Until the violence stops

I just watched one of my Netflix recommendations, V-Day: Until The Violence Stops, a documentary about the movement born out of Eve Ensler’s Vagina Monologues; a worldwide movement of women reclaiming their bodies, their dignity and their power. I can’t believe, as an actress and a feminist, that I’ve never seen it. From former comfort women in the Philippines – teenage girls who were forced to “service” six to eight Japanese soldiers a day for more than two years during WWII – to Africa where a single woman started a revolution against female circumcision, the movie reminded me of just how powerful words can be.

I recently debated with a young documentary filmmaker about the power of images versus words. While I think one of the most powerful films ever made, Baraka, is a purely visual film, words are what change the world: the law, the constitution, marriage vows, prayer and the words “I love you,” which never lose their power. It takes a native man in North Dakota, during one of the local productions of The Vagina Monologues, a full three minutes to stop his face quivering enough to thank the audience for coming and honoring the native women killed by their husbands in domestic violence. It is so painful to watch the suffering endured by men and women, abuser and abused, in this cycle of violence. This particular man abused his wife for the first three years of marriage until (and this is implied) he killed his two-year old son who was trying to protect his mother from his father.

The last two men that I’ve dated told me that their last serious girlfriends had been sexually abused or raped, and at some point the dysfunction became an issue in their relationship. I’ve heard this story so many times, in fact, that I wonder why men don’t realize that most women they know have been abused, raped or at least sexually harassed at work or school. After the primaries, I told a good friend of mine that I felt guilty supporting Barack instead of Hilary. I can’t help but think that only a female in charge will bring attention to the violence against women the world over. There is, of course, no guarantee that Hilary would do any more in that regard than a man, but the fact that one half of the population is still so routinely victimized by the other half, across cultures, religious and socioeconomic backgrounds, and I’m sorry to say, in ways that are insidiously considered “normal,” is unacceptable.

Ironically, I was watching this film on the 10-year anniversary of V-Day and there were a slew of performances and celebrations last month, some are still going on. The monologues are the best way to see what it’s all about but if you can’t see a performance, or organize one yourself, you could always get the DVD. I would like to think that men can watch this and be just as moved, and not think "it's a women's issue." This is a worldwide problem that affects all of us, and we all can do something to stop it.

Who would do that?

On the way home from work tonight, I cracked open my brand new The Economist. I had no idea when I ordered it that it was a weekly magazine. It really is a depressing publication. Nearly every cover has some kind of war imagery. Whoever said that war is not about money, obviously doesn't know The Economist.

Only a few moments later, for I was still on the first page in "The world this week," I gasped. I had my headphones on so I'm not sure how loud it was but the man I was sitting next to turned to find out what had happened. I took off my headphones and read him this short paragraph:

Ecuadorian officials investigated the slaughter of 53 seal lions in the Galapagos Islands nature reserve. All had their heads bashed in. The motive is unknown.

"That IS worth a gasp," he said. Who would do that? And why? He remarked that sea lions are quite large and it couldn't have been easy, and that the Galapagos is far away from any mainland. I did a report on the Galapagos Giant Tortoise in Junior High. I've always wanted to go there, to Darwin's islands to see the magical animals that don't live anywhere else. I guess I should get going before they're gone!

Erupting at the speed of sound

National Geographic continues to be the coolest most relevant magazine to what's actually going on in our world. I swear, news and TV shows just seem flip and meaningless compared to the soulful exploration of National Geographic. Growing up, I was fascinated by it because it took me to distance lands that I wanted to visit, to the highest peaks and the lowest depths of the ocean, places that I could never visit. Then starting in the nineties, it seemed like every article was about pollution, over-population and other plights of our time. It made me sad and I felt our beautiful world was coming to an end and realized, I had only enjoyed it on paper.

