My First Female Person Power Post!

YO MY PEEPS!

(I apologize for calling you peeps)

Another Periodic Montage! Yay!

(Koe Halifax... Click image for insanely good quality enlargement.)

My female person power posts will essentially be videos and/ or anything else that displays accomplishments/ anything else that women do that I admire. Power to the Women!

I'm using the term "female person" instead of "woman" in the title/ tag because my focus will not really be on women. WHAT? The reader exclaims. BUT YOU JUST SAID IT WAS!!!!!

Well, my focus will be on PEOPLE. Specifically, female people.

Haha, the reader says. Not so funny.

Well, I'm making the distinction because WHEN I talk about these women, it will not always be with reference to feminism. I might just be talking about something cool someone did. I might NOT write about feminism in my closing paragraph, you dig? My type of feminism is a type that doesn't have to self-declare itself (despite the fact that I felt compelled to write a written blog). My type of feminism sometimes just means that I admire things [some] women do (not all the time, mind you haha).

I'm starting out more personally, with people that I know. My friends!

Mermaid Girl (known to most as Emma) singing Schubert with a pow-power voice!!!!

Koe Halifax (writer of Koetry by Koe Halifax) my little sis won 2nd place on her High School Gaming Night!!!!

Kelsique posted a response to a Gregory Gorgeous Tutorial. I pretty much never wear makeup, not because of principle - just laziness and lack of full incentive :) - here is a link to a post on Kelsique's blog both about Gregory Gorgeous but also about her teaching me/ putting on me (also putting on herself) a Gregory Gorgeous tutorial inspired look as a sort of tribute but also for FUN: Me and Makeup First Time since I was a Little Ballerina - look to the bottom of the post if you are purely interested in the part of us wearing makeup haha

Message I am trying to Send: Celebration of Women!!!! Pretty Simple.

-Jo Bingo

P.S. I am not saying that girls so rarely do something great that I need to post it to prove it, or that it is so miraculous that girls do something great, OR that guys don't do awesome shit. However, this IS a feminist blog. Sorry, male guy dudes, but that's that.

Wizard of Oz SPOOFS!!!!

We hear he is a wiz of a wiz if ever a wiz there was!

- Hey my audience demographic!

Didn't have much time for blogging today - had my first cello student in at least a half year! So exciting.

Soooo I shall post some of my favorite Wizard of Oz spoofs! There are a million out there, of course.

Satire can be scary. I personally am always afraid to watch satirical skits because I am afraid it will change the way I see the original work, or it will make me not like the original work at all, or "damn now every time I see that scene I'll think of this junk." Also, there is the component of good satire and bad satire. Some stuff makes a point or draws onto an aspect you overlooked or alerts you to the mindset of the story by starkly contrasting it with the mindset of the present times, and that is why we really put up with satire. With that in mind, I submit these videos and the above cartoon.

- The cartoon above suits my cynicism exactly. I love Dorothy, but this spoof almost makes me love Dorothy more! Golden. Absolutely Golden. Just my kind of thing!

"JESUS!"

"Yeah sort of a weird comment right in front of all of us;" I especially enjoyed this because this part of the movie always used to bother me. I was so concerned for the feelings of the Tin Man and the Lion my parents had to explain to me again and again that they hadn't heard it. Only since my obsessive re-watching did I realize that she says it in his ear. PLUS, she has known him much longer than the others and he is the most anthropomorphized so it makes sense.

The Wizard of Oz's presents were kind of lame. But of course, that was the point. They received no real empowerment from Man #1 in the story - at least, Dorothy didn't!

My favorite one. "When the tinman discovered he was gay."

Spoiler: "Oh oh look what happened by accident" - I love how I just placed a spoiler right under the video so it is impossible NOT to read it haha!

O, and this is really bad quality but I just LOVE Simpsons opening sequences!!!!! (I'm more of a Simpsons girl than an admirer of Family Guy, truth be told):

I've made a MUCH better quality youtube video of this simpsons couch gag, but of course therefore the embedding was disabled... and then that youtube account was deleted... to view without killing your eyes, try this embedding that will hopefully work:

I call it: "The Reverse Wizard of Oz"]

O MY GOODNESS I skipped over this one at first because the animation in the thumbnail was so bad, but it makes satirical points that are in none of the others. (Make sure and watch till the end.)

