We're all feminists as far as I can tell

     I think teachers love when their students take the ideas they’ve been taught and make them their own. But, what they don’t know it that is the secret agenda of every student. Students yearn for it. I crave it. We struggle to make something our own – to personalize it in a way meaningful to us. For most classes, this is just a dream too good to be true. But for the best classes, this is the point of the class. It’s no longer just Instructor Ed’s CORE 112 class for the girls (and guys) “went bad” and appropriated feminism for themselves.

            The crux of this appropriation was “Sh*t Feminists Don’t Say,” but it was a long time coming. I saw this happening as I grappled with the ideas this class presented to me, applied them to random events in my life that didn’t seem to warrant that like Waiting for Godot, developed favorite characters from the readings, and grew alongside them and my classmates. Looking at “Sh*t Feminists Don’t Say,” its apparent how badly appropriate like this is needed in the college curriculum. In the video, we aren’t simple repeating what Ed taught us in class, but if we are it’s repetition with a difference.

This video was written by students, filmed by students, starring students, for…? It’s hard to say. Certainly at one level, we wanted to please Ed and produce a high quality work for our final project, but the pressure to conform what he was expecting wasn’t as looming as it was in A1-A3. We just wanted to have fun, show off what we’ve learned, and adopt feminism for ourselves. At the same time, we were creating a binary that our class try so hard understand the implications of having and even attempt to dismantle. I think the overarching point of out project wasn’t to create new tenets in the feminist world but suggesting what they can and can’t say, but a call to action, an impetus to take something larger than one’s self, try to understand it, and generate fresh ideas. 

A4 Reflection

In creating “Shit Feminists Don’t Say,” our initial goal was simply to explore the feminist theories and related characters we covered in class, but once we finished, I noticed something more: we were defining feminism. As with the best videos in the same genre, the humor depends on stereotypes and generalizations. While, at times, our video was exempt from this because of its (hopefully) humorous plays on theoretical tenets, many of the better moments pull from more realistic scenarios. Sure, someone who works with feminist theory most likely will not think, “Freud is so spot-on”—harmless humor. But consider the scenes of where women seem to want to be objectified: these pull from stereotypes of what the archetypal feminist would say.

In class, we have discussed the potential gains from objectification and briefly alluded to the viability of lipstick feminism, but our video does not consider these options. During the writing process, we struggled with whether to push back against unqualified generalizations to try to make the least offensive video possible. While it ultimately became clear that without the stereotypical we would end up creating a short and rather unfunny video, let it be known that these generalizations were not included undetected.

By compiling phrases that feminists apparently don’t say, we seem to be arguing that someone who considers themself a feminist should not say any of these things, and if they do, well then they aren’t exactly a feminist. But this is not the case. While the video does poke fun at beliefs that are typically outside the spectrum of feminism, this not with the idea that they discredit a person’s feminism if they hold them; we just want to generate some laughter and maybe some thought from both sides of the text.

A4 Reflection: Stone Butch Blues Retold

I was pretty excited to start my A4 assignment on Stone Butch Blues. As the first piece of literature for this course, it opened my eyes to a new world. Now, going back and reexamining the novel allowed me to appreciate the story in a new way.

We decided to film in a documentary-like setting, interviewing the main characters from Jess Goldberg’s past. When we studied this novel in class, the focus was on Jess and her character, her struggle, her life. But with this assignment we were able to take a different approach. What impact did Jess have on other people’s lives? How did her struggles reflect the hardship that so many others go through today? Writing the script and putting myself in the shoes of the other characters brought Jess to life. She was an old girlfriend. She was a past student. She was my Baby Butch. I felt the novel in a whole new way.

My favorite piece to film was Theresa’s interview. As a character, she had a large impact of Jess’s life. The novel even opens with an apology letter from Jess to Theresa. It was interesting to think from her perspective. Most of the novel is told through Jess’s eyes and we remain unaware to the thoughts of the characters. I liked pretending to be Theresa, getting inside of her mind to write the script. In the interview we tried to show her to be remorseful but also happy. We wanted to give the characters a good ending, especially after all of the struggles that they had faced. Jan was also a great character to film. As a mentor to Jess, she is able to see the growth that Jess goes through as a character. She sees Jess before she develops into her new persona, before she finds out what it means to be a butch.

I really loved this project because the book is so important to me. I feel like we could never do the characters the justice they deserve, but we did try our best. I liked this assignment because we were able to take a novel about a topic that felt so far removed, and make it into something that we could relate to in a new way. 

