I am incredibly proud to announce that Praying with Lior, a beautiful documentary by my beloved friend Ilana Trachtman, was the top grossing independent film opening in the country last weekend. You can read one of the many rave reviews here. Thank you to all those who came out to see it last weekend, and attended the party! I had fun playing the bouncer. If you missed it, you can still catch it. The NYC run has been extended. Tickets here.
movie reviews
Virginia Rutter (the gal who brought us “Who Votes Their Gender?” the other week) took time out from writing college lectures to pen this excellent review of Juno from the perspective of a sex researcher. As you likely know by now, Juno was just nominated by the Academy for four Oscars, including Best Film, and Best Actress (Ellen Page). We’re bound to see a continued discussion of the issues the film raises in coming months, and here Virginia calls our attention to something other reviewers have overlooked: the way our culture talks about–or rather, doesn’t talk about–luuuvvv. -GWP
Can We Talk about Love, Please?
The movies are giving demographers, sociologists, and sex researchers a boost these days. Movies about unwanted pregnancy that eschew abortion, such as Juno, Knocked Up, and Waitress, are giving gifted columnists (like Ellen Goodman and Carrie Rickey) a chance to contemplate where the culture stands with respect to unwanted pregnancy, early motherhood, and all things youthful, tawdry, and anxiety producing for those of us who consider ourselves grown ups now. Those kids are different from us grown ups, and the problems that they have are about the mechanics of sex, and the rules and practices around abortion, adoption, and teen delivery.
Meanwhile, it is Christmas in January for a sex researcher. There is a lot of important teen sex and unwanted pregnancy news out there, too. Abortion rates are down, Guttmacher reports. The fantasized link between teen pregnancy and poverty is screwy, as reported to the Council on Contemporary Families, and instead, poverty is caused by (who’d a thunk it?) the economy. Ouch. How unromantic.
But I don’t want to write about that, any more than I want to write my sociology lectures or finish my latest sex data analysis, right now. The cultural theme that Juno raised for a lot of commentators is whether we as a society are making sex and reproductive decisions look too easy and too simple.
Mind you, the main theme, focused on a woman’s body, seems to have crowded up some other ideas that matter. I have wondered why we haven’t detected a cultural story to be told here in this movie about the fact that:
1. Consequences of sex are a component of the plot in Juno, just as they are in Knocked Up; and
2. The boy, Paulie Bleeker (played by Michael Cera), though not as touched by the pregnancy crisis as the girl, Juno MacGuff (played by Ellen Page) remains a large focus of the unfolding story of the consequences of sex.
But, like I said, none of this grips me. You know what grips me? Love. And I’m convinced that we just don’t talk about it enough.
http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif
The value and pleasure of Juno was that it was a story of love—where the kids sing to each other “you’re a part time lover and full time friend.” In the messy, dull, weird world of conformity and reticence that dominates high school relationships, Juno sweetly offers a story of shy, sweet, but steadfast friendship and romantic love.
Family love was there too. I was touched by the love and acceptance that the father showed his daughter, even as he was befuddled by her choices. I cheered at the loyalty portrayed by the stepmother when she dressed down the judgmental ultrasound operator. This is the kind of love we can live with, the kind of love that we need in order to live, survive, thrive, and just be good people. It isn’t “kill yourself love” like we get from movies like Titanic, which is the kind of love we are more likely to glamorize and talk about.
Cultural commentators, chief among them Stephanie Coontz, highlight the way in which marriage itself has been transformed from an institution based on commitment to an institution based on love. We’ve got a host of politicians who respond to this reality with hand-wringing about the loss of old-fashioned commitment. But we will do well to contemplate, elucidate, illustrate and talk about ways to love skillfully, kindly, and with compassion and acceptance that were illustrated in Juno. In the end, love—doable, realistic, everyday love–was the protective envelope (not marriage, not traditional values) that made us see that Juno the teen mother was going to be okay. In other words, love, done right, serves the kind of social purpose that commitment and traditional values do. And jeepers, the songs are so sweet when they are about love.
