Just because it made me cry

I haven't seen Milk, or any of the other films that were nominated for Oscars. But everyone should watch the speech that Dustin Lance Black gave when he won the best original screenplay for Milk:



via Yes Means Yes

Battlestar Galactica (Spoiler Free)

Political bloggers tend to be geeks. So there has been lots of discussion of Battlestar Galactica among American blogs recently. Including a series of letters to the editor of fleet newspapers about the latest events in season four.

I wrote my own letter to the editor over at Alas. I won't post it here, because obviously many people won't have seen the new episodes. But if you have (or dont' mind spoilers) my view of the BSG world is here.

Note please keep discussion in this thread only to episodes that have aired in New Zealand.

I know I'm a little bit behind the curve on this one...

Outrageous Fortune is absolutely fucking brilliant.

I haven't enjoyed a NZ TV show this much since Strangers (not only do I remember Strangers I could still do the sign language for ZanEmMoKel - I have such hidden talents).

I'd watched the first episode of Outrageous Fortune when it airedand thought 'this is OK', but I hadn't loved it enough to watch the second episode - which is a shame because the second episode would have gotten me addicted seeing as how it features a strike at the supermarket Cheryl was working at, and the supposed ditz swapped drinks with the man who was trying to drug rape her and tied him to a bed.

I've only watched five episodes so far, so consider this a provisional rave review - but I can't wait for more.

I already though Robyn Malcolm was awesome - but I clearly had no idea. Cheryl West owns the show, and Robyn Malcolm is incredible in the role - she fights for her family - and they fight for her back (and with her, as you'd expect - the family relationships are very well drawn). As I've said before I don't believe that individual characters can be feminist,** but the characters and the relationships between them make this a feminist show with Cheryl at the centre.

I keep coming back to the great politics of the show - but I don't want to distract readers from its excellent quality. It's very, very funny, with a humour that comes out of the characters. By episode five I was in hysterics just at the way Munter was looking at Van.**

I haven't even mentioned the way cops, prison guards, lawyers and other members of the establishment are portrayed - let's just say it makes me very happy.

I love art that makes ordinary people's lives epic. Outrageous Fortune does that in spades.

Does anyone have early season three episodes recorded? Or will I have to wait for the DVD?

I'm sure I'll have more crazy raves when I've watched some more episodes.

* Although if I did Cheryl West, may well join Kaylee on the list of characters who come closest.

** I know this blog post already has a ridiculous number of superlatives, but there are no words for how much I'm loving Van and Munter. Munter is hilarious, and Van is so very sweet (and also hilarious).

Guess what?

You know sometimes you find random bits of information that really excite you, but no-one else cares about? Like the fact that Arthur Ransome was married to Trotsky's secretary - and then you have to find someone who cares about left-wing politics and read Swallows and Amazons as a child so they can be excited about this fact with you.*

One of the advantages of having a blog is that you can pretend that people who share your interests exist just by posting.

So it is with great joy that I share with my many, fascinated, readers my new knowledge about Dobby. The first House Elf to demand wages is named after Dobby Walker a communist, unionist and radical lawyer. JK Rowling chose the name because Dobby Walker was the person who invited Jessica Mitford and her husband Bob Treuhaft to join the communist party. I'm not sure that Dobby would have been particularly pleased by the comparison - Dobby the person ran a tight union ship - and Dobby the house-elf bargains down wages 10 galleons a week to one galleon a week.

Isn't that exciting?

* Although finding a radical subtext in his books would be pretty impossible from memory.

Mute! Mute!

I don't watch much TV usually. When Joss Whedon returns, then I'll have shows . What this means is that I've forgotten how awful TV advertising is. I am often genuinely shocked and appalled by the shit they put on TV adverts.

There was an ad which told us that it was our patriotic duty to lose weight. "What happened NZ?" the viewer is asked - while we are shown pictures of fat people "How did we go from a nation of sports lovers to a nation of couch potatoes. Then there's some flag waving (real flag-waving, not metaphorical flag-waving, and an order to go on Weight Watchers. Although it didn't seem to be Weight Watchers usual style - their focus is usually more targeted to people who might join Weight Watchers (middle-class women).

