GEMMA JAMES-SMITH AND GIL GARRATT OF CLAWHAMMER | Photo courtesy Clawhammer

The wonderfully non-human retelling of a Canadian novella on stage

IT’S A STORY that needs to be retold.

“The Faustian bargain is a classic hook,” says Gil Garratt, referring to Derek McCormack’s 2008 novella The Show that Smells. Garratt is adapting the book for the stage via Clawhammer, the small company he founded in 2011 and that he runs with his wife, Gemma James-Smith.

The story rests on Jimmie (as in Rodgers, the real-life country singer and yodeller). As he lies dying of tuberculosis, which actually killed him in real life in 1933 at age 35, Jimmie is visited by another historical figure: the 20th-century Italian designer, Elsa Schiaparelli, who is not as she seems here. (She died at 83 in 1973.) Vampirish and devilish, Schiaparelli offers to restore the singer’s health in exchange for his wife Carrie’s participation in her latest project, a perfume. Coco Chanel, a contemporary and rival of Schiaparelli’s, and the Carter Family Singers intervene as well.

“Visually, it called to be staged, built, seen,” says Garratt, who is also artistic director for the Blyth Festival. The Clawhammer production, The Show that Smells (or The Last Temptation of Jimmie Rodgers)—running May 13–31 at Toronto’s Theatre Passe Muraille Backspace—is an intensive project. Along with writing, performing and producing, Garratt and James-Smith operate the sound and lights. They also provide the voices, music and movements of the puppets who play Rodgers, Schiaparelli et al.

James-Smith, who works as a studio assistant with Ronnie Burkett Theatre of Marionettes, researched images, stories and recordings of the characters’ real lives for her design drawings. She and Garratt also studied Schiaparelli’s designs, the sculpture of Swiss surrealist Meret Oppenheim and the work of Canadian artist David Altmejd, whose image is on the cover of McCormack’s book.

Once the drawings were complete, James-Smith and Garratt started writing. “Once we had a storyline laid out, we began to actually build the puppets,” she says. The puppets are made of wood, wire, Paperclay (a kind of paper maché, James-Smith explains), glass eyes, human hair, assorted fabrics and, of course, string. Construction took nine months, with much experimentation and “engineering” involved to ensure the marionettes moved properly, from joint rotation to maintaining posture (no lolling heads).

Photo courtesy Clawhammer

“We wanted to find ways to make objects that were themselves beautifully conceived, meticulously and deliberately constructed, but also hideous and nightmarish,” explains Garratt. “The puppets [are] simultaneously portraits, caricatures and monsters.”

Last year, the pair publicly workshopped the play. Leading up to that performance, they met with McCormack several times. Garratt recalls playing Rodgers’ tune “T.B. Blues” for the author in their living room. They all fell silent afterward. “It was a moment when the emotional core of the show became clearer,” says Garratt. It’s a play with heart: lightheartedness, silliness, and a dark heart, too.

“Derek has done this brilliant thing with the tone of the piece: it’s outrageous, and very silly, and yet incredibly disturbing, too,” says Garratt. “And the ending is actually quite moving,” Figuring out how to translate that tone to live theatre has been a big part of the challenge. Improvisation helped, according to James-Smith: “When we presented the workshop, we improvised quite a bit also. A lot of new characteristics came out of that, informed by the audience and our heightened energy.”

The play is a roughly 70-minute performance with no intermission. Though they’re still developing aspects of the production, some things are fixed: Garratt’s fondness for operating—playing—Schiaparelli, for example. “I won’t share,” he says. The couple takes turns playing Rodgers. Considering Clawhammer is a two-person operation, this particular string of performances will test their endurance. “The show is definitely a workout for both of us,” says James-Smith. “It can be a bit of a bloodsport. We push each other a lot,” says Garratt.

But it works because they keep pushing each other, say these partners. They wouldn’t trade it for anything.

From our education system to our literary community, why is CanLit so white? Nashwa Khan challenges the default narrative

JUNOT DÍAZ UNLEASHED A BOMBSHELL on the writing world when he published his essay “MFA vs. PoC” in the New Yorker last spring. The Dominican American author is a creative writing professor, a fiction editor for the Boston Review, and has won numerous awards for his writing—most notably the Pulitzer Prize for The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. His New Yorker piece was about his own experiences as a racialized man in an MFA program he completed in 1995 at Cornell. Díaz’s take resonated with many who had lived through being racialized in the Ivory Tower, but it also unsettled some readers, predominantly white ones, who seemed shocked and outraged. Their reaction didn’t surprise me. Historically, academia at its foundation was built for white men, and not much has been done to rework the initial framework of how institutions are built—even if today’s student body is much more diverse.

I read hundreds of online comments. I read pieces analyzing Díaz’s essay. I read as much as I could digest. A lot of it made me cringe. Online comments seem to bring out people’s worst prejudices and even readers of the venerable New Yorker seemed no different. Commenters said people of colour were “not grateful;” they were told to “go back home.” Others praised his work. People wrote response pieces, both negative and positive.

Díaz’s essay was published at a time when I was at a crossroads with my own education. Reading it, I thought he was describing a racist experience, but one at a wealthy school that may have been less diverse. Plus, if he could, in the end, find like-minded people and support as a racialized man, I figured I could too. I was inspired to take the leap, and signed up for a creative writing program.

As a racialized Muslim woman, I grew up without my stories. I grew up reading about kids who weren’t like me, teenagers who weren’t like me, and now adults who aren’t me. I thought Díaz’s experience was anchored so long ago that mine would be better and I could foster his experience to build my own journey.

I found a program that had the flexibility and diversity I wanted. Díaz’s piece became a way for me to baptize myself in the world of creative writing courses, to learn how I could avoid the whiteness of the writing world. I told myself I would learn from his mistakes; he wrote that he slipped up because he was young. I was determined not to: I checked faculty, campus culture, and communities. I purposely chose faculty for my first set of classes who were queer or racialized, here in Toronto, the city Drake keeps trying to make happen, a city proud of its multiculturalism and cracksmoking ex-mayor.

