Tuesday, May 12, 2009
GREAT JOB Com 6770 (Media Crit.) Class!! :-)
Monday, May 11, 2009
Ally McBeal and Feminist studies...
I just wanted to share an interesting excerpt from my final paper for Com 6770 (Media Critisicm) in regards to Ally McBeal and some issues with feminist studies.*
Ally McBeal premiered in September of 1997. This pilot episode’s ratings “beat ABC’s Monday Night Football in terms of 18-49 year-old viewers, a novel event in the history of televised Monday Night Football” (Svetkey 1998). The show depicts the life of a single, independent woman who works in a successful law firm in Boston. “Ally McBeal represents one of the last major commercial productions to address feminism itself as the subject of its narratives as its evident in its numerous episodes on litigation and the human rights issues central to the feminist agenda, as well as its direct confrontation with sexual politics in the office” (Owen et. al 2007). The show’s creator David E. Kelly described Ally McBeal’s character in the following way:
“A positive representation of a strong, professional woman who, was not the hard, strident feminist out of the ‘60s and ‘70s…She’s all for women’s rights, but she doesn’t want to lead the charge at her own emotional expense” (Owen quoting from Bellafonte 1998).
In addition to the Ally McBeal’s great audience’s reactions and the positive things that the creator had to say about this successful show, the series also benefited to the society in some of the content that it covered (i.e. sexual harassment laws and the issues of legal and social equity). This fact is shown through the plot line of the show’s pilot when we see that Ally quits a prominent law firm in which she got hired fresh out of Harvard Law School (Owen et. al 2007). The events that lead up to her walking out of this law firm are described as the following: “ …the firm fired her rather than Jack Billings, the senior ‘rainmaker’ partner in the firm who repeatedly grabbed Ally’s rear and who, when confronted with being fired himself, threatened to counter sue the firm under the Federal Disabilities Act, claiming he had an obsessive compulsive disorder that impelled him to squeeze butts” (Owen et. al 2007). After walking away from this situation and leaving the firm, she bumps into one of her collages from Harvard Law School named Richard Fish who invited her to join a firm that he and John Cage had started (Owen et. al 2007). It is here at Cage and Fish, where Richard exposed Billings of his misleading and perverted defense claims. “Although the pilot episode affirmed the legal right of working women to be free from sexual harassment by powerful superiors in the workplace, it also affirmed that male power holders continue to regard occupationally competent, successful women as transgressive and attempt to discipline them through sexually infantilizing and intimidating behavior” (Owen et al. 2007).
Ally McBeal also came with much criticism from the more conservative spectrum. One example of this criticism came with Second Wave journalists and viewers who were frustrated at the “realization that hey were not being treated as equal partners in the civil rights movement, the peace movement, or in their everyday lives” (Owen et. al 2007). According to these feminists, Ally’s short skirts worn in the series “made her the antithesis of a feminist and a poor role model. They read Ally’s adoption of the signifiers of sexual feminine fashion as participating in the very sexism Second Wave feminism had struggled against and as legitimizing the hegemonic masculine view that all women are primarily and fundamentally objects of sexual desire” (Owen et. al 2007) .
When Ally McBeal was at its peak (during the end of the first season), the question of ‘Is feminism dead?’ resounded in an issue of Time magazine that came out on June 29, 1998 (Owen, et. al 2007). “Journalistic critics’ and viewers’ responses to this query were quite divided. Some argue that the series and its title character were a powerful expression of contemporary Third Wave feminism. Others asserted that the series was an elegantly crafted backlash against feminism, a televisual reflection of the antifeminist tropes in the writings of Kate Roiphe, Camile Paglia, Naomi Wolf, and Pene Denefield” (Owen, et. al 2007).
*Citations provided from the following sources:
Bellafante, Gina (1998). ‘Feminism: It’s All About Me!’, Time, pg. 58
Owen, Susan A., Stein, Sarah R., & Vande Berg, Leah R. (2007). Bad Girls: Cultural
And Media Representations of Transgressive Women, Peter Lang Publishing, Inc:
New York.
Svetkey, Benjamin (1998). ‘Kelley’s Heroes’, Entertainment Weekly, pp.32-34, 37-38, 40
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Oracion por Marilyn Monroe (Prayer for Marilyn Monroe)
Receive this girl known around the world by the
name Marilyn Monroe
although that was not her real name
(but You know her real name, that of the little orphan girl violated
at age 9
and the little store clerk who at 16 had wanted to kill herself)
and who now presents herself before You without any makeup
without her Press Agent
without photographers and without signing autographs
alone as an astronaut facing the night of space.
(as reported by Time)
before a prostrated crowd, with heads to the ground
and she had to walk on tiptoes so as not to tread on the heads.
