If it's pouring with rain, or just cold, or otherwise exhibiting lasting signs of late winter, make this for dinner, Mark Bittman's quick polenta. Basically: cook about a cup of polenta on medium heat, adding a cup of water initially, and again, three or four times subsequently, as the cornmeal absorbs the moisture. Whisk before putting the polenta onto the burner and then after every addition of water, and whenever else it seems to need it. As you're cooking the polenta, throw some good quality sausages into a pan, and saute until done. When the polenta tastes almost done, add another cup or so of water, turn it down to low, and cook until it's tender. Then add a knob of butter, a generous amount of pepper, and a "boatload" of parmesan. Stir until combined. Throw some good sausages on top, and you're set to go. Add a vegetable on the side if you must, but it will interrupt the sheer pleasure of slurping up hot, cheesy polenta on top of little slices of sausage. This is comfort food, y'all. It will soothe your February fatigue.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Thursday, February 4, 2010
A few more things need vindicating, Mary
So I've been watching a BBC series called The History of Britain, narrated by none other than Simon Schama, the wunderkind historian. Schama has truly strange delivery, and he never emphasizes the words you expect him to -- so if he'd said that phrase, he would probably have emphasized "emphasizes" and "words," all while moving his head very quickly and decisively back and forth. Even if this makes him easy to satirize, it doesn't mean he isn't an excellent and engaging historian. I mean, I say props to anyone who has enough knowledge to write his own script for a series about the entire history of England. This island has been at it for a long time!
Anyhow, a few nights ago I was watching the episode about the end of the eighteenth century, which contains a gutting section on slavery (and the irony of its existence alongside general Enlightenment calls for freedom), and goes on to talk about the French revolution, specifically about Mary Wollstonecraft's time in France. The production value for the series isn't the best: there's a lot of bad, sort of game-showey music, and really lame costume drama reenactment. So, for example, the narration frequently cuts from Schama, talking someplace historical (like in front of Wollstonecraft and Godwin's shared tomb), to this gauzily filmed sequence of Mary happily sitting across from Godwin. Any of you who are aficionados of history programs will know what I mean: when you're discussing history that happened pre-film and that doesn't involve lots of artifacts, you don't have an awful lot to work with.
So Mary was on my mind yesterday. Then I went to a C-18 reading group, and on to a pub afterward (it's customary here to go to a pub after workshop; it's a very nice tradition). About half an hour after we turned up, a legion of young women, dressed in costume, charged in. This made me think about Wollstonecraft's Vindication much more directly, because they were all, to a person, unbelievably scantily clad; at least four had garters, several others bunny costumes, or slender excuses for near nudity (a hat does not a convincing costume make...). All the guys they were with hadn't dressed up at all. This was obviously a special occasion, probably someone's birthday, and there seemed to be a vague circus theme. This kind of sight is by no means uncommon here. Fancy dress (the British phrase for costume) isn't a Halloween or bachelor party affair -- though one of the best costumes I've heard of, a banana, was used for the latter. Nor does it always involve young women wearing almost nothing and getting completely drunk. Last weekend, for instance, I saw a troupe of female ninja turtles happily charging down Euston road. But most times, fancy dress does involve young women dressing in nearly invisible miniskirts, bustiers, and drinking all night long, later to stumble along the streets. Maybe this is what enlightened womanhood looks like, but I don't really think so.
Feminism is a dirty word these days in many circles: when Manohla Dargis wrote about the underrepresentation of real women in Hollywood cinema, she made a point of saying she wasn't being a feminist. Um, ok, Manohla, but are you sure you really mean that? Here in the UK, it's something you'll hardly hear anyone admit to being. One of my friends had a young female student who said, "Isn't the work of feminism done?," and there seems more generally to be a sentiment that it no longer needs to be taught. Admittedly, feminism is such a multiple, variable thing that it cannot be considered as a monolithic concept; it encompasses a wide variety of approaches, ideologies, and claims. Not every feminist goes as far as the dugareed Dworkin. And I understand the misunderstandings that extreme feminism can give rise to: it's easy to think that all feminists are as radical as Dworkin. I'm equally sympathetic to the point of view that imagines that feminism is more or less over, and thinks we're post-feminist. I remember thinking this myself in college, and not really understanding what all the fuss was about. If I always used "he" as a pronoun, did it really have to mean something? Couldn't we just understand it as a convention?
