The monster in Elmo

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A couple weeks before the creepy news broke that Kevin Clash, the voice of Elmo, was accused of having a sexual relationship with a sixteen year old, I received this email from my daughter’s after school program:

 A man dressed in an Elmo costume was seen in Rossi Playground on Saturday attempting to approach and hug neighborhood children. In addition to approaching children, he yelled obscenities and derogatory remarks. This man was also spotted at parks in New York City.

My first thought was: Elmo, for goodness sake. Holy shit. What is the world coming to?

But my second thought was this. The disturbing story attests to a thesis of my blog, Reel Girl, that is often disputed or questioned: “Lovable” characters created to appeal to children can also be dangerously manipulative of those children. In many cases, that’s why they were created, right? To sell products or push an agenda. Just because a character has oversized pupils doesn’t mean he’s good for kids. Maybe that sounds paranoid or trivial, but children are malleable and vulnerable. Parents should be aware of who they let in their home, even under the badge of PBS (which has a cast of characters just as male dominated as Disney.) G-rated movies can be more sexist, racist, or classist than R movies. That’s why parents should trust their own instincts, be aware, and make careful, informed decisions. There’s a potential monster side to every Elmo

Update: From the NYT

Andreozzi & Associates, a law firm that said it represented the anonymous accuser, said in a statement on Tuesday afternoon that “he wants it to be known that his sexual relationship with Mr. Clash was an adult consensual relationship.” The statement added, “He will have no further comment on the matter”…“We are pleased that this matter has been brought to a close, and we are happy that Kevin can move on from this unfortunate episode,” said Sesame Workshop, the organization that produces “Sesame Street.”

The organization did not say when — or even whether — Mr. Clash would return to work at “Sesame Street.” On Sunday, he took a leave of absence when it became clear that TMZ was going to publish an article about the accusation of inappropriate and possibly illegal conduct.

Update: Jezebel reports: “Well, turns out our collective sigh of relief was short-lived. Though puppeteer Kevin Clash’s first accuser recanted his claims one week ago, Clash officially resigned from Sesame Street today. Though it’s not mentioned in Clash’s official resignation, his departure coincides with new allegations from a second accuser, who claims Clash began a sexual relationship with him when the accuser was just 15.”

Petraeus/ Broadwell conspiracy theories…

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The Petraeus/ Broadwell story gets stranger by the minute, but did you see this from The Guardian?

The CIA has dismissed as “baseless” and “uninformed” claims made by the former lover of ex-agency chief David Petraeus that Libyan militants were held in secret US prisons prior to the deadly Benghazi consulate attack.

Paula Broadwell, the biographer whose affair with Petraeus led to his abrupt resignation Friday, alleged that the assault, in which US ambassador Christopher Stevens was killed, was an attempt to free men being detained in a covert CIA annex.

Speaking last month at the University of Denver, Broadwell further alleged that Petreaus knew about the secret holding cells.

President Barack Obama stripped the CIA of its power to take prisoners through an executive order signed soon after his inauguration in January 2009…

The comments were recorded and posted in a YouTube clip which has since been taken down.

Read the rest here.

And this is pretty funny from The New Yorker: “How to Tell If You’re Involved in the Petraeus Scandal.”

How sick are we of this narrative? Powerful man brought down by his lust for younger woman blah blah blah. You know the only thing that will change this tired story? More women in power.

Frank Bruni has a great piece in the NYT about the sexism inherent in the scandal and the coverage of it: “Such adamant women, such pregnable men. We’ve been stuck on this since Eve, Adam and the Garden of Eden. And it’s true: Eve shouldn’t have been so pushy with the apple.” Read Bruni’s post here.

My favorite Tweet from Amanda Marcotte: “I love how sexists both believe men are incapable of impulse control AND should be the holders of all meaningful power.”

Everyone loves “Argo” but where are the women?