I decided to do a certificate program, not a full MFA. I wanted to dip my toes in this world, not dive in unprepared. I wanted to avoid all the negatives situations Díaz recounted—things like workshops that were “too white” and a body of literature that similarly lacked diversity. I took all of the precautionary measures and, at first, it seemed to pay off.

On my first day, I was thrilled to walk into a classroom where a man of color was the instructor and the class was roughly 50 percent white and 50 percent people of color. I thought I had done my due diligence to find something close to a utopia in writing. I would soon learn, however, that I had walked into another sort of baptism, this one by fire. As much as I thought I had prepared for an MFA vs POC environment I called “Creative Writing vs. POC”, I should have expected, and have now amended it to, “Creative Writing vs. MOC vs. WOC:” Creative writing versus men of colour versus women of colour.

I’VE NOW READ DÍAZ’S PIECE at least a dozen times in full; I often pull up paragraphs that resonate with me most. I have a few sentences memorized. Tears well in my eyes every time I read it, but now they well in my eyes for Athena, the woman of color in his MFA program, the one who was gifted, but had enough, and left. Athena is not entirely fleshed out in his piece but Díaz does reminisce that the whiteness of the program exhausted her, and I feel that. About 20 years after Díaz and Athena felt the casual racism and microaggressions of being racialized while writing, I feel that.

To date in my life I have largely been “the other” but have not felt as hurt by microaggressions elsewhere as I have by those in the writing world. The writing world has made me feel more othered than any other space. Writing can expel so much.

Writing to expel shame.

Writing to cope.

Writing to tell stories.

Writing to riot.

Writing to right.

What writing cannot expel, however, is the anguish I leave the classroom with every time we workshop pieces. This kind of anguish is something hard to articulate. What I can identify is that my own experience is very different than the men of color with whom I write, and even more alien from my white classmates. Perhaps being a racialized female is an archipelago of an experience on its own. Perhaps it’s this belief that racialized people are their own category, and my female embodiment is one too distant for men to relate.

Every writing class I relive trauma.

I. I litmus tested Díaz’s mistakes, and failed.

I’ve realized that what I deduced from Díaz and others’ writing about classes being “too white” in numbers did not account for situations where the numbers may be in people of colour’s favour, but whiteness as a system and standard would dominate. White literature would be the default, white stories the skeleton of every piece, and white voices, even if outnumbered, would be the loudest even with a man of colour running sessions.

II. Minorities as a majority does not hold.

Hari Kondabolu’s skit “2042 and the White Minority,” about the census calculation that 2042 will be the year white people will be a minority in America, should be a primer for white people. When you really do the math in my workshops it doesn’t play out the way white women often thought it did when they mumbled things like “wow, so diverse.” But as Kandabalou makes light of in his skit, there is one big problem: as people of color, we aren’t all the same. This presumption of the white minority is heavily rooted in the belief that racialized people are a homogenous and united front.

Looking at the composition of certain classes, faculty, and program promotional material, both printed and on the web, you would think I found the utopia so many writers of color search for, including myself.

You would think people of color flourished and thrived as they wrote their vulnerabilities, shared their hearts on paper. You would think. When you look at my most diverse class, the composition is 50:50.

On days when one of their Ashley squad is missing, the white women will not let us forget how they are suddenly a “minority.” I don’t know whether our educational system hindered their basic math skills or if they just love surface level analysis, but in actuality women of color are still the “minority” on these days, and every other day in class. This particular class is comprised of 50 percent white women, versus five percent black women (i.e. one black women) and five percent non-black women of color (i.e. me). The rest is 40 percent men of color.

Bodies like mine and stories like mine remain foreign, uncomfortable, and on the margins. My stories become abstract even to the men of color who many classmates presume must relate to me. So when a white peer remarked during a workshopping of my piece, “well, you’re no longer a minority” and the class cackled, I still question their math.

III. Men of color don’t often support women of color in the same ways; #solidarityisforwhitewomen is real in the realm of writing.

White women in writing seem to have an easier time attacking women of color. This could be because of any variety of factors, but I want to say that it is a combination of intimidation and conditioning to believe that men are usually correct. I am still testing out my theory, but after conducting a few social experiments—such as using very WASP names in my writing or removing factors that potentially identify race, gender, and sexual orientation—my writing remains viewed as “foreign.” Maybe seeing me in the flesh is what constantly makes people fixate on what I can and cannot write. I am still conducting
experiments.

I say “white” but what I mean is women immersed in the very simplistic and classic ways literature is taught, those who uphold white feminism and let it seep into their writing and workshopping of pieces. I mean white women who would let myself and the other woman of color in my class know how to write about our bodies and existence, question our use of words from our mother tongues, and surveillance our truths. These white women were often cosigned by the silence of men of color I adamantly defended or agreed with in workshop sessions. These men were not part of my supposed “people of color majority.”

I still don’t know Maybe I feel bitter. But at the same time I understand that some have folded their bodies to fit into boxes that appease our white peers during
the workshops. I found their silence to be more comforting than their vocal approval with white women who said things like, “Why did you use that foreign word there?”

What I can say is having people of color does not equate to solidarity.

IV. Díaz was right in saying, “that shit was too white” about 1995 and I concur in 2015.

Díaz discusses how Athena and another friend often reflected on the shit their peers said to them. Feeling isolated, I kept a list that moved from a Post-It, to a sheet of paper, to pages in my notebook.

I try to slyly add to the chicken scratch list as people speak.

“Wow, since I was born here it’s fascinating for me to listen to your story.”

“You know I moved from England when I was six; I am an immigrant too!”

“I’m not racist but…” (Multiply this times infinity.)

“The names used in the story are really difficult, why can’t you pick …” (Insert any number of Anglo-Saxon names.)

“Oh, so, obviously English is not your first language.”

“Well this is obviously grossly exaggerated: Kids aren’t racist.” (Said during a memoir writing workshop.)

“I am a woman so I face oppression too.” (As if I am not a woman—very Patricia Arquette circa 2015 Oscars, if you ask me.)

The list that started as a page at the back of my notebook has now filled margins of my notes. It is blossoming like weeds throughout my pieces; a page can no longer contain the comments that my white and male peers will never face. These comments have also made me fold myself into a smaller version of myself, whittle down my stories to make them more palatable for a white liberal gaze.

