Blog PostsStoneybrook Revisited: BSC #37-#40, Super Special #5

Posted on February 6, 2013 by Theresa Basile

#37 – Dawn and the Older Boy
This book is weird. It has a Very Important Message about Not Changing Yourself For a Boy and Being True to Yourself – a good message, don’t get me wrong, but it’s very awkwardly handled.

Basically, Dawn gets a huge crush on Travis, a California boy (of course, because individuals have to stick together!) who is in high school and friends with Kristy’s older brothers. Travis immediately becomes really interested in telling Dawn what to do – what clothes to wear, what to eat, how to wear her hair, and she swallows all of this hook, line, and sinker. But Travis is really committed to changing Dawn into someone he likes more. Like, he’ll show up to her house just to flirt with her and tell her she needs a haircut. He’s an unintentional parody of a controlling guy archetype, not a realistic one.

It’s all so contrived, and while I make fun of Dawn for her “I’m an individual!” pride, I don’t find it believable that she would so quickly, so easily, fall for a controlling person. This plot would’ve made more sense with Mary Anne or one of the sixth-grade babysitters.

And to make it even less believable, Travis turns out to be dating another girl behind Dawn’s back! This is all so silly. Either he’s a controlling fixer-upper or he’s vain and quasi-cheating, but both in the same person makes no sense! At least not in the very limited space they have to develop this non-character. So very silly.

Also contrived is the plot where James Hobart is bullied by his “friend” Zach to stop playing with girls and do boy things. Dawn reflects on James’s inability to see that Zach is using him. It’s an utterly contrived parallel between the main plot and the baby-sitting plot, and it also makes Dawn look like an asshole. She’s watching the Hobarts, Zach comes over and just starts making fun of James, and Dawn…does nothing. She does not tell Zach to leave, nor does she take the Hobart kids inside to get away from Zach’s bullying, nor does she refuse permission for James to go off with the kid who’s bullying and manipulating him. For once, I can’t really blame Dawn herself, though – it’s contrived writing. Dawn is not that bad of a babysitter.

Actually, Dawn has a neat moment, where she hates Zach’s new girlfriend on sight but then thinks, “Then I stopped and reminded myself that it wasn’t her fault she was gorgeous. And it wasn’t her fault that Travis liked her.” Way to go, Dawn! Good for you for not being a Nice Girl.

Stacey gets faint in the first chapter and sits on Claudia’s bed again. We’re still several books away from her diabetes emergency! Damn, they are committing to this foreshadowing.

Dawn thinks that being the alternate officer gives her the most “interesting” job in the club. Oh, honey. No.

#38 – Kristy’s Mystery Admirer
Otherwise entitled, “Kristy Thomas is So Gay.”

I can’t take it, people. It’s too funny. Kristy gets a lot of love notes in the mail that are totally gushy and cavity-inducing, but then they turn threatening and stalkery. It turns out the gushy notes are from Bart Taylor and the nasty ones are from Cokie Mason and her crew, who are still smarting from the BSC humiliating them in the graveyard. (Girls, that was like, twenty books ago. Get over it.)

But seriously, Kristy is SO GAY. She goes for a whole long paragraph about how Shannon isn’t gorgeous like Dawn or Claudia, or not even attractive like Stacey, but just interesting-looking like Meryl Streep (um, Kristy, Streep is gorgeous, what is wrong with you?) Despite her insistence that Shannon is just “interesting-looking” and not that gorgeous, I swear she spends more time describing Shannon’s appearance than any male character’s appearance. Denial much?

Then, THEN, when Shannon shows Kristy the love notes, they have the following exchange:

KRISTY: Why are there hearts and flowers all over the envelope? Stacey McGill is the only person I know who dots “Is” with hearts. Boys don’t do that. This looks like it’s from a girl.

SHANNON: A girl who wants to go steady with you? Kristy, grow up.

LOL FOREVER. My new favorite theory: Bart is Kristy’s beard, Kristy is a little attracted to Stacey, but is secretly really attracted to Shannon, and Shannon is jealous of her comments about Bart and Stacey. Kristy/Shannon forever! Shannon is super-protective of Kristy in this book, too, and ignores Bart like a bawse. Yup, that’s love.

Bart tells Kristy that she is “as beautiful as a snow-covered mountain.” Oh, gag me.

Charlotte, Haley, and Vanessa want to be the Three Stooges for Halloween. Aww, that’s kind of cute.

One of the creepy stalker notes: “Violets are blue, blood is red, I’ll remember you when you are dead.” OMG Cokie WTF is wrong with you?

BSC slang alert: this is the first time I’ve noticed that “distant” is used in place of “cool.” Sigh.

#39 – Poor Mallory!
Or, as it’s alternately called, Mallory’s Poor! (Full disclosure: I stole that joke from Tiff.)

So Mal’s dad loses his job and the Pikes are temporarily poor for like, a month. Except not really, because it turns out that Mr. Pike got a severance package after he was laid off. The other kids are annoyed with Mallory for worrying them. I’m annoyed that Mr. and Mrs. Pike never tell their kids about the severance package until after Mal gives them all of her babysitting money and the other Pike kids give their money to their parents as well.

Seriously, am I odd for finding something really wrong with this? That the Pikes take their kids’ money? If they were destitute, I’d understand the attitude of having everyone pitch in and contribute, even the wee ones, but again – Mr. Pike got a severance package, they’re not dirt poor, Mal’s pitiful babysitting funds aren’t going to help much, and he gets another job in like, a month. The Pikes are grifters, folks. Those poor children.

Anyway, there’s a big message in the book about how to recognize who your true friends are. And apparently “dibble” is short for “incredible,” while the opposite of “dibble” and “distant” is “stale!” Lord help us. This one is fairly silly, but about 50% less boring than the previous Mallory book, so at least it’s an improvement.

Super Special #5 – California Girls
The baby-sitters win the lottery (not the jackpot, but a smaller prize, because Dawn’s ticket has five out of the six correct numbers). They all decide to spend the money on a two-week trip to California and stay with Dawn’s dad. They make this choice before actually asking Dawn’s dad if he wants seven girls sleeping in his house, but luckily for them, he’s totally cool with it.

For once, a Super Special doesn’t have a stupid and contrived conceit where every BSC number is recording her experience as a gift to Stacey or Logan or whomever. The chapters are split up when the BSC numbers write postcards home to their friends and family back in Stoneybrook. Finally!

Now, this super special doesn’t have the drama and excitement of the island adventure book, except that Stacey almost gets killed in a car accident after she hangs out with a bunch of reckless older teenagers. This will not be the first time in the BSC series where Stacey gets into trouble for spending time with reckless people. She calls Dawn’s dad’s girlfriend Carol instead of Dawn’s dad, thinking that Carol won’t tell her parents, but Carol surprises them all by acting like a responsible adult. Even though Carol absolutely does the right thing, I can’t help but feel bad for Stacey. In all of her postcards home to her parents, she writes, “Don’t worry, I’m being careful.” She probably wanted to be a little reckless and do something exciting for once.

I am less sympathetic to Mallory, who decides to go California blonde and put wash-out dye in her hair (which makes no sense because she’d have to bleach it before putting wash-out dye in, but whatever). Then she mopes because she has no money. It’s all very whiny.

As for the other girls, Jessi gets a bit of the fame bug and a retread of her plot from Jessi and the Superbrat. Mary Anne befriends a little girl with asthma who is usually a client of the We Heart Kids Club because GOD FORBID someone goes on a trip without baby-sitting. Kristy feels competitive against the We Heart Kids Club because she’s a jerk. Claudia is saddled with yet another boring romance subplot, where her thirteen-year-old date likes to talk politics and take her to fancy French restaurants because YEAH RIGHT. And Dawn doesn’t like Carol, but then she does, sort of.