Also, check this baby out. Again, just my style. The middle picture, of course, being the funniest.

A similar "alternate ending" skit that is moderately well-known is the madTV routine. I'm not going to embed this, because though some moments are laugh-out-loud funny, I just don't find other moments very funny. There is funny vulgar, and there is trying-too-hard vulgar, if you know what I mean. However I will provide the link if you are curious.

MadTV Wizard of Oz Alternate Ending Skit

[... and, I'm adding this MONTHS later (it is Wed. July 28th) but I've come upon a magnificent 30-sec bunny spoof of the Wizard of Oz!

Love! - Especially hilarious: Toto has bunny ears too! XD - Had to include it.]

[... AND, it's now August 23rd, but I HAVE to include this utterly ridiculous Phineas and Ferb Wizard of Oz spoof episode, "Wizard of Odd." I have recently become very much a hard core fan of this show!

Phineas and Ferb + Perry the Platypus + The Wizard of Oz = The Best Spoof Ever. "And your little Platypus, too" made my life. ]

And now, though it's Tues. March 8th, 2011, I've GOT to include Futurama's version of Wizard of Oz, not only because the ruby "boots" exactly resemble Phineas and Ferb's (it's a coincidence. Leela's character always wears boots like that) but also because I love these characters SO MUCH - the only thing wanting was to see them in Wizard of Oz form.

Futurama Episode 18 Season 3, "Anthology Of Interest" - Leela Asks the What-If Machine a question about what it would be like to fit in and instead blacks out and has a dream that "resemble[s] what is legally distinct from" the Wizard of Oz.

I love that Leela decides she wants to be a witch instead - in her words: "as long as I get to hurt people and not just dance around at the equinox." Some things are more important that feeling at home, apparently.

I also like that this version emphasizes the poverty and sort of life Dorothy would be returning to - life in the middle of nowhere! HAha! But no in all seriousness Dorothy made the right choice... *cough*

Okay, so, signing off. Wizard of Oz part three coming soon!

-Just call me Jo

My Feminist Collages!

Hell0 Hello Welcome Welcome!

(I dare you to answer the phone this way.)

Been watching and re-watching Julia and Julia for blogging moral support:

(Hopefully you can click on each image and it will enlarge for you. I am not yet technically savvy so I'm crossing my fingers that this works!)

I am a tight-ass. At least I can be very often. I get stressed out easily. How do I fix this? Well, for the last couple of years one of my techniques for de-stressing has been to make collages digitally on the computer from images, scanned or on the internet. In fact often when I had several tests/ essays/ exams, I would get the "deer in headlights" reaction - I wouldn't be able to do ANYTHING academic. I'd freeze. The way I fixed this was by making a collage - a bridge from nothing to construction - so that I'd eventually return to my functional self.

So I thought I'd share some of my best female/ feminist/ gender role relevant collages with you. Peruse and Ponder!

This I did in May 2009 for brainstorming for a girl character in my as of yet unfinished Novella.

I love this movie. Look at this link to wikipedia: "But I'm a Cheerleader." Rent it. It is adorable and suprisingly well written. Topic Explored: Homosexuality. Made this to convince my sister to watch it. She's very lazy so she still hasn't watched it. All the worse for her. CHECK IT OUT!

Topic to think about: What makes a Hero. These happen to be some of my heros.

(In my hero collage: George Washington Carver, Helen Keller, Bruce Lee, Beethoven? (I don't even remember I made this almost three years ago! All those portraits look the same!), Jimmy Stewart, Satchel Paige, Jacqueline Du Pre, Bach?) - my top two heros? Helen Keller and George Washington Carver. ALTHOUGH my favorite person/ writer would have to be Roald Dahl.

Cute movie! Sandra Bullock plays this character nicely - very compelling if very light. Topic: What is Womanly?

Most of these images are from an amazing edition of "Snow White." Check out her wiki page. All of them are illustrations by Trina Schart Hyman. If you have facebook, become a fan on her page. She is a genius. Also, just google image her. She is the MAN. (ooooo gender stereotypes!)

