... in which Katie's chanting
Today I went to see The Vagina Monologues.
I didn't quite get the hype before, I must admit. The whole chanting thing seemed a bit much, and while I gathered there was interesting stuff regarding stories which don't get told, I wasn't expecting to be particularly impressed.
I was, though. Damn, was I. The cast were great, and their obvious enthusiasm for the message was infectious. It made me want to go around afterwards going 'people, this is stuff worth talking about! there are actual issues brought up, here, dammit - you don't agree, then bloody well discuss why!' Inspired in many ways is probably the best way of describing it - it was obviously a theatrical thing, in that it was so rooted in the experiences of these individual women and didn't really address many other areas of experience as truly academic discourse would hopefully try to do, but that didn't really seem to matter. It was about saying that there were things going on in the world we should care about, about not putting up with stupid shit just because someone said you should, about making people want to question and argue and do things. Those are goals I can totally sympathise with.
I also loved that it was about lettting people know they didn't have to be ashamed of being who they are. Obviously the way it goes about doing that doesn't work for everyone, but... I think that message is one a whole load of people could do with hearing. It's very very easy to fall into the habit of believing the thing that's wrong is you, even if you know intellectually that your reasoning is based on societal expectations which are actually unhealthy, so creating an environment where it's ok to go 'fuck that, I ROCK' is a damn good thing in my book.
It did make me wonder, though, what it might be like for the men in the audience. Needing justification for your existence, reassurance that you're not alone and that you can still be you and survive, is obviously not a solely female thing, but it did seem to me that the specific issues raised by the show are very female-specific, and that being a bloke in the midst of that might feel kind of strange. I wonder how much the guys there got out of stuff about the validity of sexual expression and being on the wrong side in a power structure that's so all-encompassing it's hard to even see it. Hmm.
The other main thought I had was that if anyone wants to learn about how to write engaging - often utterly fucking heartbreaking, or harrowing in a way that lets you know the truth of it - first person narration, they should see this, because dude. (Although I got the impression that some people didn't seem to quite realise that this was because the stories were, in fact, true. This stuff happens. It's real. And it's that horrible.)
Tomorrow, I am going to wear my asskickin' boots.
I didn't quite get the hype before, I must admit. The whole chanting thing seemed a bit much, and while I gathered there was interesting stuff regarding stories which don't get told, I wasn't expecting to be particularly impressed.
I was, though. Damn, was I. The cast were great, and their obvious enthusiasm for the message was infectious. It made me want to go around afterwards going 'people, this is stuff worth talking about! there are actual issues brought up, here, dammit - you don't agree, then bloody well discuss why!' Inspired in many ways is probably the best way of describing it - it was obviously a theatrical thing, in that it was so rooted in the experiences of these individual women and didn't really address many other areas of experience as truly academic discourse would hopefully try to do, but that didn't really seem to matter. It was about saying that there were things going on in the world we should care about, about not putting up with stupid shit just because someone said you should, about making people want to question and argue and do things. Those are goals I can totally sympathise with.
I also loved that it was about lettting people know they didn't have to be ashamed of being who they are. Obviously the way it goes about doing that doesn't work for everyone, but... I think that message is one a whole load of people could do with hearing. It's very very easy to fall into the habit of believing the thing that's wrong is you, even if you know intellectually that your reasoning is based on societal expectations which are actually unhealthy, so creating an environment where it's ok to go 'fuck that, I ROCK' is a damn good thing in my book.
It did make me wonder, though, what it might be like for the men in the audience. Needing justification for your existence, reassurance that you're not alone and that you can still be you and survive, is obviously not a solely female thing, but it did seem to me that the specific issues raised by the show are very female-specific, and that being a bloke in the midst of that might feel kind of strange. I wonder how much the guys there got out of stuff about the validity of sexual expression and being on the wrong side in a power structure that's so all-encompassing it's hard to even see it. Hmm.
The other main thought I had was that if anyone wants to learn about how to write engaging - often utterly fucking heartbreaking, or harrowing in a way that lets you know the truth of it - first person narration, they should see this, because dude. (Although I got the impression that some people didn't seem to quite realise that this was because the stories were, in fact, true. This stuff happens. It's real. And it's that horrible.)
Tomorrow, I am going to wear my asskickin' boots.