A little kerfuffle over at Science Blogs brought mail-order brides back to my attention. (Didn’t they have their fifteen minutes of fame in the eighties?)

I commented to Mark that I didn’t see what the fuss was about. He gamely pointed to the fuzzy grey borderline between mail-order brides and prostitution.

Alison: Well, there’s a fuzzy-to-nonexistent borderline between marriage and prostitution generally. The point of marriage is that it recognises sexual relationships as inherently potentially exploitatitve, and confers legal rights and responsibilities on the parties involved.

Mark: Ah, but that doesn’t apply in the US. If they divorce, the mail-order bride has no residency rights and is deported back to her country of origin. It’s not like Canada where a sponsored immigrant spouse has residency rights independent of the status of the relationship.

Oh. Right. I keep forgetting. (Which is odd, because one of my favourite stories about sponsoring Mark under Canada’s Family Reunification Program is how when he went to get his visa exchanged for a residency card, he was sat down and solemnly lectured that if I were to become abusive, he was not to hesitate to Move Out Immediately. Quebec would help him find a place to live and give him welfare if he needed it. He would NOT have to leave the country. Quebec would come after me for reimbursement as necessary. He was NOT to worry about that.)

But does that mean that we should be worried about the institution of mail-order brides, or that we should be protesting the lack of protection the US offers immigrant spouses – exacerbating a situation of potential exploitation where marriage is supposed to alleviate it?

Mark sold this to me as A Lesbian Movie! Which I suppose is technically correct according to the Bechdel/Wallace test,* because right at the end a woman asks a thirteen year old girl what grade she’s in. But ultimately it’s about the spiritual and emotional sterility and soullessness of non-reproductive sex and the potential redemption to be achieved through reproductive sex. 

Not very lesbian at all. 

Any better suggestions? In 1985, Bechdel/Wallace identified Alien as a prototypical lesbian movie because the two women in it get to talk to eachother about the monster. Has there been anything since then? 

*The Bechdel test [from Wikipedia]

The [Dykes to Watch Out For] strip popularized what is now known as the Bechdel test, also known as the Bechdel/Wallace test, the Bechdel rule, or Bechdel’s law. [Alison] Bechdel credits her friend Liz Wallace for the test, which appears in a 1985 strip entitled “The Rule”, in which a character says that she only watches a movie if it satisfies the following requirements:

1. It has to have at least two women in it,
2. Who talk to each other,
3. About something besides a man.

[Exchange with Mark, on a train in Holland]

We were settling in our seats when a vision of loveliness floated by us in airy layers of black and brown chiffon. I immediately understood the Arabian Nights tales where our hero nearly dies of lovesickness after glimpsing the beautiful princess. How do you know a woman is beautiful enough to develop an adolescent crush on if she is draped in loose clothing that only reveals her eyes? Well, you do. 

Mark started to become visibly agitated. I asked him what was wrong and we had the following conversation.

Mark: My friend would be very upset if she saw that.
Alison: What?
Mark: A woman veiled like that.
Alison: Oh. Why would your friend be so upset?
Mark: She would say the woman was oppressed.
Alison: She’s a young woman travelling alone. I’d say that’s a pretty good sign of emancipation in any culture.
Mark: She was married young.
Alison: Who is she? What’s her social background?
Mark: Oh, her husband’s a factory worker or something.
Alison: I don’t think so. She’s extremely stylishly dressed. I don’t think factory workers’ wives swathe themselves in silk to take the train.
Mark: Well anyway, she’s isolated and not integrated. She can’t read. She doesn’t even speak Dutch.
Alison: [Craning to get another look at the woman, now seated a few rows down] She’s reading a book.

Hm. What a veil can hide and reveal are not necessarily what you’d expect.

*** *** ***
[Exchange with a Greek-born taxi driver in Mississauga]

Taxi driver: Immigrants have more rights than Canadians these days. It’s not right.
Alison: You weren’t born in Canada. Do you think you have more rights than I do?
Taxi driver: No, but I’m old school. In my day immigrants came to Canada and adapted. Immigrants these days go too far. Just look at the problems muslims are causing with their veils.
Alison: A veil is a declaration of faith. I see a cross hanging from your rear-view mirror.
Taxi driver: They take it too far. In Quebec they were having all that trouble because the women wouldn’t take off their veils to vote. They had to make a law.
Alison: Well, I’m from Quebec and I can tell you that when I go to vote nobody asks to see my ID. All they want to know is my address. If they don’t need to see my face, then they don’t need to see my muslim neighbour’s face either. It should be the same for everyone.
Taxi driver: That’s right! The same here in Toronto! They just look at my address. No ID. It should be the same for everyone! You’re a really nice person, do you know that?
…
Taxi driver: You’re such a nice person.
…
Taxi driver: Well have a good trip home! You’re so nice, I wish you have a really good trip.

I’m trying to imagine what it must be like to have a job where you work for tips by deprecating a group you belong to. It reminds me a little of a scene in Black Like Me where the author witnesses an elevator conductor charging passengers a dollar to kick his ass. Hard.

*** *** ***
[Exchange with a Syrian-born taxi driver in Montreal]

Taxi driver: I’m muslim but I don’t like it when women have to wear veils. That makes me angry.
Alison: Aren’t they a statement of faith? Don’t women choose to wear the veil to make themselves visible as Muslims to everyone?
Taxi driver: You know what I hate? When those hypocritical imams get up in front of everyone and say so sweetly that you have to treasure and respect women. And you know exactly why their wives can’t show their faces. They’re hiding the bruises and scars.

