All posts written by Michelle Schwartz

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• • Film Reel
  • Media Savvy

  RiP: A Remix Manifesto

  April 28, 2009 • Michelle Schwartz

  In January, I blogged about RiP: A Remix Manifesto, a movie aimed at criticizing international copyright law, a system that tramples art and innovation, and makes criminals of small children and old ladies. We live in a world where major corporations are declaring they “own” everything from rain forest plants to human DNA. In February, the Electronic Frontier Foundation began a protest of YouTube’s Fair Use Massacre, in which copyright owners (notably Warner Music Group) sent out takedown notices, threatening users who posted videos as innocent as teen girls practicing their piano and singing Christmas songs. Fair use has been gutted and major corporations are seizing “ownership” of our entire universe.
  

  
  

  

  Join the remix revolution!

  RiP: A Remix Manifesto has since been released, screened in theaters and available in its entirety on the Internet. Brett Gaylor, the filmmaker, still considers it a work in progress, open to being remixed by its audience. At the end of each chapter, Brett offers a prompt to viewers, asking fans to add everything from animation to soundtrack music. Grab material from Open Source Cinema and work your own magic! Art is meant to be shared, not owned.

• • Bibliothèque
  • News Flash

  Amazon Declares Gay = Smut

  April 12, 2009 • Michelle Schwartz

  Amazon, already the scourge of small publishers and independent booksellers, has finally gone too far. No, I am not talking about the Kindle. That thing is just pointless. I am talking about Amazon’s new policy of labeling any and all LGBT printed matter as “Adult.” This policy strips the material of its sales rank, excluding it from bestseller lists and certain search results, and basically destroys its sales. This policy has not just been applied to erotica, but to general fiction, young adult novels, academic theory, political treatises, history books, dictionaries, and self-help books. Books that have not suffered the same fate include heterosexual romance novels by authors like Jackie Collins or even pornographic books published by Playboy.

  Here is a constantly expanding list of books that have been stripped of their rank, classified as “Adult” for daring to contain mentions of the horrible, deviant behavior that is same sex love. Examples include classics such as Rita Mae Brown’s Rubyfruit Jungle, James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room, and Jeanette Winterson’s Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. Also marginalized are Brokeback Mountain, Stone Butch Blues, books by respected fiction authors like Sarah Waters and Christopher Isherwood, as well as non-fiction (and completely non-erotic) works by Kate Bornstein and Randy Shilts, including The Mayor of Castro Street, which certainly must have received a boost in sales after the release of the Oscar winning film, “Milk.”

  Thank you Amazon, for first putting all my favorite bookstores out of business, and now trying to make it so that no one will ever publish LGBT books ever again. Because with profit margins tight and a terrible economy, why bother sinking money into a book that will never sell, because the largest bookseller in the world will declare it to be shameful porn and hide it on a dusty shelf behind a beaded curtain at the back of the store?

  EDIT: Amazon has declared the de-ranking of almost all gay related titles to have been the result of a “computer glitch,” which is apparently what we get instead of an apology or an explanation. I think it is highly improbable that a simple “glitch” managed to somehow single out only titles that mention homosexuality in a positive light, but leave titles like A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Homosexuality alone.

  Pissed off about this new policy? Want an apology? Here’s what you can do:
  (more inside…)

• • Activist Report
  • Film Fridays

  Join the Remix Revolution!

  January 23, 2009 • Michelle Schwartz

  I recently had one of my videos muted by YouTube in response to a “Content ID Match.” This two minute movie about a trip my friends and I took to Coney Island used “Cumbia En Do Menor” by Lito Barrientos for a soundtrack. This home movie was created for personal entertainment (Look Ma! I went to the beach!) and not for profit. However, because it “may have content that is owned or licensed by Warner Music Group,” it was determined to be in violation of copyright laws and muted.

  I suppose I should count myself lucky that Warner Music Group didn’t sue me for all I was worth (which is not much). As it is, I am guilty until proven innocent. WMG was not required to provide any evidence that they either own or license that song, nor were they expected to prove that I was impacting their commercial business or had gone beyond fair use. If I wanted to dispute the claim, I would have to do all the work, and open myself up to the full wrath of the WMG legal department.

  How did we let this happen? How did we let corporations take such control of our collective creative output that the public domain has become a joke, with copyrights extended ad infinitum, and robot crawlers searching the internet for unlicensed songs in home videos (Look Ma! I went to the beach… in silence!)? Why are we letting these corporations stifle our creativity by making art illegal or prohibitively expensive?

  In answer to these questions, I offer Open Source Cinema, an open source documentary film about copyright.
  

