Tynan's Anger

I Wanna Be Your Dog from LEGS on Vimeo.

This video is getting a lot of attention in the film universe, and it's being called the most subversive cover song of the year. Very Short List describes it as such:

Have the words "I wanna be your dog" ever taken on such dark overtones as when each pretty face blends into the next, all in the hopes of pleasing a visibly bored casting director?

 I don't know about that. I do know that this video caused an intense physical pain in my brain. Funny Games didn't even cause that kind of pain: it caused a lot of mental stress that paid off in the long term (much like exercise).

There's kind one glaring problem here: it is made from within the fashion industry, much like a TV show that tells you to turn off the TV as often at it tells you "don't touch that dial!". I am not sure whether Georgie Greville, the director, is (or identifies as) a man or women, and it doesn't matter. All I can say is that no matter how intense the image is, it never goes beyond "woah! hot models are like sex slaves!" This is the kind of video that even the most intelligent liberals can laugh at, acknowledge as "true," shake their heads at and move on. Or in other words, this is Dov Charney's business model.

You can dispute that. You can't dispute the pain it caused in my brain.

Here's a video that succeeds in doing what the above video tries to do:

Jokes.com
Maria Bamford - Makeup Commercial
comedians.comedycentral.com
Joke of the Day Stand-Up Comedy Free Online Games

Labels: american apparel, fashion industry, feminism, i wanna be your dog, maria bamford, punk rock, Stooges

This is something of a break in Tynan's Anger, I don't usually engage in explicit political arguments here, but this is something I feel very strongly about; it does relate to theater, film, music and new media tangentially, but only as it relates to society at large.

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It is easy to understand the divisiveness that comes with the treatment of pornography in modern society—traditionally, it has been attacked by the Christian pro-right, and those on the left, who support free speech, have opposed it. Lately I have been reading Ariel Levy's Female Chauvinist Pigs, a mainstream treatise on the misappropriation of pornographic imagery as feminism; despite the examples in her book being extreme, blatantly obvious cases of misguided, lazy understanding of ethical principles, it has, like most books on the subject, been described as "highly controversial."

With that in mind, it doesn't surprise me that recent columns on the divisiveness over the use of rape imagery in Observe and Report, as well as Nicholas Kristof's column on the lack of sufficient testing in rape kits (or that the letter column had to have its comments section turned off). When an article shows just how prevalent a problem sexual assault and abuse is in our society, from Hollywood blockbusters to the lack of police support for one of the most frequently committed crimes in our society, it will face an enormous wrath of backlash because it threatens the "very fabric of our society." Arguing a more radical position in the mainstream press is next to impossible.

Nonetheless, in light of the recent verdict to ban hate crimes against homosexuals, there is one practical, achievable law that should be passed that should not be as controversial as it is bound to be: Reviving the Antipornography Civil Rights Ordinance.

This is not an area where you can trust Wikipedia; considering that the website features 87% male contributors, and the pages of Jenna Jameson and Marilyn Chambers are 10 times more elaborate and developed than those for Betty Friedan or Ellen Willis (or for that matter, Socrates), you'll have to dig deeper. Suffice to say, here's basic history:

In the 1980s, various local legislators attempted to pass laws preventing that would allow women who were sexually abused, assaulted, or raped in pornographic films to seek civil legislation against pornography producers. The legislature was in part prompted by the the 1980 memoir Ordeal by Linda Boreman, star of the industry-defining film Deep Throat, published a memoir claiming several cases of being raped, physically assaulted, and violently pressured to film scenes against her will. Laws supporting legal recourse for victims of sex crimes in the porn industry were passed in various local governments, including nearly universal support whenever the issue was addressed by a public ordinance.

Nonetheless, the courts repeatedly turned down the law; in the first case, Minneapolis Mayor Donald Fraser vetoed the bill, claiming that the city did not have the budget for a lengthy, expensive Supreme Court case, but also because he disagreed with it on his own views (the next mayor of Minneapolis was Sharon Sayles Belton, the city's first female and African-American mayor). With obscenity still an issue of contention for free speech advocates in the federal court system, many feminists debated whether it would be more effective to argue legally for reform or whether to proceed through education and social action. The movement for the Antipornography Civil Rights Ordinance largely died down in 1992 after the Canadian Supreme Court passed R. vs Butler, a bill that included many of the arguments of the Ordinance into its definition of obscenity—by turning rape in the porn industry in the free speech issue, and by incorporating it into a larger slippery slope argument, the issue of sex abuse in the porn industry became an issue no one on the left wanted to touch.

