Category: man
“The Female Eunuch”
Germaine Greer argues that scaring women is
“big business and hugely profitable.”
It is fear, she wrote, that “makes women comply
with schemes and policies that work against their interest”.
Sexism is indeed creating a second class citizen,
and fear works equally well on men,
don’t be a slave to either.
(art by John Holmes)
“One may see that solitude and retirement from the world is not such an insufferable state of life as most men imagine, especially when people are fairly called or thrown into it unavoidably, as this man was.” Captain Rogers commenting on Alexander Selkirk’s fate when he rescued him.
- Labels: books, history, human condition, man, story
Swept Away (full English title: Swept Away by an Unusual Destiny in the Blue Sea of August, full Italian title: Travolti da un insolito destino nell’azzurro mare d’agosto) is a 1974 Italian film written and directed by Lina Wertmüller. It is a study in romance and class warfare.
The movie stars Giancarlo Giannini as long-abused crewmember Gennarino Carunchio, toiling on a yacht rented by a wealthy couple, Raffaella Pavone Lanzetti (Mariangela Melato) and Mr. Pavone Lanzetti (Riccardo Salvino). A beautiful, wealthy, spoiled woman, Raffaella takes endless pleasure in verbally abusing Gennarino over nearly everything, but especially about his Communist politics. When an unusual event at sea leaves Gennarino and Raffaella cast away on a deserted Mediterranean island, the tables are finally turned and the Communist sailor suddenly has the upper hand in the relationship.
American film critic Roger Ebert gave the movie four stars, his highest rating.
Many reviewers criticized the film as deeply misogynistic, with its themes of violence against women, subjugation, and rape. Anthony Kaufman, in The Village Voice, called it “possibly the most outrageously misogynist film ever made by a woman.” (read more)
When I was 18 years old, me and two of my buddies decided that we were going to climb Mt. Signal. Even though it’s only 2,300 feet to the top of Mt. Signal it looked like Mt. Everest to us. Being the young bucks that we were, we thought it the thing to do to prove our manhood. Temperatures in the Imperial Valley hit 90 to 110 during the day so we started early in the morning, figuring to make the summit by noon and get back down before nightfall. We started up one foot in front of the other, boulder by boulder, it was a good climb and we gained a hundred feet of altitude every ten minutes. Half way up we looked around and thought, maybe we’ve bit off more than we can chew, but we kept on climbing. We made the summit right around noon and took in the view. 2,300 feet in the air it was if we were in an airplane flying over the perfectly flat fields of the Imperial Valley, we were in awe of what we had accomplished. Standing before the shrine with it’s cross at the summit we knew we were somebody, we knew that we mattered. I picked up a couple of rocks and put them in my pocket, then we started the climb down. It was like floating on air, we bounded from boulder to boulder gravity assisted and flew down the mountain. Without seeming effort we glided as if on wings toward the base, in a trance like state time slowed down, as if in slow motion every stone was alive and a step back to reality. We arrived in the real world and realized that we were men and began our journey, we had arrived ! (read more)
- Labels: experience, man, perception, perspective
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Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, is a novel written by English author Mary Shelley about eccentric scientist Victor Frankenstein, who creates a grotesque but sentient creature in an unorthodox scientific experiment. Shelley started writing the story when she was eighteen, and the novel was published when she was twenty. The first edition was published anonymously in London in 1818. Shelley’s name appears on the second edition, published in France in 1823.
Shelley had travelled through Europe in 1814, journeying along the river Rhine in Germany with a stop in Gernsheim which is just 17 km (10 mi) away from Frankenstein Castle, where two centuries before an alchemist was engaged in experiments. Later, she traveled in the region of Geneva (Switzerland)âwhere much of the story takes placeâand the topics of galvanism and other similar occult ideas were themes of conversation among her companions, particularly her lover and future husband, Percy Shelley. Mary, Percy, Lord Byron, and John Polidori decided to have a competition to see who could write the best horror story. After thinking for days, Shelley dreamt about a scientist who created life and was horrified by what he had made; her dream later evolved into the story within the novel.
Frankenstein is infused with elements of the Gothic novel and the Romantic movement and is also considered to be one of the earliest examples of science fiction. Brian Aldiss has argued that it should be considered the first true science fiction story, because unlike in previous stories with fantastical elements resembling those of later science fiction, the central character “makes a deliberate decision” and “turns to modern experiments in the laboratory” to achieve fantastic results. It has had a considerable influence across literature and popular culture and spawned a complete genre of horror stories, films, and plays.
Since publication of the novel, the name “Frankenstein” is often used to refer to the monster itself, as is done in the stage adaptation by Peggy Webling. This usage is sometimes considered erroneous, but usage commentators regard the monster sense of “Frankenstein” as well-established and an acceptable usage. In the novel, the monster is identified via words such as “creature”, “monster”, “fiend”, “wretch”, “vile insect”, “daemon”, “being”, and “it”. Speaking to Victor Frankenstein, the monster refers to himself as “the Adam of your labours”, and elsewhere as someone who “would have” been “your Adam”, but is instead “your fallen angel.” (read more)
Mary Shelley
