ok i know i just blogged today but take it as a makeup for not blogging for so long...

i just watched Stepford Wives (and i think i can hear leonard tsking in the background at me for having taken so long to finally watch it.) and after it finished i just had to come here and rant...

ok not that it's a bad show, it's brilliant really...

but.

here comes the long ranting post that i think some will find just tiresome. but well.

For what I see to be an otherwise quintessentially feminist movie, there are too many subtle details that undermine feminism. Major plot movements throughout the movie, while successful in sustaining interest and suspense, are thematically weak and perhaps even contradictory.

In a scene where Joanna confronts the men, for example, although she breaks the mould by going against stereotype and challenging male authority in Stepford, questioning their methods and treatment of their wives, she is ultimately shown to be after all, female, with the classic female weakness in love. The act of her kissing Walter could be seen as her final plea to him to show him that no Stepford Wife could replace her, but ultimately, she succumbs to her love for him and lets him make the final decision. In this alone the man is shown to be in power yet again.

Further down the movie the audience is shown that Joanna has not really become a Stepford Wife and has been merely playing a part to fool the town. However, a subtle statement is made by showing Walter to be in action, instrumental in dismantling the plot, while Joanna distracts Mike, and the movie falls to the standard stereotype of the man in action, saving the day. Although much could be said about Joanna and what goes on that is not mentioned in the movie, for example the exact circumstances leading up to her "transformation", it is ultimately true that she is somewhat reduced to from the woman who could have made a difference to Walter's sidekick.

Even in charcterisation there are minor details that seem to undermine the feminist thread running in the movie. For example, while it seems at first that Joanna is pitted against Mike, ultimately the "bad guy" is shown to be after all a woman. She is shown to be firstly, mad, driven insane by the shock of discovering her husband's infidelity. Then she is shown next to be scheming, planning to spread her skewed plans worldwide. Finally she is again a pitiful woman, whose weakness in love has brought her downfall and ultimately her death.

so yar thus ends my short sojourn back to the days when i could just launch and my pen would devour foolscap and produce 5 sides of essay material in 45 minutes...

i like to think i haven't lost it yet...

this is so saddening...
i've just discovered that a writer i always thought was pretty good has started to recycle her work...

when i first read Mistress of Spices some years ago i thought it was very well done...
and now i read another book of hers and quite disappointingly... it seems like i'm reading the same book with different names and places but with the same themes...

like Mistress of Spices and Queen of Dreams.

go figure...

but i shall not be blindly angry and just slam her...
i still think she's quite good... maybe i'll go pick up something else of her's and see if she's really recycling her stuff...

and i do realise that i haven't been updating these past few weeks...
mainly it's cos i've been watching dvds of a certain very popular Korean serial like a desperate auntie...

so sad right my no-life...

but then and again not to worry since i've successfully plowed through the entire serial already and to ensure that i do not watch it over again i will return the dvd to it's rightful owner...

...

i have minor surgery on the 4th of may for excision biopsy to remove a lump of flesh on my lip...

i know it all sounds terribly dramatic but it's really just a minor irritation that has been hanging around irritating me to no end since...

lemme see now...
january?

as a friend of mine pointed out when i said that surgery was scheduled for may when i visited the doctor in january, "if it's nothing it will have gone away by itself by then, and if it's something you'll be dead by then!"

then of course by now it has very irritatingly not gone off by itself, but i'm not dead yet too...

so err yar.

ah whatever. as long as it's not a) cancerous, b) insect larvae in my lip or c) an alien gestating in my lip i guess i shall not be worried...

i'm kinda tired...
like too tired to blog right now so i decided i shall just take my favourite bits from the books strewn around my room and just post it up here for everybody to ooh and ahh over...
and of course this will not be like those bits of poetry that i sometimes use as a closing for some posts...

"Just so. For as everyone knows, when it is noon in the United States the sun is setting over France. If you could get to France in a twinkling, you could watch a sunset right now. Unfortunately France was too far away. But on your tiny planet, little prince, you only had to move your chair a few steps. You could watch night fall whenever you liked.
'One day,' you said, 'I watched the sunset forty-three times!'
And a little later he added:
'You know, when one is that sad, one can get to love the sunset.'
'Were you that sad, then, on the day of the forty-three sunsets?'
But the prince made no answer."
- The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupery

" ... I have always loved the desert. You sit down on a sand dune. You see nothing. You hear nothing. Yet all the time something is radiating hrough the silence.
'What makes the desert beautiful,' said the little prince, 'is that somewhere it is hiding a well.' "
- The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupery

" 'The north wind is alive,' the BFG said. 'It is moving. It touches you on the cheek and on the hands. But nobody is feeding it.' "
- The BFG, by Roald Dahl

"The crickets sang in the grasses. They sang the song of summer's ending, a sad, monotonous song. 'Summer is over and gone,' they sang. 'over and gone, over and gone. Summer is dying, dying.'
The crickets felt it was their duty to warn everyone that summertime cannot last forever. Even on the most beautiful days in the whole year - the days when summer is changing into autumn - the crickets spread the rumour of sadness and change."
- Charlotte's Web, by E. B. White

"The snows melted and ran away. The streams and ditches bubbled and chattered with rushing water. A sparrow with a squeaky breast arrived and sang. The light strengthed, the mornings came sooner. Almost every morning there was another new lamb in the sheepfold. The goose was sitting on nine eggs. The sky seemed wider and a warm wind blew. The last remaining strands of Charlotte's old web floated away and vanished."
- Charlotte's Web, by E. B. White

so these are the books that i grew up with...