- Many of you know I love FEMEN (Site: FEMEN). Police detained and later released three topless protesters this weekend after they stripped to the waist outside a World Economic Forum event in Davos, Switzerland (attended privately by wealthy elite like Arianna Huffington and Facebook’s Sherl Sandberg). The trio, from the Ukrainian group FEMEN, carried banners while shouting “Poor because of you.” Topless FEMEN protesters arrested in Davos (GlobalPost)
- To say that I’m a fan of Girl With The Dragon Tattoo would be the understatement of the century. The new version? Not so much… Here’s how Hollywood got Dragon Tattoo SO wrong: “It’s unacceptable to take a woman made into a phenomenon because of her solitary strength and particular moral compass and drive, and turn her into a romantic girl saved and guided by a man.” Softening and Sexualizing Lisbeth Salander (Movies.com, via The Sexadmeic)
- Sex educator Corey Silverberg heard about new location-based app Pee In Peace that helps trans people find safe bathrooms where they don’t have to worry about gender violence, and interviewed them about their brilliant app. Pee in Peace: Using Technology to Counter Bathroom Violence (About: Sexuality)
- A wealthy Californian pornographer who sued Kim Dotcom for infringing copyright on thousands of nude images says he is delighted the FBI and New Zealand police have smashed Dotcom’s Megaupload file-sharing business. But Norm Zada, owner of soft-core porn website Perfect 10, said he would be happier still if the US government was instead attacking the search-engine giant Google, Kim Dotcom In Porn Wrangle (Stuff.co.nz)
- At right: see why this poster for Shame was banned? Banned Hungarian Poster For “Shame” (Buzzfeed)
- Dr. Hai Hong is one of a new generation of Chinese entrepreneurs: Hong sells sex toys manufactured in his Chinese factory, but you can get just about anything from these guys. Need a few thousand iPad cases? They’ve got your back. GPS trackers for your fleet of trucks? No problem. They say that they’re legitimate businesses. They just happen to be spammers too. Who Sent That Sex-Toy E-mail? Your Friendly Chinese Spamufacture (Wired, thanks netik!)
- One of our favorite male porn stars may just crossover into mainstream film. Bret Easton Ellis has been tweeting about a film script he is writing with James Deen in mind = having sex with both women and men. Hot! Porn Star James Deen to Star in New Bret Easton Ellis Movie? (FishbowlLA)
- The history of straightness is much shorter than you’d think. An expert explains its origins… The invention of the heterosexual (Salon, thanks Damon!)
- It’s not new news (as you can see in the fleshlightyet Twitter timeline) but the minute that Gizmodo found out that male masturbation sex toy company Fleshlight is developing an iPad Fleshlight masturbation case, they confirmed the upcoming device. I can personally tell you that Steve Jobs would not approve… Fleshlight Developing an iPad Case You Can Have Sex With (Gizmodo)
Having read the first 2 books, I think I will now choose to skip both the US movie (which sounds from your description like just what I feared/expected from Hollywood’s male-dominated point of view), and also the Swedish version. Doesn’t sound like the Swedes ‘got’ Lisbeth, either.
I haven’t seen the new movie, nor ready the books, but I could completely understand Rapace’s Lisbeth being underestimated by people. She looks like a weird, shy loner, not someone willing to go all out in defending herself against subway attackers, smart enough to hack anyone, or crazy enough to tie up her twisted gov-appointed minder and take her revenge on him. She just looked lonely, not courageous and powerful.
I think the Dragon Tattoo piece is spot-on in its criticism of the marketing to U.S. audiences (over which the artists involved in creating the film have little to no input or control) and makes interesting points about the critical response that seem to be attributed to the wrong people; the filmmakers rather than the reviewers themselves. I think those issues definitely speak to the differences in American vs. European movie culture and mass audiences.
I disagree with most of what it says about the film, though. I watched the Swedish version years ago and again before the U.S. version was released, and I thought they feminized Salander in the make-up and costume design in ways that didn’t match up with the physically slight, androgynous character in the books and changed her demeanor dramatically in an effort to make her more of a sexy goth dominatrix. She was pleasantly powerful, but I wasn’t buying that anyone believed she was stupid, which is a huge part of the people in Lisbeth’s life misunderstanding and taking advantage of her and key to the point the book makes about how women are targeted. I liked Rapace’s performance a lot, but if differed from the character in the book significantly more than Mara’s and in ways that seemed designed to make her a sexualized femme fatale. It seems really weird to me to accuse the U.S. version of not being true to the character in the book while implying that the Swedish version got it right.
I do think the Swedish film had a much firmer grasp on the Blomqvist character, but that’s a different story.
The piece on Lisbeth in the new Dragon Tattoo is spot on and I didn’t even notice it when I watched in the theater. Maybe I had blinders on because I was so excited for the movie, and visually it looked so much like what I had in my head from reading the books (moreso than the Swedish movies). Also, I remember discussing all of the items listed in the one paragraph of improvements in Mara’s Lisbeth over Rapace’s. I’m still excited to see the next two, but I’ll be judging them with a much keener eye. Thanks for the link!