Historiann

Boy, most of you really hated “Barbie Death Camp!”  Here’s a soothing balm of Barbies and Kens in their vintage fashion knitwear.  (Connoisseurs will note that these aren’t the “real” Ken and Barbie dolls, but rather inferior knockoffs.  The male dolls here look strangely more childish than Mattel’s Ken ever looked.)

Check out that Beatles-era red skinny suit with black piping on “Ken” at the far left!  Snappy.  Also, someone should give top-row “Ken” the memo that says that heavy sweaters generally aren’t worn with swim trunks.  I kind of like that pale ice blue dress and coat combo next to swim trunk “Ken,” though–anyone know where I could find something like that?  I’ve got a big conference next month, and I’d like to look my best. 

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I’m not sure what I think about this installation at Burning Man 2007, “Barbie Death Camp,” but since this blog is one of the few places on the non-peer reviewed internets where you can find deep, intellectual discussions of Barbies and dismembered doll parts, I suppose I have to cowgirl up.  (Be sure to click on the link above to see the whole slide show–this still photo is just one of many.  Thanks to Historiann’s newly tenured friend G.S. for the tip.) 

This blog says that “Barbie Death Camp” is clearly anti-consumerist, anti-corporate satire, but I’m not so sure it can be viewed only or primarily through this lens.  Looking at the slide show is disturbing–is it a feminist commentary on the  commodification and dismemberment of women’s bodies?  Is it a commentary on the ambivalent relationship girls have with their Barbies, since they frequently train their aggression on the dolls, cutting their hair and frequently removing their arms, legs, and heads?  Or is it just another example of female bodies being dismembered for our pleasure and entertainment?  (You can’t see it in this photograph, but the yellow school bus near the lower right corner has “DIE BITCH” scrawled on the side, so it’s not accidental that it’s a Barbie and not a Ken or G.I. Joe Death Camp.  I’m not sure how I feel about the appropriation (complete with toy ovens) of a specific historical event, the Holocaust.  Does it trivialize the attempted genocide of Jews, Gypsies, Gays, Poles, and disabled people in the twentieth century?  Is there an implicit commentary of the uniform perfection of Barbie bodies being destroyed in the same manner as the “racially inferior” or otherwise imperfect victims of the Holocaust?  Is it an accident that the Barbies in BDC look like they’re all white and are overwhelmingly blond, too?  What if it had been called “Middle Passage Barbie,” “Barbie Trail of Tears,” or “Killing Fields Barbie?” 

Reflecting on Historiann’s recent foray into contemporary feminist art, this project seems like it could have been included in the recent The Way that we Rhyme:  Women, Art, & Politics exhibition at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.  It shares many of the same features:  the use of found objects in particular, but also the ”outsider art” fetish that many “insider artists” have affected lately, an aesthetic of amateurism and bad taste.  (Actually, in many ways, “Barbie Death Camp” is more compelling and provoking than many of the installations at the YBCA, which seemed to labor rather humorlessly under a different kind of historical weight.)

For those of you interested in pursuing some of these issues in a more serious forum, at the 2008 Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, we’ve got a panel on “Gender, Torture, and Memory,” which features papers on American POW’s in Korea, Femicide in Guatemala in the Cold War to the twenty-first century, and women in Stalin’s Gulags.  (Unfortunately, our roundtable on “Women and the Holocaust:  Reshaping the Field in the 21st Century through Oral History and Personal Narratives,” was cancelled.)  We also have a roundtable on “What (if anything) Can Women’s History and the History of Sexuality Teach Us about Genocide and Extreme Violence,” and a Sunday morning seminar on “Historicizing Sexual Violence,” led by Estelle Freedman of Stanford University, which features many papers about rape and sexual violence in wartime and in occupied or colonized countries:  colonial and postcolonial India, Nazi-occupied territories, 17th century Ireland, 1950s and 1960s Argentina, and 19th and 20th century Kenya, South Africa, and Costa Rica.  (You can find the full program here.) 

What do you think?  Is “Barbie Death Camp” funny?  Horrifying?  Feminist, or anti-feminist?  Too clever by half?  Or just really good bad art?

