Game of Thrones

Is there such a thing as "chick flicks" and "boy humour" in film and tv? Are we really such simple creatures that we can draw hard gender lines when it comes to entertainment? I would like to say no, but I am loathe to admit that this hard line keeps showing up when I try to watch film or tv with my partner. Generally I don't watch much of either, so I am very picky with how I spend my precious time watching a screen. It had better be worth it - and plotless action flicks with lots of things being blown up just don't tend to do it for me.

For him, on the other hand, it is a release of his frustrations of a hard day to watch other people release their anger and play out the hero against the evil guys. He lives out his frustrations vicariously through this mindless entertainment - his own words!

And I admit my Sex And The City addiction - it's like a box of chocolates when I'm feeling down or ill. I know all of the episodes inside out but I still get a gentle high from emerging myself in the light but moving entertainment of listening to four women deal with the paradoxes of being independent, career oriented, and still seeking love. Whereas my partner is done after a few minutes.

So it was quite something for us to find a series we both enjoy - and Game of Thrones has us both completely addicted, partly because of how cleverly woven together an increasingly complex cast of characters and shifting alliances keeps emerging. Who would have thought medieval power play could be so enthralling? It's like one endless chess game and we have caught ourselves discussing the next possible moves over a meal....

Which has led me to wonder at the gender aspect of this series. One friend of mine calls it "Tits and Dragons", which is kind of summing it up - minus the zombies, of course. There are endless gory bloody scenes to satisfy the need for violence, interspersed with unashamed shots of women dropping their clothes to reveal perfect white breasts. Is this not a series aimed at a particular male gaze?

I do find myself rolling my eyes occasionally when a titty shot seems contrived, inserted simply to satisfy the quota in an episode, but I can't help appreciate the diversity of characters of both gender. There are men playing out the shadow side of masculinity just as there are women playing out this same desire for violence. There are women representing the divine goddess just as there are men representing the divine protector.

The women inspire me for what they represent of the unwanted side of the female as well as their strengths. There are indeed dumb helpless blonds, who learn to use sex as an instrument of affection but also of power. There are prostitutes who both enjoy their sexuality and are prisoners of it. There are women who have ensured their seats of power by seducing with their dark side, fully aware of how to manipulate through the use of their lips and hips. And there are intelligent women, the ones who represent the queen archetype from her more enlightened side. There are the ones who refuse to be ladies, playing out their true nature in mens' roles dressed as boys or men, but not denying their identity. Women are portrayed as virgin, whore, mother, queen, crone, and never entirely dependent on the men around them for their status.

The men intrigue me. There are those with limits in the eyes of society - dwarf, bastard, illiterate, poor - who find a way to assert themselves. There are virgins and abusers. There have been several kings and leaders who have absolutely no idea how to lead, and some young princes who have had to step up and learn how to do so. There is the megalomaniac, the sadist, the torturer, the rapist, the soldier, and some of these can also be the righteous warrior, the king, the lover, the magician. The good guys sometimes suck at protecting the village, the bad guys sometimes turn out to be the good guys. Some of them are weak in the face of womens' sexuality, others are inspired by it.

The point is, there is a lot of humanity represented here. Good and evil are not represented in a squeaky clean Hollywood style, but as elements in all of us. We all have the potential to love, to lead, to inspire, to injure, to kill, to humiliate, to destroy, both covertly and overtly  I love how many powerful women there are in a context that could have become a "boy's" festival of tits and blood and power. And I love how many archetypes keep showing up without it being a moralistic story of good and evil.

 And on a personal note, I love how many redheads keep appearing!









Nature shows up as a powerful force as well - in spirituality, in seasons, in the long summer and the long winter, the representation of life and death, in prophetic dreams, and in the White Walkers. There are many layers of mystical storytelling that represent so much about us as men and women, that makes it unexpectedly appealing and

Only one question remains: How the hell did the zombies make it into this story?

Cutting the umbilical cord

We feel separation from the moment we are born, forced from the warmth of the womb. We feel separation as babies when we are weened from mother's milk. We feel separation the first time we are left with a babysitter, the first time we are left at child care. And psychologists say that in fact unless this separation happens in a healthy way in the first 2 years of our lives, we will suffer as teenagers and adults. Unless a mother can bring herself to separate, she will smother her children and their ability to be fully independent beings. And she will probably limit her own ability to move on in her role as mother.

I have often felt smothered by my mother's love. She worked so hard bringing up three children on her own. So hard that she was always tired, upset, angry. And still she wanted the best for us all. Which meant she also had great difficulty when any of us did things or chose things that she did not consider to be the best for us. And she always told us so. She had - and still has - difficulty identifying as a separate emotional being, so when something happens to us she feels it is happening to her as well. As an adult for a long time I still felt very judged by her, by her opinions, by her telling me what to do. To the extent I stopped sharing my vulnerable moments with her because the last thing I wanted to hear was her judgmental opinions on the matter, or deal with her upset. And my pattern of communication with her remained that of a teenager defending myself, arguing, being combative. And wondering why I still felt so bound to her, still smothered by her love even though I live on the other side of the world and am in my mid-30's.

Until around the time of my 35th birthday. It all had to do with cutting the emotional umbilical cord to my mother, truly letting go, setting myself free and thereby setting her free of any blame I had been giving her throughout my life. It hurt like hell. And it was a necessary stage of adulthood.

Completing my 35th year was a time of going through some very uncomfortable moments of shedding layers. I am a big believer in 7 year cycles. Every 7 years our entire physical being has renewed itself. Not a single cell in your body existed 7 years ago, because these cells live in 7 year cycles. Saturn returns to the same place it was when you were born exactly 28 years later, so it's the 4th seven year cycle. And there was that great documentary series made which followed a group of people every 7 years: "7-Up", "14-Up", "21-Up", etc, to see if the notion was true "Give me the child until (s)he is 7 years, and I will give you the man (or woman!)"...turns out it wasn't, because all of these people made dramatic shifts and turns in life every 7 years.

I was very conscious of this process of dying and giving birth to a whole new phase, just as I had been on my 28th birthday. This time, so much dying was going on, so much pain and letting go. And then when my mother came to visit me in the US where I had been living for a few months, we kept bumping up against each other like we always used to, and I felt like a teenager reacting in anger and frustration, feeling judged by her opinions, hearing her tell me yet again whether she thought I was doing the right thing in life.

I realised it was up to me to break the pattern. My man was about to meet her for the first time, and he had asked me to tell my mother something about our relationship that would involve me revealing something very private about my sexuality. He asked me to do so because he knew it would be a challenge for me to be so open and honest with her, to bear my soul to her, and to do so without accepting judgment from her. And when I told her she was so uncomfortable that she said almost nothing. But she pulled one of those faces. Disgust, disappointment, worse than anger.

When I looked at her and watched for her reaction, I realised I was standing in front of her being myself, bearing my secrets, and standing very centered as I did so. I realised I was entirely unaffected by her reaction. It was the first time I didn't care, in the most caring way possible.

Later, when I told her of my plans to move to Canada to be with my man in a couple of years, she tried to tell me I make decision in my life based on the men in my life rather than my career, and that she was "concerned". What she meant was "it's wrong". I simply said "you know what? This is me, this is who I am at age 35. I am not a child, I am not vulnerable in this world and needing your protection. I know you say these things because you care, but I want you to see me as a woman, capable of considering consequences in my life. I choose my path, I choose what is right for me, and it may not fit with what you think is right for me, but I am asking you to let go and trust me to walk my own path".

She was hurt and felt rejected, said she felt her opinions don't matter. We still bumped against each other in a couple of conversations, but I noticed something incredible when she met my man. She had so much respect for him, for who he is, and she said "he certainly knows what he wants in life" with a great deal of admiration. The very thing I was asking her to respect in me, her daughter, she had respect for in this man.

I had to wonder whether gender has something to do with it. Although my mother is proud of my achievements and supports my career ambitions, she still has somewhere imbedded deep inside a notion that men SHOULD be strong, independent and driven. Her sons are failing in this respect in her eyes because they are not particularly career-driven. Also not free to just be themselves. Whereas her daughter should find a man who is clear he knows what he wants in life!!

Throughout our time together I could tell my mother felt rejected by me, cut off in some way. In some way she was right. I was cutting myself free of her, but not rejecting her. When we parted, and she knew it would be a couple more years before we saw each other, she was sadder than any other time we have said goodbye. Except the first time when I left home. She knew there was a real separation happening, and I felt sad too. I hugged her close to me, unafraid of what her love would do to me, unlike my familiar habit of keeping her smothering love at a distance. We both sobbed. And I said to her "it's ok to let go, I am still here and always will be".

