[blackfemlens] Pink Princesses, Blue Commandos

By Sikivu Hutchinson

My daughter is no princess. Loud, assertive, and headstrong, she would just as soon as stomp on a castle drawbridge with her big size six feet than pine coyly from it, twirling a dainty lock of hair waiting for a Ken doll suitor. Yet the multi-billion dollar media marketing regime is poised to shoehorn her 2 year-old self into being one. As any parent with eyes and a pulse knows, a trip to Americana’s favorite non-unionized big box retailers is a crash course in the enduring power of gender segregation. Trundling through the “girls’” toys aisle, maneuvering the explosion of pink frilliness, one expects to bump into June Cleaver or Donna Reed. Baby dolls, play ovens, play houses, strollers, dress-up kits, make-up and the ubiquitous princess accessories, addle the senses. Around the corner in the boys’ commando-in-training section, trucks, balls, science kits, building sets, Legos, blocks, action figures, guns and other rough n’ tuff paraphernalia signal a return to the jungle of discovery, adventure, violence and enterprise.

In the ostensibly secular democratic West, this surfeit of consumer options represents “choice,” rather than cultural indoctrination. Parents can just vote with their pocketbooks and not buy these products. Unlike in the fundamentalist monolithically gender repressive Middle East little American girls certainly aren’t programmed to be subservient. Women in power broker positions abound and capitalist consumption is politically "neutral."

Indeed, proponents of shattered glass ceilings point to recent job data that suggest American women are actually making bigger employment gains than are men. The decline of the construction and manufacturing industries has severely limited men’s job opportunities. Coupled with the higher proportion of women in four year colleges, American women would seem to be making out like gangbusters.

There are serious flaws in this premise. First, the gender wage gap shows no signs of narrowing. According to the Center for American Progress, women are the primary breadwinners in over 1/3rd of American families. Women are still relegated to the lowest paying service industry jobs in child care, clerical work, domestic work, and teaching. And black women, who are more likely to be single working parents than are women of other ethnicities, remain at the bottom of the gender wage ladder. Secondly, and most egregiously, the new job data fail to account for the double and triple burden of women’s work. Regardless of whether they are custodians or corporate execs, women continue to be saddled with the majority of child care, housework and adult caregiving. The minute a working mother hits the door down time and breathing space are sacrificed for an array of cleaning, parenting, cooking and counseling duties. Sacrifice is a woman’s creed and to-die-for duty. And it is this message that the big box retailers’ flotilla of pink baby dolls, strollers, play houses, et al. are designed to instill in little sacrificial princesses in training.

The ubiquity of this social programming inspired two British women to start the Pink Stinks campaign, which targets retailers who market gender segregating toys and accessories. Yet the flip side of pink stinks is the dominion of blue. When my students presented a workshop on gender stereotypes in retailing to a group of their peers, the sole male participant commented that he had been targeted for not conforming to the model of “hard” masculinity because he liked to do hair. For young men, any activity that is remotely associated with caring or nurturing is feminine and therefore “gay.” As feminist writer Derrick McMahon notes in his article “Boys and Baby Dolls:” “Boys who wish to play with baby dolls are seen as punks, sissies, and weak…parents are quick to tell little boys that they have no business playing with baby dolls.” While young girls who “crossover” and express interest in traditionally masculine pursuits like car maintenance or science are tolerated as tom boys going through a phase, boys are punished with the heterosexist stigma of being less “manly.”

The consequences of this are exemplified by the epidemic of black male homicide. Trained to be hard, swaggering, aggressive and indifferent to the value of each others’ lives as mere “niggas,” young black males are inured to the violence they inflict upon each other. What would it mean then for the future of African American communities if there were a paradigm shift, and boys were raised to be caring and nurturing? Biological determinists argue that boys gravitate to cars and guns because they are genetically hard wired to do so. In her groundbreaking book Pink Brain, Blue Brain, neuroscientist Lise Eliot debunks this assumption through painstaking analysis of scientific studies on alleged innate sex differences. She argues that there is “little solid evidence of sex differences in children’s brains” and that adult perceptions of gender difference strongly influence children’s behavior.