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Historiann.com reader and commenter ej writes in with some thoughts on the new movie, Baby Mama:  “I think Historiann should tackle the topic of women of a certain age not being able to get pregnant. I love Tina Fey, but I’m so tired of the media perpetuating this myth that women who wait ‘too long’ to have a baby, usually because they’re busy pursuing their careers, find themselves s.o.l. when their biological clock stops ticking.  This is nonsense. I was after 35 when I got pregnant, and both attempts were successful on the first or second try. Other friends who are my age hit the jackpot on the second try. Not to mention that fact that infertility studies have proven that 40% of cases are the result of the man, but no one makes a movie about that!”  (When you think about it, movies about male infertility promise to be so much funnier than movies about female infertility!  All of those spank mags and masturbation jokes, y’know.  Speculums?  Not teh funny.) 

I think ej’s right that the “ZOMG I forgot to have children and now it’s too late because I’m not 29 anymore” plot is a little played out, and actually not true.  (Then again, Seth Rogen having a chance with anyone who looks anything like Katherine Heigel?  Not true, either!  It’s only in the movies that men who look like Paul Giamatti, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Rogen have any kind of sex life at all.)  Given the fact that the modern movie industry is designed to cater to the warped fantasy life of 14-28 year old boys and men, I’m inclined to give this movie the benefit of the doubt, mostly because it promises to be something we haven’t seen a lot of lately–an actual female buddy movie that doesn’t end in a suicide pact!  There are so few decent roles for women actors that don’t relegate them to the male lead’s wife or girlfriend these days, let alone a movie starring TWO FUNNY WOMEN, without the Judd Apatow the-(female) hottie-and-the-(male, undeserving) nottie plot. 

Another thing to like about Baby Mama:  In an interview with Amy Poehler in Salon last week, she affirmed in no uncertain terms that “absolutely I am!” a feminist.  Salon’s review of the movie was blandly positive, calling it an ”essentially sweet-natured picture that doesn’t go as far as it could in satirizing both our child-centric culture and the fact that, now that there are so many scientific advances to help people conceive and bear children, sometimes the basic desire to have a baby can turn into a desperation bordering on mania.”  The New Yorker’s review was similar, although it did feature this strikingly odd passage: 

Angie [Poehler] is skinny to Kate’s [Fey's] curves, loose-tongued to her zipped-up sense of fun, fertile to her barren jealousy. Angie wears pedal pushers and tank tops, whereas Kate stalks around bare-legged in skirts that lurch to a halt two inches above the knee, which is a length that Christy Turlington would struggle to carry off. It’s possible that Fey, like other television stars, is unused to being framed in full length, and, though in complete command of her delivery—dry, spiky, but unthreatening—she hasn’t yet made up her mind how funny her body is meant to be. She isn’t big enough to make a joke of her ripeness, like Bette Midler, but she’s no Lily Tomlin, either. She could do worse than steal a trick from Lucille Ball—a lovely, elegant figure who taught herself to be graceless.

Is Anthony Lane actually suggesting that Tina Fey is zaftig?  Oh, no he di’nt.  Reading this review is like shopping at Barney’s, the store that unfailingly makes me feel fat and poor.  (And did he really write the phrase, “fertile to her barren jealousy?”  Hmmm.  Standards really have slipped, haven’t they?  Is no one, you know, editing the magazine any more?)  Comme toujours, Jezebel has a comprehensive roundup of reviews.

Have any of you seen Baby Mama yet?  I haven’t had the pleasure, but may have to make a point of getting out one of these days to see it.  (What do you say, ej–shall we take in a matinee?)

*haka is a term I’ve borrowed from Corrente.  They use the term to mean a coordinated and usually very loud message meant to intimidate those who hear it despite the lack of truth in the message.

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Well, everyone’s a “citizen journalist” now, aren’t we?  Historiann has some more movie news to report!  While she and her entire family were visiting this city (pictured at right)

a member of her family, who was in this neighborhood (pictured at left) happened to see one morning that a movie was being filmed there.  Last Sunday morning, strolling back up the hill, this family member walked by John Waters.  (I know!  How cool is that?)  He was carrying a newspaper and talking on the phone about movie business.  Some members of the Historiann family used to live in Baltimore, and claim to have seen Waters there twice, although I myself was never so fortunate.   And now–damn and blast–he has eluded me again!  (The only movie Historiann ever saw being filmed was in Baltimore, although, tragically, not a Waters movie.  Nothing to brag about–it was Major League II!)

