Greetings, friends. I am in Canada. It is cold and snowing and the cable is similar but different and it’s a nice place minus the weather.
Now, you don’t even need a hit to have a moment of wonder.
Perhaps you remember Jeremy Meeks, the handsome felon turned Internet sensation.
Last June, the photograph of the 30-year-old “mug shot hottie” ricocheted around the web, from the Facebook page of the police department in Stockton, Calif., to a Twitter hashtag #FelonCrushFriday to, soon after, stories on “The Colbert Report” and “Good Morning America.” Mr. Meeks signed with an agent who was quoted in The Daily News saying that he could earn up to $100,000 a month for modeling and other gigs.
So where is Mr. Meeks today? He remains incarcerated. That agent, Gina Rodriguez, no longer represents him. And the Twittering class has moved on.
TINY WHISK NECKLACE OMG
It’s about time godly people started acting godly.
At Bitch Flicks, Ren Jender reviews Mommy.
The misunderstood, screwed-up manboy/hero is such a persistent trope in films that audiences are often tricked into empathizing with characters whose actions are more deserving of our scorn. At the end of Blue Valentine, when Ryan Gosling’s character separates from his wife, the Michelle Williams character, and leaves the daughter they’ve raised together, I heard someone nearby say aloud, “Poor guy.” But Gosling had, just a scene before, shown up drunk at Williams’ workplace to terrorize and humiliate her (and ends up assaulting her boss, which results in her losing her job). The director and co-writer, Derek Cianfrance, could barely manage to see these actions from the point of view of Williams’ character: the one with whom our empathy would more naturally lie.
I went into Mommy, the magnificent, new film from out, gay, Québécois prodigy Xavier Dolan (he’s 25 and this feature is the fifth he’s written and directed) knowing that Anne Dorval, who plays the title character, was being touted in some awards circles as a possible nominee for “Best Actress” (she’s flawless in this role, certainly better than the other Best Actress nominees I’ve seen)–as opposed to “Best Supporting Actress.” But this film (which won the Jury Prize at Cannes) kept surpassing my expectations by keeping its focus on her and not the one who would be the main character of any other film: her at turns charismatic, obnoxious and violent 15-year-old, blonde son, Steve (an incredible Antoine-Olivier Pilon).
Self improvement for better sex. Yes, yes, yes.
Since the dawn of time—or at the very least, since the early days of Cosmopolitan—we’ve been preoccupied with the question of whether we’re good in bed. There’s no shortage of surgical or pharmaceutical options available to make us harder, better, faster, and stronger. More recently, we’ve even started using sex-tracking apps, so we can record every thrust and whimper between the sheets.
But all of these hacks we employ to improve our sex lives have the disadvantage of being relatively impermanent. No matter how many pills we pop, sex toys we buy, or Tantra workshops we take, there’s no way for us to permanently hack our own bodies to become the sleek, ultra-libidinous pleasure machines some of us so desperately want to be.
Rich Lee, a 32-year-old salesman from St. George, Utah, thinks he’s found the solution to this problem. He calls it the Lovetron9000, and it’s an implant embedded underneath the male pubic bone that causes the penis to vibrate. His goal, he told me during a phone conversation a few weeks ago, is to “turn your boyfriend into a vibrator.”
OUCH.
On the gentrification of racial humor.
I love making fun of white people. I do it every day. It garners laughs, which, as a humorist, is what I want most in this world. (The thing I want second most? For white people to stop trying to pass off casseroles as real food.)
But as a black woman, there’s also another, more elemental reason for telling jokes at white people’s expense. The reason is not that I hate white people (some of my best friends are white!) but that this sort of racialized humor is an instrument that people of color can use to placate themselves in the face of the overwhelming reality: It’s just better to be Caucasian. By making fun of white people, people of color can, in a small way, push back against stereotypes, opposing racial humor by inverting it.
Amazing library vault.
Adam Serwer and Katie Baker took a look at the man behind the men’s rights movement.
The first time Bonnie met her father, Paul Elam, he cried like a baby. It was a summer day in 2005, nearly 25 years after Elam relinquished his parental rights in court and refused to pay child support for Bonnie, whose name has been changed, and her younger brother. Bonnie and Elam felt awkward at first as they smiled through their tears across a restaurant table, marveling at how much they looked alike. Elam told Bonnie that he was sorry he had failed her and that he wanted to develop a relationship.
The last time Bonnie saw Elam was in 2011, after Elam spanked her son for opening a refrigerator door. In the years between, Elam struggled to be a good father to Bonnie and a good grandfather to her sons, and Bonnie and Elam eventually became strangers to each other once more. But Elam did become a father figure of sorts to scores of men who feel disenfranchised from what they see as an increasingly feminized society. They call themselves men’s rights activists. Over the past few years, Elam has established himself as their most vocal and controversial leader.
Denver is getting a new drive-in movie theatre!
Did you know that snow farms were a thing? Now you do.
Sports Illustrated would like cookies for featuring a “plus-sized” model. ROLL YOUR EYES WITH ME.
Alas, Google Glass.
Michelle Tea had a baby.
Readers of Blog, I’ve done it again — after begging you all to come prancing through my pregnancy attempts with me, dragging you through my miscarriage, clinging to you through my pickle-guzzling first trimester and then — poof! — I put on the vanishing cream and was gone.
I’m sorry to anyone who felt abandoned. Basically, being pregnant was totally exhausting, and I spent my entire second trimester doing something I never do — napping. Napping makes me feel like I stayed up all night on speed and my life is falling apart. Why else would a person need to sleep during the day? It’s a sign of depression, or being a resident of Portland.
Malcolm Burnley writes about his biracial life.
It’s 1:30 a.m. on a Saturday night at the barren 24-hour Melrose Diner in South Philly. I’m there alone. The hostess is hawkeyed at the cash register, as if I’m going to steal her silverware. She eventually moseys up to my booth. “Do you have a tan, or is that your natural skin color?” she asks. Natural, I tell her. “What are you?” I give her three guesses. “Hawaiian?” Nope. “Samoan?” Getting colder. At this point, a nearby server who’s been eavesdropping on the conversation decides to join in. “Puerto Rican,” he says. Wrong. “Dominican.” Wrong again. Then, five minutes after I’ve told them my ethnicity, a third member of the waitstaff comes up to me. “Hey, I like your skin color — what are you?”
This one time, a critic reviewed a movie she hasn’t seen.
DELICIOUS BIG BABY NOM NOM NOK
Tags: it’s monday I guess, link roundup, the internet
My favorite thing to come out of the whole Paul Elam/MRA thing was that Elam’s “awakening” came at age 13 when his mother made him take diarrhea medicine. Ken Jennings (yep, the dude from Jeopardy!) tweeted “so the red pill is Immodium” and I absolutely LOST. IT.
Also, this line from the big baby article: Avery’s father, Allen Denton, told the newspaper: “I got a linebacker now instead of a fullback.”
Ken Jennings is so snarky. I love that guy.
Between Ken Jennings and Arthur Chu, I feel like Jeopardy! is the kind of place that breeds amazing people.
I loved the juxtaposition of that story with the story about 8 paragraphs later where the BF report confronts him on the way he treated his first wife and he’s all “How fucking DARE you bring up my relationship from 20, 30 years ago??”
okay bruh
But don’t you see? His own mother betrayed him, and that kind of hurt never goes away. His mother forced him to take his medicine, and psychically forced his father to hit him, and she probably never even really loved him, therefore all women are monsters who try to force you to do horrible things like take medicine.
at least SEE Jupiter Ascending before you write stupid things about it. (You won’t be able to write stupid things about it after seeing it because you will be dazzled.)
