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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This post goes out to a special someone out there who suggests that I find better things to do than whine about the misogynistic plot devices in Bret Easton Ellis’s 1991 book, American Psycho, and the “toned down” violence against women in it’s 2000 film companion.  Clearly Bret doesn’t hate women or use objectification and violence towards them for attention.  Feminists just don’t get it.

Woman Taunted in Promotion for Bret Easton Ellis’ New Book [adrants]

Bret Easton Ellis fans are now directed to The Devil in You where they can step into the shoes of Clay, a Hollywood producer, as he runs a seedy casting session somewhere in LA. You direct the actress; you tell her what to do. You can encourage her, fill her with booze and drugs, make her dance for you or take things to a whole new level. Although the levels are quite tame. There’s no nudity, no sex, no elicit behavior. Which is too bad because, well, we thought there’d be more from a dude like Ellis.

Bret Easton Ellis Markets Book With Painful Subservient-Woman Game [jezebel]

At the bottom of each screen is the choice to “Let her go.” It’s kind of like “Choose Your Own Adventure” but less entertaining since no actual story emerges — as soon as each segment is done you’re back to the choice screen. When you realize how boring the “game” is and click “Let her go,” you’re taken to a screen that gives you a percentage meant to show how much you have “the devil in you.” You can then send the special meaningful score of exactly how bored you are at work to Twitter or Facebook and promote Ellis’s book to your friends.

I’m still pretty enthralled with Stieg Larsson’s Girl trilogy, and almost through the final book.  Sadly, the second film isn’t going to be shown anywhere near where I live until the end of August, so I’ll probably end up reviewing the final two books before I get to the second film.  In the mean time, there are plenty of other bloggers out there writing some great stuff about the series.

(Beware of spoilers for the first and second books if you haven’t read them yet.)

Why “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” Is So Important [Women Undefined]

Yet what on the surface seems to be an entertaining but purely aesthetic read offering little to no intellectual exercise, there is a gripping examination of gender equality and discrimination in Sweden (by extent Western society). Larsson examines the state of the country’s gender relations and brings to light such issues like violence against women ( often brutal violence) , discrimination against sex workers, gender equity in the workplace, child abuse and molestation, rape, sex trafficking, and the stigmatization of female rape victims worldwide.

Stieg Larsson’s 4th manuscript clouded in mystery [associated press]

“The question about the fourth manuscript is entirely hypothetical,” head of publishing at Norstedts, Eva Gedin, said. “We have never studied this manuscript and therefore don’t know if it exists, how much has been written and if so what shape the manuscript is in.”

The Girl Who Fixed the Umlaut [the new yorker]

But where in Sweden were they? There was no way to know, especially if you’d never been to Sweden. A few chapters ago, for example, an unscrupulous agent from Swedish Intelligence had tailed Blomkvist by taking Stora Essingen and Gröndal into Södermalm, and then driving down Hornsgatan and across Bellmansgatan via Brännkyrkagatan, with a final left onto Tavastgatan. Who cared, but there it was, in black-and-white, taking up space. And now Blomkvist was standing in her doorway. Someone might still be following him—but who? There was no real way to be sure even when you found out, because people’s names were so confusingly similar—Gullberg, Sandberg, and Holmberg; Nieminen and Niedermann; and, worst of all, Jonasson, Mårtensson, Torkelsson, Fredriksson, Svensson, Johansson, Svantesson, Fransson, and Paulsson.

It’s been discussed to death, and I haven’t read everything that’s been written (I don’t have that kind of time), but I want to make a few comments about the Daily Show/Jezebel/Olivia Munn situation.

I take that back. I have nothing to say about Olivia Munn. I’ve never seen her perform and while I’ve read some quotes attributed to her that rub me the wrong way, I also realize I read those quotes in a very negatively biased context and thus I’m slow to make any sort of judgement based solely on them.

What I would like to respond to is the original Jezebel post written by Irin Carmon, and the response by the women of The Daily Show.

I’m a big fan of questioning what part of the story I’m missing, and there were many times while reading the Jezebel piece that I wondered what part of the story was being left out. For one it seemed as though no one who has worked there within the last seven years was involved in the piece. Not to excuse any negative behavior or experiences of the past, but seven years is a long time, and there may have been some important changes in attitudes or how things are run.

