Fuck Pluck

There’s an excellent artilce at FlowTV on the ‘pluckiness’ of Sarah Palin and how it effects reception of her. The author, Kathleen Battles, uses Legally Blond to show how pluck is the key ingredient for chicklit/chickflick heroines: these bright but not too brainy girls (and I do mean girls) face down challenges from the snobs and haters that want to bring them down, succeeding through a seductive combination of determination, bedrock good values, and a little feminine know-how. As Battles puts it,

In fitting her story into the contours of the made-for-TV movie, this script posits Palin as the protagonist from the get go. The “audience” for this unfolding drama is already positioned through the conventions of the genre to see every public appearance as a “challenge” our heroine is sure to overcome. Armed with pluck, she does not need knowledge, insight, or experience, so it is useless to suggest that she is not qualified for whatever lies ahead. As long as her “cause” is clear and her pluck in tact, she will win the day. Given a new goal, “change,” our plucky heroine shows herself up for the challenge. Those who attempt to pierce her pluck shield with prodding questions will be met with disdain by her fans.

Pluckiness is an ideal character trait for a “chick flick” or made-for-TV heroine. The generic character traits are so instantly recognizable that they require little in the way of explanation or back story. It makes for a pleasurable viewing experience, and generally flatters its viewers into thinking that their own inner strength can likewise carry themselves through any trial. But Hollywood formulas make for poor politics.

Battles’ article also makes me think that the Republicans may not have fully thought through the repercussions of positioning Palin as Our Plucky Heroine. Movie conventions suggest that, after some hard challenges and lost nerve at around the 75 minute mark, our heroine will surmount all obstacles and emerge victorious by the end of 100 minutes or so; there are no unhappy endings in chicklit, so the challenges must be relatively brief and the heroine’s final triumph unquestionable. As Palin stumbles her way through interview after interview, will the pluck narrative still hold? Perhaps. Or perhaps her loving audience will eventually follow in the footsteps of conservative columnist Kathleen Parker, who grew so discouraged waiting for the duckling to turn into a swan that she is currently calling for Palin to step down.

jke

Big Ups to Stiller & Tropic Thunder Crew

Folks may disagree on the merits of the film, Tropic Thunder, but I  was struck by the absence of sexism.

Unabashed insensitivity about the mentally disabled? Certainly. Thin-line-treading on race with Robert Downey, Jr in blackface? Eh, actually some unexpectedly good critique of both race and gender minstrelsy.

But for a film about the Vietnam War set in Asia, the lack of stereotypes about prostitutes, ping pong balls ejected from coochies, and a complete absence of the words, “Me love you long time” was refreshing.

True, none of this occurred to me until about a week after a second viewing, but doesn’t this verge on the ideal? Not noticing the absence of misogyny? Or am I merely suffering from Stockholm Syndrome? I’m just sayin’.

Now your turn to point out some sexism I missed when I was LMAO…Call me, Robert D!

Free Sarah Palin!

Campbell Brown at CNN does it again. This time, she chimes in with a commentary that may be the single smartest statement anyone has made about Sarah Palin since she was nominated for VP.

htg03

Sarah Palin on Foreign Policy

Sigh.

htg03

Sarah Palin, You’ve Left Me Speechless

Katie Couric, nice work. Look at these journalists asking questions, and REASKING them when they aren’t answered. It’s like we have a free press, dontcha know.

htg03

It’s Witchcraft

Did you see the Sarah Palin witchcraft video?

Of course you did.

But did you see her short commentary on the whole thing just two months ago?

Apparently, before going into her whole “red-headed Sasquatch for Jesus” bit, which I posted on a couple of weeks ago, she commented on Pastor Munthee’s blessing (if that’s the right word for it).

In an earlier excerpt from that video (shown in this Keith Olbermann clip) she seems amused by this witch hunter’s prayer for her success in politics. In her words: “He’s so bold he’s praying…Lord, make a way. Lord, make a way. And I’m thinking this guy is really bold. He doesn’t know what I’m going to do. He doesn’t know what my plans are…”

Yeah, neither do we.

Maybe it is witchcraft.

blfmstprof

Umm, Yummy Books

There’s nothing like the refuge of books when the real world’s got a feminist down. We all need a place to hide from coverage of Sarah Palin et. al (and especially our own coverage of Palin et. al).

Books can be infuriating too, however, especially when you like literary candy but hate chick lit. My go-to has always been mystery novels with feisty protagonists. My mystery obsession began in childhood with Trixie Belden books, and unlike my love of the Dukes of Hazard (I had their racetrack), it’s lasted so long, I daresay my deathbed will be littered with mystery novels.

Two gems that I’ve been powering through in election 08 season:

Denise Mina’s Paddy Meehan series: I love Paddy Meehan, daughter of a large working class Catholic family in Glasgow, who begins the series as a copyboy and wannabe journalist and starts the third book as columnist and true crime writer. Sure, Meehan solves mysteries, and good ones too. But it’s the way that she seeks solace and love in the complex social matrix of her life that has me hooked on this series. Mina’s writing is lovely, and her history of Glasgow in the 80s and 90s as presented through Paddy’s point of view is riveting.