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Women and Hollywood posted about Ben Affleck’s universally adored “Argo:”

Of the movie’s thirteen or so lead roles, three of them are played by women, and none of them are the caliber you might expect from a film that takes its female characters seriously…

Part of the movie’s marginalization of female characters can be rationalized away by the true-life nature of the film. Because the movie is “based on a true story,” Affleck and his screenwriter, Chris Terrio, have to somewhat stick to the facts and show the story the way things happened. But unlike this year’s Compliance, which told about as accurate of an account of real-life workplace abuse possible, Argo plays fast and loose with the facts for cinematic impact — to ramp up the drama and intensity. (If you needed someone to tell you the airport chase probably didn’t happen that way, you have no idea what the definition of a movie is.) Thus, the “we-had-to-stick-to-the-facts-so-no-lines-for-womenfolk” argument doesn’t hold up. If you can make room for an airport chase, a protracted dénouement where Mendez is awarded an Intelligence Star, a speech from Jimmy Carter (that adds nothing to the film) and a gratuitous shot of Affleck’s abs, you can give one woman something to do. Anything at all.

I’m not saying they should create a new role for a woman or magically create a female spy (it’s not Alias, after all), but the women here deserve more than virtual silence. The film doesn’t take place at an all-boys’ school or a magical world in which all of the women have gone mute. It was the 1970’s, not Spike TV. There were women who had relationships to the story, and the film’s desire to marginalize them or cut them out completely shows how little modern Hollywood thinks of female narratives. Movies actually made in the 70’s had better roles for women than this, and the idea that Affleck gets let off the hook for sexism because he made a period piece is insulting.

Writer Nico Lang is addressing an issue that people always raise on Reel Girl: “a magical world where the women have gone mute.” Fill-in-the-blank movie has to leave females out because that’s just how it is, in the original story, in the time period, in the jungle, whatever i.e. Tintin, Lord of the Rings, Marvel comics, DC comics, pirates, the 70s.

WTF? There is only one female chef in “Ratatouille” because there aren’t female chefs in France. The movie is about a rat who can cook. A talking rodent is more believable than 50% of chefs being female? In “The Lion King” the female lions have to wait until the male lion, our hero, Simba, returns because males lead the pride in the real world. That same “real world” where a lion dances, sings and is BFFs with a warthog and Meekrat? Huh?

The “we-had-to-stick-to-the-facts-so-no-lines-for-womenfolk” argument rarely holds up, yet it gets used all the time.

Lang makes another point in her criticism of “Argo” that I often address on Reel Girl. When a female is allowed to be a lead in a movie, she is surrounded by a constellation of males. You almost never get to see powerful females working together. Lang writes:

Argo isn’t alone in marginalizing women’s roles in film, as all but five of this year’s Top 20 films were dominated by men, and even films that feature women as leads do so in films where their gender is the minority (see: The Hunger Games, Brave, Snow White and the Huntsman).Although it may be wrong to criticize Argo for doing the same thing everyone else is (just more egregiously), the film shows that even our “serious films” often do not privilege women’s narratives.

Not serious films and not children’s films. What does that leave? Oh yeah, chick flicks.

A Mighty Girl: great resource for buying toys

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I think I just bought half of the “dolls/ action figures” compiled and recommended by A Mighty Girl, and I don’t even feel guilty about my spree.  I am hoping that I can hold on to the Wonder Woman in her invisible airplane until Christmas, but it is so cool, I don’t know… Toys are so key to imaginary play. When kids are given these kind of tools, instead of plastic hairbrushes, make-up, and dolls to dress, so aggressively marketed to girls, their narratives go wild. You’ve got to check these products out. Some, like the Jane Austen doll, are not available. (BOO-HOO) Several, when you click on them, say that only a few are left. It really makes me get how much of this is about MARKETING. Who knew about these toys? Yes, Wonder Woman remains in her underwear. Baby steps, here. We are desperate for MORE stories featuring female heroes. A much wider variety of costumes and poses are needed in the toys of kidworld. (Does this image show the importance of a pose or what?) But for what’s available out there, A Mighty Girl’s new resource is unmatched.

The humiliation of Karl Rove

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My husband and I just happened to have the awesome luck of stumbling onto Fox News right as Karl Rove accused the conservative network of calling Ohio, and thus the Presidential race, too early. Watching the baffled Fox anchors and staff react to Rove’s stubborn denial of reality was a great TV moment.

All this a day before the Republican party and its big donors tore down Rove for taking $300 million and coming back with nothing. Chuck Schumer rightly pointed out, “If Crossroads were a business and Rove was the CEO he’d be fired for getting poor return for his investors.”

Here’s one funny scene from Fox.

Charlie’s Angels: I’m still a fan

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Last week, when I turned on the TV to put on a DVD, with my kids surrounding me, “Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle” blared into our den.