Until the 'weight watchers' part came up I thought it was government funded. It appears that the government is going in that direction, which I find immensely frustration, because I actually like the "Push Play" campaign. It helps that there is some scientific evidence showing that regular exercise has some health benefits (unlike weight loss, only eating a chocolate bar once a term, and whatever else they've made up recently).

But the non-awfulness of the Push Play campaign is more fundamental than that it's not at all moralistic. It's focused on making exercise doable and fun. I have a very long blog post up my sleeves about the extreme fucked-upedness of linking morality, health and 'lifestyle'.* But for now I'll just point out that telling people they suck isn't a particularly good motivating factor

The Push Play Campaign isn't how I'd go about changing people's exercise levels (if I thought they needed to be changed and I don't have any data on that). Unlike Sue Kedgeley** I don't think people do the things they do because they're stupid or lack information, but because of lack of options. I'd be about lessening people's work hours, making public transport free, providing free recreational facilities, and making sure that everyone feels safe, and is safe, outside day or night. But I'm fairly certain the Push Play campaign isn't doing any damage, and may even help exercise seem more doable.

Unfortunately we seem to be pointed more and more towards state sanctioned damage doing.

* Although now I've mentioned it, you know I'm never going to actually write it.

** There's no way I could get through a post without a dig at her.

We will have pride in how we live

I have a new favourite Christmas song. I'm not sure what my old favourite Christmas song was, but there's no way it can be as awesome as Merry Christmas Maggie Thatcher from Billy Elliot: The Musical. This is the chorus:

So merry Christmas Maggie Thatcher
May God's love be with you
We all sing together in one breath
Merry Christmas Maggie Thatcher
We all celebrate today
'Cause it's one day closer to your death

I wasn't particularly fond of the movie Billy Elliot. I felt it wasn't particularly well written, and the mining strike was too far in the background. I wouldn't have expressed any interest in the musical, but my sister has just come back from the UK, and she brought the Cast Recording with her.

I'd consider a song about celebrating Maggie Thatcher's death enough to make a musical anyway, but there's more. There are songs of solidarity and struggle, which give workers' struggle weight and importance.

I'll probably never see the musical, for all I'm loving soundtrack and I'm still a little unsure about the idea. I believe passionately that we need to tell the stories of our struggles. Knowing about fighting and winning, even fighting and losing, is the hope in our history. I don't know much about the miner's strike, and I'm a trade unionist and historian, who was born in Britain. Billy Elliot: The Musical will keep the history of the miners strike alive.

But this a West End musical, with seat prices to match. At what point do people telling their own stories become the commodification of resistance? Does it matter that the creators don't see themselves writing about someone else's life, but feel resonances in their own life for the story that they tell?

Do ex-miners and their families get in free?

* . I think the miners, the union movement, and the working class, would have been far stronger if their vision of the future hadn't been so very limited.

Review: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (SPOILERS)

I wasn't going to buy Harry Potter: The Deathly Hallows. I could have scraped together the money, but at the moment if I have a spare $35 sitting around it should go to the lock-out fund. But I remembered that I had a $20 Whitcoulls voucher, and wanted nothing more than to read the book in one sitting, and it was an enjoyable and engrossing five hours or so.

A lot of what bothered me in the last few books really worked in this one. There's much better pacing and much less artificial tension, and plots that only exist because the characters aren't talking to each other. From the seven Harrys on I was totally there for the ride. When I ended the book, I felt satisfied (the epilogue was another matter), and I was certainly cheering at times.

As I've said before, I love serial story-telling. The only thing I like better than enjoying serial story-telling is picking apart serial story-telling. I like the sense of collective ownership that fans feel over these stories.

So I'm going to spend rather a lot of words analysing the meaningover the meaning of these stories, what I liked about them, and what didn't work for me. If you don't enjoy this then go somewhere else. I'm using headings because I'm too tired for transitions.

