Theater Review (NYC): Quickening

If not for Juno, Knocked Up, and Jamie-Lynn Spears and Bristol Palin having already made one of a woman's most private matters a subject acceptable for public gossip, Rebecca Tourino’s play would be unnecessary, maybe even too invasive. Ten years ago, I would not have felt comfortable reviewing Quickening, which gives an inside look at a Planned Parenthood center in Portland, Oregon. It’s not a matter of worrying about being politically correct; it’s more that, as a man, there’s simply no way for me to fully understand the experience, and it's not worth pretending to try. The best I can do is judge Quickening from a theatrical standpoint. From that end, I can safely say Tourino shows some significant storytelling skill and more than a little bravery for Albertine Theatre's first production.

Quickening spares no mundane detail in showing the realities of modern-day abortion in an age when they often get overlooked. It was these details that caused Juno MacGuff to decide to deliver her baby; as frivolous as some saw that justification in Juno, the mundane and logistic issues are some of the biggest roadblocks facing the characters of Quickening. Be it the three-hour drive from the sticks (and waiting even longer for the doctor to show), or the hunger from not being able to eat before surgery, there are more hurdles to overcome in having an abortion than just political or moral stances. Left unspoken for the most part is the backdrop of the health insurance crisis, the safety concerns presented by Army of God types, and the irresponsibility of the fathers when marriage is not involved. Of course, the moral considerations are the ones that last the longest, and we can immediately see changes in the mindsets in all four characters after they—hold your breath—all end up going through with the procedure.

In keeping with the gritty, realistic theme, Tourino has crafted a remarkably complementary, emotionally affecting, and instantly relatable cast of characters. They include a British academic who sees herself as above going to a clinic, a coquettish (or in colloquial terms, slutty) Latin girl with deceptive book smarts, a Catholic mother of two, and a recent college grad, proud (however foolishly) to be making her first decision as a woman. The intelligence of the characters—socially and emotionally as well as intellectually—shifts constantly, depending on the moment and on the character. While the play’s dialogue can get a little too poetic at points, Quickening never sees its characters lose their charms or devolve into archetypes. These realistic characterizations are crucial to Quickening; the more audience members can draw parallels to people they know, the easier it is to admit that the realities of abortion are ever-present in society, but get lost behind the more theoretical issues.

Tourino’s grasp of her characters is on best display when they’re all in the same room; it’s only natural that the Lord of the Flies-like nature of the waiting room, policed by a recovered alcoholic, lesbian nurse, is where the play becomes most captivating. Still, Tourino was right not to let that room give the exclusive picture of the situation. Her dips into the characters’ back stories, while not as immediately attention-grabbing, form the support around the foundation of waiting room scenes. The play is at least half an hour too long, and Quickening could have easily done better by cutting a few backstory scenes (and all of the overlapping dialogue scenes, which take away from the realism anyway). But while the play may languish at points, the core of a skillfully-crafted narrative is most definitely in place.

With all the obstacles facing these women in their choice, it’s a wonder than anyone would go through with the procedure, let alone the one in four American women who have had an abortion (though that rate has dramatically declined over the past decade). But while the play accurately if depressingly sees privacy as a fading priority, the major theme Quickening aims for is in its tag line: “Sometime a choice can mean the beginning of a new life. Yours.” In pursuit of that goal, the play doesn't really find time to take up the longer-term implications of having an abortion. But at the very least, Quickening exposes the reality behind one of the country’s most controversial topics, a reality people rarely dare to see unless they are forced. That’s a significant enough accomplishment in its own right.

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Quickening, written and directed by Rebecca Tourino. Starring Michelle Rene Cowin (Round Cheecks), Zach Fletcher (Man), Mia Morland (Crossword), Kjirsten Riccardi (Bright Eyes), Amanda Sayles (Ankle Socks), and Stephanie Staes (Nurse).

Presented by Albertine Theatre at Center Stage, 48 W. 21st St., NYC. Sept. 17-28. Wed.-Sun., 8 p.m. For tickets call (212) 352-3101 or (866) 811-4111 or visit Theatermania.

This review was originally published on Blogcritics.

Time for someone to do the Democrats' dirty work for them

The Democrats are in an impossible situation with the Sarah Palin mother/grandmother debate. On the one hand, investigating the claim would go against everything they stand for in terms of women's privacy, and even if the claim tuns out to be true it essentially turns the women's body into a public object anyway. And if they're wrong, it'll be open season for the right. On the other hand, with the potential for a crazy, inexperienced, hypocritical moral values Republican in the White House, the Democrats can't really not afford to break the story if it is true. This would an absolute knockout blow against McCain, and save for a nuclear war, there'd really be no way for him to recover.

