This weekend I FINALLY had the opportunity to see the critically acclaimed documentary, "Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work," which follows the once revolutionary and always iconic comedienne through a year of her roller coaster career, when it seems to have come to a tragically discouraging low point. I went into this expecting big things, and my expectations were met and even surpassed.
Most people of my generation regard Rivers as a mere caricature that is the constant source of parody and endless mockery. A plastic surgery cautionary tale and a red carpet gadfly. What the documentary illustrates is how she's aware of, okay with and participates in that the parody is for the benefit of her career, and the alternative to it, is not having a career at all. And one thing Rivers is not okay with, is abandoning the pursuit of artistic relevance. Her place on the comedic hierarchy is one that has shifted drastically and is fascinating to see chronicled in a documentary, as it is also fascinating to see the psychological results that that shifting can have on a real individual in relentless pursuit of their passion.
Piece of Work also shows how the purpose of comedians in society is to fill that role, making things that could be construed as tragic as humorous and more bearable. The difference between Rivers and many comedians though, is her level of credibility amongst the general public has suffered because of her ability to manipulate her image and turn it into shtick.
Part of this is obviously because she is a woman, and female comedians are certainly coming from a disadvantaged position as they're limited by the bounds of societal propriety about what they can joke about and how they're allowed to perform their funny. But Joan has defied those confines throughout her entire career making her presence as a pop cultural feminist justified, relevant and productive.
I don't just want to gush here about how much I love her and what she's done for women in comedy and how her resilience is so fairly portrayed in this film without indulgent glorification or the public's oversimplification of her, BUT, I will say that if you haven't heard of this movie watch the trailer here and go see it because you won't regret it!
Promoting her summer-action flick Salt, Princess of the Global Poor and aspiring Cleopatra impersonator, Angelina Jolie, has a cover shot and feature article centered around her in the increasingly irrelevant Vanity Fair magazine, where she addresses her lifelong career as an actress, her high profile life partner Brad Pitt, and her famous brood of Jolie-Pitts as collected from each of the continents featured in Disney's theme park attraction It's a Small World. In the article one perhaps actually productive thing she seemed to do was address the scrutiny that she and her FOUR-YEAR-OLD daughter were receiving from tabloids and the public as resultant from her choice of clothing and short haircut.
Personally I think she looks insatiably adorable, but come on it's Brad Pitt plus Angelina Jolie, without some sort of mutated gene chances are you're gonna turn out alright. Photos of her rocking this style and haircut in several different situations were printed back in March with headlines hypothesizing about the potential doom that this implied and the confusion she must be having thrown upon her by her obviously oppressive and liberally-minded mother insisting on her to push parameters (see here).
In the VF piece, Jolie addresses the look by saying: "Shiloh, we feel, has Montenegro style… It's how people dress there. She likes tracksuits, she likes [regular] suits. She likes to dress like a boy. She wants to be a boy. So we had to cut her hair. She likes to wear boys' everything. She thinks she's one of the brothers." More on the piece here.
Back when all of this was being printed I was really annoyed with the attitudes that were being spewed all about newsstands policing gender normative behavior and styles for this toddler. I'm glad that Jolie addresses it without perpetuating the alarm and gender panic that was unwarranted from the start.
I work at a community center where we have youth programs and over the summer we house a summer camp program. We have one class of three and four-year-olds who have a morning session where they do different arts and crafts, athletic games, songs etc. Everybody that enrolls in camp gets a tee-shirt that they have to wear when they go on trips and to the pool. This year, the preschool program's tee-shirts were hot pink. Nearly everyone's reactions upon hearing this went something along the lines of, "Oh my! What about the boys?"
What about the boys. Yes. Because when they're three and four there are so many biological differences that have already manifested themselves that vastly differentiate the boys from the girls. They can't possibly have their three and four-year-olds masculinity threatened by wearing pink tee-shirts! It will confuse them and deeply offend their parents. Well, only if their parents are as close-minded as one who a couple months ago thought his son needed to go to a preschool that catered towards children of special needs because his son only played with the girls (TRUE STORY!).
I know I'm making the grave assumption here that the attitude that gender is a socially constructed and reinforced system of control and status-quo is the dominant attitude (which evidently it certainly isn't), but even if you have something vested in the idea of a scientific and infallible connection between your genitalia and your greater social role, doesn't it seem like an obviously arbitrary correlation to make between femininity and pink? Between masculinity and short-hair and track suits? Why do we insist on policing one another and children into prescribed normative behaviors with no real backing behind those behaviors and assumptions?
