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...But Why Give To Susan G Komen In The First Place?

All those 5K runs and long walks and pink ribbons and all the rest... if this week is the moment that some women realize there's a problem in breast cancer fundraising, all I can say is, you're really late. The industry of fundraising around breast cancer "awareness", treatment, research and "finding a cure" has long been excessive and in need of a good bit of questioning. And if it takes a stunningly strange decision by  executives at the Susan G Komen foundation to do it, well, there's another thing one ought to ask more clearly: why is everyone giving money to the Susan G Komen fund anyway?

The Susan G Komen Race For The Cure was, at its inception, a clever idea: Komen was an active woman who apparently enjoyed those 5K races (before she was diagnosed and died of breast cancer), it tapped into a group of active young women who are probably the third (or fourth wave) of feminism looking for ways to be active (especially a group of young, mid-level corporate women), and it served as a good reminder that women have the economic leverage, now, to make a difference on causes they care about most.

Trouble is, "Susan G Komen" also became a kind of corporate shorthand for easy giving to a cause. You can buy lipstick and detergent and cereal and God knows what else these days, and "a portion of the proceeds" will go to Komen. Bank of America will give you a Susan Komen Visa, for God's sake. For fashion and advertising and health and beauty - or more to the point, anything in the industry of selling things to women - the easy way to look good and caring is to wrap something in pink and slap the Susan G Komen name on it.

Pink. Seriously, all this stuff, and they've colored it pink and say its for breast cancer awareness and the fact that it's also gendered and sexist determinism, suddenly flies out the window because it's for "Breast Cancer" and that makes it practically illegal to point out that most of this stuff is exploitative and kind of offensive... because say that, and somehow you're an uncaring lout who doesn't care about the millions of women with breast cancer.

And what does the Susan G Komen Foundation do, anyway? Well... mostly, they raise money, or spend money to raise yet more money, planning events and running races and all the rest. Do they actually do breast cancer research? Do they do breast cancer screenings? Do they treat patients? No, none of these, and not much else. What they do is take the money they raise - and I'm sure it's a reasonable percentage as these things go, not some scandal about them keeping more of it than they give away... but that's not my point. My point is, they take the money they raise... and they give it to the people who actually do those things.

At some point, one can reasonably say... why are you giving money to a third party when you could just as easily give the money you want to see used for breast cancer screenings and treatment and research and all the rest... and give it to the people who actually do that?

The thing that this "scandal" about Komen dropping Planned Parenthood reveals is not (just) that it exposes some woman at Komen as a pro-life tool, or that it puts both organizatiosn squarely in the middle of white hot women's politics (abortion is so the issue that's all over this election season that most men like to pretend isn't)... the thing about this scandal that cuts to th heart of charitable giving is that it makes something really lazy and embarrassing really obvious about all these people giving to Komen as if they're doing something. In other words... if you want to give money to see more women screened for breast cancer... give it to Planned Parenthood. Like you should have been doing, anyway.

I'm not trying to make people feel guilty or bad about giving to Komen; but from the start, sending money to "The Susan G Komen Fund For The Cure" has been, as charity often is, a class issue masquerading as kindness. It's third party, hands clean, do a little something, but just a little, for a difficult issue. Do you have some money, a little time, do you like parties or running or really long walkathons? Do you like to wear pink? Then we have the charity for you! Because that's what "charity" is, that's how charity works... it's comfortable, well off people who can watch other people's difficulties from a comfortable distance giving money to make sure other people take care of whatever it is that's wrong.

There's nothing wrong, really with giving money that goes to the Komen fund; even if they don't give it to Planned Parenthood, I'm sure they give it to a lot of worthy enterprises that are doing things to treat and research breast cancer. There's also nothing wrong with giving money, or having the kind of wealth that allows you to give generously. But the problem is, and has been, that giving money in this kind of corporate, three hands from the source kind of way is just what the past couple of days reminds us - you are at the mercy of a lot of well meaning people whose actions you don't control and have very little say over. And the reason people give to Komen, rather than to the actual sources, is because it would be harder, and take more work, to figure out what that is, how to give that way, and also still not think about the fact that you could do a lot more, really, than just give money. Or race for the cure. And people with the money to give don't like to spend a lot of time, often, thinking about all of that.

 

Melancholia: Like It's The End Of The World

To me, the real definition of "screen presence" or star power is the ability to visually hold the screen. It's not as simple as being good looking, or well known. It's a quality, I think, of "something behind the eyes" - the presence of a mind that conveys feeling, thinking, something to make us both curious and satisfied, all at once.

I'm not explaining it all that well, but whatever it is, Kirsten Dunst is a movie star because she has it. She has had it for a long time, really since she first burst onto the scrren in Interview With The Vampire. Big or small, arty or lightweight (bring it on!), most of Dunst's work is amazing because she's so much more than just an attractive face.

Melancholia opens (as Manohla Dargis, lord help me, describes) with a series of dreamlike shots of Dunst in various moments of the film's story. There's a shot of her sinking into the ground as she tries to run across a golf course, and a shot of her appearing to conduct electricity. And there's the dramatic shot of her in an opulent wedding dress, tangled in strings and branches, trying to escape a forest. All of it centered on Dunst, beautiful, magnetic, mysterious.

