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A blog that I like almost as much as a novel, albeit a novel whose cover I would hide from prospective suitors. Sorry, but Stephen King goes down much better than Marian Keyes with the buachaillí.
A day off today: to read, to think, to watch television, to create ipod playlists, to debate whether or not to buy a Sonia Rykiel dress on net-a-porter . . . life is tough.
The blogging will, hopefully, resume with vigour cette semaine. Je suis desolée pour the incredible lapse in blogging. Perdoname.
So, yesterday, after a year of wanting to, and missed opportunities, and waiting and tension and desire and regret, I watched the film version of Khaled Hosseini’s Kite Runner. Much as people expressing their love for books irks me – and has resulted in some serious errors in reading judgement, most notably Tuesdays with Morrie and The Da Vinci Code – The Kite Runner was one of those books.
No hesitation, no ambiguity. The Kite Runner, The Time Traveler’s Wife (American spelling excused), Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and Life of Pi – books that change a person. They all share one thing in common: a bittersweet strand that is more bitter than sweet, a lesson about life that, while encouraging, is hardly uplifting. Tears shed, brows furrowed – in these litigious times, I’ll probably be able to sue Audrey Niffenegger and have her pay for my Botox in a few years.
Films are always to be entered into with trepidation, especially when they are motion pictures of books that you have cherished. There’s always something taken away, something less than what you’d imagined or, if not less, just different, and different to the extent that either the experience of watching or the experience of reading is altered, depleted, somehow – if you’re very unfortunate, a movie can have the double-edged sharpness of being able to damage both (hello, 2006’s Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe).
The Kite Runner, the film, I did not love. It was faithful to the book, yes, almost too faithful; although it left bits out, small parts that were, perhaps, not integral to the plot but seemed integral to the atmosphere, to the mood of the story, which is so much more important than the plot itself, in my book (if you’ll pardon the pun). I couldn’t decide, afterward, if I would have liked it as a film, alone. Had I not loved the book, had I not held it within me somehow, had it not stayed with me, would I even have watched the film? The kites were beautiful, it’s true; the boys were well cast; the Afghanistan that it portrayed both enthralled and repulsed me – I’d love to visit but I know I would not, in actuality.
But the film disturbed me in a way the book did not; and if you have never read a thing about Taliban Afghanistan, look away now, I may ruin the plot of a future piece of historical non-fiction. In the book, there is a scene, a grotesquely disturbing yet mesmerising scene in which our hero, Amir, witnesses the stoning of an adulterous woman in a Colloseum-type scenario. In the book, the action and the sound are described; we hear the soft thud as the woman’s body hits the sandy ground.
This is a scene that, one would imagine, would be difficult to portray in film. You would show the woman, pan to the stoners, to the stones, you could show the audience’s reaction, you could record the sound, but you wouldn’t show the stone hitting her body, you wouldn’t see the blood coming from her body; you could show it spraying in the air, instead. These things are awful, and heartbreaking, and we don’t need to see it in order to know that it happened.
But in the film, a woman is stoned. We see the stones, we see her screaming, we see her kneeling, we see the first, and second and third stones hit her body; we hear the sound and we see the blood and we are witness to her falling to the ground, kissing the sandy earth as if she were praying to Mecca. And my theory is that the director thought it fit to show this because she is wearing a burkha. Surely the point of producing a film based on a book that is very obviously anti-Taliban would be to point out how they dehumanised their people, rather than dehumanising them further?
The impression I got was that, because this woman was wearing a burkha, it was okay to show her being murdered; she was covered up, she was barely recognisable as human – and besides, violence sells.
But it left a bad taste: not a bittersweet one, no, that would have been too delicate. The film was very man-centred, but Afghanistan is very woman-centred, no? Women are a focus of Muslim society, and the film was made much more macho than the book.
Women matter. Whether they’re covered up or not.
I almost spelled that “Inpendence” which would have been embarrassing.
Every Sunday, the Sunday Independent is purchased, and consumed, with vigour, a casa Mac Cabe – okay, to rephrase: every Sunday, I buy, and consume the Sunday Independent with great vigour, some relish and the occasional bout of mouth-vomit, usually induced by one Mr B Egan.
And every Sunday, the Independent and its group of fearless industry leaders (the journalists) pioneer several worthy causes. This week, Michelle Doherty, Channel 6 presenter and Irish model (news to me, on both counts). Last week, Malahide and its bevvy of beautiful young wimmin. Here they were, beautiful and rich and jetting off to Marbella for the summer, or to Hong Kong, to spend Mummy and Daddy’s money. But – wait – these Malahide madames don’t take anything for granted! Of course not! They are aware of the lengths to which their oil tycoon parents went to earn them their cash.
2007 was a particularly high year for the Indo. Marcus Sweeney tells all (and, oh, there’s an interview with Radiohead on the inside); Wesanna do soft-porn (and if you’re interested, Jack Nicholson talks to our journo on page 12); these beautiful women talk about what it’s like to be a woman today. . . in their underwear.
The Independent has its priorities all wrong. Radiohead vs Marcus Sweeney? Should that sentence ever even have been written?
Or. . . there’s another, frightening, less starkly obvious possibility. Could it be that we (in this bracket I am including myself; feel free to exclude yourself as you deem fit) have our priorities all wrong?! Could it be that our obsession with Wesanna and the late, great Katy and all their friends and money and houses and shoes and dresses (you get the point) has reached a scary sort of fanaticism?
For all we give out about Tila Tequila (the Myspace-made star of Tila Tequila’s Shot at Love), who is famous for (a) being popular and (b) being bisexual even though (c) she’s probably neither in reality, we are nonsensically obsessed with these Irish A-listers whose roles in Irish life seem to be confined to turning up at vaguely alcohol-associated events and flirting with the presenters of Exposé or, if they’re really unlucky, Ryan Tubridy.
So now I’m going cold turkey. Myself and the Independent – our love affair is over. Anyway, I’m mighty peeved about what they said about my Geraldine.
Have any of us felt like natural women in a long, long time? Today, over on beaut, the ladies discussed the merkin – the down-there hair for the lady whose down-there hair, well, isn’t quite there. According to the guardian, it was borne of a desire [by prostitutes, natch] to cover up unseemly sights down below: pubic lice, herpes, and so on. A valiant cause, therefore.
Today, the merkin is apparently only acceptable in fetishist circles or, one presumes, if you want to have a really good laugh. Or – if you want to have the Union Jack emblazoned on your pubic area. The whole Spencer Tunick experience did, however, make me see the benefits of the merkin; although when I suggested that it may have helped to Ciara, she responded with a definitive “if they did a knee merkin I may have taken up that offer – my crotch wasn’t the area concerning me most”.
But… I digress. The thing that bothers me most about the whole merkin affair, is that there’s no merkin for men. Much as there’s no lipstick, no Brazilian wax (back, sack and crack doesn’t quite have the same ring to it, it has to be said), no tights, no high heels, no Double Wear, no silk-satin lingerie sets. We have it all wrong, kids – and the way things are going, we’re never going to make it right again.
Naomi Wolfe, in her book, The Beauty Myth, maintains that female beauty – the modern idea of female beauty, replete with waxing, self-maintenance and more make-up than you’d find in the whole of Mount Anville, was not created, but encouraged at the same time as the female sufferage movement as a way of keeping the good ladies down: they may want equal pay and, fine, they’ll get it eventually, but by God we’ll find other ways of keeping them on their knees (Michael O’Leary would know all about that).
And, though some of her views might be a bit too far-fetched for the less cynical among us (for the record, when it comes to cynicism, I’m right there with her), Wolfe has a point. If – and only if – a woman makes it to become a manager in her place of employ, you can guarantee that her management technique will not be the same as that of a male manager. This is a generalisation, but they are useful, in their place, and it’s not entirely beyond the realms of possibility to state that most female managers have a more difficult job: if they wear suits, they are bitches; if they wear skirts, they slept their way to the top; if they reprimand in a straightforward way, they’re bitches; if they’re sickly sweet, they’re, well, undercover bitches.
If a woman chooses not to shave her legs, she’s probably a lesbian (and therefore a feminist, and most likely a bitch, in the bargain); if she doesn’t wear make-up, she’s unattractive; if she lets herself get fat, she’s over the hill, and she’ll probably turn into a bitch out of resentment. Most of the qualities – relaxation, a bit of slovenliness, some over-indulgence – that signify that a man is successful, signify that a woman has lost it. Who saw Indiana Jones and didn’t think “no way, Indie wouldn’t go for that old hag, what about a bit of Cate? He could bring her around!”?
The battle of the sexes is not going to be over until us women start thinking of ourselves as equal. Distinguishing ourselves as women often serves only to exacerbate the myths that surround us, as a sex and as an anomaly, a non-understandable entity that is here for several functions, none of which should involve power, success or, heaven forbid ambition (again: lesbian). We need to get off our chairs and back onto our high horses, and stop saying things like “I’m not a feminist, but…”. Because if you’re not, then you should be. If you’re not, then, please, half your paycheck and give the other half to your partner. He deserves it: he’s a man, after all.
We came in our droves, early this morning (2.30am, to be precise) and . . . we waited. Despite the slight odour of sewage (this is Dublin’s docks and there is a sewage treatment plant there so, while disgusting, this was not surprising), the ominous-looking rainclouds and the possibility of rats (where there’s water . . .), we came with enthusiasm, a lot of nerves and a towel each – in case of rain.