Since, despite my impulses, I have to keep working on my sociology lectures and my sex research, I have a nice little social science illustration for why love matters that brings us full circle to thinking about teen sex. In her research, Amy Schalet (UMass-Amherst) contrasted how teens and their parents in the United States think about and communicate about sexuality as compared to in The Netherlands. She found that Dutch parents and teens actually believe that young people can experience love, can be in love, and that love is an important prerequisite to sexual activity, while in the United States, parents are skeptical of their teenagers’ capacity to be in love, and instead keep expressing the view that boys and girls must be in some kind of antagonistic, sexual arms race. The lesson in Professor Schalet’s work: the age of first sex is higher and the rates of unwanted pregnancy and STDs are lower among Dutch versus American youth. Valuing love works. Don’t forget it.
I say, up with Juno! Up with love! Now, to write lectures and look at data.
Virginia Rutter, whose last post “Who Votes Their Gender?” traveled across the blogosphere far and near, will be reviewing Juno in this space later this week She’s one savvy lady, a helluva sex researcher, and an astute cultural observer too. Stay tuned.
Yes I did.
Being a New Yorker who lived through 9/11, I had very mixed feelings about going to see a movie in which a monster takes down our city. I’d seen that one before. But Marco, a lover of monster movies and a dude who goes with me to chick flicks, pleaded. And so I went.
Interesting discussed ensued on the way subway ride home. Marco reminded me that Godzilla came out in Japan 10 years after the bombing of Hiroshima. Does Cloverfield perform some kind of cultural work that has to do with the processing of the unimaginable in the American imagination? Is this movie, which puts the takedown of Manhattan back into the realm of horror fantasy, a wish for an earlier day, when such monstrous things only happened on the silver screen? Many are arguing, and I understand the point, that the movie is merely exploiting America’s trauma for dollars. But the cultural studies girl in me wonders if, in addition, there is something deeper going on.
My piece on the Disney movie “Enchanted” is now up over at the Women’s Media Center. Here’s a little addendum to that piece, to leave with you with this weekend:
Everyone’s singing the praises of Amy Adams, who plays the fluttery protagonist, Giselle. I loved her performance in Junebug (where, as Roger Ebert reminds us, she tells her snake of a husband: “God loves you just the way you are, but he loves you too much to let you stay that way.”) And while Adams herself is entirely enchanting in Enchanted, truth be told, what enchanted me more was the two-minute JC Penney commercial from Saatchi & Saatchi that ran just before the film.
The Penney spot is called “Aviator.†John Lennon’s “Real Love†plays in the background as a bespectacled, determined little girl gets the ultimate revenge on the neighborhood bullies by transforming herself from local outcast to local hero by using her imagination and ingenuity. As AdWeek aptly describes it, the spot opens with her quietly drawing a picture about traveling to the North Pole on her porch when the boys of the ‘hood pelt her with water balloons. She runs inside to dry her picture with a blow dryer and then begins on a construction project. Riding her Big Wheel back and forth from a neighbor who supplies her with materials, she begins to build her “secret” project. The boys are soon intrigued and serve as her bodyguards. When she is finally ready to debut her creation, the entire neighborhood has gathered for the unveiling. She’s built a rocket-like “North Pole Voyager.” And the boys end up saluting her. The spot ends with the on-screen tagline, “Today’s the day to believe.” Ok, so it’s a gosh darn Christmas ad from JC Penney. But I’m telling you, it made me teary. See for yourself, above.
While waiting for the feature movie, Enchanted, with my family this week in Yonkers (long story, will tell another time), I watched trailer for the movie Juno--another film that centers around an unplanned pregnancy. And it got me thinking….
