Posts Tagged ‘New Moon’
Tuesday Link Love
Posted on: December 15, 2009
Bitch Blogs: The Transcontinental Disability Choir: Pride & Prejudice & Ableism
Which makes it all the more unfortunate that clear notes of ableism were introduced into both of the monster mashups released in 2009. Ableism is not really necessary to the plot (original or new), and it certainly doesn’t add anything to the books. It pushes both books from being playful romps into being something different entirely as they subtly reinforce ableist social and cultural values.
FWD/Forward: Depictions of Disability That Make Us Happy
And I think it might be interesting to have a larger discussion about what makes a depiction of disability “good” by our standards, though I assume that people may have some differing views on this subject. Personally, I think of a well-rounded depiction of a character who happens to be disabled, with a characterization which is not necessarily centered around disability. Where the disability is integrated well into the identity of the character, and acknowledged, but the character is not the embodiment of the disability. I think of characters who avoid common disability tropes, such as the Angry Bitter Cripple or the Telegenic Sick Kid. I think of characters who are rich and complex and who are allowed to have emotions (which can even vary from day to day!). I think, also, of plots which manage to avoid disability-as-tragedy, miracle cures, Empowering Experience for Able People, and other dehumanizing tropes.
Womanist Musings: 7 Year Old Gets Hair Cut By Teacher As a Punishment
Even with all of these concerns, what is not being discussed is Cammon’s race. Black women exist with very little social power and as a result it is extremely easy to devalue a little Black girl. It is already a known fact that in the states in which spanking is legal, Black girls are subject to the most corporal discipline. This is not because Black girls are any more unruly than any other child but that they exist as a group with no social power. Race and gender combine to make them valueless socially from birth.
Feministing: New Moon and domestic violence
However, I was not prepared for the way the movie portrays physical relationship violence, particularly in Native communities. For all the talk of Edward’s abusiveness throughout feminist blogworld, I’ve seen much less written about domestic violence as it relates to the film’s competing love interest, Jacob Black — a 16-year-old Quileute boy who can turn into a werewolf.
fbomb: A Feminist Analysis of “Fifteen”
I love country music. I love it with a burning passion. And inside of my love for country music also comes a love for Taylor Swift. I like her because she is my age, her songs are extremely easy to play on the guitar so I feel like I have some musical talent, and I can relate to most of her songs. Her song Fifteen is now climbing the charts. This is a fine song, and some of the things in it were true in some degree to my life. When I was a sophomore at a new school, I just wanted to be wanted (“when all you wanted was to be wanted”) instead of feeling isolated and friend-less. However there are a few lines of this song I disagree with.
As much as I enjoy my Taylor Swift songs, this one really bothers me. I’m contemplating a post of my own.
Tuesday Link Love on Wednesday
Posted on: December 2, 2009
Last night I just wanted to curl up and watch TV, so that’s what I did. But in doing that, I didn’t create my usual Tuesday Link Love list. So here it is…on Wednesday. This might also mean that I’ll move Thursday Link Love to Friday just for this week so I can make a more complete list. Fun times. As always, don’t forget to leave links to what you have been writing/reading in the comments!!
Small Strokes: The Feminist Lens: Juliet, Naked
But the exact issue I had with his previous novels of his I had read (the lack of well-rounded female characters, for those of you not following along) was turned on its head with Juliet, Naked. (If you haven’t read the book and plan on doing so, DO NOT READ FURTHER! Unless you don’t mind spoilers.)
Bitch Blogs: The Transcontinental Disability Choir: True Blood: Sookie Stackhouse, Telepathy, and Disability
But the reason I looked forward to True Blood is because the Sookie Stackhouse novels feature a disabled heroine. And, as a person with disabilities, that is something that I do not get to see very often. Despite the fact that we make up an estimated 20% of the population, our representation in film and television is quite small. This means that I rarely get to engage with a character who is like me, with whom I can connect because we share commonalities.
Bitch Blogs: New Moon’s success means women hate sex. Obviously.