I think that progress comes when more parents are able to accept without judgment the choices of style and appearance that their children are inclined towards despite the standard set by traditional notions of a masculine/feminine binary. Only through allowing them to challenge these representations can we escape the binds that they put upon us for no real reason. There is as much variation within the categories as there is between the standardized idea of each of the categories, especially when dealing with toddlers! They're basically all gender-queer at that point, not yet inescapably poisoned by the oppressive ideas of the gender binary and the necessity to conform to it.
For further reading and suggestions towards parenting children without genderalizations, click here.
Some of the women I work with are big fans of the reality T.V. competition "The Biggest Loser." The show, if you're unfamiliar with it, takes overweight contestants, generally with tragic personal tales of loss or abuse, and motivates them through competitions to lose weight for a cash prize. Their methods on the ranch are intense and based around rigorous diet and exercise and a lot of emotional purging and largely negative reinforcement.
Recently NBC gave Jillian Michaels, one of the shows' hosts and trainers, a show all of her own where she visits overweight families across America for a week and formulates action plans for them to live a more healthy lifestyle. At least, that's what the intention of the show is claimed to be. After sitting through an episode of the show, and having read many of the follow up horror story accounts of contestants on The Biggest Loser, I think that what Michaels does is more about size than health and is more about effective and profitable television than personal and familial growth.
Michaels's attitudes around the people that she works with on these shows is condescending and militant. She screams at them as they are working out, telling them they've been killing themselves for all this time and repeatedly asking them don't they want to be skinny, don't they want to be healthy. She repeatedly without problem equates health with thinness, an attitude that has manifested itself so deeply in contemporary American culture that many people don't see a problem with it at all. Her attitudes about fat and about the contestants have also been illustrated through press interviews.
The episode of the show that I watched is very effectively recapped in the AV Club post here. The episode ended with the family losing weight before the daughter's wedding, providing the producers with an opportunity to make a charitable gesture in financing this heteronormative ceremonious right of passage, and providing them with an accompanying institution to justify the success of the process that they've all gone through, and that viewers have witnessed. My heart is warmed.
Never mind the fact that the show promotes widely problematic attitudes of fast easy results and doesn't address the greater systemic issues of why our country is so fat, and doesn't address our relentless panic around that alleged epidemic. An issue the show does address, but perhaps inadequately, is the idea of our cultural attitudes about food being linked to our inability to communicate with one another within our sociological units, particularly the family. If you can't hold a conversation with a group of people, why not bring an element into play that will facilitate some kind of action and fill the time? Why not just eat? Though I honestly feel that this is an oversimplification of the problem.
What Jillian Michaels and her widespread success illustrate is the perversely unhealthy attitudes around food, weight and body image that we practice as a culture. Fatshionista wrote a piece (here) that expresses the idea of how Michaels, through this process, becomes a savior to these people, a savior who ultimately abandons them as to further her career and her brand and the brand of the show, and then they are left at risk of feeling more hopeless than they did to begin with. This makes sense to me. As does the fact that contestants on Biggest Loser have reported how the show's methods were so unhealthy that in certain instances they were so dehydrated they were peeing blood (here) or developing serious eating disorders (here).
We can't allow ourselves to justify the ineffective and destructive attitudes and methods of competition-based reality television shows and the personalities birthed through them because of deeply seeded panic we have as a culture around fat people. If you're worried about obesity, why not examine the way food is made, marketed and manufactured throughout this country? Why not look at how cities are designed furthering the car-centric layout we've thoughtlessly created and perpetuated? Why not examine how advertisers create unrealistic representations of people that leave us all hating our bodies and suffering from destructive feelings of inadequacy? Losing it with Jillian Michaels is not about solving the obesity crisis. It's about salvaging a false sense of control through force that is so tempting to us in a society that is driven on contempt for ourselves but faith in the systems that govern us and dictate our perceptions of reality.
The image above is Jes Sachse and she is a 25-year-old Canadian model and artist with Freeman-Sheldon syndrome, a genetic disorder that affects her bone structure and anatomy. This image is part of a series by photographer Holly Norris entitled "American Able," adopting the format and style of American Apparel advertisements to explore and play with perceptions, or lack there of, of disabled women in advertisement and media. You can see the series here.