The latest figures from the Guttmacher Institute find that in America, about one in five pregnancies end in abortion. Yet, as Carrie Rickey, film critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer, just noted, in recent American movies, every unplanned pregnancy is carried to term. What gives? Writes Rickey, turning to my number 1 favorite sociologist for a quote,
From Knocked Up to Waitress to Juno, opening Dec. 14, abortion is The Great Unmentionable, euphemized as “shmashmortion” (Knocked Up), “we don’t perform, uh, -” (Waitress), and “nipped it in the bud” (Juno), comedies in which pregnancy is the situation. Abortion is likewise obliquely referenced, if actually considered, in the drama Bella, now in theaters. “It’s as if there’s an ‘every conception deserves delivery’ policy being observed,” says Virginia Rutter, senior scholar at the Council on Contemporary Families, a Chicago-based organization of academics and public health professionals.
You said it, Rutter. And then, this nice bit from my favorite historian, Stephanie Coontz:
Perhaps when abortion is illegal, it makes a better story for filmmakers, says Stephanie Coontz, a family historian and author of Marriage, a History, in describing the motivating conflict behind Cider House, Vera Drake, and Four Months. “When you don’t have powerful stories about women whose lives have been derailed by unplanned pregnancy,” Coontz says, “there will be a tendency to sweep the subject of abortion under the rug.” Historically, she notes, abortions were common among respectable married women in the 19th century and were easier to obtain in the 1930s than in the 1950s.
How much do I love it when such smartie pants scholars are actually quoted in the press?! I’m looking forward to seeing both Stephanie and Virginia at the May 2008 Council on Contemporary Families conference in Chicago…but I don’t think I’ll be running to Juno anytime soon.
I saw Elizabeth on Friday night. Enjoyed the spectacle, even if this one was a bit, well, over the top with the wide-angle. (Apologies for the confused metaphors; it’s Monday.) So remember Warner Bros. president of production Jeff Robinov’s lovely comment the other week that “We are no longer doing movies with women in the lead”? Definitely check out Rebecca Traister’s chat with 10 of the most powerful women in Hollywood and see what they say about it all.
Meanwhile, I’m still paging through Newsweek’s spread on women leaders. The issue that hits the stands this week has an article on young women and feminism in it–I think I’m quoted. Really enjoyed talking with the supersavvy reporter, Jennie Yabroff, on this one. Off to get a copy…
A hearty blogospheric welcome to Melissa Silverstein, who has launched a blog offering news and commentary about Hollywood from a feminist perspective.
Says Melissa, “Hollywood is so male oriented that women and their stories and expertise get shunted to the side. This blog will focus on what’s going on for women in Hollywood – what movies are being made; what directors are getting jobs; what actors are working; and anything else that will help tip the balance.” Also helpful is Melissa’s list of upcoming movies to check out. Welcome, Melissa!
Wendy Schneider just sent me word of her new documentary, CUT: Teens and Self Injury. The film looks like a much-needed resource in schools, and Wendy is currently seeking a distributor. CUT premiered at the Wisconsin Film Festival in Madison this week. Do check out this glowing review in the Isthmus. Ah, the Isthmus: A paper I once placed a personal ad in during the dark lonely days of grad school only to be answered by someone with whom a friend had already tried to set me up. Total non sequitor there — I blame the chocolate hangover. Anyway, Wendy is setting off on a college screening tour in a few weeks. For those of you on campuses, keep an eye out for this film! More on it all on this MySpace page. Good luck, Wendy, and do keep us posted!
The movie version of The Nanny Diaries opened last week, and my good friend and fellow traveler Heather Hewett, Coordinator of the Women’s Studies Program at SUNY-New Paltz, has an extremely smartypants op-ed on it all today in the Washington Post titled “Who’s Your Nanny?”. Muses Heather,
I can’t help noting how little the story has to do with reality — either with the situation of parents like me, who depend on nannies and babysitters to care for our children, or with the lives of most women who work as caregivers.