Fight back
My favourite line was when Harry Potter can't find a good memory for a Patronus and Neville (or Luna or someone) says "We're still fighting, what's a happier memory than that?" I'm a sucker for messages about the joy and strength that comes from fighting together.

There's been a real tension in between the single hero who must go it alone, and the idea that people are stronger together than they are alone. I've not time for individualistic super-hero crap, so I've been glad that the tension has generally been resolved on the side of fighting together.

But I felt this book took the idea a little bit further than any of the previous books had, as Dumbledore's secrecy and authority were undermined. I think she could have gone further than this, and with Dumbledore's ambiguity (although I liked what we got).

We also got people challenging Harry for acting alone, not just Ron and Hermione, but most of Hogwarts by the end, and Harry agreed they were right, and couldn't have won without them.

Of course that doesn't make Harry Potter an ode to collective action, Harry does act alone, and wouldn't have succeeded out there. But I don't think it buys into the individualistic super-hero crap which drives me nuts in many fantasy books.

Occupation
J K Rowling is a genre children's writer - most of what she's writing makes more sense when you know the genres she's writing in (I don't love the fact that she chooses the genre over sense, politics and at times characters). In the later books she's been pulling in world war two genres, and I think it works really well. I thought the creeping fascism of the ministry was very well done, and creepy. The scene's in the ministry of magic were particularly powerful.

I've preferred the books where our heroes were the resistance (5 and 7) than the others where they were more clearly part of the establishment. In this context the basic obstacles of the beginning, staying hidden, finding food and fighting boredom, worked really well. I also loved Lee's radio show (and could have used more of it actually, it'd be nice if it had been the consistent way our members had found out about the outside world - although would it have killed her to have a single female character on the show?). While the dangers of fascism isn't the most challenging message (although she has deliberately drawn parallels with post-September 11 Britain and US policy), I much prefer Harry, Ron and Hermione fighting the government, than being part of it.

The only way the occupation parallel didn't work for me, was the amount of collaboration at Hogwarts, which creeped me right out. Hogwarts was incredibly violent and abusive, bad enough that it would have done real damage to the students. Teachers like McGonagall just tried to mitigate that damage rather than fighting back. I think that decision was a serious one and should have been given more weight.

Death
I think she should have killed off more people, Fred, Tonks, Lupin, Colin Creevy Crabbe (or was it Goyle) and Snape (although that was clearly inevitable)? And fifty people we've no idea who they are? The ratio of named deaths to unnamed deaths seemed far too high to me, particularly since the people we knew were shown as being in the centre of the battle. If she wasn't prepared to even kill off Hagrid, Luna or Neville, she should have killed some more Weasleys, teachers, or other characters who we'd known for seven books.

I also felt she fumbled a bit with Fred's death - the tragedy of Fred's death is George continuing on without them, much more than Molly Weasley's rage (although I'm not complaining about Molly Weasley taking action). I found Dobby's death easily the most moving and important in the book.

Relationships
I said that the relationships would annoy me, and the idea of them certainly did. Why is it in fantasy everyone has to have met and got together with their soul-mate and life-partner by the age of 17? They're cookie dough; they're not done baking.

Having said that, I actually quite enjoyed Ron and Hermione. Their difficulties and uncertainties about each other, their unwillingness to declared. The way they treated each other didn't set off any dysfunction alarm bells for me (this is quite a major achievement really) Even Ron's attempt at suave moves in the beginning didn't annoy me; they were about him being nice, rather than about him being a dick. Which meant that I could appreciate that the reason he was turning to books for his moves was because he was really insecure about his position (I thought his fears that came out when he were trying to destroy the Horcrux were quite well done). When they finally get together, it's because Ron was listening to Hermione. She finally snogs him when he thinks about the house elves in the final battles. This seemed as good a basis for a relationship as any to me.**

But Harry & Ginny - 'I'm going to leave you because I'm putting you in danger' is my least favourite relationship device ever.**** Mostly because it usually just rings so false, it's a false attempt to create tension, where there's no real reason for it. If Harry and Ginny had just kept their relationship secret and made out at every opportunity the book would have been just the same. He wouldn't actually have put her in danger by kissing her (and she was doing a pretty good job of putting herself in danger).