#40 – Claudia and the Middle School Mystery
Claudia works very very hard in her remedial math class. She studies with Janine. Then she manages to get an A- on her latest math test! Except the girl who sits next to her, Shawna Riverson, gets the exact same problems wrong in the exact same ways, and the teacher recognizes that someone must have cheated. And that someone is obviously Claudia.

This leads to a plot with drama! where the baby-sitters try to prove that Claudia is the victim. They even break into Shawna’s locker, and only after they find evidence does Claudia realize that said evidence would be inadmissible, since they procured evidence through illegal means. (Why am I talking in pseudo-legalse? I don’t know. Just go with it.)

Eventually, Janine talks to the middle school principal and convinces them to give Claudia another chance. She does a re-test and kicks ass on it, and when Shawna is cornered, she finally confesses to having cheated and lied.

It’s all very dramatic and a little silly, but because it’s Claudia, I was all, like, invested in the story and stuff. She tried so hard! Math and school is HARD for her and she studied with Janine! How dare the teacher accuse her of cheating! How dare Shawna lie! ARGH! YOU MUST PAY FOR WHAT YOU DID TO MY CLAUDIA!

She triumphs at the end, though, and all works out. Her name is cleared and she gets to enjoy her A-minus. Janine is pretty awesome in this book, too – helping Claudia, standing up for her little sister, believing her immediately even when her parents don’t. That’s good big-sistering, Janine!

This book also has a rare moment when I really hate Mary Anne – she thinks Claudia might have cheated. Everyone shoots daggers at her, and she bursts into tears. Now the baby-sitters have to comfort her for making her cry, even though she’s the jerk for not believing her friend. So manipulative. I briefly love Kristy when she interrupts the sobbing and is all, “Okay, M.A., enough of that.” I also like Dawn’s silly plan to break into the locker, even though it’s ridiculous, because for once she’s living up to her “individual” and against-the-grain reputation.

And Claudia goes to school dressed like Ms. Frizzle from The Magic School Bus. It makes no sense. I love it. It also reminded me of one of my favorite XKCD comics: http://xkcd.com/911/

This is my favorite regular BSC book with the word mystery in the title. Probably because, um…it’s not an actual mystery. They know who cheated. They just have to prove it.

That’s all for now. Next month I will take a break from Stoneybrook Revisited, because March is Women’s History Month and I’ll be focusing on that. For April’s BSC update, Mary Anne and Logan BREAK UP OMG, Jessi’s involved in another dumb mystery plot, Stacey has a DIABETES EMERGENCY, Dawn has a big sleepover, and the girls go to New York.

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Blog PostsImportant Announcement: I Have Revised My Opinion of Lena Dunham.

Posted on February 4, 2013 by Theresa Basile

In October, I wrote a post called “I Don’t Like Lena Dunham, and You Can’t Make Me,” in response to an obnoxious article on The Huffington Post that claimed that people who didn’t like Lena Dunham were jus jellus of her success.

Yet, despite my dislike of Lena Dunham and my ambivalence towards her show, I still watched the first two episodes of season two of Girls, because Girls has such a strong cultural presence that I feel obligated to watch it and keep tabs on the show’s storylines. (I also really like Shoshanna/Zosia Mamet.) I paid close attention to the scenes with Donald Glover as Sandy, Hannah’s temporary love interest.

Donald Glover’s character was supposed to be evidence that the show had resolved its race and diversity problem. Sandy was black, and also a Republican. (I waited for the show to make a joke about Sandy’s blackness and Republican-ness, and then I realized that Sandy being black and Republican was the joke.) At some point, Hannah picked a fight with Sandy, where she lectured him about the incarceration rates of American black men, quoted Missy Elliot and then pretended not to, and then asked him if he still wanted to have sex after their fight.

The scene was funny. Sandy criticized Hannah for her privilege and for dating a black guy as part of her self-absorbed hipster phase in life. When Hannah asked Sandy if he still wanted to have sex, I laughed out loud, because it was a gloriously naive and clueless question, and Lena Dunham’s line delivery was perfect.

Yet the scene still left a bad taste in my mouth. Sandy never came across as a real character to me, just a trope that can make white hipsters feel good about themselves (haha, he’s black BUT he’s a Republican, har dee har har). He was played by an engaging actor and genuinely funny human being (Donald Glover is Troy on Community and he wrote for 30 Rock, people!) but he wasn’t a character. He existed for only one reason: for Lena Dunham & co. to respond to criticisms that their show is racist. Sandy was more mature than the other twenty-something characters and he gave Hannah some brutal criticism of her racism, but he had no apparent flaws or even personality, despite being played by Donald Glover.

I watched this episode and planned to write a review of Girls, a review where I would say something along the lines of, “Nice try, but thanks for playing, Lena Dunham and company.” Because while this episode of Girls was far more self-aware of its flaws than other whitewashed, New York City-set shows like Friends, How I Met Your Mother, or Sex and the City, it still Didn’t Get It.

But before I could write that review, my copy of the latest Entertainment Weekly came in the mail, and lo and behold, Lena Dunham was on the cover. The magazine cover promised to tell us “how Lena Dunham became the voice of a generation.”

Then it finally hit me: my problem with Lena Dunham has little to do with Lena Dunham herself. My problem with Lena Dunham is really my problem with The Media.

On the very first episode of Girls, Hannah told her parents, “I’m the voice of a generation! Or of a generation…somewhere…” It was meant to be a joke, a sign that our protagonist is extraordinarily self-absorbed, convinced of her own importance to the world, and wildly misguided.

Yet The Media decided that Lena Dunham was declaring herself to be the voice of OUR generation. Girls was THE SHOW that portrayed twenty-somethings who live in Brooklyn.

I am a white twenty-something. I used to live not only in the same borough as the Girls characters, but in the same neighborhood. Several locations on Girls episodes are locations I recognize from personal experience.

Many people in the most hipster-ish section of Brooklyn are as self-absorbed as the characters on Girls. But many of them are not. Many of them work humiliating shifts for minimum wage in third-rate restaurants so they can afford to pursue their art in their free time. Many of them balance two jobs and side gigs to pay their rent and hope for a more rewarding future.

Sometimes they are selfish and narcissistic, but they have their good qualities. They can be politically conscious and reliable friends even while being pretentious.

The characters on Girls are not like this. They are selfish and narcissistic 95% of the time, and they are terrible friends to each other. Hannah doesn’t even know how to break down a cardboard box. They have no interest in working hard. When people compared Girls to Sex and the City, I said, “It’s not the same show. Most of the characters on Sex and the City had jobs.”

In short, Girls has a fairly negative opinion about twenty-somethings who live in New York. Girls portrays people in their twenties as entirely self-absorbed and whiny.

This stereotype of the lazy twenty-something does not sit well with me in a world where 50% of college graduates are unemployed or under-employed, where almost everyone in my peer group is working off debt and/or struggling to find a job, any job, even after working diligently through college and graduate school.

But maybe Lena Dunham isn’t trying to write a show about all twenty-somethings, or even most twenty-somethings. Maybe Lena Dunham is writing about a very specific group of people. Maybe her twenty-something characters are not obnoxious because she believes all twenty-somethings are obnoxious, but because she enjoys writing about the foibles of obnoxious people who happen to be in her age group.

And maybe the fact that The Media has anointed Lena Dunham as The Voice Of A Generation isn’t Lena Dunham’s fault at all, but another example of sexism in our society. Lena Dunham is a woman, and therefore she must be speaking for ALL women.