In the years between undergrad and now -- six now, going on seven -- I've changed my mind about the importance of feminism. It's not because of anything particular that's happened to me, but it's been due, I think, to my (limited) exposure to the working world, and also to my continued exposure to the hypersexualization of women in the media. It's something that it's possible to notice even more clearly when you move to a new place: when I lived in Florence for a few months, I remember finding the car that advertised the strip joint really peculiar, and when I moved here, I've found myself repulsed by the postcards in phone booths, as well as by the apparent imperative for young women to dress and behave in a extremely determined manner. There are plenty of equivalents in the states, but you just get numb to them after a while. There's something quite stark about seeing how it breaks down in another country, because you notice it much more clearly.
I'm inured to the use of bodies in advertising -- there's a vacation poster for Aruba up in the underground that says "Arooooba" over some girl's boobs, and basically should say "A-boooooba" -- but I think that when the conventions, or trends, or whatever you want to call them, of young women's dress are so uniformly provocative in the UK, it's unlikely that all of these ladies have read their Mackinnon, had a think about it, and decided that they were going to put on a miniskirt. To be clear, the creditable strands of feminism tell you that you should put on a miniskirt if you want to. Feminism isn't, and shouldn't be, synonymous with prudery or with an aversion to sex. But as any smart person worth her salt knows, our desires are determined by forces outside of us, and I find it genuinely concerning that so many young women here seem to take this kind of personality on as their cause celebre without thinking about why it's become so ubiquitous, or what it means. Make sure it's yours, girls, before you take it on.
Anyhow, a few nights ago I was watching the episode about the end of the eighteenth century, which contains a gutting section on slavery (and the irony of its existence alongside general Enlightenment calls for freedom), and goes on to talk about the French revolution, specifically about Mary Wollstonecraft's time in France. The production value for the series isn't the best: there's a lot of bad, sort of game-showey music, and really lame costume drama reenactment. So, for example, the narration frequently cuts from Schama, talking someplace historical (like in front of Wollstonecraft and Godwin's shared tomb), to this gauzily filmed sequence of Mary happily sitting across from Godwin. Any of you who are aficionados of history programs will know what I mean: when you're discussing history that happened pre-film and that doesn't involve lots of artifacts, you don't have an awful lot to work with.
So Mary was on my mind yesterday. Then I went to a C-18 reading group, and on to a pub afterward (it's customary here to go to a pub after workshop; it's a very nice tradition). About half an hour after we turned up, a legion of young women, dressed in costume, charged in. This made me think about Wollstonecraft's Vindication much more directly, because they were all, to a person, unbelievably scantily clad; at least four had garters, several others bunny costumes, or slender excuses for near nudity (a hat does not a convincing costume make...). All the guys they were with hadn't dressed up at all. This was obviously a special occasion, probably someone's birthday, and there seemed to be a vague circus theme. This kind of sight is by no means uncommon here. Fancy dress (the British phrase for costume) isn't a Halloween or bachelor party affair -- though one of the best costumes I've heard of, a banana, was used for the latter. Nor does it always involve young women wearing almost nothing and getting completely drunk. Last weekend, for instance, I saw a troupe of female ninja turtles happily charging down Euston road. But most times, fancy dress does involve young women dressing in nearly invisible miniskirts, bustiers, and drinking all night long, later to stumble along the streets. Maybe this is what enlightened womanhood looks like, but I don't really think so.
Feminism is a dirty word these days in many circles: when Manohla Dargis wrote about the underrepresentation of real women in Hollywood cinema, she made a point of saying she wasn't being a feminist. Um, ok, Manohla, but are you sure you really mean that? Here in the UK, it's something you'll hardly hear anyone admit to being. One of my friends had a young female student who said, "Isn't the work of feminism done?," and there seems more generally to be a sentiment that it no longer needs to be taught. Admittedly, feminism is such a multiple, variable thing that it cannot be considered as a monolithic concept; it encompasses a wide variety of approaches, ideologies, and claims. Not every feminist goes as far as the dugareed Dworkin. And I understand the misunderstandings that extreme feminism can give rise to: it's easy to think that all feminists are as radical as Dworkin. I'm equally sympathetic to the point of view that imagines that feminism is more or less over, and thinks we're post-feminist. I remember thinking this myself in college, and not really understanding what all the fuss was about. If I always used "he" as a pronoun, did it really have to mean something? Couldn't we just understand it as a convention?
