Quiet in a Noisy World

Rats, it's April!  What happened to my promise to myself to blog at least weekly?

Well, ironically when I have been massively busy, I haven't really felt like I have very much to say.  I've been doing all sorts of wonderful things in the real world, spending time with good friends, dearly-loved family, going on country walks, eating a lot of good lunches, making it to my dance class for a change, running my book club, going to Moviebar.  I haven't seen any films to make me angry about their gender politics (we'll gloss over 'Dr Strangelove') although I did get into a brilliant Bechdel Test debate with my chum Ash - proof that people really are reading my blog and paying attention, thank you!  Maybe I have already changed the world a very tiny bit.  This makes me happy.

But none of that is very exciting in the blogosphere.  I drafted a blog about how much I love people - I really do - but the moment passed and although I still love people, I sort of lost the feeling that prompted me to write it so that'll stay on the backburner until I love people so much I have to revisit it.

I drafted a blog about how, Mr Writer by Night, I don't have a feminist blog, thank you very much. I sometimes write about feminist things.  I also sometimes don't, as seen here, here and here.  It was going to be a long, self-examining post but really, as I said when I started this, I'm not going to declare a blogging manifesto.  I'd rather let my posts speak for themselves.

I baked some fairy cakes and I have made a resolution to do more knitting again.  I'm a process knitter.  I'm really bad at finishing things, I just love the therapeutic rhythym and the magic of seeing a piece of fabric take shape with my hands.  I don't care for making-up and precision knitting so that sleeves fit into armholes.  This is why I mainly knit scarves and other rectangular things.

Talking of which, I read this not long after I wrote my marriage post and I found it really interesting.  As I said at the time, I don't have a feminist argument for marriage and I can think of many against it.  Broadly speaking, I think of my marriage in and of itself, nothing to do with anyone or any history or politics other than my husband and I, just a promise we made to each other.  I don't disagree with all of Jaclyn Geller's arguments against marriage, but what I do disagree with is her assertion that not only are women still getting married, they are 'manicuring to hyper-perfection the very domestic idyll their mothers rallied to escape', and quoting among other things the resurgence of knitting as an example.  Among pretty much all of the young married women, and men, I know, I cannot think of anyone who can be accused of such un-feminist behaviour as doing unreasonable amounts of housework and I think (do correct me if I'm wrong) I'm the only married knitter I know.  I don't think knitting makes me a bad feminist.  I suppose it might if all I knitted was clothes for my husband but as he never wears the scarf I knitted him once, I haven't bothered since.  I knit for the sheer low-tech pleasure of the activity, not because I'm married or I confuse it with domestic goddesstry.  One of my most outspokenly anti-marriage friends has this fantastic recipe blog, and I don't think it undermines her arguments against marriage or her personal politics, she just likes to cook.  I think arguments like this (and I do accept that the journalist could be paraphrasing and generalising) damage feminism because they refer back to the outdated image of woman and domesticity bound up as one, rather than acknowledging that the two are separate, with a perfect right to both exist in the same person if that is what she chooses.  The same goes for the reaction to Natalie Portman's Oscar acceptance speech.  She's about to give birth.  No wonder she regards motherhood, right now, as being the most important thing in her life.  Does that make her unfeminist?  I don't think so.

Oops, I accidentally wrote a feminist blog again.  Maybe the Writer by Night has a point after all...

I forgot to make a book recommendation last Feminism Friday.  You can belatedly have my all-time favourite book, Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood.  I have read it at least 10 times.  Everything I know about life, I learnt from this book.

Feminism Friday: Winter's Bone

I didn't want my Feminism Friday blogs to just be me moaning, I wanted to talk about all the good stuff that women and feminists do in the world too, then last night after watching it, the Writer by Night said I should blog about Winter's Bone.  Obviously, like any good feminist I thought I'd better do as my husband said, and here I am. 

I'd like to stress at this point, that a good film and a feminist film are not necessarily the same thing.  If it wasn't a Friday, I might not even mention Winter's Bone, I don't watch things in order to deconstruct their gender politics because if I did that I don't think I'd enjoy another film again.  I will always notice, but it isn't how I choose films to watch, and many of my favourite films could not be considered feminist.  This is not a review of Winter's Bone, it's a reflection on the messages I find within it.


Chris actually liked the film more than I did, although I liked it too.  I will try not to give spoilers, in fact, I don't really need to say very much specific about the plot.  The good news is, it passes the Bechdel Test within about five minutes, but more than that, the film is full of female characters with names all talking to each other.  Amazing.  And even better, they all do it fully clothed, and in some cases, with woolly hats on.   It is the female community in the film that supports, advises and helps Ree, the central character - and although violence is threatened by male characters, the only real violence in the film is executed by women.  What's interesting about this violence is that it is committed in the name of protection; not revenge or power or personal survival.  Astoundingly, given the odds for escaping this in movies in general, no one is raped.

