Changing clothes/Changing Tones/Mocking Gender

"You change your mind like a girl changes clothes." What always gets me about this line is that female singer is using a misogynist line to mock her male lover. It is as if she wants to sound like a tough old guy--like Clint Eastwood, but in order to insult her boyfriend, she has to denigrate women. Indeed by putting women down she legitimates herself as capable of insulting a man for being "feminine."

Even better, in the video Katy Perry is wearing a white wedding dress as she first sings the line, signaling that she does not want to change her dress, she wants to continue as the bride. The groom on the other hand is too girly to marry. The bride is "man enough" to make a commitment, the groom not.

This tough girl talk is also the aural strategy in many conservative political commercials, where the voice over is a (white) woman passing along skeptical remarks about Barack Obama. Because the voice sounds female, it gets away with remarks that might otherwise sound like a harraning white guy. This seeming contradiction defines the rhetoric fascination for Sarah Palin, and all those other soccer mom spokeswomen for the right-wing, -- she speaks more like an old white guy than any old white guy, even as she sounds female. Feminine is definitely not how the woman speaking wants to sound, because in this rhetorical context femininity becomes a negative attribute that the conservative, tough-guy female voice accuses the male liberal of having become--soft, indecisive, moody and eager to spend money, a string of attributes that are meant to mock his claim to masculinity.

Just wait, conservative political women are going to sound more and more like Katy Perry--minus the whipped cream spraying.

Yoko Tawada in Dutch

The first translation of Yoko Tawada into Dutch is now available

Yoko Tawada, De Berghollander, translated by Bettina Brandt & Desirée Schyns

The Mountain Dutchmen (in English)

Published by Vootnoet

German-Jewish Marriage

A fascinating interview with Christiane Kubrick, the German widow of director Stanley Kubrick, about their marriage, her family and making a film about the Holocaust. She speaks about her uncle who was notorious for having filmed Jud Süss at Goebbel's behest and about the difficulty Kubrick had putting together a film about the Holocaust. What's also impressive his the ease with which all these topics flow in the conversation. Allows you to have another look at Kubrick, which is a treat in itself.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/video/2010/aug/10/christiane-kubrick-stanley-dancer

Christiane Kubrick's notorious uncle was Harlan Veit, who directed numerous films for the the Nazis and was specifically picked by Goebbels to direct Jud Süss, the appalling anti-semitic film. In his trial after the war, Veit claimed that he was forced to work with Goebbels, or he and his family would have been killed. There were protests against the court's decisions even at the time, and calls for a boycott against Veit's post-war films. Greg Eghigian recommends taking a look at the documentary "Harlan: In the Shadow of Jew Süss," which details how Veit's family dealt with their unrepentant father. You can catch a preview of the documentary here: http://www.myvideo.de/watc

h/6513553/Video_des_Tages_Dokumentarfilm_Harlan_Im_Schatten_von_Jud_Suess

Subway Systems of the World Unite!

Imagine you could walk a quarter of a mile, wait ten minutes, then get on a train that would connect you with any major shopping center or office building within fifty miles. It would cost you $2.50 to take the ride and it would take 24 minutes to arrive at your location. On the way home you could take the same ride, anytime up until 12:30 AM.

Your children could take the train to after school events, friend's houses and practice sessions. You would not have to drive them everywhere after school and on weekends. They would learn independence and responsibility. They would figure out how to negotiate the wider world, become less introverted and screen obsessed, learn to be polite to strangers, help old ladies of face the stares of other passengers.

Imagine you did not have to own two cars.

Here is a web site that shows you how its done

http://world.nycsubway.org/world/index.html

Light rail--we are not talking about graffiti covered intimidation, rather a world full of smooth efficient reliable modern transportation.

All we need to do is build a few less aircraft carriers.

No French citizenship for you

Check out this German report on how Sarkozy wants to retract the citizenship of foreign-born French who commit crimes. This is the kind of move that in the US would seem to require a constitutional amendment, and perhaps even in France there might be some debate on this legal question, yet there is no doubt that US officials have at times tried the same maneuver.

Amazing how Sarkozy borrows from the American right-wing and the rest of Europe watches with bated breath

http://www.ardmediathek.de/ard/servlet/content/3517136?documentId=5081698

Adorno on Vacation

A wonderful essay about Theodor Adorno's vacation habits, indeed about the word "Urlaub" and its historical formation. As time goes by, and more material is published, we get to read his lectures, his letters to his parents, his childhood biography so that Adorno and company become historical beings. Someday we read about his Hollywood romances, no doubt. It makes them all the more fascinating, in their particularities. High theory goes down well with a dash of gossip.

http://www.faz.net/s/Rub5C2BFD49230B472BA96E0B2CF9FAB88C/Doc~EDA119C6AA77044DEA602233FC505CAD2~ATpl~Ecommon~Scontent.html

Father's Rights in Germany

A painful topic under the best of circumstances,

New rulings allowing unmarried fathers custodial rights in Germany

http://www.faz.net/s/Rub594835B672714A1DB1A121534F010EE1/Doc~ECD0674D56D2B4115B809830CFA73B744~ATpl~Ecommon~Scontent.html

A friend put English subtitles on this brief ZDF report about fathers' rights in Germany

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qeu-Rzsq6As&hd=1