By which we mean not “the mysterious poetry inherent in random events,” but rather “for no real reason, today, here’s some poetry.” The Madness of Sweeney is a landmark work of medieval Irish literature, one that has stood the test of time and inspired writers ranging from T.S. Eliot to Neil Gaiman.

Also, it is totally emo.  Observe!

God has given me life;

without music, without rest,
without woman’s company,
loveless
he gave me life,

and so you find me here
living disgraced in Ros Bearaigh;
the life God gave
seems somehow dislocated.

You do not wish to know me.

Later, it starts to get into goth territory,

Madness shrieks beneath my feet
as I search for watercress.

Madness lurks among the reeds
leaping at me when I stoop
about a hill-pool.

Madness has a white and haggard face.

and then sometimes it’s just weird:

O great God above
my weakness is also great
and black are the sorrows of Sweeny
whose scrotum hangs slack.

The excerpts above are from a modern translation by Trevor Joyce, which you can read for free on his website; if you prefer a somewhat more “translator-y” translation, J. G. O’Keefe’s 1910 version is available here.

Never let it be said that we don’t sometimes class it up around this joint.

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This makes Mugabe officially a fighter, which is probably the class he should have been all along.

But before we look forward at the next few years of borderline-genocidal min-maxing that Mugabe will bring to his beleaguered nation once he is declared the winner of last week’s joke election (as of this writing, the votes hadn’t been counted, but, oops, SPOILER ALERT!), let’s take a look at what Mugabe loses along with his Paladin class, and what he did to let it slip away –

President Mugabe* in happier years . . .

As the D & D Wiki says (and as my Second Edition AD&D Player’s Handbook would probably come close to saying if it weren’t off in storage somewhere) –

A paladin who ceases to be lawful good, who willfully commits an evil act, or who grossly violates the code of conduct loses all paladin spells and abilities (including the service of the paladin’s mount, but not weapon, armor, and shield proficiencies). She may not progress any farther in levels as a paladin.

This is a very serious rule. Shaquille O’Neal is also finding that out the hard way.

But as is the case with most D&D players (and unlike Shaq Diesel), it’s not like Mugabe was on the fence. As anybody who’s played D&D knows, there are guys who really pretty much just play to kill things. Or to just beat the Hell out of them. Or drive them fom their homes. Or try to assassinate them. Or imprison them and torture them. Beholders, goblins, women and children, the disabled, you name it. Or prompt massive hyperinflation crises. You know, boys with toys.

Sometimes, these guys like to try to be Paladins, or join the Most Honorable Order of Bath. It usually doesn’t end well. They make jokes about laying hands on people and on themselves all the time, and it gets pretty tiresome.

Thankfully, Mugabe no longer has to pretend to be Lawful Good, and can now endeavor upon his proper alignment of Lawful Evil. By the way, if you need help with alignments, check out this excellent resource that has been circling around the Series of Tubes.

Holy Holy Sword, Batman!

And now, without futher ado, the powers that Robert Mugabe loses because he is no longer a Paladin, also courtesy of the D&D Wiki (I’m kind of impressed by how D&D folks use feminine pronouns all the time to balance out the default use of masculine ones in so many other publications):

Aura of Good: “The power of a paladin’s aura of good (see the detect good spell) is equal to her paladin level.”

Mugabe must now rely on his iron grip on local media to maintain his impeccable image.

Detect Evil: “At will, a paladin can use detect evil, as the spell. “

Mugabe will circumvent this by simply listening for a British accent.

Smite Evil: “Once per day, a paladin may attempt to smite evil with one normal melee attack. . . . If the paladin accidentally smites a creature that is not evil, the smite has no effect, but the ability is still used up for that day.”

This power is lame. Everybody knows that indiscriminate smiting is superior to conditional, moralistic smiting.

I’d imagine Mugabe lost a lot of days’ worth of smiting by accidentally smiting the non-evil.

Divine Grace: “At 2nd level, a paladin gains a bonus equal to her Charisma bonus (if any) on all saving throws. “

This is really going to hurt Mugabe. His Charisma was pretty high (which is probably why he went for Paladin rather than fighter in the first place).

“No matter how much he wants to, a Paladin must never touch the Dungeon Master’s Hat.”

Lay on Hands: “Beginning at 2nd level, a paladin with a Charisma score of 12 or higher can heal wounds (her own or those of others) by touch.”

