Alice Walker discusses the life and legacy of Adrienne Rich (1929-2012)

I never got to meet or speak with Adrienne Rich. Or Alice Walker for that matter. But there's still time with Alice. What I remember most about Adrienne was her willingness to struggle with whiteness and the unearned power that defines and sustains it, and her lesbian-feminist brilliance in analysing heterosexuality as a socially and politically compulsory condition for women, not a natural one.

Below is the video featuring Alice Walker. Below that is a transcript of the conversation.



To link to any of this, please click here: http://www.democracynow.org/2012/3/30/adrienne_rich_1929_2012_alice_walker

Adrienne Rich (1929-2012): Alice Walker & Frances Goldin on the Life of the Legendary Poet

by via Democracy Now!, Wikipedia & Flickr
Friday Mar 30th, 2012 11:57 AM

Adrienne Cecile Rich (May 16, 1929 – March 27, 2012) was an American poet, essayist and feminist. She has been called "one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century", and was credited with bringing "the oppression of women and lesbians to the forefront of poetic discourse.

In 1997, Adrienne Rich famously declined to accept the National Medal of Arts in a protest against the Clinton administration, writing that art "means nothing if it simply decorates the dinner table of power which holds it hostage."

Rich died on March 27, 2012, at the age of 82 in her Santa Cruz, California home.

640_audre-lorde-meridel-l...original image ( 1280x960)

PHOTO: Audre Lorde, Meridel Lesueur, Adrienne Rich 1980 by K. Kendall
"They led a writing workshop together in Austin, Texas. I was in it, and they let me take this picture of them."

Adrienne Rich (1929-2012): Alice Walker & Frances Goldin on the Life of the Legendary Poet & Activist

by Democracy Now! — March 30, 2012

The legendary poet, essayist and feminist Adrienne Rich, who died on Tuesday at the age of 82, was one of the most celebrated poets of the last half-century and a lifelong advocate for women, gay and lesbian rights, peace and racial justice. Rich drew widespread acclaim for her many volumes of poetry and prose, which brought the oppression of women and lesbians into the public spotlight. She was a key figure in the women’s movement and an uncompromising critic of the powerful. In 1997, Rich famously declined to accept the National Medal of Arts in a protest against the Clinton administration, writing that art "means nothing if it simply decorates the dinner table of power which holds it hostage." We remember Rich’s life with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker and Rich’s literary agent Frances Goldin.

Guests:

Alice Walker, Pulitzer Prize-winning author, poet and activist. When Adrienne Rich was awarded the 1973 National Book Award, she refused to accept the award alone. She appeared onstage with poets Audre Lorde and Alice Walker, and the three accepted the award on behalf of all women.

Frances Goldin, Adrienne Rich’s longtime literary agent and friend.

This transcript is available free of charge. However, donations help Democracy Now! provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on the TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution.

Transcript:

JUAN GONZALEZ: The legendary poet, essayist and feminist Adrienne Rich died on Tuesday at the age of 82. Rich was one of the most celebrated poets of the last half-century and a lifelong advocate for women, gay and lesbian rights, peace and racial justice. Rich drew widespread acclaim for her many volumes of poetry and prose, which brought the oppression of women and lesbians into the public spotlight. She was a key figure in the women’s movement and an uncompromising critic of the powerful. Rich won numerous awards and honors, including the National Book Award for the 1973 collection Diving into the Wreck. Refusing to accept the award alone, she appeared onstage with poets Audre Lorde and Alice Walker, and the three accepted the award on behalf of all women.
AMY GOODMAN: In 1997, Adrienne Rich famously declined to accept the National Medal of Arts in a protest against the Clinton administration, writing that art, quote, "means nothing if it simply decorates the dinner table of power which holds it hostage."
In a moment, we’ll be joined by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker and Rich’s literary agent Frances Goldin. But first we’re going to go to Adrienne Rich herself, reading her poem "What Kind of Times Are These."

ADRIENNE RICH: There’s a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill
and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows
near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted
who disappeared into those shadows.

I’ve walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don’t be fooled
this isn’t a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here,
our country moving closer to its own truth and dread,
its own ways of making people disappear.

I won’t tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woods
meeting the unmarked strip of light—
ghost-ridden crossroads, leafmold paradise:
I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear.

