sundries

[rm]

Patty has a cold. :(

Also, Buffy and Angel? Not here yet.

Finished my WIAD story.

Can we talk about Lady Gaga's new video? Because I could. All day. Not only is it a response to a certain era of Madonna, but it also goes to a lot of strange, strange uncomfortable places, the fascist references in its physical language being close to the top of the list. It's incredibly cool, smart stuff. There needs to be a Gaga Studies Journal, that's all I'm saying.

From all of my friendslist to all of yours: liljacks_corner is a community that has been set up for fan creators to make G-rated stuff for an eight-year-old boy named Jack who has just lost his legs; one of the only things that cheers him up right now is Doctor Who. He's only seen the first two seasons of the New series. What's being requested is a story about a little boy, much like the one it's for, going on an adventure with the Doctor and Rose. Details at the community.

Ready to start hollering? Daring to discuss women in science.

The Century Athletic Club.

New York now has an AllStaints Spitalfields.

Does anyone know more about this: is Judy Shepard's book homophobic? Accusations vague, scenario murky. Bwah? Anyone read it?

Didn't know this: Stephanie Flores, the Peruvian woman van der Sloot has reportedly confessed to killing, was a lesbian.

Comments

[jinian.livejournal.com]

MASONIC CHECKERBOARDS. Wow, thank you.

(Edited for Not Really Awake Yet.)

[heavenscalyx.livejournal.com]

What fascinates me most is the claim that GaGa = intersex.

I loved the fact that she got in a jibe at this in the video for "Telephone."

[darthhellokitty.livejournal.com]

Wow, the articles about Judy Shepherd's book sure are vague on the issue - that's interesting, as you'd think they'd have an example before they branded it as homophobic. Not comfortable with that.

I *had* heard about Stephany Flores. God, Joran van der Sloot is an all-around creep...

[xtricks.livejournal.com]

I saw paparazzi as a mix of the 'film' and 'reality' -- like the actors were in a film during part of it then, when she was thrown off the balcony, it was the real 'actor' ... or something like that.

What I saw it mostly as was two people (Gaga and her b'freind) using the Papparazzi to stay famous. Reminded me of the brief fetish for 'my own TV reality show' and the folks who commited various crimes to get one (the guy with the little kid and the weather ballon, the two folks who crashed the White House party).

Bad Romance bothered me because some of the fantasy elements were ones that freak me out (kidnapping, some sort of unwilling enslavement thing going on, rape).

Machine gun bras? Good clean fun! Kidnapping, drugging and forcing someone to be a sex toy (unwillingly)? Where's the warning before the text cut!!???!!

[rm.livejournal.com]

The Bad Romance video was the one that first made me go "this is really, really interesting" but I think our general "crap we do to women in entertainment" makes it way less noticeably so. It's also the video that has the most over Leigh Bowery reference in it, so I sort of love it for the homages to the New York that was.

[introductory.livejournal.com]

I just came out of a film studies class, so the entire time I was watching the video (which, to be honest, took me a few tries) I kept trying to analyze it from a film studies perspective, like, appropriation of the male gaze and all that. Gaga's videos are always strange, but this was the first one to make me feel especially nervous.

One of my friends watched it and her first reaction was, "It's Evita on drugs." Which, strangely, doesn't not make sense.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Yes! With the Evita! And nervous is so the right word. There's an actual, personal, discomfort with this one that I haven't felt with the others.

[shipchan.livejournal.com]

See that's the thing about Lady Gaga, her videos are really aesthetically pleasing to people who like to think, and really aesthetically pleasing to people who don't like to think. So much so that it almost makes you think they mean something because they push buttons that activate responses in different people whether it's 'hot girl!' or 'hey look nun symbolism!'. But watching her stuff a lot and with my basic distrust of the music industry, I sort of think that really her videos don't mean much. They're just trying to sell product. I mean what is the new video really saying? I thought up a lot of stuff, but it's not really Lady Gaga saying that, it's Lady Gaga's videos pushing my buttons and manipulating me so I think she's saying that. I'm not saying all art needs to have a moral or have something to say, but I think really what this video (and most of her stuff) is saying is 'look pretty things! Sexy woman doing scary things, America! Now she's in underwear! You should buy this. Hey, look, steampunk, you guys like that right?'

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

I want to write a book on her.

I'm hoping there will be multiple volumes written on her and the cultural phenomena she's either representing or satirizing.

[soukup.livejournal.com]

I could go on and on about the silhouette of Axis vs. Allied uniforms and the different male shapes the video highlights

Thank you for catching this! I was wondering if I was imagining it.

