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There were two things that had me pumped up about The Wild Things: 1. Jim Henson muppets, and 2. Karen O.  I was never very attached to the story as a kid, and was pretty sure that it was going to be a hyped-up-indie-fest as a film.  However, this was also during that period that I kept going to movies expecting little and being blown away (Away We Go, Jennifer’s Body, Paper Heart, and Whip It!), so maybe that explains the mild obsession that overtook me after seeing The Wild Things last fall.  The film, the soundtrack, and the book all made their mark on me, and all have a little feminist spin in my opinion.  Let’s break it down:

The Film

Sadly this trailer doesn’t incorporate the Karen O led music that really contributes to the feel of the film, nor does it capture what, to me, was the most meaningful theme: Max’s relationship with his mother.  What? you say?  His mother?  Please, this is a story about a naughty and wild little boy. On the surface, yes, but Max’s relationship with his mom is what gave the film depth.

Max is being raised by a single mother who has a new boyfriend, which can be hard on any kid.  It’s hard even into adulthood to understand split parents, and when a newcomer steps in things become even more difficult.  Max was already a pain-in-the-butt kid, and between a fight with his older sister and the apparent intrusion of a new man into his home, he loses it.  He runs away and winds up living among the Wild Things as their king.  And each Wild Thing offers us an insight into Max’s relationship with his mom.  Carol represents the possessiveness Max feels towards her; Alexander represents how ignored he feels; Judith represents his difficult and disagreeable side; Ira represents the doting and needy part of him; and the Bull represents the stoic role our society asks us to show when we’re really experiencing pain.  K.W. on the other hand, represents Max’s mom.

K.W. is warm, loving, kind, and is more complex than the other Wild Things can understand.  She has a different level of maturity, she needs relationships outside of the group.  Carol in particular is resentful of this and alternates between loving K.W. and not knowing how to express it and loathing her in a violent and possessive way.  This is a clear reflection of how Max has treated his mother on the night he ran away.  When Carol turns on Max for letting him down as a king, it is K.W. that protects him, hiding him in her mouth.  For a moment after it is safe, K.W. wants to keep Max, but she understands that as much as she loves him, she must let him go.  Whether Max has the capacity to understand this as deeply as I see it or not, this is the turning point where he realizes he needs his mother and must return to her, hopefully with a new respect for her as a person, not just a mom.

After the jump, an analysis of the soundtrack (including an interview with Karen O.) and the book

A production of To Kill A Mockingbird came to our small town this week, and having reread the book for the first time since 10th grade, I was thrilled to see it!  After finishing the book this summer, I poked my nose around the internet a bit to get a better idea about its critical reception.  I was surprised to learn that although it was originally heralded as a controversial and monumental statement about race relations in the south, the book has not been received favorably by many African Americans or feminists.

In reading the book for the first time in my adult life, I was able to truly comprehend the importance of the trial at hand – perhaps even in the 10th grade I was as naive as Scout, or maybe I just wasn’t that engaged in the reading since it was required.  Reading it after spending two years in a community that is even more homogeneously white than the community in which I grew up, the racial messages of the book were very prominent to me, and I came away feeling like I understood the hubub.  The fear, hatred, and judgment of the unknown, including (or maybe especially) racial differences, have become more visible to me in that time, and I felt the book did a good job of condemning such ignorance.

As excited as I was to see the play, suddenly the criticisms of the novel became clear and understandable to me.  As I sat in the theater, filled with college freshmen required to attend for their Creative Arts and English 1010s, I realized that the supposed triumph over one form of prejudice simply promoted various other forms.  And I feared that even if these homogeneous, pious young adults were paying attention to the most prominent message of the production, racial tolerance, the acceptance of sexism and classism were being reinforced.  What messages would these students really walk away with?

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The Beatles are very dear to my heart.  I know, everyone says that, but I really, really mean it.

