jo(sephine)blogs

I don’t really want to spend to much time making fun of Clover’s ‘Go Bag’, seeing as other kids have already done such a good job of it but I just wanted to make 2 minor points:

1. Does anyone else find that the name ‘Go Bag’ immediately conjurs up an image of a colostomy bag? You know, a bag for when you need to ‘go’?

2. The cats in pillowcases thing… I remember hearing stories when I was a child from my grandfather about unwanted litters of kittens being collected in pillowcases, tied up and thrown in the local river to drown. Are we supposed to be transporting the cats in pillowcases or just preparing them for the drop off in the Harbour as we are running for our lives?

 Yesterday’s article by Paul Sheehan is one in a long line of pieces about climate change that draws attention to the impact of personal carbon contributions, usually measured as your ‘carbon footprint’. Sheehan argues that many of the changes we want to make to our lifestyles are still incredibly difficult to make; expensive and inconvenient for the lives we have become accustomed to. He concludes that these changes are so difficult that we should not rely on personal efforts at conservation to slow down climate change, but will have to rely on bigger changes to technology and affordability. At first it sounded like a cop out to me, but the more I thought about it, the more I think he kind of has a point.  It got me thinking about the way individual contributions have become the predominant focus of the media’s interest in climate change, and whether  Sheehan’s right that the focus is unfair. Read the rest of this entry »

This little jam is going to be the last word you hear from me about this movie, I think I ‘ve spent enough time thinking about a film made by the people responsible for the ‘40 yr Old Virgin’. I think its a nice little take on the poster, and something I ‘ve felt tempted to scrawl myself as I walked past all those stupid posters around the city.

Not because us feminists hate babies, and think all pregnancies should lead to abortions (thanks very much Christian bloggers), but because its ridiculously archaic to even have a film and a poster predicated on the ‘disastrous’ notion of getting ‘Knocked Up’ in the first place. Its not 1900, or even 1960. Who the hell even calls it getting ‘knocked up’ anymore? At a time when reproductive rights are being scaled back in the USA, you think the filmmakers (particularly those like Apotow who claim to be pro-choice) would deal witht this issue better. The girl who made this jam of the poster has a good point, it IS legal, at least for now, and it would probably help the political cause if filmmakers would grow some balls and recognise that fact.

It seems with fame comes noteriety, or something. I have officially received my first bad review, from some Christian website. They write

Here’s yet another movie reviewer (this one in Australia) who is ticked off that Hollywood doesn’t do enough to sell abortion.

Tough to make that into a comedy.

Golly gosh!

Today I had an Op-Ed piece published in the Sydney Morning Herald. Its about a film that comes out tomorrow which, like so many before it, treats abortion like a taboo rather than a medical procedure that large numbers of women undergo.

I was very happy to see that it was positioned on the page right under Tony Abbott’s latest nutty, partisan diatribe. I hope he read mine and choked on his Weetbix.

I was initially very pleased and amused when I saw this story on smh.com today, about a news anchor who ripped up her script on air because she objected to Paris Hilton’s release from jail being run as the lead story.

Its almost too obvious and cliched to whinge about Paris Hilton’s dominance of the news lately. There is so much that could be said about the innane obsession with celebrity, the disproportianate sympathy given to rich white female criminals over everyone else who finds themselves incarcerated, the way issues like the Iraq war have slipped from coverage… It must be hard to be a newsreader or journalist these days being forced to cover Hilton’s every move, every sneeze.

But after the newsreader had finished making her point about Hilton, she breathed a sigh of relief that she could get back to the ‘real’ news, and starts reading from the teleprompter about the latest Republican policy release. I think its important to follow Federal politics, but the reporting of it on most US networks is so slavish and conservative that it hardly qualifys as ‘real’ news either.

If only that newsreader had kept ripping up the stupid script, turned off the teleprompter and started telling us something we haven’t heard before… That would be worth cheering.

