I’ll admit some of my reasons for writing this post are rather selfish. Parks & Recreation has quickly become my new favorite comedy (I’m sorry Community. I still love you), and I want others to understand its awesomeness (or at least give it a fair shot). Regardless, the show has a lot of good traits that I think are worth talking about. So here I give a few thoughts on what makes this show so fantastic.

Leslie Knope is Awesome!

I am not the first to fall in love with the charming, good-hearted, optimistic Deputy Parks Director. I could tell you what makes her so amazing, but others have said it so much better. Sady, over at Feministe.com, wrote a list of why she loves Leslie and it included things such as “You invented Galentine’s Day” (an annual celebration during which Leslie tells all the women in her life how much she loves and appreciates them), “you love your job without shame or reservation,” “you have a best friend, and she’s a GIRL!” and “you care.” Sady expands on all these ideas in her post, and she also takes some time to explore the differences between Leslie Knope and Liz Lemon.

Liz Lemon, the oft-discussed lead on 30 Rock has been the subject of much debate. Is she a feminist icon or not? What do we do with her? Sady suggests Leslie Knope may be a less frustrating alternative to serve as fictional feminist role model, and she offers a lot of convincing support. I recommend you read it if you haven’t. But then I recommend you read an article written by Kate Dailey on Newsweek.com. She echoes a lot of the same sentiments Sady expresses and offers some her own reasons for admiring Leslie. Dailey points out that Leslie is competent, and admired and supported by her colleagues. Leslie is also concerned with more than weddings and babies and the relationships she has are mature and genuine and they end just because they’re not right for each other, not because either party is crazy or neurotic. Many of these things are brought up specifically because they are the opposite of what we see from Liz Lemon, so Dailey takes things a step further and asks the question, “So what would Leslie Knope think about Liz Lemon?” and I think her answer is awesome;

That’s the best part, and the most telling: Leslie would be proud of Liz’s accomplishments. She would respect her desire for a husband and baby, and admire her career achievements. She’d encourage her efforts to get more respect as a female executive, while encouraging Lemon to reach out to the other women in her office. Leslie Knope understands that women’s advancement is about the advancement of all women, and that women need support from one another just as much—in fact, much more—than they need approval and access from the men that surround them. She might get frustrated with Liz; they may butt heads or disagree on certain points. But at the end of the day, Leslie realizes that she doesn’t need to compete with “Liz Lemonism,” and she’s not interested in besting Liz, shaming Liz, or proving Liz wrong. Instead, Leslie wants for Liz exactly what Liz wants for Liz: the freedom and confidence [to] make choices, the ability to command respect, and the opportunity to achieve all her goals.

Because Leslie Knope, overambitious dreamer that she is, believes that all women deserve those same advantages.

The other characters rock too Read the rest of this entry »

Back in high school I occasionally watched the first couple of seasons of Everwood on the WB. I found it enjoyable but when I moved away to college my tepid devotion to the show got lost in the transition. Due to a summer without work or school I’ve recently rediscovered the series, and I’ve found particular enjoyment in watching the relationship between bumbling but well-intentioned womanizer Bright Abbott and sweet, unassuming book worm Hannah Rogers. And lately with all the talk of body image on the site, I thought it would be interesting to take a closer look at an episode that deals specifically with that topic; the season 4 episode “Getting to Know You.”

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I have been really into Tegan & Sara lately (in particular their fifth album, The Con), and I have always had a soft spot for Hayley Williams (Paramore).  So when I stumbled across this interview over at autostraddle it was a match made in heaven (there is also a fascinating bit about Lady Gaga at the link, which I’m sure I’ll address sooner or later).  Enjoy!

Last week I was absent for very exciting reasons.  First, my mom came out to visit and then my partner and I headed over to Lyons, Colorado for Planet Bluegrass’s 20th Folks Festival.  And it folked my socks off.  Old favorites were there, like Ani DiFranco and Jenny Lewis, and I found some new favorites, too, such as Girlyman and Dala.  Consider the following to be souvenirs I brought back for you!

Ani DiFranco - Her new stuff keeps getting better.  Which is astonishing.  Check out this sweet folk ditty (sorry about the poor visuals, but the sound is great and this vid is from the festival!):

Jenny Lewis - Jenny had me at Rilo Kiley, and her solo stuff continues to win me over.  She played Silver Lining at the Folks Festival, but this clip is from a different performance:

New favorites after the jump!

This is a cross post from a good friend of mine.  It originally appeared at team berlin.  If you are interested in guest or cross posting at feministhemes.com, send a line with your idea to ms.wizzle@feministhemes.com.

Inception was not that good of a movie.  It wasn’t that BAD of a movie either.  Leonardo DiCaprio did a mediocre job with a mediocre movie.  There were two female parts in the entire movie, one of which was an antagonist.  Maybe three if you count the not-so-pretty lady at the bar who steals the wallet, but then turns back into a man immediately afterward.

