2007 February « Truly Outrageous

Idiot Snake Idiot

February 28, 2007 at 3:40 pm | Posted in assholes, breaking news, pop culture, the art of bullshit | 5 Comments

Today there’s an interview in Salon with Craig Brewer, director of Black Snake Moan and 2004′s Hustle & Flow. I decided to check it out mainly to see if there were any behind-the-scene stories about my estranged boyfriend, Justin Timberlake. Instead I find the most entertaining version of ‘We are the World’ I’ve heard in awhile.

You’ve got a God-fearing but troubled black man chaining a promiscuous young white woman to his radiator. That imagery is pretty combustible, for reasons that have to do with both race and sex, and even though we live in supposedly enlightened times, people are bound to have trouble with it. Do you see people’s potential discomfort as a liability, or is it really more of a tool? A way to shake people up?

Sure, I guess I view it as a tool. But I guess it’s a liability to some. I remember the first time I read “To Kill a Mockingbird.” My dad really wanted me to read it, and we had discussions about each chapter, and we finally got to the end. In the book, a black man is on trial for raping a white girl. And by the end of the trial it’s so clear that this man was asked to come into her house to move a chifforobe, I mean just to move something — and she attacked him. He didn’t attack her. So when he gets a guilty verdict, I remember asking my dad, “How could he have gotten a guilty verdict? His hand couldn’t even have done the bruises on her face. It’s so obvious her dad did that. Why did this guy go to jail?”

I’ll never forget what my dad said. He said, “Well, you gotta understand the South and you gotta understand white people’s fear about black sexuality with their women. They sent that guy to jail not because he did anything wrong, but because she wanted him. He had to pay for that.”

That’s when I realized that that never goes away. I don’t explore race or gender when these two characters [Rae and Lazarus] are together. Just them being in a room together does a lot. There’s a moment where Ricci’s character, in an incoherent state, lunges forward and kisses Sam on the lips. There is nothing sexual between these two in the whole movie, except that one kiss. And audiences flinch like it’s a horror movie. Now that says a lot about that audience. They audibly shout when she lunges forward and kisses him.

So it’s still very much in the ether, this tension and titillation with the whole thing. But nobody wants to talk about it … So that’s where we are. I don’t know if I’m ever going to be able to change that. But I definitely don’t want to not make a movie, and explore issues for myself, in my own region, where, by the way, we have blacks and whites who fuck with each other and do all kinds of stuff with each other — and it’s no big thing, and yet at the same time it’s the thing.

I’m not writing from a place of progress. I’m not writing a movie that I want people to necessarily intellectualize. And I think that really messes with people who feel that they need to make a statement against this, and they don’t quite know what it is they’re against.

Because man alive, you look at this imagery on this poster, and I’m so obviously banging this drum. It’s like, you really believe that I believe this? That women need to be chained up? Can we not think metaphorically once race and gender are introduced? … Can we never go back to that time when people can be people and we can explore whatever the hell we want to? Of course we can, but there are going to be people who take exception to that.

God, don’t you wish people could just, you know, be people? And that everybody would shut up about privilege and how maybe some people’s perspectives are historically more valued than others? I mean gosh, I am exploring Southern Identity here. And in my quest to explore Southern Identity, I am totally allowed to portray sexist, racist stereotypes, and I am totally allowed to get annoyed when people bring up that it’s what I’m doing. Because, guys — guys. They’re metaphors! Get it? It’s like in To Kill a Mockingbird, or at least what my dad said about To Kill a Mockingbird. Or, you know, it’s like the blues. Totally.

Oh no they didn’t.

February 28, 2007 at 9:54 am | Posted in assholes, blogging for choice, breaking news, the forg | 3 Comments

One of last year’s big victories for reproductive health in the US was FDA approval for over-the-counter access to emergency contraception, known as Plan B. During the debate on this issue, the FDA agency Office of Women’s Health found itself front-and-center, not least because former director Susan Wood resigned after the FDA’s initial decision to withhold approval of making emergency contraception OTC.

And now what? What do you think? The 2007 fiscal year started with the OWH allocated a $4 million budget, the same amount as in previous years.

In and of itself, that deserves a pause. Four million dollars. That’s it! Women’s health gets a measly fucking four million dollars. Clearly, this is a high priority for our government. And guess what’s gonna happen to that number.

Last week, however, word came down that the FDA intends to withhold $1.2 million of that, apparently for use elsewhere in the agency. Because the remaining $2.8 million has already been spent or allocated for salaries and started projects, the office must effectively halt further operations for the rest of the year, according to a high-level agency official with knowledge of the budget plan, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the official is not authorized to speak publicly.