You know our dreams better than the psychiatrists.
Church, home, cave, are the security of the mother’s breast
But also something more than that…
The heads are those of her fans, it is clear
(the mass of heads in the darkness beneath the stream of light)
But the temple is not the studios of 20th Century-Fox.
The temple – of marble and gold – is the temple of her body
in which the Son of Man with a whip in hand
drives out the 20th Century-Fox flesh merchants
who made Your house of prayer a den of thieves.
In this world of sins and radioactivity
You will not blame a little store clerk only.
Like all shop girls she dreamt of being a film star.
And her dream was reality (but the reality of Technicolor).
She did nothing but act according to the script that we gave her
- That of our own lives – And it was an absurd script.
Forgive her, Lord, and forgive us
for our 20th Century
for this Colossal Super-Production on which all of us have worked.
For her sadness, as we are not saints,
Psychoanalysis was recommended to her.
Remember, Lord, her growing fear of the camera
and her hatred of makeup – insisting on fresh makeup for each scene –
and how the horror kept building in her
and her late arrivals at the studio became more frequent.
she dreamt of being a film star.
And her life was unreal like a dream that a psychiatrist interprets and archives.
yet when she opened her eyes
she discovered that she was under spotlights
and they turned off the spotlights!
and they take down the two walls of the setup (it was a movie set)
while the Director walks away with his notebook
because the scene was shot.
Or like a yacht trip, a kiss in Singapore, a dance in Rio
The reception at the mansion of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor
viewed in the miserable little living room of an apartment.
The found her dead in her bed with the phone in her hand
And the detectives didn’t know who she was going to call.
She was
like someone who had dialed the number of the single friendly voice
and had only heard the voice of a recording that told her: WRONG NUMBER
Or like someone who had been wounded by gansters
reaching for the disconnected telephone.
whoever it might have been that she was going to call
and didn’t call (and perhaps it wasn’t anyone
or it was Someone whose number isn’t in the Los Angeles Directory)
You answer the phone!
Friday, May 8, 2009
Slumdog Millionaire; life goes full circle
In Slumdog Millionare, Jamal Malik is being physically tortured and antagonizing interrogated because of the fact that some officals in India believe that he was cheating on the all famous show called “Who Wants to be a Millionare”. Throughout his interrogations, we witness many flashbacks on his life – stretching back from his childhood. The themes seen in this inspirational film include destiny, lives going full circle, and beating the odds.
Jamal Malik was born in extreme poverty in Inda. The government (police) were constantly present and violent riots were an unfortunate common occurrence. On one occasion, we witnessed one of Jamal’s flashbacks. This memory in particular involved some horrible Gestapo members causing havoc, death, and ultimate destruction on the streets. Jamal and his brother were playing with the local kids (as usual) as his mother and many other women were washing laundry in the common canal one day. We see a huge group of men come and rampage the city, killing many innocent people (including Jamal’s mother) along the way. Jamal and his brother Salim make a run for it- determined to escape and spare their lives. Luckly, they make it out of this mess and find shelter.
Further on in their adventures, Jamal and Salim were sleeping under a quick made tent, made of a simple sheet/blanket in the middle of a literal dump. Two men came along and offered the boys some coke. Oblivious of the danger that these strangers were, Jamal and Salim followed them, ultimately allowing them to kidnap them (perhaps there was something in the Coke that made them docile and compliant?). It wasn’t too long after this that the two meet their “third musketeer” (beautiful Latika). After facing many trials and tribulations, including one incident that involved the perverted men who took the Jamal, Salim and Latika (as well as many other orphaned children) “under their wing”, so to speak and made them sing a national anthem type song. These kids were tricked, thinking that if they had a nice voice, something good would happen to them- that they would gain something in return for singing. Unfortunately, the opposite occurred. One little boy was singing his heart out for these men, but sadly, his eyes were burned away and he wound up blind. Jamal and Salim were lucky enough to escape from this treachery, but Latika was left behind (since she could not make it onto the moving train the brothers managed to escape on).
With the song “Paper Planes” in the background, we see Jamal and Salim grow up while riding atop of speeding trains and stealing their way to survival (acting as tourists, using ropes to take food out of train windows, etc). In accident that happened as they were trying to steal bread caused their travelling to be put on halt, and from there Jamal went searching for his lost friend and ultimate true love Latika. The beautiful girl was found, learning how to belly dance so that she could sell her body to any man who wanted her. Jamal and Salim come to the scene, and we see the trend of slumming, bargaining, and violence all in the process of Salim’s escape from the whore house she was living in. Destiny and life coming full circle are two key themes in this film because each character truly did find their destinies in a way. Jamal got his girl in the end and Salim (who dedicated his life to stealing and cheating his way through things) died in a literal pool of blood and money that he stole from other people. Jamal beat the odds that were against him in his life by winning the "Who wants to be a Millionaire" game and becoming a television celebrity.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Natasha Richardson (1963-2009)
I recently found out that one my favorite actresses past away this month. Her name is Natasha Richardson and she was in many famous films (such as Nell, The Parent Trap, and Maid in Manhattan). She also did stage work, acting in plays like Tennesee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire.