Is Eddie Redmayne as glorious in it as he is in the trailers? I’m hoping to see it sometime in the next couple weeks and he is 98% of the reason why I want to see this film so badly.
he is even MORE glorious! if you are going to see it just for him, you absolutely will not be disappointed.
YES. There should have been more of him but what we do get is exactly what you want.
I saw it this weekend and will brook no detractors. Official Blazes stance: if you don’t understand the appeal of this movie the you don’t understand ME.
If Ashley Graham’s shoot had been by SI and featured in its regular spread, I could see this being a big deal, but, guys, IT’S AN AD. SI took that company’s money just like anyone else’s. I don’t really see it as super revolutionary that an ad got made. That company thought Ashley Graham was the best person to represent its product and they did a shoot and bought space in the swimsuit issue and put together an ad for that space. SI deserves not one single kudo for this.
But…but…”curves are in!”
Apparently the issue does include a “plus-size” model named Robyn Lawley in the swimsuit spread (who is a size 12). For some reason the news about Ashley Graham came out first and the announcement about Robyn Lawley came out a few hours later, so it got a bit buried. Yay for progress I guess?
I know this is not an open thread, but aaaaaaaugh JUPITER ASCENDING! I saw this movie, and now I never want to see another movie ever agaaaaiiiiinnnn!!!!!
I am going to just spoiler the hell out of this amazing tower of excellence in the replies here GET READY.
Me and my friend turned to each other as the credits rolled and said at the same time, “If Channing Tatum were your boyfriend, he would call you Your Majesty all the time.”
I also applauded everytime Eddie Redmayne delivered a line.
Also, bees can’t lie.
THINGS ABOUT JUPITER ASCENDING THAT ARE PERFECT AND AMAZING
Eddie Redmayne whispers like a cut-rate Voldemort for the entire movie, except for the times when he explodes in high camp melodramatic screaming.
Channing Tatum is a half-wolfman, half bionic-space-eagle who has rocket-powered rollerblades and a gun that fucking barks. (BECAUSE HE IS A HALF WOLFMAN)
Mila Kunis’ extended Russian family that seems like someone was at least 1% interested in what the immigrant experience in America was like.
Extended rocket-boots versus invisible fighter plane dogfight throughout the skyline of Chicago where everything gets wrecked.
Mila Kunis treating Channing Tatum’s injury with a maxi-pad.
Sean Bean is a man with the genetics of a bee so that he has the loyalty of bees. At one point, he musters up every ounce of working-class Yorkshireman gravitas to deliver a monologue on the virtues of bees.
(In the background of his house, which is covered with bees, there are jugs and jugs of honey, which I assume he can get drunk on, and in the five-hour directors’ cut [WHICH I KNOW MUST EXIST AND I WILL BUY, WACHOWSKIS] I must believe that he gets drunk on honey and his bee monologue goes on for thirty minutes.)
Extended five-minute interlude into a pitch-perfect Terry Gilliam homage that ends with actual Terry Gilliam.
Consistently eroticizes male nudity but de-eroticizes female nudity.
Space alien humans who believe that “genetic recurrences” are basically reincarnation, and so they include their future selves in their own wills.
One of the villains has a spaceship adorned with gold statues on the outside, and whose hangar bay is lit by crystal chandeliers.
Sean Bean and Channing Tatum flying winged robot battle armor through ten million geometry space-mines to stop a space-wedding in which an evil aristocrat tries to marry the reincarnation of his dead mother.
Oedipal space-wedding is attended solely by an audience of robots.
Nikki Amuka-Bird as a Captain of the Space Police.
Gugu Mbatha-Raw as a sexy deer-lady.
Channing Tatum uses rocket boots to karate flip kick a dragon man on a secret refinery on Jupiter.
The refinery looks like Notre Dame cathedral if it were also a city and a mountain; the dome that protects it has vaulted ceilings.
Eddie Redmayne has a gigantic room in his palace that has nothing at all in it except columns and one floating hover bench at the far end, that he can sit in and watch the refining. The floor can turn invisible so that he can look into his torture chambers.
Eddie Redmayne’s uptight villainous kid-Voldemort is COMPLETELY INEFFECTIVE when it comes to actually physically fighting with anyone.
Despite everything she has seen and been through, Mila Kunis refuses to kill anyone, not even Eddie Redmayne.
When given the choice between saving her family and preventing earth from being harvested (i.e., everyone gets killed and turned into bathwater for vampire space-Bathorys), Mila Kunis is straight up ready to let her family die.
Ruthlessly anti-capitalist Marxist parable that includes genocidal space-vampire capital class and the working classes being LITERALLY DEHUMANIZED by getting spliced with animal DNA so that they can perform their jobs more effectively,
The movie is basically the same plot as an old-fashioned Regency Romance.
Mila Kunis straight up wanting to jump Channing Tatum from minute one, actually trying to seduce him and all but saying, “I want to bone you.”
Eddie Redmayne’s bare-chested space gown with giant arm sleeves that makes him look like a fucking BAT!
I am sorry to have made all of these replies, instead of one gigantic list! But it looks like Intense Debate won’t let me do a comment if it’s too long, or I guess maybe if it has too many paragraph breaks? I’m not sure, because the error window is blank when I try to do it, but definitely breaking up the list allows me to submit.
Friends I am doing my best to be courteous about everyone’s needs regarding the conversational space! I am just super excited about this movie WHICH IS THE BEST MOVIE.
This sounds like the best of all possible outcomes in the best of all possible movie worlds
After reading all this I feel like I need this movie in my life right now. It sounds like just the right amount of crazy and Eddie Redmayne.
oh my GOD why did I sleep all day yesterday instead of seeing this movie as many times as humanly possible
The only thing I am mad about is the fact that I am not watching this movie right now. Everything you are saying makes me want to see it so badly!
YOU HAVE CONVINCED ME.
yes agreed this movie was so great!
Also Sean Bean’s HEXAGONAL irises bc obviously random tiny details are important and also BEES EVERYWHERE
I wish I could have been a costume designer for this movie. I love (almost) everything about it, not least the nutso clothes and Eddie Redmayne.
And re: Eddie Redmayne:
From HuffPost: “Ah, Eddie Redmayne. Let’s pause here to say if he were to win his possible future Oscar for “Jupiter Ascending” instead of “The Theory of Everything,” it would be deserved.”
TRUE.
He won the BAFTA last night and I choose to believe it was for Jupiter Ascending.
Translation via MrChouffe: “In t’background of ‘is ‘ouse, which is covered wi’ bees, thas jugs ‘n’v ‘oney, which that’ assumes hi gets pissed on.”
Just Sean Bean staggering around with a jug of honey, all, “…an’…an’ you know what ELSH beesh don’t do? They don’t…they don’t say they’re going to the pub and then when you finally get they’re they’ve left and so you’ve no one to talk to but it’s like…twenty…twenty minutes to the pub and so you don’ wanna turn back around becaush of…the. The thing is bees. Bees are better than people. Bees are better than SOME FUCKING PEOPLE.”
[Glares at Channing Tatum, chugs honey straight from the jug.]
He’s covered in beeeeeeeeeeeees!
Mead!
if he can’t get drunk on the honey itself, he certainly has plenty of raw material for massive quantities of mead
“Mila Kunis treating Channing Tatum’s injury with a maxi-pad. ”
STICKY SIDE DOWN D:
you got to stick it on somehow
The only part I didn’t like
Channing Tatum fights a dragon inside Jupiter’s red spot while a factory collapses around them
Mila Kunis’ character loves dogs
Has always loved dogs.
