This weekend, we just wanted an easy weekend and planned to take on something easy -- like NBC's CONNECTING . . . Watching on-demand on SHOWTIME, we thought we'd relax with a movie while we outlined some main points regarding the sitcom while discussing some topics we wanted to introduce in next week's speaking gigs. Somehow, we ended up with POMS.
Not somehow. We had selected Diane Keaton's HAMPSTEAD. We'd missed the film and Diane Keaton's an incredibly talented actress. We spoke of ways, in next weeks talks, to introduce the new attacks in Iraq, efforts made by players including the international community to do away with camps for the displaced -- not to find new housing -- permanent or otherwise -- for the displaced, just to close down the camps. And we talked about had been so rich over the last ten years in terms of roles and how moments in 5 FLIGHTS UP and BOOKCLUB attest to the fact that Diane remains one of the best actresses of her generation.
Stepping out of the line of fire when people are rude
Cheap stuff made in China, someone calls it a sale
Somebody's mama, somebody's daughter
Somebody's jail
Beat down in the market, stoned to death in the plaza
Raped on the hillside under the gun from LA to Gaza
A house made of cardboard living close to the rail
Somebody's mama, somebody's daughter
Somebody's jail
And I feel the witch in my veins
I feel the mother in my shoe
I feel the scream in my soul
The blood as I sing the ancient blue
They burned in the millions
I still smell the fire in my grandma's hair
The war against women rages on
Beware of the fairytale
Somebody's mama, somebody's daughter
Somebody's jail
The noise of elections, the promise of change
A grabbing of power at the top, a day at the rifle range
Somebody's in danger, somebody's for sale
Somebody's mama, somebody's daughter
Somebody's jail
We wondered about Diane. Would she make another comedy with Woody Allen? We wondered about that and felt a romantic comedy -- a triangle -- might be best. She'd be Woody's wife and maybe an old love, maybe a first wife returns. A 60s radical? Played by Elaine May or Louise Lasser? She's been underground -- maybe assumed dead? And now she resurfaces and adds complications to Woody and Diane's life together. We talked about how Diane had been attacked for being a good friend to Woody Allen. We don't believe Woody molested Dylan. And a mob seems to think they can bully and intimidate anyone into silence. Diane's refusal to do the recant-walk so many have done in recent years has led to a lot of nonsense and hate aimed at her.
When did standing by a loved one become a bad thing? For example, we do believe Whitney Houston's siblings when they say Dee Dee Warwick molested Whitney. But, even believing that, we don't blame Dionne Warwick for defending her late sister. Dionne doesn't believe the claim and that's her right and it's her right to defend anyone she loves. And, of course, as with everything we aren't personal witness to, we could be wrong about Dee Dee.
Discussing all of those topics and much more, we noticed that HAMPSTEAD had gone off and POMS was starting. Neither of us had caught that one either (which makes us both poor cinefiles and bad friends since we know Diane).
We figured we'd catch a few moments before tidying up the glasses and snack tray and our note pads. A few moments? We watched all the way through. It's product, yes. It's also really good product. Hollywood has made some very solid films over the years, some of which have gone on to become film classics. POMS is supposed to be entertainment and is succeeds on that level. Diane Keaton offers a rich performance as Martha, a woman with cancer who decides against further treatments. She's preparing for the end.
And POMS might have done better at the box office if the studio had up-fronted that. Instead, they hid that detail -- a detail established in the film's opening scenes. A lot of people who didn't see the film mocked it as lightweight because it was about women who wanted to be cheerleaders late in life.
Now it's actually a film about a dying woman banding together with other women to achieve. But even without that, even if it was just a film about a group of senior women wanting to have a go at being cheerleaders, so what?
How is that worthy of disdain and mocking? Because it's a film about women? Because it's a film about women's dreams?
The very low value that our society places on women allows any film dealing with elderly men's flights of fancy to be treated as revolutionary and groundbreaking. And films about elderly women -- Wait. Let's be honest, there aren't a lot of American films with a cast of elderly women. So it's really any film dealing with women's flights of fancy that get branded garbage and worse.
