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Lately I’ve developed an affection for TV shows that aired on ABC between 1989 and 1993. Doogie Howser, and the Wonder Years have been faves for some time, and nostalgia has led me to add thirtysomething and Life Goes On to my Netflix queue. Most recently, however, I’ve fell in love with a show I’ve actually been hunting down for years: Homefront.

Homefront aired on ABC from 1991-1993. Its short run means it was rarely syndicated and no one has gone through the trouble to release it on DVD, so creative googling and luck are necessary to hunt down VHS recordings. It was rather critically acclaimed during its initial run but failed to pull in the ratings necessary to guarantee renewal. It seems a very similar story to my favorite show on TV these days, Friday Night Lights. Kyle Chandler stars in both, but whereas Homefront died due to lack of viewership, Friday Night Lights had the advantage of being produced in a more flexible era of television, allowing it to live 5 (short) seasons–for which I am eternally grateful.

But back to Homefront. It’s an evening soap that revolves around a town, River Run, Ohio, at the end of WWII. The first episode begins with the young soldiers returning home from overseas and begins to explore the early post-war era.

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Released in 1999, I had never seen The Cider House Rules until a few weeks ago.  I’m not usually into period pieces or Tobey Maguire, so I didn’t expect much.  However, there were some powerful lines about the importance of a woman’s right to choose and to have safe medical treatments available to her once she’s made her choice.  Furthermore, there were some powerful examples of times that removing that choice is truly cruel, regardless of your political beliefs on the matter.

The Cider House Rules is the story of Homer, an orphan boy who never made it out of the orphanage, and has been trained as a doctor by his mentor and father figure, Dr. Larch, who runs the orphanage.  In addition to delivering the babies of women giving their children up for adoption, Dr. Larch offers safe medical abortions to any woman who asks for it.  He doesn’t advertise this service (as it is illegal), and he doesn’t suggest it to women no matter how many times he’s delivered their unwanted babies, but he won’t turn away a woman in need.  When Homer accuses him of playing God in this way, Dr. Larch responds:

Dr. Larch: I have been given the opportunity of playing God or leaving practically everything up to chance. Men and women of conscience should seize those moments when it’s possible to play God. There won’t be many. Do I interfere when absolutely helpless women tell me they simply can’t have an abortion – that they simply must go through with having another and yet another orphan? I do not. I do not even recommend. I just give them what they want.

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I hope that you were able to take a moment today to think about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and all the other civil rights and peace activists who have made our world so much better at the cost of their own pain, suffering, and sadly untimely deaths.  Feministing has a great list of links to posts about MLK and the importance of his memory, and F-Bomb has a great short bio posted as well.  In case you’d like a refresher, his “I have a dream” speech is below, in it’s entirety.

In the interest of full disclosure, let me begin by admitting that I have never liked Adam Sandler.  I think he’s offensive, crude, annoying, stupid, and irritating.  But, as I’m a bit under the weather and laid up on the sofa, I decided to give Sandler’s Disney kids flick Bedtime Stories a shot.  And despite my low expectations, I was disappointed.

Supposedly we’re supposed to empathize with Skeeter, the screw-up poor kid who lost his family’s hotel and has a chance to win it back.  We’re supposed to root for his success and watch the Average Joe beat the wealthy snobs at their own game.  But true to his track record, Bedtime Stories is filled with sexism, racism, and toilet humor.

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I can remember watching The Craft at sleepovers during 8th and 9th grade, collecting old books on witchcraft (always history books and never spellbooks, much to my adolescent disappointment), and playing with tarot cards and Ouija boards by candlelight.  I’m reminded of Willow’s mom (Buffy shoutouts, yo) brushing off her witchcraft as an “adolescent phase.”  In a lot of ways, I think it fits – the search for empowerment, female power, and sisterhood are all common components of the teen girl experience.

The Craft exemplifies all of these themes, as well as addressing other teen (and generally human) issues such as slut shaming, racism, beauty ideals, domestic violence, and sexual assault.

When Sarah and her father relocate to a new town, she is taken in by three aspiring witches as their fourth – completing the circle and representing all the elements.  While her friends, Nancy, Bonnie and Rochelle, work diligently at their craft, magic comes naturally to Sarah and she is able to bring to fruition the spells that they have been trying to complete.  However, things begin to turn bad, and when Sarah tries to leave the group she is harassed, until she demonstrates her superior power, scaring the other girls off and returning to a seemingly peaceful life. A closer look at the themes listed above after the jump.

I recently purchased a Roku box to use with my Netflix account, and I am loving it.  I’ve been able to rewatch Heroes from the beginning, and over the past few weeks I’ve almost caught up.  Watching the show years after its debut, I’m certainly in a different place than I was the first time around, and it’s been really interesting to view the characters and their powers with special attention to the role of gender.

As you may or may not know, Heroes debuted in September 2006 and revived NBC with an average of 14.3 million viewers in the United States, and the highest rating for any NBC drama premiere in five years.  The premise of the show is that ordinary humans begin manifesting superpowers, like invincibility, invisibility, flight, mindreading, flamethrowing and so on (we’ll pretend that it doesn’t remind us of a makeshift X-men knockoff).  Its been revealed through an artist that paints the future that there is going to be a massive, devastating explosion in NYC, and in order to prevent the disaster…  You know, “Save the Cheerleader, Save the World.”

As the season progresses, we get to know a variety of characters with powers ranging from kinda lame to flippin’ sweet.  At first glance, it seems like the casting crew must have commended themselves on incorporating diversity (main characters include an Indian doctor, two Japanese office workers, a biracial family, and an African American art dealer), but on closer inspection most of the characters fit a pretty specific mold.  After the jump, we’ll take a closer look at some of the main characters and their strengths, weaknesses, and character flaws.

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“Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender.”

- Alice Walker

Alice Walker is the author of the powerful novel, The Color Purple, which was later turned into an Oscar nominated film.  She has also served as an editor of Ms. magazine, and coined the term “womanist” in contrast to “White” feminism to remember that black women (and all women of minority race/ethnicity and/or low socio-economic status) were ignored and silenced by “white” feminism through its second wave.

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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I don’t follow tennis, but you don’t have to to know about the latest sports scandal.  At the Wimbeldon tournament, Serena Williams, in two emotional outbursts, smashed a racket, shouted at a line judge, and was penalized on match point, costing her the game.  And we can’t stop talking about it.

But its not like this is new to the world of tennis.

And what are McEnroe’s consequences?

By now you’ve probably seen one of those irritating kgb commercials for a service that allows you to text that annoying question that you can’t think of the answer to to someone who will find it for you for a dollar.  Aside from the fact that you could just keep your pants on long enough to get to a computer and look it up yourself, and aside from the fact that kgb is the acronym for the USSR’s communist secret police, those ridiculous ads have crossed the line from stupid to offensive.

First, I saw this one.

Then came this one:

And for good measure, lets add a little racism to the mix:

Awesome.  Listen – save your dollar, write your question on a napkin, and look it up yourself.  Maybe look up “How can we end the objectifican of women in the media?” or “How can we eliminate racial stereotypes as a source of humor?” or “How can 99 cents make the world a better place?” or “How can I get these stupid commercials off my tv?”

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