As my daughter begins to navigate the minefield of gender norms and expectations she’ll be constantly told what is proper for a girl. She’ll be hounded by peers, adults, the media and organized religion to be sexually desirable to men on the one hand and chaste and virginal on the other. In a nation of liberated “post-feminist” women, she’ll be propagandized with the contradictory message that romancing kitchenware, cooing after baby dolls, and being a precious, sweet “daddy’s angel” are the keys to fulfillment. And as a third generation feminist she’ll be ably equipped with her loud mouth and big feet to storm the drawbridge of gender conformity.

Sikivu Hutchinson is the editor of blackfemlens.org and a Senior Fellow with the Institute for Humanist Studies.

Yoga on the Great Lawn:New York City 10,000 strong

So this is what women's liberation looks like, I thought, sitting on the grass of the great law in New York City along with more than 10,000 mostly women awaiting the start of a yoga class followed by a drumming session.

It hadn't rained yet and on the stage was this pot-bellied man sporting a huge Afro, fully clothed with a huge beard that hid everything except his eyes. Clearly, he did not fit in. But neither did the images projected onto a larger-than-life screen viewed by the assembled many and by the helicopter circling overhead, images of first a man's head and then a woman's projected without benefit of neck or a hint of shoulder. How un-yogish can you get!

But the women didn't seem to mind or notice. The audience of thousands did what Yogini's do. They focused, ignored what didn't belong, and had a good time. They sat in groups, teacher and students all mixed up talking, looking at their fellow yoga practitioners.

It would be hard to find a more strikingly beautiful group of woman anywhere in the world; and on full display, clad mostly in spaghetti-strap tank tops and tight Lycra pants. Only the privileged members of the "work crew" were told to wear the uniform: grey, knee-length pants and light blue tops which covered everything (which in this place, at this setting, was less than "in the spirit"). Tank tops would have been more appropriate.

The Cooperate stage show seemed to go on endlessly while the audience awaited their fate. To go on or cancel and promise a "Rain date".
A compromise was struck.

A little Yoga - downward facing dog, plank, upward facing dog, mountain pose, hands to heart in prayer to whatever or whomever, and the sound of a long long long OHMMMMMMMMMMMM filled the Lawn and entered into the minds and hearts of all.

The benefit of being seen in public without having to "cover up" and without fear of man's stares are extras to the benefits of Yoga, the spiritual, physical, emotional discipline that women are embracing world wide.


This day's event is the result, almost the culmination of a new Woman's Liberation Movement and I'm loving it!


Next onward to California's Love Fest
then back to New York for a promised Rain Date.

Maybe this time it will be 20,000 strong and more.

Linda Zises
Criticalwomen.net
WBAI Radio

The Milk of Sorrow: "The Frightened Tit"

Claudia Llosa's hotly debated film with strong political/social content. When compared to the Oscar 2009 winner of the Best Film (Slumdog Millionaire), the Milk of Sorrow shines as a star far above all others.

Beautifully written and Expertly Directed.

By Claudia Llosa, the film stars Magaly Solier as Fausta,

Plot: Our heroine Fausta (translated, means a girl who is full of fear) suffers from "The Milk of Sorrow" (which is, in the Peruvian-indigenous tradition, an illness), suffers from the desease she believes is transmitted through the breast milk of women who were raped in the Shining Path’s war of terror in Peru. The film begins with scenes from the death of her Mother followed by her obtaining sleep-in work in a wealthy home in Lima.

The plot and narrative are half the story. Providing a view into Peru from the vantages of both its very wealthy and its very poor is the other half. There is endemic cruelty, callousness at both extremes: a rampant lack of sensitivity among all parties. This even-handed expose is what helps to make The Milk of Sorrow a great film, a politically irrefutable statement.

Personally I would be depressed if I had to live the lonely life of the wealthy woman whose life is propelled by her drive for general recognition. The paucity of people in her life to meet her innate human need to be loved, wanted/needed, appreciated propels her onward and forward to the stage where she sings to so many people who when lumped together in the audience look like specks of confetti. No wonder she is depressed, detached and addicted to pills to stay "healthy".

But equally depressed and depressing is the depiction of the poor woman, Fausta, who suffers from the Peruvians illness the Milk Of Sorrow. the spoiled, Beast Milk – milk contaminated during the violent acts of Rape (during the 1980 Shining Path’s war of terror) that resulted in her birth.