I waved her goodbye on the ferry, she stood next to my step-father looking bewildered, and I had an overwhelming compassion for her for the first time in a long, long time. I realised I was sad because I was letting go too. I had to tell myself what I told her. It's ok to let go. She will still be there.

I cried and cried and cried like a child after she was gone. It was separation the way a child feels it from her mother when she is little. That yearning for mother and at the same time the freeing sense of separation from her (over)protective arms. Standing on my own I felt truly alone. Not lonely. Just alone. I had cut myself free, I had taken the emotional step of separation. I had made it clear her opinions and her judgment, which were an expression of her wanting to protect me, were not what I needed. I guess as a mother that might have made her feel at a loss. If I don't need her protection, what do I need from her?

Six months later we spoke after a very painful argument we had in which she felt utterly rejected. I had written her a long letter, which took me three nights of crying to get onto paper. I had very carefully tried to explain the entire process of individuation I have been consciously forging in the past few years, and why it was that I needed to separate from her emotionally.

And I told her that in fact I believe a new closesness is possible because of it. Only by freeing myself of the smothering love could I step back and see her as a whole individual as well, with her own history of pain and joy an growth, with her own attempts to fulfill who she is. And a mother who gave everything she could and did the best she could. No matter what my own judgments are about how she loves.

When we spoke on the phone, she started to tell me about events in her own past which had led her to decide she needed to protect her children, give them everything she could, and ensure that they did not make horrible mistakes in life. I felt my heart open to her, as I could see her as she was as a young mother, from my adult perspective. And I thanked for everything she had given us, everything she did for us. And I told her I used to blame her and no longer do. And I also told her, this separation is healthy and I need you not to try to protect me anymore. I need you to embrace me as your adult daughter, a product of the gifts you have given me, but also of my own life experiences.

And you are still my mother. You are still someone I want to share events in my life with. There is a new relationship possible between us. And we both cried, feeling a release, a freshness, a fear of the newness, a sadness of letting go of the old, and a pureness as well.

James Hollis wrote that an authentic relationship is only possible when there is separation. Two individuals connected, rather than fused. The pain of separation is necessary in order to love in an unattached and healthy way.

I now feel that I can trust her when I have children of my own to be involved as a grandmother whose wisdom I will ask for, and with whom I can also draw a line when my own path of mothering diverges from hers.

I also hope I can trust myself to separate from my children for their own good.

Snow White

It's a while since I wrote about my excitement that Tim Burton had given us a true female heroine in his Alice in Wonderland film in 2010 (see my old post). Finally a popular story presented to a mainstream audience with the central female heroine displaying all sorts of the traits and struggling through the questions that the path of the feminine heroine takes.

Myths and fairytales are often used to demonstrate the archetypes of individuation and the struggles we face on our path of growth to wholeness. Facing our shadows, our demons, separating from our parent and family paradigms, finding our "true" selves.

The confusing thing for a woman seeking to find symbolic clues in many of these stories is that the majority of them focus on the hero's journey. The masculine path. And the heroine's journey is a different one. Women must face demons and shadows, but our trials and tribulations are different, when focusing on the feminine, than those for men, focusing on the masculine.

I can draw much inspiration and meaning from a story about the hero's journey because I too must seek to know my masculine self, my animus. But I must also seek to know my anima, my feminine self, and my path of individuation will therefore be different from my male friends'. While we all seek to find balance, the focus will be different.

I therefore celebrate bringing more symbolic stories of the feminine journey to the mainstream. And the producer of "Alice in Wonderland" have thrown it up a notch to bring us "Snow White and the Huntsman".

A quick look at the synopsis shows that the huntsman who is sent by the vain Queen (who declares beauty to be her power) to kill Snow White, ends up training her to be a warrior to kill the Queen. Take note: it is her own acceptance of the masculine warrior archetype that allows her to be trained and find it within herself. This is not the man who comes to save the damsel, it is the masculine who helps transform the naive young feminine on her heroine's path to wholeness, to individuation, to her full self. It is balance between masculine and feminine and there are all sorts of other archetypes in the story to follow the Jungian analysis.

I look forward to seeing this film with the same kind of goose-bump anticipation that I have when there is a reason to scream out loud either in joy or anger. Either way there is some exciting release about to come!

The Neo-Cons hijacked Wonder Woman!

I have to admit, I am a little concerned. It's not just a matter of resisting the re-writing of a character who I consider to be pop culture's most important female role model. It's not just a matter of resisting change as such. Heck, when they showed photos of model-come-actress Adrianne Palicki in the newly styled Wonder Woman latex costume I kinda thought it was hot.

At least it was an improvement on the attempts to re-vamp the comic book character's outift a couple of years ago, when she looked like a 1990's fashion victim (see left)....

No, my concern goes deeper. Having just watched the 2011 pilot of the NBC Wonder Woman series, I am convinced that some neo-con lawyers were heavily involved in the script-writing. I know it sounds funny, but I am serious - there is some uncomfortable political agenda behind much of the script. And the consistent "evil-eye" hard face worn by Palicki throughout the pilot episode did nothing to soften the blow of references to torture as evidence gathering, manipulating the legal advisory department to sidestep the law, and use of the PATRIOT Act to justify some highly questionable behaviour.

Wonder Woman's character was invented by a psychologist during the second world war when DC Comics approached him to create a new patriotic hero. He was an adamant feminist and created the first female superhero, whose powers were bestowed upon her by the (Greek) gods and goddesses. Her task was to bring the lessons of peace, love and justice to a world that was warring. She was given a lasso of truth and bracelets to deflect bullets. Wonder Woman never attacked, she only ever defended....

70 years later, in the umpteenth attempt to bring Wonder Woman back into mainstream popularity, Palicki lashes out with her golden lasso and strangles people to unconsciousness, she threatens wounded bad guys and jabs them with needles to get blood samples. In fact she silently admits to using torture to elicit evidence from one man. Her detective ally refuses to let her make a move based on this evidence gained as "poisonous fruit" but she remains righteous - apparently if many lives are at risk, it's ok to torture the bad guy.

Wait a minute. I'm sorry WHAT???? Does this not sound reminiscent of the Bush

administration's justification of the use of torture to elicit evidence from detainees in Guantanamo Bay and hundreds of other locations around the world where the CIA sent their "extraordinary renditions"?

Any international lawyer will tell you that the prohibition of torture is one of the few absolute pre-emptory norms which exist in concrete terms. Despite what the neo-con lawyers were advising the Bush administration in the torture memos.

It went further in this disturbing pilot episode. At one point, a character who is Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee confronts Wonder Woman, accusing her of such disgusting behaviour that "not even the most liberal reading of the PATRIOT Act would justify what you did". The USA PATRIOT Act - in full, the "Provide Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism" Act, introduced in 2001 - was a bill passed in response to the Sept 11 attacks. It removed numerous procedural restrictions on police, FBI and CIA actions, leading to indeterminate detentions, huge invasions of privacy, a veritable roll-back of civil rights in the US and a discriminatory focus on immigrants. It was also was part of the neo-conservative lawyers' justification for the use of torture.

So what is one to think of the fact that the woman whose original task was to teach the ways of truth, peace, justice and sexual equality, has now been reinvented as a unilateral crime-fighting

machine who goes above and beyond the law, ever scowling at both her enemies and her allies, threatening and in fact using force, justifying torture to elicit evidence?

Her "don't mess with me, I'm a hard bitch" face seemed to portray this deep shift in political paradigm. (I'm serious, she only smiled once in the whole episode, when she spoke to the victim around whose plight the episode centred, and of whom she made a point of informing everyone at her press conference that he was a black teenager from the ghetto. I was a bit confused until her new right wing stance started to become evident, and my only conclusion was that this was an attempt to show she really does care about the underdog. Kind of like Bush flying over New Orleans a few days after Hurricane Katrina, to show he really cared, too.)

Perhaps this 21st Century Wonder Woman is after all completely in line with what happened to the national identity of the country for whom she was invented 70 years ago. Then it really was about bringing ideals as a leader to a new world order. In recent decades it has rather appeared to be about imposing ideals as a unilateral world police force down the barrel of a weapon of mass destruction. Perhaps I shouldn't be so disturbed that my long-time heroine is once again speaking the truth, I should just accept that the truth is a little uglier. Perhaps I should accept her ever angry face as the replacement of the one that was created of the earth and bestowed with Aphrodite's beauty and Athena's wisdom, just as the face of US foreign policy has lost its beauty in the decades since the second world war.