Peter Robinson’s Inspector Banks Series: Men can be feisty too, and it’s impossible not to like protagonist Alan Banks. The landscape of Yorkshire, where the novels are set, becomes a palpable character in the stories as well. Best of all, there are more than 15 Banks books. I haven’t been this thrilled to discover a series since I decided to give Dennis Lehane a try, despite wanting to gnaw off my hand in the movie version of Mystic River, and found myself riveted.

I do like stand alones (Tana French’s recent Into the Woods, Kate Atkinsons’ Case Histories), but I love finding older series with lots of titles oh so much more. If you have recommendations, post them here, and cheers to a little escapism in election season ‘08.

htg03

The Audacity of Entitlement

It was only a matter of time.

Rebecca Walker- self-anointed mother of the naval-gazing third-wave feminism that we so dislike here at Across the Pond – posted on Palin Power today over at the Huffington Post.

I posted on the similarities between Palin and Walker’s weak brand of feminism almost immediately after Palin hit the scene. It seems that Walker also sees striking similarities between her experiences as a feminist and Palin’s rise to the top.

Walker claims that feminists who just can’t get with the fact that not all feminists are “progressive” have maligned her and Palin. Now, we like to think that feminism is progressive by definition, but according to Walker, we’re wrong.

Of course, Walker has seized on this historic moment in US political history to talk about her pain at being rejected by 2,000 participants at the National Women’s Studies Association annual meeting a couple of years ago. They didn’t like her talk and suggested to readers of their newsletter that Walker is not actually very feminist. What did Walker do? What any hard-working, grass roots, in-the-trenches feminist would do – she threatened to sue.

It couldn’t be that 2,000 women were right to be pissed of at her, just like it can’t be that mobs of women who are pissed off at the blatant tokenism, co-optation and distortion of feminism that resulted in Palin’s nomination can’t be right either. There can’t be something wrong with Walker’s or Palin’s politics…it must be us.

Walker embraces her shared victimhood with Palin and then blames feminists for it all. She warned us about all of this 15 years ago, she writes, and what did she get in response: “I’ve been attacked, undermined, and politically abused by some of the very women I sought to serve.”

Sought to serve?

Please.

Real feminists, and women with any shred of dignity, don’t get all petulant when the people they “seek to serve” don’t bow at their feet. By the way, real feminists understand the problematic power dynamics that are reflected in the phrase “women I sought to serve.”

I am a feminist woman in her thirties and I have always found Walker’s brand of feminism to be vapid and slight compared to the work of other feminist women, and not just the feminist icons that Walker always alludes to in the hope that it will get her more press. I’m talking about my mother and those millions of women who are deeply engaged in feminist practice – not “just” ideology – without always looking around for a pat on the head or some other nauseating form of approval.

Walker’s critique is as superficial as Palin’s lipstick.

blfmstprof

No Victims Here (But One Big Whiner, Phyllis Schlafly)

“Is this Feminism?” That’s how the San Francisco Chronicle headlined this weekend’s Insight, a special Sunday pullout section, focused on women’s reactions to Sarah Palin. Then they featured an op-ed by (cue groan) Phyllis Schlafly.

Here is a small sample:

The bad attitude of victimhood is indoctrinated in students by the bitter feminist faculty in university women’s studies courses and even in some law schools. Victimhood is nurtured and exaggerated by feminist organizations using their tactic called “consciousness raising,” i.e., retelling horror stories about how badly some women have been treated until small personal annoyances grow into societal grievances.

How is it that agents of change, like feminists, are branded victims by conservatives like Schlafly? Aren’t action and whining complete opposites?

I know of no progressive women who carve a life out of whining; as jke notes in an earlier post here, the media hungers truly for traitors.

I’m not sure Schlafly would be a household name, however, if she wasn’t tapped over and again to berate feminism. So you could say that Schlafly, and women like her, owe their lives to feminism.

Read the response to Schlafly by Caille Millner here.

htg03

NYT, Far Left Seek to Destroy White Male Power Strucure

John McCain and Bill O’Rilley say “no way” to the destruction of white male Christian power structure!

Ok, so maybe I’m paraphrasing a bit. But I’m not fudging the white male Christian power structure part; that’s verbatim. Check out the wacko exchange below, and notice how McCain appears to be scared of O’Rilley. Maverick my ass.

This exchange took place in 2007, but I think it deserves a resurgence of youtube popularity, given that way that McCain supporters dug out that old footage of Obama introducing Kwame Kilpatrick. (Funny, I always thought it was ok for politicians to be buddy-buddy with crooks before their public unmasking. Or maybe such associations are ok only if they involve money funneled to politicians from dirty people through indirect channels. It’s hard to keep these rules straight).

This is via our friend Consciousness Razor. Try taking her sexism and racism quiz, posted on her site along with this video; it’s a good comeback in the unfortunate event that someone you know starts talking that you-just-can’t-say-anything-anymore nonsense

htg03