This particular image and the project at large relates to the idea of how women, and men, are instructed on how to appear through advertisements for allegedly countercultural retail markets. American Apparel is a big culprit, as well as its stylistic counterpart Urban Outfitters. Each recently have garnered press surrounding certain products or protocols that promote unhealthy body image through a particularly sizeist vein.
American Apparel is a store I have a conflicted relationship with. Though their brand in many ways appeals to me as a tall, thin, white male with pseudo-bohemian inclinations, I do recognize the problematic tendencies in their sizing and their selection of their clothing. Recently I read on Gawker of their "Full Body head-to toe Employment Policy," where the hiring and firing procedures are largely contingent upon submitted photographs of employees. I had also read on several occasions of their refusal to consider inclusion of a plus-size line, despite propositions by fashion icon and musician Beth Ditto among others, stating that that size of person is not of their demographic. More of that nonsense here .
On a more local, to me at least, level, Urban Outfitters of Durham recently had a protest staged outside of its doors with dissent about a tee-shirt being marketed on their website and sent to stores for sale that was a gray v-neck with the words "Eat Less" printed across it. The protesters felt, and I agree, that this promoted eating disorders and an unhealthy relationship with food and your body. The story was covered in the Indy and can be read here.
Urban Outfitters I have less of a conflicted relationship with. Not only is it owned and operated by big time Republican contributor and Rick Santorum supporter Richard Hayne, but little if any of their clothing or accessories are even made within the United States and a large portion of their merchandise is not made from sustainable materials or from any other green practices. American Apparel at least has that to fall back on when accused of being less progressive than they claim to be. Urban Outfitters is a manifestation of the counterconformist countercultural mentality and the progressive idea around their brand is one that is being counteracted by the people they are ultimately profiting off of it. Buying a cleverly worded and boldly designed Obama tee-shirt here is not helping anyone aside from you in your venture to escape ordinarity.
What I want to address is how these companies are taking advantage of their consumers' attitudes and philosophies, political and otherwise, in order to further an agenda and create an elitist market, one still reliant upon a static concept of beauty and value. Shopping at these places does not make you any better than someone who shops at the more ostensibly conformist Abercrombie and Fitch or Hollister. The brand they've created manipulates its consumers and fools them into thinking that that's the case, but accounts like these expose them to be the control mechanisms they have been all along.
I don't want in this statement to claim that I am above it in anyway, just to highlight how dependent we are on these systems of power and how subversive their affects can be on our attitudes about groups of people, ourselves and our world.
Well as tiresome and allegedly insensitive and ignorant as it can be to draw implications about one's sexual proclivities based on their choice of wardrobe, this outfit is the outfit of a man strutting proudly down the streets of Provincetown trolling for a comparably pastel-clad princess to have a little bit of fun with.
I found this picture as a headlined article on Gawker today and it reminded me of a piece I had read on Congressman Schock last summer in Details. The article lauded his success in becoming the youngest living congressman and the first member of the Millennial elected to the House of Representatives. The question the interview framed the article within was would Schock be able to maintain the relevance of the Republican party despite our generation's present day favoring of a more progressive agenda, and our preferring of the Democratic party as the source of such progress.
What was interesting in light of this photograph and Schock's record on issues of gender equity and gay rights, is the way that the article undercut the old school conservative image that Schock has built himself within and around with the obvious suspicion of his homosexuality, drawing comparisons to his facial structure to Neil Patrick Harris, making note of his "carefully mussed hair and pastel ties," and making explicit mention of how his lack of romantic prospects have lead to people quesitoning his sexuality, which he has maintained is hetero.
If you're going to prance around in fitted white linen pants with a baby blue belt, don't even get me started on the checkered shirt, you better be going to a Vineyard Vines themed fraternity party or a pride parade. (Really though aren't those oftentimes one in the same?). Plus he appeared in the Details feature in May of 2009, and then did a shoot in different designer suits in different locations in and around the Hill in GQ only four months later. Details and GQ are both owned by Conde Nest. Huge narcissist. We gays are a narcissistic people I'll admit. Though he is a politician, one whose voting record against gay marriage and against including gender identity and sexual orientation in federal laws concerning hate crimes. Self-hating homophobe? Probably. To me, all signs point to gay.
