http://womenshealthnews.wordpress.com/2009/02/18/about-this-i-have-some-concerns/
http://womenshealthnews.wordpress.com/2009/02/22/expanded-commentary-on-sb1065hb890-forced-drug-tests-for-pregnant-women/
Read it and weep. Really. Sorry this isn't artsy.
Thanks Rachel from Women's Health News.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Student's Spill It
I went to Gail Griffin's non-fiction class's reading today. It was really enjoyable. A lot of really beautiful pieces. The best part was coming in after warming in the sun, sitting in the back, and absorbing each carefully written and poignant work. It was inspiring. So was the camaraderie among the class and Gail.
Glad I choose to take another English class for my last quarter here. Bravo.
Glad I choose to take another English class for my last quarter here. Bravo.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
A New Generation of Theatre Kids: Pushing for 3D in the age of ADD
By Jackie Rogers
“And the pe-ople, in the hou-se , all went to the uni-ver-sity
Where they were put in box-es and they came out all the same,
And there's doc-tors, and there's law-yers, and busi-ness ex-ecutives
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky and they all look just the same”
“Little boxes”—This song was Malvina Reynold’s anti-suburbia anti-conformist reaction to driving across California in a housing boom of 1962. Resurrected as the ironic theme song for a television show about a suburban weed-dealer mom, it’s been covered by over thirty nationally-known artists and countless others on YouTube, evidently invading everyone’s brain with the same infuriatingly catchy tune.
At the Sunday matinee of the 45th season of the Festival Playhouse at Kalamazoo College, student- recorded 30-second covers played over and over in between each of the seven student written, acted, and directed ten-minute plays.
When did the theatre, dah-ling, start riding on the anti-establishment train? No complaints. A resurgence of a cool factor for stagecraft would be welcomed by many of us afraid of what the occupation of earth by technology could mean for the future of art and entertainment. Some neuroscientists have started suggesting that speed and multiplicity of simultaneous electronic media is changing how our brain’s work.
Students in college now are part of the first wave of the completely plugged-in generation, those who can’t imagine life without their laptop or, at the very least, daily access to the internet, and they are reclaiming the stage. A good ten-minute play has just as much character and composition as the more common longer versions. Feeding more flighty attention spans doesn’t mean skimping on substance; for the aspiring playwrights it instead meant the more difficult task of exposing the substance of the work in a concentrated and poignant way.
And this makes sense. Art imitates experience and this generation doesn’t expect an old-fashioned gentle wooing. People’s lives and relationships are shaped by technology, even indirectly, as explored poignantly in Emilia LaPenta’s “Missed Connections.” The pressures of making life-altering decisions are intense, immediate and imminent, as in Matt Jones’s “Clap Switch.”
It’s still true that a lot more people see film than theatre in America. Visual effects, instantaneous scene change, gigantic screens, the zoom lens —it all makes for a more thundering sensory experience. What then, for the campus popularity of playwriting and stagecraft?
It’s not as if 3-hour monologues are suddenly becoming all the rage. Young playwrights are using theatre to remind people of the three-dimensional world by acknowledging and working with diminishing attention spans. Almost all the plays were felt as quick but meaningful; sometimes even stimulating bursts of energy, significant ten-minutes of fun and pleasingly amateur production in the dusty Balch Auditorium.
Before and after rocking back and forth to the mocking nursery rhyme-like melody, these seven “K” student playwrights, even more student actors, actresses, and mostly student directors entertained and converted members of the flat-screen fanatical generation to the joy of real 3-demensional entertainment.
“And the pe-ople, in the hou-se , all went to the uni-ver-sity
Where they were put in box-es and they came out all the same,
And there's doc-tors, and there's law-yers, and busi-ness ex-ecutives
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky and they all look just the same”
“Little boxes”—This song was Malvina Reynold’s anti-suburbia anti-conformist reaction to driving across California in a housing boom of 1962. Resurrected as the ironic theme song for a television show about a suburban weed-dealer mom, it’s been covered by over thirty nationally-known artists and countless others on YouTube, evidently invading everyone’s brain with the same infuriatingly catchy tune.
