Protagonists at large
August 26, 2011 2 Comments
Dear M.,
Here is a famous writer quote:
The task of an American writer is not to describe the misgivings of a woman taken in adultery as she looks out of a window at the rain but to describe four hundred people under the lights reaching for a foul ball. This is ceremony.
–John Cheever
To which I say: SHENANIGANS.
Yours,
CF
August 22, 2011 1 Comment
Dear Millicent,
While you were curating this collection of Painful Groins in Art, to which I say “ouch!”, I found one more Maidenform ad to join your previous post on bra madness. Because, really, what is more dreamy than dreaming yourself as one of the most boring, useless objects in a household besides napkin rings?
As you do,
CF
August 19, 2011 6 Comments
Dear M.,
The glory of your recent post on Maidenform bra ads (does the name “Maidenform” mean “we will make your breasts look maidenly and not matronly? Forget your sagging dugs of today…”) made me think of the glory of the famous Modess ads, where all menstruation was alluded to by pounds of taffeta and the vaguest motto ever, “Because…”.
How to explain biology away in one word…because. The italics are important. The italics mean something special, something relaxed and leaning. They are the verbal form of gownery and diamonds. In the world of Modess, menstruation is the stuff of soap operas and royalty. Even the brand name simultaneously brings forth ideas of modesty, models, and being de mode. It was a genius aspirational brand.
I have a stack of old magazines I scored from Goodwill, and every time I come across a Modess ad, I gasp. They are just lovely. And insane. They also make me want to be a sanitary napkin model for a day. How could you not? Take a look:
Ah, the glamour of menstruation! I didn’t know it meant you could have pink satin streaming from your behind like a great beacon of fertility.
But let’s get more pensive.
Hydrangeas! Taffeta! Cursive!
My period always makes me feel like a starlet who ran away from a movie premier to feel the morning dew on my skin. I particularly love the knowing look on her face. As she sweeps her wrap towards us, you know she’s thinking “oh, if you only knew what my uterine lining was doing right now…that’s right. Bleeding all over the place.”
Or, sometimes, menstruation makes you want to sit down in your ball gown, and have a cup of coffee:
Again, do not, whatever you do, associate that red triangle of fabric with blood. And really, how can you chafe when you are so arranged? How can you chafe when you’re swaddled in a pad ballgown? Because, again, your period is pretty much like going to the fanciest dinner of your life, every month.
This next lady kind of looks like she needs our help. I think her elbow has been super-glued (accidentally) to the harpsichord!
Or, you can start shedding, just like your endometrium!
Modess went in a different direction here, where the news is pretty much sunshine and lollipops:
Doesn’t this look exactly like Helena Bonham Carter?
Here are a few more just…because…
With the Maidenform ads, I kept thinking what a strange statement it was to wish for a grand (semi-grand) life in your basic undergarment. Who cared what you dreamed in your bra, because you still have to mop the kitchen floor. The ads don’t promise deliverance from a shitty, bra-wearing reality. They just promise that you will dream about being other places when you wear their product, which doesn’t seem like a compelling reason to don their underwires. With Modess, it’s a similar paradox. If Modess means high fashion, high living, and extreme elegance, then how funny is it to aspire to those things with a disposable product that is the opposite of fashion. You want people to see your cutting edge fashion platery. You really really don’t want people to know you are doing that covert monthly activity of bleeding in your pants.
I guess menstruation is pretty damn feminine, as are these ads. And I can see the allure of insinuating that a pad is something like the ballgown of your dreams. A dream instantly deferred upon use, but, well, I can see what the admen were thinking.
But really, it all really boils down to this Peep Show clip:
Yours,
CF
Images via Clotho98 on Flickr
August 9, 2011 1 Comment
It looks good. SWINTON! will be one of the narrators, and I’m relieved to see more than one quick news-story or 15 minute segment on how things suck. Instead it is a multi-episode series that looks like it asks some big questions. Definitely part of the posse, not the problem. Set your DVRs or what have you for October.