In the years between undergrad and now -- six now, going on seven -- I've changed my mind about the importance of feminism. It's not because of anything particular that's happened to me, but it's been due, I think, to my (limited) exposure to the working world, and also to my continued exposure to the hypersexualization of women in the media. It's something that it's possible to notice even more clearly when you move to a new place: when I lived in Florence for a few months, I remember finding the car that advertised the strip joint really peculiar, and when I moved here, I've found myself repulsed by the postcards in phone booths, as well as by the apparent imperative for young women to dress and behave in a extremely determined manner. There are plenty of equivalents in the states, but you just get numb to them after a while. There's something quite stark about seeing how it breaks down in another country, because you notice it much more clearly.
I'm inured to the use of bodies in advertising -- there's a vacation poster for Aruba up in the underground that says "Arooooba" over some girl's boobs, and basically should say "A-boooooba" -- but I think that when the conventions, or trends, or whatever you want to call them, of young women's dress are so uniformly provocative in the UK, it's unlikely that all of these ladies have read their Mackinnon, had a think about it, and decided that they were going to put on a miniskirt. To be clear, the creditable strands of feminism tell you that you should put on a miniskirt if you want to. Feminism isn't, and shouldn't be, synonymous with prudery or with an aversion to sex. But as any smart person worth her salt knows, our desires are determined by forces outside of us, and I find it genuinely concerning that so many young women here seem to take this kind of personality on as their cause celebre without thinking about why it's become so ubiquitous, or what it means. Make sure it's yours, girls, before you take it on.
Friday, January 22, 2010
Englishness
I just spell-checked an article, and since my spell-check is set to 'US' -- in fact, there's a little American flag in the top right corner -- it caught my new dirty secret: sometimes I use British spellings without even noticing it. It's not gone so far as to make "colour" look okay; I can't imagine it ever will. Nor have I started wearing shorts with tights, which seems to be all the rage here. (Ladies, this is not ok!) But in any case, slowly the letter "s" is creeping in in place of "z," so I'll write "analyse." In fact, right now Blogger has underlined the word in red, so there you go.
Spelling is the tip of the assimilation iceberg. It's tricky, this business of assimilating, because England does and does not seem like a foreign country. Unlike Germany, where I don't even get the gender of bratwurst right -- I mistakenly ordered ein Bratwurst instead of eine Bratwurst; I had no inkling it was feminine, and was gruffly corrected by the sausage seller -- here I can get around no problem, and certain things, for instance the NHS, seem to run more smoothly (knock wood) than their American equivalents. Nevertheless, an American inevitably experiences occasional, or even frequent, puzzlement in the face of English traditions and ways. As Bill Bryson chronicles so well in Notes from a Small Island, which I was given as a (very appropriate) Christmas present, there's a long list of English things that stand out to an American. The variety of radio programming, for instance -- who's heard of a radio soap? or a show all about gardening questions? -- not to mention the ritualization of tea, the obsession with sparkly Saturday-night outfits, the fear of being overheard in public, and the tremendous population of urban foxes (and yes, I do mean the variety with four legs, not two, for any of you who are wondering...). There are nicer oddities, too, like the warmth of English families and the pub-to-pub walking you can do, in the countryside, or, if you like, in the city; plus Simon Schama's history programs, and any recipe by Nigel Slater. But for a nation that speaks English, it is a pretty different country. Even the word "pretty" means something different here: "pretty different" is the equivalent of "very different"; the meanings of "pretty" and "quite" are switched in British English.
That said, I think the pluses outweigh the minuses. I mean, flaming Christmas pudding? Pretty awesome. Lots of crazy tweed sold by old hat shops? Also nice. A general sense of community whenever it snows? