Nicole Levitz

Access to Knowledge in the Age of Intellectual Property

mandy — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 08:00:00 +0000

Edited by Gaëlle Krikorian, Amy Kapczynski

A2K. Robot or revolution? A2K is a movement dedicated to dissemination of information to increase access to knowledge; hence, the acronym. Encompassing HIV/AIDS activists working for access to antiretroviral therapy in developing countries to college students downloading music for free, A2K is, at its heart, challenging intellectual property rights to enhance to fit our changing world.

Every time a group of people with similar ideas in the same moment come to together to form a “movement,” it seems they forget to record their experiences. Giving multiple perspectives on the history of A2K and the current situation on the ground, in Access to Knowledge in the Age of Intellectual Property we hear the real story through the voices of academicians and activists. Speaking to the wide scope of A2K, this intensely comprehensive tome of a book runs about 650 pages. It is not subway friendly, nor is it easy to read for more than twenty-minute chunks of time. Everything is dense but readable, and intensely thought provoking. Who knew intellectual property could be interesting?

Conceiving scarcity as a thing of the past persisted throughout the book; good riddance Econ 101. Information commons topple the Left-Right divide. (Perchance creating the space for bipartisanship, so perchance a single piece of legislation could be passed this term.) Th existence of boundless immaterial goods. What a tantalizing future. But could it be real?

The authors not only believe this to be so but they share the stories of this reality as it is progressing in our very real world. Think beyond the old confines of Napster to a place where access to lifesaving medicines is universal simply because they should be. Now that is freedom to knowledge and a future I could believe in.

Written by: Nicole Levitz, March 16th 2011

Women’s Health: What We Know Now (1/31/2011)

mandy — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 10:00:00 +0000

92nd Street Y

New York, New York

Blueberry myths and spicy food hot flashes were but two of the multitude of topics covered at an informative lecture on Women’s Health at the 92nd Street Y. Aimed at the middle aged uptowner, Women’s Health: What We Know served as a forum for the educated health consumer to raise their concerns with health professionals not waiting on their next appointment. Both Dr. Susan Love and Dr. Alice Domar were patient and honest, even occasionally funny. Exactly the type of woman you'd hope to find on the other end of the stethoscope.

The need for such a lecture is slightly disheartening in that it is clear even those who care and have financial means cannot find a fair answer between their providers, the media, and other sources. Time and again the speakers went back to studies in the media and the need to maintain absolute critical vigilance in deciphering who paid for the study, who got the results into the paper, and why.

Going into this event I thought I would learn nothing. Utterly false in my assumption, I learned many new tidbits, which may or may not be true, but they all have some evidence behind them. These include:

Buying organic produce is worth it if you are buying fruits or vegetables you don’t peel (e.g., strawberries and tomatoes); otherwise, it’s not (e.g., banana).
Think of menopause as backwards puberty. It’s natural. It’s bizarre. It's uncomfortable. You will get through it.
Fitness and exercise do not necessarily go hand in hand. If you are under fifty, you need to be fit, which may or may not imply that you need to exercise. If you are over fifty though, you need to exercise regularly to remain fit no matter what.
Vitamins and supplements, on the whole, have not been shown to be effective. But New York City does have a vitamin rich sewage system.
The existence and insistence of girls obtaining the Human Papillomavirus Virus vaccine may exist thanks to the fact that HPV studies needed to be conducted on people not rats.
There are women who still believe hormone therapy is the answer to their hot flashes. IT'S NOT!
Even breast cancer advocates are sick of the pink ribbon craze. Donate to breast cancer research, not awareness raising.

But my absolute favorite tidbit was Dr. Domar’s three cardinal rules: don’t smoke, wear a seatbelt, and have safe sex. These apparently are the only things science knows for sure.

Written by: Nicole Levitz, March 10th 2011

Put This on the {Map}: East King County

mandy — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 10:00:00 +0000

Directed by Megan Kennedy, Sid Jordan Peterson

Revelry Media

Part education, part cinema, all honesty. Put This on the {Map}: East King County gives a youthful face to gender and sexuality through its twenty-six compelling high school narrators. Filmed in Washington State on the east side of Seattle, where there is seemingly no visibility of queer youth, the strength of these young people to comes out on camera. Celebrating who they are is astonishing for any high schooler, let alone a queer one in a community where they are often isolated.