I can’t embed the PBS promo, but here’s one for Pray the Devil Back to Hell. It’s an inspiring start to the conversation that hopefully takes over our Tuesdays in October. It will also make you feel like everything is possible, and that if you are on your couch watching a documentary, you are not doing enough.
July 27, 2011 2 Comments
Questions as they appeared in my head, back to front, while watching:
July 16, 2011 16 Comments
Dear Millicent,
With Harry Potter and Friday Night Lights ending their stories this week, generations are weeping everywhere. And last night, as the audience settled in the theater to see what happens to Potter and friends even though we all know what happens, a surprising commercial came on. It was epic, starting with a woman holding her baby to the moon, and the words “It’s the cradle of life.”
“Uterus” I whispered to Mr. Carla Fran, thinking I was hilarious.
“It’s the source of nations.”
“Uterus!” I thought I was playing a reproductive parts/movie trailer game akin to the fortune cookie “in bed” thing.
“Men have fought for it”
Still works!
“Men have died for it.”
And then, you know what they were actually talking about? VAGINAS! It was really about ladyparts. It was a commercial for Summer’s Eve, convincing women to get spendy because their historical vaginas are so epic. They are the stuff of movies. The tag line was the bold “Hail to the V.” I actually gasped.
I can’t find a clip of that actual commercial online, [update: it’s here] but I’m sure everybody will see it because everybody is Harry Pottering this weekend. It was surreal because it was so body positive, and yet I don’t want to celebrate my epic lady part by dumping a bunch of chemicals on it. That does not sound like hailing to me. Actually, it does, but the weather kind. The hailing that dents cars, and tender things.
The commercial is also a fascinating snapshot of power and gender. Yes, the knights are fighting for the princess’ vagina, but that’s kind of the problem, not the cool thing, right? I cannot wait to hear what Sociological Images has to say about all of this. [Update, Gwen Sharp covered it here).
This all did lead me to Summer’s Eve Youtube channel, where they have a bold campaign to work their way back into the sex ed health class. Because we know every health teacher warns against douching, and brings up Summer’s Eve or Massengill as the example baddies. We all know that we are not supposed to buy those things. But, Summer’s Eve’s new approach is get direct, get educational, and make hand puppets that are your vagina.
Here is white lady comedian gal friend vagina:
Here is tired and sassy latina lady vagina on the go:
And here is club-going black lady vagina, complete with wrist snap:
Summer’s Eve wants women to be “BFF”s with their vaginas. Cool. The problem? A.) Nothing is still the best everything for upkeep down there. No soap, no wipes, no special body lotion, nothing. and B.) I like the idea that I can be besties with my anatomy without corporate direction. Gimme Hot Pantz, the free and awesome pamphlet on lady parts, any day.
But, is this the kind of ad campaign that gets conversations started earlier, especially for adolescents, and at the very least, gets the V out of the closet? Another tag line from the videos is “Welcome to Vaginaland.”
Harry Potter was fine. I just can’t stop thinking about feminine wipes.
Yours,
CF
July 15, 2011 Leave a comment
Dear Millicent,
Migraines are such an intimate issue. One time I told a friend I had them and he just hugged me, I thought, in the form of a brother-in-arms. But he was not a fellow migraineur, he was just really, really sorry for those who were. It’s a few other places in my life where I have received such unfiltered compassion. And, since I always link migraines to Didion, the whole act is always slightly bristly. A migraine is something with blunt bangs, not ready to be held, that has a blunt charge with words. Blunt is a key word for me, and for how I think about the precision of Didion’s writing (not that her precision is dulled, as much as it is so idiosyncratically precise that it will hit your stomach and heart hard, like a bag of grapefruits (let’s make it oranges, for California)).
I’m guessing describing headaches is like describing dreams, but here’s what mine are like: I feel all of my blood thicken (when it feels like hot wine soup, I know I have a migraine), all I want is a dark room, and even sleeping sucks. I can’t focus on words very well, and just the static underhum of television (my balm for all pains) is one more weight on my brain and everything has to go away. Hot baths help, sex helps, and the brief moments when I am swallowing hot tea. But the migraine is mighty, and likes to return after the nerves have gotten over their little interruption of heat or pleasure. I’m also very hot when I’ve got a good one going. My hands and feet feel swollen. One time, at a dinner party, I did that thing I’ve always read about, and lay down on the cool tiles of the bathroom floor. My pulse becomes most of what I can concentrate on.
