Made in Dagenham review

Made in Dagenham (2010) is a film about the Dagenham, England strike of 1968. For those unfamiliar with the history of the strike, at the time, Ford Motors was the largest employer in England. The women at the Dagenham factory were sewing machinists (they pieced together the leather for the car seats mostly), and were classified by the union as unskilled workers, which meant that they were paid significantly less than men who did similar work--those men were classified as "semi-skilled" and ranked in a higher class of pay. The women were also paid less than the men in their same category, making even less than the janitors. They took their demands of a higher skill rating to the union and threatened strike if they were not given it. The union refused to take them seriously, so the 187 women walked out. And then women in other factories joined them. Eventually it shut Ford factories around England down completely, because they couldn't make the cars without the seats. The union at first did not support them, and they tried all sorts of tactics to undermine them and get them back to work. Eventually they came around and threw their support behind the women. After three weeks of striking, Barbara Castle, then Secretary of State for Employment and so far the only woman to have held the title First Secretary of State in Great Britain, met with the women to work out a solution--they were awarded 92% of the same pay as the men doing the same job (which was the most Ford would give at the time) and it also ended up leading to the passage of the Great Britain's Fair Pay Act in 1970, as well as Ford worldwide increasing their pay of their women workers.

The real Dagenham strikers

The movie is mostly about Rita O'Grady, who is a composite of a few of the leaders of the strike, played by Sally Hawkins. Miranda Richardson plays Barbara Castle, Bob Hoskins is the manager over the women and one of the few men in the factory who supports them (he states his reasons, saying that he was raised by a single mother, who worked a factory where she was paid half what the men were working her same position, and they had a hard struggle making ends meet and how wrong that was). The movie is very good, the acting solid--I haven't cared for Sally Hawkins in the few other movies I've seen with her, but I did enjoy her in this. The film does try balance being a kind of feel good movie and with some of the more sobering aspects--husbands/co-workers who may not have supported them, money issues and their families going without (although the union didn't support their decision, they did provide a very very small stipend to them while on strike, but not really enough to get by on), general sexism/misogyny, and a suicide. Sometimes that light/dark balance works, and sometimes it doesn't. Additionally, it doesn't delve enough into the characters' personalities or home lives or whatever, so you don't really get to know them all that well. However, despite the drawbacks, I think it is still a very good film, and worth seeing for the historical significance.
Comments on several film websites give the usual tedious complaint made any time there is a feminist film, that the men are one-dimensional and all villains (And yet, they don't seem to have a problem with women in "men's" films being one-dimensional and generally there just to provide sex or to make the guy's life miserable in some way. Go figure.). But that complaint is unwarranted here--yes there are men who don't support the women, notably the leader of their union and the Ford executives. But I would say out of those 4 men, really only the union leader is the "villain," and even so, he's far from a mustache twirling dark hatted caricature. But there is also the aforementioned Bob Hoskins character, and Sally Hawkins' husband's character--who begins the strike resenting what his wife is doing and being kind of a jerk about it to having a change of heart and supporting her. And yes the male characters are less developed, but as I mentioned earlier, all of the characters are slightly underdeveloped; and the movie isn't about the men and it is pretty common that the characters who are secondary or peripheral to the main plot don't get quite as developed as the main characters.
Film is rated R for some occasional language and one very brief non-graphic sex scene.

Reason #7143 why I love Portland

A local woman runs a kind of bookmobile on her bike for the homeless who can't get a library card because of a lack of address: http://streetbooks.org/.

Victorian Lit

On to Part 2:

The Semi-Attached Couple and the Semi-Detached House by Emily Eden--Actually two novellas in one book. "The Semi-Detached House" is a fairly typical slightly sentimental Victorian story about a newlywed couple setting up their first home. However, what makes it memorable is the contrast of pairing it with "The Semi-Attached Couple," which is a darker story about a couple on the verge of separation that probably never should have married in the first place.

The Bondwoman's Narrative by Hannah Crofts--The manuscript for the book was just recently discovered and published in 2003 (read the introduction about finding the manuscript, which is pretty interesting itself), and is possibly the first novel written by an African American woman in the United States. The story follows a slave and her biracial mistress as they flee north when her mistress' identity is discovered.