I still wish I had chosen a career that enabled or required worldwide travel as I am still fascinated by other cultures and countries. But I have been pleased to discover that National Geographic is again inspiring me although, and maybe this says more about me than the magazine, it's a more mature relationship. The articles still celebrate the human spirit and beauty of nature within the context of a modern world - but in a less abrasive way - as if we're all better suited to digest these complex issues.

Last month, I read that Hurricane Katrina was the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history and that not even a "massive and endless national commitment" to the safety of New Orleans is enough to secure it. The area has always been environmentally vulnerable, it is put under water about every eleven years. The letter from the editor suggests that it's foolish for anyone to live there, foolish for the government to spend money trying to keep people there and wouldn't we all be better off if they paid people to start anew somewhere else and let nature reclaim the wetlands?

This month, the magazine ran an awesome article about Naples and the area surrounding Mt. Vesuvius, home to about the same number of people as the New Orleans area. There have been seven eruptions over the last 25,000 years, a frequency far less than that of devastating hurricanes in New Orleans, but each blast has destroyed all life in the area for several hundred years.

Scientists say the area should expect another blast any day. There is no way to predict it before it happens. There is no way for an area of that size to be evacuated safely. There is no way to survive it. And yet a thriving population continues to live in the shadow of and on the slopes of the deadliest volcano in the world with the faith that they will survive. The article is worth reading for the description of how a blast like that will unfold, a cataclysmic event equal to a nuclear explosion. Here the government, instead of spending money to build artificial protections, pays people to leave.

The pressure building from below will blow a hole in the mountain that will hurl "100,000 tons a second of superheated rock, cinders, and ash into the stratosphere," breaking the sound barrier and causing a sonic boom. This liquid rock will shoot 22 miles in the air, far higher than cruising altitude for commercial jets, and spreading out like an umbrella before flying back to earth at 95 miles an hour.

Then an avalanche of debris will explode sideways from the volcano sending a cloud of powder and ash outward, a "hot, choking wind, advancing at about 240 miles (386 kilometers) an hour" at a temperature of 900°F (482°C). If it passes quickly, and your clothing and flesh aren't vaporized, you can survive the heat for a few seconds. But you'll certainly suffocate on the fine powder in the air which will accumulate up to "65 feet (20 meters) deep at a distance of three miles (five kilometers) from the crater to about ten inches (25 centimeters) thick at a distance of 15 miles (24 kilometers). Eight inches (20 centimeters) of ash is enough to cause modern roofs to collapse."

Anyone or anything left will be washed away by the rivers of mud created by liquid ash and thunderstorms. Volcanologists estimate that an eruption nearly four thousand years ago unleashed that cycle of destruction six times in a 24-hour period. I don't know, it kind of makes me laugh to think that we spend so much time devising ways to inflict that kind of damage on each other when nature is happy to do it for us.

Nature as therapy for veterans

There was an article in the New York Times today about Outward Bound classes that are being used as therapy for vets returning from combat. The courses are free, covered by a grant, and the article describes how a week out in nature climbing rocks, wading through rivers and living outdoors with other vets has given these men a chance to mourn, a chance to heal and a chance to live in the world among those who have no idea what they've been through. I got teary-eyed imagining these guys standing around a pile of stones that they made, tears streaming down their face as they mourn the ones who didn't make it.

There were two quotes from the article that piqued my interest. One was from a 27-year old who fought in Afghanistan:
“I think if there’s one message I could get across to the public, it’d be to not give up on us,” he said as the group walked through the mountain sunshine to the trailhead.

The other was from a 23-year old Marine who fought in Iraq and sustained a head injury from flying shrapnel:
“I wish that civilians and policy makers really understood, at an emotional level, the tremendous toll and cost of war on those who actually experience it,” Mr. McMaster said the next day, as he hiked down the mountain and across a green field.

From Matthew Dowd asking for more gentleness in the world, to a poll I read recently (but can't find!) that said in several countries known for supporting terrorists, the public is dramatically less likely than a few years ago to think violence is justified. In Pakistan, the percentage that supports the actions of terrorists decreased from 46% to something like 14%. I've said it once and I'll say it again, violence is out of fashion.

