Gremlins in the system????

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TBOR- more thoughts and an explanation of sorts

Some more thoughts and some already stated on the Book of Revelation that I wrote about in my other blog. I will no doubt at some later stage return to the topic of sexual crime and man as victim, since that is what the film is about and my reason for disliking it is for turning what should have been a powerful look into the debilitating nature of this kind of crime was turned more into an erotic fantasy that has completely and utterly castrated the whole original concept of the film in the first place.  Forgive the repetiveness, but it just bugged me so much I would have to dig for a week to remove the bug from my ass.  So here’s what I wrote in the other blog,

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Today is all about procrastination. I am putting off doing the ironing.

So I thought I’d tell you all a little story, that really isn’t a story at all, is just me rambling and doing what I do best, avoiding the mountain of ironing that awaits.

Anyone who has ever met us would know that the husband and I are completely different (and not just by genitalia) I mean we are totally different. The only thing we have in common (aside from our offspring) is that we are both rabid and fervent Rugby League fanatics. (He moreso than I)
I am a lover of words. As a child books were my heroin. I shot up volumes of Shakespear, snorted Bronte and Austin, smoked the great books of the western world and ate literature like candy. I was brought up in a house that encouraged political passion and debate at dinner, that was socially aware and lived an excessively bohemian existence.

My husbands world was very different. It was working class full of 6-5 and overtime. Chops and sausages and dinner infront of the tv. Camping once a year and kids sitting in the car waiting for Dad to remember them and bring them a packet of twisties until he was done drinking at the pub and took them home.

The closest thing to culture my husband had ever experienced was the time his mum accidentally bought natural yogurt instead of sour cream at the supermarket. The only literature he had ever read was The Hobbit, that he was introduced to in his year 7 english/lit class. It was the only book he had ever read before he met me, when he was 20.

So it really should have come as no surprise that he thought Michelangelo was a Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtle, that Virgil was a thunderbird (not a poet) and that real men don’t eat quiche. Which means we see the world in completely different ways. Somehow we work, we have over the years rubbed off on each other, each muting and magnifying certain aspects of each other. (Though no one in his family will watch the news with me, apparently my ranting at the tv scares them)

So it would be only natural that our tastes in movies are completely different. Now I don’t mind the odd war movie. (In fact we own pretty much all of them including every epsiode of MASH) My husband is as Army as they come. Had we been americans he’d have been the best goddam marine the US Army would have ever seen. So his taste naturally lies in War and action movies.

Me? Well for one thing I love to laugh. I especially like intelligent comedy. Wit, puns, dry, black, sarcasm, it’s all good. but I do have a ridiculous love for the kind of movies that deconstruct boundaries and force us to face taboo. (Bad Boy Bubby comes to mind as the most successful movie to combine humour and taboo in the most engaging of ways, making Australian Film a force to be reckoned with and then leave us wondering why we have failed to make such a remarkable impact since.)

Enter a small DVD, Australian and poorly recieved by critics. I wanted to see it for myself. Had to see it for myself. It promised to tear down gender stereo-types, make us see men and women in ways we had never seen them before. At least that was the promise. The husband of course was resistant to the idea. but since he really is a good husband he sat through it with me. And thank god he did. Without his pithy quips and his pained expression and the six pack he was forced to scull simply to endure the first 20 minutes had me laughing out loud where otherwise I would have fallen asleep before Greta Sacchi had even uttered the words “I want you to dance without ego”.

Now, normally when I write about movies I have watched, it’s because I like them so I warn the reader of any spoiler I might accidently allow to pass onto the screen in my desire to talk about what I have seen, however, in the case of The Book of Revelations….this is not the case.
1. I did not like it Sam I am, I would not watch it in the can, I could not would not Sam I am.
2. Spoilers? What spoilers? The whole movie is nothing more than a slow torturous sucking of 119 minutes of your life that could have been better spent ironing or cleaning the kitty litter tray.
3. I will tell you everything, to spare you the indiginity of having to watch it for yourself.

Daniel is a dancer. (modern ballet or something, whatever it is, it is mind numbingly dull and I would rather have my eyeballs peeled like grapes then watch an actual performance)
His sour puss girlfriend (also a dancer) sends him out for cigarettes and he doesn’t come back. Greta Sacchi is the choreographer and Collin Friells (the only saving grace of the movie) is a cop who was once married to her, she asks him to look for Daniel.

Daniel returns after 12 days. During which he was abducted by 3 hooded and masked women who chained him to the floor and used him as their sexual puppet. (An idea my husband thought would be awesome in typical testosterone fashion) What ensues is Daniels downward spiral as he attempts to come to grips with his victimisation and goes in pursuit of his attackers ending in a violent episode that really, leaves one feeling kind of flat. More of an anti-climax really.