Wilkie Collins--Collins is often credited with crediting the mystery novel, but he's often ignored when talking about the Victorian greats, which is a shame. His stories are very easy reads, and was one Victorian male authors who could create very believable three-dimensional heroines and was critical of the sexism they faced.
No Name--After their parents die, two sisters find out they were illegitimate and their inheritance passes to their uncle, who turns them out of the house gleefully. One sister will go to any means necessary to get revenge and get their inheritance back.
The Woman in White--A woman escapes from an asylum, and winds up with two sisters--one of the sisters and the escaped woman look identical to each other. Lots of intrigue, mistaken identity, secret brotherhoods, amnesia, etc.

Anthony Trollope--Another author that maybe isn't mentioned enough. Given my choice between Trollope and Dickens, I'd chose Trollope every time (but then, Dickens and I have serious issues). Although Trollope is more conservative than Collins in his views, his female characters are similarly developed, and much more developed than Dickens'.
Palliser novels--There are six novels total in the series and deal with politics and life in society, the politics part sounds dull, but quite honestly it is interesting, and it's more to do with the life of a politician and member of Parliament, rather than politics itself. They follow several characters and families, but one noble family in particular, a duke and duchess in an arranged marriage who are extremely unsuited for each other, but trying to make the best of it. The novels in order: Can You Forgive Her?, Phineas Finn, The Eustace Diamonds, Phineas Redux, The Prime Minister, The Duke's Children.
Miss McKenzie--An older woman used to being ignored by everyone inherits a decent fortune, and suddenly has several suitors and is the center of attention.

Elizabeth Gaskell--Gaskell is becoming more popular with some recent successful BBC adaptations of her novels, and I think she's always been a staple in Great Britain, but I think she's not given enough attention over here in the States.
Ruth--Scandalous in its day for featuring an unwed mother who was not raped, coerced or forced. Of course, she does spend the rest of her life atoning for it. Still, worth reading for the sympathetic portrait of a "fallen woman."
Wives and Daughters--After her father remarries, a daughter has to deal with a shallow selfish stepmother, and a beautiful sophisticated stepsister. A small caveat, Gaskell died before she finished the book--she left notes on how she intended to finish it, and she was probably only a chapter or two away from the end. Don't let that deter you.
North and South--A young woman moves from the rural south to a factory town in the north, and tries to adjust while learning about unions, working conditions, the owners (and having one fall in love with her...).

The Lamplighter by Maria Susanna Cummins--Follows an abused and neglected orphan after she is taken from the streets at 8 by kindly strangers as she grows up and moves through society. (This was the second best-selling novel in the 1850s behind Uncle Tom's Cabin and caused Nathaniel Hawthorne's jealous bitter remark about how "America is now wholly given over to a d—d mob of scribbling women." Oh Hawthorne. Maybe if you weren't so darn dour, people would have bought your books.)

Lorna Doone by R.D. Blackmore--a historical novel set in the 1600s during the end of Charles II's reign. A rural county is plagued by a large family of robbers, and the hero's father was killed by them. Yet in Romeo and Juliet fashion, he falls in love with a daughter of one of the band. Her family hates him because his father supposedly killed one of the robbers before he died.

Georgian and Regency lit

Quite a few of my favorite authors are pre-1900s. But when talking about Regency, Georgian or Victorian literature, there's only a handful of big names that get repeated over and over. And while there's certainly a reason they are still around and being read after all this time and some of those authors like Jane Austen, Louisa May Alcott or Charlotte Bronte are among my favorites, I thought I'd focus a two-parter post on some of my favorite lesser known authors from these time periods.

Wieland by Charles Brockden Brown--One of the first novels published in the United States, it features an intrepid heroine trying to figure out why everyone around her is hearing voices, and why her brother is acting so erratically . There's spontaneous human combustion, mass murder, and other gothic goodies. Brown was a early advocate of women's rights and follower of Mary Wollstonecraft's and William Godwin's, although he was more conscious of race and class than either of them, and most of his novels and writings deal with these themes.