I love Toulouse Lautrec almost as much as he loved his prostitutes that he painted. Find out more. Look him up! Read this link of his bio. (It also includes a selection of images. Thankyou, web museum!) - Notice the (at least) 3 lesbian paintings. Lautrec has such a talent for communicating gentle bodily affection!

I am obsessed with Hans Christian Anderson's "The Little Mermaid." (Press the link to read it yourself! Just for the writing alone...) The writing on the right side of the image is a quote from it that I find compelling concerning life and death and such. (His Mermiads turn to foam when they die, and have no afterlife.)

Kate Winslet being the stunning self-centered emotional yet intelligent and feeling teenager in the 1995 adaptation of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility.

Helena Bonham Carter's "Room with a View."

Helena Bonham Carter's "Room With a View."

There are definitely tons of gender-related subjects in this book. Read it. It is by E.M. Forster.

Where did I find such high-quality screen captures? A gigantic Helena Bonham-Carter fan website. Seriously consider following it. This is the URL for the exact screen-capture page though: SCREEN CAPS

On a still slightly related note, here is the 2nd trailer for Tim Burton's Upcoming "Alice in Wonderland" which has some very cool Helena Bonham-Carter moments!

Audrey Hepburn's "Roman Holiday"!

Audrey Hepburn's "Roman Holiday!"

Topic Explored: The Control a Princess has over her life

Modigliani. One of my mom's favorite painters and I certainly like him too. Look at his wikipedia page.

Ophelia from Shakespeare's "Hamlet." I will definitely cover Hamlet in the future. It is my favorite Shakespeare play thus far.

Mr. Rochester from "Jane Eyre." His character and his relationship with Jane Eyre raises all sorts of feminist topics, let alone the character of Jane Eyre herself. Most of the photos are from the most recent BBC mini-series starring Toby Stephens - of all the Jane Eyre adaptations I've seen, and I've seen many, he's the best both in sexiness and in accurateness.

This is a collage of me over the years. Most of them within the last four or so years with a couple toddler/ childhood ones thrown in. None of them are really recent. I purposely included some less flattering ones.

Cher. Moonstruck. 'Nuff Said.

Miscellaneous images.

My Mermaid Collage. Will be making many, many posts on Mermaids and the Culture and History of Mermaids in the future. I am a Mermaid Girl. In fact, the night before last I dreamed I WAS a mermaid and it wasn't the first time!

Howl's Moving Castle a Miyazaki Movie. LOVE it. The original book by Diana Wynne Jone's also good, though different. The guy? A weenie. The girl? A Tower of Strength.

Males and Females (including Roald Dahl,the activist Harriet Beecher-Stowe? might be getting her confused with someone else, Jacqueline Du Pre, Caravaggio and Da Vinci paintings, my favorite painting ever Da Vinci's "The Lady with an Ermine," Casals, Brenda Ueland (reccommend her book "If You Want to Write"), Emperor Hirohito, and a painting that is under debate as to being of Jane Austen)

Illustrations from Andrew Lang's Color Fairy Books.

Illustrations from Andrew Lang's color fairy books.

Disney's Animated "The Little Mermaid" images I had BEFORE I started my magnum opus - which I have not finished yet thus it has not been posted yet.

Da Vinci Portraits of Women.

All black and white photos from second row down are from on old all-girls' school. Forget where I found the images.

I love the Tarzan spoof!

WOMEN! Not all of them are...

Amazing. I love all of these images. There is some Picasso in this.

Botticelli Madonna and Child's.

That big furry wet mammal is a Capybara, the largest rodent. The top left corner image is a baby horseshoe crab. Two of my favorite animals. The Platypus is still #1 though.

Made this into a bookmark for my little sister's birthday a couple years back. The document is called "Women." The famous painting on the bottom left corner is supposed to be looking up at the painting of Eve on the top right corner. Thus, the viewer is invited to interpret her face!

I play Cello, remember?

Botticelli and Da Vinci, my two favorite artists EVAR.

Botticelli Botticelli Botticelli.

1995 BBC miniseries Adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.

I will probably post some of these collages again in future posts that are pertinent relevant and such, but in the mean time, I'm making much more.

P.S. Haha I just realized that I opened my 2nd Wizard of Oz post with the resolution to make no more promises - and that I ended it by making a promise... that yet again I didn't keep! XD

P.P.S. Wizard of Oz Part 2 was not the end. Wizard of Oz Part 3 is saved as a Draft almost finished but not yet! So, something to look forward to.