The insensitivity to Fausta, the now grown woman with a potentially ripe vagina of her own and the weight of her mother's dead body that must be buried, is overwhelming horrifying partly because of the emotional cruelty heaped upon her by a community that refuses to empathize with the demands her poverty places upon her.

The juxtaposition of the her cousin's wedding festival and all that it entails with the wealthy woman's onstage performance is augmented with the internal contrast of the wedding versus Fausta's pressing need to bury her mother.

First, the mother's body is stored under a bed on top of which is the bridal gown for the plump, happy, soon-to-be-wed cousin and then, what was to be a grave for Fausta's mother's body to be buried in, becomes a watering hole for the delight and fun of the overheated travelers.

In every aspect the film Director offers the scenes as internal contrasts to each other. This is not an easy feat to achieve. Claudia LLosa's success is what makes this film so special.

Even the terrain, the pictures of what Peru looks like, are presented with such severity of difference from the daily needs for a gardener because of the wealth of flowers, plants, and trees versus the striking lack of anything other than the brown dust in the hot, arid world in which Fausta lives


There is nothing to cry about in this film. It is too serious, too depressing for tears. Maybe that is why it didn't win the 2009 Oscar award for best film or best foreign language film It was too real, it's message too clear. The obvious conclusion being that Socialism, where the class distinctions are less severe is the only real solution for a better world.

Winner:
2009 Berlin Film Festival Top Award ; The Golden Bear

Opens August 27th
New York City
Village Cinema

The Disappearance of Alice Creed: terror flick with a taste of humor

Director: J. Blakeson

Producer: Adrian Sturges

Composer: Marc Canham

Cast:
Gemma Arterton
Martin Compston
Eddoe Marsan
Exras need not appy

A thriller turned into an almost comedy and the triumph of women over the minds and brawn of the stronger men in their lives. It might be difficul to find a man to enjoy the turns and twists of this solid thriller but women seemed unanimous in their enjoyment of The Disappearane of Alice Creed.

This is a violent film and yet it is funny, light hearted almost not believable but in the fun of it all, these otherwise important details don't seem to matter. Of the three cast members Alice Creed (Gemma Arterton) got the worst of the nudity and violence that rippled throughout the film because she is tied and gagged for most of the scenes. Her seemingly endless screams and squairming body would stay with me long after the film ended if they hadn't been upstaged by the most compelling innovative sounds, the music of composer Marc Canham that thundering with Dolby clarity filling the theater to capacity.

And then the silence, the long protracted moments of no music, just action and the men's voices and I knew then I was in the presence of genius. The genius of great music composers who know what to play when and when not to. Music that doesn't talk to emotions either present or anticipated but the use of deep bass tones like mellow velvet vibrations and other unidentifiable instruments that enhance and augment the thematic needs of every filmed moment.

Marc Canham, the composer, comes from a Game background so perfect for this film because basically The Disappearance of Alice Creed is a game of cat and mouse with many a playful gesture mixed with a deadly foray into the minds and methods of professional crooks, ex cons and the seedy sort that inhabits our immediate environment.

Thete was a tangible feel of humanity, of likeable features even in the crooks turned kidnappers. Surprsingly Alice, the victim was the weakest , least likable person on screen; (poorly cast; I thought her too old for the part). She was cruel, one dimensional, and pehpas less than a seasoned actor. But that didn't dampen my applause.

The Disappearance of Alice Creed is fun, playful, memorable.

Enjoy!

MINE: Contested ownership of Canine

MINE examines how we treat animals as an extension of how we view and treat each other.

Place: New Orleans post Katrina: uninhabited by man and beast

Subject: the new owners of the animals rescued from the hurricane
disaster and the owners who come back to claim "their own".

Director/producer: Animal Defence League

Trailer: http://www.minethemovie.com/trailer

An enjoyable, compelling view of humans and their animals. It highlights the best, the most loving aspect of our human nature.


Hailed by the New York Times as “Smart, sincere and affecting”.

Irresistible!

