Here’s something you Toronto readers may want to check out. It’s an art opening and also a screening of a film made by Jessica Yee, activist, community organizer, and Shameless blogger and contributor.

The Centre for Women’s Studies in Education and The Native Youth Sexual Health Network present:

Youth Resisting Colonialism and Rebuilding Pathways to Hope - A Film Screening and Art Exhibition

Monday, September 21st, 2009
OISE Building, 252 Bloor St. W., Room 2-212
6 pm to 9 pm (film @ 7 pm)

This event exhibits the work of youth reflecting their resistance to violence and colonialism through artistic expression.

The exhibit will be followed by a screening of Building a Highway of Hope, a documentary filmed and directed by Indigenous feminist activist Jessica Yee about the numerous disappearances and murders of Aboriginal women along Highway 16 in British Columbia, followed by a panel discussion featuring Jessica Yee of the Native Youth Sexual Health Network, Charlene Catchpole, Executive Director of the North York Women’s Shelter, and Tannis Nielsen, Artist and Youth Program Coordinator, Native Canadian Centre of Toronto.

The exhibition will continue until October 2, 2009.

Light refreshments will be served. Venue is wheelchair accessible.
For more information contact the Centre for Women’s Studies in Education at: 416-978-2080 or cwse@oise.utoronto.ca

This week, one of my friends informed me of the premature passing of filmmaker John Hughes, a man who practically defined youth culture in the Eighties with his brat pack movies like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Pretty In Pink, and The Breakfast Club. We were discussing our favorite Hughes films, our favorite brat pack members, our favorite soundtrack song, when someone brought up Sixteen Candles.

We all remembered loving Sixteen Candles when we were younger, but when we rewatched it as adults, we found certain aspects disturbing. There was the racist comic relief provided by the Asian minstrel/exchange student, Long Duk Dong, and there was the scene where Jake Ryan, Molly Ringwald’s Object of Affection, passes off his car and his bitchy cheerleader girlfriend to The Geek, the lovable loser portrayed by Anthony Michael Hall. The girlfriend has had too much to drink and has passed out in the front seat. Instead of, I don’t know, doing something crazy like driving her home, Jake Ryan, Dreamboat Extraordinaire, gives her to The Geek, telling him to have fun (read: have sex with her, she won’t even remember in the morning). Wow. Thanks a lot for that wonderful message, John Hughes.

I’m not trying to hate on the man. After all, he gave the world the forever-awesome scene of Jeannie Bueller kicking Ed Rooney in the face. But I find the casual and unremarkable depiction of men trading a woman as a commodity disturbing. Unfortunately, sexual assault and violence against women is running rampant in Hollywood. Rape or the threat of rape appears in everything from comedies to action movies. Hollywood takes our terrifying culture of misogyny, which has most recently gifted us with a massacre in a fitness club, and turns it into a punchline. And it’s becoming more and more common.

I rented Blindness and found myself sick to my stomach after a 10-minute gang rape scene. My friend Trancer was grossed out by the threat of rape playing a part in the new Terminator movie, especially offensive since the franchise has spent over two decades as a bastion for strong female characters. In response, she decided to make a list of all the movies in which sexual assault or rape occurs. The list doesn’t judge the quality of the movies. As she states, “Some of these are good movies, some are bad and some are *really* bad! Some of these deal with the issue seriously. Most of them don’t.” And like the Guerilla Girls statistics comparing the number of exhibited women artists versus the number of female nudes on display in museums, Trancer decided to compare the number of films depicting men being sexually assaulted or threatened with sexual assault with the number of films depicting women being sexually assaulted or threatened with sexual assault. The current count, just based on reader submissions?

MOVIES IN WHICH WOMEN ARE SEXUALLY ASSAULTED OR THREATENED WITH SEXUAL ASSAULT: 179

MOVIES IN WHICH MEN ARE SEXUALLY ASSAULTED OR THREATENED WITH SEXUAL ASSAULT: 15

Click more to see the list as it currently stands. Have another film to add? Leave it in the comments. Let’s see exactly how big this list can grow. Let’s “show how commonplace and totally cliched sexual violence against women (while presented as entertainment and something that only happens to women) has become.”