And then the world ends.

Director Lars von Trier makes the nervy decision to show his hand up front - the plot of Melancholia, no spoiler, is that a giant planet is headed for the Earth and will crash into it and destroy it. But that, really, is not what Melancholia is about. Melancholia is a musing on depression, a science fiction story about being so depressed it's the end of the world... except if the world were really to end. 

Dunst plays Justine, a young woman who is getting married at the start of Melancholia, whom we first see on her way to the reception with her new husband. The reception is taking place at the large hotel/estate of her sister and brother-in-law, and things, naturally, go disastrously awry. The bride's family is a mess, her boss is on hand to pressure her to work, and Justine is sinking into a deep depression that makes it impossible for her to please all of the people who expect so much from her. It's a long night, with a variety of dramas and revelations... but we wind up with a marriage that couldn't survive the after party, and a woman uncertain of her future.

We next see Justine returning to her sister Calire's a few weeks later, when her depression has worsened, and the world is gripped by the news of Melancholia, the planet headed straght for us. Claire's husband is fascinated by the planet's movements, the real life science experiment happening overhead, less concerned with his family's growing concern, or with supporting Justine at her most desperate hour of need. Claire is left to try and hold everything together - her fragile sister, her difficult marriage, and taking care of her young son. It is, in the end, too much.

As Claire sinks, miraculously, Justine revives; as Melancholia inches closer to its collision (the one we've already seen), Justine sharpens, gains focus, It's Justine who takes charge as Claire gets ever more hopeless and helpless, especially when John, her husband, realizes that we are, in fact, doomed. And it's Justine who faces the final end more alive, more present than ever, whose face may well be the last thing we ever see.

Von Trier is a difficult, eccentric director - and that's being kind - and Melancholia is not without his usual tics and tendencies, particularly to mistreat his beautiful female leads, and to be needlessly heavy handed with his thematic points, especially in his graphic depictions of sex and female sexuality. That said, this may be von Trier's best, most commercially accessible film yet, a sharp piece of carefully controlled sci-fi that harks back to classics like Raymond Carver, where a hypothetical futuristic scenario yields well observed thoughts on the current human condition. As a metaphor for depression, the end of the world caused by slamming into a planet named Melancholia may be obvious... but it's also, in its way, accurate. Von Trier's implication is that something about depression is personal, internal - it turns on, and then, for some reason, turns off. He also suggests, via Justine and Claire's interpersonal dynamic, that depression is catching, and that passing it along may somehow be part of surviving.

As I said at the start, what holds all of this together is Dunst, luminous, fearless, taking enormous risks as an actress that pay off, handsomely, in the end, as Justine regains her inner strength and sense of purpose. As she bathes, naked, in the glow of Melancholia as it approaches, Dunst is every inch the movie goddess, but that is almost beside the point; it's her moments of near catatonia, her desperation as Justine is at her lowest, that really speak volumes to how natural and unforced her work can be.

Dunst is ably supported by a stellar international cast - especially Charlotte Gainsbourg as Claire and Kiefer Sutherland (who knew?) as the feckless John. But there are masterfu turns by John Hurt and Charlotte Rampling as her parents, Stellan Skarsgaard as her boss, and several lovely young men during the wedding scenes (notably Alex Skarsgard as her new spouse). It's likely that von Trier had two films that didn't make sense until he combined them - one a bitter wedding story, the other, this intruiging idea about a planet. Together, they make a genius combination, a way to underline what matters, and what we really have to live for, in every sense.

Handsomely shot, and beautifully scored (as well as stunningly costumed), Melancholia may suffer during awards season from an understandable backlash against von Trier's thoughtless manner of speaking, but it's terribly unfair to such an ambitious, fascinating exercise, graced with such a daring, expressive performance. In a sane world, Dunst would easily face off against Michelle Williams and Meryl Streep. But likely there's no justice to be had, and Dunst will have to simply advance on a brilliant revival of her career in an overlooked gem. If you have better sense than an Academy voter, I'd urge you to give Melancholia a look.

 

The Defiant One

Last week - on my storm break - I had planned to write about Herman Cain and his various harassment allegations... but I got busy and the story kept moving. And still, what I want to write now is essentially what I wanted to write then.

Cain's response to the allegations is about Textbook 101 in How Not To Run A Campaign, but that's not of deep interest to me - to take Cain's missteps seriously is to take Cain seriously, and long before we evaluate sexual harassment charges... Herman Cain is never going to be President.

Still, the unfolding "scandal" and Cain's fumbling response says more - and more good, I think - about the state of workplace harassment allegations than many want to admit. It's easy to look at the various negative aspects - the rabid defenders of Cain, mainly on talk radio, the ugliness from his campaign operatives - and see a lot of bad news on taking harassment seriously. But from the opposite angle - where these charges are being examined and reexamined and discussed - it's worth noting some of the good that's coming out of this.

