My friend Besty and I were possibly the only people to refer to The Break Up as the new Peyton Reed movie. Ever since we watched Bring It On in a mostly empty cinema in the middle of the day, we have been big fans (don’t ask about the opening cheer unless you really want to know).

The great thing about Peyton Reed is that his movies have quite a mainstream sensibility, but with a different (and most importantly feminist) content. Betsy and I cracked up listening to his DVD commentary on Bring it On when he talked about the movie’s punk rock sensibility (punk cheerleaders!), but we knew what he meant. The ads made The Break Up look like an extended episode of friends (boys are like this, and girls are like this - isn’t that hilarious), but (and I should have had faith in Peyton Reed) instead it looked at the reality behind some of those ideas, and what they mean for the people involved.

It’s weird that we finally got around to watching the break-up tonight, just after I’d written about housework. Because the Break-up is a movie about the dishes. Brooke (Jennifer Aniston) and Gary (Vince Vaughn) have been together for two years and they’re holding a dinner party. When Brooke gets home from work she tidies up the whole place, does all the cooking (for the meal she’s shopped and planned for), sets the table, and so on. When Gary gets home he turns on the TV and watches the game, despite the fact that she’s still cooking dinner, and he’s not changed. Then after the dinner party he sits down and plays Playstation, and when she asks him to help her do the dishes he talks about how he needs to unwind (this is the fight where they break up).

More than anything else I found the movie terribly, terribly sad. Right throughout the movie Brooke, keeps trying to get him back, she’s doing more, and working harder in the hope that’ll make him notice the work she already does (which appears to be about 90% of the work in the relationship). There’s a scene near the end where she lists all the things she does for him, and doesn’t ask him to reciprocate, doesn’t ask for equality, just asks that he recognise what she’s doing.¹ When he finally began to understand what was upsetting her so much, it was too late, she felt entirely used up, and couldn’t keep trying any more.

It all felt so familiar. They’re not even particularly my issues, but I’ve listened, and I’ve given advice, and in the end there’s nothing I can do.

There were other bits I really like; the female relationships were very real and reminded me of the limits of solidarity without analysis. It was obvious, throughout the movie, that other women backed up Brooke because she was a woman. But the advice they gave was all slightly ridiculous and useless, and showed that her friends were also mired in this pit where it was impossible to relate to men on anything approaching equal footing, so all they could offer Brooke were suggestions on how to get around.

What I really do wonder is how much of this was intentional. I’m fairly certain that Peyton Reed brought out the feminist aspects of the movie on purpose. But on the DVD commentary Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston were implying that they thought this was a movie about two equally flawed people. I imagine if you’re used to being blind to power dynamics it might look like two equally flawed people. But there was a power imbalance in that relationship, whether it was intended by the creators or not.

It passes the Mo Movie Measure - but in quite a neat way - it’s only after that she’s decided that she has no more energy to give him that she is shown speaking to another woman about anything but Gary.

As a movie it definately worked for me, anything that felt that real definately would. There were also some absolutely hilarious moments (and some others that didn’t really work for me, but I don’t find Vince Vaughn particularly funny). I really do recomend you watch it, I’d like to know what other people thought.

1. I imagine that it’d actually be impossible to recognise that you were in a relationship where the other person was doing the vast majority of the work. It’s much easier to be blind, than to realise that you’re a parasite (or to do your share). (back)

Bean and I went to see “The Pursuit of Happyness,” a new movie starring Will Smith as real-life stock broker Chris Gardner. Set in the 80s, the movie tells the story of how Gardner — black, poor, a single father with only a high-school education — became a stock broker using only intelligence, hard work, and a seemingly inexhaustible will to succeed.

The movie was entertaining but not fantastic. What struck me most about it is how differently liberals and conservatives will interpret the movie’s message. To conservatives, like Michael at InternetMonk, the message is that hard work wins the day:

Will Smith’s “The Pursuit of Happyness” [is] a stunningly positive, pro-individual, pro-America film that may go to the top of every economic conservative’s “must see” list. “Pursuit” is a stereotype breaker in every scene, and it’s not an accident. This is a film with the unashamed message that America is a place where individuals aren’t rewarded via pity, but through initiative, sacrifice and hard work. Chris Gardner’s success came by taking the gifts God gave him, motivating himself with love for his son, and persevering in a superhuman effort to outdo people with racial, social and educational advantage. [...]

And when he achieves his goal- a genuinely emotional breakthrough that will be hard for any man who loves his family to resist- it is not because of affirmative action, but because Chris Gardner was the best man for the job. You can look in the eyes of all those corporate types and know that they have only been dimly aware that this is a man who has been sleeping in restrooms and at homeless shelters, but they are treating him completely in line with the content of his character and not in pity. At a moment when he is nearly starving, his boss- a millionaire many times over- asks him for five dollars for cab fare. Gardner gives it to him because that is who he is and will always be.¹

I saw the same movie, but I got a different message. Because the effort Gardner puts forth in the movie really does seem (as Michael says) superhuman. In the movie², Gardner had no real friends, no support network, no savings, no home, and a child to take care of. He was pretty much in the situation Hilzoy discusses here — no margin for error, no margin for bad luck.

There are thousands of Americans in that situation. What makes Gardner’s story so unusual — and a good subject for a major Hollywood movie — is that Gardner ended up a millionairre. The far more common story of people who don’t make it, isn’t the story of which major movies are made. Artist and blogger Marc Vallen (who created a 1980s protest poster used as set dressing in the movie) writes:

The Pursuit of Happyness has as its actual star the mythic American dream story, where anyone can become financially successful through dedication and hard work. While it’s said “everyone loves a winner” and “a happy ending”, I’d still like to see Hollywood tackle the stories of those real-life people who’ve struggled and worked hard all of their lives but never even came close to achieving their dreams. Odds are that describes a huge number of people, and as yet, their stories haven’t appeared on the silver screen. I also find it ironic that a poster once considered controversial, and used by activists who were willing to be beaten, arrested, and jailed for a cause - has became set dressing for a popular “feel good” movie.

For me, the lesson to take away from “The Pursuit of Happyness” isn’t that anyone can make it in America. Gardner wasn’t “anyone.” He was broke, but he had a natural endowment of intelligence, charm and drive that made him one in ten thousand, or maybe one in a million.
I’s ludicrous to think that “Pursuit of Happyness” shows that anyone can make it; on the contrary, “Pursuit of Happyness” shows that for someone starting with nothing in America, it take a ludicrous amount of talent and drive to pull oneself up.

I think it’s possible to become a better society — one in which no one is every that utterly lacking help and resources, and in which it doesn’t require Chris-Gardner levels of talent and drive for someone on the bottom to make the system work.

