politics

No One Killed Jessica

mandy — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 08:00:00 +0000

In 1999 model/waitress Jessica Lall refused to serve drinks to a rowdy man in a crowded bar, who then shot her point blank in a fit of rage. That man turned out to be the son of an influential politician, but with 300 witnesses it seemed like a straightforward case. However, in an unfortunate example of the rot in the judicial system and rampant corruption, all the witnesses were either threatened or paid off, and the evidence was tampered with, leading to the release of the killer. No One Killed Jessica by Rajkumar Gupta follows the initial courtroom campaign relentlessly pursued by Jessica’s sister, Sabrina (Vidya Balan), and then the news media battle for the reopening of the case led by fictionalized reporter Meera (Rani Mukherji).

No One Killed Jessica remains obsessively loyal to the central plot of the real events; the film is about the murder case and nothing else. There are no romantic tracks snuck into the narrative, no diversions, and no subplots. Every scene is in some way connected to the main story, and this loyalty becomes the film’s greatest strength. For just over two hours, Gupta sucks you into the minute details of the case and, even if you know how it all turns out, the film makes you feel disgust for the guilty parties and root for justice. The bigger message here is the immense power of a democratic movement leading to a change in the system. As Meera questions at one point, “What would happen if power is truly given to the ordinary man?”

The structure of the film is intriguing. The two protagonists hardly have any screen time together and there is a reason for it. The first half of the film is focused more on Sabrina and her fight to ensure a solid case against the accused, Manu Sharma. Meera’s life runs parallel to provide a wider news context of the time (i.e., Kargil war, Indian Airlines flight hijacking), but she doesn’t really have a role to play in the Jessica case at that stage. The first half also moves at a somewhat slow pace, fitting in well with the simpleton personality of Sabrina’s character. The second half then sprints into more sensational and glamorized action where Meera comes to the forefront and takes on the cause. Sabrina’s role then diminishes until the latter parts, and the very moving climax.

Mukherji’s portrayal of Meera is by far the more interesting character, whereas Balan’s Sabrina becomes so understated that she comes off as dull. The most memorable performance, however, is by newcomer Myra Karn who plays Jessica. She is simply a revelation. She injects such charm and vivaciousness into Jessica that you instantly fall for her.

Hindi cinema has traditionally had a very overbearing approach to advocating social change. With No One Killed Jessica, Gupta walks a fine line between making a hard-hitting realistic film and a commercial political thriller. As a result, he tends to slip on a few occasions. However, considering that every detail of the case is already so well known, Gupta delivers his retelling in such an engaging manner that you get pulled into the chaos of the moment. No One Killed Jessica is a brave film that picks a battle and fights it until the end. It’s not just a promising start to the films of 2011, but with all the corruption scandals plaguing India these days, the timing seems even more appropriate.

Read the full review at The NRI

Written by: Pulkit Datta, February 1st 2011

Absolute Erotic, Absolute Grotesque: The Living, Dead, and Undead in Japan's Imperialism, 1895-1945

caitlin — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 12:00:00 +0000

By Mark Driscoll

Duke University Press

Mark Driscoll, an associate professor of Japanese and International Studies at the University of North Carolina, here presents a very thorough reassessment of Japanese imperialism of Asia in the first half of the twentieth century. Driscoll focuses his attention on the fringes of the colonized Asian peoples, writing about the Chinese coolies, Korean farmers, Japanese pimps and trafficked women of various Asian nationalities that moved Japan's empire along and provided the behind-the-scenes energy that created such an empire. Japan's rise to a capitalist power—and its expansion of its empire—is identified by Driscoll as happening in three distinct phases, each marked by exploitation of people, land, life, and labor: biopolitics, neuropolitics, and necropolitics.

Driscoll's reading of biopolitics as it applies to Japanese imperialism and capitalism is the same as Michel Foucault's: faire vivir (improving life) and laisser mourir (letting die off). Biopolitics most often involves public health, disease prevention, maternity clinics, and hygiene campaigns. It directly ties in to the concept of laissez-faire capitalism, its aim being for some lives to be improved and for others to be left to fare for themselves. In neuropolitics, the exploited worker in the capitalist society has a life that no longer belongs to him but to the object into which he puts his life (often his job); therefore, he must try to buy back his own life in the form of “commodity substitutes.” (Think of Fight Club and its message of “the things you own end up owning you.”) Citizens in a neuropolitical state are “shocked into stupefaction,” and then tricked into buying a “second life” back from the capitalist regime in the form of consumable goods. Necropolitics, the third phase of Japan's capitalist imperial expansion, is defined as the state in which workers, forced laborers, and colonized persons are aware of the constant threat of omnipresent death, and perceive life as a constant struggle against this threat of death. The imperialistic powers over the colonized peoples subjugate their lives with the power of death.