With the explicit goal of “reteaching gender and sexuality," Put This on the {Map} opens by defining the term gender itself. Some of the more useful educational exercises include a visual of a football field to explain the spectrum of gender and clarifying sexuality and gender through personal stories. Biology versus gender is difficult to grasp for many adults in our heteronormative society, and this film explains it to youth in simple yet never patronizing terms.

Shifting from an educational lens to the stories of the youth dealing with many familiar themes like depression, drug abuse, and bullying, one that was especially powerful was of a young, FTM transman explaining the challenges of returning to his school among the classmates who previously knew him as a girl in middle school. The dating difficulties segment in particular seemed really useful and unique. It provided a space to not feel so alone while going through all the trouble of self-discovery and disclosure, and still not being able to find a date.

From the personal to the political, the youth in this film move to speak directly to a wider audience. Peers, parents, friends, families, and the universe are called upon not for pity but receptivity and support, even if folks aren't sure whether a young person truly needs their help. Harboring wisdom beyond their years resulting from deep self-exploration, the young people seek a world where all people can marry in any state, bathrooms no longer succumb to assumptions of sexual violence if a woman’s pants are down within three feet of a man, and a country where comprehensive sex education is the norm. Obvious to some, but it is the privilege of hope amongst youth that gives it so much power. Watching a teenager explain genderqueer as limiting is absolutely phenomenal.

You can find this thirty-four-minute film at www.putthisonthemap.org, with other educational tools soon to follow.

Written by: Nicole Levitz, February 28th 2011

Scandalous Politics: Child Welfare Policy in the States

farhana — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 08:00:00 +0000

By Juliet F. Gainsborough

Georgetown University Press

Sixteen-month-old Amiya Brown died due to blunt force. Thirteen-month-old Christopher Thomas died and his two year-old sister. All under the auspices of child welfare. These and many other horrifying stories are the touchstones of Scandalous Politics: Child Welfare Policy in the States. A series of similar vignettes open the book with a jolt.

Meticulously structured, the book starts with a history of child welfare nationally before diving into the crux of the multi-pronged study featured. Though it clearly serves an academic purpose, it does so flawlessly. Scandalous Politics is incredibly well researched and could easily be mined for details for years to come. However, without my background in social science research it may have been a much more difficult read.

Gainsborough’s study supplements three different state case studies (Florida, Colorado, and New Jersey) with a regression analysis of how scandal influences funding and legislation around child welfare reform. She emphasizes the importance of media in highlighting child welfare atrocities in policy formation. Her regression analysis found a significant relationship between scandals and legislation, but not scandals and funding for child welfare program. Many of the bills came out within two weeks of a compelling story hitting the papers. Gainsborough recognizes the need for continued coverage and pressure from the media in order to create the funding base necessary to create systematic change instead of band-aid reform on a case-by-base basis, which is generally short term and not appropriately funded overtime.

Separation of the research from the stories of children appears conscious. Unfortunately, the continuity of the stories is then lost in the research. It’s as if the stories run in parallel to the study, making the book a significantly less emotional read.

Child welfare issues are not easy, and Gainsborough gives much credence to that. But must we simply leave the fate of the most vulnerable children in this country to the whims of the news cycle?

Written by: Nicole Levitz, January 31st 2011

Unequal Desires: Race and Erotic Capital in the Stripping Industry

mandy — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 20:00:00 +0000

By Siobhan Brooks

SUNY Press

Racial inequality in the workforce seems sadly obvious, but something I had never before thought of was racial inequality in sex work. Logically, it makes sense that this brand of inequity would carry through to the sex industry, but it feels wrong somehow that anyone would be vying for a better position in sex work. As a feminist, empowerment in sex work has always fascinated me. Although the typical debates of this issue play a very limited role in Unequal Desires, the book creates the space for a new conversation about sex work and race.

Unequal Desires highlights race’s role in stripping—specifically, the stripper’s erotic capital. (Erotic capital is the value given to a body based on socially and culturally crafted visions of ideal beauty that are accepted by the majority of people in a given society.) Adapted from Brooks’ dissertation, her book reads like an ethnographic study. Her interpretation of interviewees quotes are very limited and the majority of the book contains her uncontaminated observations. The purity of her research gives it enormous academic credibility in my eyes, but may become tiresome reading for someone outside of academia.