Sean Bean’s character is named “Stinger Apini” (Apini is the tribe of bees that includes only honeybees)
The elephant helmsman who trumpets his wee snout when the ship is in danger.
The scheming underling is named “Chicanery Night.”
“Tatum had to wear a [prosthetic goatee] to change the shape of his lower jaw, which prevented him from closing his mouth and gave him trouble when he had to talk.”
The elephant helmsman is named “Nesh,” which I assume is short of Ganesh, BECAUSE OF COURSE IT IS!
The Space Police are competent and reasonable and not corrupt!
Kalique: Feel my skin.
Jup’: Oh, wow.
Actually all of the dialogue, pretty much all the time. Especially that first scene of the Abrasax siblings, wow.
Cyberpunk bounty hunters, including a guy with a goatee made out of feathers!
My husband had the audacity to compare the elephant helmsman to Jar Jar Binks.
I have been unable to shut up about it all weekend. At one point last night I told my husband, “Listen, I promise I won’t read you any more excerpts from Jupiter Ascending reviews for like at least the next hour, but first I need to read you this one.” Here are my basic opinions:
1. This is everything the Star Wars prequels should have been: movies in which the dialogue is hokey, the plot makes no sense if you think about it too hard and hinges on some details about space inheritance law or tariffs or whatever that no one but the writer cares about, but everything is SO GORGEOUS and SO MUCH FUN and SO WILLING TO NOT TAKE ITSELF SERIOUSLY that nobody minds.
2. I just read your full blog post and oh shit you are absolutely right, there SHOULD have been a sword duel in there somewhere and I’m a little disappointed that there wasn’t.
3. This is FANFIC: THE MOVIE and I am elated. I love everything about it. Almost everyone I know who’s seen it and liked it is a woman; I don’t know how significant that is, it’s obviously a small sample size, but I think you’re onto something re. female gaziness of this movie.
4. I am like 90% sure this movie was based on someone’s Numenera campaign. I hope I’m not the only person who has played Numenera in this thread so someone can agree with me about this.
I went to see it with a male friend, but he’s gay, so I don’t know really what that means other than that we both appreciated Channing Tatum’s long shirtless period.
A thing that I think is super-fascinating, and that I hope someone at some point writes about, is this idea about Jupiter Ascending as a sort of Tumblr-centric movie. Someone pointed that out to me, “This movie was basically written for Tumblr”, which is very much the same as “Fanfic, the movie,” and also someone else has pointed out that the audience is sort of split with women really liking it and men being confused by it (though I am myself a man, and other men I know also like it — possibly because of my aggressively contagious enthusiasm for it, I have also perceived this schism).
I think this is also related to descriptions of it as “garbage”, “trashy”, or people acting like they feel “guilty” for liking it.
The thing is, Fanfic and Tumblr aren’t, like, alien attitudes towards story or something. Tumblr and fanfic are just these avenues of story where people (often women) are able to make the stories that they want when they’re being excluded from control over mainstream storytelling, and all of the marginalizations of stories like this are a part of the broader marginalization of sort of…well, I won’t say “feminist” exactly, but I think feminine stories might be accurate.
This is a Space Opera Romance Novel, as opposed to a Space Opera Action Movie, and it’s just confusing the hell out of people — like, they can’t understand how Jupiter can be a character who does things and makes decisions but also just is not good at fighting at all and never becomes good at fighting, they don’t see any appeal in the explicit and impicit feminization of Channing Tatum’s avatar of masculinity (i.e, his quest for companionship, accepting his feelings, that part where she treats his wound with a maxi pad), the fact that the movie isn’t about her destiny to destroy the space empire or kill the space dragon or something but instead embraces traditionally “feminine” virtues like humility, family, and home.
A lot of critics, and guys especially!, just don’t get what to do with it.
I had a dude talking to me about “why was there even a part with a space marriage”, and are you KIDDING? This is a princess movie! How can you have a princess movie without an unwanted marriage proposal from a skeevy unscrupulous relative? Except something like that looks weirdly out of place to eyes that are conditioned to see this sort of aggressively masculized action plot of Get the Thing and Destroy the Other Thing and Kill the Guy.
Anyway, I refuse to accept the idea that this movie is trashy, in the same way that I refuse to accept that fanfic and tumblr and romance novels are trashy, because that is part of a cultural atittude designed to marignalize certain kinds of stories, and by extension, certain attitudes, mores, and values.
I saw something (on Tumblr, of course!), that, to paraphrase was someone asking “Is this what straight, white dudes feel like all the time? Like, someone took all their childhood fantasies and wants and desires and threw $100 million at them and made a movie out of them?”
Which is so true! This movies seems to tap into those fantasy/princess/adventure stories that girls tell themselves and it hit me SO HARD and I just love it so much.
Yeah and you know the thing is that cultural quirk of privilege is that things that are targeted directly to women or people with queer identities or people of color are “pandering to a demographic”, but things that are targeted directly to my straight cis white guy fantasies are “movies”.
YES. like, look at the Transformer movies! they make less sense than Jupiter Ascending, they’re based off toys, the movies are basically two hours each of things exploding (which I like! don’t get me wrong!) – but they’re considered to be big, blockbuster summer movies.
also I have to say I read your blog post about the movie and agree 10000% with everything you said.
yes!!! This is what made me want to see this movie, when I have not wanted to see any movie for years…
Hah. This actually nicely explains the why the two dudes near me in the theatre were confused by the focus on the romance. I did not love the movie as much as some Toasties obviously did, but that seemed like a really strange criticism to me.
It wouldn’t let me like this comment twice. But please know I tried.
The space marriage was practically lifted straight out of The Princess Bride. It was all I could think about during that scene
I mean, yes, but the scene in the Princess Bride is also a sort of distillation of many traditional compulsory marriages in romance literature. Anyway, I don’t know, if you’re going to steal, steal from the best!
(Though the evocation of The Princess Bride did make me feel even more sorely the absence of a good swordfight)
Also it has the BEST WEDDING STYLING. I had always been baffled by the Say Yes to the Dress “I’ve always pictured my wedding as…” kind of thing, but now I 100% want to have that wedding, with everyone having to wear the hairstyles that she sims had as well.
Sidebar: I’ve just realized that all of my favorite places on the internet are places where I get surprised when people “out” themselves as men, because I assume all commenters are female until proven otherwise.
I mean, I still support and affirm you and stuff.
It’s great, right? Also, unless otherwise specified, I assume any commenter on the Toast is a librarian.
This is a really interesting perspective that wouldn’t have occurred to me, thanks. It’s easy to forget that representation and values in art go beyond just the text itself.
My opinion was that making Jup the protagonist was an important step, but almost completely undermined by pretty much everything that actually happened in the movie. The prologue sets her up to be an aspiring astronomer, at least, and probably also the heir to some pretty serious brain power. Her dad is this great astronomer, her mom was a lit professor (or something, idr exactly), she has all these science posters in her room, she is willing to make pretty big sacrifices for this telescope. I inferred she had some use for it beyond sentimental value?
Then she gets to space and finds out there’s this advanced civilization that knows the answers to like everything she was ever curious about . . . and asks them no questions, shows no curiosity, not even a passing interest in BEING IN SPACE OR INSIDE THE PLANET JUPITER. But it’s not just an omission; the script goes out of its way to belittle her intelligence at least twice:
Jupiter Jones: Are those flying boots?
Caine: They harness the force of gravity, redirecting it into differential equation slopes so you can surf.
