Archive for the 'television' Category

misogyny bowl

Published on February 9, 2010 in media and television. 10 Comments Tags: , , , , .

I’m not much of a football fan. When I was a waitress, I’d always volunteer to work on Superbowl Sunday, in hopes that someone would volunteer to work for me on Oscar night. Since then, my Superbowl-watching has been confined to the years when someone I know has a Superbowl party or people come to my house or whatever. Left to my own devices, I spend Superbowl Sundays sewing or knitting or watching DVDs or whatever.

This year my boyfriend wanted to watch the Superbowl, so we invited my sister and her husband over for food, drinks, football-explaining (my boyfriend’s forte) and general mocking (my forte). Dear readers, if you saw the Superbowl, I’m sure that my anger regarding a number of the ads will come as no surprise to you.  The message in many of them was: Women are bringing you down, men! Bitches have removed your spine! They’re making you watch vampire TV shows! They’re bossing you around! They’re inferior to a set of tires! It’s time to remedy this by buying stuff and acting like an asshole.

(Side question: Regular Superbowl watchers, is there always this much misogyny in the ads? I don’t remember it being this bad before, but as I said, I’m a sporadic viewer.)

Anyway. The worst, most rage-filled ad as far as I’m concerned was the Dodge Charger one (which you can see here; I’m not going to embed it). I found this clever response to that ad and posted a link to it on Twitter:

A woman I follow on Twitter wrote that she didn’t watch the game, but from what she could tell, the ads were pretty alienating to the female audience. I responded:

Yeah, a LOT of the ads were of the “WOMEN BE SHOPPIN’” variety. Made me wish @sarah_haskins was still doing “Target Women.”

Then I said:

Our superbowl: leftover party food, @meganheadley falls asleep, @luiztauil watches the game, I bitch to @bpriker about sexist commercials.

I got these two replies within two minutes of each other:

@bluishorange yuck. I hope the fallout from the critiques doesn’t further it with “women are too sensitive and can’t take a joke”

@bluishorange I tried bitching about the sexist commercials, but everyone thought I was being an overly sensitive whiner. ARRRG.

It took a lot of exposition for me to make this point, but here it is: Thinking critically about the portrayal of your gender, race, nationality, sexual orientation, etc, in the media does not qualify as being oversensitive. Speaking up about it does not mean you can’t take a joke.

The fact that two people I know worried at nearly the same moment about being thought of as oversensitive whiners is evidence to me that this sort of “Oh, lighten up!” response is still pretty common. Well rest assured, people, I’m not planning to lighten up on this issue anytime soon.  It’s not that hard to create TV shows and movies and advertisements that are funny, interesting, enlightening and engaging without insinuating that women are bitches; and it’s up to us, the viewers, to demand that standard.

I’m fortunate to have a boyfriend who is happy to discuss sexist commercials and sexist other things and general feminism with me. He maintains that the ads like the ones aired during this year’s Superbowl are offensive to both sexes: they’re hostile towards women, but they also assume men to be thoughtless, anti-intellectual cads. And I think he’s right. Gentlemen, if you’re part of the “lighten up” contingent, you may want to start evaluating how you’re being portrayed.

P.S. Matt Haughey made a good response video as well:

Parisian Love, Part II from Matt Haughey on Vimeo.

little tumblr-sized thoughts I’d write on tumblr if I had one (which I do, but there’s nothing there, and I only got it because I didn’t want anyone to take “bluishorange” before I did)

Published on February 13, 2009 in bluishorange, lists, maude and television. 9 Comments Tags: , , , , .

1. Last week I bought one of those digital-tv converter boxes so I can still watch Lost* after my television has become obsolete. This week I checked my mail and found the $40-off coupon for said box, which coupon I requested a month ago. If I were 45 years older and a lot crankier I’d take that coupon to Target and ask the returns desk to give me forty dollars. Then after they refused to give me forty dollars, I’d write a stern letter to the digital-tv converter box people and ask THEM to give me forty dollars.

But I’m 30 and not very cranky, so I’m not going to do any of that stuff. Instead I’m just going to pretend that coupon doesn’t exist, as is my custom with all such things I’m too lazy to do.

2. Freebirds, what is the point of selling me this chocolate-chip cookie if I can’t open it.  If I were 45 years older and a lot crankier I’d drive back over to your store and demand a different cookie, or my money back.**

3. I do not like spending the Friday before Valentine’s Day in an office setting.  My coworkers get flowers, and I say, ooh, sweet, you got flowers, and they say thanks!  And I feel like they’re thinking,*** I bet she wishes SHE’d gotten flowers.

