The Avengers get together and break things

The Avengers.. Defending NYC from carnage?

Today I went to the cinema and watched the new superhero film. here are some thoughts:

1. This is a very efficient film, because now I don't have to bother watching The Hulk, Captain America, Iron man, Iron man 2 or any of those Marvel comic blockbusters, because they are all in it! I feel like i have already seen them! However, as I haven't seen them, I was a little confused, my partial deafness didn't help and some parts of the storyline were a little bit confusing..

2. Mark Ruffalo is such a babe! Aww I have loved him ever since he was in 13 Going On 30, and he makes a very likable Hulk.

3. Putting all those superheros into a room together to fight a new evil did bring about the inevitable clash of masculine egos that you would expect. Made me hate all of them a little bit (apart from Mark Ruffalo and Scarlet Johansson, who was also quite good)

4. It is a good thing Captain America got frozen after world war two, or he would have joined the Republican Party. Instead, he is just slightly confused and adorable. And he loves God. #allamericanhero . The patriotic propaganda of Captain America is so obvious it becomes semi ironic. When he said how he "met a man who tried to control people in Germany once before, we didn't get along too well" I actually LOLed because of the cheesy, American fascination with like the only time they "beat a bad guy", and the awfully reductionist view the media takes on such wars.

The USA have generally tended to support such "bad guys" (Milosevic in the 1980s, the Contras in Nicaragua etc) as long as they line up with the US economic interests.. But hey Claire! Stop ruining Captain America with all your "political correctness" and historical "facts"... jeez.  But on a level I actually think Captain America is such a camp stereotype that it is too obvious to hate on him. Like Loretta Lynn.. he seems like a nice guy..

5. They break soo much stuff. Watching this film I sort of slipped into a slightly comatose state where I watched enemies attack an invisible spaceship, fights would happen, there was be punching and shooting and it just happened in front of me with no need for a coherent story line. The special effects were very shiny..

And on a more serious note, the WSWS reviewed the Captain America film last year, and have also referred to Marvel comics as Super epic Cold-Warriors. They have a lot more clever things to say about it, but I do think at a time when we have a global economic crisis and bourgeois leaders intent on starting imperialist wars in Syria, Iran, Libya etc, such sparkly blockbusters with a vague story and ability to make people feel comatose are intended to do so. They like to get across these ideas of patriotism and heroism. It has been the practice of the USA over the past 60 years or so to make their citizens feel threatened about the invasion of "others", to justify their warmongering as a defense on American Freedom.

And this movie even went as far to justify the use of Nuclear weapons against the attacking Aliens, who were brainwashing people and attempting to "take peoples freedom", teach them that "freedom is not freedom" and other such right wing doublespeak. Free market sort of freedom? that doesn't feel so free to me. And the fact that the invasion was centered on New York city, and contained lots of evocative images of buildings falling down.. just felt a little bit 9/11. I am just saying.  Lets get the Captain Americas organised to fight the attackers? Is that what they want the audience to say?

However on the whole, the film was watchable, if one suspends disbelief (as with a lot of Marvel comics). The last line of the film, the defeated enemy alien attacker says something about how formidable the Humans are, he won't try attacking them again!! It made me cry out (literally) "yaaay, I am a human!!". How nice.

Looking for a mountain

I stole this pic from google maps streetview, but HOW AMAZING they have managed to take a much better photo of the view from the top of Mount Wellington in Hobart than I ever managed to. New favourite thing to do is streetveiw Tasmania and pretend I live there already! It will happen one day, and then I bet I will just sit at home and streetveiw North London and say aww...  But still, Tasmania.. <3

Introducing Hugh

This is Hugh. He is my long haired grey Syrian hamster and he is one of the loveliest Hamsters I have ever had :)

thoughts on the SCUM manifesto and relevance of radical feminism

I like Valerie Solonas because she is really determined and strong and angry, and one really gets the impression when reading the SCUM Manifesto that she would not mute her angry passion, no matter how much society judges it to be ugly or intimidating or childish. She rejected every expectation of femininity, and wrote really actually radical statements. There is a really personal, striking element to radical feminist literature like this, which i think reaches out to women. It screams FUCK YOU AND LISTEN TO ME, I WILL NOT BE QUIET OR WAIT MY TURN OR PLAY BY YOUR RULES! I am sure lots of women have felt this way, I know I have.

