I was browsin’ around tonight, and found Media Girl browsin’ through her latest New Yorker:
I had time to start into this week’s issue with some leisure, though, and that afforded me the pleasure of seeing a multi-page ad for Iconoclasts, a miniseries on Sundance Channel celebrating “innovators, ground shakers and rule breakers.”
I couldn’t help but notice that, out of the 12 iconoclastic movers and shakers profiled, only two are women — actress Renée Zellweger and CNN journalist Christiane Amanpour.
Okay, so that’s not cool. But I’ve learned a lot of stuff watching Sundance channel. I’ve learned how bull semen is, um, extracted and how bodies are embalmed. And I’ve watched some good documentaries, like Bush’s Brain. (P.S. I noticed the other day that the televised clips of Al Franken’s daily Air America show have been dropped for the second time.) But what in the hell is this Iconclast show?! Is this a joke?
Meanwhile, the male Iconoclasts featured are:
- Robert Reford (actor)
- Paul Newman (actor)
- Samuel L. Jackson (actor)
- Bill Russell (sports star)
- Tom Ford (fashion designer)
- Jeff Koons (artist)
- Brian Grazer (film producer)
- Sumner Redstone (CEO)
- Mario Batali (chef)
- Michael Stipe (rock star)
To be sure, many of these people have done much more than what they’re known for. But let’s face it, they’re known for being actors and designers and so on.
So why aren’t there more women? Yes, we live in a patriarchy and yes men dominate the arts, fashion and entertainment industries, but women account for 53% of the population and, in the creative arts industries, there certainly is not a dearth of female iconoclasts, is there? (Need I post a list?)
Are women deserving of only 16.67% of the honors? (Are Hispanics and Asians so undeserving of any mention? And what is Sumner Redstone doing in this show at all?)
If this were a Fox or NBC product, this kind of bias would hardly be remarkable — in fact, it would be expected and insisted upon. But this is Sundance, which supposedly is about empowering disempowered voices and supporting progressive causes. With Iconoclasts, Sundance gets a failing grade.
… (Read all at Media Girl.)
Okay. So the Sundance selections are majorly lame and shockingly mainstream. But who would you choose if you really could tell Bob (Redford) what to do with his dumb list?
There’s only one possible answer:
– Susanhu (liberal blogger extraordinaire)
Maybe I need some time away from the computer? ;-D
Ohhhhh … thank you! That’s a really lovely thought!
Let me think for a minute and come up with my list.
(Darcy and I went to hardware stories today! Not our usual haunts. But my cat Bear has succeeded in tearing through two of my window screens — I’m a fresh air freak and keep my windows open a lot, and Bear likes to sit in the window sill and watch the birds and raccoons, and then try to escape). Home Depot wasn’t that helpful, but the guy at True Value was terrific, and showed us just how to do it! I have zero mechanical aptitude but Darcy’s pretty good, and she’s now replaced both screens all by herself!)
How the window screening is held in place is one of those little mysteries of life you never think about until the screen is torn somehow.
Then someone shows you how to replace it and you go: “D’Oh! So THAT’S how it’s done.” 😀
Kind of like some of those little cooking tricks.
We might have to do a “useful household tips” discussion sometime… Sounds like a good one for February, when things are kind of dull after the holidays and folks are starting to think about spring cleaning, gardening, home repairs, etc.
And I just love that little tool that pushes the piping into place with a satisfying “snick.” Military housing has these little self-help places where you can borrow gardening equipment and a shop where you can take your screens and… whatever in to do repairs and woodworking, etc. I’ve always thought they should have that kind of thing in low-income neighborhoods. I’m sure people would like to do home improvement stuff, but just don’t have the tools.
where you can actually rent time in a woodworking studio — since we’re an area with a lot of apartments and condos, there’s not too much space for folks to put in an actual workbench area of their own. If I didn’t have two left hands when it comes to tools, I’d look into it (though thanks to having to put together IKEA furniture, I can handle a hammer a hell of a lot better than Our Fearless Leader, thank you very much…).
I’ve heard tell of such places and keep meaning to check if there’s one around here. Call me crazy, but I’d love to try my hand at some millwork. I’ve heard of those places for auto-repair, too. Still, it’s renting and if people don’t have much time, money, or reliable transportation, it just seems like a free, neighborhood place would be so worthwhile. I wonder if it’s being done anywhere?
still believed in shop classes (wood shop, metal shop, etc.) instead of trying to shoehorn all their students into “4 year college or die” mode, those would be a great resource. I wouldn’t even mind paying a small rental fee, which could go back into the shop program to buy new equipment, supplies for the students, etc.