Frances "Fanny" Burney--Burney wrote 4 novels, and several plays. For a while, she served as a lady in waiting to Queen Charlotte. If you've seen the movie the Madness of King George, there's a scene where King George is chasing after a lady in waiting and she's running away as they've been given orders not to talk to the king when he's not in his right mind...that was Fanny Burney. For some unknown reason though, they didn't name her in the film. (Burney also gives us one of the earliest accounts of a mastectomy in her published journals, also worth a read...it was her own mastectomy from cancer, in the days before anesthetics, she was conscious during nearly the whole operation!) Anyway, Burney was a large influence on Jane Austen--many people hear that and read Burney expecting the same sort of overt sparkling humor or satire. And while Burney was definitely satirizing Georgian society, she was far gentler and subtler about it. She is also more typical of Georgian authors like Samuel Richardson in length--her novels are often well over 600 pages or more. The only one of her 4 books I didn't like was Camilla, so that one is not recommended.
Evelina--Probably my favorite of Burney's novels, a legitimate but unacknowledged young woman of an aristocrat who's spent her life in the country comes to London for her first season and makes one faux pas after another based on her naivete.
The Wanderer--A woman fleeing the French Revolution comes to England and tries several jobs to support herself. Unusual in that it deals sympathetically with a working class protagonist, and also a scathing criticism of England's treatment of foreigners (which accounted for very poor reviews and sales during Burney's life).
Cecilia--An heiress has an unusual condition to her inheritance in that her future husband has to take her last name or the inheritance reverts to another heir. She also has to deal with three guardians till she's of age--one who wants to try spend her fortune on his own family, one who is an extreme miser and won't let her touch any money, and one who is a pompous prig who thinks she's after his son for his fortune. Also rare in that it's one of the few Georgian novels that a young single woman lives in her own estate for a while (with a chaperone of course)--most other books of the period, even if the heiress has a perfectly suitable estate, she must go to live with with relatives.

Belinda by Maria Edgeworth--Another tale of a young woman making her way in society, who's interested in two men, one may be attached to another woman, another seems to have his own secret. Features a duel between two women, and controversial in its day for themes of interracial marriage.

Roxana by Daniel Defoe--This is a pretty uneven novel, so I hesitant recommending it, but for the first half, I loved it, and in some ways thought it was better than Moll Flanders (which I greatly enjoy, but am not reviewing since it's widely considered such a classic). However, it ends very abruptly, as if Defoe ran out of time, and there is a character that enters about halfway or two-thirds through the novel that annoys me to no end, and when she she meets an ill fate, I almost cheered....which I think was probably the opposite of what Defoe intended, and I've never been so annoyed by a character that I've actually been relieved by their demise. So all that being out of the way, the novel follows the rise and fall of a courtesan from entry into the courtesan life after being a proper virtuous wife, to later catching the eye of the prince and so on.

The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann Wyss--So, although countless movie adaptations have been made of this, but I'm not sure how much it actually gets read anymore. The story is surely known to everyone, but a family emigrating to Indonesia gets shipwrecked by themselves and survives for several years on a tropical deserted island. And the Disney movie totally did a disservice to Jenny's character (well, her whole storyline was butchered to make her a damsel in distress and have the boys fight over her), but she actually had survived by herself on another island for 3 years thank you very much and had built her own tree house and everything.

And I know I said I wouldn't be dealing with the big names, but if you're a Jane Austen fan and haven't read her short stories (generally published together as Lesser or Minor Works, sometimes with Northanger Abbey or Lady Susan, the last novel she was working on and didn't finish), you are missing out. These are stories, poems and novel fragments she wrote when she was younger, and they are absolutely hilarious.

For further reading, Mothers of the Novel by Dale Spender is a great resource on European women authors who originated the novel form. She focuses on 100 that were writing before Austen. It's out of print right now, but pretty easy to find through inter-library loan or selling very cheaply on Amazon.

The Hunger Games

So there's this little trilogy you might have heard of called The Hunger Games? It's only being hailed everywhere like the Second Coming of Young Adult literature or like it's single-handedly created the dystopia/post-apocalyptic YA novel. And I'm not saying it's not good, but I am saying it doesn't live up to its hype. (There are major spoilers for the end of the series, if you haven't read it, skip to the end of the post for other book recommendations.)

