Sunday, October 14, 2007
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Too much to bare | Features | Guardian Unlimited Film
Too much to bare | Features | Guardian Unlimited Film
The issues mentioned in the article mirrors what is happening in the Chinese film market, with the most prominent (and recent) example being Ang Lee's movie, Lust, Caution.
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Nicole Kidman is an award-winning actor. So too is Maggie Gyllenhaal. So why do they - and other talented female Hollywood stars - still have to expose their bodies in order to get into the public eye? Kira Cochrane despairs
Thursday September 6, 2007
The Guardian
Flicking through the newspapers yesterday I was stopped in my tracks by an image of the new Vanity Fair cover. This shows Nicole Kidman - two-time Oscar nominee, one-time winner - with a military cap on her head and an open-mouthed expression. Said expression is, I guess, supposed to be a Monroe-esque pout, but just makes her look (though it pains me to say it) completely bloody vacant. Beneath this vacuous visage, for no apparent reason, she is holding her shirt open to expose her white, bra-clad breasts. There is something strangely passionless and perfunctory about the pose - as though, off camera, a doctor has just shown up and told her it's time for an impromptu mammary examination. (Or, indeed, the magazine editor has just told her she is off the cover unless she gets on with it and gets 'em out.) "Nicole Kidman Bares All" screams the coverline.
And this image arrives just a few days after the release of photographs from the new Agent Provocateur advertising campaign, featuring another highly lauded actor mugging shamelessly in her scanties: indie favourite and two-time Golden Globe nominee, Maggie Gyllenhaal. The full series of pictures are due online this Friday as part of a book of "adventures" called, very cheesily, Lessons in Lingerie, in which Gyllenhaal stars as a character called Miss AP. Those released so far show Gyllenhaal, variously: reclining in a basic black push-up bra and pants; gazing coquettishly over her shoulder in lacy knickers and a pair of stockings; cavorting in a bubble bath in a striped one-piece (so heavily styled and made up that she resembles another young actor, Brittany Murphy, far more than herself); her breasts pushed up in a tight pink corset, looking as awkward and unhappy as Kidman; and, in the most provocative shot, trussed to a strange wooden chair, legs spread wide, in just her bra and knickers.
The general take on the Gyllenhaal pictures so far has been that they are fabulously sexy (indeed, the Sunday Times's Style magazine used them as a peg for a piece about "girl crushes"). So why did I find them - and the Kidman shot - so supremely depressing? It can't just be because they feature women as sex objects. After all, there's a constant parade of woman-flesh on the newsstands each day, and while I find the half-clad photos of Hollyoaks stars and Big Brother contestants depressing, too, they don't have the power to surprise these days.
But photographs of genuinely acclaimed actors in their underwear affront me every time, whether it's Angelina Jolie draped in a silk sheet for US Esquire, or her great rival, Jennifer Aniston, baring her breasts for US GQ. There seemed something sad to me about the controversial GQ cover of Kate Winslet a few years ago, not because of her legs being digitally lengthened, but because I couldn't understand why the youngest woman to receive five Oscar nominations had to be togged up in a basque. And as for the Vanity Fair cover of Teri Hatcher, in which the story of her childhood sexual abuse was illustrated with a just-out-of-bed shot of her in nothing but a white top and white knickers, well ... words fail me.
I think what I find so incredibly discomfiting about these pictures is their suggestion that, no matter how talented a woman is, how many plaudits she has received, how intelligent her reputation, how garlanded she has been for depicting one of the most talented writers of the last century while sporting a huge prosthetic conk on her noggin, at the end of the day, if she wants to stay in the public eye, if she wants the magazine covers and the leading roles, she has to be willing to reduce herself to tits and arse.
One of the most blatant demonstrations of this came last year, when Vanity Fair (them again) published their Hollywood issue. Put together by the fashion designer, Tom Ford, the cover featured Scarlett Johansson and Keira Knightley, two talented young actors, completely naked. Rather bizarrely, Knightley was being sniffed by a fully-clad Ford. Inside, it was explained that Ford's appearance had been a last-minute addition and that a "certain young actress" had been slated to appear as part of a "gorgeous female threesome", but hadn't understood the nudity requirement and "bowed out when the clothes started coming off". Said actor was Rachel McAdams, who, at that junction last spring seemed on the brink of stratospheric fame. She had appeared in three successful films in 2005 - Wedding Crashers, Red Eye, The Family Stone - and, some might have argued, was worthy of a fully clad Vanity Fair cover. Since declining to bare all, McAdams' career has gone strangely quiet (she has apparently turned down some offers of sidekick roles), while the fame of Knightley and Johansson has soared. Coincidence? Well, maybe.
That example suggests that it is a simple equation - get your clothes off, see your career rocket - but, of course, it is not. It is a hugely risky business to disrobe (the same people who laud your sexiness will think much less of your talent), and it is a risky business to leave them on (see McAdams, and, no doubt, many other aspiring, principled actors throughout the decades). Actors such as Kidman and Gyllenhaal must recognise this edge of risk, which brings me to another depressing spectre. For many women, it seems, no matter how successful they are, the need to be pleasing to men, to say, "However powerful and clever I might seem, I'm just a playful, bra-baring bunny underneath," trumps everything. Excuse me while I wipe the tears off my keyboard ...
