Things I Love: Seth Aaron Henderson

I am lucky lady. My job revolves around being creative. I make movies. However, regardless of how lucky I feel to be a filmmaker, sometimes I need to do something else. Thus, I sew. I am not a good seamstress by any means; the tool that I use most is probably my seam ripper. Therefore I am easily fascinated by those who have more skill than I. Thus, I love Project Runway. In season seven this love was focused on one designer in particular - Seth Aaron Henderson.




The funny thing is that it had little to do with his work. Truthfully, I would never wear most of clothes. They just aren't me. Grunge rock star I am not.

The reason why I love Seath Aaron Henderson is that he is a straight, married man with teenage kids who still wants to be a fashion designer.

In Tough Guise Jackson Katz talks about how masculinity (and femininity to a point) are all about fitting into these really rigid boxes that do nothing but to keep us confined and from fully actualizing as human beings.

Truth be told I don't know many men who can sew even though sewing is an important life skill. I don't mean that you have to be able to churn out couture, but everyone puts premature holes in clothes from time to time and it is a great skill to be able to fix those. Thus, I applaud Seth Aaron Henderson for not only rocking the runway with his punk/military/goth look, but being a straight man who is living outside the gender conforming box.

However, there is a flip side to this sew-tastic story. We live in a culture that is male dominated, male identified, and male centered. Does having a straight man win at a reality contest in a traditionally female-centered discipline really help to break down our rigid gender constructions? Or is is just another example of how white (straight) men are the best at everything... including sewing? It is an interesting dichotomy. Is this really progress? Or is it just another male takeover? I, personally, can't decide. So I put this quagmire out to the masses. I am going to go back to ripping out seams.

Pictures from:

• The Project Runway Website

Also mentioned:

• Tough Guise. Dir: Sut Jhally. 1999.

Things I Love: Mae West

I love Mae West. She says all the things I could never say and does it with such panache I can't help but swell with admiration.

Mae West started out on in vaudeville and eventually moved to Broadway and where she became notorious for her raunchy style. She even wrote and starred in a play simply titled "SEX!" which also landed her in jail for obscenity in 1920s New York. However, it was the controversy that she created as a part of her sexy persona that peaked interest in her from the Hollywood studios. She eventually signed a contract to make films for Paramount Pictures. It was the 1930s, the Depression, and Paramount was facing bankruptcy. However, Mae's box office draw almost single-handily (partial credit also goes to the Marx Brothers) saved the studio from complete collapse.

Aside from being an actress, Mae West wrote most of her own stuff and was proud of it. Director George Raft commented that "She stole everything but the cameras." In honor of her witty dialogue I have copied and pasted some of her more memorable one-liners here. Oh, may I only be this witty one day!

A dame that knows the ropes isn't likely to get tied up.

A hard man is good to find.

A man in the house is worth two in the street.

Anything worth doing is worth doing slowly.

Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before.

Cultivate your curves - they may be dangerous but they won't be avoided.

Every man I meet wants to protect me. I can't figure out what from.

He's the kind of man a woman would have to marry to get rid of.

I believe in censorship. I made a fortune out of it.

I believe that it's better to be looked over than it is to be overlooked.

I didn't discover curves; I only uncovered them.

I enjoyed the courtroom as just another stage but not so amusing as Broadway.

I never worry about diets. The only carrots that interest me are the number you get in a diamond.

I only have 'yes' men around me. Who needs 'no' men?

I only like two kinds of men, domestic and imported.

I'll try anything once, twice if I like it, three times to make sure.

I'm a woman of very few words, but lots of action.

I'm no model lady. A model's just an imitation of the real thing.

I've been in more laps than a napkin.

It's not the men in my life that count, it's the life in my men.

Those who are easily shocked should be shocked more often.

To err is human, but it feels divine.

Virtue has its own reward, but no sale at the box office.

When I'm good I'm very, very good, but when I'm bad, I'm better.

When women go wrong, men go right after them.

You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.

Eventually the Hollywood Production Code censors ran Mae out of town with their puritan ideals. However, she made a comeback at the age of 85 in a film called Sextette (1978). In it she sways and sasses a host of men including Ringo Starr, George Hamilton, Tony Curtis, Timothy Dalton, and Alice Cooper(!). May we all be as lucky as Mae one day!

Things I Love: "Female Agents"

I love Les Femmes de L'Ombre (Female Agents). I saw it at the Seattle International Film Festival several years ago and cried my way through the opening sequence; war films tend to get the better of me as I think about the real life death and destruction that they are based upon. However, this particular sequence made me tear up for completely different reasons - it was a series of still images from World War II showing women in uniform serving their countries. Yep, I cry when I see images of women in power. It is so unusual on celluloid that it brings out a lot of emotion in me. Strange, I know. But we all have the things that make us descend into waterworks without control.

In Female Agents Sophie Marceau plays Louise Defontaines. The character of Louise is based on the real life of Lisé Marie Jeanette de Baissac Villaneur, a French female agent in the French resistance during World War II. While the screenplay has been sauced up for dramatic effect, Lisé had a dramatic effect on the success of the resistance and Allies before the D-Day invasion. In the film she is the reason for Allied success at Normandy beach as she races with other female spies to keep information about the D-Day invasion a secret from the Germans. In the film she and her crew get to shoot machine guns (cool), blow up buildings (cooler), work in a team of women without getting catty (seriously, it is possible), and generally make the German commander on their tail miserable. At the same time, the women show compassion for one another and fear in the face of danger ultimately making the film a fabulous mix of action and true emotion. The film also stars Julie Depardieu, the daughter of Gérard Depardieu, so it passes the requirement that all French films are held to - that they contain at least one Depardieu.

Now, unlike Avatar, where women ultimately bow to the power that the white male main character has over them, the women in Female Agents do no such thing. When things get rough they band together. When things get even rougher they think of a new plan. There are men in the story, including Louise's brother Claude, but the women and men stand on equal ground and, ultimately, it is up to the women and just the women to save the day.

While I worry that even with my vagueness has given too many spoilers away, I know that not many of you in the U.S. will ever even see this movie. I am not trying to say there is some sort of conspiracy, but there is - Female Agents is only available on PAL (European format) DVDs. However, those of you with the ability to play PAL in the Seattle area (aka you have a computer with a DVD-ROM) can pick it up at Scarecrow video and watch it in all its glory. Its unavailability everywhere else does make me wonder why? why?! WHY! Why is it not available in the U.S.? Do distributors think we do not want war films based on real life events and people? There are so many of those - Saving Private Ryan, Schindler's List, Band of Brothers, The Great Escape, Pearl Harbor, The English Patient, Patton, etc. etc. Do distributors think that we do not want films that re-invision World War II? Can't be that - the masses turned out for Inglorious Basterds this past summer. Hey, but I see a trend in these films! They are all about men and their forays into the field during war. The women, at best, get to be strangled by psychopathic German officers who are based on real people, but most of the time they are just nurses. While nurses do play a vital part in wartime situations isn't it about time that we show images of women in combat gettin' it done. And not like Courage Under Fire where Meg Ryan fights and, just like so many films with women with any sort of agency in them, dies. I mean really gettin' it done. Like being in the mix and living to tell the tale, exerting their full emotional and physical power, and doin' it like we know we can. Seriously. Someone make this film.