People were friendlier than usual; obviously knowing that, before long, you will all be naked ensemble, without so much as a friendly fig leaf, breaks down whatever barriers might have existed. People shared cigarettes, jokes and anecdotes. Anything to break the monotony of the wait.
The portaloos were insufficient; but, then, it seems that they were expecting fewer people. It was surprising: somehow, people signing up to partake in an “artwork” doesn’t always translate to the amount of people who show up, but show up they did, and in their thousands. Conservative estimate – 2,000 people, united in nudity but otherwise very different.
Our bodies are undoubtedly functional, but no two are alike, and all of them were beautiful. Larger ladies, red-haired Celts, a woman who, in usual circumstances would have elicited a gasp and a cry of “anorexia” was with us – the group was “we”. We were there, we were naked, we were laughing, we were smiling. We didn’t know each other’s names but, somehow, it didn’t matter – one could even go so far as to say that knowing names would have lessened the impact of the event. It was irrelevant who you were in the real world; for four hours early on this Saturday morning, the longest day of 2008, we were all equal.
And somehow now I find myself on the verge of tears; while glad that I partook, I wouldn’t do it again. The cold was unbearable, the ground was stony, the wait was difficult and my patience wanes easily. My tears are for the fact that I will most likely never again feel so free. Even when we were told to put our clothes back on, there was a tangible difference in the air. Those who struggled to get dressed, those who couldn’t find their plastic bags, they were to be pitied; once we had our jeans back on, being naked seemed positively mortifying.
One poor soul took a while. His plastic bag was lost in the abyss of bodies and he scurried through the [now fully-dressed] masses, attempting to find his armour. We had ours, and he was defenseless. Vulnerable and almost laughable, a naked man in the midst of a clothed crowd.
I can still feel the cold in my legs, in my arms; we lay on the stone for much longer than I had anticipated, and the winds were high, and the rain was coming. I am feeling sad, for the feeling of freedom that is gone now, for the feeling of camraderie that you just don’t get any more. There was even a couple who shared our taxi home; they gave us €8, but we didn’t want to take it. You just don’t see things like that any more.
For a while, early this morning, we were all children: innocent, trusting, equal, and with a whole lot of hope for the future, and for the present. Now that we have our clothes on, our armour, we are back to the reality we have created – Baudrillard has a lot to answer for in my philosophical ramblings, but what I saw this morning, that was reality. Your jeans? They’re the mask.
As a random aside, the other day I began to think what it would be like to talk in song words. It’s like that, and I don’t want to miss a thing… It gets tiresome.
I’ve blogged about feminismo before, in a roundabout way. Unless one wants to be a feminist writer – and with all its negative connotations, why would one want to be? – it’s always in a roundabout way. Writing, blogging, speaking about feminism is like walking through a minefield wearing flippers. Except that you probably won’t die; it is, however, difficult, full of possible pitfalls and embarrassments, and at every corner there is someone who tells you that you’re not really a feminist: you’re wearing make-up, obviously for men; you’re wearing a short skirt; you’re flicking your hair because you want to impress someone; or maybe you’re being bitchy about women.
When is it going to sink in that being a feminist and being a woman who acts like a woman (in the very general sense) are not mutually exclusive? If I am a feminist, what do I believe in? Equal rights for men and women, mostly. Equal treatment, equal opportunities and equal luck and equal chances. Life is not fair, nor is it easy, and it’s okay that some people are luckier than others, or treated better than others, for no reason whatsoever – what isn’t okay is to be treated differently, or to be less lucky than someone else, because that person is male.
This could turn into a tome, and if I’d wanted to be a feminist author, I would have chosen the changing face of feminism as a topic for my thesis. I didn’t, and I may live to regret it. Is Cosmopolitan feminist, for example? Is it feminism if you view it as a dirty word, itself?
But I’ll leave you with a story: on an Iarnród Éireann vehicle the other day (let’s say, perhaps an automated rail-bound vehicle), having bought tickets and reserved seats, we were told (fourteen of us) that there were no seats, that the carriage in which we had reserved them did not exist, that we would have to stand for the duration of our journey. At which point I stepped up, not any more aggressively than was expected, and said that this was not acceptable, that we had booked tickets, had reserved seats, and deserved to have our tickets honoured.
In response, Mr IÉ said: “listen, love…” Would he have said that to a man? Would he have taken that tone with a man? When I responded with “Excuse me, please don’t call me ‘love’” (understandably quite enraged), he rolled his eyes, in that typical ‘uh-oh, feminist alert’ and strolled off. Back turned, eyes probably still to the ceiling. He’s lucky the wind didn’t change.