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When we started the Roller Derby League here in Prince George we were pretty excited about the onslaught of Roller Derby culture about to hit our communities: the Hell On Wheels documentary, Knockdown Knits, and the forthcoming Whip It. With Whip It about to come out it’s like we, the roller derby’ers, have fully arrived in hegemonic pop culture. The trailer brings on debate about the showiness of the sport, the brutal beatings so often left out on television (and not usually on the track), and the weird continuity issues of a teenager being able to play in an adult league. Regardless, the soundtrack is phenomenal and the stacked cast including Zoe Bell, Juliette Lewis, Eve, and Ellen Page will make this movie a gem. And, it must turn out right because Page’s character’s dad gives her a shiny new pair of Riedells: such a well earned and classic new gift for any roller girl who tries to make a name for herself on the track.

Last week, Heather Wood Rudúlph wrote an article for Huffington Post highlighting five reasons we still need feminism. Number four on that list was as follows:

Obsessed, Bride Wars, Bridezillas and everything else that paints women as crazed (in various and sundry ways) to find, keep, and marry a man.

To that, I say “Amen, sister.” I am quite sick of living in a world that offers men movies like The Hangover or the oeuvre of Judd Apatow, where shlubby loser guys get to have all the fun and women exist only as punchlines to the jokes, and offers women… well, very little. Except for, y’know, a chance to fight with each other over said shlubby men.

The white heterosexual male still rules Hollywood and sometimes I think that will never, ever change. Not when I read articles like this one, in which an earnest and talented young screenwriter is told repeatedly by both professors and producers that the world doesn’t want to see a movie starring a woman, or about a woman, or even a movie where two women talk to each other about something other than a man.

To this I say, fine. If Hollywood insists on offering me nothing in the way of suitable entertainment, well, then, I will make my own fun! I have long been a devotee of fanfiction, if only because, as a queer girl, I gotta take representation where I can get it. If Hollywood isn’t going to give me a TV show where the hero is a woman who just happens to enjoy making out with other women, well, I am not going to scoff at any writer who helps to fill that gap. Plus, I’ve always thought there’s something rather subversive about fanfiction, about taking the subtext, or even the text, and seeing it in a radical new way.

And thus, I present, Bride Wars: The Alternative Story, in which, using nothing but film stills, one of the most sexist, misogynist movies of the year is turned into nothing short of a glorious lesbian love story. Don’t you just love it when the two women get married at the end? Everyone say it with me: Awwwwwww.

And they lived happily ever after…

Interested in adding some female oriented fanfiction and subversive subtext to your summer reading list? You’re just in time! Next month is the second annual International Day of Femslash.

Since the discussion has been so lively on my previous post about sexism in the new Star Trek movie, I thought I would open up the discussion of race in the new movie and in the series.

While I thought Sulu’s dramatic sword fight was awesome (and pretty sexy, too), I was disappointed by Uhura’s reduced role in the new movie. Already saddled with a legacy of being a glorified receptionist, this new Uhura lost even more power by becoming not much more than Spock’s girlfriend. A franchise that had once been praised for its diversity (which was impressive for the ‘60s) has once again become the playground of white heterosexual men.

Diversity in space?

Danielle C. Benton has written an interesting article (note: contains spoilers) for The American Prospect about the history of minorities in science fiction shows, connecting Uhura to Petty Officer Dualla of Battlestar Galactica by their occupation — answering the phone.