At the Sunday matinee of the 45th season of the Festival Playhouse at Kalamazoo College, student- recorded 30-second covers played over and over in between each of the seven student written, acted, and directed ten-minute plays.
When did the theatre, dah-ling, start riding on the anti-establishment train? No complaints. A resurgence of a cool factor for stagecraft would be welcomed by many of us afraid of what the occupation of earth by technology could mean for the future of art and entertainment. Some neuroscientists have started suggesting that speed and multiplicity of simultaneous electronic media is changing how our brain’s work.
Students in college now are part of the first wave of the completely plugged-in generation, those who can’t imagine life without their laptop or, at the very least, daily access to the internet, and they are reclaiming the stage. A good ten-minute play has just as much character and composition as the more common longer versions. Feeding more flighty attention spans doesn’t mean skimping on substance; for the aspiring playwrights it instead meant the more difficult task of exposing the substance of the work in a concentrated and poignant way.
And this makes sense. Art imitates experience and this generation doesn’t expect an old-fashioned gentle wooing. People’s lives and relationships are shaped by technology, even indirectly, as explored poignantly in Emilia LaPenta’s “Missed Connections.” The pressures of making life-altering decisions are intense, immediate and imminent, as in Matt Jones’s “Clap Switch.”
It’s still true that a lot more people see film than theatre in America. Visual effects, instantaneous scene change, gigantic screens, the zoom lens —it all makes for a more thundering sensory experience. What then, for the campus popularity of playwriting and stagecraft?
It’s not as if 3-hour monologues are suddenly becoming all the rage. Young playwrights are using theatre to remind people of the three-dimensional world by acknowledging and working with diminishing attention spans. Almost all the plays were felt as quick but meaningful; sometimes even stimulating bursts of energy, significant ten-minutes of fun and pleasingly amateur production in the dusty Balch Auditorium.
Before and after rocking back and forth to the mocking nursery rhyme-like melody, these seven “K” student playwrights, even more student actors, actresses, and mostly student directors entertained and converted members of the flat-screen fanatical generation to the joy of real 3-demensional entertainment.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Cash for Culture?
Is the "stimulus" really going to fork over the $ to fund "the arts"? Usually, its the first to go...what do you think? Has any politician ever seen funding the arts as beneficial and said it on the record in the middle of a financial crisis?
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/26/arts/26nea.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/26/arts/26nea.html
Women writing about sex, check out this book review
It starts with this..."Do female novelists write about sex less often, and less skillfully, than men?" uh........
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/04/books/04garn.html?_r=1&ref=arts
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/04/books/04garn.html?_r=1&ref=arts
Monday, March 2, 2009
But We Accessorize! Myths of Women's Empowerment on TV (working title..........)
A beautiful well-dressed smart and successful woman can’t find a date in the big city.
An even wealthier woman’s husband isn’t interested in having sex…with her.
And still another boasts 200 pairs of shoes and a date with a billionaire…who asks her out through his secretary.
Oh, the life of the mythical modern woman.
She is and has (almost) everything: the brains, body, bank account, and sometimes, the boyfriend and baby. She lives the dream. Now is the generation pressured to meet women’s potential for equal pay, equal treatment, equal power. Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall) says in the pilot episode of Sex and the City, “…this is the first time in the history of Manhattan that women have had as much money and power as men.” While this statement is no doubt a fantasy itself, it successfully propelled millions of viewers into the imaginary world of a generation of urban Cinderellas righteously empowered by their cash and sexual prowess.
Yet, its still there, the same old gospel: women are built up and then let down by men. Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) sets up the hugely successful Sex and the City episodes by saying the following about financially stable, successful, attractive woman in New York City “…they travel, they pay taxes, they’ll spend 400 dollars on a pair of Manolo Blahnik strappy sandals…. and they’re alone.” Sex and the City’s huge fan base found the show groundbreaking because it bluntly talked about orgasm, sexually transmitted diseases, experimental sex, abortion, and infidelity. The ecstasy! Suddenly men are the objects!
But is power characterized by an ability to purchase sex appeal and “have sex like men” truly revolutionary? And is it really so progressive that women are interested in sex and control?
