Thursday, July 23, 2009
Two and a Half Misogynist Men, and counting
[watch, especially one minute into this video, also, ironically, 2:29, and also 6:17]
[And here's one more, making clear who controls what during men's procurement of women as prostitutes]
Note above and below the overt sexism typical of any network television show featuring more than two heterosexual men:
http://video.australian-media.com.au/video/yt/EH1jZktqpDk/>">Promo for Two and a Half Men (2009)
[ And please also read this post on Charlie Sheen: http://radicalprofeminist.blogspot.com/2010/10/how-much-will-hollywood-pay-white-het.html ]
In a currently running TV promo for the Fall 2009 season of this blatantly misogynistic program, an adult male (played without great difficulty by Charlie Sheen) asks the young teen male (played by Angus T. Jones) if he thinks he's providing a good home for the boy. The boy replies enthusiastically with a remark like: "You bring home a different woman almost every night. It's a perfect upbringing!"
I saw this promo piece for the first time yesterday, and it was yet another reminder of why I've never watched that program, and so many others. In fact, the videos above are the most I've ever seen of that particular TV show.
While very temporarily on the subject of a certain sexist actor, one of my all-time favorite Tina Fey lines, from her work as anchor of "Weekend Update" on Saturday Night Live, goes like this:
Tina Fey: "Today marks the final episode of 'Everybody Loves Raymond.' Next season CBS Monday will be anchored by the show, 'Everybody Has Mixed Feelings About Charlie Sheen.'"
Everyone, I guess, but this boy.
And what a great role model Sheen and his character have been for other heterosexual males.
Liberals love to argue how dominant media only reflects culture; it never has any impact at all, according to liberals, on how we behave. Never mind that commercials work to sell the product being advertised. And never mind that a young male relative of mine decided beyond the shadow of a doubt--after watching the movie Top Gun over and over again, that he would enter the Navy as soon as he was old enough. As soon as he was old enough he entered the Navy.
I post this as but one among a million plus examples of how media influences culture, much to the detriment of anyone's hope that society will one day be free from male supremacy, sexism, and misogyny.
END OF POST.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
This is indeed an extremely sexist and misogynist show. Sadly it is one of many created by white male dominated Hollywood.
ReplyDeleteI have also been watching a number of teen movies. Hollywood would have you believe that these teen movies are actually very pro female as their main characters are strong females. However, what really gets to me is that in these movies the main girl’s arch enemy is always another girl or girls.
These movies have very little to do with empowering young girls but rather are created for a male audience who enjoy watching teenage girls slug it out.
If these movies really were pro female, then they would deal with real issues such as the blatant sexism that girls face, especially girls of colour.
Instead of watching girls fight each other these movies should show girls dealing with sexist white males. These movies should be empowering young girls by showing them that they do not have to accept white male sexism and misogamy and that they can stand-up to it.
I was also watching re-runs of an older American show called Major Dad. This is sexism undercover. At first glance this show appears to be good old fashion harmless family entertainment.
But when you are familiar with the likes of white male supremacy you are able to see the white male sexism and misogamy coming through.
Hi Christina,
ReplyDeleteYES! Thank you!
I had a long conversation with a white man once, who was a HUGE fan of Quentin Tarantino. QT is someone I find to be overtly white male supremacist in his filmmaking and I told this guy that I was talking to that I thought so. He actually thought QT was both anti-racist and pro-woman, noting, for example, the film Kill Bill 2.
I told him that currently what we can expect out of Hollywood is to show women being beaten, raped, buried alive, and as long as they beat back (especially if they beat up a woman!), and fight back, and figure out a way out of the grave, then the filmmaker is considered feminist.
Every misogynist thing can happen to a woman, but if she's alive and angry at the end, well, that makes it feminist? I don't think so. That makes it a sick way for men to think they are making movies about "empowered" women as men would like to imagine them. Instead of shooting their next films, white male supremacist filmmakers would do humanity a favor by shooting themselves in the head.
And of course, the "feminist" character in such movies still must be very thin, blond, have cleavage that is shown, and have shaved legs and armpits. She must be "pretty" by white heteromale supremacist standards.
So, where's the liberation? As a white feminist lesbian once said, "Where are all the butch women on TV and in movies?" Why do women have to be "femme" to be "acceptable" for visibility in any dominant liberal media? How "liberal" is that?
P.S. to Christina,
ReplyDeleteI just posted about a blog and a film made by an Italian documentarian about misogyny on TV in Italy.
