WMC News & Features
December 10, 2009 | Janus Adams |
Arts and culture
“Truth Goes Marching”
Historian Janus Adams reflects on two Civil War exhibits in New York, featuring John Brown and Abraham Lincoln. In a footnote she finds her key to women’s truth, hiding in the margins of history and giving us insight into the issues of today.
WMC News & Features
Precious Star Claims the Spotlight
With the confidence of a seasoned performer, Gabourey Sidibe portrays a particular character with universal appeal. The movie, based on a Sapphire novel, opens in limited release on Friday.
WMC News & Features
Gender Discrimination in Filmmaking—Bollywood Style
Moviemaking styles may vary between Hollywood and Bollywood, but women working in the Indian commercial film industry have as difficult a time as their counterparts in the United States getting good roles and investment in their films. Director Zoya Akhtar takes a satiric look in Luck by Chance.
WMC News & Features
October 05, 2009 | Ellen Bravo |
Arts and culture
Daylight Lessons from Letterman’s Late Night Escapades
The author, an expert on the prevention of sexual harassment and other issues of women in the workforce, suggests that human resources professionals and corporate executives take the occasion of David Letterman’s revelations to revisit their companies’ policies with the understanding that “sexual favoritism is sexual harassment.”
WMC News & Features
October 02, 2009 | Marcella Chester |
Arts and culture,
International,
Media,
Violence against women
What Consequences Should Roman Polanski Face After 32 Years?
The author, a rape survivor, takes a clear-eyed view of the Polanski case, sorting out both the needs of his victim and those of a society that cannot afford to tolerate sexual violence.
WMC News & Features
Broadcast News: When Women Become Two out of Three
The author, whose first job after earning her journalism degree was with Katie Couric’s evening news show, argues that both Couric and Diane Sawyer will adjust to a changing TV news scene, one in which the traditional evening broadcasts coexist with interactive new media.
WMC News & Features
July 30, 2009 Arts and culture
Yoo Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg: A Story of the “Oprah of Her Day”
Before Lucy Ricardo, there was Molly Goldberg. The author interviews prize-winning filmmaker Aviva Kempner, whose documentary brings to life the star, writer and producer of the first TV sitcom, “The Goldbergs.”
WMC News & Features
Midwest Teen Sex Show: Can Sex Ed Actually Be Entertaining?
As the author reports, the creators of the podcast believe humor and honest information about sex for teens do mix, and programmers at Comedy Central think they may be on to something.
WMC News & Features
The Undiagnosed Problem: The Twilight “Saga”
Harmless fantasy-romance? Or influential prototype of a controlling lover? The author asks her (somewhat) younger sister-readers to take a deeper look at the popular series.
WMC News & Features
Celebrating Women's Media Successes
WMC’s first awards event honored the best work by women in news and entertainment. The recipients, however, cautioned those assembled to pay tribute: many barriers remain.
WMC News & Features
QWOC Film Festival Focuses on the Immigrant Experience
Produced by filmmaker Madeleine Lim, herself an immigrant from Singapore, the San Francisco festival gives newly trained queer women of color a showcase for their short films—and also feeds into the...
WMC News & Features
Finally, the Magical World of Disney Is About to Include an African American Princess
Granted, it’s a fairy tale—the furthest thing from reality. But a wide audience of little girls is likely to take Tiana, the new Disney character, to heart. The author asks how likely is it that the mainstream company can produce an effective role model for them.
WMC News & Features
A Theatre Season To Savor
As Broadway celebrates with the Tony Awards Sunday night, the nominations recognize some, but hardly all, of women’s great successes in theatre during the last year. The author analyzes why an industry that is bucking the economic downturn continues to shortchange productions by and about women.
WMC News & Features
Ain’t No Women (Like the Motown Women)
There’s a lot to celebrate about 50 years of Motown music—including the careers of two women whose behind-the-scenes efforts helped create a new genre of music.
WMC News & Features
Marilyn French, 1929 to 2009
A brilliant feminist theorist, her 1977 novel, The Women’s Room, connected with millions of women who had no way before of claiming their anger and discontent. And, as Women’s Media Center President Carol Jenkins tells us, Marilyn French was a tender and caring friend.
WMC News & Features
Reflections on the Observe and Report Date-Rape Controversy
Just in time for Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention month, a comedy provokes argument—if not box office success.
Rarely does a film incite responses as diametrically opposed as the new "dark...
WMC News & Features
Tracey Ullman Examines the “State of the Union”
Sketch comedian extraordinaire Tracey Ullman found a comfortable niche on Showtime for her satiric probe of America’s psyche. But no viewer gets to remain complacent under her penetrating gaze.
WMC News & Features
AmazonFAIL: How Online Social Tools Can Wreak Havoc—and Repair It
The author explains what probably happened over the weekend to threaten sales of LGBT and feminist books on Amazon.com—and how social media instantly jumped into the fray.
WMC News & Features
Media Attacks: Getting Even—and Then Some
Stung by Michael Savage’s attack on children with autism and their parents, playwright Carolyn Doyle, in a one-woman performance currently running in San Francisco, uses her craft to show how a family navigates a mysterious world.
WMC News & Features
Communicating with Jane Fonda
Not content merely to speak to her Broadway audience eight times a week through a critically acclaimed performance, Jane Fonda is blogging daily and twittering nightly. She finds herself hooked on the instant feedback.
WMC News & Features
Patsy Mink: Paving the Way
Kimberlee Bassford discovers a subject for her documentary who had crafted the laws that made it possible for the filmmaker to achieve her education and career.
WMC News & Features
Pondering the Chick Flick
Call it what you like, the genre comes with both good and bad traits. The author suggests that we reward Hollywood at the box office only when it resists its misogynistic tendencies.
WMC News & Features
“Lonely Soldier Monologues” Only Opens an Essential National Conversation
Helen Benedict’s play, now ending its run in New York, focuses attention on enlisted women soldiers with the authenticity of their own words. Now, argues a former Marine, we must go on to recognize ...
WMC News & Features
What Would Ida Do?
At a time in many ways parallel, though more perilous, than our own, Ida B. Wells stood up and spoke out. For Women’s History Month, her biographer describes her complex understanding of how race, class and gender play out in the politics of change.
WMC News & Features
Finding a Media Career that Suits Me—Not My Image of Myself
From an early age, the author had a particular kind of career in mind. And, rapidly, she was realizing her dreams working in network television—until she stepped back and took another look at what she wanted in life.