction with language and writerly practice. It's a venue for discussion of an art form that I love--film. But most importantly, it's a venue for me to think through contemporary American life and my own particular obsessions through this lens of film discussion. It's a perfect forum for me to marry my assorted fixations to the practice of detachment that comes with critical writing (ok, so, I'm still working on that second part).
And I suppose it's a beacon. I know I'm very consciously shaping my own blogger identity here. For those who read and don't know me very well, this persona that I project here is warty for sure, but have no doubt that I've carefully selected the warts you get to see. In the way that I conceive of the human body as nothing but a big node, designed for the purpose of sending and receiving information (this is why we speak to each other and why we listen; this is what pheromones do; this is why we touch each other and have eye contact and wear certain clothes and walk a certain way; this is what a body IS!), I suppose my blog is just one more way I keep sending up flags.
I'm not entirely sure what sort of responses I'm hoping to receive in return. The deeper my engagement with this writing becomes, the more I find myself burrowing into some weird stuff. Do you know how dogs get those things called hotspots? They're little infections on the surface of the skin... the dog will get a bug bite or some fur will get matted and it'll itch and so he'll chew the spot until he eats all the hair off and it becomes red and bloody and all he can think about is chewing on it some more. This is how my obsessions work, too, I think. Some little arbitrarily imposed social rule will prick at my skin and pretty soon, I'll have worked myself into a lather over it. And because we seem to have so goddamn MANY rules about sex and the social order, it's quite obvious that all things transgressively sexual have become such intense hotspots that no quantity of hydro cortisone on Earth can quiet them down. Am I looking for respondees, or silent readers, even, who buy my arguments and are similarly troubled? Or would I rather have people who would take me to task? A healthy mixture of the two would be nice, I think. But I do know that I want to be talking to more than just myself. That's important. Audience, I mean.
And that's what writing poetry never gave me. Because my poetry was obscured and prettified and sounded like the inside of my head and therefore spoke more to me than to anyone else.
So, I wanted this post to be the mission statement that I couldn't write a year ago. I want to have figured out exactly what my project really is. But it seems I still can't. I know it won't prevent me from fighting with Jon. I know it's often about movies, but not all the time. I know that it's often about social issues that bug me, but not all the time. I know that it's USUALLY about sex and I'm quite pleased about that. I intend for it only to get dirtier (please note the blog-rating button I added to the bottom-- yep, according to Mingle2, my blog contains enough profane language to merit an NC-17. Holy hell, I'm so proud!).
I intend for it to be an outlet for my fixations but in such a way that I can distance myself from them. I intend to find an audience, or expand the one I've got. It's not that I think I have something so important to say that the world's been waiting for my wisdom since the dawn of time... except that I DO think that.
I intend to work on deflating my ego a little. Yes. Right. I intend to cultivate humility.
In the meantime, I say cheers to the brown bunnies!
May they obsess in good vegan, yoga-fied, oversexed health for another year to come!
Friday, July 6, 2007
The Spaulding genetic domination continues.
My parents spent their Fourth in the hot-as-blazes Sonoran desert, god bless 'em. And seeing as my mom is better in terms of sending me picture of my cute nephew than my brother is, I figured I'd post a visual update. I think it's been since Christmas since any of my blog readers have been able to take a gander at the adorableness that is Will Spaulding.
Rumor has it that Will is being coached to call my dad "Pee-paw!" I shouldn't laugh. But I do!
Here's my brother, pretending to be a French, beret-wearing guy, pretending to be a big ol' American flag-waver. Not a very convincing disguise. But Will's feet are adequately dangly.Don't these pictures look hopelessly empty without me in them? Oh, Desert! Oh, Family! How homesick I am for all of you!
