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05.26.08, 18:46 PM General Topics
31 replies
When the doctor checks to see if the patient is still breathing, it's disgust, not compassion, that leaks out between his syllables: "You couldn't kill her with an ax," he sneers. That patient—the wide-hipped, unwieldy woman at the heart of Dorothy Parker's 1929 short story "Big Blonde"—is a familiar image in books, films, songs, comic books, TV series, video games and, now, politics: The woman as monster. The over-large, over-ambitious, overbearing creature who irritates everybody, the death-defying witch who just won't go away—and who therefore must be destroyed. [ Reply | Watch | Flag ]
General Topics 05.26.08, 06:46 PM Flag
 

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She's a vampire, a zombie, an alien, a werewolf, a psychopath, a serial killer. She's Alex, the Glenn Close character in "Fatal Attraction" (1987), who ... keeps ... on ... coming. She's the looming, clutching, stifling mother or wife or girlfriend in a Philip Roth novel. (Which novel? Take your pick.) She's the eerie, outlandish creature in the Sylvia Plath poem "Lady Lazarus" (1965), who proclaims, "Out of the ash / I rise with my red hair / And I eat men like air." She's the vengeful giantess in the 1958 film "Attack of the 50 Foot Woman." [ Reply | More
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General Topics 05.26.08, 06:46 PM Flag
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And to judge from the media commentary about the first woman to get anywhere close to a major party's presidential nomination, she is Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton. [ Reply | More
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General Topics 05.26.08, 06:47 PM Flag
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You know, that's really stupid. Dracula is the main vampire, zombies are of both sexes in equal proportion, werewolf? Both teen wolf and wolfman were, um, men. Psychopath? American Psycho = man; Norman Bates = Man. Serial Killer? Hannibal Lecter. Roth and Plath? Um, whatever. I don't think mass media takes its cues from Sylvia Plath. And way to go on citing a movie from fifty years ago to make a point about modern media. [ Reply | More
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General Topics 05.26.08, 06:53 PM Flag
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Norman Bates was a man, but it was his mother who was evil. [ Reply | More
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General Topics 05.26.08, 06:56 PM Flag
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ah. There you are! [ Reply | More
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General Topics 05.26.08, 06:47 PM Flag
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Yea, like Lady MacBeth. Familiar figure in literature. There are these types in the Bible, too [ Reply | More
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General Topics 05.26.08, 06:47 PM Flag
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Very dramatic and eloquent and ultimately pointless. She's a monster becaues she IS a monster, it's what she's said and allowed her cronies and dh to say. She has lost because of who she is and how she ran, period. [ Reply | More
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General Topics 05.26.08, 06:48 PM Flag
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wow, brilliant logic. she's a monster because she IS a monster. thanks for clearing that up. [ Reply | More
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General Topics 05.26.08, 06:49 PM Flag
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you're welcome, sometimes it stares you right in the face but you can't see it. Like the fact that you're a bitch because you ARE a bitch. Live with that. [ Reply | More
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General Topics 05.26.08, 06:50 PM Flag
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it's sad that you can't see the sexism even when it smacks you in the face [ Reply | More
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General Topics 05.26.08, 06:52 PM Flag
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oh please STFU, it's not sexism with her anymore than it's racism with him. You either capture the electorate or you don't in greater numbers than your opponent. Period. [ Reply | More
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General Topics 05.26.08, 06:54 PM Flag
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why do you hate her the way that you do? [ Reply | More
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General Topics 05.26.08, 06:56 PM Flag
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np: You have to admit she is getting a bit pathetic in her whining. Can't imagine Maggie Thatcher whine like this. [ Reply | More
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General Topics 05.26.08, 07:05 PM Flag
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No matter what she says, you will call it whining, because you hate her and want to justify your sexism. When Obama blathered on about race it was oh so historic and dignified, if she mentions sexism, it is whining. Keep up your double standard and see how that works for you in the long run [ Reply | More
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General Topics 05.26.08, 07:08 PM Flag
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Obama has never complained about people not voting for him because of his race. Media is all over that crap, but he never did. [ Reply | More
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General Topics 05.26.08, 07:13 PM Flag
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oh, come on. cut the crap and please get real. [ Reply | More
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General Topics 05.26.08, 07:16 PM Flag
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Revealed in the coverage of Clinton's campaign is the persistence of an ancient and distasteful cultural theme: the powerful, ambitious woman as cackling fiend, as fantastically terrifying ghoul threatening civilization. And because this creature (or "she-devil," as MSNBC commentator Chris Matthews called Clinton) is not human, the only solution is to kill it. Not just derail its career—obliterate it. Smash it to smithereens. Vaporize it. Leave not a trace of the foul beast behind. [ Reply | More
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General Topics 05.26.08, 06:49 PM Flag
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Hence the appalling preponderance of violent, death-infused imagery in conversations about Clinton, smuggled into otherwise ordinary political discourse like a knife taped on the bottom of a cake plate: On CNN, pundit Alex Castellanos said democrats must realize that "it's time to take the family dog to the vet." Matthews' MSNBC colleague Keith Olbermann expressed the hope that "somebody will take her into a room—and only he comes out." CNN's Jack Cafferty gleefully floated the specter of Clinton being run over by a flatbed truck. A recent Tribune editorial compared Clinton to a euthanized Kentucky Derby contender. [ Reply | More
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General Topics 05.26.08, 06:51 PM Flag
