Tuesday, September 09, 2008

Mamma Mia

“You are the Dancing Queen, young and sweet only seventeen, Dancing Queen
feel the beat from the tambourine, oh yeah you can dance, you can jive, having the time of your life… la la Dancing Queen.”

I saw Mamma Mia (the movie) about a month ago, for a few weeks I danced around with the tunes of ABBA ringing in my head. (btw U2 do a pretty good cover of Dancing Queen). After the tunes had faded I thought more deeply about the show.
Mamma Mia is fun, light and enjoyable (although the stage show was funnier and more engaging) yet there are some subtleties I would like to discuss. The show is obviously written by men with traditional values, and the gender issues raised need to be critiqued.

There are some surprising contrasts in this movie. Women are the primary characters in the movie; the men are left to play goofy sidekicks (I’ll let you guys complain about the implications of that). However the roles the women are given are merely the traditional three female archetypes that women have been protesting since the rise of feminism in the 1970’s. In Mamma Mia we have the traditional Mother, Virgin, Whore roles. Yes the roles have been updated for 2008 – the good mother no longer has to be married, the virgin is no longer sexually innocent, but is innocent in her values, approach to and experience of life. The 2008 Whore has married for money and is a sell out to brand names and capitalism. In Mamma Mia they are joined by the latest addition to the traditional roles for women, the intelligent, plump man-less best friend. The roles hardly present a challenge to the acting ability of the cast and I’m surprised that these actors who were mothers of freedom and choice for women settled for roles that promote such stereotypes.

Meryl Streep (one of my favourite actors) plays Donna an ex singer who runs a hotel and has a daughter (Sophie). Admittedly she isn’t just a mother – she runs a hotel too. However she has no passion for her business, she dreams of a man whisking her away to idle luxury on a super-yacht (money, money, money). She has worked hard on her hotel for 20 years, but is portrayed as being unable to make a success of it without a man. Sophie also needs a man to affirm her identity and to tell her that she’s good at drawing before she has the courage to experience the world and leave her mother to further her art.

There are some quite serious identity formation issues that are explored by the movie, and I don’t want to minimise the importance of these in any way. But there are some subtle messages that are spread by Mamma Mia that concern me. The first is that women are to passively wait to be ‘saved’ by a man who will ride in on a white horse, and rescue them. The passive waiting to be rescued role is surfacing more and more in movies lately, or perhaps never truly went away. Secondly we have the idea that a woman cannot be successful without a man, and if she is successful (like the plump best friend) she will be undesirable to men. Women also need to have their work recognised and declared good by men before they can be confident enough to take it to the next step.

The backwards movement in the representation of women in Movies and the media in general has also been observed by other commentators. Susan Faludi for example states, “A reflexive response to 9/11 was that the feminist movement had emasculated the American male and reduced his effectiveness in his primary role as head of the family and protector of vulnerable women and children. The media collaborated with politicians in reincarnating this old myth of masculine heroes and distressed damsels.”
Women’s representation in the media must be more strongly critiqued if we are not to fall back to traditional limited roles, that do not reflect the opportunities for and aspirations of today’s women. I want to see women who want to be successful and to take an active role in their own lives and in changing the world, not sitting passively waiting to be saved. The critique of women’s representation in the media needs to be advanced by younger women, ageing feminists like myself are ready to pass the baton on – however we do not see younger women stepping up to the plate. Who do you want to be? What images of women do you want your younger sisters to see? Are you happy that their heroes are those who have sleaze and style over substance or even talent?


Waiting for your comments
Christina

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Mammaries in MGs.

It’s that time of year again when the city council argues about the merits or otherwise of the ‘boobs on bikes’ parade, while a pornographer stands up for women’s ‘human rights’. Yes he claims that it is women’s human right to bare their breasts in public. Since when has a porn maker stood up for women’s rights? In all the arguments for and against the parade one issue has not been raised. In my ongoing quest for authenticity the issue that crops up for me is how authentic are the boobs on display? Is displaying a real boob different to displayed a fake boob, the parade is associated with advertising for the erotica expo but really I feel it is a better advertisement for the skill of the plastic surgeons.

To protest the synthetic ness of the parade I propose an alternative – Mammaries in Mgs (name provided by Mike). Real women show what it means to ride topless in topless cars, open to women with next to nothing up top, to the old and droopy, the scarred, the reconstructed, but only open to those with the genuine natural article.

Well my proposed parade is of course tongue in cheek, but it raises an important point, would the same fuss be caused by everyday fat, thin, old women riding around topless? It might raise a few eyebrows but I don’t think it would get the same media coverage. This clearly points to the problem of boobs on bikes – that it is simply not a celebration of the female form in all its god-given beauty. It is blatant sexualisation and objectification of the female body. The name of the event points to the objectification of a single part of the female anatomy - it suggests boobs floating on bikes unattached to women. Sexualisation of women in our society is rampant and unhealthy, particularly for young women who are still forming ideas about body image and sexuality.

