Category: Ms. Magazine
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Guillermo del Toro’s Mythical Mamas
Cross posted at Ms. For horror fans, January is both a blessing and a curse. Christened “Hollywood’s dumping ground,” January is where movies go to die. With everyone’s attention focused on awards season, or so the thinking goes, studios can afford to release films from which they do not expect much profit, many of which…
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Trains, Pullman Porters and a Woman’s Blues
Cross posted at Ms. What do you get when you combine passionate individuals determined to survive with multi-generational family drama and two key moments in African American history? A pretty great new play, that’s what. Opening November 23 at Arena Stage in Washington, DC, Pullman Porter Blues, by Cheryl L. West (Jar the Floor, Before…
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A Feminist Guide to Horror Movies Part Three: Worlds Without Patriarchy
Cross posted at Ms. This is the third post in a three-part series on watching horror movies as a feminist spectator. Having covered films which reinforce the necessity of the patriarchy and films which question its value while still punishing challenges to patriarchal norms, let’s look at two movies in which the patriarchy is almost…
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A Feminist Guide to Watching Horror Movies, Part Two: It’s Not Just About Vampires
This piece is Part Two in a three-part series. See here for part one. Since Edward Cullen first graced the pages of a young adult novel in 2005, vampires have been the sexy bad guys du jour. But it’s not just the lingering fear that sex might lead to death that makes these nightmarish manifestations…
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Lynn Nottage Brings 80 Years of Women, Race and Hollywood to the Stage
Cross posted at Ms. Looking for an evening of entertainment that’s humorous, thought provoking, and possibly paradigm changing? The West Coast premiere of African American Pulitzer Prize-winner Lynn Nottage‘s new play By the Way, Meet Vera Stark is your ticket. But it’s not your typical evening of theater. Directed by Jo Bonney and featuring Sanaa…
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A Feminist Guide to Horror Movies, Part One: Daddy Knows Best
Cross posted at Ms. Monsters in movies are us, always us, one way or the other. … John Carpenter My love of horror movies is a product of both nature and of nurture. My mother loves them. My older brother says I ended up in theaters as a child watching movies that were definitely not…
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“The Mindy Project” – Comedy and Contradiction
Cross posted at Ms. Watch it while you can: Mindy Kaling’s The Mindy Project, which premiered last week to mixed reviews, may or may not have a long life. Most of Kaling’s hardcore fans watched it online before it was on TV, so it probably has more devoted viewers than the disappointing ratings it received…
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Did Someone Say Vagina?
Cross posted at Ms. When I heard the news from Michigan, the first person I thought of was Eve Ensler. I’ve directed The Vagina Monologues twice and, despite unsettling doubts that the play does not actually work as V-Day events intend it to (to end violence), I loved doing it both times. In theater speak,…
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Coming to Sandra, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Sandra Bernhard
Cross posted at Ms. I have never really understood Sandra Bernhard. It’s not that I haven’t tried. After admiring her fantastic turn as ballsy sexual harassment lawyer Caroline Poop on Ally McBeal, my absolutely favorite show at the time (1997) about my absolutely favorite “dead feminist,” I told a friend, “I’ve never really gotten the…
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A Look Inside the Mind of a Suffragist
Cross-posted at Ms. Picture it: 1917. Susan B. Anthony has been dead for 11 years, Elizabeth Cady Stanton for 15. Carrie Chapman Catt has been agitating with the National American Woman Suffrage Association since 1900. But women in America still do not have the right to vote. Fed up, a group of militant suffragists called the National…
Holly L. Derr 