Also, you seem to have spent a little more time thinking about Lady Gaga than I have (and possibly about fascism, too), so I’d be interested to hear your take on the gender stuff in this video. Do you have any thoughts about why she might have chosen to feminize the fascists? I've read what xtricks has said above, but I'm curious what your thoughts are as well -- you pay attention to gender in very productive ways, and this seems to have gone over my head.

[rm.livejournal.com]

I do! (Although it's still percolating). And, if Google is kind to me, with pictures! So, that has to wait a bit.

[xtricks.livejournal.com]

So weird. I had no real trouble with this one, more with some of the others. Maybe because the majority of the supporting dancers were men while the majority of the supporting dancers/cast most of her other work were women? To me, there was less violence and such in A than the others. Of course, I'm totally oblivious to any discomfort regarding appropriation of Catholic imagry so that whole section didn't bother me at all (except as I think I've seen the translucent latex nun suit at fetish parties around here).

[rm.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I totally have a lack of response to the religious stuff in an authentic way too. I can't tackle that at all from anything other than "oh hey, latex" and "oh hey, Madonna" either.

[soukup.livejournal.com]

*folds hands, waits patiently*

[woogledesigns.livejournal.com]

I take that Alejandro is still seen as edgy or transgressive as evidence of just how regressive our society's attitudes towards sexuality and gender still are.

[woogledesigns.livejournal.com]

Although, to limit my criticism, I did genuinely feel it was a breath of fresh air from heteronormative culture.

[woogledesigns.livejournal.com]

Well I went 'Oh hey latex... yawn', 'oh hey Madonna... again', 'oh hey girls on top and possessing the space of a phallic dominator... well at least I'm not watching repeats of Friends on E4.'

And interwar Europe, clumsy fascinating fascism, (aside from eroticising imagery of suffering and cruelty and the exoticising of cultural and historical zone be a big American company and rich white girl) it's not actually critical of oppressive relationships, is it? It's more like 'I want to take my turn being an emotional abuser now.'

But then again, it is insipid, it is trash culture and nobody has to take the good bits or bad bits as seriously as I do. They're meant to buy it with their pocket money and then grow out of it in three years time. C'est la vie.

Random thread-jumper is randomly jumping in

[soukup.livejournal.com]

Oddly, I found it semi-squicky when she wasn't on top. Hmm.

I know we don't know each other, but I find this really intriguing. Is it really rude and nosy of me to ask whether you mean "on top" in the literal sense? Because there were some shots where it was more of a figurative topping or bottoming -- in one, she was physically in her partner's lap (so "on top" of him), but clearly being held; in another she was on the bottom in the literal sense, but posed in such a way that it was meant to look like she was fucking him. Does it squick you when she's posed as if being penetrated, or when she's physically under him?

Unless this is the weirdest question in the world! This is one of those things which I feel waaaaay too comfortable discussing in public, so sometimes I'm not really sure where other people's boundaries lie. Please feel totally free to ignore me if I'm over the line.

[malle-babbe.livejournal.com]

Re: Women in science. For folks who complain about "the PC Police", they never waste any time wallowing in self-pity when folks roll their eyes at them. Because correcting misinformation and audible sighing at the idiocy of others is just the same as slashing tires and pipe bombing offices....

They DO know that the first person to win 2 Nobels in the sciences was a woman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Curie), right?

It will be interesting to see if discussion of the "Alejandro" video takes some of the same turns as discussions about women writing slash fiction...

Re: Random thread-jumper is randomly jumping in

[51stcenturyfox.livejournal.com]

Nah, I don't mind. I was actually just rewatching the video to unpack my first reactions, and I think several factors play into this:

- Gaga is dressed in lingerie the color of her skin tone, versus the male partner in leather or latex, so she seems more naked/vulnerable.
- The bed/dance moves remind me of wrestling, and she's (likely) physically weaker. (Which... if this were two men in bed or she was with another woman, I don't think it would stand out to me.)
- The snippets when she's on top seem more sensual and less combative. At one point, the guy holds her down by the upper arms, and anything that feels like a non-con vibe squicks me. (Though she's not distressed or anything.)

Penetration has little to do with it; to me it's just the posing. I mean, I'm on the bottom all the time when I do it.

(I pretty much don't have a lot of sex-discussion boundaries, really. :D )

I wonder if I can get my husband to shave his legs and buy some patent-leather pumps. Hmm.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

So, what did you think of that NYT article about women in science you linked to? It seemed pretty well written and well sourced to me.