(I had to search really hard on Google for an image of more than 1 woman from the film.  Note to self: in future, avoid googling anything with the word 'bone')

So, is it a feminist film?  At first I thought not, because in this community men represent power, authority, they are still the catalyst for change and most of the progression in the plot.  Most of the conversation between the women is about men, and indeed the plot revolves around a man.  There is still a moment where a man comes to the rescue - but I am coming to the conclusion this is more in the vein of 'sidekick' than 'superhero'.  Some of the men try to be heroic, but they all fail through cowardice, greed or malice.  Ree on the other hand succeeds without becoming a masculine archetype.  She is still able to nurture, communicate and seek non-violent solutions to her problems.  She is brave, selfless and dignified.  The film does truly celebrate feminine characteristics without devaluing them. 

What interested me most though, was the number of women involved in making the film, reading the credits, there were women - usually plural - in pretty much every behind-the-camera department.  I think our commercial film industry is so skewed towards male stories and tells them in such a blatantly sexist way is because women generally have such a tiny part in the process, men genuinely forget about them.  Then women aren't interested because they don't feel reflected in cinema, and so movies just get made for young men and it becomes a viscious circle.  There was still nothing like an equal split but women clearly had a much stronger presence in the making of Winter's Bone, on a project led by women.  The more this happens, I hope, the more we will see an honest reflection of our world on screen.

While writing this I've been listening to Debra Granik being interviewed about Winter's Bone, and she makes the point that if we are to have any kind of 'biodiversity' in film making, we need to support the small films, because if they make their money back, the investors are happy and they get to make more films.  She's not talking from a feminist perspective, just any kind of independent film-making outside the glossy Hollywood model.  So I am making a resolution to seek out and pay for movies like this, in the hope that my one voice will go some way to ensuring I get to write more positive blogs!

Feminism Friday: Any Woman Worth Her Salt

A couple of weeks ago I watched Salt.  You'll have to forgive me, it wasn't the most memorable of films and a lot has happened since so I'll be hazier on the details than I would have been the next day.

*Contains spoilers - but no deeply important plot points*

Firstly, it wasn't a terribly good film, it tried to have plot twists but it basically just meant you spent much of the film without sympathy for any character, risky but with fabulous writing you can pull it off. This wasn't fabulously written and I had a hard time caring about pretty much any of them. 

But it makes an interesting film to watch from a feminist viewpoint because it was apparently originally written for Tom Cruise.  I love action women, I like Angelina Jolie, I hadn't heard great things about the film beforehand but I was willing to throw myself into it.  It had some plus points - there were some outrageous action sequences with Jolie throwing herself off a bridge and jumping between moving lorries.  I can't think of another film where I've seen a female character do that kind of chase without a male sidekick ( rather, without being a man's sidekick), or not in the most ridiculous skimpy dress or shorts you ever saw.  In this she was wearing a beanie and a backpack, and she looked, preposterous lips notwithstanding, like a real woman.  The fights were believable, they didn't make too much fuss about the fact she was a woman throwing punches at men, but also didn't make it too easy for her to disable some pretty big and tough guys. 

There's also an intriguing moment where she kicks a sanitary towel dispenser off the wall in a ladies toilets and uses one to patch up a gunshot wound - this strikes me as a very practical move and I don't think I've ever seen a sanitary towel in a film.  I'm not sure given the wound she had this would really have been possible but this is the world of an action flick and it doesn't do to question feasibility too closely.  It feels like a 'wouldn't it be cool if, now Salt's a woman, she...' but in this instance it paid off, for me at least.

Not so for the moment a little earlier when, after spraying CCTV cameras with a fire extinguisher to cover the lens, she inexplicably, with the fire extinguisher still to hand, whips off her knickers to block the final camera.  This she can do easily and a million times more gracefully than any knicker removal I've seen or executed in real life, thanks to the massive slit in the tight skirt she wears to her office job in the CIA.  I can't believe Jolie even did it, really.  I'd have been tempted to punch the director in the face.  There's also a questionable moment at the beginning of the film when she's learning to fold napkins for her anniversary dinner with her husband.  I find it very hard to believe this was part of the original script, and while the function of the episode is clearly to establish the husband and the occasion, this would never have been written for the character as Cruise would have played it.

When I watch a film, it has to go through two tests.  One is personal, informal, I have been using it more or less since I took A level English and my teacher asked the girls in the class, 'where are you in this play?'  I think the Writer By Night named this the Andrea Test after our first row about The Thing (he says it was about Phantasm 4 but neither of us are prepare to swear to it).  Basically, what I'm looking for is a film to contain female characters I can identify with, who have experiences in the film outside of being wives, girlfriends, mothers, rape victims (in the sense of being accessories, a film like Stepford Wives for example - the good one- about those experiences is fine); who behave with integrity and in a believable way, and the plural is crucial - there needs to be more than one.  Some films I love like Fight Club, don't pass this test; it doesn't make them bad films (Fight Club I think in some ways is different anyway because the film is about male identity and inter-male relationships in today's world).  But it's measure of beginning to see the way women are portrayed in movies, almost by default, without anyone really noticing it might be a problem.

Then last year the Writer By Night put me onto John August's blog which linked to Feminist Frequency's blog about the Bechdel Test.  It's a more formal, much simpler version of my test, asking 3 questions: Are there two or more women, with names, in the film?  Do they talk to each other?  Do they talk to each other about something other than men? Pick a film, any film.  Does it pass?  (But please watch the FF video - she is so much more eloquent, on this or any other subject, than I am).