First, sexual harassment is being taken seriously, and seriously, on the right. Conservatives, male and female have noted that if these allegations have merit (I think that's a more productive description than "true" which isn't nearly as concrete as it would seem), Cain is unfit for the Presidency. That's some remarkable progress, even in recent memory. Moreover, the women making these allegations - whether Karen Kraushaar's reluctant move into the public eye, or Sharon Bialek's deliberate steps - are being given room to make their cases and be heard.

Second, there's more agreement on what constitutes "harassment" than I would ever have expected: Bialek's story of a hand up her skirt and leering "you want a job, right?" proposition didn't get a lot of people trying to explain it away with discussions of her looks, or her outfit, or "she must have misunderstood." Yes, people have noted that her charges are "he said, she said" and hard to confirm... but even then, there's two choices: either he's right that it never happened... or she's right and it did... and that means it was harassment. Similarly, Kraushaar's been clear that "you come up to my chin" is both neither harassment, nor what happened. This too, is some fairly significant progress.

It's in this context of harassment being taken fully and seriously that Cain's missteps have been so pronounced. Even Cain - reflecting his "DC outsider" status as a business world leader - has had to admit that sexual harassment is real and serious and disqualifying. His "I haven't never touched nobody" defense is too absolute and too quick to make this story go away. At the same time, Cain's been surprisingly muddled about offering the kind of simple evidence that would ostensibly prove his point - why not go back and at least review records from the National Restaurant Association before making pronouncements that can easily be disproved (like who've you met, or what setllements were paid). That's not the sign of business competence which Cain's been selling as his main positive attribute.

Cain's press conference was a similar nonstarter, full of abstract denials, a lack of specifically discussing his dealings with specific women, and a lot of third person references to "Herman Cain's decency." Cain's assessments of his own decency is neither the issue nor the point. Nor was trotting out a power lawyer like Lin Wood, who neither came off as objective nor reasonable, to simultaneously intone that sexual harassment is serious while positioning all of Cain's accusers as liars and deabeats. But then, Cain's campaign seems, even for them, remarkably ill-equipped to handle these events profesisonally or competently.

Admittedly, trying to make all of this seem to rosy would be a mistake - both Kraushaar and Bialek face some pretty ugly moments, there's a clear collection of unreconstructed men on the right who will never entirely get the issues around sexual harassment (not to mention Cain's "sexual harassment doesn't just happen to women" going on to insist that women harassmen too. Apparently man-on-man harassment is just too much to discuss). The news about our culture, as this story unfolds, isn't especially better than its ever been. There's been some change... but we still need much more.

I don't know what Cain did or did not do, and mostly, as I said, I don't especially care in the context of Cain's misbegotten run for the Presidency. It wouldn't surprise me to eventually confirm that much of what the women allege is true; it wouldn't necessarily surprise me to find out Bialek's story can't entirely be trusted, either.  At best it's worth noting what progress that has been made, I think, while noting that Cain's defiant denials do him no favors. That, and keep waiting for Cain to give in, and give up.

Finally, one other point in passing: I suspect that Cain's case got harder, not easier, with the revelations out of Penn State. The revulsion we're experiencing around Jerry Sandusky's conduct will make it much harder, I suspect, for anyone to simply wave away sexually inappropriate behavior, and in Cain's case, not help him when he tries to denigrate or marginalize his accusers. It would be different, perhaps, if the Penn State story didn't revolve around sports and hadn't captivated a lot more straight men than might otherwise take notice. But for now, I don't think anyone wants to be part of a news story where "sexual acting out" is part of the storyline. And Cain's defiant stance only makes chasing him and the story that much more likely.

Higher Ground: Faith That Works

I've been on something of a lucky streak with moviegoing lately, mostly because I've been avoiding most of the big budget mainstream films in favr of the smaller gems. Among the other reasons for being missing in action is because this past week was pretty much an indie film festival.

And I have to start wit what is probably the most remarkable and,in its way, ambitious: Vera Farmiga's Higher Ground. 

Vera Farmiga is one of the go-to actresses, right now, for wife and girlfriend roles in big budget films. She was nominated for Up in the Air (playing Clooney's love interest), had a big role in The Departed, that sort of thing. Perhaps that's why nothing quite prepared me for the impressiveness of her directorial debut in a small, deeply felt film about faith and finding your way. What's more astonishing is that while the directorial debut is assured, Farmiga's performance in the lead role is also brilliantly realized.

Based on the memoir of writer Carolyn Briggs, Higher Ground is the story of a woman who finds God at a young age. Corinne raises her hand in Sunday school when almost no one else does, and finds herself on a long journey into an intense Christianity. As a teen she starts a romance with a young rebellious singer songwriter in a teenage band, and they wind up married after she gets pregnant. A reckless, near death experience for them and the baby drives the family even deeper into bible study and church.

HIgher Ground is remarkable in many ways, not least because it charts a kind of Christian intensity that is worlds away from southern, born again Baptist gospel. Taking place in upstate New York, Higher Ground is populated with hippie men and Earth mother types who place a great value on their journey in faith. Agree or disagree, but the window into these lives, which are probably unseen by many, is fascinating.

