HOW DO YOU INFECT? HOW DO YOU HANG?

Getting brutal, got rude, arrogant, willingly, I enjoyed it, my brutality, saying how I felt, skipping over the damaged area, mutilated, hanged by the neck, by things sticking out, looking at that position. How can you say that? Don’t say it out, please, hanging, hung, dripping, dropped. The Official method of loud hanging very convincingly, women and character that must be trained, women and nature that must be controlled, beautified, one should enjoy.

Desires of the power elite: Us under the phallocentric order.

1. Desires of the power elite: Us under the phallocentric order
2. Dominance and seduction, five looks, one accessory
3. What makes a classic, what makes a movie?

Introduction: Nevertheless the impossible mission one must make an effort and tackle the copy-paste culture where there seems to be unbreakable circle of tradition in how gender, talent, abilities and possibilities are seen and dealt with. To see opposing, questioning and anger justified not apologised for, one’s own art and body of work worthwhile, necessary and valuable and because someone has to lead the way and do it what few dare to do. This is an article trying to understand what is the feminine in movies for especially in Hollywood. Role of women in movies, in art and place of ours is to go against, not play along but question. I know you will be called difficult. Be difficult in demolishing and constructive way. To be difficult and demanding is to build something new. Becoming movie critics, producers and directors, active makers in the business ruled by white men is of vital importance. Importance is also there who evaluate the films made and how, what issues are emphasised when talked about making movies and distributing them to the audiences. What is the sellable item? How pushing the envelope even though it is difficult makes a difference no matter how small and powerless you feel. This means women should write and put in action new rules how we are to be viewed, displayed, portrait and talked about. Our roles are to be active not playing according to the old comfortable ones. One problem being lack of finance, demand and support is one women face which is telling women should support each other.

1.Desires of the power elite: Us under the phallocentric order

Movie is a continuation to something experienced in real life. It is an interpretation of how we can experience and see, but it is up to the viewer to grasp what to make of the seen movie. How movie can explain an experience and tell what to look at or for, what there is to see and experience further. Truth of a movie is truth of the movie maker, an illusion, make-believe, coloured tale or fact-based illustration, a portrait and depiction. Whatever movie is to fulfil it is also image of the makers. We like to think reality is fixed, there is normal and the weird, to go weird doesn’t take that much of effort. To break this illusion of normalcy movies function beautifully partly it is why movies get made, to imagine again for us in a new way. Some movies are made to strengthen our fixations and feel powerful via them which patriotic movies tend to accomplish forcefully, they often don’t offer any kind of new perspectives but repeat the same story with some extra boosting and hyper-hyper. The experience needed to break down the normal wire and comprehension of what is and what movies can be marginal plays an important role. Mainstream moviemakers are given the glorified position of telling large-scale fables and larger than life stories. How these stamped ideas can be altered is a matter of art and courage. How much about the reality movie tells is up to the makers and what we think is reality, story worth telling. What have been the stories told for those who make films and what remains untold. What have been discovered before and during the making of a film, and after movie was released, to make a movie is to unearth and research. Interesting is towards what kind of issues moviemakers have their curiosity focused. What can be told via the medium, there probably isn’t much which cannot be depicted via film. Moving pictures are hypnotizing, whether holding a camera or sitting in front of a screen.

What lies hidden but is told via clues, what is not shown but is still there in the expression and how that invisible can be the most interesting part of films, the most realistic and humane part and forces us to imagine beyond the seen. What is the perspective there, decisions made how to tell, whose points of view are we looking at, whose truth or lie, what a movie is telling us, is it about the viewer as we choose what we watch, do we have to know about the makers as in excess we are curious about the stars as they are the heroes, they are those with means and visions, capabilities to make their ideas happen there where it is almost impossible to get. Movie continues in mind as it is at best a full body experience depending where and how movies are watched, how personal the story is, how relatable and what is universal in human experience. What kind of interests the viewers have in seeing films. Why do we watch movies is the easiness of just watching, the forgetting and sinking in to a world, and some of us watch very many movies of all kinds. This easiness is thought often not having much value, just sitting and watching. Movies feed the mind but in what way is the question we should be asking. Is it just less thinking needed, is there blame and guilt be felt for this indulgence.

Interesting is how we experience a movie, even a movie poster is an experience. What is the liking, time span, being influenced by and thinking about a movie, its messages, images, stories, artistic decisions and perspectives. Images and scenes of a movie stay there in our heads. The more curious the more puzzling. Too weird, surrealistic does not make a blockbuster but it can make a classic. We need familiarity which also can be totally unrealistic and adventurous. Films making euphoric and thrilling or otherwise felt sensations, cultural, artistic and political statements need a fruitful and fertile ground to live in. There is candy for thought and candy for the aesthetics which must be taken and somehow had, felt. At best movie has a mystery in realistic way which leaves space for thinking and puzzlement of not knowing. Feeling of learning about important events watched from a safe place as a spectator may be enough for some. Do we know more via films, definitely. Is movie experience comparable to life experiences? What raises our curiosity, is it the personal and something new? What makes a movie brilliant? How to define a movie, how is it defined? Technically it is how many pictures per second flashes before one’s eyes and make a moving scene, the running horse, a dancing woman, bullet from a gun. Films have different durations, different qualities, scales of evaluation, films have position in society which today play a big part. Movies are places of extravaganza and a huge part of entertainment industry, a way of life such as TV, it is everywhere.  Definitions and genres for films are maybe already irrelevant. Films that are and have been made are endless in the amount and technic. Tiny piece of what is being made make it to the consciousness of the average consumer or anybody via controlled system. Internet makes watching and making demographic. When life feels like a film we think we have captured something historic and worth filming and sharing.

Film has a position in advertising and often nowadays mainstream films look like ads, function like ads and ads in turn are like movies. Movies are the most powerful tool to impress, catch the eye and attention, make an impact on large amounts of people, to influence and manipulate as something sweet and meaningful, breath of fresh air in a dull moment. Cultural and personal importance of movies is what counts. We like the fun part of films. Moving image is like a car, an object to move with and in which as an object is male dominated vehicle but treated like a lady or named a woman. It has a status to impress, possess, take us from one place to another, seduce. Cinema is above us, a fantasy, untouchable, holding power in size, containing vast amounts of capacity to influence our thinking, vision and appreciations therefore to talk and write about what is shown for us is at critical importance. To write only on surface about the surface is not doing us much good or for film as art.

Films make stars, films are the stars, writing gives at best more depth to what was seen and another perspective than our own. Moving feature is what has a hold on us, energy and lightness of it is felt. Could a movie have any other definitions other than something moving forward and towards us? Is it always the personal taste telling what plays importance in a film or something else, a shock, a strong emotion, a surprise? Society rules much via what is shown, where and how we watch. General opinion, or probably is better to talk about what we are used to seeing, what is convenient, pleasant and interesting to us, is still a guide to what we are having. We reflect our desires in an interesting way through movie culture and the culture is us? Many are attracted to speed and not being bored, to be entertained and to have a feeling of something fantastic being witnessed is to feel alive as we watch living pictures that are more alive than us, size and amount count. To avoid being left out is in focus and one main interest is to give birth to desires and needs. How much of this is not make us think for ourselves, distract us from looking what is behind the glittering luring images and why we must want what is given to us, sold to us? What creates brilliance or circumstances for sensitiveness, a thrive to create beauty and meaning, how this creating is restricted or guided, banned or manipulated? Is it related to what is sexy and desirable in a straightforward manner, where we come from, what we are afraid of, what we know about the world, what we have read and seen already? How does gender dictate what we see as beautiful? I’m interested in which are the ways people get their work on the spotlight, what kind of work is put in the centre of attention, given media focus which focus forcefully is narrow and gendered. What kind of publicity movies and moviemakers get, are there girl movies and boy movies? What kind of voice do moviemakers have, are given, how are they heard, what is asked of them and from what kind of world do they make? What kind of things journalists focus on in interviews and stories about movie scenes? What creates interest in a certain movie nowadays? How brave can and should moviemakers be? Is it still restricted what can be issued and manifested in movies nowadays? Is it limited what kind of people make movies, what kind of people are shown in the movies, act in movies, talk about movies? Is there something to be afraid of other than lack of variety and making an echo chamber for ideological purposes? Are there certain kind of people who seek attention through the movie scene, attention seekers? How all this structure of creating moving pictures dictates and who dictates the structure? Is it basically corporation-based solutions that work in this business? Which are the interests of those corporations, interests of the investors other than winnings and cinematic fame? What kind of role do film festivals play in all this? Or press and media as a whole? I’m asking because they are all linked under a dome and mostly what get mentioned are the galas, trophies, celebrities, faces, bodies, lives of the famed and clothes they carry. Any irregularity is reported and scandalised. Everything moves along the direction of relations, scare of losing and where the money is, how the money is and should it be followed. What does it mean to be an independent movie maker in this picture? Does it mean marginal or original, having voice of one’s own? What is originality in movies, in this context of making, who has a voice? Is there any place or demand for independence, independent thinking and breaking the habit?

It is a question of demand, what is in demand, who has control. What kind of people consume mainstream movies and what revolves around this mainstream ideology of spending and living a habit. It would be interesting to see how strictly audiences are analyzed. Anything that isn’t produced in Hollywood is basically marginal in the west. Hollywood movies or movies imitating Hollywood style get the most public space, attention and funding. Should we be concerned? Yes and concerned of what exactly? Some kind of monotonous Americanized view of the world perhaps, lack of complex views of the world and how things happen, lack of perspectives to difference, lack of imagination, having one-eyed view and one political perspective on good and bad. Consuming being the main focus of films is alarming, consuming being the good, the more as well. The way movies manipulate people to think and act, or not to act and think as the easiness is nice and a relief in complex everyday.

One answer to a couple of my questions come from an internet magazine The Gateway sponsored by Morgan Stanley article written by Matthew Reeves: ”The producer is the money person who buys the scripts, hires the director, actors and crew and organises the making and selling of the film. The producer is usually employed by a production company. Production companies are often referred to as “independent”, but all this really means is that they don’t have a distribution deal with a major studio, that is, Sony, MGM, 20th Century Fox, Paramount, Warner and Universal. While studios can buy scripts the usual way, they also have the power and money to decide they need, “a kids’ fantasy movie, with an A-list actor, for release in the summer holidays in 2011”, get a writer to craft it, attach a producer, put up the funds themselves, make the movie (in their own studios), and distribute it themselves.

But what if no distributor is interested in your film, which may have been made with nobodies, on a nothing budget and with no room left for marketing. How can you get the word out? The answer is film festivals. Cannes, Venice and Sundance are free marketing Meccas. You can enter Cannes, the most influential film festival in the world, for €50. There’s no guarantee your film will get chosen to feature, but it will get watched. If it does get chosen, thousands will see it, newspapers will review it and many distributors will be circling, looking for a bargain. Paranormal Activity was shown at Slamdance Film Festival, http://www.slamdance.com and a year and a half later it was released across the USA. It’s arguably the best $70 the producer has ever spent.http://thegatewayonline.com/articles/content/how-does-the-film-industry-work

Continuing with more answers: Structures of Discourse and Structures of Power TEUN A. VAN DIJK University of Amsterdam ”In the news media, this strategic control of knowledge is exercised through restricted topic selection, and more generally by specific reconstructions of social and political realities (Hall et al., 1980; Tuchman, 1978; van Dijk, 1987b, 1987c). This process is itself governed by a system of news values and professional ideologies about news and newsworthiness, which happen to favor attention for and the interests of various elite actors, persons, groups, classes, institutions, nations, or world regions (Galtung & Ruge, 1965). Preferential access and coverage (whether positive or negative) of news actors is one factor in the mass medíated reproduction of social power (Brown, Bybee, Wearden, & Murdock, 1982). The same ís true in education, where the curriculum, textbooks, educational materials, and lessons are also governed by educational objectives, subjects, topics, and learning strategies that mostly happen to be consistent with the values or interests of the various power elite groups (Apple, 1979; Lorimer, 1984; Young, 1971). Therefore, we see that the symbolic elites that control the style and content of media and educational discourse are also those who have partial control of the mode of influence, and hence of ideological reproduction in society. The symbolic elites, we suggested, are not independent of other”  https://archive.org/stream/IdeologicalDiscourseAnalysis/Ideological%20discourse%20analysis_djvu.txt

2.Dominance and seduction: five looks, one accessory.

The patriarchal society makes it easier for men to take the lead which is for them compulsory and what manly men are supposed to do: direct, command, lead, have the answers, know. It is compulsive and violent for both sexes, toxic masculinity. It is given and forced on us as natural. Women have to fight for being heard, be taken seriously and a powerful skilled woman is easily a bitch, witch, weirdo, difficult and an outcast. It is a male feature to dominate with physical force and scare, to direct others with threat and it has been easier for men to imagine being a director and to become one, the role falls on them more easily, naturally. To my knowledge women like to dominate and do it maybe in more complex and subtle ways or imitating men, but nonetheless feminine domina play is normal everyday act in patriarchal society, meaning women use their power to destroy as well and to direct, question is why they cannot do it in business and in art. What happens more subtle doesn’t make it less hurtful or less powerful.

A lot did change what comes to equality during 20th century in the Western world but what is the change other than technical and in terms of production? What will the ultimate change and progress within movie industry be in the 21st century? Hopefully more about morals, art and justice of the business than technicalities. It still does not mean things are happening for women to the extent of men or that things change fast. Speed is in the renewing the machinery not human condition or doing away the patriarch. That is why it is very important to show movies from all kinds of makers, sexes, backgrounds etc. in schools, in movie theaters and TV. What comes to equality internet is showing the way, moving images are at the core of our internet experience. At the moment women directors are treated like marginal makers as emphasis is on the gender and it is said out loud male or female. Scripts written by women usually are different from men. Directors are treated like it still is a wonder a woman is a director or a producer, although there are many women in the business and have been for a long time. It is much easier to watch females pose on a red carpet wearing a designer gown asked how they feel expectation being the viewer wants to hear it and see this. Emphasis is on the assumptions what does a photogenic person look like and who can be filmed, who attracts the eye and why.

Movie people seem to live a fabulous life, images give us impressions. Narcissism is questioned in any media strongly but celebrated at the same time. Narcissists are interesting people as they entertain and know what they want, get what they want and make scenes. To want such spotlight life is praised and encouraged, idolised. Photographs of someone entering a gala of something are shown in every magazine that have a gossip column or want to comment the movie world or talk about movies in any manner. Movies nowadays is a very stereotyped world. Everything goes around the money-making machinery and what brings in the dollars. Biggest moneymakers are talked about and again idolised. Imaginary is highly glittered, narrow and thin. Shallowness can be turned interesting when reasons for it are investigated and studied. Such industry is massive and the biggest categorizor of people world-wide, advertising and movies are part of our visuals which we eat and consume. Most people watch movies, see the ads which are creating the world we live in and look at, and films get inspiration from the world we live in. To go outside that box can turn out to be more than just an image.