My infatuation began in middle school, with sleepover parties spent watching Help! and Yellow Submarine, then was followed by a George Harrison inspired experimental phase with Hinduism in high school.  In college, I took a three credit humanities course on the music and impact of The Beatles, and for my 21st birthday I attended a Beatles tribute concert.  The recent release of the remastered catalog, as well Beatles edition Trivial Pursuit and Rock Band have caused me pain on a very personal level, as my graduate student budget can’t feed my addiction at this point.

However, between gifts and the bargain section at Borders, I have accumulated a respectable Beatles library of (hardcover) books about the Beatles, by those who actually knew them or are respected Beatles scholars (yeah, those exist).  Two of the most interesting books that I’ve read on the subject each came from very personal perspectives, and when taken together form an interesting picture of the men behind the band.  These books are the memoirs of Beatles wives Cynthia Lennon and Pattie Boyd.

Both stories start out full of romance and excitement. In Cynthia’s case, she had already met and started dating John before the Beatles had left Liverpool. Although John’s temper revealed itself early in their relationship, Cynthia’s love for him (as well as their unplanned pregnancy with son Jullian) led to an early marriage. She writes about their “secret marriage,” which was kept under wraps to increase the popularity of the band (four bachelors was more “marketable”), as well as being surrounded by John’s adoring fans, who unsurprisingly were less adoring of Cynthia.  Despite the crazed fans, Cynthia and Julian lived happily together enjoying the good life while John toured and wrote them beautiful letters from the road.

Pattie didn’t meet George until the Beatles had gained more notoriety, but with a history of modeling, she was more familiar with the limelight already.  Pattie was an extra in the Beatles’ first film, A Hard Days Night, and she and George fell in love at first sight.  In fact, one of the first things George said to her was “Will you marry me?”  Pattie laughed, and George asked “Well if you won’t marry me, will you have dinner with me?”  They soon were married, and, as a token of George’s love, Ms. Boyd is blessed enough to be the muse of the most covered song of all time, “Something.”  Pattie writes fondly of touring with the band, of fancy parties, and of the Beatles’ infamous journey to India to study under the Maharishi.

For many women (and some men) across generations, the idea of being married to a Beatle sounds like an absolute dream.  However, the honeymoon can’t last forever, and it didn’t for either woman.

The honeymoon’s over after the jump…

Persepolis is an easy to read, easy to understand, and easy to identify with introduction to the Iranian Revolution of the 1980s.  Initially published in two volumes, the graphic novel is Marjane Satrapi’s memoir of growing up in Iran as a part of a revolutionary family that did its best to exist in the new regime while dreaming of a better future for their country.  Marji is outspoken about human rights from a very young age, explaining that Marx was one of her childhood heroes.  This gets her in trouble often at school, making fun of the veil she must wear, speaking out about political prisoners, and dressing like a punk in the conservative culture.

After a family friend is arrested for harboring a young woman who came from a communist family, Marji’s parents explain the danger of being a political activist in Iran: because it is against the law to kill a virgin, the woman was married to a soldier the night before her execution.  Fearing for Marji’s safety, her parents send her to France to study at a boarding school before her outspokenness and unpopular beliefs can get her into bigger trouble than being expelled.

In France, Marji struggles to reconcile her feelings of loyalty to her country and family with her desire for greater freedoms than she will ever be allowed in Iran.  Furthermore, she is an outsider with such a dramatic history that her classmates think she is lying when she describes the tribulations she’s experienced.

Beyond being an introduction to the politics of the Iranian Revolution, Persepolis is a coming of age tale as Marji grows from a small child into a young woman.  While her experiences of the terror of war are more than anyone who has grown up taking safety for granted can even imagine, her personal struggles are easy to identify and empathize with, making the story easier to comprehend.

Persepolis has also been released as a film.  As Satrapi illustrated her memoir and was highly involved in the creation of the film, the story and art are consistent across mediums.

I thoroughly enjoyed both the book and the film. I recommend reading the book first, as a lot of details and background are lost in the film, but I commend the feature on being so accurate to the book. For those of us struggling to understand the current events of Iran, Persepolis is a fantastic introduction to revolution and divides that have been at work in the country for decades.

