26 Tuesday Feb 2013
Posted in Memoir
When I was a child, the library came to me. Every couple of weeks, the mobile library van parked around the corner, its desultory young driver oblivious to my excitement as I climbed the steps up into the back of his van, a cramped space lined with shelves of books. For me, it was Aladdin’s cave. It was the place where I fell in love with books. Everyone should have such a place. Thank you John Scalzi, for thanking the libraries . . .
23 Saturday Feb 2013
Posted in Bechdel Test, Feminism, Memoir, Women in Politics
Tags
Argo, Arts & Entertainment, Awesome Women, Barbra Streisand, Bechdel Test, Bloomberg, Brothers McMullen, Feminism, Film, Film Financing, Hillary Clinton, Kathryn Bigelow, Melissa Siverstein, Memoir, Movies, Oscars, Prince of Tides, Sexism in film, The Oscars, Women and Careers, Women in Film, Women in Politics, Words of Wisdom, Zero Dark Thirty
The time has come,
. . . said Barbra Streisand, as she opened the envelope and announced Kathryn Bigelow’s name. Finally, after 81 years, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences had bestowed upon a woman, the award for Best Director. A long time coming and surely bittersweet for Streisand to breathe those words, having been passed over for Yentl in 1983 and again in 1991 for The Prince of Tides. Of making movies, she once told Parade magazine that:
Being a woman in music was fine, but when I wanted to direct, I was poking my head into a man’s world. ‘What do you mean you’re going to direct? Women are the actresses, they’re frivolous, not the ones responsible for finances.’ That really got me.
It gets me too, that in 2013, a gender gap persists in the making of the movies that I pay to see. If Hollywood is the bastion of lefty progressivism it is purported to be, then how come 91% of the top 250 films at the box office in 2012 were made by male directors?
As the graphic shows and as Lauren Sanders points out in Bloomberg’s “Why Women in Hollywood Can’t Get Film Financing” sexist attitudes prevail, with one of her sources saying that women just “cannot be trusted with money.” Rightly, this prompted Mary Jane Skalski who produced one of my favorite films, The Brothers McMullen in 1994, to ask, “Isn’t that the same thing they said during Suffrage?” Indeed.
Adding insult to injury is that The Academy, the members of whom are thanked profusely and repeatedly at every Oscar Awards ceremony, is a bevy of mostly white, mostly male voting members, with a median age of 62. The movie-going public represents a much different demographic, and women are buying 50% of the tickets as of 2010.
Can movie-goers do anything about it? Sure we can. First, start paying attention to the representation of women in film, using an idea promoted by cartoonist Alison Bechdel almost thirty years ago in The Rule. Hardly revolutionary, Bechdel’s cartoon character asks three simple questions before deciding if she should see a movie. Essentially, it’s a reality check:
At first blush, what has become known as The Bechdel Test sets the bar low. Still, when you start to think about it, just how many of the 2013 Oscar nominees for Best Motion Picture have a hope of passing the test? How about Argo? Fail. Zero Dark Thirty? Pass with distinction. The latter features strong female characters in a film that is also directed by a woman, Kathryn Bigelow. Her name was not even included in the list of nominees for Best Director with the Academy and the Foreign Press continuing to overlook female directors.
Had a man been sitting in the director’s chair on the set of Zero Dark Thirty, would he have received a nomination and accolades for his unflinching expose of the torture and brutal interrogation of prisoners? We’ll never know. Bigelow has been widely criticized for emphasizing the role torture played in the search for bin Laden. Steve Coll writes that the film “fails as journalism because it adopts shortcuts that most reporters would find illegitimate.” In an open letter to Bigelow, Naomi Wolf calls her “torture’s handmaiden.” And, Bigelow has had to defend her directorial choices in the film repeatedly, writing in the LA Times:
I support every American’s 1st Amendment right to create works of art and speak their conscience without government interference or harassment. As a lifelong pacifist, I support all protests against the use of torture, and, quite simply, inhumane treatment of any kind.
But I do wonder if some of the sentiments alternately expressed about the film might be more appropriately directed at those who instituted and ordered these U.S. policies, as opposed to a motion picture that brings the story to the screen.
I wonder too. It appears that Bigelow can’t win for losing. On the one hand, her film is criticized for factual inaccuracies including its depiction of the main character; on the other, it is condemned for misleading viewers into believing that torture is effective as Senators McCain, Feinstein, and Levin write in an open letter to Sony Pictures. Then there was the apology from Bret Easton Ellis after he posted on Twitter that Bigelow has won Oscars for The Hurt Locker only because she was “a hot woman.” Mind you, it’s not much of an apology given his cop-out that she probably didn’t even notice or care about the Tweets because “her balls are bigger than that.”
When film-award season passes, I suspect much of the debate will as well. So why should we keep the conversation going? Because the movies can be so much more than diversions, with immense capacity to shape and reflect the human experience – all of it. As Megan Kearns writes,
We need to see women of different races, classes, sexualities and women with abled as well as disabled bodies. We must demand to see more films featuring strong, intelligent complex women living life on their own terms, whose lives don’t revolve around men. We also need to recognize films featuring women and created by women in awards shows.
