feminism

Manipulative force of movies: What are movies wanted to make us think?

| Henna Timanttimetsä

Are movies like malls where we can wander and pick things of our choosing up in a chart, pay and leave happily for having found what we came for? What are our reactions to movies, especially to those which get a lot of advertising and space in media. Do we expect something of movies we choose to watch? Enjoyment, escape, dreams, stories, anything else? A surprise or something specific which we are paying for not to be disappointed but leave the theater content and entertained. Movies play an important role not only as something to be shown in theaters and on TV to pass the time but something very complex, maybe more than meets the eye. The help to create an empire of merchandise, news, extra on top of the cake and it is fun to make movies, I’m sure. So I am not spoiling the fun, I am just wondering visuals among which we live, power of business and how well organized can a machinery to make profit be. Are visuals used making our perspectives more narrow? Our possibilities in making pictures, thoughts of what can be done, why something is done and what is good?

As it is always in action movies there is good vs. bad, probably the most used juxtaposition as is the all mighty solitary hero and heroine against a mass of ordinary folks who cannot keep up the speed. Heroes and heroines can make a good story with turns that interest a crowd enough to pay to see it, if that is what is enough. What interests to such extent that up to repetition story of all mighty hero has to be told similarly repetitiously with similar kind of twist as American fathers bond with their sons by throwing ball? That a movie makes a blockbuster as planned and how a concept of blockbuster movie is so luring that it over and over again finds viewers making hundreds of millions of dollars? One can question the buzz around it but one can hardly stop it. Just like that, impossible. We are in a whirlwind of media and its choosing of visuals. Is it too obvious and more importantly are we as viewers and consumers that obvious? So it seems. To see something that could actually happen but is bigger than we are, still somehow within reach, attractive as a fantasy and a dream, maybe not as every day scene in real life but saving first America and then the World. Something already may be lost.

What do viewers witness or are viewers being used?

Jurassic Park never did it for me in any way, but here are couple of interesting articles concerning women in science, role models and movies, how movies impact the viewer:
http://bitchmagazine.org/post/in-praise-of-jurassic-parks-dr-ellie-sattler ” When the park’s power fails to come back on as expected, she doesn’t sit in the emergency bunker waiting for rescue. She makes a plan and grabs a walkie-talkie, heading out to find the power switch.” 
http://www.vulture.com/2015/06/jurassic-world-feminism.html

Most sad I am when people who I assume would be the least with prejudice appear to be anything but.

| Henna Timanttimetsä
All one can do is to prove them wrong. Hardest thing must be to admit being wrong. But I drink to hoping those narrow-minded will see the light.

 

Interesting case of female action heroes.

| Henna Timanttimetsä

And that there are many, most of them though are styled to follow idealized female heroine of cartoons with large breasts, revealing outfits, high heels, long hair, standard western beauty characteristics for a perfect active woman under forty. Something which perhaps the fitness culture of today and competitions in bodily beauty have had advantage of. Muscles still equal to strength, health, certain kind of attitude towards life and how people should look like, obsession over bodily perfection and gaining such perfection with hard work out tell something and stand for a way of life.

As I recall character of Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) and her transformation into muscular fighter, maker of her own destiny, world’s destiny and dissident who was right all a long, was the first one to make the fashion of muscles acceptable for women. This was in the beginning of the 90′. Celebrities began to work out to get the same biceps and bodily tone as Sarah Connor. Movie Terminator 2 was a huge hit and it made an impression on me as well. Not with sense of fashion but as I have mentioned earlier because of the woman character who is determined and destined to do her all to save the world.

Influence of movies is not to be undervalued. The movie stands in my record one of those worth digging into. A cyborg who was sent by John Connor from the future to save John Connor in the present becomes a father figure to fatherless child. As Sarah Connor thinks to herself how a cyborg is in an insane world a sanest choice for a child.
She does not see herself a hero. What does she feel of herself can be irrelevant because she does not look in the mirror nor weigh her inner emotions. Bleeding wounds do not stop her from accomplishing her mission and she is ready to die for it. Only thing that is sane and doable is the mission, to stop the inevitable destruction. Same kind of features apply to Ellen Ripley in Alien series. She takes lead as others fail to do so. She is a decision maker and she knows what to do. She is an expert without need to please nor be given a prize for her excellence. To survive she has got what it takes. She is omnipotent and her gender does not make her weak. Gender does not play the major role as it is not emphasized by camera angles, clothes or flirtation. She just is what she does, a person who is good at what she does, knowing good and right and what to fight against even if it means doing it on her own.

To be a woman of action does it still mean denying femininity?

| Henna Timanttimetsä

As it happens women who pursue work that requires/means physical stress measured as getting dirty, sweaty, working with your hands wearing overalls, mask and gloves, lifting things, moving and making something that needs one to work with whole of body adding problem solving to work are thought to lose something of their femininity. Rationality and innovation with capable hands is for some reason not something women have. Idea of what women are and can be still lives in the 20th century dragging behind infuriating. Women who are doing something that is not traditionally their area to work at, to be expert at without question is seen obscure like an absurdity in every day. Strangely work for women which is to be for some reason clean, neat, ’easy’ and allow cute clothes is really an invention of the modern times and place that used to belong to upper class women who at best did nothing but things that were strictly theirs for some reason by nature, by their gender and by their class, so a privilege. Nowadays to me privilege is to be able to do work that one desires to do and most people want to work. To be absolutely idle to which we in our easy living fantasy dream about, is hopefully just a dream and an impossibility. Those unemployed rarely are happy about their idle existence.

Nature is regularly referred to when talking about women. Women are physically weaker than men and division is made clear what are chores for women. Strength and power are male characteristics physically and mentally which as such is an appalling stereotype and false. Men feel attacked and put down when women enter work that traditionally is labelled for men. This I have experienced many times myself. My work effort as my capabilities are diminished and questioned over and over. Here applies again the strange truth how people do not believe other than their bias and what they think is true. That unchangeable solid truth of theirs is so unwavering it can be changed only by huge amount of proving, maybe not even then. How slowly our world changes even though our technological advancement is rapid. Even those who have high degrees in science to my surprise are very biased what comes to women in science and art. That slowly movable wall strikes as what the fuck is it there for. Such highly educated people who hold dear the world order of theirs where just to have a Ph.D. is enough to tell how knowledgeable, refined, correct and justifiable they are and see their points of views unchangeable and undeniable. Offence is to follow, no doubt, when questioned.

What is hip and cool and why do we pay attention to the at the moment hip and cool phenomenons and trends knowing they do change all the time and the most hip and cool are those who do their thing disregarding the fashion of hip and cool? Do you know what I mean? For example making applications for the sake of making applications is a now-thing, but it is probably over quite soon, because who actually needs them. More important would be to ask why be hip and cool when you can be thoughtful, innovative, active maker, do many things in your life disregarding do they make you a fortune, things that have other kinds of meanings than what they appear outside and not do because it is your place which is decided by others but because you want to.

To my surprise younger generations to me are very often not taught to do basic chores at home at all. If it is so that parents do every day nuisance such dishes and cleaning for their kinds, boys and girls, how does it change our world of work? Will we have maids to do those inconvenient things that are dirty and low, unappreciated work chores? Robots?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/soraya-chemaly/what-exactly-does-its-a-mans-world-mean_b_7454660.html?utm_hp_ref=tw ”It’s a shame our society generally fails to teach girls to have higher expectations and boys not to feel threatened by their realization. The worst part about people’s responses to the suggestion that we find ways to address women’s needs in public spaces was the reality of many women’s low expectations and desire not to offend anxious and angry men.”

Pleasure of watching

| Henna Timanttimetsä
Art of pole dancing is an image of a sleazy questionable profession watched by questionable personalities of the underworld. Caricature of female body placed to be watched intensely all over and right there almost full-on. Art of seduction still in which one can succeed or fail. Movement with accessories that emphasize the sleaziness and cheapness of the craft. Fullness of woman’s body is put on in display in full flesh to be seen in positions that pole, shameless attitude and imagination offer. This is the old auntie writing who wonders why and seemingly disapproves as the dichotomy goes: there is light and then there the dark, something to be afraid of, something that we should not be influenced by or let society see, but it is there and it interests me as culture shaping pop up act, pop art, erotic and as such naughty. Naughtiness is essential part of the dance, to enjoy naughtiness, guilty pleasure, turn on by watching, to feel doing something forbidden. So those who disapprove have an important role as counter forces. Counter forces are not diminished nor shut down. Maybe there is a lesson for them, if they are willing to take it.
Women wearing little outfits on stage to please and create art, me thinking they please themselves as well as a professional dancers can and should. One should not do anything one does not enjoy doing. I take pleasure for watching videos of pole dancers who can be extremely gifted athletes and dancers as such, beautiful to look at and I am amazed by their work. Arousal for me is the beauty of female body and watching is thinking what is there the shameful act, whose shame are we talking about? Is the display of genital areas the shameful, seduction of strangers, a lot of them and woman alone on stage at risk to be hurt. Still arousal as sexual term does not apply for me but arousal of mind for what human body and especially female body can represent and means when it is on stage dancing bare.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/sex/11669108/Strip-club-dancers-brought-out-my-inner-sexist.html