Not long ago, I spent a day at my favorite coffeeshop reading journal articles for fun – yes, this is a sign that I am a graduate student.  I recently subscribed to Psychology of Women Quarterly, and was engrossed in an article about women’s self-sexualizing behavior – in other words, women seeing themselves as sexual objects and engaging in sexually objectifying behaviors of their own volition.  The article reminded me of a book I had read about, but hadn’t read.  My favorite coffeeshop being in my favorite bookstore, I headed over to the women’s studies section and picked it up.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I remembered reading about Ariel Levy’s Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture, but I couldn’t remember if it was presented to me in a positive or negative light.  Flipping through the book and checking out the blurbs (“Culturally astute and not at all preachy.” – Psychology Today; “Feminism’s newest and most provocative voice.” – New York Post), I decided to give it a go.  However, another blurb caught my eye and perhaps should have been my first warning sign that despite not being “preachy” it was likely to be judgmental.  According to Kurt Andersen (author of Turn of the Century, which I’ve never heard of): “Ariel Levy understands that while we may defend to the death every woman’s right to look and act like a whore, it doesn’t mean we’re prigs if we find it unfortunate.”  Whoa.

In her book, Levy analyzes “raunch culture” from Girls Gone Wild to Playboy to gay bars, each of which are equally bad according to her narrative.  You’ll be hard pressed to find a feminist that finds GGW empowering, and we’re pretty split about Playboy, but it seems gay bars would probably make the cut as not explicitly bad for women.  In fact, I’m more likely to see these as markers on a continuum.  There is a difference between sexual exploitation of drunken college girls, consensual participation in pornography, and being allowed to express one’s sexuality in what one would presume to be a safe environment of like-minded people.  What’s more, in describing “pressure” to participate in GGW (which is more specifically blatant sexual harassment to the point of nausea on the reader’s part), Levy criticizes not the hooting frat boys, but the resigned young women and the women behind the scenes.  If we’re going to criticize GGW, why not address the multiple rape and sexual harassment cases against creator Joe Francis rather than the victims of his exploitation?

Levy portrays the world in strict black and white terms.  Good feminists appreciate the early women’s movements’ struggles against objectification and subsequently baulk at modern commodified sexuality.  Any woman involved in the sex industry (from college GGW to media and business CEOs), as well as any woman who is known for her sexual promiscuity (Levy refers to Paris Hilton and Tara Reid as “prizes”) are at best victims and more often traitors, void of all value as a “feminist” and ungrateful for what their foremothers fought for.

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Your typical ladies mag probably has some gorgeous model on the cover whose spent about seven hours in makeup prior to her photoshoot.  It probably has headlines about how to lose weight, have better sex, and make your man happy.  It’s lined with ads for make up, weight loss products, and designer clothes and jewelry that’d cost you a full paycheck (not to mention that you’d never have anyplace to wear them).  There’s an interview with some Hollywood starlet who’s promoting her latest show or film, and trying to iron out some trashy rumors.  If you’re lucky, there’s a gossip column outlining everyone else’s dirt, too.

Not the kind of magazine you want on your coffee table, but not sure there are other options?  Rest assured, and pick up a copy of BUST: a magazine “for women with something to get off their chests.”  According to editor-in-chief Debbie Stoller:

I’ve always believed that pop culture is far more than just a matter of keeping us entertained on the couch.  Not merely reflective, pop culture acts to shape our ideas of our society and, in particular, women’s place in it.

I picked up my first issue of BUST in June, and read it cover to cover – not something I can often say about magazines.  The issue contained interviews with Kathy Griffin, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, screenwriter Vendela Vida (of Away We Go) and the women of the Gulabi Gang (an Indian domestic violence vigilante women’s group).  There were recipes, DIY instructions for pinatas, tongue-in-cheek articles about the obsession with women’s bodies, and a thoughtful discussion of labiaplasty.

