There's No Irony in Sexism, Hipster

Among the criticisms levelled against hipsters, such as they’re shallow, derivative, overly privileged, snobby, or that they demonstrate a misguided fashion sense which equates hideous cast-offs from yesteryear as an opportunity for an ironic pose, not enough is written about sexism disseminated by some in the hipster scene. Sure, plenty of folks point out the sexism marketed in pornified campaigns by American Apparel, a favourite haunt for those aficionados of white canvas belts and all bright things lycra, when really, the lady-hating and belittlement extends far beyond the letchy toad that is Dov Charney.

The most recent example of hipster machismo occurs not in Vice as you would expect, but in the February 28th edition of The New Yorker, of all periodicals, a bastion of highbrow culture. Of the 14 contributors listed in the current issue, only two are women, in what continues to be a grim trend in the magazine’s standing record, as has VIDA has already documented. The new issue features Demetri Martin in the Shouts & Murmurs column, a comic beloved by hipsters, and one who also dons the style with schoolboy locks and ugly-on-purpose sweaters, begins his essay ‘Who Am I’ with the following winky Cartesian inspired account of himself:

‘Who am I? That is a simple question, yet it is one without a simple answer. I am many things—and I am one thing. But I am not a thing that is just lying around somewhere, like a pen, or a toaster, or a housewife. That is for sure. I am much more than that. I am a living, breathing thing, a thing that can draw with a pen and toast with a toaster and chat with a housewife, who is sitting on a couch eating toast. And still, I am so much more.
I am a man.’

The problem is that sexism rates as a poor host for satire because we have no point of distance or respite from it in a culture marked by bashing on women. We have not arrived at a place where a dude can refer to housewives--to women--as dull objects lying about for his perusal. Nor can a dude snigger that housewives sit around doing little else but eating toast, an update on the old bon-bons joke. Indeed, we have not safely disembarked the patriarchal steam liner that has navigated the course of history in order to accommodate an ‘I’m a Dude, Hear Me Roar’ stab at comedy. There is no parody here. Demetri Martin has more in common with Larry the Cable Guy than he would be willing to admit. A dude who regards his subjectivity as the centre of the universe, the sum of all parts, the definition of humanity warrants nary a chuckle. Martin highlights the prize tucked inside every blue birth announcement which all but says

IT’S ALL ABOUT YOU, FELLA!

Hipster sexism same as the rest.

My Sure-to-Lose Oscar Ballot

Best Picture:

Black Swan

Best Actress:

Natalie Portman

Best Actor:

James Franco

Best Supporting Actress:

Melissa Leo

Best Supporting Actor:

John Hawkes

Best Director:

Darren Aronofsky

I can't bring myself to watch either The King's Speech or The Social Network. Colin Firth radiates such smug detachment and that Jesse Eisenberg guy may mean well, but I don't enjoy sensitive dude entitlement any more than the macho version.

Even the Dudes are Subject to Photoshop

Maybe it had more of an impact as a large advertisement on the subway, because when I was staring at a nearly life-sized version of Liam Neeson in the promotion for 'Unknown' last night, I turned to the husband to remind him that said dude was 58 years-old, and not 35, as he appears to be while posed with a gun.

One line; one crease; plump cheek.

Even the dudes aren't allowed to look aged anymore.

Shrews & Doormats VS. Dude-Bro Heroes

At the end of the fifth instalment of Episodes, I could not help but shudder over how the pitch for this series by David Crane and Jeffrey Klarik must have gone down. Did the pair approach Showtime intent on a script to complement the male privilege already celebrated in their fare such as Dexter, Californication, Shameless, Brotherhood and Penn & Teller? Showtime’s Sunday night line up in particular boasts Episodes, Californication and Shameless, in what amounts to a master study of male entitlement to treat women like garbage and behave as abusive dickwads. Is there any character type creepier than a misogynist who wants to get back at women by fucking as many as he can manage, as that Hank Moody character in Californication? And how many tear-rendered memoirs have been penned by folks who suffered drunken abusive fathers like the one William H. Macy plays in Shameless? Oh, and they gave him an Irish name, too. Way to break those gross stereotypes, Showtime.