To make movies requires ability to tell stories, will to succeed in a very male-dominated world and money-oriented atmosphere. Stubborn belief in one’s ideas and abilities is needed and room to make ideas happen, also to make others believe in ideas of yours, to get attention is what we seek, all of us nowadays. What else is there to have? Luck? Moviemakers must be completely passionate about their craft just as any artist, making movies and seeing movies, making that particular film and story which totally extraordinary sounds like a dream. As a woman does one have to be a man to make it in this frame is an interesting question, to make a feature film as a woman but act like a man? Such a woman is easily considered a difficult person. It is much easier to be filmed and look beautiful, do as you are told but be unique. Womanhood posing as a fragile flower, young, polished in ads, in flashlights, photographers calling your name. And why is it important to talk and bring this issue in front, is there a problem?

Needless to say, but I’m saying it, women make different kinds of films than men, they have different points of views and interests. When women play roles that have been played by men there is totally new level to it, something lived by men is lived by women too, story gets vastly layered context and understanding of gendered experience, it is power which resonates within the powerless. Women see the world differently than men, experience it differently, do differently, walk and talk differently, are treated differently. Women should be given equal chance to bring their knowledge on to the screen, be active and create as they create, thinking instead of being looked at and they should understand it themselves too. Do men get their clothes examined on the red carpet? Aki Kaurismäki was drunk and danced at Cannes 2002 which was making appalled headlines in Finland. Men can and must disturb the scene in a moving way as well as business requires certain behaviour. Scene is asking to be cut open and questioned. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vcs3sottHm4

This is of course my observation and a bothering issue, horrifying actually when you look at the picture at hand. What a world. What are male points of views then? Is it so that men do different kind of movies than women as I claim. I already dislike the topic at hand, I dislike that I even have to mention it, sex and gender and what they mean. What does gender got to do with anything what and how people make professionally? In making movies or making art? Unfortunately quite much. Everything revolves around it. Comes back to our bodies. Why is it so? What is sexy here? What is sex other than a toy? Why is it sold? Because it is the easy way and an obvious want, obvious defined and dominator. An act, the difference, organs, emotions, chemistry, molecules, desires, reproduction, repetition, perspective of the wanted and the ones who want. It is the power-issue ruling our behaviour which is in the visuals. It is regulated by religion, politics, traditions, rules made to give us frame to act upon and know where the limits go. Major topics in film, in anything and the leading couple kiss is the anti-climax in an action film but it has to be there. Image of movie industry, of its people, how it works and what for, it all goes back to sex, human sexuality and how to profit from it, use it, it using us.

Feminist film theory has opened up reasons behind film industry, given a voice and chance for women to analyze film as an art, our point of view and why it should be there on film. How women are on film, used, abused, cut open. ”Feminism is a social movement which has had an enormous impact on film theory and criticism. Cinema is taken by feminists to be a cultural practice representing myths about women and femininity, as well as about men and masculinity. Issues of representation and spectatorship are central to feminist film theory and criticism. Early feminist criticism was directed at stereotypes of women, mostly in Hollywood films (Haskell 1973/1987, Rosen 1973). Such fixed and endlessly repeated images of women were and are considered objectionable distortions which have a negative impact on the female spectator as well as on males.” Claire Johnston (1940-1987) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claire_Johnston was among the first feminist critics to offer a sustained critique of stereotypes from a semiotic point of view (1973/1991). She puts forward how classical cinema constructs the ideological image of woman. Drawing on Roland Barthes’ notion of ‘myth’, Johnston investigated the myth of ‘Woman’ in classical cinema. The sign ‘woman’ can be analyzed as a structure, a code and convention. It represents the ideological meaning that ‘woman’ has for men. In relation to herself she means no-thing (1991: 25): women are negatively represented as ‘not-man’. The ‘woman-as woman’ is absent from the text of the film (26).”

http://www.film-philosophy.com/vol8-2004/n17sloan Is it problematic for cinema as a whole to talk about women’s cinema? “This concept of minor cinema is quite fruitful for the purpose of concluding the debate on the strong political ground that most interests Butler. Since a ‘minor’ cinema is one that politicizes everything, women’s cinema well qualifies, generally finding struggle in all aspects of life, and value in confronting it. Further, a minor literature is written by marginalized authors, and so focuses on the challenges of belonging to an out-group.

The important theoretical shift happening was and is that women started taking up as voices and act out from places of power, from an understanding of cinema reflecting realities of variety of women, realities of many instead of one. Having a view to cinema as a constructing method, ideological and politically engaging on individual level. Classical cinema was not to show its means of production, or was it? It should be defined what we mean by classical cinema and why classical cinema is what we think it is. Characterised by veiling over its ideological construction and under restrictions rather than free expression? Thus, classical film as we think the classical presents the constructed images of ‘woman’ as naturally desirables, unrealistic and attractive for the male. This is the illusionism of classical cinema.  www.feministezine.com

It feels like a concrete wall, the notion that a woman in film is not the man, not as able as the man and is always in need of assistance. She lacks something. She is there to be looked at, in relation to herself to her being no-thing. To continue the misogynist tale Budd Boetticher (Hollywood film director during 1942-85) has put it: “What counts is what the heroine provokes, or rather what she represents. She is the one, or rather the love or fear she inspires in the hero, or else the concern he feels for her, who makes him act the way he does. In herself the woman has not the slightest importance.

3.Desire of the power elite; Us under the phallocentric order.