Keep your eyes peeled for Waters’ next movie, and if it was filmed in this city, you can say you heard it here first at Historiann.com.

LATE BREAKING UPDATE ON TENURE:  E.H., our intrepid correspondent on the movie set at Bryn Mawr College, has been “super busy with midterms” lately, but sent in a recent update on the Luke Wilson movie.  She writes, “[T]he ‘whoa-they’re-filming-a-movie-here’ craze seems to be on the way out. I’ve overheard a few people saying they are already tired of having the big trucks and the film’s crew being around all the time.”  Those Bryn Mawr women–so worldly-wise, so seen-it-all, been-there-too.  (Then again, Luke Wilson is no George Clooney, if you know what I mean.  He’d be cute for a college professor or a congressman, but he’s not Hollywood’s top dreamboat, not even at a women’s college.)

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Historiann commenter Indyanna sent these spectacular Barbie photos so that I could present them to you as a Historiann.com exclusive.  (I guess that now makes Indyanna my second on-the-ground reporter in the Philadelphia area!)  This was captured on the 2200 block of Rittenhouse Square Street in the City of Brotherly Barbie Love, a little block between Spruce and Locust, and 22nd and 23rd Streets.

Apparently, the two barbies above have a sister planted as an orphan in another window box to the side, or perhaps above.  Indyanna also sent along this blurred shot of the forlorn one, leaning over as if to catch what the other two are talking about.  The little minxes!

Thanks, Indyanna, for having your wits (and your cell phone camera) about you as you prowl Center City–and please keep the dolls-in-weird-places photos coming.  I’ve been thinking that I should update you all on Creepy Doll Head in her new home, my back garden–perhaps later this spring, when the garden will be green and blooming.

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Inspired by Ortho at Baudrillard’s Bastard–both by his nicely illustrated report on his spring break and his recent analysis of graffiti in New York City–this post is about one of my favorite spring breaks ever.  March 2001 was a great month for me–I had signed a contract to start a new academic job, freeing me from the misery of my first job, and I was off to Paris with a beloved close family member.  It rained a lot that week–natch–after all it was Paris in March.  But it was memorable in every way, as it was my first trip to Paris.  (I wasn’t one of those rich college kids who hung out in Europe all summer long–I had to work to cover my expenses and top up my steeply increasing tuition bill.)

One of the most distinctive features of our visit was the appearance of a cat who went quite sensibly by the name “M. Chat” (Mr. Cat, en Anglais.)  I take it now that he’s famous all over the world, and the star of a movie that premiered at the Pompidou Center in 2004.  But, we knew M. Chat before he was cool, and it was a pleasure to see where we might find his grinning face (and nearby, occasionally, his purple mouse friend.)   There he was again, along the banks of the Seine, or next to the funicular that goes to Sacré Coeur, or on the side of a building in Montmartre. 

He’s got a website now, not by his mysterious creator, but by a fan, where you can track his whereabouts worldwide, as well as the locations of other graffiti characters.  His creator’s identity was a closely guarded secret until March, 2007, when one Thoma Vuille from Orléans was caught mid-Chat by police.  

Have you any M. Chat sightings to report?  (Of course, many of us believe that we have seen him before, since he seems to be the bastard lovecat of  John Tenniel and Keith Haring.)  To paraphrase Alice:  What’s the use of a blog, without pictures or conversations?

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Historiann.com has a young correspondant reporting from inside the Gothic Revival cloisters of Bryn Mawr College about the new Luke Wilson vehicle, Tenure, which Historiann wrote about a few weeks ago.  Our intrepid girl reporter, “E.H.,” says that the movie will be ”shooting on campus in late April and early May, while we’re doing final exams.”  (Study hard, mes petites!  Remember, May Day–and exams–are only three weeks away!)  E.H. notes that “Luke Wilson and Danny Koechner have already been on campus; some of my friends have seen them around in the past few days, although filming was supposedly happening over at Rosemont College.”  Keep us posted, E.H.–ask your friends to leave comments here, too.  Let us know who’s being tapped to play the young female prof, and what you observe about the plotline.  Is “Grey College” in the movie going to be single-sex, or co-ed?