I was at the video store yesterday and saw something on the shelf that made me want to get sick. I saw a movie called “The Babysitters” after reading the back I could see that this was an extremely sexist misogynist movie clearly aimed at the sexual lust of white hetro males.
ReplyDeleteWhen I got home I went onto the internet to find out what the movie was all about. So here goes.
A young teenage girl is babysitting. Afterwards the father who is a much older married man takes her home. But he makes a pass at her. He then pays her money not to tell anyone. After the next babysitting session he has sex with her (an underage school girl) but that’s OK because he pays her for it. (Sarcasm)
Soon other older white males (friends of the father etc) find out about this and want this same kind of babysitting service. (Strange how none of these white married middle age married fathers don’t see anything wrong with having sex with underage girls).
Our underage heroin is unable to full the needs of all these older males so she forms a babysitting service that supplies all these married fathers with young underage girls who she recruits from school. The motivation is obviously money.
Of course things go horrible wrong for our Heroin and the girls as the whole thing falls apart.
There is one scene that takes place at a wooden cabin with a whole lot of white middle-aged men romping around half naked with under age school girls. This apparently is just part of the baby sitting service.
In scenes like this you want to see something really bad happen to all those disgusting men. A scene that would clearly send a message out to all the male viewers that young underage girls are not there for your own sexual pleasure.
That is so disgusting. Whoever made that movie... hold on...
ReplyDelete"Written and directed by David Ross." He also wrote the screenplay for the movie, "The Woods" a synopsis of which is as follows:
In 1965, after provoking a fire in a forest, the rebel teenager Heather Fasulo is sent to the boarding school Falburn Academy in the middle of the woods by her estranged mother Alice Fasulo and her neglected father Joe Fasulo. The dean Ms. Traverse accepts Heather in spite of the bad financial condition of her father. The displaced Heather becomes close friend of he weird Marcy Turner, while they are maltreated by the abusive mate Samantha Wise. During the nights, Heather has nightmares and listens to voices from the woods, and along the days she believes that the school is a coven of witches. When some students, including Marcy, simply vanish, Heather believes she will be the next one. Written by Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
The Babysitters, I am disturbed to learn, was airing on a TV movie channel.
Here are some of the keywords on IMDb (a subject worthy of its own post):
* Call Girl
* Babysitter
* Flashback
* High School Junior
* Mountain Cabin
* Father
* College
* Drugs
* Teen
* Cabin
* Train
* High School
* Statutory Rape
* Violence
* Breasts
* Abandoned Train
* Prostitute
* Locker
* Marital Relations
* Father Daughter Relationship
* Marital Discord
* School
* Punch In The Face
* Destruction
* Breaking Glass
* Teacher
* Daughter
* Broken Glass
* Son
* Voice Over Narration
* Student
* Watchman
* Father Son Relationship
* Business Idea
* Cash
* Bra Less
* Night Watchman
* Guard
* Punched In The Face
* Marital Infidelity
* Marriage Problems
* Punch To Face
* Mirror
* Money
* Sister Sister Relationship
* Bare Breasts
* Rape Attempt
* Mask
* Nipples Visible Through Clothing
* Fellatio
* Adultery
* Sex
* Phone Conversation
* Topless Girl
* Female Nudity
* Nudity
I will take this on in a separate post, but this means that asshole misopedic misogynyists can check for more movies featuring "Nipple Visible Through Clothing" (do you suppose that includes men's nipples?) and "Statutory Rape"!!
How fucked up is that?!
For a misogynist review of The Babysitters by some dickwad named Alex Jackson, see here.
ReplyDeleteFor a feminist review, see what follows below, from this website:
A special place in purgatory must be reserved for John Leguizamo, who produced and stars in "The Babysitters," a loathsome slice of exploitation at its most cynical and crass.
Leguizamo plays Michael, a middle-aged father of two who seduces the family babysitter one night and, thanks to his hefty tip, sends her into business as a high school Heidi Fleiss. Within weeks, 16-year-old Shirley (Katherine Waterston) has enlisted her friends to hook up with Michael's lascivious friends, culminating in a sordid sex-party scene at a hunting cabin and, later, a gang-style attempted murder in a parking lot.
It's bad enough that writer-director David Ross indulges in the very perverse kind of Lolita-tinged titillation the film pretends to lament, but then he ties everything up with an oh-well shrug. Leguizamo, in a supremely arrogant act of wanting to have it both ways, tries hard to convince viewers that Michael's misgivings count as a credible stand-in for moral judgment. With luck, Waterston (daughter of Sam) will put this episode behind her with the same swiftness as her conscience-free character; not so fast for Cynthia Nixon and Andy Comeau ("Huff"), who lose major quality points.