I realize that I'm operating under the logic of stereotype here leaving lots of holes in my argument. But I would not hesitate to say that I strongly suspect he is this overzealous closeted midwestern glory boy who can't bear to identify as or with anything that would compromise his status within his party which promotes traditional family values that are, in my opinion, ignorant and hateful. Despite his presence as the youngest member of Congress I don't feel that he is representative of the attitudes of our generation, political and otherwise, particularly involving issues involving gay rights.
To anyone interested in issues of sexuality and the way that power is manifested through sexual identities, DC is a clear manifestation of what can happen when in order to advance within the established hierarchy you need to hide certain desires you may have because they are perceived as unnatural by the dominant culture. The HBO documentary Outrage centered around how DC is a hot bed for closeted individuals. Schock I do not believe was included in that documentary but seems as though is a continuation of that practice of furthering homophobia to protect your political interests and suppress your real desires.
My Oscar load is finally about to blow and though this season the majority of the awards seem blatantly predictable, I will never falter in my viewing and will always watch for tears and gowns. AND PENELOPE CRUZ!
Here’s my predictions as well as who I feel most warrants the award for several of the major categories, i.e. the only ones anyone outside of the film industry, and many insiders as well, care about in the first place.
Best Supporting Actress Will Win: Mo’nique for Precious Should Win: Mo’nique for Precious There’s really nothing to be said for this that hasn’t already been said. She shocked and terrorized audiences with her fervor and emotional depth. Plus the Academy owes her from snubbing her for her brilliance in Beerfest.
Best Supporting Actor Will Win: Christoph Waltz for Inglourious Basterds Should Win: Christoph Waltz for Inglourious Basterds Though I admit I still haven’t seen The Messengers and probably never will see The Lovely Bones, this one is Waltz’s to lose. Plus is it weird that I find him really attractive in an older and would take care of you but control you kind of way? Maybe I’d best keep those sentiments to myself. Although I did feel that they could have cut on the Matt Damon nomination and given one to Brian Geraghty for his playing a violently conflicted military man in The Hurt Locker whose existential crisis frames arguably the most horrific turn of events for any of the characters in the movie.
Best Actor in a Leading Role Will Win: Jeff Bridges for Crazy Heart Should Win: Morgan Freeman for Invictus I am very conflicted about this one. And I do feel as though on many levels it is an advantageous position in terms of winning Oscars to be playing a specific character that really exists, as Freeman did, mastering the mannerisms and delivery of Nelson Mandela. Whereas Bridges was working more with an archetype, with less of a solid example against which to measure the value of his work. Eh fuck it give them both Oscars.
Best Actress in a Leading Role Will Win: ::mumbled through gritting teeth:: Sandra “Miss New Jersey” Bullock for the remake of Mighty Joe Young Should Win: Gabourey Sidibe for Precious It’s Erin Brockovich all over again. Who knows? Maybe the Academy is smarter than I’m giving them credit for and is realizing that there is potential for danger when marketers will be able to sell movies like, All About Steve by saying, “featuring Academy Award Winning Actress, Sandra Bullock,” and that maybe we shouldn’t reward performers who continuously put out product as low-quality as Hope Floats. There’s a strong possibility this could go to Meryl, who really should be as inundated with awards as she has historically been with nominations. Who knows. There will be hell to pay and a strongly-worded letter though if by the end of the night Sunday, Practical Magic stars two Academy-Award winners.
Best Animated Feature Film Will Win: Up Should Win: Fantastic Mr. Fox I don’t care if you call me a pretentious hipster! The story and the style through which it was told was innovative and artful. LOVE YOU WES. RIP ROALD.
Best Director Will Win: Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker Should Win: Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker Blah blah blah first woman to win this award. ZOMG James Cameron's ex! Who cares? She made an artful and emotional but apolitical and contemporary war film that was packed with adrenaline but was not neither gratuitous nor tacky.
Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay Will Win: Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner for Up in the Air Should Win: Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner for Up in the Air If you haven’t seen it yet see it. Yes it is excessively clever to the point that it may sacrifice verisimilitude, but I like wit in my dialogue and I value dialogue in my film. Jason Reitman knows how to do it. Fuck you Juno-haters!