Do women objectify themselves by putting their bodies into a certain light where their body and sexuality is openly under gaze and played with, in a certain repetitious positions to gain profit and be seen as that is the way still to get seen? Of course, and I would say, it is not passive. It is a very active role to play and toy with, the game where women win in one way only and are therefore used for a certain time, as long as their looks grant it. Women are slaves as much as they must put themselves in that position to be looked at, in a way it is slavery, yes. There must be something more to it as it is voluntarily done. Victim is a spectator of her fate. She still must imagine what happens to her when she chooses to act in a certain way and like it. Film industry is an abusive machine which abandons those who are no longer useful which is seen tragic. This must be seen beforehand, calculated and be known, understood and accepted. Industry obeys only capital and how to get it. It gives models of how to be, become, what to be, where to be, what to wear, what is talked about and how etc. Seduction is deliberate, unforgiving and cruel, to seduce the audience, a mass has its psychology and logic. Movie industry is a brainwash operator where meat is power and murder. Movies are made to seduce the consumer. Movies to give goals in life. Movies to give dreams. How audience is seduced? Or are we really that stupid? What is seduction? From Wikipedia: ”In colloquial language and fictional literature, seduction is the process of deliberately enticing a person, to lead astray, as from duty, rectitude, or the like; to corrupt, to persuade or induce to engage in sexual behaviour.” The Internet has lately given rise to more open discussion on seduction and how to master it: The Rules for women and The Game for men.

MUCH ABOUT JENNIFER LOPEZ:
Actress, entertainer, music artist, film & TV producer, fashion designer, entrepreneur and humanitarian Jennifer Lopez has been called one of the most powerful and celebrated celebrities in entertainment. Forbes Magazine named her the #1 Most Powerful Celebrity in the World of 2012. Known for her beauty and fashion sense Lopez has been the face of many advertising campaigns— L’Oreal, Louis Vuitton, Ford, Fiat, Subaru, Lux, Brahma Beer, Gillette, Kohl’s and Pepsi just to name a few. In 2012, Forbes ranked Lopez number one on their list of “100 Most Powerful and Influential Celebrities in the World” “and she has appeared many times on The Hollywood Report’s list of best paid actresses. Also known as a fashion icon, her appearance at the red carpet events always garners considerable media attention.www.jenniferlopez.com

While Hitchcock goes into the investigative side of voyeurism, Sternberg produces the ultimate fetish, taking it to the point where the powerful look of the male protagonist (characteristic of traditional narrative film) is broken in favour of the image in direct erotic rapport with the spectator. The beauty of the woman as object and the screen space coalesce; she is no longer the bearer of guilt but a perfect product, whose body, stylised and fragmented by close-ups, is the content of the film and the direct recipient of the spectator’s look.www.feministezine.com

Watching her going in to an exiting event wearing Versace smiling and looking happy. The most beautiful woman on Earth, hugely wealthy and desired, influencer on the beauty market. She has her hands leaning her waist. She is a business woman, it is said she is in control of her image, meaning what exactly? She is strong and independent, her own boss and ruler of her art. Poses telling so and the interviews strengthening our perception. But she isn’t saying much concerning entertainment business or how it could be something other than it is and should it be different as it has served her so well? What other could it be and what else is there. Industry serves her as she serves it. I wonder the machinery behind creating the phenomenon like JLo. Is it pure and simple as I think in businesslike? This is awesome. I love you and your arse, your body is part of your art. The publicity is moving around the globe. Beautiful women sell enormously well, so conducting from that there is incredible power in women which remains on image level as it is not completely let go, released. Wildness is ok up to a point. Too much rock and roll is too much the devil.

How it functions building an image for one person around her or his sex symbolism, luxurious life, incredible life story of being discovered and how the story continues, relationships, children, houses, clothes, movies, making music and money, going around the world dancing, having pictures taken, videos being made being followed. The amount and quality of imagery is about style + beauty, body+mind says also her website, a place for worship and to know her a bit better: Lopez’s dedication to assisting children in need and to the empowerment of others is far-reaching. The Girls & Boys Club of America has named her their national spokeswoman. Gucci is featuring Lopez in a national advertising campaign along with her twins Emme and Max launching its children collection. The campaign will benefit UNICEF. Lopez set the branding standard for celebrity fragrance, apparel and accessories. Her latest fragrance, Love and Glamour, marked 17 successful launches, taking in over $2 billion combined. A new fragrance, Glowing, was launch in 2012. In 2006, Lopez was awarded with the prestigious ACE Fashion Icon of the Year for her contribution to accessories and the fashion industrywww.jenniferlopez.com 

It’s good publicity to be a humanitarian. Cynically put, but mentioning one’s humanitarian work after all business and entertainment deals and PR is as cynical as business can get and only in couple of sentences her humanism is clear, she is clean and good. I would like to know more about the results of her humanitarianism. What is being made exactly? What is done? What comes to being powerful and influential? She is hypnotizing and playing on many arenas, sure. She attracts men and women that is called power, she makes people wild and dancing, that could be called freeing. The queen bee, a person as a classic beauty to imitate, movie personality with looks to kill, movie star who gathers people to watch her perform, a role model. There are many out there who play this particular part and use their gained position to make a difference as well. She has acted in several Hollywood movies which gives her a platform where she is listened to. Still such story is not the most important issue in a Hollywood feature film, in Hollywood, to be humanitarian it is a side trail, something rich people feel compelled of doing. What kind of sexual vibes arise from the making it. It is a Hollywood cult of icons, stories behind and what actually makes difference in the world. The industry is like a religion with angels and demons, money as the only God. Is philanthropy a distraction, a cleanse? What are movies then? Tools to become rich and famous?