I still have issues with Girls, even aside from its white-centric self-absorption. I think we’re supposed to find the characters obnoxious and sympathetic in equal measure, and I can only manage an 80:20 obnoxious:sympathetic ratio (except with Shoshanna, who is just so endearing and silly, omg, I love her). Sometimes I think it’s very funny (the episode where they went to that terrible party in Bushwick), and other times I think it’s not nearly as smart as it wants to be (the episodes that dealt with Hannah’s handsy groping boss).

I also have mixed feelings about Dunham herself. I have issues with her comments about race and privilege, and I also admire her for challenging our society’s expectations about bodies and body image. I think she’s a pretty good writer who is not The Best Writer Ever.

But even though I still don’t love Girls the way I’m supposed to, I can no longer dislike Lena Dunham herself. She didn’t ask to be anointed as The Voice Of A Generation. The fact that The Media looks at Girls as a portrayal of “What Women Are Really Like” and “What Twenty-Somethings Are Really Like” is not Lena Dunham’s fault.

If The Media didn’t place such importance on Girls, Girls would just be another show that I sometimes enjoy and sometimes find annoying, a flawed program that has its good points and bad points.

Because I’ve read so much media on Girls, I can no longer separate the show from the commentary on the show. For me, the show is permanently tainted by association with The Media’s coverage. But Lena Dunham herself? She’s okay. She’s not a saint and she’s not a monster. She’s a human being and artist who deserves to be criticized for her flaws, but does not deserve to be criticized for falling short of our collective expectations for A Woman In Hollywood – because she’s not speaking for all of us, even if her show is called Girls.

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Blog PostsThis is a Conversation I Had On Facebook The Other Day.

Posted on January 25, 2013 by Theresa Basile

The second season of Girls began last week. I have not watched it yet, though I intend to, because as much as the show annoys me, there’s something about it that also intrigues me (and also I genuinely liked the episode where they all went to Bushwick for that awful party).

I also heard that Donald Glover was on the show, and apparently, according to reviews, this means that Girls has solved ALL of its diversity problems and now the writers should be given a Congratulations for Not Being Racist (Anymore) medal.

I posted this status update on my Facebook page: “The only thing more smug than the show Girls is the horde of people who tell you you clearly don’t GET the show Girls if you don’t like it.”

And then this conversation ensued with a friend of mine, who is black, male, and also a former classmate of Lena Dunham’s. Conversation re-published with his consent.

Him: THAT’S THE POINT THEY ARE CLEARLY AWARE OF EVERYTHING YOU THINK SO THEY’RE AHEAD OF YOUR THOUGHTS.

Me: THEY ARE THE THOUGHT POLICE.

Him: BUT THE PEOPLE WHO MAKE GIRLS UNDERSTAND EVERYTHING THE CHARACTERS ARE INSUFFERABLE BECAUSE THEY ARE REAL, THEY ARE SO REAL, THEY ARE THE REALEST.

Me: Every woman in her twenties I know steals from housekeeping and has nothing interesting to say about anything ever! And every man in his twenties I know is a borderline misogynist creep!

Him: It’s so real. You don’t even. You don’t even. So real.

Me: Realer than ACTUAL REAL LIFE. Also, did you know Donald Glover is on this season as a black Republican? Black Republicans are *edgy.*

Him: I did know. And he was meta because he called Hannah out on her shit and people were like SEE NOW NO MORE CRITICISM EVER.

Me: “But what about the fact that the show’s about women and we still don’t have any women of color” “LA LA WE CAN’T HEAR YOU DONALD GLOVER BLACK REPUBLICAN YOU LIKE COMMUNITY SO SHUT IT.”

And that was basically it.

I have not yet watched the beginning of the second season of Girls, and I don’t know how the conversation between Hannah and Sandy went down. Maybe it really was an enlightening, interesting conversation about race.

But on a surface level, I fail to see how casting Donald Glover to play a temporary love interest of Hannah’s is any different from 2 Broke Girls hiring a Hot Asian Guy to play a temporary love interest of Caroline’s.

“We’re getting criticized for lack of diversity and/or stereotyping – quick, let’s throw in a POC love interest for our female lead to bone! That solves everything!”

I think Sex and the City had a similar plot once, where Samantha dated a black guy, and it was all about how reverse-racist the black guy’s sister was on not wanting her brother to date a woman. And from what I’ve heard, the black character on Girls is almost immediately called out on his Republicanism and therefore intolerance of gay marriage.

I’ll withhold judgment of the Girls scenes until I watch them myself, but my gut reaction is to say that the very idea of a black Republican is not as inherently funny as people seem to think it is. And also, if your show has been criticized for its lack of meaningful diversity, and the very first character to be called out on his bigotry is also the first person of color with anything close to a meaningful role, then I have to say that UR DOIN DIVERSITY WRONG.

Okay, so that’s not withholding judgment at all. Tell you what: when I do watch the episode, I’ll give an honest critique of it.

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Blog PostsLady T Recommends “Help Rebuild La Newyorkina’s Kitchen”

Posted on January 23, 2013 by Theresa Basile

Hurricane Sandy hit shore almost three months ago, and it devastated homes, business, and lives. New York and New Jersey in particular are still hurting from the effects of the storm.

Therefore, my donation recommendation for the month of January is not another artistic endeavor (though those are certainly worthy causes). My donation recommendation is a business that is struggling to rebuild itself after the devastating storm. I recommend donating to La Newyorkina’s Kitchen so they can rebuild their business. (The link is here.)

What is La Newyorkina’s Kitchen? Here is a description from the Kickstarter link:

“La Newyorkina is my dream of sharing the sweet flavors of my native Mexico thru delicious all natural Ice Pops, or as they’re called in Mexico, Paletas.

I began this journey making Paletas and selling them at the Hester Street Fair, which also opened in the summer 2010.   I started with these delicious Mexican Ice pops because they represent the traditional frozen treats of Mexico. Every little town has at least one paletería (paleta shops) and to us Mexicans, paletas are like gelatos to Italians, a delicious and integral part of our culture.”

In other words, if you donate to La Newyorkina’s Kitchen, you won’t just be supporting someone’s livelihood. You’ll be supporting ice pops. Are you convinced yet of the worthiness of this cause? You should be.

La Newyorkina’s Kitchen needs a Paletera to keep running. A Paletera is the machine they use to make the delicious, fruity, melt-on-your-tongue ice pops.

La Newyorkina’s Kitchen has received $3,365 of their $20,000 goal, and they have 27 days left. Please consider donating to their worthy cause. Or, if you can’t, please consider passing their information to a friend so that person can donate money. Let’s help this business rebuild and regain their footing after such a terrible storm.

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ReviewsBtVS and Consent Issues: Episode 6.19 – “Seeing Red”

Posted on January 21, 2013 by Theresa Basile

[Note: I’m writing a series about consent issues in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I will post a new entry in this series every month. In this series, I will look at an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer that deals with rape, sexual assault, or consent issues as a main plot point or as a featured event of the episode. I will examine these episodes in chronological order. If, in my writing of this series, you feel that I have skipped an episode that should be a part of this series, feel free to submit a guest post, and I will consider publishing it.]

EPISODE: “Seeing Red”
INCIDENT: Attempted rape
PERPETRATOR: Spike
VICTIM: Buffy Summers

The specifics: This episode takes place shortly after Buffy officially ended her sexual relationship with Spike, and Spike and Anya had drunk rebound sex. Dawn comes to visit Spike in his crypt and implies that Spike hurt Buffy by sleeping with Anya. In the meantime, Buffy gets injured in a fight with a vampire and hurts her back. She draws a bath and Spike comes in to talk to her, apologizing for what he did with Anya. Spike tells her that he’s been in a lot of pain and she should’ve let Xander kill him. Buffy tells him she couldn’t do that, and Spike assumes it’s because Buffy loves him and won’t admit it to herself. He goes over to her and pleads with her to love him, and when he gets physical with her, she hits her back on the tub and seems to exacerbate her injury. He holds her down on the floor and the pleading turns into an expression of anger as he pulls at her shirt and says, “I’m going to make you feel it.” She finally kicks him off of her and sends him flying across the room. Spike looks shocked at what he almost did, and Buffy yells, “Ask me again why I could never love you!”

