You can totally outrun that, dude.
I’ve been away for some time, but over my extended vacation I had the pleasure of watching a treasure trove of disaster movies, which made me giddy. I want to share these gems with you, but there’s quite a few, so I’m breaking it up into parts. Part 1 and 2 will be earthquake movies, Part 3 will be weather movies and Part 4 will be dedicated to volcanoes. I present to you now, Part 1 of The Movie Marathon That Destroyed the World: Earthquake Season #1.
I’d had “Born In Flames”, a Lizzie Borden film from 1983, in my Netflix Instant Queue for a while now and I just managed to watch it today. Set in the not-too-distant future, it takes place 10 years after the U.S. has gone through a second (bloodless) revolution and become the world’s first socialist democracy. Unsurprisingly and quite realistically, not much has changed for PoC, women, WoC, the poor, queers, or pretty much any other traditionally oppressed group of people. The film follows 4 groups of women activists: the Women’s Army, a grassroots organization that fights for labor equality, organizes feminist protests, and performs vigilante actions against would-be rapists and street harassers, led by Adelaide Norris; Phoenix Radio, a black women’s underground station fronted by Honey, who espouses kind of a spiritual/mental fight against oppression; Radio Regazza, a white women’s underground station with more of a punk rock sensibility; and the Socialist Youth Review, a mainstream Party newspaper spearheaded by upper class “intellectual” white women (one of whom is played by Oscar winning director Kathryn Bigelow) that mainly exists to reinforce the Party line regarding women’s rights.
I won’t go into great detail, as I urge you to watch the movie if you’re interested. It’s kind of disjointed and better seen than explained.
The movie starts out going back and forth between the 3 counter-revolutionary women’s groups as they discuss the current state of civil rights for all people, especially women. It’s pretty much agreed that the situation is dismal, but they disagree on what needs to be done to change it and how involved they want to get. The first part of the film focuses on Adelaide Norris, the leader of the Women’s Army, the organization that seems to be doing most of the organizing and heavy lifting. After several demonstrations and vigilante actions, the situation is not any better, so Adelaide feels armed resistance may be the course the Women’s Army will have to take. She takes a trip to the Western Sahara, where women and men are fighting against colonial forces trying to recapture that territory. On her way back home she is arrested for attempting to smuggle arms into the country. She is jailed and assassinated by the government while incarcerated.
This spurs the other feminist groups into action, including the Party group of women who run the Socialist Youth Review, who had previously refused to endorse any revolutionary feminist group because it would “hurt the overall goals of the Party”, which sounds so much like Democrats today asking you to vote for their shitty candidate because if they’re not elected, the REALLY bad guys will win. The paper begins to print stories decrying the government assassination of Adelaide Norris, which eventually gets them fired. The radical women’s groups send out a team to hold television station managers hostage so they can get a tape of one of their leaders played telling about the assassination. They’re arrested and the two feminist radio stations, Radio Regazza and Phoenix Radio, are firebombed. The two stations emerge again as one, and the now united feminist groups decide that violence is their only viable option in the face of tyranny. Interestingly, they end the movie with a woman planting a bomb at the World Trade Center and it exploding as a newscaster broadcasts in front of the buildings.
Apparently the movie was filmed over the course of 5 years, so that might explain why it meanders in some ways. For the first half of the film I wasn’t really digging it, although I thought it was awesome that there were so many black women feminists in it and that the main character was a black lesbian. But other than that it seemed kind of cliche and honestly not very enjoyable. But as it progressed and more action was taken it gained momentum and I became more interested in it. By the end I felt almost empowered. I even polished my ankh necklace and busted out some Egyptian Musk incense.
The way the “establishment” women were portrayed really mirrored how white women in positions of power act towards WoC, poor women, women with disabilities, etc., basically telling them that they must put their own best interests aside for the good of the overall cause. I could definitely see this situation happening in our overly complacent society. The majority of the women in this film were of color, which was refreshing. Overall, I was glad I had watched it.
So go put this movie in your Netflix queue and get all the details I missed.
Isn't she adorable?
If the profile featured in The September Issue of Anna Wintour, editor-in-chief of Vogue, is supposed to frame her as a cold-hearted, semi-sadistic bitch similar to the character Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada, it doesn’t do a very good job. In fact, I found myself admiring and even liking Ms. Wintour. She is very good at her job, very honest and direct, and clear about what her expectations are from her employees. Vogue is the premier fashion magazine; all other fashion rags are playing catch-up on the regular. So of course she’s going to expect excellence from the people who work for her. It’s the big time, and if you’re lucky enough to work there, you shouldn’t be surprised that she’s not holding your hand and giving you a cookie when you do a good job.
The movie overall does a really good job of capturing the process that goes into creating the most important issue of the year. It does focus mostly on Anna, Grace Coddington (the amazingly talented creative director of the magazine), and somewhat on André Leon Talley (the flamboyant editor-at-large). There’s a lot of push-pull with Grace and Anna, with Grace usually on the losing end. Which is probably as it should be because creative types tend to not be able to edit down their work and it is a magazine, which requires decisive editing since you can’t put every last photo in one issue. Anna is really good at being decisive; in fact she describes it as her biggest strength in the movie.
There’s some funny scenes where Anna has to (quietly) lay the smack down on some errant fashion editors, and she does make a face similar to one made by Miranda in Devil. There’s also a scene reminiscent of the scene in Devil where Miranda and Co. go to James Holt’s studio to pre-screen his collection. Anna and Co. show up at Yves Saint Laurent and the head designer, Stefano Pilati, has to explain why he hasn’t designed anything colorful. She does not look happy. Oddly (to me), Anna hates black. She never wears it, doesn’t like to see it in the run-throughs, and obviously doesn’t like when designers create an entire line of black. This is contrary to the stereotype of fashion editors wearing black all the time.