Jupiter Jones: Yeah, I heard “gravity” and “surf”.
Which is like the laziest technobabble and the bluntest “dumb blonde” joke combined into one line of dialogue. Then there’s the time she couldn’t get that door open – totally understandable, but why was it in the script? The one time she looks really smart, quoting that bit of law at Titus, feels totally anomalous.
So the problem isn’t that Jupiter, as a woman, gets to champion traditionally feminine values like romance and family. It’s that she does those things seemingly at the expense of all the other things she could have and apparently wanted to do? She never even gets to use her neat superpower again, for violence or fun or to help clean toilets. Also, I can’t really excuse her letting her family continue to live in poverty when she owns the whole planet. Having that power and not exercising it because you miss the way things used to be isn’t “being a decent person.”
Not to mention, of course, that Channing Tatum rescues her not once or twice but something like 20 times throughout the film, sometimes up to five times in a single action sequence (it’s apparently the only piece of choreography they could think of).
I know it’s not reasonable to expect trans people to make more socially conscious art than everybody else, that’s fucked up, but I have to admit that I left the theater thinking “it’s odd that someone who had gone through the experience of transitioning more or less publicly could make a movie with gender politics on the level of Transformers 4.”
I’m not sure I totally agree with it (I really think the marginalized viewpoints and value systems of the fan-fic/tumblr crowd can and deserve to also be represented by movies that aren’t gibberish) but your argument definitely reframes the movie pretty substantially for me. The feminine v feminist distinction is smart and apt, in general if not 100% for this movie. Audiences and audience perceptions are complicated and I guess sometimes it’s okay for things to be largely problematic if they’re played/read the right way?
Making Jupiter the protagonist is enough to take her from sexual object to subject, and it is pretty neat that a female action movie protag doesn’t have to become a stone cold ice warrior to survive in this male-dominated field, to make her life about violence and triumph to have some agency in the story. Or even just that JA gets credit for trying to be a scifi action movie that is targeted to women. But it still feels a bit too much like the same old (for boys) story, even if it is told from a different point of view and in a different artistic tradition. Making a damsel-in-distress character the protagonist doesn’t automatically make her a strong character.
Sorry for the long post. TL;DR you’re smart and thanks but maybe too eager to forgive glaring regressive tropes?
Maybe I am, who knows!
But on the one hand, I didn’t read not being able to open the door as undermining her intelligence. It is a weird door with no visible handle! I am a pretty smart guy, and I feel like I would be baffled if I encountered any one of a number of doors that I have seen in science fiction settings, so, disagree that that was anything besides a good joke. Similarly, getting space-rescued is actually only undermining her as a character if we’re meant to understand her character as being some kind of action hero; she is a regular person, and she’s supposed to be a regular person. In times of conflict, I think it’s okay for her to rely on her wolf-eagle-man, because the story isn’t trying to make her a strong character by making her physically strong or adept.
Does it rely on this too much? Yes, probably. Especially the fact that almost every time she’s in peril it’s from falling. But on the other hand, if you’re trying to recenter the narrative away from “action fighting”, I don’t personally have a problem with it. Jupiter is here to make serious moral decisions; the action stuff is just to keep the proceedings lively, it’s not really important.
Also, if I recall correctly, the boyfriend in Transformers 4 has an actual laminated document authenticating his right to have sex with this girlfriend, which he has to show her father. So, even if there are regressive gender tropes here, it’s still an order of magnitude better than a Michael Bay movie.
The question of her using her wealth to get her family out of poverty is an interesting one, but also a terrible one, since all of her wealth comes literally directly form murder. I think it’s one thing to say, “Well, I can take this ten thousand dollars and give my family a new start,” but I think it’s something else to say that “I can give my family a new start, but only if I kill one thousand people do it.” In that case, letting your family live in poverty actually WOULD be the decent thing to do. I think this is what makes it so clearly anti-capitalist, thematically — she’s not just rejecting the individual space-princess privilege that’s being offered to her, but the entire system of genocide and murder that supports it.
(I wrote about this elsewhere, and i don’t want to get too talkative about it because it’s not really my place to make arugments like this, but the fact of Lana Wachowski’s relatively public transition I think is supremely interesting when it comes to this movie: Jupiter essentially wins the genetic jackpot, is faced with a set of privileges and expectations as a consequence, sees this as being ruthlessly exploitative and monstrous, and then rejects that system in its entirety. Well, interesting, I think.)
My problem with the door thing and the rescuings isn’t that they aren’t plausible or that if Jup were ‘strong’ she could take care of herself or whatever, it’s that the decision to include them and lean on the latter so heavily throughout the movie is a deliberate choice. As a romance movie, I guess it’s because getting swept up in Channing Tatum’s arms is presumed to be a romantic moment, I guess – seems cheap but I’m not the target audience so it’s not my place to say. Anyway, including that scene so many times adds up to a pretty big endorsement of the damsel-in-distress narrative.
Doesn’t she inherit a bunch of money from the sale of long-dead strangers? It’s not like she would need to liquidate the Earth for cash or something. And plus what’s even the exchange rate of space currency for dollars, I bet a little bit would go an awful long way. All that’s beside the point: you can make justifications for her all you want, but what is missing is her acknowledging with these conflicts in the movie. And I guess this is just a matter of taste, but I found all the anti-capitalist stuff way too on-the-nose and overdone to merit credit.
That is an interesting angle re: Lana’s transition, but the way you’re wording it, at least, implies that she transitioned because she was rejecting male privilege?
Sorry, I feel like I’m just becoming a contrarian here and that’s not really my intention! The movie is a ton of fun despite/because of being (IMO) quite a bad movie in almost every way. I think these conversations are fun and interesting (and your perspective did give me a new read on something I was pretty convinced I had settled, which doesn’t happen a lot) but I don’t wanna make you feel attacked.
Oh, also! The thing about the gravity boots. So, I agree that this is a lazy construction that traditionally indicates a dumb blonde, but I think reconfigured from this feminine perspective, it’s important to remember how often women are placed in the position where they have to pretend to be stupid in order to not threaten men — to the point where for a lot of men it’s instinctive. So, in this case, this is for her a kind of charged scenario when she is trying to be safe, maybe she is dumbing herself down as an instinctive precautionary measure.
What I especially like about this is that it forces us to reframe every historical instance of the same line, going back to all these movies written from a dudely perspective, and wondering how often these damsels were maybe even subconsciously making themselves weaker and more vulnerable because of the social requirements around them.
I mean, that’s a thing, and it would be neat if the movie were going for that angle, but it isn’t and trying to apply it I think is a huuugely apologistic stretch, sorry. :S
Well, okay! I don’t actually care about that part very much, so.
I saw it with my boyfriend, who is a cis straight man and he very much enjoyed it.
I tried to explain this film to people at work, and there’s so much ridiculous shit in it that I literally forgot about the space dinosaurs. “Oh yeah, there were also space dinosaurs.” as an afterthought.
It’s not really a good film. The main character kind of doesn’t have a character ark (maybe it was “she becomes less naive”? “learns to appreciate her shitty life”? Or something? IDK), the plot isn’t really resolved (does the sister now own all the Aba-whatever planets now? WAS THIS A RUSE??), we never find out why Channing Tatum bit that guy’s throat out (was that the reason eddie redmayne talked so weird? It was him??), but whatever, who cares! Sparkles! Space werewolf! Someone publish the original script!
