One of my favourite TV shows of these past few years is Criminal Minds. It's an extremely interesting, well-written and well-acted series about a bunch of FBI-profilers who kick unsub's asses. There's two main things that I love about it, the first is Dr. Spencer Reid (Matthew Gray Gubler), their resident socially-awkward genius who is beyond adorable and nerdy, and the second is the fact that there's 3 strong female characters on the show.
Jennifer Jereau (A.J. Cook) is the FBI-liason and although I have no idea what that means, she basically decides what cases they take on, and what baddies they're gonna catch. She is the one with most people skills (which is helpful because she does all the contact with the media as well), yet she completely holds her own in the team. In season 4 she became a mother, but returned to work pretty quickly, and her becoming a mother appears only to have added to the character.
Penelope Garcia (Kirsten Vangness) is the computer-geek of the team. She finds all the facts and details and everything else the team needs. She also appears to be the only character that is still affected by seein gruesome murders, which is quite.. refreshing. She has a really close friendships with Derek Morgan (Shemar Moore), who I suppose is the most "macho" of the men. I love their friendship because they are complete equals, they make fun of each other and make lots of inappropriate jokes.
Emily Prentiss (Paget Brewster) is the last one to join the team but she could kick everyone's ass. She speaks more languages than the other team members combined. In one episode she sacrifices herself to save Reid, how often do you see that a woman sacrifices herself to save a man (who she is not related to)? She is very serious in what she does, and extremely good at it.
There are hardly any comments in the show about the looks of these 3 female characters, and them being female appears irrelevant unless it can help them catch a baddie. They are completely equal to the men (although Hotch and Rossi are sort of "in charge", they still take JJ, Garcia and Prentiss as seriously as they do the others) and they are completely irreplacable in the team. Or so I thought.
Apparently A.J. Cook is fired and Paget Brewster will no longer be a full-time cast member. They will not be replaced, this decision is to "save money". Why saving money can only be done by axing female cast members is a mystery to you and me. But yet again it seems more proof that Hollywood is still a very sexist industry.
Those of you who are as upset/angry about this as I am; please sign the petition: http://www.petitiononline.com/cmwomen/petition.html
Showing posts with label feminism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label feminism. Show all posts
Tuesday, 15 June 2010
Thursday, 10 June 2010
Hélène Cixous "The Laugh of Medusa"
“What strikes me is the infinite richness of their individual constitutions: you can’t talk about a female sexuality, uniform, homogeneous, classifiable into codes —any more than you can talk about one unconscious resembling another. Women’s imaginary is inexhaustible, like music, painting, writing: their stream of phantasms is incredible.
[…]
I wished that woman would write and proclaim this unique empire so that other women, other unacknowledged sovereigns, might exclaim: I, too, overflow; my desires have invented new desires, my body knows unheard-of songs. Time and again I, too, have felt so full of luminous torrents that I could burst —burst with forms much more beautiful than those which are put up in frames and sold for a stinking fortune. And I, too, said nothing, showed nothing; I didn’t open my mouth, I didn’t repaint my half of the world. I was ashamed. I was afraid, and I swallowed my shame and my fear. I said to myself: You are mad! What’ the meaning of these waves, these floods, these outbursts? Where is the ebullient, infinite woman who, immersed as she was in her naiveté, kept in the dark about herself, led into self-disdain by the great arm of parental-conjugal phallocentrism, hasn’t been ashamed of her strength? Who, surprised and horrified by the fantastic tumult of her drives (for she was made to believe that a well-adjusted normal woman has a…divine composure), hasn’t actually accused herself of being a monster? Who, feeling a funny desire stirring inside her (to sing, to write, to dare to speak, in short, to bring out something new), hasn’t thought she was sick? Well, her shameful sickness is that she resists death, that she makes trouble.
[…]
And why don’t you write? Write! Writing is for you, you are for you; your body is yours, take it. I know why you haven’t written. (And why I didn’t write before the age of twenty-seven.) Because writing is at once too high, too great for you, it’s reserved for the great —that is for ‘great men’; and it’s ‘silly’. Besides, you’ve written a little, but in secret. And it wasn’t good, because it was in secret, and because you punished yourself for writing, because you didn’t go all the way, or because you wrote, irresistibly, as when we would masturbate in secret, not to go further, but to attenuate the tension a bit, just enough to take the edge off. And then as soon as we come, we go and make ourselves feel guilty —so as to be forgiven; or to forget, to bury it until the next time….