Absolute Erotic, Absolute Grotesque is a highly fascinating book, though occasionally dry and academic. This is no fault of the writer or subject matter, but simply my own Western/Caucasian mind not having these lingual-neural pathways, but I had trouble keeping up with the many Asian names sprinkled liberally throughout the text. There is plenty in here to intrigue those with an interest in twentieth century world politics, Marxism, sex workers, the failures of capitalism, the deplorable treatment of women in war conditions, poverty, gender, race, political corruption, and the swift rise and fall of empires. Driscoll also covers pornography and drugs in Japan's colonization of Asia, and includes some grisly photographs from “erotic-grotesque” magazines, the idea of these being that the two concepts were not so different from one another.

Written by: Natalie Ballard, December 4th 2010

Cho Dependent

mandy — Sat, 11 Sep 2010 10:00:00 +0000

By Margaret Cho

Clownery Records

To call comedienne Margaret Cho’s latest endeavor, Cho Dependent, a comedy album seems like a disservice. Though songs like “Calling in Stoned” (featuring the ever-stoned Tommy Chong), “Your Dick,” and “Eat Shit and Die” do little for my argument, Cho Dependent is completely unlike her six previous comedy albums. This, my friends, is Cho’s foray into the music world, and a damn fine one at that.

I accidentally began following Cho’s career thanks to the short-lived television series All American Girl. I didn’t have cable television until I was twenty-three, so I would watch just about anything on the “regular” channels. From what I recall All American Girl wasn’t spectacular by any means, but I knew it was unprecedented for a television show’s focus to be on a Korean family. By the time high school rolled around, I spent weekends lying in bed with a friend watching VHS tapes of Cho’s standup. I ultimately fell in love with her wit, her hilarious take on sex and race, and her devotion to issues surrounding the LGBTQ community.

Cho’s wonderfully offbeat humor is present in nearly every song on Cho Dependent, and an impressive collection of musicians are along for the ride. The album is a mishmash of the alt-country and pop sensibilities of such talent as Ani DiFranco, Ben Lee, Brendan Benson, Jon Brion, and Grant Lee Phillips who providing the backbone for many of Cho’s songs. On opening track “Intervention,” featuring Tegan and Sarah, Cho admits to an obsession with the television series from which the song’s name is derived. Much like the show, “Intervention” features a nervous Tegan unsuccessfully reading a heartfelt letter to a drunken Cho who barfs on Tegan’s jack-o-lantern. The sisters then break into a chorus of “No more hugs ‘til you give up drugs. I know it sucks, but for once think about us.” I had no idea Cho has such a lovely, lilting voice, nor was I aware of her knack for songwriting.

Amid the dick jokes and songs about vaginas is the standout track “Hey Big Dog,” co-written by the amazing Patty Griffin. According to Cho, the song is about conversations she’d like to have with her (now deceased) dog Ralph, if only Ralph could speak. Cho imagines telling Ralph (played by Fiona Apple) there’s no reason to be afraid of the wind—as he was his entire life—and Ralph would respond that Cho should stop waiting for a certain man to call because he probably isn’t going to and the guy was no good anyway. As I write this I’ve become aware that this is a silly concept for a song, and I’m embarrassed to say the sincerity and soulfulness of the song made me cry: “Hey big mama, why you let that man come around? I don’t like the way he looks. I don’t like the way he sounds. I didn’t tell you, but he stepped on my tail. And he smells just like he’s fresh out of jail.”

A lot has changed for Cho since I spent lazy weekends watching those hazy VHS tapes. She’s become a gay icon, a burlesque star, a clothing designer, and an author. Most importantly, she’s comfortable in her own skin, a large part of which is now covered by tattoos, which is no small feat for a woman who once starved herself to the point of suffering from kidney failure and descended into a drug- and booze-fueled downward spiral. In other words, Cho has lived through a lot of rock star clichés, only now she has created an album to respond to the bad behavior.

If you were expecting a conventional comedy album, Cho Dependent will not deliver. But if you’re interested in seeing a slightly sweeter side to one of the ballsiest female comedians to ever grace the stage, this album will not disappoint.

Written by: Tina Vasquez, September 11th 2010

Women Count: A Guide to Changing the World

mandy — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 10:00:00 +0000

By Susan Bulkeley Butler, Bob Keefe

Purdue University Press

As a single mom with two jobs and an interest in finding space for volunteerism and activism, I immediately connected with Susan Bulkeley Butler’s interconnected main points—that the ways we “count” women don’t always count, and that women need to take control of the ways in which they “count” on personal and political levels.