1. I maintain that the fact that the main character doesn’t have an arc is actually the best thing about it — that in many ways the point of the movie is that she encounters all of this crazy shit (and, importantly, is offered the expectations and privileges of incalculable wealth by becoming part of the space aristocracy) but remains a basically decent person, anyway. The whole point of it is her refusal to change; she ends up back where she started, nothing but wiser.
2. I also think the plot IS resolved, it’s just that the universe that it’s in is bigger than the plot; so, the question of whether or not earth is safe for now from getting vampire-harvested is settled. Yes, it is safe. But all the stuff about the sister and the brother and the billion other things going on in the universe aren’t resolved, that is true, but also who cares? Not every story in a universe has to solve the essential problem of the universe. Jupiter Jones does not end Vampire Space Capitalism, but I think that’s okay.
3. I think it must have been Eddie Redmayne that Channing Tatum bit, that’s why he whispers all the time and always wears weird collars and FURTHERMORE I think it must have been because Channing Tatum was in love with Jupiter’s previous incarnation, and he was trying to protect her from Eddie Redmayne but got caught up in the machinations of the aristocracy, and either this is information they’re saving for a sequel (which we will probably never see) or will be available in the five-hour director’s cut (which I will watch SO MUCH).
I suppose if space-sister comes after her, she has her own rocket boots to scoot away on now. And all space-sister has to do is wait for her to die (not so long, in the grand scheme of things!) and then she will presumably inherit and harvest earth anyway. :/ Along with all Eddie Redmayne’s planets and the other guy’s planets. :/ :/ :/
Maybe Jupiter will take night classes in ending space capitalism.
If there’s a 5 hour director’s cut, I am 100% there for it. It gives me life that they walked into a studio, described this film, and someone went “sure, $100 million, why not?”. WE CAN DO ANYTHING.
I kind of read the ending as her starting to learn about rocket boots and space-eagles so that she could start preparing for her upcoming attempts to end Vampire Space Capitalism. The war isn’t over, it’s just begun, etc, but also let’s end on a nice note of love and friendship instead of anger and indignation?
Obviously we’re never going to get the franchise I want out of this; maybe the Wachowskis will let me write a bunch of novels about it.
yes! At first I was like, “okay, well she’s not going to become Evil Space Royalty, but why does she still have to scrub toilets”? But then I realized it was kind of just a breather for her, to get over the whole Evil Space Royalty craziness and figure out what she actually wanted to do about owning Earth. She won’t scrub toilets forever, but it will make her a better Space Princess of Earth.
Right? There’s a way that scrubbing toilets and cleaning houses is actually a relief after all this shit.
“Another toilet? Well, at least I know how a toilet brush works, and there’s no flying dragon man trying to bite me in the face. Let me at it!”
“This is a problem I can solve, and then I can look at the clean toilet and know that I made it happen.”
maybe it’s saying that it doesn’t matter if you literally own the earth – toilets gotta be scrubbed, no one’s too good for that. (except, presumably the people who own the toilets. But Jupiter owns THEM. Or something, look, I tried, my AS level in film studies isn’t up to this.)
But by the space laws of inheritance, can’t Jupiter just give the Earth to her heirs in her will? Presumably it will be safe until one of her descendants decides to become a space vampire and liquidate the earth.
I guess she’d need to make a space will, probably at the space DMV. She should take night classes in space law.
Your point three is fucking brilliant. YES. Yes and now I need to see the movie again with that in mind.
Oh god. Splooshing for a directors’ cut. I want to know everything about space vampire capitalism and I want to know it today.
I wanted to see it but leery because I heard that Jupiter was this passive character who spends the entire movie standing around waiting for Channing Tatum to rescue her. (Okay, am I the only person on Earth who had never heard of him before this? His name keeps getting tossed around like it means something but I don’t know what it could be.) But you have convinced me with “Consistently eroticizes male nudity but de-eroticizes female nudity. “
I’m coming back to this thread 6 days later, now that I’ve seen the movie, to agree with everything you said, and to say that spoilers did not reduce the gloriousness of any of it even a tiny bit. “I love dogs! I’ve always loved dogs.”
Although between Channing Tatum and my unrequited yearning for the friend I went to go see the movie with, I’m having a bit of the vapors.
Thanks to everything you wrote about this movie (but especially the comment where you call it “Fanfic, the Movie”), I saw it on Valentine’s Day, and I’m here to thank you for making my VD awesome.
So I’m blogging about this movie’s excellence and linking to your whole comment thread here, plus lots of excerpts that I’ve also foisted on all of my friends the last few days, YOU’RE WELCOME, FRIENDS.
THANK YOU again. I want to see your review of every movie from now on.
Hooray!
I guess #remarkablyattractivewhitewomenwithaveragebmisinbikinis was just too long for an ad campaign.
This is a delightfully full roundup for this nasty Monday morning! So much good stuff!
Well, the article about Paul Elam makes me want to vomit, but you know.
It was barf-worthy, but I mostly just felt sorry for his ex-wife and daughter and all the ridiculous crap they put up with from him. Sorry, ladies, and good for you for cutting contact and moving on with your lives.
So, the Boston snow farm. I get that we can’t dump snow into the Charles because of “salt” and “trash” and the EPA, but I cannot see how running a “snow melter” is any better for the environment. It’s just generating massive amounts of heat pollution, we end up with salty, trash-filled water instead of snow, and the process of removing snow to the farm takes so long we can’t finish doing it for one blizzard before the next rolls around.
Sigh. I’m not an environmental scientist (maybe one can point out to me why this is actually a good idea) but this is my third snow day in as many weeks, which means the commute for the next three days will be double to triple what it usually is because of the clumsy snow removal, and I am a grump.
I am an environmental scientist by trade, and I had to look up “heat pollution” because I have never heard of it being a thing before. But apparently it is and I am now researching it.
Theoretically, melting the snow is better for the environment because it goes into the sewage system to be treated before it makes its way to the river. Having a snow melter at a dump site a mile out of town prevents the city from having to open another dump site 10 miles out of town, which reduces the amount of travel for all those giant trucks. Maybe reduced emissions compensate for the melter’s pollution?
I doubt there’s enough environmental benefit to the snow melter to actually factor into the decision to use it – like, budget/available snow storage space were bigger concerns, and the impact of running that thing might be marginal on top of running plows and salt trucks all day. The only benefit I can think of is what PierrePoutine said, managing the runoff rather than overwhelming the storm sewers and rivers with one big melt on the first warm day after this.
I worked in the Boston area the first decade of this century. There were snowstorms that paralyzed the city because there was nowhere to put the plowed snow. All empty lots were full of snow. All streets were lined with snow piles six feet tall. Then more snow fell. Nowhere to put the new snow. Nowhere to put the snow that would fall the next day. Searches for where to put the snow were followed closely by people stuck in their homes. My IT guy finally came to work after climbing out his bathroom window and snowshoeing to the office.
Yeah exactly — I think in a situation like this, it’s about going with the “least worst” option, and at least this way the melted snow goes through the sewage treatment process instead of as was mentioned above directly into surface water bodies.
Yes, “least worst”. Excellent phrase.
Roxaaaaaane welcome! I’m sorry about the snow. We don’t care for it either.
So, Jupiter Ascending–is it, in fact, as wonderful and glorious as everyone was hoping? A friend whose judgment I usually trust said that he got bored most of the way through it. Which crushed me, because although I don’t expect the movie to make any sort of logical sense, I expected it to be a ton of fun. I don’t want to pay for a movie ticket if it’s not going to be -fun- nonsense.
YES.
My 100% non-scientific polling is that women/girls love it, and guys are generally left confused.
Oh man. I had no plans to see this movie, but thanks to all of you, NOW I DO.