Corinne's adult life is up-ended when her closest friend, Annika, is diagnosed with a brain tumor and comes out of surgery with significant brain damage. Lost, adrift in a faith that cannot answer her deepest prayer, Corinne discovers that she's grown apart from her husband, and her faith. With considerable strong personal resolve, she sets out on her journey, breaking away from her marriage and her church, and, ultimately, everything familiar in the life she's lived.

The film handles all of this with a delicate sensitivity and respect for everyone in it. These are not easy caricatures  of intolerant Christians, the women are not saints and the men are not simply insensitive boors. Farmiga's performance as Corinne is fully realized and three dimensional - her choices at every step make sense for her character, even if those choices can seem frustrating. This is a good, decent person who cares deeply about what it means to be good and decent. To everyone.

Farmiga is surrounded by a talented cast who also bring incredible levels of depth to their roles. That's particularly true of Dagmara Dominczyck as Annika and Donna Murphy as Corinne's salty, independently minded mother... but pretty much every role here is pitch perfect. All of which convinces me that Farmiga is an especially sensitive director in dealing with her actors, a real accomplishment.

But the point here is that Farmiga's work as a director shines on many levels. Visually, the film is striking and often stunningly beautiful. Among other things, the film is a visual love letter to the simple pleasures of life in upstate New York. The settings are so believably rendered, I both felt I knew these people and longed for a moment to return to life up there. Farmiga also captures, as few directors do these days, the realities of working class life just now - this is one of the most believable portraints of working and middle class people I've seen, simple, direct, and respectful.

Higher Ground isn't a film meant to convince us, any of us, that it knows the answers when it comes to faith any more than the rest of us. Farmiga's final, brilliant speech as Corinne gets at the struggle to live a life in the real world carried by a faith that cannot always provide all the answers, what it is to live a life with doubts. That Corinne gives this speech to the congregation she's leaving, without telling them off or denying the strength of their faith is amazing. But then, so is this entire film. I highly recommend it.

The Help: Southern Comfort

Among the many stories and experiences in my family about race issues and Northern vs. Southern living, my Mom's experience as a college student doing an internship in North Carolina is probably one of the most vivid. By this time, after all, my mom had lived for several years in Boston where she had friends of different races, and had dated black men, including the man she would marry (and with him, have me). 

So it was a shock when she and a black woman friend were in North Carolina, and left the grounds of the (integrated) VA Hospital where they were interning. Her friend had to go to the back of the bus. Both of them had to be careful when my mom went to socialize with her friend and her friend's family. Eventually, it became easier to just not leave the grounds of the hospital.

This experience of segregation and its effects is of course one of the darker and more painful aspects of American history, a stain from which we as a nation can never entirely recover. At best, we have tried to relegate segregation to the past, and to create a present where segregation by law, at least, has no place in our society. But the question of how to look at this complicated history lingers.

The Help, a film based on a bestselling novel, attempts to explore this ground, examining the complexities of life between white women and their black maids in deeply segregated Jackson, Mississippi, in the mid sixties. The book was an "Oprah's Book Club" selection, which should give a good indication of what's both interesting and exasperating about the whole exercise. Well meaning, deeply earnest, The Help is ultimately a feel-good piece of sentimental claptrap that distorts our historical realities and tries to put a warm, upbeat gloss on topics that simply don't merit the treatment.

Mostly, The Help is a story meant to make Northerners feel better, as usual, for prevailing in the cause of civil rights. The main character, Skeeter Phelan, is a young white woman fresh out of college (Ole Miss), who wants to pursue her dreams of being a writer. After being shunted onto a "Helen Helper" column of the local paper in Jackson, she decides to also pursue collecting the stories and experiences of black maids in the community.

It's worth pointing out that, from start to finish, all of what transpires in The Help is fictional. There was no book of this sort produced at the time, and some of the depictions of segregation issues are overstated (and others, curiously, are understated, as well). Though much of these distortions don't mean much, they are, still, distortions, and it's disconcerting to have a film so earnestly purport to depict the experience of segregation, while, in fact, cutting a fake experience entirely out of fictional cloth.

Ultimately, when the book is published(!), truths are revealed and some of the ugliest aspects of mistreatment of the maids comes to light. But little of life in Jackson actually changes as a result. The movie hedges one of the final confrontations in the book (between Aibilene, our lead maid, and Hilly, the bitch leader of the white wives), to give the black heroine more of a sense of control over her destiny, but really, either way, there's an unreality hanging over the whole business that by the end simply grates.

Which is not to say that the film is cold or unmoving; as I said, this is sentimental hogwash meant to push various emotional buttons, and most of these are done smoothly and efficiently. Watching the black women stand up for themselves is empowering. Their suffering - economic, social, personal - is often heartbreaking. The aspects of casual racism are unpleasant and difficult to take, at times. Writer/Director Tate Taylor has produced a smart adaptation that smooths out some of the book's less convincing moments (while still failing to ring historically true), and much of the film's lack of historicity is build on Kathryn Stockett's dubious foundations constructed for the novel.

