Like the Bell Jar, the Cocteau Twins, the poetry of Anne Sexton, and Meshes of the Afternoon, at some point in the life of a young girl with dark interests, you come across the story of Elizabeth Báthory and are unquietly amazed by it. The Transylvanian countess tortured and murdered hundreds of young women. As legend would have it, she once dabbed the blood of a servant girl under her eyes and believed it reduced the signs of aging. But stone cold sadism was her motivation, above any demand for eternal youth. Sound like the perfect role for Tilda Swinton? Why yes, indeed she’s lined up for an adaptation. But wait, Julie Delpy wrote, directed, and stars in The Countess, also about Bathory. Much as I love Delpy, the Swinton movie has a script by Elfriede Jelinek, the bitterest writer I’ve ever read, which I mean as a very good thing.
The easiest way to go about resolving the problems presented by Clay Shirky is applying American Pie math to intellect: divide a man’s alleged aptitude by three and multiply a woman’s by three. Previously: Where Are the Renaissance Women?
“I think there’s a very real sense in which [women] are supposed to say ‘chocolate’ whenever someone asks them what they want” – Nina Power, One Dimensional Woman (reviewed in the Guardian.) “Power’s analysis is brilliantly acute on all this, with a critique of capitalism running as a clear thread throughout her interrogation of muddled contemporary feminisms. Pro-war “feminists”, for example, are taken to task over the veil. Drawing on Alain Badiou, Power writes: ‘On the one hand, any woman who wears the hijab must, by the logic of secular reason, be oppressed. On the other, if she makes too much of the rhetoric of choice to justify her wearing it, she misunderstands precisely what that rhetoric is for. The logic of choice, of the market, of the right to pick between competing products cannot be used to justify the decision to wear what one likes, if one chooses something that indicates a desire not to play the game.’”
Reading something the other day, I came across a reference to a book in Latin translated by Queen Elizabeth. Digging a little further I came across this article: “Book of translations reveals intellectualism of England’s powerful Queen Elizabeth I.” In addition to ruling the country starting at the age of 25, she translated Seneca, Boethius, and others for fun.
“Cupcakes are the evil foodstuff of the infantilisation of rational human beings everywhere. Death to cupcakes! Let them eat anything but cake, giant walking toddlers that we are rapidly becoming! Bring back rationing! That’ll learn ‘em!” Agreed. Plus, if you’ve ever tried a bite of a fancypants $7 cupcake, with a preposterously inaccurate flavor description “yerba mate,” “mangosteen,” “lychee frosting,” of the sort twee bloggers reblog everywhere, more often then not they taste like sugar crystals and sawdust. Bring on the “jars of mushed-up baby food”!
I wonder if Edward Hopper’s portrayal of the ’20s automat is correct. Was it really a place a young woman could go at night… alone? Unless you are Angelina Jolie, (who apparently sneaks out to bars solo in New York and New Orleans) late night options are pretty much limited to movie theaters, indie rock shows, or Netflix at home. Don’t get me wrong. I have no problem getting lunch at the bar with a journal, or even a drink up til about 8 or so. But after that one is opening oneself up to the possibility of unwanted attention. And the point of going out alone is to be alone. I suppose if Horn & Hardart were around today, it would get same kind of rowdy crowd as a late night falafel place. Maybe the contemporary equivalency of an automat is a sushi bar where you pick the plates off the train and they charge you at the end by numbers of plates. (Was thinking about this while reading Coolhunter on Minibar, the Amsterdam “automat”-style self-serve bar.)
I’m not a huge Joss Whedon fan. His sense of humor isn’t dark enough, his storytelling is too traditional, too obvious. Anyway, it really doesn’t surprise me, he’d make a comment suggesting women into SF are all kinda tomboyish and not that hot. I talked about this in my interview last winter with Deep Glamour — when you’ve got Rosario Dawson developing a sci-fi pilot and a girl from Danity Kane drawing SF comic books, you can’t say it’s in any ways “butch.” The big difference here is between fan culture and fanbase. All my hot friends love sci-fi. Would they go to cons? No. I’ll save explaining why (most) hot chicks don’t go to cons for another post.
Margaret Wertheim on Susan Boyle and The Beauty of Crochet in Design Observer. If you read anything today, make it this.
“Importantly — albeit inadvertently — it is also a film that illustrates the misogyny still pervasive in the art world today, a misogyny that Hasegawa-Overacker both records and exudes.” – Kriston Capps on Guest of Cindy Sherman (via.) (I cringed listening to Paul H-O on Studio 360 this weekend. I can’t even imagine how insufferable he is on film.)
Fascinating interview with Charlotte Roche in Salon. And here’s a pretty good article from Times of London on some of these ideas.
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