What I find so frustrating about this, is that limiting women's choices for them is portrayed as a romantic act. Ginny's a smart girl, she can understand danger, he could have told her what his worries were and they could have made decisions together. Loving someone shouldn't mean limiting their agency.

But what's really odd is that the 'I'm a danger to you, I cannot be with you' plot was also part of Lupin and Tonks story. I guess I just don't understand where this plot comes from. Do people in times of danger break up supposedly to protect their partner? It seems completely unlikely to me. There aren't many circumstances where the enemy can use a relationship against you in real life. When authors use this device is there a real emotion that they're trying to map onto? Or are they just using it for cheap tension?

What I did like that the book ultimately valued friendship. Luna Lovegood's picture of Harry, Hermione, Ron, Neville and Ginny was awesome (if we had to have an epilogue couldn't we have found what she was doing).* The entire book is structured around Ron, Hermione and Harry, and the fact that Ron and Hermione start making out doesn't change the dynamic of that friendship. In the end it's Ron and Hermione that Harry turns to, even though he's decided that he's not a danger to Ginny anymore (I'm still rolling my eyes).

Love
Ultimately the Harry Potter stories were about the power of love. But not the abstract hippy sort of 'all you need is love', but the very real love we have for people we care about. That loving one person can be transformative and the love of one person can be translated outwards to help you fight for everyone.

This idea was shown in all the characters on our side, over and over again, in the friendships they made and kept and the way they fought together. It was shown with Snape and Lily, even though that was infinitely predictable. But I thought it was the Malfoys that showed this idea most powerfully, when their love for each other, eventually led them to take a stand against Voldemort.

I'm not entirely convinced by this idea. I think in the real world our enemies are as capable as loving as we are. But I do think there is hope in love. I think most of us who fight for a better world get our strength to fight not from the abstract idea of people, but the concrete reality of the people we love.

There are worse messages for a generation of children to grow up with.

Epilogue
The epilogue was the most disappointing part of the book, partly because it was so trite and predictable. But also because it showed that they had just saved the world, not changed it.* While I was reading it I hoped that the book would go further than it did. During the book the wizards attitudes towards Muggles, Goblins and House-elfs were all shown to be limited. The Ministry of Magic consistently acted in their own interests, not in the interests of the people. Defeating Voldemort was not enough. I didn't need them to succeed in this, or even necessarily to try, but I'd liked it if she'd left open up the possibility of trying to create a bigger change than beating one evil guy. The epilogue shut that down.

*I think left-wing activist women would probably appreciate the fact that he was the one to change his views. I've seen many relationships with sexually transmitted politics over the years, and usually they go the other way.

** Well technically non-consensual sexual contact, which is somehow welcomed by the woman is my least favourite relationship plot device, but I'm almost always successful in trying to avoid stories which use that plot device (yes that was a pointed remark about Buffy, yes this review contains too many Buffy references)

*** I strongly identified with both Luna and Hermione. I was nerdy and completely out of it as a teenager. Obviously these characters are created for women to over-identify with, so that's not a surprise.

Review: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Movie

When I was walking to the movie theatre we were talking about what they would include and one of my friend's said 'don't spoil me' (and then claimed he was too busy to read the books, but apparently has plenty of time for the movies). Just to be clear that this post has spoilers for the movie, and every book that has been published.

The movie theatre had big stickers on the back of every fourth seat saying "1 in 4 women and children are the victims of domestic violence." Apart from my dislike of running together 'women and children' I thought that was an awesome way of representing the effect of violence within families. This week is refuge appeal week so give money if you can (last year the government gave more money to Clint Rickards than Wellington Women's Refuge, so it'd be good if other people could pitch in).