Women Count is divided into four sections: “The New Math,” “The Pioneers,” “Change is Happening,” and “Now It’s Your Turn.” Underscoring each of these sections is a fundamental belief in women’s ability to change the world by taking charge of their own educational, organizational, professional, community-based, and volunteering opportunities. In each section, Butler peppers her succinct chapters with statistics, facts, and affirmative messages; she gives women a sense that they possess unique skills and potentials that, if correctly accessed and valued, might revolutionize the world.

At points, her message becomes bogged down in gender essentialism and binary thinking. I do not entirely believe that women are innately “better communicators, better listeners, and better consensus-builders” than men, and I certainly feel like some of Butler’s points invoke a feminotopia that remains at odds with corporate structures. She discusses female mentoring at great length, and while I have experienced this in academic settings—especially from my dissertation director, who was also active in the Women’s Studies program—I have also noticed that professional women can be as cut-throat, competitive, and monovocal as many professional men. Although women do continue to face issues in the work place that men do not, Butler focuses on highly subjective mental features of gender difference (e.g., women are nicer and more patient) than on biological features (e.g., women might thrive if Fortune 500 companies all provided discrete, comfortable rooms for breast pumps and on-site childcare facilities).

Despite some theoretical differences, though, Butler’s book gave me insight into the invisibility of women in received narratives of history. I was shocked that Eli Whitney didn’t invent the cotton gin. Catherine Littlefield Greene did, but she let the young inventor take credit for it since women couldn’t receive patents for ideas and inventions in 1793. She also showcases the oscillating relationship between women, war, and work at several key moments in the book, and she notices the ironies enfolded in the fact that feminists (so often identified with peace) gained agency because of war, for example as part of the “Woman’s Land Army” or farmerettes of World War I.

Butler spotlights the accomplishments of historical women, of recent politically successful women in the United States (including both Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin), of female entrepreneurs and businesswomen, and of young girls aspiring toward political ambitions. In her final section, she weaves the inspiring messages her readers could garner from the examples of women from ancient times to the present into a message of hope and, more importantly, manageable action. As soon as I finish making dinner for my daughter and myself, I’ll answer her parting question (“What is the change I want to affect in the world over the next three to five years?”) and write out her steps to success. But like many of the women depicted in Women Count, I still need to spend an hour in the kitchen first.

Written by: Emily Bowles, September 10th 2010

Couture and Consensus: Fashion and Politics in Postcolonial Argentina

mandy — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 02:00:00 +0000

By Regina A. Root

University Of Minnesota Press

While I was intrigued by Regina Root’s assertion that fashion played a large role in the development of national identity in postcolonial Argentina, I was more than intimidated to jump into a book with such an impressive thesis without much background knowledge of Argentinean history. Thankfully, Root packs an incredible amount of information into a slim volume.

In Couture and Consensus Root cleverly divides her work into five distinct chapters, the first of which addresses the tension that existed in Argentina following the revolution in 1810. She deftly explains the divide between the Federalists (those who pledged loyalty to Juan Manuel de Rosas, the tyrannical leader from 1829-1852) and the Unitarians (the rebels) in two ways: through a straightforward explanation of the politics of each side, and by using the lens of material history. Here is where Root’s thesis begins to take hold. By discussing the critical role that color played in this political binary—Federalists wore red and Unitarians favored green—she illuminates the power that dress held in that society to both conform and subvert a political agenda.

Root swiftly moves through her historical discussion and begins to set her sights on discussing the role that women played during this tumultuous time. She oscillates between highlighting the few, largely undocumented women who dressed as men to fight during the British invasions and women who commanded a space of their own by wearing outlandish garb such as massive skirts and intimidating hairpieces. The peineton was a hair comb that Root states was “one yard in height and width” during its most popular time. As a result of its grandeur, Root explains that woman gained more physical presence than ever and also more ridicule for being frivolous (as the combs were quite expensive). The amount of detail that Root uses in her discussion of the peineton is remarkable—she has truly searched out every archive in an attempt to form a material history of Argentina.

Her final chapter is perhaps her most interesting, because she speaks to the new found voices that women gained in the political sphere through engaging in fashionable discourse. While revolutionary men gained political footing under the guise of writing articles about fashion, it was the women who felt empowered by their ability to finally speak their minds. Root calls on everything from storylines of novels to the history of the magazines to prove this point, and the reader is almost exhausted at the conclusion of this book as a result of the incredible amount of information they’ve received. While this is an academic text, the amount of interdisciplinary thought that Root embodies is laudable—this isn’t just a book about fashion, politics, or feminism. Couture and Consensus is a book that manages to weave all of those distinct philosophies into one cohesive narrative about a beautiful country that is still forming its national identity to this day.

