Technical Difficulties

Women Who Kill by Ann Jones

My rating: 5 of 5 stars
( warning: extensive soap-boxery behind the cut )

Slotkin, Richard. Regeneration through Violence. Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press-University Press of New England, 1973.

Chapter 1: Myth and Literature in a New World
( myths reach out of the past to cripple, incapacitate, or strike down the living )

Sigmund, Anna Maria. Women of the Third Reich. [Die Frauen der Nazis]. 1998. Richmond Hill, Ontario: NDE Publishing, 2000.

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I don't know whether this book was poorly written or poorly translated or both (my money's on both). The language is clumsy; the scholarship is mediocre to poor (I grant that Leni Riefenstahl's post-WWII, self-exculpating memoir is not a trustworthy source, but when you're countering with Goebbels . . . um, maybe this needs a little more unpacking?); and as a historiographical endeavor, this is a set of eight biographical sketches, to varying degrees of sketchy, devoid of an argument even in those cases when an argument is absolutely crying out to be made. As for example, Geli Raubal. Or the fantastically hypocritical Gertrud Scholtz-Klink, who made a public career out of telling women to stay out of the public sector:

She wanted to communicate to other women her fervent conviction that fulfilling one's duty--quietly in the background and without demanding recognition--was an essential part of the female psyche.

"For mothers it is true that they come to a very quiet and understated power through service, whose sole purpose for ever and ever remains service."

Scholtz-Klink, of course, never served quietly, but traveled constantly from one congress to the next, giving speeches and putting her simple ideas down on paper. In 1938, when her husband started complaining about her numerous party duties, she divorced him.
(117)

And overarchingly, demandingly, the central question about Carin Goering, Magda Goebbels, Leni Riefenstahl, Gertrud Schotz-Klink, Henriette von Schirach, and even Eva Braun: what was it that made intelligent, ambitious women devote themselves to Nazism and to Hitler, who made no secret at all of the fact that he had no use, either personally or politically, for women who were intelligent and/or ambitious? Some of it is attributable to Hitler's legendary magnetism, but not all of it. Some of it is attributable to the Nazi habit of making exceptions: Leni Riefenstahl, for instance, was able to achieve extraordinary things with Nazi support, and Hanna Reitsch, who isn't covered in this book, is another example. But right at the center of the whole thing is this question that Sigmund doesn't even formulate, much less try to answer: why did these women devote their entire lives--and in the case of Magda Goebbels, her death--to an ideological cause that, from the beginning, utterly and unhesitatingly rejected them?

So, Julie Taymor is directing The Tempest, with Dame Helen Mirren as Prospero. (I am ignoring the change from Prospero to Prospera, because honestly (a.) not necessary, (b.) what's wrong with some good old-fashioned genderfuck?, and (c.) to me it kind of suggests we don't think Dame Helen is up to the challenge of playing Prospero, which is nonsense. But if that's the worst mistake they make--and hopefully, this is really a very carefully thought out feminist statement that will persuade me of its rightness when I see the movie--we are all so very golden.)

The Tempest is not my favorite of Shakespeare's plays, nor even my favorite of Shakespeare's late plays, but I have to tell you, the trailer goes a long way towards persuading me to rethink that opinion:


Because:
1. Helen Mirren.
2. Alfred Molina.
3. HELEN MIRREN.
4. This, seriously, is what CGI is for (check out those hellhounds, OMFG), and if there was ever a Shakespeare play that could take the bling, THIS IS THAT PLAY. I am really almost deliriously grateful to see that here, finally, is a production of The Tempest that takes Prospero's magic seriously.
5. Hard to tell from the tiny clips we get, but it looks like they're also taking Caliban seriously. Which not all productions do.
6. And did I mention, HELEN MIRREN.


glvalentine has some excellent discussion of the costuming (which is where I lifted the still from). Zippered doublets FTW.