Sometimes I want to scream, “Did you even read the words I wrote?” Tangential topics arise that are heavily laden with subtext. In fiction writing, if I wrote about any kind of conflict and the character had a name that seemed foreign or exotic, the same women would lament “this is cultural” and even once, a slip, “Is this from your experiences with your father?” Tropes saturated my existence—if only they believed my memoir writing the same way they believed my fiction.

Every week, they would explain how they did not understand my writing because they were “born here” and every week I would tell my white peers how I too was “born here,” on stolen land. I realized soon enough that they did not want to understand my writing. They couldn’t even humour reading my pieces: about immigrant parents crossing oceans and breaking their backs while being exploited by cheap labour for the American Dream.

They would not give me space to write about discovering myself as diaspora when I went to Morocco as a teenager. There was no space for my stories. This shit is still too white.

V. Memoir as fiction and fiction as memoir.

I discovered quickly that memoir writing classes should have beencalled something along the lines of “memoir; fiction for women of color, though.” No amount of reading on the MFA/workshop/writing retreat life would have prepared me for how much my truth would be interrogated along with the other woman of color in my program (who is actually the most educated person in the class, at least in the formal sense people seem to respect).

My stories had traces of flirty racism, racist iterations of sexism, and the pain of growing up racialized. That list in my notebook grew tenfold in memoir sessions. White women would use my workshop time to reflect on how my “gross exaggeration” made them cry. Once, the sole black woman in my memoir class wrote about herself, explicitly giving her character her name. A white peer asked why this white character was in Barbados. As if she did not realize it was memoir and the author right in front of her was a black woman. When I brought up how the default is white and that creates blind spots during workshopping and how egregious it was to suppose women of color wrote their memoir characters as white, the white women, joined by men of color, were up in arms.

Instead of letting me or other women of color receive feedback that was constructive, to requite the feedback they received, feedback I paid for, I got to hear about how they cried, how they “understood,” and how women of color memoirs made them “sad.” I wrote about my insecurities around women who looked like them as a child. I still cannot grasp how they “understood.”

I started to water down my writing like cheap coffee. I limited my memoir scenes to retellings of the awkward situations that not eating pepperoni caused me as a kid because if these women thrived off stories of drunk prom queens deserving to win, I could try writing about the tiny things in my life, close myself off from sharing anything more meaningful, more real.

VI. Social experiments don’t work on white people.

As much as I would remove markers of anything that was not white, straight, or middle class in my writing, my time in workshops became very specific. Regardless of how WASPY I made my pieces, white women still fixated on how I made them cry. They lamented that I was exotic and mysterious, despite having removed identifying markers from my writing. My body, the body I am trapped in, will never be able to write literature without having 21 questions unfold. My peers would say “I disagree with your memoir, but I learn so much from you.” Beyond the abhorrent notion that people can disagree with others’ memoirs, this labour I provided, vulnerability, and the display of my heart, only resulted in trauma for me and debating points, along with amusement, for them.

Once, I wrote a poem about the repetition of hearing the questions: Where are you from? What are you? Where are you really from? Where are your parents from? Three white women approached me after class to let me know these questions stem from genuine curiosity. They had good intentions, they told me; they weren’t racists. This all happened after a dedicated class discussion to my reverse racism. Throughout the term, this particular group kept relaying to me that they, too, were oppressed: they were oppressed by the yoga moms, the rich, the men—the list goes on, letting me know all I had was my identity oppression, whereas they had so much more.

VII. Pedagogy.

In the first five months of class, I read more white cis hetrosexual authors than I have in my entire life. Many don’t seem very special to me, but they are held to some kind of imaginary gold standard. Even in Canadian high schools, most of the literature taught is white, American, and male, as Michael LaPointe argues in his 2013 Literary Review of Canada essay “What’s Happened to CanLit?” The piece highlights truths that speak volumes. At the time, seven out of every 10 students in Toronto, for instance, were non-white. Of those surveyed, two-thirds expressed that learning about their own race would be more desirable. As well, unsurprisingly, half of the students surveyed believed that if that were the case, they’d do better in school. But whiteness will follow them into post-secondary education.

If we are what we read, will my writing become nuanced in the classic expectations of straight, white male writing?

I’ve read James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Paul Muldoon, Ted Kooser, Theodore Roethke, and Raymond Carver, all white men I’ve chased with the works of white women, such as Alice Munro, Amy Hempel, Eudora Welty, and more. This survey of whiteness is predominantly non-Canadian. Yet, it serves as Canadian literature, which I’d argue has morphed into ubiquity with white Anglo-Saxon protestant default writing.

White descriptions rooted in very colonial normative reality remain the default in writing programs today. This is witnessed in what we deem as “American Literature” and who is let into that elite group. The ahistorical erasure of methods of teaching writing in all forms is witnessed in what works we do close readings of and those we reference as authors to which we should aspire. I have navigated classrooms for most of my life and I want to reiterate that this is about white classrooms and not necessarily white people.

I say white classrooms to emphasize that it isn’t about the bodies occupying the room, the way we often think it is. Rather, it’s all taught to us within the pages of the syllabi and novels we treasure in these courses; the way we teach who to respect; the stories that are viewed as true; this the deep-seeded white normalcy.

It it is time to reevaluate the changing landscape of writers and adjust course curricula. Until then, the current set-up provides the ammo that weans out and exhausts women of color in these spaces. Until then, the framework for what is considered “respected literature” and what is not will remain the same. Until then, we will continue to see novels written by talented people of color used to fill diversity quotas, instead of just integrated as compelling works. Until then, we will we witness “diversity” writing integrated through the gaze of white authors. We will elevate novels like Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird. Until then, this is all that we will give racialized people: our stories retold through other mediums, selectively placed into marginalized classes.

VIII. Future.

I am weak and vulnerable; I feel too much, maybe. I like to think it could be a “me” problem but often realize it isn’t when I go online or to events. I find peers who look like me and I find a twisted comfort in finding out they have gone through similar experiences. I find ways to cope by ranting with them, listening to them, constantly being in solidarity with them. I’ve met people through the internet, which I always thought I would never do, just to find solace. I actively look for racialized writers forums and events now. Prior to being in this program I would go to any event, not wanting to be read as divisive. Now I know part of my survival is finding people like me in this struggle.