The film also features a top flight cast, most of whom lift sketchy stereotypes into fully realized characters. That's not surprising from veterans like Mary Steenburgen (as New York editor "MIss Stein" - no, seriously), or Sissy Spacek, Allison Janney, or an ever luminous Cicely Tyson. The younger white women - Emma Stone as Skeeter, Bryce Dallas Howard as Hilly, as well as Jessica Chastain as social outcast Celia - fare less well, mostly because their roles are largely thankless. The real grit and determination belongs to Octavia Spencer and Viola Davis as the principle maids, particularly Davis as Aibilene. Already clearly one of the great actresses of her generation, Davis has nothing to prove, and this is a great, tailor made role for her talents.

One of the film's larger structural problems is that men are simply all but nonexistent in this film - a hallmark of "Oprah's Book Club" projects generally. Several critics have pointed out that there's no image of an intact black family to be seen, but even the white families presented are generally grim, dismal exercises in feckless, often cruel ciphers with the husbands.  But the larger point is that segregation was not merely a problem where white women and black women struggled with boss/servant relations; it was a societal construct that touched every social interaction, between all genders and all races (which, by the way, is a good moment to point out that The Help seems as averse to miscegenation as Hollywood generally is. No race mixing here). The film's narrow focus is, in the end, a cheat on having to examine - or deal with - the larger issues, and especially, the role of many whites, in not just accepting a system of such distinct inequality, but constructing it and enforcing it, often violently. That's of a piece with presenting blacks as noble, suffering victims, of superior morals and grace. And all of that, really, is a pleasant notion of southern segregation that northerners like best. See those awful southern whites, and those noble suffering blacks? Whose fault is that?

For my money - quite literally - the film that really digs into the complexities of enforced segregation and the way it perverted relationships between white homemakers and their black servants was The Long Walk Home, in which Sissy Spacek and Whoopi Goldberg played boss and servant during the Montgomery bus boycotts (it's surely one of Whoopi's best, most subtle performances onscreen). The Help, by comparison, is much closer to History Comix than a serious attempt to unravel the tensions and painful dilemmas caused by segregation, focused, as it is, way too closely on the question of one woman raising another woman's kids. That issue, after all, is a class problem and a feminist thought provoker that's hard to solve, well beyond issues of race. The Help would be remarkable if it even tried to unravel an issue that fraught. But mostly, the film is happy to hand you a hankie, pat you on the back for being enlightened, and tell us all that segregation was bad. As if that was, you know, a question. Don't you feel better now?

Here's To Good Friends

Today is a day off and I've been catching up with good friends, all of us linked in strange, nearly magical ways. This one's for you guys, and all we talked about today:

 

 

Seriously, Does Anybody Know How To Madison?

I tried - in vain - not to get my hopes up, but election junkie that I am, I found myself following the Wisconsin recvall elections in minute by minute detail last night, When I went to bed, the possibility was a 2 or 3 seat pickup for Democrats. When I got up this morning, it turned out to be only 2.

There's no reason for a Democrat to get too down about this; doing all these recalls was seriously uncharted territory, and perhaps the most heartening thing for democracy (small d) is that so many Wisconsinites took the recalls seriously and turned out to vote. That's a good reminder to elected officials to remember that voters do, in fact, care about voting. And Americans care about elections.

Still, it's reasonable to wonder just what went wrong and to wonder how Democrats, who can't seem to muster enough energy or support to reverse a wildly unpopular set of actions in Wisconsin can make any progress elsewhere or nationally in 2012. Recall elections in one upper Midwest state shouldn't be a national barometer, but these will be, and what they tell us, I think, is that the prospects were oversold, anger alone is not a strategy, and that equating unions with the working class is a mistake of the liberal establishment that should be let go of, and soon. Whether we learn these lessons, the right way, and how we apply them, I think, will  be the gauge of whether 2012 is a reversal of tea party strength or merely water treading (there's no way, I think, for a tea party based surge except in conservative wet dreams).

The overselling of Wisconsin is a big part, I think, of how next year's results will be perceived. It was a mistake, I think, to make Scott Walker and some of his more outlandish ideas such a focal point of of liberal activism, absent a clear indication that they could be stopped or reversed. Wisconsin enjoyed a pretty significant turnaround in the last election, and it wasn't just - though this frustrates many lefties - a cosmetic success of "Tea Party" activism. This was a real and pronounced shift, and probably a reflection of demographic shifts that have built over time. Even now, it's unclear how Democrats statewide can retake the big elections. The prospects in the recall elections were always daunting and slim, yet optimism, anger, and hubris took over, a reminder that playing politics on an emotional level never realy works. You need someone who can coldly, and from a distance, evaluate what's possible, and what isn't.

In the end, the failure enshrined in liberals overpromising and under-delivering in Wisconsin will matter, no matter how we try to minimize the loss. Yes, it was an uphill fight; yes, these districts were drawn for Republicans and considered safe. But still. Why create 6 races on a hunch?And if the prospects fo success were as limited as late reports indicated, why didn't someone get in front of that reality sooner? Ratcheting down expectations, admitting that Walker might well retain his stranglehold would both have made the results less dramatic and provided a focus for future angry energy.