That wasn't the only good thing to happen before Harry Potter started, because they showed a Northern Lights preview (well they're calling it a Golden Compass preview, but whatever). I'm terribly excited.

I think the Harry Potter books are getting worse, and the movies are getting better, as the series progresses. I think this might be related. In the later books J K Rowling has no page limit, and doesn't have to listen to an editor so they just sprawl. She's particularly prone too over-foreshadowing, and overlengthy explanations by Dumbledore at the end of each book. I think all the unnecessary bits in the books make it easier to make a movie (even as the books are getting longer), as the movie can tailor itself to the essential story (which I think J K Rowling has been two drafts away from in every book after the third).

I'm not suggesting that Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is the greatest movie playing, but it is very engaging. David Yates was previously a TV director, and I think in some ways this services . In TV you are servicing characters and a story first and foremost. Previously directors (particularly Chris Columbus who directed the first two) were far too interested in set pieces to do either of those. Alfonso Curon, is a brilliant director, but in Prisoner of Azkaban he was more interested in creating mood and atmosphere than characters and story.

The casting directors did very good jobs and were very lucky, because the actors' physicality continues to work for the parts. Ginny was a walk-on part in the first movie, and would have been 9 when she was cast and that the actress has grown up in roughly the way the character in the book did.

Imelda Staunton was brilliant as Dolores Umbridge, and everything about her costumes, and design of her room emphasised her character, and made the movie. To underscore the banality of evil isn't a particularly new point, but it was incredibly well done. The movie is worth seeing just for Dolores Umbridge's room alone (you'll know what I mean when you see it).

While I have an affection for J K Rowling, it's next too impossible to put a radical reading on the Harry Potter books.* But I feel this book, in particular, has a good heart. The students getting together to fight authority is a theme that works for me, and the movie really emphasised this angle. The simple scene of Fred and George sympathising with the first year who had had the (creepy and totally sadistic) crazy cutting lines thing underscored that nicely (and their departure was spectacular. And the ending is a reiteration of 'we're stronger together than we are alone', which always makes me happy.

And just to go on the record with my (rather boring) predictions for the final book: Snape isn't evil, Dumbledore was telling him to kill him, Snape was in love with Lily and the reason Dumbledore trusts him will be something to do with that love. More than one Weasley will die in the final book. The love stories will annoy me.

Feel free to add your own thoughts about Harry Potter in general and predictions (but no spoilers, although I don't suppose there are any).

*And don't even get me started on the gender politics - which are made worse in the movies by upping the ways Mrs Weasley conforms to a stereotype (which is quite an accomplisment in itself).

Bring Back Joss

My grandmother died on the weekend. I'm going to try and write something about her life at some point.

In the meantime all I've got energy to write about is TV. They aired the season finale of Heroes* in NZ yesterday. My main reaction was to miss Joss Whedon. I know that he could never have kept as many threads going as the creators of Heroes did, but the season finale would have been much better if he'd written it:

1. The ending of Hiro's story for this season wouldn't have been him leaving Ando to go kill Sylar alone. I have no time for individualistic superhero crap.

2. The female characters would have occasionally talked to each other, this may even have lead to them developing relationships with each other.

3. The two characters with the most central arcs in the season wouldn't be the rich, powerful, white guys.

Although we are spared yet another crazy, very skinny female character.

* A show I've only just started watching. It's enjoyable to watch, and has its moments - but the virgin/whore complex is a problem and I'm not loving the existance of a mystical black man without a name.

Maori stories

I've been following the TVNZ story with a building sense of 'Rick Ellis said what?' astonishment.

But the debate that followed has frustrated me, because it is so superficial. I agree that showing Maori stories on television is really important (and Norm Hewitt on Dancing with the Stars isn't going to cut it, haka or no). But the executive producer on Shortland St argued that Shortland St was telling Maori stories because two of the CEOs have been Maori.

I'm sure there are many Maori on police 10-7 and Locked Down (a series about Rimutka prison). That's because our racist police and justice system disproportionately beat-up and lock-up Maori much more frequently than Pakeha. There's an important Maori story to tell in there, but it's not going to be told in those shows, because they're told from the perspective of the police and the prison guards.