“I lay hands on myself. Heh heh.”

“Shut up, Robert.”

“I lay hands on myself while thinking of Cindy Crawford.”

“I know this is a flashback to the early 90s, but don’t date yourself, Robert.”

“But I am dating myself. And I’m easy. Heh heh.”

“That’s it. A rock falls on your head. Take <rolls dice> 6 damage.”

“Geez, I’m hurt! Better lay hands on myself! Heh heh.”

“You can only do it once a day! Shut up!”

Alternatively, Mugabe could have used this power to eliminate the right of habeas corpus.

Aura of Courage: “Beginning at 3rd level, a paladin is immune to fear (magical or otherwise).”

Robert Mugabe continues to insist he is still immune to fear. Perhaps he hasn’t checked his character sheet.

Divine Health: “At 3rd level, a paladin gains immunity to all diseases, including supernatural and magical diseases.”

Remove Disease: “At 6th level, a paladin can produce a remove disease effect, as the spell, once per week. She can use this ability one additional time per week for every three levels after 6th (twice per week at 9th, three times at 12th, and so forth).”

Have you seen pictures of this guy? He’s like 84 and looks 60. Now we all know why.

“Heh heh. I lay hands on him. Heh heh.”

Turn Undead: “When a paladin reaches 4th level, she gains the supernatural ability to turn undead. She turns undead as a cleric of three levels lower would.”

I strongly suspect Mugabe has every intent to let dead people vote in his election, so losing the ability to turn them away at the polls will not be so bad. Although it may be tough if he can no longer turn them away from voting for the other guy.

Hey, zombies don’t like inflation. They’re very sensitive to the price of brains.

Spells: “Beginning at 4th level, a paladin gains the ability to cast a small number of divine spells, which are drawn from the paladin spell list. A paladin must choose and prepare her spells in advance.”

Everybody knows these spells always sucked anyway. If anybody should be worries about losing divine spells these days, it’s the Anglican Church.

Special Mount: “Upon reaching 5th level, a paladin gains the service of an unusually intelligent, strong, and loyal steed to serve her in her crusade against evil.”

So, it looks like Bobby needs to get himself a new hooptie.

And this time, he needs to pay for it, rather than call for it and have it appear by magic. Although he could always just use graft. Graft works.

“I call it my warpony.”

I Take Off My Robe and Wizard Hat

But, hey what do I know? When I last played D&D, we all had to calculate ThAC0 on abacuses. By all the accounts I’ve read on the ‘net doing research for this, it looks as if fighters are a stronger class than Paladins anyway, which if you ask me, doesn’t make any goddamned sense.

But then again, very little of what is happening in Zimbabwe these days makes any goddamned sense.

And as for Mugabe, well, he does get to keep his weapon proficiencies, which include bastard sword, glaive-guisarme and voter fraud.

Do you have an actionable idea for solving the political and human rights crisis in Zimbabwe? Sound off in the comments!

* - I do not intend for this reference to be racist.
“Yugi! Did he say he didn’t intend for that reference to be racist?”
“Yes, Kaiba! He does not intend for this reference to be racist!”
“I think they’re saying he didn’t want the reference to be racist.”
“That’s right, Joey. They’re saying that the reference could be taken as racist, but that’s not the way he intended it.”
“Your move! It’s time to D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-DUEL!!!”

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Disney has had Chinese, Native American, Middle Eastern, mermaid, and even Hawaiian heroines–not to mention its many dog, cat, and mouse heroines. And Latinas at least got The Three Caballeros, which featured such memorable female characters as “The Brazilian Girl,” “Mexico Girl #1,” and “Mexico Girl #2.” What about the sistahs? More importantly, as a white girl, am I even allowed to say “sistahs”?

Evidently Ms. Jolie didn’t know about Disney’s upcoming new animated feature, a film slated to arrive in more than a year and a half but has already gathered around itself much controversy.

In its original iteration, the new film, dubbed “The Frog Princess” after the famous folktale of the same name and set in 1920s New Orleans, featured a plucky African-American servant girl named Maddy who, with strength of heart and the help of a voodoo priestess, a jazz-singing crocodile, and a Cajun firefly, wins the heart of the noble prince and lives happily ever after.