Released On DVD

Not Knocking on Heaven’s Door:* Black Atheists, Urban America

By Sikivu Hutchinson

Late Saturday afternoon, like clockwork, the street corner preachers on Crenshaw and King Boulevard in South Los Angeles take to the “stage.” Decked out in flowing robes and dreadlocks, they fulminate into their mikes about the universe, God’s will and “unnatural” homosexuals to a motley audience waiting for the next express bus. Members of the Black Israelites, they are part of a long tradition of performative religiosity in urban African American communities. This particular corner of black America is a hotbed of social commerce. Kids who’ve just gotten out of school mingle jubilantly as pedestrians flow past fast food places, mom and pop retailers, street vendors and Jehovah’s Witness’ hawking Watchtower magazines. The Israelites have become a fixture of this street corner’s otherwise shifting tableaux. Exclusively male and virulently sexist and homophobic, they are tolerated in some African American communities in part because of the lingering visceral and misguided appeal of Black nationalism.

While the Israelites’ millennialist “racial uplift” ethos ostensibly fits right in to the bustle of this prominent South L.A. street, other belief systems are not as easily assimilated. Since 2006, the L.A.-based street philosopher Jeffrey “P Funk” Mitchell has been documenting his conversations with everyday folk on questions of atheism and faith. Using the handle “Atheist Walking,” Mitchell also conducts free-ranging inquiries into Christianity’s contradictions with a rolling video camera and a satirically raised eyebrow. Adopting the role of the bemused urban flaneur, ala the commentator- pedestrian immortalized by French poet Charles Baudelaire, he delves into “atheist spirituality,” biblical literalism and the paradoxes of faith. Mitchell is a member of the L.A.-based Black Skeptics, a group that was formed earlier this year to provide an outlet and platform for secular humanist African Americans. The Skeptics are part of a small but growing segment of African Americans who are searching for humanist alternatives to organized religion. In May, the Washington DC Center for Inquiry’s first annual African Americans for Humanism conference drew over fifty participants. Chat groups and websites like the Black Atheists of America have sprung up to accommodate the longing for community amongst non-theist African Americans who feel marginalized in a sea of black hyper-religiosity. Organizations such as the Institute for Humanist Studies cultivate African American secularist scholarship and advocacy.

With over 85% of African Americans professing religious belief, black religiosity is a formidable influence. Racial segregation, the historical role of the Black Church, and African American social conformity reinforce Christianity’s powerful hold on black communities. Indeed, I was recently told that I’d been deemed an unsuitable culmination speaker for a bourgie philanthropic organization’s young women mentees because of my decidedly unladylike public atheism (Perhaps the Israelite’s Old Testament shout-out to silent prostrate women would be more acceptable). Proper role models for impressionable black youth are, at the very least, skillful church lady pretenders with ornate hats in tow. Secular organizations that seek to build humanist community with a predominantly African American base and social justice world view are challenged by the association of charitable giving, philanthropy, poverty work and education with faith-based communities. For many, successfully emulating the strong social and cultural networks that have sustained church congregations is an elusive goal.

And then, there is the deep and abiding desire for belief in the supernatural, the ineffable faith-passion that propels some through the trauma of racial indignities and personal crisis. Yet, humanism asks why we should cede enlightenment and the potential for restoration to the supernatural. Humanism challenges the implication that the sublimity of the natural world, and our connection to those that we love, admire and respect, is somehow impoverished without a divine creator. In one of his bus stop monologues, Mitchell comments, “I want people to look at each other with the same reverence that they look at God and realize that ‘we’ did this, we made this happen.” The “we” represents will, agency, and motive force; qualities that many believers would attribute to God as omniscient architect and overseer. Non-believers are compelled to ask whether individual actions (for good or ill) are determined by God, or whether human beings simply act on their own volition in a universe overseen by God. Since time immemorial, non-believers have questioned whether God exercises control over those who commit evil acts or whether hell is the only “medium” for justice. By refusing to invest supernatural forces with divine authority over human affairs, humanism emphasizes human responsibility for the outcome of our pursuits. Morality is defined by just deeds, fairness, equality and respect for difference; not by how blusteringly one claims to adhere to “Godly” principles.