But still, anger alone is not enough. Just as "Tea Party Rage" has proven to be no theory for actually governing, liberal activists have little more to sell across a number of states than anger - anger at anti-union policies, anger agt antiwoman efforts on abortion, anger at budget cuts, and on and on. It's not that rage isn't appropriate, or even productive; it's that once you've gotten angry... there needs to be a next step. Get angry and... do something. But the question of what to do, and how to go about doing it is where politics, on all sides, is falling down. 

Which, if you think about it, is why we just seem to get angrier.

Yes, I'm angry about eviscerating union rights; I'm angry about efforts to roll back access to abortion and much of the rest. But I need more than that when I think about voting for people, and I think Wisconsin voters did as well, and I'm not sure that's how this election played out. And ultimately, at the state level, across a lot of states, there are enormous budget problems, more than a little of which stem from promises about state worker pensions that cannot realistically be fulfilled. And however well meaning, liberals have, for years, punted on the hard questions of the bad math of state retiree pensions. That's how you get Scott Walker, and his elimination of bargaining rights. Being angry about that isn't an answer.

Ultimately, Wisconsin wasn't a test for Democrats per se, it was really a test to see if unions could muster the kind of support needed to remain vital players in big time election politics. On that score, the results are probably a wash - not overwhelming enough to scare the right, but strong enough that the left has little choice but to go all in on backing union demands. Republicans play to a theory that working people no longer see unions as vital or necessary, and I think Wisconsin showed that to be a fallacy that doesn't necessarily help the GOP with the less well off.   

In thinking about that, though, it occurred that Democrats believe a dangerous reverse fallacy - that is, that unions see everyone in the working class as their allies, and therefore, to support unions is to support a stand-in for the working class experience. That reality too, is less true than we'd like to admit. While workers like the idea of unions and the protections they've sought, most workers aren't in them. And while unions would like to expand their presence, I'm not sure that's the same thing as identifying fully with every workers current experience in the workplace.

Unions have failed, repeatedly and spectacularly, at unionizing the private service sectors, especially retail. Part of that, naturally, is resistance by employers, and part of it is an adverse regulatory climate. But the fact remains, often, that workers don't pick the union. And I'm not sure unions really understand the dynamic, or appreciate that, to some workers, the prospect of what a union can provide doesn't outweigh other factors.

I don't want to make this too broad, but I think both union leaders and Democratic Party leaders like to substitute "union" for "working class" even though they're not the same. Whatever unions think about non-unionized workers, however much they think of themselves as advocates for all workers, the reality remains, a union is there to represent its members. That's what SEIU does. That's what the NEA does. That's what AFSCME does. And those union interests - for instance, for state and municipal workers - can, at times, conflict with the interests of other, non unionized workers.  It would be counterintuitive, and poor leadership, for unions to pick the interests of others over their members.

The point, really, is that the failure to change Madison, to know how to shake up the Madison of Scott Walker and today, is rooted not in one failing, but in the combination of hubris, anger and substituting union goals for the goals of all working people. Merely lowering expectations, or relying on more than anger will not be enough. The left needs to unwrap the sticky, difficult question of how to separate unions and the important, but merely subset of workers they represent from the needs of other, nonunionized workers as well. That's one tough dance... and I doubt that it's one the left can learn in under a year.

Bridesmaids: Do You Know What It Feels Like, For A Working Girl?

I realized, as I was working on my Hangover review (there's a misplaced modifier for ya), that I hadn't actually written a review of the other wedding-themed comedy, the infinitely superior Bridesmaids. Let me right that wrong, or write it, anyway.

In a season of too much bridal nonsense - let's just ignore bottom of the barrel stuff like Something Borrowed or even niche pieces like Jumping The Broom - Bridesmaids is the actually refreshing entry, a film that doesn't make the bride, or worse, the man, central to a wedding comedy among women. Bridesmaids is actually about the piece of the wedding puzzle that I think many women care about most - the relationships between the woman getting married, and the women in her bridal party.

Bridesmaids is, of course, brilliantly funny; and it does nothing less than confirm that Kristen Wiig is going to be a formidable force in film. Co-writing a great screenplay, she also delivers a fresh, natural performance as a somewhat unwilling Maid of Honor to her best childhood friend. At heart, Bridesmaids is a comedy about the challenges that test the bonds of such a deep friendship. But more than that, Bridesmaids hits a nerve about class and economic inequality in America right now that really makes the film hard to shake, and impossible to ignore. This is the film, I think, that should tell Hollywood that audiences really hunger for films that reflect on how we struggle, and survive, through this economic downturn.

The story is simple enough: two good friends are tested when one of them gets angaged to her longtime boyfriend, and makes her best friend her maid of honor. Annie is not a woman who goes for a lot of traditional feminine expectations, but she gamely tries to fit herself into the role. That gets harder as she realizes that her friend Lillian is marrying into a more upscale life than she has, sharing a sad suburban apartment and working a grim retail job she hates (her attempt to open a cupcake shop failed miserably).