The original story has the princess turn into a frog at some point, but information about that element of the plot has yet to be revealed.

Outrage ensued. Or, so I’m told. I googled “Frog Princess controversy” and read article after article about how “politically correct types” complained that the name “Maddy” was too low-class (don’t tell Ms. Albright) and sounded too much like “Mammy,” a name I’d give the Disney corporation a dollar to use just to watch the hilarity. These articles also claimed that some mothers complained on the Internet that a chambermaid was too low class a profession for a soon-to-be princess (don’t tell Cinderella). Apparently, someone railed against the title of the film (don’t ask me who; I’m just a rumor-monger) because of the “frog” part, although if you asked me why I couldn’t tell you.

I’m a little suspicious of these articles since not one of them links to any of these mysterious complaints, but I’d be very happy to see some evidence of these terrible PC moms if anyone can find some for me. The only person actually quoted was BET’s Jennifer Daniels, who maybe rightly took issue with the fact that the villain of the movie is an evil Magical Negro (Voodoo class), the frog princess’ prince was white, and the film’s music written by pasty-as-chalk Randy Newman.

While I don’t agree with all of these real or imagined grievances, I can understand them. After all, based on Disney’s track record with sensitive racial issues, I’d half-expect their Frog Princess to look something like this:

But Disney’s response annoys me, too. No longer is Maddy a simple chambermaid. Actually, no longer is Maddy Maddy! Fearing backlash, Disney decided to give its new protagonist a new sparkly rainbow Disney name: Princess Tiana, a name that I’m pretty sure no black woman in the 1920s would ever actually have. Baby Names World shows that this name didn’t even really exist until around 1970, reaching its peak in the mid-90s. I assume based on this information that Princess Tiana’s best friends in the film are Princesses Mackenzie, Autumn, and Breanna. For that matter, why not Princess Beyonce? I’m fairly sure Disney owns her soul, too, don’t they?

Okay, “The Frog Princess” was changed into the blander “The Princess and the Frog”–no biggie–but, more mysteriously, the love interest, once named Prince Harry, was suddenly switched to Prince Levine. So the Disney Corporation decided that instead of offending people by a wealthy WASP save the poor black girl, they’d have a wealthy Jew save her? That’s the big fix?

I realize the Disney writers, like all white writers, are navigating between Scylla and Charybdis here, with super-racism on one side and white-washing on the other. Before the second half of the 20th century, most white authors writing ethnic characters went the stereotype route. Jews had giant noses and hoarded cash. Asians had shifty eyes and would stab you in the back. Black characters had “negroid features” and “wooly hair” and wouldn’t know anything about birthin’ no baybays. Television in the 80s and 90s got better, as evil politically correct types in Hollywood started allowing African Americans on sitcoms. Of course, those characters went in the opposite direction. If you can find an episode of the Cosby Show in which any of the characters mentions issues of race, I’d love to see it. The Fresh Prince of Bel Air (which I’ve already mentioned in another post was created and written by white Jews) is an exception which proves the rule, since Will is only able to be a fish out of water because he is the only un-white-washed black character in the cast.

In America, unfortunately, television, and, for the most part, movies have avoided featuring minority characters for the past five or ten years to avoid any controversy at all. These writers, sadly, don’t realize that it’s actually not that hard to write minority characters who aren’t blatantly offensive. Here are some guidelines I like to follow when I write non-white characters:

1. Don’t be racist. Make your characters three-dimensional people.
2. Try to place the characters in realistic settings and situations based on their social context.
3. Include more than one minority character so a lone character doesn’t become a token or a symbol of his or her race.

Let’s see this rule in action. Disney, pay attention. I’ll use Jewish characters in my examples since it’s more hilarious.

EXAMPLE #1: TOO OFFENSIVE

EXAMPLE #2: TOO WHITE-WASHED

EXAMPLE #3: JUST RIGHT

Of course, the easiest way to get more minority characters into American films is to hire minority writers. But that’s another story for another day…

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As with everything I write about movies, there are spoilers ahead. And if you have even the slightest intention of ever watching this movie – which you TOTALLY SHOULD – please stop reading right now. Lair of the White Worm is so weird, so gleefully bonkers, that a full %70 of my enjoyment of the film came from the surprise factor; from the “Oh my god did that just really HAPPEN?! Am I WATCHING this?” aspect of the experience. And I wouldn’t want to ruin that for you. But if you are never going to watch it anyway – and I’ve got to imagine that applies to most of you – then by all means read on. Note: some images below the jump could be classified as NSFW. Not in the way we usually think about these things, but still… it’s a hard R, you know?