Will I finish any formal writing program?

Truthfully, I am not sure. There are days I feel great about a piece I’ve read or written that is creative non-fiction and get told I should be “realistic” about having a racialized person in fantasy, science fiction, or performing daily activities in a way that isn’t palatable to my workshop. I guess the same way dragons are more realistic than a man of color as a knight in medieval times.

Athena is only a tiny piece of Díaz’s essay, but to me she is everything. I’ve heard many racialized women feel the isolation, expressing similar sentiments that their alone is so alone that leaving any given writing program seems like the most appealing option. A future in writing looks bleak when this white default thrives in literature, a default that erases my being.

What real and dignified future is there for writers of color who make it?

Díaz has multiple awards to his name including, beyond the Pulitzer, a MacArthur Genius Grant. Yet, as an esteemed author honored by white dominated spaces, he still faces racism to serve as a punch line, even as a guest of honor. When Peter Sagal interviewed Díaz in October 2013 at the Chicago Humanities Festival, for instance, he riddled his introduction and questions with microaggressions and racial stereotypes. This exchange during the introduction made my skin crawl:

SAGAL: Welcome to this evening’s presentation of two bald guys from New Jersey. This is actually true. You’re from Perth Amboy, right?… And I’m from a town called Berkeley Heights …

DÍAZ: Yeah, I delivered three pool tables there.

SAGAL: What I like to imagine, well—We weren’t there quite the same time, and we never had a pool table, but I love the idea like a truck pulls up and in walks these Dominican guys—

DÍAZ: Nah, it was me and an African-American dude.

SAGAL: OK. And deliver to this, you know, suburban house where there’s this Jewish kid that’s going to Harvard and it’s like freeze it—Which of these is going to win a MacArthur Genius grant? [Points at Díaz.]

Similarly, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie can author a New York Times’ 10 Best Books of 2013 but still be referred to as “Beyonce’s favorite feminist,” instead of as a talented author who has won numerous accolades.

In this system that has manifested, it may be that I could thrive— or I could perish a slow and painful demise within it, along with many other women of colour, along with Athena. Let me return to an earlier question: If everything we write is an extension of ourselves, what do women of color have in these workshop spaces? How can we flourish in male- and white-dominant spaces? Will I succumb to stories that are not my own, narratives of lives I cannot relate to?

I believe that writing, as an art, does not necessarily imitate life; it grows from it, roots itself in truth and blossoms with stories. But the roots cannot break through and take to the soil, they cannot sprawl and have their storied seeds planted when a system only values certain stories. I am a racialized woman writing in 2015. If I get rooted as a rare token writer, I may yet flower. Or, I will wilt at the margins of pages, my stories untold, my words unwritten. I know only that every workshop I walk into is like a battle, and my mental struggle in these spaces will determine my fate.

An in-depth review of Hollywood’s problem with women

“You could try to hold your camera like this… but your breasts would probably get in the way.”

“Women do not belong on set unless they are in hair and makeup.”

“Your main job is basically to be my work wife. You need to anticipate my needs. Especially when my wife’s on her period.”

“Women just freak out all the time. They’re crazy. Their hormones are all over the place and they can’t be calm and rational. They make the worst producers.”

These are just a few of the depressing testimonials from the new blog Shit People Say to Women Directors (& Other Women in Film). Launched in April, the site calls attention to the blatant sexism and barriers women working in the film and entertainment industry face. In less than 24 hours, it received enough material for a year’s worth of posts. The anonymous stories come from a wide range of women working in film and television, from directors and actresses to writers and crew members. And if the blog posts aren’t proof enough of the gender bias in the entertainment industry, there are no shortage of studies or women in Hollywood speaking out against the horrible way women are treated.

Sadly, women in the silent film era were better off than women today; at one point back in the day, the highest paid director was even a woman. Yet today, if you look at the top 500 films from 2007-2012, the average ratio of male actors on screen to female actors is more than two to one, according to the New York Film Academy. If you look at the ratio of men to women working on films, the numbers get even more depressing at 5:1. Of all the directors, executive producers, producers, writers, cinematographers and editors working on the top 250 domestic grossing films of 2012 only 18 percent were women, reported Celluloid Ceiling, a comprehensive study of women working in film.

Recently, actress Maggie Gyllenhaal revealed that at 37 she was told she was too old to play the love interest of a 55-year-old leading man. A review of top grossing romantic films found that the average age of a woman lead is 29, compared to 37 for leading men. In the male-dominated wish fulfillment film industry, it’s unfortunately no surprise that ageism exists and an older man seducing a woman in her 20s is the norm. Female fetuses are currently being auditioned to fill the role Gyllenhaal couldn’t.

Comedian Amy Schumer recently mocked this practice on the Season 3 premiere of her hit show Inside Amy Schumer. In “Last F**kable Day” Schumer, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Tina Fey and Patricia Arquette celebrate the day the media decides female actresses are no longer desirable, poking fun at the ridiculous double standards Hollywood has for women.

Hollywood’s gender bias extends to everything from screen time to pay scale. The top 10 highest paid actresses made a collective $181 million while the top 10 male actors made $465 million, according to a 2013 Forbes study of Hollywood’s highest paid actors and actresses. One of the biggest reveals of last year’s Sony hacking scandal concerned the movie American Hustle and the fact that Jennifer Lawrence and Amy Adams were paid less than the film’s male stars.

It’s not just woman actors Hollywood has given up on. At this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Salma Hayek accused Hollywood of giving up on women viewers as well. Despite making up 50 percent of the ticket-buying public in the U.S., Hayek noted that Hollywood thinks the only films women wants to see are dumbed-down romantic comedies (I believe these are commonly referred to as chick flicks).

Hayek also discussed the sexism and racism she’s experienced in Hollywood. One Hollywood executive told her that her Mexican accent was a drawback since it might remind moviegoers of their maids. A talented actress, Hayek has been reduced to playing a hot trophy wife co-starring alongside fart jokes and punches to the crotch in the Grown Ups movie franchise. (Never mind the fact that they keep making these movies, which just seems like one giant punch in the crotch to moviegoers everywhere.)