And I won’t tell you where it is, so why do I tell you
anything? Because you still listen, because in times like these
to have you listen at all, it’s necessary
to talk about trees.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Adrienne Rich reading her poetry. She died on Tuesday at the age of 82. Alice Walker, as well as Frances Goldin, her literary agent, are here to talk about her life.
Alice Walker, your thoughts about Adrienne?
ALICE WALKER: Well, it was very interesting. She and I saw each other infrequently and almost always by accident, so it was quite magical. We would be sometimes in an elevator together, and she would have come from one part of the country and me from somewhere else, and there we’d be. Or we’d show up at a movie, and there she’d be, and there I’d be. She was very close to a friend of mine, June Jordan, and so I got to know more about her through June, and also, of course, through her poetry, which was very meaningful to me. And my sense of her, the thing that I most loved, was her integrity. She lived exactly what she said. And this was so rare and so beautiful. And we will miss her.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the National Book Award in 1973 that she won for Diving into the Wreck that she insisted that you, Alice, and Audre Lorde accept the award with her on stage? Talk about that moment. Where were you?
ALICE WALKER: I was in Mississippi. I was, you know, fighting the good fight down there. But anyway, what happened was that we were all three nominated for this award. And we understood that we were living under apartheid and segregation and, you know, all of that, and that under such a system, which favored white people, she would get the award. We knew that. And so, we decided, before anybody—anything was announced, that we would not accept being ranked, and we would not accept the racism implicit in an award that would go to someone—you know, she was a great poet, but it would go to her also because she was a white person. And to her immense credit, she had no desire to be honored as we would be dishonored. And so, we got together. Audre called me in Mississippi, and we chatted about it, and Adrienne. And so, we decided that we could only accept an award so suspicious if we accepted it in the name of all women and indicate by that action that we understood that women were not honored in the arts and elsewhere.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And Frances, you represented her for many years. Talk to us about how you first came to know her and what kind of person she was, and especially this issue of her stances on principle and social justice.
FRANCES GOLDIN: I met her at a dinner. The gay and lesbian rights groups had a dinner the night before, every year, when the publishing world came together in various countries—cities in the country. And I was sitting next to her and met her for the first time at that dinner. And we bonded, because we had similar politics, and we had wanted to meet each other for some time. And when the meeting was over, I said to her, "Can I hug you?" And she said, "It would be a pleasure." And we hugged. And then I said, "Well, if we can hug, can I kiss you?" And she said, "I would love to." And we left, and that happened.
And then I really campaigned for a couple of years to be able to represent her. And I remember taking a camera on a city bus, because they had on the billboards of the buses the poet of the month. And once, it was Adrienne. And so, I took a picture of that and sent it to her and said, "Millions of people in New York know about you because you were on the bus this morning." And, you know, I just courted her with anything I could think of.
And then, one day, she called and said, "I need some help. My publisher, Norton, has two offers from England, and I don’t know which one to take." So I said, "Well, just sit there, and don’t go away from your phone." And I called my British agent, because I certainly didn’t know which was the better of the two. And he called her, and she explained it, and he told her which was the best publisher for her. And she called back and said, "He was so wonderful, and he didn’t take any money, and he wouldn’t charge me." And I said, "Well, of course not. It was just a favor." And she said, "Well, then, can you represent the book?" And I said, "How can I? You signed a contract. And if I called with a question about it, they would hang up on me, because I didn’t agent this book." And she said, "Well, can you do my next one?" And I said, "Does night follow day?" And we became agent and author. And it’s been 25 years.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to go back to that moment in 1997 when Adrienne Rich refused the National Medal for the Arts to protest the growing concentration of power in fewer and fewer hands. Adrienne Rich informed the Clinton administration of her decision in a July 3rd letter to Jane Alexander, the chair of the National Endowment for the Arts at the time, which administers the awards. Adrienne Rich appeared on Democracy Now! soon afterwards, and she read her letter.

ADRIENNE RICH: "Dear Jane Alexander,

“I just spoke with a young man from your office, who informed me that I had been chosen to be one of twelve recipients of the National Medal for the Arts at a ceremony at the White House in the fall. I told him at once that I could not accept such an award from President Clinton or this White House because the very meaning of art, as I understand it, is incompatible with the cynical politics of this administration. I want to clarify to you what I meant by my refusal.

“Anyone familiar with my work from the early Sixties on knows that I believe in art’s social presence—as breaker of official silences, as voice for those whose voices are disregarded, and as a human birthright. In my lifetime I have seen the space for the arts opened by movements for social justice, the power of art to break despair. Over the past two decades I have witnessed the increasingly brutal impact of racial and economic injustice in our country.