In other words, the FDA has decided ‘We don’t care about women’s health for the rest of 2007. Go celebrate Plan B some more, maybe we’ll see you in ’08′. That’s brilliant. Although, perhaps, we could argue that the OWH is just another government agency, pushing papers around and helping some hairy-legged female college graduates earn enough money for the Apartment with Twenty Cats of their dreams. So cutting the budget isn’t a big deal! After all, what does the Office for Women’s Health really do?

The office was created in 1994 amid growing evidence that some sex-based differences in biology warranted special regulatory attention — and a recognition that other offices within the FDA did not have the time, money or expertise to focus on women’s special needs.

More than 200 research articles based on studies funded by the office have appeared in scientific journals since 1994, and the office’s fact sheets and other publications have generated record-breaking responses in recent years.

Oh. You mean, people care about women’s health? People want information on osteoporosis, birth control, pregnancy, mammograms, and heart disease? Really. How interesting. So… how about those Penguins?

[More on Our Bodies, Our Blog and Reproductive Rights Prof Blog.]

‘Bout time I funk you (supposedly related to the Oscars)

February 26, 2007 at 1:24 pm | Posted in breaking news, hollaback justin, pop culture, rampant consumerism, the art of bullshit, timesuck | 2 Comments

… because I don’t really want to talk about the Oscars, because I missed them, because I was at the beach. The only reason I’d be sorry would be if Marky Mark had won. The world will have to pry my copy of Music for the People from my cold, dead hands.

Bottom line, when I think of the Oscars, I think of this.

Yes, that’s right, Meryl Streep. But also 12 million photographers and the fashion-industrial complex. So if, like me, you were chillaxing under a palm tree during last night’s pre-show, you can find good dressy-dress commentary courtesy of the Fug Girls and Slate. My vote for best dress is actually Cameron Diaz’s sassy white number, and no, it’s not because I’m still mad at Justin about that video. It’s because girlfriend looks good.

Best Oscar coverage goes to, surprise surprise, fourfour. For the Celine Dion facial expression recap if nothing else! And on a tangential note, check out Dante’s belated top ten (+3) films of 2006 over at Crazy from the Heat.

On feminist aesthetics: Gina Abelkop and Birds of Lace Press

February 26, 2007 at 9:34 am | Posted in poetry, the forg | 4 Comments

[Untitled, by Alexis Dei Santi, part of the collaborative project Intentions Still Artifact/Watching You, Watching Us forthcoming from Birds of Lace Press]

A couple of months ago I came across the website for Birds of Lace, a small cooperative feminist press founded in 2005 which produces, among other things, Finery, a quarterly feminist literary and arts journal that publishes ‘the experimental, devastating and grotesquely gorgeous’ by women and genderqueers. Gina Abelkop, the poet working towards her MFA at Sarah Lawrence who founded Birds of Lace, agreed to talk with me over email about the press and the possibilities of a feminist focus for publishing. Read the interview behind the cut.

[Note: This is is the first in a periodic series of features and interviews promoting the work of feminist writers and artists. If you are or know women whose work should be featured here, please email your suggestions to ppoussin AT gmail DOT com.]

Continue Reading On feminist aesthetics: Gina Abelkop and Birds of Lace Press…

Poetry Monday

February 26, 2007 at 8:36 am | Posted in poetry | 1 Comment

Two Variations on a Theme by Stevens

First there is the thing and then there is
the account of the thing, bent into new
alphabets. Living your life twice is no feat.
Or there is what happens to you, as if
to you only, the yes of no comparison,
until finally, or secretly, the yes
repeats. So a vine with grapes enough
to persuade it to the ground may be a line
with one grape repeated. All love’s sighs
are this, simply: an inhalation, an
exhalation, something in between that
is imagined. The final word is the first word
reiterated with gray hair.

Much like mine, your delight.
No discrete evidence of the new
is invented. For the other suns are
our sun surrounded similarly, not seen
together. Some uncertain planet is
what one wants it to be, until found,
when it is the earth. The documents
of genius are nightmares with the sentences
rearranged. Your aspirations
to magnificence are already done
and recorded as the memoirs of sad kings.

-Sarah Manguso

Friday links, for reals

February 23, 2007 at 11:01 am | Posted in Blogroll, friday is link-day, pop culture, the forg | 6 Comments

First off, another reminder that the deadline for the first Carnival of Creative Writing is next Wednesday, February 28. You can find full details on Sylvia’s blog, along with the Best Photo So Far of 2007. It’s not of a baby animal, so I can’t post it here (sorry).

saltyfemme has a very thoughtful discussion of the JAP stereotype up (including links to some excellent essays on the subject), and notes how difficult it is within the Jewish community to deal with the trope.