It also looks like, from the trailer, they understand what Stephano and Trinculo are in the play for (again, not all productions do, nor do all Hollywood versions of Shakespeare understand what the clowns are for. See Much Ado About Nothing, re: Michael Keaton.). The casting of Alfred Molina, aside from rocking my socks, is a good sign.

And, in conclusion, HELEN MIRREN.

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ETA: if anyone else would like a very simple Helen Mirren icon, you may feel free to use this one:

And don't hesitate to add text if it pleases you. Currently, my only image-editing software is, um, Paint.

1. for those who are interested, this is the email I just sent to the Milwaukee Art Museum about the quilt exhibit:
( cut for mercy )

2. for those who aren't interested in quilts, but do like animals, have a video of seven-week-old Pallas's Cats* (there are several other videos of these kittens if this one charms your socks off as it did mine).

3. If you don't like either animals or quilts . . . well, you probably like books, so here: Mary Robinette Kowal is having a caption contest in which she will be giving away two signed copies of her debut novel, Shades of Milk and Honey.

And now I really need to get some work done.

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*I'd never heard of Pallas's Cats before this morning. They're like a cross between cats and owls, with some raccoon spliced in for good measure. (matociquala, wikipedia says they're native to the Asian steppes.)

Dear Milwaukee Art Museum:

While I very much enjoyed your exhibit, American Quilts: Selections from the Winterthur Collectcion, and was impressed by the excellence of the quilts, there was one thing that gave me pause.

The quilts in the exhibit were from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (1760-1850), and they were, of course, made by women. I said to my husband, "This is the most women's names you will ever see in a museum exhibit," and that was something I particularly appreciated: seeing women's artwork taken seriously and presented as worthy of respect, even if it was evident that the curators were struggling to find the vocabulary to talk about the quilts as art rather than merely as social artifacts. That's okay; I understand how hard that can be, having encountered the same difficulty with science fiction and fantasy many times, and that did not detract from the quality of the exhibit. However, in the gift shop (the last room in the exhibit), there were three quilts on display by Bruce Seeds.

Let me be clear: I think that it is awesome that a twenty-first century man has chosen to take up quilting, and furthermore, I think that Mr. Seeds' quilts are indeed excellent and gorgeous and quite interesting in juxtaposition with the quilts in the exhibit. But by placing them at the end of this exhibit of early American quilts, without any acknowledgment of the fact that women continued to make quilts for the 150 years in between and are still making quilts, some of which are every bit as iconoclastic, if not more so, than Mr. Seeds', are you not perpetuating a particularly unpleasant canard: that women may be competent to make, in this case, quilts, but it takes a man to make real art out of them? In this context, I cannot help but feel that Mr. Seeds' slightly supercilious self-consciousness ("not your grandmother's quilts" indeed) is an unfortunate sidelight on the valuation of women's artwork--the very thing that I had found so striking and admirable in the rest of the exhibit. (Let me also add that I know that's being unfair to Mr. Seeds, since I wouldn't find that nearly as troublesome in a different context--and the context is not his fault.) And while I understand that the focus of the exhibit was on early American quilts, and thus it did not have the scope to explore the rich continuing tradition(s) of American quilting, if you could find space for one modern quilter in your gift shop, could you not either

(a.) have found space for two?

or

(b.) have made that single quilter¹ a woman, so as to continue the celebration of women's arts that made the exhibit so moving?

It's not hard to find examples of contemporary women quilters doing fascinating work. Here's a fairly intellectualized example, but jeez. Just take a look at the Smoky Mountain Quilt Show 2009 and see the amazing and beautiful things contemporary women are doing in quilting.²

After a lovely, thought-provoking, and even inspiring exhibit, this sudden descent into patriarchalism left me feeling dissatisfied, and in fact a little bitter--as this blog post now attests.

Nevertheless, thank you for putting on this exhibit of early American women's quilts. It is far better to have a flawed exhibit than no exhibit at all.


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¹For that matter, I was puzzled by the degree to which the exhibit ignored the fact that quilting was a social art. The quilts were all attributed as much as possible to single quilters, even when those single quilters' names were unknown. I would have appreciated an acknowledgment that the paradigms of Western art did not apply comfortably here.