The movie was supposed to offer up the role of victim for examination. Man as victim in particular and the stigma attatched to men as victims of sexual crime. (And woman as perpetraitor) Unfortunately the whole tone and mood of the movie falls flat on its own unemotional delivery. The dialogue is stilted and unanimated. No one seems to ever get really angry until the final climax, which in itself seems to be contained rather than the explosive finale one would expect.

I realise the awkwardness of the acting and direction is meant to reflect on the awkwardness of the material, but it didn’t work. It touched lightly on the subject, for example where Daniel goes to the police to report that “his friend” was abducted by three women and the two police officers laugh “Half his luck” and so the crime remains unreported.

It touched lightly on it when chained to the ground Daniel begs to be freed so he can use the bathroom and he is left there, lying in his own urine until one of the hooded women comes to his aide, removes his clothing and gives him a slightly erotic sponge bath. If they wanted to truly debase him they would have left him completely naked and chained, exposed in the same way a man would leave a woman. It seemed to want to challenge the generalisations but failed to really pull through. Probably the most frightening thing he underwent was when they released his wrists and ankles and instead chained him to the wall by his balls.

Daniel then leaves his dance company and returns to the spot on the road he was dumped, to trace back his steps in an effort to seek out his assailants. In my husbands words, “You gotta commend his tactics, screw every woman you meet in an effort to find the three.” Which is basically what he does. Because his abusers allowed him to see their naked bodies and the identifying marks by which he could some day indentify them. (One had a tatoo on her hip, one had a tatoo on her breast and one had a big birth mark on her ass)

Throughout the movie the husband would pipe up with the same machoistic reactions as the cops. Half his luck, go with it buddy just go with it. It was a highly erotic movie with sex scenes being somewhat explicit. Not XXX explicit but certainly explicit enough for the R rating. What was lost on my husband was the movies subtle attempt to show that this was infact rape. When there is no sexual consent, it is a sexual crime to continue to engage in a sexual act with someone who has expressed no desire to be involved.

It was however slightly more successful in showing just how debilitating this kind of crime is on men. On the stigma atatched to reporting the crime. On the debate that if he was able to perform then obviously you can’t really class that as rape now can we? of course we can. Sexual stimulation will achieve the required result even if one party is unwilling. In the case of men, more so, since anatomically it does seem to have a will of it’s own. It does open up a lot of points to address but never really does it adequately enough.

I believe most will still see this movie as three women seducing a man rather than three women objectifying and raping a man. Because the film fails to really go to the great depths of villification. It has swept them aside and replaced them with erotocism, which damages the whole plot.

Collin Friels as a cop who specialises in sexual crimes, is the only one who brings any real warmth, persona and life to the film. He is fluid and emotive, and yet he is the only alive thing in a world of dancers where their art itself relies on emotion, fluidity and passion, and yet they all seem devoid of emotion at all.

The cinematography is pretty good. The scenes of the melbourne alley ways where Daniel is abducted are beautifully done. But otherwise, the movie holds no real appeal. What it promises it fails to deliver.

119 minutes of wasted time. The husband now gloats.

God I hate it when he’s right.

the pitfalls of parenting

This afternoon I had an interesting talk with my sons teacher. It was parent/ teacher interview time again. Now I have a pretty odd sense of humour, I like toilet humour, I like dark humour, I like dry, droll and pithy. I am sarcasm, I love puns.  We laugh a lot in this family.  Trying to have a serious conversation with any of us is a painful experience. We have a tendency to get all humourific on your ass.

My kids go to a  Catholic School. My sons teacher is fabulous. She has a pretty good sense of humour, (thank the stars) which is just as well since she’s teaching my kid.

My son is visually impaired. He has monocular vision and the sight he does have in his seeing eye is starting to deteriorate…thank fully at a slow pace so far…touch wood.

So her first concern was his hand writing. Which has always been an issue. Plus the kid is lazy, he is capable of writing legibly, he chooses not to.  His math is coming along well, he still has a few problems with long division but over the next few weekends we can fix that. (My kids are geeks, they ask me to do maths with them on weekends. I can’t think where they get it from)

but this is pretty good given the kid skipped a grade.

When she cleared her throat and said to me, “Now I’m not sure how to put this delicately….” I will admit to a moment of panic….a  moment of What the hell did he do? Did he call someone a Smeg head again? AND then tell them what smegma meant? (He did this in play school- he only ever attended the one term)  I was literally ready to sink through the floor and listen to a sermon on age appropriate veiwing for my kid.

but then she said, “….seems to have a flatulence problem.”