I don’t believe that red wine triggers it, or chocolate, or fancy cheese. It can’t be that simple. I do believe that stress and a bunch of other things start a cocktail going, and if all is ready, then that cocktail goes to town (which is why I get migraines more after I finish a project, right when I’m about to celebrate). I have had years with 2 migraines, and then one a week for a long stretch.
I haven’t had one since November, when I started seeing an acupuncturist who told me that all of me was inflamed. Her reasoning for the headaches is that everything gets hotted up on one level or another, and when you reach a certain level of RED ALERT, you are prone to the headaches. Like, fruit flies can invade your kitchen whenever, but when it’s hot out and you don’t put the banana peel away, WATCH OUT. Her theory is not based on triggers as much as accumulation, and that when you get enough heat accumulated, you are ready for a little tornado in your head (our head as Pepsi Bottle cyclone?). In my case, this made sense. I had been drinking hard and not moving except from bed to computer for about 15 years. I thought I ate well, but I also ate a lot of pizzas at midnight. She also diagnosed my inflamed liver by pressing on my shin, which had become so sensitive that sometimes a bedsheet felt too heavy on it, and when she hit that one tiny spot, I said “ow,” and she said “ah.” She also told me I was puffy, and anxious. I wouldn’t have chosen those words, but she was right.
Her path to getting un-inflamed was brutal. She wanted me to replace alcohol with exercise (who does that?), and stop eating everything I like to eat (the list is boring, but trust me, it’s everything good). She told me to do it for a month, and to exercise twice a day. She’s also part witch, so I did everything she said.
I’m not preaching this path. It worked for me, but I got inflamed in my own particular way, and had to get deflamed in the same manner. I do think you sound HOT, hot in the queasy-no-more-please sense. The sensory overload, the intolerance for demanding or new things, it sounds as if your nerves are already filled to the gill. I’m guessing there were times in your life where you could absorb everything you wanted, which sounds like your accumulation is simply maxed out right now. It might be stress, salt, tomatoes–anything that makes our tiniest linings (both physical and emotional) poof out instead of in. And maybe you’re super-poofed.
The brain, in this version of migrainery, is a world of credit cards, jelly fishes, and ball gowns. We have to pay down the debt, and trade in the debutante meringue for a nice mermaid cut.
It isn’t forever (I really believe this), and it isn’t an eternal judgement on your character.
Forgive my spray of advice. I just found out about Dear Sugar, and have been reading her archive so happy to find the internet saving some lives.
But with all of that, I do hope your head feels better today,
Yours,
CF
July 5, 2011 1 Comment
Bad Teacher is not going to save anybody’s life. Cameron Diaz as our very bad teacher is mostly a tiny monster. She tells kids they suck, she steals from the school car wash, and she strangely comes up with the idea to rub poison ivy on another teacher’s apple. And this is extreme stuff for us American audiences. For all the gross-out humor of Bridesmaids, we still don’t like to see our lady protagonists getting ethically nasty. I think of what the Brit version of Bad Teacher would be and get simultaneously high, and a case of the hives. It would be rough. A funny, wickeder version of Notes on a Scandal.
At it’s best, Bad Teacher is a takedown of the Teach for America squeak and bounce, with a healthy knock to the mishmash of generic hoopla we expect of the “nurturing” professions. At one point, Diaz’s Craigslist roommate comes home to find her eating a corn dog. “I thought you were going out with all the other nurses,” he says. “I’m not a nurse,” she says. “I thought you were a nurse.” More of this, please.
