Dissentery

A little bit of this, a little bit of that, duh duh buh dum duh

My reasons for not seeing nudity in movies has nothing to do with my aversion to breasts, per se-if so I could turn my head during dozens of movies. While that is part of it, it's a side bar. I have no problem with the nudity in "Orlando" or "Room with a View", for example, and have out of curiousity's sake have had my fair share of "Playboy" and "Playgirl" thumbings. No no, the main reason I don't see movies that have nudity is because I'm a feminist. Nudity always means female nudity, sex seens always means breast shots. These shots are always done for the purpose of bringing male viewers to the audience, or done because the male director doesn't feel comfortable with male nudity, or because male nudity is 'distracting' for an audience who has been spoonfed the notion that male sexuality is humourous or disgusting. These attitudes are disgusting, and I will not keep contributing money to film makers who are trying to make more money by selling female titty shots to 13 year old boys. I'm not even going to get into this subject, or I will become uncontrollable and start smashing the keyboard.

as Byatt is the most brilliant woman alive. I am so glad I pushed to the end of her "Little Black Book of Short Stories" because the stories keep getting better and better as the book progresses. Her stories are so dense and gothic that they tap into my love of both magical realism and Jane Austen, and it's instant enchantment. One story in particular is called "Raw Materials" which is about a failed writer who teaches creative writing classes to boring people who write stories about murders and rape as therapy. The teacher stresses that writing isn't therapy, and becomes thrilled when one of his students begins writing about how to blacken a stove. The teacher reads the story allowed, and the class hates it because there is "no coherent narrative." The teacher enters the student's story about stoves in a contest, and it wins. He bikes over to her house to tell her and discovers her naked and dead on the floor, with years and years of scratches, bruises, scars, burns, and scabs all over her body. SHe had been secretly tortured for years, finally being slit across the throat, and yet her writing was always about stoves and laundry. The story was so elegant, poignant, and profound--I can't even verbalize my feelings on the truth and elegance of this story. And in an interesting twist, it was the only story the critics universally hated in her collection. Also worth the investment is "Stone Woman", about a woman who slowly turns into a collection of mica and lava after the death of her mother. Since my short stories are about a woman who gets eaten by crows or a car accident or vomiting lungs, Byatt speaks to my macabre. I am presently stewing on a story about a woman who becomes a cathedral.

Since chapter 1 is short, want to read chapters 1+2 for next Sunday?

posted by Mary @ 10:20 PM