The San Francisco Gate has a story with more information about The Real-Life Chris Gardner; there are interesting contrasts between his life and the movie version. (For example, in the movie he was homeless while doing an unpaid apprenticeship; in real life I doubt he was homeless while he was an apprentence, since the apprenticeship program paid $1000 a month.) And CNN has an article about Gardner’s current activities – he’s hoping to become the next Oprah.

Also, Czerna has a related post.

1. Contrary to Michael’s interpretation, I think it was clear that Gardner gave him the five bucks because he was an intern who had no choice but to suck up to his bosses, and who couldn’t let them know how close to the edge he was living. (back)
2. and in real life, for all I know (back)

This post is a total geek-out; non-geeky readers will want to scroll on past this one. Later today, I’ll also post this week’s baby blogging (sorry for being late on it!).

Read the rest of this entry »

Recently Foolish Owl posted the lyrics to Love Me I’m a Liberal. It’s a great song. If you haven’t read the lyrics you should go do that now.

Reading the lyrics to ‘Love Me I’m a Liberal’ made me sad. There was a time in my life I loved Phil Ochs. When I’m Gone was on the short-list of songs I wanted played at my funeral. I still have his live album and it’s wonderful.

But I don’t listen to his music any more, not since I read a biography of his life. Phil Ochs was a great lyricist, but he was also violent and abusive.

Like most music genres political folk is male dominated, and there’s a lot of sexism in it. When the lock-out ended it took me a while to clean out the sexism of Talking Union Blues so I felt comfortable posting it on my blog. The original third verse of Union Maid, is so offensive that it makes me giggle. That doesn’t bother me that much. I either listen to the music in its original form, or (more likely) a recent re-recording that has lyrics I like better. The nice things about folk music is that everyone changes the lyrics up sometimes.

It is regrettable, but understandable, that such sexism was acceptable in political movements in the past. But I can overlook that in a way I can’t overlook men like Phil Ochs sang for freedom and abused the women around them.

It’s particularly political folk music that I have this reaction to. Other forms of art I’m generally less fussy about. I’m not going to stop loving In My Life, because 50% is a conservative estimate of the number of men in the Beatles who were violent and abusive.

But political folk music, at least the stuff I listen to, is music about liberation. Abusing the power society gives you is fundamental incompatible with anyone’s liberation. Just like I wouldn’t be interested in a brilliant interpretation of When I’m Gone, from someone who didn’t mean it. I lost interest in Phil Och’s interpretation of ‘When I’m Gone’ to the extent that he didn’t mean it.

I want to emphasise that my reaction is not one of political purity, but my emotional reaction to the disconnect between the song and what I know of the person who wrote it. I’d be interested in how other people feel.

As fans of Buffy probably already know, from March next year ‘Season 8′ will run monthly in comic book form. Joss will write the first four, last four and some in between. I’m excited, really I am, I love Buffy beyond the telling of it.

But I’m just not sure I can be persuaded to love superhero comic books. I enjoyed Fray, it had Joss dialogue and great twists and turns. But the drawings of Fray and her sister depressed me - croptops, tiny waists, and breasts of steel.

Joss says the right things:

TVGuide.com: Does she get comic-book superheroine breast implants?

Whedon: She really doesn’t. I’ve been fortunate that I’ve never worked with a T&A artist. I’m very specific about that.

TVGuide.com: Isn’t that the raison d’etre of lots of comics?

Whedon: That’s part of why I stopped reading comics for a while. All the people I work with draw actual women.

But this is one of the sample pages from the Buffy comic provided with that very article:

I suppose there are possibly women who have a waist hip ratio of .66 (or whatever that figure has), but Buffy sure wasn’t one of them.

It seems a bit stupid to be complaining about the images of women in a comic book based on a TV series where Amber Benson was ‘the big one’. But at least with TV you are looking at an acutal women. When a TV actress loses weight she does lose weight all over. Comic book women are fantasies - and they’re male fantasies. I don’t want to look at images of women created to fulfil the desires of men. The endless images of women with exagerated hour-glass figures make it clear that women readers are peripheral to superhero comics. That the stories are not supposed to be for or about us.

I’m just not sure I could handle Buffy stories that said that to me.

I love Studio 60, but I have to admit, this is spot-on. Curtsy: Lawyers Guns and Moolah.

I ran into a couple of friends after they’d been to see The Wind that Shakes the Barley and they described it as a great movie, very harrowing. This seemed to me to be a good reason to avoid it - I’m actually fine not being harrowed.

I hadn’t even meant to go and see it, my friend Josie and I had planned to go see The Devil Wears Prada, guarateened to annoy - not harrow. But due to a minor case of cashlessness we were both suffering from we missed it, so we decided to give Ken Loach’s movie a go instead. It is an incredible movie, I definately recommend it, even though ‘harrowing’ isn’t a bad description.

This isn’t exactly a review, more a discussion of the things that I thought about after watching this movie. I don’t so much review movies as dissect them - a habit that some people find annoying (but I’m not quite sure what the fun in movies are if you can’t discuss the portrayl of gender roles for an hour afterwards). Despite not being a review there are spoilers - so stay away if you don’t like that sort of stuff(and you should go because it’s good - but take tissues, because it’s really, really sad).

The Wind that Shakes the Barley is set in Ireland in 1920, a land which was under British occupation. The main character is a doctor who is about to travel to England, because he’s got a job in a big hospital. His friends ask him to stay to help fight the British, particularly after the British army brutually murder one of their friends. He refuses, until a relatively minor incident at the railway station as he’s leaving that changes his mind.

It’s odd, watching a guerilla army operate on rolling green hills with unwieldy rifles. I’m not used to watching people fight in suits, with vests, watch chains - and an array of slightly ridiculous hats. The film is obviously, at least partly, a comment on current occupations. I think that part of what gives that comment its power is this dissonance. Period movies have a whole set of expectations - and generally it doesn’t involve ambushing soldiers to steal their weapons. We also have a whole lot of expectations about war movies, which generally make it very difficult to say anything worth saying about war.

But we don’t have any preconceptions, filmic or otherwise, about 1920s Ireland (and I’m sure I wasn’t the only audience member who knew very little about 1920s Ireland). So I think people are much more likely to accept the arguments about the necessity of resistance than they would if the film was set in Iraq, or even Vietnam. Partly that’s just plain racism - but it’s about the fact the movie is set in the past.

The weakest part of the film was the love story, whereby the main character falls in love with the only female character who does anything.* Don’t get me wrong I loved Sinnead (the woman in question) - the actress did a great job with an under-written role. But the narrative they told was extremely problematic from a feminist perspective (see I told you we’d get to gender roles).