"middle-class ladies with a high regard for the touching faith in the essential goodness of Daddy and policemen. If SCUM ever marches, it will be over the President's stupid, sickening face"

I can relate. Many presidents have had "stupid sickening faces", politicians are professional liars and as a man of great authority he has many tools in his metaphorical gun-holster to patronize and undermine women. (They have misogynist comments, innapropriate sexual advances, female stereotypes, scrutinising our appearance.. and even the nicest man is given these tools whether they use them or not). Solonas identifies a lot of truth with this bizarre call to arms, her childish rage is not to be dismissed as incoherent but as honest.This radical feminism is about complete and total rejection of male authority, and Solonas powerfully reprimands the well behaved suffragette for stopping way short of true liberation. I think it reaches the psychological core of inequality, and calls for a passionate uprising not a polite reform. Well done.

A lot of people take the extreme bits, read: she hates men, she wants to kill half the population, how silly, that must be rubbish, what a nutter. If you quibble over generalizations you risk missing the point. The SCUM Manifesto is about how much patriarchy kills distorts and subordinates women, mankind have changed female nature into something that exists to compliment men. And she is simply turning it back on itself and imagines the worst excesses of a gender based war. Solonas herself said in 1977 it is a "literary device". Essays that are this extreme are needed to drill home the message to uncertain feminists and are a rallying cry for women who have been beaten, raped, objectified and fucked over: literally or otherwise. In our minds, we all have our inner SCUM, and that source of anger and complete, level headed man hating energy can be a source of strength. Filmmaker Mary Harron recalled how reading the SCUM Manifesto helped her "reach a core of anger she never knew she possessed" [1]. This angry core exists but is difficult to put into words, however I think Solonas' attempt to do so is pretty accurate.

"What will liberate women, therefore, from male control is the total elimination of the money-work system, not the attainment of economic equality with men within it" [2]

I really like it when radical feminists talk about some sort of economic revolution. What Solonas calls the money system is what Marxists call capitalism? Maybe the problem is property and ownership not currency, but as the theory goes in its most simply form, we are an unfree society and it doesn't have to be this way. The Marxism vs feminism debate both intrigues and annoys me, because I can see both sides and don't want to pick one. Radical Feminist women want their freedom from men NOW and don't want to be put in a hierarchy where men talk over them and give orders, no matter what the revolutionary goal. Consequently, the Marxists see this as divisive of the working class, as if gender is creating a false dividing line when we should all be concerned with class based politics. But that is a whole separate issue. I am so far undecided and have a lot more reading before I take a side, but these differences I want to see debated! And Inspirational women like Alexandra Kollontai managed to walk a line between the two, so there is hope. Well there was in 1917. The advent of neoliberalism is putting global changes into overdrive, things aren't looking too good for the working class,women or the entire human race in 2012- if we like having things like healthcare, having enough food and having a stable environment we need to get our shit together! And these big revolutionary questions shouldn't be vanquished to the past. It really makes me angry when people talk of the left as being "political dinosaurs". What sort of agenda dismisses these ideas just because they aren't discussed by the mainstream, although they seem like common sense to me?

I get disappointed and bored when all the current debate in the news is "should we introduce boardroom quotas?" (like last months appalling ten o clock live effort). Yes, I am sure that high profile corporations are horrible patriarchal places and must be frustrating for the women who work in them.. but getting more Christine LaGardes and Margaret Thatchers hasn't really solved anything, these are unfree women who have to play a mans game in a mans world. Though they have these jobs the organisations they represent like the IMF and the British government has inflicted extra economic suffering upon millions of less fortunate women. Christine LaGarde or Angela Merkel is not the friend of Greek working class women right now.. I just think today's arguments about women and feminism have become totally bourgeois and individualistic, they either relate to women who, the radical feminists predicted would be completely unfree, equality in an unfree world means we swapped one set of chains for another.. Or are so plagued by arguments about "difference" that the original message has become diluted. Rainbow coalition.. really? (OKay i got off topic here..)

