Re: Re: He Missed The Point & RE:The Man, and his ideas about my sex.

Double decker blog special!

Re: Re: He Missed The Point
I did my work sample over Ebert's review, and I don't think I've ever changed my opinion over someone so quickly. Like you said, he completely missed the point. I found his comments egotistical. I think he becomes a terrible reviewer when he is made uncomfortable. Rossellini standing naked on the lawn is jarring to Ebert evoking inside him the idea that women need to be protected and he seems to project this beyond the movie to Rossellini. He seems to feel that Rossellini is being used to perform masterfully as joke in an insincere movie despite the uncompromising vision of Lynch. This is a bit of a rehash of what I said in my work sample but I figured I would share it.

RE:The Man, and his ideas about my sex.
"It is in the Man’s best interests for us to fear our own nudity and sexuality."
Word. It seems to me like that having women fight with their sexuality allows men to restrict women further and keep their social and economic dominance. A promiscuous woman is labeled a slut while a promiscuous man is labeled a player and someone to be admired. Its pretty unfair, but there is a reason for it outside of social mores. It is much easier for a woman to randomly find someone on the street willing to sleep with her than it is for a man to do the same. It seems like it is in the best interest for a woman to be monogamous while it is in man's best interest to spread his seed. If we are to stop women from being labeled sluts for being in touch with their own sexuality then we must divorce ourselves from the idea that it is in a woman's best interest to be monogamous.

"Why are we told to be ashamed of nudity? Why IS pornography so damn lucrative?"
I blame the Puritanical origins of this country for its stupid attitude on nudity.
I imagine part of the reason pornography is so lucrative is because it provides some escapism of personal feelings in a safe way. It allows for people to live out their sexual fantasies without anybody getting hurt or offended. This obviously doesn't extend to child pornography and anything similar to it. It also allows us to be vile in secret and return to our public selves in a short time.

"How do we go change any of this? Change our perception of nudity and sex? Change the media’s use of sex? How do we change any of this censorship? Change, Yolande, the importance of thorough investigative reporting? How do we change the media we have been handed?"

The answer lies within ourselves. If we are to make this society egalitarian, then we must be the ones to have these attitudes. I dont think we would be able to change everyone's minds who live now or even of some who will live in the future, but we can start to have that attitude ourselves and make that attitude acceptable simply because it would exist in large numbers.