Saw Maria Full of Grace last Tuesday. The theatre was packed. My overall impression: a beautiful movie. Mark’s overall impression: a sad one. We both eagerly noted that it met the Alison Bechdel lesbian criteria.

Then on Thursday I read promotional articles about it in the local A&E weeklies and was very surprised to note that it was being touted as an anti-drug movie. I hadn’t noticed that theme. I double-checked with Mark, and he had. Ok, so I am somewhat oblivious. We knew that. But then he said he agreed with me that it wasn’t the dominant theme.

Special interest points:
Y Lesbian (features: at least two women, who talk to each other, about something besides a man).
Y Latina (a latina occupies the screen by herself without sharing it with anyone else).
N Crazy (from the point of view of a visibly unhinged person trying to get by in the real world).
N Aspie (features someone who appears to have Asperger’s syndrome)

*** *** ***
Then Mark downloaded Supertex from BitTorrent and we watched it on Friday. It’s a Dutch movie, made in Holland with Dutch actors who all speak English and Yiddish. There is no Dutch version. He watched it for the Dutch nostalgia value and I watched it for the rag trade theme. Well, it was awful. At first I thought it was just clumsy which I really don’t mind: if I made a movie it would be very clumsy. But then there were some simply terrible scenes and even I had to admit that it was simply a bad movie. The father dies and the mistress and the bright son – who had been fighting like teenagers with PMS up until then – fall tearily into one another’s arms and make love. The moralizing about Jewish identity made me gag: happiness lies in speaking Yiddish, wearing a yarmulke and marrying a submissive, silent woman. Oh, and in carrying on your father’s business even though you have determined that it’s a bad business decision.

Even Mark was disappointed in the Dutch nostalgia value department: people kissed in greeting only twice (not three times, the way they do in Holland) and no, he has never seen anyone with side curls in Amsterdam, never mind large communities of them impeding traffic on Saturday.

Mark knows the filmmaker and says he was one of the few people in Holland who supported the US invasion of Iraq.

Special interest points:
N Lesbian (features: at least two women, who talk to each other, about something besides a man).
N Woman-of-colour (a woman of colour occupies the screen by herself without sharing it with anyone else).
N Crazy (from the point of view of a visibly unhinged person trying to get by in the real world).
N Aspie (features someone who appears to have Asperger’s syndrome).

So I can confidently say that there is no reason to watch this movie at all.

[originally transmitted by e-mail August 9 2004]

I got feedback and help here too, though not as abundantly as for laundry.

My favourite suggestion for breaking the monotony was Irréversible, a movie I actually saw when it came out last year. It’s notorious for its brutal, nine-minute rape/murder scene. M. had warned me in advance so I kept my eyes closed for that bit, but the soundtrack was pretty gruesome all by itself. Overall what I noticed about the movie was its sophomoric frat-boy obsession with anal sex, and its mysterious (to me) equation of anal sex with sadism. The person who embodied evil was nicknamed La Tenia (tapeworm); he was a gay man who hung out in a gay bath house called Le Rectum; he was a top (sexually dominant in anal sex); which meant, quite naturally in the world of the film, that he was essentially a sadistic rapist; and his essential identity as a sadistic rapist meant that he was a danger to all women everywhere.

Yes, this is a different view of sexual relations than the one shown in Lost in Translation. But, um, not the kind of different I was really looking for.

Other suggestions, more on track:

-The general one to carefully research movies before going to see them. Not really my style. I’m not looking to be protected from bad movie-going experiences, and I like surprises.

Underworld
-Features a woman in the lead, but from what I can tell there aren’t any others.

Bend It Like Beckham
- Features women and girls in all sorts of interesting relationships. Lots of gorgeous shots of girls practicing on the field. Highly recommended: yes, there is an unfortunate love triangle featuring a man, but it doesn’t dominate the film.

Bound
- Two women, unambiguously lovers. Fun to watch, lots of people really like it, but I found it just a teensy bit dull.

Prey for Rock and Roll
- A bisexual rock musician in the lead trying to figure out what life in rock means for her at age forty. A tryst with another woman. Don’t know anyone who’s seen it, but will definitely be giving it a whirl. Thanks for the tip!

White Oleander
- Six women, five of whom stand in parental or quasi-parental relationships to the sixth, so it scores high on the Alison Bechdel rating scale. But the closer the relationship the mothers have with the daughter, the more they fail her. Motherly love is inherently flawed and poisonous and covetous and may not even exist. The three most motherly women are insanely jealous – either sexual jealousy, seeing competition with the man in their lives, or jealousy of other mothers. Our little heroine finally finds herself when her mother lets her go to pursue her future coupled to a safe and bland young man. Gag.

Please keep the tips coming!

[originally transmitted by e-mail October 3, 2003]

The last three movies I’ve seen (Lost in Translation, The Good Thief, Matchstick Men) all featured middle-aged-to-old men in intimate relationships with women much, much younger. None of the relationships included orgasms. Two of the three movies included “try it, you’ll like it” advice on parenting from experienced men.

While this is an interesting twist on the theme of the affair with the younger woman, it leaves me unsatisfied.

The only movie I’ve seen out of the last ten or twenty or so that met Alison Bechdel’s basic lesbian criteria…

1) The movie features at least two women
2) Who talk to each other
3) About something besides a man

… was The Core, where the two female characters (a pilot and an air traffic controller) have a two-second exchange about landing a plane.

If that’s all it took to constitute basic gay criteria for a movie (that it contain at least two male characters – who talk to each other – about something besides a woman) then all the movies I watch would be high camp.

Any suggestions for relieving the monotony?

[originally transmitted by e-mail September 28, 2003]