There is no way to tell what one person might or might not find boring, but this was my face the whole time:
It surpassed my expectations.
It’s like The Matrix, but with better costumes, more camp, less philosophy, more fun.
Most excellent. Thank you all.
it is a lot of fun. If you think about it too much, you will find all sorts of plot holes, but I left it feeling like it was a good use of my time and wanting to know more about the universe it was set in (to the extent that we were disappointed that it wasn’t based on a YA book or a graphic novel).
There are pretty costumes and OTT fights and campy dialogue and ridic intrigues and I would be willing to pay to see it in the theater again.
If they made a bunch of sequels exploring the universe and other planets, families, etc. I’d be super stoked.
Sorry, long response ahead:
I dunno, I might be in the minority (though apparently with the majority of critics…? reviews have been mixed) but I was disappointed. I was expecting space epic, and it was just… your standard action film constructed around a flimsy plot involving a minor family feud over property.
Now, that property happens to be the entire planet Earth, so big stakes from our perspective, but we’re left with the feeling none of it matters very much in the long run for the characters who live thousands of years and own hundreds of such planets.
And I also had a lot of questions about why these uber-powerful people were so concerned with legal technicalities about who owned what and who would inherit it, when… they have massive firepower? and the Abrasax primary (villain) had the best ships and stuff, so he could just take what he wanted from his siblings and no one could stop him? We’re shown that there’s a police force of sorts called the Aegis, but never told who empowers them (must be the home planet’s government which is mired down in bureaucracy and doesn’t seem all that effective) or how they can keep these ultra-rich, ultra-powerful Entitleds from just resorting to might-makes-right when they’re as weak and ineffectual as the movie portrays them. I just found the worldbuilding kind of lacking, I guess. If we’d seen more of this galactic society and gotten the sense that there were powerful forces who could bring the smackdown on the Abrasax heirs if they got out of hand, I would have taken their motivations for using marriage proposals/contracts/etc. for controlling Mila Kunis more seriously.
I also think the movie lacked a strong emotional core or any identifiable themes, which is what it would have taken to move it out of the standard-issue action flick bucket and into ~OMG EPIC!~ territory for me. But maybe the Wachowskis were trying to back away from big themes because they threw, like, 10 of them into Cloud Atlas and it went over poorly…
Anyway, your mileage may vary.
And that said, the visuals were GORGEOUS. I’d still say you should go just to enjoy the view.
I haven’t even finished reading the Brooklyn real estate article and my eyes are already exhausted from all the rolling they’re doing.
I keep waiting for it to get to the point, but I think it’s going to turn out like aravisthequeen says upthread: “rich people buy apartment”.
To be fair-ish, it’s a weekly column where they profile someone’s apartment search. They do have an annoying tendency to choose only the extremely privileged of course, but that’s why the article doesn’t have more of a point.
I would be very interested in reading that column if they chose someone who WASN’T wealthy– imagine the actual reporting they could do if they had to follow someone as they weighed their dumpy options with their long commute and the availability of childcare and the safety of the neighborhood.
Yeah, it would be much more interesting as a story, and more useful as an example of how real-estate shopping goes, if the people being profiled encountered obstacles other than “someone else bought the one we wanted.”
Yeah I feel like the NYT owes me for the 120 seconds of life I wasted reading that.
The fun is definitely in reading between the lines to figure out how these people are rich. They blog (“SpanishHipster” of course). There’s a consulting job of some sort. And an inheritance. I wish I didn’t have actual work to do this morning because I want to know MORE.
I mean, they don’t need to be actually rich for the numbers to work in this scenario. They bought a 1.5M dollar apartment. If we assume 20% down payment then their mortgage is somewhere between 5500 and 7500 depending on the rate they got. Even assuming they got a bad interest rate and are paying 7-ish a month, for their rent to only represent 30% of their take home, which is ideal but many people stretch and become house poor, they should make something like 252k a year after tax. That’s very well off but within reach of a consultant and some other “professional” job like an accountant or even a governmental employee in G11+ range, especially because they are in their 30s and likely have been working for 10ish years.
To take their range from 1M to 1.5M then the inheritance would have been somewhere around 100k.
It may not feel like it for some people but if you make $252,000/yr, you are actually rich. You may not be as rich as some people, but that is actually rich.
even in NYC this is true. Even in Manhattan, median income is 66k, and obviously quite a bit less in the other boroughs.
You’re right. I phrased what I was saying poorly. They are rich, but they are, from what I can tell from this article, go to work 5 days a week rich not rich forever and ever without working rich.
Two people working not incredibly high-powered jobs for 10 years can make that kind of money
I get what you’re saying! These real estate columns would be really fascinating if they actually did go into the financing, wouldn’t they? Of course, no one would probably want to participate, but it would give a much more interesting picture of the market.
yeah, i want numbers and lots of them.
His goal, he told me during a phone conversation a few weeks ago, is to “turn your boyfriend into a vibrator.”
But I already have a bunch of excellent vibrators, so what do I need a man for?
Sometimes you can get them to lift the heavy things. Not so much because you can’t, just because it’s nice not to.
This upcycling thing has gone too far!
We should be investing our resources in developing vibrators that can cook and clean instead!
To fetch your vibrators for you and clean them when you’re done!
I love drive-in movie theaters! The last time I went, we saw the Magic Mike/Ted double feature which was awesome because IDK about you guys, but I was not a huge fan of the dialogue in Magic Mike. So we just turned down the radio and watched Channing Tatum and made up our own words. It was pretty awesome.
I still often (and loudly, to mr roisindubh211’s no doubt delight) lament the fact that I saw Magic Mike not once, but twice. Not only did I hate it, it squicked me big time because Alex Pettyfer kind of looks like my brother (I hasten to add, my brother is a tall white guy with black hair and good cheekbones who just tends to look like people, including everyone who’s ever played Superman since Christopher Reeve. I spent Man of Steel muttering “put a shirt on, damnit”).
Edited to add that adding your own dialog in sounds like an excellent idea.
Whenever I see Paul Elam’s name, I take a millisecond to appreciate that the man’s name is Male, backwards. Is that a thing? Did he do that on purpose? Then I move on, because life’s too short.
OMG, that’s amazing.
ETA: Oh noooooo he lives in my city
A backwards name for a backwards male. Seems perfect.
I’m looking forward to seeing screen shots of deleted comments from men defending Elam.
*anticipatory cackling*
YES
Maybe we can do a reading at the NYC Galentine’s Day event. I will dress like a witch/Stevie just for that.
Is this a real event? Please tell me yes??
Oh it definitely is!! If you’re not part of the Coterie group on Facebook, find us and send the admin Marie a request. It’s a secret group full of sharing and witchiness and gatherings.
Sent from my iPhone.
“The misunderstood, screwed-up manboy/hero is such a persistent trope in films that audiences are often tricked into empathizing with characters whose actions are more deserving of our scorn.”
So I’m re-watching Friends since it’s up on Netflix and I just can’t get over Ross Geller. I mean, ok we all know he is THE WORST, and I have never liked him, but an entire nation full of people thought this guy was the romantic lead??? In Season 5 he gets absolutely terrifying, and we’re still supposed to believe Rachel has feelings for him? The only person in-universe who seems to realize how scary and unwell he seems is his boss, who forces him to go on a “sabbatical” to get his rage issues under control, but the writing makes it clear that the audience is supposed to find this outrageous and silly not a totally reasonable thing for a boss to do to someone who is clearly in crisis.
