Weekly Flâneur: Heroic

Captain America, Phoenix, some writer, Dazzler, and Batman. Click to enlarge.

I dunno, flâneurs. Sometimes, you're just walking down the sidewalk and BOOM. Superheroes. 

 Like, what can you do? Grab a shield and pose. Or duck, because bystanders usually get in the way during epic battles. Mostly pose, though.

N.C. Music Factory, aka Gotham, Charlotte, N.C., May 2012

Snow White With A Thousand Faces

You guys. YOU GUISE. Ask your mom if you can come over and spend the night at my house Friday. My mom says it's OK. We can get pizza and slushies and I've got tapes for us. You can use my My Little Pony sleeping bag. We've got Snow White and The Huntsman and The Hunger Games! And we can stay up late and watch them before we rewind and watch again!

No, really, what a great time to be a 12-year-old girl, huh? 2012 has summer movies that feature straight-up role models (Katniss and Rue in The Hunger Games, Black Widow holding her ground with demigods in The Avengers, Snow White, and later this summer: Brave). I recently caught an early screening of Snow White and The Huntsman, and like Thor and Red Riding Hood, there's no embargo for some early thoughts.

First off, the film needed -- say it with me, the sad refrain -- MORE people of colour, especially women. Also, also? Less heteronormativity. Speaking of, wouldn't it have been awesome if the Huntsman was a lady? Would've pushed that sucker right over into 4-star territory for the romantic tension alone.

At times, the film can't quite decide if it's a Zooey Deschanel daydream of fairy whimsy, a fan-made KStew/Bella YouTube music video, or Lord of the Rings. It's excusable, because it can be a little bit of all those things (all those somewhat derivative and somewhat cringe-worthy things) and still be enjoyable.

Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.

Because there's some really good points, such as the fact that the Hero With A Thousand Faces, the You-Are-The-Chosen-One, the DESTINED Child is a woman with chutzpah; one who could care less about the hottie Huntsman and wants to get her Inigo Montoya on and regain her kingdom.

Dwarfs? Trolls? Fairies? All OK for Snowy, but mostly in the way of getting to an army. Let's hurry along now. There's an Evil Queen to fight.


And the Queen! Long live the Queen! Charlize Theron owned the movie, plain and simple.
I mean, really, even the film's marketing campaign can't escape her royal bad-ass. Check out the movie website. It's like it should be called: "QUEEN RAVENNA and that brat Snow White and sometimes Thor."

Snow who with the what now?

Don't hate me 'cause I'm beautiful.

Fairy tales became immensely more interesting to me when, after a youthful bout of literary theory (thanks, Robert A. Johnson, Angela Carter and Roehampton University!), I learned that the princess and the witch were the same character. Snow White is fighting herself.

We're all in the tower, we're all the princess, the witch, the sleeping beauty, the fairy. We're fighting death, fighting for regained youth, and fighting to stave off the fear of the unknown. HQIC (Head Queen In Charge) and Snowy are fighting their own fears that a woman's only worth in a patriarchal society is solely connected to her youth and beauty. Oh, hello same fight most women face every single day, how are you?

As for the romance, I really appreciated that it was secondary, as mentioned above. Snowy did shoot some eyes at her childhood-friend-turned-archer and her titular Huntsman, but thankfully the film did not fall into the trap of the angsty teen love triangle or become Medieval Twilight. If anything, impressionable youngin's watching the film may take away the idea that, hey, maybe young ladies (and lads) like yourself may want to kiss a few boys and see how you like it? And when you do meet a guy you spark with who respects you and makes your heart and ladyparts beat faster, he may not be all Prince Charming-y. He may have previous relationships (or a wife) and baggage and holy hi-ho-hi-ho that's really very normal, so get used to the idea.

The movie was a little "meh" at times, and there are somewhat problematic elements due to the fact that smaller-sized people were not cast in the role of the dwarfs; rather average-sized actors CGI-ed to scale. There are other actors beside Peter Dinklage who would like roles in Hollywood films. No need to hobbitify a role when there are capable and talented actors just waiting for a chance.

All that said, it's a much better take on the fairy tale genre than last year's Little Red 90210 and hopefully just a taste of what's to come with this summer's Brave and beyond. And long live the meaty roles for talented actresses who can be truly wicked.