I fail to understand why women go along with it and participate in such events, our foremothers did not fight for sexual freedom so that we were free to go along with men’s exploitation of our bodies and call it choice. On Sunday I saw the Dark Night in this movie the ‘girlfriend’ of Batman is a hotshot lawyer of such a calibre to be an assistant District Attorney. However she wears tops to work that are so low cut I doubt any judge would let her in a courtroom. In the struggle to be taken seriously as an intellectual equal in the real world of work, women cannot afford the slightest glimpse of cleavage. I can’t help but think that professional women on TV and in Movies are sexualised to try and neutralise the threat that they pose to some men who still feel rather insecure about professional women.

However I find the opposite view is not compelling either and once again does not lead to the healthy formation of body image and sexuality in young women. This view also over-sexualises the human (particularly female) body, and says that it should never be displayed in public, because it leads to and is associated with (usually) sexual sin.

Surely there is a middle ground that can be found, where a female body is viewed with respect and delight because of the wondrous beauty of its form. Some of the old masters paintings of naked women express some of this. Surely a woman is and can be beautiful without being a sexual object, her body can be celebrated for its wonderful form and design, whatever its size. This would help young women to develop a healthy relationship with the beauty of their bodies, and perhaps they would no longer need to have sex just to feel good about themselves.

p.s. If I did organise a mammaries in MGs parade it would not be in the cold winds of winter either.

Keep thinking, and young women learn to stand up for women's rights - don't let a pornographer claim to speak for you!

Christina

Wednesday, April 02, 2008

The Stamp of Authenticity



I couldn't help but be stimulated to ponder authenticity again when I came across this ad for Stoli in Rolling Stone.


Authenticity is now an important marketable quality of a product. The question that arises is who decides what is authentic and how is that expressed. In the Stoli ad there is a stamp in the corner. I don’t have a clue what that means and its in Russian so I don’t understand it. But it looks official so I guess it gives it an air of formal approval.

Some questions arise from my pondering:

Is it more authentic to drink ‘authentic’ Russian vodka, or a more authentic cultural expression to drink 42 Below?

What is the ‘stamp of authenticity’ that we need to express our faith to a suspicious world?

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts
Christina

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

The Challenge of Being Authentic.

I am currently reading Go Put Your Strengths to Work (by Marcus Buckingham). In the book Buckingham makes the point that we often research or discover things by working out what they are not. So we find out about health by researching disease we find out about function by researching dysfunction. I am still thinking about authenticity and I’ve been noticing an inclination (including myself) to define what is inauthentic rather than what is authentic. We seem to instinctively know what is inauthentic, but struggle to describe what is authentic. However Buckingham’s point is that if for example we research disease and do or achieve the opposite we don’t necessarily get great health – we just get not diseased.

If we try to achieve authenticity by using our instinctive ability to recognise what is inauthentic and doing the opposite, we run the risk of achieving a mediocre polite middle ground that is not inauthentic but isn’t wonderfully and creatively authentic either. As Christians we have in Jesus and in the biblical narrative our inspiration and guide for living authentically.

A Christian understanding of what it means to live authentically must be rooted in a rich understanding of what it means to be created in and called to live as the image of God. . To live authentically is also embedded in Jesus’ call to follow him. As we seek to follow and imitate the one who said “I am the way, and the truth and the life” we are called to live with an authenticity that reveals the image of God in us, and points to the revelation of truth that is the person of Jesus. In our sound-bite, image conscious society living authentically is as radical as it was in the society of Corinth in the early days of the church. I want to finish with a quote from an address by Vinoth Ramachandra, he tells the story of a Russian philosopher who became a Christian and moved to the US, the contrast between Christianity in the US and Russia was great and led her to state,
“For the first time I understood how dangerous it is to talk about God. Each word must be a sacrifice – filled to the brim with authenticity. Otherwise it is better to keep silent.” (Tatiana Goricheva)

Monday, January 07, 2008

Understanding Learning Today

I love this video clip from KSU, it explains so much of what it is like to work with students today.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o

As well as helping to explain some of the challenges facing tertiary students today, it raises a lot of challenges. For example "if students learn by doing - why are they sitting in class?" My feeling is that tertiary students are dissatisfied with the learning that they encounter at University. The whole learning system is based on 'modern' principles of information and learning, that are on the whole no longer relevant or effective. Students now are searching for a greater engagement with their studies and critical thinking that is relevant to their lives. They are searching for guides not instructors. This is a huge challenge to the church and to TSCF - are we being proactive about reading and responding to changes that I predict are coming in the education sector. We need to critically assess the way that we are teaching the bible, leadership and doing evangelism. It is no longer enough to talk at large groups of people, when research into teaching shows that passive listening is the least effective way of learning. Students are longing for genuine engagement in their lives and with their issues and for mentors and guides that can teach them by getting alongside them and helping them to learn to read the patterns of life, to read the bible, to know Jesus and to be fully who they were created to be.

I pray that the church (and TSCF) can remain proactive and ahead of the game on this issue.