The mind of the perpetrator: Spike visits Buffy because he feels guilty about sleeping with Anya. He doesn’t go into her bathroom because he expects to have sex with her. When he believes that Buffy loves him, though, he becomes obsessed with trying to make her admit that she loves him, and thinks that if he’s “inside” her again, she’ll admit to loving him. He’s instantly regretful when she kicks him off of her, and tries to apologize.

The victim’s perspective: Buffy just wants to take a goddamn bath and Spike decides that then is the perfect time to talk to her. She admits to having feelings for him but won’t call it “love.” When he holds her down on the floor, she’s crying and begging for him to stop. Any trust she had in him is broken.

What does this episode say about misogyny and rape culture?

*takes off eyeglasses, Giles-style, polishes glasses, puts them back on, sighs, pours brandy because this might take awhile*

First of all, the very most offensive thing about this triggering and upsetting episode is the fact that the writers and producers decided to put a commercial break in the middle of the attempted rape scene. Spike hold Buffy down, his eyes wild, and then there are a few minutes of ads. “WILL Buffy be raped by her ex-lover? Find out after a word from our sponsor, Acuvue 2 contact lenses!”

Given that, it’s not surprising that this episode manages to be pretty uh, NOT GOOD in its handling of sexual assault.

Spike’s crime, for example, is portrayed as an act of desperation. He becomes desperate to make Buffy admit that she loves him, and seems to “come to his senses” once she finally kicks him across the room. In other words, his attempted rape of Buffy is portrayed as a crime of unrestrained sexual passion. He has no intention of hurting her, but when in the presence of the woman he loves, he…wait for it…can’t seem to help himself.

I don’t need to explain why that’s a dangerous message, right? Good.

Then we have the issue of Buffy’s injury. Buffy hurting her back before the attempted rape makes me uncomfortable. I feel like the writers put the injury in place because they needed an excuse for Buffy to not kick Spike off of her immediately. They wanted their drawn-out attempted rape scene, and they thought it would be unrealistic for Buffy to NOT fight back more quickly if she were at her full strength. This squicks me out. If the writers wanted to show Spike crossing the line and violating her consent, I think they could have done it without having a protracted scene without a weakened Buffy unable to fight back right away.

I also think that “Seeing Red” taints Buffy and Spike’s relationship. Their dynamic was always a little – okay, a lot – unhealthy, but their kinkier acts – public sex, using handcuffs, some BDSM-y moments – were fun to watch. Buffy the Vampire Slayer would often show the “good guys” having rather vanilla sex, while the “bad guys” (Spike/Drusilla, Angel/Drusilla) would get it on with the kinkier stuff. Buffy and Spike were the first example of a “good guy” and a semi-good guy getting a little kinky, where at least one person was in love with the other, and it was refreshing to see that the more adventurous sex wasn’t reserved for the villains on the show. Maybe I’m reading too much into this, but this attempted rape almost seems like a cosmic punishment for Buffy exploring a more adventurous side to her sexuality – “If you do some kinky stuff with a guy, he’s going to try to rape you later!”

One thing I can say for “Seeing Red” is that Spike’s act is at least portrayed to be wrong. It’s not glossed over like other murky consent issues presented in Buffy the Vampire Slayer thus far. But we’re meant to feel equal sympathy for Spike and Buffy, and that’s not cool, because Buffy didn’t try to rape anybody.

Finally, we come to the issue of why. Why did the writers include a scene where Spike tried to rape Buffy?

The reason was simple. The Buffy team had decided that they wanted Spike to earn his soul – not be cursed with it like Angel was, but to actively pursue it – and they needed an inciting incident for his character. They needed for Spike to do something horrible, so horrible that he would hate himself for it and want to make sure that he would never do it again.

Hence, Spike tries to rape the woman he loves.

I have to admit that, from a storytelling perspective, this choice makes a strange sort of sense. There’s not much else Spike could do, at that point in his character’s journey, that would prompt him to seek out a soul. At that point, Spike’s sense of morality is still very small. He’s in love with Buffy and he has some affection for Dawn, but he’s ambivalent about the other Scoobs and doesn’t think much about humanity and life. He doesn’t concern himself with questions like, “What is the good and moral thing to do?” He concerns himself with questions like, “What can I do that will make Buffy love me?” His love for her is intense and strong, but selfish and self-centered.

I read a suggestion that Spike should have tried to turn Buffy into a vampire instead of trying to rape her. An attempted vamping would have kept the violation of consent within the rules of the genre, so I can see why that idea is appealing. It’s hard to argue that an attempted vamping has troubling real-life implications. Still, the plot device doesn’t entirely work, because I don’t think Spike ever wanted Buffy to be a vampire. He talked a lot about wanting her to “be in the dark, with me,” but I don’t think he wanted her to be a vampire. From a characterization standpoint, an attempted vamping wouldn’t make sense.

There’s only one other thing that I can see working as an inciting incident to provoke Spike into seeking his soul, and that’s if Spike had tried to kill Dawn. And I don’t think Spike would do that. For one thing, he couldn’t do it at the time, because he had the chip in his head, and Buffy was the only human being he could physically harm. I also think he has too much affection for Dawn to do that.

So, the writers use rape as a plot point, to set the (attempted rapist) male character on his journey to become a better person. We see more of Spike’s reaction to the attempted rape than we do Buffy’s. That is A Problem.

What makes it worse is the scene between Spike and Clem shortly after the attempted rape, where he feels momentarily guilty, then questions why he feels guilty, then curses Buffy for turning him into a person who feels guilt about trying to rape someone, and then leaves town making threatening messages to Buffy under his breath.

This is all in the pursuit of MISDIRECTION. The writers wanted us to think Spike was leaving town to get his chip removed, so they could have a surprise twist ending cliffhanger at the end of the season where whoa, Spike got his SOUL instead.

For the sake of misdirection, we had to watch three episodes where Spike shows anger and bitterness towards the woman he tried to rape.

That was an extraordinarily bad idea, and the second-most offensive thing about the attempted rape storyline (the first being the commercial break in the middle of the scene). After all that, we were still expected to sympathize with Spike and root for his redemption.

As a matter of fact, I did root for Spike in season seven, and I even rooted for him and Buffy together, but not until the second time I watched the season through, several years later. The first time I watched the seventh season, I couldn’t reconcile the attempted rape and the writers’ handling of it with the redemption story they were trying to tell.

Back when “Seeing Red” first aired, I was impressed with the writers for their attempt at a “brave” storyline, but now, I don’t see anything remotely brave or interesting about reinforcing a stereotype about rape being a “crime of passion.” I don’t think the misdirection was worth it, especially since everyone and her mother saw the “twist ending” coming from miles away, and if the writers really wanted to make Spike seek his soul, they should’ve given him a different motivation. (I can’t think of a good one right now, but heck, I wasn’t paid to write for the show, was I?)

As for why I liked the Buffy/Spike relationship in season seven despite the events of “Seeing Red”…well, I’ll save that for another post.

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Blog PostsEveryone is Hitler, apparently.

Posted on January 18, 2013 by Theresa Basile

This week, I’ve written two posts about how some people think that Kathryn Bigelow is like Leni Riefenstahl, and why that comparison upsets me.