Another thing that struck me was the connections that were made. One person interviewed said that the real Jon Stewart is nothing like the guy on TV. The guy in reality “runs the show with joyless rage.” Also included in the piece is an anecdote about Mr. Stewart throwing a script in the face of an executive producer. While I don’t want to condone any such behavior, I am left wondering if that type of behavior is directed solely at women. If he really runs the show with joyless rage where is our evidence that every writer hasn’t at some point had something hurled in their direction? And was there perhaps something that instigated the script-throwing behind the fact the victim was a woman? It is not good behavior, certainly, but it is also not necessarily sexist.

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Oh how I hate football.  I hate that athletics are more highly valued than academics from the time that kids start little league.  I hate that the football team gets more attention and funding than the art club, science club, and literary guild combined in high school.  I hate that football players are held to different academic and social standards in college.  And I hate the bullshit that professional football players get away with (check out my new favorite blog, nflcrimes.blogspot.com).  And I hate how much they’re paid.

And then there’s this:

Which, according to the Orlando Sentinel “has a chance to be the most successful professional women’s “sport” from a business perspective.”

Let’s all take a minute to think about what that says about the way that our country views women, women’s athletics, and men’s interests.  Because the LFL is an insult to all three. Women are more than their bodies, women’s athletics is more than women’s bodies, and dear God men must have interests beyond women’s bodies.

Also, the comments over at the OS are enough to make you puke.

Fess up. You’re not really indignant about this, but jealous. I know that you know that if you looked as hot as these girls and were just as fit, you’d be out there proudly flaunting it like they do.

My guess would be the writer of this piece is a frusterated former athlete or simply an unattractive or mis-informed women [sic] who never received 1/2 the attention the LFL is garnering.

Now I feel stabby.

Pat Robertson has made it into our archives of misogyny before, but this one is really something else.  Remember that time that Tina Fey hosted SNL and implied through her tear-down of “Bombshell” McGee that a husband’s cheating is more the fault of the mistress than the husband?  Pat Robertson takes it a step further and educates us all on how it’s the wife’s laziness that drives her husband to cheat.

E-mailed Question: “My husband has always been a flirt and loves to talk with other women he finds attractive.  He says he would never cheat on me, but his actions are starting to get to me.  What should I do?”

Robertson’s response: “First thing is you need to make yourself as attractive as possible and, uh, don’t hassle him about it.  And why is he doing this?  Well, he’s doing it because he wants affirmation that he is still a man, that he is attractive, and, uh, he gets an affirmation of himself.  That means he’s got an inferiority complex that’s coming out, and, uh, he’s not gonna cheat on you – he’s just playin.  But you need to not drive him away, start hassling and hamming on him, but make yourself as beautiful as you can, as fun as you can, and say ‘let’s go out here, let’s go there, let’s go do the other thing’ so…”

Co-host, laughing: “He has a lot more grace than I do.  Let me just say, we’d be having a serious conversation.”

Robertson: “Affirmation!  Affirmation, dearheart!”

Co-host: “Yeah, yeah. A little bit of affirmation goes a long way.”

Wow.  So much fail.  I need to take this apart, bit by bit. Read the rest of this entry »

“Regardless of the business aspect of things, is there a reason that there isn’t a female Hitchcock or a female Scorsese or a female Spielberg? I don’t know. I think it’s a medium that really is built for the male gaze and for a male sensibility. I mean, the best art is made under not an indifference to, but a neutrality [toward] the kind of emotionalism that I think can be a trap for women directors.”

- Bret Easton Ellis

After all the gruesome lady-killing in American Psycho (which was, by the way, directed by a woman), this drivel shouldn’t surprise any of us.

BONUS IDIOCY:

“I’ve always thought that the feminists got it totally wrong on that one. But I can’t go there anymore.”

Because killing women horrifically in an attempt to discuss the pros and cons of being a wealthy hipster is not at all anti-woman.  Feminists should be happy about it!  After all, it was directed by a woman! *headdesk*

From Movieline via Jezebel. (Also interesting: Roger Ebert’s review of the film.)