What I found most interesting was Brooks’ choice of interviewing strip club staff as her primary source, and not dancers. This appeared to coalesce in the process of her research, as the dancers were less accessible at the three clubs at which she conducted her study: two straight clubs in New York City and one lesbian club in San Francisco. Hearing directly from bouncers, waiters, custodians, club managers, and a few dancers was incredible. It is nearly impossible to hear these voices unfiltered through media and academic sources, so Brooks’ fieldwork is invaluable in that sense; however, her choice to maintain an academic frame in her publication may limit the scope of individuals these voices reach.

Using stripping as a window makes racial discrimination in the workplace a new issue. Even among jobs that many find undesirable, racism persists and reminds the world that we are not in a “post-racial” state; in fact, it is quite the opposite.

Written by: Nicole Levitz, January 22nd 2011

Growing Roots: The New Generation of Sustainable Farmers, Cooks, and Food Activists

barbara — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By Katherine Leiner

Sunrise Lane Productions

Seared Scallop Salad with Honey Vinaigrette and Moqui (Spicy) Mac (n’Cheese), yum. This was simply the one of the selections of delicious recipes in Growing Roots that I attempted with the assistance of my boyfriend/sous-chef. But Growing Roots is much more than a cookbook. Chronicling one woman’s cross-country road trip and profiling folks on the ground at every level, from composting queens to herbalists to family farmers to social entrepreneurs-restaurateurs, Growing Roots is a unique window into the breadth of labor and love that is going into the ever-growing movement of food sustainability.

Each interview flows into the next by region, not issue area, but it works because you get the sense you are tagging along on this road trip with Leiner and her dog, Luna. Leiner gives a little exposition on how she met the people she interviews and where she spoke with them along the way in her travels; interestingly though, she predominantly uses their own words. Interviews focus on the daily lives and progress of their work on sustainability. Most of the profiles are complemented by each individual’s favorite recipes; most include ideas for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert, and all of them look incredible. The two I made on Sunday, mentioned above, were scrumptious and strangely complemented one another, even though they came from different folks.

From the scope of the interviews, Katherine Leiner appears to have a real insider’s connections throughout the industry. She notes lots of personal relationships, and though she tries to sound down-to-earth her Manhattan foodie fabulousness bubbles up again and again. It appears that she sees the book as a platform to highlight the little people of the sustainability world. Perhaps she sees it as doing her part, or perhaps she has compiled this as a pet project simply because she can.

Ironically, everyone highlighted in the book describes sacrifices they’ve made in order to do this work. Day jobs that they love and feel are so important leave them with limited means or other losses. Juxtaposed with Leiner, it seems at times she is almost using them. But to be fair, I come from very much the same school of privileged environmentalism that Leiner does, and the opportunity to credit these hard work activists is incredible—very few people could pull it off.

More than anything, the consistent pattern of each interview would seem to get old quite fast, but it doesn’t at all. Each person’s story is compelling and inspiring and makes you want to read more and more. It even began to create grand delusions in my own city girl mind about the beauties of farming and that even I could be capable of it. Now, that’s a hell of a book.

Written by: Nicole Levitz, November 25th 2010

Nirvana of Pussy: A Conversation with Tucker Max

brittany — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Interview with Tucker Max

All I wanted to know was if Tucker Max was for real. Ladies and gentlemen, let me tell you, he is. Explaining that if he has learned anything over the past five years, it is that people are fucking stupid, clearly the infamous Tucker Max was extraordinarily candid when we talked about his new book Assholes Finish First. His candor was particularly astounding, as he knew I was a writer for Elevate Difference, a site with a mission to advance political and social justice, while Max is embodiment of all things politically incorrect. He is particularly known throughout the feminist community for his drunken antics with women, which I personally believe have been consistently misconstrued, and this was my chance to find out if I was right.

Perhaps it was the simple fact that I was dared to read Max’s first book I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell that so quickly brought me into his fold, or the fact that reading it made me feel like a subversive sex-positive feminist. More than anything, it was my curiosity about the man behind the controversial books that made this book reviewer seek out the infamous sex writer.