How does one go about getting regular, freelance work? How many times does one have to put oneself out there, write emails, beg, plead, be cheeky, be nice, be friendly… I shouldn’t complain, but the difficulties of getting anywhere are highlighted by the successes of my peers. Namely Ciara and Corina, who are now my idols, my role models, the women to whom I look for career advice. And also, advice about conduct.
I find myself, on a daily basis, astounded at how well people handle themselves. In the office, on the street, I feel myself a stumbling fool, a bumbling idiot unable to get the simplest of points across.
If you want me to make a phonecall, please encourage me to turn off my television screen first.
One would think that this blog post is going to be about a hangover – incidentally, there was that. But, instead, for a change, for something new (etc) it’s about the Lisbon Treaty. The Treaty to end all Treaties… Or is it?
For us, anyway, it should be over now. We voted No, for whatever reasons, and, despite what the No campaign may say, it is not beyond the realms of possibility to suggest that a lot of people voted No because of bad feeling towards the Government. Because “they didn’t explain it properly”… I could go on. But then… sigh. This has all been said, it has all been done.
Today’s Irish Times had a myriad letters relating to the Lisbon Treaty. Somehow (Brian Cowen, sir, please pay attention) the views of the people are a thousand times more interesting than the views of the politicians. One avid newspaper reader suggested that the Lisbon Treaty needs to be redrafted to include the Church. Inclusive? Methinks not. Another referred to Sinn Féin’s newfound love of peace and neutrality; another letter berated the Yes camp for suggesting that the No camp voted No out of spite, out of ignorance… one can see how the No camp could be offended. [Red herring: who doesn't love an ellipsis?!]
Theorists aside, no one can say how things will go now. We won’t leave the EU; could we? Should we? It’s beyond the point. Brian Cowen probably won’t stand up and say that the Irish public was wrong, regardless of his personal feelings about the issue. There probably won’t be a call for the Treaty to be redrafted; will the Treaty be ratified without us? Only time will tell.
But the problem is, by the time it rolls around, will we even care?
Here’s one for Pricewatch (no, I’m not obsessed) – yesterday, this intrepid researcher went in search of a copy of Vogue. Eating on one’s own is never pleasant, no matter who you’re being ditched for. So a magazine is a prerequisite: that way, people won’t think you’re waiting for someone who hasn’t turned up.
The first newsagent I went to (which I would name, had I the foresight to remember it at the time) had a copy of said Vogue in all its shiny glory, with the sterling price of £3.80 on the cover, and a sticker with €7.05 on it. I’m no conversion wizard, but that doesn’t seem to add up; indeed, today I see that £3.80 converts to €4.80. And I would allow for transport; but €2.25 per magazine seems excessive.
So, on I went to the next shop: Centra on Wicklow Street, next to Tower Records. There it is again! Hurrah! My thinking was that Centra is a chain, so may order more Vogues, and may, therefore, be able to get a bargain on the packaging / distribution costs. I may have been mistaken: in Centra, Vogue is €7.95. As Una would say, no waysies.
Next, on to another shop, this time across from Monsoon on Grafton Street: Vogue, for the relatively meagre price of €6.13. Sold, and feeling quite smug (although, still, in the grand scheme of things, ripped off), until being told this morning, over on Beaut, that Easons are selling Vogue for €5.40.
How is this possible? How is this allowed?!
On a positive note, it was a stellar issue. Short, but to the point, and doesn’t Uma look amazing? Still, I can’t help but have a bitter taste in my gob about the whole thing. It’d practically be cheaper to drive to Belfast and pay the sterling price for it.
Last night was Lykke Li in the Sugar Club with the ever-delightful Ciara.
It’s a good thing she was on that, because she was sold out, which I was not anticipating. The Sugar Club itself – well, it was me first time, and it was a lovely venue.
However, the gig was a danceable gig, and the Sugar Club, not so danceable. Besides, once parked beside some not-so-friendly males of the species, there was no way we were absconding our seats for the vague uncertainties of a tiny dancefloor.
But it’s true – Sweden is the land of plenty. Lykke Li was everything I’d heard she was, and more; she danced, she sang, she rapped, she sang into a loudspeaker, which was amazing – she had instruments around her neck, like a travelling circus performer, with her entire kit enveloping her tiny frame. I did worry, for a while, about her body heat, what with the fact that she didn’t take off her cardigan, but she must have been okay – maybe her headband conducted the heat out of her body through her cranium.
She was, quite frankly, mesmerising. Everybody felt it; I’m buying her album, I’d buy her perfume, were she to release one. But somehow, I suspect that’s a route she will leave less-travelled.