As long as we live in a racist society Maori stories will include being beaten up by police far more than being CEOs. Television is unlikely to tell the story of police racism, from the victims perspective, but it'd be nice if someone could point out the gap.

FAILED

I have completely failed to write a post on May Day. I got distracted by the American Freedom Movement and bashing Democrats. Which makes me a pretty awful kind of left-wing blogger.

But May Day is actually quite a simple concept, that can be summed up five words: 'There's Power in a Union':



PS: While I'm posting Billy Bragg videos, my all time favourite is him singing Between the Wars on Top of the Pops:

Will YouTube give MTV the sack*

Regular readers may have noticed I'm a Billy Bragg fan. I am - although I resent the fact that he hasn't toured New Zealand since I became a fan (which is a long time - I'm almost 29 and I once sang 'A New England' and meant it). Anyway in a recent YouTube excursion (a rare treat for me, since I don't have YouTube at home). I found a copy of Billy Bragg and Bill Bailey singing Unisex Chip shop (Bill Bailey's Billy Bragg parody). I can't recommend it highly enough - the gherkins and tigers are perfect:



There's lots of Billy Bragg fun on YouTube. My favourites included Between the Wars from his first appearance on Top of the Pops - he's so serious. I also loved this video for There's Power in a Union, but I couldn't decide if I thought the images of women were tokenistic (I'm leaning towards 'no they're representations of a gendered workforce')

Then there's videos for Sexuality, Great Leap Forward, Boy Done Good. Just a warning that they're a tad smurfy - what is it about folk singers and extremely literal music videos?

*From a recent live versions of Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards.

Shakespeare is fucked in the head

My friend Rowan and I have a bit of an Emma Thompson thing going. We're planning a grand rewatch of all her movies (except Maybe Baby and Henry V) that will end with Sense and Sensibility. Tonight we were watching Much Ado About Nothing. I don't think I'd seen it since it came out when I was 15. It was the first movie I ever went to see twice at the cinema - I loved it.

Seeing it tonight was a little different; I no longer consider Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh the perfect celebrity couple (which is good because neither do they). But we found one plot-line distressing.

Like most Shakespeare plots it's quite ridiculous. Claudio and Hero are betrothed and the villian* sets it up so Claudio will think that Hero is having sex with another man. Claudio confronts Hero at the wedding, throws her across the room. Her father is also abusive. Hero then pretends to be dead, but than makes no sense at all.

We couldn't listen to it; we changed the language to Polish so we wouldn't have to deal with how awful Hero's situation was. There were some nice moments - Emma Thompson was taking it all seriously, and Kenneth Branagh was backing her up, and choosing the abused women over his abusive friend.

But then Claudio and Hero marry - and we're supposed to be joyful about it.

There is a version of this play that I could watch - where the horror of Hero's situation was given weight, where their marriage is not a joyful event, but one the audience dreads. I feel the same way about Taming of the Shrew, from what I've read a feminist version of the play is usually one where Katherine implies she has some sort of power. I disagree, a feminist version would be one that played those events absolutely straight. Taming of the Shrew is a tragedy; a tragedy that occurs far more often than young lovers commit suicide because their parents don't like each other.

* Played by Keanu Reeves! He's only the second worst actor in the movie too - Robert Sean Leonard plays Claudio and we cracked up when he tried to act sad when it was revealed how wrong he was.

Unless...

I was babysitting for the Frog (my friend's toddler) tonight and one of the stories I read him was the Lorax. The last page goes like this:

UNLESS someone like you cares a whole awful lot,
nothing is going to get better. It´s not. SO...
Catch! calls the Once-ler. He lets something fall.
It´s a Truffula Seed. It´s the last one of all!
You´re in charge of the last of the Truffula Seeds.
And Truffula Trees are what everyone needs.
Plant a new Truffula. Treat it with care.
Give it clean water. And feed it fresh air.
Grow a forest. Protect it from axes that hack.
Then the Lorax and all of his friends may come back.