Issue #2 included interviews with Diablo Cody and Regina Spektor, craft and recipe instructions, a fall preview of music, movies, television and books, and a killer crossword (which went much better for me than the June/July puzzle).  In short, the magazine delivered.  Again.

BUST has everything you could hope for, from book, music and movie reviews to feminist friendly fashion designers to DIY instructions for everything from lunchboxes to shower curtains to kombucha.  The magazine regularly features interviews with empowered women from a variety of fields, ranging from pop to politics.  The “Boy Du Jour” column highlights interesting men in the media, and male artists are often included in the reviews (another reminder that feminists aren’t “man-haters”).

You can bet I filled out that little cardboard subscription card ASAP and dropped in my mailbox.  In fact, I did that after binging on Issue #1.  Issue #2 looked so good, I couldn’t risk my subscription not starting in time so I picked it up at the store, too!  If you’re looking for something a little less insulting and a little more empowering than Glamour, Cosmo, or Elle, I highly recommend BUST magazine.  You won’t be able to put it down.

Thanks to a chance encounter in the Border’s bargain bin, I finally picked up Diablo Cody’s naughty memoir Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper. Yes, the Diablo Cody who wrote Juno.  And yes, she still managed to work a hamburger phone into the story.

Knowing enough about Cody to expect a snappy description of her year long foray into the sex industry, I braced myself for what proved to be an R-rated journey into the world of strip clubs, peep shows, and phone sex.

After stomaching the chapter on strip clubs from Norah Vincent’s Self-Made Man, hearing the story from the other side of the stage was very interesting.  In many ways, the observations of both women were similar; the expressionless dancers, the bored connoisseurs, the secrecy and shame on both ends of the exchange.  However, while Vincent’s strip club experiences seemed wholly dissappointing and disturbing, Cody’s experiences range from empty to empowered as she strives to understand how she ended up on the pole and what her secret career says about her.

Cody’s memoir offers a first-person perspective on the world of sex work – short of outright prostitution Diablo dipped her toe into nearly every pool.  Her book never comes across as preachy, and is more observational than it is analytical.  It neither promotes nor condemns the sex industry, and Cody’s experiences never (okay, rarely) come across as traumatizing or upsetting.  In the August/September issue of BUST magazine, Cody has this to say about the lasting impact of stripping she has personally experienced:

I never internalized the shit that I did as a stripper and in the peep show.  For some reason, it did not affect me in as primal a way as it seems to affect other women.  When I think about that stuff, it’s still funny to me.  When I wrote about it in “Candy Girl,” I was laughing; when I read that book I still laugh.  I have never looked back on that stuff and felt ruined or hurt, wheras I’m learning to understand from talking to other women that they do feel hurt, they do feel exploited.  That they do look back on that stuff and want to barf.  I don’t know why I’m not like them.

Candy Girl, and perhaps Diablo Cody herself, seems to be a Rorschach test for feminists who are quick to interpret her work for better or worse.  In the interest of solidarity, I am less critical of Cody’s trendy lingo and hot topics than I am encouraged to see a female author and screenwriter climbing the Hollywood ranks and bringing these women’s issues into the spotlight.

Part Alice in Wonderland, part Nightmare Before Christmas, Neil Gaiman’s Coraline is one of the most fascinating children’s books I’ve read in a long time.

Coraline Jones is an explorer who loves adventure and hates recipes.  No one ever gets her name right (it’s Coraline, not Caroline), and no one ever has time for her until she stumbles into an alternate universe on the other side of a mysterious little door in her family’s new apartment.  On the other side of the door, Coraline meets her Other Mother, who has all the time in the world for her.  In fact, Coraline is the only thing that really matters to the Other Mother, who kidnaps Coraline’s real parents when she refuses to stay in the alternate world.  Coraline braves the tricks, traps and monsters laying in wait for her in order to save her parents and the other children who were kept by the Other Mother.  In the end, Coraline chooses the real world, with all its dissappointments, over the fantasy world offered by the Other Mother, and buries the key to the mysterious door to end the Other Mother’s game once and for all.

