He finds out she’s having an affair with another man. He crashes his plane, in which she is a passenger, into her lover, intending to kill everyone.

or

He finds out she’s having an affair with another woman. He shakes her and threatens her and allows her to catch on fire and be horribly burned.

or

His heretofore pliant new wife talks back. He slaps her and calls her names and, quite improbably in light of this evidence, declares in a lustful about-face that he likes his women “spunky.”

or

He finds out his fiancee still loves her ex-boyfriend. He forces her to marry him and attempts to kill her boyfriend.

or

A woman whose hero boyfriend has been distracted is discovered by the villain. He calls her “sweetheart” and suggests that she be given to his most physically repulsive henchman as a kind of sexual sundae.

or

A woman talks back to a man/a woman behaves out of the common way/a woman is found by a man to be alone on a street/in a bar/in her home. He rapes her.

or

or

or

I watched Fire last night. It made me so tired. And I don’t watch this stuff if I can help it. What about the rest of you, I wonder, who don’t have my hyper-sensibilities and have seen legions of women being raped and beaten and murdered, how can any of you walk around in a world with men and not be afraid all the time and not believe you are just a potential victim all the time and not be waiting always for the creepy violins to start or the scream-drowning bassline? Even though you know in your brain it’s not a realistic portrayal still how can you not have this beaten into your bones like a genetic code? There are things I would never say or do around a man because if you push a man too far he will beat you up I have been taught it is so and I am big into self-preservation. There are ways I will never lead my life, things I will never say, places where I will never be alone, places where I will never be in company, men I will never be with around other men because they are the wrong man and they can get you for the company you keep as much as anything else, there are clothes I will never wear there are words I won’t use there are places I will run through and places I will move through at an effacing-walk there are a thousand rules I will follow that I have intuited and never been told.

I saw my first Dogme 95 film last night, Italian for Beginners. Dogme 95 is a group of directors who have made a series of promises known as the vow of chastity about the films they make.

I heard about Dogme 95 three or four years ago, but I never had any interest in watching their films. Their manifesto is extremely unappealing in the way that only German ideas can be. (I myself am slightly German, so I feel justified in condemning the whole nation.) (Slightly German: band name?) Their central problem with modern films seems to be that these films are rife with false elements (i.e. false lighting, sound work, scenes shot in times other than the present, etc.) and therefore can’t be expected to impart a true idea or emotion to the audience. They solve this problem by requiring that their films be shot only in real locations, with natural light, and handheld cameras, and so on. Basically they’re coming as close as possible to shooting real life without just going around filming ordinary people.

Because Frahm introduced me to this philosophy I expected the films to be pretentious, but Italian was amazingly accessible. It’s a very good film. Unfortunately, I found that the handheld cameras and use of video distracted me from the script and acting which were the film’s strengths. In fact the only thing I approve of about Dogme 95 is the lack of a soundtrack or score. I have always resented filmmakers who use sweeping violins or bass lines to manipulate my emotions when the acting or script isn’t enough to convince me.

Wait, I do approve of one other thing.

http://www.quarlo.com

Thursday in class we watched a video about how women got the vote, launching us well and truly into our feminism section. It’s making me extremely touchy about certain things, like the fact that the Lad does not like Lily Tomlin. I keep wanting to blame it on his patriarichal need to feminize feminists, and last night over Scrabble I nearly stood up on my parents’ newly-upholstered dining room chair and yelled “J’accuse!”

In other news, Brian found a wonderful site which consists solely of fascinating links. Usually after spending any more than half an hour surfing the web I feel robbed, like Weebl & Bob or Memepool just hastened me towards death without me noticing. But the site Brian found made me feel all tingly and nice. Rock, Brian.

It’s interesting how some of these garner 50 comments and some none.

Have y’all seen Kissing Jessica Stein? Yeah? Did anyone notice how much egg it sucked? Millers and Lad and I watched it last night, and I couldn’t help but notice not only the lack of steamy lesbian sex but also the lack of so much as a passionate kiss.

It’s a billed as a groundbreaking lesbian movie, but all it shows is a neurotic straight girl and her doormat girlfriend not having sex. And p.s., Actress Who Plays Jessica, waving your hands in the air and talking with a baby girl voice will not distract us from the fact that you aren’t acting. You know what would have distracted us? Showing us your breasts.

If Hollywood made movies about real people who happened to be gay, I would watch them without an expectation of breasting. But when I’m watching straight actresses taking on gay roles because of the “challenge” of it, I expect the movie to be entirely sex-based (as this was) and I expect nipple action. Why else would I watch it?

P.S. I’m not trying to be a tiresome dormroom lesbian. I just think girls are pretty.

…are eating my living brain.

I did good up until the first midterm and now I’m struggling. Does anyone know about derivatives? (Cue helpless mocking laughter from all of you who know math, except KTV who seems to have forsworn that kind of mockery. Do we know derivatives? Yes, and we can recite the whole alphabet too…)

Okay, but I need help, so quit laughing for a minute. It’s very basic (I assume) stuff, as it’s just being introduced to us, and now we’re learning all the rules for exponential equations and stuff and my head is sort of coming off. Because suddenly with no warning my professor got all snippy about going slow – which he was so good at up until now – and said You should know all this immediately from algebra. Urk.

So, help?