Filed under: age, American, art, art institutions, feminism, Racism, theatre | Tags: ableist, ageism, ageist, gatekeeping, Geffen Drama School, inclusive, playwrights, playwriting, velvet rope, Yale, Yale Drama School
The application form asked my age, so I answered the question and submitted my application. But after I did, I started to worry. Should I have skipped that question? Should I have submitted it to Honor Roll, the group of women playwrights over 40 that works to combat ageism and sexism in American theatre? Had I just set myself up for being rejected by revealing that I am 48? The form asked. I answered. I’m not yet used to being vigilant on this topic. I tried to be attentive to ageism before it was relevant to me but I wasn’t prepared for it to come for me so soon – or at least before I had anything impressive under my belt.
It was one of the first things I’ve submitted to in a long while and the whole exercise sent me into a bit of a funk. In the year and a half that theatre was been shut down, I’ve aged into ageism and now all the doors that have been closed to me are extra closed. I read a book on creativity that suggested that the science says we are most creative in our first few years with our art and after that it’s just a steady downward trajectory.
What is that ageist science nonsense? It’s possible I was more creative in my youth. I’d say my songs were full of some naïve innovations – but I am a much better writer now than I was in my 20s. And also, the American theatre is not very keen on innovation – so it may be an asset if I have, indeed, lost creativity over the years.
Anyway – this whole spiral was brought to you by the series of questions on the application that tend to happen around demographics and attempts to be more inclusive. I suspect this questionnaire asked my age, not so they could be ageist at me, but so they could make sure to include some young playwrights. However – one does privilege the other. You want to get more young writers, you’re discriminating against the old. You want to combat ageism and pull in the older writers, you’re discriminating against the young.
When we apply for things, we have no idea whether we are helping the organization discriminate against us, or give us an extra boost. Somehow arts organizations think that they can solve their racist, sexist, ableist biases with tools like this.
As my friend put it, “Right now across the nation, arts administrators are sitting around tables trying to figure out how to do more inclusive gatekeeping.” I have not been able to stop thinking about this phrase since he said it.
Because that’s the thing. American Arts institutions are built on gatekeeping. They are spaces designed to keep people out. The velvet rope was invented in NYC by someone in the hospitality business but Arts institutions are the ones who’ve really taken the idea and run with it. Sometimes with literal velvet ropes and sometimes internal ones. Having people in or out is the whole deal. The people who have salaries in the arts are not the artists but the gatekeepers.
As a culture, we clearly value keeping people out more than the actual art. But the gatekeepers have been challenged to shift the demographics of who they let get past the door of their clubs. Most of the clubs have been chock full of white guys with a handful of white women and some token people of color. But ultimately, after all these years of hanging out in those clubs, those clubs are really white guy clubs. And mostly they’re clubs full of white guys who went to Yale and occasionally some other people who also went to Yale. They’ve congregated there for so long and they want to keep hanging out there and they want to keep doing things the way they’ve always done them; They just don’t want to be accused of racism or sexism. So they ask the bouncer to let in enough “others” to not get in trouble about it anymore. So the bouncer tries this new inclusive gatekeeping. He’s trying to keep the club the same as it always was but include enough of the RIGHT new faces to keep this club out of the news.
Actually, they think they just need to approach this problem at the ground floor and make sure to send more diverse people to Yale, so they can make their gatekeeping more inclusive because you get in the club immediately that way. So – they rename Yale Drama School after David Geffen so he’ll give a bunch of money to Yale so they can make it tuition free in the hopes of making it more inclusive and voila! Problem solved, right? Must be!
I can’t wait for all these super inclusive shows that will tell us all about what it’s like to have studied at Yale. Oh, the fresh perspective we’re going to get! Oh, the extraordinary inclusivity that awaits us from all the different people who might have gotten in to Yale.
The thing is we’re sort of in this mess because the gatekeepers get their power from choosing, from who they select – which is, significantly also about their power to say no, to refuse people entry to the club. To have an actual equitable club, there would be no bouncer and our gatekeepers would have no power. We might get to stop guessing whether our demographics will hinder us or help us and just, say, hope for a good lottery number. Honestly, could we do worse?
I mean, I don’t want to be cranky about it, but I haven’t seen a really innovative piece of work in maybe a decade. Choosing the same sort of people all the time, whether it’s their race or gender or grad program, does not innovative art make. Maybe we could give up trying to do inclusive gatekeeping and try to just do away with gatekeeping altogether. What if we tried that?
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Filed under: art institutions, feminism, Leadership, Racism, theatre | Tags: anger, Benevolent sexism, big boat, favorite sons, Lake Travis, rage, reckoning, restitution, throwing plates
You all remember the guy who inspired my blog post about Sticky Benevolent Sexism? (It was a few people’s favorite. It’s about the time this guy asked all the ladies to stand up so the men could applaud us.) Well, I just got an email from an organization that is trying to reckon with its own racism and sexism and this guy is apparently part of some learning group on the subject. In the email, he recommends some podcasts to listen to for this racism/sexism reckoning.
I happen to agree with his recommendations so I can’t fault him for his choices. But there’s something about this particular brand of white guy leading this conversation that just makes me want to start throwing plates.
He’s the darling of this organization. One of the Favorite Sons. Everybody’s favorite nice guy. I bet if he’d spoken to me, I’d have found him nice and charming, too. It’s not about him, I promise.
It’s how this particular pattern is playing itself out around the world. Rather than figuring out how to include all the people who have been left behind due to their race, class or gender, the white men who have the power are figuring out how to talk the woke talk so they can hold on to their positions of power.
They’ll still have the jobs, the gigs and the opportunities but now they’ve learned how to say that we should be hearing from a BIPOC or a woman instead of them before they start their speech. They’ll hang their heads a little bit and bemoan that it is they in front of us, instead of, say, a black woman. “It’s just too bad,” they’ll say. They’ll coat their power in a layer of guilt so we still like them and let them keep their jobs.
Rather than going back and collecting all the people this organization left behind over the years, it’s beefing up the current members with woke language and talking big talk about all the people they’ll include in the future.