However, in communities that are plagued with double digit unemployment and a sense of cultural devaluation, notions of self-sufficiency and ultimate human agency may be perceived as demoralizing if not dangerously radical. As a child preacher steeped in the fiery oratory of the Black Church, writer James Baldwin recounted his growing cynicism about spreading “the gospel.” Lamenting the grip of religion on poor blacks, Baldwin said, “When I faced a congregation, it began to take all the strength I had not to…tell them to throw away their Bibles and get off their knees and go home and organize.” In Baldwin’s view organized religion’s requirement that believers suspend disbelief and submit to “God’s will” is a liability for working class African Americans. Religious dogma anesthetizes as it bonds, a dangerous combination in an era in which the proliferation of storefront churches in urban black communities is a symptom of economic underdevelopment.

Echoing Baldwin, Chicago-based Education professor and atheist Kamau Rashid argues that “Freethought is an extension and expression of the struggle that African Americans have waged for self-determination. In fact it represents a heightened phase of such a struggle wherein one of the final stages of ‘conceptual incarceration,’ the belief in a God or gods, is discarded for a belief in the human potential, for a belief in ourselves.”

And why, in a heritage steeped in the revolutionary thought of such dirty outlaw skeptics as Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. DuBois, Baldwin, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, Nella Larsen, A. Philip Randolph, James Forman and Alice Walker, would this be so viscerally frightening?

Sikivu Hutchinson is the editor of blackfemlens.org, a member of the Black Skeptics Group and the author of the forthcoming book Moral Combat: Black Atheists, Gender Politics and Secular America.

*With apologies to Bob Dylan

Aging, Cancer, Genes: Science for All

"A lot of people think we're biologically programmed to die, but the truth is that we're biologically programmed for survival" - Dr. Robert Kane Pappas


So why do we get old and die? Why do some people get cancer and others don't?

I. "Treatment: The Difficulties of Making a Cancer Drug" - Malcolm Gladwell New Yorker Magazine May 17, 2010

II. To Age or not to Age, a documentary by Doctor Robert Kane Pappas to be released on July 16, 2010

III. Dr Stanislaw Burzynski The Movie. Director: Eric Merola. Winner of the "Humanitarian Vision" award at the Newport Beach Festival

Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski the Movie reveals the results of the doctor's treatments administered to paying, hopeful patients and his seemingly endless battles against the FDA. The film might have been called: Dr. Burzynski Has the Answers'

At the heart of the matter as presented in these three popular efforts to communicate with us, the laymen of the world, and the potential or actual financial backers of the endless quest to Know, is the question Why: Why Cancer, Why Age?

For the Drug industry, as discussed in the New Yorker Magazine, the question is answered with an indirect reference to the chemical makeup of the human body. If only we can find the right chemicals, the right cocktail, the problem of Cancer containment, then cure, will be solved. This is a long, expensive, exacting endeavor the fruits of which are a long way from realization. But the scientists are on their way, sort of. And the total cost to date is well beyond our collective imagination.

There are literally millions of known chemicals and many of them are being tested - going through the mandated protocols from phrase I to phase 2, then phase 3. All remedies seem to have failed to pass all three phases but hope has not died, not yet.

The outstanding question is what is the cause of Cancer - without knowing the cause can a solution ever be found? Is it the chemical composition of the body that causes cancer, and if so, isn't the emotional component as much responsible for our chemical composition as the physical mechanisms that cancer infests. Maybe it isn't an injection of the "right chemical" that is needed but someone who addresses our emotional problems with the intent of achieving mental health and stability with subsequent alteration in our chemical makeup. The Psychoanalysts of the world could possibly be in competition with the invasive substance that the scientists want to inject.

Dr. Burzynski has another idea that he has been investigating through injections into live subjects who want desperately to be cured. He thinks and acts upon the belief that the cause of Cancer is in the genes. It is our Genetic makeup that causes cancer and with the right injection of a substance to alter our genes our cancer can be controlled and eliminated or put into remission.

In effect he is refocusing our attention away from the millions of chemicals known to man and onto the chemicals that would alter genes. But....he hasn't gone through the phase 1 or 2, or 3 of the mandated process established by "legitimate" medicine, with the unfortunate result that he is constantly brought to account by the legal profession (and FDA) for his treatment method and administration and his results.

His results are not perfect - far from it - but he claims to have cured enough people with his efforts that the Federal Government (FDA) wants to shut him down for fear that..........well, that is yet to be revealed. Maybe just cutting corners (and costs) is the crime for which he has been harassed.

