"I don't know if it was a mistake"

Words of wisdom from the Grammy's exec called Ken who was asked to comment on the decision not  to ask Lorde, the only woman in the lineup of nominees for Album of the Year 2018, to perform her own music on the night of the awards ceremony (she was instead asked to be part of a group tribute to Tom Petty. She declined. Go girl!).

Another Grammy's exec, this one called Neil -- hang on, there's a pattern forming here; I don't know if that's a mistake -- offered his view that 'it's always hard' (I doubt that, Neil), but the show they delivered, including 'endless appearances' by Sting and Bono, and a 45-minute opera, was 'the best we could do to put on a really balanced show.' Balance on *this* Neil. 

Timely feminist poem written in the 70s by Jenny Holzer
pinned to Lorde's Grammy night dress in a Time's Up protest.

Huston we have a problem: the world's top music execs in charge of deciding who gets to showcase their talents to the world and ultimately to succeed as artists in that world, if industry support is necessary to that success, which it no doubt is, are called Ken and Neil and are men who fit their generic white-male privileged names to a tedious tee in thinking that blatant gender exclusion is not a form of systemic imbalance and discrimination, or at least who know it is but who have the audacity to go public with this brazen bullshit and to hold up their hands and say: 'I don't know'; 'We did our best'; 'It's hard.'

Good on Lorde's mother for posting this in response to illustrate the systematic nature of the US music industry's discrimination against female artists since the inception of the Grammys, a sexism that is maybe even more brazen today than ever in the push-back against the 2017-18 women-led Me Too and Time's Up movements against gender inequality and male sexual harassment in the entertainment business and beyond.

Your time's almost up, boys; so take courage indeed, girls; 'The worst is a harbinger of the best.'

A Womb With a View of Virginia

If we continue to exaggerate our differences

of sex, race and religion, we risk

becoming united only in

our opposition to

one another; 

the united

fates of

none.

Postscript: This was actually a poem intended for a different text and moment in time, and doesn't quite bend to a celebration of Virginia Woolf's 136th birthday, I agree. 

For Virginia Woolf was the woman who explained to the world, in her example and words, that women must be given the freedom and resources to write 'without hate, without bitterness, without fear, without protest, without preaching.' And I fear Woolf would say that my womb poem fails this test on at least one count. But to serve my little, unoriginal, pun on the womb with a view I have used it here anyway - she does not say anything directly about vanity, but perhaps that's goes without saying.

So in clumsy but sincere tribute, I say happy birthday and thank you, Virginia Woolf. I loved, most of all, riding your Waves. 

 

The Post with the Most

The Post is not obviously a movie about gender politics, but that's what makes it all the...

more effective as a vehicle for challenging gender stereotypes that continue to devalue and overlook what women have done over time to improve the human condition and always with obstacles put in place for them by men. 

And the historical nature of the The Post that was written by a woman and man screenwriting team in 2017, the year that the fight to overcome the presumption that men are better at everything that matters and are more deserving of the top jobs and rewards in life than women went mainstream and global, manages to show us how pervasive this injustice was in the 1970s and how far we think we have come since then, but in actuality how little distance we have travelled. 

Not all reviewers agree with this analysis. 

One reviewer wrote that the gender lament of the film as portrayed by Streep actually 'feels like the wrong performance for these angry #MeToo times', a male reviewer he was and with that word 'angry', a man who shows that he doesn't get it. It's not about 'anger', it's about justice, a goal that encompasses the full spectrum of emotions and is more about solidarity and sisterhood and taking action against injustice than anything as negative and crude as anger.

But some other men are stepping up to the challenge of thinking and writing from a more gender-aware and justice-minded perspective about women (and men), and two of the reviews of The Post written in this country (not published online) have surprised me in this respect by not finding a way to diminish Streep's performance and praise Hanks', but rather openly acknowledging the strength and subtlety of Streep's performance in playing a much more complex role than the one Hanks' character plays, kind of like the difference between the roles that women and men so often play in life in general. 

One writes: 'In the end it is her film' acknowledging the greater acting challenges of the role Streep takes on in portraying the first woman publisher of a major newspaper working amongst men, having inherited the role after her husband died (committed suicide), and while surrounded by men who don't respect her or think she should be there at all. 

Another reviewer commented on how 'watchable' and 'appealing' Streep is in the film, adjectives that are not often heard in public descriptions of women over 60 (over 40) in any setting. 

So although it's no 'Wonder Woman', I think The Post and these sorts of positive and feminist-forward reviews by men represent significant progress in the battle for women's talents, equal and unique, to be recognised by the gender that has resisted and actively opposed this idea for so long. 

I have been reading and watching for this stuff for more than twenty-five years and know how rare it is to find men openly acknowledging women's value in the workplace and beyond. It sounds like a small thing but in my view it is the biggest thing of all. If men can publicly show respect and admiration for women - when and where deserved, of course - then I think we are well on our way to a more equal and empowering world for all, on and off screen.