And maybe they will! I don’t know. But as one of those people that got left behind, I know I will never be collected. There will never be a moment when they say, “Hey, where was that nutty feminist from a few years ago? Think we should ask her back to help us improve our sexism problem? She might know a few things about that.” It will NEVER happen.
Instead, they’ll have the newly woke white guy explain it to them.
It’ll happen for BIPOC folks as well. The reckoning won’t pull an artist back in who understood how racism was operating there. They won’t call up that artist and ask them to make a piece about what it’s like to be excluded.
Nope. The newly woke white guy will lead everyone in a white guilt seminar instead.
And maybe, just maybe, they will make a change and the place will be full of the work of women and BIPOCS, as well as work by working class or disabled artists. Maybe this place will become a beacon of egalitarian art.
But they won’t come back for me. They won’t come back for all the BIPOC, working class or disabled artists they left behind.
As an artist in my 40s, no one’s coming back for me. I know that. If I’m not the Favorite Son now I never will be. All the privileges, that got Mr. New Woke Bae where he is, passed me by and he will continue to benefit from what got him there. He may begin to try to make space for the artists on the horizon who fit his mold but all the women and BIPOC artists who got displaced in the water, because his boat was coming through, are drowned forever.
Except we’re NOT drowned forever. We’re still here and available. But those who got drowned in the wake of this guy’s big boat are poison somehow. We’re too angry. We don’t strike the right tone.
(Sorry about all these boat metaphors. The Trump parade at Lake Travis is fresh in my mind and the way all those big boats caused the submerging of the little ones, really stuck with me. I mean it’s just so apt, metaphorically speaking – those big boats having no awareness of the others’ distress as they happily motor along, throwing up damage in their wake.)
Anyway – congratulations on your new wokeness newly woke white guy. I look forward to your blogs about feminism – because heaven forbid you just amplify mine.
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Filed under: art, art institutions, Art Scenes, feminism, Non-Profit, Racism, theatre, writing | Tags: Children's Books, favorite sons, feminized spaces, folk tales, Italian mothers, Theater for Youth, Theatre for Youth, Young Adult Books
This is another one of these “written before” posts. The world is moving so fast, it is hard to keep up! It’s not quite of this moment. But it’s probably still worth talking about.
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Over the last few years, I have leaned into making work for young people – both as a theatre maker and as a writer. I dove head first into Theatre for Youth and then, later, into middle-grade fiction. I went to conferences for both and found that they shared something I didn’t expect. They were both fields that were largely run by women. Women were the decision makers and the middle (wo)men. Women dominated – which was very nice to see. There aren’t a lot of fields where that is true.
But work for young people is, like education, a kind of feminized subset of the greater whole. The rest of theatre and the rest of literature are dominated by men. It’s a very interesting phenomenon. Even more interesting to me is how this domination does not extend to the artists. There are the odd exceptions but the artists that these women choose to grace their stages or their publishing houses are mostly men. If there’s a commission to be handed out, I can almost guarantee that it will be handed to a man, and in all probability, he will be a white man. At the several theatre for youth conferences I attended, I saw many all male performances and not one single all female show. The ratios were staggering. I saw male writers hailed as geniuses and male directors applauded for their mastery. I did not see one single woman so honored. I saw artistic director panels without one single woman. Similarly, at the children’s book writer’s conference, men in artistic positions of outnumbered women two to one, while the membership of the organization had women outnumbering men by 10 to 1.
In both places, I saw men being coddled and catered to. I saw them lionized and adored. I did not see the same for women. Ever.
There’s a quality that reminds me of the stereotypical Italian mother from fiction. This bella mama adores her sons. She’ll do anything for them. She pinches their cheeks and calls them heroes. She treats them like kings. In women’s spaces, like work for children, men who go there become the favorite sons.
It makes me think of a phenomenon that Deborah Frances White talks about on her podcast, The Guilty Feminist. The podcast is a distinctly womany feminist space and whenever a man shows up, he tends to be very interesting to the audience. Deborah Frances White has lately been inclined to talk about how much credit male feminists get for just showing up. “The bar is so low,” she’ll say. And it is. All a male feminist had to do to get a whole bunch of credit is show up at a feminist event and he’s a hero. She compares it to the applause men will get for caring for their own children.
“Look at him holding his own baby,” people say. “What an amazing man.”
I think this happens in other feminized spaces to varying degrees. Men get handed goodies just because they showed up in a place men don’t always go. They get all the privileges associated with maleness and then get an extra layer of laudatory attention for being unusual. But the fact is, men in these spaces are NOT unusual. They are the norm. They are the norm over and over again. The favorite sons are chosen over and over again. They seem like unicorns to the women who are choosing them but it’s a 98% unicorn world so unicorns just aren’t that special in it. And the horses are left kind of wandering around the paddock going “I thought horses belonged here. There are so many in charge.”
Does it have to be this way? Of course it does not. I know at least one presenter who brings in women’s work much more often than her colleagues do. She’ll do the occasional unicorn show but she makes special room for horses. While her colleagues are pinching the cheeks of the latest It Boy unicorn, she is giving space to a group of horses to try a new idea. The bar is high for women feminist heroes and to my mind, she meets it.
I’m not saying we should never do another unicorn show. Unicorns are great. But I would like for their bar to be a little bit higher and I would like for the bar for horses to be a lot lower because at this point, only the occasional magic horse can get over it. And usually, it’s because someone’s favorite son is riding on her back.
And don’t think I haven’t noticed that most of the favorite sons are white. The majority of the women in charge are white and they choose their boy geniuses to be as like them as they can. On a rare occasion there is a son of color but he is usually treated as a kind of pet project. The white boys are geniuses; the boys of color have “so much potential” that needs to be cultivated and shaped and pruned. In these spaces, men of color can be called inspiring but they’re rarely called brilliant. In some rare moments in these spaces, you’ll find a woman of color but she somehow has to lean into a culturally specific lane. A Black woman can make some inroads with Anansi tales; Agents can sell her show for Black History Month. A book about Chinese lanterns can be sold around Chinese New Year lessons in school, so that means there might be space for a Chinese woman. I mean, I love Anansi tales and Chinese lanterns as much as the next person – probably more than the next person – but what if our artists of color could just make cool stuff that they felt like making? Like we could have a South Asian company make a show about trains. Or an Iraqi writer could just publish a cute story about a frog. Or maybe, as a temporary remedy, white artists should only be allowed to make culturally specific work for a while. Like, no more cute frog stories for us white folks. It’s just Betsy Ross myths, muskets and tea cozies in our repertory now. See how we like it. (We wouldn’t like it.)