When does this change?
There have been so many 'answers' offered over the years. One of the most common has been when women assume offices of power, things will change. It's sort of a Marxist answer a la 'when the workers seize the means of production.' That answer is obviously not true in terms of women.
Let's talk about magazines, for example. There's been no real improvement for women in the last ten years. Katrina vanden Heuvel took over THE NATION years ago and things aren't any better for women at that magazine -- not in terms of subject matter, not in terms of bylines. As we noted in 2010's "On whores and karma (Ava and C.I.):"
Not only did she [Katrina] lament "policies
that will hurt women" and a lack of "pay equity" she went on to whine,
". . . there's much more attention in our mainstream media to the right
wing women. Just as in the same way we've seen the tea party inflated
and there's too little attention to the women who are running on peace
and justice."
Really?
Katrina vanden Heuvel is editor and publisher of The Nation which published 491 men and only 149 women
in 2007. And she wants to talk about pay equity? (She certainly
doesn't want to talk about how she pays men more for their writing than
she does women -- doesn't want to talk about it, but it is true.) And
she wants to talk about "policies that will hurt women"? We happen to
believe that publishing 491 men in one year but only 149 women is
hurting women.
She's
upset that the mainstream media is focusing (in her mind) on right wing
women and she's whining that it's just like with the tea party. She's
editor and publisher of The Nation.
Does she want to explain why her publication obsessed over the Tea
Party? Does she not understand that those weeks and weeks of five and
six pieces at The Nation
on the Tea Party didn't go unnoticed by the MSM? Does she not get that
the frenzy and moaning and whining by her ilk built the Tea Party?
During all that time, The Nation
wasn't covering Donna Edwards or any of the "peace and justice women"
Katrina could be barely be bothered with actually naming when she was
castigating the MSM for . . . not talking about these women.
"There
are so many women who don't get attention," whined Katrina. "Where is
the narrative about those women and what they've accomplished?"
Gee,
Katrina, where is the attention? You know it's too bad that you don't
run a weekly magazine where you could assign stories and bring
attention to these women . . .
Oh, wait, she does. She is editor and publisher of The Nation.
And a woman being in charge of THE NATION didn't make a bit of difference. Elsewhere? MOTHER JONES has not one woman in charge but two -- Clara Jeffrey (editor) and Monika Bauerlein (CEO) -- and all that's meant is that they've worked overtime trying to turn two blowhard males into media stars -- it's not happening. Well, Clara and Monika did do one more thing . . . they hired a woman . . . to do a hit job on a woman who states she was raped. What a proud moment for the sisterhood. We can't forget Ruth Conniff who failed so spectacularly when she was in charge of THE PROGRESSIVE that everyone wants to pretend like her leadership never happened. In that brief time, she ran the magazine nearly into the ground and did nothing for -- you guessed it -- women.
That's print and online text. What about video? There are a few prominent women who host programs online -- some of which are podcasts. Briahna Joy Gray just leapt into the pool with the podcast BAD FAITH POD. But there are many women who are prominent in this world and, domestically, they include Krystal Ball, Katie Halper, Margaret Kimberley, Rania Khalek, Abby Martin, Fiorella Isabel, Ana Kasparian . . .* Look at the work most of them are producing. Where are the women? They are hosts and co-hosts but, certainly with regards to Katie Halper and Ana Kasparian, they're not interested in women. Yes, Katie's improving, we will give her credit for that. We were part of a group that started calling her out after it was one male guest after another and a man was allowed to make jokes about how he might have a "rape baby" and no one pointed out the obivous: (a) you're not funny and (b) the only way you'd have a "rape baby" is if you were the rapist -- which makes you even less funny.
But, yes we do see in the last two weeks an effort being made by Katie. It's not enough. She may get to the point where it's enough but she doesn't want us doing a count right now. It wouldn't be pretty.
In fact, it never is. Want to talk Diane Rehm? Hmm.
This is a woman who used her gender to get a job with public radio but who didn't feel the need to give back.
It's an important point, especially as Diane spent the last months giving empty lip service to the idea of diversity.