Wednesday, July 4, 2007
cf sm cf sm cf sm cf sm cf sm cf sm cf sm
At some point in the development of this little hobby of mine-- the one in which I spend a great deal of time contemplating a culture that creates sexual transgressors and then defines them as somehow outside the norm-- I found it necessary to read that old French classic The Story of O. I wanted to understand what would drive a person, of her own free will, to allow herself to be pierced, branded, beaten, sodomized and led into subjugation, all towards the fulfillment of a sexual relationship. I found her story extreme. There's no doubt about that. I found that the author's insights into her motivations unsatisfactorily skim the surface of O's psyche. Most of the time. I say "most of the time" because there were a few moments when I was able to step outside of my own pretty deeply ingrained you-just-don't-hit-girls sensibilities and SEE what benefits and thrills she receives from her proscribed arrangement with her "master." How her giving-over of herself to another is ultimately freeing for her, how allowing herself to submit to such extremes of humiliation makes her not only immune to humiliation but also one for whom social rules were by-and-large irrelevant. And truth be told, regardless of my own blog-anonymity-related bravado, I know good and well I'm far more bottom than top-- that taking direction is more fun than giving them, that, while actual pain scares me (outside of my chiropractor's office, that is), the desire to be stripped of everything save my capacity as a vessel for someone else's pleasure exists in me. After all, for all the intellectualizing and analyzing about sex that I do, sometimes I want nothing more than to have someone so divert my attention to an extreme such that that particular gushing faucet in my head can just shut the hell off for a while!
All this is preamble and explanation for why I chose to sit through a difficult little documentary called Sick: The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist. Bob Flanagan was a performance and visual artist, and also poet, who died a few years ago, but lived many years beyond expectations, seeing as he had the congenital disease, cystic fibrosis. He also liked to hammer his dick to boards every now and again. Now, in real life, I've encountered a couple of folks who've got this disease, and really, I cannot imagine such a life. There was a friend of a friend in college... and I have a distinct memory of watching him push a handful of pills--probably 20 of them--into his mouth and swallow them all at once. He said he had to do it about 3 times a day. He said that he was maxed out in terms of prescription strength of all these various drugs that enabled him to continue breathing and quasi-digesting. He was 19. Most folks with this disease won't see age 30. I also remember this same kid walking me back to my dorm room one night after a party. Rather unexpectedly, he shoved me--hard--against the cement block wall of the little hallway between rooms in my quad. He tasted strangely salty (I understand that salty skin is one of the first clues many mothers of CF kids receive that something is amiss with their brand new children) and slightly chlorine-y, because he was also on the swim team. The next morning, I found bruises on my shoulder blades and scratch-marks on my stomach where he'd been gouging at my clothes. Frankly, I was thrilled, though he had desisted and left as abruptly as he'd begun.
Everything else I know about this disease I've learned from the blog of a poet with whom I went to grad school. I recall feeling fairly intimidated by this poet's formidable talents when I was in workshop with him and on the rare occasions that he posts about his disease, well, the writing is, let's say, effective on many levels.
But, in the interest of getting back to my discussion of this movie, let me just say that it's not for the weak of stomach, nor the light of heart. There's a lengthy montage of footage of Bob choking on phlegm. There's a slow, painstaking interview with Bob's wife Sheree that plays out while she's lovingly running needles through the skin in the underside of his penis. Bob trusses himself up, naked, onto various contraptions with some frequency and then he hangs there, coughing. Bob really does nail his dick to a board (not through the skin on the side but Right. Through. The. Center. And it's shot in very tight close-up.) and then he removes the nail and lets the blood spurt all over the camera for what feels like an extraordinary amount of time. There are a lot of vesicles in a penis. And then, Bob dies and Sheree's photography of his skinny, slack little corpse winds up in the film, too.
I wondered if some of this stuff might be a bit gratuitous. But Bob was a masochist first and an artist second. His sexual and artistic partnership with Sheree became as much a part of his creative project as anything else that he might have tried to explore. Interestingly, it seems that, instead of conceptualizing his sick body as a distraction from his art-making endeavors, the sick body became part of the show. Or maybe even the whole show, in and of itself. He has one piece that he called "Visible Man" which is one of those plastic models of the human body through which you can see the layers of musculature, organs, bones and everything else. He rigged the thing up such that it excreted the particular substances with which he was most familiar. Green phlegm comes out of its mouth. It shits out a gloppy mixture of tempera paint and VO5 hair conditioner so as to replicate the consistency of the bowel movements of the CF sufferer. And it comes. This particular piece seems really indicative of Bob's particular creative obsessions in that that which is sick and that which is sexual are so irreversibly tangled in his own mind that he can't help but put himself on display, in a circus of his own making.