Yes, the Daily Kos story is based on nothing but conjecture and hearsay. Yes, the odds of having a child with Down's Syndrome goes up ten-fold after the mother turns 40. Yes, while the above picture, taken in March, looks pretty damning, if the rumor was true it would be less likely that the picture would be taken at all. But sometimes, perhaps even most of the time, there's fire where there's smoke. I'm not making any assumptions about the truth of the rumor (or its truthiness, for that matter), but what I am saying is that some independent, or perhaps even conservative watchdog group investigating this more thoroughly would be the best thing to happen to the Dems in this situation. Where's the left's Blackwater when you need it?

Is the Palin Pick Sexist?

I personally thought it was Christmas for the Obama camp yesterday when McCain picked Palin as VP. Her completely pandering speech afterwards seems to announce that. Now, as The American Prospect's Ann Friedman points out that, in picking an inexperienced woman in hopes of gaining the women vote, the GOP actually showed sexism:

Palin's addition to the ticket takes Republican faux-feminism to a whole new level. As Adam Serwer pointed out on TAPPED, this is in fact a condescending move by the GOP. It plays to the assumption that disaffected Hillary Clinton supporters did not care about her politics -- only her gender. In picking Palin, Republicans are lending credence to the sexist assumption that women voters are too stupid to investigate or care about the issues, and merely want to vote for someone who looks like them. As Serwer noted, it's akin to choosing Alan Keyes in an attempt to compete with Obama for votes from black Americans.

I certainly see the logic to the argument, and the article didn't even mention how Palin's beauty queen past doesn't exactly promote a progressive attitude. My friend calls her "Government Barbie" for a reason.

Update: This was inevitable.

So This is Girl Power: Rock 'n' Roll as Defined By Hillary Clinton's Democratic Convention Intro Video

You can find out a lot about rock 'n' roll by comparing The Kinks version of "You Really Got Me" to Van Halen's cover. When the Kinks released the song around the time of oh, I don't know, "I Want To Hold Your Hand," it was already ahead of its time. Completelty lustful with nothing but teenage sex on the mind, it chose to approach the subject subtlety, with the danger in the subtext and expressed in double entendres and innuendo that allowed such an incendiary song to be played on the radio. Of course, when it did get onto the radio, it became more famous for its three chord garage rock stomp, perhaps the least original part of the song. Not suprisingly, the Kinks would go on to keep the subtext-dominant rock, but would never write such a hard rockin' song again after "All Day and All of the Night" or as it is also known, "You Really Got Me"-prime.

The Van Halen cover, however, exemplifies how metal fits in the rock canon. It takes all the subtext of the Kinks version and puts it into the forefront. Eddie Van Halen's guitar pummels the speakers in an obviously sexual manner. Where Ray Davies's vocals had only the barest tint of lasciviousness, David Lee Roth practically has an orgasm while singing it (from the "oomph" at the song's beginning through the heavy panting—male and female—following the solo). This kind of overt sexuality, where what you see is what you get, is why some feel such a rush in heavy metal, while others deride it as shallow and campy.

If you take a note by note comparison of the two covers, however, nothing is different. There's a slightly longer solo in the Van Halen version, but otherwise the structure's the same. What separates these two versions is not anything inherently musical, but something inherently anti-musical: the level of distortion in a guitar, the atonal inflections of a singer's voice, the production touches that are more for performance than anything else. I believe comparing these two covers gets to the real heart of what distinguishes rock 'n' roll from other forms of art and explains why rock criticism has a different tone from other forms of criticism: rock's medium is defined by precisely what goes against the ontology of its medium (sorry for that Meltzerism).

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So anyhoo, Hillary chose to go with the Van Halen version for her bizarrely rock-laden intro video. That's cool, when you want to get the biggest applause, it's probably the best version to go with (buried in the DNC coverage was the fact that The Kinks' version of the song was used to introduce Wisconsin congresswoman/lesbian Tammy Baldwin, which seems appropriate I guess). You may say the song is too sexual for a political candidate, but anyone who's been to a sporting event in the last 25 years can tell you that screaming fans have an unparalleled ability to ignore innuendo (how else would inherently gay songs like "We Are The Champions" and "YMCA" get played in support of a celebration of testosterone).