“There is no simple formula for the relationship of art to justice. But I do know that art—in my own case the art of poetry—means nothing if it simply decorates the dinner table of power which holds it hostage. The radical disparities of wealth and power in America are widening at a devastating rate. A President cannot meaningfully honor certain token artists while the people at large are so dishonored. I know you have been engaged in a serious and disheartening struggle to save government funding for the arts, against those whose fear and suspicion of art is nakedly repressive. In the end, I don’t think we can separate art from overall human dignity and hope. My concern for my country is inextricable from my concerns as an artist. I could not participate in a ritual which would feel so hypocritical to me.

"Sincerely,
Adrienne Rich"

AMY GOODMAN: Adrienne Rich, reading on Democracy Now! the letter she wrote to the actress Jane Alexander, who was then the head of the National Endowment for the Arts, rejecting the 1997 medal, the 1997 National Medal for the Arts. Alice Walker, your final thoughts on Adrienne Rich?
ALICE WALKER: I think that that letter demonstrates that integrity that she had that I so admired. And I think her legacy for all of us is to continue to believe in the power of art, especially in the power of poetry, and to keep moving and not to be dissuaded, not to be discouraged, but to take heart from a woman who lived for 82 years giving her very best, growing out of every shell that society attempted to force her into to become this really amazing figure of inspiration and hope and love.
AMY GOODMAN: Alice Walker, we want to thank you for being with us, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and activist. Frances Goldin, Adrienne Rich’s agent and friend. And we will post you reading, Frances, Adrienne’s letter to you on our website at democracynow.org.

Thoughts today about how white het male supremacy works and how to unemploy it

image is from here

In the all-too-real world, what possibly can be done to stop male supremacist power, het supremacist power, and white supremacist power from being exercised in the world against most humans on Earth and against the rest of Life on Earth?

Activism is happening across the globe and has been for hundreds of years and it is to those activists we must look for guidance and wisdom.

Indigenous activists have been resisting and combating the racist invasions and attempts at complete colonisation and genocide for as long as European men have been waging war against Indigenous people.

Women across region and race have been resisting and combatting male supremacist oppression and violence for as long as men have organised power into patriarchal force.

In the last decades, at least, non-het people have organised for rights, dignity, and survival in a world of rampant heterosexuality and virulent heterosexism.

I believe that all of us who are privileged by race, class, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality must look to the activist work done by Indigenous women, and radical feminists across race and region, including radical feminist Lesbian activists. This blog has attempted to highlight some of the herstory and practice of resistance and challenge to oppressive power organised into identities and institutions made to seem completely natural and not at all organised.

Most people do not face one form of oppression only. Indigenous women and most non-Indigenous women of color, for example, even if not involved with daily struggles to combat white people's dominance directly and intimately, are unlikely to be free of it institutionally: economically, culturally, and politically. From white het male military invasion to impoverishment ensured by corporate globalisation to social organisation designed to shut out, shut up, or kill women of color, we live in a world where lethal and atrocious violence is commonplace and is assumed by dominants to be inevitable. The assumption is what we might call "wishful thinking" on the part of those with no heart or soul.

Lesbian womyn necessarily face misogyny and heterosexism aimed at them as "despised others".There is no support beyond Lesbian organisations and networks for Lesbian support, empowerment, and liberation. Even queer communities that I witness or know about are largely anti-Lesbian. Consider the implications of that for on-going Lesbian existence. 

I live a life largely removed from the struggles of poor women of color and of lesbians who don't speak English. To know anything meaningfully and deeply, to the bone, I have to be available to and in alliance with people who are not necessarily in my offline life. Most struggles will not be bone-deep real to me because I simply don't know what is going on and am not on the receiving end of the force.

One is led to believe the role of media is to inform us of the important struggles, if not also offer wisdom. In the information era, there is virtually no wisdom coming out of the mouths and corporate boardrooms of rich white het men. And the information spewing forth is utterly and ubiquitously self-serving.

As I type this, Somali women refugees are fighting for survival for themselves and loved ones. The media will report in Western countries what all the good things are that Western countries are attempting to do to participate in relief efforts and how they'd succeed were it not for bad people of color getting the way. The media will make it seem like the (white) US and other (white) Western countries are "good" and that it is lucky for poor women of color globally that the US and other Western countries exist. Lost in the self-congratulatory media blitz is the fact that if the US got out of North America, and if whites all went back to their countries of origin, over time women of color would fare far better than they do now.

