I’d planned to write this entry about Almanac of the Dead by Leslie Marmon Silko, but I’m currently lost somewhere around page 400 (of 763), in the desert amongst the cholla and mesquite, in a time out of time.
So instead I’ll be talking about The Moon Under Her Feet, by Clysta Kinstler. I read it for a course I’m taking — “Encounter With The Divine Femine” — and I’m quite sure I never would have picked it up otherwise, though I quite enjoyed it. It is a reimagining of the story of Jesus and, more importantly, Mary Magdalene. In this version, Magdalene is a formal title for the High Priestess of the Temple; the Hebrews worship YHVH and the Goddess* as a divine couple. This supreme Goddess is a blend of several different goddesses (or, the same goddess in different traditions), who are recognized as one. She is “the Mother, Inanna-Ishtar-Isis-Ashera” (264).
Kinster creates a fascinating blend of mythologies, putting the story of Jesus in its (likely) cultural context. It is very appropriate that we only read it now, in the last few weeks of the class — one needs a very solid grounding in Near Eastern goddess mythology to really understand the book, I think. The immaculate conception is a hieros gamos rite, and everything happens in terms of the Isis-Osiris/Inanna-Dumuzi legend. The inter-mythological connections are really imaginative and interesting. I think it would be very enjoyable for anyone with an interest Inanna/Lilith worship and lore, goddess worship more generally, the goddess within Judaism (see also!), feminist interpretations of Judaism and Christianity, and/or the way that power and politics tend to transfigure religion and history.
Now. Criticism.
She made the characters white. No, really, she did. Not Jesus — Yeshua — but everyone else, including Mary Magdalene, the other Jews, and many of the Romans. It’s not subtle, either. I’m talking “glorious . . . red hair” (8) and “blue, blue eyes” (14). This distracted and exasperated me to no end. I don’t understand why Kinstler would make that choice because quite frankly it’s fucking insane. It’s false, inaccurate, ridiculous, ethnocentric, racist, offensive. Native Middle Easterners look like Middle Easterners; Mediterranean people look Mediterranean. They do not look like they’re from Western Europe. What the hell.
This kind of whitewashing is always insulting, but it was especially bad in this case for two reasons. Firstly, she’s got a pretty far-out premise (that the Hebrews were polytheistic Goddess-worshipers, that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were not just lovers but an egalitarian ministry team) — it strikes me an extremely unwise to undermine her credibility in any way, given how far her ideas are from the mainstream. Kinstler has got to know that many of her readers are straining to even believe her setting. Why would she make that even harder, make the book any less tenable? If we can’t even trust her not to make these Semites into the English, why should we accept her other, far less common propositions?
Secondly, this book is, it seems to me, supposed to be about reclaiming truth from the oppressive power structure. It’s about putting women back were they belong (equal to men), putting the feminine back where it belongs (as part of the divine). Why do white feminists so frequently forget our comrades, people of color? Why did Kinstler feel the need to continue this bigoted, unacceptable tradition? Why did her editors at HarperCollins figure this was just fine?
Maybe for the same sort of reasons that the Christian hierarchy thought it was fine to make Mary Magdalene into a prostitute?
It’s really quite a lot like the situation with Jessica Valenti’s Full Frontal Feminism. From a feminist perspective, the book has many merits. Do those merits outweigh its failings? In both cases, I am not sure.
* I don’t think YHVH and the Goddess are mutually exclusive. That is, I don’t think worshiping the feminine requires either rejecting or adding to YHVH. Ideally, the unified Godhead (what YHVH is supposed to be, I think and was taught) isn’t some father-figure in the sky, but a much more complete, complicated abstraction.