Well, I couldn’t help it, I broke up laughing. The issue is my kid farts too much. And it’s no surprise. The kid can’t go more than 10 minutes without cutting the cheese. And he really stinks. The air in his bedroom is CHUM. So chunky you can carve it. We literally take a deep breath before opening the door, run in, tuck him in and run out again before taking another breath. The kid has the most toxic ass known to man kind. I thought he was storing it all up at school and letting it go at home.

His teacher brought it up because she was worried about it interferring with his social development. (Apparently the girls won’t go near him) I have been wondering more and more recently over his prolific rear emissions, I’m betting his carbon footprint is enormous just on gases alone, so I am taking him to the doctor next week. I think my boy may have a food intolerance.  (And I think I will get his little brother checked out while I am at it, his bum is pretty funky too)

I never ever thought I’d see the day where the point of order at a P/T interview was over how often a child breaks wind. Poor kid, and being the wonderful parents that we are he has had to endure nothing but fart jokes and name calling since.

And no, I don’t feed the kid beans. But I am worried that some day his claim to fame will be that he can fart the alphabet, in six langauges.

The Book of Revelation (incomplete thoughts)

 The husband and I  sat down to watch The Book Of Revelation.  Now TBOR is an Australian film. It was directed by Ana Kokkinos and honestly I hate agreeing with the husband on this note the movie quite frankly sucked.  It had so much promise. (Well it could have….had it been written better, directed better. )

One word….Ballet! Now, I am not a ballet going type. I hired the movie on the premise that it would deconstruct the idea of stereotyped gender rolls, make me rethink the male as victim and woman as aggressor, when really all it did was suck the life out of you for 119minutes.  But oh the dance scenes….it was like having my fingernails pulled. It was slow and torturous and if not for my husbands pithy comments and pained expression that made me laugh out loud I probably would have fallen asleep before Greta Sacchi even uttered I want you to dance without ego.

It did nothing to address man as victim save for a few small moments when Daniel goes to the police station to report that his “friend” had been abducted by three women and he was promptly laughed at.

The dialogue was stilted and awkward and though I am sure it was meant to be, to protray the stilted and awkwardness of the material, it really didn’t work for the film on any level.

So Daniel (our hero of the film) is abducted by three women. Three hooded women who also wear masks. They chain him up and for 12 days they use him as their sexual play thing. (My husband meanwhile is sitting there wondering why this is a bad thing)  The point is meant to be that men can be victims too. That being seduced by three women is very different to being chained to the ground and made to perform for three women. (Something that is lost entirely on a man like mine) That sexual consent is sexual consent regaurdless of gender. And none was forthcoming.

But the film didn’t handle this very well. The only thing that seemed to victimise Daniel at all was a few small moments, one were he pisses himself because they won’t unchain him(they do however give him a somehwat slightly erotic sponge bath and change his clothes) and the other when they release the chains from his wrists and ankles and chain him instead by his balls.

Even his downward spiral in his quest to seek out his abusers was poorly done. Although in my husbands words…”I gotta commend his method of fucking as many women as he can till he finds the right ones.”

Collin Friels as a cop who specialises in sexual abuse  and who was the ex husband of the choreographer of Daniels dance company was the only saving grace in this film. His scenes were steeped with feeling, they were more fluid, less inhibited, which is kind of ridiculous given that the world of the dancers is so stilted, so robotic and unfeeling, since dance is supposedly all about emotion.  (There is one dance scene that seemed powerful to me, Daniel on his own, dancing his story, his abuse.  but it is short lived.)

I felt incredibly let down by Australian Film. I have always been moved by its ability to shock, to dissect human failings at the very core, to really challenge the way we think by persuing taboo. (Think Bad Boy Bubby)

I wanted to like this movie.  It’s a sad state of affairs when I would rather watch The Marine.

The Book of Revelations, time that would have been better spent doing the ironing. Perhaps when I have given the movie more time to sink in, to really think about what it was that rubbed me the wrong way about this film, then I can construct a more articulate criticism, but really, I just can’t form the words I really want. It really was that awful.

And I know it will be a cold day in Hell before my husband watches an Australian Film with me again.  

My weekly opinion- Abdicating Parents. The private vs. public debacle.

I was taken aback recently when reading Hugh Mackay’s scathing article against the upper-middle socioeconomic stratum and their demands for expensive private schooling, in August 10’s article in The Age.  What begins as an assault on these parents “abdicating their parental duties”  to the social policies incorporated and  employed by private schools, becomes an outright attack on private schools being the new tool by which parents (these abdicating, absent and apathetic parents) are buying social status, grades and future jobs.