On the other hand, maybe Bigelow got off easy. At least she’s not being compared to Hitler himself.

Lately, gun-rights buttheads (phrase chosen to distinguish between them and the not-jerky responsible gun owners) have been comparing the president to Hitler, because apparently Hitler did something with gun control and yada yada yada.

Salon.com pointed out that this assertion was, uh, more than a little bogus. But to be fair, he’s not the only one who has been compared to Hitler. Bush got compared to Hitler when he was president, too.

The latest Obama issue, however, got more attention on my friend’s Facebook timeline, because Obama is the most recent (though not only) U.S. president who was compared to Hitler. A friend-of-friend pointed out that one of Hitler’s first acts was to be a union-buster, and that’s why Hitler comparisons from both sides of the aisle are, shall we say, less than helpful.

Then the conversation got silly and everyone started talking about he or she was also like Hitler.

“I’m obsessed with sports. I AM ALSO LIKE HITLER.”

“I can’t draw. I AM ALSO LIKE HITLER.”

“I am a homo sapien. I AM ALSO LIKE HITLER.” <– My contribution

Now I invite you readers to participate. In which way are you like Hitler?

I mean, if special interest groups are going to break Godwin’s Law over and over again, we might as well join in and have a little fun. Write in the comments and tell us how you are like Hitler!

 

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Blog Posts“Zero Dark Thirty” and a Liberal Struggle

Posted on January 16, 2013 by Theresa Basile

We progressives and liberals have a complicated relationship with the war on terror. We’re against the war(s), but we want to support the troops. We wanted bin Laden dead, but we didn’t like some of the methods the CIA used to try to get information about where he was hiding. We want more women involved in the military and government even though we don’t like the war(s) very much.

These conflicts, I believe, are behind the mass outcry and backlash against Kathryn Bigelow’s acclaimed Oscar-nominated film, Zero Dark Thirty.

We’re against the war but we support the troops. One of the first characters we meet is Jason Clarke’s Dan, a CIA operative. We know that his character is a torturer because we’ve seen the trailers with him calmly threatening a detainee with torture. We go into the film expecting to see a dark, disturbed character.

Except Dan is not a mustache-twirling villain who gets off on torturing his victims. He’s straightforward and methodical in his actions and his words.

“Oh, he’s methodical – that must means he’s become so cold and inured to what he’s doing that he’s incapable of any human emotion anymore.” Nope, not exactly. Dan is a good colleague to Jessica Chastain’s Maya and respectful of her abilities, and he remains a helpful colleague to her for eight years.

“Oh, well, then…he must be a good guy deep down who’s being forced to do horrible things by the big bad government and Army. He feels morally conflicted about his role as a torturer!” Well, no. Not really. After a few years of fulfilling his assigned role as torturer, he doesn’t want to do it anymore. He wants to return to D.C. and get a job away from the place where he tortured people. But he wants to leave because he can’t take what torturing people is doing to him. He never expresses remorse or concern over his victims.

Dan, then, is a person who commits horrible, violent human rights violations, but also seems an okay guy to get a beer with after work, and a reliable colleague and sort-of friend.

We can’t handle that. We can handle an evil villain who commits torture, or a cold-hearted robotic person who commits torture, or a man who commits torture but feels really bad about it, but we cannot comprehend someone who seems like an otherwise decent guy except for the horrible human rights atrocities.

Thus, we say that the movie is pro-torture, because clearly the filmmaker is saying that if an otherwise decent guy like Dan has no moral problem with torture, than neither should the audience.

We want more women involved in the military and government even though we don’t like wars. Maya is a CIA agent who witnesses detainee torture early in the film. At first, she turns away and seems ill at the sight of watching her colleague torture another person. But when left alone with him and the victim begs for help, she responds, “You can help yourself by being truthful.”

Maya proves several times over that she is not morally opposed to torture. She uses it herself several times in the film, even without Dan’s help. She rolls her eyes along with the other CIA operatives when they watch a video of President Obama condemning the use of torture.

We want more women in the government and military because we believe in equal rights, but perhaps there’s a part of us that believes that the inclusion of women will make the government and military more humane, that women’s supposedly superior moral courage will make the CIA a kinder place.

Maya, however, is not especially kind, and she even says that she wanted to drop a bomb on bin Laden’s hiding place instead of sending in the SEALs to take him out individually.

What are we to make of Maya? Well, we want to see more women in important government positions, and we’re also told that everyone wants to see more Strong Female Characters in the media. Maya is a Strong Female Character who has a government position.

Thus, we say that the movie is pro-torture, because Maya is a Strong Female Character in a film directed by a Strong Woman, in a role of power, and she is not especially against torture. If Maya is an SFC, then her position on torture must also be the director’s, right?

We hate the war on terror and torture but we were happy when bin Laden was assassinated. Few people will say that the assassination of bin Laden was a bad thing. Even liberals with the most bleeding hearts felt a sense of catharsis and relief when the news broke that he was killed.

But we don’t like the idea that torture played a role in the search for bin Laden. It’s not a pleasant thought, that our country committed human rights atrocities in the hunt for this horrible man.

Zero Dark Thirty indicates that torture played a role in finding the right information that led to successful killing of bin Laden, a notion that has been disputed. I am not a foreign policy expert and cannot say how true these claims are. Were I to base my understanding of foreign policy entirely on this movie, I would believe that a combination of torture and mind-fucking/lying led to the real-life version of Maya learning of bin Laden’s courier – BUT, because the information about the courier’s family turned out to have been in an old CIA file all along, that torture was not the only or best way they could have found this intel.

It’s also quite telling that Dan, who committed most of this torture, is the least convinced by Maya’s theory about the location of bin Laden. The CIA agents who were removed from the detainee interrogations say that they’re 80% to 90% sure, while Dan puts it as a “soft 60%.”

Anyway, to say that Zero Dark Thirty hints that torture led to some key information into catching bin Laden is true. What people don’t often say is that the killing of bin Laden is not, in any way, presented as a victory or moment of glory.

The scene is tense, cold, and brutal when the SEALs raid the compound. They kill fathers and some mothers in front of their children, and then try to hush the children by offering the perfunctory, “It’s okay. You’ll be okay.” When they actually kill bin Laden, no one cheers or even expresses much relief. They swiftly move onto the next task of removing the body, loading the plane, and grabbing enough files as they can before their helicopter leaves.

Maya herself is almost frozen after she sees bin Laden’s body. The moment of catharsis and relief that she expects in a task well done never comes. She seems stunned, almost zombie-like, and only when she sits on a plane by herself does she start to cry.

Even the bleeding-heartiest of us believe that bin Laden’s death is a victory. We still remember 9/11, and we remember that part of us that felt relief when we heard the news on May 2, 2011. Therefore, if the film is saying that torture led to a victory, then the film is endorsing torture, and we ignore that the film does not portray the assassination as a victory at all, but something that leaves our protagonist feeling hollow.

When I saw Zero Dark Thirty, I wanted to watch the torture scenes peeking through my fingers, but I forced myself to sit through it all, in spite and because of the fact that it was extremely difficult to watch. I thought it was important for me to watch a depiction of a human rights atrocity that people in my country committed, that I may have tacitly endorsed as an American citizen, even though my heart believes and knows that torture is wrong.

I have seen my fair share of violent war movies in my lifetime, and I have never seen a less glamorized portrayal of violence than what was depicted in Zero Dark Thirty. There is nothing about the direction or the writing of the scene that allows us to enjoy watching what happens to Dan’s victim, Ammar. In fact, by beginning the film with audio recordings from 9/11 victims, and following it up with the interrogation of Ammar, Kathryn Bigelow has us relive the horror we felt on 9/11, and then immediately puts us in the strange position of feeling pity for a man who’s supposed to be our enemy.

