Hi Friends!

Heres Sinead O’Connor’s letter to Miley Cyrus. Definitely worth the read.

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/oct/03/sinead-o-connor-open-letter-miley-cyrus

http://www.buzzfeed.com/danieldalton/do-male-feminists-get-free-drinks#217b9jl

Found this article earlier today on Buzzfeed, as satirical as it is I found it interesting just to go along with the many conversations we’ve had about feminism this semester and was wondering what people in our class, especially the boys, thought about it.  Also the “are you a feminist” quiz link at the end is funny and definitely work checking out.

After much thought, I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m still not over the ending of Boys Don’t Cry. I meant what I said in class–when the camera cuts to Brandon laying on the ground in the fetal position then shows John and Tom approach him, give him his shirt back while John physically lifts him up and puts his arm around Brandon, it was safe to say my jaw dropped. It wasn’t until after John says, “If you keep our little secret, we’ll stay friends.  Right little buddy?” and Brandon replies, “Yeah of course.  This is all my fault. I know,” that I literally had to pause my Netflix and thought, what just happened. 

Watching the rape scene was treacherous in itself.  I felt myself get goosebumps when John jumps up and cheers, adrenaline flowing after he finishes his turn with Brandon; a lump in the back of my throat after hearing Brandon’s cry over and over again, in hopes that this moment would end.

You hear about rape victims placing blame on themselves and it seeming pretty ridiculous, but actually watching a rape (which was treacherous in itself) and then hearing Hillary Swank say that (s)he knew it his fault was overwhelming to say the least.  Brandon wasn’t ‘asking for it,’ he wasn’t dressing provocatively, or egging John and Tom on like we saw Bridget do in The Last Seduction, he was doing quite the opposite of that actually when he starting dating Lana.  But then there is the argument (solely for the sake of one) where one could say that had Brandon been dressing provocatively in girls clothes and hitting on the boys instead, they wouldn’t have raped him, because this was considered punishment for tricking them (again this is for the sake of argument-not my stance on the matter).

Does that sounds contradicting to anyone else or just me?

And then there is the fact that John and Tom say that they and Brandon are going to be friends after the entire rape scene, or else they would kill him.  I’m sorry, what? That is the most messed up part in my opinion.  There were five people in their circle of friends, three of which were involved in this rape.  That means every day, all three of these people would see each other and be reminded of what had happened, and in Brandon’s case he would most likely relive it every time.

After the two kill Brandon and film ended, I had a very terrible feeling about the whole thing, but I think I would have felt even worse had they not killed him and instead just gone on with their daily lives, causing Brandon to relive his rape and causing even more of “punishment” for him to live with.

Some argue that The Help underplays the civil rights era.  That was more than apparent after watching the movie review clip at the end of class last Thursday.  But unfortunately evil comes in more types than just horrific brutality the jim crow era is known for.  We do not see any lynchings in The Help, but we see the destruction of lives through mental games and higherarchy of the female social construct that was essentially law.  A construct where Regina George of Mean Girls looks kind or where ostracization and manipulation is a crowd favorite.  The Help shows that where a white man had the power to get up and shoot someone, the white woman had the power to ensure a black person could never get another job again, leaving them with nothing but the responsibility for a family they must still provide for, and a side of shame and belittlement.

I know that this is very different from the cruelty that the female critic (blanking on her name sorry folks), but cruelness is cruelness no mater what description entails, and The Help shows one of the many sides of cruel that was very apparent during this time period.

As I said in class, I actually just finished reading the help. I usually hate reading books after I see the movie (I’ve seen the help before this class) because the movie is never as good as the book, but I heard that the book and movie were very similar when it came to The Help.

Overall, the movie follows the book rather well.  Tate Taylor, the dirctor of the film, is a friend of Kathryn Stockett, the author of the book, and Stockett helped on the screenplay before production began as well.  Overall to me, there were two things that were apparently different between the book and the film.  The first being that the violence was toned down a bit in the film, in order to make it more of a PG film according to IMDB.  The other difference that was changed from the book to the movie that is worth mentioning is part of the ending of the film.  Don’t worry, the Mae Mobley and Aibleen goodbye scene is just as heart wrenching in the book.  But in the book when Skeeter goes off to New York, the paper she works for before actually gives the Miss Myrna column to Aibileen.  This is something I’m not sure why they cut from the film, especially because this tidbit of information would have given the audience more closure with Aibileen’s character, but then again, closure is a debatable word in this situation due to the time period.