Annie's world is even more shaken by the appearance of Helen, wife of the boss of Lillian's fiance, whi appears to be trying to muscle in as Lillian's New Best Friend. The movie's main tension is their competition for Lillian's favor and affection, leading to a series of over the top comic incidents - I can't pick between food poisoning in the fancy bridal boutique, Annie drunk and high on the plane, or the bridal shower gone nuclear as my favorite moment - that higlight their competition.

But more than that, Bridesmaids focuses on Annie's challenges to make a better life for herself, dealing iwth the dead end job, lousy living situation, and a dismal relationship with a hot looking cad (Jon Hamm, studly and brilliantly thoughtless). The picture brightens when Annie finds sparks with the cop who pulls her over for erratic driving, making tentative steps towards a new relationship. But without Lillian to keep her grounded, Annie's insecurities make a mess of the whole situation.

If Bridesmaids were simply laugh out loud funny - which it is, throughout - that alone would qualify it as one of this year's great comedies; but it's the ability of Wiig to dig deep and make Annie a fully rounded character that the audience comes to care about that lifts Bridesmaids into the realm of movie greatness. It's not that I laughed through this film - it's that, as Annie struggled to make sense of a life spinning out of control, I cried. This is a film that understands that comedy exists on the knife edge of personal difficulty - you can make it funny, but you can also make it very moving.

Maya Rudolph is smashing as Lillian, delivering the film's best costume payoff in a wedding dress that must be seen to be believed (in a word...ruffles). And Rose Byrne brings uptight perfection and real sensitivity to the role of Helen. As the other bridesmaids, Melissa McCarthy transcends the obvious as the groom's tough, no-nonsense sister, while Ellie Kemper and Wendi McLendon-Covey are also brilliantly funny, but underused. Jill Clayburgh, also makes a wonderful, final, turn as Annie's mother.

Ultimately, though, this is Wiig's chance to shine and she makes the most of it; I'd expect nothing less, given that she's already shown, in nearly every film appearance, some real gifts as a natural, funny presence onscreen. This is also a brilliant script, one of the best I've seen all year, if not in several years.  Paul Feig's direction, on the other hand, is mostly perfunctory - he gives room for the comedy to shine, but visually, the film is often quite pedestrian.

Don't see Bridesmaids just because it's another wedding comedy, admittedly a very good one; see it because nothing else in major, mass market film right now comes anywhere near as close to touching the hard realities of working class life these days, in a way that manages to be both positive and honest. That's not just great filmmaking, it's nearly a goddamn miracle.

Boy Don't Try To Front, I Know Just What You Are...

At first, I figured there's nothing to say about Dominique Strauss Kahn.

But as this story unfolds, it's really impossible not to (though let's give the New York Times points for keeping it out of editorials and off the op-ed page for two days; even the Wall Street Journal felt fine leading with it as Monday's editorial). Strauss Kahn (or "DSK") and the tale of his alleged behavior ib the Sofitel New York is just so outrageous, and so enormous, it's one of those stories that you just can't anticipate that has the sudden ability to refocus everything.

What's struck me - and it usually doesn't - is how people, reporters, but also the rest of us, seem to be groping for the words to describe what happened. Part of the problem appears to be that "forced her to give him head" isn't a phrase fit for a family newspaper, but the other, more basic problem is that apparently no one wnats to say "rape." I don't usually favor Melissa McEwan's assessment of a Rape Culture in our society, but the past few days have brought home, for me, just how endemic the cultural problems around rape really are. As alleged, Strauss Kahn appears to have raped a member of the Sofitel's housekeeping staff. Yet so many alternatives are employed - "sexually assaulted," "attacked", "went after", "attempted to force her to.." it's hard not to notice the word no one wants to quite say. 

In the first few days, there's been a lot of reminders about how different events look between American and European perspectives. There's the European dismay for "perp walks" and complaints about our "harsh" legal system, and the American disdain for a kind of European notion of quiet aceptance of a kind of behavior that doesn't seem so quietly tolerated here. A lot of this strikes me as silly, and probably, in part, a question of immediacy - if an American magnate had been arrested in Paris, I suspect the reverse reactions would also be kind of messy.

It's dismaying to realize, at this late date, that Strauss Kahn was widely known for inappropriate behavior and acting out, including an affair with a subordinate that was quietly swept away by the IMF, and alleged advances on a reporter who kept quiet for years. This kind of behavior - which is reverberating, as I write this, around the Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver mess - being quietly tolerated, known about, and ignored, is really one of our worst cultural aspects. And too often we label this behavior, too, with descriptions to make it sound less menacing, less harassing - "womanizer", "touchy feely", "roving eye." I don't think women who face unwanted attention think of it as "womanized."

