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As time wears on, I - like most other television watching Americans - want the Writers Guild of America strike to end. For the most part the strike doesn’t bother me (God forbid I be forced to leave the house or read a book), but I am annoyed by the idea that the strike might promote an influx of more eye-gouging ‘reality’ television or that it could negatively impact the shows that are coming to an end this year.

I have no sympathy for the producers and studio executives who could have easily forgone a strike by making equitable concessions to Writers Guild demands. I was surprised by how little control and compensation many Hollywood writers receive for their work, which plays no small role in making studios billions of dollars. I understand that the major studios are playing their available cards - and that their considerations encompass more than just appearing insuperable to the writers - but this generally sucks.

On the other hand, it irritates me to see two generally wealthy and well-off groups argue melodramatically about money, particularly when the country is filled with people who are much more screwed over than Hollywood writers are.

Seeing the panic that “new media” has caused for both the film and music industries, I think it was wise of the writers to go on strike now. I disagree with those who say that they should have waited to see how lucrative methods of “new media”/internet distribution will become. If companies do find means of profit in these distribution methods, I would think that it would be much harder for writers to get financial ownership of them down the road. What would compel major studios to generously give up the financial rights to an assured area of tremendous revenue? It could be argued that the studios would want to invest what is necessary to keep their “new” revenue stream going, but I suspect that wouldn’t turn out to be the case.

My primary concerns, as I stated above, reflect my status as a television watcher; not an insider. What will happen to the shows whose final seasons are this year? Will I be able to see the end of Scrubs as it was intended? Will scripted comedies and dramas become even less visible on television as studios favor even more easy-to-produce ‘reality’ shows? As with many other things, we probably won’t be able to assess the damage until it’s done. Here’s to pastime creativity.

No, not for your music, but for your decision to release your new album In Rainbows yourselves, and for the fact that you made it available for download at a pay-what-you-will price. I thunderously applaud the decision… not that the members of Radiohead are likely gasping for accolades. :)

Sometimes you may not like the artist, but you love their decisions. How truly enterprising.

This is ridiculous:

Out-of-synch lip-synching. Lethargic movements that seemed choreographed by a dance instructor for a nursing home. The paunch in place of Spears’ once-taut belly.

People really do loathe her, don’t they? Otherwise I don’t think this kind of ‘reporting’ would be acceptable. It’s not a fanboy evaluation. I’m not reading what Perez Hilton thought of the VMAs. It’s an a-r-t-i-c-l-e. Unprofessional, juvenile, and sexist, but an article nonetheless.

“Write absolute music and let go of music for film because it can cause enormous delusions: if a film composer, who wants to do film, a real composer, is not called by anyone, the composer doesn’t exist. That is a very serious and sad situation.”

- Ennio Morricone

An interesting observation and probably excellent advice, although difficult to follow.

I read an article that really irritated me regarding the concept of the ‘emotional affair’, i.e. cheating on your spouse in the form of emotional support from another. The whole idea of the emotional affair is exploited to make women feel guilty about having profound personal relationships outside of their marriage.

I’m not saying that forming emotional connections to someone else can’t be hurtful to your spouse or evolve into something that becomes a full fledged physical affair, but I loathe this idea that a married woman has to cut herself off from the world; that every moment of satisfaction and fulfillment she receives should be through her husband and her husband alone; that having a valuable friend outside of her husband is something she should feel guilty about.

Oh society, with your mixed messages and lose-lose ultimatums - you really have it out for girls, don’t you?

I was treated to a splattering of posters for the Bratz movie around Manhattan today, a film based upon the popular doll/cartoon/puzzle piece franchise. These are Bratz dolls:

Ewwwwwwww… It sends a shudder down my spine to even have to upload the picture. You’ve probably seen them. A quick glance, they look like any twiggy thin Barbie doll, then you do a double take because their hideous makeup-caked faces have made an imprint on your brain.

Here, in a succinct little bite-sized portion, is why Bratz dolls are clearly created, endorsed, and owned by satan or other satan-related affiliates:

WHY WOULD YOU GIVE THIS TO YOUR DAUGHTER?! I guess someone may have said that about Barbies, once, too…

1) They celebrate stupidity.