Speaking on the phone, before I even got through my introduction, Max jumped in to explain that his work is not a commentary on male sexuality, but simply writing about his real life. He is a man with some seemingly outrageous stories to tell and us aspiring sexologists should make no further assumptions. Fair enough.

Max believes that we are a society still “too prudish and buttoned-up” to teach sex education properly. He quickly conceded that the next generation of sex ed will largely center on porn and work like his own, and even Tucker Max finds this “shameful.” The fact that anyone is learning about sex from his books and not from school or their parents is truly shocking. Thankfully (or not), virgins across America are turning to Tucker Max for their intellectual and physical sexual education. The fact that thirty-year-olds with no sexual experience and barely-eighteen-year-olds all reach out to him as a sexual celebrity and a familiar person to take their virginity—literally—is surprising, even to Tucker.

Assholes Finish First is Max’s follow-up to the best-selling I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, and it takes so-called “fratire” to a new level. Dividing the book into his pre- and post-fame lives—a decision that emerged as he was writing and friends (the familiar Nils and Bunny to fans) noted a clearly different tenor between these stories—gives a new richness to his work. Because these are tales from only one man, the juxtaposition honestly showcases how fame can change one’s life, especially when compared with examples of other celebrity works.

The book’s bonus section contains stories from the women Max has slept with, written from their own perspectives. He knew this would appeal to his female audience—about half his readership. It also gives a different level of credence to his body of work, because as readers we finally get to hear someone else’s side of his stories—something I wondered a lot about and am sure others have as well. Oddly enough, the accounts from both sides line up more often than not.

What is most striking to me in his post-fame stories is Max’s cognizance about the state of his own life. Most people don’t spend their days writing about themselves; they don’t have that kind of time for self-reflection. Max takes this opportunity and really looks at himself as an outsider. He is in the midst of the common transition from playboy to family man but often documents it as an outside observer. Perhaps most interesting, it is not his own words that encapsulate his feelings about the state of his life but those of his friend (which he does include in the book).

We talked about this quite a bit on the phone. Fame has brought him to this so-called “nirvana of pussy.” The ladies come to him, and they come in droves. What he emphasized was how his life is in transition, from living out his teenage dreams of endless sexual conquests to his adult aspirations for a relationship. He stated outright that, “I don’t know how to live a committed, monogamous relationship, but I want to. Living the life every nineteen-year-old guy wants,” he told me he is now “moving out of it...not fully in either phase.”

More striking was the confession that this “nirvana of pussy” was the “complete opposite” of what he expected. Max’s lesson is an obvious but universal one, even in a book about gratuitous sex: Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it. He qualified this, saying that it would be “totally disingenuous” to whine about it now. This is what he wanted. The fact that the lived reality was not the same as the dream is a fact of life that needs to be swallowed hard.

After I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell sold over 1.5 million copies, he had unique creative freedom with editors and publishers on the second book, Assholes Finish First. This was why he felt he could include abortion so explicitly, even using the phrase “baby killer.” Though he did not appreciate my take that his story about unintended pregnancy is a PSA for condom use, he did agree he was more actively spelling out advice in his vignette than he usually does. “[I’m] so tired of idiots taking the wrong thing out of what I write,” he said. Lots of sex does not mean lots of unsafe sex. It just means lots of sex.

A big secret: He can quote Betty Freidan. Under her definition, Max is a self-declared feminist. So why the incessant anger from the feminist community? He believes he is often labeled a misogynist because he doesn’t worship all things female. He also thinks “extremeophiles,” those who see all porn as rape, had a large role in much of this labeling. Max estimates that twenty-five percent of his readership is comprised of self-identified feminists, with women as half of his overall readership.

To him, the reality is that that he “makes fun of people,” at-large. Not women, not men, just people that he thinks suck. “Sometimes a woman can be a bitch or a guy can be a shithead, [and they] need [to be called out],” he told me. According to Max, calling someone a slut has nothing to do with his or her sexual experience. It is the power of the label itself. When he’s using such a label, he doesn’t know the reality of that individual’s life. He’s doing it just to get a rise out of someone, because he can.

His most vehement reaction to my series of questions on feminism was around what I see as a common thread in his books, the Madonna-whore dichotomy. Max sees the entire dichotomy as “bullshit” and says it just doesn’t apply to his work.