In any case, I’m no longer attempting to make any inroads in these spaces. I gave them my best shot but I didn’t see a path toward success. I was no one’s favorite daughter there and there is no such thing, really. The favorite daughter of folktales is the one who does all the chores and sacrifices herself for the good of her loved ones, not one who strides out into the world to make her fortune. I’m keen on striding out into the world to make my fortune the way the boys do in those stories. And one day I hope to encounter someone who can actually champion me the way the boys get championed by their arts mothers and arts fathers. And I hope all the bella mamas, of all the feminized spaces, find a way to make favorites of more than just the white boys one day.
This post was brought to you by my generous patrons on Patreon.
They also bring you the podcast version of the blog.
It’s also called Songs for the Struggling Artist.
You can find the podcast on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
Every podcast features a song at the end. Some of those songs are on Spotify, my website, ReverbNation, Deezer and iTunes
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Filed under: American, Racism, resistance | Tags: Bill De Blasio, Black Lives Matter, BLM, Center for Media Justice, Charlottesville, Eric Garner, New York City, protest, Racism, resist, statue, Tamir Rice
Warning: This post has got a lot of swears in it. And it’s kind of a mess. But aren’t we all?
I don’t know what to say right now. We’re in a revolution which was long overdue and I feel invigorated and glad that changes are already being made in some way in some places. I also feel terrified and alarmed by the power of the police state which is acting out in the worst possible of fascist ways all over the country and particularly in my city.
The NYPD used terrorist tactics and ran their SUVS right into a crowd of protestors and our motherfucking useless-ass pseudo-progressive mayor, who ran on a platform of stopping this horror-show policing, defended them. In Charlottesville, town of my birth, a few short years ago, a white supremacist terrorist murdered a woman and injured many more doing this same thing. That guy was convicted and sentenced for the murder he committed.
Here in this police state of New York City, we got a curfew instead of arrests of those SUV cops. This curfew allows the police to arrest anyone at their pleasure as soon as the sun starts going down. Last night in the Bronx, they penned in a group of protestors twenty minutes before curfew and then proceeded to pepper spray and beat them before arresting them. They took them in hot crowded transport to a whole different borough in the middle of this pandemic. And all of this is just the tip of the fucking iceberg.
Am I stirred up about it? You bet. We need these cops off the streets immediately. Like, now. Their unfettered violence needs to end. There are so many activists who have been working on this stuff for ages and sure, we should have been helping them before and we’re late but we can still pitch in.
I keep thinking about how whenever I’ve been late to a rehearsal, say, and everyone’s super pissed that I’m late and I feel bad that I’m late but at a certain point, we just have to let it go and get to work. I don’t decide to give up and go home just because everyone’s mad I’m late. And we can’t waste any more time talking about how late we are.
I feel like right now I’m seeing a lot of my white friends wringing their hands and self-flagellating and you know, sure, you’re late. You didn’t get it before. You didn’t understand what Black Lives Matter was actually trying to tell you. So -you’re late and some people are pissed at you for being late. I’m late, too. Or maybe I was on time (I retweeted some of the first BLM tweets, that makes me on time, right? Didn’t I show up on time? My god, it’s so embarrassing how much I want to have been on time.) but I failed to learn my lines or bring my props. (I didn’t put my body on the line or call my reps.) In any case, we’re all fucking late and people have a right to be pissed off about it. But now it’s just time to go to work.
Interestingly, I’m noticing that my friends and family in Charlottesville aren’t doing quite as much handwringing as the rest of the country and protests there have gone smoothly, without incident. It feels to me, from 500 miles away at least, that Charlottesville having gone through the reckoning of 2017, has learned that it just needs to get down to work. And that statue of Robert E Lee that was the beacon that summoned all those white supremacists will likely finally come down. The bad guys there gave up their dumb campaign. The governor ordered a similar statue removed in the capital. There’s hope in there. There’s hope in a lot of things. And some of it is complicated as hell.
For example, here in NYC, we have these things on the streets that Google paid to have installed. We call them Propaganda Sticks because they broadcast messages and images 24-7 and are also surveillance devices. Before I stopped being able to touch my face, when I passed one, I touched my nose in the classic gesture of “I know what you’re up to.” If I was going to be caught up in a surveillance net, I wanted them to see me seeing them do it.
I would not be surprised to have confirmed that all the cute little trivia and art that shows up on them is just there to make people look at it, so they can get better facial recognition data. As you can see, I am not a fan of the propaganda sticks. I’m concerned about all the ways they could be used for ill. I don’t trust Google not to be evil just because they once had a catchphrase reminding them not to do it and I don’t trust New York to protect anyone’s privacy.
This week, the propaganda sticks are slowly just flashing the names of people who have been murdered by police around the country. It’s a black screen with each person’s name in white. And even though I hate those propaganda sticks, it’s actually very moving and we thought the sticks had maybe been hacked by an activist group, which would have been cool. They have been hacked in many interesting ways before. But, no, it’s an official LinkNYC thing. But even so, it’s moving. I about lost it in the street when Tamir Rice’s name went by. And then Eric Garner’s name came up. And on one hand, it is amazing that the city is broadcasting an acknowledgement of these murdered people and on the other hand, this is the same city that allowed Eric Garner to be murdered by police in the first place and then did absolutely nothing about it for five years. You don’t get to have your death agents murder a man for selling cigarettes and then flash his name in protest like you had nothing to do with it. Is Eric Garner’s name flashing on the propaganda stick next to the police assembling their riot shields and teargas? It could be. And is that good? Does it remind them to do the right thing? Or does it just incite their violence further? Given what we’ve seen so far, I’d guess the latter.
Everything is just intersecting right now and I’m not going to lie, I’m a little freaked out. The police state, the surveillance state, the capitalist state, the digital dominance.