  
  (more inside…)

• • Media Savvy

  Note to Ad Execs: Women Like Beer (in fact, some of them LOVE beer)

  January 17, 2009 • Michelle Schwartz

  The latest advertising abomination (adbomination?) to make the rounds is a campaign for Israel’s Gold Star beer. These ridiculous ads, structured as cartoony flowcharts, trade on the old trope that men are low-maintenance sex hounds who just want to drink beer and get laid, while as women are high-maintenance fashion lunatics who spend five hours obsessing over what shoes they wear before going out for girly cocktails in hopes of meeting a knight in shining armor who will marry them so they can pop out baby after baby and live happily ever after. The tag line for this lovely campaign? “Thank God you’re a man.”
  

  

  Click here to see a larger image, along with the rest of the campaign (it only gets worse).

  (more inside…)

• • Media Savvy

  Why Feminism matters…

  January 13, 2009 • Michelle Schwartz

  Living in the midst of a backlash that has turned “feminism” into “the f-word,” a horrifying dirty slur used to dismiss, rather than help women, I often find myself attempting to explain why exactly feminism is important. These explanations typically fall on the deaf ears of women who have fully bought into the idea that the only thing feminism cares to eliminate is their right to wear frilly pink bras.

  Those of us who, despite having used the gains made by feminism to play varsity sports, work our way into high-powered careers, and open independent bank accounts, never saw what it was like before feminism, and thus often take our freedom for granted, even going so far as to mythologize “the good old days, when women were women, and men were men” as part of our backlash influenced beliefs.

  Working as an archivist, I would frequently come across photos and letters that would blow my mind. Women completely erased by history, having always signed correspondence with their husband’s name. Women being sexually harassed and groped by men in company photos. Women being rejected for employment, treated like children, insulted, or ignored entirely. I would often think to myself that if only this stuff was out in the open instead of in a dusty box, the backlash wouldn’t exist.

  So, without further ado, here is one of those very pieces of dusty pre-feminist history, a rejection letter sent by the Walt Disney Corporation to a woman applying for work as an animator:
  

  
  Click the image for a larger copy.
  Photo courtesy of Sim Sandwich

  (more inside…)

• • Media Savvy
  • Queeriosities

  Dudes and Dating Shows

  January 8, 2009 • Michelle Schwartz

  Last night, for the first time in forever, I tuned in to MTV to watch The Real World. For the 21st season, they are heading to my hometown of Brooklyn, New York, and I couldn’t resist the urge to watch a bunch of spoiled attention seekers embarrass themselves in the place of my birth. I had nothing to do in the hour before the show started, so I let MTV babble away in the background while I puttered around the apartment. Wow, does MTV have some bizarre programming!

  First up was a commercial for A Double Shot At Love, in which two vacuous blondes chirp “HI, WE’RE LOOKING FOR LOVE!” as the voiceover explains that this is a dating show about a pair of lonely bisexual twins. Ohhhhh-kay.

  Then there was the highlight of the night, an episode of Bromance, another “dating show” in which former model and “reality TV personality” Brody Jenner searches for the perfect man.

  
  

  

  This too could be yours!

  Supposedly this show is not about Brody finding a new lover, but instead about him finding a new best friend. Why Brody needs a reality show for this purpose is unclear, however one would think that if you have to hold an MTV-sponsored contest to connect with people, you might be doing something wrong.

  (more inside…)

• • Activist Report
  • Queeriosities

  New Year’s Resolution: Never To Forget

  January 2, 2009 • Michelle Schwartz

  With the constant media barrage of disasters, injustices, and assorted international atrocities, it can often be hard to focus on just one cause. In a world of 24-hour news tickers and 30 second segments, it seems like there’s never the time or space for follow up. One minute the news will leave me enraged over one particular case, and the next minute it will have moved on to the next reprehensible act, and sadly, so will I. So for 2009, instead of my typical resolutions to go to the gym more often or eat fewer chemical-laced and possibly radioactive meat byproducts, I resolve not to let the 24-hour news cycle get me down, and not to forget the injustices of the world five minutes after they happen.

  Number one on my list is the New Jersey Four. In 2006, a group of young black lesbians were walking on Sixth Avenue in New York City’s Greenwich Village, a neighborhood that has long been a safe haven for queer youth. A man selling DVDs on the sidewalk propositioned them. When he was met with a rejection, he called them dykes, threw his lit cigarette at them, and threatened to “fuck them straight.” A fight broke out, and he was caught on camera trying to strangle one of the women. The women fought back, along with several other men who stepped in to defend them.