Charity efforts don't empower whole groups of people even while they may well save lives. And saving lives of people unjustly targeted for destruction is good to do. But what is not effectively communicated by media is how it will be women, lesbian and not, from the countries where whites dominate and invade, who are most capable of knowing what is wrong and how to correct it. What we see is women across Asia, Africa, and the Americas working to make life more humane and free. Not white men. White men work to destroy life. And white men succeed.

However it is possible in your area, please support the work of women of color globally who are challenging white, het, and male supremacist abuses of power, and other forces seeking destruction, whether interpersonally acted out or done so institutionally and through international systems of harm.

Please don't forget that whites, hets, and men are positioned to be dominant oppressors as whites, as het people, and as men. While each group argues precisely the opposite, they are not structurally positioned to be effective or wise leaders of liberation struggles to end white supremacy, het supremacy, and male supremacy.

At the very least, we can share knowledge, if not also wisdom, and organise our efforts with one another to achieve freedom from WHM supremacist force and the values and practices it calls great.

Feminist Action Alert: Please support "The Untitled Black Lesbian Elder Project" before Friday July 29th, 2011!!!

Some of what follows and more info can be found *here*. Thank you to all who can support this project in any way.

 

UBLEP IndieGogo Campaign Update #5: Our Production Process. from tiona.m. on Vimeo.

Help make it happen for The Untitled Black Lesbian Elder Project on Indiegogo!

Our Story
THE FILM.
Filmmaker Tiona McClodden and publisher Lisa C. Moore announce their collaboration for a feature-length documentary film, Untitled Black Lesbian Elder Project. UBLEP will highlight interviews with black lesbian elders in their 60s, 70s and 80s from across the United States and situate them in a range of black historical movements, spanning the decades between the 1930s and 1980s. The film will feature 8-10 profiles of elders, and show accompanying archival footage and personal ephemera that will reveal rare images of black lesbian life and history. UBLEP will also bring to light a number of black lesbian underground movements, solidifying a black lesbian presence within overall American black history.

We have under a week left in our IndieGogo Online Fundraising Campaign to raise $10,000-$15,000 which ends this Friday July 29, 2011.

We are asking that each of you please take some time to do at least 1 of these things via our IndieGoGo Fundraising Campaign Page: indiegogo.com/​The-Untitled-Black-Lesbian-Elder-Project


*DONATE at one of our contribution levels to assist us with reaching out goal.

*TWEET about our campaign by using the button below our Update #5 video.

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To Hugh Hefner: Old Pimps Don't Die, You Just Keep on Pimping

photo of Hugh Hefner with three young extremely white women is from here

Above, Hugh demonstrates, in action, his racist, heterosexist, misogynist values. He surrounds himself only with the most narrow understanding of female people. Apparently, if you're not Aryan-looking and made up in CRAP-loaded ways, he doesn't want to know you. And even if you are Aryan-looking and made up in CRAP-loaded ways, he doesn't want to know you, he wants to sexually exploit and domineeringly control you.

If you're looking for ageist jokes about an elderly man's penis and Viagra, you've come to the wrong place. This post is about the alleged humanity of Hugh Hefner, not his age or genital functioning.

As Mark Twain said about reports of his demise, rumors of Hugh Hefner's death recently have been greatly exaggerated. What cannot be exaggerated is the extent to which Hugh, over more than half a century, has made US society a far more classist-racist-misogynist society, promoting ideals of women's beauty that has been so horrifically harmful that he ought to be charged with crimes against humanity—the humanity of women, and girls.

To an alarming number of white men, he is seen as a hero; to liberals he is also seen as a fighter of civil liberties and human rights—claims of his humane humanity have also been greatly exaggerated. Not too long ago his soon-to-be wife, Crystal Harris made what some viewed as a surprising decision: she elected to not wed and also dump Hugh Hefner. If anyone doubts the wisdom to be found in women who appear to be what Hugh insists women must look like, let it be noted that before she signed away her rights to self-possession, she got the hell away from this controlling, domineering, manipulative, oppressive play-prick. Hugh is to human rights what B.P. is to environmentalism and what General Petraeus is to the Peace Movement.

On Piers Morgan Tonight, last night, he put forth the nonsense that we can't really know why she dumped him. We can: he was an oppressive, misogynist prick. No, she's not likely to say that on television or in print media. He thinks a case can be made for them not having much in common intellectually. Perhaps: while a successful business-man, he's not especially smart at relationships or anything else that doesn't have to do with his own ego, his compulsively racist-sexist-heterosexist value system, and the bank accounts he has due to profiting off of those values-in-action. Hugh isn't just a pimp; he's also a filthy white supremacist, and an anti-Lesbian activist, and a virulent misogynist.