What they don’t know is that I do not, in fact, wish I’d gotten flowers.  I’m not into Valentine’s Day at all, and in fact I told my potential flower-giver that while I’m glad we’ll be hanging out on the 14th doing whatever it is we usually do, I am not interested in gifts or cards or plants or edibles of any kind, thank you.****

But there’s no polite way to dispel their hypothetical thoughts without sounding weird or going off on an unnecessary and impolite tirade about how lame V-Day is.  So instead I just say ooh, sweet, you got flowers, and then walk back to my desk and put my headphones on.

4. The other day I was heard to remark, “Is it possible that I love my dog too much?” For those of you who think that it’s possible, I invite you to look upon her and tell me you don’t love her a bit too much, too:

my funny baby

She’ll be approximately nine in April, which will also mark her five-year anniversary of being my dog.  I think she looks much happier now than she did five years ago, don’t you?

*Also Dollhouse! Dollhouse comes on tonight!

**I got it open, though, aren’t you glad?

***I am not what I think other people might think of me, etc.

****I said it nicer than this.

this started out as a tweet* but then got too long.

Published on January 9, 2009 in bluishorange and television. 6 Comments Tags: , .

OH OOPS 30 Rock was on last night and I didn’t watch it because I was in San Antonio having dinner with a friend and I didn’t tape it because I forgot and you know what? I’m really proud of myself.

*for Dad: some help with what “tweet” means.

fun and sexy time

Published on December 1, 2008 in television and the small. 1 Comment Tags: , , .

Yay, Springfield Punx does Arrested Development!  I like Franklin the best, I think.

I’m a Spalding Gray in a Rick Dees world!*

Published on November 17, 2008 in bluishorange, lists and television. 8 Comments Tags: , , .

1. The way to get your house in order and everything hung up on the walls real quick-like is to move in and then have people over three weeks later.  You’ll spend those three weeks getting everything to look nice, instead of spending them staring at all your art and saying, “Man, I really should hang that shit up someday.”

Everyone will say your place looks “super-cute” and “very cozy!”  You will say thanks, that you think it looks a little bit like a cartoon, but secretly you will be proud of your new clown apartment.  Then you will get silly drunk and nearly fall asleep on your friends, who will take one look at your sleepy face and decide it’s time to go.

It was a good party.

2. My parents moved to St. Louis several years ago, and they’ve done a good job of keeping in touch with their Houston friends, most of whom they met through church.  They all visit each other relatively frequently and stay up-to-date on what’s happening in everyone’s lives.

After I decided I wasn’t going to go to SXSW next year (though I’ll be in town to hang out in the evenings), I made a point of going to Chicago to visit Andrew and Cinnamon, two of my favorite people I see at SXSW.  I’ve been toying with the idea of visiting Seattle for the same reason, though I’m not sure yet if that’ll happen.

While I was in Chicago, my parents happened to be there as well.  They were on their way to Elmhurst to visit some old church friends of theirs, and they stopped by to have lunch with Andrew and Cinnamon and me.  As we were walking back from the Indian restaurant, Andrew and my dad were walking ahead of me, and my mom and Cinnamon were walking behind me, and that’s when it occurred to me that I treat my internet friends the same way my parents treat their church friends.  We don’t get to see each other too often, but we try to make a point to visit and keep up.

Is the internet my church?

3. Despite my best efforts, things are not looking too good for Pushing Daisies, my new favorite TV show of late.  It’s the Arrested Development thing all over again, and it makes me sad. With the failure of my favorite TV shows comes the realization that most people don’t like the stuff I like, and the stuff I like that sticks around tends to suck after awhile.  Gilmore Girls, the X-Files, Scrubs, the Office,** etc.

With that in mind, maybe it’s good that AD and Pushing Daisies didn’t last that long.  They never got the chance to suck.  Maybe it’s time to move to England and watch shows that aren’t meant to be around that long.

*from this episode of The Simpsons
**The Office‘s suckitude is still debatable at this point, but that dinner party episode was really, really awful.

where else will I get my pie-maker fix?

Published on October 28, 2008 in letters, television and the small. 17 Comments Tags: , , , .

Dear Internet,
If you ever loved me, you will watch Pushing Daisies a bunch so it doesn’t get canceled and I can avoid a repeat of the dark, drunken day of November 11, 2006.
Love and delicious pies,
Alison