The Wizard of Oz! Part 2

CONGRATULATIONS! YOU ARE READING A FANTASTIC BLOG! AND HI! AND THANK YOU!

Okay, so I didn't post yesterday. Obviously making promises was not for me. Whenever I make them I break them. A rare and unfortunate curse.

AND, it's late and I need to go to bed. SO, no time for commentary of a detailed and informed obviously feminist nature. But, believe me, BELIEVE ME, I spent all freakin' day on the Wizard of Oz. Tomorrow's entry will pop your eyes out. But make sure to pop them back in again because you'll want to read my blog.

Actually, I really do intend to write as close to everyday as possible. I on purpose bought a Wizard of Oz Journal to begin writing on New Year's Day in honor of that most noble sentiment. I started writing in it as I said on New Year's Day - at 12:14 AM. First two sentences? "New Year's Day. Hopefully will post my Wizard of Oz blog entry before tomorrow!" Blpppfbpph. XD

(This one enlarges if you click it. Feel free to make it your desktop picture!)

The pages are nice and thick too.

Jealous much? Well, in case you're that jealous (which you should be), I got it at Barnes and Noble for $12.95. (If your eyesight is the magnitude of a stereotypical archetypal super power, you might have read it on that last image on the price sticker in the bottom right corner.)

Okay, so this entry will be strictly videos. Mine, others'. Food for thought. And more importantly: RELEVANT food for thought. Some of this information you could have found in the Wikipedia Production section of "Wizard of Oz (1939 Film)".

Casting Videos! Nice and informative, Nice and Short, just plain Nice.

And now, two videos I have made for fun that took a lot longer to make than they look - which is true for all good things, as we know. That is why bragging and complaining are completely unnecessary. Everyone knows it. But it's one thing to know it, and another thing to practice it.

(The Cowardly Lion one is new. Made today. That makes five youtube Wizard of Oz youtube videos of mine. FYI.)

Read up on this awesome guy: Meinhardt Raabe.

...If you can add, you will realize that I haven't shown you one of my youtube videos yet - I also plan to make at least one more tomorrow. I am ALSO aware that this is a blog and it is supposed to be somewhat cerebral - at least that's how I want it - so the next entry will be deliciously delectably delightfully more wordy! Yum!

And some videos of the actors in Wizard of Oz I like very much!

The first video, that, according to the movie "That's Entertainment!" (which I recommend - I first discovered it at my Grandparents' house by the beach), that convinced MGM that Judy Garland was SOMETHING ELSE. The other girl just became a singer, nothing big :(

My favorite video ever ever ever that makes me want to live and breathe - ironically one of the last takes she did before her suicide. She was in her thirties I believe. IF YOU HAVE NO TIME TO WATCH ANY OF THE OTHER VIDEOS I SUGGEST YOU WATCH THIS IT IS LESS THAN THREE MINUTES!!!!!!

Judy Garland's "Somewhere Over the Rainbow": Unfortunately not embeddable (cool word I just made up) for copyright reasons I suppose. But worth the one click it takes on my link. Worth much more than that actually.

But wait! There's more! You may notice that for your convenience I have listed these thousand videos from most to least relevant. I think.

Okay so now, bed for me. I promise that on the morrow you will be more privy to the pratterings and bemusings of my mind concerning feminist issues and interesting tidbits and general insight - on the Wizard of Oz. (Be prepared for more run-on sentence, verbose sentences like that.)

-Just call me Jo

P.S. Today I decided also to re-watch and re-obsess for review's sake - it had been a couple days since my obsessive 2-week-at-least marathon. The number of Pages in My NEW journal that I wrote? Guess. Guess. Just try. Just Try. (This was just today understand. I have notes from previous days) ... SIXTEEN. (So much for the no bragging thing!)

The Wizard of Oz! Part 1

Hi Readers!!!!!

This entry is devoted to the Wizard of Oz, for which I spent at least two if not more weeks obsessing over. I could not make this entry long enough to be in proportion to the time and effort put into the research and thought. For starters, I took screen captures. And I took screen captures. And I took screen captures. Twelve Thousand, Four Hundred, and Ninety-Nine to be precise. 12,499. I also filmed certain clips and made three separate youtube videos from those, making it four youtube videos in total.