But what does Cancer have to do with Age and Aging? Dr. Pappas has convincing evidence that aging, that threat and reality of our bodies ever changing, does not have to be. What causes aging, he asks - a question we had hitherto decided was answered by life observed, lived and then ended most commonly before the age of 100. But Dr. Pappas says that we should live on and convinces those who watch his documentary To Age or Not to Age that aging is not normal.

Not normal! What I see and experience every day is not in sync with reality. Wow. How does he get to this conclusion?

Genes: That is the answer. He goes beyond the theory that if we consume fewer calories per day during our life time, our time on earth will be greatly elongated, our healthy life span will be seemingly endless. Beyond food means that the cause of aging is not just what we eat or fail to eat. He says the cause is in the Genes.

My observations (I am a complete layperson), based on my friends and acquaintances, are that the descendants of slaves in the southern United States come from a long-living and healthy lineage. In fact the slaves didn't just live longer than their owners, which is well documented, but the slaves and their descendants who are the parents of those in my age range outlive their children by a significant statistical margin. If Aging was just a matter of genes this could not be the case.

In summary, based on my limited observations:

The first generation were slaves
They lived the longest (discounting those murdered)
The second generation were black share croppers, small farm owners who worked the land and ate food that was unprocessed by corporations. They lived as long or almost as long as their parents.
The third generation were the children who came up North to seek fame and fortune - or just fortune enough to secure food, shelter and clothing without land of their own; they enjoyed a significantly shorter life span than their genetic inheritance would have predicted. Indeed, they often died before their parents.

Conclusion: emotional, physical factors not related solely to genes might be a significant cause of life span.

Genes are not a stand-alone cause for cancer or aging. Then why are we being exposed to gene analysis or given the rudiments of cost and future possible research for cancer at this time? What is going on? Coincidence or...... what is the Cause.

We seem to be bombarded with so much more information about the world, the Universe, the foundations of life in a test tube and the ability to replicate what had once been thought of as God giveth, and God taketh away, that there is an ever widening gap in applicable knowledge. Knowledge that will improve our lives and the lives of those we love and care for. Too much information seems to bread ignorance

This is the dilemma that confronts us every day. What food to eat, what clothes to buy, what cloth to touch our skin, what to drink, which water to avoid, which juice is okay and which is too sugary... is sugar bad or is it corn syrup or should both be avoided. These are some of the easy unanswered questions. Imagine having to think about, to live with, the uncertainty of which treatment to select, which doctor to see, which theory to bring to bear on our desire to continue to live... if living at all cost is what we want. Now there is the potential question of when should I die, should I register for prevention because I have the Gene or don't.

Chemical, emotional, physical, germ, infection, virus, bacterium, genes and more genes and the list goes on and on....

No wonder people choose to die rather than live in terrifying uncertainty.

See the films, read the New Yorker Magazine and feel like you are not alone because.........that's one truth that is indisputable: we are all in this together.

TO AGE OR NOT TO AGE
Opening July 16, 2010

Dr. Burzynski The Movie
available on DVD

Mother and Child: Now playing in New York theaters

writer-director Rodrigo Garcia (Nine Lives) and executive producer Alejandro González Iñárritu (Babel)

“MOTHER AND CHILD”

Opens Friday, May 7th in NY at the Landmark Sunshine and Lincoln Plaza Theaters

Starring
Annette Bening, Naomi Watts, Kerry Washington
Samuel L. Jackson, Jimmy Smits

with
Shareeka Epps, Cherry Jones, S. Epatha Merkerson, Amy Brenneman, David Morse, Marc Blucas, Elizabeth Pena

plot: Three women's lives share a common core: they have all been profoundly affected by adoption.

Mother and Child opened on May 7th to coincide with the great Mother's day recognition/celebration events that bode only good, kind and charitable warmth on women who assume the role of Mother.

While the phrase "happy mother's day" is repeated often throughout the day from even strangers to women they think might be a mother the phrase reemphasizes our fantasy notions of mothers which is even more potent when combined with "mother and child" Almost like the idealac Madonna recreated in all those perceived to be mothers, an image that is more destructive to human relations than supportive of women as real, complex vital contributors to society.