Written by: Alyssa Vincent, September 5th 2010

Exposing One of the Greatest Intrusions of Religion into American Politics

admin — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Interview with Reed Cowan

Some interviews are more timely than others. In this one, producer and filmmaker Reed Cowan explained his underlying motivation for writing, directing, and producing the critically acclaimed documentary film 8: The Mormon Proposition. Cowan also talked about the “holy war” of the Mormon Church: the fight against marriage equality.

What was your motivation for writing, directing, and producing 8:The Mormon Proposition?

I was raised a Mormon, and I still have many high level friends who are Mormon. I’ve watched and been aware of their involvement in political campaigns for a long time, like their involvement in campaigning against the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s and early 1980s, and now their involvement in any campaign against same-sex marriage. I wanted to tell the truth about their involvement, especially since a key strategy of theirs has been to remain in the background. Their campaign to support Proposition 8 and other measures like it has been one of the greatest intrusions of religion into politics in America, and it has been swept under the rug. I wanted to tell the truth and expose “the man behind the curtain.”

The PR department of the Mormon Church openly told us that they were “invited to participate in a coalition of faiths,” when in fact they were the ones who were doing the inviting. They invited Catholics and other religious groups to participate in a coalition to support Proposition 8. In their efforts to remain in the background while pulling all the strings, the Mormon Church has done a great disservice to other religions. I have my issues with other religions and their stance against the LGBT community as well, but what the Mormon Church has done is to send others into the battle for them. This is almost spineless, to let others take the bullets for you in what is essentially your fight. I wanted to expose that.

A key part of the documentary is exposing the financial contributions the Mormon Church made or encouraged for the “Yes on 8” campaign. To your knowledge, has the church been similarly active in campaigns in other US states where marriage equality was on the ballot?

The records that we have show Mormon involvement all over the US, and in other countries as well; most recently, in Argentina, for example. Any place where the issue of same-sex marriage comes up, the Mormon Church is active. Luckily, in Argentina, their efforts were not successful.

Marriage equality is a controversial and divisive issue, not just within the Mormon Church. Have there been any personal ramifications for you since making this documentary?

I lost my family over this film. It was like dropping a nuclear bomb on family relationships. The relationship with my sister is irreparable. The relationship with my father is irreparable. The other part of it is the hate mail, and a lot of them mention my son, Wesley. He died in a swing set accident a few years ago, and I have gotten a lot of hate mail where people mention this and tell me that I deserve what happened and that I will never see my son again.

Two days ago, a federal judge rules that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional. What is your personal reaction to this ruling?

I am thrilled that documents from our film were part of the evidence in this case and part of the debate in court. I am thrilled that this has become part of the public discourse about Proposition 8. I also feel like the LGBT community now has traction again. The ruling has given us hope. It will no doubt go all the way to the Supreme Court, so there are still more steps to be taken along the way, but it has given us hope.

Based on your knowledge of the Mormon Church and their strategies, do you expect them to continue or even ramp up their efforts in supporting the “Yes on 8” side as this case moves to the Supreme Court?

You bet! They not only have said as much, but all of the evidence we have shows that they will never stop. This is a holy war for them. They will never stop, which is why it was so important to make this film and to show what they are really all about.

Written by: Annette Przygoda, August 28th 2010

Forget Sorrow: An Ancestral Tale

admin — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 16:00:00 +0000

By Belle Yang

W.W. Norton

I jumped at the chance to review Forget Sorrow: An Ancestral Tale, an unconventional graphic memoir from writer/artist Belle Yang. While I am no expert on graphic literature, I did devour Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis series. With this medium, I enjoy (and envy) the way an artist can show emotions through inked illustrations, and use words more sparingly. Further, there is an intimacy created on the page, because the typeface and conversational style evoke a personal journal lying on a nightstand.

Yang is a Chinese-American woman, and her story, in part, tells of the identity struggles she experiences in separating from the Chinese traditions of her immigrant parents. When she travels to Beijing for art school, Yang has a chance to learn cultural history while not being bound to it.

At the outset of her tale, we see the source of Yang’s title: her Chinese name, Xuan, means “Forget Sorrow.” When Yang was thirty years old, she sought shelter from a violent boyfriend by moving back to her parents’ home. While there, she began to give shape to her father’s childhood stories in Japanese-occupied Manchuria, World War II, and Mao’s Great Leap Forward. Yang writes, “I have a voice in America. I won’t waste it.”

The art in Forget Sorrow is tender, powerful, and moving. One ink illustration that stands out is Yang’s nightmare about her abuser, which captures a feeling of stark terror. In contrast, Yang’s illustrations also evoke tenderness between father and daughter, a feeling of comfort for him as he shares painful memories.

Yang’s story demonstrates ways in which strength comes from relationships. Her father’s tales are painful at times. Under communism, family relationships were made subordinate to party affiliation. Important aspects of tradition, such as honoring elders, did not apply if those elders were deemed to be landlords or capitalists. The political side of Yang’s family story makes it very clear that social change should not come at the cost of human life or dignity.

