Chasing Amy and media images of lesbians and lesbianism

Movie Reviews, Writing, , , , , , , ,

I know I’m supposed to write about Chasing Amy from the standpoint of media images of lesbians and lesbianism, but this particular film is hard to extend in that way.  Writer and director Kevin Smith is hardly part of the mainstream media.  He gained notoriety with his first film, Clerks, which was completely independent and was noteworthy in a large part because he bucked mainstream film trends.  Smith never shies away from subject matter major studios shun (Chasing Amy is a case in point), uses frank, sometimes offensive dialogue, and refuses to adopt a visual directing style, instead letting the script carry the movie.  If we wanted to look at media images of lesbianism, it would be more valuable to seek out a mainstream Hollywood movie.

One of the benefits to looking at this movie, though, is that it’s so much better than your average Hollywood movie and Smith’s outsider status allows him to examine issues everyone else would be afraid of.  One great example is near the beginning when Banky starts a fight with a seemingly militant black member of a panel on minority comics.  After the panelist shoots Binky screaming “Black rage!” it turns out the whole deal was planned to drum up controversy for his book and that the panelist is flamboyantly gay.  This is one of the few times you’ll ever see a gay character satirizing a straight (and racial) stereotype, although movies and TV are rife with straight characters mockingly mimicking gay stereotypes.

The scene in the bar where Holden learns Alyssa is a lesbian is another striking image.  After singing a seductive song he thought was aimed at him, she makes out with another woman, with no hedging about it-the camera doesn’t cut away or leave anything to the imagination.  This is hardly Hollywood.  What’s most interesting, though, is the way in which Holden deals with this.  He’s not disgusted but reacts rather like he would had she started making out with a boyfriend.  Throughout the rest of the film the other characters react to his dilemma in a similar fashion-fell in love with a lesbian?  Poor guy.  It’s almost as if he fell in love with a nun or a married woman-there’s no real mention of turning her, or how someday she’ll see the light and go straight, or whatever, except maybe by Banky, who has his own issues to work through.  Throughout lesbianism and bisexuality are accepted rather matter-of-factly by almost everyone.

Despite this, Chasing Amy opened to a great deal of criticism from gays and lesbians.  The main issue what the fact that Alyssa fell in love with a man at all-the complaint was that by treating lesbians so seriously on the one hand and having one fall in love with a man on the other, they cheapened it and strengthened the old notion of lesbians as just chicks who haven’t met the right guy yet.  Personally, I don’t see that at all.  I find no indication that Alyssa was just waiting for the right guy to some along and show her the way.  Rather, their romance seems an illustration of how love can appear in places never sought and how difficult relationships can be in the supposedly open and honest 90s.  The scene where Alyssa tells her friends about Holden is telling.  As soon as they find out she’s met a guy, they’re shocked, offended and hurt.  They react as if she’s doing this to hurt them, and they skip out on her pretty quickly once they find out she’s not exactly like them.  Smith is not attempting to show lesbians the light and lead them to the godly path or anything.  He is merely using the oldest theme in the book-two accidental lovers separated by cultural barrier, with guys and lesbians filling in for Capulets and Montegues.

It’s unfortunate that this can’t be extended to a general discussion on media portrayals of lesbians.  The fact the Chasing Amy was a small commercial success may be an indication of things changing, but for the most part except for indie film and very rare notable exceptions (Boys Don’t Cry, for example), lesbians are either stereotyped or ignored.

Online media versus traditional print media

Academic Papers, Writing, , , , ,

A response to Mass Media and Society (James Curran and Michael Gurevitch), Chapter 13

In “Dead Trees to Live Wires,” Colin Sparks argues that the rise of online media poses commercial challenges to traditional print media.  Sparks does not say that print is dead or dying, or that publishing print material online is some kind of bonanza.  Instead he says there are four ways in which the internet has changed business for the news.

The first change is in terms of competition.  Newspapers historically do not have to compete with broadcast and magazine news because other media do not balance timeliness with depth the way daily papers do.  Online, however, everyone is publishing 24 hours a day, so the local paper now has to directly compete with the local ABC affiliate and whoever else.  Also, the net gets rid of geographical boundaries to competition and lowers the price of entry into publishing.  Second, it allows advertisers to potentially bypass newspapers and talk directly to consumers and allows people looking for in depth news to go straight to the sources.  Third, this will lead to division between large national/international news sites and small locally-concentrated news sites, with the local sites becoming much more involved in their communities.  Finally, newspapers may respond to these pressures by breaking down the barriers between news/editorial and advertising in order to compete.