What is critically needed is a separation of violence from the desire to defend one's country, promote a way of life, or liberate a group of people. Although many actions of war can be "justified," overwhelmingly people are starting to question not the motives of going to war but the actual decision to go to war. Soldiers coming back from war might be willing to turn around and go back because they believe in the cause but they still question the choice of war. As McMaster expressed, it's worth the toll if it's the right decision. IF, it's the right decision.

Last year I watched a fantastic documentary, Sir, No Sir!, about the soldiers who protested the Vietnam War, a story covered up for years. Even now, we're artificially divided between those who "support our troops" and those who don't. It's a technique devised to suppress the public's growing desire for peace. I don't think there's an American alive who isn't grateful for our army and who doesn't think it's incredible to live in a country where people volunteer to serve. But clearly, people all over the world are starting to wonder if violence is still an effective tactic for bringing about change.

Violence is so not cool anymore

I had a weird day in Santa Monica yesterday. There seemed to be more violence around than usual. I went out to buy a ticket for the 7:30 movie, it was still sunny and I was going to the bookstore first, then the movie. On the way, I was confronted by a large and frightening woman with no shoes who yelled at me "if I wasn't something something, I'd fuck you up!" She was literally foaming at the mouth. She continued down the street screaming and cussing and on the other side, people stopped what they were doing to see who was making all that racket.

Then when I found out the movie was sold out, I bought a ticket for the later show and headed home. I walked by an ATM where a young woman was trying to get money and was being harassed by a guy who could have been homeless, it's hard to tell. She was explaining "actually, I'm late for a play and just trying to get some money." I don't know what she was apologizing for but he continued to talk at her anyway.

When I got home, there were some kids on the stoop across the street practicing their rhymes. They were rapping at the top of the lungs the same two lines over and over again. I could hear windows and doors closing, the sound traveled for a whole block in each direction I'm sure, of all the nearby apartments. Only one woman yelled "shut up!" but it didn't do any good.

A few hours later, I headed out again to see the movie and I passed two women walking. They were talking but it quickly escalated to yelling and the younger one tried to grab the bag of the older woman as she shouted "will you just stop drinking already?!" They went on down the street like that, the younger one yelling and trying to grab the bag and the older one shushing her as other people walked by. I passed a couple on my side of the street, clearly in a fight, as the guy said something mean to his girlfriend.

Before the film, there were several trailers. I'm always tuned in to how people react to trailers. Whether they laugh, or talk the whole time or are engaged. During two for movies about random violence, the kind that doesn't make sense and makes us into crazy people, the feeling from the audience was not good. It felt angry. When the Bourne Ultimatum came on though, even though there's violence, the feeling is uplifting. He's fighting for all of us, and the people who get hurt are generally bad guys. People laughed and cheered and went along with it in a way that they absolutely were not going to for those two other films.

I'll venture a guess that random acts of violence are sliding down the backside of cool.

Wisps of magic

Something that's been rattling around in my brain lately is magic. Here's an abridged definition from Dictionary.com:

mag·ic [maj-ik] – noun
1. producing illusions by sleight of hand or deceptive devices for entertainment.
2. supposed human control of supernatural agencies through the use of incantation.
3. any extraordinary or mystical influence, charm, power, etc.
4. mysteriously enchanting.

THIS is what I think magic is:
An idea, vision or experience that defies explanation by and/or alters our experience of our earth-bound reality.

A lot of people have experienced this recently through "The Secret" or "What The Bleep Do We Know?" Some people find magic in God. Music is magical to me, the way it can lift me right out of the physical hell of driving. A good movie can work magic, utterly transforming my reality temporarily or permanently. And some dreams are certainly magic. No one really understands dreams.

We find magic in coincidences. Maybe they're just our brain sorting through our world in a way that shows us what we want or need - what Malcolm Gladwell refers to as "messages from behind the locked door" - but how do you explain this?