The trope of Diaz not nurturing her students ultimately becomes stale. She beats them, she smokes up in the school parking lot, and that was fun, but I was hoping for darker. I was hoping this would lean more towards Bad Santa, if we were going to be badding up at all. This might also be because I have been stuffing my eyeballs with Nighty Night lately, which has perhaps fucked up my expectation of what bad truly is. This is also the first movie I have seen with an extended dryhumping scene.
Two key markers are becoming standby shorthand for a lady movie where the ladies are “real people.” The first is that she has to eat something with a high caloric content without glamour or lust. She has to eat in the way that people do when they are alone. Think Annie and her cupcake in Bridesmaids. In Bad Teacher, Diaz and her cheeseburger get some strange scene time as she drives to seduce a school district wonk. Is it narratively important that she eats a cheeseburger on her mild drive? No. Is it funny to watch a fit Diaz eat a cheeseburger? If you think eating cheeseburgers are funny. It was a strange way to spend 4 seconds, but it was so memorable. The earlier mentioned corn dog had a similar effect. I can’t tell if it’s because we’re unused to seeing women blandly eat without it being a large statement (she’s healthy cuz she eats! Cute because she doesn’t hide her appetite!) or so typical (woman laughing alone with salad). Women are either supposed to have orgasms when they eat cupcakes, or cry in the bathroom about it. Here, they just eat, and, you know, drive.
No orgasms, either. The other marker is the very bad sex scene, usually one that is good for the guy and atrocious for the gal. Again, anything with Annie and John Hamm in Bridesmaids, and Justin Timberlake’s dedicated dryhumpery here. The joke usually lands on the stupid, offensive, completely selfish things the men say during sex, while the women are slightly winking at the audience as they contort and romp. They’re with us, telepathing “this guy is a real piece of work,” as they wait for him to finally come. Both scenes are used to announce that the dude is not part of the happy ending for our protagonists. Neither woman tells off the dude or quits the very bad sex even though he is not listening to her, or worse, tells her to stop talking. The good news is the audience aligns with the woman’s experience in the exchange, even if it assumes that putting up with mid-coitus bullshit is normsville. By making fun of the man’s blindness to his partner, we all actually see and listen to the lady character’s experience.
As a tangent, can you imagine this same dynamic for a great sex scene? In both these movies, the good sex is skipped over, either as a fade out or as an untold part of the story. This might be more because bad sex is easy to define, while good sex is ridiculously specific, especially for women, and thus harder to write. In Forgetting Sarah Marshall, where the bad sex was all very funny and very much from a male POV (the woman who kept saying ‘Hi,’ etc.) but the good sex was downright cliche’ (looking into each other’s eyes, meaning).
The idea of seeing a good sex scene between Diaz and Jason Segel, her other love interest, is a little bit iffy. How do you keep us aligned in the woman’s experience without making it an over the top ode to a woman’s pleasure? And bad sex keeps the story focused on the protagonist, whereas good sex realigns the audience with the couple. And, the nitty gritty of bad sex is funny. The grit of good sex, is just, well, blushy. We already assume women are blushy. In these movies where the lady protagonists are trying to claim all three dimensions they have to disregard and work against the already well-mapped soft spots of traditional femininity. Thus, the dryhumping.
As for Bad Teacher, it’s a mildly good excuse to sit in the dark. One thing it does well is skew dialogue into natural conversation. Characters often say the obvious thing, but in a real and unpackaged way. When Diaz gives helpful dating advice that leads to two men hitting on her sidekick (Phyllis from the Office), Segal says “Wow, that worked superfast.” It could be flat, but it twists enough that when he says it, it lands as a real sentence in the world. Also, Segel and Diaz seem to have a real chemistry, and while the plot gets stupid, and there are lots of loose ends, it doesn’t become a carnival like Spring Breakdown. I think that means we might be getting somewhere.
Yours,
CF
June 27, 2011 1 Comment
Dear Millicent,
On Mad Men, Don Draper famously defines “nostalgia” as a wound that won’t heal. Our generation has always been a sucker for nostalgia–remember the round of early emails in the late 90s that went “you are a child of the 80s if…” and then had a precise list of gutswinging generalities that made us all feel so defined and packish. We were. We had our things that others older and younger could not relate to in the same way we could (and tellingly, most of them are about consumption–apparently, you are a child of the 80s if you were middle class, suburban, and white). We were 17, and already mourning the golden times. We very much like the look and feel of that light.