 As if a thesis year is not stressful enough, the bloody governent had to go and make sweeping legislative changes around the very topic I’m writing about. Jesus.

However the changes are just infuriating enough that I think adrenaline, indignation and a resolve to stick it to this govt wherever I can will get me through these months, and to hopefully, to write a good thesis.

The government announced last week that in response to a report on rampant levels of sexual abuse in Indiegnous communities, they would be assuming control of all Aboriginal communties in the NT, scrapping the permit system, banning grog and pornography, making welfare payments conditional and subjecting all children to medical checks. Howard said in a speech last night (to the Sydney Institute), that the situation in the NT ‘was our Hurricane Katrina’ and that he had to act.

I have no idea what he could have meant by likening the situation to Hurricaine Katrina except that they could both be described glibly as ‘black people in trouble’. The problems in the NT are widespread, deeply entrenched and have their roots in the colonisation of Australia and sucessive govt policies to manage Indigenous people. The problems are wide -ranging and require a multi-facted response; improved access to medical care, housing, education, employment.  The victims of sexual assault will require support, care and counselling, just as they do in non-Indigenous Australia, not simply a forced medical check and a punitive approach to policing.

My particular interest though is in the scrapping of the permit system. The permit system was enabled under the Aboriginal Land Right Act of 1976, giving Aboriginal communities the right to determine who comes onto Aboriginal freehold land. This govt has been making a grab for that land the whole time they have been in office. Removing the permit system has NOTHING to do with reducing sexual abuse and everything to do with liberalising the access to Aboriginal lands to groups like mining companies, who have until now had to negotiate with communities.

The govt claims that liberalising access to Aboriginal land will allow journalists to report more freely in communities, which will help curb deviant behaviour. This is such a furphy, and when the permit system is abolished later this year it will be such a great shame, such a regressive move for Land Rights.

The situation in these communities is no doubt grave, but surely it requires community consultation and a sensitive, long term approach. Punitive measures, further criminalisation of behaviour and a shameless land grab will not help. Nor will a thoughtless appraoch by our useless PM, likening a social problem he has known about the whole time he has been in office to a one-off, freak storm.

Today is definately shaping up to be one of the bad days (see previous post - have aready watched 20 mins of Oprah, had 6 cups of tea, am wearing a blanket over my pjs and have only contributes 3 sentences to essay). Already I have started thinking about tonights’ dinner, which doesn’t require too much thought, seeing as tonight’s dinner is actually last night’s dinner. No, not leftovers, though, the story is far more complicated than that…

Read the rest of this entry »

Something I am slowly learning in my honours year is that there a good days and bad days. The good days are the ones where you get up early and go to the library, get a good six hours of productive study done, and come home feeling self righteous.

The bad ones are where you get up late, it raining and cold so you don’t want to get out of your pjs, you make endless cups of tea, read all the stupid parts of the paper, then all the stupid parts of yesterday’s paper, watch a bit of daytime TV, read old blogposts, take long naps, and eat dinner early with an overwhelming sense of guilt for all the work you could have got done.

Thankfully, increasingly, the good ones are far outweighing the bad ones.

A couple of days ago I came across this ad on a feminist blog, where it was being widely criticised as yet another shameless grab by Benetton to associate wearing their shitty, sweatshop labour clothes with progressive social movements. Obviously, on the blog, it was being widely criticised for picking up a social issue without actively doing anything to change it; no support lines were mentioned, no public-education component, just skinny, sad-looking models wearing bruises and ugly tops. I thought it was a new low in advertising (excuse the cliche).

But Benetton has since come out and said that it didn’t produce the ad, and they don’t know who did. So question is, are they lying and is it some fucked-up viral marketing campaign, or is this the work of a mischievous cultural jammer? Adbusters have done some particularly good piss-takes of Benetton commercials before, but this doesn’t really have the same feel. So if it is a jam, is it cool or not? Rasing awareness or just being a smartarse?