²When I was a kid, there was a woman who exhibited her quilts at the Children's Museum of Oak Ridge. Her quilts were astonishing in their combination of quilting, calligraphy, and feminism--obviously, since I remember them twenty-plus years later. I just wish I could remember her name.

What with the whiny princess feet, I've been thinking a lot about the Little Mermaid recently.

I should say clearly, btw, that I hate Hans Christian Andersen. Terry Pratchett is on record as hating Lewis Carroll, and the way he feels about Carroll, although completely antithetical to my experience of Carroll, is pretty much word for word the way I feel about Andersen: "I didn't like the Alice books because I found them creepy and horribly unfunny in a nasty, plonking, Victorian way. Oh, here's Mr Christmas Pudding On Legs, hohohoho, here's a Caterpillar Smoking A Pipe, hohohoho. When I was a kid the books created in me about the same revulsion as you get when, aged seven, you're invited to kiss your great-grandmother."

Except, of course, that Andersen has no particular sense of humor.

As alert readers of the Doctrine of Labyrinths will probably have noticed, there is one Andersen story I like: "The Tinder Box." But "The Steadfast Tin Soldier"? No. "The Girl Who Trod on a Loaf" Hell, no. "The Little Mermaid"? No no no.

I should also say that, while (having a weakness both for musicals and for animated films) I enjoyed Disney's Little Mermaid, I was aware from the beginning that it was a cheat--quite literally the Disneyfied version. In many ways, it's a more satisfying story than Andersen's, but Andersen seems to have been quite deliberate in his choice to tell UNsatisfying stories. (N.b., I am not and do not pretend to be an Andersen scholar; I'm only going on my memories of the stories of his I've read.) And, you know, I do genuinely respect that as a choice, but that doesn't mean I have to like it.

( spoilers for Peter Straub's novels SHADOWLAND and THE THROAT )

Freud is such a problem.

Partly this is because he was right, and partly it is because he was grossly, irredeemably wrong. Oftentimes in the same essay. And partly it is because his disciples and intellectual descendants have reified his ideas, transforming them from theories into universal truths. (Not that Freud himself did not contribute to that tendency with his pontifical--in fact, patriarchal--stance.)

And any truth Freud has to offer is most assuredly not universal.

But that doesn't mean he isn't thought-provoking and it doesn't mean he can't be illuminating. It just means you have to approach him with caution and an independent mind.

Case in point: I started reading Frederick Karl's biography of Kafka, Franz Kafka: Representative Man: Prague, Germans, Jews, and the Crisis of Modernism and very shortly thereafter posted a plaintive call for better biographies. Happily, perverse_idyll suggested Ernst Pawel's The Nightmare of Reason: A Life of Franz Kafka. I haven't finished Pawel yet, but I've found an oddly illuminating point of comparison which I think will demonstrate why I found Karl unreadable and Pawel compelling.

First, from Karl:
( this is where I started yelling )

Compare with:
( the analogous opening move from Pawel )

( And then I go on talking for a while )

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WORKS CITED
Karl, Frederick. Franz Kafka: Representative Man: Prague, Germans, Jews, and the Crisis of Modernism. 1991. New York: Fromm International Publishing Corporation, 1993.

Pawel, Ernst. The Nightmare of Reason: A Life of Franz Kafka. New York: Farrar Strauss Giroux, 1984.

TIME: 25
DISTANCE: 3.1 mi.
TOTAL: 36.4 mi.
NOTES: Yelling at Prof. Rabkin again.
SHIRE-RECKONING: We're keeping off the Road now.

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I disagree with my learned colleague on so many different points that I can't even list them. So let's just go with the one wherein he is conflating "phallocentrism" with "science fiction." Feminism, goddammit. FEMINISM. You can't be feminist and phallocentric, but you can be feminist and write science fiction. This definition is flawed.

Also, please, for the love of rocket ships, do not generalize from NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE to the genre of science fiction. Please.