Through telling her family’s story as well as exercising her voice and her artistic vision in Forget Sorrow, Yang found new freedom. As a writer, artist, and woman, she shapes her own future.

Written by: Lisa Rand, August 23rd 2010

Sells Like Teen Spirit: Music, Youth Culture and Social Crisis

admin — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 16:01:00 +0000

By Ryan Moore

New York University Press

Punk, hardcore, and alternative rock music scenes have been for years the almost exclusive realm of teenagers and youth in their twenties. Not only have they been areas of creative expression, but such subcultures have given young people a place to challenge beauty standards, political boundaries, and cultural norms.

In Sells Like Teen Spirit, author Ryan Moore documents the music scenes of the 1980s and early 1990s, as well as their evolutions today. From metal to Riot Grrrl, Moore talks about the players and the stories that made youth music cultures what they were during these times. Moore also delves into the sociopolitical moment to relate how the dominant cultural debates directly and indirectly shaped youth music cultures. Generations-old struggles, such as sexism, also played prominently in many subcultures.

Most notable in this book, Moore explores an interesting subtext in youth music cultures that other writers in the midst of feminist research and study on race further explore. Namely, a wave of "post" approaches ("post-racial," "post-feminist") take a role in youth culture that, in spite of pretensions to the contrary, only replicates and supports traditional roles and power in white, patriarchal American society. For instance, the alternative fashion model Suicide Girls trend of a few years ago presents women from youth subcultures (e.g., punk and goth) as different, empowered female pin-ups. Such images intended to impart a view of women as self-assured, independent, sexually liberated creatures; however, the essential conversation of this image—women fitting into a male perception of beauty presented primarily as objects for male consumption—remains intact.

Men, in virtually all alternative youth music cultures, assume a position that fundamentally affirms the patriarchal position: strong, individualistic characters navigating a world in which white male hegemony is crumbling amid globalization. Moore points out the revival of swing, ska and rockabilly imagery harkens back to times in which men were the makers of their fortunes whereas today corporate power and economic uncertainty dimmed hopes and dreams of millions.

Yet many outgrowths of youth music subcultures offered refreshing challenges to the worlds in which young people grew up. Bands like Bikini Kill and the women’s zine scene are explored in Sells Like Teen Spirit, to give another perspective of young people committed to challenging power, as others before them, through their talents and passion.

Though not as expansive as similarly themed books like There’s A Riot Going On or Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop, for those interested in intersections of youth culture, music, and politics, Sells Like Teen Spirit is a good text to understand or reminisce about music subcultures that were special, though could not overcome the conundrum that stymied subcultures before them: how to use the youth music subculture make substantive political, cultural, and social change.

Written by: Ernesto Aguilar, August 15th 2010

Food Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know

admin — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 16:00:00 +0000

By Robert Paarlberg

Oxford University Press

As an ethically and environmentally aware feminist vegetarian, I view food and politics as ineluctably joined. Robert Paarlberg’s Food Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know challenged some of my basic ideas about hunger, famine, and the scope of issues contained by the term food politics, yet the book ignores some of the ways in which food is always simultaneously personal and political.

Food Politics covers a wide range of topics connected to the way we eat as well as to our food’s impact on the world around us at local and global levels. Paarlberg examines population growth, food costs, politics of chronic hunger and famine, farming technologies, food aid, obesity, environmentalism, agribusiness, fast food culture, organic and local food, GMOs, and the overarching structures that govern the world food system. At times Paarlberg oversimplifies complex problems, especially in his chapters “The Politics of Obesity” and “Agriculture, the Environment, and Farm Animals.” Moreover, although he supports his points with statistics and logical arguments, he frequently flattens alternative positions, sometimes inconsistently. For example, he suggests that vegetarianism has little global impact on the food supply in one context yet acknowledges the consumption of less red meat as a better way to reduce the environmental impact of food than eating local produce.

Paarlberg recognizes the significance of women’s labor in third-world farming systems. He addresses the political disenfranchisement of women in these economies when he depicts the problem of chronic undernutrition in “poor and hungry communities” where women are prevented from political action because they are, first, overextended by their duties as farmers and as caregivers for the children and elderly and, second, their socially marginalized status. Feminists doubtless know this and would like to see Paarlberg push his points further, as I wanted him to, but his attention to the gendered politics of undernutrition is significant.

Paarlberg considers the work of Rachel Carson and Frances Moore Lappé in dialogue with Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser, but he dismisses Frances Moore Lappé’s as a “young countercultural food activist.” Although Lappé was young when she published Diet for a Small Planet, she has created The Small Planet Institute and established a rich, innovative series of books, videos, teaching aids, and other resources about the politics and environmental impact of food. Although he supports some of Lappé’s points, he does so in a way that shifts their focus—he implies that her actions are good, but not for the reasons upon which she bases them, which is a partial, uneven, and reductive way to treat an argument.