As our conversation wound down, we talked about his wide readership. Ranging from sixteen-year-olds, who view him as a demigod, to fifty-year-olds reliving their glory days, what makes Tucker Max so appealing? In his eyes, he is simply “objectively funny [and] painfully, authentically raw,” something we don’t see much in media, if at all. He “exists outside the machine.” It shows.

The book launch I attended was at a West Village dive bar, up the stairs in the back, and totally public. Max has no sanctioned book reviews on the jacket of a follow-up to a New York Times bestseller. His Cinderella tale of success—of having his manuscript rejected by every publisher, to building an audience through his blog, and gaining the leverage to write the exact book he wanted—was one of the first, though in the blog-to-book world, has become commonplace. Central to his wide readership, he claims, is his balance between self-indulgence and corporate appeal. He is attempting to create the best art that he can while resonating with his wide audience. Yes, Assholes Finish First is art.

Written by: Nicole Levitz, November 16th 2010

Lynchpin #1

payal — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By William Brian MacLean

RoosterTree ComicLit

You’re a bold Canadian Mr. MacLean. For your first full-length comic, Lynchpin #1, you decide to tackle sexual assault in high school, and then sent it to the Elevate Difference. You even went so far as to specifically request our uncensored assessment. Well, you asked for it.

Though you clearly had the best of intentions and appear to want to help your friend find a little justice by sharing her story with the world, you missed the mark. Your courage in tackling this very personal subject matter is astounding. Few people, and possibly even fewer men, would dare such a thing in a comic book. But the story to the many, many women and men affected by this issue is extremely triggering with no warning to them at all. Noting only lust, villainy, philosophy, heroism, survival, confession, and chewing gum as topics covered was incredibly misleading to me (though it may not be so for others). There were so many opportunities to allude to the plot line of comic before diving into it. The most obvious to me is Alanna’s (the author’s friend who is the survivor) opening frames.

As Alanna calls it, this is her true high school story, and it is the slut-shaming aspect of assault, captured here so well that, to me, makes it so true. Rarely are there fictional depictions of young women who are shown before and after an assault and how that changes their day-to-day life, most specifically here being labeled a “slut.”

From simply a visual perspective, I think the work is really strong. Your panels are incredibly well laid out and balanced in their diversity, and your illustration has a voice of its own. You just have to let it speak for itself. Your character’s Modigliani-like eyes say so much alone, don’t be afraid to depend on your art more. There is no need for you to step into the comic as a character yourself. That transgression, though seemingly personally necessary, distracts from the power of the story. Your apologies to the universe from men everywhere is only making yourself feel better.

I hope this is a sufficiently uncensored assessment for your liking.

Written by: Nicole Levitz, October 5th 2010

O Fallen Angel

payal — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By Kate Zambreno

Chiasmus Press

Mommy, Maggie and Malachi may be the first to give Mrs. Dalloway a real run for her money. In O Fallen Angel Kate Zambreno deconstructs stream of consciousness and successfully reworks it for the twenty-first century. The inner most thoughts of Mommy, a homemaker in Juicy pants with more than a feminine mystique; her adult daughter Maggie, the product of nature and nurture with a penchant for penis and depression; and Malachi, a mysterious prophet of sorts, are interwoven into a story less about the inner workings of a family and more about commenting on everything from therapy to grandparenting.

Each character’s interspersed sections has its own consistent rhythm and structure, which is how the book garners its real power. Mommy with her nearly constant declarations and commands! Maggie with her brooding staccato blocks. Malachi with his poetry and delusions. Their thoughts run on parallel tracks with very little intersection, yet the book feels completely cohesive. Zambreno defers to her characters to tell their own stories while using the third person throughout. This is no easy feat, and she seamlessly pulls it off.

What Zambreno fails to do is hide her blatantly feminist stance. The themes of gender, sex and relationships are everywhere. We see a relatively mainstream feminist perspective peeking through. We know what messages Zambreno wants the reader to leave with—reproductive justice, failures of gender norms, etc. Only Maggie really pushes these ideological boundaries with her fantasizing about men loving her, and when that reality fails, taking advantage of her, and when that fails loving her again. But the issue is not her ever-lost love but her perception of it. Maggie really plays in the grey areas of empowerment and sexual freedom and promiscuity, pushing the reader to question their own views.