So like I said, Lair of the White Worm is a Ken Russell film. Ken Russell is a pretty interesting guy, known for Oscar nominated adaptations of DH Lawrence, BBC documentaries, the film version of Tommy, and for appearing on the British edition of Celebrity Big Brother last year at the age of 80 (where he kept the other housemates awake with thunderous snoring). He also made Lisztomania, a film in which Ringo Starr is cast as the pope, and Rick Wakeman from Yes is cast as the norse god Thor. Russell definitely an “artist,” a “great director,” but his movies are weird and polarizing, and his overall career rating at Rotten Tomatoes is %56.

In terms of straight-up weirdness, Lair of the White Worm is hard to beat (although Lisztomania could take it to the cleaners… did I mention that Ringo Starr is the pope?). It’s roughly based on a book by Bram Stoker, who in turn based it on some dragon legends from Britain’s North Country. Yes, “Worm” in this case is the old anglo-saxon “Wyrm,” meaning “dragon” (as one of the characters helpfully spells out for us within the first ten minutes of the film). According to the legends, the dragon was killed by the local lord, John D’Ampton, when he came back from the crusades. And to this day (in the world of the film), his family celebrates the event by putting on an annual crazy puppet show cum folk-rock dance party for the locals.

And just in case you can’t make it out in the image above, yes, that is a young Hugh Grant playing the part of the current Lord D’Ampton. Grant is quite good in this, but it’s kind of weird to see him act without slipping into his nebbishy Hugh Grant persona. You know, that charming/befuddled thing he does where he talks and acts exactly like Woody Allen only gorgeous and with a British accent?

The film starts off with a visiting archaeologist unearthing the skull of the D’Ampton worm. It turns out those legends weren’t just legends after all. What’s more, the worm wasn’t just a worm: it was the pagan snake god Dionin. And gods are hard to kill permanently. It turns out that Dionin is still around (perhaps hiding in some sort of… lair?), and so is his posse of creepy snake-vampire cultists. (The vampire aspect appears nowhere in Stoker’s novel or the original legends. Russell threw it in for the film, presumably thinking that if you’re going to market something as a Bram Stoker adaptation, it had better well have vampires in it.)

This is the Snake Vampire head honcho No. 1, Lady Arabella Marsh (Amanda Donohoe). Donohoe’s performance is one of the best thing about this movie. And I’m not saying that just because she spends a lot of time walking around in her underwear, really. Even though you find out pretty much right away that she’s quite a cold-blooded killer (ha! Because she’s a reptile, get it?), you end up pretty much rooting for her, if only because she seems to be having so much more fun than any of the other actors. She spends most of the movie – well, she spends a lot of it just flouncing around, tossing off one liners, and generally portraying the sexy sexy danger. But she’s ostensibly trying to return Dionin to power by performing a human sacrifice. A virgin sacrifice. Which is hard, since, as she puts it, “Virgins are in such short supply these days.” Luckily for her (what are the odds!), Hugh Grant’s love interest just happens to fit the bill.

From that point on, it writes itself. Or it would, in the hands of someone other than Ken Russell. In Russell’s hands? Not so much. Because along the way, for some reason, THIS happens.

And this.

Lady Sylvia: “To die so that the god may live is a privilege, Kevin. And if you know anything about history, you know that human sacrifice is as old as Dionin himself… whose every death… is a rebirth… into a god ever mightier!” [Doorbell rings.] Lady Sylvia: “Shit.”

And this.

And this.

That last image makes me think of something… I wonder what it could be?

There’s a lot more that one could say about this movie. Just tracking through the blatant phallic and yonic symbols would take a post and a half. Trying to answer the perennial question of “Sexist? Or holding a dark mirror up to sexism?” would take at least two more. And it has more fun sneaking visual references to the title into the frame (in the form of garden hoses, earthworms, etc.) than any movie I’ve ever seen with the possible exception of John Woo’s Face/Off. But I think the pictures tell you more about the movie than anything I could write. If you find them hilarious, or disturbing, or hilariously disturbing, Lair of the White Worm is a must-see.