Still I am disturbed, and it's because of the very reason I love (the original) Wonder Woman so much (see my previous blog posts). She is a pop culture role model. If she is now the voice of the 21st Century America, it disturbs me that this might be internalised by the next generation of world leaders.

And I am disturbed as to what happened to her feminist ideals as well. She used to be a champion of sexual equality, (apart from demonstrating that women can be both strong and vulnerable, in one comic book adventure rather than act from pure hatred or righteousness, she

convinced a female member of the Nazi regime to return to her humanity and abandon the Nazi project) now she is spitting hatred at the sight of another powerful, beautiful woman and threatening to kill the female villain played by Elizabeth Hurley (shown left in character).

And although Palicki's Wonder Woman makes a point about dolls being made in her likeness with impossible breasts, she admits that she needs to sell them in order to fund her crime-fighting, and she even uses her latex-packaged breasts to sexually intimidate men: "Like my outfit officer? This outfit opens doors for me. It's gonna open that one, isn't it?!"

I'm not sure this was what Wonder Woman's original creator had in mind when he published in The American Scholar in 1941:

"Not even girls want to be girls so long as our feminine archetype lacks force, strength, and power. Not wanting to be girls, they don't want to be tender, submissive, peace-loving as good women are. Women's strong qualities have become despised because of their weakness. The obvious remedy is to create a feminine character with all the strength of Superman plus all the allure of a good and beautiful woman."

I breathed a sigh of relief to read that NBC has already axed this failed pilot. And I have to re-iterate, it's not because I'm opposed to an update of Wonder Woman. It's because her core values had been hijacked for disturbing political ends. It's not the fate we should wish upon any super hero!

Rebalancing the voice (letter to a friend)

Please forgive the way in which I communicate what it is I am committed to. Fact is I remain committed to distinguishing and discovering and restoring equality. It is my drive as an international lawyer, it is my purpose in life. It is part of who I am as a woman. And it is not only about equality between women and men, it is about equality between all human beings. And equality of the resources we have to live with.

So when it comes from a breath fuelled with fire, I apologise if it leaves you feeling scorched, and if it leaves the echo of a racket rather than of speaking to a possibility. The world I speak about is not cold, it is quite the opposite. But the way I speak about it is still driven by the rage I have at injustice.

And it is driven by the fact that certain voices have been silenced over time, and when these voices get loud they are told to calm down, be nice, wait their turn. But it's only because these voices dare to get loud that social change is made possible.

What interests me is how the pendulum swings. How to access the unsaid. And how to find the middle point of rest, the point of balance and equality, between the swinging extremes. In that I acknowledge that my rage-fuelled voice is too loud, and is still informed by the past.

When I said I am searching out the rebalancing, what I mean is I am still learning and discovering how to communicate it without there being the accusations I used to speak with, and without it being about fixing a wrong, but rather about inspiring towards something where we are all fulfilled.

And when I said I am searching out the rebalancing, what I also mean is rebalancing gender, but it's also about consciousness and unconsciousness, about shadow and divinity, about the mascuilinity and femininity in all of us, the animus and the anima.

It's my "new model", I'm just still figuring out how it all fits together and, more importantly, how to bring the dialogue about it when there is indeed a lot of righteous rage caught up in it.

Please have patience with me as I figure this out. This is truly important to me and to the world I wish to live in.

Please read this blog - it's part of this process of learning to articulate what comes up for me in those moments.

Much love and respect

xx

Love letter to my man

If the King is the rock, the core of the earth,
then the Queen is the soil, the plains, the fertile land.
His leadership, lordship and blessings over the soil
will have her flourish and fulfilled.
Like the Pharoah whose seed kept the Nile rich
and fertilised;
Like King Arthur whose even, just leadership
kept the people ordered, calm and happy;
the Queen who is granted the space
and the just leadership and blessings
to grow and flourish and be her full self,
will provide the fertile land for her King
to fulfil any of his grand plans and wishes.
She will offer her lands to him
from which he too can grow and build and be his full self.

