Because I Really Needed to Make a Dickensian Justification for My Taste in Film

The Rules: Don't take too long to think about it. 15 films that you've seen that will always stick with you. Take no more than 15 minutes to decide.

Standard disclaimer: this is not necessarily a list of “favorites” or “bests.” I suspect that this meme stands a very real chance of becoming “let me recount to you my childhood favorites, with some geekery thrown in for good measure.” Oh well, can’t be helped I suppose. Also, I refuse to stick to the concise, just-the-facts-ma’am-list format. That’s not how I work, baby. So, justifications ahoy. You’ve been warned.

1. Let’s just get this out of the way right now: “The Princess Bride” Loved it passionately as a child, still quote it frequently as an adult. I’ve read the book, I fangirl Inigo. I have “Storybook Love,” the film’s hard to find love theme, on my iPod. Don’t mess with my PB, kk? That would be a classic blunder, in line with getting involved in a land war in Asia or going against a Sicilian when death is on the line. ;P

2. “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves” Wait, what? Yes. Yes, I have a guilty, guilty affection for this movie. Sure, Kevin Costner is a terrible Robin Hood (even worse than Russell Crowe). Its okay, I have Cary Elwes and Errol Flynn for that. This thing contains the pure, unadulterated awesome of Alan Rickman hamming it up like whoa and like DAMN as the Sheriff. And Christian Slater being the sexiest scamp of a Will Scarlett ever. Yum. Also? Morgan Freeman. And pretty pretty costumes and ponies. And did I mention how awesome Alan Rickman is? Because he’s pretty awesome. I wore a literal hole into the VHS of this movie in middle school. And I will admit that the Brian Adams song totally hit my mushy girl buttons when I was a preteen.

3. “Army of Darkness” This is a terrible movie. It is 100% synthetic rot your soul and mind film spray cheese. AND I WILL EAT THE WHOLE DAMN CAN EVERYTIME. Why? Do you really need to ask? Bruce Campbell is hilarious, sexy, and damn good at cocking a shotgun. This movie is stupid quotable, and just so ridiculous and bad that it actually comes close to awesome approaching from the wrong way.

4. “Hot Fuzz/Run Fatboy Run” Okay, I’m cheating. That’s two movies. But they’re both Simon Pegg, and I love them equally, and this is my list, so jog on. There are so many awesome little things about “Hot Fuzz”, and it’s still laugh out loud funny to me, no matter how many times I’ve seen it. I like it better than “Shaun of the Dead”. That may be blasphemy; I don’t care. “Run Fatboy Run” is achingly sweet and geeky, and has quickly become one of my favorite rom-coms of all time. But really, they had me at the shoplifting tranny.

5. “How to Steal a Million” This thing is a romp, and the clothes are gorgeous. You can’t really go wrong with Audrey. The film’s central crime is ludicrously implausible, but it’s so fun to watch, I can’t be arsed to care.

6. “Star Wars” The original trilogy, before Lucas decided he was clever and started pasting bullshit CG ‘improvements’ in and murdered the teddy bear picnic HEA of “Return.” I refuse to explain this one. If you don’t get it already, nothing I can say will help.

7. “Kiss Me, Kate” My absolute favorite musical. It has so many wonderful features: theater, play-within-a-play narrative, Cole Porter, Bob Fosse, “Brush Up Your Shakespeare”, and of course, Howard Keel. That man’s voice was spectacular. Also, the costumes are pretty sweet.

8. “Strictly Ballroom” Ballroom dancing, tango, and Aussies. What’s not to like? This is by no means a cinematic masterpiece, but it is kooky and fun, and I loved it in High School. It pleases my inner dance nerd.

9. “Pride & Prejudice” It should go without saying that I mean the old BBC version with Colin Firth, not that abomination starring Keira Knightley. Pitch perfect Austen-to-screen. Love the book, but this movie is a good P&P fix without the major commitment of reading time. Also, Colin Firth? YES.

10. “Krull” This is one of my geek cred movies. It isn’t good. I haven’t watched it in at least a decade. But the recollection of the movie sticks with me. Fire Mares, the Glaive, and young Liam Neeson? Good call. Promotional "Krull" themed weddings? Not so much. This is kind of a rite of passage film for me; you don’t have to like it, but until you’ve seen it, you can’t call yourself a fantasy/sci-fi movie nerd. Period.

11. “The Goonies” If you don’t like “The Goonies," I don’t want to talk to you. This is another one of those stupid fun movies I’ve loved since childhood. Super quotable, and just a good time all around.

12. “Young Frankenstein” So funny. Dammit Mel Brooks, why don’t you make ‘em like this anymore? I dare you to watch this movie and not laugh. I DARE YOU. But bear in mind; even if you succeed in doing so, I will refuse to believe you’ve managed it.

13. “Surf’s Up” Okay, seriously? I’m comfortable betting that more than half of this movie’s box office came directly from my pocket. Ev made me see this cartoon A MILLION TIMES. It was cute the first few times. Now, the thing is burned into my retinas. I guess it’s cute. I really like that they did a lot of the voice work in groups, with improv and actual actor-to-actor interaction. I just wish Shia LaBoeuf weren’t in it.Additionally, this is one of the funniest scenes ever. Seriously, I love this sea urchin:

14. “Willow” I told you beforehand this would turn into a list of my childhood favorites. Look, I don’t care if “Willow” is the poor man’s Lord of the Rings knock off. This is the first movie I can remember seeing in theaters, and I have a visceral recall of how shit scared I was of the Death Dogs. I love Val Kilmer in this, bad wig and all, and Warwick Davis is adorable. The shot of him on his white pony at the end still warms the cockles of my heart. So suck it, Tolkien. “Willow” is awesome, dated special effects and hackneyed plot be damned.

15. “Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang” Yeah, I drank the Kool-aid. I love me some Robert Downey Jr. And c’mon, this is a good movie. Funny, a little bit clever. I think of this movie like my morning latte of films. Familiar, invigorating, a good pick-me-up, and always satisfying.



Smart Bitches Unite: Identity, Community, and Activism in the Modern Romance Reader Blog

So, once there was this time (about a year ago) that I wrote a paper about the Smart Bitches website for my pop-culture class. And the prof loved it, and asked for a copy to use as an exemplar for future students doing this assignment. And more importantly, my sister liked it, and told me to post it here. So here 'tis:

“Everyone has a very firm idea of what the average romance reader is like. We bet you already know her. She’s rather dim and kind of tubby --- undereducated and undersexed --- and she displays a distressing affinity for mom jeans” (Wendell & Tam 4). For all the years that romance has existed as a separate and distinct genre in popular fiction, romance novels and their readers have been denigrated and undervalued. There is a clear and pervasive prejudice against the genre; the stereotypical romance reader is generally a pathetic lonely housewife or a spinster, who consumes large quantities of chocolate and possibly owns a great many cats. She is not particularly intelligent, nor is she vivacious. The novels themselves are characterized as hackneyed and formulaic, when they aren’t being called outright pornographic, and the genre is rarely granted any artistic or cultural value. As an avid romance reader (since age 12), I often find myself grinding my teeth over phrases like “but you’re too smart to read that crap! Aren’t you an English major?” “I can’t believe you read that chick porn,” or “all those books are the same; formulaic and badly written.” This is an incredibly frustrating and isolating experience. Fortunately, there is a thriving, intellectual fandom community to be found online, a forum which allows romance readers to cooperatively use the romance novel to “construct meanings of self, of social identity, and social relations” (Fiske 112). Participation in these online communities provides contributors and readers with a sense of identity as members of a subset of a larger romance reading community, and enables active debate, not only of the genre and its stigmas, but also of politics and the morality of the publishing industry.