I don’t have a problem with movies that depict homosocial realities. In some times and places women and men live largely seperate lives. Even when women and men live a more integrated life (as I imagine they would in rural Ireland - seperate spheres is not an ideology that particularly suits rural living) it is not exactly stretching the imagination to believe that men exclude women from some activities and consign them to others.** If movies about the past and present want to explore reality they need to depict worlds. But, it is so easy to tell those stories in a way that centralises men’s experiences, and minimises women’s experiences.

I would have actually had no problem with the portrayal of women in The Wind That Shakes The Barley if Sinnead and Damien had never got together (or had been together from the beginning). We did get to see glimpses of women’s world - and the work that they were doing. If we’d left it at that then the movie would have been implying that women existed in their own world.

Part of the problem is that the woman Damien was interested in was the woman who was doing everything - delivering messages, bringing them guns, running the court. Rather than implying that there was a network of women parallel to the network of men they showed, this implied that there was one really keen woman, who was almost as useful as the men. More importantly Sinnead was one of the four most central characters in the film, and yet she has no agency, she makes no choices, and she never voices an opinion that is seperate from Damien’s.

Of course, I’d be the first to admit that their romance made the movie much more powerful. But if the filmmakers wanted the scene at the end where Teddy tells Sinnead (and it was certainly where the tears that were running down my cheeks bcame sobs), then they should have earned it. They should have made her a person, and shown her world as well as his. Otherwise they are perpetuating the idea that women are just there to serve men.

So having got the gender politics out of the way, I do want to say something about the actual plot of the movie - because it’s left me thinking about guerilla warfare ever since.

Chris, the youngest member of their group (I’d say he was between 14 and 16), works as a farm labourer on an English land-owners property. The land-owner figures out what’s going on and gets Chris to talk about the group. This leads to everyone being captured by the English soldiers, while most of them escape from the prison, three don’t and these three are eventually shot.

When they discover where the information had come from they kidnap the English land-owner and tell Chris to come with them. Damien receives orders to shoot both the English land-owner and Chris, and he does.

I’ve been thinking a lot about my reaction to this. While I was watching the movie I actively wanted them to shoot the English land-owner, and I have absolutely no problems at all with them having done so. But I was, and am, extremely angry that they shot Chris.

In many ways I feel really uncomfortable writing about these issues, because they’re so beyond anything I know anything about. I believe people have a right to self-defence, that if you’re being attacked you have a right to fight back. I also believe that for self-defence to be effective it has to be organised (just like any other form of action). I’m generally going to be on the side of the guerilla army. But I have absolutely no knowledge of what that actually means.

I was really angry when they shot Chris, not just because they were shooting a teenager who was on their side, but because from the narrative the leadership were setting him up for failure. He was a teenager working on an English land-owner’s estate, and the land-owner who knew where his family was. He should not have had any information that could do them any damage. There was no need for him to know where the forces were camped out.

They had let this boy take part in an ambush for which there would clearly be reprisals, but, from his stammering answer when asked where he was that afternoon, they hadn’t even discussed what he should do if someone suspected him. They hadn’t given him any of the tools that you need in that situation and were killing him for failing.

I think that if the stakes are so high that someone might die as a result of leaked information, then those in leadership positions have to be really careful about who knows that information. I would blame whoever let Chris know where they were staying, and whoever let him be part of the action, without teaching him what he needed to know (ie there’s more to fighting a guerilla war that where to find cover) for the deaths of the three men who were captured.

That’s a bit of a cop-out, because it allows me not to look at the more serious issues around how collaborators and spies are treated by a resistance army. That’s where my ignorance comes in, I really don’t know enough about those sorts of wars to write rules about where the line falls between the land-owner and Chris. So I feel kind of silly trying to make pronouncements.

But the more I think about it, the more I think the killing of Chris was indefensible. Not just for the practical reasons (and I think the movie would have been tighter if the set-up had bee more ambiguous), but because of an argument I’m sort of stealing off Howard Zinn.***

As you may already know the Irish nationalist movement got sold out by its leaders, obviously part of this was the creation of Northern Ireland, but for our characters it was more than that. Some of the characters were not just fighting for independence, they’re fighting for socialism.

The film ends with Damien being shot. His executation was ordered by Teddy, the leader who ordered Damien to shoot Chris. The night before Teddy offers Damien amnesty if Damien tells Teddy where the weapons cache is, and Damien says that he shot Chris, who he’d known since he was a boy - to give up would be to make that meaningless.

The thing is that historically all movements for a better world have fizzled out, been crushed, or been sold out. That’s not a reason not to try, not by any means. But it does mean that if the only way you can justify shooting a teenage boy who is on your side, is that you’re creating a glorious future, then it’s probably worth pausing and considering the fact that you might not.

One of the characters who stayed with me the most, wasn’t ever on screen. Damien talks to Sinnead about telling Chris’s mother that he had shot Chris. He tells her that Chris’s mother went and got her shoes, and asked Damien to take her to where Chris was buried. They walked for six hours up into the hills till they got to the chapel. Chris’s mother put flowers on Chris’s grave and then told Damien to go - “I don’t ever want to see you face again.”

*The film does (just) pass the Mo Movie Measure - as long as you consider ‘Nan’ a name, when it’s given to a grandmother.

** I’m a feminist historian, so I feel I need to point out that of course that it is more complicated than that. Gendered division of labour is not static, but a site of contest.

*** Howard Zinn’s version of this argument is an argument for non-violence. He argues that since we never know what is going to happen it is unacceptable to kill people in the belief it will create another world. I’m not convinced by this argument as a whole - because as I said I believe in people’s right to self-defence. But I do think we have to take the range of consequences into account when deciding what’s OK.

First of all, please don’t comment on this post by saying you don’t the title of one of my favorite TV shows, “Ugly Betty,” because lead actress America Ferrera is actually quite dishy. Yes, she is - in fact, it would be hard to name a sexier actress on TV nowadays - but that objection misses the point, and it’s getting old.

A review in Salon by Rebecca Traister gets it:

But those who have taken the title’s bait and examined only the aesthetics of the show have missed the point. “Ugly Betty” is not about being unattractive, or at least not simply about being unattractive. It’s about class. And ethnicity. Its smart take on cultural and economic differences, enmeshed as it is in a fresh, funny package, makes it positively subversive television.

Betty Suarez is the 22-year-old daughter of Mexican immigrants. She lives in Queens with her widowed father; older sister, Hilda; and Hilda’s son, Justin, a fashion-obsessed preteen. But when we first meet Betty, it’s in the marble lobby of Meade Publications, where she’s awaiting a job interview with an H.R.-bot who needs only an eyeful of her metal-mouthed grin to shut the door in her face. [...]