A few years ago, I was in a café when everyone’s phones starting making alarming sounds all at once. It was an alert that a snowstorm was coming and I found myself disturbed by the reach of this alert. I worried this might be used for ill in the future. I could imagine a future when our proto-fascist “president” turned full fledged fascist and would broadcast his cruel messages to all our devices at once. Then this week, we got alerts that New Yorkers were under curfew and we had to be in by 11pm. The next day, there was another alert, declaring all New Yorkers needed to be in our homes by 8pm and it would last all week. Meanwhile, most of us have been stuck in our homes for two and a half months due to the virus. And that’s when I figured out how to turn off my alerts. (So if there’s a genuine emergency and not just our local government acting like dictators, please call me to let me know, as I have now opted out of state sponsored communication.) While protestors are able to track police using things like the Citizen app, the police are also able to track protestors through their phones.
Anyway – there’s another place to get to work – because wouldn’t you know, Black activists are vulnerable to being labeled “Black identity extremists” which is a thing the FBI made up to track Black activists and they are certainly using all the digital means at their disposal to surveil the people who have been doing such important work. There are layers and layers of awfulness and it can be overwhelming looking at a list of places you should donate to and when you don’t have many donation dollars, you might just throw up your hands and go home. I’m tempted to throw bricks at the propaganda sticks like this guy but I know that’s not productive and would, in fact, be destructive to the cause and also I’m late, I’m late, I’m late, so late.
So I’m gonna go donate to the Center for Media Justice to help them defend Black activists and end surveillance because I guess that’s something I can do about this digital concern I just discovered I am especially worried about as I write this. And then, just, you know, I’ll get to work on more stuff, too, one thing at a time. Even if I’m late and everyone’s mad. I’m late. You’re late. A lot of people are late. Let’s get to work.
You want to look at that, right? Look, they put nice art on it. It says it’s Art to the People! You like that sort of thing. Just look another second…there! They got your face. But, ha! We’re all wearing masks now, so ha ha ha! Foiled the surveillance machine!
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Normally, in this space here,
I write some related line to suggest you become my patron on Patreon.
But I’m skipping it today. Instead of asking for a tip, I’d love to suggest you donate to the Center for Media Justice or a Bail Fund or Nourish NYC which is getting food and supplies to protestors.
Filed under: art, feminism, Imagination, movies, Racism | Tags: #MeToo, aesthetic, evil, film, formative artists, Imagination, influence, misogyny, Racism, Terry Gilliam, Time Bandits
“Mum! Dad! It’s evil! Don’t touch it!”
This is the final line of one of my all time favorite movies, Time Bandits. I loved Time Bandits as a child and in the many subsequent viewings of it, as an adult, it has not diminished in my estimation. It is a delightful film made by one of my favorite filmmakers.
And I didn’t just love Terry Gilliam’s Time Bandits, no. I also admired his Brazil, The Fisher King, and even his relatively unknown and under-appreciated, Tideland. Tideland is a deep cut in the Gilliam oeuvre and I was a big fan.
After reading his interview in The Independent, to say that I’m disappointed in him is a massive understatement. I’d heard he’d said some pigheaded garbage before but this was sustained pigheaded garbage. This was relentless pigheaded garbage.
As a feminist, I found it pigheaded enough to never want to hear from or see him again. I’d honestly prefer to have read his obituary than to have read his opinions on #MeToo. If it had been his obituary, I’d have cried and mourned the loss of his brilliant mind. As it stands, I guess I have to re-evaluate everything he ever made. Why, Terry Gilliam, why?!
Listen, he’s never been a particularly woman-friendly artist – but he hasn’t been actively terrible either. Sure, there are only a few women in Time Bandits but the main ones are Shelley Duvall and Katherine Helmond and they are remarkable. I didn’t mind that Time Bandits was a boy’s story. I really didn’t. It was perfect. The battle between Good and Evil, a test of the system, as it were, featuring an adorable kid and six hilarious thieves. But now that it’s clear that Gilliam has no idea that women are human, I’m going to have to sit in some discomfort. I don’t think I will love Time Bandits any less but I have to love it knowing the man who made it thinks that MeToo is a witch hunt, that Weinstein’s rape victims chose to be assaulted and that white men are the real victims here. The man who made some of my favorite films is basically an MRA. (Men’s Rights Activists are not actually activists for men. They’re the folks who bring us many violent acts against women and some incredibly toxic thinking.) Gilliam’s become like the chunk of pure burning coal sitting in the toaster oven at the end of Time Bandits. Poisonous and Vile. I’m finding it particularly difficult to reconcile.
It’s not as if I haven’t had to reconcile this sort of thing before. I could probably still recite whole Bill Cosby routines from his albums. I was a fan of Louis CK. I have appreciated some Roman Polanksi films. And, unlike those guys, we have no actual terrible deeds from Sir Terry. We just have his terrible thoughts. And his terrible thoughts suggest that he thinks my entire worldview is ridiculous. His terrible thoughts suggest that he has never thought of women as anything more than sex objects or archetypes. His terrible thoughts suggest that he thinks the systemic oppression of women and people of color are a joke. It breaks my Time Bandit loving heart.
It also strikes me as impossibly stupid. Because I am his fan base. I am his audience. And he just lost me. Who will go see his movie now? All of 4Chan? The darkest reaches of Reddit? The incel chat boards? Is that who he wants for his audience? I’m sure as hell not going to see his movie now and I’m sure I’m not alone in being suddenly very disinterested in what he’s made.
It matters what he says and thinks. If I’m going to go sit in a movie theatre and spend a couple of hours in the world someone created, I want to trust the mind of the person who made it. I wouldn’t go see a Brett Ratner or Bryan Singer movie. I no longer want to sit through the work of Woody Allen. The writer/director’s thoughts are intimately connected to the work they make. I know because I do those things onstage. If you don’t like how I think, you won’t like my creative work. How I think is intrinsic to how I make things. That’s true for most artists.