If neither naked mole rats nor the failings of the gender binary have dissuaded you from removing your body hair with a razor, I recommend using this one (via Boing Boing Gadgets). The handle is 100% recycled plastic, most of it from Stonyfield Farm yogurt cups. You can buy replacement blades, and the hilt is completely recyclable — if your town doesn’t process #5 plastic, you can mail it back to the good folks at Recycline instead, postage paid. And speaking of paying, unlike many green options, this one is affordable — a four-pack costs $7.25.
Recycline makes some other great, completely recycled/recyclable products, including a toothbrush and tableware.
From Boing Boing, take a look at this Worth1000 photoshopping contest. The theme is “more than usual” — mostly eyes and fingers and limbs. The collection has got just the right balance between appealing and repulsive.
Billions of jellyfish in a dense school covering 10 square miles wiped out the entire population of more than 100,000 fish at Northern Ireland’s only salmon farm, the business owners said Wednesday.
Ten square miles!? Just try and visualize that for a second…
Managing Director John Russell said the Northern Salmon Co.’s dozen workers tried to rescue the salmon, worth about $2 million, but their three boats struggled for hours to push through the 35-foot-deep mass of jellyfish. All the salmon were dead or dying from stings and stress by the time the boats reached the two net pens last week, about a mile off the coast of the Glens of Antrim, he said.
… The species of jellyfish responsible, Pelagia nocticula — popularly known as the mauve stinger — is noted for its purplish nighttime glow and its propensity for terrorizing bathers in the warmer Mediterranean Sea. Until the last decade, the mauve stinger had rarely been spotted so far north in British or Irish waters, and scientists cite its presence as evidence of global warming.
See Grist for a more detailed explanation of the factors that most likely played a role in this aqua-drama.
It’s a rare occasion when I think the movie version of a book I’ve read looks as good as, if not better than, the original work itself. But after attending a pre-opening movie teaser of sorts with the film director Julian Schnabel and Lou Reed present (he worked closely with the director on the soundtrack–which really sounded excellent and matched the footage perfectly, from what I was able to witness), I long to see the movie even more than I remember enjoying the book (and I did enjoy it quite a lot).
The trailer:
The story is a memoir by Jean-Dominique Bauby, a successful magazine editor who suffered a massive stroke in his middle age and was paralyzed with locked-in syndrome. He could move only his left eyelid and, if I remember correctly, the only sensation he could feel was pain. A method of communication was developed by which his nurse would recite the alphabet; not in the usual order of letters but in the order of letters most frequently used in the French language, and Bauby would blink once when she spoke the letter he wished to use. She would then record his construction of sentences, letters to his family, and eventually, a book. He died ten days after the book was published.
Though I only got to see about ten minutes of the movie, I was completely absorbed in the aesthetic, which looked as beautiful and flowing and upsetting and sweet as the original work read. Happily, the movie is coming to theaters near me in just a few days. I doubt I’ll be disappointed and hopefully, if any of you see it, you won’t be either.
I’m a few days late in posting about this, but “better late than never” holds. The 16 day campaign began November 25th, International Day Against Violence Against Women, and will end on December 10th, International Human Rights Day. The dates were chosen specifically to emphasize that women’s rights are human rights and should be irrevocable.
The 16 Days Campaign has been used as an organizing strategy by individuals and groups around the world to call for the elimination of all forms of violence against women by:
raising awareness about gender-based violence as a human rights issue at the local, national, regional and international levels
strengthening local work around violence against women
establishing a clear link between local and international work to end violence against women
providing a forum in which organizers can develop and share new and effective strategies
demonstrating the solidarity of women around the world organizing against violence against women
creating tools to pressure governments to implement promises made to eliminate violence against women
Also and relatedly, via Feministing, check out Take Back the Tech, a project that involves the collection and online display of virtual postcards which visually express women’s reaction to gender violence in the vein of Post Secret.
Salon has a fun little round-up of a few of the questions that have been sent in for tomorrow’s CNN YouTube debate (this one is for the Republicans). My favorite one:
The woman who made it is hilarious/insane. Her channel is here. And below is another of her videos.