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So last night, just as I was about to head to bed, I flipped across the 1969 Sydney Pollack movie They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? I ended up staying up way too late, but wow – that’s a fun movie. And by fun, I mean jaw-droppingly sad.

The movie is set during the Depression, and it’s about a dance marathon – last couple dancing gets $1,500. That sounds like it might be a fun little comedy. But all the contestants are desperate, one step away from dead in a gutter, and they dance like their lives depend on it. And meanwhile Rocky, the promoter, charges admission to watch them teeter on the brink of physical and mental collapse as the days stretch into weeks…

Here they are again, folks! These wonderful, wonderful kids! Still struggling! Still hoping! As the clock of fate ticks away, the dance of destiny continues! The marathon goes on, and on, and on! HOW LONG CAN THEY LAST!

For a movie about a dance marathon, there is almost no dancing. The couples just sway forlornly, sometimes literally holding each other upright. Occasionally, they get to collapse on cots during ten minute breaks. And then they hear a piercing klaxon, and it’s back to the dance floor. Sometimes spectators throw pennies, which they pick up meekly.

And this isn’t some Disney schlock where the dancers gradually bond, renew each other’s faith in humanity, and everyone wins. There’s no romance either – most of these couples are strangers who are paired up out of necessity. I don’t want to say anything about the ending, because it’s so over-the-top you guys might laugh at it. But coming at the end of two hours of majestically bleak filmmaking, the climax seems earned and appropriate.

But here’s the clever part: you obviously feel for these desperate dancers and hate those ugly spectators who eat popcorn and cheer for their suffering. But of course, you also want to see what happens next, how much more misery will be heaped on these poor bastards, and what will finally break them. In other words, YOU’RE one of those sadistic spectators who pay good money to watch a human spirit get trampled. That’s a neat trick, putting you on the dance floor AND in the stands.

One final note: Jane Fonda is awesome. When I grew up, she was most famous for those exercise videos and being Mrs. Ted Turner. But this lady won two Academy Awards, and was nominated another FIVE TIMES. They Shoot Horses was her breakthrough as a serious actress. She’s beautiful and sick of life, and it breaks your heart. You want to give her a hug, but you know she’d barely feel it. No surprise this film earned her a nomination for Best Picture… although if you consider how her PREVIOUS film was sci-fi soft-porn Barbarella, then yeah, it’s a little surprising.

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          EXT. FOOTBALL FIELD - NIGHT

          The Nerd, the Hipster, the Jock, and the Stand-In enter
          separately and greet each other warmly. Then they sing:

                              STAND-IN
                    So what have you been up to?

                              HIPSTER
                    You mean besides your mom?

                              ALL
                    Isn't it great we're all still
                    friends?

                              NERD
                    You've gained some weight I see.

                              JOCK
                    Well, mostly in my dong!

                              ALL
                    Isn't it great we're all still
                    friends?

                              NERD
                    I went to college!

                              JOCK
                    I went to work!

                              HIPSTER
                    You're flush with knowledge!

                              STAND-IN
                    You're still a jerk!

                              ALL
                    It sure is great we're all still
                    friends! Still friends!

                               NERD
                    I need to tell you something.
                    Don't take it the wrong way.
                    This bowtie ain't for nothing.
                    I'm gaaaaaaaay!

                              ALL
                    Gay! Gay! Gay!
                    We're totally shocked!

                              JOCK
                    My homophobic world is truly
                    rocked!

                              ALL
                    Our group will never be the same
                    again!

                              STAND-IN
                    I'm kind of hurt you took this long
                    To tell us you like men in song.

                              HIPSTER
                    I say sarcastic things every once
                    in a while!

                              NERD
                    I guess I was afraid,
                    I'd lose the friends I'd made.
                    Can we still hang out and joke?
                    Now that I Netflix "Queer As Folk?"

          The Hipster, the Jock, and the Stand-In confer.

                              ALL THREE
                    You're still our friend!

                              NERD
                    I'm still your friend?

                              ALL THREE
                    We're totally behind you 'til the
                    end!

                              ALL
                    We'll laugh and talk about old
                    times!
                    And muse about our lives in rhyme.
                    We'll go our separate ways,
                    But hold on to our Glory Daaaaaays!

          They all turn to the audience and walk to the front of
          the stage.