The greatest flaw of Food Politics is Paarlberg’s oversimplification of other groups’ and individual’s claims. He provides useful and even groundbreaking information but only by suspending these fundamental components of food politics in a way that does not allow for the inextricability of belief or ideology from the way we eat.

Written by: Emily Bowles, August 7th 2010

Fearless Female Journalists

admin — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 08:00:00 +0000

By Joy Crysdale

Second Story Press

Fearless Female Journalists is a set of ten short profiles of female reporters, photojournalists, and newscasters hailing from various times and places over the last two centuries.

Among the women featured is one of the early pioneers of modern journalism: nineteenth-century American newspaperwoman Nellie Bly, a daredevil stunt reporter. Nelly Bly is perhaps most famous for circumnavigating the globe in seventy-three days in an era before airplanes, but she also took on assignments designed to do good as well as to make a splash. For example, she got herself admitted as a patient to the Women's Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell's Island in order to expose the terrible conditions there. In a later chapter, we meet Anna Politkovskaya, a Russian reporter who, despite her privileged origins as the daughter of diplomats, made the decision to risk–and ultimately lose–her life in order to report on the Russian occupation of Chechnya. (Politkovskaya was assassinated on October 7, 2006, at age forty-eight.) The book closes with a portrait of Thembi Ngubane, a young South African woman who recorded an audio journal about her life with AIDS as part of an effort to end the stigma around AIDS, as well as to push the South African government to acknowledge the tragic proportions of the AIDS epidemic.

The book is geared towards children–I estimate that it is most appropriate for an audience aged seven to eleven. The profiles are attractive and highly readable, complete with photographs and sidebars containing “fun facts.” The stories are entertaining and inspiring, and the selection of featured journalists reflects some variety in terms of era, type of journalism, and nationality (although the book still skews heavily toward heterosexual North American white women). Unfortunately, the book does have a downside–it is written from a “nice, liberal” standpoint, in which history is presented as an inexorable march towards progress, driven by a few exceptionally determined actors. This perspective glorifies individual high-profile “heroines” while erasing the history of communal struggle. It also obscures the reality that, in most cases, the few exceptional people who “make it big” do so not because they are more courageous or determined than thousands of others, but rather because they got lucky or started out with some “extras,” such as racial or class privilege.

The book reaches its nadir at the beginning of the final chapter, when it begins the profile of Thembi Ngubane by blatantly exoticizing her ethnicity: “Thembi Ngubane had a beautiful voice. Like her name, it was wonderfully African. Her voice flowed and lilted and swam around words, especially words with ‘r’ in them."

While I enjoyed reading Fearless Female Journalists and learning about the ten outstanding women profiled within, I could have happily done without the book’s uncritical, unconscious approach to the narrative of history and social change.

Written by: Ri J. Turner, July 23rd 2010

/\/\/\Y/\ (Maya)

admin — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 08:22:00 +0000

By M.I.A.

Interscope Records

A week prior to its July 13th release, M.I.A.’s new album, /\/\/\Y/_ (or _Maya), was made available streaming on the artist's MySpace page. The agitprop-meets-cyberpunk video for “Born Free” is the most inspiring thing I’ve seen all year (a clear indication that M.I.A.’s message is as much visual as it is aural), and my guess was that her latest effort would be the most overtly conceptual album that M.I.A. has recorded.

The first track, "The Message," begins with the sound of keyboard strokes that reminded me of early alternative rock heroes R.E.M. and experimental musician John Cage. It creates a rhythmic paranoid beat laid over a mechanical nursery rhyme. A male voice suggests that the body is no longer private property, and spells it out for the “connected” listener: “Headbone connects to the headphone/Headphones connect to the iPhone/iPhone connected to the internet/Connected to the Google/Connected to the government.”

“Steppin Up” will appeal to fans of Kala. It mixes laser and power drill sound effects with a melodic reggae pace while asserting an increasingly cyborgian identity. “Teqkilla” recalls “Boyz” for its hyperactive layers of hip-hop hooks and fluctuating vocals. This is a sexy club song, and would be the closest that M.I.A. settles into mood music.

Although she is stretching choruses and pressing the temporal limits of pop music, M.I.A. still has a knack for constructing tighter melodies, and proves it on “XXXO.” This track is about unrequited love, and calls a potential lover out for his down-low tweets. It’s a beat-heavy examination of familiar odes to obsessive love.

_/\/\/\Y/_ is definitely weirder than M.I.A.'s previous recordings, and it will be interesting to see where critics of her ability to balance political and aesthetic ambitions go with this album. Will the media continue to castigate M.I.A. for going too far beyond the pop star galaxy with her overt political agenda? If so, I just hope M.I.A. doesn't go the way of pop feminist icon Madonna and, in the words of bell hooks, "return to patriarchy."