The paradox of phallocentrism in aIl its manifestations is that it depends on the image of the castrated woman to give order and meaning to its world. An idea of woman stands as lynch pin to the system: it is her lack that produces the phallus as symbolic presence, it is her desire to make good the lack that the phallus signifies.” Laura Mulvey Visual Pleasure NarrativeCinema http://imlportfolio.usc.edu/ctcs505/mulveyVisualPleasureNarrativeCinema.pdf

Hollywood film is a monolith, what I have seen, watched and as I see, it is leaving much out and sticking to the very narrow tones of humanity and sexuality, posing sexual stereotypes, showing a look-a-like magic tricks with a lot of bling and bang. The thing I don’t understand is why is it doing so when it could be doing so much more? With a lot of noise to get so little is strange. Hollywood as a factory would have an enormous potential to do better quality, interesting, experimental, progressive cinema offering the masses variety and actual change. To me their way is more and more commercial humbug offering ecstatic experiences which other art forms also try to achieve, mass appeal and instant ecstasy. Musical sounds are the same, people look the same, has every fucking thing become a clone, an ass and pair of tits? And the world has become an image of the movies. We are coping what is being copied, becoming copies of each other. Copy that.

 

 

 

They don’t understand and I should figure out what is the best way for them to understand, because we really long to understand each other, right?

Issue of understanding is very crucial today like the issue of what you can say to somebody and what is not good to say to somebody and who is this somebody to whom we choose to say what we think or choose not say what we really think. Why do we think the way we do and what is this social game? What are the grounds of our thoughts and actions, what are the benefits and drawbacks? Do you encourage as you think it is the best way to practice humanism or do you discourage and why, what kind of place does silence play in discouraging and giving lessons, choosing not to act upon something or someone, choosing not to benefit someone. Via this we can analyse people’s motives, character, emotional capacities and attitudes, positions people think they have in relation to others, also power people think and clearly have over others. Who gets encouraged and who does not. This is a very important factor in making of us. Who has the strength to fight against constant discouragement, constant doubt and ridicule? How much is it allowed to say I do not understand this without sounding stupid and what is the thing we want to understand, because sometimes it seems it is not ourselves or the other, it is not politics, it is not social media and reasons behind it. The question of I do not understand is frequent for an artist to hear. It was not frequent at university, because fear of sounding stupid is acute and real. This is the record of rational contemporary humans, fear of not being adequate, of not being smart enough to wonder out loud. Art can be the thing which must be understood immediately or else it is pointless, wrong, out of place and futile. Measured by reason which is obviously there owned by the viewer who walks by, gazes, feels awkward and refuses art as it is not so him or her, it is not part of this person meaning it does not resonate, give much, have personal touching points. Art therefore must be owned by the viewer as likeable as it flatters the viewer, belongs to his or her realm, reality, understanding and does not frighten. Point of making difficult and complex art is exactly this, that it is not a straight passage to walk through and say this I understand, this is good and worthy the money. What I understand is good what I do not understand is threatening and maybe even bad, corrupt. Art must be equal to good as it is seen as doing good, teaching us about ourselves. Question is what art teaches about ourselves then? Art we are shown  has an entertainment value, it has to be applauded and accepted by experts, this makes art valid and existent. Seen, judged, talked about, placed, viewed, liked. Art expert is someone who has a lot of power telling what is good, hopefully clearly telling to those who are not experts why good is good and bad is bad. So what is the situation when art experts are corrupt and are not telling about art objectively but subjectively and when personal relations define good, and even what is art? When things get more than instantly comprehensible people lose their temper, patience, interest, the difficulty is almost an insult against the viewer because it is not made into easily chewable bits after which to feel thankful and smart of having seen this, witnessed.

What kind of message and content sinks in? How must information be modified, modelled, moulded, simplified, made comprehensible within the frame of our culture, the frame being as we understand our culture, ourselves and people’s needs, desires, minds, assumptions, patterns of thought, appreciations. We all search for some kind of grandness which elevates us. We understand via where we come from and we see people through that lens. It is all so often said and thought of me for example that I as coming and working working class jobs am not able to understand, gain, reach out for and grasp his and her culture. I do get, I really get it if you know what I mean. “That kind of people rarely take interest in classical music, even less to contemporary classical music” or ” I can’t afford to get a PhD in Switzerland” or “My art is not art” Straightforward no to my desires and dreams. I have shut up about them because to understand value of my dreams and capability to reach out go uncomprehended. Strangely my gender and my class, my poverty put me in a position where I am told more no’s and told about my lack of cultural and intellectual capacity which is  bound to where I come from and what kind of an instant image my gender poses to people. If I tell what I would like to do, I am told the reasons why it is impossible for me, just like that. Please tell me your motives, they really stay in the cloud. Thank you for the moral and mental support. You guys shine a light.