The examples of Hollywood sexism are endless. Melissa McCarthy recently called out a sexist critic over comments he made about her appearance. In this month’s Fast Company cover story, Amy Poehler talks about being in meetings with powerful Hollywood men who ask her where her kids are, implying she’s a neglectful mother who doesn’t see her kids enough—something they would never ask a man. Speaking at Cannes of her new film A Tale of Love and Darkness, Natalie Portman admitted to being afraid to direct herself in the film because people might see it as a vanity project, despite the fact that they would never do so if she were George Clooney.

As if Hayek and Portman’s Cannes comments weren’t enough to confirm that sexism is coming soon to a theater near you, #flatgate happened. The #flatgate controversy emerged when an unnamed festival source was quoted in the British press saying that women on the festival’s red carpet must wear high heels or risk being turned away. This after several women in flats were, in fact, turned away from a screening of the new Todd Haynes movie. Paris Hilton at your festival is classy; flats are not.

The no flats policy—which I initially thought was an Onion story— happened in a year when Cannes was trying to appear more female friendly by showcasing a number of films with strong female leads and selecting Standing Tall by Emmanuelle Bercot as the festival’s opening film, the first time a woman director has opened the festival since 1987.

Flatgate comes on the heels of this year’s #askhermore. The social media campaign to get red carpet reporters to ask actresses about their accomplishments rather than focus on who and what they’re wearing launched during this year’s Oscars. As if it’s not bad enough that women are hugely underrepresented when it comes to awards nominations—even more so for women of colour—they then have to endure full body camera pans on the red carpet and endless internet snark about their dress choices. At the 85th Academy Awards in 2013, across 19 categories, 140 men were nominated compared with 35 women. And in its entire history, only four women have been nominated for a best director Oscar. Of the four, only one woman has won: Kathryn Bigelow in 2009 for The Hurt Locker—regrettably, not for Point Break.

Response to the #askhermore campaign was mixed with some arguing that awards carpets are for talking about fashion with many celebrities, using the opportunity to promote brands and designers. Admittedly, at my Oscar party, the possibility of Ryan Seacrest going off script to discuss global warming with Sienna Miller increased wine consumption by at least 30 percent. As the man responsible for Keeping Up with The Kardashians, Seacrest has already unleashed enough awful on us and must be stopped.

I know the responsibility shouldn’t be on Reese Witherspoon’s shoulders to stop sexism on awards night, but I’d love to see actresses simply refuse to walk the red carpet or show up in a Dinosaur Jr t-shirt with a chip dip stain on it and sweatpants—a little look I like to call “Saturday night.” At least the dreaded Mani Cam was gone after many actresses refused to participate in it and Elizabeth Moss famously flipped it off in 2012. Peggy Olson would be proud.

The double standard certainly doesn’t end when actresses are off screen. In the same week that #flatgate broke, actor Bill Murray appeared lit like a road flare on MSNBC. Having just wrapped up a final Letterman appearance in which he chugged vodka, Murray drunkenly wandered onto the MSNBC set like he got lost looking for the washroom. He proceeded to spectacularly fall off his chair and then slur his way through an interview.

The next day, there were no calls for Murray to go to rehab, no concerns about whether his drinking was out of control or whether his career would ever recover from his drunken television appearance. If Murray had been a woman, the internet would still be talking about it and not in a good way. Instead, the internet found it all very charming. Full disclosure: I found it amusing, but that’s because Murray’s midlife crisis is way more entertaining to witness than my own.

But it’s not just Hollywood who is fed up with the double standards. Earlier this month, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) announced it will ask federal and state governments to examine the hiring processes studios use for directors and investigate the discrimination faced by women directors. While the discrimination certainly extends beyond directors, the ACLU investigation provides some hope, especially given the possibility that studios and networks could be charged with gender discrimination.

The hopeful moments tend to be short-lived. The 2011 success of the Kristen Wiig-penned Bridesmaids—the film grossed $288 million worldwide and was nominated for a best picture Golden Globe as well as an Oscar for best original screenplay and best supporting actress—was seen as ushering in a new wave of smart funny films by and starring women. Despite a few films like 2012’s Bachelorette, the “Bridesmaids Effect” seemed largely to be a mainstream media construct that, sadly, yielded few lasting effects. Also, cooking with summer squash is an example of a trend; women being funny is not.

When Kathryn Bigelow won best director, people were optimistic the situation would improve for women in Hollywood. Similar optimism greeted the box office success of director Catherine Hardwicke’s Twilight, which had the biggest opening ever for a female director, and also, most recently, Elizabeth Banks’ Pitch Perfect 2. Still, having a woman behind the camera is not the norm. An annual studio by San Diego State University found that women directed only 7 percent of the top 250 grossing films last year, two percentage points lower than in 1998.

Disappointingly, it seems like the responsibility to end Hollywood’s gender bias falls largely to the women. Meryl Streep recently announced she will fund a mentoring initiative for female screenwriters over 40—further proof that Meryl is awesome. Her announcement comes after reports that both the number of female screenwriters, as well as their pay levels are dismal. At last year’s SXSW keynote Girls actress and creator Lena Dunham—who also wrote, directed and acted in 2010’s wonderful Tiny Furniture—said “Something has to change and I’m trying.” Both Dunham and Girls have certainly had a positive effect, but we haven’t come a long way, baby.

Oscar-winning actress and director Helen Hunt summed it up perfectly in a recent Huffington Post interview: “What are the great movies for younger women where they’re the protagonist [being] made now? You know what I mean? The whole thing — there’s no equal rights amendment. We’re fucked.” And Hunt should know. At 34 she played 60-year-old Jack Nicholson’s love interest in As Good As It Gets. At least she got an Oscar for it.

Photo by Norman Wong

Lowell’s bold, new vision for a women- and girl-friendly pop future

POP SINGER-SONGWRITER Lowell has recently been experiencing a recurring dream in which she’s robbing a bank, then driving away on a motorbike with her lesbian lover. Given the surreal imagery in the videos for her songs “The Bells” and “Cloud 69,” it’s easy to imagine visuals from her dream appearing in a future musical performance.