Cross-posted at Gender Across Borders

Written by: Maria Guzman, July 14th 2010

The Tyranny of Opinion: Honor in the Construction of the Mexican Public Sphere

admin — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 16:01:00 +0000

By Pablo Piccato

Duke University Press

A coworker who saw this book sitting on my desk commented, “The tyranny of opinion? Isn’t the whole point of an opinion that it’s free from tyranny?” Not quite. Even today, public opinion can make or break a celebrity’s or politician’s career. In The Tyranny of Opinion, Pablo Piccato weaves an intricate web connecting a variety of aspects of nineteenth century Mexican society, examining the notion of how honor was closely tied to one’s place in society and how public opinion affected people’s public and private lives.

Since honor was one of the most important—if not the most important—form of social capital one could have, people went to great lengths to maintain (or attain) it. Journalists at the time, for example, had a dualistic connection to public opinion. On one hand, they were responsible for publishing the material that helped create it. On the other, many journalists were underpaid and worked in poor conditions, and their upward mobility in society was closely tied to their success as writers. As such, establishing one’s reputation sometimes took precedence over objective reporting, which in turn had an impact on how public opinion was shaped.

Love affairs, student protests, public riots, and duels are also subjects of analysis in the book. Lest one think that he focused solely on the honor of the upper class, Piccato actually covers a broad spectrum of race and class. He is also careful to include a gender-based component in his analysis. Although the book focuses largely on the honor of men, Piccato examines the reasons why women—especially “respectable” women—were largely excluded from public life. In his conclusion, he notes how his analysis regarding women, domesticity, political narratives, and moral economy serve to contribute to a larger academic conversation about these subjects.

Piccato grounds his work in close readings of primary sources, interpreting everything from published newspaper stories to court documents. His knowledge of the historiography on the subject is evident, as is his knowledge of Mexican culture during the late eighteenth to early twentieth centuries. The strength of the book lies in Piccato’s ability to convey the context of his analysis. The Tyranny of Opinion will surely serve as an excellence resource for Mexican history scholars.

Written by: Melissa Arjona, July 12th 2010

Peepli Live

admin — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Directed by Anusha Rizvi

UTV Motion Pictures

The women of Peepli… well, there are no women in Peepli. Yes, there are daughters and mothers and wives, and to them Natha is purportedly “son and brother.” Natha is in dire straits; he has taken a loan from the bank and now cannot repay it. In an attempt to keep their lands from being auctioned off, Natha and his brother, Budhia, go to the local strongman cum political candidate for advice.

The politician recommends that one of the brothers commit suicide, for while the government does not provide debt relief or agricultural subsidies for farmers, it will give a sizable payout to the family of a farmer who has committed suicide. And therein lays their salvation. The family will have money and what have the two brothers done with their lives anyway? Let one sacrifice himself for the greater good.

Natha is a simpleton and his somewhat more savvy brother convinces him that since Budhia is the one who has a family, Natha must be the one to commit suicide—only he can save them all. Obligingly, Natha agrees. Later on that evening, after the brothers have drunk themselves into a stupor, a visiting reporter hears their story. The following morning’s headline foretells the death of farmer Natha and a media circus (as well as a political one) descends onto Peepli. The various parties and partisans push and pull, and attempt to decide whether or not Natha should live.

The three female characters in the film are all shrews. From Natha’s wife, who badgers and assaults the brothers, to his mother who complains and swears, to the reporter who appears to be unconscionably chasing leads, there is not a single positive female figure in the film. Inflation herself is a witch, wreaking havoc and ruining the farmers’ lives, leading them to their early graves.

Written by: Elisheva Zakheim, July 3rd 2010

For My Father

admin — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Directed by Dror Zahavi

Israfilm, Relevant F!lm

Centering on the chaste love affair between a Palestinian and an Israeli, For My Father offers the viewer a Middle Eastern re-telling of Romeo and Juliet while trying to spell out the complexities of post-intifada Israel.

The film opens up on Tarek (Shredi Jabarin), a Palestinian who has decided to act as suicide bomber. He’s ambivalent about the state of Israel—as well as Palestinian resistance to it—but takes action in order to salvage his yet-unseen father’s sullied reputation. After unsuccessfully trying to set off his bomb, he realizes that the device fails due to faulty wiring in the detonator, a jerry-rigged switch. Panicking, he flees, ending up in one of the scruffier areas of Tel Aviv. He ducks into an electronic repair shop, encountering Katz (Schlomo Vishinsky), an elderly Romanian Jew with a chip on his shoulder and a leaky roof. Tarek agrees to fix the hole in Katz’s roof in exchange for a new switch, which has to be ordered. As Shabbat is celebrated the next day, Katz’s shop will be closed until Sunday. Tarek is then forced to spend the weekend with the very people he was planning to kill.