“Ugly Betty” is the American adaptation of the Colombian telenovela “Yo soy Betty, la fea,” which began airing in 1999 and has since been translated and remade around the world. [...] “Betty la fea’s” creator, Fernando Gaitán, who is also a producer on “Ugly Betty,” told the Guardian in 2000 that telenovelas “are all about the class struggle. They’re made for poor people in countries where it’s hard to get ahead in life. Usually the characters succeed through love. In mine, they get ahead through work.” The U.S. version of “Betty” offers a bracing look at how those class struggles are further fraught by cultural diversity and intolerance, thanks to “Betty” producers Salma Hayek and Silvio Horta, who insisted that it retain a Latina heroine.

The scorn with which Betty is treated at Mode has less to do with her looks than with her place of economic and cultural origin. “Are you DE-LIV-ER-ING something?” enunciates receptionist Amanda when Betty first arrives, assuming that a brown girl in a bad outfit could only be a messenger. “Sale at the 99-cent store?” she later remarks when Betty misses a party. When Daniel frets because Betty has taken the “book” home to Queens, Amanda purrs, “You’re going to get it back and there’s going to be chimichurri sauce all over it.”

“Ugly Betty” is an unabashed soap opera, with all the silliness and melodrama you’d expect. It’s just that this soap is situated in a world in which classism and racism are subtexts lurking behind almost everything.

Although the Salon article doesn’t comment on it, sexism also lurks in “Betty’s” reality. Betty’s boss is a good guy within the show’s plot, but his constant sleeping around - and his objectification of and indifference to his many sexual partners - is treated harshly by the show’s writers. Betty’s boyfriend, Walter, is cute (in a totally non-mainstream-media way) and sweet, but he’s also petulant and whiny whenever Betty makes her career a higher priority than being Walter’s always-on-call girlfriend.

Still, the show’s critique of sexism is soft compared to its razor-sharp depiction of classism and racism. From the Salon review:

But the show again escapes the too-good-to-be-true trap by making clear that Betty is not above wanting to belong or look good. In Episode 3, at Hilda’s urging, she undergoes a makeover. “You want to fit in with these people? They’re not going to change. You have to,” says her sister. “The hair, the face, the clothes. You gotta look it to be it.” She whisks Betty to Choli, a local beauty technician who works her magic on Betty’s hair, nails and wardrobe.

Betty’s transformation is dramatic. With hair piled on top of her head, an outfit of jangling jewelry, a tight skirt and heels, Betty becomes a goddess to the men who catcall her (”She’s hot!” exclaims one) as she walks to the subway the next morning. But the look doesn’t translate in Manhattan, and it provokes the most scathing round of jeering she’s yet received. The other assistants photograph her as if she’s a zoo animal, and Wilhelmina scoffs, “It looks like Queens threw up.” The message is clear: Queens pretty is not Manhattan pretty. Poor pretty is not rich pretty. Latina pretty is not white pretty.

Switching into total fanboy mode, one more thing I love about “Ugly Betty” is that as the show has gone on, the villains who mock and torment Betty have become increasingly humanized. My favorite such moment so far is a brief encounter between Betty’s nephew Justin, an effeminate 13-year-old who loves fashion, and Mark, a flamboyantly gay co-worker who constantly mocks Betty (on Halloween, he comes to the office dressed in cruel Betty drag). After Justin admits that his schoolmates don’t like him very much, Mark sympathetically advises Justin to “Be who you are; wear what you want. Just learn to run real fast.”

Sometimes, “Ugly Betty’s” fish-out-of-water story seems like a metaphor for “Ugly Betty” itself. Like its title character, “Ugly Betty” is optimistic, sincere, and smart, which because of these traits sticks out among the cynical, mean-spirited, and clueless TV shows / co-workers surrounding it. I’m an addict.

(Hat tip: Racialicious).

As if the Source hasn’t had enough problems, now beleaguered Source owners Raymond “Benzino” Scott and David Mays have lost a major lawsuit brought by for Source editor Kimberly Osorio. There is some dispute over the amount of the damages, and it was a little unclear from initial reports exactly what charges the defendants were guilty of. The New York Newsday said the suit did not award Osorio damages for sex discrimination, but they did find that she was fired in retaliation for making sex discrimination claims. Here is a quote from Newsday:

The jury rejected Osorio’s claims that she was subjected to sexual discrimination when she worked at the magazine from 2000 until 2005, becoming the magazine’s first female editor-in-chief.

But it concluded she was fired in retaliation after she made her sexual discrimination claims, complaining of a workplace in which pictures of G-string-clad women hung on the walls and an X-rated movie was shown in the mail room.

On Tuesday afternoon, Osorio expressed satisfaction with what she believed was a $15.5 million verdict, and her lawyers painted it as affirmation that sexual discrimination should not be tolerated at any workplace, despite the jury’s rejection of that claim.

“I definitely hope this has an impact on the attitude of hip-hop toward women,” said Osorio in a news conference. “It was very hard for me emotionally. There was a lot of harm to my reputation.”

I’m waiting for the final outcome, but I think this is a landmark case that sends a signal to some of Hip Hop’s head misogynists. Many women love Hip Hop, but we don’t have to take this sort of brazen anti-woman bigotry. Moreover, the two former owners continue to tarnish their own reputations.

Editor’s Note: Of course, this case is not just about Hip Hop. Sex discrimination is pervasive in many workplaces, but this is one of the first big cases in the Hip Hop industry.

Battlestar Gallactica Executive Producer to Remake Bionic Woman

On the one hand, why?

But on the other hand, I assumed that the remake of Battlestar Gallactica was going to be lousy, too. I was wrong. Really, it makes more sense to use lousy TV shows as fodder for remakes than it does to use good ones.

As long as this doesn’t become an excuse for more of the robot-woman fetish already on ample display in BSG¹, I suppose a new Six-Trillion²-Dollar-Woman could be okay.

1. A possibility Elkins pointed out to me. (back)
2. Inflation. (back)

I’ve started watching Grey’s Anatomy really regularly (they’re repeating Season 1 in NZ), I’m not quite sure why - because I don’t really like it that much. I don’t think it’s well-written, by half-way through season two I hated almost all the characters. But watch it I do, if nothing else it gets things to blog about it.

Shonda Rhimes (Creator of the show) said that she wanted Grey’s Anatomy to look like America, and she did quite well. Of the four authority figures we see most regularly, three are african-american, and one of those is female. This is a world where you can live in a trailer park and grow up to be surgeon. Rich or poor, male of female, Korean, African-American or white - anyone can work at Seattle Grace.

Compare this to Scrubs, the authority figures are all white men, and while you can be a doctor and female or a doctor and African-American, the women of colour are all nurses.

