June 22, 2012

'Snow White' still a bad apple of feminism

I got dragged along to see it night before last, and disliked it intensely coz every time I saw Chris Hemsworth, I kept on humming the theme to Home & Away (see pic below)




Anyway, back to Snow White....


Philosophical questions: 1. Would a rose by any other name smell as sweet? And 2. Is a Snow White wearing a metal breastplate and brandishing a sword still Snow White?

"Snow White and the Huntsman"stampeded into theaters Friday to mixed — often fawning — reviews and a box-office-leading $56.3 million, but the movie has a fairly open relationship with the original Grimms' fairy story. Not because there are eight dwarfs instead of seven or because there's a random scene in which a Christlike stag magically turns into a cloud of butterflies. Those are the sorts of minor changes that nag at fangirls but are acceptable when spinning new versions of old stories.

But when Snow White storms a castle, and Snow White learns to fight, and Snow White (spoiler alert!) ends up choosing neither of her two male suitors, preferring to sit on a throne alone — well, perhaps we should at least call the girl Snow Whitish, or maybe Snow Ecru. Or just rename the altered product, "Princess on a Fast Horse, Also Tames Trolls."

Yay for feminism, yay for fight scenes, yay for girls who know better than to lie around waiting for a lover's kiss to wake them from a coma — because honestly, in modern times that scene looks like a date-rape PSA waiting to happen.

"It's a desire to do a role reversal," says Brian Sturm, a professor at the University of North Carolina who co-wrote the scholarly article, "We Said Feminist Fairy Tales, Not Fractured Fairy Tales!" It's a course correction — a way of acknowledging that misogyny in old bedtime stories should be put to sleep.


http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-06-04/entertainment/ct-ent-0605-fairytales-20120604_1_jack-zipes-feminist-fairy-tales-grimms

June 9, 2012

After an eight-year surgical journey 'everything is good'

Warning: this is a good news story. Those who like their news conflicty may not want to read any further.

EMAN Tabaza first came to Australia when she was eight for surgery to remove a bulging tumour behind her nose and forehead that left her feeling like an outcast at home in Gaza.

Craniofacial surgeon Tony Holmes led an eight-hour operation at the Royal Children's Hospital in 2004 to remove the tumour and rebuild Eman's face, giving her a new forehead and nose and moving her eye sockets closer together.

The difference to Eman's appearance was dramatic and she returned to Gaza a far happier girl, no longer taunted as ''the mother of all noses''.

<snip>

Two months after her facial surgery Eman is now due to return home to the Gaza Strip, having spent more than a year in Melbourne in the care of the Children First Foundation, which arranged her travel and medical treatment.

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/after-an-eightyear-surgical-journey-everything-is-good-20120607-1zyt9.html#ixzz1xI8bXGYM

June 9, 2012

Why the Question of Palestine is a Feminist Concern

Note - because there's been some confusion at DU3 about where anything that mentions either Israelis or Palestinians should go (it's not like DU2 where it was all sent to the I/P forum), I thought I'd mention here that there's no restriction on posting anything about Israel, Palestine or the conflict anywhere but GD and one or two other forums

<snip>

I have been asked how I view the occupation of Palestine from my feminist perspective, or perhaps another way to put it, why and how I think the question of Palestine is a feminist concern. It seems to me that the question posed by the predicament of Palestinians is not merely the uncertainty of their future political fate as a people (a nation without a state, territory, and resources of its own, without capacities of self-determination). It is rather the question of the specific conditions of human devaluation and disposability to which they appear to be fated by a normalized system of exploitative inequality, dispossession and violence. That these conditions of devaluation and disposability depend on the maintenance of naturalized hierarchies of human difference (race, ethnicity, nationality, religion) will undoubtedly resonate with feminist analyses of forms of gendered devaluation, disposability and violence that obtain in many socio-historical contexts, including this one. It is also the case, however, that beyond any homologies, which this theoretical resonance might suggest (eg. between racialized and gendered forms of devaluation and disposability), the projects of settler colonialism and apartheid nationalism that the Israeli state embodies and the logic of security which undergirds and legitimates its policies of surveillance, militarization and war have long been feminist concerns. Feminist analyses have shown how such projects are enabled and upheld not only by normative cultural ideals of gender and sexuality embedded in their constitutive conceptions of land, territory, sovereignty, people/race, citizenship, freedom and power. As modes of producing and regulating life – indeed, as projects that see to the uneven distribution of life-chances (the augmentation of life-chances of some at the cost of the reduction of life-chances of others), like and in tandem with capitalism – the projects of settler colonialism and apartheid nationalism also require divisions of labor and forms of social reproduction (and social death) that are profoundly gendered and racialized in ways that exceed the dominant form of political antagonism.




http://thefeministwire.com/2012/01/why-the-question-of-palestine-is-a-feminist-concern/

June 1, 2012

Israeli minister urges unilateral declaration of Palestinian borders

DEFENCE Minister Ehud Barak wants Israel to consider imposing the borders of a future Palestinian state, becoming the most senior government official to suggest bypassing a stagnant peace process.

Mr Barak's statement on Wednesday to consider what he and many Israelis call ''unilateral actions'' without offering any specifics, echoed an emerging chorus of political leaders, analysts and intellectuals who have said Israel needs its own solution to the Palestinian crisis.


<snip>

But the Palestinian Authority did take its own steps last autumn, when it pursued United Nations recognition, something it is considering again. Israel has criticised such efforts for stepping outside the bounds of negotiations.

The Obama administration has strongly opposed unilateral action by either side and some senior Israeli officials have worried that such a move by Israel could provoke an uprising by Palestinians.


Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/world/israeli-minister-urges-unilateral-declaration-of-palestinian-borders-20120531-1zkmq.html#ixzz1wXgYVSkv