It seemed like so much responsibility to put on such a little baby, I got upset and teary reading it to him.* The world felt like a heavy weight today, and I didn't want to give it to him.

* Just to clarify I haven't completely changed my politics - I don't think the unless... is one boy and one Truffula seed (lots of children is a different matter), but it was close enough to upset me.

Review: Shortbus

I went to see Short Bus tonight. There are a lot of good things you could say about this movie. It's got lots of lovely and real moments, humour and wit, and, most importantly, it shows people having sex. Not just soft lighting and fading to black, but people having sex in a way that an actual person might actually have sex.

I'm not going to say any of these things, instead I'm going to explore why, despite these features, the movie left me cold.

The most obvious reason was that there was just too much non-consensual sexual activity for me. A professional dominatrix has sexual contact with a man who repeatedly steps over her boundaries, and she can't afford to enforce those boundaries. A stalker stalks a couple for two years, and culminates this in touching one member of the couple sexually when he is passed out. The climax of both the major plots involve scenes with sexual contact that is clearly non-consensual.

I don't have a problem with movies depicting non-consesual sex. What I need is for a movie that depicts non-consensual sex to take that seriously. To give the viewer space to be creeped out. I need to know that the director also believes that non-consensual sex is a problem, or else I can't play in his world. I can't switch from creepy non-consensual sex scene to happy orgy party scene, where one woman's orgasm restores power to a city.

Shortbus sold itself, both during the movie itself and through publicity, as a broad view of life and sex. I think if I hadn't thought of the movie like that I would have enjoyed it a lot more, becuase my other problem was what a limited world the movie showed.

Partly it was limited in the way films set in Manhattan are so often limited. Ridiculously rich people are meant to stand for us all. I realised while watching that I'm prejudiced against Manhattan movies, or at least that subset of Manhattan movies that believe that by showing us Manhattan they are showing us the world. If what I've been told is true, then if you can afford an apartment that looks spacious in Manhattan, then you have a reasonably to very high income.

But it was more than that, the extras in the scenes set in the club were remarkably similar for a movie that was supposed to show us a broad section of human experience. They were almost all young, conventionally attractive and white. The exceptions were tokenised to an extent that felt insulting. The old man wasn't just an old man who might enjoy sex like everyone else, he was also the only old person in the building (and as a side-note I don't think he deserved any forgiveness or absolution). The non-white characters were given pointed roles (one of the main characters or one of the few lesbians who was shown twice), which presumably was meant to make us forget how few of them there were. There were two fat people in there, but both were meant to show how weird and freakish this club was, and didn't actually do anything (because that would be too much).

I discussed all this, as we were walking home afterwards. We agreed on the points I mentioned above, But my friends felt they had gained something from this movie, and many people gave it rave reviews. I understand why. We're so deprived of anything resembling real images of sex and sexuality, that for so many of us a step in the right direction is really important.

I'm not sure that any movie can take the weight that the director and marketers tried to give this one. If films acknowledge sex as a part of our life then this could be a movie about a sex therapist, a depressed man, and the people they meet. But they don't, and it's not. I'm not saying you shouldn't see it, because movies like it are rare - but we deserve better.

Dude you kissed a girl

The first episode of Ugly Betty aired in New Zealand a couple of days ago. My short review is that it looks awesome (although the ending was way too pat, and if the point is supposed to be that if you're smart you can succeed I will stop watching).*

One aspect bothered me, and that was the part of Betty's presumed to be gay cousin - Justin. He wanted to watch fashion TV, and was slightly effiminate, and I suspect that from this the audience was supposed to deduce the sexuality of a 10 year old.**

It probably didn't help that immediately after watching Ugly Betty I watched a few episodes of Arrested Development.*** In this show there is also a character that the audience is supposed to believe is gay, based on a general sexual awkwardness and a feeling of oddness. I've been bothered by this particular trope ever since Andrew in Buffy.

