www.seconddrawdown.com
This maybe a few days old before it gets published to Facebook.
It was noted by Lud, one of my few diligent followers of this blog, that the last post was actually worth reading. Funny that. Seeing as I do want you to read what I write, I’m going to try my best to control quality. Ok, so here goes.
I just finished watching Stepford Wives : http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi318439705/
Absolutely fantastic. Very interesting. I really wish that they made more movies of the comedy thriller genre. This movie really gives you so much to talk about. One of the things that came up in real life recently, as well as the movie, was the question: what is it to be a man? Although the movie focuses primarily on the role of woman and their function in relation to the lives of men the movie is also about what it means to be a man in an increasingly gender equal society.
WARNING: DO NOT READ ON IF YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS IN THE MOVIE.
The men of Stepford are husbands to powerful, career-driven women who are better than their men in the professional domain, gaining positions in higher places, earning larger figures; in many ways the woman are the breadwinners of these relationships. This role reversal of what is held to be the traditional roles of male and female have caused these men to turn their high-earning wives into robots and the perfect 50’s wife in order to re-become men. To summarise Mike Wellington, they had become the women in the relationship and had to regain their manliness. (The big surprise is that this is not orchestrated by the mayor but the mayor’s wife (the mayor is a robot). This idea was a guise that worked toward the larger goal of creating the perfect society.) ANYWAY, the way that the men tried to recalibrate this imbalance of power was by taking away the masculine features from their wives. In reality making their wives less manly/more womanly didn’t really make themselves manlier but made them appear or feel more manly. It’s like if everyone around you became really dumb, that doesn’t make you any smarter, you are the same (you shithead). So it’s all relative, right?
I was talking to Lud on the bus on Friday morning about this project that he has to do research which relates masculinity and how men are meant to behave or something like that. So he said that the idea of how men are meant to act/what it is to be a man (and a woman) was in fact created by men through advertising, media and all of those other things that interfere with our subconscious. This makes sense. These of course have varying degrees of influence in different societies. My favourite country for comparison for everything these days is a perfect example for this topic: Ukraine. Others who were lucky enough to travel there also agree on the following points I’m going to make. So, in Ukraine, men are men and the women are gorgeous, gorgeous because they take such good care of themselves and they have this inner womanliness in them that seems to be lacking with others of their species (myself included). They actually carry themselves differently. Guys- Go to Ukraine and find yourself a beautiful Slavic bride. In contrast, the men are manly, manly like a lumberjack-truckdriving-builder, but more like a moustachetouting-cigarttesmoking-vodkadrinker; think your stereotypical Russian a la Boris the Babysitter from Little Britain. Yulia’s Dad actually looks kind of like Boris the Babysitter. Being a man in Ukraine means being a complete hardarse. However, the way men treat woman is something NZ hasn’t seen since the 60’s: opening doors, holding heavy bags, a helping hand off of the bus. Which is nice and slightly degrading, but mainly nice. I put this down to the fact that the women are so womanly that, naturally, the men have become so manly. The extremes have developed together/caused the existence of one another.
In Stepford Wives the men were not manly at all; becoming more manly was facilitated by the women becoming more womanly. And so, it’s all relative. The creation of such a role has to be be accompanied by a contrasting opposite by which we can judge the qualities of one against the other. As one extreme grows, so does the other. Therefore manliness can be enhanced by a corresponding growth in womanliness. ”Men” cannot exist without “women”. I may be wrong but this is what these things tell me.
——————————————————————-
On a more dull note, I’ve lost my phone and so have no way of knowing what time it is or what time to get up. I fear that I’ll still be in bed when Vanessa comes over tomorrow. Awkward.