Best Writing, Original Screenplay Will Win: Mark Boal for The Hurt Locker Should Win: Quentin Tarantino for Inglourious BasterdsI don’t have much to say about this one as much as this is the award I’m most likely to be wrong about and it’s likely to go to Tarantino. I just have a hunch.
Best Picture Will Win: Avatar Should Win: The Hurt Locker What I think I am doing here is expecting nothing as to avoid disappointment kind of thing. Though I have a strong suspicion that the Academy will award accessibility, heavy-handed metaphor, technological innovation, and James Cameron’s relentless arrogance and lack of appreciation for mankind aside from himself and give it to the blue-people. It would not be the first time that they split the Best Director/Best Picture honors, Ang Lee won for Brokeback Mountain but Best Picture went to Crash (which is just absurd and the fag in me wants to scream homophobia though who knows really) and Steven Spielberg won for Saving Private Ryan but Best Picture was Shakespeare in Love (Judi Dench What WHAAAAAAT). I do very much hope that the little war-film that could triumphs through and I am surprised, as I honestly feel that The Hurt Locker, and several of the other nominees, were superior films, but for now I’ll put my money on Avatar taking home the big one, and viewers will be forced to sit through the king of the world give himself a blow-job up at the podium.
Well, this was bound to happen. And I was bound to have something to say about it. And what I have to say about it is perhaps predictable and has probably already been said, though maybe not, as I feel people are often more hesitant when criticizing "good intentions," but who knows. Let's get on with it.
The 25th Anniversary rendition of Michael Jackson's charitable musical collaboration, "We Are the World," was unveiled to the masses after the opening ceremony of the Vancouver Olympics and left me feeling disheartened at the blatant exploitation of a nation's tragedy to try and reinforce the illusion of cultural and cosmic significance felt by members of an ailing industry, but really served as a testament to the depressing state of said industry and revealed their narcissism and exposed their lack of potential for longevity.
Let me break that down so I don't sound like the pretentious fuck that I ultimately admit to being: The remake sucked. The calibre of the artists who participated in it, for the most part, pale in comparison to the original roster of musicians. Nobody can honestly say that Lil Wayne is as talented or culturally significant as Billy Joel, that Miley Cyrus is as vocally capable as Tina Turner, that Jamie Foxx is as musically charming as Stevie Wonder. Yet by participating in a remake of the original they place themselves on an even-playing field and almost assert a challenge that they can do it better. That they can somehow make it contemporary and more accessible and enjoyable for a 22nd century audience. Sorry Justin Bieber but your overly produced auto-tuned nightmare of an opening is just not cutting it.
And stop trying to make Nicole from the Pussycat Dolls happen. She's NOT, going to happen.
By blanketing it as a charitable gesture, they make it controversial to question their intentions. But sincerity, I feel, (again, for the most part) is not among said intentions. Perpetuating the celebrity industrial complex for these meritless entertainers by associating them with Michael Jackson's hit seems to be the underlying intention in my opinion. And it's an attempt to claim lasting cultural significance for a group of entertainers whose longevity and significance is questionable if existent in the first place.
In addition to manipulating the disaster in Haiti for their shameless self-promotion, they're manipulating Michael Jackson's image and influence by aligning themselves with it. Many of the people involved in the remake have made confident claims that this is what he would have wanted and this is what he would have done. It's easy to speak for the dead because they can't speak for themselves. And given the history of manipulation that Michael Jackson as a cultural figure has notoriously had perpetrated against him, I take all claims of understanding of his intention and posthumous wishes with a grain of salt. And let's be real, that editing job of Janet's face across the screen was creepy as shit. Plus did anyone even hear a harmony in there or was she just tagging along with him?
I'll level with fans of the remake though in saying that J Hud always does bring tears to my eyes and this was no exception. I'll also say that though I prefer Cyndi Lauper's distinctive shriek, my girl Celine really let it rip on that part quite well. But come on it's fucking Celine Dion is she really gonna let us down?
Conclusively, on a collaboration that's supposed to serve as a barometer of the current state of the musical industry and include a representation of the best of the best in pop cultural figures, the absence of Jay-Z, Lady GaGa, Beyonce, Rihanna, and more was notable to say the least, and when several of those artists were vocal in their declining of the invitation to the project, you have to wonder why. Though after seeing the result, it's not so hard to figure it out.
