The Silly Soliloquy

This comic came about because I‘d read several commentaries comparing Homer Simpson and Peter Griffin, specifically in regards to how they treat their daughters.

Almost everyone I know who takes the time to think critically about The Simpsons or Family Guy hones in on the fact that Peter physically and emotionally abuses Meg, whereas Homer is incompetent, neglectful, and absolutely does not understand Lisa – but he loves her and he tries.

In the commentary about how Peter and Homer treat their daughters, I didn’t really see anyone bring up the physical/emotional abuse of their sons.

To lay it out there – I loathe Family Guy. Fucking hate it.

I grew up watching The Simpsons and can have entire conversations purely through quoting the show. But as much as I love The Simpsons, I think the overall cultural attitude to corporal punishment (physical abuse) has changed enough that it’s time to retire the running “joke” of Homer choking Bart. It may have been a culturally acceptable joke ten years ago, but more and more research is showing seriously negative outcomes for kids that have experienced any form of physical punishment. We need to stop normalizing it.

As for King of the Hill, Hank and Peggy are hardly perfect parents and both have a tendency towards stifling Bobby’s more flamboyant and/or “feminine” behavior. But they both love Bobby; they have both, at different times during the show, been able to connect to Bobby through his various interests. While not perfect, they are a much healthier depiction of a family.

And by the end of the series you see him behave differently. He learns to be openly romantic with his wife (even having sex on a freaking train), he deals with his father’s issues, HE DRESSED IN DRAG IN FRONT OF THE NEIGHBORHOOD FOR BILL, and most importantly he learns that his son will always be “different” and gets over his own unease so that Bobby can be happy. Hank’s a good dad on the pure measure that he tries and that’s damn more than Peter or even Homer.

“this is the 90’s" 

shania twain: let’s go girls!

me:

carrie underwood: right now, he’s probably-

me: 

Beyoncé: daddy’s little girl 

Me:

dolly parton: jolene jolene jolene jooooleeeeeeeeene

me:

Lady Antebellum: It’s a quarter after one!

me:

>> Transcending testimony: an interview with filmmaker Deepa Dhanraj

Deepa Dhanraj is a filmmaker and feminist whose extensive filmography spans issues of gender, labour, education and women’s position in Indian society. In 1980, she founded the Bangalore-based filmmaking collective Yugantar, an organisation that produced films about women’s labour and domestic conditions in Southern India. With searing imagery, Dhanraj’s highly influential 1991 film, Something Like a War, presented the gender and class violence of the population-control policy of the Indian government. In this interview, I talk with Dhanraj about the historic relationship between activism and documentary film and the ways in which she addresses contemporary industrial as well as aesthetic shifts in this cinema.

Deepa, you were closely associated with the Indian women’s movement during the 1970s and the 1980s. How did your involvement with this movement lead you towards documentary cinema? I became a documentary filmmaker because of my association with the women’s movement.

When we started our collective Yugantar in 1980, the intention was to make films on various struggles, agitations and issues that were being raised by the women’s movement at that time, particularly the shifts in consciousness, politics and the kind of contributions that both the activists and the academy were making in public discourse. A lot of theory was being generated and one of the things we asked as a collective was: how do you communicate this back to the audiences and particularly women audiences so that there is a continuous loop? How do you tell these stories and talk about this politics at all levels from the grassroots to the academy?

Personally, the intention of the collective was to document the struggles and then return these stories to the constituency, which could be women’s groups of all classes and as many institutions as we could tap into – trade unions, universities, high schools and film clubs.

Coming to the documentary medium from activism, how did you conceptualise the documentary form? What could the documentary film accomplish in the social collective?

We did not come to a ready-made understanding of documentary practice; we were creating a process as we worked. When we started this collective, our intention was to be collaborative and to stand with the women, not only to transmit their story.

With Something Like a War, we spoke about issues that were important to many women’s groups. I am often surprised at how much of my work is used for teaching in universities – but, at that time, it wasn’t our intention. With Something Like a War, we wanted to stop the government of India’s coercive targeting of poor women to achieve state sterilisation targets.