Katniss has been touted as this wonderful kick-butt feminist role model, but I disagree. Yes, she is kick-butt for the first two books. However, she's mostly reactive, almost never proactive, except for choosing to go in her sister's place to the Hunger Games. In everything else, she's reacting to situations, events and circumstances everyone else creates for her or around her. Katniss is also manipulative, although I can't necessarily find fault with it, since it's to keep herself and her friends alive; and the boy she manipulates is excessively clingy, as well as entitled for lack of a better word. Although he and Katniss have barely ever spoken to each other in their lives, he announces on TV his love for her, and while a lot of people claim something like that is sweet; someone who makes such a public announcement (especially without finding out even tentatively how the other person feels) is essentially power playing his partner. Trying to play on someone's sympathy or embarrassment to say yes if love isn't strong enough and make sure that she/he won't back out of saying no because it's in such a public arena. That's not sweet, that's just as manipulative as what she does to him (pretending to love in in exchange for gifts from sponsors of the game).
Additionally, after the audience starts (somewhat inexplicably) rooting for Katniss as an icon of rebellion against the Capital, Katniss moans and complains endlessly about it. At first I could understand and even sympathize--I mean I wouldn't want that kind of adulation either, but then in the last book when she finally agrees to be the "Mockingjay" and the mascot of the revolution; I had zero tolerance for her whining and avoiding whatever involvement she could in planning and activities. After you take on a responsibility, that's when you put on your big girl pants and you do the job, no matter how much you hate it.
And finally, Katniss spends the last book either in the hospital (seriously she's in the hospital for at least half or more of the book) or otherwise sidelined for some reason, and misses every single major plot event but one because of her forced inactivity. Why would Collins write her main character out of every major event in the climax of the story? It's just bad story-telling, not to mention it makes Katniss incredibly passive in the last book. Katniss also spends the last book crying, weeping, hiding in closets, and generally angsting about. I get that after going through two Hunger Games with lots of death and having to kill people she'd be suffering from PTSD. But yet, her entire district is bombed and 2/3 of the people die, don't you think that the remaining people in her district are also suffering from some form of PTSD from seeing most of their family and friends bombed to death right in from of them and just barely escaping? And yet the district carries on and they are volunteering as soldiers or helping plan the revolution or whatever else they can do? Or what of Finnick and Johanna, who were not only in two Hunger Games as well like Katniss, but were also tortured for several weeks which was far worse than anything she went through; and it turns out that Finnick at least, as well as other Hunger Game contestants, were used as child prostitutes by the Capital? Again, far worse than Katniss' problems. And although the two of them are obviously messed up, when there is a chance to help, they step up without being asked, even if they may not be emotionally or physically ready for it.
But then there's the epilogue to the final book, that ghastly horrible epilogue. Collins in the last book does that thing that so many YA writers do when they've created a love triangle with two generally suitable love interests and the protagonist. Rather than letting the main character choose between the two love interests as they are, the author turns one of the love interests into a jerk or worse, without any warning or previous evidence to support it, as an easy way to get the protagonist out of the triangle. So anyway, after getting rid of Gale (who was a much better fit for Katniss than Peeta and far far more interesting), Katniss winds up with Peeta even though she doesn't love him, and has never loved him as more than a friend. In the epilogue Katniss settles on Peeta just because he's there, not because she loves him and marries him. Both she and Peeta 20 years later still broken and tortured from their experiences. Katniss never wanted any children throughout the series, but in the epilogue, Peeta pressures her for 15 years and she finally gives in and they have two children. And although she loves her children, she feels fear and pain when she looks at them. Why are YA writers so insistent on hetero-normative endings and making sure that the woman ends paired/married off with babies or engagements or above all making her relationship throughout the book the total sum of her existence (hello Twilight, I'm looking at you and all other YA book obsessive relationships like you)? The love triangle in the Hunger Games isn't necessarily so central to the plot like a lot of these others, but why the need to have a triangle in the first place, and then the forced "happily ever after" with marriage and babies no matter what, even if it goes against what the character feels or wants? A truly revolutionary ending would have been Katniss not just settling for either boy that she didn't truly love or not having children she didn't want, and working out her issues on her own.