In comparison, Mommy embodies the prototypical vices of the fifties housewife, loneliness cloaked in exuberance. She spends most of her days thinking of how good she is to her husband, making him sandwiches with extra mayo just the way he likes them. She seems to stand in for all that the second wave was fighting against.

Malachi would be the comic relief to all of this theory if any of what he had to say was comic or a relief. Instead his doomsday poetry, possibly the nearest thing to truth in Zambreno’s eyes, comes from the only man featured, throwing yet another wrench in the feminist mix. Is Mommy’s black and white and Maggie’s grey area just eking for the space of something greater beyond gender—like humanism? I’ll let you be the judge.

Written by: Nicole Levitz, October 3rd 2010

Literary Readings: Margaret Atwood (9/20/2010)

mandy — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 16:00:00 +0000

92nd Street Y

New York, New York

Have you ever overheard such a riveting, witty conversation that you simply had to eavesdrop? Listening to Margaret Atwood and Valerie Martin quibble over every possible tangent to Atwood’s latest paperback The Year of the Flood felt much like playing the part of an enchanted voyeur. The incredible chemistry of these two old friends was stunning unto itself; the subject matter was a combination of defining dystopia and rabbit starvation, elucidating the mythology of bees, and examining city lights and migratory bird patterns. Even still, they were hilarious.

As Martin introduced her friend of thirty years, she joked that the impossibility of Atwood having been so prolific with her writing and appearances could only mean that she must have a secret “Saskatchewan double” typing away for her in the tundra. Later on during the Q&A, as one writer tried to outdo the other, there were many gems.

The story of The Year of the Flood is meant to examine the path of those with lesser means in a dystopian world of privilege set in the future. Centered on a utopia thrust into a dying world, three narrators tell the story of the God’s Gardeners, a fictional cult that operates in slums and praises Mother Earth on rooftop gardens. This is a future where Al Gore is canonized and characters wait out the annihilation of the planet in spas while persisting on avocado masks. A waterless flood, in the form of a man-made virus, has essentially eliminated humanity.

Atwood reading from the podium felt much more like a traditional reading, with a bits of scene setting and three excerpted selections (one for each narrator in the novel). That is, until Margaret Atwood sang a hymn called "We Praise The Tiny Perfect Moles" for Mole day, a children’s festival of the God’s Gardeners. As Atwood has become a sort of a modern day patron saint of the dystopia genre, perhaps all this is her way of giving back.

I went into this event an enormous fan of Atwood, and left even more in love. If you have yet to read Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, stop reading this drivel I have penned and go find that book. It will change your life.

Written by: Nicole Levitz, September 21st 2010

Colonial Metropolis: The Urban Grounds of Anti-Imperialism and Feminism in Interwar Paris

admin — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 14:19:00 +0000

By Jennifer Anne Boittin

University of Nebraska Press

Interwar Paris conjures up images of romance and renewal. From the ashes and rubble of the First World War, families reunite and rebuild under what seemed to be the end of the most dire of circumstances. Unfortunately, Colonial Metropolis fails to capture this magic, and yet it is an extremely thoughtful and methodical review of the local primary source material available, and would serve as a very strong academic referral source.

The author, Jennifer Anne Boittin, has a clear passion for the subject matter and conveys this well through her enthusiastic descriptions of the characters of the period who populated the anti-colonialism and feminist movements. The problem, for me, stems from the fact that we never feel the interaction between these players. These characters never seem to weave together into the larger story of feminist and anti-colonial activism, the tale that Boittin is seemed so hopeful to tell at the outset of the book.

Boittin lifts directly from the historical record to bring a multitude of characters from this period to life, but none so well as that as Josephine Baker. Pages and pages are dedicated to bringing her tantalizing and mischievous performances to life. Imagine the dedication and zeal of Marina Abramović crossed with the free wheeling sexual spirit of Isadora Duncan. Who wouldn’t want to be warped back to the front row for that show of an old theater in Paris?

With these high sensory moments scattered throughout, readers catch glimpses of the time gone by that was advertised to them, but even the best of these moments failed to sustain me from page to page. Clearly, Boittin’s integrity to the historical record speaks to her virtues as an academic; it just doesn’t make for a particularly interesting read.

