November 19, 2007
The Color of Love
I really like this movie however I feel that it will not be part of my final blog. The film is great and there are many aspects that deal with the lives of Iranian women. However the entire basis of the film is the notion of love and how it is expressed in the Iranian culture. Really I feel that this movie could be the basis of a whole other blog, discussing the portrayal of love in different countries, within differing cultures and religions, etc. Good movie I recommend it but not what I was looking for for the blog.
Changing Paths
Changing Paths, was pretty awesome. I was worried that the film would be too reactionary and I would not be able to relate it to any TF theories. I was wrong. The films was pefect in showing how an NGO can use TF ways of approaching global issues can really work.
The continuing and rising influence of cultural or religious justifications for women's inequality is one important reason why it is so significant for women's rights to be recognized as human rights--Okin, pg. 31
The problem is that existing theories, compliations and prioritizations of human rights have been constructed after a male model-- Okin, pg 28
November 22, 2007
Sign of a Bad TF Documentary: #1 Using a voice over translation on top of the actual voice. ----This practice has sprung mostly out of the broadcast news tradition. Broadcast news never has time to loose, so it is most efficient for them to use a voice over translation. Unfortunately in the documentary film this practice is, I feel disrespectful and makes the person invisible. The audience may not know the language but one can often feel the intention of a phrase based on inflection tone, etc. However throwing someone’s voice over that takes those things away and all we are left with are the words. and we all know it isn't always just about the words it is about the delivery. Also I feel that this can make the person being interviewed invisible.
November 23, 2007
Honorable Murder
i can't even form words right now. Absolutely horrible, honest, and illuminating stories of women in Jordan who live in a culture where the practice of honor killings is not only allowed but also celebrated.
Although states promise security to their women citizens, many do not deliver, especially when the violence occurs in the private sphere. -- Vickers pg. 223
But all women are vulnerable to violence as long as systematic male dominance and the ideologies that support it persist. –“Thinking about Violence” by Jill Vickers in “Gender, Race and Nation: A global perspective”
November 27, 2007
Blossoms of Fires
Okay I fully understand that the women and men in this film are perpetuating gender and cultural essentialisms but a part of me didn’t care. This film makes it very easy to get lost in the beautiful scenery and colors of the women's traditional dress. The attitudes of the Zapotec women are refreshing, compared to many of the documentaries I have seen of other women in Mexico.
While gender essentialism often proceeds to assume and construct sharp binaries about the qualities, abilities, or locations of "men" and "women, " cultural essentialism assumes and constructs sharp binaries between "western culture" and " Non-western cultures" or between "western culture” and particular "other' cultures. --Narayan pg. 82
November 29, 2007
Dual Injustices
Wow. I have seen this film before but without fail every time I see it I get that same rock in my stomach feeling. I think that my own Mexican heritage is the reason that I react the way I do when I see films that focus on Mexico and people of Hispanic heritage. I am the kind of person who cries when I hear news stories about the atrocities committed against women. However when the subject matter is this close to home, when I can look at the faces and see mine, it is different. It isn't that I care more at all. It is more like it scares me more. yea that is it scares me.