Towards the end, Solonas talks of the SCUM manifesto's master plan, elimination of men and the society becomes utopian, death and disease will be worked on by dilligent women until they don't plague us anymore.. This part of the essay is not the unrealistic raving of an unhinged woman. She isn't seriously planning a genocide of men, but to exterminate destructive masculinity. Solonas was smart and had a Psychology degree and it is an insult to denounce her work on the grounds that these sections are a bit improbable. She is merely pointing out that Women have been so restricted by elitism, sexism, hierarchy, (an academic scene who's purpose she felt was to "perpetuate" its own existence..) that if they were truly liberated, the possibilities and achievements could be potentially miraculous and boundless.

So in short, I think that the SCUM manifesto has huge relevance today. Really aggressive feminism should stay in the minds of women and feminists, the passion rage and energy are valuable and not to be rejected just because it is also very negative and violent.

Men shouldn't be hostile just because its man hating, Women shouldn't be scared to identify with angry feminists because we sure do have a lot to be angry about. Its important to understand that sometimes you need to push the boat out and scream FUCK YOU, and say all the things that you supposed allowed to say, and I applaud Solonas because all accounts of her seem to show that she does this extremely well.

I am going to watch I Shot Andy Warhol, the biopic.

bibliography/ sources. Not very extensive.

1 http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/3178456?uid=3738032&uid=2&uid=4&sid=47698859696127

http://www.womynkind.org/scum.htm --> where i read it , (2)

Some good communist reading

I am reading And Red Is The Colour of Our Flag, by Oskar Hippe. Its really good, the memoirs of a committed german communist who took part in the reststance, was imprisoned by the nazis, and THEN spent another 8 years in prison in the GDR. Hippe's story reflects the fact that the german working class were screwed by Fascism, then endured the double betrayal of Stalinism. However, Hippe doesnt abandon his principles, and continues to argue for undiluted marxism and always for the workers. What a babe.

I think this is especially great given that the Stalinist dictatorship sure did sow a lot of false seeds about how rubbish communism is, but Hippe who remains a trotskyist managed to see Stalinism for the obscurity that it was..

It is good because the early chapters focus on Hippes upringing and, like most of these socialist books are really moving when describing the poverty that people endured. People were hungry! Really understandable why socialism was so appealing for Hippe. What got me most was the account of his doubly exploited mother and how the housework burden fell on her, as well as a horrible patriarchal husband, it demonstrates why early bolsheviks were also radical feminists..
The book also brings to life aspects in history- the sinister freikorps, Nazi germany, the chaos of east germany being brought under the control of Ulbricht. The inspirational power of Karl Leibnechts speeches, the irony that prisons built BY HITLER were recycled by the moscow controlled GDR regime to imprison dissidents and political unreliables.. And how truly rubbish it must be to have to spend your life in prison. Memoirs such as these are great for history students(aka me) because it reads easily but is subconscious revision.

More importantly there are political lessons which I really think young left wingers (like me) should hear about. The betrayal of Social Democracy in 1914- the Second International abandoned their perspective of, um, internationalism and became patriotic flag wavers in world war one... That worked out well for the working class...no? The true nature of Stalinism and the GDR is also gone into. Too long to recount here! Party splits and factions might seem petty to people like me who grew up in a time and country of relative money and stability, but these factions were and still are important, when one party are actively being instructed to forget their principles and the other is being persecuted for sticking by them..

I havent finished the book yet, but when I do I will say how it all ends... worth reading!

P.s I wrote this on my phone so excuse spelling mistakes :)

HI WORLD

Writing the headline on blogger is a bit like on a CV, and almost as cringey. Aiming to use this blog to write about what I think about the news, the world, people and politics! My sociology A level teaches me that the internet is important, and I am sick of just shouting at newsnight, so trying to be alittle more constructive. Here goes..