Sady Doyle has an awesome post up at The Awl regarding the Rivers Cuomo of our adolescent angst.  Weezer was kind of a big deal to those of us who were teens in the 90s, especially those that considered our selves “different,” “alternative,” “artsy,” or generally non-jock (although I certainly knew quite a few members of the swim team who were big fans).  Weezer was for the self-declared geeks who enjoyed seeing rock stars wearing grampa sweaters and Buddy Holly glasses, because it gave us a little validation for doing it ourselves.

Weezer was what I listened to while I rode around my yard in circles for two hours every Saturday on our riding lawn mower.  Weezer was the little “=W=” I drew on my notebooks.  Weezer was one of the first concerts my friends and I went to only to be picked up by someone’s mom in a minivan.  Weezer was cool.

But Weezer was weird.  I mean, there was a quirkiness to the self-deprecating, kind of creepy music.  Rivers was this wiry little nerd that was cute and deep and non-threatening in most ways, but then he’d sing stuff about girls who put their make-up on the shelf when he wasn’t around and whose diaries he read and all kinds of other weird, not-so-lady-friendly junk.

I still listen to the Blue Album and Pinkerton (the new stuff never did it for me) on occasion, and ease my cognitive dissonance by telling myself that it’s all tongue-in-cheek, and after all, this guy is primarily focusing on how his ridiculous ideas about love don’t seem to be working out anyway.  But it’s nice to know that someone else sees the problems inherent in many of the messages.

Rivers Cuomo was the Michael Cera of his generation.  But he was a Michael Cera who played guitar, loud guitar, and he sang. Imagine Michael Cera in a stadium, screaming about how girls don’t like him back and it makes him sad sometimes, a guitar strapped to his hips. The power unleashed was nuclear.

And this:

“Pinkerton,” basically, is the album where Weezer got creepy. And there is a lot of creepiness to be dealt with. There is “Pink Triangle,” in which Rivers Cuomo Chases an Amy, laments, “she’s a lesbian! I thought I had found the one,” and presents the highly persuasive argument, “everyone’s a little queer, can’t she be a little straight?”

There is “Why Bother,” on which Cuomo hilariously declares that he has had two entire girlfriends, and he is never going to have one again, because we are all terrible. (Again, so that we’re keeping track of the emotion-to-age timeline: The man was twenty-six.) And then, there is “Across the Sea,” wherein… oh, God. Oh, GOD.

And this:

Rivers Cuomo is both Liz Phair and Liz Lemon. He’s the pathetic dork in the glasses who can’t get laid and has gone at least slightly bonkers over it, the one you hate to be like, but love to identify with, because it means you’re not alone in being such a reject.

I mean, that’s not some deep hidden misogyny you uncovered because you’re so paranoid/clever. Those are just the words. It’s like a musical installment of Twilight. If a friend were dating a dude who talked like this, you’d start leaving checklists of Signs That You Are In An Abusive Relationship all over her apartment.

Sady has incorporated so much awesome in her article that I can’t even explain it.  Go read it. It’s long.  Read the whole thing.  Then listen to Weezer in a new way.  Get nostalgic, get pissed, and smile fondly about the doodles on your 10th grade notebook.

When I am working on things (big papers and whatnot) I like to have something on in the background, usually a movie or TV show I’ve seen a million times to provide a little background noise. Lately The Princess Diaries 2 has been on my rotation. It’s simple, it’s cute and fun and light and I find all the weird faux-Europeanness of the whole thing mildly amusing.

The more I watch the movie, however, the more I’ve come to realize it is highly problematic, and the more concerned I am for the young girls this film was (successfully) marketed to.

My biggest issue with the movie: Nicolas Devereaux (the male lead) is really inappropriate.

Consider Exhibit A:

Lord Devereaux oversteps his bounds on a number of occasions and it’s played off as cutesy and romantic, thus telling young girls this behavior is not only okay, but charming. According to the movie it’s okay for guys to grab and kiss you and then knock you into a fountain (I still don’t understand how they end up in there).

It’s also okay for him to follow you up stairs (against your wishes and invading your personal space), meddle in your relationships and insult and demean you.

