The new website is going to take a little longer than expected, and I will probably not preview it until next week instead of May 1st. Once it’s up, I’ll send you the links, and then post a lot of annoying reminders here to encourage you to subscribe at the new site.
In the meantime, I’ve written two posts for Bitch Flicks this month: Bart Simpson’s Feminine Side and Gratuitous Female Nudity and Complex Female Characters in ‘Game of Thrones.’ The GoT article has been re-published at the Bust Magazine blog and linked at a few other feminist websites, so you might have read it already. It’s also gotten some epically trollish comments and oh how I wish I had the time to write posts mocking them, but alas.
Anyway, thanks for your interest and continued subscription, and I will keep you updated when things progress more.
Thank you for reading and commenting on this blog. Whether you’ve subscribed since the first entry on December 10, 2010, joined the mailing list along the way, or read the occasional post, I value your readership and I’m happy you’ve enjoyed my writing.
I have some bad news and some good news.
I am taking a month-long hiatus from The Funny Feminist, and I waited until April 2nd to share this news because I didn’t want anyone misinterpreting it as an April Fools joke.
For most of my blogging history, I’ve worked part-time, and had enough time to regularly update this blog, work on my novel, and do some meaningful volunteer work. This year, I made it a goal to find a full-time job by October, and in the meantime, I would take on a few extra volunteer duties and continue with my other writing.
Well, I found the full-time job by the end of February, after already committing to two volunteer duties that put me in a leadership position.
Between working a full-time job, commuting four hours every day (yes, four hours), volunteering, and trying to finish the novel, I am stretched too thin, and the blog needs to take a break.
But! In May, I will be launching a brand-new website on a brand-new platform. The template has been designed and paid for and it’s going to be shiny and more organized.
By May, the amount of time I have to spend on volunteer work will have dwindled down, and I’ll be able to write on a regular basis.
Until then, I will have to refrain from writing my usual blog posts and articles, but I will update this blog every so often to keep you all posted about the status of the new website.
Again, thanks for reading and commenting, and I can’t wait to show you all the website once it’s ready.
It’s the last day of Women’s History Month, and you didn’t really think I’d spend 31 days talking about television without once mentioning the voice actresses on The Simpsons, did you? The Simpsons is my favorite thing, and while no one actress on the show performs as many voices as Dan Castellaneta, Hank Azaria, or Harry Shearer, the show wouldn’t be what it was without this group of talented women playing some key parts.
There’s Julie Kavner as Marge Simpson and Patty and Selma Bouvier, bringing a dorky humanity to our favorite homemaker and her oft-mocked weird sisters.
There’s Yeardley Smith as Lisa Simpson, our favorite little scholar, activist, bookworm, and jazz musician, the inspiration to little girls everywhere.
There’s Nancy Cartwright as a host of little boy characters, most notably Nelson Muntz, Ralph Wiggum, and our favorite hellion of all, Bart Simpson, proving anyone wrong who might say, “You can’t play that part. It’s for a BOY.”
There’s Marcia Wallace as Mrs. Krabappel, Bart’s long-suffering and perpetually sexually unsatisfied teacher.
There’s Maggie Roswell as Maude Flanders and Helen Lovejoy, coiner of the now-infamous “Won’t somebody please think of the children?!”
There’s the late Doris Grau as Lunchlady Doris, the perpetually unflappable cafeteria worker.
There’s Russi Taylor as the nerds at Springfield Elementary, most notably Martin Prince, the nerdiest of them all.
There’s Tress MacNeille as Lindsay Naegle and Agnes Skinner, Seymour’s always dissatisfied mother. “It means lamb! Lamb of God!”
And last, but not least, we have Pamela Hayden as Milhouse Van Houten, Bart’s best friend, Lisa’s admirer, Nelson’s punching bag, and the most joyous beaten-down nerd in the world.
To the women of The Simpsons, I say, “Thank you all for voicing these women, girls, and boys, and providing me with decades of entertainment.”
If I were an actress, I would want to play Livia in I, Claudius. It’s such a meaty and rewarding role that I couldn’t resist playing it if afforded the opportunity. At the same time, I would be terrified of playing Livia because there’s no way I could possibly live up to Sian Phillips.
Livia is…not a very nice person. She will gladly kill anyone who stands in the way of her plan. If someone in her way happens to be someone she loves…well, she’ll still kill that person, only she won’t be glad about it. She is the ultimate pragmatist, poisoning the people she can poison and arranging the deaths of the people she couldn’t poison herself.