The thing about Bob, though, is that he spends a great deal of time pontificating about how his masochistic drives have granted him unique coping strategies when it comes to facing down his disease. And it not "well, my body's in pain all the time anyway. What's a little more?" And it's also not "this clothespin in my bellybutton and this c-clamp on my nipple and this plug up my anus hurt so much worse than the infection in my lungs that I've forgotten all about that lung business." No, instead he feels that the mental discipline of overriding the body's flight instinct on the occasion of physical pain makes him stronger both mentally and physiologically. He says at one point something about how a common perception of Sub-Dom relationships is that the submissive is the weak one. He argues that, in fact, the submissive is actually, by nature, the more constitutionally substantive between the two because the submissive is the one who withstands so many barrages of torture. And comes back for more. And I guess I kinda buy that argument.
However, one of the more difficult parts of watching this film for me was watching Sheree's pre-grieving process. At one point when he's so sick he can't even move around a whole lot, she begins suggesting that they should break up. It makes him angry, because, obviously, he's in need of moral support. She says, "I really need you to submit to me. I don't feel like you love me if you don't submit to me." And more or less, he is such a slave to his impending death at this point that her demands that he demonstrate his submissiveness to her in their habitual fashion seem cruel--and petulant--beyond the usual master/slave set of rules. The disease creates this distance between the two of them and her usual tools prove wholly ineffective. During one of the final interviews with Sheree, while she's sitting in the hospital waiting room, she says something about how she doesn't think he's even a masochist anymore because the pain of the disease is too great for him to be able to process anything but. She is heartbroken then, as though, not only is the disease stealing her lover's life but it's stealing his very identity while he still lives. None of this-- her frustration, her anger, his anger, the ways in which they blame each other for the pain of it all-- is atypical of situations in which one of a couple is dying but it is interesting that the film refuses to make a saint out of this woman who built a life out of making her lover bleed. Instead, it makes her into something of a mother figure whose child is perpetually on the verge of outgrowing his need for her. And that is really at the heart of her grief.
So, uh, yeah. Happy 4th of July. Let us all give thanks that we live in a country wherein we're all free to be as kinky as we want to be, but in which our government does not see fit to throw any bones towards researching the applications of stem cells, such that some doctors might bring to light some treatments against the horrors of CF... and hundreds of other diseases. What a great fucking country.
All this is preamble and explanation for why I chose to sit through a difficult little documentary called Sick: The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist. Bob Flanagan was a performance and visual artist, and also poet, who died a few years ago, but lived many years beyond expectations, seeing as he had the congenital disease, cystic fibrosis. He also liked to hammer his dick to boards every now and again. Now, in real life, I've encountered a couple of folks who've got this disease, and really, I cannot imagine such a life. There was a friend of a friend in college... and I have a distinct memory of watching him push a handful of pills--probably 20 of them--into his mouth and swallow them all at once. He said he had to do it about 3 times a day. He said that he was maxed out in terms of prescription strength of all these various drugs that enabled him to continue breathing and quasi-digesting. He was 19. Most folks with this disease won't see age 30. I also remember this same kid walking me back to my dorm room one night after a party. Rather unexpectedly, he shoved me--hard--against the cement block wall of the little hallway between rooms in my quad. He tasted strangely salty (I understand that salty skin is one of the first clues many mothers of CF kids receive that something is amiss with their brand new children) and slightly chlorine-y, because he was also on the swim team. The next morning, I found bruises on my shoulder blades and scratch-marks on my stomach where he'd been gouging at my clothes. Frankly, I was thrilled, though he had desisted and left as abruptly as he'd begun.
Everything else I know about this disease I've learned from the blog of a poet with whom I went to grad school. I recall feeling fairly intimidated by this poet's formidable talents when I was in workshop with him and on the rare occasions that he posts about his disease, well, the writing is, let's say, effective on many levels.