[…]
Write your self. Your body must be heard. Only then will the immense resources of the unconscious spring forth. Our naphtha will spread, throughout the world, without dollars - black or gold - nonassessed values that will change the rules of the old game.
[…]
The Dark Continent is neither dark nor unexplorable. It is still unexplored only because we’ve been made to believe that it was too dark to be explorable. And because they want to make us believe that what interests us is the white continent, with its monuments to Lack. And we believed. They riveted us between two horrifying myths: between the Medusa and the abyss. That would be enough to see half the world laughing, except that it’s still going on. For the phallogocentric sublation is with us, and it’s militant, regenerating the old patterns, anchored in the dogma of castration. They haven’t changed a thing: they’ve theorized their desire for reality! Let the priests tremble, we’re going to show them our sexts!
Too bad for them, if they fall apart upon discovering that women aren’t men, or that the mother doesn’t have one. But isn’t this fear convenient for them? Wouldn’t the worst be, isn’t the worst, in truth, that women aren’t castrated, that they have only to stop listening to the Sirens (for the Sirens were men) for history to change its meaning? You only have to look at the Medusa straight on to see her. And she’s not deadly. She’s beautiful and laughing.”
[…]
I wished that woman would write and proclaim this unique empire so that other women, other unacknowledged sovereigns, might exclaim: I, too, overflow; my desires have invented new desires, my body knows unheard-of songs. Time and again I, too, have felt so full of luminous torrents that I could burst —burst with forms much more beautiful than those which are put up in frames and sold for a stinking fortune. And I, too, said nothing, showed nothing; I didn’t open my mouth, I didn’t repaint my half of the world. I was ashamed. I was afraid, and I swallowed my shame and my fear. I said to myself: You are mad! What’ the meaning of these waves, these floods, these outbursts? Where is the ebullient, infinite woman who, immersed as she was in her naiveté, kept in the dark about herself, led into self-disdain by the great arm of parental-conjugal phallocentrism, hasn’t been ashamed of her strength? Who, surprised and horrified by the fantastic tumult of her drives (for she was made to believe that a well-adjusted normal woman has a…divine composure), hasn’t actually accused herself of being a monster? Who, feeling a funny desire stirring inside her (to sing, to write, to dare to speak, in short, to bring out something new), hasn’t thought she was sick? Well, her shameful sickness is that she resists death, that she makes trouble.
[…]
And why don’t you write? Write! Writing is for you, you are for you; your body is yours, take it. I know why you haven’t written. (And why I didn’t write before the age of twenty-seven.) Because writing is at once too high, too great for you, it’s reserved for the great —that is for ‘great men’; and it’s ‘silly’. Besides, you’ve written a little, but in secret. And it wasn’t good, because it was in secret, and because you punished yourself for writing, because you didn’t go all the way, or because you wrote, irresistibly, as when we would masturbate in secret, not to go further, but to attenuate the tension a bit, just enough to take the edge off. And then as soon as we come, we go and make ourselves feel guilty —so as to be forgiven; or to forget, to bury it until the next time….
[…]
Write your self. Your body must be heard. Only then will the immense resources of the unconscious spring forth. Our naphtha will spread, throughout the world, without dollars - black or gold - nonassessed values that will change the rules of the old game.
[…]
The Dark Continent is neither dark nor unexplorable. It is still unexplored only because we’ve been made to believe that it was too dark to be explorable. And because they want to make us believe that what interests us is the white continent, with its monuments to Lack. And we believed. They riveted us between two horrifying myths: between the Medusa and the abyss. That would be enough to see half the world laughing, except that it’s still going on. For the phallogocentric sublation is with us, and it’s militant, regenerating the old patterns, anchored in the dogma of castration. They haven’t changed a thing: they’ve theorized their desire for reality! Let the priests tremble, we’re going to show them our sexts!
Too bad for them, if they fall apart upon discovering that women aren’t men, or that the mother doesn’t have one. But isn’t this fear convenient for them? Wouldn’t the worst be, isn’t the worst, in truth, that women aren’t castrated, that they have only to stop listening to the Sirens (for the Sirens were men) for history to change its meaning? You only have to look at the Medusa straight on to see her. And she’s not deadly. She’s beautiful and laughing.”
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