                              ALL
                    We're grown-ups now!
                    We're so mature!
                    We're so damn wise you'd think
                    we all were twenty-four!
                    This field is where
                    our childhood ends!
                    But isn't it great?
                    (Yeah, isn't it great!)
                    Isn't it so damn great...
                    Isn't it great we're all...
                    still... friends!
                    Gloooooor! Eeeeeeee! Daaaaaaaaays!

[Ed. Note: Though it had enjoyed a successful run out of town, the Broadway production of Glory Days—that of the ubiquitous and annoying poster—closed after its opening performance, joining 2003's The Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All in that unfortunate distinction. This article was written before the closing.]

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As a new blogger, mostly, what I’m worried about is picking the right subject. What is a female blogger to write about? Other media have rules for us womens, and I’m kind of lost without them.

If I were setting out to write a screenplay, for example, it would be incumbent upon me, as a female screenwriter, to write about out-of-wedlock pregnancy. The dialogue should be spry and witty, the characters quirky but attractive, the themes superficial. Write what you know, right?

Likewise, if I were a poet, I’d write about depression/oppression and die young, preferably by suicide.

I’m all about selling out and playing into stereotypes, but the one “female writer regulation” by which I cannot abide is the rule coercing vaginal novelists to entitle their books The Such and Such’s Wife or The Such and Such’s Daughter. For whatever reason, this particular commonplace really gets my goat… to vomit copiously on the carpet.

Think about it. In recent years we’ve had The Time Traveler’s Wife (Audrey Niffenegger; soon to be a film starring The Hulk), The Senator’s Wife (Sue Miller), Pandora’s Daughter (Iris Johansen), and the wonderfully plural Rashi’s Daughters series (Maggie Anton). Literary luminaries such as Amy Tan and Joyce Carol Oates are not immune to the curse (see The Bonesetter’s Daughter and The Gravedigger’s Daughter, respectively), nor are writers of bestselling Oprah books (see The Pilot’s Wife by Anita Shreve). We’ve got a paranormal thriller (Pandora’s Daughter by Iris Johansen), a costume romance-cum-mystery (Wizard’s Daughter, Catherine Coulter), a Holocaust drama (The Zookeeper’s Wife, Diane Ackerman), and a Jamaican coming-of-age story (Margaret Cezair-Thompson’s The Pirate’s Daughter, yaarr). In 2005, a genius by the name of Ms. Wanda E. Brunstetter had the brilliant idea of writing a trilogy called The Daughters of Lancaster County, which includes The Shopkeeper’s Daughter, The Quilter’s Daughter, and The Bishop’s Daughter. That’s a whole lotta cooters right there.

Hollywood, of course, is not inured to the blight of the daughter/wife designation, as evidenced in such classics as The Preacher’s Wife (a remake of The Bishop’s Wife), The Coal Miner’s Daughter, and My Date with the President’s Daughter. Now, just to piss me off even more, Lifetime’s been touting a new made-for-bawling film based on the bestselling novel, The Memory Keeper’s Daughter. Rumor has it that J.K. Rowling was going to call the first Harry Potter book The Blast-Ended Skrewt’s Wife until she changed her name to the more masculine J.K.* and avoided the curse.

No. Enough. Enough enough enough. On behalf of all women everywhere, I say no means no.

How would you like it, men? How would you like it if your classic books were forced to be branded with such inane titles in order to—supposedly—appeal to a demographic bearing a certain type of gonad? Let’s see how you like it, Shakespeare, when an editor exchanges King Lear for The Old Senile Coot’s Daughters. Ibsen, you cool with re-dubbing Hedda Gabler The Boring Scandinavian Guy’s Wife? Great! And Paul Thomas Anderson, our test audiences think There Will Be Blood is too interesting a title, so we’re changing it to, uh… The Oil Tycoon’s… um… Okay, actually there weren’t any women in that movie**, so you get off easy. This time.