For the purposes of this paper, I will be examining the online community surrounding the Smart Bitches, Trashy Books blog, created and operated by Sarah Wendell and Candy Tam. The basic premise of the site is that the authors and commenters are intelligent, if somewhat profane, professional women with advanced degrees, who nevertheless enjoy critiquing and reading romance novels. This particular blog is a very clear example of community and identity building in online fandoms. Fandom members take a commodity, in this case the romance novel, and use it, as well as their own reactions to it, to define themselves both as individuals and as a community. In this fandom, reviews of romance novels and discussions of romance novel tropes create a dialogue and a sense of commonality between commenters. Members are drawn to the forum because of a shared love of romance novels, and they stay and become active members of the community because they are able to relate to other commenters. They form social bonds, while still asserting their individuality, by posting their own preferences and thoughts on any given subject.

This fandom community further cements a sense of social identity through a combination of site specific lingo and pervasive hypertextual elements. Group members share a common vernacular which establishes them as members of the “in group,” the community of Smart Bitches readers and contributors. Commentary and blog posts are littered with “in group” vocabulary: the acronym TSTL (Too Stupid to Live, usually used in reference to a novel’s heroine), alphole (an “asshole” alpha hero), and mantitte/man titty (pecs, generally referring to cover models). Many of these terms are self-referential, and require a working knowledge of past posts or discussions to be understood. For example: the expression Napoli-ed is used as shorthand on the site for rape, and is used synonymously with the term “hella rape.” This stems from an incident in March of 2006, in which the Smart Bitches successfully instituted a Google bomb on Senator Bill Napoli after he made some unfortunate comments about the extreme conditions under which he would consider allowing abortion. Without the context and awareness of Napoli’s statement, the Google bomb, and the blog community’s campaign to institute said “bomb”, this expression makes little sense, and excludes one from the “in group.”

In addition to this “in group” specific vocabulary, the Smart Bitches blog and community relies heavily on hypertext, “the technological realization of intertextuality; with a click of a mouse, one text leads to another, and another;” frequent linking and referencing of outside sources, be they web-based or more broadly cultural, is a cornerstone of the Smart Bitches blog (Gwenllian-Jones 187). John Fiske says that, “intertextuality proposes that any one text is necessarily read in relationship to others and that a range of textual knowledges is brought to bear upon it” (qtd. in Gwenllian-Jones 186). This hypertextual element is both inclusive and divisive. On one level, links to other romance blogs, current events, and the Romance Writers of America contests and statistics are inclusive, providing at the click of a mouse much of the information necessary to process Smart Bitches posts, as well as a sense of membership in the broader romance community beyond Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. However, there are equally many somewhat obscure references to outside texts on the site, which require either prior knowledge or careful research into a wide spectrum of pop cultural and literary sources. Therefore, by frequently referencing past material, other blogs and media sources, as well as a vast array of pop culture references, from Howard Keel to “Spinal Tap”, Norse mythology to Britney Spears, and Sartre to keyboard cat, the Smart Bitches blog creates a complex fan community which requires certain prior and acquired knowledge to belong and fully understand the forum. Certainly at the most basic level any person who enjoys romance novel can join the group, but in order to get all the in-jokes and context, one must be equally versed in any number of seemingly unrelated external sources, which are not inherently relevant to romance reading. Membership in the Smart Bitches fandom community may also inspire one to explore these broader references, thereby both expanding one’s personal experience and frame of reference for self-identification, as well as reinforcing bonds to the fandom.

The Smart Bitches, Trashy Books romance novel fandom is often quite political. This is one of the most outspoken romance novel fandom communities when it comes to refuting the common stigma attached to romance novels and their readers, often posting notices of online media sources lambasting romance, which generally spurs a flurry of commentary from the fandom community, both on the Bitches blog itself and on the offending media link. In one recent post, Sarah Wendell wrote a strong criticism of a Huffington Post contributor, going into a point by point breakdown of just how the man was perpetuating stereotypes both of the genre and of the readers, which resulted in a flurry of articulate comments, both on Huffington Post’s website and on Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, defending the genre and criticizing both the offending post’s author and the Huffington Post for perpetuating the stereotype. Although this may not seem overtly political, particularly in comparison to the community’s attack on Bill Napoli and his stance on abortion, it is important to note that this fandom often addresses the stereotype on romance and romance readers as a feminist issue. When discussing the question of why romance is so often denigrated, blog authors Candy Tam and Sarah Wendell ask, “Are you a woman? Look in your pants. That could be why,” suggesting that one of the major reasons romance is still so openly mocked and stigmatized is that it is “a genre written mostly by women, mostly for women” (126). When viewed through this lens of throwback patriarchal discomfort with female literacy and success, it is easy to see why any attack on the genre could be seen as an attack on women and women’s rights to produce art for the enjoyment of themselves and their fellow women.