I find the idea that we can deduce someone's sexuality from their gender conformity, or anything else besides their sexual desires, is completely regressive.

I don't think it's a coincidence that these characters are always men. A woman who acted and dressed butch, and whose sexuality was uncertain wouldn't be amusing, she'd be pathetic. The joke (such as it is) is dependent on a society that views feminine traits as inferior in general and inexplicable in men.

For all the fancy dressing (and all these shows are in some ways progressive or alternative) these characters are basically more gender policing.

I would actually like to see a male character who gave off all sorts of effeminate vibes was sexually attracted to women, or reveal that a character who behaved in typically masculine ways was in fact in the closet.****

* I also saw America Ferrar's golden globe acceptance speech, where she said "It's such an honor to play a role that I hear from young girls on a daily basis how it makes them feel worthy and lovable and they have more to offer the world than they thought." I believe her, but do want to pont out what a sad inditement on the world that is.

** I've only seen the first episode so I could be wrong and I'm sure people will let me know in the comments if I am.

** Also awesome, don't get me wrong. I keep on having a new favourite joke, for a long time it was the fact that none of the family could tell any Latino people apart, then there was the Atkins diet episode, but my new favourite is "they won't do anything to me, it's shoplifting and I'm white."

**** Of course on Buffy this happened with the Larry character, and it was great. Except the actor was a Christian homophobe and they killed him off.

Review: Children Of Men (reasonably spoiler-free)

Children of Men is a distopian movie, about a world where no woman has given birth for 18 years. It contains the most powerful scene I've ever seen on film. Kee, a young black woman is going into labour on a bus at the entrance way of a refugee camp. We're watching her fighting the contractions and out the window we see refugees being tortured by the police.

What made this sequence so powerful was not that it showed us a distopian future, but that it showed us our distopian present. The images of refugees who are selected as dangerous at the entrance to the campis deliberately evocative of photos we've all seen from Abu Grahib. The camp they then enter is Gaza with British signage. The most potent political comment, in this amazingly political film, was the message refugees heard as they entered the hell-hole of a refugee camp: "Do not support terrorism, we are here to help you."

The set, and the world-creation, is truly remarkable in its detail, and there's barely a frame that doesn't contain information about the world of the film, and criticism of our world.

What makes Children of Men's critique of our world so radical and thorough- is it takes the world that is usually hidden from those of us who live comfortably, the experiences of Iraqis, palestinians, illegal immigrants and so on, and makes it the centre-piece of Britain's future. Our government's are as racist and as brutal as the world, but at the moment they can hide it from a good portion of their population.

I did have a minor problem with the movie, and that was it's characters - or lack thereof. It is a really sign of the quality of the movie that the fact that the major characters are completely unmemorable is a minor problem rather than a reason to demand my money back. While some of the minor characters were well drawn, the main characters - particularly Theo and Kee very under-developed. This was probably a deliberate choice, which would have worked better if they hadn't given Theo a back-story from cliche hell (guess what? It involves a girl).

One of the reasons that the movie can sustain characters who don't hold your interest, is because it is incredibly well-paced. Like Theo we are taken, a little bit reluctantly, along a series of events we have no control over, and we don't know what's coming next. I get very jumpy in action movies (actually I got jumpy in Happy Feet), and my friend Betsy grabbed my hand to reassure me that it was OK. Then, once they reached the refugee camp I grabbed her hand, and it turns out that we really needed that.

Children of Men is full of horrors, but it does offer us hope. I may write more about it's politics of change. But for me, the hope didn't come from the Human Project, a For me, the hope wasn't about the group that Kee was trying to reach - an organisation we knew nothing about. The hope came from watching people who kept fighting for a better world, even though they had no reason to believe that anyone would be alive to live in it.

I do recommend this movie, it is an astonishing piece of film-making. It wouldn't have stayed with me so much, if it wasn't real. We must fight for a world where women don't have to give birth in these situations.

Review: The Break Up

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.* 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.

* 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).

Call it 'Love' or call it 'Reason'

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.

The Wind that Shakes the Barley

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.