And she may test him
with her unpredicatble, tempestuous nature,
and her ocean of emotions,
and her questions and taunts.
But in the end all she is seeking
is reassurance
that her King will remain rock solid
in the face of her changeable nature
So that she may relax
and give in, and give herself entirely
to him.

And together,
rock core, fertile soil, and the nourishing water of their love,
Earth, Air, Fire and Water,
They create and fulfil Life itself.

As You Like It

A gorgeous summer evening, lying on a blanket with a picnic dinner under the dappled light of trees in the arboretum of Cornell University, upstate New York, I watched a great production of Shakespeare's "As You Like It" tonight - and for the first time the gender twisting antics of his comedy struck me as utterly post-modern!

It was a traditional period production, put on by the Ithaca Shakespeare Company on a lovely in-the-round stage outside and surrounded by woods. The choice of costume was what one expects of a small budget but serious

Shakespearean theatre company, with layers of lacy skirts and corsets for the women and knee-high socks, knickerbockers and waistcoats for the men. In many of Shakespeare's comedies, mistaken identity and women disguising themselves to their lovers by cross-dressing tickles audiences as much today as in the 17th century. Which is why the period costume lends itself to turning gender assumptions upside down.

The men wore high heels, wigs with long curls and pony tails, lacy cuffs and collars, tights and puffy pants or knickerbockers. Extremely effeminate.

And when the leading woman, Rosalind, disguises herself as a man, she looks more masculine than the men do, with her own hair tied back and her legs firmly placed on the ground.

Meanwhile there are many quips about how Rosalind and her cousin Celia share a love "dearer than the natural bond of sisters", intimating a lesbian bond between them. And at one stage a peasant girl falls for Rosalind, incognito under the name Ganymede, despite Rosalind's protests that she loves "no woman". Yet all the while Rosalind, in her male alter ego, befriends Orlando who is in love with Rosalind but doesn't know he is speaking to her, and makes him pretend she IS Rosalind in order to test his love for her. So while Orlando believes he is playing out feigned love scenes with another man, there are homo-erotic and cross-gender, pansexual undertones.

She has her male suitor woo her while she is disguised as a man pretending to be a woman. Confused yet? Good. This is what started to strike me throughout the performance as Shakespeare's ultra modern gender bending politic.

Jokes are made about the so-called "weaker sex", yet the women carry the entire narrative and are the stronger characters by far. And the peasant girl who falls for Rosalind/ Ganymede is a dominant, rough and rude woman, who is pursued by a truly submissive man for whom she has no respect - but who loves her all the more for it.

In the end all is restored to "normalcy" as Rosalind emerges in feminine flowing finery to marry Orlando, the peasant girl realises her amour was directed at a woman who would never have her and instead accepts the hand of the submissive man, and there are 8 heterosexual marriages to conclude the play just in case we should have been led down the path of believing this cross dressing and gender bending was anything but comical...

But this is not the only play of Shakespeare's in which these cross dressing antics appear (Much Ado About Nothing), or in which he played outright with stereotypes of "the weaker sex" (the daughters in King Lear), the changeable feminine emotional nature (The Taming of the Shrew), the corruption of man by the shadow side of the feminine (Macbeth), the shadow side of the masculine (Richard III, The Merchant of Venice) the relationship between the feminine and nature or magic (A Midsummer Night's Dream, the witches in MacBeth), the expectations of the masculine leader (Hamlet).

Considering he wrote at a time when women were not allowed to appear on stage, Shakespeare wrote a lot of very strong female roles, and challenged gender stereotypes both contemporary

and timeless. The fact that boys would have played these roles makes the cross-dressing and gender-bending aspect even more of a visual and cognitive challenge and delight! This is one of the reasons Tom Stoppard's film "Shakespeare in Love" was such a clever re-telling of Shakespeare's stories. The women, including Queen Elizabeth played to perfection by Judi Dench, are all strong characters standing where the audience and characters expect men to stand and challenging not only gender stereotypes but perhaps also heterosexist assumptions. There are male-to-male love scenes and Gwenyth Paltrow looked particularly sexy dressed in finery

but still sporting her fake moustache and goatee beard.

The more I think about it, the more I am convinced the bard was a postmodernist, anti-essentialist writer a few centuries before his time!