What makes Livia so fascinating to me is the way she rises above the role of “entertaining but evil villain.” Livia does many cruel, terrible things in her reign as the emperor’s wife, many acts that can be considered evil – but is she herself evil? I can’t say that she is. She always believes that she is serving in the best interests of Rome. If the best interests of Rome happen to coincide with her own selfish interests, well…so much the better for her, and so much the worse for anyone else.
This is a woman who murdered or arranged the murders of so many people, some of them much younger than herself, and one of them her own son. And yet, when she’s in the twilight of her life, months away from her death, feeling afraid of being damned for all eternity, I still want her to be deified and become a goddess, to avoid suffering in the afterlife.
Keep in mind that Livia shows no remorse for what she did. She is vulnerable because she’s afraid of being damned, but she doesn’t regret the actions she took. She still thinks she was right. And I still want her to be saved. I still want Claudius to protect her soul.
That takes a talent and skill far beyond anything I could accomplish, and far beyond what most actresses could accomplish. Sian Phillips in I, Claudius is my single favorite female performance on television, and I doubt any other performance will take her place in the near future.
I’ve included two clips of Livia. The first is when she addresses the gladiators about to fight in the games she arranged for her late son (whom she wanted dead, mind). It’s hilarious: “These games are being degraded by the increasing use of professional tricks to stay alive, and I won’t have it!” The second scene is one she shares with Derek Jacobi (who is also wonderful and my favorite actor, but this is Women’s History Month, so this post isn’t about him), where she shows real fear for the first time. Bow down. She wants to be a goddess, Claudius, and when she’s in your presence, you believe that she is one.
All in the Family is another show that is on my to-watch list. I haven’t seen much of it, but I’ve seen enough to add Jean Stapleton to my Women’s History Month celebration. Edith Bunker was a remarkable character, one who could have easily been a cartoonish stereotype in the hands of a less capable actress. Naive and trusting, kind and understanding, Edith was the good side of Archie and a worthy character herself.
There’s an episode of All in the Family where a stranger tries to rape Edith. I wanted to link to that episode because it’s a great piece of acting from Jean Stapleton, but the episode is too visceral and too important for me to talk about in a 250-word post. I will probably write about that episode at another time. For now, I’ll link to a clip from the episode where Edith discovers that her late cousin was in love with a woman – she doesn’t completely understand the larger implications of that relationship, but she understands love and she can convince her husband to exercise his empathy. Everything about it is moving, and Stapleton was just a gem as Edith Bunker.
Between Golden Girls and Girls, there was Sex and the City. I have not written about Girls in this Women’s History Month series because I think everyone knows how I feel about that show by now, and even though I like Zosia Mamet as Shoshana, she’s not influential enough to me to include in my Women’s History Month posts. Golden Girls is a show that everyone tells me is amazing, and I believe them, but I somehow have gone through life without being a Golden Girls fan, and even though I fully intend on becoming a Golden Girls fan sometime in my life, I haven’t seen enough to write about the show yet.
Reruns of Sex and the City, on the other hand, were a staple during my college years. I liked Charlotte and Samantha, I…tolerated Carrie (but liked Sarah Jessica Parker’s acting), and I loved Miranda. Witty and smart, sarcastic and brittle, with a bigger heart than she ever admitted to having, Miranda was the only character I loved on that show.
The following clip is one of the few from Sex and the City that moves me every time I see it. I can’t even care that the bra saleswoman is a little too pushy, because the result – Miranda breaking down in front of a stranger and finding comfort from the same person – is just the best. Cynthia Nixon rocks.
Disclaimer: I don’t usually care for shows and films that cast beautiful actresses as “ugly” characters, because it always seems like the casting people are trying to avoid giving work to anyone who isn’t conventionally attractive.
I make an exception for this next actress, though, because a) we don’t see enough women of color on television, period, and b) she’s so good that she makes me forget that the braces and the wig and glasses are all part of a costume.
For four years on Ugly Betty, America Ferrera played a character who was always insecure about her looks, but never her overall worth as a human being. She had moments of deep insecurity and moments of confidence. She was sometimes hopelessly naive, optimistic, and too trusting, seeming younger than everyone around her, but those were nicely balanced with moments where she seemed wiser than everyone in her circle. She was always a delight to watch, the very definition of a character you love to love, whom you root for in every step of her life. Ugly Betty was my happy show, one that always put a smile on my face, and a lot of that was due to Ferrera.
The first of the next two clips is not one of Betty’s best ever moments, but it still illustrates (to me, anyway) why Betty was just so stinkin cute and huggable. The second clip illustrates why I felt for her in her hopeless crushes (and also why Eric Mabius as Daniel was the other big reason I loved the show so much, because I swear he looks gobsmacked in love with Betty in every damn scene they have together. Brother/sister relationship my butt). Betty, you ARE beautiful, inside and out, and you always were.