If you haven’t heard of the book, perhaps you’ve heard of the film, directed by Henry Selick (“The Nightmare Before Christmas,” “James and the Giant Peach”) and voiced by Dakota Fanning and Teri Hatcher.

It’s rare (in book and film) to find a story about a brave little girl who doesn’t depend on sidekicks or external factors to get herself out of trouble.  In fact, Coraline is more like Dorothy, who never lost sight of her purpose in the land of Oz and confronted her oppressor in the end, than Alice, who blindly stumbled through Wonderland until her spell wore off.  However, the film (unnecessarily) added a male sidekick (Wyborn) to spice up the action, or balance the gender ratio, whichever.  Despite “Why Were You Born” (as Coraline dubbed her companion), I enjoyed the film, and would recommend it (and the book) to girls and boys alike.

Coraline is a refreshingly empowering and unique character in an avant garde modern fairy tale.

For one year of her life, Norah Vincent experienced life as her male alter-ego, Ned. Her experiences compose her first book, Self-Made Man, and provide a unique window into the world of men as interpreted by a woman.

Vincent explains that her journey, although an experiment in identity, has nothing to do with her own gender identity.  She explains that although she grew up as a tomboy, she is “wired” as a woman, and her year as Ned took quite a toll on Norah.

The first theme described in the book is friendship.  Ned joins a bowling league, and learns the rules of male friendship, camaraderie, and mentorship from his three teammates.  As a lesbian disguised in drag, Norah feared what would happen to her if she were “outed.”  After a few weeks on the team, she learns that she entered the bowling alley with far more judgements and prejudices than she encountered.

Other chapters are less uplifting.  Through Ned’s eyes, Norah sees the behavior of men in their natural habitats.  From the underbelly of strip clubs to the uphill battle of the dating scene, Vincent struggles to cope with the experiences of Ned’s adventures without losing sight of Norah.  The inside jokes, thinly veiled sexism, and machismo push Ned to his limit, and the inability to express her emotional reactions to the experience leaves Norah feeling isolated and depressed.

Self-Made Man is one of the most interesting books that I’ve read in months.  It’s a page-turner which I finished in just a few sittings.  The book left me wondering how to separate the subjective and objective truths of Vincent’s experiences, and what it really is like to be a man.   In Vincent’s words,

I don’t really know what it’s like to be a man.  I never could.  But I know approximately.  I know some of what it is like to be treated as one.  And that, in the end, was what this experiment was all about.  Not being, but being recieved.

I highly recommend this book, and welcome the reactions of any male readers to Norah’s interpretations of Ned’s experiences.  Check out Norah Vincent’s website for more information about her writing.

In a world of Tom Sawyers and Huck Finns, there just aren’t that many troublesome girls in kids literature. But I can think of one wild redhead who’d give those boys a run for their money: Miss Pippi Longstocking.

Pippi was created by Swedish author Astrid Lindgren in 1944 as a story to encourage and comfort Lindgren’s sick daughter.  Pippi’s adventures have since entertained children worldwide, having been translated into more than 70 languages.

Pippi is a resiliant, independent orphan who is a regular source of entertainment and adventure to her neighbors, Tommy and Annika.  She is an inventive youngster who can always come up with an idea for a game, from “thing-finding” to a round of tag with some policemen.  Despite her frequent trouble-making, Pippi is always ready to fight the good fight, standing up to bullies and rescuing children from burning buildings with her super-human strength!

Pippi embodies the dreams of children – independence from the rules and responsibilites imposed by parents, a house to herself with a horse on the front porch, and a pet monkey named Mr. Nilsson.  Pippi is a relatively androgynous character, who easily appeals to both boys and girls.  A sterotypical tomboy, she is brave, assertive, and rowdy, always ready to climb a tree or start a fight.  At the same time, she enjoys wearing her long red hair in wild pig-tails, cooking and baking for her friends, and taking care of others as is expected of “good little girls.”  Pippi is complex and unique, and deserves a spot on all kids shelves, right next to Tom and Huck.

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