That is a great idea! Most neighborhoods have schools within walking distance. I’m liking this idea more and more.
Hey!
No suckin up ahead of me ;o)
Have a 4 since I beat you to it. 😉
Angelina Jolie — who’s in Pakistan (with Brad Pitt) calling on people to give more to help the rather forgotten earthquake victims — what a trippy life that woman has had, from vial-of-blood-wearing wife of Billy Bob Thornton and sex goddess to U.N. ambassador whose personal journals on her trips to places like Darfur are quite exquisitely written and very thoughtful
Who else …
Darcy just piped up with Brian Eno. I asked her, “Who is he?” And she told me to look him up in Wikipedia.
I met Efren Ramirez, who played Pedro in Napoleon Dynamite, last week in a hotel. He told me that he worked with Angelina Jolie in Mr. and Mrs. Smith (he ended up on the cutting room floor), and that she changed his life.
He now travels the country speaking at high schools about holding onto dreams. So that trippy life continues to ripple… now that’s trippy.
Carly Fiorino, head of H/P, certainly a ground shaker. She took a big risk (and a lot of heat) merging H/P with Compaq, but it seems to be working at this point.
She would be a good one.
tell that to my friends whose asses got canned in the last two years.
They’re just the people whose ground she shook, silly!
I’ll assume that your friends were Compaq employees and clearly what happened to them is unfortunate. But the industry has been consolidating for some time, as many other industries have. It is essentially a two company industry now (H/P and Dell). IBM is out of the PC game now and Gateway, Sony, Toshiba and a few others play only minor roles. Given this concentration of resources, your friends may have suffered sooner under Fiorino a fate that they would have suffered eventually had things stay the way they were. This is no reflection upon them, only the unfortunate changes rendered by a mature industry. Much the same has happened with consolidation of the automobile industry. But there can be no denying that Fiorino belongs on the short list of female movers and shakers.
is a positive thing in what way? Consolidation decreases competition, and therefore hinders new technology and offers consumers less choice for more money. Ain’t that the whole purpose and promise of capitalism? More Microsoft anyone?
Pure speculation that my friends, who came from Compaq and HP, would have suffered unemployment sooner under Fiorino, as is it speculation that there is any benefit to being canned sooner than later. I don’t know of a single one that would argue for an earlier termination.
I also disagree that the technology market is a mature one. It has matured, certainly, and has become fairly predictable and stagnant with a minor few exceptions. Consolidation stifles innovation, as it is cheaper to continue marketing the same old technology as “new and improved”. Less innovation, less opportunity, less growth.
If we learned anything from the American auto industry, it is that very lesson.
Umm, where exactly did I say that consolidation is positive thing? (I made no such statement.) I merely made an accurate observation that it has happened, that the industry by economic definition is mature. Like I said before, what happened to your friends is unfortunate, I would not wish hardship upon them. But apparently you mistook much of my comments.
Carly Fiorino, head of H/P, certainly a ground shaker. She took a big risk (and a lot of heat) merging H/P with Compaq, but it seems to be working at this point.
I took your words “working out at this point”, in reference to the merger or consolidation, to mean a positive thing, as well as your citation of Fiorino.
To me, 10,000 to 25,000 people losing their technology jobs in this economy is more than unfortunate.
n/t
Her resignation came a week before HP was due to report earnings–a report that the company acknowledges will meet Wall Street’s estimates.
[snip]
Under her command, HP in 2002 spent $19 billion buying Compaq, largely to expand its position in PCs and fight off Dell, the market’s low-cost leader. Though the merger had produced cost savings–and wrenching layoffs–profits remained hard to come by. In 2003, despite Fiorina’s promises that operating margins would reach 3%, the company’s PC division earned a meager 0.1% on $21.2 billion in sales. And last August, the company’s Enterprise Servers and Storage Group, which sells to corporate customers, reported a $208 million loss for the quarter.
Well, I would start by ruling out anyone who has spent much of his/her life pursuing fame, big money, or power. Those are, after all, our icons, and that they are to be pursued is our one unchallengeable rule.
(I know. Another pedantic, disgruntled, old-school liberal. Another beer and I’ll be going on about Cesar Chavez and I.F. Stone…)
If this sundance list of so called top iconoclasts, (a somewhat inappropriate descriptor for the people they’re describing, it’s no wonder our society is in such big trouble.