She goes on to contrast reality (the feminization of migration) with the nanny fantasies that currently abound in pop culture — not only The Nanny Diaries, but a slew of so-called reality tv shows and plays. I find Heather’s op-ed an excellent example of accessible writing that surveys the latest theory and pop thinking on the subject and makes us all think. GO HEATHER!
Virginia Rutter (the gal who brought us “Who Votes Their Gender?” the other week) took time out from writing college lectures to pen this excellent review of Juno from the perspective of a sex researcher. As you likely know by now, Juno was just nominated by the Academy for four Oscars, including Best Film, and Best Actress (Ellen Page). We’re bound to see a continued discussion of the issues the film raises in coming months, and here Virginia calls our attention to something other reviewers have overlooked: the way our culture talks about–or rather, doesn’t talk about–luuuvvv. -GWP
Can We Talk about Love, Please?
The movies are giving demographers, sociologists, and sex researchers a boost these days. Movies about unwanted pregnancy that eschew abortion, such as Juno, Knocked Up, and Waitress, are giving gifted columnists (like Ellen Goodman and Carrie Rickey) a chance to contemplate where the culture stands with respect to unwanted pregnancy, early motherhood, and all things youthful, tawdry, and anxiety producing for those of us who consider ourselves grown ups now. Those kids are different from us grown ups, and the problems that they have are about the mechanics of sex, and the rules and practices around abortion, adoption, and teen delivery.
Meanwhile, it is Christmas in January for a sex researcher. There is a lot of important teen sex and unwanted pregnancy news out there, too. Abortion rates are down, Guttmacher reports. The fantasized link between teen pregnancy and poverty is screwy, as reported to the Council on Contemporary Families, and instead, poverty is caused by (who’d a thunk it?) the economy. Ouch. How unromantic.
But I don’t want to write about that, any more than I want to write my sociology lectures or finish my latest sex data analysis, right now. The cultural theme that Juno raised for a lot of commentators is whether we as a society are making sex and reproductive decisions look too easy and too simple.
Mind you, the main theme, focused on a woman’s body, seems to have crowded up some other ideas that matter. I have wondered why we haven’t detected a cultural story to be told here in this movie about the fact that:
1. Consequences of sex are a component of the plot in Juno, just as they are in Knocked Up; and
2. The boy, Paulie Bleeker (played by Michael Cera), though not as touched by the pregnancy crisis as the girl, Juno MacGuff (played by Ellen Page) remains a large focus of the unfolding story of the consequences of sex.
But, like I said, none of this grips me. You know what grips me? Love. And I’m convinced that we just don’t talk about it enough.
http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif
The value and pleasure of Juno was that it was a story of love—where the kids sing to each other “you’re a part time lover and full time friend.” In the messy, dull, weird world of conformity and reticence that dominates high school relationships, Juno sweetly offers a story of shy, sweet, but steadfast friendship and romantic love.
Family love was there too. I was touched by the love and acceptance that the father showed his daughter, even as he was befuddled by her choices. I cheered at the loyalty portrayed by the stepmother when she dressed down the judgmental ultrasound operator. This is the kind of love we can live with, the kind of love that we need in order to live, survive, thrive, and just be good people. It isn’t “kill yourself love” like we get from movies like Titanic, which is the kind of love we are more likely to glamorize and talk about.
Cultural commentators, chief among them Stephanie Coontz, highlight the way in which marriage itself has been transformed from an institution based on commitment to an institution based on love. We’ve got a host of politicians who respond to this reality with hand-wringing about the loss of old-fashioned commitment. But we will do well to contemplate, elucidate, illustrate and talk about ways to love skillfully, kindly, and with compassion and acceptance that were illustrated in Juno. In the end, love—doable, realistic, everyday love–was the protective envelope (not marriage, not traditional values) that made us see that Juno the teen mother was going to be okay. In other words, love, done right, serves the kind of social purpose that commitment and traditional values do. And jeepers, the songs are so sweet when they are about love.