Written by: Nicole Levitz, August 2nd 2010

Holy Rollers

admin — Tue, 18 May 2010 05:43:00 +0000

Directed by Kevin Asch

First Independent Pictures

Holy Rollers is a story of sex, drugs, and Orthodox Judaism. In the late 1990s, a group of drug dealers used young Orthodox kids from Brooklyn as mules to carry ecstasy back from Amsterdam to New York City. On the surface, this fictionalized account of these real events seems so simple: the sinful preying on the innocent. The viewer is drawn in by the intrigue and deceit, yet is left thinking about religion and culture.

We are never told exactly which Orthodox community in Brooklyn Holy Rollers’ main character (and real life person) Sam Gold lives in, but I think that merely speaks to the fact that it could have been any of them. (Post-viewing research proves it to have been Williamsburg.) Sam is a prototypical, ideal Orthodox boy who is studying to be a rabbi, comes from a good family, and works in his father’s shop. Sam's only problem is that he dreams of something beyond his immediate surroundings, and sees money as the means to get him there. His material desire leads him to blindly follow his neighbor into the "easy money" job of bringing "medicine for rich people" back to the U.S. from Europe.

Playing with the inconsistencies of reality is what changes a good story into a great movie. Who would ever believe it was a Jew who instituted and ran such a scheme? Who used a shared faith to exploit young people? And who would think that so many lies could create a positive space from which to question one’s beliefs? I found myself sitting on the edge of my seat, praying that Sam and his compatriots wouldn’t get caught while simultaneously questioning prayer.

Watching Sam’s crisis of conscience made me see so much more than a bizarre news clip in an insular faction of American society. His is a life almost too close to my own, and, really, Sam’s story could be anyone’s coming of age: moving away from the world of your youth, finding who you truly are, and deciding if you want to stay in the place you’re from or choose another fate. Sometimes when we choose to leave, there is no space in our new predicament for who we used to be.

Written by: Nicole Levitz, May 18th 2010

Get Low

admin — Thu, 06 May 2010 16:01:00 +0000

Directed by Aaron Schneider

Sony Pictures Classics

Robert Duvall. Sissy Spacek. Bill Murray. If that’s not an easy sell, I’m not entirely sure what film would be. As expected, the acting in Get Low is phenomenal across the board. Even up and comer Lucas Black more than holds his own with these legends. The acting is the magic the movie tries so hard to make. Unfortunately, the allure of the fanciful southern folktale misses the mark. There are magic moments but Get Low fails to sustain itself consistently. Even so, it is a great pleasure to see these actors at work and tell this moral laden fable.

Robert Duvall plays an infamous town recluse, Felix Bush; Sissy Spacek plays his love of times gone by, and Bill Murray plays a funeral director. The premise is shockingly simple: the entire story centers on a funeral—only, it is for the still living Mr. Bush. If that were not strange enough, the funeral itself is no ordinary affair. In lieu of somber speeches and tears, there is an enormous party, with a raffle no less. But most surprising to me is that this film is based on a true story. A man by the name of Felix “Bush” Breazeale convinced counties of people to come to his “funeral party” by raffling off his property for next to nothing. The curiosity alone is appealing but the film presents a story the wider world needed to hear for its message on greed, love, and real life in the small town South.

Though all of these perspectives are intriguing, I somehow keep focusing on the fact that the film is couched as a folktale when really it is much more of an nontraditional love story. The intriguing part of this film is the dimension of older people in love. What would be so wrong with saying that? Is our world still that stuck in the traditional model of attractive, youthful happily ever after? Are we just not ready to think of the love lives of older people—beyond The Notebook in which we see their love mature from their youth? I think the answer to all those questions is yes.

The advertisers probably rightfully chose not to focus on this key aspect as for many audiences, it is not a major selling point. But as a feminist and someone critical of society’s scope of love, I think it is one of the most important reasons to go out and support this film.