-- Ann Hornaday (May 9, 2008)
Why is it all white males...ever listen to the lyrics of a rap song?
ReplyDeleteHi eshle,
ReplyDeleteYes. I do. And there's critique here of all forms of misogyny, if you care to look for it, not just on one post. And Black men don't rule the music industry, white men do. Or the mass media: white men do. Or the 10 billion dollar a year pornography industry: white men do.
And Black men don't run Western Civilisation, do they?
And, I do not expect to cover everything here, but if you search my posts, you will see that I address violence all men do to women, not just white men. But, also, please note the top message on this blog, just under the title, about what my central focus is.
If you, let's say, have a blog about saving the environment, I could write and say "What about the humans!"
Every blog has its parameters. This I can tell you, though: I know of not one other blog that seeks to focus as much attention on the demographic which has the most structural power in the West: white heterosexual men.
I think that group, WHM, can stand having one blog focus attention and analysis on what they do that is inhumane. And to do so doesn't in any way imply that they hold the monopoly on being inhumane. I speak here about every demographic and how we all can be harmful to others, and be hurt by others, if you seek to find that.
But, white het men have more privileges, entitlements, and institutionalised power than any other group in the U.S., UK, Western and Northern Europe, and Australia. And those places comprise a huge power base for what happens in our global economy, which is committing ecocide, genocide, and gynocide.
Why, I have to wonder, would anyone want me, a U.S. white man, focus on anything else?
There's a harsh and critical spotlight on WHM supremacy here. And tell me, where else do you find that, in the whole world?
Can you really not tolerate one blog that does "only" that?
I am currently writting an english assignment and im wondering if anyone knows some other examples of misogyny in american media?
ReplyDeleteHello, miss_understood,
ReplyDeleteThere are so many resources in this regard. I'm not sure where to begin. For one, online, I'd recommend the "Sociological Images" website.
Here's a link to them:
http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/
Also, I'd recommend the following DVDs or films, many of which appear at least in part on YouTube:
Killing Us Softly 4: Advertizing's Image of Women, by Jean Kilbourne
Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes, by Byron Hurt
Generation M: Misogyny in Media and Culture
The Price of Pleasure: Pornography, Sexuality, and Relationships, A Film by Chyng Sun
For books, I'd recommend:
Reel to Real: Sex, Race, and Class at the Movies, by bell hooks
and
Beauty and Misogyny: Harmful Cultural Practices in the West, by Sheila Jeffreys
Let me know if you'd like more resources.
Also,
ReplyDeleteDreamworlds 2 (or Dreamworlds 3), by Sut Jhally, each of which deal with graphic misogyny on MTV.
I prefer because DW2 because it doesn't include news footage of a woman being publicly sexually assaulted, which is in DW3--VERY irresponsibly. I also don't much like that Sut doesn't share the power to narrate with women, but keeps the entire narrative in his own voice. Then again, many males will only listen to men.
Here's a link to a preview of Dreamworlds 2.
You can find DW3 online as well.
Please note, all the materials I've recommended should be available through any networked public library system or any college/university library system, for free.
I do not consider myself a feminist but I find Charlie Sheen repugnant. He is a terrible person and quite possibly the devil himself. All joking aside read the following from Bree Olson’s Wikipedia page (one of his “goddesses”):
ReplyDeleteShe later said to a reporter on whether she was retired from porn, "As long as I’m with Charlie. But be sure you put that in there though. ‘As long as I’m with Charlie, I am retired.’"[6] On March 5, Sheen tweeted, that Olson had "left the building" and that, "We're sad... Over it...Applications now being accepted", then two hours later he tweeted, "She's back." Olson's mother said she was worried about Olson but Olson said she was OK with the arrangement and that she thought men should be allowed to live with as many women as they wanted.
Also, during an interview with Ms. Olson she looked afraid to talk to the reporter. The man has abused every woman he’s been with. People say it’s the drugs that make him act like that but the reality of the situation is that he is a horrible person. I’m going out on a limb here but he, in my opinion, rapes this poor girl and if I had to venture a guess he is probably a sexual sadist.
Hey Drucker,
ReplyDeleteHe's demonstrated enough misogyny without speculation as to what else he's done, imo. I see no reason to assume he's raping his daughter. Or that he's a sexual sadist. He's a misogynist. That's plenty.