This could be Bryn Mawr’s biggest moment on film since Adam’s Rib (1949), one of the last of the classic screwball comedies starring Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy as Amanda and Adam Bonner, attorneys married to each other who square off in court over a case of attempted murder of an adulterous man by his wife.  (Interestingly, this sounds kind of like the setup for Tenure, with a male and a female professor squaring off against each other for, well, tenure.)  Defense attorney Amanda makes an explicitly feminist argument in order to lead the jury to acquit the defendant:  She argues that “woman is the equal of man - is entitled to equality before the law,” and so calls three highly successful women to the stand, ”each representing a particular branch of American womanhood, for not only one woman is on trial here, but all women.”  The first witness Amanda Bonner calls is Dr. Margaret Brodeigh (Elizabeth Flournoy), who rattles off her resume thusly:  “A.B., B.S. - Bryn Mawr, M.A., Ph.D., M.D. - Columbia…Diplome des Sciences Chimiques de la Sorbonne, Paris, Docteur Honora-Scholar [probably Honoris Causa, h/t rootlesscosmo in the comments] de Philosophie, Universite…”  Yes, that’s typical–sadly, Historiann is an underachiever compared to her classmates.  And although this was something of a minor comedy, Hepburn in this movie seems more gorgeous than ever as a tough and self-assured 42-year old than she did in her younger years.

. . . The time is swift and will be gone!

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Charlton Heston has died.  Never has one actor starred in so very many cheesy movies without earning an Ed Wood-like reputation.  Think about it:  all of those weird 1950s biblical/ancient world epics (The Ten Commandments, Ben Hur), then the 1960s and 70s sci-fi and disaster movies (The Planet of the Apes and sequels, Soylent Green, and Earthquake).  How did he do it?  Maybe by taking himself and all of these roles so seriously, and remaining resolutely humorless in spite of the laughable material he was asked to perform.

And remember:  Soylent green?  “It’s people!!!”

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Indulge me in a little navel-gazing.  This is a trick that I’m totally ripping off from Bing McGhandi at Happy Jihad’s House of Pancakes (once again–say it with me!–Best Blog Name Ever!), who occasionally posts the Google searches that lead people to his blog.  My family member David, the web guru who administers Historiann.com (among other fab websites), has installed software here so that I can keep track of my traffic, and see how people find their way to the virtual rustic North Woods lean-to that is Historiann.com.  Here are some of the searches that people have run yesterday and today that led them to me–the parenthetical phrases are my interjections:

• historiann (maybe a typo?)
• endless bullying
• women faculty bullied academe
• parents my kid has swears on my shirt (ummm…syntax?)
• how to write biography + myself
• good for absolutely nothing
• he man club
• liberal people waco
• under dolls (Huh?  Do I even want to know?)
• resigning from the tenure track
• dean incompetence fear retribution (Sing it, sister!)
• limerick about harriet tubman (Now that is some twisted, geeky pervert!)
• bryn mawr luke wilson

So, it sounds like you Historiann.com readers have about the same levels of rage, despair, perversity, and can-do, “let’s put on a show!” optimism (liberal people waco?) that characterize everyone else on the non-peer reviewed internets.  And, there are way more of you than I thought there were (hi, Mom!)–almost 400 of you yesterday, so even if I’m whistling past the graveyard, I’ve got company!

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Check this out, via Corrente, to see a most undeserved tribute to our eleventh President, “Mr. James K. Polk, the Napoleon of the Stump,” by They Might Be Giants.

Incidentally, a close family member of mine has discovered that TMBG has tried this schtick of “borrowing” from textbooks before. When perusing an old astronomy primer (don’t ask!), he discovered that the first line of their song “Why Does the Sun Shine?” was cribbed directly from Stars: A Guide to the Constellations, Sun, Moon, Planets, and Other Features of the Heavens, a Golden Nature Guide (Western Publishing Company, 1951, 1956), shown here on the left (click for larger view). Below, you can see the proof on page 16–note the first sentence in the second paragraph shown here:

That’s OK–writing new song lyrics is hard, so why not turn to used bookstores for inspiration? (Don’t you?)

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