Many people left the theater during the interrogation scene. I don’t blame them. It was difficult to watch. I saw the waterboarding and thought, “If anyone comes into this movie thinking that waterboarding isn’t torture, they’ll feel completely differently walking out of the theater.”

Imagine my surprise to learn that Bigelow apparently made a pro-torture movie that compares to Triumph of the Will in its propaganda.

I’m not someone who likes to make huge generalizations. This is a complicated film and reactions to the text are going to be different. When people say that they think the portrayal of the effectiveness of torture is problematic, and that the film has factual inaccuracies, I understand and appreciate that point of view – and even sometimes defer to that point of view, when that person has a better understanding of history and foreign policy than I do.

But when people compare Bigelow to a Nazi propagandist and claim that her film is an infomercial that glorifies the CIA and advertises torture as a something wonderful…no. Absolutely not. You are sent straight to jail, you do not pass go, and you do not collect $200.

Zero Dark Thirty is a movie that challenges our assumptions about our government, about women, and about the war on terror. What a shame that its reputation is being dragged through the mud by people who cling stubbornly to those assumptions and refuse to see what the film is actually saying.

[Recommended reading: ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ and the Emptiness of the War on Terror, by Alyssa Rosenberg at Thinkprogress.org.]

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Blog PostsWhat Does Jessica Chastain’s Beauty Have to Do With It?

Posted on January 14, 2013 by Theresa Basile

David Clennon does not want you to vote for Zero Dark Thirty for any single Academy Award.

Who is David Clennon, you might ask? An actor and activist who is a voting member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He does not want you – and by “you,” I mean other members of the Academy – to vote for Zero Dark Thirty in the five categories which the film was nominated. He does not want anyone to vote for Zero Dark Thirty in the Best Picture, Actress, Original Screenplay, Film Editing, or Sound Editing categories.

He does not want anyone to do this because he believes Zero Dark Thirty promotes torture. He also believes that Jessica Chastain should not be rewarded for her performance in the film because actors have moral obligations to choose their projects well. He writes on truth-out.org:

“Everyone who contributes skill and energy to a motion picture – including actors – shares responsibility for the impressions the picture makes and the ideas it expresses. If I had played the role that was offered to me on Fox’s 24 (Season 7), I would have been guilty of promoting torture, and I couldn’t have evaded my own responsibility by blaming the writers and directors. So Jessica Chastain won’t get my vote for Best Actress. With her beauty and her tough-but-vulnerable posturing, she almost succeeds in making extreme brutality look weirdly heroic.”

There are many things about this piece that are reactionary and completely misinterpret the point of Bigelow’s complicated film, and many things about the extreme backlash to Zero Dark Thirty that are ill-considered. I plan to address these issues later this week.

For now, I have only one question: what does Jessica Chastain’s beauty have to do with it?

Clennon mentions Chastain’s beauty later in the piece as well:

“Later, the female interrogator (and Zero’s heroine Maya [Chastain]), supervises the beating and near-drowning (aka waterboarding) of another detainee, Faraj; he gasps for air, gags, shudders and chokes; director Kathryn Bigelow then shows Chastain in a clean, well-lighted restroom, looking pretty, but tired and frustrated; Bigelow does not give us a view of Faraj after his ordeal.”

Again, I ask the question: what does Jessica Chastain’s beauty have to do with it?

It seems strange to me that her looks are mentioned twice in an article that has a count of fewer than 600 words.

Clennon isn’t the only one who uses that adjective in describing Chastain’s character. Marjorie Cohn’s piece at The Huffington Post also calls Maya the “beautiful heroine” – a beautiful heroine who says that she’s “fine” in response to watching a detainee get tortured:

“Torture is also illegal and immoral — important points that are ignored in Zero Dark Thirty. After witnessing the savage beating of a detainee at the beginning of the film, the beautiful heroine ‘Maya’ says ‘I’m fine.'”

One more time: what does Jessica Chastain’s beauty have to do with it?

I don’t think Jessica Chastain’s physical attractiveness is remotely relevant to the film’s stance on torture, but apparently, these writers do. They link her beauty with her supposed heroism. Clenon does this most blatantly by stating that Chastain’s beauty, combined with her tough-yet-vulnerable personality, almost makes torture seem heroic.

It seems to me that these writers, Clenon particular, has swallowed the Beauty Equals Goodness trope hook, line, and sinker. At the very least, they’ve been conditioned to believe that “beautiful woman = heroic woman” in a Hollywood movie, that Chastain’s beauty is the director’s way of telling the audience that we’re supposed to see her as the moral center of the film.

This is a sign, to me, that much of the criticism surrounding Zero Dark Thirty has roots in a very latent, subtle form of sexism. Jessica Chastain is a beautiful woman, and therefore her character must be the moral center of the film, a spokesperson for both the film’s message and the director’s beliefs. Beautiful women only exist in mainstream film to be rescued, to be prizes for the male characters, or to be the film’s moral center. Maya does not need to be rescued and is no prize for a male lead (because there isn’t one), so therefore she’s the moral center, and omg this movie supports torture!

Am I reaching with this theory? Perhaps. But I can’t help notice that, even though Clenon cautions the Academy to avoid awarding any Oscars to Zero Dark Thirty, Chastain and Bigelow are the only two people he mentions by name. He never once mentions the name of Mark Boal, the screenwriter who penned those torture scenes he found so offensive and morally wrong. He never says “the screenwriter,” period. All of the attention is on either Chastain or Bigelow, not writer.

He mentions that when he was choosing parts, it would have been unfair of him as an actor to put all the blame on the director and writers for their material. Yet in his article on Zero Dark Thirty, he does put some blame on the director – yet not the writer.

It doesn’t take a genius to play “one of these things is not like the other” with Jessica Chastain, Kathryn Bigelow, and Mark Boal. Anyone with a background of watching Sesame Street can guess why Boal’s name was left out of this plea to other members of the Academy, why the screenwriter let completely off of the hook.

Bigelow, on the other hand, is apparently no better than Leni Riefenstahl.

Bigelow, like Chastain, is also an attractive woman. So attractive that prominent writers (or writers who were once prominent ages ago) believe that she only receives acclaim because of her physical beauty.

It appears that when women step out of their designated roles to be moral centers of a story, they are no better than Nazi propagandists.

When beauty fails to equal goodness, Beauty is Bad.

Interestingly enough, Jason Clarke, the actor who plays the torturer CIA agent Dan in Zero Dark Thirty, is a handsome man. I never assumed that I was meant to find his actions morally correct, or view him as a moral authority, because he was handsome.

I also never assumed that I was meant to find his actions morally correct, or view him as a moral authority, because he was a man.

It’s a shame that Bigelow didn’t cast an ugly woman or a man in the lead role of Maya. Then the audience would have known right away that the protagonist was not necessarily meant to be a hero, and this confusion over the film’s stance on torture would never have occurred.

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InterviewsRebellion Through Collaboration and Flawed Female Characters: An Interview With Cristina Henriquez and Samantha Shane

Posted on January 11, 2013 by Theresa Basile

When Cristina Henriquez and Samantha Shane browsed the shelves of the Drama Book Shop in midtown Manhattan, searching for a play to inspire them, they weren’t sure what they would find. They only knew that they wanted to perform something meaningful, something that spoke to them as up-and-coming artists in an inspiring and competitive city where many other actors were pursuing a similar dream.

The text they chose was Neil LaBute’s The Shape of Things, a play that was first staged in 2001 and adapted into a film in 2003 starring its original cast. The play tells the story of a young college student who meets and falls in love with an artistic woman who inspires him to change his life, to the delight – and later, chagrin – of his friends. The young, ambitious characters spoke to Henriquez and Shane as artists attempting to create opportunities for themselves, and the female characters in particular impressed both women with their depth and development over the course of the play.