…JAP is different, unbelievably more complicated and worthy of some serious unpacking, not to be brushed aside. Certainly if we can’t talk about the misogyny/ racism/ classism, can we at least talk about the internalized anti-Semitism it takes for Jews to call each other such a term?…

How about these questions. How does the JAP stereotype propagate the myth that all Jews are wealthy? What is the damage of such a myth? How does it unquestioningly accept the notion that Jewish women are controlling and manipulative? What lesson are we teaching Jewish girls when their only visible/public image of Jewish women paints them as vain and materialistic? How do we internalize and propagate the stereotype that all (or even most) Jews are rich when half a million Jews in New York City live below the poverty line? And perhaps the underlying question of this post – why are we so afraid to talk about these issues?

Poverty in general has grown at an alarming rate in the last five years. That might not be news to some of us, but what’s scary is it’s even worse than you think, according to a McClatchy Newspapers analysis:

The McClatchy analysis found that the number of severely poor Americans grew by 26 percent from 2000 to 2005. That’s 56 percent faster than the overall poverty population grew in the same period. McClatchy’s review also found statistically significant increases in the percentage of the population in severe poverty in 65 of 215 large U.S. counties, and similar increases in 28 states. The review also suggested that the rise in severely poor residents isn’t confined to large urban counties but extends to suburban and rural areas.

The plight of the severely poor is a distressing sidebar to an unusual economic expansion. Worker productivity has increased dramatically since the brief recession of 2001, but wages and job growth have lagged behind. At the same time, the share of national income going to corporate profits has dwarfed the amount going to wages and salaries. That helps explain why the median household income of working-age families, adjusted for inflation, has fallen for five straight years.

These and other factors have helped push 43 percent of the nation’s 37 million poor people into deep poverty – the highest rate since at least 1975.

An individual is described as living in severe poverty if she makes less than $5,080 a year, or $9,903 for a family of four (two adults, two children). Please pause for a moment and let those numbers sink in. Nearly 16 million people are living on almost nothing.

Moving on to more positive news, the 9th Disability Carnival is up over at The 19th Floor. This time the theme is employment, and I especially recommend this post at the Blind Bookworm Blog. Meanwhile, Blue offers a hilarious send-up of porn for disabled people.

At Fit of Pique, Thirza introduces a brilliant concept: Genius Sex!

It’s an unusual concept, to be sure, but there does seem to be a such thing as Genius Sex, and it doesn’t seem to be something most people can do. I was lucky in that my first two lovers were highly intelligent people and so having long extended four hour plus sex sessions were pretty normal. But then I found out, that isn’t the norm! Most people seem to have sex lasting on average half an hour. I think in some respects I gave up sex because I got tired of the limited scope of it with certain parties. I would choreograph extended sessions with fifteen different acts and get done with about two of them when the other person would roll over and turn out the lights. Uh, hey, wait a minute. We didn’t even get to hour two, and I had something REALLY spectacular planned at hour four. What the hell?

While we’re on the subject of genius, Mr. K wrote a great post yesterday on the common practice of throwing around the word ‘totalitarian’ in academic/theoretical discussions, which includes some very interesting thoughts on the concept of force. I’d also like to add, on an entirely personal note, that this gentleman has excellent taste in brie.

And to continue a fine tradition of ending this thing with Justin, Clare at Dead On offers another analysis of his latest video disaster, concluding ‘“What Goes Around” can be considered the newest entry to the “Girl, I love you, but you done me wrong, and now one of us has to die” genre of music videos.’ She offers up a couple of older examples (R. Kelly alert!) and hilarious commentary. Look out, fourfour!

Have a lovely weekend, everyone. I’ve got karaoke in my future so all’s right with the universe. And look… down there! What is that?

OH. A BABY KIWI.

It’s a whole new level.

February 22, 2007 at 11:58 am | Posted in breaking news, hollaback justin, pop culture, the art of bullshit | 1 Comment

I’ll be damned. QD alerted me to a piece of genius entertainment journalism in the St. Petersburg Times and all I have to say is, fuck. I better step up my game big time. All my previous ‘outlandish’ statements about the big JT are out the window. Who is this Sean Daly? He is kicking my ass!

On the surface, comparing Justin Randall Timberlake, who plays the St. Pete Times Forum in Tampa tonight, to Francis Albert Sinatra sounds preposterous, silly, downright dangerous, considering Frank’s clout.

But think about it for a minute, and the similarities are unmistakable. Heck, even Justin seems to know he’s chasing Frank’s ghost, the young pop stud dressing in Rat Pack ties, fedoras and carefully rumpled suits that beg comparison.

- – -

Take away those fedoras, the women, the stage lights, and things really get interesting. Two seemingly regular guys, Frank and Justin became larger than life by reading the vagaries of pop culture and using their talent in the right way at the right time: ditching youth-oriented bands, embracing muscular pop, daring to be arrogant, unafraid to be vulnerable, bringing sexy back (in the ’60s, in the ’00s) when we needed it most.