There was this episode of Scrubs where all the main characters were speaking to the camera about their lives. I don’t remember the reason but Carla (the Latina Nurse) was telling a story about when she was a girl, and how she came to be in the job she was in. She was in a store and someone was injured in some way and a doctor came in and saved the patient. Her segment ended with her saying “That’s when I realised I wanted to be a doctor.”

The show didn’t have to tell us why Carla didn’t become a doctor, because it was really clear. What I loved about Scrubs is that it showed a society where racism, sexism, and the class system were all problems.

I don’t believe that individuals can overcome racism, sexism and their position in the class system by themselves, even if you do manage to achieve a position of power despite belonging to and oppressed group then there are going to be scars.

When Izzie told a girl from her trailer park to give up her baby, because Izzie had given up her baby and become a doctor - the show is arguing that anyone can make it. In our society it’s simply not true, and any show that pretends it is is lying to us.** Give me a show set in a world I can recognise.

*Or at least the first couple of seasons of Scrubs, I haven’t watched the show in years, and suspect it has gone downhill.

** Grace Paley, short story writer activist, said of writing that all your characters had to have blood and money. Meaning that everyone comes from somewhere, and where that is shapes who you are, and that everyone is also shaped by the way they meet their material needs . Most TV shows ignore the second rule, and the worlds they create are that much poorer because of it (and, Firefly excepted, Joss Whedon was unfortunately no exception).

Also posted on Capitalism Bad; Tree Pretty

El of My Amusement Park agrees with me that it’s silly to criticize Garden State for using music to convey emotion:

If you are a filmmaker (or editor or music supervisor) and you have a weaker scene, or even just a scene that could be vastly improved by a masterful choice of music, your job is to put kickass music behind that scene. Duh. Music is one of a filmmaker’s tools.[...]

Garden State is a VERY interior film. While Braff could have gone the “Interiors” route of Woody Allen, using no music, and making an unwatchable film, he didn’t. He chose to use music to turn the film inward, to show an exterior landscape, but to allow the viewer to hear the interior landscape.

Of course, I’m utterly mad for the divine Ms. El. But then she has to go and show me up:

My adored Ampersand comments on the Pandagon post and notes:

In the comments of Pandagon, “The J Train” calls Natalie Portman’s character in Garden State a “vagina ex machina” character, which she defines as “the beautiful, together, inexplicably single woman who just seems to fall out of the sky in front of the protagonist.”

This reminds me of my student the other day who pretended to have viewed the film for class, but referred to the main character as a “he” though the protagonist was, in fact, unmistakably a woman, and a movie star to boot. I don’t know if “The J Train” saw or remembers Garden State. One thing Natalie Portman’s character is NOT is “together”. She’s a total mess. It completely understandable that she’s single. She’s a total mess. She doesn’t fall from the sky. She’s a total mess, he’s a total mess, they meet at the doctor’s office to take care of that.

(Also, shouldn’t feminists be a bit alarmed by a phrase like “inexplicably single”? Doesn’t it kind of indicate that the only reason a woman would be single is because she’s damaged goods?)

I haven’t seen Garden State since it was in theaters, so it’s very likely that I’m mistaken and El is correct on this point.

Also, Olive says that Garden State does pass The Alison Bechdel test : “Natalie Portman’s character and her mother discuss a dead hamster.” (But is the hamster male?)

I’m sorry, I didn’t hate Zack Braff’s movie Garden State. It was sweet and wistful and funny. Sure, it wasn’t The Greatest Movie Of All Time, but it certainly didn’t deserve a heaping double-scoop of contempt from Slate.

The Slate article has good laugh lines, but some of its criticisms are bewildering:

Braff also uses pop songs as a cheat, an easy way to heighten the emotional impact of otherwise unremarkable moments. The music in Garden State is so load-bearing that the movie becomes ridiculous if you swap in different tunes—if you don’t believe me, check this out.

The link leads to a YouTube video in which whatever sensitive alt-rock piece was originally in a scene from Garden State is swapped with a hip-hop song. It reminds me of Mad Libs - yes, it’s funny, but it’s not a meaningful criticism. We’ve demonstrated that swapping a song chosen to match the emotional tenor of the scene with one chosen to conflict with it changes the scene. Big deal.

I’m also bewildered by the claim that using music to successfully convey meaning and emotion to the audience is bad.

The Slate critic - who praises Braff’s sit-com Scrubs - is of the “how dare you have artistic ambitions - don’t you know your place?” school of thought:

Instead of focusing on the one thing he’s good at, Braff is quitting Scrubs after this season to focus on his film career. His rumored upcoming projects reveal two possible career paths. The first: the leading role in a Fletch remake. The second: starring in, writing, directing, and producing a remake of a Danish Dogme film about a woman whose husband gets paralyzed in a car accident. Please, Zach, leave paralysis to Lars von Trier. Chevy Chase—now there’s a guy you should look up to.

Yes, because what the world really needs is a Fletch remake, rather than someone attempting to do something that has ambitions of being good.

In the comments of Pandagon, “The J Train” calls Natalie Portman’s character in Garden State a “vagina ex machina” character, which she defines as “the beautiful, together, inexplicably single woman who just seems to fall out of the sky in front of the protagonist. See also Kirsten Dunst, Elizabethtown.”¹That, I think, is a much more on-target criticism than grousing about a movie director incorporating pop music he loves into his film. The Portman character was embarrassing, not so much a character as a girlfriend-shaped blob pulled out of a prop closet so that Braff had something to play his romance scenes against. Portman was aggressively cute! cute! cute! all movie long, but Braff’s script didn’t give her much to play. (And although it’s too long since I’ve seen it for me to be sure, I don’t think Garden State passes the Mo Movie Measure either).

Finally, it’s annoying that Braff — who owes his career to the willingness of producers to cast someone without cookie-cutter movie-star looks — didn’t show a similar daring when he cast the parts in Garden State. Maybe he’ll improve in his future movies.

[Crossposted at Creative Destruction. Right now, the comments on "Alas" are broken, so today is a good day to leave comments at Creative Destruction.]

1. There are also penis ex machinas - see the veterinarian character on Gray’s Anatomy, for instance. (back)

Looking back at the disability press and its coverage of the FDR Memorial and Chris Reeve’s post-injury politics, there’s clearly a different perspective of these famous disabled men than the mainstream media presents. The topic of stereotypical representation of disability by the media and newly-disabled celebrities themselves rather than news about disability rights ignites activists to raise their voices. Each of the following links (save, perhaps, the last one) are worth reading in their entirety.