But let's see how the other songs stack up: There were only two other rock songs, and both had weird things to say about H.R.C., the Demmycrats, and America in general. The first song after Van Halen was Lenny Kratiz's "Are You Gonna Go My Way?" That was a weird choice for a number of reasons. One, it was already clear we hadn't gone her way when the Dems nominated Obama. But more importantly, they found it safer to go with a song that's derivative of Jimi Hendrix instead of going with Hendrix himself. Was the problem the association with hippies and the perpetuation of the Culture Wars? Would that have been too sexual? Frankly, the absurdist in me was wishing they had played Hendrix's Woodstock performance of the Star Spangled Banner, but that may have been too obvious (for me and for the Dems).

Following that was another peculiar choice, Tom Petty's "American Girl." One the one hand, both the song's title and its opening verse story of a girl who "Tryin she had one little promise/ She was gonna keep" sounds fitting enough for a Hillary tribute video (and to borrow a phrase from Idolator, uses a rock star who's build a rock hall-worthy career off of being solid). But what would have happened if they had gone on to the second verse, where these words would have described the American Girl that is Hillary:

And for one desperate moment there
He crept back in her memory
God its so painful
Something thats so close
And still so far out of reach

In a campaign where sexism was undoubtedly a factor, it would not be in Hillary's best interest to depict herself still dependent on men (especially with the man she hangs around with). And while we're on the subject of feminism, what's with Hillary depicting herself as a "girl?" This happened both in the "girl/ you've really got me now" of Van Halen and with Tom Petty's "American Girl" schtick. But when was the last time you heard a 60-year-old woman be referred to as "girl" without it being in a demeaning, derogatory sense? I guess they were trying to show her softer, gentler side, which may be good after appearing like a hardass on the campaign trail (but what's the difference between hardass and empowered woman?). Strangely, a song that would have taken a more P.C. title,"American Woman," is one of the most notoriously misogynist songs in the rock canon (to bring this full circle, the song was covered by a seemingly oblivious Lenny Kravitz). Oh by the way, this was still not even close to the oddest setting for "American Girl" of the past year.

Thus, we see that in rock, the sexualized, perhaps objectified girl-woman becomes an empowered, liberated full-grown woman, while an explicitly tough, powerful women is the worst thing you can be (unless you're L7). Why else would a term like "girl power," which seems obscenely silly and borderline patronizing in any other context, be used in just about every article about feminism in rock 'n' roll? That sexualized nature of the woman in rock songs eventually transcends sexuality and turns into empowerment. Which is why, over 40 years after the Kinks first performed the song, we can now see a highly sexualized version of "You Really Got Me" in a national Democratic Party event promoting the first serious female candidate for president in our nation's history. How could Ray Davies have predicted that?

Prada Bags Beat Dashing Hats

I thought we were done with Sex and the City. I had hoped that a television show that determined feminism to be professional women who can only talk about sex and shopping had outlived its welcome. Well, the movie that should never have been made has now had the best opening weekend ever for an R-rated comedy, and has even trumped Indiana Jones for box-office supremacy. And I'm here to bury it, not praise it. Why? Because I can (note the sarcasm).

Sex and the City is a microcosm with everything wrong with the treatment of professional women in this country. There's nothing wrong with successful women being able to screw around, but the show depicts women who have everything going right for them as still hopelessly dependent on men to make their lives somewhat meaningful. There's also the constant, never ending dependency on consumerism in their lives. When men aren't plentiful, material goods will have to do, usually clothing that's purpose is to attract men.

No one seems to remember that the show was created by a man, or that men wrote nearly half of the episodes and directed just about all of them. Darren Star, the creator, is an openly gay man who doesn't seem to know how to write women other than as a gay men. What's worse is that so many women who have no place identifying with the show somehow did (a fact spoofed on the Simpsons, when Patti and Selma Bouvier commented that the show "Nookie in New York" was so like their life"). And there have been a whole slew of imitators, such as Lipstick Jungle and Cashmere Mafia that, to borrow a phrase from Cinematical's Ryan Stewart, are possibly the two worst things to happen to New York since 9/11.

Apparently this depiction of women is only getting stronger, and has now trumped the depiction of say, a hard-assed Russian spy and a top notch archaeologist who can outdrink frickin' Indiana Jones. This is why I want to date a girl who has as much of a sense of fashion as I do, which mainly consists of having few pieces of clothing in their wardrobe that are not incorrectly sized and/or stained.