This is just a hoot:
More than half the country (58 percent) say they wish the Bush presidency were simply over.
Hey, I'm finally in a majority! I feel like a real Amurrican!
Saturday, January 27, 2007
For some reason, this tickles me
This is just a hoot:
Hey, I'm finally in a majority! I feel like a real Amurrican!
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Kinda-fucked-up, Actually
I've been watching Love, Actually a lot lately. If movies were food, Love, Actually would be mashed potatoes with rosemary and leeks and heavy cream: comfort food gussied up with fancy ingredients to make it seem more sophisticated and thus socially acceptable. Except mashed potatoes never make you weep and want to call your mom. Or at least, they don't have that affect on me. My mom never made mashed potatoes.
If you've never had the pleasure of seeing Love, Actually 14 times, the film consists of about 10 different intersecting romantic plots, all taking place over a period of a month, in a cleaned-up, sunny version of London. The characters range from a cute Prime Minister played by Hugh Grant to stand-ins on a porn movie played by that guy from the British Office. It has a peppy-yet-classy soundtrack, it stars every working British actor, and the plotlines are thin yet emotionally satisfying. It's total girlcrack.
Politically speaking, there's actually a lot to like about the film: it presents a compelling vision of a progressive, multicultural society. Because it's British, there's just enough self-deprecating humor to keep it from being smugly PC.
And, yet ... about 30 minutes into my, oh, 14th viewing of the film, I realized that there is a quite sexist undercurrent to the film. This undercurrent is one of the most common and pervasive sexist plot elements one finds throughout pop culture: almost all of the stories involve men falling for, or involved with, women of lower socioeconomic status.
The prime minister falls in love with the cute, simple girl who brings him cookies and tea. Colin Firth's (yummy!) writer falls in love with the Portugese house cleaner he hires at his second home in France. Alan Rickman is married to the amazing Emma Thompson but can't resist the wiles of his assistant. Keira Knightly doesn't seem to have any sort of career at all - but then, being that pretty and winsome is surely a full-time job; her husband's job is left undefined, but we see him wearing a great suit in an office, so we can assume he's well-off.
There are two couples who seem to have similar socioeconomic statuses (stati?): one consists of the cute porn stand-ins, who meet oh-so-cute on set and have a breezy courtship. The other is probably the saddest plotline: Laura Linney pines after her coworker Carl for years, but when he finally makes his move, she shuts him out, using the schizophrenic brother she feels obligated to as her excuse. This plotline is so sad precisely because it illustrates how, so often, we ourselves stand in the way of our own happiness. And it's done really beautifully: we're never told explicitly why Linney's character shuts Carl out, but it's clear that she can't help herself and that her life is poorer for it.
But godamn it, why do the two well-educated, sophisticated women in the movie (Laura Linney and Emma Thompson's characters) have to be two of the film's biggest losers as well?
And why is the whole thing still so damned seductive? I know I'm still going to love this movie. I'll probably watch it another dozen times. That's the thing about mashed potatoes; you know they're bad for you, but they just make you feel good.
If you've never had the pleasure of seeing Love, Actually 14 times, the film consists of about 10 different intersecting romantic plots, all taking place over a period of a month, in a cleaned-up, sunny version of London. The characters range from a cute Prime Minister played by Hugh Grant to stand-ins on a porn movie played by that guy from the British Office. It has a peppy-yet-classy soundtrack, it stars every working British actor, and the plotlines are thin yet emotionally satisfying. It's total girlcrack.
Politically speaking, there's actually a lot to like about the film: it presents a compelling vision of a progressive, multicultural society. Because it's British, there's just enough self-deprecating humor to keep it from being smugly PC.
And, yet ... about 30 minutes into my, oh, 14th viewing of the film, I realized that there is a quite sexist undercurrent to the film. This undercurrent is one of the most common and pervasive sexist plot elements one finds throughout pop culture: almost all of the stories involve men falling for, or involved with, women of lower socioeconomic status.
The prime minister falls in love with the cute, simple girl who brings him cookies and tea. Colin Firth's (yummy!) writer falls in love with the Portugese house cleaner he hires at his second home in France. Alan Rickman is married to the amazing Emma Thompson but can't resist the wiles of his assistant. Keira Knightly doesn't seem to have any sort of career at all - but then, being that pretty and winsome is surely a full-time job; her husband's job is left undefined, but we see him wearing a great suit in an office, so we can assume he's well-off.
There are two couples who seem to have similar socioeconomic statuses (stati?): one consists of the cute porn stand-ins, who meet oh-so-cute on set and have a breezy courtship. The other is probably the saddest plotline: Laura Linney pines after her coworker Carl for years, but when he finally makes his move, she shuts him out, using the schizophrenic brother she feels obligated to as her excuse. This plotline is so sad precisely because it illustrates how, so often, we ourselves stand in the way of our own happiness. And it's done really beautifully: we're never told explicitly why Linney's character shuts Carl out, but it's clear that she can't help herself and that her life is poorer for it.
But godamn it, why do the two well-educated, sophisticated women in the movie (Laura Linney and Emma Thompson's characters) have to be two of the film's biggest losers as well?
And why is the whole thing still so damned seductive? I know I'm still going to love this movie. I'll probably watch it another dozen times. That's the thing about mashed potatoes; you know they're bad for you, but they just make you feel good.
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