  (more inside…)

• • Film Reel

  Guilty Pleasures: The Oeuvre of Sarah Michelle Gellar

  December 23, 2008 • Michelle Schwartz

  Following in the footsteps of Anna and her musical solution to holiday stress, I offer my own plan for surviving December: The Guilty Pleasure Movie. Everyone has one hidden under the bed or at the back of the entertainment unit. A movie that, despite endless viewings and despite its lack of any apparent value, still rewards the watcher with a mindless sense of serenity. In the interest of full disclosure, I will cop to my guilty pleasure of choice. It’s a little something I call The Always Entertaining Film Career of Sarah Michelle Gellar.

  I started watching out for the big screen appearances of Ms. Gellar way before I had ever even seen Buffy. I loved her particular blend of vacuous bimbo, catty bitch, and evil trollop parts. The more offensive to my feminist sensibilities, the more I loved her work. From Scream 2 to Cruel Intentions to Southland Tales, Sarah Michelle Gellar just warms my heart with a combination of excellent comic timing and horrible career choices.

  To this list of mostly awful, but always entertaining movies, I add Simply Irresistible. Sure, it’s a rip off of Like Water For Chocolate, and sure, the dialogue is full of sexist stereotypes, and yes, the male love interest is a irredeemable chauvinist pig the entire movie, but who cares? It has Sarah Michelle Gellar playing a cook granted magical kitchen powers by a muppet crab sent down from heaven by her dead mother! A muppet crab that she talks to and carries around in her purse! And she vanquishes all the bad guys with orgasm-inducing eclairs! Plus, a supporting cast that includes Patricia Clarkson, Betty Buckley and Dylan Baker, all of whom could make a recitation of the phone book funny and awesome. Simply Irresistible is my new cure for the holiday blues!

  What about you? In the holiday spirit of shamelessness, what are your most embarrassing guilty pleasure?

• • Bibliothèque

  Stuff your stockings with dykes

  December 9, 2008 • Michelle Schwartz

  Just in time for the holiday season, Alison Bechdel has released The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For, a collection of episodes of Bechdel’s weekly comic, “Dykes to Watch Out For.” The comic, a smart, funny soap opera about the lives of a group of women in a college town, has been appearing in alternative newspapers across North America since 1983. I would have asked for it as a Hannukah gift if I hadn’t already bought it for myself. Oops!

  

  The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For (Alison Bechdel)

  
  This isn’t a complete collection. For that, you’ll still have to pony up 15 bucks for each individual volume of the series, of which there are now 11. But for just 25 bucks you can get a lovely hardcover book that includes almost 75% of the 527 episodes, plus an additional 12 page illustrated introduction by the author. For those concerned about completeness, the missing strips don’t have much effect on the story. I checked one of my partner’s volumes to see what had been removed, and the missing strips were mostly subplots and long outdated political rants.

  I had never read more than a strip or two of “Dykes” before buying this book, but I loved Bechdel’s graphic novel memoir, Fun Home, so when I saw this at the store, I knew it would be the perfect antidote to winter gloom and the oppressive patriarchy. When the world has got you down, there’s nothing better than spending your evenings curled on the couch, immersed in an alternate universe filled entirely with women of all shapes, sizes and colors, doing every conceivable job, from mechanic to accountant, living in a magical Bohemia filled with feminist bookstores and lesbian coffee shops.

• • Media Savvy
  • Queeriosities

  Katy Perry, UR Not Gay

  December 3, 2008 • Michelle Schwartz

  While doing some research for my post on Amanda Palmer’s scandalous belly, I noticed that she had been nominated for Out Magazine’s annual “Out 100” Awards. While happily watching interviews with Amanda and Tegan & Sara, who should I see but Katy ‘UR So Gay’ Perry standing around in the background. ”

  What is she doing there?” I thought to myself. What is the woman famous for lyrics that say kissing another woman is “not what good girls do” and that listening to Mozart and being a vegetarian is “so gay” doing in the Out 100? Well, not only is she in the 100, she was awarded Musician of the Year and is the only woman represented on the cover of the magazine.

  

  The Out 100 Awards (Out Magazine)

  
  I am so sick of Katy Perry. She actually gave an acceptance speech in which she laments not getting to attend the “fabulous” award ceremonies because she would miss all the cattiness and gossip! She trivializes the queer experience, makes lesbianism into a show for men, and trades in cheap and insulting stereotypes. She is not queer, does not claim to be queer, and shows absolutely no solidarity with queers nor understanding of the queer experience. Her martyr-complex tales of being castigated by her conservative parents makes a mockery of every queer kid who really was thrown out of the house and couldn’t fall back on a heteronormative pop-music cushion. Her whining about how people are just “dying to be offended” shows a complete unwillingness to listen to the people she is exploiting for their fabulous gowns and great cocktails.

  Shame on Out Magazine for awarding Katy Perry! Shame on them for not only listing her, but for letting her represent all “out” women on the cover, and for letting her offensive apolitical drivel stand above all the other awesome music being made by and for the queer community.

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