(no subject)
israel's war on lebanon is fucking disgusting. my week has been spent doing anti-war stuff on the campus; my university has a large arab population, many of my political friends have had their families bombed by israel trying to escape. we got attacked by zionists the other day for speaking out in lectures/in the agora against the atrocities. this thing will probably erupt into a fullscale war, in which syria & iran are the next target. it's fucking horrible that the US can fund such a war & get away with it.
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in the past few weeks i saw both the yeah yeah yeahs, & sonic youth. karen o was very entertaining, their sound was so much tight than i expected it to be. but at the entire show i felt detached somehow, maybe because we missed getting a decent spot & had to sit back from the action. sonic youth however were the opposite. we turned up to the show late so i didn't get anywhere near the front row like i wanted. anyway, i managed to squish my compact body through the pit close to the front during the support act, this cheesy B-grade mogwai-esque band who put way too much effort into their costumes. i fucking hate the costume thing; why do guys in bands always think it makes them look bad-ass? ugh. this guy, the nicest guy i ever met, then saw me struggling to get to the front & gave me his spot in the 2nd row, right infront of lee! how fucking cool is that? sy were amazing, they played eric's trip & shaking hell, which is one of my favourite sy songs ever. incredible. for the entire show i was just lost in the intensity of lee's sound. i should have taken photos but could barely move or breathe in the pit.
i watched irreversible the other day, very disappointing, maybe cos i saw it in black & white, hence missed the rich colour. but the narrative pissed me off. this film is not worthy of the title 'rape revenge'; instead of the revenge journey being a liberating & cathartic experience for the rape victim as it is in true 'rape revenge' films such as i spit on your grave. it instead is about the macho search for revenge in which the woman is plays no role; she is mere decoration, & has no control over the sequence of events that follow the rape. the protagonist is not the woman, but of course, the man - isn't it always? alex is just the property of marcus, he avenges the man who dared to touch his ornament, his possession, to dirty his woman, his girlfriend, his property. she's just an accessory, & marcus attempts to 'defend her honour'. how patriarchal. the rape scene itself seemed to be decoration, a cheap plot device, an excuse to unleash the brutal, male-dominated rampage of violence against tenia later in the film. this is due to the position of the camera; wide-shots just don't work in rape scenes, they need to be p.o.v shots to remove any ambiguity, like in moodysson's lilya 4-ever. i can understand why wide-shots were used, to convey the loneliness & detachment, but a massive level of ambiguity is invoked in the spectator when wide-shots are used; rather than envoking a sense of empathy, the spectator becomes removed from the experience, hence this can leave open a series of different interpretations - some guys would watch this & probably jerk off. why have a 9 minute rape scene when there has been no intimacy established between the spectator, & the woman? what is the point, apart from controversy, breaking taboos, violence for violence sake? the film, & its shallow depiction of alex, borders on being exploitative. but i'm sure it's aesthetically beautiful in colour.
other things that are happening: lack of sleep, started back at uni & love my course, many city protests, oh, & i currently have the most painful period pains of my entire life. someone get me some morphine.
.
in the past few weeks i saw both the yeah yeah yeahs, & sonic youth. karen o was very entertaining, their sound was so much tight than i expected it to be. but at the entire show i felt detached somehow, maybe because we missed getting a decent spot & had to sit back from the action. sonic youth however were the opposite. we turned up to the show late so i didn't get anywhere near the front row like i wanted. anyway, i managed to squish my compact body through the pit close to the front during the support act, this cheesy B-grade mogwai-esque band who put way too much effort into their costumes. i fucking hate the costume thing; why do guys in bands always think it makes them look bad-ass? ugh. this guy, the nicest guy i ever met, then saw me struggling to get to the front & gave me his spot in the 2nd row, right infront of lee! how fucking cool is that? sy were amazing, they played eric's trip & shaking hell, which is one of my favourite sy songs ever. incredible. for the entire show i was just lost in the intensity of lee's sound. i should have taken photos but could barely move or breathe in the pit.
i watched irreversible the other day, very disappointing, maybe cos i saw it in black & white, hence missed the rich colour. but the narrative pissed me off. this film is not worthy of the title 'rape revenge'; instead of the revenge journey being a liberating & cathartic experience for the rape victim as it is in true 'rape revenge' films such as i spit on your grave. it instead is about the macho search for revenge in which the woman is plays no role; she is mere decoration, & has no control over the sequence of events that follow the rape. the protagonist is not the woman, but of course, the man - isn't it always? alex is just the property of marcus, he avenges the man who dared to touch his ornament, his possession, to dirty his woman, his girlfriend, his property. she's just an accessory, & marcus attempts to 'defend her honour'. how patriarchal. the rape scene itself seemed to be decoration, a cheap plot device, an excuse to unleash the brutal, male-dominated rampage of violence against tenia later in the film. this is due to the position of the camera; wide-shots just don't work in rape scenes, they need to be p.o.v shots to remove any ambiguity, like in moodysson's lilya 4-ever. i can understand why wide-shots were used, to convey the loneliness & detachment, but a massive level of ambiguity is invoked in the spectator when wide-shots are used; rather than envoking a sense of empathy, the spectator becomes removed from the experience, hence this can leave open a series of different interpretations - some guys would watch this & probably jerk off. why have a 9 minute rape scene when there has been no intimacy established between the spectator, & the woman? what is the point, apart from controversy, breaking taboos, violence for violence sake? the film, & its shallow depiction of alex, borders on being exploitative. but i'm sure it's aesthetically beautiful in colour.
other things that are happening: lack of sleep, started back at uni & love my course, many city protests, oh, & i currently have the most painful period pains of my entire life. someone get me some morphine.