But, in the interest of getting back to my discussion of this movie, let me just say that it's not for the weak of stomach, nor the light of heart. There's a lengthy montage of footage of Bob choking on phlegm. There's a slow, painstaking interview with Bob's wife Sheree that plays out while she's lovingly running needles through the skin in the underside of his penis. Bob trusses himself up, naked, onto various contraptions with some frequency and then he hangs there, coughing. Bob really does nail his dick to a board (not through the skin on the side but Right. Through. The. Center. And it's shot in very tight close-up.) and then he removes the nail and lets the blood spurt all over the camera for what feels like an extraordinary amount of time. There are a lot of vesicles in a penis. And then, Bob dies and Sheree's photography of his skinny, slack little corpse winds up in the film, too.
I wondered if some of this stuff might be a bit gratuitous. But Bob was a masochist first and an artist second. His sexual and artistic partnership with Sheree became as much a part of his creative project as anything else that he might have tried to explore. Interestingly, it seems that, instead of conceptualizing his sick body as a distraction from his art-making endeavors, the sick body became part of the show. Or maybe even the whole show, in and of itself. He has one piece that he called "Visible Man" which is one of those plastic models of the human body through which you can see the layers of musculature, organs, bones and everything else. He rigged the thing up such that it excreted the particular substances with which he was most familiar. Green phlegm comes out of its mouth. It shits out a gloppy mixture of tempera paint and VO5 hair conditioner so as to replicate the consistency of the bowel movements of the CF sufferer. And it comes. This particular piece seems really indicative of Bob's particular creative obsessions in that that which is sick and that which is sexual are so irreversibly tangled in his own mind that he can't help but put himself on display, in a circus of his own making.
The thing about Bob, though, is that he spends a great deal of time pontificating about how his masochistic drives have granted him unique coping strategies when it comes to facing down his disease. And it not "well, my body's in pain all the time anyway. What's a little more?" And it's also not "this clothespin in my bellybutton and this c-clamp on my nipple and this plug up my anus hurt so much worse than the infection in my lungs that I've forgotten all about that lung business." No, instead he feels that the mental discipline of overriding the body's flight instinct on the occasion of physical pain makes him stronger both mentally and physiologically. He says at one point something about how a common perception of Sub-Dom relationships is that the submissive is the weak one. He argues that, in fact, the submissive is actually, by nature, the more constitutionally substantive between the two because the submissive is the one who withstands so many barrages of torture. And comes back for more. And I guess I kinda buy that argument.
However, one of the more difficult parts of watching this film for me was watching Sheree's pre-grieving process. At one point when he's so sick he can't even move around a whole lot, she begins suggesting that they should break up. It makes him angry, because, obviously, he's in need of moral support. She says, "I really need you to submit to me. I don't feel like you love me if you don't submit to me." And more or less, he is such a slave to his impending death at this point that her demands that he demonstrate his submissiveness to her in their habitual fashion seem cruel--and petulant--beyond the usual master/slave set of rules. The disease creates this distance between the two of them and her usual tools prove wholly ineffective. During one of the final interviews with Sheree, while she's sitting in the hospital waiting room, she says something about how she doesn't think he's even a masochist anymore because the pain of the disease is too great for him to be able to process anything but. She is heartbroken then, as though, not only is the disease stealing her lover's life but it's stealing his very identity while he still lives. None of this-- her frustration, her anger, his anger, the ways in which they blame each other for the pain of it all-- is atypical of situations in which one of a couple is dying but it is interesting that the film refuses to make a saint out of this woman who built a life out of making her lover bleed. Instead, it makes her into something of a mother figure whose child is perpetually on the verge of outgrowing his need for her. And that is really at the heart of her grief.
So, uh, yeah. Happy 4th of July. Let us all give thanks that we live in a country wherein we're all free to be as kinky as we want to be, but in which our government does not see fit to throw any bones towards researching the applications of stem cells, such that some doctors might bring to light some treatments against the horrors of CF... and hundreds of other diseases. What a great fucking country.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)