On second thought, I should probably be happy that I, as a woman, have a niche. I know that regardless of how frivolous or mawkish my writing is, I’ll have a place in the Women’s Fiction section of the bookstore if I use one of the abovementioned shibboleths. I should be happy that I get to write books that have such titles. It’s like how Asians get to write about kung fu, or how Jews have comedy and the Holocaust sewn up, or how African-Americans get to make Soul Plane.***

Boobily yours,

The Middle-Aged Lawyer’s Daughter

*John Kougar Rowling

** Apparently Upton Sinclair’s Oil! was another treatise on “meat packing.”

***Made by a Jew.

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For those who don’t remember the plot, or who decided to read this spoilers and all, here’s a refresher. Model/actress/musician (and eventual casualty of cocaine abuse) Zoe Tamerlis plays Thana, a beautiful, innocent, mute seamstress-cum- haute-couture-sweatshop-worker. See, the fact that she’s mute represents how women everywhere are mute! Kind of! Let this character sketch, and the picture at the left, serve as your introduction to the allegorical clusterfuck that is Ms. 45. Nothing – but NOTHING – happens in this movie that doesn’t play into the metaphorical argument somehow, so if you don’t like your symbolism heavy handed, take your DVD rentin’ money elsewhere. (Then again, this wouldn’t be the first time that heavy handed symbolism has produced awesome results.) Anyway, within the first ten minutes of the film, Thana gets raped twice. (See, the fact that she gets raped represents how women everywhere… egh. ) The presentation is suitably horrific, and it also sets up the venerable rape-revenge plot that motivates everything from The Rape of Lucrece to The Virgin Spring to Last House on the Left to last year’s The Brave One. Nothing that happens from here on out should be surprising. Thana is going to get revenge, but her revenge will get more and more extreme until eventually we’ll come to wonder if – in getting revenge – she has become as monstrous as her victims. (In the early versions of the rape-revenge plot, she would kill herself out of shame and then her father or husband would get revenge. So this is… progress? I guess?)

Sure enough, that’s exactly what happens. Well, the one small twist is that she never gets revenge on the first rapist, although she brains the second one with a steam iron halfway through his attack. Instead, she just wanders around at night shooting men who are being sexually violent to women. Or just men who are being sexual to women. Or just men.

So as you can see, on the level of plot, there’s not much to it. And no one would call it a character study: Thana is the only character we spend any amount of time with, and she doesn’t talk. (Mind you, as Fenzel pointed out to me once, this makes it easier to identify with her. She doesn’t say anything we wouldn’t, so we can project whatever thoughts we want onto her, dig?) No, labored symbolism aside, Ms. 45 is all about surface and style. But god, it has style coming out of its fucking ears. Compelling images. Canny musical choices. Bizarre camera angles. The works.

An interesting thing about Ms. 45 is the way that it flirts with the vocabulary of the horror film. One of the rapists wears a creepy mask that’s straight out of a sub-Friday-the-13th slasher flick. The music often, especially in the first half of the film, sounds like something out of Halloween or The Exorcist. There’s a visual reference to the shower drain from Psycho, and a bizarre, hallucinatory gore effect, in which that same drain starts spewing chunks of raw chicken. At one point, it is strongly implied that Thana is going to eat the second rapists’ corpse. (Cannibalism is pretty weird for a horror film these days, but it used to pretty much come with the territory.) And when Thana gets ready to go out on her rampage, there’s a great shot of her putting on an absurd amount of makeup, essentially turning her own face into a horror mask… although she’s still a lot easier on the eyes than, say, Gunnar Hanson.

But during that same scene, it stops being a horror movie, almost permanently, because this badboy pops up on the soundtrack. (Awesome!) The same kind of music plays under most of her first killing spree, and I would have a hard, hard time experiencing it as scary, or alienating, or really as anything other than flipping sweet. The same kind of thing happens with the visuals. There’s an overwhelming sense that Thana’s spree killings are not only justified, but cool.