My observations about women in the sciences is that just about any woman with the mathematical ability to get into a doctoral program will get the doctorate if her life/family circumstances permit. But what happens to women after they've got the doctorates is ... disturbing. More women who get into tenure track jobs end up not getting tenure for all sorts of reasons, most of them having nothing to do with their actual abilities as scientists. Women who go into non-tenure track jobs stay on "soft money" for decades sometimes. Arguably the biggest single driver behind both of these is that the women are having children in the decade following their doctorates. They put off the whole marriage and family thing to get through grad school, but the biological clock keeps ticking and they're keenly aware of the risks associated with childbearing after age 40. So we end up with a fair sized population of women scientists in their 30s who are working part time in science while also doing mommy track stuff.

Anyhow, my point is that the reason we still end up with the top tier of the professoriate populated almost exclusively by men is *not* due to any especially high intelligence on the part of those men, but rather because the women with doctorates seldom devote themselves to a single-minded pursuit of advancement in academia during their 30s and 40s. In a perfect world the men wouldn't either, as they'd be as engaged and involved with their young families as the women are, but we don't live in that perfect world.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Your point (which is pretty good) is not, regrettably, the point of the article.

Additionally, you don't quite acknowledge that the reason women do not single-mindedly devote themselves to a pursuit (scientific or otherwise) in their 20s, 30s and 40s is because it is a cultural taboo for which they have little to no support to do so, expected as they are to have children to prove their gender, sacrifice their career (as opposed to a male partner sacrificing his) for said children (again to prove success at gender) and then to additionally care for aging parents who rarely want to burden male children with such tasks if they have the option not to.

While I acknowledge that most people of both genders desire children; women are told their whole lives that they do -- negating the possibility for many women of considering otherwise, and certainly negating for many more women the possibility of negotiated partnership around children that allows a woman to maintain career power.

There is nothing that indicates that women are innately less ambitious, intelligent or science oriented than men or in overwhelming majority want to sacrifice those things for having a family. But articles like this fall back on "girls just don't like science enough", "sure, lots of women are good, but only men can be great" and "women don't know how to take risks"

I was trained, from the very first moment of sentient life I can recall to never take a risk, to never make a mistake and put everyone else above me. The reason women aren't scientists have nothing to do with their being women, and everything to do with the ways they have been treated because they are women.

The women and science bullshit is right up there with "men write about ideas; women write about feelings." As if things like nation building don't happen due to jealousy, possession and desire.

[rackmount.livejournal.com]

re: women in science. the study says that girls trail boys by about 1 to 3 for their SATs at the top end.

when there is one woman for every 3 or 4 men in every science faculty in this country, then maybe we can re-discuss. we are a LONG way from that.

[rackmount.livejournal.com]

can i just say amen to that last comment of yours. even when feminists start in on women and earth/emotions/mysticism/etc, it makes my 21st century brain go into overdrive. hello, self-ghettoizing.

he's totally right about tenure. we're at Princeton, at which the admin has tried in a number of ways to equalize the tenure/family problem, without success. lesser administrators (department chairs, etc) find ways to continue punishing both male and female faculty members for having families (female faculty disproportionately).

in fact, here, you get an "extra" year to get tenure for each child you have, whether you are male or female. good idea, right? unfortunately, that just means that you ahve to get 6 years of sprinting done instead of 5 (when the idea is that you should have 6 years to get 5 years of sprinting done, so that you have a year to devote to being a parent.

by sprinting, i mean that my husband was working on the order or 80 hours a week during my son's first year. they wanted to "give" him an "extra" year, and i insisted he not take it, because i wanted him to be part of my son's first few years at least. the policy is a good idea with bad execution. i think that's common.

[arianhwyvar.livejournal.com]

Yeah. The article made me kind of irritated and uncomfortable; it seemed to me to be saying or include a number of people saying: 'hey! We [partially, vaguely] mitigated one factor affecting why girls don't do as well as boys in science/math, and there were still a lot more boys who were really good at it -- so that must mean it's biologically built in!' And my thought was: while you're trying to mitigate that one factor, which did make some difference, those girls are still getting all the other crap from society about what they're supposed to be or not supposed to be interested in, and that crap about what they're supposed to value and how they're supposed to act from everyone, including their friends and their families, and you think that all factors are now compensated for so if girls really can be as good as boys at this, they would now demonstrate it with the numbers?

I also thoroughly agree with you on the massive effect of assumptions about women's role with regard to raising children. Even if you are super-progressive, fighting against that is really hard.