The journey through woman’s personal life is nothing new to television. Comedic television shows since the late 1960’s have attempted to capture the experiences of single women as lead or title characters, from That Girl and The Mary Tyler Moore Show to Laverne and Shirley, Three’s Company, Living Single, and Murphy Brown, and more recently Friends, Less Than Perfect, and Will and Grace. These shows were developed over a time when the television comedy form was evolving from the standard sitcom to a format where relationships became the main plot device.
The problem now is how these relationships in the new “post-feminist” television series are dependent on rigid ideas of masculinity and femininity; a focus on the irresolvable differences between men and women. How can women crack the nature of the beast?
Television show producers still think American women want to know why the modern woman fails at completely punching through the glass ceiling with their stilettos. The image is that where men are, women want to be. Women no longer need a Prince Charming, but if they want him they have to sacrifice something. Oh, and they really want him.
Sex and the City ended in 2002 and four years later, Lipstick Jungle (by producers Oliver Goldstick from Ugly Betty, Timothy Busfield from ‘The West Wing’ and Candace Bushnell from ‘Sex in the City’) portrays women who again (almost) have it all. Higher-income, higher-powered, and similarly high-styled Manhattan women talk the difficulty of balancing business, love, and cosmetics in their high-paced city lives. Sound familiar?
In the first five minutes of the pilot, #8 on NYC’s most powerful woman list says to her friends, “I find it offensive that women feel as if they have to apologize for our success. There are no flukes, there is no luck, there is just talent and the ability to bounce back when you’re knocked down.” Better, right? Almost. The same episode opens with a series of close ups: four-inch pumps, leopard boots, silver ballet flats that are supposed to represent the true fabulousness of their power walk. Gag. What is truly offensive is the unrelenting meshing of women’s power and materialism. What is truly offensive is that for every story on Hilary Clinton’s policy or Michelle Obama’s success there are two about their shoes and matching accessories.
The message is that since marriage and motherhood can no longer define femininity, what remains to distinguish women from men besides a passion for Prada? Women’s purchasing power is being twisted as a need to purchase their empowerment.
What is ultimately discovered is that these shows defy some conventions but reinforce society’s master narratives on gender and power. While empowerment never receives a direct mention, the characters clearly believe that spending $400 on strappy sandals is an important decision; one about a woman’s power to choose in what to strut. Economic independence is real and powerful thing. But the idea that women partially achieve empowerment through an acceptance of a “natural” female preoccupation with appearance is a mind-numbingly archaic inference that a woman’s currency is sex, her rate of exchange her beauty.
Women having money of their own used to be about something else—being financially independent represented liberation from patriarchy on multiple levels. The heart-breaking reality is that the greater pressure and potential for women to seek that independence (and more and more women doing so) is being twisted back around. These shows are focused on women’s battle with an emotional dependence on men. Relevant as that may seem too many women, throw in rampant consumerism and the same beauty ideals of the 1950’s and it’s the same patriarchal mass media blitz, just with a savvier disguise. While it appears that modern TV is boldly and progressively telling women the real glamour in life is achievement, the wealthy sexual women who saturate primetime are literally buying the same patriarchal product line.
A series of TV shows for and about modern women that argue fashion as feminist is troubling. While the message of female financial independence can be considered modern and progressive these shows greatest flaw is the degree to which it validates class and wealth snobbery. An ideology of “empowerment” for women that doesn’t challenge the divide between the haves and the have-nots is deeply misguided and useless.
An even wealthier woman’s husband isn’t interested in having sex…with her.
And still another boasts 200 pairs of shoes and a date with a billionaire…who asks her out through his secretary.
Oh, the life of the mythical modern woman.
She is and has (almost) everything: the brains, body, bank account, and sometimes, the boyfriend and baby. She lives the dream. Now is the generation pressured to meet women’s potential for equal pay, equal treatment, equal power. Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall) says in the pilot episode of Sex and the City, “…this is the first time in the history of Manhattan that women have had as much money and power as men.” While this statement is no doubt a fantasy itself, it successfully propelled millions of viewers into the imaginary world of a generation of urban Cinderellas righteously empowered by their cash and sexual prowess.