It’s such a shame, too, because I do love the friendships between the friends and Monica and Chandler are the best, but UGH ROSS.
Ross is unbearable. Possessive, jealous, immature. I can’t re watch the show because of this character.
He makes me sad to be a geologist.
Yeah also — the whole “Ross talks about science so is therefore boring” thing makes me annoyed. Like, THAT’S his flaw? How about his uncontrollable rage, or his pathological jealousy, or his homophobia??
The more I think about it, the more I think it’s just Hollywood not thinking that science can be anything other than nerdy or uninteresting. And then shit like the Big Bang Theory comes out and not only a) continues to equate science with something that “normal” people want no part of but b) also shits down on geology for not being a “real science” and ugh.
No wonder people are discouraged from STEM fields if his is all they have to base them on.
I really do not care for the Big Bang Theory at all. I have tried to watch once or twice and it was just…..it was very much not laughing with and was definitely laughing at and you now, I have enough of that.
Also geology is the best science, obviously.
I feel like it’s one of those shows that parents love because it makes them feel like they know just enough about pop culture to laugh at people that are socially inept, if not moreso.
Needless to say, I agree with your entire comment.
BBT is a show that claims to be about nerds but is actually about making fun of nerds.
Parks and Rec is the show that celebrates nerds.
OMG yes — is there anything better than the bachelor party with everyone playing Settlers of Catan? Also I know Ben and I are soul mates because I always go after the longest road.
The longest road card is the one true path to victory.
I’ve decided that the “geology isn’t a real science” refrain is actually a meta-joke on Sheldon. Seriously, a STRING THEORIST calling things “not real science”? Call me when you’ve got a testable hypothesis, sweetie. (Not to rag on actual string theorists, one of whom was the best karaoke singer I’ve ever heard.)
YES. I am on Season 5 right now and Ross just gets worse and worse. His feelings for Rachel start off as prettymuch Nice Guy TM and just gets worse from there.
I knew from my first exposure to the show (via syndication) that there was a lot of quality difference, season-to-season. But I hadn’t realized how instantly everything goes downhill when they visit London. Chandler is suddenly just Mean, Mean, Mean; Ross stops having any ability to function in a way that resembles a human being; everyone suddenly looks like they got five years older overnight. (The last isn’t a “downhill” thing, just a commentary on the suddenness.)
It makes me wish there was some way to go back and pick through the gossip archives to know what happened. Did the writers quit en masse? Did the cast have an extra-big falling out that year?
Yeah Chandler was SUCH an asshole to Joey in London. But I really love him and Monica together. IDK Chandler is complicated for me.
I am also rewatching it and I go so back and forth on Chandler. Sometimes I love him because he’s kind of sad and pathetic in a relatable way. And then sometimes he is SUCH AN ASSHOLE, like I can’t believe that anyone still wants to be his friend. I haven’t gotten to him and Monica yet though, and I remember loving their relationship when Friends was on the air, so I’m sure that will put me firmly back in the Chandler camp.
I’ve scrolled down past your comment multiple times and every single time I misread “UGH ROSS” as “USSR.” I am not quite sure what this says about me.
Maybe you are trying to block him out of your brain? I know I am! I’ve been fast-forwarding through his scenes and only watching the Chandler-Monica love story and absolutely anything with Phoebe in it.
Chandler/Joey 4eva
UGH ROSS INDEED. All of what you said, and also he’s so WHINY. UGGGGGGGHHHH. Ugh horrible entitled ragey white men whining.
It absolutely terrifies me that pregnancy can be so stealthy that a NURSE wouldn’t realize she was pregnant until she was 35 weeks in, especially with a fetus that big. This kind of thing is why I’m thinking of getting an IUD even though my husband has a vasectomy.
I plan on keeping my IUD regardless of what MrChouffe does (a vasectomy is likely in his/our future) just because I absolutely love not having a period.
I’m so jealous. My tilted cervix meant that mine never sat right and gave me a lot of pain so it had to come out. Woe. The vasectomy has been terrific though!
I want to not have a period D:
Mirena.
Just chiming in to say I was one of those people who couldn’t sneeze without fear and had to sleep with garbage bags under the sheets. The mirena was weird at first. I actually burst out crying when they inserted it. Then I bled for six weeks straight. Three months later, periods are lighter and there is almost no cramping. Of course my periods changed when I turned 30 so there’s that too. Overall, I;m pretty pleased with it. I can life my life while having a period. I am still hoping for no periods though
I want to not have them but also to *know* that I’m not going to have them, rather than the ‘you might stop getting them, you might not, they might be even more irregular than they are when you’re not on the pill’ that comes with mirena etc which leads me to intense panic every single month.
Seriously, it’s 2015, why haven’t we sorted the whole periods thing by now? Why are they a small oasis of inconvenience and chaos in our lives which otherwise have a range of gadgets for everything? If cis men bled/cramped regularly, there would probably be a reliable solution by now. (Although actually, might society have developed differently if they did… hmm, brb writing scifi)
Amigas! Taking the pill continuously is A Thing! You just…don’t take the placebos. It gets you perfect control over when/whether you have periods and has better nopreggers results than taking it the normal way. But it’s easy! We have the technology! Ask your doctor, if they don’t get it, find a better one. You can borrow mine.
but hormonal birth control is not an option for all of us, sadly.
🙁 I was thinking that Mirena was not the only option for preventing menses, but you are entirely correct, all of those methods rely on hormones. Get on it, science! (except I am a scientist, and since the whole cycle is hormone-driven, that may be difficult).
I find that if I go through more than two months I get spotting and cramps and random periods when I shouldn’t be. Pill + periods is the best option for me so far given they won’t take the whole lot out and be done with it.
Yeah, same here. I once tried stacking 3 packages of pills in a row and halfway through the third month I got my period anyway.
My annual physical is coming up, I will ask my doctor about an IUD or putting me on the 4-periods-a-year pill.
I’d be more pro-IUD if I weren’t in a long-distance relationship – I need to know when it’s coming so I can schedule visiting the gentleman caller!
I’m on the paraguard, so at least I know when I’m due to start bleeding and get monthly confirmation (hopefully) that no babies are on their way!
Welcome to Canada, Roxane! I hope your hosts have their priorities in order and have taken you for a proper poutine with squeaky cheese. It will definitely make casserole look like real food.
From the article on Elam: “John Hembling, the site’s former editor who has since left A Voice for Men and has dedicated himself more to writing and his own activist group — named Community Organized Compassion and Kindness…”
COCK. You named your serious, domestic violence activist organization COCK. Seems legit.
HAHAHAHAHA OH GOD
It can’t be a coincidence. It just CAN’T be.
Oh, I’m sure it’s not. I can just imagine the press releases. “COCK is growing considerably thanks to the efforts of volunteers, and is expected to become a towering presence in the domestic violence community. COCK is getting especially good penetration into previously untapped and underserved markets. With continued perserverence, COCK is really poised to explode over the coming year.”
ow ow ow ow
rum in my nose is a bad plan but I DO love your copy
I find the gentrification of comedy article a little confusing. There are definitely some good points being made, especially about how a lot of ‘white people’ jokes by white people end up being classist, but the author says she’s OK with self-deprecating jokes by and about white people if they’re aware of the power dynamics and aren’t making a joke of oppression itself. But I’m unclear what her problem is with:
“My level of ‘can’t even’ today is higher than a white girl in Ugg boots with a pumpkin spice frappuccino wearing a North Face jacket,”
I mean, not the cleverest thing ever said, but I don’t see what’s offensive about it?