They’re called “Bratz”. Need more? Look at their website, watch the cartoon, go see the upcoming movie, which I’m sure is a shining example of progressive pro-feminist ideals developed by women for a smart, impressionable female audience.

2) They take the laughably unrealistic beauty standard and blow it out of the water.

I mean, Jesus, just look at them. The nose thing kills me. They hardly have them. Oversized, pouty Angelina Jolie lips. Eyes drowning in eyeliner and eyeshadow. Why is it that girl dolls are never allowed to have noses? Is being able to smell unattractive? Their faces look almost identical, save for the slightly differing skin tones and preferred shades of makeup. I’m not even against makeup in every way, shape, or form. I’m fine with teenage girls playing with makeup, but not when it’s to tear down their first face and create a new one.

3) They’re teaching girls… what?

To plaster industrial strength makeup on their faces much earlier than ever before; to dress as provocatively and mass-market targeted as possible; to adopt the attitudes that very insecure, self-bankrupt older women adopt now rather than later; to achieve a level of thinness thought impossible by human test subjects; to get plastic surgery so that their noses are extra itty bitty and cwute (meaning barely visible); to gloriously and proudly refer to themselves as ‘bratz’, a word that, by my recollection, used to mean you were obnoxious and self-entitled; to love shopping without reason or rhyme; to be cliquey and exclusionary; to predicate their lives on fashion, fun, and flirtatiousness.

It annoys the hell out of me that these dolls have managed to become so popular. Why can’t girls be assertive rather than ‘bratty’? Why can’t they have dolls that reflect something of what their lives are actually like? And, if they actually live lives like those of Bratz dolls, why would we encourage anyone to celebrate or idolize that mentality?

Thank God my sister missed this craze by a small margin, because if I had ever seen her playing with a Bratz doll I may have had to remove it from her presence, tear it’s head off, and chuck it in the trash.

I stumbled across an article on MSN today titled, “‘Momblocked’ mothers edged out by dads”.

Wait - what?

Am I insane, or is that a very strange and deliberate play on words within the title -’momblocked’ instead of ‘cockblocked’? Cockblocked, of course, being the phrase that men use when their predatory attempts to coerce a woman into sex fail due to some unforeseen barrier. Was this their sad and disconcerting way of trying to attract men’s attention?

Journalistic sexism rears its ugly and perplexing head once again.

If you’re an undergraduate turned stripper.

Academic Stripping? Student Strips For Thesis
Professor Applauds Student’s Courage

OMAHA, Neb. — A University of Nebraska-Omaha student took a job recently as a stripper for class credit.

Jenny Heineman, a sociology student, said she wanted to bring sex workers out of the dark, so she felt she had to enter their world. Her thesis, “Gender and Work: An Ethnography of a Midwest Strip Club,” got her a B and she graduated this spring with high honors.

I would really like to see what her analysis was. I’m going to look through her thesis. Was she really doing critical, meaningful work? Are her assertions really that groundbreaking? Because other women have done this already; it’s not exactly a novel, innovative concept. What’s the nature of her “fascination” with the world of sex work?

The most striking part of the whole story to me was that she received a B. That’s right. Her professor praised her courage. Just not enough to give her an outstanding grade, I guess. She would have needed to prostitute herself for that.

With new and improved levels of grotesque, thought-devoid super-gore.

There’s a commentary article from The Guardian titled, “For Your Entertainment” that examines the reemerging popularity of horror films. A lot of what the author says in the article I take issue with, but some of her points are extremely valid and the quotes and insights into the minds of the films’ directors alone make it worthwhile reading.

I saw Grindhouse. Being the developing feminist that I am, some may respond to that idea with bewilderment. “Why, pray tell Miss gingermiss, would you voluntarily patronize such a low and base form of intellectually degenerate entertainment, that makes no bones about it’s exploitative attitudes towards women? I demand satisfaction on this point!” That’s a very valid question, no matter how awkwardly worded.