The issues mentioned in the article mirrors what is happening in the Chinese film market, with the most prominent (and recent) example being Ang Lee's movie, Lust, Caution.
----------------------------------
Nicole Kidman is an award-winning actor. So too is Maggie Gyllenhaal. So why do they - and other talented female Hollywood stars - still have to expose their bodies in order to get into the public eye? Kira Cochrane despairs
Thursday September 6, 2007
The Guardian
Flicking through the newspapers yesterday I was stopped in my tracks by an image of the new Vanity Fair cover. This shows Nicole Kidman - two-time Oscar nominee, one-time winner - with a military cap on her head and an open-mouthed expression. Said expression is, I guess, supposed to be a Monroe-esque pout, but just makes her look (though it pains me to say it) completely bloody vacant. Beneath this vacuous visage, for no apparent reason, she is holding her shirt open to expose her white, bra-clad breasts. There is something strangely passionless and perfunctory about the pose - as though, off camera, a doctor has just shown up and told her it's time for an impromptu mammary examination. (Or, indeed, the magazine editor has just told her she is off the cover unless she gets on with it and gets 'em out.) "Nicole Kidman Bares All" screams the coverline.
And this image arrives just a few days after the release of photographs from the new Agent Provocateur advertising campaign, featuring another highly lauded actor mugging shamelessly in her scanties: indie favourite and two-time Golden Globe nominee, Maggie Gyllenhaal. The full series of pictures are due online this Friday as part of a book of "adventures" called, very cheesily, Lessons in Lingerie, in which Gyllenhaal stars as a character called Miss AP. Those released so far show Gyllenhaal, variously: reclining in a basic black push-up bra and pants; gazing coquettishly over her shoulder in lacy knickers and a pair of stockings; cavorting in a bubble bath in a striped one-piece (so heavily styled and made up that she resembles another young actor, Brittany Murphy, far more than herself); her breasts pushed up in a tight pink corset, looking as awkward and unhappy as Kidman; and, in the most provocative shot, trussed to a strange wooden chair, legs spread wide, in just her bra and knickers.
The general take on the Gyllenhaal pictures so far has been that they are fabulously sexy (indeed, the Sunday Times's Style magazine used them as a peg for a piece about "girl crushes"). So why did I find them - and the Kidman shot - so supremely depressing? It can't just be because they feature women as sex objects. After all, there's a constant parade of woman-flesh on the newsstands each day, and while I find the half-clad photos of Hollyoaks stars and Big Brother contestants depressing, too, they don't have the power to surprise these days.
But photographs of genuinely acclaimed actors in their underwear affront me every time, whether it's Angelina Jolie draped in a silk sheet for US Esquire, or her great rival, Jennifer Aniston, baring her breasts for US GQ. There seemed something sad to me about the controversial GQ cover of Kate Winslet a few years ago, not because of her legs being digitally lengthened, but because I couldn't understand why the youngest woman to receive five Oscar nominations had to be togged up in a basque. And as for the Vanity Fair cover of Teri Hatcher, in which the story of her childhood sexual abuse was illustrated with a just-out-of-bed shot of her in nothing but a white top and white knickers, well ... words fail me.
I think what I find so incredibly discomfiting about these pictures is their suggestion that, no matter how talented a woman is, how many plaudits she has received, how intelligent her reputation, how garlanded she has been for depicting one of the most talented writers of the last century while sporting a huge prosthetic conk on her noggin, at the end of the day, if she wants to stay in the public eye, if she wants the magazine covers and the leading roles, she has to be willing to reduce herself to tits and arse.
One of the most blatant demonstrations of this came last year, when Vanity Fair (them again) published their Hollywood issue. Put together by the fashion designer, Tom Ford, the cover featured Scarlett Johansson and Keira Knightley, two talented young actors, completely naked. Rather bizarrely, Knightley was being sniffed by a fully-clad Ford. Inside, it was explained that Ford's appearance had been a last-minute addition and that a "certain young actress" had been slated to appear as part of a "gorgeous female threesome", but hadn't understood the nudity requirement and "bowed out when the clothes started coming off". Said actor was Rachel McAdams, who, at that junction last spring seemed on the brink of stratospheric fame. She had appeared in three successful films in 2005 - Wedding Crashers, Red Eye, The Family Stone - and, some might have argued, was worthy of a fully clad Vanity Fair cover. Since declining to bare all, McAdams' career has gone strangely quiet (she has apparently turned down some offers of sidekick roles), while the fame of Knightley and Johansson has soared. Coincidence? Well, maybe.
That example suggests that it is a simple equation - get your clothes off, see your career rocket - but, of course, it is not. It is a hugely risky business to disrobe (the same people who laud your sexiness will think much less of your talent), and it is a risky business to leave them on (see McAdams, and, no doubt, many other aspiring, principled actors throughout the decades). Actors such as Kidman and Gyllenhaal must recognise this edge of risk, which brings me to another depressing spectre. For many women, it seems, no matter how successful they are, the need to be pleasing to men, to say, "However powerful and clever I might seem, I'm just a playful, bra-baring bunny underneath," trumps everything. Excuse me while I wipe the tears off my keyboard ...