This was a heist movie.  Yes, the heists may have taken place inside of dreams, but let’s dissect the elements of the movie.  First, it starts out with a theft in process.  Then, the person who was being robbed offers the thief a job…something that’s seemingly impossible.  Then a chunk of the movie is used up setting up a team, including the ever popular outlier that doesn’t really belong.  I will summarize Dane Cook’s description of this.  “The guy that is a last minute replacement and somebody vouches for him.”  Of course, they need to find the guy who they need to pull out of retirement for “one last job.”  Now the movie is done assembling the team, and they begin doing their training, plotting, planning, and preparing.  Is it important?  Yeah.  Does the movie spend too much time on it?  Yes.  If it is necessary to set up some background information on characters, it may be useful to actually spend time on it.  While it is nice to allow the audience to have their own imagination on what has gone on in the past with these characters and their interactions with each other, it is unnecessary if we don’t pay attention to any of the characters or if their roles are overshadowed greatly.  In this case, there’s no point in telling any story on any of the other characters because DiCaprio’s character is the only one who has even the slightest growth during the entire movie, and the only one that has closure at the end.  The actual heist was good.  It had multiple levels with different times going.  It would’ve been interesting for them to show the watches working at different speeds (see: beginning of the movie) just for reference sake or for a cheap gimmick.  A quick note on when they did this at the beginning of the movie: they showed the watch and time difference before explaining it.  That’s fine and dandy.  Then they explained it and never showed it again.  Though they did make it rather obvious that time was moving at different speeds on different levels, so that’s fine.

Was there character development?  A bit, I suppose.  DiCaprio’s character is haunted by his dead wife…and in the end he gets over it.  Otherwise, the other characters are hardly in the movie with active parts to really even tell if they have character developments or not. Read the rest of this entry »

A couple of weeks ago I set out to find an air-conditioned escape from my 90 degree house (hooray for no a/c in the desert!), and lo-and-behold, I ended up at that frigid complex known as “the movie theater.” I faced the daunting decision of choosing a movie I knew little to nothing about in order to eat junk food and not turn into a puddle of sweat on my carpet.  It came down to “Despicable Me” versus “Inception,” and once I took a look at each of the trailers it was clear: Ellen Page for the win.

So there we were: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tommy from 3rd Rock, Juno, and me.  And it was cool, and it was action-y, and it was not overtly disturbing or offensive.  So I walked out cool, happy, and jonesing for an Ellen Page marathon.  This probably doesn’t bode well for the impression that Inception itself made on me, eh?

Read the rest of this entry »

I love Felicia Day.  I loved her as Vi during season seven of Buffy.  I loved her as Penny in Dr. Horrible.  I loved her as Mag during the postapocolyptic Epitaph episodes of Dollhouse.  And I love her as the star and creator of The Guild.

The Guild is an awesome internet series focusing on the in-game and real-life exploits of the members of The Knights of Good, a guild in an online RPG only referred to as The Game (it’s essentially World of Warcraft).  The series focuses on Day’s character, Cyd Sherman aka Codex.  The series pokes fun at stereotypes regarding online gamers, but is filled with enough in-jokes that gamers are the core audience and not just the butt of the joke (ahem, not that I’d know).

However, that’s not to say that it’s perfect (after all, nothing regarding MMORPGs is).  So allow me to express one (of many) of my concerns:

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My introduction to Felicia Day came when one of my favorite geeks, Wil Wheaton, posted the trailer for Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog on his website and told me to watch it. I did. I even waited up with anticipation waiting for the final installment.

The Trailer:

It was (and is) easy to love Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. It’s a well-written, well-acted, well-produced 45 minutes of entertainment. It was also rather groundbreaking in the fact that it was independently produced by highly-respected professionals and proved that you don’t necessarily need the big studios to make something good or profitable.

Dr. Horrible also spawned a lot of discussion, most of it surrounding the character of Penny (played by Ms. Day), and the role she plays in the story.

(If you haven’t seen all three parts of Dr. Horrible yet, you should be warned: there will be spoilers.)

Read the rest of this entry »

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has recently appointed actress Geena Davis to a state commission aiming to promote women’s equality.  Sweet!

According to Wikipedia:

In 2004, while watching children’s television programs and videos with her daughter, Davis noticed what she thought was an imbalance in the ratio of male to female characters. From that starting point, Davis went on to sponsor the largest research project ever undertaken on gender in children’s entertainment (resulting in 4 discrete studies, including one on children’s television) at the Annenberg School for Communication of University of Southern California. The study, directed by Dr. Stacy Smith, shows that there are nearly 3 males to every 1 female character in the nearly 400 G, PG, PG-13, and R-Rated movies the undergraduate team of Annenberg students coded.

In 2005, Davis teamed up with the non-profit group Dads and Daughters to launch a venture dedicated to balancing the number of male and female characters in children’s TV and movie programming.

It’s nice to see someone with power, and with a background in the entertainment/film industry no less, acknowledging that this is a problem worthy of attention and taking steps towards change.  Let’s hope that Geena is able to really get the ball rolling and that change starts to happen!

(Check out Alethea Joy’s post on research inspired by Ms. Davis.)

While Stieg Larsson’s literary Girl trilogy has received generally positive reviews, reactions to the Swedish film have been mixed.  Having finished the first and second books, and now having viewed the film, I feel ready to throw my two-cents out there.  But first, the disclaimer-y stuff: There are certain to be spoilers, but I’ll try to keep it to book one and the film.  Also, be aware (if you aren’t already) this series contains graphic depictions of violence against women and sexual assault.

I’ll start with my summary and conclusion in case you’re using this to determine whether or not to read the series or watch the film:

If you’re the kind of person who likes psychological thrillers, non-slasher horror films, and murder-mystery style suspense, you’ll probably like this series.  If you like those types of things AND choose to view the themes of the series through a feminist lens, you may well be impressed.  But if you can’t handle violent films on the principle of the matter, this film will overload your system.  If you can’t handle violent films AND choose to view the themes of the series through a feminist lens, you’ll probably be pissed.  And revolted.

Let’s take a look at the first installment in the series. Read the rest of this entry »