The upsetting thing about this Gilliam situation is not that Gilliam said some dumb shit and may now be canceled, it’s that he’s revealed himself to be the opposite of what I imagined him to be. Instead of a hero of creativity and bold imagination, he’s a stinky old dinosaur reinforcing the patriarchy. And he must have been all along, in such subtle ways, even I, who am very vigilant about these things, failed to sniff him out.
I have found myself re-evaluating much of his work through this newly revealed lens of his. I’m looking for the dark threads of misogyny and racism that must have been there all along before he laid them bare. I’m also working hard to somehow explain what feels inexplicable. I think, “Oh, he’s just trying to be funny. He’s enjoying being provocative. He’s purposefully sounding like an asshole because he enjoys making mischief. He is doing that classic buffoon style of clowning or something.” This is how I’ve explained away countless other asshole clowns but I don’t think it’s an in-the-past explanation that can fly anymore. I mean – it may explain the why but the why doesn’t matter.
It doesn’t matter why, in Time Bandits, Kevin’s parents reach in to the toaster oven after they are warned by their son not to. It doesn’t matter if they ignore his pleas to not touch the evil because they are contrary or because they always ignore him or because they think it’s funny. They reach in and touch the evil and the consequences are predictable.
Gilliam has surely been warned not to touch the evil in the toaster oven (he’s said some dumb things before) but in the end, he just couldn’t resist. To predictable and sad results.
But what does it matter? Why not just enjoy the films I used to like and forget about the man that made them? Well, it’s actually important that I look at this and not just forget about either Gilliam himself or his work. I have to dig in to some reflection on it because his work was so formative for me. I can draw a direct line from Time Bandits, from Gilliam’s sense of humor, from his aesthetic, to my own work. I can see the threads of his influence in a lot of my plays and fiction. I may have unconsciously interwoven some of the threads of his misogyny or racism along with his aesthetic. Unfortunately, learning what he really thinks about things means I have to be extra vigilant about the foundations of my own work. He was important to me when I was a child and has continued to be important. I can’t just brush off this development. It is a great loss and it will be a great project of reorganization. Even though it’s evil, I still have to look at it. I will not touch it, though! I know better than that!
Mum! Dad! It’s Evil! Don’t touch it!
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Filed under: feminism, movies, Racism | Tags: Caroline Or Change, feminism, feminist film, Mexico, Racism, rant, reproductive freedom, reproductive rights, Roma
Both swearing and spoilers ahead. I’ll warn you before the spoilers. Consider yourself already warned about the swearing.
I really wasn’t mad about Roma while I was watching it. It was a quiet arty experience and I appreciated the cinematography and getting to see the very specific world it created (and perhaps documented). But I didn’t find it moving. I expected to. I brought a pocketful of tissues and I did not use a single one. Not that my tears are required for a moving experience. But I was oddly unaffected and I was trying to understand why.
So I did some googling and saw this cascade of articles declaring Roma to be a feminist film. That’s when I started to get mad. Sure, there are mostly women in the film and that’s really nice and all but crowing about it as a banner feminist film? Sorry. No. Now I’m mad about it.
Just putting women in your movie does not make it feminist. Having your movie declare that men are trash also does not make it feminist. In fact, it is quite the opposite. Feminism holds that men are equal with women (and vice versa of course) and, in fact, men are quite capable of being great (in other words, not trash). Feminism has had a bad reputation for being a man-hating ideology but in truth, it holds men to higher standards than the trash men are often accused of being. Demonstrating that men can behave badly and sometimes leave women to fend for themselves in the world men created is not a particularly feminist demonstration. It’s just something that happens. Feminism doesn’t flatter men or give up on them. It says, “You could do better and you should.” Which is how I felt about Roma.
If (SPOILER ALERT) when Cleo’s character got pregnant she’d been able to get an abortion, that would have been fucking feminist. Assuming Mexican abortion laws were restrictive at the time, there would still be ways to make that a more feminist movie. For example, if her employer had taken her to get an abortion where surely all the rich ladies got their illegal abortions, (because people with money always have more access to abortions even when they’re illegal) that would have been fucking feminist. Even if neither of those things were possible, a feminist film would have at least discussed the possibilities for dealing with an unwanted pregnancy. Instead this film acted like everyone needed to be super happy about a baby no one wanted. And when that baby was born dead – we could maybe not, as an audience, have been put in a position to think, “Well, that’s probably for the best.”
I resent a film that made me feel relieved about a dead baby. Really. Come on. That’s why abortion needs to be fucking legal. Because no one wants to feel relief about a baby born dead. No one. Come on.
And then – at the end, the big fucking reveal is that she never wanted that baby in the first place? What the fuck? Of course, she didn’t. From the moment her boyfriend ditched Cleo in the movie theatre, we all knew she did not want that baby.
In addition to all the personal reasons that the baby was a bad idea, she could have lost her job. It’s clear a different employer would have fired her immediately. That pregnancy was a catastrophe long before it had a gun aimed at it. Somehow the movie pretends it’s not and somehow thinks that women wouldn’t talk about that.
Cleo is a sort of domestic saint, who always does the right thing, is always put upon. The pregnancy somehow makes her more holy. I kept expecting her to get martyred and I’m glad she survives the movie but I guess her declaring that she didn’t want that baby is meant to be an acknowledgement that she is not an actual saint? I don’t know – but domestic sainthood doesn’t rank high in my feminist book.
END of major SPOILERS – some very minor ones ahead:
This sanctification of a boy’s nanny appears to be a thing. I don’t know why boys who grew up with nannies feel the need to make art about them but they do and they seem to be these saintly loving self-sacrificing figures who endlessly give of themselves to help form genius young men. I’m thinking, also, of Tony Kushner’s much lauded musical, Caroline, Or Change, which has similar issues of a woman of color raising white children. Both Roma and Caroline, Or Change have been fictionalized but both creators make it clear that their work was based on their youth. They also both drive me up a fucking tree with their magical negro/magical Native American tropes.
Anyway, speaking of how Roma was based on Cuarón’s nanny, I highly doubt that the big fulfillment in Cuarón’s actual nanny’s life – the end of her story – was to be told that her charges loved her. I’m sure hearing what she meant to her employer’s children was very gratifying but the odds that his family never once drove her crazy and never once made her want to cry out in frustration or kick a hole through one of those glass doors – those odds are very low.