So the movie’s really about female empowerment, right? Well… Rape-revenge movies generally aren’t. (See, the sexism lies in the fact that a man wouldn’t have to get raped to turn into a badass… although it might help if you killed his parents in front of him.) And although you do identify with Thana a lot while you’re watching this, she’s less a character and more an embodiment of the sexy, sexy danger. (I never thought I’d see the day that I’d link to someone’s livejournal page, but “Bad Goth” gets the point across, whoever he or she is, and I can’t remember where I originally saw that phrase.) What’s worse, almost all of the people that she kills in this early stage are black, latino, or arab. Towards the end, when she starts killing white people, the music and cinematography turn back into a horror movie again. So you could walk away from this movie thinking that the message was “female empowerment is awesome because we can use them to cleanse our cities of those rascally minorities.” On the other hand, there’s at least a suggestion that Ferrara is trying to make a different point: both of the rapists are obviously white, and her white boss sexually harasses her, so the message could be “militant feminism is pretty rad, but it has a tendency to choose its targets poorly.” (This might be supported by the identification of Thana with avant-garde jazz, which is, after all, african-american music.) Even so, this aspect of her rampage is a little queasy-making, as is the movie’s denoument, in which Thana loses her avenging-angel aspect and becomes a more straightforward example of the monstrous feminine. First, she appears to murder her neighbor’s dog, instantly causing the audience to lose all sympathy for her. Then the horror movie music comes back. Then she goes on a killing spree at the office halloween party, shooting her loathsome boss and a bunch of other (notably white) men before she’s brought down by a female co-worker weilding a phallic cake knife. And when I say phallic, I don’t mean in the usual film-studies shorthand which identifies all knives as phallic. I mean phallic like “she holds the knife in front of her crotch like it was a wang for a solid twenty seconds before using it to stab Thana in her crotch.” (To be totally fair, you can’t really tell where she stabs Thana, but you can tell that it’s a lot lower than most people in movies get stabbed. Like I said: an allegorical clusterfuck.)

Two things redeem the end of the film, though. One is this song, which plays at the beginning of the Halloween party sequence. There are a few interesting points here. First: flippin’ sweet! Second: the saxophone never appears on the soundtrack except when Thana is out shooting people. So although this music is very different from the earlier cue, it’s still clearly her song. In fact, the track is called “Ms. 45 Dance Party.” Third: there are musicians at the party ostensibly playing this, but instead of a saxophone they have a trumpet player. It’s not just in the background, either. The camera focuses on him while he pretends to play and does a little dance. I’m guessing this is the result of a low budget: that they couldn’t get a sax player on the day of the shoot, so they made do. But it’s actually a kind of eerie effect, and it calls attention to the music, making you intellectualize it instead of just, you know, grooving.

When she actually starts shooting up the party, though, this music goes away and we get some very horror-movie type processed sounds. I prefer the funk, thanks… but the “horror” music is just another sign that we’ve reached the part of the film where we’re supposed to realize that Thana, in doing battle with monsters, has become a monster herself. Like I said, the rape-revenge plot is pretty formulaic.

Oh, the second thing that redeems the movie? Right before the credits, the neighbor’s dog pops up again, none the worse for wear. See, audience, she didn’t kill it after all! You’re just an asshole for thinking that she did. And you’re also an asshole for buying into the rape-revenge rhetoric that demands that we view her as a monster. (Incidentally, this turns the stabbing into another instance of “awesome feminists choose their targets poorly”). Also reappearing, along with the dog? The “Ms. 45 Dance Party” song.

So yeah. On the whole, a mess. But it’s such an incredibly vigorous mess! The poster says “it will never happen again,” and it’s true: they really don’t make them like this any more.

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Even as McDonalds continues to evoke freedom fries francophobia in new advertisements, there are signs that the popular culture has moved on, and that we are on the brink of a new era in French-American relations. The ambassador of this détente? None other than a 25 year old female electro-hip-hopper named Yelle. Video and analysis after the jump.

Its not just that MTV has picked up Yelle as its current artist of the week as a tie-in to the Lauren Conrad-in-Paris-fucking-shit-up episode of The Hills. A quick view of the above video for the single “Je Veux te Voir” reveals an artist enamored of American youth culture, from 90′s revivalism, to American Apparel short-shorts, to pimped out Hummers. This stands in stark contrast to the stereotype many Americans hold of the French- drinking wine and eating cheese while reading Derrida and bemoaning the vacuous nature of the ever expanding American cultural hegemony.

Its clear: Yelle loves American hipsters, and American music bloggers have been quick to return the favor. And Yelle isn’t just an aberration: Kanye’s jumping on last year’s Daft Punk revivalism and the French duo Justice’s affection for Michael Jackson, 80s Metal, and old-school HBO provide additional evidence that the transatlantic love is deep and mutual.

If this is the beginning of a bigger trend, it may be necessary to abandon the widely held conception of globalization as the inevitable forward march of McWorld and start thinking about the possibility of a syncretic transnational hipsterati as a driving force in shaping word culture. The end of history is on its way. And it is wearing a unitard.

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