In addition to politics, the Smart Bitches community is also keenly interested in the policies and morality of the publishing industry, particularly in the handling of plagiarism. Since the community is comprised not only of readers but also of authors and industry insiders, the community as a whole is greatly concerned with protecting the rights of authors and firmly punishing plagiarists. The most powerful example of this is the blog’s full scale campaign against author Cassie Edwards. In January of 2008 a reader spotted several instances of likely plagiarism in Ms.
Edwards’ books, passages seemingly lifted entirely unaltered from an article about black-footed ferrets, and pointed them out on the Smart Bitches forum. Within days the fandom community had mobilized against the author, sparking public exposure in the national news media and two statements from Ms. Edwards’ publisher first supporting, and then questioning and condemning, Ms. Edwards’ behavior. The Smart Bitches community aggressively pursues and publicizes any and all such cases that come to their attention, and is quite proud of their role in policing it. Interestingly, this was a divisive issue for some members of the community; some members criticized the blog community, suggesting that the attack on Ms. Edwards was out of proportion, and likely motivated by the blog’s authors’ well established dislike of Cassie Edwards’ books.

Ultimately, it is clear that romance novel blogs, and the fandom communities which spring from them, are multifaceted and complex collectives which, nevertheless, tend to be able to unify their members under a common group identity. Fandom members often achieve a strong sense of group identification, from which they derive a sense of belonging, of being understood and welcomed. Communities like Smart Bitches, Trashy Books help their members to create a cultural framework through which to view their own lives and role in society. However, perhaps more importantly, fandom communities also have the power to mobilize their members. John Fiske has written that “popular culture is always part of power relations; it always bears traces of the constant struggle between domination and subordination, between power and various forms of resistance to it or evasions of it . . .” (115). In the case of Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, this power struggle is embodied by a lingering feminist defiance, and the bibliophile’s near religious disdain for plagiarists and the publishers who would protect them.

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Works Cited

Brooker, Will, and Deborah Jermyn, eds. The Audience Studies Reader. New York: Routledge, 2003. Print.

Fiske, John. “Understanding Popular Culture.” Brooker and Jermyn. 112-16. Print.

Gwenllian-Jones, Sara. “Histories, Fiction and Xena: Warrior Princess.” Brooker and Jermyn. 185-91. Print.

Radway, Janice. “Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy and Popular Literature.” Brooker and Jermyn. 219-25. Print.

Wendell, Sarah, and Candy Tan. Beyond heaving Bosoms: The Smart Bitches’ Guide to Romance Novels. New York: Simon & Schuster,2009. Print.

---. Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. Esosoft, 7 Dec. 2009. Web. 7 Dec. 2009.

25 Random Facts

This meme is quite possibly older than God. You Know the drill; 25 random facts about me:

1. I am totally and desperately in love with the Oxford comma. (That, this, and those. Spot the Oxford comma!)
2. I wish there were more opportunities in life to say “because it would hurt a lot, Warren.”
3. I’ve a weakness for men on TV/in movies cocking shotguns. I don’t particularly care for firearms in reality, but put a shotgun in Bruce Campbell’s hands, and I melt.
4. I am fascinated by the themes of physical and social castration in Gulliver’s Travels.
5. There are 2 full body fiberglass mannequins in the “office” area of my house. We call them Edy and Olivia.
6. One of my favorite possessions is a fabric shower curtain from the 70s with Frank X. Leyendecker’s “The Flapper” printed on it, which my father stretched on a frame and hung in my room when I was a child. Some kids get teddy bears and rainbows in their nursery, I got a semi-nude woman with butterfly wings.
7. I really, really miss working at the Studio Tour. Blowing out queues with hundreds of people in them was like a drug. (My area supervisor once told me that watching me stretch the queue was like watching a ballet. It must have been a very strange ballet he had in mind, because this was during Halloween Horror Nights, and I was yelling like a woman possessed and belittling the guests at the time.)
8. Robin Hood is my favorite old school Disney cartoon.
9. I think less of people who actively campaigned in support of Prop 8, especially the soccer moms who held up the big ass signs a block away from my son’s elementary school. I can neither confirm nor deny having given the PTA secretary the finger over those damn signs…
10. I love BBC America. I want to put David Tennant in my pocket and snog John Barrowman.
11. I really wish I could dance.
12. When I was a freshman in high school, I stepped on a bright yellow toothpick and broke ¾ of it off in my foot. At the urgent care, it took 4 big male nurses to hold me down so they could take it out. I kicked one of them in the face when they tried to give me local anesthetic. That fucker HURT.
13. I never learned how to ride a bike.
14. For three years during my childhood, I had a panic attack every time I tried to ride an escalator.
15. I hate people who teach or read Shakespeare as pure literature and ignore all the dirty jokes.
16. My mother used to cook a turkey (whole bird) every Saturday when I was a kid. She would always burn it. My sister and I loved eating the burnt upper meat, and would pretend we were eating bat wings, like in “The Three Amigos”. I still love the taste of burnt turkey.
17. My crazy Mormon relatives have tracked the family genealogy back to Harold Bluetooth (yes, THAT Bluetooth), a Viking king with rotten teeth. Genealogy fascinates me, but I think it is ludicrous to assume that every female through history in one’s family line has faithfully borne her husband’s children, rather than the milkman’s.
18. Twinkies make me physically ill.
19. I’m afraid that one day, everyone will realize that I’m actually a lot less intelligent than I appear to be.
20. I learned how to tell time properly from my alcoholic, man-hating high school French teacher, Madam Cohen.
21. When I was in the 8th grade, I was given a Saturday detention for yelling “Fuck You” at a friend. Shockingly, the experience did nothing to check my love of profanity. I still find that when asked to cuss less, I am taken with the perverse desire to swear even more extensively and creatively.
22. I once spent an entire weekend helping a friend tape little green army men and toy cars to her bedroom ceiling.
23. I wish I could still do plays. I miss it so much.
24. I have a kind of phobia of veins. The bulgy arm veins on bodybuilders squick me the fuck out, and I have infrequent dreams in which every vein in my body bursts through my skin.
25. I still cry like a baby when I talk about my father.
26. I’m considering opening a store on Etsy.com to sell custom paper dolls and decoupage bracelets. Fuck yes, I am lame and crafty like that.

Bite Me

From a survey on a forum I frequent: From Dr. Polidori's Lord Ruthven to Stephenie Meyer's Edward Cullen, the annals of vampire lore are filled with attractive, charming bloodsuckers. Which one would you most want to be bitten by?

You know, I'd be fine skipping the biting bit altogether and just sitting to a nice cup of tea and some chat about photography with Otto Von Chriek. But, if we must go the biting route, then I'd say Angel all the way (Spike's hot and all, but I much prefer James Marsters when he's snogging John Barrowman). Or, for a more old school tv vamp fix, Nick Knight (Is that not the worst character name ever?)

For a more literary bite, well, I'd sooner slit my own throat, or leap into a pit of sharpened sporks, than let Edward Cullen or any of Ms. Meyer's other sparkly kiddie craft project emo "vampires" anywhere near me. I'll take some wicked beautiful Lestat (only the book Lestat. Both film versions were horrid. Tom Cruise was a terrible Lestat, but Stuart Townsend was even worse). Failing that, I wouldn't refuse Louis (book or movie. I can deal with Brad Pitt).

Although really, I've been on more of a werewolf kick lately. So hell, let's throw some Oz (Seth Green on Buffy) into the mix as well.