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
learning from sucess & failure
success
- chek jawa
- removal of female quota on medical students
- enactment of laws to target sex offenders who go overseas
- optional rest days in employment contracts for maids
- amendments to the law for marital rape
- NMP scheme
- removal of mr brown column in TODAY
- refusal of entry for accredited NGOs to IMF/world bank meetings
- banning of zahari's 17 years
- actions leading up to arrests made under ISA
- actions linked to opposition parties
Monday, September 24, 2007
Friday, August 31, 2007
blueprint for a new left
From the adbusters editorial from issue 70
- Stop hiding - get back in the public eye - do something a little wild every day
- Go to Kenya, Brazil, India - rub shoulders with the activists there
- Explore visionary ideas - then embrace one of them
- Join a Third Party - then put up the fight of your life
- Work on your morals - admit that whichever way you look at it, abortion is a tragedy (not sure if i agree with this totally...)
- Meditate on what happened before the Big Bang
- Live without dead time
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Me Against the Media: From the Trenches of a Media Lit Class
Adbusters : The Magazine - #70 Blueprint for a New Left
Extract from the article...
So, what can media activists do? I think the first step is to find ways to appeal to members of this generation on the level of the individual. Young people might not initially care about the plight of a Nike worker in Vietnam or a Wal-Mart worker in Houston. They may, however, be concerned with how credit card companies lure in college students, or how college bookstores jack up prices needlessly, or how car insurance companies charge them exorbitant amounts. When I ask students to give examples of how corporations have screwed them over personally, the room fills up with raised hands. This is a good way to show them that although consumerism has brought them happiness in their lives, it has also brought them problems.
A second activist strategy of reaching Generation Y is to find examples in popular culture. Generation Y is all about pop culture. I’ve found that my students are amenable to discussions about how advertisers and media producers consciously create media content that “trains” young people to be consumers. Young people need to know that corporations see them as a market to manipulate, and often will respond to this argument, because who wants to be manipulated? The trick is to find popular culture texts they relate to that have a strong pro-consumerism bent. I’ve had some success in the past with the “Pottery Barn” episode of Friends. In this episode, Rachel lies to her roommate Phoebe and tells her their new furniture is antique. Actually, it came from Pottery Barn, but Phoebe hates commercial furniture. Rachel is caught in her lie when the two walk by Pottery Barn and see most of the furniture in the display window. But then Phoebe sees a lamp in the window and decides she must buy it. Phoebe learns her lesson: commercial furniture is good. Another good source of pro-consumerism media is reality television, a favorite of students and chock-full of product placement.
A third strategy is simply to get young people to talk to their parents about their experiences growing up and how people “back in the day” felt about corporate power and consumerism. These are the children of Baby Boomers, after all, so even if they haven’t been around activism, their parents have. One of my favorite assignments is to get students to interview older family members about popular culture and their past experiences. Students love this assignment.
Extract from the article...
So, what can media activists do? I think the first step is to find ways to appeal to members of this generation on the level of the individual. Young people might not initially care about the plight of a Nike worker in Vietnam or a Wal-Mart worker in Houston. They may, however, be concerned with how credit card companies lure in college students, or how college bookstores jack up prices needlessly, or how car insurance companies charge them exorbitant amounts. When I ask students to give examples of how corporations have screwed them over personally, the room fills up with raised hands. This is a good way to show them that although consumerism has brought them happiness in their lives, it has also brought them problems.
A second activist strategy of reaching Generation Y is to find examples in popular culture. Generation Y is all about pop culture. I’ve found that my students are amenable to discussions about how advertisers and media producers consciously create media content that “trains” young people to be consumers. Young people need to know that corporations see them as a market to manipulate, and often will respond to this argument, because who wants to be manipulated? The trick is to find popular culture texts they relate to that have a strong pro-consumerism bent. I’ve had some success in the past with the “Pottery Barn” episode of Friends. In this episode, Rachel lies to her roommate Phoebe and tells her their new furniture is antique. Actually, it came from Pottery Barn, but Phoebe hates commercial furniture. Rachel is caught in her lie when the two walk by Pottery Barn and see most of the furniture in the display window. But then Phoebe sees a lamp in the window and decides she must buy it. Phoebe learns her lesson: commercial furniture is good. Another good source of pro-consumerism media is reality television, a favorite of students and chock-full of product placement.
A third strategy is simply to get young people to talk to their parents about their experiences growing up and how people “back in the day” felt about corporate power and consumerism. These are the children of Baby Boomers, after all, so even if they haven’t been around activism, their parents have. One of my favorite assignments is to get students to interview older family members about popular culture and their past experiences. Students love this assignment.
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
How to blog anonymously
Reporters sans frontières - Handbook for bloggers and cyber-dissidents
Perhaps it's time to go underground...another webpage from EFF here.
Perhaps it's time to go underground...another webpage from EFF here.
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