Since the September 2014 release of her album We Loved Her Dearly (released on Toronto indie label Arts & Crafts Productions, which also put out her 2014 five-song EP, I Killed Sara V.), Lowell (born Elizabeth Lowell Boland) has been in a state that she describes as both euphoric and cinematic, which is driving the creation of her new songs. “I can do anything,” she says.

At only 21 years old, the Calgary native was invited to London by a producer impressed by her demo tape. While there, she wrote songs for both herself and for pop groups like the Backstreet Boys—she received a co-writing credit for the bonus track “Take Care” on the band’s 2013 album In a World Like This. As a woman, Lowell knew she would have to work harder at getting through the door, and fought to make sure her ideas weren’t shut down. The struggle only ignited her competitive nature. While she describes herself as a control freak, she is certainly not ashamed— this kind of forceful attitude has gotten her this far.

Now, at 23, she is back in Canada, living in Toronto, and is in a position where she can choose who she works with. In a male-dominated industry, Lowell knows that it is expected for a female artist to walk in the room and have less interest, or less talent, to write songs. That said, she believes that while the bar has been set higher for women in music, more female pop artists are now propping each other up as opposed to being pitted against each other.

What sets Lowell apart is that her songs are all written with women in mind, touching on topics such as gender equality, abuse, and abortion. “There’s something more satisfying in writing to a girl,” she says. She is not inhibited when it comes to sex, or writing about it, but doesn’t do it to push the envelope: she’s just being honest. “We’re not in the 1800s, where women have to blush and guys can be dogs,” she says, admitting that people don’t always know how to receive a woman who talks openly about sex, and that others can mistake this for flirting. “Everyone I meet thinks I want to have sex with them,” she laughs. One day, she hopes, it will be commonplace in music for girls to write to girls and boys to write to boys, and it won’t be seen as so taboo.

Until then, we have Lowell writing about not worrying about the world around you, like in her song “I Love You Money,” or about sexual fantasies in “Cloud 69,” where she sings, “Oh my god, I think I need a girlfriend.”

“I like to have a purpose with my music,” Lowell says. “But sometimes I like to just write a stupid song.”

CHELSEA VOWEL, MOLLY SWAIN, AND SOME DALEKS AT COMICCON | Photo courtesy Métis in Space

Métis in Space is a hilariously smart take down of Indigenous stereotypes in popular science-fiction

LAST SUMMER, friends Molly Swain and Chelsea Vowel were having a rough time, and looking for an excuse to spend more time together. Swain and Vowel, who are both Métis and live in Montreal, came up with a solution to fix their woes: create a podcast where they could “nerd out,” drink red wine, and talk about science fiction.

Swain and Vowel created Métis in Space, a bi-weekly podcast that reviews and critiques movies and television featuring Indigenous tropes and themes. It took the friends three days to come up with the podcast, record their first episode, and upload it to SoundCloud.

“When Molly and I hang out, we’re hilarious. I thought that the rest of the world should hear that,” says Vowel. “We expected our entire audience to be our moms, and then our moms were not interested.”

Indian and Cowboy, an independent network that creates, produces, and publishes Indigenous media projects across multiple platforms, hosts Métis in Space. Swain says the network is a “fabulous, fabulous idea” in how it allows Indigenous people to build relationships and communicate with each other in new ways.

With episodes gaining thousands of listens on Indian and Cowboy, SoundCloud, and iTunes, Métis in Space frankly, and often hilariously, analyzes shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The X-Files, and Supernatural, picking out common Indigenous representations that surface in mainstream pop culture. Vowel, who has been an avid fan of sci-fi since she was young, says she knew the tropes had always been there.

Recording Métis in Space, however, forces the friends to actively look for stereotypes. They’ve found that in science fiction, Indigenous people are often associated with mystic flutes and drum music, or the ability to turn into an animal.

Métis in Space recognizes that sci-fi creators are predominantly white men, who “explore concepts and anxieties related to colonialism in order to reassure themselves,” Swain says. Vowel adds she can’t “unsee” a pattern in science fiction that is often representative of colonial fears: the storylines often feature Indigenous people and societies who are “wiped out” or about to be erased.

“People don’t expect Indigenous people to be interested in the future,” Swain says. “That’s partially because nobody expects Indigenous people to have a future, which is what colonialism is.”

According to the hosts, Métis in Space listeners cite the “Ask a môniyâw (white man)” segment as their favourite part of the podcast, in which Swain and Vowel ask a stereotypical “white man” a question. Vowel’s husband, to his chagrin, participates in the segment by playing the môniyâw. After uploading episodes to SoundCloud, Métis in Space started receiving earnest requests from several men who wanted to be the guest môniyâw.

Métis in Space also actively confronts sci-fi creators. In Episode 5, they recorded a live-report podcast from the 2014 Montreal Comiccon. Knowing that Indigenous people are so often a part of science fiction, Swain and Vowel expected guests at the pop-culture fan convention to have some knowledge of Indigenous history, but they were surprised to find that wasn’t case. On top of that, there were vendors selling products with racist or inaccurate portrayals of Indigenous people.

“They had no consciousness. It was completely divorced from the fact that there are real Indigenous people out there,” Swain says. “It wasn’t only that we were confronting them about their lack of knowledge, but I think to a certain extent, we were almost confronting them with our existence.”

Despite the problems in science fiction, Swain and Vowel are still huge fans of the genre. For the second season, the hosts plan to uncover new ground by exploring what an Indigenous future look like 300 years from now.

“I think science fiction is almost inherently Indigenous because it is so much about world building and future building and telling stories in a way that points to where we want to go, or explores questions of, if this were to happen, how would we deal with it?” Swain says. “We’re going to reclaim ourselves from science fiction in order to create science fiction.”

While writing my reading piece “She Asked For It” I was thinking about all the bystanders who watch their friends/sisters/peers get physically and verbally abused by their partner, or the adults who don’t stand up for abused children. I was thinking, too, about the public backlash women receive when coming forward about abuse, especially publicly like in the cases of Jian Gomeshi and Bill Cosby. There is this strange obsession to defend the most popular and charming, and this terrifies me. Almost as much as public speaking.

