Target Women: Vampires

In light of my recent post about Vampire Knight, I thought I'd post the most recent Target Women episode by Sarah Haskins, the comedic light of my and Maggie's lives.

In case you're unfamiliar with it, Target Women is Sarah Haskins' segment on Current TV's Infomania, which comes on every Thursday at 10 on Current. You can also watch all of her episodes at Current.com. 

Quick Review: The Scar (2002)

I know it's taboo to review a book before you're done with it, but I just wanted to give a quick shout-out to one of the best fantasy/sci-fi books I have ever read. China Mieville's The Scar is not only a fantastic piece of literature, but it has one of my favorite female protagonists in a fantasy/sci-fi book so far.

Let me tell you some of my favorite things. The protagonist is a middle-aged female linguist named Bellis Coldwine. She is somewhat detached, very guarded and highly intelligent. She has several lovers throughout the book and has no intention of marrying or falling in love. She is a normal human, no super powers. She is not beautiful, in fact she is barely even physically described. Are you in love yet? God, I am.

Also, Mieville drops these fabulously subtle hints about gender inequalities in the city of her birth. She publishes her work as B. Coldwine, a move that she calls a "harmless little piece of obfuscation"  so that people won't judge her work by her gender. Another character, Uther Doul, describes gender relations in Bellis' home city of New Crobuzon as "A certain sacralization of women. A contempt masked as adoration." Of course, Mieville is commenting on the status of gender relations in his home city of London, the model for the steampunk New Crobuzon. These statements make Bellis's character so much more intriguing for me, now that I know that she comes from a society like mine in which women aren't exactly given a fair shake. They also garner more respect for Mr. Mieville, as it lets me know that he is in touch with some of the subtleties of my issues.

The fact that Mieville even writes of gender issues in a book not entirely about gender issues has me in love. I wasn't expecting a particularly feminist read here, and I was oh so pleasantly surprised. There are many other reasons to check out this book even beside the female protagonist. Mieville is a highly inventive writer, a master at race creation and civilization building (he has an MA in social anthropology) and knows how to construct a great plot. Also there's a character in there with tentacles and gills, so I'd probably be reading this if it were a treatise on chauvinism. I can't help it, I just love me some octopuses. Over and out!

Manga Review: Vampire Knight（ヴァンパイア騎士 )

So I've decided to take a quick look at a comic that has recently taken the shoujo world by storm: Vampire Knight. As Maggie can tell you, vampire stories have seen a huge uprising recently in YA Lit (Twilight, Vampire Kisses, etc.), television (True Blood is the new one on HBO), and film (the recent film adaptation of Twilight), so it's no wonder that a manga with a title like Vampire Knight would be flying off the shelves. I should preface this post with a disclaimer: I don't like vampire stories. As a whole I find them rather contrived, as they all rest on that popular "she's a girl, he's a vampire" dilemma wherein he has to hold in his raging urge to rip her throat out  (read: man lust) to preserve her innocence (read: virginity) all in the midst of fierce sexual tension (read: high school brand hormones). However, I figured I would look into this one to see if it had any new play on the tired out gender cliches. And I'll go ahead and tell you, the short answer is no.

The main protagonist is Yuuki ("gentle princess"... ugh) Cross, the spunky and clumsy yet caring, innocent and unknowingly super hot adopted daughter of the Cross Academy's headmaster. The academy is made up of a Day Class for normal, human students and a Night Class for the vampire students, who are all really hot. The head of the vampire class is really really hot Kaname Kuran (seeing a pattern?), a "pure blood" vampire who happened to save Yuuki from a mean, ugly vampire when she was little. The other protagonist is Zero Kiryuu, Yuuki's angsty (hot) childhood friend who is totally in love with her who also happens to be a vampire, because he was bitten by one when a "pure blood" vampire killed his whole family...whew. I wish I were making this up, I really do. Zero is my least favorite type of character: the hot friend who secretly loves the girl, is super protective of her but a huge dick to her face. And of course, I am betting 5 bucks right now that this is the guy she will end up with.