We had caught the movie in the middle of an action scene featuring all three Angels. My daughters’s mouths dropped open. They were so transfixed that I paused to let them watch, but then the hours of ads started, and I popped on Miyazaki.

But after that, I couldn’t get “Charlie’s Angels” out of my head. With the exception of “The Powerpuff Girls,” I don’t think my daughters had ever witnessed three females working together to save the world. I thought about the looks of delight, excitement, and awe on their faces and wondered if I should let them watch the movie.

Not only did I love the first Charlie’s Angels movie (the second one, “Full Throttle,” dragged) but when I was a kid, I was a huge fan of the TV show. I was eight years old when I started watching, and I loved that it was all about girls. I didn’t have to wait around, bored, to finally see a female saunter in to wander around the margins of the TV show. I also liked that the show was about three girls (I know “women” is correct here, but from my eight year old self point of view, I distinctly remember thinking: it’s all about girls doing stuff.)

Another reason I was a fan of the show was that the Angels were in different disguises every week. I couldn’t wait to see what roles they were all going to play. I think that watching them be different people gave me the idea that multiple identities were possible.

I was inspired by “Charlie’s Angels.” When I was nine years old, I began a novel that when completed was 120 pages, typed, about Kris Monroe (Cheryl Ladd’s character) and her adventures as a girl. My book was called “Look Out! Here Comes Kris” and besides “Charlie’s Angels,” my protagonist was influenced by Ramona, of “Ramona the Pest” fame and, also, my little sister. When I showed my book to my teacher, she asked me to read a chapter a day to my fifth grade class in homeroom. That whole experience helped to solidify my identity as a writer.

So did it matter that “Charlie’s Angels” was “jiggle TV?” Like I said, I was excited to see females get to be the stars of the show. But that is not to say the flowing hair, cleavage, and skinny bodies were lost on me. Early on, I got the importance of “beauty” in a woman’s life, in no small part, from my experience as fan of this show. To me, it seemed like “beauty” was a means to an end. If you wanted to have an exciting life, if you wanted to have adventure, if you wanted things to happen to you, if you were a girl, then first, before any of that, you had to be “beautiful.” I put “beauty” in quotes because I’m referring to the cultural definition of beauty.

One thing I love about Drew Barrymore’s movie is that she mocks that stereotype with the slow-mo flowing hair and exaggerated sexual innuendos. But back to considering the movie for my kids, as I posted just a couple days ago, kids don’t get irony. So would the movie, with all the Cameron Diaz’s butt shaking, be bad for my kids?

Here is what sucks: in 2012, there are still no action-adventure movies where three females work together to save the world. Even in adventure-fantasy books, from classics like Alice of Alice in Wonderland, Dorothy of The Wizard of Oz, and Lucy of Chronicles of Narnia to the contemporary ones like Lyra of The Golden Compass— the female protag is surrounded by a constellation of mostly male characters. When do you get to see females bonding not over men or make-up, but skill?

So the bottom line is I got the movie for kids. Right when I opened the DVD, one of my daughters picked up the box,  turned to her sister and said: “Who do you think is the prettiest?”

I stopped and wondered: is this a bad idea? “Which one is smart? Which one is brave? Which one is fast?” I asked them. But that thought process is hard to generate when the picture shows them all just standing there, skinny, hip-cocked, not doing anything they are in the movie, not driving a race car, breaking into a safe, or making a bomb.

I went ahead and pushed play.

My kids loved the movie. I did, too. But my daughters and I, we’re all waiting for more action-adventure movies starring women, as in plural.

Reel Girl rates “Charlie’s Angels” ***HH***

Women break records to make up 20% of U.S. Senate

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Congratulations women and congratulations Barack Obama!

Let’s get these numbers up to 50%. Obviously, all female politicians aren’t pro-choice, including Senators. With so few women allowed into power, it can be easier for women to achieve with an anti-woman agenda (See Sarah Palin.) But the more women we get into government proportionally, the more supportive the government will be of women. It’s pretty impossible for a country with women in only 16% of power positions to be pro-woman.

About those losses, Richard Mourdock (“And even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen”) Todd Aiken (“If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”) Joe Walsh (“With modern technology and science, you can’t find one instance…there’s no exception for the life of the mother”) perhaps the Republican party should reconsider its policy and start treating women like human beings.

via RH Reality Check