Yet, its still there, the same old gospel: women are built up and then let down by men. Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) sets up the hugely successful Sex and the City episodes by saying the following about financially stable, successful, attractive woman in New York City “…they travel, they pay taxes, they’ll spend 400 dollars on a pair of Manolo Blahnik strappy sandals…. and they’re alone.” Sex and the City’s huge fan base found the show groundbreaking because it bluntly talked about orgasm, sexually transmitted diseases, experimental sex, abortion, and infidelity. The ecstasy! Suddenly men are the objects!
But is power characterized by an ability to purchase sex appeal and “have sex like men” truly revolutionary? And is it really so progressive that women are interested in sex and control?
The journey through woman’s personal life is nothing new to television. Comedic television shows since the late 1960’s have attempted to capture the experiences of single women as lead or title characters, from That Girl and The Mary Tyler Moore Show to Laverne and Shirley, Three’s Company, Living Single, and Murphy Brown, and more recently Friends, Less Than Perfect, and Will and Grace. These shows were developed over a time when the television comedy form was evolving from the standard sitcom to a format where relationships became the main plot device.
The problem now is how these relationships in the new “post-feminist” television series are dependent on rigid ideas of masculinity and femininity; a focus on the irresolvable differences between men and women. How can women crack the nature of the beast?
Television show producers still think American women want to know why the modern woman fails at completely punching through the glass ceiling with their stilettos. The image is that where men are, women want to be. Women no longer need a Prince Charming, but if they want him they have to sacrifice something. Oh, and they really want him.
Sex and the City ended in 2002 and four years later, Lipstick Jungle (by producers Oliver Goldstick from Ugly Betty, Timothy Busfield from ‘The West Wing’ and Candace Bushnell from ‘Sex in the City’) portrays women who again (almost) have it all. Higher-income, higher-powered, and similarly high-styled Manhattan women talk the difficulty of balancing business, love, and cosmetics in their high-paced city lives. Sound familiar?
In the first five minutes of the pilot, #8 on NYC’s most powerful woman list says to her friends, “I find it offensive that women feel as if they have to apologize for our success. There are no flukes, there is no luck, there is just talent and the ability to bounce back when you’re knocked down.” Better, right? Almost. The same episode opens with a series of close ups: four-inch pumps, leopard boots, silver ballet flats that are supposed to represent the true fabulousness of their power walk. Gag. What is truly offensive is the unrelenting meshing of women’s power and materialism. What is truly offensive is that for every story on Hilary Clinton’s policy or Michelle Obama’s success there are two about their shoes and matching accessories.
The message is that since marriage and motherhood can no longer define femininity, what remains to distinguish women from men besides a passion for Prada? Women’s purchasing power is being twisted as a need to purchase their empowerment.
What is ultimately discovered is that these shows defy some conventions but reinforce society’s master narratives on gender and power. While empowerment never receives a direct mention, the characters clearly believe that spending $400 on strappy sandals is an important decision; one about a woman’s power to choose in what to strut. Economic independence is real and powerful thing. But the idea that women partially achieve empowerment through an acceptance of a “natural” female preoccupation with appearance is a mind-numbingly archaic inference that a woman’s currency is sex, her rate of exchange her beauty.
Women having money of their own used to be about something else—being financially independent represented liberation from patriarchy on multiple levels. The heart-breaking reality is that the greater pressure and potential for women to seek that independence (and more and more women doing so) is being twisted back around. These shows are focused on women’s battle with an emotional dependence on men. Relevant as that may seem too many women, throw in rampant consumerism and the same beauty ideals of the 1950’s and it’s the same patriarchal mass media blitz, just with a savvier disguise. While it appears that modern TV is boldly and progressively telling women the real glamour in life is achievement, the wealthy sexual women who saturate primetime are literally buying the same patriarchal product line.
A series of TV shows for and about modern women that argue fashion as feminist is troubling. While the message of female financial independence can be considered modern and progressive these shows greatest flaw is the degree to which it validates class and wealth snobbery. An ideology of “empowerment” for women that doesn’t challenge the divide between the haves and the have-nots is deeply misguided and useless.
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