I’m super glad that Cuarón has introduced us to Yalitza Aparicio, who is an extraordinary indigenous actor and that this film got her an Oscar nomination and all that – but we never learned anything about the character she plays or where she’s actually from. The barest minimum we learn is that her village looks a bit like the countryside where they spent New Year’s Eve. Her indigenousness was inconsequential in the end and that feels like a real missed opportunity – especially when it feels like the only real purpose of the film is to tell us that some men can be trash sometimes. Yeah, we know.
Now, can we get some reproductive freedom for everyone?
I’m not saying the film’s not brilliant – the sequence of the father trying to park that whale of a car in his garage is as poignant a look at masculinity as I’ve ever seen. But lionizing Roma as a feminist film just makes this feminist fucking mad. No. Not all men are trash and not all movies about women are feminist. Fade out on ranting feminist.
photo by ProtoplasmaKid via WikiCommons
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Filed under: art, class, education, movies, Racism, theatre | Tags: cultural imperialism, movie, movie theatre, Racism, Roma, theatre, This American Life, white people at the movies
They were doing a screening of Roma in my neighborhood so I went. The theatre was dotted with audience members – so everyone sort of had a little bubble of space for themselves.
About two rows behind me sat two elderly Latino men. They were possibly the only Latinx people in the place. Once the movie began, they spoke to each other in Spanish. In a movie that is so much about atmosphere, their voices added to the experience. I was only sorry that my Spanish is not good enough to eavesdrop a little.
But some guy on the other side of their row was not happy about their conversation. He shouted at them to be quiet. His shouting was very jarring. And he did it again about ten minutes later. He was really mad about those old guys talking. The third time, he shouted “Be quiet. You’re disturbing the movie.” Which was ironic because to my mind, it was him who was disturbing the movie. (Also – it’s a movie. It doesn’t care what happens out in the audience. I think you mean the movie going experience.) I turned around to glare at him and of course he was a white guy. He was a white guy who was convinced he was being a white guy hero. However, I’m a white lady so I used my disapproving white lady glare to hopefully disabuse him of that position.
I don’t know if it worked or it didn’t work. He shut up after that. If it was my glare, I wish I’d used it sooner. And I don’t know if I ought to have said something to the shouter who was disturbing the movie by declaring the movie disturbed, I somehow didn’t feel like more white people shouting would help the situation.
But I did find it ironic that this white guy had decided to come to this movie about a working class Latina and did not want his experience disturbed by actual (I’m assuming) working class Latinos in the theatre. It felt a bit like all the folks who love tacos and nachos and celebrate Cinco de Mayo but are fine with separating Latinx children from their parents at the border.
It’s all of a piece, it feels to me. It is a control of the space, any space. This attempt to keep spaces like theatres and movie houses quiet and in control is an attempt to exclude, to state who is welcome and who is not. The attempt to dictate how we experience culture is generally classist if not explicitly racist. I’m thinking of that story I just heard on This American Life about a group of kids going to see a movie on a field trip and getting kicked out of the theatre because they had a visceral response to what they were seeing and no context for it. And the racism that they encountered on their way to their seats didn’t help either.
I’m particularly sensitive to this because of my previous work as an arts educator wherein it was my job to prepare students for whatever they were about to see in a theatre or on a screen. Performers loved our audiences because they were vocal and responsive. But if they were ever mixed in with a general audience, the general audience became a problem. It’s almost as if we ought to have been leading workshops for the adults in how to be less classist, racist or uptight before we let them watch a show with a bunch of kids. (Watching shows with bunches of kids is great. People should pay extra to do it.) The kids generally just need a little context and a heads up about stuff that’s going to be new for them. Adults usually need far reaching lessons in cultural imperialism.
In the end, back at Roma, I was more interested in what the two old guys thought of the movie than the movie itself (that’s another post, coming soon) and I definitely hoped to never have to see (or more importantly, hear) Mr. White Savior again – especially at the movies. He very definitely disturbed that movie for me.
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Filed under: Gen X, Racism, resistance | Tags: advertising, Baby Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, MTA, N train, politicians, politics, Racism, sexism, Subway, Via
The first one I saw just made me roll my eyes and say, “Of course,” in classic Gen X style. The ad features an illustration of a white haired woman with a bag of Whole Foods-like groceries next to a red haired woman carrying a plant with a small figure between them. I thought it was a baby the first time I saw the ad but it turns out it’s a little dog. (In a spacesuit?)
The tagline is “Whether you’re a boomer or a millennial, we’ve got a seat for you.”
Implied tagline?
And Gen X – You Can Go Fuck Yourself.
I mean. Classic Gen X erasure. I was going to Tweet it but someone already beat me to it. This is the most dominant Gen X media experience now – just noting when we get left out. It seems to have become our primary pop culture meme. Anyway – all I know about the company that made this ad is that they have no Gen Xers on staff.
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Then I noticed their OTHER ad on the subway. It features two white men in suits – one with a blue tie and one with a red. They are cheersing one another with coffee and the tagline reads: Whatever your politics, we’ve got a seat for you.
I’ll give you a second to think about this ad and to guess why it made me angrier than the Gen X erasure of the first one. Just take a second. It took me a second to really take it in.
I’ll give you a hint. It is ALSO about who is missing. I mean – look – I know that when I say “politician” you probably picture a white man in a suit. These two douchebags in the back of their Via car cheersing their coffees are exactly who most people picture – consciously or unconsciously when they picture the political landscape. To some people (including the people who made this ad) the whole political situation is just a jovial game – a friendly competition between white men who wear different color ties. Meanwhile, the rest of us are fighting for our lives and the lives of those more vulnerable than ourselves. And the absolute fiercest fighters right now are women.
The press fawns over the men in their ties while the women, laying out substantive policies and ideas are given significantly less coverage.
So these two illustrated douchebags who can agree on one thing – coffee and ride sharing – are not cute. They’re re-enforcing again – as has it been for so long – that politics is for the boys. And white boys specifically. And you know, right now is a really terrible moment to do that. It’s not great at any time but right now, Via? While we watch the white men in ties take the lead in polls over all the qualified, interesting, exciting women candidates? You wanna show me how it’s possible for two privileged white men to get chummy in your car service? Just – you know – why don’t you take the implied message you sent to Gen X in your other ad and go fuck yourself.