It's empty lip service and we know because we did a study of her show in 2010 and found 232 guests booked of which only 30.17% were women.
Two years later, we looked again:
As we've pointed out before, in the United States women are said to make up 50.1% of the population. So half the country is women. This should mean that half of Diane's guests were women.
But that's not the case. Over ten months, only 34% (33.9%) of Diane's guests have been women.
So although women make up half the country's population, they make up only 34% of Diane's guests.
Everything above after "Hmm"? It's from the 2016 piece we did "Media: One of her guests was never you" when Diane retired from her daily program THE DIANE REHM SHOW. How about Terry Gross? From our 2011 "Terry Gross' new low (Ann, Ava and C.I.):"
Shephard's the reason we monitored Fresh Air. In the spring, examing the guest balance on Morning Edition and All Things Considered, Alicia Shepard wrote,
"Those figures are equally discouraging. NPR listeners heard 2,502 male
sources and 877 female sources on the shows we sampled. In other words,
only 26 percent of the 3,379 voices were female, while 74 percent were
male." As we noted many times, if you wanted to look at imbalance, why
would you go by soundbytes on news programs as opposed to looking at the
shows that book guests?
Alicia Shepard was dismayed (maybe
outraged -- we were outraged) by the fact that the two shows she
examined featured women (non-NPR staff) only 26% of the time. Well it's a
good thing she didn't chart Fresh Air.
We
tracked the show for 2010. We ignored the critics (except in April) and
don't include them in our count of guests unless they were, for an
example, the guest for the hour or filing a report (not doing a review).
Had we counted the 10 regular critics as guests every time they filed
one of their reviews, the gender imbalance would have been even greater
for two reasons: (1) there are nine men and only one woman and (2) the
woman covers books -- and nothing gets less airtime than book reviews.
Terry
relied on many canned interviews throughout the year -- including the
last week of December when she aired repeats she passed off as best-ofs.
In all, her show featured 399 guests (fresh and canned). How many were
women?
74.
Can we get a percentage?
That would be 18.546% of her guests were women. 18% were female. And the NPR ombudsperson's worried about 26% on Morning Edition and All Things Considered?
If you've ignored this issue previously, are you starting now to get how bad it is?
Women are shut out of the conversation. Print, online text, video, podcast, what have you, we are shut out. Even when the people in charge are other women, we are shut out.
Women controlling the means of production did not mean that women's role in media improved. Their voices did not increase. Issues effecting women did not move to the forefront. Nothing happened.
And that is how we get the attacks on POMS, let's be honest. We get those attacks because women aren't valued. So if you're a woman reviewing a film? You know that the pack mentality is to attack and ridicule. You know the safe thing to do is to not champion it.
This is internalized in response to the fact that women are not valued. Daily it's made clear in the offices and on the chats and zooms and phone calls that men are the norm and a token woman or two is the exception. Those exceptions usually learn very quickly to adapt the male norms and customs. It silences, in fact, not only the women not invited in but also the women who do get invited in but know that they're only along for the ride on a pass and that pass can be revoked at any time. As this discrepancy takes place, it reinforces the notion that only men can talk, only men can analyze and weigh in -- which is how you get the problem that is NPR's ALL SONGS CONSIDERED (see ""Media: The hatred of women runs deep -- even at NPR").
When women like Katie Halper have the power to choose who they speak with and repeatedly ignore women, it sends a message. The message is that the other women are not worth talking to, not smart enough or whatever. At any point, these women could have their passes revoked. You'd think if only to protect themselves, they'd be working on increasing the number of women invited on their shows. But maybe when you work around so much hatred of women on a daily basis, you not only internalize the customs and mores (the hatred of women) of the dominant group, you also deny the reality that you're part of the despised group. You're in on a pass and for the moment, even though you're a woman, you can pass for something else -- for a little while, anyway. Women like Katie can change the world. Having an equal number of men and women as guests on her show can change the world. It can change attitudes, it can change expectations, it can change what is the norm. When your actions could do so much and could mean so much, why are you failing other women?