In 1992, “the year of the woman” – yes, we got a whole year – Barbra Streisand gave a speech about Women in Film. Acutely aware of how language provides insight into how women are viewed in a male-dominated world, she offered this:
“A man is commanding – a woman is demanding.
A man is forceful – a woman is pushy.
A man is uncompromising – a woman is a ballbreaker.
A man is a perfectionist – a woman’s a pain in the ass.
He’s assertive – she’s aggressive.
He strategizes – she manipulates.
He shows leadership – she’s controlling.
He’s committed – she’s obsessed.
He’s persevering – she’s relentless.
He sticks to his guns – she’s stubborn.
If a man wants to get it right, he’s looked up to and respected.
If a woman wants to get it right, she’s difficult and impossible.”
Twenty-one years later, do her words still resonate? As the mother of a daughter, I would like to say that we have come a long way, baby, that we move in a world where masculine clichés are not foisted upon boys and men, where a woman as Best Director of a motion picture is not an anomaly, but the truth is that what Streisand said in 1992 still rings true.
Considering women in the movie industry, in independent film and in Hollywood, I cannot help but reflect on 2008 and then-Senator Hillary Clinton’s concession of the Democratic primary to Barack Obama.
To the millions who voted for her, she had this to say:
As we gather here today, the 50th woman to leave this Earth is orbiting overhead. If we can blast 50 women into space, we will someday launch a woman into the White House . . . Although we weren’t able to shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling this time, thanks to you, it’s got about 18 million cracks in it, and the light is shining through like never before, filling us all with the hope and the sure knowledge that the path will be a little easier next time.
Isn’t that we all want? That the path will be easier – from the classroom to the boardroom, from the state house to the White house, from the small screen to the big screen, from on-scene to behind the scene. Yes. There is more light shining through. It’s time for some action.
Enjoy the show.
Source: Melissa Silverstein
21 Thursday Feb 2013
Posted in Memoir
Tags
Art, Awesome Women, Biography, City Trees, Cora Mallay, Edna St. Vincent Mallay, Feminism, Greenwich Village, marriage, Memoir, Mother daughter relationship, Mothering, Nancy Milford, Nature, New Woman, Norma Mallay, poetry, Poetry, Savage Beauty, Thomas Hardy, Trees, Writing
Edna St. Vincent Mallay, who brought us the candle burning at both ends, was born on February 22nd 1892, a woman before her time. Enchanting, bold, and brilliant, her poetry was described by Thomas Hardy as one of America’s two greatest attractions – the other was the skyscraper.
In the biography, Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Mallay, Nancy Milford describes E. Vincent as the herald of the New Woman:
She smoked in public when it was against the law for women to do so. She lived in Greenwich Village during the halcyon days of that starry bohemia, she slept with men and women and wrote about it in lyrics and sonnets that blazed with wit and a sexual daring that captivated the nation.
Poring over thousands of papers and letters, and with the cooperation of E. Vincent’s sister, Norma, biographer Nancy Milford learns how this ‘New Woman” evolved. It was her mother, Cora, who urged Edna and her two sisters towards a fierce and unconventional independence, having asked their father to leave the family home in 1899. It was Cora who taught her daughters to love music and literature from an early age. In Edna’s scrapbooks, are preserved performance programs, photographs, and early writings of the first woman poet to win the Pulitzer. Wholly empowered by a devoted mother, Edna was performing and writing when she was just five years old.
When I think of all that I wish for my daughter and that which my mother still hopes for me, I appreciate Cora Mallay’s fierceness and imagine a little of it resides in me. Formidable and uncompromising, her mother, Norma exclaims:
. . . was not like anyone else’s mother. Yes. She was ambitious for us. Of course she was! She made us – oh, not ordinary!
We all want to be “not ordinary,” to matter while making our respective marks on the world.
As the sun resumed its predictable shimmer following a rare wintry rain in Phoenix today, I looked up and through the trees that line a downtown parking lot, and I thought of Edna St. Vincent Mallay, whose childhood pulsated with her love of nature, poetry, and music. Of those formative years, she would later recall, “it never rained in those days” . . .
City Trees
The trees along this city street,
Save for the traffic and the trains,
Would make a sound as thin and sweet
As trees in country lanes.And people standing in their shade
Out of a shower, undoubtedly
Would hear such music as is made
Upon a country tree.Oh, little leaves that are so dumb
Against the shrieking city air,
I watch you when the wind has come,—
I know what sound is there.