Madonna reinvents herself. Frank and Justin, two Grammy winners fully aware of their strengths and limitations, redirect themselves, deftly altering their approach without sacrificing who they are.

I bow to you, Sean Daly, and your superior bullshitting skills. This time.

Rape is just another word

February 21, 2007 at 10:54 am | Posted in assholes, breaking news, the forg | 2 Comments

On Monday night, a 20-year old Sunni woman appeared on the Al Jazeera TV station to give what the NYTimes calls ‘a horrific account of kidnapping and sexual assault at the hands of three officers in the Shiite-dominated Iraqi National Police’. Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al Maliki immediately offered his condolences and support, and resolved to fully investigate the crime.

For, oh, about five minutes.

Only hours later, however, Mr. Maliki reversed himself. His office released a second statement after midnight, that one calling the woman a liar and a wanted criminal and going on to praise the officers involved.

“It has been shown after medical examinations that the woman had not been subjected to any sexual attack whatsoever, and that there are three outstanding arrest warrants against her issued by security agencies,” said the second statement. “After the allegations have been proven to be false, the prime minister has ordered that the officers accused be rewarded.”

The government did not elaborate on the statement or say why the prime minister had so quickly reversed himself. His office only said that “known parties” had been responsible for the allegations.

But in siding with the security forces, Mr. Maliki threatened to only heighten the tensions surrounding the already highly charged case. His government also released the woman’s name, which is not being published by The New York Times.

That’s some turnaround! Condemnation to praise in only a few short hours. Good news, though – this diplomatic approach didn’t escalate tensions between Sunnis and Shiites at all.

Saleh Muhamed al-Mutlaq, a Sunni member of parliament, decried the way Maliki handled the case and accused him of covering up the acts of what he said must have been a rogue group of officers at the Shiite-led Interior Ministry.

“They gave them a compliment,” he said about the officers. “That’s an insult to the family and the tribe. To do that in such a fast way is not fair. The investigation should have been done in a quiet, steady way, taking time to get the reality.”

The Sunni speaker of parliament, Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, also criticized Maliki. “By God, if you don’t bring justice to this Muslim Iraqi woman, whom you should view as your sister or daughter,” he said in a televised interview, “history will curse us with eternal disgrace.”

The Islamic Army in Iraq, a Sunni insurgent group, weighed in more forcefully, issuing a statement on its Web site vowing to avenge the alleged assault. The statement declared a “state of maximum alert” and called on its followers to “intensify attacks against the Iraqi security forces” in support of Sunni Muslim women.

The threat came on a day when at least 11 people were killed by car bombs in the capital, a police spokesman said.

North of Baghdad, at least six people were killed and more than 100 hospitalized after a truck apparently carrying a toxic chemical exploded, another police spokesman said.

People’s agendas are all over every step of this, from airing this woman’s story on satellite television, to releasing her name to the public and subsequently firing an official who demanded an investigation. Within hours, enough distance is created from the actual events so that, thank goodness, we can step back from the ‘rape’ altogether and say that, really, the issue here is ‘sectarian division’ within the Iraqi state. That’s nice and vague and located outside of any physical location – like, say, the bodies on which this war writes itself, every day. The war becomes War, again, a self-conscious colossus that can’t be stopped and can’t be discussed, certainly not on the level of one rape, one casualty, one bomb.

Today it was also announced that the UK will reduce the British presence in Iraq by 3000 troops before the end of this year. Clearly, though, American troops aren’t going anywhere. I mean, gosh, they’re so decisive and commanding in tense political situations like this, not like that wishy-washy Prime Minister guy.

The Americans, who have advisers working with the Iraqi National Police, found themselves caught in the middle without answers. The woman said the Americans had rescued her from the officers and gave her medical treatment. The American-backed, Shiite-led government said the Americans would show the woman’s claims to be false.

The American military said only that it was investigating the charges.

Poetry Tuesday

February 20, 2007 at 9:02 am | Posted in poetry | 2 Comments

The Language

Locate I
love you some-
where in

teeth and
eyes, bite
it but

take care not
to hurt, you
want so

much so
little. Words
say everything.

I
love you
again,

then what
is emptiness
for. To

fill, fill.
I heard words
and words full

of holes
aching. Speech
is a mouth.

– Robert Creeley

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Truly Outrageous

Idiot Snake Idiot

Oh no they didn’t.

‘Bout time I funk you (supposedly related to the Oscars)

On feminist aesthetics: Gina Abelkop and Birds of Lace Press

Poetry Monday

It’s a whole new level.

Rape is just another word

Poetry Tuesday

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