Reflection: Jess Goldberg Redefined

Contrary to Julia, Stone Butch Blues was my favorite book of the semester. I was captivated by the queer world of the butch-femme dichotomy, and I learned a lot from Jess Feinberg’s story. So, naturally, I wanted to take it even further. I was curious about a lot of the characters in Jess’ life who fell off the radar and I wanted to recreate their stories from a different perspective.

We chose to make documentaries of characters that we wanted to know more about: Jess’ parents, Teresa, Butch Jan, and Jess’ English teacher. What happened to these people? How did they see Jess? What would the story look like from a different perspective? The most interesting character to me was actually Jess’ old English teacher, whom I liked a lot in the book. She seemed to understand Jess, and she was on Jess’ side (unlike everyone else at that point.) And in the interview, the teacher remembers Jess and asserts that Jess made an impact on her too. Even thought Jess thought no one cared about her at the time, the English teacher cared. Moreover, we added some irony and make the teacher unaware of Jess’ success in life. She says that Jess had a lot of potential and should have done something more with her life. But Jess did. If the English teacher knew then she would have been proud.

Overall, this was a fun assignment that let us think beyond the book. It often bothers me when characters are left hanging and we don’t know happens to them. Now, we know a little more about these characters.

A4: Jess Goldberg Redefined

Hey guys!

Sorry the video was private earlier. Hope you enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlBV8oUC8Ok

-Megan, Christina, and Julia

Max and Eileen

Critical Response 

All my friends know about my characters “Max and Eileen”. It’s because once you start creating a world like I tried to for “Max and Eileen”, it’s hard to bring yourself out of it. You begin dreaming up ways to change the plot, or develop the characters more. But by far the most challenging part of writing a script is getting that main idea down in dialogue and action. 

This was by far the most challenging and rewarding assignment I’ve done all year. I’ve never written a script before, so bare with me on the readability, and please, try to laugh at a few of my jokes. What I found most challenging with this script actually picking something to write about. I had three characters from the start; Max, Eileen, and Helen, and that was the easy part. The hard part was incorporating some little-known-facts from the course into the script. I tried my best to add jokes or descriptions that would enhance the “gender subplot” of the script. The most fun I had was adding music throughout the piece, used as a pacing technique and also as a plot enhancement. 

Where I think I fell short was towards the end. I tried my best to include Butler in the script, but wish I had more time and more pages to flush out my ideas. Helen was the hardest character to develop as she is a high femme lesbian (see http://confessionsofafemaledragqueen.blogspot.com/ for an idea of the look I was going for). The idea of adding Justin Bond in came later, however gave Helen’s character motivation for joining the “Ladies of the Horror House” in the first place. It was hard for me to find a good ending, so concluding with a few lines about Justin and Helen’s relationship was the best way I found to send the proper message of the script. Although Helen was a high femme lesbian, her ability to transform into a male figure on stage illuminates Butler’s idea of “gender performity”.      

Jess Goldberg: A Retrospective

When we first decided that we were going to focus on Leslie Feinberg’s Stone Butch Blues for our A4, I have to admit that I was less than enthused. To be honest, this was one of my least favorite pieces of literature from the course—a little too long and drawn out in my opinion. However, when the idea of interviewing supporting characters from the book in a sort of documentary-style retrospective came up, I got excited. While the main character, Jess, may have annoyed me during parts of the book, this project gave me a chance to revisit some of the characters that were not as prominently mentioned. That being said, I think that the characters I did end up focusing on (Jess’s parents and high school English teacher)—while not having major roles in the narrative—are very important characters in their own right.

Jess’s parents are the first sources of negativity in Jess’s life. I thought it would be interesting to interview her parents since they come across as particularly cold-hearted people in the novel. Originally not wanting to have any children, the resentment Jess’s parents feel towards their first born is compounded by the fact that Jess is not a “normal” little girl. While reading the book, I found myself taken aback by the fact that her parents not only send her to a psych ward, but also seem perfectly happy with their daughter running away from home. The interview format of our project allowed an opportunity for an imagining of their side of the story.

In much the same way that her parents represented the first authority figures in Jess’s life to disapprove of her identity, I think that her teacher Mrs. Noble is the first adult to really support Jess. She sees past the exterior and straight into the potential to do something great that Jess seems to possess. She represents hope for Jess—the possibility of acceptance and success. While only mentioned on a few pages, I think that Mrs. Noble has a lasting effect on Jess and her determination in finding belonging and happiness. Furthermore, as portrayed in her interview, I imagine Jess as having had a lasting impression on Mrs. Noble as well.

Hope you guys enjoy the video! =]