16 Saturday Feb 2013
Posted in Adriane Herman, Memoir
Tags
ADL, Adriane Herman, American Apparel, Art, bucket lists, culture, don't forget, grandfather, immigration, John F. Kennedy, Kennedy, Legalize LA, Leonard Mlodinow, Life Lessons, lists, Memoir, memori, mundanity, Pandora, Post-it notes, reminders, The Art of The List, The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives, tom waits, Words of Wisdom, Writing
I’m not a compulsive list-maker by any stretch, but sometimes, if I have a new pad of paper, a new ink cartridge in the fountain pen I use maybe three times a year, and nothing else to do (in other words, my Wireless connection is acting up) I’ll start a list such as that begun on June 24, 2012. Entitled, “Things We Really Need To Do Around Here,” it has been ignored for nine months. Thirteen of fourteen things still need to be done, not the least of which is “Hang pictures & get rid of ones we HATE.” The only thing done that resulted in any demonstrable changes was “Call the Mike the Painter.”
On July 1st, I began another list. I wrote it down with To Do at the top and next to each item, I added an empty check box:
Well-intentioned and clearly focused on an upcoming vacation that necessitated sending Atticus to kitty jail, I was off to a good start. I’m guessing Beck must have popped up on Pandora, sending me and my list off on a tangent that ended with remembering my grandfather who fought in World War I. Nonetheless, we went on vacation, the cat lives, my playlists include more Beck and Tom Waits, and I have written about my grandfather and his experiences as a young soldier lest any of us forget.
While I don’t make daily to-do lists, I am rarely without post-it notes in my handbag, or one of those little notepads reporters used to carry around in their back pockets. This is not entirely about being ready to jot down things of a pedestrian nature, although that has happened – I’ll quickly scribble some new medical term I need to look up on Google, because instead of asking my doctor what she was talking about, I just sat there, nodding sagely. Or I will remember that I need to buy shampoo. I might hastily write down the name of the store where I can find a handbag like the one hanging from the arm of the complete stranger I met in the post-office, befriending her over our mutual regard for a bag that’s just the right size. Paper and pen at hand is more aspirational, anticipation of some treasure waiting for me in the most unexpected places.
I remember a summer afternoon in 2008 on Brattle Street in Cambridge, MA when I spotted a bright yellow piece of paper stuck to the window of an American Apparel store. On it, something John F. Kennedy had said about immigration, that I have since learned was part of the Legalize LA campaign. No smartphone on hand to take a picture, I captured those achingly relevant words in my little reporter’s notepad, and for good measure added them to my signature on my work email:
Immigration policy should be generous; it should be fair; it should be flexible. With such a policy we can turn to the world and to our own past with clean hands and a clear conscience.
Along with John F. Kennedy’s compassionate words on immigration, I have jotted down reminders, presumably, to buy water, ice, band aids, and plane tickets to San Diego. Stuck between the plane tickets and the need for band aids, is The Drunkard’s Walk by Leonard Mlodinow. This is the title of a book, and I am now bemused, given the theme that is developing here, by its subtitle: How Randomness Rules our Lives. I wish I could remember who told me about this book and in what context. I probably need to read it.
Randomness continues on the next page with apples, strawberries, bananas and a toothbrush. I need to call Kathleen, perhaps about a pair of shoes from Sandalworld online, where, as it happens, I will also find Jack Rogers. Realizing eventually that Mr. Rogers is not someone I need to call, but is the name attached to pricy sandals which the website screams, are the summertime staple. There is another quotation: “Culture is a social control system. If you don’t manage it, it can undermine innovation and creativity and hinder your ability to execute your strategy. This is why a leader should care about culture.” Indeed a leader should. I have no idea where I was or who said this, but obviously it was someone who said something I had also been thinking about, except better than I could and at just the right time.
A man of few written words, my husband loves his post-it notes where his abbreviations of grocery items often render them cryptic as ancient hieroglyphics or personalized license plates.Yesterday morning, I spotted on top of a small pitcher of water his note to himself to feed our family of humming birds and water the petunias in the front yard. He added a flourish. “Hum-bird. Water the Front.”
The stories we could weave from our discarded lists and post-it notes – resolutions, reminders, instructions, and bucket lists. Our favorite things. The very worst things, too, the things we fear the most – a message received too late, a fence never mended, undeniable evidence of a loved one’s harrowing descent into memory loss. Intimate. Relatable. Human.
Whatever is posted on those notes stuck to themselves at the bottom of my handbag is unlikely to see the light of day, unlike the array of yellow post-its, lists, and miniature drawings that meander around, above, and on top of a desk belonging to the aunt of a friend: 
An artist, she has pressed tightly over the edge an intriguing “Simplicity. Complexity.” I am curious about the story contained in those words but it’s likely to remain elusive, as it does for artist Adriane Herman who for almost a decade rummaged through trashcans and grocery carts, culling evidence of the way we spend our time – or the way we aspire to.
In her review of Herman’s word-based art, Annie Larmon describes this reconstruction of “our most ephemeral and disposable documents as relevant cultural artifacts,”
From grocery and to-do lists to notes scrawled on Post-its, Herman slips between humor and scrutiny while unpacking the social narratives and psychological patterns loaded into the uncensored scribbles
Here, in Art of the List, Herman presents and discusses these marks we make, our sometimes desperate attempts to contain the lives we are living in small and sticky spaces:
