of dislocation & graceful unravelling

weekend misadventures in media consumption

I. Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich (2001).

This had been on my reading list since my first try at college 2002. I finally borrowed the book from my sister, who recently had to read it for Sociology. All this time, I was under the impression that it was some kind of “creative nonfiction” piece about the author experiencing actual hard times and then writing a book (with statistics and facts!) about it. But really the premise was: highly-educated, middle-class white liberal feminist undertakes a social experiment to work minimum wage jobs and live in low-cost housing to see “what it’s really like.” Which, I guess this goes without saying but it totally doesn’t count when you still know you have the safety net of a savings account and your “real” home with your “real” profession and “real” income and health insurance to fall back on.

I can’t write a comprehensive review because I’m pretty sure I was offended at least once per page since, surprise, I’m actually working class and when people ask me “why don’t you just quit,” “why don’t you just unionize,” “why don’t you just save up money for better housing” or “why don’t you just find a better/more fulfilling/less demeaning job” I usually scream, or at least scoff or sneer, and throw up a little inside.

Since this book is old news, some people on GoodReads have of course written much better scathing reviews, like this one, which is concise and snappy. Anyway, this isn’t a book review blog, this is my personal complaint department blog.

I’m only posting about this book because the whole time I was reading it, I kept thinking, oh gosh, it’s like a safari, innit? a safari into the working class, HOW EXCITING FOR MIDDLE-CLASS WHITE BLEEDING-HEART LIBERALS. COME, LET ME SHOW YOU HOW THE OTHER HALF LIVES.

Perhaps as a ~free agent within the capitalist marketplace~ I can start my own tourism company.

II. Indecent Proposal (1993, dir: Adrian Lyne)

I’m ashamed to admit I was tricked by this movie; more than halfway through I was still under the mistaken assumption that the lady was the main character and that this was a film about complicated (middle class white) lady choices: to be faithful or have an affair, love vs. money, blah blah boring, but, oh! She said the extramarital sex was good? She’s strugglin’ with moral quandaries? HMM INTRIGUE!

But eventually I noticed that the female lead hardly says anything outside of disembodied narrative voiceovers (nice try Lyne) and that actually the entire movie is just about manfeelings — MANXIETIES, even — about jealousy, possession, insecurity about manhood, snoooooooze.

Lyne snuck in an apparently jabby reference to Susan Faludi by including a quick cut of a “ditzy”-looking secretary reading Backlash, and because of that I found a rather witty interview with Faludi re: Lyne, and maybe I should read her books, too, finally?

Maybe I should read anything that doesn’t suck?

feministfilm:

sunneinsplendour:

So this is a post that has been a long time coming, ever since I started tracking the Betty Draper tag basically and was exposed to a whole new level of vitriol that I didn’t think a fandom - whom I always used to consider pretty classy - was capable…

I just started watching Mad Men and I’m only in the middle of Season 3, so I’m not sure if my opinion would change as Betty’s character is further developed. Also I have not explored any Mad Men fandom type forums at all and only had a few discussions about Relevant Issues regarding the show.

That being said, in re: item #1, “Betty Draper is a bad mother” - as yet in my viewing experience, I haven’t labelled her a “bad mother.” Partially this might be due to my own childhood; I was raised by parents who were not necessarily opposed to shouting at or spanking a kid for disciplinary purposes. It didn’t happen often, but it was a thing that happened. (At the same time, my mom raised hell when she found out my Kindergarten teacher was smacking me around.) And although I wouldn’t spank my own kids, I don’t personally feel that what I experienced was all that detrimental in the long run, despite the fact that it would be defined as abuse nowadays, technically. (And also despite the fact that surely some people will say I’m messed up for thinking what happened to me is not messed up, when taken as a whole. Whatever, unabashedly confessional y’all.)

So far as I’ve watched in the series, there have been many tense moments where Betty is mean, cold, or curt to her kids. I actually thought this was kind of a brave thing to be showing on TV (though I am loathe to describe a television program as “brave”) because I read it as a kind of authenticity. I mean, you have the cheerful 50s mom Leave It to Beaver-esk stereotype — all of which is covered in the linked commentary. But still today, regardless of our privilege of 20/20 hindsight into how messed up the past was, this stereotype of the happy mother joyously sacrificing everything for the sake of her angelic children is still all the rage.

Motherhood-as-a-concept is made out to be this life-changing experience where despite all the sleepless nights and poopy diapers and stained clothes and hurty tits (not to mention finding time for the rest of your life and maintaining sanity and being an individual person with thoughts) — you are so happy, so so overjoyed, and it is The Best Thing That Ever Happened To You (tm). Which I wouldn’t argue with per se. I have experienced the feeling of overwhelming love for one’s child and it is a thing that is real. But then there are the other realities of cleaning up messes and crying and losing your mind and being exhausted and also at the same time, making sure to always have something grateful to say about the joys of parenting and always have a happy face. These are the things I haven’t experienced and this is part of what terrifies me about eventually raising a kid… what happens when I mess up? There’s a lot of pressure to Not Mess Up around your kids because if you get angry you will RUIN THEM FOR LIFE.

So to me, Betty Draper’s character as a mom offers glimpses into a kind of parenting that can be a real thing. Not the kind you’ll see on cutesy Facebook posts or photo albums. There are going to be days when the parent is tired and snaps at the kids. There are days when the parents can’t take it anymore because as precious and beautiful and amazing as children are, they can also be hellish. I know this because I used to be a kid and I was kind of an asshole sometimes. Parents don’t become perfect and infallible after having kids; they’re still human and they still have to deal with their human shit while also being responsible for a smaller human. Life doesn’t stop being difficult forever simply because something allegedly miraculous happened to you once or twice.

I once read a story — I think it was in Breeder but I will have to go and search to confirm because I’m not totally certain — that was about how when a woman gives birth, she will undoubtedly (due to emotions as well as the rush of hormones) feel this overwhelming, universal rush of perfect love for her newborn; this helps in the initial attachment and bonding process. The author of this particular birth story wrote that after hours of laboring, squatting and on all fours, when her baby was finally born, the mother’s first thought was to eat her child. Like some kind of atavistic wolf instinct. I’ve never read another birth story like this. You don’t want to tell people about that feeling; that shit is weird and inappropriate. The mother was troubled by these feelings and regardless of her doing all the right things and being a good mom/caretaker, she still felt like a freak because Parenting is Hard and it wasn’t all cupcakes and rainbows. She loved her kid fiercely, but raising an infant for her was a lot of craziness. I loved that story because it was honest as shit. I don’t want to hear about how having a kid made your life perfect and amazing and everyone should have teh babiez it is the best!!! I want to know about the real human shit so that I don’t have to constantly fear that I will totally fall short of this unattainable magical standard of motherhood simply because I am a lady who can caretake and feel beauty and joy and overwhelming love but also who sometimes feels tired and sometimes gets angry and sometimes just doesn’t have time for the bullshit and needs to be left alone every now and then to think. Is there something wrong with still wanting to be a person while you’re caring for another person?

/TV SHOWS THAT MAKE ME THINK ABOUT SERIOUS ISSUES.

ETA: Case in Point: WHAT HAPPENED, MOMMY?

rgr-pop:

I Never Said I Wanted to Be a Man:  The Jack White Navigates His Masculinity, Publicly, Project
A White Stripes Gender Studies Primer, 1999-2004

My growing up was a Jack White growing up at least as much as it was a pop-punk growing up.  Where Screeching Weasel songs taught me (and reinforced over and over again) how I was supposed to look and act as a Girl Punk, it was Jack White’s parabolic posturing that stretched those threads of socialization until they tore open.  Until I could see could see all its stuffing.  I don’t want to make Mr. Gillis out to be any more of an omniscient prophet/pedagogue than he would already give himself credit for, but I will say that a poor little punk girl, Biggest White Stripes Fan of the Midwest 2001-2004, learned a whole lot of things about gender from the White Stripes.  And I will also say that when we look at these broken seams of gender construction in White Stripes songs, I’m not sure that we’re looking at the calculated mythos we’re used to talking about when we talk about Jack White.  Instead, I think we’re looking at his tool marks in the process of constructing that mythos.

I would argue that Jack White used blues standards and early country tracks much in the same way that Emily and I are using Billie Joe Armstrong and Ben Weasel tracks when we cover them to play at co-op bro parties.  He sought to re-contextualize and reconcile those pieces that formed his concept of music and of himself, and mostly his conception of masculinity.  The White Stripes project, maybe more than anything else, was the Jack White Explores What It Means to Be a Man project.

Jack White loved and covered blues tracks in which violence—toward women especially—was neither glorified nor condemned.  It was just part of masculinity.  The Robert Johnson/McTell tradition is strong in so much of Jack’s songwriting, tracks like “Broken Bricks” are ultimately just re-envisioned Blind Willie fables set in a post-big-three Detroit.  But while Jack White was covering “Your Southern Can is Mine” (look here woman, don’t get hard, gettin’ me a brick out of my back yard) and beating Jason Stollsteimer’s face in (according to one of my friends who was there, the fight was over Marcie, but that’s irrelevant except in perpetuating the Jack White Violent Chivalry Myth as witnessed in “Hand Springs”), he was also dropping weakly moralizing reflections on City Violence and Who Will Think of the Kids, like in “Candy Cane Children.” 

What I mean is that Jack White’s masculinities of violence in those first three  years were less a segment of his design and more an artifact of his process.  The man who was playing marriage-tease Marlene and divorcée-libéré Loretta and housewife-besieged Dolly without a hetero-flinch, was a year or two later back in the Robert Johnson woman-beating role.  (Compare the sexualized brutality of Johnson’s “Stop Breakin’ Down,” the stuff I got’ll bust your brains out to “Ball and Biscuit’s” my strength is ten-fold, girl, I’ll let you see it if you want to before you go.)  The juxtaposition of these venerated Delta-masculinities and  auto-masculinities—especially in conjunction with the ambiguous sexualities and characterizations of girls and women—are a kind of a sneaking peak at this man’s process.  It’s a testament to his own attempt to figure it out.

Jack’s assumption of women’s voices was sometimes an assertive act, I’m sure.  For him to airily sing about envying other men, or being desired by other men, or even the proposition in “Pretty Good Looking” that boy-girl attraction isn’t necessarily the only attraction, was an act that allowed him to extend his sexual mystique (and the conversation about his relationship with Meg) in a way that reinforced his control and his comfort with his masculinity. 
“Jolene” is such a compelling conversation between masculinities and femininities, in some ways an infinite subversion of subversions of the gaze.  It’s a song about women tearing each other apart, even though the pivot point is, obviously, a man.  When Jack re-inserts that male voice, it’s both appropriative and reflective.  But for pre-teen me, a mostly-straight rock star man singing about his man, and that “us women don’t have a chance,” was, like, a huge deal.  To even bring up the question.  To expand the terms.

You cannot discuss Jack White’s mythologies without discussing Jack White’s furtive/fervent Catholicism—he who allegedly kissed the ground every year on the last day of school like the pope himself, he who almost went to seminary.  (The latter, at least, is only part of his own mythology—we have no reason not to believe him when he claims that he turned down the seminary for a new amp, but I think the fact that White recounts its as important to his origin story is relevant enough).  There is no Jack White masculinity without folkloric, catholic and superstitious conceptions of gender.  In “Red Death at 6:14”:

Was that her dad with the magic marker writing little angel on her head?
She must be dead if the only sound I hear are the devils by her bed.

Jack’s Catholic-cum-Welles Motor City mythologies reinforce his masculinities.  In “Ball and Biscuit,” maybe most notably, he uses his own power/piety to squelch a worldly feminine sexuality: it’s quite possible that I’m your third man, but it’s a fact that I’m the seventh son.  “The Union Forever,” an entry in the “Jack White States Pretty Clearly What a Man Is” canon, he draws from Citizen Kane.  Remember, Orson Welles himself was raised Catholic—a tradition of overwrought, superstitious, patterned symbolism to which both men belong.

In “Broken Bricks,” just like in “The Big Three Killed My Baby,” the ruins of the auto-industry become the site for reflecting on the roots of Detroit manliness as well as a site for transformative spiritualities (the potential connotations of the auto-trinity were never lost on Jack White).  “Broken Bricks,” in my view, is almost a magnum opus of synthesized understandings of gender:  it’s basically a story about a girl’s exploration of a soon-to-be-demolished plant and how she uncovers the histories of the men in her life through interacting with the remnants of their material realities.  And, not surprisingly, what she discovers is violence and working-class men’s quotidians.  In some ways, placing the girl in the site of experience is another form of Jack White’s play with gendered subjectivity, but it’s also a reinforcement of the almost-religious, embodied-domestic means that gender is learned and understood in Jack White’s world.

In “The Air Near My Fingers,” “A Boy’s Best Friend,” and “I’m Finding It Harder to Be a Gentleman,” he more explicitly tears into what it means to be a man, but the site for these explorations is the maternal and domestic.  Both of the former discuss how Jack’s understanding of himself as a man are rooted in a love of/learning from his mother.  In “Air,” all that day-to-day gendering is laid bare:

Don’t you remember? 
You told me in December that a boy is not a man until he makes a stand.
Well, I’m not a genius but maybe you’ll remember this,
I never said I wanted to be a man.

Again, in “I’m Finding It Harder,” we watch him learn and negotiate his masculinity, looking for it in his socialization (presumably all those manners that he’d been taught came to him from his mother), and finding it in a stoic paternalism which he learned from his father:

Well I never said I wouldn’t throw my jacket in the mud for you
But my father gave it to me so maybe I should carry you.

I decided to stop at 2004 for two reasons.  The first is that I pretty much have a fully accessible brain-encyclopedia of absolutely everything there is to know about the White Stripes through approximately 2004.  After Elephant is where I fizzled out as a fan, but I’m sure that this conversation could be continued on the last two albums.  Second, though, I might argue that after Elephant, even as the stylized, tight grip on White Stripes Mythology loosened, the complexity of the Jack White mythos expanded a lot.  On those last two albums I think there is a much heavier awareness of the Jack White myth but at the same time there is a much wider and more complex application of it, and it is much more difficult to discuss his works in such easy categories.

In the end, this mix covers a lot of themes: violent masculinities, dead and dying girls, ambiguous sexualities, working-class paternalism, possession, the maternal mark, Jack Sings Songs About Women’s Sexualities, Jack Covers Blues Standards About Beating People Up, Jack Covers Blues Standards About Beating Women Up, Jack Models That Behavior, Jack Tells Us What It Means and Doesn’t Mean to Be A Man.  I could easily also make a companion mix called _______ Killed My Baby:  the Jack White Sings Songs About Dead and Dying Girls Project or Every Single Girl Needs Help Climbing Up Her Tree:  The Jack White Saves Ladies, Because Ladies Need a Lot of Things, or Sometimes He Doesn’t Save Them and They Die Project, or the Nobody Knows How to Talk to Children About Gun Violence and Sexual Maturation Except Jack White Project.  But this is a good start, no?

         Pt. I,  Angels/Sex/Girls/Dead

1. “Red Death at 6:14”
   (Sympathetic Sounds of Detroit, 2001)
2. “Rated X”
   (Loretta Lynn cover, live at the Hotel Yorba, from the Hotel Yorba single, 2001)
3. “You’ve Got Her In Your Pocket”
   (Elephant, 2004)
4. “Look Me Over Closely”
   (Marlene Dietrich cover, b-side to “Let’s Shake Hands,” 2001)
5. “Jolene”
   (Dolly Parton cover, b-side to “Hello Operator, 2000)
6. “You’re Pretty Good Looking (For a Girl)”
   (De Stijl, 2000)
7. “Lord, Send Me an Angel”
   (Blind Willie McTell cover, 2000)
8. “Expecting”
   (White Blood Cells, 2001)
   
   Pt. 2, A Man/A Certain Man/You’ll Feel My Hand
9. “I’m Finding It Harder to Be a Gentleman”
   (White Blood Cells, 2001)
10. “Hand Springs”
    (originally a 1999 split with the Dirtbombs, then released on the Japanese release of  White Blood Cells in 2001)
11. “The Air Near My Fingers”
    (Elephant, 2003)
12. “The Union Forever”
    (White Blood Cells, 2001)
13. “Stop Breaking Down”
    (Robert Johnson cover, The White Stripes, 1999)
14. “A Boy’s Best Friend”
    (De Stijl, 2000)
15. “Broken Bricks”
    (The White Stripes, 1999)
16. “Your Southern Can Is Mine”
    (Blind Willie McTell cover, De Stijl, 2000)
17. “Ball & Biscuit”
    (Elephant, 2003)

I know, I know, tl;dr.  Fine: 
[Download it here]
(photo via)

“And I was filled with compassion for his suffering, even now, as he confessed his craving to take my life.”

Okay, I read Twilight, and I found it to be one of the most awfully trite excuses for writing I have ever set my eyes upon.  But, I was intrigued by this pop cultural phenomenon which has inspired so many blogs of adoration as well as hatred.

I mean, long ago I was once a teen goth, so I s’pose it’s a cute idea—gorgeous-but-deadly vampire (Edward) falls in love with a human teenager (Bella) prone to whiny self-deprecating monologues.  Without falling too far into the pit of deconstruction, I will say that I was made most uncomfortable by the following:

1) Bella’s constant negativity regarding her own self-image, though her vampire boyfriend insists that she’s beautiful.  On a related note, the perception of one another’s intense physical beauty seems to be the only reason they fell in love…oh, and, of course, that vampire boyfriend is desperately attracted to the scent of her human blood, and must exercise intense self-control in order to avoid killing her!  Metaphor for puritanical teenage sexual tension, anyone?

2) Bella’s willingness to completely give up her individuality in favor of being with her vampire boyfriend (see above quote).  Edward, always the father-figure (he is, after all, actually a hundred years old), refuses to turn her into a vampire for her own benefit, because he is of the opinion that she should get to experience the normal human life that he missed out on since he became a vampire at the age of 17.  In Bella’s mind, however, plan A is “be with Edward” (at all costs, no matter what, etc.) while plan B is “go to college.”  At least she knows that a woman can’t have both a career and a husband—that would be ridiculous! </sarcasm>

I know I shouldn’t get so worked up about fleeting pop culture nonsense… but damn.  Why must we swoon over such gross representations of superficial, obsessive, controlling, codependent relationships masquerading as “true love”?  What do you think about it, Shakespeare?…