At best, Episodes could be viewed as a cautionary tale for women with career aspirations in the entertainment industry. The show makes it clear that La-La Land is a mug’s game for women. Tamsin Greig plays a smart television writer, a transplanted Brit named Beverly Lincoln. Bev sports chic ensembles from Hobbs that underscore a London career-gal background. (In fact, one blouse she wears when they arrive in LA, a mustard in geometric print, I cheered to recognise the same hanging in my closet from our trip last year.) Bev’s predicament, as for all smart ladies in Hollywood, the show tells us, is that you can expect to be patronised, marginalised, excluded as the downer, the adult, the one who won’t laugh at kids with Tourettes. If you are the female lead in a sit-com, like Morning Randolph (played by Mircea Monroe) you will be the centre of on-set gossip about how you played William Shatner’s wife onscreen in the 80s. She’s old, plastic, shallow, a laughingstock. The central lady in the production team, Carol (Kathleen Rose Perkins,) is a toady, yes-woman doormat who carries on an affair with the network boss, Merc,(John Panklow) behind the back of his blind wife. The show thinks so little of the blind wife that I couldn’t locate the actor’s name at IMDB or the Showtime website. Merc ignores, humiliates and mocks his wife. Not only does the show make fun of a blind lady, it makes a direct connection between disability and being an insufferable pain in the ass. Politesse dictates that you can’t tell a blind lady to shut up with all the yackity-yack, so just roll eyes and make faces in order to indicate displeasure at a skirt taking up airspace. They made a woman’s spirit, resolve, and generous philanthropy a punch line. The same line of low-blow humour stages riffs during a fundraiser for a rape crisis centre. Yep. There’s nothing funnier than smug dudes making jokes while a woman onstage describes how she was raped.

Such unsparing and unkind characterisations are not shared out for the men in the cast. The one long-running joke for Matt LeBlanc is that he has a really big dick. Ouch. Now that casts quite the aspersion. Dudes, as we all know, are fun as a barrel of monkeys. They just want to go to Vegas, talk about chicks and how banging the nanny in front of the kids results in the bitch-ass ex keeping you from them. Joey-I-mean-Matt is presented as a good guy, a total bro, a misunderstood hero.

In Episodes, the sour and lazy jokes come at the expense of women while men get fantasy fulfilment. All crudity aside, none of this seems fresh or interesting. Women are a pain in the ass; Men want to fuck around. *Yawn*

Give us something we haven’t heard a gazillion times already, Showtime.

Squint and You'll Find a Woman

After playtime and walksies, I pull open the Toronto Star with snack in hand.

What's wrong with this section?

How about only finding lady performers in the small print?
Yanni, Randy Newman, Charley Pride, who-the-fuck-is Matt Dusk, Gipsy Kings, Larry the Cable Guy, Bill Engwall, Colin Mochrie, Brad Sherwood, The Chieftains and Gordon Lightfood.

Not one woman pictured or in top billing.

Forgive me if I pass on the Peen Fest.

Dudes Have a Tampon Phobia

This Kotex commercial ran at least a dozen times during the NBC lineup last night. Even if it's staged with actors, you get a sense of how truthful this is for many dudes who balk at the idea of having to negotiate the products for menses. In her book The Female Thing, Laura Kipnis cites a study conducted in 2002 which revealed a deep fear of menstrual blood. University "researchers studying how menstruation shaped attitudes towards women found that when a participant in the study 'inadvertently' dropped a tampon from her handbag, the research subjects, male and female college students, sat farther away from her than when a neutral item like a hair clip was dropped. In contamination studies, the majority (69 percent) of subjects, both men and women, were unwilling to put a new, unused, and previously wrapped tampon in their mouth; 3 percent wouldn't even touch it."
The vagina is a designated source of pollution for lots of folks.

In the Kotex ad, dudes act like their junk is gonna fall off if they purchase a box of tampons.
Weak.

With Pals Like Him, Who Needs Enemies?

While he presented the highlights of Ernest Borgnine’s career, for which the 94 year-old was being honoured with a lifetime achievement award from SAG, Tim Conway, that no-talent hack who thinks pretending to be short ranks as a pinnacle of physical comedy, slobbered all over his former cast member’s accomplishments, including Borgnine’s turn to work with Frank Sinatra in From Here to Eternity. No shit, I almost went through the screen after the weasel to shake the idiocy from his mouth for overlooking Montgomery Clift—a true star—for a former mob flunky. Frank Sinatra is for me one of those actors inextricable with their real life persona. Ava Gardner may have loved the dude, but to me he’ll always be the man who left his child bride Mia Farrow sleeping at casino tables as he yukked it up with buddies playing cards and swilling hooch. When Sinatra plays vulnerable in films such as FHTE or The Manchurian Candidate, I can appreciate him as an artist, and restrain my fingernails from tearing palm flesh. Yet in his Rat Pack visage on display in Guys and Dolls or Pal Joey, I marvel at any woman able to look him in the face without hocking one up. Not even the regal goddess Rita Hayworth could keep me from shutting off Pal Joey after the knuckle walker, woman-hater, dog-abuser finally seduces Hayworth's character and leaves her the morning after in a full-on glow as a younger Gilda onscreen. His character Joey employs the creepshow pick up tactics such as ‘The Neg’ as a method to win over the women played by Hayworth and Kim Novak. He pretends not to remember names, trades sexual innuendo, stalks them, insults them and maintains that in order to win one over, you treat a dame like a lady and a lady like a dame.
Awful.
Joey also thinks coffee and bagels are fit feed for a dog, as well as a chicken leg.
Oh, and he ‘outs’ Hayworth’s society lady as a former stripper at a fundraiser in her own home. She’s all class in the number regardless of his attempt at humiliation. Watch ‘Zip’ and skip Sinatra’s thug performance.