This is my understanding of contemporary humans where understanding is the most difficult and hardest part even though there seems to be loads of it as personally all view themselves and pose. How contemporary it is let’s pause for a moment and ponder. Still even though we live in the age of intellect, smart this and that, there are strict boundaries who can be smart and what is smart, who can make and who can’t. Anything worth while is simulated and signalled via the named, labelled, defined, understood in a way concept of smart. Smart which is effortless and an easy process of making things to better our lives, availability and accessibility signalling this. What do we have access to and how? Who can access what? Do we have access to something that is relevant or to something which is on the go, moving and getting replaced as easily as it is coming to us like a whistle?

When you have access to all this what is named smart you are smart too, that you have it. You know how things work on the surface and you do not have to know what things truly are, are for, are made of, come from and why. Is this living a lie and not wanting to admit it because it would be too hurtful? Purpose of smart is the created illusion which brings the good feeling of being inside and having it all. It is still an unfortunate fact that possession, bank account saldo, where you come from and who you know define our moral, intellectual and cultural superiority. This is also believed and held dear by those who should be able to question everything even status and relevance of their own, those are ‘intellectuals’ in arts and academies. Vanity is the biggest drive we seem to have and be incapable to fight against. Why should we fight it when it justifies and states our uniqueness and glory.

 

 

 

All male panel on how to become a woman. Best of Pussy. You create yourself.

Also men having an expert conversation on menstruation is one I would like to go and listen to.

How does one become a woman, to become part of a gender that is specific, recognizable, is to know what are the things people of that gender do and what they look like, are about. What are women about then? The problem of being part of a pure idea, a perfect ideal to live by can be binding, womanhood which is controlled and firmly obedient to tradition. Obedience is strongly expected of young women as it is for children. Women who act against the rules have something wrong with them. There is something wrong with her, she is not right, she is trouble, she is wild, she is a warning sign. Women who do not fit in, do not fill up given criteria, do not appeal, please and do right are punished, silenced, killed, abandoned, isolated, stigmatized etc. Means are many and they are in use all over the world. Men do the talking for women, have opinion on women’s issues, lives, looks, decisions, education, rights and prohibitions.

One becomes a woman realizing there are fewer options for women than for men. She understands she is not allowed to do the same things as men are, she utterly sees how different her life is compared to men and it is very difficult to change that situation. This is one way to womanhood, comprehending it. To be a woman is to learn to defend oneself, defend children, defend childhood, take care of others, be emotional, be what you are expected to be and still be more, do otherwise than you are expected, do what you want to do and face the consequences. Caring, kind, speaking softly, not speaking, not daring, avoiding dark alleys, strangers, avoid stigma of any kind, or you can have your own way and face the consequences.

A never-ending mirroring of your body and image. Hey beautiful how are you feeling?
First you get yourself a pair of tits, you start to think about how you feel, how transformation made you feel from girl to a woman from man to a woman. You are not happy the way you look, you are not happy who you are? You feel bad, you feel good. You are an emotional body figuring out how to be a woman and what a woman does.
You think are your breasts big enough and how they look, how they should look and whose breasts you idolize and think look good and sexy, how your belly looks and is it flat enough. Images in your head. Are you legs long and firm enough, how much skin can you show, how your ass looks and can you wear tight clothing. What kind of response do you want from those who look at you and are you interested in what other people think. How depended women are on other people’s opinion and judgment?

That women don’t have what it takes? It?

For women to be taken seriously there must be a formula. I just don’t quite grasp what it might be when in a world where male qualities are seen more reliable than female starting from appearance and having the privilege of being born male. The volume of being reliable enough women have to do serious fighting to accomplish the same status as males, imitate male posture, way of presenting, speaking, tone of voice or just know your topic better than anyone, be many times more qualified and capable? Could it be so or does the lesbian card get thrown at us like it was the most unattractive thing there is when women try to blend in? Do we have to blend in and pretend we are good guys? I sure as hell am not a guy and don’t call me one. Is the situation that desperate that in technology women don’t convince as women?

I have noticed it can be difficult for men to listen women speakers. It is difficult for them to accept woman’s point of view and that woman could know more. That woman argues and debates, guides and accomplishes more is a heavy deal to accept. Technology is a very sexist area of exact science and work requiring expertise and skill, that woman does something well in technology be it welding, engineering, programming it is hard for men to believe or accept a woman doing anything well or better than men. Could give you couple of examples when men didn’t believe their eyes and kept saying it was not my doing saying she cannot be that good. It is even more ridiculous when someone who stood next to me and witnessed me welding something demanding perfectly and then the other bloke refuses to believe I did it. It is hard for me to believe something like that could happen in Finland but it did. What does it take to give a woman credit for her skills? It takes balls.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/25/woman-sexism-tech-founders-forum-london-entrepreneurs?utm_content=buffer6da72&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer “This year, there were more than 68 men speaking at the event, and four women.”

How do you clean without a vacuum cleaner? Who cleans without a vacuum cleaner? No one. Really? Can you smell the new smell?