His horrible, arrogant behavior is in part explained by the fact that he’s working with his uncle to usurp the Genovian throne, making him the future king instead of Mia being made the future queen. But this just makes his behavior worse. Throughout the movie, we’re never sure who’s side he’s on. I guess we can pretend he wouldn’t be a jerk if he didn’t have ulterior motives, but either way his interactions with Mia are in the context of dishonesty and disrespect. In fact the first time we, as the audience, really know where he stands is after all their little meet cutes when he officially declares his refusal to take the throne. He never apologizes to her or explains his internal struggle (as though any of that would validate his behavior). Instead he just says he loves her and she jumps into his arms, never getting a whiff of clarity on whether he planted the paparazzo that caught them canoodling by the lake or feels the slightest remorse for treating her like dirt.

The big problem here is that the movie was targeted to tween girls; the same tween girls that watched That’s So Raven religiously and would tune in to Hannah Montana two years later. I use “was” as if this movie has disappeared and never finds itself being rerun on Disney Channel or sitting on the video shelf (both virtual and real) at various retail establishments. The movie ends with a feminist message about how women shouldn’t have to be married to run a country, particularly when their male counterparts would not be laden with the same requirement, but that message (which seems rather unapplicable to the average person’s life) doesn’t make up for the horrible representation of romantic relationships.

I know it seems a little silly to think so much about a movie that came out 6 years ago, but as a fan of kids television I’ve become really sensitive to the messages being propagated by children’s entertainment. It often seems that with lighthearted little romps like this people focus on the wrong things. In the case of this movie it’s easy for parents to glance at it, see that there’s no violence and the most sexual content is a kiss, and notice it has a heartwarming little message about women having equal rights and has the “safe” Disney logo on it and accept that it’s appropriate for their kids.

It’s so easy to think that way about movies like this, and that makes me sad. I feel like entertainment produced for the next generation should be taken more seriously and given more consideration than whether it will be profitable or not.

I remember seeing a preview for The Ugly Truth when my partner and I went to see Away We Go.  Not only do these two movies have nothing in common, I can’t imagine anyone who liked one being able to stand the other.  Even the preview for The Ugly Truth made me stabby.  Somehow, the desperation of procrastination paired with the convenience of Netflix Instant resulted in me scowling through the whole thing, pretty much in disbelief.

The trailer is far less lude and insulting than the movie, if you can believe it.  Plot: beautiful, successful woman is too neurotic to land a dude, so Dr. Bro teaches her how to get a boyfriend.  Makeover, innuendo, playing stupid, and being a tease should do the trick.  Dr. Bro falls for chick, chick falls for Dr. Bro, Dr. Bro runs like a little baby because he’s sensitive and heartbroken and doesn’t trust love, they make out in a hot air balloon.  Awww….

*vom*  Perhaps the one saving grace of this piece of crap is that there is no way that a bro is going to see it and be encouraged to follow these bullshit “tips” (such as make a woman think she’s ugly and that you hate her in order to get her to like you – but be warned, this should only be used on women over the age of 25, as 14 year olds are still too insecure to know how hot they are due to puberty).  If any men saw this film, they were surely dragged by their girlfriends.  What is more likely is that women went to this P.O.S. with their girlfriends.  Hopefully they were smart enough to know the whole thing was insulting, misogynist, and disgusting and that this is not the way to woo a woman and that this was the opposite of “romantic.”  Furthermore, if there were any men who were subjected to sitting through this, hopefully they were equally insulted.  The film reduces men to stupid, horny, shallow, callous, cruel caricatures of bros, frat boys, and players. I can’t imagine the level of hatred for the opposite sex on either side of the battle of the sexes that would make this film funny.

Can we please get a makeover flick where some shallow, naive, people-pleasing woman is given a longer skirt, isn’t criticized for her hair, is allowed to do a happy-dance without being mocked, doesn’t have to show cleave, and is encouraged to start voicing her opinions in order to get to where she wants to be, whether that’s a house in the suburbs or a top-floor corner office or anywhere in between?  Or where a dude learns how to respect women and sees how much hotter it is when a brainy babe is allowed to be who she is?