This company, by choosing to reinforce the historical, patriarchal norm, while they are claiming to be for everyone, is making the most conservative backwards choice they could make and also reveals that, in addition to not having any Gen Xers on staff, they probably don’t have any people of color or women in decision making positions either.
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Filed under: art, feminism, Racism, resistance, writing | Tags: Boots Riley, colonization, Default Character, Elizabeth Acevedo, gentrification, Neutral Character, nobility, patriarching, patriarchist, poetry, rat ode, SCBWI, self-editing, sexism-ers, sexism-ing, Sorry to Bother You
Elizabeth Acevedo’s presentation at the Conference of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators made tears fall down my face in a way that I usually try to avoid in public. Acevedo is an extraordinary performer, writer, speaker and it’s no surprise that she took hold of the room full of writers and illustrators and moved us. But why was I crying?
At first, I thought, “Well, I’m old enough and she’s young enough that she could have been one of my students when I was doing workshops and residencies all over New York.” And while I probably didn’t teach her specifically, I certainly taught a lot of kids who could have grown up to be poets or performers. I thought maybe I was having a teacher’s kvell moment, feeling proud of my former students by watching her work. But I think it was something more.
One of the stories she shared was about her graduate training in poetry that led to her writing an ode to rats. (I’d tell you the story in more detail but SCBWI’s blogging policy forbids me from disclosing the contents of a presentation. Though if you watched the beginning of this video, which is freely available on the internet, you’d be pretty much up to speed.) At the heart of the story is a kind of mental gentrification of an artist in the midst of learning a craft. It’s a story about the way that a person in power, coddled in privilege (white, male, economically secure, always part of the dominant paradigm) can thoughtlessly dismiss a culture, a humanity, can fail to see what treasures are right in front of them.
I thought, perhaps, after hearing this story, particularly the part where all of Acevedo’s Spanish words are circled in red, that I was crying for the loss of all the books I haven’t read, all the stories I haven’t heard from the people whose art was cut off at the knees by this kind of colonialist mind set, the kind that can’t look up words he doesn’t know, the kind that can’t see an experience outside of his own. There are so many books we won’t get to read, so many poems we won’t hear, so many films and plays we missed. I mean, I’m crying for that loss again right now as I write this. It is our culture’s great loss. There is no question.
But this felt more personal. It felt like she was talking to me – like it was my story she was telling in addition to her own. I’m not Dominican. Not Latina. Not a woman of color. I cannot claim to have had my work edited to fit a whiter paradigm. My work is probably right in the white zone, probably with its own unconscious colonialist impulses. I have seen the cultural knee-capping happen to students in my orbit but that particular injustice has not been one I’ve had to face. So what is it? Why does this feel so personal? I’d love to believe I was just moved by a cultural loss but I don’t think my tears are that selfless.
I suspect the feeling is familiar even if the facts are different. I suspect I felt all the ways I have been dismissed, edited or questioned for being too feminine, too disorderly or too much trouble. I suddenly found myself looking for a word that expressed a kind of colonization of gender. I want to be able to note the action while it’s happening. I want to be able to say to someone something like “Stop patriarching me!” (but better) or to find the equivalent of calling someone a colonizer. It’s not the same, I know. I know it’s not the same. But there are many ways that women’s bodies have been claimed by others instead of the people to whom they belong.
Of course we have words for the many ways that that claiming happens – many of which have only recently become common parlance. We can acknowledge that someone has committed domestic abuse or sexual assault or sexual harassment or reproductive tyranny or gaslighting or rape or objectification, etc, etc – even something as tiny as mansplaining – but so many of these things stem from a basic entitlement to women’s bodies and space. I need a word for the whole basket. I need a word bigger than sexism. I need a word for when someone is editing the femininity (or feminism) out of my work. I want to be able to shout something better than “You’re being sexist!” That phrase is too passive. It’s something the person is being, not doing. I want something like, “You’re doing sexism!” – both so I can identify it myself and to make it clear to other people. I need a word that can help highlight the subtle ways this happens. Sexism, like colonization, is ACTIVE. It’s not just in the water. It’s something people do to each other all day long and repeat and repeat, generation after generation. Colonizers try to make people assimilate to the dominant culture. Sexism-ers (sorry, still need a word and until I find one, I’m going to keep making them up) make people assimilate into the biased binary.
I have no idea what I would have been able to create if I hadn’t already spent a lifetime in the Patriarching Machine. I hope I’ve been able to resist most of the assimilation to the sexist structures – but I know there is a colonizer and patriarchist in my own mind, who does at least as much damage to me as any sexist colonizer outside me. I’d like to believe that if someone told me my idea wasn’t good enough that I would have gone ahead and written it anyway, the way Acevedo did, but I don’t know if I would have. Or did.
At this same conference, I learned about the Default Character – this is the “Neutral” character, the one that you don’t need to specify anything about. Unless we’re told otherwise, we assume the character is male, white, upper middle class, able bodied and Christian. Any character outside this norm, tends to need to be specified.
In order to be welcomed into the mainstream, we try to make ourselves closer to the default, to the neutral. We might edit out our femaleness and/or our cultural identity. (When Boots Riley won a Spirit Award for my favorite 2018 film, he pointed out how class struggle has been pretty much invisible in film due – in part – to self-editing.)
It’s a gentrification of the mind, of art. Where has my own artistic sensibility been edited and proclaimed not noble enough for the taste-makers, educators and gatekeepers? What poems haven’t I written because I was told my experiences were not sufficient? What plays or books or songs did I set aside because they weren’t nice enough for a “nice” girl like me? Acevedo heard criticism of her rat idea and she did not fold, she did not nod and say, “Oh, okay, how about an antelope?”
She went ahead and wrote that ode to rats. And she performs it on stages and in videos and there are likely people who have heard her rat ode that have heard no other odes in their lives and so she sets a new standard, a new possibility. We can praise what had once been held in contempt. We can change the definition of nobility. We can all be noble humans and there will be no more default characters.