Richardson came from a long line of actors and actresses; her mother being the legendary Vanessa Redgrave and sister Joely Richardson (some might recognize her as Julia McNamara on Nip/Tuck).
Natasha was on a skiing trip in Quebec, Canada on March 16th taking a skiing lesson. In the process, Natasha fell and consequently suffered head injury. After her accident, she was able to hold conversations with the paramedics who came to the scene, so she was not admitted to the hospital right away. It wasn’t until 3 hours after she returned to her hotel room, since she was complaining of a headache, that she was taken to the closest hospital. Subsequently, Natasha was transferred to a different hospital in Montreal, Canada- at this point she was in critical condition. About seven hours later, Richardson was taken to a hospital in New York via airplane. It was there, at Lenox Hill Hospital, that Natasha Richardson passed away.
No one is entirely sure what exactly caused her death, specifically, why this head injuy turned fatal. Research shows that even a small head injury can lead to death, so one must not delay when an accident like such occurs.
At any rate, REST IN PEACE, Natasha! Your theatrical grace and elegance will be forever admired!
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Fatal Attraction, Swim Fan, Cruel Intentions and the Femme Fatal…
We’ve all seen it happen; Boy meets girl, their eyes meet, and eventually its love at first sight. But what if something goes awry? What happens when this feeling of “love” is not mutual and instead of ‘love at first sight’ it becomes a matter of LUST at first sight? Infatuation is not all its cracked up to be. It can become an agonizing and disgusting process. Some people take this aspect of lust way too far; we see this example in popular movies.
The other night, I was watching Cruel Intentions starring Sarah Michelle Gellar, Reese Witherspoon, Ryan Phillippe, and Selma Blair. For those of you who have not yet seen this film, it was popular in the late 90s (1999) and depicts a love/ lust triangle between the main characters Kathryn (played by Gellar), Sebastian (Ryan) and their “conquests” Annette (Witherspoon) and Selma. Gellar and Phillippe make a perverted bet at the beginning of the movie, stating that if Sebastian has sex with Annette ( who is the headmaster’s daughter) before the school year starts, then he gets to have intercourse with his step sister Kathryn. If he fails, Kathryn gains possession of Sebastian’s beautiful car. Ultimately, Sebastian falls in love with his “conquest” Annette, Kathryn being the bitch that she is ends up turning on him and he gets killed. Karma falls on Kathryn in the worst way by the entire school learning all of her horrible tactics at Sebastian’s funeral; including the fact that she is a HUGE crack snorting hypocrite.
Another example of crazed femme fatal roles comes from the all famous film entitled Fatal Attraction. In this movie (Starring Glenn Close and Michael Douglass), Glenn’s character meets Michael’s at a corporate dinner event. Everything seemed good and fine in the beginning, but then things got a bit more serious- with the two meeting for “lunches” and going out for coffee. Next thing you know, Michael is meeting Glenn in her apartment for dinner and they end up sleeping together, causing him to be cheating on his wife. Michael knows what he’s doing is wrong, and tries confronting Glenn about their actions and tells her that they must STOP, but she has this horrible hold on him- Glenn’s character wants what she cannot have and is an insane and psychotic individual who will attempt any action it takes to try to be with Michael (including following him home, kidnapping his child, and claiming to be pregnant with his child). Sorry to be a killjoy, but I shall come to the conclusion that whomever is reading this entry has seen this movie- the ending of this thriller depicts Glenn eventually trying to kill everyone off (Michael and is his wife), but ironically, Glenn is the one who dies (gets stabbed/ drowns in the bathtub).
The final film that I wish to describe is one of my personal favorites called Swimfan. This one is basically an updated 2000’s version of Fatal Attraction, with pretty much the same plot- only it is set in a high school setting. The main character is a taken member if the swim team of the high school the actors attend. He has a very happy and functional relationship with his girlfriend until a Southern Belle comes and takes everything away from him (his job, his chance at a swimming scholarship for college, the tight relationship he has with his mother, etc). After multiple turns of events, the Southern Belle goes postal and ultimately gets killed off- causing everyone else to live happily ever after (again similar to Fatal Attraction’s plot).
Thursday, March 5, 2009
CHRIS CROCKER!!