November 30, 2007
La Boda
Good. Unfortunately is was hard to immediately see the connection between our readings and the film. The film is primarily about Elizabeth’s wedding. However through her interviews and during the wedding preparation many aspects of the migrant workers life is revealed. This movie by far was the most personal for me. That was my life, my mother grew up the daughter of migrant workers and graduated early (16) so she could work the fields and help my grandmother with her four younger sisters. Elizabeths sisters in the film just left school, one as early as 6th grade! While my mother was no longer a migrant worker when she began her family the effects of her life in the fields has impacted our lives. Both my brothers worked in the fields in the summer, most boys in my hometown did, and even I spent a summer working in a packing plant that was right next to a large field. My mother is now disabled she is missing two disks in her back in the vertebrae in between ahs fused together. My mother did not seek additional medical until it was too late and replacing the disks would have required that her back be broken in two places. When I asked her how she could have waited so long and stood the pain, she told me she had pain since she worked the fields. Other aspects that I could relate to was the planning of the wedding, every celebration we had had padrinos, my Quinceanera, all the weddings I went to, baptisms, all of it. And the preparing of the food, I can’t even count how many times my step-father and my brothers had a pig or dear in the back cutting it up for meat. Elizabeth’s dream is simple, she hopes to not be a migrant worker, her husband to receive his legalization papers, and maybe they could have enough to rent a house (she hopefully says, a two bedroom), that has a kitchen, living room, bedrooms and a bathroom (inside). While it may seem extreme this film was made in 2000, the reality Elizabeth lives with is that she has lived in housed where there was no bathroom inside. Again something I could again relate to, until the early nineties, my favorite great-aunt (who was my grandmother figure) lived in a home with no proper plumbing (yes they had an outhouse). I am a bit disappointed in my review of the film, I just can’t help but feel too connected to this piece, I am not sure how some of the writers we have studied this semester do it. How can Mohanty, and Pratt apply their TF theories while being so ‘close’ to the subject matter. Finding readings to support my review for the other movies (even the Zapotec women and the Dual Injustice films ) was fairly easy. I know the issues are their gendered work, gender and cultural essentialism, displacement, globalization, capitalism, and on and on. However it has been hard to really write about this film. The truth is I know a lot of Elizabeths, I am only one generation away from being Elizabeth. I know her face, her accent, her slang. While some of the other films may deal with horrific global injustices that tend to draw more attention, this film has touched me more than any of them. I have sadly found that my quest to understand TF theories and become more aware of the goings on of Transnational Feminists, I find that having to really look at the injustices perpetuated upon my own culture is overwhelming and I can finally really understand why some groups of women may reject western feminists attempts to solve their problems, and right the wrongs they feel are being done to them.
December 1, 2007
China Blue—
Amazing movie, I was shocked at the level of access Micah X. Peled was able to get. Although at the end of the movie there is a note explaining that the film crew had been arrested and a lot of their footage had been confiscated which isn’t surprising. I think the factory owner may have realized how he couldn’t gloss over the condition of the factory for long. Especially when he delayed the payday of his workers for two months. Not to mention then that Jasmine didn’t receive a first check because the factory often keeps it as a ‘deposit.’ I always pictured that I could be one of those filmmakers like Herzog who would not be afraid to go into jungles and really expose my subject matter, but after seeing what Peled must have gone through and looking back on the other docs I have seen I have to admit that the prospect of making a film like this is scary. What it means to provide a representation of these places, and people is threatening to the people who oppress and use them. Although it is scary, knowing what they are willing to do to stop this type of film tells me that the work is important, we live in a visual age, people don’t read newpapers, the magazines they read are about the daily lives of celebrities. While most people wouldn’t actively seek out a film with a message of social justice, there is a higher chance that someone will see a film about the denim factories in China rather than read an essay about the factories in China.
We must keep in mind how the changes described as 'globalization' interact with issues of women's security from violence--Vickers, pg. 223
December 3, 2007
I cannot even begin to put into word how I feel when I see documentary. I have cried, laughed and become incensed at the world that theses films have introduced me to. I would like to repeat something that I brought up in my Research memo, films can be an extraordinary tool in attempts to change the way people see and understand the world. When broadcast television began to flourish the talk of the world being a small place began. Well today the world is tiny; people can actually see real female circumcisions on the internet. Money can be donated to NGOs with the click of a button; atrocities can be revealed and shared with the entire world in less than a minute. The representation of these women, these places, and these situations it is vital. The Christian children network has raised millions of dollars and the reason is the visual representations of real children living in extreme poverty. Movies like Born Into Brothels reveals the entire world of the red light districts, people then (who in many cases have never thought of it) realize that the women working there are living in a world in which their entire value is dependent on their genitalia and that the brothel are filled with children will take the place of their parents
I am so happy that I chose this project for my final; I have to admit this has been hard. I will continue the blog after this semester is over so please continue to check the site.