Written by: Nicole Levitz, May 6th 2010

Girl Trouble

admin — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 15:59:00 +0000

Directed by Lexi Leban, Lidia Szajko

New Day Films

Girl Trouble gives a glimpse of the underbelly of The City By the Bay. Set in San Francisco, this is not a story about the hippies of Haight Asbury, nor is it a tale of the modern liberal Mecca so many of us assume it to be. In fact, Girl Trouble could be set just about anywhere in the United States. The film follows three young women whose lives are entrenched in cycles of violence and who can barely keep their heads above water, let alone enjoy the splendors of the world around them. One attorney in the film explained it perfectly: "These girls live in a city where, from any point, the ocean is no more than seven miles away, yet they have never seen it."

Spanning four years, examining the ins and outs of the juvenile justice system, the audience follows Stephanie, a new mother battling domestic violence; Sheila, a drug user and dealer who comes from a family riddled with violence and addiction; and Shangra, who sells drugs to support her homeless mother. The girls are tied together by their mutual experience working at the Center for Young Women’s Development. The Center’s mission is to “empower and inspire young women who have been involved in the juvenile justice system and/or the underground street economy to create positive change in their lives and communities.” The three girls, to varying degrees and at very different stages, all eventually do make positive change in their lives. We see the continuum of that potential change amongst them with one essentially submitting to fate, one petrified but embracing recovery, and one starting her life anew.

Girl Trouble makes a clear case for the benefits of intervention in individual lives over prosecution, and highlights discrepancies within the system. According to the film, girls make up twenty-three percent of juveniles in the system nationwide, and less than five percent of the funding goes towards programming for young women, the fastest growing segment of the juvenile justice system. Stuck in the cycle of violence, girls can end up bouncing from group homes to survival crimes and back again. The film shows how people need a second chance to see that another path is possible and that jail does not provide girls with rehabilitative opportunities.

Written by: Nicole Levitz, April 7th 2010

American Moderns: Bohemian New York and the Creation of a New Century

admin — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 16:01:00 +0000

By Christine Stansell

Princeton University Press

Occasionally, in 'getting to know you' circles, the question of what period you would have most liked to have lived in is brought to the table. Granted, for many, these are not quite as appealing as banally declaring mint chocolate chip is the finest of the flavors, in your humble opinion, but I think the prior question may be more telling about a person. Christine Stansell’s newly revised American Moderns has changed my response to this telling question. For a long time my semi-automated, ice cream flavor-style response would have been the late '60s, specifically 1968: the birth of Hair, the Chicago 10, and all around political radical goodness. Now, it is 1914 and the original teens, if you will: the birth of modern feminism, the New Woman, and all around political radical goodness.

The book sweeps the reader far away to a Greenwich Village full of poetry and literature and so much love, something lost now to NYU bars on McDougall and overpriced faux French bistros pretending to be forbidding and tucked away. Perhaps walking along a brownstone block on a very snowy day, with no one around, you can begin to imagine what it was like back then: cafes brimming with radical thought and discussions of masculinities and feminities, what love means, why we express it the way we do. Maybe that image can stay with you as you walk east to a village that used to be full of immigrants exporting ideas of anarchism and free speech, not a place where CBGB is replaced by John Varvatos, and it is seen as a lesser of possible evils.

Unfortunately, I have found that nearly impossible in the real world, but steeped in the pages of this book that world is real again. Emma Goldman runs from Rochester to the safety of the immigrant bohemia in the East Village and moves from immigrant to anarchist to feminist to patriot, all the while freely falling in and out of love with prisoners and hobos. Margaret Sanger takes on the Comstock laws and fights for free speech and access to information on birth control. (Perhaps one of the few remaining vestiges of this time is the Margaret Sanger Center, still next to the very first Planned Parenthood.) Mabel Dodge returns from years in Italy to cast her husband aside and take on New York society while adopting artists one-by-one. And so many stories of women and men that we never hear of: the writer couples, the forgotten lovers, and the revolutionaries who never made the history books.

The book raised questions about the past and future of feminism, with this striking quote: “Older women's rights leaders had been formed by nineteenth-century notions of sex as fundamentally dangerous to women and were repelled by the new ideas.” Over a century later and we're facing the same exact battles. What kind of movement are we fighting for really? Are the New Women a lost vestige? Is the future of feminism a doomed cycle of repetition until it dwindles to nothing? Magical and immense, this book can stand simply on the surface, but it speaks to the third wave in such a poignant way that it cannot be ignored.

Written by: Nicole Levitz, March 21st 2010