Monthly Archives: January 2006

gender representation on King Kong

I decided to see the new King Kong while i was in Hawaii and i have to say it was an unbelievable experience. First, there was something so utterly astounding to be in a theater with mostly Hawaiians Hawaiian residents while watching a film with an atrocious and offensive depiction of Islanders as a “savage” population incapable of hygiene with their eyes rolled back in their heads. Of course, the kids in the audience didn’t seem to mind – they happily talked their way through the entire film, more ecstatic at the action scenes than anything else.

Putting the problematic racial depiction aside, what really fascinated me was the representation of gender performances intertwined with the dichotomy between nature and technology. Kong is a stand-in for pure masculinity, pure nature while Jack (and crew) represent a technologically-aided masculinity. Ann on the other hand represents pure femininity in society, but her representation in the “wild” is a complicated mix of feminine beauty and stereotypically masculine strength and will. The masculine side of her tames the beast while the feminine side brings out his vulnerabilities and nurturing side. The crew’s masculinity comes out in trying to preserve the female while Kong’s masculinity is tamed by the female.

In the wild, neither Kong nor Ann represents a cleanly gendered split while their representations in human society are, by the very nature of that society, split into a clean binary (best represented by Kong and the fake Ann’s interaction on stage back in New York). Conversely, in society, Jack is a nice metrosexual but in the wild, he develops into a pure masculine energy, determined to heroically save the girl. The crew view Ann as a completely vulnerable individual who must be saved while Kong saves her for bringing out his vulnerabilities.

Juxtaposed against the monkey vs. robot narrative, the gendered aspect is intriguing. In the wild, there’s more flexibility for complicated gender performances but when technology evens the playing field, gender must be dichotomously maintained through performance.

What i found intriguing about Jackson’s representation of gender in King Kong was that it was so over the top caricatured that it was fascinating to watch unfold (while his racial representation was disturbing at best).

Anyhow… just some random thoughts. Mostly cuz i’d love to hear others’ thoughts on the representations in the film.

Amazon’s plastic response to phishing

So, i’m one of those obnoxious people who uses a unique email address on every single site and when i use a site where i put my credit card in, i use a string of odd letters and numbers at the end to make it less guessable. I’m very careful to not give out those email addresses outside of the company i’m dealing with and, because i use pine and a Mac, i’ve never worried about viruses. Plus, business emails go to a separate account that is removed from my primary email.

Over the holidays, i got a phishing message to my Amazon email address and i was quite upset. (I’m one of those people who has an Amazon credit card and gets the free shipping because i spend far too much money there – this is not an account i want to be fucked with.) Amazon has this whole thing about how phishing is important to them and thus they have a special reporting place. So, i write to them. What do i get back? It’s my fault, of course. In response, i get a link to learn more about how to protect myself from phishing with nothing addressing any of my specific concerns.

Fuck you very much, Amazon.

One of the things that i hate about the whole online vendors thing is that we’ve lost customer service completely. What happened to the customer is always right ethos? What happened to being really conscious of valued customers? ::sigh::

In the meantime, i’m really concerned about how the phishers got that email address and i have no idea how that might have happened. Did Amazon send the address to one of the used book people that i bought books from? How else might someone have gotten that address? Hrmfpt.

i’m baaaaack….

In the last episode, i told you i was off for the holidays. Somehow, when i got to New York, i just managed to stay offline. And then when i got to Hawaii, it seemed foolish to open the computer. Damn that felt nice. Here’s a recap of the loveliness for those of you who get a kick out of me having a life in the physical world.

I landed in NY just in time to witness the transit strike. The kid sitting next to me was also from Cal and we got to talking. He was going home to see parents and he volunteered his parents to drive me home. I was a bit unsure about this, but when they arrived, they talked about how hard getting around was because of the transit strike and _of course_ they’d drive me even though i was going to the Lower East Side and they were going to the Upper West Side. I love New Yorkers in a crises. During the first two days, i never made it past the Village. It was neat to walk around but so very strange. People on bicycles biking across the Williamsburg Bridge. But of course, it was New York and everyone was just buckling down and dealing. It was great to see some community actually standing up against the disintegration of social support in society.

After chilling with a friend for a few days (including fun pub times), i was supposed to go to midtown to move into the Algonquin with another friend. I decided to grab a cab midday, hoping it wouldn’t be so bad. It took over 2.5 hours to get from Houston to Time Square. ::gulp:: But the Algonquin was wonderful and i felt like i was going back in history… Dorothy Parker… Harpo Marx… George Kaufman. Ahh. We went and saw a fantastic exhibit at the Met (Photography and the Occult) before doing lots and lots of Christmas shopping.

Off to Long Island for familia and then back to the city to whip through the Pixar exhibit at MOMA before seeing a *HYSTERICAL* Broadway musical called Avenue Q. OMG. I couldn’t stop laughing at the mockery of modern day PC-ness.

Next, i took a brutally long flight from JFK to Kauai (with a layover in Los Angeles) which i mostly spent playing Sudoku and reading about the history of Times Square (The Devil’s Playground). I actually did quite a bit of reading on vacation. I read A Million Little Pieces, Dharma Punx, Prep, and Teenage Wasteland. (Yeah, yeah… there’s a theme here.) The last one was based on Cameron’s recommendation and OMG, it was fantastic. It’s an ethnography of the burnouts in Bergenfield, New Jersey where four teenagers killed themselves in a suicide pact in 1987. The book does a brilliant job of covering class in America and the disappearance of notions of success for working class workers (death of unions, factory work). I will deal with it more specifically on alterity in a few days. But wow! Soooo good.

And then there was Hawaii…. Barb and i managed to get a Mustang convertible which made me think so much about Thelma and Louise (the friendship bonding part, not the suicide part). We drove all around the island, hiked the Waimea Canyon, saw pretty waterfalls, snorkeled, watched kite surfing in blissful obsession and flaked on the beach with joy. Soo good.

After Barb left for CES, both of my advisors arrived with their full families. Their friends arrived, my friends arrived and i realized at some point that i knew 16 people on the island who had nothing to do with the conference in addition to the 12 people i intended to see because of the conference. The workshop was a fascinating discussion of Pepys Diary and my talk went well (and Peter even came!). I ended up having brilliant conversations about social visualization while goofing around at beaches, hottubs and pools. I got to play with Mimi’s absolutely wonderful children (who i managed to get fascinated with hurricanes, blizzards, tornadoes, tsunamis and earthquakes in a strange twist of conversations). I also got to play with another wonderful kid (Mimi’s brother’s girlfriend’s friend’s daughter) who didn’t speak of lick of English but loved talking to me in Japanese. And then, when i would speak back to her in English she would just repeat whatever i would say. “How are you?” “How are you?” It was utterly beyond adorable.

So, that was my vacation… it was lovely… I’m relaxed and calm and ready to dive deeply into my qualifying exams (yelp).

Hope everyone out there is doing well! And i promise some more thought-provoking entries soon.