I thought of the Antipornography Civil Rights Ordinance a lot when watching yesterday's coverage of the Hate Crime Legislation. Though it passed with flying colors, an effort that would have seem impossible 25 years ago, it seems ludicrous today to think that even 175 in the House would vote against it. The argument against used a similar free speech and slippery slope line of reasoning that plagued the APCRO 20 years ago. Jon Stewart noted, "you can still hate them, but you don't get to hit them," and even conservative columnist Kathleen Parker, reflecting on the diminishing power of the far-right Republicans, noted, "Who wants to join forces with someone who would use the word 'hoax' in regard to Shepard's murder 'that continues to be used as an excuse for passing these [hate crime] bills'?"

So public opinion has certainly changed on hate crimes, but it has not on the serious issue in terms of rape in pornography. Furthermore, with obscenity having not been a contentious legal issue for almost two decades, it seems that there should be nothing stopping those on the left from pushing the case. So why the lack of activism? It could be the education and public discourse issues that many feminists advocated in the 1980s. The Matthew Shephard case was a national story that dominated cable and evening news, was turned into an award winning play and an award-winning television film. The most public argument against rape in the porn industry, which for all we know happens nearly every day, comes on Maria Bamford's 30-minute Comedy Central Presents special, and backhandedly in Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic. Meanwhile, we are deluded with dozens of films that legitimatize and, in many, cases blatantly advocate the sex industry while ignoring this issue; many of which, it should be noted, are broadcast on HBO, the very same network that broadcast The Laramie Project.

Nonetheless, the argument is basically the same in both cases; in both hate crime law and anti-rape in pornography law, free speech would not be affected. Anti-gay rights advocates could still write incendiary columns, and pornography and its advocates could still be published freely. What would be disallowed, however, would be to commit violent acts of assault or rape against homosexuals or those who work in porn.

To that end, the term "Antipornography Civil Rights Ordinance" is probably outdated, as it was conceived in a larger cultural framework that came at a time when radical feminism was not seen as a fringe movement and when civil rights. When framed as a law emphasizes providing legal opportunities for women who are raped as part of the sex industry, as opposed to a rebuke on the entire industry, it would seem ridiculous to most Americans to oppose such a law.

Of course, the prevalence of those who argue against prosecuting rape of any kind is often ignored. The opposition to all forms of sexual assault law, often using the label Men's Rights Activists, is growing strongly, and its presence is especially strong on the Internet. You can argue that mainstream media personalities like Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh share most MRA views, and Limbaugh, of course, coined the now-mainstream term "feminazi." I imagine I will receive some nasty comments for this blog post, none of which I will censor or even respond to.

Because of the lack of information as well as the rise in MRA attack in blog comments, daily conversation, and mainstream press, arguing to regulate rape in porn is something few outside the feminist blogosphere would think to address publicly. Nonetheless, that silence is precisely the problem; my only regret is not being able to post this in a larger venue. From the MRA point of view, the recent Hate Crimes legislation is just as crucially related to feminism as it is from the feminist point of view. The Men's Rights Activist blog Men's News Daily argued that it is impossible to support gay rights without being a part of the "feminist power agenda." That, to me, should close the mainstream book on the real agenda behind MRA. That should be a good sign of the kind of person who argues against hate crimes or rape legislation.

Allow me to break down the possible arguments against regulating rape in porn (which seems ridiculous to write in a sentence, but it needs to be done). First off, for those who oppose pornography in any way shape or form, I understand that point of view, and I am not throwing out the issue outright. However, this is a clear, tangible goal that was a legitimate public social issue 20 years ago, and that, with more public awareness, has the potential to be achieved again due to changes in the legislation and public opinion of related cases.