For the first, oh, fourteen chapters, Yuuki is the only notable female character in the manga. I am serious. There is one other girl who has like seven lines, which are all about how she hates Yuuki and wants to bone Kaname. So the manga has already fantastically failed The Bechdel Test. What else? Yuuki has little to no agency in the entire manga. Typical of vampire stories, she is constantly in dangerous situations from which she needs to be saved by Zero or Kaname, only to have her savior slather all over her neck and then push her away so he can hate himself for giving in to his raging lust. She has a fighting stick but she never, ever uses it, or else it is knocked out of her hand in the first five seconds so that she can get slathered on by her attacker before getting slathered on by her saviour. Because of the sexual implications of vampirism, every dangerous encounter that Yuuki has is colored by the possibility of rape, and basically every safe encounter she has with Kaname or Zero is sexual. Sometimes there is some uncomfortable blurring between the two. So far, the manga is a complete fantasy for women who want to surrender to hot guys who are mean to them.

I'm only fourteen chapters in (and I'm impressed I got this far), but I think I will continue because apparently a new girl is about to enter the scene. If she is what I predict (an evil, beautiful but ultimately innocuous rival), I will certainly throw the thing down in disgust. If not, maybe I'll be back to report some more. For now, I'm giving myself a break from bad shoujo and reading some China Mieville. Goodnight everyone.

Movie Review: 交霊 (Séance) [2000]

Halloween is coming! 

And seeing as it is my favorite holiday, I'm doing a few reviews of horror films to celebrate the spookiness. I'm a minor horror geek, in that I have a love for gore flicks but they are by no means my passion. Horror geekdom (like the rest of geek culture) is still largely a male-dominated area (though in my experience, some of the most hardcore fans of the genre are women). The reason women typically stay away probably has less to do with the fact that it's "scary," and more to do with the American slasher flick's origins as a backlash to the second-wave feminist movement. Everyone knows the stereotypes; the "slut" (read: sexually-empowered woman) is always the first to die while the virgin is always the heroine. The intersection of sexual mores and gore has resulted in a recent surge of "torture porn," in which a sexualized female body is mutilated and dismantled. With all this fun stuff, it's no wonder that women tend to stay away from the genre. Even so, the horror genre holds a certain attraction over me. Like science fiction, I think the horror genre is fertile ground for exploring societal phobias. The film I am about to review is a great example of this fact.

As part of our October Horror-thon, my boyfriend and I recently watched Kiyoshi Kurosawa's 2000 film, Séance. The film revolves around a husband and wife who are drawn into a kidnapping plot that results in the death of an innocent young girl. The main character, Junco, is a dissatisfied housewife with psychic powers who holds séances for grieving families. When a kidnapped young girl shows up at the couple's house, the couple decides to use the situation to their own advantage. Junco, in an attempt to legitimize her skills as a psychic, leads the cops along a fake trail while hiding the child in her home. When the child mysteriously dies, the couple is besieged by the child's angry spirit and creepiness ensues.

Kurosawa's film exemplifies a universal paranoia concerning shifting gender roles in the home.  In the beginning of the film, the husband is the bread-winner—a sound engineer for a TV station—while Junco stays at home. Junco repeatedly expresses her dissatisfaction with housewifery. She tries to enter the work force, but her psychic powers allow her to see disturbing visions surrounding customers at work so she quits and returns home. Dissatisfied and out of options, Junco jumps at the opportunity to prove herself as a psychic when 

the kidnapped child appears at her house. If she were to attain respectability among the police, her name would be disseminated in the news and she would never be in want of paying clientele. It is this possibility that drives her to concoct the bizarre plan that leads to the child's death. 

It is strange to me that such a reasonable desire would result in the death of a child. Children are often used to make a moral point in film, or function as a film's moral center. If this film is to be read similarly, the death of the child would indicate that Junco's desire is morally wrong. Furthermore, I want to note that the film couple is childless. In Japanese culture (as well as in American), there is a societal expectation for couples to have children (for instance: try to recall a heterosexual thirty-something married couple portrayed in a film that has no children, and no explanation as to why they don't have children). Couples who do not choose to have children can even be regarded as "selfish," as if their disinterest in children is correlated with their interest in themselves. Keeping these conventions in mind, it is easy to see the subtext: Junco's desire to enter the workforce is selfish and morally corrupt. If she had been content with her present life, the child would have survived, and the metaphorical film "family" would have remained intact.