Hugh is not a lonely man; he makes sure his economic clout and social stature keep women around—women who would not likely know life without economic woes without him. I doubt they are anything resembling economically free while living under his roof—by many accounts he is so controlling that he wouldn't let anyone else co-own his money, not even a spouse.

He brought with him to the program, to wait for him backstage, two “new loves”--both blond, both young--briefly referred to by only their first names as if they were his daughters: one woman has been a girlfriend for a couple of years. Hugh made polyamory into a lifestyle well before it took off in progressive queer community. His brand of polyamory is insistently WHM supremacist. So when I say things like “polyamory” and “monogamy”, what I mean is possession and oligarchy.

Hugh believes liberalism is a solidly good ideal. But when it comes to him hoarding male supremacist power he's entirely conservative.

He says he wanted to give Crystal “what she wanted” by marrying her, but if she wanted freedom and economic independence, he wasn't likely to support her having either. He speculates she had another man, as if this is a reason to not marry—clearly for Hugh it's not a reason—he's never been monogamous. He says “I never played shady. I've always been who I am.” Yes, a pimp. But I doubt he ever tells anyone that's exactly what he is—to the core of his being. Nothing he's done with his life was not done to serve himself.

Hugh and Piers sat together speaking about politics, the kind organised around elections, not erections. Piers remarked: “Like everyone, I'm sure you've been through a very tough time in the last couple of years.” Huh? Right, Piers: most folks live in their own mansion, have plenty of access to health care, and have enough social-sexual capital to sell women and his own image.

Hugh got in a xenophobic slam against China's economic power, and at least Piers reminded him capitalist China's values are largely [US] American. What could Hugh say: he agreed.

He said he didn't think Casey Anthony acted like “an innocent person”; I'd argue it takes one to know one. I don't mean that Hugh is a murderer of children. I mean he has done gross harm to children—far more children than Casey Anthony ever could. Yet she will continue to be demonised as evil, while he got a film made about him proclaiming him a great human rights activist. This could only be true—well it could never be true—but it could only be proposed as possible truth if we pretend girls and women are not human deserving of the human rights fought for by groups like Amnesty International—not that they have a great record on fighting for rights for women against patriarchal atrocities. He once refused to do a pictorial of Vanessa Williams, a former Miss America, because he knew it would ruin her career. He pretends to actually care about women by stating insincere things:

"They clearly weren't authorized (by Williams) and because they would be the source of considerable embarrassment to her, we decided not to publish them," Hefner told PEOPLE in 1984. [source: here]

He hasn't given enough thought to how perpetuating heteroracist-sexist standards of exploitative femininity harms Black, Brown, Asian, and Indigenous women and girls, I guess--as well as white women and girls. When asked if he thought of Playboy as exploitive, he unsurprisingly, if bewilderingly, said “I don't”. Fortunately Piers reminded Hugh he has his own moral compass on such things. Well, a pimp's moral compass that is not quite only his own. Hugh has a new show, The Playboy Club, coming onto US television this fall; it will likely attempt to airbrush or Photoshop the heterosexism and racist-misogyny of the time and re-present them as forms of liberation for young blond white het non-Jewish, non-Muslim women. The program Mad Men deals with the same era and economic culture, but has reportedly attempted to show sexism as sexism, not freedom.

At the end of the show, Piers misogynistically verbally welcomed Hugh to go off-stage to the “comforting bosoms” of his two girlfriends, who had been shown a few times through the show, never allowed to speak. Hugh chuckled in a unsurprisingly creepy way—these are women who are not yet old enough to be the average age of his own children.

Black Swan (2010) starring Natalie Portman, story and screenplay by Andrés Heinz; screenplay also by Mark Heyman and John J. McLaughlin, is one of the most misogynist movies I've ever seen

image of movie poster is from here

Plot summary paragraph added on 8 May 2011. 

There's a lengthy rant before the review. 
If you want to cut to the chase, go down about ten paragraphs. This note was added on 21 Sept. 2012. 
***Added 12 Oct. 2012: Even easier--scroll down to the row of red asterisks!***

This post concerns misogyny, whiteness, darkness, and movie-making. I'm unsure of how it is that misogyny about white women is so revered and celebrated by men as a form of entertainment. I only know that it is, as is misogyny against any woman--it's just that Hollywood knows that if it makes movies about white people, more white people will go see the movie, in theatres or by renting the DVD. In a racist society in which there are white people--a majority population or not--where the economic system is racist too, whites will rule both socially and economically.