I was making banana muffins the other day and momentarily forgot while watching a show. Right at the time I should have been taking them out of the oven, one of the characters said to another "want to get a banana muffin?" I mean, are you kidding?

Mostly, though, I find magic in the wind, ocean, moonlight, trees and clouds:
Two hundred seventy thousand feet above the ground, higher than 99.9 percent of the earth’s air, clouds still float around — thin, iridescent wisps of electric blue.


The New York Times reported:
NASA is launching a small satellite to take a closer look at these clouds at the edge of outer space and to try to understand why, in recent years, they are appearing more often over more parts of the world. They are also becoming brighter.

The clouds are called noctilucent or “night shining,” because from the ground they can be seen only at night as they float about 50 miles above the surface, illuminated by light from a Sun that has already set below the horizon. (That is essentially the same effect that makes moonlight.)

Even scientists who spend their days studying the atmosphere are amazed:
“They’re beautiful,” said James M. Russell III, co-director of the Center for Atmospheric Sciences at Hampton University in Virginia and principal investigator of the NASA mission. “The pictures do a good job, but it’s not like seeing them.”

There's so much in this world that I don't understand: hip-hop/rap music, horror films, rollercoasters, hunting, football. I hear that people like these things because "they need an escape" but with so much magic in the world, why do people seek escape through violence?

"Someone should be held accountable"

My obsession with The West Wing continues as I start season four. In the last episode of season three, CJ's love interest (the super hot Mark Harmon) was shot and killed in a robbery. It was so upsetting, I actually yelled at the TV "why can't they leave these people alone!" It seems like people are always getting killed on that show. Now I know why. People are always getting killed in real life.

The shooting yesterday, in Virgina, the deadliest in US history, has sparked outrage from the rest of the world about the ease and prevalence of obtaining a gun in the United States. And even though most of the handgun deaths occur on our soil, we're the largest manufacturer of weapons in the world, making this a global issue.

"Mexican authorities reported that 80 percent of guns in the country came from the U.S., 50 percent of handguns seized by Canada's gun crime task force were also smuggled across the U.S. border and 30 percent of guns recovered by Japanese authorities originated in the U.S., the IANSA found."

Gun deaths persist even in countries with zero tolerance policies towards guns in large part because they continue to be made and are bought so easily in the U.S. A London Times columnist asks why Americans continue to tolerate our lax gun laws and a culture that allows so many people to die by something so easily avoidable. I'm embarrassed to be seen as tolerating it and yet when I asked a friend what he thought, he said "it's tragic but unavoidable."

"The president believes that there is a right for people to bear arms, but that all laws must be followed," said Dana Perino, a spokesperson for President George W. Bush. "And certainly bringing a gun into a school dormitory and shooting ... obviously that would be against the law and something that someone should be held accountable for."

How barbaric a society we live in where the government defends people's rights to kill each other! SOMEONE should be held accountable for these deaths? WHO? The guy who killed 33 people and then shot himself? Hundreds of laws are passed to protect us from ourselves without nearly the debate appointed to gun control.

You must wear a seatbelt in a car (11,000 lives saved per year), you must not drive under the influence of drugs or alcohol, you must wear a helmet when riding a motorcycle, you must stop at a red light.

We have laws protecting us from food that could kill us (even if it's caused by OUR OWN bad eating habits) since heart failure is the number one cause of death in America, laws protecting us from second hand smoke and drugs that might harm us, and we have guard rails in every public place to protect us from falling to our death.

Unfortunately, many of these laws are only passed because companies don't want to get sued. Problem is, there's no one to sue when someone shoots and kills you. If there were, GUARANTEED that person/company would have found a way to protect us from getting shot.

CNN reports that "small arms manufacturing in the U.S. is a $2 billion-a-year industry." Still think those gun lobbyists are protecting our right to bear arms? In the aftermath of 9-11, President Bush said “We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.”

The power of images

I've been reading Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. I loved The Tipping Point, a great marketing book, and a friend said I should read Blink. In it, he talks about how powerful words and images are, even in small doses on a short term basis. Someone reading angry words will become angry, a person seeing images of a minority group committing crimes will become disposed to distrusting that minority group, etc.