Friday QuoteDay

“I don’t think it’s terribly controversial to note that women, from a young age, are required to consider the reality of the opposite gender’s consciousness in a way that men aren’t. This isn’t to say that women don’t often misunderstand, mistreat, and stereotype men, both in literature and in life. But on a basic level, functioning in society requires that women register that men are fully conscious; it is not really possible for a woman to throw up her hands and write men off as eternally unknowable space aliens — and even if she says she has, she cannot really behave as though she has. 
Every element of her life — from reading books about boys and men to writing papers about the motivations of male characters to being attentive to her own safety to navigating most any institutional or professional or economic sphere — demands an ironclad familiarity with, and belief in, the idea that men really are fully human entities. And no matter how many men come to the same conclusions about women, the structure of society simply does not demand so strenuously that they do so. 
If you didn’t really deep down believe that women were, in general, exactly as conscious as you, you could probably still get by in life. 
You could probably still get a book deal. You could probably still get elected to office.”

— Jennifer duBois, Writing Across Gender

Weekly Flâneur: Sign of the Times

Image of sign, reading, "Hipster Yard Sale." Click to enlarge

Questions this sign brings up:

Do they sell hipsters?

How long is a yard of hipsters?

Hipsters!

North Davidson (NoDa), Charlotte, N.C., May 2012

 

A Twist of Metal

Tuesday

It started this way: Lucky Lefty, the boob I always liked the most, the one with the cute freckle and the one that rarely got in my way, has a lump. Only no one calls it a lump; the nurses walk around that word, the radiologist calls it a mass and a possible fibroadenoma. The first thing they told me: 1 out of 10 women are called back for a second mammogram following their very first. I am young. I’m not worried. It’s the ten-year rule that brings me in; my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer the month after she turned 40. Her children should be tested for the cancer earlier; 10 years to the day. So here I go, early thirties and a mammogram.

The scheduling receptionist tells me I’m too young; wait until I’m 35. I want to tell her that it’s not like I’m doing it for kicks, but it’s nice to know there’s still something I’m still too young for.

The first mammogram appointment comes. I intentionally forget not to drink caffeine. Caffeine makes the breasts tender, but so do the 22 pounds of weight that compress them for imaging. A small percentage of women faint when this happens. Guess who’s one of them?

The second time around, I warn them. I may faint, with or without the 22 pounds of weight. Diet Coke at hand. There are two bright and cheerful nurses, one in training, to attend me. Like ladies-in-waiting for my boobs.

It is a sunny Tuesday afternoon, but the lights are dim and the walls window-less throughout the clinic. Good lighting to hide wrinkles. Good lighting to hide fear. The second mammogram is over quickly, and I am ushered into a waiting room. Still topless, a paper gown crinkling against the purse slung over my shoulder. If they see anything, they’ll do an ultrasound. No one says what they see just yet. When they come back for me, it’s down another window-less hallway into another wing. Radiology and Ultrasound.

In the ultrasound room, my boobs’ kind handmaids and I talk about The Bachelor (which I don’t watch) and I learn about Ben’s bad bachelor choices with That One Girl they don’t like. They cover my boobs with a warm gel and take a few test glances while we talk. My toplessness is routine, natural. The radiologist comes in and takes over. A mechanical wand slides through the warm gel on my breast and casts an image on a screen above my head. He points to a black mass. There it is. He doesn’t talk about reality TV, but about biopsies. I am scheduled for a needle biopsy at 8 in the morning Thursday.

My mother cries when I call and tell her. “It’s simple, Ma, I promise. Just a little needle. In and out.” It was different for her. They put her to sleep, cut her open. She cries, thinking that’s what’s going to happen to me. “There won’t even be a scar,” I assure her, though I have no idea. It sounds nicer to say.

I don’t want to call and tell anyone else. What would I say, anyway, if I called? I tell my husband in person, but no one else needed to know. Better to keep it hidden, just in case. Just in case it is nothing. Better to be natural, calm, speak of other things.

Anyone else I speak to that Tuesday heard normal things. Like the recent email from Stig, planning to visit in August, wanting to know if North Carolina had waterfalls. We’ll go to the Appalachian mountains, I say, visit Sliding Rock.

But even through this, there were gnawing questions behind every word. If the lump in my breast was the Big C, was cancer, would I be able to slide down waterfalls? Stig struggled for years with dialysis for his kidneys, fighting the enemy within his own body, but still managed to travel and live in London. If I have to fight, the thing I must fight will be above my own beating heart. How the hell do I fight that?

Friday QuoteDay

“We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must — at that moment — become the center of the universe.”

 — Elie Wiesel, writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate and Holocaust survivor.

Weekly Flâneur: On the Edge

Image of white dove. Click to enlarge.

Like a white-winged dove, loves.

At the edge of seventeen, maybe?
Somewhere in London, U.K.

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