She also points out why a future society envisioned by white writers as being “post-racial” is so dangerous:

Most Hollywood sci-fi presents a “post-racial” world in which we’ve moved from fighting each other over cultural differences to fighting some bigger intergalactic evil. On its face, this type of film should allow for more colour-blind casting and minority roles. Yet even in the Star Wars and Star Trek universes, where the humanoids are “beyond race,” black and other minority actors are rare. Morton calls such tokenized roles the “new Mammy”

Another blogger, Center of Gravitas (note: also contains spoilers!), has also tackled the less than impressive diversity of the new film:

Unlike 1967, it is no longer revolutionary to just acknowledge the presence of people-of-colour or women. They can’t be the tokens who promise future inclusion, but then step aside when the “real” decisions need to be made. This new Star Trek only sneaked around questions of gender and racial equality. In the end, it is still a boys’ franchise that no longer wants to think about contemporary problems of racism and sexism.

I do hope that if there is a sequel, and I’m sure there will be, that some of these problems will be addressed. What was considered groundbreaking in the ‘60s just looks dated today.

What are some of your favorite sci-fi characters of colour? What about queers in space?

I have mixed feelings about the new Star Trek movie. While I quite enjoyed it as an adventurous space romp, my nagging issues with the original series re-emerged in spades.

I grew up on the later series, so I’ve always found it difficult to enjoy the terrible special effects and campiness of Kirk’s bridge. I also hated the lack of women, except as girlfriends for Kirk, and the fact that female officers would wear miniskirts and go-go boots on the bridge. In what universe would that be practical?

I was much more invested in Captain Janeway, Major Kira, and my favourite female characters in the Star Trek Universe: the sexy warrior Klingon co-captains, the Duras Sisters.

Don’t mess with the best.

So let’s just say I was a bit peeved that J.J. Abrams’ new movie cut the female cast from two to one and that Uhura was once again wearing a miniskirt. I expect a bit more from the man who gave the world Felicity, Sydney Bristow, and Olivia Dunham. I was genuinely surprised that he could not do better than this new Uhura, a woman who spends the whole movie bickering or staring meaningfully at a not-very-logical Spock.

Ellen Lawrence, in her article for Playtime Magazine, perfectly summarizes - in the light of Roddenberry’s original vision - exactly why it was so illogical to make the future sexist. Although I may take slight issue with her positive reading of the “equality” in the later series (no one will ever be able to convince me that Troi, with her low-cut leotards and her “emotional” job description, was cool), I think her criticism of this new movie, which had a chance to create an entirely new Star Trek universe, is spot on.

What did you think of the new Star Trek? What would be your hopes for a sequel?

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.

The Colouring Book invite

There’s a terrific event this Thursday at the National Film Board in Toronto: a screening of The Colouring Book: Short Digital Videos by Artists of Colour. This will be the Toronto premiere of the films, which debuted in Vancouver last November.

One of the filmmakers is Indira Dutt, a Vancouver-based writer and student, and an old friend of mine. I was thrilled to catch up with her recently and hear all about the film.

MGG: How did the project get started?

ID: This Colouring Book began as a Vancouver-based youth-driven project that started as a conversation over e-mail. Gabriel Martin wanted to build a community where people of colour could come together to reflect, express, and explore issues of race and experiences that shaped who we are. The writing was all focused around specific questions and themes: we explored our own experiences with sexuality, class, race and media.

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Michael Muhammad Knight’s The Taqwacores Arrives In Canada!

This Is Not A Reading Series celebrates Freedom To Read Week with the Canadian premiere of Michael Muhammad Knight’s controversial novel about the Muslim-punk movement, The Taqwacores (Soft Skull Press).

Montreal filmmaker Omar Majeed is currently working on Taqwacore: The Birth of Punk Islam, a feature documentary about the real-life bands who were inspired by Knight’s fictional creation. Majeed and Knight will show footage and discuss the politics of the Muslim-punk scene. Knight will then have an extended Q & A session with the audience, to be included in the documentary-in-progress. – A This Is Not A Reading Series Event presented by Pages Books & Magazines, Publishers Group Canada, Eyesteel Films, EYE WEEKLY, Gladstone Hotel and Take Five On CIUT.

Gladstone Hotel Melody Bar, 1214 Queen Street West, Toronto
Tues Feb 24; 7:30pm (Doors 7pm) $5 (Free With Book Purchase)

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