How to change situations of people for the better? Is it a question of who defines what is good to anybody without asking the people?

| Henna Timanttimetsä
How do you do a sexual revolution within a culture that in many places violently oppresses people especially women and children? Where one easily loses one’s life for objecting and confronting the regime, religious fundamentalists, media that is in short leash. Big money and absolute power that cannot be questioned and put under magnifying glass because this absolute power has God’s authority is doing an enormous amount of harm and damage. Authority that family institution, religion and men have is keeping countries from evolving wasting human resources. Leaning on traditions, bias, unjust power conventions and punishing practices, unjust definitely against girls and women who are denied schooling, careers, decision-making in politics, rights to their bodies and lives is everyday and obviously deadly prospect when doing and saying against. What is human life worth? Has somebody put a price on it?

Irony lies in the impressive and long history of Arab world which has been more tolerant that Christian world has shown to have been. Why such bigoted, short-sighted, oppressive culture that reigns in many Arab nations now is possible? Why ruling via violence and revenge is allowed? To kill and torture all those who stand against is lunacy and against any worth while conception of justice. Brutality is not work of anything holy.

How about an army of women?

We need a sexual revolution in the Middle East – video http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/video/2015/jun/10/we-need-sexual-revolution-middle-east-arab-spring-failed-women-video?CMP=share_btn_tw

http://feministcurrent.com/12196/the-no-platforming-of-radical-feminists-a-talk-by-julie-bindel/(Men are quite unhappy under patriarchy often, as we’ve heard from pro-feminist men.)”

Bodies online

Kuva | | Henna Timanttimetsä

Places of critique and how to.

| Henna Timanttimetsä
It all too clear that institutions, which some people think are themselves, as personification of power, monumental and solid, and broadly seen institutions as structural entities and complexes that have a massive amount of power within the fields they work, so easily place themselves above criticism. This is a road to regression where nothing changes until it is forced to change and usually it means heads rolling usually of those who give the vital criticism. There are too many people who hold on to gained positions thinking it is their right and theirs alone. That is one common form of dictatorship. The more up one climbs the more one has to be able to accept criticism and answer to it, be accountable. As it is so that people do not climb the stairs up without help of friends there is a danger of cocooning into the power tower as perfect and untouchable with skills and intellect which others can dream of.
This topic touches many areas of life, science and art are the ones that are difficult to criticise because the nature of those fields embraces cult of geniuses who know the absolute right, who have expertise that most people do not have. Personality cults are therefore dangerous what comes to integrity, trustworthiness, progress and finding new. Self-love that is more interested in being right all the time rejecting the balancing effect of critique is very harmful.
Place of critique is always when one suspects foul play, dishonesty, disrespect, playing to get the most profit and glory, when the field of work is in many ways corrupt holding too much on to the same old same old without even wanting to change the tone and tune.
”Tim Hunt criticised female scientists because they “always cry” when criticised. While this would be somewhat disruptive if true (which it isn’t), this is still a far less problematic response than holding an intense lifelong grudge against someone who criticised you, and doing your best to make their life difficult and miserable.” http://www.theguardian.com/science/brain-flapping/2015/jun/10/tim-hunt-old-men-women-controversy-science?CMP=twt_gu&CMP=twt_gu

 

I wish I was an atomic bomb.

| Henna Timanttimetsä

http://mashable.com/2015/06/09/post-hipster-yuccie/ ”By that definition, the hipster has to be dead, killed by a contradicted identity. When everyone is rejecting the mainstream, no one is.”