Since, despite my impulses, I have to keep working on my sociology lectures and my sex research, I have a nice little social science illustration for why love matters that brings us full circle to thinking about teen sex. In her research, Amy Schalet (UMass-Amherst) contrasted how teens and their parents in the United States think about and communicate about sexuality as compared to in The Netherlands. She found that Dutch parents and teens actually believe that young people can experience love, can be in love, and that love is an important prerequisite to sexual activity, while in the United States, parents are skeptical of their teenagers’ capacity to be in love, and instead keep expressing the view that boys and girls must be in some kind of antagonistic, sexual arms race. The lesson in Professor Schalet’s work: the age of first sex is higher and the rates of unwanted pregnancy and STDs are lower among Dutch versus American youth. Valuing love works. Don’t forget it.
I say, up with Juno! Up with love! Now, to write lectures and look at data.
Virginia Rutter, whose last post “Who Votes Their Gender?” traveled across the blogosphere far and near, will be reviewing Juno in this space later this week She’s one savvy lady, a helluva sex researcher, and an astute cultural observer too. Stay tuned.
Yes I did.
Being a New Yorker who lived through 9/11, I had very mixed feelings about going to see a movie in which a monster takes down our city. I’d seen that one before. But Marco, a lover of monster movies and a dude who goes with me to chick flicks, pleaded. And so I went.
Interesting discussed ensued on the way subway ride home. Marco reminded me that Godzilla came out in Japan 10 years after the bombing of Hiroshima. Does Cloverfield perform some kind of cultural work that has to do with the processing of the unimaginable in the American imagination? Is this movie, which puts the takedown of Manhattan back into the realm of horror fantasy, a wish for an earlier day, when such monstrous things only happened on the silver screen? Many are arguing, and I understand the point, that the movie is merely exploiting America’s trauma for dollars. But the cultural studies girl in me wonders if, in addition, there is something deeper going on.
My piece on the Disney movie “Enchanted” is now up over at the Women’s Media Center. Here’s a little addendum to that piece, to leave with you with this weekend:
Everyone’s singing the praises of Amy Adams, who plays the fluttery protagonist, Giselle. I loved her performance in Junebug (where, as Roger Ebert reminds us, she tells her snake of a husband: “God loves you just the way you are, but he loves you too much to let you stay that way.”) And while Adams herself is entirely enchanting in Enchanted, truth be told, what enchanted me more was the two-minute JC Penney commercial from Saatchi & Saatchi that ran just before the film.
The Penney spot is called “Aviator.†John Lennon’s “Real Love†plays in the background as a bespectacled, determined little girl gets the ultimate revenge on the neighborhood bullies by transforming herself from local outcast to local hero by using her imagination and ingenuity. As AdWeek aptly describes it, the spot opens with her quietly drawing a picture about traveling to the North Pole on her porch when the boys of the ‘hood pelt her with water balloons. She runs inside to dry her picture with a blow dryer and then begins on a construction project. Riding her Big Wheel back and forth from a neighbor who supplies her with materials, she begins to build her “secret” project. The boys are soon intrigued and serve as her bodyguards. When she is finally ready to debut her creation, the entire neighborhood has gathered for the unveiling. She’s built a rocket-like “North Pole Voyager.” And the boys end up saluting her. The spot ends with the on-screen tagline, “Today’s the day to believe.” Ok, so it’s a gosh darn Christmas ad from JC Penney. But I’m telling you, it made me teary. See for yourself, above.
While waiting for the feature movie, Enchanted, with my family this week in Yonkers (long story, will tell another time), I watched trailer for the movie Juno--another film that centers around an unplanned pregnancy. And it got me thinking….