What is striking about Salt then, considering it has an interesting, three-dimensional female character at the centre of it, is that it doesn't pass either test.  She is oddly the only woman in this world apart from a couple of unnamed agents and White House aides.  There are no other female characters.   It just fails at the first hurdle; not even two with names.  Think about this for a moment - isn't that astounding, more than that, shocking?  She does talk to a small girl, who might be named (I said I might be vague), about taking care of her dog, but the test specifies women, and every single adult woman with any status, all the politicians, spies and terrorists are all exclusively men.  I don't know about you, but this does not reflect the world I live in.  Hard as it may be to believe, everyday I have conversations with other women, who have names, about things other than men!  I see on the news women in positions of power (not enough but that's another blog) with names, talking to each other about things other than men.  We all as adults accept the movie world as being a construct, where things can happen that don't happen in the every day world, but how often do you step back and look what that construct, as a complete picture, is telling us?  And how do we explain to a younger generation why we have chosen to discriminate on screen in a way we would never find acceptable in the real world? 

I realise the same goes for almost any minority group on film; race, religion, sexual orientation.  But women are not a minority group.  Count us, see us, give us names.  Stop making us accessories and rape victims.  Start making us people.  Why is that so hard, Hollywood?

  For this Feminism Friday, I prescribe Allison Bechdel's Fun Home. The Writer by Night bought it for me for Christmas and I read it in seconds, just wonderful and warm and sad and true.

Call Yourself a Feminist! or, the Difficult Second Blog

And it really has been difficult.  While catching up on Feminist Frequency the other day I stumbled across a few other feminist blogs, including one that mentioned Feminism Friday - the idea being that if several bloggers post feminist blogs or articles on a Friday it will create a bigger buzz and maybe reach readers who wouldn't otherwise read something with that tag.  I think it's a great idea (I accidentally nearly wrote 'great' in capitals, I didn't think it was that great) and immediately wanted to give it a go.  Cue a few stumbling paragraphs about some of the sexist attitudes I encounter on a day to day basis.

Just one problem.  Turns out, I'm not terribly good at being opinionated.  I do a few things wrong:

1) I'm really bad at expressing myself without making allowances for other people having a different opinion to me.  I blame my parents, they did a pretty good job.

2) I always make a counter argument to myself in my head as I go along, which I find it hard to keep off the page (screen? keys?). I blame James II.  Not the king, the boyfriend.  James II was always right - he'd be the first to admit it.  In fact, he wouldn't just admit it, he'd inform you he was always right. No matter what you were arguing he'd be right, he'd pick the opposite viewpoint just for the mental workout.  Overall, it was probably pretty good for me and I have a lot to thank him for.  But unsurprisingly, I didn't marry him.

3) I write like I'm in the Famous Five.  It's not put on, I speak that way too (people who know me in real life will verify this).  Julia Marchese didn't think English people really say 'jolly good' until she heard me say it- I had to break it to her that they don't usually, since the 1950s.  I'm not sure who I can blame for that as my mother was strongly against Enid Blyton, or any children's literature where the girls helped mummy/Cook in the kitchen while the boys planted potatoes in the garden.  She used to switch it around when she read us bedtime stories (yes, I do blame her for me wanting to get involved in Feminism Friday. Thanks Mum!) Anyway, try making a forceful argument using phrases like 'jolly good', 'terribly' and 'marvellous'.  See what I mean?

All of this has sort of got in the way of me saying it makes me rather cross when, in the course of recommending an excellent book (which I have course to do on an almost hourly basis, and they pay me for it), I'm asked if it is Woman's book - 'woman' said in the same tone as 'I'm on a train that stops at Balcombe' (for those who don't use the London-Brighton line, the tone you use for an irritant the universe has thrown in your path which is not deadly but highly inconvenient and if you could think of a safe and legal way of destroying it, you might.  David Cameron. Seagulls).  So my brief nod to Feminism Friday which I will participate in, not necessarily every Friday, but as often as I can, and my response to all those readers who judge a book by its gender, is this:

There is no such thing as a woman's book.
A woman enjoying a book does not mean that a man will not.
And vice versa.
The novels I have most enjoyed have been those which surprise me, allow me to experience things I might not otherwise experience, educate me.
The gender of the authors of those books is irrelevant to my enjoyment of them.
The gender of the characters of those books is irrelevant to my enjoyment of them.
I know of no biological reason why this should be different for a man than it is for me.
It would not kill you just once in your life, or maybe even more often, to read a book about motherhood, or love.  In fact, in order to treat your condition, I view it as compulsory.
Yes, discounting a book as suitable reading material purely on the gender of the author or the person who recommends it is sexist, and in eight years of working with books, I have never seen a woman do it.

Every Feminism Friday, until I get bored, I'm going to recommend a good book by a woman.  I'd love to know what you think.  Today, it's The Electric Michelangelo by Sarah Hall. 

Also, I'd love for other bloggers I know and love, every now and then, to spare a thought (or even a blog) for Feminism Friday.