The strongest feminist moment in the film is when the cocky character Tom Hanks' plays wakes up to the truth of the what his wife (Sarah Paulson) says about that Streep's character having shown a bravery far outstripping his own in deciding to publish the papers and risk going to prison and the end of her family's newspaper for defying the president's injunction against publishing such papers, a truth told to him by the woman who helps him into his coat every morning. 

If all men could be encouraged to wake up to the strength and bravery of women - the kind of bravery shown in the #MeToo movement indeed with women speaking out knowing they will be hated and blacklisted for it, as they have been - while understanding and admitting to themselves and others the limits of their own bravery for not doing nearly enough to fight this injustice in the past, then brave they, and we, will be. 

So Streep's performance as the brave Katherine Graham is not 'the wrong performance' for our 'angry times,' it is exactly the right performance for our unjust times to show us how far we might have come had we recognised what Hanks' character is made to recognise in the film, but no doubt failed to recognise at the time, and that our failure to progress has had little to do with the existence or not of a free and unfettered press. Indeed as the 2016 election shows, if there is one factor that brought in Trump and his mission to destroy the free press - and god knows what else - it is the ongoing resistance of men (and many women, too) to the idea that women can and must be allowed to play their vital part in leading us forward into a brighter and freer world.  

The first First Baby

Jacinda and Clarke, the parents to be of the first First Baby

You know times are a-changing for the better and the braver when the leader of your country announces she is pregnant.

Fittingly this happened today in New Zealand, the land that was first to grant women the vote.

And the Dad, the third First Man we've had in this country, will be the primary caregiver of the world's first First Baby that is due in June, which will be another first.

It's a brave new world indeed, and I for one can't wait to see how well these two trailblazers show us how it can be done, they both seem ideally suited for the tasks.   

Ice is nice

Given that justice might be likened to a drug for the feeling of euphoria it brings that is all too often fleeting with the high hope fading and in its wake, a legacy of disappointment and failure to live up to the spirit of justice, I think I might be forgiven this cheap pun ('ice' being meth's street name, if the American movies I watch are to be believed) to mark Iceland's recent move to make it illegal to pay women less than men for equal work, adding a burden of proof on all employers to show that they are in fact complying with the law and actual punishments if they are found to be not complying. Imagine that! Actual punishments for non-compliance of a gender equality law. What is the world coming to?!

 
This is a world first indeed, though equal pay legislation has been in place there and in all democratic countries around the world since the 1970s, but has remained unequal not least because the majority of law enforcers in these countries have continued to be men who, it turns out, are not so fussed in practice about the equality and justice for all they have written endless theoretical treatise on ever since the Enlightenment in the 1770s.

But not in Iceland anymore. Today in Iceland equality becomes real, in large part because that country boasts an equal number of male and female parliamentarians. The commitment is to have 100% compliance with the law of equal pay for men and women by 2020.

So although I have no actual idea if ice is nice (I like a cube or two in my vodka), and have never been to Iceland, where there is clearly a great deal more to be charmed and chilled by than actual ice, I think this practical commitment to equality between the sexes and to honouring those Icelandic women who walked off their jobs, in home and out, to fight for this equality forty-plus years ago, is a sign that the world, one country cube at a time, is finally becoming actually enlightened to the practical challenges that real equality and justice between the sexes (and between humans) presents, thanks to the women who are enlightening those other people in the world who are not women. And that, my friends, is nice. Nice ice.   

Black is the New Golden and Women are the New...

In her presidential speech accepting the Cecile B. DeMille Award for outstanding contributions to the world of entertainment, Oprah Winfrey spoke passionately about her pride in being the first black woman to have won the award (awarded since 1952 to 49 men and 14 women in total), and about how she was inspired to pursue her dreams when watching as a little girl in 1964 Sidney Poitier become the first black person to win an academy award for best actor.

But overall her speech and the Golden Globes ceremony in general was a celebration of our times in which women are speaking up to men in power and saying no to their abuses of that power, with most women at the ceremony wearing black in solidarity with those women who have spoken out as part of the Me Too Movement and Oprah saying to a standing ovation:

“For too long, women have not been heard or believed if they dared to speak their truth to the power of those men. But their time is up.” 

Also in solidarity with this feminist movement the Big Little Lies actresses brought female activists to the ceremony as their guests rather than their male partners, while a female-centred and anti-sexual-abuse-themed film, Three Billboards, won best film and various other awards. 

So it would seem that this is not a passing news story or a political moment in time to be replaced by the next big noise, at least not if the powerful women of the world, like Oprah, whose mother was a domestic cleaner, and like all of us in our own brave, little and big ways, have anything to do with it. And they/we do.

Oprah for president 2020? Sounds like a golden idea to me. 

   

    

Off with a hiss and a roar

The year off to a stormy start with the storm chasers out in force at our local Takapuna beach this morning at King Tide after a full moon last night and record high winds this morning. 

Not so much fun for campers... 

Single file out of the North Shore this morning before the road was closed. Hopefully it's not a case of an ill wind that forebodes no good for this critical year.