FDR

After the FDR Memorial in Washington, D.C., had been unveiled, there was an outcry from disability organizations that the wheelchair Roosevelt used daily all through his presidency was nowhere visible. A 1997 article in Ragged Edge (then called Electric Edge online, since the ‘zine-like print version of Disability Rag was still available) questions “FDR: Rolling in his grave?” :

The controversy among crips is this: Is it great that NOD [National Organization on Disability] is calling Roosevelt a hero for crips, and using him as what one person called a “‘culture icon”? Or is it misplaced praise for a man who really went to great efforts to pass as non-disabled?

“It is important to Americans with disabilities — and important as a symbol of how American society perceives its disabled people –that the Memorial depict the man as he was: tall, strong, heroic and disabled. Don’t let them steal our hero!” Hugh Gallagher, author of FDR’s Splendid Deception, has said. He has been liberally quoted by supporters of the NOD campaign.

[Blind reporter Kathi] Wolfe worries that the effort to turn Roosevelt into “a crip icon just because he was a crip” contradicts history. “He wasn’t a disability hero,” she insists. He wasn’t “a crip advocate like Helen Keller, who worked to better conditions for blind and deaf-blind people and veterans who had disabilities — as well as being a feminist and against racism.”

Here’s the Congressional hoopla that led to adding a statue to the Memorial depicting Roosevelt in his wheelchair. It was a rare triumph that the voices of disabled people were heard and effected change, though likely the biggest reason for their success was Roosevelt’s political history of serving oppressed minorities. That aspect of his personal history tipped the scale to support people with disabilities.

Chris Reeve

Along with instantly becoming the most famous, most quoted disabled person on the planet, Chris Reeve was always a lightning rod for political controversy and frustration among disability activists.

In letters to the editor of Electric Edge, readers vent about Reeve:

Due to his high profile, it’s no surprise that much ink is devoted to Christopher Reeve. Our world has collided with that of an A-list celebrity in a way that we could never have anticipated, so it is inevitable that we react to him in the Rag, Mouth, Accent, and all of our other usual forums.

Readers themselves may have witnessed or experienced firsthand the myriad thoughts and emotions in the two or three years immediately following such a massively imposed change as is caused by a spinal cord injury. In the clinical model, there are textbook pages written about a pattern of denial, anger, and depression. Christopher Reeve is, so far, the most powerful, influential person to go through this experience. All his talk of The Cure is nothing new; convert gimps have been singing this tune for years. His use of this crap is now drawing the attention it craves because he’s the one saying it. We’re all horrified because he can undermine the life work of hundreds of advocates in just one speech.

Writing about her 1996 experiences as a South Carolina delegate at the DNC, Harriet McBryde Johnson was on the floor when Reeve addressed the Convention:

They’ve been building up to tonight’s major prime-time speaker, and now they’re introducing him: Christopher Reeve. When the introduction ends, the hall lights are dimmed. Onto the stage he rolls and then sits, gleaming under a dramatic spotlight. The crowd is on its feet, wild with welcome, with excitement, with awe. Yes. They’re awed by the mere sight of this man sitting, smiling, looking around. He hasn’t said a word and they’re going crazy. It’s real. There’s no prompting from the DNC staffers.

I’m in the middle of 60,000 drop-jawed souls, witness to a late 20th-century Pentecost. Physically, Reeve is way above the 60,000, isolated by that spotlight. Symbolically, he’s the object of devotion, not a member of the fellowship. As Reeve and the crowd are having their communion, I feel completely out of it.

He’s speaking now. I try to listen, but things have become surreal. I look up at Reeve.

I look up and I see … a ventriloquist’s dummy.

How could I think such a thing? I’m horrified. If these worshippers knew my thoughts, they’d tear me up and throw me to the dogs.

I tell myself Reeve’s playing out the very peculiar drama of his life the best way he knows how. He’s being used, but what can he do? This is a new role for him. He has no script.

But, there he is, Charlie McCarthy.

Where is this image coming from? No quad I’ve ever known has impressed me this way. I’m pretty quad-like myself. Maybe it’s the staging that objectifies him. Or maybe it’s the contrast between his persona and the physical vigor we expect on the podium of a national political convention.

No. It’s the face. That smile running from ear to ear. The face is commonly considered animated, but I see something … wooden.

I’m warmed by the sudden sunburst of TV lights; a camera crew is setting up. They want the crip reaction to Reeve’s speech.

“Beth, can you block me?”

She stands between me and the camera. The crew establishes a new sightline and she leans right into it. They call someone on their cell phones.

Reeve’s measured syllables are perfectly timed with his mechanical puffs of air. The pauses make what he’s saying seem important. Even in the dim lights I can see the faces in the crowd, transfixed by the sight of him, fascinated by the sound of him. The gleaming presence. The ventilator whoosh. The body propped up in dress-up clothes.

The camera crew realizes that Beth’s not going away. They load up their gear and head elsewhere.

Moments later, there’s a woman in a wheelchair on the giant TV screen in the rafters. She’s scowling. Quick cut to a nondisabled white woman, tears streaming across a smiling face, backlit to highlight her moment of inspiration. The lights pick out a variety of delegates. White, black, old, young, male, female. Everything but crips.

It’s melodrama. The kind of Telethon melodrama I tried to ignore in my childhood and youth, tried to ignore until finally I got angry enough to put up a picket line. How could they bring the Telethon here, to a national political convention? This is my party. How could they do it?

The speech ends and the lights come on. As emotion runs through this vast arena, I’m left cold. I can’t possibly feel what they feel. Now they’ll want to see me the way they see Reeve, a disability object, presumably tragic but brave, someone to make them grateful they’re not like us.

I tell myself I’m overreacting, but I’m almost shaking when I join the line at the elevators. A misty-eyed stranger kneels down beside me and clutches the hand I’m trying to drive my chair with.

“Wasn’t that just wonderful?“

“No,” I blurt out, “it wasn’t at all wonderful. I thought it was pretty bad.”

“Well, I thought it was wonderful.” She springs up and pivots away with an angry shoe-clop on the hard floor. How dare I refuse to be inspired?

On the bus ride back, everyone rhapsodizes about how inspired they are. Gone is the usual friendly chitchat. I stare at the black floor mat and withdraw from the group that has set me apart.

We get to our rooms, way past ready to collapse into our beds, but there’s a blinking light on our phone. A message from Mike Ervin: “Hi. Some people from Chicago are having a press conference tomorrow to deal with the Christopher Reeve, er, problem … “

Beth writes down the details. We’ll be there.

Continuing in Part II, Johnson describes the disability rights media response:

Christopher Reeve’s speech has left us with a problem. By putting him up on the podium the way they did last night, the DNC has fed–and fed upon–the harmful disability stereotypes I’m here, in part, to fight. When I arrive for the disability caucus and find the gang from Chicago outside the door passing out flyers, I’m overjoyed. The flyer, by Mike Ervin and Anna Stonum, deals pointedly with Reeve.