Shane expressed excitement in performing the role of Evelyn, the character she describes as the “explosion” in the play: “She arrives in the other characters’ lives, and they become unraveled. What drew me to the character was her confidence. She’s portrayed as calculated in her actions, but I see a vulnerability about her, and I’m discovering what drives her to be so meticulous. I find that fascinating.”

Henriquez has a different challenge as the quiet, reflective Jenny – almost a polar opposite of Shane’s Evelyn. She appreciates the opportunity to play a character different from herself. “I’m still discovering her character. She’s very different from who I am, which is very interesting as an actor. She’s the observer who stays out of the conflict, but she’s just as affected by everything that’s going on.”

As described by Shane and Henriquez, Evelyn and Jenny are two flawed, interesting female characters with complex layers and histories. Unsurprisingly, they balked at the suggestion that playwright LaBute has a misogynistic agenda in the play. A poster in the comments section of an interview they did with Carey Purcell from The Huffington Post claimed that Neil LaBute “hates women,” an assertion that neither Shane nor Henriquez support.

“I think broad statements of that sort have little credibility,” Shane said. “His work shows the darker side of humanity. It just so happens that some of those characters with dark sides are women.”

“I also think people sometimes expect plays to represent too much, that they expect one play to be representative of all ideas,” Henriquez added.

Both women agreed that Neil LaBute is a provocateur who enjoys exploring complex layers in his characters. Based on their current production and the name of their theatre company, one can easily see why Shane and Henriquez would find those qualities appealing.

Shane and Henriquez first met while studying acting at the William Esper Studio in Manhattan, learning the Meisner technique and forming a friendship that lasted past graduation. During their periods of downtime at their job waiting tables, they eventually came up with a name for themselves, partly inspired by their love for Joan Jett and rock music. A Red Lipped Rebellion was the result of several discussions. As Shane put it, “It felt like a band name – we were a theater rock and roll band that didn’t play any music.”

Over time, the theater rock and roll band that didn’t play music developed into a theatre company that did produce a play – a production entirely arranged and promoted by Shane and Henriquez themselves. They selected the text, found a director they had previously collaborated with in a theatre workshop, reached out to actors who worked with them at the William Esper Studio, and created and promoted a successful indiegogo campaign to finance the production. They left intriguing cards around the city with phrases and quotes from the play, including “If it’s with your mouth, does it count?” and “I know your secret,” hoping to drum up interest with the tantalizing vagueness in those statements. In short, they did almost every step of the prep work in production aside from writing the play themselves.

Despite this impressive achievement, the women of A Red Lipped Rebellion waived their constitutional bragging rights, and instead expressed gratitude for the opportunity to work on a meaningful production with other talented people. “I respect everyone in this production, which makes this all the more inspiring,” said Henriquez, referring to their director, Jay Stull, and their co-stars, Sean McHale and Cory Sharp Haynes. “We get the chance to work in a small group in an intimate space.”

Their chance to work in that intimate space will happen in mid-February, right around Valentine’s Day, at The New Theater at 354 West 45th Street – though they cautioned that one might walk away from The Shape of Things with a less-than-positive view on the nature of love. “It’s an anti-Valentine’s Day play,” joked Shane.

Still, one shouldn’t get the impression that launching an anti-Valentine’s Day campaign is the “rebellion” part of what their theatre company represents. Shane described their mission in much broader terms: “Rebellion is all about sticking to your guns and standing for something.”

You can become part of the rebellion by following them on Facebook and Pinterest for more information about The Shape of Things.

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Blog PostsStoneybrook Revisited: BSC #33-#36, Super Special #4

Posted on January 9, 2013 by Theresa Basile

#33 – Claudia and the Great Search
I’m not sure why I have such an enormous soft spot for Claudia Kishi. She was always my favorite as a kid. Kid-readers tend to identify strongly with the characters who are most similar to themselves, and I probably have less in common with Claudia than with any other babysitter. But my affection for her is great nonetheless.

I made that disclaimer to explain my reaction to this book, because any book that has a plot where one of the baby-sitters thinks she is ADOPTED OMG and spends the whole book searching for her birth parents only to find out that she wasn’t really adopted is bound to be incredibly silly. And it was. But because it was Claudia, I felt bad for her and wanted to give her a hug, whereas if it were any other character, I’d be laughing at her for being so ridiculous and angsty.

I think I just feel bad for Claudia for feeling so out of place in her own family. I have so much empathy for that, even though I’m very close with my family. Whatever the reason for my bias, I have it and I own it. I heart Claudia.

Anyway, there’s a subplot where Kristy is worried that Emily Michelle is behind other two-year-olds, and how the school is struggling with teaching her because she has attachment problems. Sari Papadakis catches onto learning a game before Emily Michelle does, and the preschool program won’t take kids who aren’t toilet-trained. I’m not an expert in preschool rules or anything, but uh, not being toilet-trained as a two-year-old seems entirely normal to me.

Stacey baby-sits the Perkins girls at one point. They make chocolate-chip cookies, and the book takes pains to point out that Stacey “couldn’t taste it because of her diabetes.” I swear, these books are all over the place when it comes to Stacey’s diabetes. In an earlier book, she tells the readers that she has to eat some sweets to keep her blood sugar down, and in this one it’s so strict that she can’t taste a teaspoon of cookie dough. I don’t buy it.

Ann M. Martin promotes her fellow authors of children and YA literature by title-dropping Lois Lowry’s Find a Stranger, Say Goodbye, all about adoption. Except that book was actually good. OH SNAP.

Holy crap, Claudia doubts if she’s even Japanese. What is this. I can’t even.

At the end of the book, Mrs. Kishi explains that there are fewer baby pictures of Claudia than of Janine because Claudia is the second child, and parents’ energies are stretched farther when there are two kids. And this explanation is totally reasonable, but I’m surprised that Claudia, given her jealousy and inferiority issues re: Janine, is so accepting of it. She’s all, “Oh, well that makes sense!” Really?

More reference is made to Stacey feeling more under the weather than usual and we’re still ten original-series books away from Stacey’s Emergency (one of my favorites). Is this an actual arc I see on the horizon?

#34 – Mary Anne and Too Many Boys
This title is correct. There are too many boys in this book and it’s annoying. Mary Anne and Stacey join the Pikes for their Sea City vacation. Stacey reconnects with Toby, Mary Anne reconnects with Alex, Vanessa gets a crush on a boy at the ice cream parlor who turns out to have a crush on Mallory, and it’s all very boring.

Vanessa is really annoying. She leaves “true love forever secret admirer” poems for the twelve-year-old boy who works at the ice cream parlor, and this boy is charmed by these letters because he thinks they’re from Mal – because most twelve-year-old boys would be totally into love poems that talked about forever. I will give Vanessa this, though – she names her pet hamster Frodo, and I find that charming. My iPod is named Frodo. Not the same thing as a pet, no, but the principle is the same. Hobbits rule.

Mary Anne feels anxious about going on a “date” with Alex and ordering messy food. One of my exes once gave me the hostile silent treatment for hours after a date where I ordered a burger, because I “looked messy” eating it, and it ended in a fight where I cried and wound up apologizing to him. Obvs this food fear is all in Mary Anne’s head and not something Alex is doing, but this scene reminded me of that date. Yeah, reason #326485 why I’m relieved to not be dating that guy anymore. Emotional abuse ain’t fun, kids.