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he is, according to author Andrew Sullivan, akin to the zombies in the film "28 Days Later" (2002), as well as that knife-wielding harpy in "Fatal Attraction"—the one with the relentless, rapacious, inhuman will: "It's alive!" Sullivan wrote, adding, "Whoosh—She's back at your throat." The comparison between the Close character and Clinton also seemed apt to U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.), who wrote, "Glenn Close should've stayed in that bathtub." Translation: Death. Comedian Chris Rock loves the "Fatal Attraction" link as well. Ditto for blogger Wil Wheaton, who played Wesley in the TV series "Star Trek: The Next Generation," who dubbed Clinton "the psycho ex-girlfriend of the Democratic party." [ Reply | More
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General Topics 05.26.08, 06:52 PM Flag
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nd we know, don't we, what to do with psycho ex-girlfriends? Drown them, club them, electrocute them. Meanwhile, analogies between Clinton and that flat-eyed, metallic, multimovie franchise character "Terminator" are copious to the point of cliche. You may or may not like Clinton—or any other female candidate. You may or may not agree with their policies. But is it really necessary to order a hit? Isn't it enough just to vote for somebody else [ Reply | More
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General Topics 05.26.08, 06:53 PM Flag
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LOLOL - the cackle is all hers, nobody is attaching anything to her that isn't there. She ran with a disgusting sense of entitlement, she and Bill, panting to get back in the white house and on airforce one, and it showed, it smelled and most said NO> [ Reply | More
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General Topics 05.26.08, 06:52 PM Flag
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you know, she laughs like an ordinary woman. but that is enough, isn't it? [ Reply | More
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General Topics 05.26.08, 06:54 PM Flag
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This is not simply sexism or racism. Those prejudices are familiar, if still repugnant, and leaders as strong as Clinton and her opponent, Sen. Barack Obama, have faced them many times. This, though, is something different and more sinister, because it is not just a commentator's opinion about a person's fitness or unfitness for public office. It is not about using colorful, vivid language in order to wish that a person might or might not continue a campaign. It is an unprecedented public call—albeit metaphorically, but still violently and persistently—for a person's death. [ Reply | More
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General Topics 05.26.08, 06:54 PM Flag
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In their landmark book of literary criticism "The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination" (1979), Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar were among the first to spotlight this noxious theme, this isolation and ridicule of powerful women by labeling them crazy, hysterical, perverse, monstrous. To challenge male domination—of the world, or just of oneself—was to be risk being marginalized, ostracized, locked away like Rochester's wife in "Jane Eyre" (1847), the fate that gave the book its title. In real life, behavior that strayed from the polite, demure norm expected of women in the 19th Century was rewarded with psychiatric evaluations and often, imprisonment and death [ Reply | More
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General Topics 05.26.08, 06:55 PM Flag
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One of the most barbaric medical procedures ever performed legally in this country was the lobotomy, and a look at its early history is chilling. As Jack El-Hai recounts in his book, "The Lobotomist: A Maverick Medical Genius and His Tragic Quest to Rid the World of Mental Illness" (2005), the frightening operation that could leave patients catatonic or dead often was employed as a way to deal with "difficult" women, with wives and mothers who had minds of their own, with willful daughters and headstrong sisters. The message was clear: Do whatever you have to do—but shut her up. [ Reply | More
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General Topics 05.26.08, 06:55 PM Flag
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The notion of a powerful, driven, influential woman as a hideous threat—a threat that can be curtailed only with her death—ripples through literature, from the D.H. Lawrence novel "Sons and Lovers" (1913), with its protagonist's conviction that he must escape the clutches of his looming, clingy mother if he is ever to realize his destiny, to the 1962 novel "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" by Ken Kesey, with its way-scary female character: the loathsome, larger-than-life Nurse Ratched. The joyless, hulking harridan who wants to keep her patients drugged and miserable so she can control them. From the Furies in Greek literature onward, the women-as-mythical-monsters theme has shrieked, flapped and lurched its way through the arts. [ Reply | More
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General Topics 05.26.08, 06:56 PM Flag
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It's natural to wonder whether Obama approves of the death-haunted images that surround his opponent like a phalanx of vultures. Surely he doesn't. He is an intelligent, sensitive, enlightened man whose life has been enriched, as he frequently acknowledges, by the presence of strong women, most notably his late mother and his wife. I wish, therefore, that he would publicly condemn the trend of evoking death and destruction when it comes to Clinton. Perhaps, someday, he will. [ Reply | More
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General Topics 05.26.08, 06:57 PM Flag
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Meanwhile, the pile of death images continues to rise, like corpses outside Dr. Frankenstein's laboratory door. After Clinton's victories in recent primaries, the New Yorker's Elizabeth Kolbert called it a "back-from-the-dead" moment. Walter Shapiro, Washington editor for salon.com, opined last week that Clinton had entered the "death with dignity" phase of her campaign. [ Reply | More
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General Topics 05.26.08, 06:58 PM Flag
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Death, death, death. The steady, depressing drumbeat continues. What these commentators seem to seek is not just a proud female's withdrawal from a political contest—but her outright annihilation. They evoke the nightmarish vision of a commanding woman intent on destruction—thus she must be destroyed before she can launch her evil scheme. [ Reply | More
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General Topics 05.26.08, 06:58 PM Flag
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In a thriller by Irish novelist Tana French, "In the Woods" (2007), a detective muses about a psychopath who has outwitted him, "I wanted her not just dead but obliterated from the face of the earth—crushed to unidentifiable pulp, pulverized in a shredder, burned to a handful of toxic ash." With that attitude, he won't have to worry if the gumshoe gig ever fails him: He can always apply for a job with MSNBC. [ Reply | More
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General Topics 05.26.08, 06:59 PM Flag
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good night curb mom [ Reply | More
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General Topics 05.26.08, 07:02 PM Flag
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