So ranting over, here are some books with similar themes that I think are better done than the Hunger Games (sticking mostly with Young Adult novels):

Dystopias and Post-apocalyptic novels:
-Tomorrow When the War Began series by John Marsden--A coalition of nameless countries invades Australia, and a group of teens backpacking in the outback avoid the takeover and internment of their town. Despite such a storyline, Marsden avoids the Red Dawn/patriotic furor territory for the most part. The series follows the group from average rural teens to guerrilla fighters and a realistic view of the psychological effects of such actions on the teens.
-Emergence by David Palmer--After a bio-nuclear plague wipes out most of the world, 11 year old Candy looks for other survivors and learns she is the next step in the evolution of humans.
-The Maze Runner trilogy by James Dashner--When sun flares made most of the middle section of earth uninhabitable, a group of gifted children are put through a series of sadistic trials by a government group in the hopes of finding leaders among them that will find a solution to the world's problems.
-The Tripods series by John Christopher--possibly one of the earliest YA dystopias. After aliens invade Earth, they control the world's population by putting a cap on each person after they reach puberty which controls their thoughts and emotions. Will and his friends are able to negate the effects of their caps and fight against their oppressors.
Libyrinth by Pearl North--set thousands of years in the future on another planet, there is a kind of war between the Libyrarians who refuse to teach the masses to read, and the Singers who believe written words are evil. Haly, the heroine, is a Libyrarian, but can also "hear" a book without opening it; she is captured by Singers who believe she can help them destroy the Libyrarians.
Chaos Walking series by Patrick Ness--Todd lives on a planet where men's and animal's thoughts are audible to everyone around them. He's been told that all the human women on the planet were killed by germ warfare just after he was born, but then he meets a girl his age, and they forced to flee once she's discovered; and Todd struggles to reconcile life on the outside of his town with what he's been taught his whole life.

Kick-butt heroines:
Warrior Princess trilogy by Frewin Jones--Set in Wales during the Saxon invasions, Branwen is chosen by the ancient Gods to lead her people's fight against the Saxons.
The Hero and the Crown and The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley--Two different women lead their countries against forces of darkness, fight dragons and learn to control their magical abilities.
Devil's Kiss and Dark Goddess by Sarwat Chadda--Bilquis is the youngest and only female Knight Templar, in modern day London as the Templars fight against demons, werewolves and other supernatural baddies.
Rampant by Diana Peterfreund--Astrid comes from one of 12 legendary maternal clans that used to hunt unicorns (not the cute cuddly kind, but these unicorns are instead venomous, meat-eating and aggressive). Thought to be extinct for over a hundred years, unicorns suddenly start showing up again in modern day, and Astrid reluctantly joins the newly reopened warrior training academy.
Graceling/Fire by Kristin Cashore--Katsa lives in a world where people are "graced" by certain abilities at birth. Her ability is fighting, and her uncle king uses her as an assassin and bully. To combat the wrong he has her do, she starts a secret council to right wrongs, and in the process tries to save the daughter of a king who can make anyone believe or do anything he says.
Song of the Lioness series by Tamora Pierce--A young woman takes her twin brother's place to train as a knight instead of going into the convent.

Our Imperfect Union

(Some minor language in the video. His phrase about the "interesting thing about April 27th" could be that in 2010 on that date is when Malcolm X's killer was paroled. It is also the date when apartheid in South Africa officially ended with the election of Nelson Mandela in 1994.)
Immediately after Pres Obama releases his birth certificate, Trump then starts in on President Obama's university records, not satisfied even then; and how now Obama needs to release those records because clearly he's hiding something by not releasing his transcripts, essentially claiming Obama could have only gotten into an Ivy League school because of affirmative action...which doesn't explain how he graduated from said school magna cum laude. These people were not satisfied that Obama had already released his short form birth certificate in 2008. That the state of Hawaii when all of this nonsense began, was quite liberal with copying and distributing birth certificates of Obama's because they had so many requests for it. They finally got so overwhelmed that they had to change the law last year prohibiting duplicate or repetitive requests for birth certificates. A few years ago, The Onion (satire news site) had an article that would be funny if it weren't so on the mark it makes me want to cry a bit, about the "afterbirthers" movement who wanted Obama to produce his baby placenta, "To this day, the American people have not seen a cervical mucus plug, let alone one that has been signed and notarized by a state-certified Hawaiian health official. If the president was indeed born in the manner in which he claims, then where is his gestation sac?"
Whatever you think of Obama's politics or track record as a president is irrelevant, what happened yesterday was a tragedy and degrading to our entire country that we let it happen. It was racism pure and simple, and we are all diminished by it.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/04/28/ifill.birthers/index.html?hpt=C2

In Honor of Diane Wynne Jones

Young adult fantasy author Diane Wynne Jones died today from a long bout of lung cancer. http://www.examiner.com/literature-in-national/diana-wynne-jones-dies-at-76-british-fantasy-writer-influenced-many If you have never read her Howl's Moving Castle series, get thee to a library now friend. And if you haven't read the series, well, maybe stop reading now, because this post contains a lot of spoilers.

Howl's Moving Castle may possibly be one of my favorite young adult books. And Sophie and Howl one of my favorite couples. At the beginning of the book, Sophie is a meek, down-trodden older sister working in the family hat shop she doesn't particularly like, but feels like she has to keep working there to allow her younger sisters to realize their dreams (one sister is a witch, the other a baker). Out of the blue, the infamous Witch of the Waste, hereafter known as WotW, comes in one day, and puts a curse on Sophie, turning her into an old woman. It takes Sophie most of the book it learn why, but it turns out that Sophie is also a witch with great potential, the WotW felt she was a threat, which is why she cursed Sophie. Sophie takes the opportunity to leave the job she hates. Sophie also uses her curse as a freedom to finally break free and to say and do the things she has been thinking to been to scared to say. She winds up at Howl's castle (the castle has doors that led to several countries, hence the name of the book), Howl is supposedly a hideous wizard who eats young women's hearts. It turns out Howl isn't quite that bad, but he is a total drama king, always overreacting, pouting, kind of self-absorbed, cynical, a total coward; and yet somehow awesome, endearing and underneath it a really good person. He tolerates Sophie muscling into his castle surprisingly well and Sophie refuses to put up with his dramatics and hysterics, and eventually it's love (Howl can see through the curse and knows Sophie is a young woman). Anyway, it's a fantastic book, funny, very well written, and highly entertaining. There are two loosely related sequels--Castle in the Air and House of Many Ways, although Sophie and Howl aren't the main characters in either and only show up about halfway through.

Studio Ghibli did an animated adaptation of the book, which was highly lauded, as most everything by Ghibli is; but unfortunately, in this case, they got it wrong. Ghibli is usually pretty good with potrayals of women, especially when compared to Disney or Pixar. However, the plot was changed quite a bit, and some of those changes completely reduced or took away whatever power the women had in the book.
So, in the film they left out the sisters completely. Sophie's sister Lettie, the witch, when she finds out that Sophie is an old woman and working for Howl, sends a dog (who, in a somewhat involved and lengthy plot, is a human wizard who was turned into a dog) protected by charms to Sophie to try to protect her from the bad wizard Howl. Lettie also at the end, when there is a battle brewing with the WotW, comes to help however she can.
And then after this epic battle Howl and the WotW in the film, the WotW is totally defeated and she is stripped of her power. But no, that's not enough. She is also stripped of her memory, having absolutely no clue who or what she was before; and stripped of her personality, so she becomes this harmless sweet old granny. So harmless and sweet in fact, that Howl and Sophie take her in to the castle to live with them. In the book, she's killed, but at least she retains her power and her memory and isn't stripped of everything that makes her her before she goes.
So one of the things that Sophie can do in the book is talk to things and make them live or grow. When making hats, she would talk to them, and the things she would say would translate to those who wore the hat--making them look younger, marry a rich man, have good luck, etc. She inadvertently brings a scarecrow to life by talking to it, and it begins to follow her about; the wizard/dog her sister sends to protect her knows that Sophie has the power to free him, and he really takes to her. Well, in the film, at the end, both scarecrow and dog are made human, and declare they were following Sophie because they loved her! So we go from the motive being because of her power, to being nothing more than a stereotypical romance. Oh, and in the book, the wizard/dog loves her sister, not Sophie.
But the largest insult is that in the film, Sophie is not a witch, she has no magical powers whatsoever. And this is the biggest loss and changes the plot and themes in a massive way. So much of what happens in the book is because of Sophie's powers. While they left her a sassy old woman, it isn't enough to make up for what they took away from her. The book is about Sophie growing not just as a person, but growing in her power and strength; finding courage and facing off against the WotW's demon; realizing she can shape her own destiny; and helping Howl, as well as several others, get out of a multitude of curses and other jams. Bad form Ghibli.