#35 – Stacey and the Mystery of Stoneybrook
Oh my god this one is so boring that I almost cried while skimming through it. Skimming, because I couldn’t handle reading it closely. This is a pseudo-sequel to Mallory and the Mystery Diary where there’s a haunted house except it’s not really a haunted house and Charlotte Johanssen (who will now be called CharJo) is flipping out because her grandpa is sick and because she has tonsillitis (remember when that was a thing?) and there’s ancient burial grounds where they paved paradise and put up a parking lot and Stacey meets an old man in a nursing home who DIES IN THE LAST CHAPTER and it’s all so dumb, and not even amusingly dumb.

Stacey also name-drops Summer of My German Soldier, The Little House, and…The Amityville Horror. So, Stacey has diverse tastes, it seems.

The only things significant about this book – Stacey mentions that her diabetes is getting harder to handle lately (foreshadowing!!), and the author “thanks” someone else in the handling of this manuscript, so I believe this is the first book penned by one of Martin’s ghostwriting elves. This is Stacey’s most boring book yet, but fortunately, the next Stacey book is awesome and one of the best of the series. I can’t wait until March.

Super Special #4 – Baby-sitters’ Island Adventure
I may have to take back what I said about the summer camp book being my favorite super special, because this one is awesomely ridiculous. Claudia and Dawn have a boating race and get shipwrecked on a teeny-tiny island off the coast of Connecticut with four baby-sitting charges, and they have to survive on their wits and a few supplies, and sleep in a cave, and catch fish and eat candy bars. None of it makes any sense or is realistic, and it is awesome.

It helps that Claudia gets to be super-competent and helpful, and that Dawn is at her least annoying ever (no, I seriously like her in this book. There’s absolutely no humblebragging about how much of an individual she is.) It also helps that the four kids with them on the boat trip are Jeff Schafer, Haley Braddock, Becca Ramsey, and Jamie Newton – four siblings/sitting charges that I like. They’re written as decent, non-annoying kids, and I think little Jamie is super cute.

This book also has a HUGE amount of asshole behavior from several characters, and it’s all kind of hilarious.

First, Jessi (who only gets one chapter in this super special even though her eight-year-old sister is missing, because Jessi is an afterthought in the author’s eyes) doesn’t want to call her parents to tell them that Becca is lost at sea because she’s afraid of ruining their vacation. Even though their EIGHT-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER IS MISSING. Let’s also acknowledge the ridiculousness in her parents leaving an eleven-year-old in charge of an eight-year-old and infant, including the nights. Her Aunt Cecelia shows up and takes over, and Jessi gets jealous and angry because Martin has given Cecelia more characterization and a more defined personality than Jessi will ever have…I mean, um, because Aunt Cecelia doesn’t trust Jessi. She complains that Aunt Cecelia moved too close to Stoneybrook for her taste after her husband died, like, way to have no sympathy for your widow aunt, Jessi.

Next, Mary Anne and Logan are both jerks. Logan asks Dawn to relay a message to Mary Anne, Dawn forgets, Mary Anne flips out and tells her favorite stepsister that she wants her out of her life. (That was way harsh, Tai.) Mary Anne is a jerk to Logan because she thinks Logan intentionally stood her up, when it turns out his brother was in the hospital. So far, I’m on Logan’s side. Then when Dawn goes missing, Logan is still being a jerk to Mary Anne for thinking that he would stand her up, and dude, seriously, your girlfriend’s stepsister is missing and it’s time to get over it. I basically hate both of them in this book.

But the biggest assholes in the book have to be a tie between Bart Taylor and Stacey’s dad. Bart thinks Kristy is canceling the Krushers/Bashers game because she thinks she’s going to lose to his team, not because her friends and baby-sitting charges are missing (JERRRK). Stacey’s dad won’t let Stacey go home from her visit in New York because this is supposed to be their weekend together (JERRRK). Actually, Stacey’s dad is the bigger jerk because he is a grown ass man and Bart at least has a tiny excuse for being a dumb teenager, but I hate that Kristy (and Stacey) both feel the need to apologize for “overreacting.” No you did NOT overreact, girls, you acted exactly as you should have! Sigh.

The characters also make several references to poor dumb Claudia and how it’s good that she was able to be so competent on the island so she could feel good about something, and it’s meant to be heartwarming but it’s really kind of condescending. I’m proud of Claudia nonetheless, though.

Martin helpfully has Dawn exposit that “we get report cards several times a year.” Martin, I think your readers know what report cards are.

Biggest sign that no one edited this book: Kristy, Mary Anne, Mallory, and Jessi have an emergency meeting to talk about their missing friends. This is a sentence that appears: “What about you, Kristy?” asked Dawn. This is when Dawn is supposed to be stranded on an island somewhere. Also, Claudia is really short in all of the illustrations even though she’s never been described that way.

Also ALSO, Claudia almost loses the first race because one of her ridiculous outfits gets caught on the sails. I can’t. It’s too funny. Still love you, Claudia, but I cannot help but laugh at your expense in this instance.

#36 – Jessi’s Baby-sitter
Notable book is notable. Why is this book notable?

First of all, this is the first time that the “fresh” slang has been used. Jessi mentions that Claudia calls something “fresh” when it’s “cool.” I will keep my eyes open for the first use of “dibbly.”

Secondly, this book is the first instance where a regular BSC follows the canon of a Super Special! I know, I couldn’t believe it myself, but it’s true. The Aunt Cecelia drama from the first book is renewed when she moves in with the Ramseys.

Sidebar: there’s an issue of Jessi being an eleven-year-old babysitter. I actually find this believable. Remember, this book was written in 1990. I remember eleven-year-olds back in 1990 that were given a lot more responsibilities than eleven-year-olds today, at least in America. A sixth-grader babysitting for younger kids for a few hours after school, in 1990? Totally plausible. The Ramseys leaving Jessi alone with Becca and Squirt for an entire weekend is some ridiculous bullshit, but for an afternoon or evening, as long as it’s not overnight? Reasonable.

Anyway, back to the plot. Aunt Cecelia moves in and is incredibly bossy and controlling over the Ramsey kids. She doesn’t trust Jessi. She thinks it was irresponsible of the parents to leave Jessi alone with Becca and Squirt (correct) and that it’s Jessi’s fault that Becca went sailing in the first place (incorrect). Jessi is resentful, because she’s a pretty responsible young adult, but because she is also only eleven, she and Becca play practical jokes on Aunt Cecelia. She calls her aunt Aunt Dictator behind her back – yet, she’s friends with Kristy Thomas.

But wait! There’s a parallel plot, where Jessi helps Jackie Rodowsky with his science project by completely taking it over because she doesn’t trust him. In other words, she treats Jackie the same way her aunt is treating her, because OMG SIMILARITIES YO. And it all culminates in a serious talk where Cecelia and Jessi find a common ground and Cecelia learns to trust Jessi.

Because – get this – Cecelia felt insecure about Jessi’s skill as a babysitter. She, this grown-ass woman who has raised children of her own, thought she wouldn’t be able to live up to Jessi as a caregiver to children.

FOR FUCK’S SAKE.

Seriously, the book should have just left it where Cecelia said that sometimes black people have to work twice as hard to prove themselves, and it’s not fair, but that’s why she was hard on the girls. That racism anvil hurts a little, but it’s at least more plausible than Cecelia feeling inferior to an eleven-year-old.

Oh, and Cecelia pranks Jessi and Becca back, which is kind of amusing.

Also amusing is the Pike triplets’ game, the Wandering Frog People. I have no idea what the game consists of or how it’s played, but that would be a pretty cool name for a hipster band.

Coming up next on Stoneybrook Revisited: Dawn meets an older boy, Kristy gets a mystery admirer and pretends to be excited, Mallory is poor, the girls go to California, and Claudia is framed for cheating on a test omg. See you in February!

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