I thought my next blog entry was to be on Ariel the Little Mermaid, however I found production in that project to be slowing - so much Little Mermaid, so much Disney! I need to take a little break, take my head out of the water and shake the water out of my head.

It turns out that The Wizard of Oz was a serendipitous choice. I had only turned on the TV to get ideas for what kind of movie I might maybe feel like watching and Lo the Wizard of Oz was playing on TNT! By the time I was knee-deep in the screen captures and waiting for the iPhoto program to load all of the pictures I took (which would take awhile, it is a miracle my computer has not crashed), I decided to do a little informal research. And anyone who's anyone knows what that means. That means that I looked it up on Wikipedia.

I encourage you to do the same. It is under "The Wizard of Oz (1939 Film)". I read the Introductory, Production, Music, Cultural Impact, and Awards and Honors Sections, the Production section being the most interesting.

And on wikipedia I found out that they had the idea to make the book "The Wizard of Oz" into a movie only because "Snow White and the Seven Dwarves," which, if you will remember, came out in 1937, 2 years before "The Wizard of Oz" (and it took them about that long to make the movie) - showed that films based on fairy tales and fantasy made real bucks. Snow White was really the first on that account. So, without knowing it, I have made a pretty little segue from Old Disney to Old MGM - from Fairy Tale to L. Frank Baum, from Princess, to Dorothy.

Dorothy. Obviously she must be my focus, with a little Wicked Witch, and Glinda, on the side.

I would love to re-read the book. But I haven't. So I'll have to go by what I remember and stress the movie-maker's choices most of all. Wikipedia I believe provides a compare and contrast between the book and movie, but I would recommend just reading the book to find that out.

With that in mind, who is Dorothy? Judy Garland plays Dorothy, that's true, and has made the role iconic and widespread. But who is she? What character did Judy Garland give her?

Well appararently Judy Garland almost wasn't allowed to chose! Read this, it is from Wikipedia:

"

George Cukor temporarily took over. Initially, the studio made Garland wear a blond wig and heavy, "baby-doll" makeup and she played Dorothy in an exaggerated fashion. Cukor changed Judy Garland's and Margaret Hamilton's makeup and costumes and told Garland to "be herself." This meant that all scenes Garland and Hamilton had already completed were discarded and refilmed.

"

Can you believe it? Forget the fact that at first it seemed they were considering Shirley Temple first - for they didn't and I agree whole-heartedly with that decision - when I read THIS my heart almost stops. If you do read the wikipedia article this heart-stopping will happen several times. Why? Because there are so many things that they almost made a part of this masterpiece that would have made it HORRIBLE. And I mean HORRIBLE. a Flop. Bad Taste in your mouth. Etcetera. This was the biggest moment for me. Can you imagine Judy Garland, THE Judy Garland in a blonde wig, with "baby doll" make-up (*shudder*), that Judy Garland, THE Judy Garland should be instructed to play the part of Dorothy in an "exaggerated fashion" - oooo! What a phrase - it leaves all to much to the imagination.

This was nearly the forties. The character of Dorothy in the book was as I remembered it quite younger, but apparently Baum never put an actual number to her age. I thought she was FIVE or something when I was reading it. Due to their eventual choice of Judy Garland over Shirley Temple, they made Dorothy's age twelve, Judy Garland herself at the time being sixteen/ seventeenish. Perhaps initially they felt they needed to make her look younger to match her part, and more of a young doll-girl like Shirley Temple because that sold - or because the character of Dorothy is so naive, who knows. Anyway thank GOD that Cukor guy came along and realized that Judy Garland was NOT Shirley Temple and told her, and I love this phrase, to "be herself." An odd thing to tell an actor, to be sure - but I think of it as the godsend for the character of Dorothy.

Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz is the "straight man" of the story. This means that Judy Garland being herself was vital because the part needs to be an effortless state-of-being naivete instead of a literally made-up and made-on put-on kind of naivete.

straight mannounthe person in a comedy duo who speaks lines that give a comedian theopportunity to make jokes
The straight man is the "normal" person who is placed with ridiculous beings in ridiculous surroundings, vital for any fantasy of this sort because the straight man reacts the same as the audience does, and in so doing the viewer identifies with Dorothy; however at the same time the viewer, unlike Dorothy, is in perfectly familiar surroundings and feels safe enough to be comfortable with whatever strange and new events happen on screen - thus allowing for the viewer to laugh at Dorothy's slow adapting powers.
As far as I'm concerned, that's half of the plot and significance of the movie right there. Everything else flowers off that.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I haven't written in so long for many reasons. Since this is the very public internet I won't go into details, but it does include a death in the family (not immediate family thank God). So hopefully I'll be back on my two feet again. To make things more fluid, too, I'm going to post as close to every day as possible. That means that blog entries like this one will have to be broken up into installments to make it easier for me to write them, and for you to read them. That is MY New Years' Resolution. That is MY Yellow Brick Road! (Hence the opening picture.)
Thus, more is to come on Wizard of Oz, Dorothy, Analysis, Feminism! For now, enjoy the youtube video I made based on my screen captures.

The music was carefully chosen to be both relevant to the plot and to feminism. On Facebook I ranted about it so I will just copy and paste:

"actually, tho the music is random in the sense that they are different genres and unexpected, i actually thought through each one and the transitions from one to the other quite thoroughly. You probably noticed the correlations with the events going on in the music video and the lyrics - well in addition the subject of each song has something to say about the themes in Wizard of Oz while at the same time putting a new modern twist to it. Three Hits Indigo Girls - "three hits to the heart son/ and its poetry in motion," "From a wise man to your red hand
You lay covered in our best sins," (in relation to the paradoxical wise man proffesor marvel/Oz". Crazy Gnarls Barkley - "I remember when i lost my mind" "i was out of touch" "it wasn't because i didn't know enough i just knew too much" "But maybe I'm crazy/
Maybe you're crazy/ /Maybe we're crazy/ Probably" (various validities of the various realities in the movie) , also the themes that come with childhood compared to the cynicism of adulthood and lack of control. The Christians and the Pagans Dar Williams - the issues of witches good/bad, acceptance of difference, "where does magic come from/ I think magic's in the learning." Where do the Children Play Cat Stevens - modern technology/ fast-paced society is helpful, but we might be losing fast of where the children will play, and on a deeper note, WHY the children play - "When you crack the sky, scrapers fill the air./Will you keep on building higher/'til there's no more room up there?/Will you make us laugh, will you make us cry?/Will you tell us when to live, will you tell us when to die?//I know we've come a long way,/We're changing day to day,/ But tell me, where do the children play?"

hahahahaha i realize this response was way too long but what the hey/hay im incapable of NOT being verbose :D..."

Tid Bit: From http://www.funtrivia.com/askft/Question3315.html (Not my words!)

||

V

(4.10. How old is Dorothy?

"Nobody knows. Baum wrote her as a generic child, with few descriptors, and never gave her a specific age. She could be as young as five or as old as twelve if you go by the illustrations in the books. In the 1902 stage adaptation, she was probably quite a bit older, as some of the characters expressed a romantic interest in her. In The Movie, Judy Garland was sixteen during filming (by the time the film premiered, she'd turned seventeen), but her costume included a corset to flatten her bosom so as to make her appear younger (studio publicity of the day usually gave the character's age as twelve). An earlier film adaptation from 1925 had Dorothy celebrating her eighteenth birthday -- and discovering that she was a lost princess of Oz! In The Wiz on Broadway, Stephanie Mills was in her teens (but played her a bit younger), while in the film version, Dorothy was played by Diana Ross and was twenty-four (!). Fairuza Balk was ten when she made Return to Oz. And in the novel Visitors from Oz, author Martin Gardner gives her age as seventeen (but this book is considered apocryphal by many Oz scholars). Best guess on how old she is in the books? In The Lost Princess of Oz it is stated that Betsy Bobbin is a year older than Dorothy, and Trot is a year younger. Then, in The Giant Horse of Oz, it is supposed to say that Trot is ten years old (but I have been unable to find the reference). If that's the case, then Dorothy would be eleven, and since nobody ages in Oz who doesn't want to, she's probably going to remain eleven.")

MORE TOMORROW! I MEAN IT! - Jo