 

There’s a small piece of me that wants to poke out my tongue and give a resounding “well D’Uh”.  Without a good education jobs are harder to come by. Year 12 is about getting good grades, you ARE competing against every other year 12 student for a place at University. This is why we have a UAI. A ranking system by which we are all graded and subjected to in order to be found worthy of tertiary education.  And it doesn’t matter which school you go to, whether it be private or public, you are still ranked, still graded and still judged on your academic performance.

 

The days of school being for expanding and broadening, developing a lust for and nurturing that pursuit of one’s knowledge went the way of the Dodo decades ago. Indeed, when I was in high school more than a decade ago, the emphasis was placed on getting good grades to earn the good TER and therefore better your chances of getting into University, nothing about nurturing and developing a curious hunger for knowledge for its own sake.

 

And what is so wrong about wanting the best for our children? The old adage that you get what you pay for is as true in education as it is in every other facet of life. To illustrate this point, my daughter is a keen musician and not completely without talent. In choosing a school for her, (which when you are a military family tends to  happen every two years) I must take this passion into consideration. She is a much happier child, performs better academically and socially when she is able to express herself musically. 

 

Where I currently live, our local public schools are a mixed bag. The two primary schools we are zoned for are woefully under funded and don’t  have a music program.  (FTR neither does the school she does attend which is private, but it does have a good choir and a wonderful staff that go above and beyond and (shock horror) I chose the school because of the family values and discipline it reinforces, there were two private schools in the area that have excellent music programs but they had no availability for her for enrolment, however, one of the schools allows her to attend their band practise every Tuesday morning and actually arranged transport for her to the practise and then to school, something that honestly, would not happen in a public school.)   

 

The point is that many private schools have better programs, resources and curriculum than their public school counterparts. If you can afford the best for your children, of course you are going to give them the best that you can.  

 

And whilst the claims in  Mackay’s article that private school is the tool of the class making devil, I am just as disturbed by his disdain for parents who want their children to be taught in an environment that teaches not only academics but common courtesy, manners, values and discipline.  Why are these value systems so maligned?  It’s not about having schools teach these fundamental basics of common politeness, it’s about having these values reinforced in their schooling life.  Yes, my children are privately schooled. Yes, I chose my children’s school  because it reinforced those basic social niceties that I have spent teaching them every day of their lives. And yes I resent being labelled as a parent who is abdicating my parental duties and choosing a school based on how well they can baby sit my children. 

 

My children spend the bulk of their waking hours at school five days a week. It’s only natural to want them to be in an environment that reinforces the values they learn at home.  Reinforces. There is no abdication there.  As for the push for private education being a sign of institutionalised class structuring, until the pressure for children to do well in school is lessened, then parents are going to continue to seek out the best educational opportunities for their children, which until public education reforms are made, will remain the dominion of the private school sector.

  

They name is Snark

This morning I was awoken by the rise of the uterine monster that gnashes and gnaws and makes me anything but sunshiney happy. Woe betide anyone dare to step on my toes today, I am all bitey and snappy and I hate that I have to go out into the big bad today and actually talk to people.

But one child has football training this afternoon which means I have to go pick him up after school. I hope no one, like, talks to me, or even breathes in my general direction. (My kingdom for a hysterectomy)

Our new puppy (Cooper) has eaten the bedding so there is white fluff all over the back yard. Stupid dogs. (The older dog- Amos, taught her this nifty little trick) It is cold here at night, not just cold but if I had balls they’d be sitting inside my chest if I had to sleep outside like the dogs (and the man who is currently away and sleeping outside, I hope his balls are warm and not up under his ribs.)
I am not buying those stupid dogs a new bed.

And according to music max, my stars this morning are just so keeping in line with the theme of the day, “today someone critques you and frankly you don’t deserve it….pot, kettle anyone?”
Oh just let them try. My ovaries are dying to bitch slap someone good.

Oh ick, I better go tie up the garbage bag for the girl to take out before the garbage truck empties the bin.

Lets just call this Pirra and the no good horrible terrible very bad day.

The girl is the mist…

The sun that streams through the window is blinding. Glaring even. It hurts my eyes. And yet it fails to heat, there is no warmth. Today I only have one child who feels out of sorts and he sits curled on the lounge in the other room, a blanket wrapped round him like a coccoon, his favourite stuffed Rat beside him, watching old cartoons and reading Franklin Books.  Last week, all three were down. One with fever, vomitting and a cough that would seem more at home coming from an 80 year old man rather than my small nine year old son.

The book still comes in dribs and drabs, but the words have been dulled and seem harder to hear through the haze of cold and flu preparations.

Mugs of hot tea are my constant companions, I sip them slowly, warming my hands. I know it’s not really cold outside, but in here, there is a chill that sinks it’s teeth deep in my bones.

Maybe tomorrow, when the fog clears and the glare dims I will have something a little more engaging to say…..

Maybe.