I have a cleaning dilemma which is ideological, not that much that I didn’t know what to do. Is it also a gender issue, environmental? Do I dare to ask? Can you imagine living without a vacuum cleaner? It is a similar kind of question as could you live without a car or two. It very often is for many unimaginable. Why is it so unimaginable? Life would get difficult and uneasy if we didn’t keep it together with helping equipment. Our everyday problems are solved and we don’t have to think much about it just. Sigh of relief. One could almost feel like a freak without the basic tools, left without lacking something important which is meant to be with us organically like a friend. Almost, hey. Of course this is a question of how much space one has to do clean and what kind of dirt we are talking about. When it comes to professional cleaning ladies, who clean for living, it is good for their health to have ergonomic light tools, essentially important. Cleaning ladies’ work is hazardous, unappreciated, loathed even. Something you do not easily see, stay interested in unless the job is not done. To pay attention to those people who take care of our spaces is therefore important. They are many and invisible as long as they stay quiet and do their jobs. Cleaning personnel get paid poorly, pay which does not enough include to the fact it is a dangerous job to maintain surfaces. Health risks are there how the work is done and what kind of poisonous cleaning detergents are used, not to mention people looking down on you as you haven’t moved up in the world. Detergents can smell good for a minute. Spraying detergents is the same as breathing them so you can imagine what the shit can do in the long run. As garbage men, cleaning ladies and janitors are doing socially extremely important work, think about it what they could do: stop the whole of society. Can you smell the new smell?
Interesting point here is how we assume, forget, do not think, see the obvious or ignore completely because we don’t have to pay attention. All we have to do is to know the necessity of technology and total superiority of things we own, their unquestionable value to us, that we know they are right for the job they are designed to and we can have them. Tasks and needs which cannot be done otherwise, who would want to anymore. We would soon be asthmatic and living in filth like our ancestors going nowhere. It is the power of advertising, powerful collective suction and consuming mindset to owning, to expertise, re-organizing, planning and performing proper civilized human beings who maintain themselves. Especially herself who has to know how to maintain this perfect image, how to be in it. It is so precise of an image holding on to us tightly. Letting go is overwhelmingly problematic. We have our reasoning which is part of the problem. Effectiveness is all. This reasoning is solving only the surface of things without wanting look inside.
If we lost machines like washing machines and vacuum cleaners it would mean cleaning work renaissance with laundry and household staff. Would it be class society all over again? Nevertheless there would be work if there were people who needed the service and paid for it. It is easy to see how important hygiene is for our everyday lives and how easily we ignore this fact.
What do you know about vacuum cleaners is another question and I bet nothing much. Where do they come from and where do they go? They, our tools, do the job just as well and much better than the old ones. New ones keep on appearing, designed, manufactured and they look amazing matching our interior of chrome and glass which need to be spotless. We are instructed how to plug-in, put on and how to operate. If you are not able to there is something wrong with you no doubt. To get rid of the things when they have lived their lives with us can be a bit tricky if you are willing to put effort and time in to that not so tiny ecological dilemma. We don’t have to know machines we use well, we don’t have to know where the materials come from, how the cost of machines get made and who profit the most. Vacuum cleaners are made super easy to use, everybody can use them, everybody can have them and will have a vacuum cleaner. What other this machine does than suck dirt and dust and what kind of life does a vacuum cleaner as an object represent is the easy comfortable living without dirt without effort. It provides and represents health. Even our apartments have closets for the thing with a long tube and heavy body. It is an essential tool cleaning your car, sofa, carpets quickly without too many extra movements and tricks.
Why I talk about vacuum cleaner is that I don’t own one and I happened to ask the cleaning lady who works our building could I borrow the one she uses. (I got a face) Nobody asks such questions because everybody has their own. So I think it is a very interesting cultural question of how we consume, how we maintain our standard of living and take care of our property, homes and which items belong to a modern household. I am in many ways a minority, by far.
Can you imagine people who live without vacuum cleaners, what they are like? At what point imagining life without those essential machines in our lives has become almost impossible?
To get stuck with ideas of how modern life is arranged and should be lived is where the closed society is born. Not that societies were not closed before, but there is a large problem waiting to be solved about how we evolve or do not and in some ways it is not new and some way it is terrible isolation which is almost impossible to change. What kind of society is closed and how do we open it or better yet encourage people to open up society as a culture and as a structure?
Yes it is a bit perverse question, psychological, and you can begin to imagine all kinds of alternatives, horrors, To think what do I mean with cleaning can too be very different than idea of cleaning to a super hygienist. Why do I even ask is because we assume too much. We have vacuum cleaners and they work perfectly fine, mostly. A machine almost all households have like a self-evident equipment so much so that to think cleaning without this noisy part of home would be unthinkably. To me it strongly seems people as modern population have come to a point where we do not see the opportunities there are. We like to be stuck and like our comfort.
http://home.howstuffworks.com/vacuum-cleaner.htm “2. As the fan blades turn, they force air forward, toward the exhaust port(check out How Airplanes Work to find out what causes this).”
 

Jacqueline Rose on Zionism, Freud, Sylvia Plath and more with Justin Clemens.

P.S.

Hillary Clinton’s Empowerment

Hillary Clinton isn’t a champion of women’s rights. She’s the embodiment of corporate feminism.
“Clinton recounts in her 2003 book Living History that Walmart CEO Sam Walton “taught me a great deal about corporate integrity and success”