My impression was that it’s boring and tired, and it’s taking something that’s dressed up in the language of social consciousness and turning it into “So what’s the deal with airplane food?” So not necessarily offensive, just exasperating.
It feels unfair to call the person ‘clueless’ though, especially as it appears to just be some random person’s twitter account.
I feel you. But I also think the clue that this person is missing is that if you’re going to invoke race you should probably think of something more to say than “lol I heard somebody say something about Uggs one time and it was funny so I’m going to repeat it ad nauseum.” But unfortunately that’s the level that, like, most of the “white people!” commentary is at.
(I’m having trouble logging into my account, ugh)
I think part of it is also that there is no need for white people to reclaim the ‘basic’ insult–while there is a history of oppression in general, the position of upper – middle class status quo maintaining women does not need an urgent reclaiming of the word /idea of basic, compared to like, the word queer. It ends up just being another thing appropriated.
But, yeah, it’s less offensive and more just trite.
I don’t think she was arguing that the joke was offensive so much as clueless. It’s a joke about privileged people–presumably from someone who is also privileged (though I think she could’ve elaborated more on that, since we’re given very little context about the person making the joke) . What’s more, it’s yet another (she’s so right about beating a joke to death) joke about “basics,” which isn’t about lampooning the privilege itself (like the Louis CK joke), but rather about making fun of a certain type of consumption. On another note, It’s kind of ironic that this hackey joke is making fun of OTHER people for being unoriginal.
I can definitely understand the exasperation for Ms. Hughes seeing as it’s just another item on long list of things that white people have appropriated and thus sucked all the fun out for everything else. And yet! I still can’t resist a good self-deprecating joke at the expense of my ethnocultural group. Because…well, just look at us.
And regarding casseroles – No way am I using more than one vessel to cook. I need save to save that time for restraining all human emotions and subtly one-upping my relatives in an eternal game of WASPy passive aggression.
“need save to save that time for restraining all human emotions and subtly one-upping my relatives in an eternal game of WASPy passive aggression.”
A++ that is perfect
About the ugg boot/north face jacket joke – I’ve also noticed that white men have really jumped on “white girl” jokes in a big way so that it becomes not an outlet for (for instance) destabilizing white supremacy in a small way, but just another day-to-day expression of misogyny.
So yeah, that’s my biggest complaint about white jokes (of which the white girl strain is particularly strong) – white men hijacking them to make sexist jokes. I’ve seen white dudes do this on twitter, in peer settings, and on comedy stages. Ugh. Gross. 😐
Michelle Tea’s baby is Beyond Adorable. It’s only that whole-Atlantic-betwee-us thing that is stopping me from just barging in there to squeeze & coo & other demented stuff. HOWEVER. The whole: He can’t be born today because Astrological Quadrupple Whammy thing gave me Serious Raised Eyebrow.
LITTLE MORE WARNING ON THE HOOKS-THROUGH-THE-SKIN LINK NEXT TIME PLZ THX
I mean, yikes. Monday morning, y’know?
I certainly didn’t need any more coffee after clicking that link I will admit. But once my heart-rate slowed down I watched the video totally fascinated.
He calls it the Lovetron9000
“Lovetron9000” makes me think of the robot from 30 Rock, but with a dildo attached to the front. The fact that it is an implant, and not a rolling sex robot, is very disappointing to me. What a waste of an excellent name.
That baaaaaby. I saw a picture yesterday and that is one gorgeous baby. I will go stare at the picture again and ignore the Elam article and be happy.
Maybe the maxi pad part is kind of a litmus test? I’ve seen more than one review call it gross. If something like showing a maxi pad on screen bothers you (WTF, right???), then probably you are not comfortable enough with “femininity” to enjoy the movie.
ETA: That was supposed to be a response to braack.
I think the maxi-pad part was amazing for a couple of reasons, one of which was “good thing this car was owned by a woman [because of course that means there are maxi-pads in the glove compartment]”, !!! But the second reason is of course she’s using it to treat a laser blast wound which is Tough Guy Stuff, but when was the last time you even saw a maxi-pad in a movie at all?
Maybe one day we’ll reach the point where a movie can acknowledge the use of a maxi-pad for its actual purpose, I don’t know.
The thing I really liked about the maxi pad thing was that the movie treated it as slightly funny but also as a really good idea. Sean Bean’s character didn’t laugh at it or anything – it was amusing but you could tell that he was like, “yeah, these things ARE good for bleeding; that was smart.”
“You mean we can use these to absorb blood that comes out of somewhere other than a vagina? BRILLIANT.”
Did she put it sticky-side down though??
YES! D:
Ugghh. I actually really liked the maxi pad part, I found it hilarious. Tied with Sean Bean saying ‘Beeswax’ instead of ‘Oh shit’ in that one part. I find it very odd that some people find that gross, but then again, my grade three teacher used to give maxi pads to kids when they had a nosebleed (the boys were embarrassed by it, but they took it anyway because they needed it to soak up the blood).
it is amazing to me that people would find that gross. When I was in college we had a first had training and the guy teaching it actually told us to use maxi pads if we ran into a wound that was bleeding heavily. If you have something lying around that is literally DESIGNED to absorb blood, why is it gross to use it for that purpose? (I know, because ew, periods)
Oh my GOD I’m so tired of men being grossed out by even the *concept* of pads or tampons or other “feminine hygiene products.” Get the fuck over it, dudes.
At this rate, the term “plus-sized woman” will be used to refer to standard Victoria’s Secret models by years end. 😛
She is actually a size 16, apparently. So it’s a bit different than when magazines call a size 8 ‘plus’. But it certainly doesn’t change that Sports Illustrated isn’t ‘featuring’ her so much as ‘not refusing to run an ad with her in it’
I just looooove the whole “curves are IN!” thing. Please let me know when my shape goes back out of fashion, thx.
As much as I like seeing “plus-sized models”, it always feels a bit like DON’T WORRY FAT GIRLS WE’D STILL FUCK YOU
ugh. i have a FB friend who posts lots of “everyone else says you’re fat and ugly but i’d still hit that so stop feeling bad about yourself” articles. he thinks they’re empowering for women or something. i simply *cannot* get him to understand why it’s a back-handed compliment and why everyone just needs to STFU about women’s looks all together.
I told my boyfriend about the Lovetron9000 and he’s all squicked out because it’s an implant and honestly women get things implanted into their arm and through their cervix in the name of better sex all the time?? Further proof that women will slay in the cyborg revolution.
I … never even thought of it that way. Of COURSE women will be willing to have implanted stuff because we DO ALREADY. Me and my bad cyborg uterus salute you!
I tell my boyfriend all the time that he shoulda got a vasectomy instead of me getting my implant. WHAT BABIES THEY ARE.
The Malcolm Burnley article is intelligent and thought-provoking, but I can’t get past his two-year-old face in the accompanying photos. That is serious toddler face game.
Wait wait wait. There’s a convention for internet memes?
I had a friend that worked for Know Your Meme at this time and if I remember correctly, she actually gave an academic presentation while there.
TINY WHISK NECKLACE
Now I’m sad that no one in my life has already bought me a tiny whisk necklace.
I wear my tiny whisk necklace every day and have for years! And I’m sort of hipster heartbroken that it’s a thing now. It’s the greatest.
Made it about 20 seconds into the Tender Hooks vid and was like NOOOOOPE.
If that model is plus-sized, who the hell knows what I must be…Triple-plus?
Rich People lol indeed.
The only part I didn't like
And totally comments on the "people keep changing my clothes while I'm unconscious, and that's not something I'm ok with," which movie heroines usually ignore.
Hooray!