However, lately it seems like every single teenage behavior is being connected to the franchise in some way, from negotiating gender identity to interacting with parents. Could it be that Twilight is the compass with which we can navigate the state of Young People Today? Do we never have to think about the nuances and complications of human existence again because Stephenie Meyer has done that dirty work for us? Well, Jonathan Zimmerman at the Chicago Tribune certainly thinks so.
According to Zimmerman’s article “Hooking up’s gender gap,” the number of young women who saw Twilight Saga: New Moon (which was a lot) tells us that, “Girls want love, not just sex.” And he got this from New Moon how, exactly?
Tiger Beatdown: Titanic: Girl Power Sleeps with the Fishes
One of the many things you come to appreciate about Titanic, when re-watching it as an adult, are the complexities of Billy Zane’s performance. Zane plays Caledon Hockley – steel magnate, loveless-arranged-marriage candidate, avowed hater of the poor – who, as you can probably guess from his preposterous name and the aforementioned list of qualifications, is the villain of the piece. Oh sure, you might think that in a movie entitled Titanic, the villain would be, I don’t know, an iceberg or something! Ah, but no. You would be wrong. The villain is Billy Zane. And what a villain he is, let me tell you!
Equal Writes: Fear and female experience
You can tell me my fear is unreasoning, childish, deserving of psychotherapy—and maybe it’s true. I know intellectually that the dark isn’t full of potential rapists and attackers, knives and penises at the ready, but it doesn’t stop me walking on the opposite side of the street to avoid the bushes, checking behind all the trees and bins in my front yard before crossing to the house, and keeping an eye over my shoulder while fitting my key in the lock. It doesn’t stop me trembling at every light that turns on, every gate that bangs open, every tree branch that rustles. I also know that my fear of the dark—and especially of being alone in the dark—has intensified since my own assault.
Tuesday Link Love!
Posted on: November 24, 2009
It’s almost Thanksgiving (in the U.S.) everyone! Which means great food and a crazy day at work the next day! Before we get into some of my favorite posts of the past couple days, take a look at Sarah Haskins’ most recent Target Women video (and don’t forget to leave links to what you have been writing/reading in the comments):
FWD/Forward: On Language, Again
There are a couple of themes which seem to come up over and over again in the comment threads on posts in the Ableist Word Profile series, and I’d like to break them down a bit, because I would rather not see them come up in the future.
* “I don’t use this word this way, so it’s not bad.”
* “You can’t tell me what language I can and can’t use.”
* “But it’s not used in that sense anymore, so it’s ok.”/”You’re focusing too much on the origins of the word, not the modern usage.”
* “I’ve never heard this word used this way.”/”In another language, this word doesn’t mean this.”
* “Are you telling me that I’m lacking in intelligence because I didn’t know about the origins of this word?”
* “My friend with a disability uses this word, so it’s ok.”
* “I don’t agree that this word is ableist.”
* “The feelings of people with disabilities and advocates are not as important as my right to use this word.”
* “The alternatives you suggest just aren’t as strong.”
The Sexist: Sexism and the “If I Were A Man” Defense
Sorry folks, but that’s not how sexism works. Ostroy is right, of course: The Washingtonian cover was criticized for a variety of reasons—from photo-shopping a public official to selling sex for page-views—but nobody accused the magazine of sexism. But Ostroy ignores two major distinctions between the Palin and Obama covers. One, Washingtonian used an ab-tastic photo of Obama to illustrate how hot he is, whereas Newsweek used a leggy photo of Palin to illustrate how bad she is. Second, Palin is a woman and Obama is a man. And the second distinction has everything to do with the first one.
Bitch Flicks: Ten Years of Oscar-Winning Films: In Posters
What do these films have in common?
skepchick: Ew Moon: Why Twilight continues to hurt America…
I went into the movie fully expecting it to be awful. I was actually looking forward to writing a snarky, funny review, with lots of jokes and mockery of the fans of Twilight and their ilk. I came out of the movie less smug. I remembered why I had written my original review in the first place. This movie made me sad and angry, just like the last one.