In the West, white men will possess more money than any other group and will hoard it using any and all means necessary, including military, legal, and police force. This is the current news story of the U.S. economic crisis--not mentioned this way exactly. Nowhere are rich white men calling for and end to the racism or the classism, coded into  financial and cultural currency, that keeps them rich, and richer, and richer. These white boys just did a calculated sell-off of oil futures. They knew that the U.S. people wouldn't tolerate gas prices above 4 bucks a gallon, and voila, as soon as that became the national average, they make their profits and now will wait to see how much more money they can make in the next quarter of the year. What is it that oil is sometimes called? Ah yes: Black Gold.

It takes a lot of men to make so many movies featuring misogyny. It also takes the support of a lot of women too. Jodie Foster is now promoting her film made with racist-misogynist Mel Gibson. As I understand it, he revealed the latest depths of his racist-misogynist raging and ranting, and abusiveness and terrorism, only after shooting of the film was completed--this is according to Jodie, who appeared on David Letterman's show and only quickly noted that Mel's behavior cannot be excused--but she said nothing else about him and has only publicly defended him as a good person.

She's quite willfully maintained a professional relationship with him long enough to determine that he's a racist misogynist--if you consider what he's said in public and done in private to be racist and misogynistic, that is--without making excuses for him.

To blame Mel's attitudes about and treatment of women across race, and of people of color across gender, and of Jews, as only a consequence of his drinking, which Roger Ebert does EXPLICITLY *here*, is to make it seem like alcohol possesses the ability to determine our attitudes about specific groups of people, which it does not. Shame on Roger Ebert for avoiding the truth of Mel Gibson's life, and to pretend his career and his abuses of women are not intimately linked. See this snippet of his review:

[H]ere is another of Mel Gibson's fine performances, a reminder that he is after all a superb actor. His personal life is in ruins because of the disease of alcoholism, which he is still struggling with. Though he's responsible for his outrageous acts and statements, I think this is not the good man I have met many times. From what I know about alcoholism, I believe he goes through personality changes, that he is content on some days and consumed by rage and madness on others, and that such changes are symptoms of the disease. Make your own diagnosis.

It took some courage on the part of Jodie Foster to direct this film. I believes she knows Gibson's good side and respects his talent. He was certainly the right choice for this material. All of his troubles through recent years are summed up by her opening shot, of an exhausted man floating on a raft in a swimming pool, his arms wide like the crucified Christ. A voice (later revealed to be the Beaver's) informs us this is Walter Black, a man so deep in depression, he has alienated his family and nearly destroyed his business.

We meet his much-suffering wife Meredith (Jodie Foster), his resentful son Porter (Anton Yelchin) and his disbelieving colleagues. Meredith finally throws him out, not without love. He buys a bottle, checks into a motel, tries to kill himself and is interrupted by the hand puppet.

And we get to feel so sorry for another privileged white het male abuser of women and his child, and of many other people too. Got it. Spare me the violins.

I understand Jodie wanting to make money off of her film. I can only hope it is her last professional collaboration with Mel Gibson. I recommend boycotting The Beaver. (And pleeease with the title--and the ridiculous story. It's not funny. It's not cute. The movie sucks. It's yet another "oh, the poor, poor very privileged MAN" movies. There have been entirely too many of those. We need far more murder-suicides where the murder isn't of a woman and the suicide is of a man who takes his own life before, not after, ruining the lives of others.) One last note on "The Beaver". (And we're not talking about *this* Beaver either, although it too celebrates the colonisation and domestication of white women.) How does one decide to name a movie after a misogynist insult to women? Jodie explained, semi-facetiously, that the title might help it sell well on DVD, because there will be het men wanting pornography who will order it. What a great idea for the selling of a serious film! (Not.) She also told us about how almost entirely wonderful her two sons are, how much better it is to have sons than daughters, and how wretchedly insulting to her Jodie's overbearing mother has been, except to her sons as a grandmother. It appears we cannot escape these themes of man-adoring and woman-hating.

I'm not sure who has more social clout: Roger Ebert or Jodie Foster. He reviews movies. She makes them. He's male and heterosexual. She's not. I've witnessed for a long time how if a woman is marginalised in some ways in Hollywood, by appearance, by sexuality, by age, or by race, she is expected to publicly support MEN, by those who pay her, more than it is expected of other women who are less marginalised. Even and especially, it appears, the most misogynistic among the menfolk are expected to be supported. What if we all stopped supporting misogynist and racist men? And stopped featuring them in movies and TV series and other programming (for example: Charlie Sheen). But there is non-gay boy-bonding of course, and it does preclude any man from speaking out against abuses that are primarily perpetrated by men against women.

