movies

Unlike Miyazaki, Hosoda embraces our dependence on virtual worlds, but not naively. He's aware of its dangers and isn't above satirizing it; the resemblance of the OZ hub to Murakami's deranged pandas, combined with its toothy, walleyed grin, makes even the pre-Love Machine OZ appear fun, but slightly dangerous, and the entire Love Machine storyline is a cautionary tale against putting all of one's faith in online solutions. That combination of wariness and recognition of digital culture is something I don't think we would ever see from Miyazaki.

This post discusses abuse in asylums, including sexual assault. It discusses the history of lobotomies and describes (briefly) the procedure. It also contains spoilers for the movie Sucker Punch.

I went to see Sucker Punch expecting a light piece of fluff that involved conventionally attractive young women with swords fighting a dragon. It's a movie where one of the lines highlighted in the trailer is "If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything." I was prepared for a light popcorn-type film and showed up for a midnight screening with one of my friends, two martinis to the wind.

I was really not expecting a film that laid out how abusive asylums and long-term care centers can be—and often are. I was not expecting a film that laid out how asylums could be used to silence uppity women. And I was really not prepared for a film that showed bluntly and horrifyingly what lobotomies involved and how they completely destroyed people's personalities.

A few of us saw The Change-Up for the most recent Popaganda podcast (the things we'll do for you...) and one of the many things I was struck with during the movie (among an inexplicable plot, a million penis jokes, etc.) was the character of Sabrina, played by Olivia Wilde. Around the time she called her date out for ordering a bottle of wine (the nerve!) and ordered a manly scotch instead, I knew what we were in for. She's a conventionally hot and sexy legal aid who loves drinking, sports, and daring people to get tattoos: A version of a trope—a woman who likes "dude things" yet is still traditionally feminine—that we've all seen before in countless movies and TV shows.


The dogs are hot and so am I! Baseball!

However, my scouring of TV Tropes for a name and a clever description yielded no results. Thus, it's time to Name That Trope!

Despite the obvious social critiques in the books, I never consciously drew parallels between the wizarding world and my world. I wanted Harry Potter to exist in a vacuum. But as the books went on, the back stories grew more complex, the danger became more insidious and intimidating, and the fantasy world turned out to be as confusing and terrifying as my real post-9/11 adolescent world. I dreaded the release of the last two books, knowing I would endure them more than I enjoyed them, but the idea of simply abandoning the series never even crossed my mind. Not only did I not want to analyze the books as cultural products or actively criticize them, I was and still am basically incapable of doing so (if you would like a really feminism-centric response to Harry Potter, Sady Doyle has a good one). Because I grew up reading these books, I have internalized the messages that I uncritically accepted in a way I only really could when I was a kid. As far as I'm concerned, it's word of God, and I don't think I'm the only one who feels that way.

Like so many other aspects of the film industry, animation is still a male-dominated field. In the early days of the industry, women worked most often as inkers and painters, so while their work was arduous and crucial, it often went uncredited and rarely got them promoted to supervising or directing positions. Fortunately, women are constantly gaining ground in animation, especially as producers – Toy Story 3, produced by Darla K. Anderson, became the highest-grossing animated movie of all freaking time – and I'm already counting down the months until Brave, which will feature Pixar's first female lead plus is co-written by Irene Mecchi, who you might know as creator of the esteemed Recycle Rex (really) and co-writer of a little movie called The Lion King (due credit also goes to Osamu Tekuza and, uh, Shakespeare). But let's turn the clock back and pay a little homage to a woman who became an animation pioneer before 3D, before CGI, even before Mary Ellen Bute's experimental shorts or Retta Scott's Disney screen credit: Charlotte "Lotte" Reiniger (1899-1981).

Super 8 is one of the few movies I was genuinely excited to see this summer, and for the most part, it lived up to the hype. It's a consummate summer movie if there ever was one: it's got action, romance, aliens, explosions, and even takes place during summer. It's not a groundbreaking or exceptional movie by any means, but I felt fully engaged with it and enchanted by it while I watched, comforted by the familiar rhythm of cliché parent-child relationships and minor character comic relief, and viscerally thrilled by the reptilian pleasure of watching stuff blow up.

I have always had a baseless, irrational hatred for Cameron Diaz. I've never kept up with any tabloid news about her personal life, so it's not like I think she's a bad person; I don't even think she's a bad actress. I just don't like her. So it was inevitable that I would have disliked Bad Teacher, even if it hadn't been so... bad.

Each month in our newsletter (sign up right here on the homepage if you haven't already!), we poll Bitch staffers and readers on their top five in different categories and posting the polls and results here on the Bitch blog. So c'mon, give us five!

Stop. Link time. (It had to be said.)

• For RH Reality Check, Jaime Jenett bravely discusses her experiences as a non-biological lesbian parent of an ill child while enduring the daily hurt of Prop 8 stickers... and makes eloquent efforts to communicate with those who don't believe she deserves rights (reposted at AlterNet).
• Mother Jones offers advice on how to wade through media coverage of Osama bin Laden's death.
• Jane Laplain of Questioning Transphobia talks about trans* identity and the one-word-or-two-words question... and why it matters.
• ColorLines shares the Center for Reproductive Rights video "They're Coming for Roe."
• Shakesville provides an open thread on the results of Canada's election.
• Racialicious reports on the release of the book I Speak for Myself: American Women on Being Muslim, edited by Maria Ebrahimji and Zahra Suratwala, and featuring writing by Muslimah Media Watch editor Fatemeh Fakhraie.
• More feminist than Mulan? At Bitch Flicks, Whitney Mollenhauer takes notes on the film Tangled. Thoughts?
• Bitch contributor EvMaroon writes a letter to his future child about the United States of America's history and the death of bin Laden.
• At the Huffington Post, Stephanie Green praises the new adaptation of Jane Eyre. Have you seen it? What are your feelings?
• Jos from Feministing presents an anti-war poem from Palestinian and US-American poet and activist, Suheir Hammad.
• Monica at TransGriot reminds readers to make their nominations for the 2011 Black Weblog Awards by Saturday!
• Bitch contributor Jarrah Hodge comments on Twitter culture at Gender Focus.
• Ms. has a few suggestions on how to spend your Mother's Day weekend.
• And speaking of mothers, check out the Mama's Day campaign, celebrating immigrant, queer, poor, and single mothers by the Strong Families initiative. Watch their great video here!

Got comments or other pieces? Please share in the comments section!

Welcome back to another episode of Bitch Popaganda! Tune in as Andi, Kjerstin, and Kelsey discuss Anna Holmes' Washington Post column "Donald Trump's Sexism," eating your cultural vegetables (watching things you don't actually enjoy), and what we're looking forward to this summer at the movies.



Links and more after the jump!