February 2012
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WatchBuilding the LEGO Harry Potter Knight Bus in less than a minute (and purposely leaving out the unfortunately racist, shrunken head)
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FemFreq's LEGO & Gender Video Series
LEGO & Gender
In part 1 of my two part LEGO and Gender series, I explore how LEGO went terribly wrong with LEGO Friends and provide a brief history of LEGO’s ridiculous and slightly hilarious attempts to market to girls since the late 70′s.
In part 2, I delve into how LEGO shifted their products from their initial relatively, gender neutral building experience to a more male dominated and...
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January 2012
5 posts
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“The first act of violence that patriarchy demands of males is not violence...”
– bell hooks
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December 2011
14 posts
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“Disdain for “political correctness” is often positioned as a concern...”
– by Tami at whattamisaid.com
Watchtryingtofollow:
A Real Princess Coloring Book - Download and print off the pdf and pass it on to all the little boys and girls your giving presents to this weekend.
Including a real Prince Charming
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“In our new digital age Hollywood movies are a lot like Lego sets. First you...”
– RebelliousPixels on video remixing (via batmanremix)
“We all speak the language of television… we all know the basic symbolism… the...”
– Lim (speaking on NPR about vidding) (via rebelliouspixels)
volunteering to translate video subtitles for...
ukulelerave:
so far i translated “retro sexism and uber ironic advertising” (into polish, obviously), but i’ll definitely take care of some other videos later. this is fun.
Yay for procrastination! Thanks so much for the subs!
“Today a handful of global conglomerates own and control the telling of all the...”
– George Gerbner (via rebelliouspixels)
November 2011
1 post
October 2011
26 posts
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Vid Recs from VividCon
Here are a few vids that I wanted to share with you all from this year’s VividCon. Vividcon is an annual convention devoted to the practice and appreciation of vidding. If you aren’t familiar with vidding check out these videos.
Title: We Rule the World (or watch on Blip.tv) Fandom: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Vidder: Cherry This is a fun vid, even if you’ve never seen...
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“To me, a story can be feminist in a variety of ways. The most important being...”
– Mariah Huehner, “Imperfectly Perfect: Why I really Love Buffy for Being a Pill Sometimes” in Whedonistas! A Celebration of the Worlds of Joss Whedon by the Women Who Love Them
“I sometimes visualize the ongoing cycle of racism as a moving walkway at the...”
– Beverly Daniel Tatum from “Why are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?”
WatchI highly recommend Allan G. Johnson’s work on systems of privilege and oppression! His books like The Gender Knot and Privilege, Power & Difference as well as the multitude of speeches I’ve listened to have been instrumental in my understanding of how the world operates. This video includes one of the most useful analogies for understanding what a social system is and how it...
Introducing The Avengers with Scarlett Johansson staring as… The Smurfette. *facepalm*
…And let’s not be quick to forget that Joss Whedon is the director.
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‘Doctor Who’ blogging: “The Wedding of River... →
Another article about the series finale of Doctor Who (contains spoilers)
I don’t want a Doctor Who that, every time it paints itself into a corner, gets out of it by having River say, “The Doctor lies.” (Are we not meant to believe anything the Doctor says anymore?) I don’t want a Doctor Who that, every time it gets too timey-wimey, just brings in another time-traveling entity to jump right...
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Disney Princess Sucker Punch
politicalremix:
What do you get when you mix Zack Snyder’s horribly, horribly, sexist movie Sucker Punch with the horribly sexist Disney princesses from a half dozen animated movies? Well, intentional or not, you get a riveting story of female liberation!
This amazing trailer mash-up by Breanne Brennan works on several levels. First it serves as a stunning indictment of Sucker Punch by...
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Some brief thoughts about Amy Pond & River Song
This article “Why This Year’s Doctor Who Finale Was (Mostly) Better than Last Year’s” by Charlie Jane Anders (io9) has some interesting thoughts about River and Amy’s characters.
SPOILERS
“River Song was such a shiny character, full of endless possibility, and she hit her high point in some of the early Matt Smith stories. Jumping out of spaceships in flight, carving...
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Fall Premiere Pilot Review: Whitney (D-)
Whitney (NBC) Critics predicted this show to be pretty bad, but nothing could have prepared me for the mess of horrible it really was. The jokes were terrible, the acting was terrible, and the laugh-track was painful. In essence this was yet another show with a neurotic, “crazy” woman and her sweet, sensible, tolerant boyfriend. There was a joke in there somewhere about how Whitney’s...
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Fall Premiere Pilot Review: Unforgettable (B-)
Unforgettable (CBS) I’m really not a fan of police procedurals. I usually can’t get over the glorification of the American Justice System. The cops and the prosecutors are usually depicted as “good guys” who protect us from all the horrible, vile people in the world. This is such a conservative, skewed worldview that is perpetuated in the abundance of cop shows. These weekly crime shows...
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Fall Premiere Pilot Review: Ringer (D)
Ringer (CW) My first thought when watching Ringer: “Look it’s Buffy!” My second thought: “Oh god, it’s so not Buffy.” Remaining thoughts: “Wow, this is really awful.” While I’m a HUGE Buffy fan, I’m not necessarily on the Sarah Michelle Gellar bandwagon so she’s not enough to hold my interest. I found the show to be quite dull, predictable and just not appealing. As Rebellious Pixels...
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Fall Premiere Pilot Review: Revenge (D+)
Revenge (ABC) Before even watching an episode I knew I would hate everything about this show. I really hate revenge story lines. I really hate the manipulative, conniving woman trope. And I loathe stories about how hard it is to be rich, especially when the woes of wealth are fed through catty, white female characters. So basically, this is not the show for me. I was however surprised by...
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Fall Premiere Pilot Review: The Playboy Club (F)
Playboy Club (NBC) I don’t really know what to say about this show; it’s everything I expected it to be. Horrible, offensive, oppressive; sexualizing, eroticizing and objectifying women and a white-washed revisionist history. One of the first scenes, of course, utilizes violence: “Bunny” Maureen is shown physically fighting off an attempted rape. What did strike me as interesting (in an...
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Fall Premiere Pilot Review: Charlie's Angels (F)
Charlie’s Angels (ABC) I don’t think I even have the heart to get into the ineffable levels of oppressive gender problems that is the Charlie’s Angels remake, this show pretty much exemplifies everything that is wrong with Hollywood. Just don’t watch it.
Although, it does provide me the opportunity to express my frustration about the way technology is used on television. There are so...
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Fall Premiere Pilot Review: The Secret Circle (B-)
The Secret Circle (CW) Yet another show that begins with horrific violence against women, this time the torture and murder of the protagonist’s mother. Cassie seems like an interesting character so far: she’s capable, can change a tire, and is struggling to fit into a new town and school after the death of her mother and only parent. Oh, did I forget to mention this is a show about witches?...
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Fall Premiere Pilot Review: New Girl (C-)
New Girl (FOX)
Okay so New Girl made me laugh a couple of times. I’m a huge Dirty Dancing fan so this episode had a couple of entertaining moments, but overall the show dwindles into “men are from Mars, women are from Venus” territory very quickly. The creators are using the Hot Goofy Chick and The Manic Pixie Dream Girl tropes (what Zooey Deschanel is best known for) to pit her against what...
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Fall Premiere Pilot Review: Pan Am (D)
Pan Am (ABC) Let’s address this whole retro nostalgia for the 60’s thing that is flooding US television. The 60’s was a great time if you happen to be rich, white, American, a man and straight – for almost everyone else it kind of sucked, it especially sucked for women and people of colour. So this all-white-middle-class-privileged 60′s revival that is going on right now to capitalize on...