Umbra Fisk is a character developed at Grist TV (and performed by Jennifer Prediger) who brings a surprising smile to a movement more familiar with a Green grimace. Her Ask Umbra videos appear often enough to remind us how to bike to work safely or enlighten us on growing food in your apartment. In her latest video, she describes how to make lube from flax seed. As she explains, personal lubricants are loaded with petrochemicals that one might otherwise find in brake fluid and antifreeze. The recipe is as quick and easy as her messages and welcome humor. Thanks Umbra for bringing on the Omega 3’s and helping us all avoid “Toxic Hoo-Ha Syndrome.”
I often hear women state that men would be uncomfortable if they overheard our discussion of menstruation. Many women work to keep men out of the menstruation conversation. But… surprise! Men are ready to participate. And very often, I hear men say that they want to learn more about menstruation. In studies by Jane Ussher and Jane Perz they found that women in lesbian relationships that are more egalitarian, empathetic and satisfying have different PMS experiences than women whose male partners misunderstand their PMS symptoms. That is partially because their lesbian partners understand the experiences of menstruation, even if they do not share the same symptoms. Imagine, straight ladies, if a male partner were also aware of your PMS symptoms through the information you impart? And that through this conversation and hopefully, through different behavior on his part, you could potentially change your PMS experience?
Or…what if he understands those symptoms through his own experience?! Last year, Angelique Smith, then a student at Marymount Manhattan College in a course called Social Construction and Images of Menstruation (co-taught by David Linton and myself) made MENstruation. This video was inspired by Gloria Steinem’s 1978 Ms. Magazine article “What if Men Could Menstruate?”. As Smith asks her participants Steinem’s question, “What if men could menstruate,” their answers reveal much about cross-gender consciousness. It screened as part of the Blood on Screen series at the Spokane SMCR conference. Continue reading...
The third film in the Blood on Screen series is Camille Holder Brown’s award winning A Period Piece (2005). I know of at least two other films and one sculptural artwork that use this title. Yet despite the ubiquitous pun, each work has an equally clever take on the cycle (other Period Piece films include a music video by Zeinabu Irene Davis (1991), a documentary by Jennifer Frame and Jay Rosenblatt (1995,) and this installation by LaThoriel Badenhausen which was presented at the SMCR Conference in 2009.)
Camille Holder-Brown’s piece of the cycle is a fictional film portraying the awkward experiences of Sionne, a girl about to begin menstruating. From her earthy sex-ed teacher who gushes about the beauty of the cycle, to her friends and classmates at different stages of menstrual acceptance, to her mother who warmly and carefully introduces her to menstruation, A Period Piece is filled with menses-positive imagery. But Sionne’s overriding fear and her association of menstruation with shame clouds most of the film. Continue reading...
Surprisingly this isn’t a post on Madonna, but another media artist interested in gender: Francois Ozon. His short film Truth or Dare (1994) welcomes us into the inner circle of four teenagers engaged in the game. As the two boys and two girls challenge each other with “Action” or “Verite” they address and trangress every taboo (sex between children, boys kissing boys, AIDS, girls fondling girls.) Yet one taboo will trump them all!
As with most of his work, Ozon manages to engage in taboo with sympathy and emotion. He crafts films that are intimate, inviting the viewer to imagine their own sexual transgression. Screenings of Truth or Dare make a room of viewers squirm and titter with delight as they partake in the pleasure of watching this naughty game. Menstrual activists may not know whether to cheer or boo at the end. That is, of course, Ozon’s wish.
Despite the shame of menstruation, feminist media makers have often turned to the cycle for inspiration. At the 2009 Spokane Society for Menstrual Cycle Research Conference, I curated a screening of short films on the menstrual cycle. Over the next few weeks I will blog about these films. From there, I’ll regularly review film works made on and about the cycle.
These works fascinate me as they diversely render menstruation. In the words of fellow SMCR blogger, Elizabeth Kissling from her book Capitalizing on the Curse, “There is no shortage of blood in US Mass Media: News broadcasts nightly reveal the blood of violent conflict; movies display gallons of simulated blood in simulated explosions and attacks… But menstrual blood is never seen and seldom mentioned; acknowledgment of the fact that women menstruate remains rare. Menstruation is our ‘dirty little secret.” These films put blood back on screen and re-imagine blood as non-violent. Despite visualizing blood, however, these films see menstruation diversely. There is no single essential menstrual experience when these films are viewed together.
The film program included works by celebrated experimental feminist filmmakers Zeinabu irene Davis (Cycles, 1989) and Barbara Hammer (Menses, 1974) as well as new pieces by upstart filmmakers Marina Shoupe (Bounce, 2007) and Angelique Smith (MENstruation, 2008). To see these films, you will need to contact the makers and I will include links to their sites when they have them. However, to begin this blog theme, I’ll tell you about one work that has a maker I have yet to identify, but which is readily available for viewing. And I will call the piece “Menstruation Animation” (though after the screening, everyone called it “Blob.”
If you type “menstruation” into You Tube, this video is first to appear. This is an animated play on the classic sex-ed films which relentlessly detail the release of the egg and its journey to the uterus. However, this egg squeals with fear as it travels. It clutches the uterine wall, begging not to go as a chorus of “blob”s begins. What strikes me are the male voices singing “Blob. Blob. Blob.” And their goatee-d visages! This short animates the body as a trans-gendered space, and the cycle as a trans-event. With humor. Not derision.
If you wish to have your film reviewed on the blog, please mail it to me on DVD or VHS to: Giovanna Chesler, Marymount Manhattan College, 221 E 71st Street, New York, NY 10021.
Readers should note that statements published in re: Cycling are those of individual authors and do not necessarily reflect the positions of the Society as a whole.
RSS 