Local TV news shows up. They shoot video of the group and then zoom in on my red delegate badge, proof of my authenticity as a genuine Democrat from the Deep South. Up here, I guess, I’m exotic. They set up lights. Mike and I agree to talk.

There’s a lot of noise and I can barely hear what Mike’s saying. Is he really calling Reeve a whiner? No, not exactly, but close. I think Mike might be going a bit too far, but a wave of gratitude washes over me. He’s a champion who’s fighting not Reeve but the people who put him on that platform.

Another 1997 Electric Edge article asks about Chris Reeve “What’s it gonna take?” Here’s writer Pat Williams:

Some gimps I know say, “give Chris Reeve a break! He’s new to gimpdom. He doesn’t realize there’s more than Cure out there.” These gimps want to believe that after Reeve’s been a gimp for a few years, he’ll get on to disability rights; he’ll speak out on the importance of access, attendant services, all that.

But I don’t buy that. I think Reeve knows exactly what he’s doing. He knows you can’t talk about cure on the one hand and access on the other; he knows people see them as contradictory. He was drawn to the American Paralysis Association, he said, because “they are dedicated solely to finding a cure for paralysis, nothing less. I liked that idea,” Reeve went on. “They’re not into lower sidewalks and better wheelchairs.”

“Suppose Chris Reeve were Barney Frank”:

Suppose he wrote an autobiography about seeking a cure for his homosexuality? Suppose he started the Barney Frank foundation to cure homosexuals? Suppose he held a television special to raise money to find a cure for homosexuality?

Suppose Barbara Walters interviewed him on 20/20 on his work to find a cure for homosexuality?

Imagine it.

A 2000 Ragged Edge response to Reeve’s Superbowl ad where a digitally manipulated Reeve got out of his wheelchair and walked:

With an unemployment rate of over 70%, the vast majority of people with disabilities could not begin to be considered consumers of this product. But the ad was not created with the disability market in mind; its target was people with money. It unabashedly pulled at heartstrings with an in-your-face, no-holds-barred “disability is bad” message. In the tradition of Jerry Lewis, this ad meant to bring tears to the eyes of football fans during their favorite game, courtesy of the incredibly courageous former Superman.

The ad may have done more damage than Jerry himself: unlike the telethon, this “disability is bad” message aired during one of the year’s most watched TV events. Nuveen paid $4 million for that minute of airtime.

At the same link, several disability activists speak out. Paul Longmore:

“The opportunities in this new world for people with disabilities have not been created by technology alone. They are the result of several generations of intensifying disability rights activism that has won passage of laws protecting us from discrimination and guaranteeing us access. . . . We need to ask why society keeps giving Reeve platforms to propagate his views but excludes the disability rights perspective.”

Tom Deniston of Accessible Design Associates:

“If I had pulled a Christopher Reeve 30 years ago, none of at least 1,000 buildings would be accessible today.”

Charles Krauthammer:

“In Reeve’s view, reality is a psychological crutch. His propaganda to that effect undermines those — particularly the young and newly injured — who are struggling to face reality, master it and make a life for themselves from their wheelchairs.”

New Mobility editor Barry Corbet writes:

Alas, poor Christopher Reeve. He can do no right.

In his quest for cure, he’s been roundly criticized by a large and vocal sector of disability activists for obscuring our core message of rights, equal opportunity and dignity.

Alas, poor Christopher Reeve. He can do no wrong.

In his quest for cure, he’s raised millions of dollars for research, elevated public awareness for all people with disabilities and brought hope where once there was none. He’s become Saint Christopher and there’s not much his detractors can do about it.

Ted Gilmer’s 2002 New Mobility interview with Reeve presents a detailed picture of the man and his advocacy while also subtly showing how alienated he is from the average quadriplegic’s life.

In 2003, Mary Johnson’s book Make Them Go Away: Clint Eastwood, Christopher Reeve and the Case Against Disability Rights explains how Reeve’s efforts dangerously undermine disability rights.

In a less critical 2004 article about his death Ragged Edge editor Mary Johnson notes:

We are awaking today to a week in which we will read and hear all sorts of encomiums to Christopher Reeve the actor, the brave man who kept on in the face of tragedy, the man who became an icon for stem cell research.

What we will not hear are tributes to the man who changed America’s understanding of disability discrimination, who put a face on the problems this country causes wheelchair users by the persistent denials of access and accommodation.

Had he lived, Chris Reeve might one day still have come to symbolize to the American public the fight millions of us must wage in order to get out of institutions, into homes of our own, into jobs, into the public environment. Many of us wanted to believe he would someday embrace the rights issue much as he had embraced, as a nondisabled man, many progressive causes.

The Need to Critique

I’ve been getting a lot of heat for daring to criticize Andrea Dworkin’s public writing about disability. Thinking critically about who the widely disparate disabled are and how we’re portrayed isn’t something I decided to play at just to “slam Dworkin.” It’s a long-term project that includes looking at literature and film too. I didn’t have a blog during the FDR Memorial issue or until the very end of Chris Reeve’s life, but I did write a letter to the editor of my college paper about the Memorial:

This letter is in response to the Tuesday State Press editorial stating that FDR should be remembered for his deeds, not his disability. While this newspaper has certainly made more blatant errors recently with regard to group stereotypes, the editorial speaks to the lack of support for diverse groups and their experiences.

It was widely known during Roosevelt’s time in office that he used a wheelchair, and buildings all over Washington were equipped with ramps so he could come and go. These ramps were all removed when he died, attesting to the fact that because his disability was hidden, the access needs of other disabled Americans remained unacknowledged for a couple more decades. No, Roosevelt did not want himself portrayed in a wheelchair, but neither did he want any kind of memorial in his honor. We already have the memorial; now the challenge is to depict Roosevelt honestly and in a way meaningful for future generations.

The history and experiences of other stereotyped and marginalized groups have not emerged without struggle. Recognition of both contributions to society and discrimination from society have been hard won for African Americans, Native Americans, women, gays and lesbians, etc. While the editorial board acknowledged that people with disabilities are often pitied and patronized, they fail to truly examine Roosevelt as a president with a disability. He chose to hide his disability because of discriminatory attitudes. As President Clinton has said: “He knew it was necessary at the time because he knew he had the capacity to be president, and he didn’t want some artificial perception to keep him from being president.”

In addition to Clinton, former Presidents Bush, Carter, and Ford — as well as 16 of Roosevelt’s grandchildren — support a statue depicting him in a wheelchair. History does not change, but what we see as important about our past continues to evolve. Who our heroes and role models are for the future has thankfully expanded. As the editorial states, “FDR was an inspiration to many,” but perhaps not “regardless of his physical state.” Perhaps his experiences with polio are part of why he was so great, and why he could say “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”

Incidentally, the new statue would not cost taxpayers a dime. The National Organization on Disability has pledged to raised the necessary funds.