Here is the written piece read that evening:

She Asked For It

It seems so obvious to the outsider, get hurt, you go.

And that’s what makes them outsiders: the dichotomy of you and them.

So when that person makes those fists – just like dad used to make – and they tell you it isn’t just you and them, it is the two of you against the world, that’s all you got.

White trash can’t get hurt.

As Other, they can not feel.

The beatings and mockery vye for what hurts most, but don’t dare take first place from isolation.

Teachers ignore signs of quiet and retraction amongst bouncy, vibrant peers.

The church keeps secrets hushed behind decorated doors.

The police don’t write up, they write off.

Nurses say, “We don’t use the word rape here.”

A distance is created.

Friends don’t want to believe it.

She asked for it.

They watch and do nothing.

Drinking buddies before hoes dominates so-called progressive punk rock mantras.

Left alone, seeing your valueless and disposability, even you can’t stand being by yourself.

Prosecutions doled by class bracket dictations.

So, you have this guy – who makes fists just like dad used to make – who makes it both of you against the world that doesn’t want you.

You latch.

It’s all you got.

A former This intern, Hillary Di Menna is in her first year of the gender and women’s studies program at York University. She also maintains an online feminist resource directory, FIRE- Feminist Internet Resource Exchange.

art courtesy Greg Smith

Inside The Weakerthans’ bassist Greg Smith’s studio

Beer in hand, Greg Smith sits in a chair wedged into a corner. A microphone stand, angled overhead, partially frames him. The room is full of instruments: four- and six-stringed guitars on stands, a mandolin hanging from a hook, a drum kit and keyboards facing one another.

But the space is meant for more than music. A folded-up easel, stacks of brushes and tubes of paint spread on a tray and walls covered in canvases in various stages of completion attest to that.

“I really want to develop a whole body of work,” says Smith, who plays bass for the Weakerthans, and guitar and vocals for his own band, the Très Bien Ensemble.

Springing out of his chair, gesturing from the floor to the wall with two open hands, he asks, “Can I take what I do here and put it there?”

Smith first asked himself that question while on tour with the Weakerthans. While on the road he was often struck by an environment (urban and rural), scene, object or motif. He then sketched what he saw, or committed it to memory. In 2007, he began to produce paintings of the strongest studies and memories. With subsequent tours, he painted more. (A Smith painting appears on the cover of the band’s last release, Live from the Burton Cummings Theatre.)

From the start, Smith has made abstract, expressive work, driven, like music, by “rhythm and heat” and “energy.” He uses acrylic paint “because you can work fast with it,” he explains. “You can build the paint up, it dries fast and it’s easy to clean.” Right now he works on canvas, building up the paint to get texture. He first painted on board, buying wood off-cuts from Home Depot. The grain and knots helped shape the process and end product.

There are small, square and abstracted portraits of authors Smith likes, such as Margaret Atwood and poet bill bissett. Larger, rectangular and vertical views to towers and high rises suggest an interest in light and shadow, and how the two interact and are interdependent in the built environment. Smith applies the paint in one long brushstroke, allowing it to thin, the colour to fade and for the white of the canvas to show through. (Mind you this is one of the unfinished works in his studio.)

In one of two large works in progress, the outline of a hogweed plant is recognizable. The plant appears to loom, imposing itself on the viewer. But Smith intends the inverse: “I want to give it this reverential viewpoint.” By doing so he challenges a commonly held view of an invasive species. Can we ever accept them as belonging, beautiful?

There’s truth in that approach, according to Matt James, a book illustrator and old friend of Smith’s. James, Smith, and another artist, illustrator Glen Halsey, share the space, which is actually an apartment over a bar in Parkdale, a west-end Toronto neighbourhood.

“What I find most inspiring is the freedom that he allows himself,” says James by email.

Smith and James, who won the 2013 Governor General’s Literary Award for Illustration for his book, Northwest Passage, met in high school in Woodstock, Ont., some 25 years ago. They bonded over music, such as punk’s visual cues and culture. Both were drawn to Toronto’s music and art communities. (Smith originally enrolled at George Brown College to study graphic design. After barely a semester there was a strike and he never went back.)

“It can be kind of helpful to see your own art through someone else’s eyes from time to time,” says James on his ongoing “exchange” with Smith. “But ultimately the best thing he could say to me or me to him is ‘keep going!’ or, maybe, ‘stop!'”

For now, Smith comes to the studio two or three times a week to paint and jam. He has plenty to keep him going in both pursuits. He’s looking for his next opportunity to show his art—he’s done so publicly three times—and work on new songs has begun.

Photo by Mark J Chalifoux Photography

Montreal choreographer confronts street life, addiction, and the Canadian aboriginal experience

As calls for a public inquiry into the many cases of missing and murdered aboriginal women in Canada go unheard by the federal government, Montreal choreographer Lara Kramer’s most recent piece, titled NGS (“Native Girl Syndrome”), could not be more timely.

“Native Girl Syndrome” references a term Kramer came across as she researched her first dance piece on residential schools (a compulsory education system notorious for its abuse and assimilation of aboriginal children in Canada). The term refers to the likelihood of aboriginal girls who, upon leaving residential school, enter abusive relationships or prostitution. Too often,  these women also end up on the streets or in jail. “I thought the name was really potent,” says Kramer, “so I held on to it. It really helped shape the piece.”

NGS explores themes of addiction, cultural disorientation, and alienation, all in relation to the Canadian aboriginal experience. Performed by Karina Iraola and Angie Cheng, it unfolds against a backdrop of street and urban culture. Kramer says the initial inspiration for the work was her grandmother, who moved  from her remote community of Lac Seul in northwestern Ontario to live on the city streets in Winnipeg.

The piece is not, however, a depiction of the one specific story of her grandmother, adds Kramer. Rather, NGS offers comment on street life, the addiction of two women—and something larger.  Kramer’s characters have a history. “NGS looks at the aftermath of cultural genocide in Canada, the whitewashing of native people in this country and its effects,” Kramer says, “When I see the vicious cycle of addiction and prostitution of First Nations women, I feel it’s part of something bigger.”