Now for much the more numerous other side: that it would be impossible to produce porn for the fear of faulty civil rape allegations. The argument here would be that with the bloated nature of the civil courts,and considering given the lack of other opportunities and personality types of those who work in pornography, it would significantly raise the risk of false, completely baseless charges against certain people who would have their reputations tarnished forever. In fact, the faulty charges of the Kobe Bryant and Duke Lacrosse Team Cases factored heavily into the rise of the organized MRA movement, and resulted in spikes in the sales of Kobe and Duke Lacrosse merchandise (though it's not like the ideas behind MRA were created by those cases).

First off, I will say this: it's not like those in the porn industry have a particularly untainted reputation to begin with. The social stigma against those in the porn industry is already well established both on the left and the right. The social stigma of those who work in porn may only be rivaled by those who go into the sex industry and later regret the decision and speak out against it. Never mind the fact that Norma McCorvey, the "Jane Roe" in Roe v. Wade, was turned into a national icon by far-right pro-life activists when she later recanted her support for abortion rights.

Secondly, behind the MRA-style argument against APCRO is the assumption, in some cases implicit, in some cases explicit, that rape is an essential part of pornography. This is an argument that the majority of society would find despicable, but it is one likely to be stopped quickly because its an immensely controversial viewpoint with questionable validity; we can never really know how many cases of sex in pornography would be legally defined as rape, especially now, with the rise of amateur, non-professional pornography. Of course, we get significantly factually-challenged far-right opinions expressed in the mainstream press all the time as legitimate, but for a radical feminist position, it requires absolute, irrefutable accuracy to be mentioned without a wave of backlash.

Nonetheless, the general public support against actual instance of rape is overwhelming, even if the actual public discourse on rape is skewed, biased, and uninformed. Just as public opinion is enormously opposed to those who think violent attacks against those based on race, ethnicity, sex, or sexual orientation, those who would be against rape in principle in any form, including the porn industry, would be largely negative, perhaps even on the Internet, where opinion is skewed in particular on this issue.

For those who see it as a free speech issue; I hope I have addressed above why it is most definitely not a free speech issue. For a good summary of recent obscenity legislation, I would recommend checking out this summary from the University of Missouri-Kansas City website. Basically, it has become such an expensive and convoluted to prosecute an obscenity case against pornography when the First Amendment is involved, that most don't even try unless it involves child pornography. The argument here has nothing to do with obscenity, and recent rulings in hate crime law should only support that cause.

Lastly, here's a question I will admittedly argue from a patriarchal viewpoint; as a trigger warning, I would recommend those who reject that viewpoint to ignore this next section:

One more question remains: how does the current, unregulated form of the pornography industry affect the experience of watching porn? As a mainstream, socially-conscious liberal, would watching porn while knowing that no matter how enthusiastic a woman seemed on screen, there was a higher than you'd like to think chance she was being raped in this footage, would you be able to get off as effectively? If, on the other hand, there was a law that let the mainstream liberal presume the women in the video was, at the very least legally protected against being raped in a porn video, wouldn't you be able to put your conscience aside more easily when your brain is really not the organ in focus at the moment?

Or, on the other hand is the fact that a woman could be raped a turn-on, even implicitly? Would someone who would never watch self-described rape pornography still find something tantalizing in the idea that they could be watching woman being raped? This is not an "all sex is rape," "all porn is rape," or a "rape is the ultimate turn-on argument;" it's the notion that men who in theory oppose rape could be unconsciously supporting and possibly even glorifying it to themselves in practice.

And of course, there are the millions upon millions of men, perhaps even the majority, who make no objection to the fact that they see the possibility and actuality of rape in pornography exciting. That voice is too loud on the Internet to examine further.

Labels: Antipornography Civil Rights Ordinance, Crime, feminism, male rights activists, msm, Pornography, rape allegations, sexism, Sexual abuse, Sexual assault

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.

Labels: abortion, albertine theatre, feminism, privacy, quickening rebecca tourino

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?

Labels: democrats, ethics, feminism, john mccain, moral values, politics, sarah palin

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.

Labels: feminism, hillary clinton, john mccain, politics, sarah palin

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?

Labels: feminism, hillary clinton, lenny kravitz, the kinks, tom petty, van halen, you really got me

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.

Labels: bad movies, feminism, here's what's wrong with the world today., sex and the city