We like it so much that it fills huge swathes of our mainstream comedy. With shows like The Family Guy, Community, and a billion mashups of things we loved layered with signs of how far we’ve come (GI Joe remixes are a good example of this), it is almost an old trick now. Reference a specific beloved moment of generational consciousness, and create a passionate, writerly moment. I did this in an earlier post, referencing Whitley and Dwayne’s wedding on A Different World. I wrote it because I felt like that scene was specifically mine in some way, and therefore, specifically everybody’s. I assumed the giddy feeling, the imprint of that moment, would be like blogging glitterdust, an easy sequin, welcome in any post. And I’m not saying it wasn’t. I still love watching that clip, and talking to anybody else who has strong feelings about Dwayne and Whitley (just saying her name makes me happy, Whitley….). I did the same thing in my high school graduation speech, where I think I made 18 references to shared cultural moments, spanning from The Breakfast Club to ending with a bad joke about Saved By the Bell. It was instant speech gold, an easy in. Relatability, and connection with a hint of that great teenage battle of us vs. them.
And this kind of nostalgia does a very neat thing: when recognized, it makes the audience feel savvy and included. It creates the sense of privilege, even though the design is based on mass recognition. I would like to know if this particular flavor of nostalgia is generational singularly or eternally. In the short view, it’s obvious that the baby boomers enjoy a similar bedazzlement with themselves, but I’m guessing their congratulatory reverie started later in life. Not as teenagers, but as ex-hippies landing in suburban houses. I never saw my grandparents in this particular trend, but wonder if that is because, ultimately, television wasn’t ready and aimed at their generation. They got the early programs of the 1950s when they were already fully launched adults. The media wasn’t trying to pluck them in the same soft spot. They had no The Wonder Years to make them ache for whatever the equivalent of aluminum cups was in the 1920’s.
The current trend of nostalgia, the one we’ve carried out of the 80s, is less warm and fuzzy, and more a blitz of television references. And it is a ferocious form of self-love, also showing that we’ve been involved in the presentation of personal narratives long before Facebook and Twitter. I also think there is a tinge of sadness in all of the riffs on Mr. Belvedere and She-Ra, a tiny accusation to the baby boomers for all the latchkeys, and all those precious hours in front of the TV. We are proud of ourselves for all of it, and the it is the difficult part to really accept. These pounds of generation specific references are so swaddled in middle-class struggles of ennui and wealth, along with premature crowing, that it’s tiring. It seems communal, but it’s really a grand narcissism. We could gaze at our pasts forever (not the heavy parts where you fell in love or saw your dad cry, but jam shorts). It’s TGIF on ABC forever.
And I could do it. I will do it. I will watch Blossom. I will feel very strongly about the Anne of Green Gables editions that had the good covers, and will tell you stories about selling enough wrapping paper to win the tiny portable TV. And that is the problem with this kind of nostalgia–it feels so good. But it’s an indulgence.
This isn’t the kind of nostalgia that Willa Cather whips up in My Antonia just by writing about the smell of lilacs on a summer night. That kind of nostalgia is a wound, and a gift to the reader. Our nostalgia-lite is more of a massage, a jab and lift, a quick route to that special kind of familiarity the internet lives on.
And I won’t be stopping my own reliance on the crutch. It’s too deep in the language. I talk in old television the way that kids born in 2000 will perhaps talk in old internet memes. What it must have been like to talk in words.
Yours,
CF
June 23, 2011 Leave a comment
Dear Millicent,
There’s more Vivian Maier to look at, this time a smart collection of self-portraits, and it’s all wonderful. What’s better than a woman’s angular shadow looming on a lawn of grass? I’m a sucker for it. I want a movie, with Emma Thompson starring.
Yours,
CF
[Via Kottke]
Carla Fran
millicent
Millicent and Carla Fran 