Since it was first performed last year, NGS has toured to Montreal, Vancouver, and Edmonton, among other cities. Kramer has designed the piece to be accessible to an audience beyond contemporary dance enthusiasts—she straddles the line between dance and theatre to be as realistic as possible. No background in dance is required to understand the themes and messages.

In this regard, NGS is characteristic of Kramer’s approach to movement and the body. She didn’t want to use the body as an abstract form, says Kramer. “I wanted to go from a realistic approach,” she adds, “so a lot of my approach to the body is giving the performer time to investigate the environment.”

Although Kramer’s roots, ancestors and much of her family are from the Lac Seul First Nation community, she was born in London, Ont. She has been dancing since she was three years old, eventually moving to Montreal, Que., to study dance creation at Concordia University, graduating in 2008. In 2012, she founded her company, Lara Kramer Danse, to support the research, creation and production of her work and community projects, such as offering school-age children an opportunity to connect with theatre and dance. Her work has become more politically charged with time and now focuses around human rights issues affecting aboriginals in Canada, which earned her recognition as a human rights advocate from the Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre.

Next spring, Kramer will start on the creation of a piece titled Tame, which deals with the themes of restraint on self-expression and the boundaries between normalcy and creative expression, which she expects to be ready for fall 2015. Although no performances of NGS are scheduled at the moment, Kramer is planning some for the coming months, notably in the U.S.

Photos by Jim Tinios

Toronto author J.M. Frey gives sci-fi a jolt of much-needed diversity

It’s not every day you read a science-fiction novel that features a polyamorous relationship, with one of its partners being a blue-skinned, bat-wing-eared, short- snouted alien, and a plot that involves time travel, a murder mystery and a near-future look at sexuality, bigotry, immigration and gender politics.

Welcome to Triptych, and the science-fiction and fantasy worlds of Toronto author J.M. Frey.

Frey doesn’t write the kind of sci-fi or fantasy you find in Star Wars. She writes the kind of genre fiction we need more of: progressive, representative and accepting, like her critically acclaimed Lambda Literary Award–nominated debut novel Triptych. The novel is a story of acceptance and hope about two humans (Basil and Gwen) who take in a polyamorous alien refugee (Kalp), come to accept Kalp’s way of life, and eventually participate in it to their betterment.

Triptych reflects Frey’s passionate belief that genre fiction can help us live better. “Science fiction and fantasy writers have the great privilege to be able to be on the front line of the battleground. It’s always been the frontier of the new,” she says. “Science fiction and fantasy can change the world.”

Of course, changing the world happens one person at a time, and Frey discovered sci-fi’s power to do that firsthand when she was eleven year old. When a crush on young actor Wil Wheaton led her to reruns of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Frey found a deep love for Gene Roddenberry’s accepting universe, and a feeling that she was understood. “What I really liked about The Next Generation was that they really explored alternate cultures, societies, and what it means to be different,” she says. “As a kid in rural Ontario who felt really different from everybody else, that really appealed.”

Star Trek’s influence led directly to Frey becoming, as she calls herself, a “professional” geek and a published author. It also left a lasting impression on her work. As someone who continues to feel underrepresented in fiction­—because, as Frey explains, “I walk with a cane, I’m going blind, going deaf, and I’m queer”—much of her playful revisionist and meta stories are propelled by questions of representation: “Where’s the gap? What’s missing? Whose perspective has this story not been told from yet?”

“Women,” is often the answer, and works like her novella The Dark Side of the Glass and the short-story anthology Hero is a Four Letter Word tackle female empowerment and the problematic male attitudes that can be found in sci-fi, fantasy and its fans.

Attitudes Frey’s very familiar with. It’s no accident she uses a gender-neutral pen name. Several years ago when she began seriously pursuing writing, she overheard two men talking in the science-fiction section of a Chapters bookstore. She recounts that “one of them pulled a book out, turned over to the back, read it and said ‘Oh my god, this sounds amazing. Dude, read this! Doesn’t it sound great? I wonder who it’s by… Oh, it’s by a chick. Never mind.’ And he put it back on the shelf.” That was the day she became J.M. Frey.

It’s a testament to Frey’s abilities as a writer that despite the issues she tackles, her writing doesn’t feel political or read like an after-school special. “I try to write books that look like the world I live in. I don’t set out to write issue books.” After a beat, she adds: “But the issues are there because they’re there in real life.”

When asked what she hopes her work will achieve, Frey answers in metaphor. “If you think of a pond and throw a pebble in the pond, it ripples. But then the surface of the pond goes still and you go back to being the person you were when you finished reading the book,” she says. “But that pebble is still there. It’s still at the bottom of the pond. That’s what I want to do. I want to change the world. I want to just drop a lot of pebbles in a lot of ponds.” Gene Roddenberry would be proud.

“This isn’t a protest, where we are being aggressive and pushing our views onto people,” explains Jazmine Carr, half of the performing duo. “This is performance art, to make people stop and ask why we are doing this.”

Women’s bodies have long been cause awareness tools; FEMEN’s “sextremism” is a recent example, as is Toronto’s SlutWalk. Whether one is in the camp that these methods show that women are reclaiming their bodies, or are of the belief that the message is lost through women flaunting their bods, it is known that the woman’s body is a guaranteed attention-grabber.

Lace 4 the Race! Was organized by the self-identified Nerdy Stripper, a.k.a. Twiggy. “I wanted to continue the conversation on what is happening to our brothers and sisters in Russia,” Twiggy says, referencing what the Facebook event page describes as, “Putin’s anti-gay, anti-speech, anti-lace panties atrocity to human rights.” The message was, “Injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere.”

A handful of photographers joined the event, while many a passerby stopped to snap their own shots or ask the gals what they were up to, including a pair of Toronto police officers who seemed to be genuinely concerned for the ladies’ well-being—the temperature outdoors being below zero degrees and all. “I personally think the event went well,” says Twiggy. “I was asking a lot [people to show up in underwear], it was -8 C out.”

After a few whisky shots, and some dancing to lady-vocal tunes such as The Distillers, both performers were warm as they braved through the early afternoon.

A former This intern, Hillary Di Menna writes Gender Block every week and maintains an online feminist resource directory, FIRE- Feminist Internet Resource Exchange.