I live in Los Angeles and while I've often known that the entertainment industry is by far the most sexist industry in the country - only 7% of working directors are women (for reference, approximately 16% of federally elected seats are held by women - not exactly a bragging point to begin with).

Even so, I'm constantly amazed by the movie posters that I'm subjected to on my way to work. I won't even get into the "Black Snake Moan" poster that is just beyond bizarre, or the "Captivity" poster that basically showed Elisha Cuthbert being MURDERED (it was taken off of buses after protest).

I'll just mention the three movies being advertised now on every billboard and bus stop on my eight mile commute. See if you can spot the theme:

"Perfect Stranger" - Halle Berry looks terrified at a menacing Bruce Willis.

"Disturbia" - The tagline is "Every killer lives next door to someone" while a terrified female is both menaced by the shadow of a man AND watched by another man through binoculars.

"Fracture" - Anthony Hopkins looks menacing and the headline is "I shot my wife."

I know. It's not something we normally think about but what do you think the unconscious reaction to this kind of messaging is?

Horrific horrifying horror

I was at the video store with my dad, looking for a film to rent. Every third film, it seemed, was a horror flick. And I don't have to tell you that most of them are about pretty young women being victimized. I picked up one called Rest Stop and made the mistake of reading the back. It's, as I guessed, about a woman tortured by a sicko after stopping at a rest stop...something about a box of tools and a saw (!)

I guess what makes it so SCARY and, I shudder to say, APPEALING, is that it actually happens and women are really afraid of that. Hmmm, I wonder how often it happens. Or are women disproportionately afraid because of movies like this? Why is a woman's fear so appealing?

A few minutes later, my dad picks up the movie The Virgins of Juarez. "This is a good movie," he says, "YOU should see this." I figure that he's making reference to the fact that I'm a feminist, something he hasn't always been too supportive of. He explains that it's a true story of women (young, I imagine, since they're VIRGINS) who are abducted in Juarez, Mexico, raped repeatedly and then KILLED. Disposable sex toys?! I feel myself getting physical ill in the video store as he goes on. "Minnie Driver plays a reporter who goes down there to get the story and this girl," he says, pointing to someone on the cover, "was buried alive but manages to escape."

I'm so horrified, I don't even know what to say. Why should I see this movie? God, how sick. How awful! My brain is spinning. Who are these people? WHO abducts little girls and rapes and kills them? WHO?! Normal men just walking around decide to do this? How can a society have such a low value on the life of a woman? How can a society care so little about women living in fear?

My mom had mentioned an article in the paper that morning (it was a weekend with the parents) about a 15 year old girl who met a guy online. She agreed to meet him somewhere and was kidnapped. He and HIS FATHER kept her in their apartment for a week and raped her. FOR A WEEK! She managed to escape, apparently, and they got caught.

That night, I had a nightmare about a serial killer, a duffel bag full of warm bloody body parts in Ziploc bags, and a series of films the killer had made while killing each victim. This was a nightmare because I was in charge of solving these crimes and had to watch the movies. I couldn't sleep for two nights afterwards.

So, the other day I was at the beach, on the walking path. Every time I heard someone behind me I jumped a little, startled. I notice that other women do it too, when they're approached. I saw a couple of guys laughing at a woman who was startled by them. Does a man even know what it's like to feel like a potential victim walking around? Sure, sure, it's a state of mind. BULLSHIT. With so much real violence against women, why do we need fictional violence?

Let me ask a question. Why is it that fictional terror is entertainment while the real terror is a challenging think piece? For example, Blood Diamond featured little boys getting body parts hacked off. COOL! Last King of Scotland is about a dictator who was a mass murderer...way better than Zodiac. That guy wasn't even REALLY a serial killer. Or what about The Virgins of Juarez? I mean, isn't that right up horror alley? Can someone explain this to me?