In Mother and Child the Mother is difficult to like and the child is adopted; Not of the mother's loins.
And the men........they are quietly supportive or not, in contrast to the role that men of this generation of new fathers are assuming.

To experience our fantasies crumble, delivered with brilliant actors and unusal clarity with attention to minute details is an experience that is essential for sorely needed change.


My mother was not a likable, lovable person. But she was my mother and as an adult I embraced her as such. If the fantasy of the mother had never existed, to accept my mother as she was wouldn't have been as difficult nor painful

And that is why I recommend this film. See Mother and Child and reunite with reality

Life During Wartime: To Forgive or Forget?

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2009 / WINNER – BEST SCREENPLAY
TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2009
TELLURIDE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2009
NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL 2009
BOSTON INDEPENDENT FILM FESTIVAL 2010

Directed By Todd Solondz (Welcome to the Dollhouse, Storytelling, Happiness, Palindromes)

Starring: Shirley Henderson, Ciarán Hinds, Allison Janney, Ally Sheedy, Paul Reubens, Michael Lerner, Chris Marquette, Charlotte Rampling, Dylan Riley Snyder and Michael Kenneth Williams

Extraordinary acting! A brilliant Plot: A mature Todd Solondz brings the theme of Happiness into a fuller, ever more intense film about Sex, Crime and the "ideal" Family Life.

Plot:
Separated from her incarcerated husband Bill (Ciarán Hinds), Trish (Allison Janney) is about to be married again. Bill is a pedophile, so Trish couldn't be more excited to have Harvey (Michael Lerner), a “normal” father figure for her two sons. But when Bill is released from prison and the boys finally meet their future stepdad, the family is forced to decide whether to forgive or to forget.

There is so much happening in this intellectual exploration of our prejudices, our frailties that cloud our preceptions and make our decisions often not in tune with our best interest nor of those we care about. At the heart of the film is that all important question of fatherhood, what does it mean to be a father, what does it mean for a man and for his son.
This identity issue looms large while the crimes that the father commits seems often trivial to the lies that surround and permeate us all. But who is the Father.

There is strong evidence throughout this film that the personal father with whom we immediate associate to "father" also refers to Israel, the Fatherland where the same criminality issue felt and experienced for this country that murders, bulldozes homes and has striped life as we know it from huge number of people in the Middle East is the Father exposed in Life During Wartime with all the complexity of feeling/thought/duplicity/longing for a better person /country to embrace.

Pedophilia is a crime. The crime's of the paroled men are multiple. Crime crime crime but even for a criminal there is a humanity and that is the point...to look at our committed lies politically and personally: Do we forget? Do we forgive? And if we forget, will we ever remember again.

Life During Wartime uses brilliant human interactions to carry it's message and there were many moments when I felt certain this film would be one of my favorites of all times but

As with so much of politics, it lack an emotional device to pull me in or get me involved in a primitive non intellectual way and that unfortunately is the life blood of the film viewing experience.

To forgive or forget: that is the question because you can not forgive what you have forgotten.
Life During Wartime is a film you won't want to forget.

Opens theatrically in NY on 7/23

The Solitary Man: middle age woes

Brian Koppelman
David Levien

A car magnate watches his personal and professional life hit the skids because of his business and romantic indiscretions.

Susan Sarandon, Danny DeVito, Mary-Louise Parker and Jenna Fischer


Alone, "talking to your bed at night"; the other side of the bell-shaped U-curve, Michael Douglas, along with Susan Sarandon and Danny DeVito, bring to the screen the ups and downs of a once successful man as he strives to maintain his distinguished position as a "respected" member of society while all the measures of his valued worth crumble.

This is not an easy film to watch. Detailing the loss of vitality in a man who seems unable to adapt to his changed self - the lack of integrity, the unscrupulous behavior, particularly sexually - even the great Michael Douglas loses his appeal in this portrayal of the middle-aged man in our midst.

While the dialogue is consistently strong, the plot construction and scene transitions fail to work at a high level . Overall, the film might not hold the viewer's attention but it does address a serious problem for those who are fortunate enough to live into old age.

For a look at life without that sexy youthful appeal, see The Solitary Man.

Now playing in New York City theaters.