I don't mean to assign this viewpoint to Kurosawa himself. The screenplay was adapted from a 1961 novel by British writer Mark McShane entitled Séance on a Wet Afternoon. Because I'm not familiar with the book, I can't say for sure exactly what Kurosawa changed. Regardless, the film presents a perfect example of the social fear surrounding shifting gender roles in the home. By seeking her own power Junco upsets the balance of the film "household," resulting in the death of her husband and "child."

letters of introduction

Welcome to Grrl Geeks!

Before we get down to business, we feel some explanation and a little history is necessary. In high school, Maggie and I were socially defined by our geekiness. Like many of our fellow girl geeks, we were awkward, intelligent and somewhat socially stunted. However, we had great passion and imagination concerning the things we loved most. We spent hours discussing the various philosophies of Trigun, and we cried our way through the ending scenes of Final Fantasy X. We read His Dark Materials and Harry Potter. We played Magic cards, we read comics, and delighted in all things that pertained to our geeky subculture without much discretion.

When we went to our separate colleges we began subconsciously distancing ourselves from most of the things we enjoyed as teenagers. Thrust into new environments, we became more and more conscious of the poisonous attitudes toward women that inhabit our culture. We further developed our own identities; I explored my queerness while Maggie found female empowerment. We both found ourselves outraged at some of the messages about women that we had willingly accepted as participants in geek culture. And so, we each came to an impasse in our identity formations; were we to ignore the blatant sexism in the geek products we consumed and thus compromise our feminist identities? Or should we wholly denounce our geeky interests for the sake of the cause and deny a huge aspect of ourselves? We found neither acceptable, so we founded this.

This blog is an attempted reconciliation of geek culture and feminist thought. We believe that by maintaining a critical eye, we can sort out the media that promotes unhealthy cultural attitudes toward women from the media that challenges and empowers us. Although historically a male-dominated culture, women are beginning to even the playing field as both producers and consumers of geek products. And they deserve a voice. Girl geeks should no longer be required to act like "one of the boys" and objectify female characters when playing their favorite games. Girl geeks shouldn't be made to feel awkward about their bodies because their favorite anime characters are unrealistically proportioned. And above all, a girl geek should never feel like she shouldn't speak out about what she feels is an unfair treatment of her sex, just because her boy geek friends will make fun of her for being "too sensitive."

We dissect geek culture because it's what we love. We wouldn't be doing this if we didn't think that geek culture could hugely benefit from a feminist reading. We would greatly appreciate it if readers would leave any defensiveness they have about their hobbies in order to partake in unfettered intellectual discussion about them.

We are grrls and we are geeks! Let's start the discussion!

Sarah

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Fellow Feminists!

There isn't really much I can add to Sarah's brilliant and inspired introduction, but since I can't seem to keep my big fat mouth shut (ever, in any situation) I would like to take a moment to stress how our intention in the creation of this blog is ultimately one of celebration. We are not trying to roundly dismiss geek culture as sexist--instead, we are looking to uncover and support those amazing comics, web comics, video games, manga, anime, YA lit novels (my personal poison), fantasy and science fiction novels, and any other geek products that break through the rampant sexism of the industry, that encourage us to love ourselves and our bodies, and that tell us women really do kick ass (the sneaking suspicion we've had since high school despite mass media telling us otherwise). That isn't to say we won't call out the total sexist bullshit that we come across (Twilight, I've got your number). Or that we won't pan the banal and boring (...I'm still talking to you, Twilight), but we also hope to promote a whole lot of awesome shit.

As you can tell from Sarah's letter, we were not very discriminative in high school. We watched shitty, self-hating anime like it was our job. And we definitely went through that whole girl-bashing, gender-role enforcing yaoi thing and somehow made it out in one piece. In fact, I think our earlier lack of discrimination gave us the kind of exposure that we need to be informed and helpful (and empowered) critics.

And while we love all things geek, since we are just starting out on this blogging adventure we will probably be sticking to our strong points for awhile (We're both huge reading geeks, and so you'll probably see a LOT of book reviews to start with) we are serious about covering as much of geek culture as possible. So just stick with us! It will be an excellent ride!

Luv,
Maggie