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Filed under: feminism, music, Racism, resistance | Tags: #cancelKavanagh, douchebags, dystopia, McRapeFace, neighbors, Racism, racist, sexist, singing, utopia, Women's March
The day that Frat Boy McRapeFace was confirmed to the Supreme Court, when my dining companion asked me what I wanted to eat, I said Senator Grassley’s heart. Not that I’m 100% sure Grassley has one, but assuming there’s at least a little dried up something there, I would like to take a big bite of it then spit it out on the Senate floor.
I’m a little bit upset, I guess you could say. Earlier in the day, I watched the police mobilize and prepare to arrest the women who were protesting on the steps of the capital on the Women’s March livestream. I watched the police line up. I watched them strategize. The troops were mostly men in uniform with their zip tie cuffs – the protestors were mostly women, fully prepared to put their bodies between a rapist and the supreme court seat.
It was a stark illustration of who has authority and who does not. All day and all evening I tried not to sink into despair about the continuing kleptocracy in our country. It feels better to rage than to despair – but despair is close the surface. Living with corruption in every corner of the federal government is taking a bigger toll than I ever imagined.
Anyway – it was already hard. Then that night, at 1 am, these guys somewhere outside who had been indiscriminately yelling for a while started chanting some racist stuff. They chanted: (“F— you, Obama. F— you, Obama. F— you, n—-s.”) I was shocked. And terrified. I mean – I was safe in my apartment, of course. They were out there and I was inside and they weren’t coming for me. But groups of men engaged in hate like that are terrifying for a lot of us – even from a distance.
I felt like I’d stumbled into some horrific dystopian novel that I absolutely did not choose. I mean, I moved to NYC in 1999 and I have never heard anything like that anywhere before. I have heard people shout all kinds of hateful things at each other but never like that. And it felt like the events of the day had unleashed this horrific behavior that had somehow lain dormant, even these last couple of years. It was the final release valve, I guess. I went from fierce dragon to terrified maiden in a minute – not because I thought this pack of douchebags would come for me – but because so many of them have just been empowered – with no obvious check on their behavior. I later learned that that same weekend, hateful anti-immigrant posters had gone up all over Sunnyside, Queens. Were the perpetrators celebrating their racist postering back in my neighborhood? Was that their victory party? Or was that an entirely different group of racist douchebags? Then, too, similar propaganda popped up at liberal arts colleges, where, like in Queens, they are decidedly unwelcome. It all feels of a piece. The final release valve of douchebaggery has been let go. They can take their misdeeds all the way to the Supreme Court apparently.
Roving packs of douchebags have always run rough shod over America but any sense of consequence on their behavior has just been removed. That is why I cried my face off when I heard them across the courtyard.
But if they have been released, they have also been revealed. We know where those racists live. The GOP can no longer pretend to care about women. They can no longer get away with their Benevolent Sexist Protectionist bullshit. They have revealed their cards and they have hands full of bluffs. It is clear that the America they dream of is one where we let the white men do all the shouting and governing, where they can rape and rob with impunity, where consequences only exist for the rest of us. They remain the kings. The rest of us are only here to serve.
As I watched this vision of the future dystopia emerge, I wondered if this is really what they want. Is this the Republican dream? Maybe it is. Maybe white supremacists shouting in the middle of the night is utopia for them. Maybe a depleted environment full of polluted rivers and flattened mountain tops is their fantasy. Maybe all the dystopian stories we read, they see as utopias. The Hunger Games? A story of a pain-in-the-ass girl who disrupts a perfectly balanced authoritarian state. The Handmaid’s Tale? A manual for how to create and maintain a religious autocracy – disrupted by a woman who just won’t obey.
Their dream of America is my nightmare. In their dream, women lose all bodily autonomy, immigrants lose their children and only old rich white men have power and resources. Prior to the last couple of years, I would have thought that the holocaust was a universally dystopian time. But even that horrific hellscape was and is utopian for some.
And very probably my utopian dream for America would be a nightmare to them. In mine, women finally gain equality and have total ownership of their own bodies. Women are believed and respected. There is wage equality, racial equality, economic justice. In my America, people come together from all over the world and are welcomed. Trans people and people with disabilities are especially honored and cherished. We delight in diversity and put our resources in things like the arts and education. In my utopian America, we care for each other. We look out for the most vulnerable. We prioritize caring for the natural world.I know it won’t be easy to get there – especially now – but it does feel important to hold on to a kinder vision of the world I want to live in.
Kavanagh’s confirmation may have signaled to everyone, white supremacists and douchebags included, that we’re headed to that dystopian future. But maybe just, just maybe we can pull it back – to hold tight to a sense of possibility even as the racists and sexists emerge from under their rocks with celebratory screaming.
The thing of it is, a week later, I have figured out what I ought to have done. Instead of trembling and not sleeping for hours, I could have sung into the night. I had gotten all caught up in trying to come up with a scary sound – a dragon roar, a wolf growl – but my voice can be just as loud as the douchebags – particularly when I am singing. I’m sure my neighbors hear me singing all the time (though I try to pretend they don’t) and I know that in the same way that I know there’s an opera singer in an apartment nearby. I know she can be louder than those racist douchebags. What I’m trying to work out now is what exactly to sing in these dystopian situations. It feels key to sing something, if not for myself, then for all the people in my neighborhood who are more vulnerable to attack.
My first thought was to make up a song – something to call to my fellow women outside, something they could join me in singing. I found myself inventing a little ditty called “Ladies, Don’t Fuck a Racist.” However, I realized as I walked past my neighbor’s door, that there were quite a few young children in the buildings near us and maybe this wouldn’t be the best way to support them, even if it might feel vaguely cathartic.
But what is the answer? How to drown out the voices of racist douchebags with the voices of women and their allies? How can we make the racists know we hear them and do not approve and empower our targeted neighbors? What song invites joining in to defeat the forces of hate? I feel like I want a plan in place, in case we really are in a dystopia and this keeps happening. I want a song ready to go so I can skip the maiden trembling and the visions of dystopia and go straight to raising my voice.
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Songs for the Struggling Artist 