To me, though, what really fascinates is the sense that this may be a wake up call to the world to examine the kind of powers and privileges that go to an overpampered elite class. The events at the Sofitel are the real example of "Versailles" theory that has been bandied about so much, these days; and I suspect that's the real reason that the Strauss Kahn arrest has so riveted the world's audience and the world press. It's rare to see such a direct, undeniable example of the wileding of class and privilege over a low level employee. Nothing could be more stark than an immigrant woman just trying to do her low level, menial job, only to be chased and held down and... well, possibly raped, by a powerful, wealthy protected man. Who might, very well, have managed to escape any prosecution if his plane had managed to take off.

It's true, too, that Strauss Kahn might be innocent. That this was all some big mistake, just some misunderstanding, even, as the wildest theories claim, some sort of setup. But I hope, in the end, that we will not let vague words and minor discrepanencies let a real crime somehow get minimized away, if it did occur. If what happened is anything close to what's alleged - a woman chased down a hall, forced into a room and forcibly raped - let's not dress it up, or explain it away. Let's know Strauss Kahn for who and what he is, and let's see some justice done. And maybe we can take some of this Rape Culture apart.

A Valley Of Pine, A View Of Llan

I'm part (and parcel) of the generational shift of soap operas from "women's daytime television" to a more teen driven demographic, so the announcement that ABC is cancelling All My Children and One Life to Live hits a little closer than it otherwise might. But it's that very change in audience -and the fact that, like many kids my age, I gave up on soaps pretty much after graduating college - that makes this news more or less overdue... and proof that the Women's Movement actually won a battle here.

People will talk about "shrinking audience share" and the need for more profitable programming, but underlying the cancellations is the story of feminism and how it changed our nation. One part - the obvious one - is the fact that large numbers of women started working instead of staying at home to raise kids. The other, less noticed part, is that at home or not, women stopped, in large numbers, looking to television shows that reinforced quaint, outdated notions of social expectations and mores. Once soaps started loosening their morals and chasing a more sophisticated, and jaded, audience, the die was pretty much cast. And ever since, it's just been a matter of time before the whole thing petered out.

Even now, the soap that probably did the most to up-end the traditional notions of soap morality - the category killing The Young and The Restless - soldiers on, still leading the evr shrinking, ever weakening pack. When Y&R first burst on the scene, it was clear that something had shifted. But the shift probably happened years before that.

Starting in the mid-sixties, there was actually a wholesale revamping of the midday soap schedule; that's when Another World, General Hospital and The Edge of Night, among others, began to appear. Another World, with its focus on psychological insights (the "other world" was inside the mind), was especially significant, and successful, in revamping how soaps told the stories they told. They were followed, in the early seventies, with the arrivals of All My Children and One Life to Live, cementing the success of Agnes Nixon, a writer of soaps, who moved into the role of creating new ones.

All My Children was one of the first shows to wade into "contemporary" political issues as part of their storytelling, with a Vietnam storyline and a son missing in action, leading to an impassioned speech from the actress playing his mother (who went on to win the first Emmy given to any daytime performer). Like the other shows, this was merely a reflection of the times and the shifting landscape of women's lives. It was in the seventies that soaps started reflecting the women's movement, sending more of their female characters into the workforce, and making them more independent. That, in turn, naturally led to a more frank depiction of sex and sexuality.

I started watching soaps as a kid for tow reasons: one was my Grandmother, and her sister, both of whom had their "stories", which dated, honestly, back to radio. I remember my Grandmother watching Search For Tomorrow, one of the real warhorses of daytime drama dating back to the fifties. And as my mom worked, I had babysitters afterschool, all of whom watched programs. And after school, I naturally joined in.

That's how I wound up watching General Hospital, and at times, AMC and OLTL. And the shows noticed the demographic changes as well, subtly shifting to storylines involving younger characters, the teen children of their established stars. Luke and Laura didn't just happen by accident. Or Patch and Kayla. Or dozens of others.

In colege, it was unsurprising to see people arrange classes to leave time for lunch and an hour of soaps - Y&R, or Days of Our Lives, or AMC, usually. Each show had a lounge somewhere. And budding VCR technology allowed for recording of one's faves for later viewing, just as DVR and the Soap Network have now made "time shifting" a part of everyday (and ratings) reality.

The overarching reality, though, is that fter college, abandoning soaps became all too easy; the realities of work and a scoial life overhwlemed following even one show, even with recordings. Audiences dropped, then fell off cliff after cliff. And really, the shows had become unmoored from nearly every aspect of everyday life. By the time Passions arrived, with its preposterous plotting, talking dolls, and witchcraft, what was noteworthy was the desperation, not the fact that it was over the top. All the shows - clones! mystery islands! - had given over to impressive absurdity.

It's a shame to lose soaps - more than anything, in New York, it means the collapse of an industry that made it possible for thousands to spend their lives as the working actors they wanted to be - but the driving impulse that created them and sustained them is gone. The need to convince women that their lives at hiome were not so bad, that they wer important and valuable, evaporated as middle class women took control of their lives and went out into the world. Soap Operas - what a quaint term - died their death long ago. What we've been watching, really, when we bother to watch these days, is the decaying, rotting remains. And the real failure here is creative; we still need drama, just a different kind of drama, more reflective of the world where we actually live and the lives we actually lead. And we don't live in Pine Valley or Llanview. Not any more.