The latest figures from the Guttmacher Institute find that in America, about one in five pregnancies end in abortion. Yet, as Carrie Rickey, film critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer, just noted, in recent American movies, every unplanned pregnancy is carried to term. What gives? Writes Rickey, turning to my number 1 favorite sociologist for a quote,
From Knocked Up to Waitress to Juno, opening Dec. 14, abortion is The Great Unmentionable, euphemized as “shmashmortion” (Knocked Up), “we don’t perform, uh, -” (Waitress), and “nipped it in the bud” (Juno), comedies in which pregnancy is the situation. Abortion is likewise obliquely referenced, if actually considered, in the drama Bella, now in theaters. “It’s as if there’s an ‘every conception deserves delivery’ policy being observed,” says Virginia Rutter, senior scholar at the Council on Contemporary Families, a Chicago-based organization of academics and public health professionals.
You said it, Rutter. And then, this nice bit from my favorite historian, Stephanie Coontz:
Perhaps when abortion is illegal, it makes a better story for filmmakers, says Stephanie Coontz, a family historian and author of Marriage, a History, in describing the motivating conflict behind Cider House, Vera Drake, and Four Months. “When you don’t have powerful stories about women whose lives have been derailed by unplanned pregnancy,” Coontz says, “there will be a tendency to sweep the subject of abortion under the rug.” Historically, she notes, abortions were common among respectable married women in the 19th century and were easier to obtain in the 1930s than in the 1950s.
How much do I love it when such smartie pants scholars are actually quoted in the press?! I’m looking forward to seeing both Stephanie and Virginia at the May 2008 Council on Contemporary Families conference in Chicago…but I don’t think I’ll be running to Juno anytime soon.
I saw Elizabeth on Friday night. Enjoyed the spectacle, even if this one was a bit, well, over the top with the wide-angle. (Apologies for the confused metaphors; it’s Monday.) So remember Warner Bros. president of production Jeff Robinov’s lovely comment the other week that “We are no longer doing movies with women in the lead”? Definitely check out Rebecca Traister’s chat with 10 of the most powerful women in Hollywood and see what they say about it all.
Meanwhile, I’m still paging through Newsweek’s spread on women leaders. The issue that hits the stands this week has an article on young women and feminism in it–I think I’m quoted. Really enjoyed talking with the supersavvy reporter, Jennie Yabroff, on this one. Off to get a copy…
A hearty blogospheric welcome to Melissa Silverstein, who has launched a blog offering news and commentary about Hollywood from a feminist perspective.
Says Melissa, “Hollywood is so male oriented that women and their stories and expertise get shunted to the side. This blog will focus on what’s going on for women in Hollywood – what movies are being made; what directors are getting jobs; what actors are working; and anything else that will help tip the balance.” Also helpful is Melissa’s list of upcoming movies to check out. Welcome, Melissa!
Wendy Schneider just sent me word of her new documentary, CUT: Teens and Self Injury. The film looks like a much-needed resource in schools, and Wendy is currently seeking a distributor. CUT premiered at the Wisconsin Film Festival in Madison this week. Do check out this glowing review in the Isthmus. Ah, the Isthmus: A paper I once placed a personal ad in during the dark lonely days of grad school only to be answered by someone with whom a friend had already tried to set me up. Total non sequitor there — I blame the chocolate hangover. Anyway, Wendy is setting off on a college screening tour in a few weeks. For those of you on campuses, keep an eye out for this film! More on it all on this MySpace page. Good luck, Wendy, and do keep us posted!
The movie version of The Nanny Diaries opened last week, and my good friend and fellow traveler Heather Hewett, Coordinator of the Women’s Studies Program at SUNY-New Paltz, has an extremely smartypants op-ed on it all today in the Washington Post titled “Who’s Your Nanny?”. Muses Heather,
I can’t help noting how little the story has to do with reality — either with the situation of parents like me, who depend on nannies and babysitters to care for our children, or with the lives of most women who work as caregivers.
She goes on to contrast reality (the feminization of migration) with the nanny fantasies that currently abound in pop culture — not only The Nanny Diaries, but a slew of so-called reality tv shows and plays. I find Heather’s op-ed an excellent example of accessible writing that surveys the latest theory and pop thinking on the subject and makes us all think. GO HEATHER!