Another theme in society is that when men are entranced by boys or men, they will betray women and girls utterly. This goes alongside the theme that when men are entranced by girls and women, they will betray women and girls utterly.

I guess it's men being entranced that's the problem. For when in such as state, men routinely conclude they are not in power, they are not in control, even while they take possession of and kill all who they are entranced by. That's a curious bit of logical phallusy, now isn't it? When women have been accused of taking possession of boys--such as in custody conflicts with abusive men, or of men's penises in the night, as in some of the witch trials, that never works out well for the women. If they don't burn her, they tie a stone to her ankle and toss her into the river: if she sinks, she was not a witch; if she floats, she is a witch and must be burned. Clever men: they get to destroy women either way.


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But on with the featured show.

This cinematic psychological thriller is called "Black Swan". The title comes from the ballet. The ballet comes from some of the cultures of Russia and Germany but was written by Pyotr Tchaikovsky and was later modified by his brother Modes. Almost immediately, I waged a bet with myself, not knowing much about the film's creators. I bet myself that the writers and director were all male. I bet that no woman was involved in constructing this story, as it appeared, in every respect, to be nothing other than a tangle of men's misogynist fantasies about pretty pale young females, as men define pretty, pale, young, and female, put on film. Indeed, we are led to believe that Winona Ryder, who plays the "aging" dancer, is so far over the hill that she might as well be dead. Oh, that's practically a spoiler alert. To the extent that she is alive, one has to ask: why is she alive and for whom? Surely not herself.

Here's the main plot: a young, thin, white woman who is pretty according to conventional Hollywood and Madison Avenue standards, is grossly and abusively manipulated in body and mind by a prestigious white het male choreographer of a revival of the ballet, Swan Lake. She hopes he will cast her in the role of Swan Queen which would allow her to perform (dance) as both the White Swan and the Black Swan. She lives with her mother; she is attracted to another woman dancer. And she is battling with various forms of psychosis as she is brought close to a complete mental breakdown well-choreographed by the instructor/choreographer.

The story braids together these themes: white heterosexualised female beauty being overpowering to presumably straight white men; men's need to control, manipulate, and dominate women sadistically, socially, and sexually; people changing from birds to humans; goodness and purity of love represented by whiteness and lightness; evil and seduction by blackness and darkness; and the on-going question men seem to have about women's sanity. The sexist and racist themes are well represented--more symbolically with the racism, more interpersonally with the sexism. (Where HAVE I heard this before??? Oh, I've written about it *here*.)

Added to those are "problems" of lesbianism and how closely it relates, to the filmmakers, to a woman's insanity. Crazy = dark = female. Crazy = dark female. Dark = crazy female. Female = dark and crazy. Remember that. When a woman is darkest, she is at her most insane, according to white het men's myths.

One of the messages of the film as written is that attraction to men is sometimes destructive, but attraction among women is only destructive and all attraction among women amounts to incest in one form or another. You know women: they can't tell one from the other! Mom sees herself in her daughter; daughter sees herself in her female dance competitor. (Sarcasm alert: Thank goodness it isn't men who mistake different women for one another! Ask any consumer of Playboy: he'll be able to tell you what distinguishes about Miss April from Miss August. But it won't be the depth or breadth of the women's humanity, I assure you.) To the extent that such attraction among white thin females is sexualised in the film, it must be presented to het men publicly for their own private enjoyment. Again and again and again. We are allowed--or is it forced?--to gaze upon Portman's breasts, covered only in a very thin white leotard. It, like her own skin, will not keep any man out.

One of many misogynist sub-plots in Black Swan might just as be described thusly: "See how male filmmakers write and direct a story requiring Natalie Portman to fake masturbation and orgasm as often as possible." Her character can try to keep her mother out of her "private" sexual life in the fantasy sequences in the film, using a wood pole, curiously. In the reality scenes, she cannot keep men out, publicly or otherwise: there aren't enough wood poles around when she needs them to beat the predatory man over the head, or to use to stab men in the crotch or the eyes. Men wouldn't write such scenes anyway. Sighted men don't stay aroused by seeing men hit in the crotch or the eyes by a woman. They "feel" such assaults viscerally, in the groin or they eyes not as pleasure. Most men want their erections and their vision too, and use both to penetrate women's bodies which, in men's stories, are everything but private.