Sparks is right on, although he fails to consider a few key facets in how online news is going to develop.  One is the cooperation of different media in online ventures.  Few newspaper sites now compete with all the local network sites-most have one or two networks affiliated with them and many run joint news sites.  This may have something to do with the concentration of ownership of different media even within the same city or it may just provide a competitive edge to both parties in a partnership.  Another conflict he doesn’t touch on enough is the struggle between journalists and business people within online departments.  Some papers have given it over to the business people, some have kept them separate, and others have let them duke it out.  At Naples, we barely had contact with the business side of our department except to talk about new technologies coming in.  All our people were journalists and the content and editorial decisions reflected that.  Still, I’ve talked to people at other publications who feel controlled either by advertising interests or crap handed down from the corporate office.  It seems, though, that individual editors and reporters can often make a big difference in how online news is produced and the corporate centralizing, advertising-based trend seems to be balanced by readers being more interested in real local news.

Hate speech and freedom of speech

Academic Papers, Writing, , , , ,

Jonathan Rauch argues in his “Defense of Prejudice: Why Incendiary Speech Must Be Protected” that despite all the pain hate speech causes to the groups and individuals it targets, it must be protected.  In “There’s No Such Thing As Free Speech and It’s a Good Thing Too,” Stanley Fish argues that free speech is a sham-it’s a phrase tossed around by those seeking to use it to gain power.  When their opponents use it, it’s no longer important to them.

Rauch comes to his conclusion from something close to the marketplace of ideas theory.  Scientists, for example, although they seem to be impartial and authoritative, are actually all fueled by biases.  It is the competition and collaboration of all these biases which leads to an unprejudiced field as a whole, and the best ideas win.  Rauch seems to thin that letting society or the government pick which speech is to be tolerated and which not would be similar to the old-fashioned way of forming consensus used by kings and dictators: eliminating the opposition.  He also sees the movement extending past hate speech and into prejudice in all its forms-from hate speech codes in universities to laws treating the same act more harshly if it was motivated by violence.  In the end, minorities can only lose out when dissident opinions are banned.

Fish points out, however, that even Milton’s Aereopagitica, a famous defense of speech and tolerance, he ends by excluding Catholics.  Fish thinks this is indicative of a larger notion; that by defining a space of tolerated or free speech, we inherently provide barriers against what is intolerable or gibberish.  For example, the First Amendment does not allow freedom of action, and therefor allows speech which is also action to be regulated.  Furthermore, pure free speech can only be maintained when no one has any stake in what they’re saying-Universities might say they’re for free expression, but if so, why have classes and tests?  Because those things work toward the University’s actual purpose.  If speech works to that purpose to some degree that is the degree to which it is tolerated.  On another level, answering hate speech with more speech would only work if contrary opinion could take away the pain, fear or humiliation.

I don’t think I could pick one of the authors here as the winner of the debate because their arguments diverge.  This does remind me, though, of the debate running in the Transcript last semester about hate crime legislation.  On one side was the In Righting columnist and some letter writers, and on the other was the From The Left columnist and some letter writers.  Though the debate went on for weeks, neither side presented a good case (or anything as intricate as the arguments here).  Most notably, the side for hate crime laws failed to come up with any rational justification what-so-ever.  Although I think many hate crime laws as written are too restrictive and in general I don’t like content-based restrictions, I can think of one rational that makes some sense.  Take a cross burning and compare it to two 13-year-olds playing with matches on their neighbor’s property.  With no hate crime laws, both receive the same charges-trespassing, destruction of property, probably not arson.  But now ask: which action does society have more of an interest in preventing/punishing?  This is getting to Fish’s argument.  Does the accidental act of two kids harm society as much as a KKK cross-burning?  Doubtful.  And the reason is content-based.

I’m still not sure that overcomes the necessity of free expression Rauch argues for.  And it could be said that by confining his argument (more or less) to this country, Rauch’s arguments could be slid into Fish’s schema-proving how free expressions serves the underlying purpose of our society within confines.