The onlyone on that list deserving of any real status as an important groundbreaker is Christiane Amanpour,and even she is still saddled with the increasingly atrocious CNN.
I’m using AOL right now because my broadband is still acting up after Hurricane Wilma, and because the AOL cutsouton it’s own without warnngusually abut every ten minutes, I’m not going to look up names right now, but it seems to me there was a military woman, an FBI woman, and an Arabic language translator woman who recently jumped way outside the traditional box by blowing the whistles at their superiors’ malfeasance and incompetence. If iconoclasm is challenging the accepted rules that govern the status quo, I’d say these women should go to the top of the list.
Sorry for all the typos above. I raced through the typing in the hopes I’d be able to post it before my AOL connection cut out.
Good choices. Their film “Cradle Will Rock” was one of the most stunningly interesting and inventive I’ve seen in a long time. Bless them both!
Maybe Margaret Cho? And definitely Molly Ivins.
…and the Williams sisters, Venus and Serena!
I’m sorry. I just can’t let this thread go. I think what’s bugging me, besides the fact that there’s only two women, is what the hell is Renee Zellweger doing on the list? Seriously. Does anyone know?
So I was thinking of women in entertainment, how there aren’t many female directors, and Penelope Spheeris came to mind. She directed The Decline of Western Civilization about the L.A. punk scene and then went on to better thingss with Wayne’s World.
So thinking about L.A. punk drove me to check in on Alice Bag’s site. Alice was the singer for The Bags and is a bit of an iconoclast herself in certain circles. She has a series of interviews called Women of L.A. punk which are really interesting most of the time. The most recent is Gaby Berlin who says:
I am feeling so much better about some of my hair styles now!
I was going to suggest Margaret…as an Asian, a woman, and a champion of gay rights…and the fact that the right wing f-ing hates her is just an added bonus…
My thoughts exactly! Plus, she’s really funny and definitely has her own style.
(jeez, I’ve been following too much Apple news…)
I think Sundance dropped Al again because he was going to be doing a lot of live road appearances while pushing the book…also, there are some questions about what direction his show is going in; the spouse heard he might be doing his show from the AAR Minnesota affiliate, while he continues to mull a possible Senate bid…
Just feeding the rumor mill here…
I don’t usually disagree with susanhu but Sundance shows lots of great stuff, hard hitting docus and fiction that one doesn’t see elsewhere on TV boob land. Besides, it looks like you’re getting stats from the festival and not just hte channel. Sundance shows foreign films too. Love it, good stuff. Taste is in the eye and ear of the beholder.
I watchg it on DocDay (Mondays). … but that’s mostly it. (I mentioned Bush’s Brain in my piece). I guess I should try more but some of those movies are too weird even for me 🙂
I am currently on a campaign, very specifically, to get the New Yorker to publish Riverbend, the blogger on Baghdad Burning, in addition to their white, male political experts. But she would qualify for this list, as well.
I’m So confused.
Ok, you can burn me for the lit degree holder that I am and pin the badge of “Snob” upon me but iconoclasts means breaking images, symbols, old archetypes, etc. What on earth are they iconoclasts of? They aren’t breaking any old symbols but rather simply perpetuating old ones.
Susan, you have hit on a goo dpoint here. They are all actors or entertainers and so they are the image MAKERS – not the image breakers.
This sounds like another attempt to make history by defining it in terms that they control. OK. Maybe they are “good guys” but perhaps only because they cloak themselves in images that we think good guys should wear. Then they call themselves iconoclasts just because they go against the worst offending conservatives
Yeesh.
It’s just like how so many of our ads urge us to be different and ‘rebellious’ by wearing their products. So, if you want to truly be yourself and expressive to the MAX you just must wear Calvin Klein jeans ( like all the other cool kids). ^_^
JEFF KOONS!
As in: I’m so rich I pay people to make my art, Koons?
“Art,” which largly consists of brightly-lit life-sized photographs of Koons and his porn-star wife having sex (which doesn’t quite give you the full impression since, the photos are really more about showing off his erect dick than anything else).
Oh, and then there are the “sculptures,” such as a hoover vacuum, and an inflatable plastic rabbit, enclosed in plexiglas display cases (built by someone else). Which Koons signs his name to and sells for obscene amounts of money.
How innovating – not.
For anyone interested, the direct link to the post is http://mediagirl.org/node/914.
Thank you! I’m a fan of your work, and I particularly enjoyed your piece … your comments about how you read your New Yorker were also fun.