All the disgusting invasive assaults against Portman's character--and there are so many I lost count--are meant to evoke pleasurable responses from men, or a kind of revulsion-titillation response, typical of how men view women they lust for and simultaneously hate. This movie is a het male serial rapist and fatherly incest perpetrator's delight. Just check the demographic of who is renting it. I predict it will be (or already is) mostly white het men. Like over 90%.

"Art"--using the term loosely, sometimes, is pornography: the graphic depiction of woman-as-wh*res. Women are depicted and referenced as "wh*res" throughout this film--whether or not they are "frigid" or "hot", they are wh*res and must be sexually available to men when men want them to be. Portman's character has the scratches on her back to prove it. Roger Ebert only alludes to this; he doesn't use the word "misogyny" at all, which I find shocking as I know he is conscious of it both as a term and a social reality. *Here's his review*. But true to form, the female lead only ever wants or admires the man who possesses and destroys her--even while she resists him; she only resents the woman who possesses and seeks to protect her, and also resists her. Portman's character attempts to tear down her mother's image, which fantastically mocks and shames her. But the male lead who tears at her and breaks her down can only be either secretly desired or submitted to. Alas, in misogynist cinema and other stories, is there any difference between the two?

This was one of the more disturbing films I've ever seen--unrelentingly disturbing, in fact. It wasn't just that it was gross--and it was gross--repulsive--a lot. What was repulsive was how the writers and director subjects the audience to scenes that seem only to exist to make the viewer recoil or retch. There seriously ought to be a trigger warning on this movie for anyone with an eating disorder that involves self-starvation or throwing up. It's not a safe movie; not only for that reason.

In addition to Portman's body being scratched, it is also bloodied in many other ways--indeed, menstruation is the only blood-event not mentioned. This was clue number 5000 that it was written by a man or by men. She peels back her own skin, off of her finger; she examines her cracked and bloody toenail; she gazes at lesions by her fingernails; she presses her fingers into abrasions; she sticks things into her flesh; she tears at herself. This is the most perversely self-touching movie of a young woman I've ever seen. But then again, I haven't seen much pornography in the last 25 or more years.

This fictional woman who is spawned from the utterly infertile minds of men (Russian, German, and U.S. American) has a boundary called "skin" that betrays her; or she betrays it. But underneath all the peeling, picking, pinching, poking, and bleeding, if you're paying attention, is a story of how men ruin women's lives. You just have to endure all the very graphic female self-injury along the way. It was like watching a movie of a bird systematically and painfully plucking out its own feathers. Oh, she does some of that too.

This and boy-war movies like Platoon rank up there in "movies I plan never to see again". Watching movies about how men graphically and violently destroy other men and how men pornographically destroy women isn't my idea of a good cinematic time. But men do love their violence and violations, don't they? And it's only when feminists notice this theme that men take umbrage and deny it altogether.

Men can do whatever they want to women--men have demonstrated this enough times for it to be received as an unquestionable statement of truth. Men can and do possess women and girls. Men can and do rape women and girls. Men can and do dictate the terms by which many women live their lives, and thrust, assert, and insinuate themselves into women's and girls' lives in such ways that women's freedom with men is not possible, and the only freedom women have from invasion is to live without men. Men arrange societies so that the only way to accomplish that is by not living at all. Suicide-as-liberation, I'd argue, is not a pro-feminist idea. Liberation by murdering the male invaders, the male abusers, the male violators: that to me is pro-feminist because it removes from men the complete lack of accountability that men currently enjoy and exploit in too many ways to imagine or contemplate. Instead, it seems we all want to think of men as "good" at least some of the time. That men choose to waver dangerously between something called "goodness" to something called "evil" only shows us how easily men project their own moral and sexual struggles onto women, making women the source of all that is good or bad in men--as if men weren't in charge at all.

It is a primary conceit of contemporary corporate pornography--and all mass produced material that is about "pornos" graphically, that because women's sexual power is greater than nuclear, wind, hydraulic, and solar power combined, it must be tamed, controlled, and punished by men. So too must animals. So too must the Earth, sea, and sky. There is nothing that white men, in particular, can keep their grubby hands off of. And there is nothing they touch that is not ruined, made to feel or be utterly without value or worth. It's like The Golden Touch in reverse, a curse from which there appears to be no remedy or relief.

Black Swan (from IMDb):

Directed by

Darren Aronofsky 

Writing credits
Mark Heyman		screenplay
Andres Heinz		screenplay
John J. McLaughlin		screenplay
Andres Heinz		story