I have a moderately like-strongly dislike relationship with Quentin Tarantino. There are elements of his films I admire and enjoy. There are elements of his films I condemn. Pro: He’s written some extremely strong female characters into his movies. Con: He loves sex, violence, and combining/confusing the two. Pro: He genuinely loves movies and enjoys melding his own cinematic endeavors with the stories he treasured in his viewing youth. Con: He genuinely loves movies, no matter how ridiculously stupid, vapid, sexist, racist, trashy, flawed, and understandably not-revered they are. Pro: He’s enthusiastic and takes an avid interest in what’s going on in the world of entertainment. Con: He financially and publicly promotes movies and directors that suck and would otherwise receive less attention. Directors like Eli Roth.

Talking about his upcoming film Hostel II at a press junket recently, the young director Eli Roth couldn’t contain his enthusiasm for the poster devised by the film’s marketing team - a close-up of some sinewy, gleaming boar meat. “Any time people see women in a horror film,” he noted, “they say, ‘Oh, these girls are just pieces of meat.’ And, literally, in Hostel Part II, that’s exactly what they are. They are the bait, they are the meat, they are the grist for the mill. So I thought it was actually a really smart poster … and really, really disgusting! I love it.”

Ah, the sweet words of a poet. That’s smart, ladies and gents. That’s his idea of a smart poster. To Eli Roth, smart and whatever gets peoples’ attention are the same thing. But it gets better. Here’s another gem from the article.

Of course, maybe Roth’s just trying to be funny - his tone is gleeful throughout this interview (a transcript and audio version of which can be found on a number of film websites). Later in the interview he says: “Let me tell you, I heard that Stanley Kubrick did a lot of takes on Eyes Wide Shut, it was nothing compared to the amount of takes we did once we had that cheerleader naked and bouncing around on a trampoline! I mean, she was great, she got it on the first take, but we did take, after take, after take! And we finished early and we had like three hours, and we’re like, ‘Well, how much film do we have?’ And we’re like, ‘All right, let’s … let’s do it again!’ And she just had a smile on her face the whole time.”

Roth is referring to the fake trailer he made for Grindhouse, which was, by far, the most offensive thing in the film, although I’m sorry to give him any sense of accomplishment. The scene he’s describing - where a cheerleader on a trampoline takes off her clothes and gets a knife to the vagina when she performs a split - was really beyond the offensiveness level of anything else in the movie. Anything. And it was over three hours of violence, sex, and gore.

I feel like the quote really speaks for itself. They all do. He’s a deranged shameless psychopath; a one-track misogynist. One of the most common criticisms of Hostel when it was released was the fact that it was glamorized torture porn and nothing else. It was a cinematic (and mental) regression; a move back into the days of unmitigated and unappropriated violence. Owen Gleiberman opened his Entertainment Weekly review of the film with this statement: “Sadism was once an element in horror films. Now it’s more or less the only element…” One of the posters for Hostel Part 2 was the naked body of Bijou Philips from the neck down with a severed head in her hands. You can Google it if you want to see it. I don’t want to link it since most of the pages that have it only have it to gush about what a great fucking poster it is.

Honestly, what the hell is wrong with people? Whether or not you enjoy horror movies, no one has any problems with Eli Roth flagrantly waving his I-kill-women-and-I-love-it attitude in peoples’ faces? He makes me nauseous. He’s repulsive. His attitude and thought-processes are way more frightening than anything in his movies. If he really wants to terrify people, he should consider making an autobiographical documentary.

I’ll end this post with another quote from the article. This man is making movies. He’s making tons of money off them, receiving loads of attention and accolades, and enjoying every minute of it.

“When I shot that trailer for Thanksgiving, I really thought there was no problem with anything - it just shows you how genuinely out of touch I am! I was like … a full frontal labial shot, to camera, of a girl landing on a knife seemed like no problem to me …”

Out of touch. I can think of several other words for it.

EDIT: I found the link here, by the way, at Women’s Space in one of the post comments.

I don’t believe sexual suggestiveness in photography is inherently bad. I believe sexuality has an important place in art. This photograph is a softer, friendlier version of something you’d find in Penthouse. It’s not about empowerment. It’s not about art. It’s about money. Bravo, Halle Berry, for continuing to be an idiot. This moment is so much bigger than her.

She looks lobotomized.