I love the soundtrack. I’ve already downloaded two songs from it, Ladytron’s “Destroy Everything You Touch” and The Asteroid Galaxy Tour’s “Around The Bend”. It’s very fashion-y. I can watch movies I love over and over, and this movie is definitely addictive to those who are interested in this kind of shit. There’s lots of drool-worthy footage of the Vogue closets, haute couture shows and photo shoots. So fire up the Instant Queue and watch it in a fur with a glass of champagne and sunglasses on. It’s like that.
[A version of this post previously appeared on I Fry Mine In Butter.]
Well, I made it out of my surgery alive but pretty sore and bruised. Seriously, y’all, it feels like someone went toe-to-toe with my abdomen and my abdomen lost big time. So I’m on pain medication at the moment, which will hopefully not totally prevent me from being able to do all the writing I had planned on doing this week.
I’ve been obsessively watching The September Issue over the past few days. Oddly, I find Anna Wintour endearing. She seems intelligent, decisive and direct. I can see where some may be put off by her directness, particularly if you’re one who needs a lot of hand-holding and positive reinforcement in your work. But it seems that her expectations are pretty well-known among her staff, so it’s a matter of keeping your head down and working within her framework. Of course the big issue with her is her blatant fatphobia — which in the fashion community is not rare, of course — but it does cause some serious cognitive dissonance for me as I find her otherwise to be somewhat of a role model of success in a field I’m very interested in. Unfortunately, other than some “plus size” models, it’s pretty hard to find role models in the fashion industry that aren’t tainted by some strain of fatphobia.
I was kind of amazed that Ms. Wintour is so averse to black. I know it’s such a cliché that fashion editors always wear all black, but she really actively dislikes it. I personally couldn’t imagine my wardrobe without black. I tend to shy away from most prints, especially florals, because they can so easily look cheap and ugly. Stripes and spots are simple, so I don’t have a problem with wearing them as long as they aren’t too big. But too often in plus size clothing the prints are just hideous. I’m not sure why designers think it’s a good idea to splash an awful pattern over a larger canvas.
That just ties in to the problem I have with so many plus sized clothing ranges, the fact that they’re just not well-thought out or fashionable in the slightest. How hard is it to just make clothing that’s in fashion but in a larger size? They really make you work for your style. I’d love to wear looks off the runway, and I know most fat women would as well. I wish I had the ability to draw and sew, or had my own personal atelier who could translate my ideas into finished garments. Of course, don’t we all. But I really want to know what the holdup is on making fat women’s clothing that mirrors what’s in style now. You’d think stores that have a main range and a plus sized range would just make the plus sized clothes larger versions of the main clothes. Like with ASOS’ Curve range, why do they need to reinvent the wheel when the main range has such cute pieces? It’s just baffling to me.
Apologies for the random nature of this post. I’m just getting my feet wet again.
Man the desk at all times.
The Devil Wears Prada is one of those movies I can watch over and over, back to back. I can’t even count the ways I love this movie, but I’ll try. It’s so lovably catty, superficial while being kind of significant, and endlessly quotable. It also offers a few life lessons I think we can all benefit from.
Strong interviewing skills are really necessary when you’re fat. Miranda Priestly, the fictional editor of Runway magazine (hello, Vogue) consistently hires slender, well-dressed, rabid fans of the magazine. Andy Sachs is a size 6 (fashion fat), poorly dressed, fashion-ignorant recent college graduate looking for a job at any magazine to advance her journalism career. In her brief “interview” with Miranda, she really screws the pooch by admitting that she’s just interviewing at Runway because “it’s this or Auto Universe“. Um, hello? Know the job you’re interviewing for! You’re not going to get a job you admit to the interviewer you don’t really give a shit about. And you definitely don’t show up to an interview at a freaking fashion magazine in a sweater vest. Unless, I guess, sweater vests are in that season, but I haven’t been alive long enough to see sweater vests be in, ever. Now, Andy may not be familiar with being considered fat, but any fat girl worth her diet salt knows that fat women have to work twice as hard — and look twice as good — to get a job. Get it together, girl. You’re lucky Miranda Priestly is famous for being unpredictable.
Try not to laugh in your boss’ face. Try hard. This is a pretty simple lesson to learn and most folks can figure this one out on their own. While observing a “run-through”, in which fashion editors show Miranda looks for the next issue, one of the editors holds up two belts that admittedly even to me look similar and says “they’re so different”. Andy promptly starts snickering. This prompts one of my favorite monologues in the movie, where Miranda rips her a new one telling her exactly why fashion matters and where that lumpy blue sweater she’s wearing came from.
Don’t give your friends expensive shit you get from your job if they’re going to be dicks about you doing your job. Andy shows up to dinner with her friends toting a bunch of triple digit prizes passed down to her by Miranda, including a Marc Jacobs bag that apparently costs $600. Andy gives it to her friend who gets all excited, then Miranda calls her cell and the same friend who gladly took the bag grabs her phone and starts tossing it around like a child playing keep away. Then they all start snickering as she talks to Miranda. What the hell, people? Her job is bomb while she’s giving you treats but when she actually has to work she’s a sellout?
Being true to yourself sometimes means you do stupid things like walk away from a life of glamour and excitement. Here’s where I discover that I have less scruples than I thought I did. At the end when Andy decides that she doesn’t want to be cutthroat like Miranda and leaves her high and dry in Paris, throwing her cell phone into a fountain (hello, how are you getting home, you’re in freaking Paris), I always find myself yelling “don’t walk away, Andrea!” at the screen. I guess because I’m one of the millions of girls that would kill for that job my priorities are in a different place.
[This post also appeared on the other blog I write for, I Fry Mine In Butter.]
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Notes from the Fat-o-Sphere