And Reeve is mentioned anecdotally throughout this blog.

There aren’t many famous disabled people because disabled people don’t get enough media coverage to be recognized as the political activists and political writers they are. It ends up being famous people who become impaired and thrust into a brighter spotlight that society views as our spokespeople — mostly spokesmen. Without criticism of their unwitting role in our continued oppression, their stereotypical messages go unchallenged. It’s not enough to critique the media when the public turns to these celebrities, the roles of the celebrities must be examined too.

Crossposted on The Gimp Parade
Check there for more comments

By the way, new header. Hope y’all like it - I was tired of the old header and wanted a change-up.

Anyhow, “Studio 60″ …It was all right. Not as funny as “Sports Night” or the early “West Wing,” but the first episode was all set-up, so maybe it’ll get sharper as it goes along.

The oddest thing for me, watching the premiere episode, is that I’m a Kristin Chenoweth fan - so I couldn’t help noticing that a major character in “Studio 60″ (Matthew Perry’s ex-girlfriend) is based on Chenoweth. That must be very odd for her. Still, nice to see a positive Christian character on TV. Maybe as the series goes on they’ll add a second non-white character.

There’s a good interview with Kirby Dick, director of the indy documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated, in the current issue of Bitch Magazine. The film is about the ratings board of the Motion Picture Association of America - the folks who decide if each film is “G,” “PG,” “R” or “NC-17.”

Three points of interest (including a chance for you to fight crime from your very own home!):

1) Homophobic & Sexist Double Standards In Movie Ratings

The MPAA uses a double-standard for films with queer content. For example, the same year that “American Pie” — featuring who-knows how many scenes of masturbation and one scene of apple pie-bumping — was rated “R,” the lesbian-themed “But I’m A Cheerleader” was forced to remove a fully clothed, “very tame” mastrubation scene to avoid getting an “NC-17″ rating. (For most movies, “NC-17″ is a commercial kiss of death.)

According to the blog Boy Culture, the MPAA is not only homophobic but also sexist: “The film convincingly argues that the MPAA discriminates against sexual pleasure, particularly female sexual pleasure.”

2) Conflict of What?

Here’s a negative review of “This Film Is Not Yet Rated.” The review is written by Harry Forbes, Director of the Office for Film & Broadcasting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. From Forbes’ review:

To uncover the identities of the MPAA ratings board — ordinary parents who quite logically are kept anonymous to protect them from pressures from the studios and filmmakers — Dick hires a private investigator, Becky Altringer of Ariel Investigations, to surreptitiously stake out MPAA headquarters in Encino, Calif., snooping around the guard’s station in front of the building, going through the garbage of board members at their homes and using other similarly questionable methods.

What Mr. Forbes neglected to mention in his review is that he, Harry Forbes, is himself one of the MPAA ratings board members whose identity is revealed by “This Film Is Not Yet Rated.” (This is pointed out on the film’s blog). It’s dubious for the subject of a film to write a review of that same film, but to do so without disclosing such an enormous conflict of interest demonstrates an appalling lack of ethics.

3) Take A Bite Out Of Crime!

Have you ever wanted to be a crime fighter? Well, here’s your chance! Check out this quote from the Bitch Magazine interview:

Before I submitted the film, I called up the administration of the ratings board, and I said, “Can you assure me that there will be no copies made of this?” And they assured me, in writing, in e-mail, and on the phone, that not only would no copies be made, but that only the raters would see it. Well, I subsequently learned that an MPAA attorney had seen it. I learned that [MPAA president] Dan Glickman had seen it…

I got a call from an MPAA attorney who said “Look, Kirby, I have to tell you, we have made a copy of your film. But you don’t have to worry, because it’s safe in my vault.” [Laughs.] I can tell you that wasn’t reassuring. In a way I wasn’t surprised, but on the other hand, there’s such hypocrisy there. The MPAA has launched this huge antipiracy campaign, and on their website they define even one act of unauthorized duplication of material as piracy. And that’s exactly what they did.

I checked out the MPAA website, and it is indeed crawling with anti-piracy messages. Fortunately, they also provide a free phone number to call and report piracy to the MPAA: 1-800-662-6797. Or, if you prefer, there’s a web form you can fill out.

I’m certainly planning to call and report that Dan Glickman, CEO and President of the MPAA, conspired to illegally copy a copyrighted movie. I strongly encourage all “Alas” readers to do the same.

[Crossposted at Creative Destruction, where the moderation is light as a feather, stiff as a board. If your comments aren’t being approved here, try there.]

So it looks like the next episode of Survivor is following a new model. The cast will initially be divided into four tribes based on the contestants’ races. There was a rumor that Donald Trump was going to do this on the Apprentice, but for whatever reason that never came to fruition. No there really isn’t anything revolutionary about assigning people to “tribes” based on race, and I want to go on record as saying this is a bad idea The producers of Survivor are claiming that this was a way to diversify the cast. I suppose the cast probably will be more diverse. It may be the first reality show ever to have more than 3 Asian and Latino contestants. In fact, if they used the old model the Black cast members would be a tribe of two, the Asian and Latino contestants would be a tribe of 1 each, and there would be no American Indian tribe at all. Well, even in this model there is no American Indian tribe–the tribes will be Asian, Black, White, and Latino. But did they really need to create race based tribe to diversify the cast? I don’t think so. Why not just cast more people of color in the first place?

I don’t want to get to deep into the problem of how they are going to assign people into racial categories, but I’m very curious who they are going to assign to the Asian and Latino categories. I supposed they don’t even realize the dramatic ethnic variation within those categories. I also wonder how they will assign mixed race contestants (of course, maybe they just eliminated all mixed race people from the casting).

I do see a few upsides to having a cast that has more than a token representation of of Blacks, Asians, and Latinos. I think when various racial and ethnic groups are represented in more than token numbers people can get a better sense of the diversity and variety of views within racial groups. The TV pundits were proposing the idea that this is exploiting racial tension. Assuming the tribes are separated in the beginning, this may have the opposite effect. The biggest tensions and rivalries will be within race, at least until the tribes merge.

I know this is largely a publicity stunt for the show, and my main problem is that the publicity surrounding the show may inadvertantly promote the idea that people are more strongly divided by race than they really are. There is a fine line to walk. On the one hand, we don’t need shows that deny the power of racism, but on the other hand, we don’t need shows that make us seem more different than we really are. I’ll be watching the show to see how this plays out.

(Side note: Somebody needs to go over and shakeup The Real World casting folks because they have really backed down on their racial diversity ever since the “Back to New York” where they actually had four people of color in the cast.).