I'll Admit It, I Saw New Moon
Posted on: November 23, 2009
It’s true. I’m intrigued by the phenomenon of Twilight because I think it’s pretty bad yet it’s really popular, as we all know. I saw Twilight (a couple times, actually) and it was bad too, but at least kind of entertaining. I’m sad (but not too surprised) to report that New Moon wasn’t even kind of entertaining…it was just bad.
I think we are well aware of the overall anti-feminist tones and feminist critiques of the Twilight saga (even if you don’t agree with those critiques, you are probably at least aware of those critiques), so I’m not going to delve too much into some of the already discussed critiques. I can talk about how the Twilight saga is all about sex and has created (ok, I don’t know about created, but definitely made popular) the genre of abstinence porn. I could go on for a while about the anti-feminist themes of Twilight, but that’s not really what I want to do in this post, I just want to talk about the movie New Moon and some of the things that I found deeply disturbing.
Before I get into it too much, I just want to make a comment about just how bad I thought the movie was. The acting was horrible and forced, the storyline was boring, there was not a whole lot of plot. Not really a whole lot of redeeming value. I had heard so much about how the book New Moon was so much better than Twilight so I was expecting the movie to be better as well, but it wasn’t. I don’t even know how the book could have been better because it would have been like 400 pages with not a whole lot of plot.
But past there being no plot, there was an overwhelming theme of protection in the movie. Both Edward and Jacob say some form of the phrase “it’s my job to protect you” to Bella at some point throughout the movie. I’m sorry, but no, it’s not your job. You just think that the man has to protect the woman and that no other man should tough the woman because she belongs to you. Edward even tells her not to be reckless after he leaves her — a way of controlling Bella even after he is out of her life.
And Bella, she’s just hopeless without a man. She repeatedly participates in “reckless” behavior as a way to see a vision of Edward telling her not to do something. There’s a whole scene of her sitting in front of a window with the months passing around her and having bad dreams after Edward leaves her because she can’t bring herself to do anything without him.
I just have to say that I found it really hard to pay attention to the movie because it didn’t have much of a plot and I was just bored throughout. I even found it hard to pay attention to the extremely problematic aspects of the movie because of this. But one thing that I want to bring up as well is the representation of the Native American tribe and the group of werewolves. When I was visitng friends this weekend, one of my friends and I were talking about the movie. We talked about how the representation of the werewolves as part of a Native American tribe and always showing them without shirts on, just in shorts, just adds to the stereotypes of Native Americans as beast-like. I’m sorry, but does this seem pretty racist to anyone else?
And then can we just talk about the poster that I have included in this post? Bella is portrayed as unconscious (possibly dead). And Edward and Jacob surround her picture as a way of protecting her unconscious body. She has no agency in this picture, and not really in the movie either. I just can’t believe that people thought this was a good promotional poster.
One thing that I did like about the movie was Dakota Fanning. Sometimes she really gets on my nerves, but she has been taking more serious, adult roles recently which I like to see. I’m not saying that New Moon is necessarily a serious or adult role, but she did do a good job. She was only on-screen for approximately five minutes as a member of the powerful vampire family, the Volturi. She was pretty hard-core and I actually enjoyed seeing her in that part of the movie.
So, overall, if you are not absolutely in love with the books, I would not recommend seeing this movie. The funny thing is, I was expecting this movie to be better than the first because I’ve heard the second book is better than the first. It was not. And I heard from people that I respect (who also happen to like the books, and yes, I still hold some respect for them despite that fact), that it was a great movie. I just don’t understand, because it wasn’t. It wasn’t even mildly entertaining like some bad movies are. I just can’t fully wrap my head around the Twilight phenomenon. I understand that some people like the “dark romance” “undying love” aspect of it, but it’s just not good writing, acting, or storytelling. There are other series that have the “dark romance” vampire stuff that are much better written and translated to film or television.
Fighting with the Sky 