During his sojourn, he interrupts the half-hearted suicide attempt of Mrs. Katz. He also befriends Keren (Hili Yalon), a beautiful tough-cookie who has fled her Orthodox Jewish community after an out-of-wedlock pregnancy. After saving her from a group of Orthodox toughs who object to her independent living and emo clothing, the two spend most of the following two days together, enjoying an easy rapport. Tarek rediscovers a passion for life which deepens his ambivalence about his mission. The fact that his handlers can detonate the bomb with a cell phone—and have threatened to harm his parents—only intensifies Tarek’s dilemma.

Yes, the movie did have its manipulative moments and the director unquestionably downplays the hostilities between Arabs and Jews in Israel. (The “Death to Arabs” graffiti scribbled on a building seemed downright contrived.) I found it odd that the Israeli characters never once questioned the very noticeable lump under Tarek’s clothes. For that matter, Keren and the Katzes seem too accepting of Tarek’s explanation for his very presence in Tel Aviv, a city that has kept Palestinians out via roadblocks for years. I also found myself questioning whether Israelis as a group are as averse to racial profiling as the Katzes and Keren are, and if the decision to paint Shaul, the one Jew who does express suspicion of Tarek, as a pompous buffoon wasn’t a subtle form of self-congratulation on the part of the Israeli director and screenwriters. I couldn’t help but wonder about how a Palestinian filmmaker would have approached this tale—or if a Palestinian would have chosen to tell this particular story at all.

In all fairness, however, this film wasn’t about the politics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This film is basically a movie about outcasts and how they often instinctively seek out and cling to other outcasts, battling loneliness while skirting the edges of society. For My Father also touches on the very human need to maintain reputation with the emotionally fraught bond between parents and children driving the story in surprising ways. I appreciated the fact that the story doesn’t insult the audience with a tacked-on happy-ending; there’s no way that a movie with a terrorist as leading man can end on an emotional high note.

Despite its over-idealized view of ethnic strife and pseudo-philosophical leanings, I am going to recommend For My Father on the strengths of its understated and powerful performances. But anyone expecting to get a crash course on the current state of Israeli-Palestinian resentments needs to look elsewhere.

Written by: Ebony Edwards-Ellis, June 18th 2010

Made in Pakistan

admin — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Directed by Nasir Khan

Talking Filmain

These days, political analysts on both sides of the aisle are calling Pakistan a failed state. While the “most dangerous place in the world” does face profound political and social turmoil, such sweeping commentary fails to capture the more personal intricacies of the lives of ordinary people living inside the country’s borders. Pakistan is more than the Taliban fighters implementing Sharia law in the Swat Valley, and it’s more than the frequent bombings of embassies and hotels from Islamabad to Karachi. As a way of countering the predominant fundamentalist image of Pakistanis constructed by the global media, filmmaker Nasir Khan recently released a poignant documentary that defies stereotypes and sheds light on some of the common challenges faced by citizens with lofty and patriotic ambitions.

Made in Pakistan presents the way a new generation of young leaders negotiates the conflicting pulls of consumerism, family, politics, gender, religion, and traditionalism. The film follows four educated, upper middle class, young Pakistanis in Lahore—a working mother, a lawyer, an event/PR manager, and a politician—from General Pervez Musharraf’s declaration of a state of emergency and military takeover in November 2007 to former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s assassination in January 2008. Waleed Khalid is a lawyer and professor at the Pakistan College of Law. He is a devout, but not uncritical, Muslim who has joined others employed in the judicial system to protest government corruption, in part fueled by American aid. In addition to raising her son, Rabia Aamir is the editor of The Fourth Article, a newly established magazine by and for politically savvy Pakistani youth. Aamir is a cultural activist who wants to find solutions to the political, social, and spiritual upheaval in the country. These two characters were the ones with whom I felt most sympathetic.

On the other hand, we have Tara Mahmood, a girl for whom the whole world is one big party waiting to happen, and she’s the one organizing it. Tara provides a lot of comic relief to an otherwise weighty film (at one point she says, "Alcohol is not banned here; it is just not legally sold."), and I was particularly moved when finally given the chance to see beyond her bubbly veneer. By contrast, duplicitous politician Mohsin Warraich provides an ominous, slimy representation of modern Pakistan: The film doesn’t have an outright villain, but if it did he’s be the one. Made in Pakistan is a compelling view of the immense contradictions of modern Pakistani society.

Review by Mandy Van Deven

Originally published in Bitch Magazine

Written by: Mandy Van Deven, June 15th 2010