feminism
CD: Martha Tilston - Machines of Love and GraceWednesday, 24 October 2012
To the first-time listener of Martha Tilston’s work, the “folk” tag seems like a tremendous over-simplification. Right from its opening track, “Stags Bellow”, the songwriter experiments with novel percussion and call-and-response choruses to create... Read more... |
Girls, Sky AtlanticMonday, 22 October 2012
While it’s not unusual for an imported television show to have been downloaded, discussed and dissected at length long in advance of of its UK transmission date, HBO’s Girls is even harder than most to approach with an open mind. Depending on which... Read more... |
Wonderland: I Was Once a Beauty Queen, BBC TwoTuesday, 09 October 2012
Even now, as revelation after revelation about what really went on backstage at Television Centre in the 1970s play out in the tabloids, there seems something almost wholesome about the heyday of the televised beauty pageant. Compared to the daily... Read more... |
Hindle Wakes, Finborough Theatre/The Man on Her Mind, Charing Cross TheatreThursday, 20 September 2012
When Hindle Wakes opened in 1912 in London, the script was burned in the street. Stanley Houghton, a member of the Manchester School of playwrights, had exposed one of society's double standards: that it was fine for a man to have a guiltless fling... Read more... |
HysteriaMonday, 17 September 2012
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” It is a truth less universally acknowledged that a married woman in possession of a rich Victorian husband must be in want of a... Read more... |
Angela Carter: Inside the Bloody ChamberFriday, 24 August 2012
Eighteen months before her death from lung cancer at the age of 51, Angela Carter talked to Jenni Murray on Woman’s Hour. She had just edited The Virago Book of Fairy Tales (1990), a rich stew of stories – Eskimo, Swahili, Armenian – which she had... Read more... |
DVD: Separation/The Other Side of UnderneathTuesday, 14 August 2012
Although the collaboration between Jane Arden and Jack Bond was truly two-way, their films were wholly driven by a female perspective. They also evolved from Arden’s explorations into the nature of self and how external forces affect that. Yet... Read more... |
CD: Gaggle - From the Mouth of the CaveThursday, 21 June 2012
GAGGLE (n.): According to the Oxford Dictionary the collective noun for a flock of geese - or, less formally, a disorderly group of people - actually finds its root in the noise that a goose makes. It’s a fact that raises a smile as one attempts to... Read more... |
Bow Wow Wow, Islington AcademyTuesday, 01 May 2012
It’s hard to think of any other records as exuberantly hedonistic as the handful of singles this London band rattled off at the beginning of the 1980s. Yes, they were accompanied by the then necessary punk sneer which said, This is all strictly... Read more... |
BFI Southbank Preview: Made in BritainSaturday, 31 March 2012
If you’re game for a galling statistic, here’s one that’s guaranteed to stun: at present, only 14 per cent of British films released in the UK are directed by women. If that seems oddly as well as infuriatingly low, it’s probably because so many of... Read more... |
Charlie's Angels, E4Thursday, 01 December 2011
Those of a certain age have certain memories (very certain) of Farrah Fawcett-Majors, wife of the Bionic Man and not exactly unbionic herself, especially in that poster of her in the red one-piece with Seventies enormohair and fluorescent American... Read more... |
DVD: BridesmaidsFriday, 18 November 2011
Like a fist to the face of the traditionally insipid, female-fronted rom-com, Bridesmaids marks a departure from the oft-derided norm, not by being brassy or crude (OK, there might be a sizeable helping of the latter) but because of its authentic... Read more... |
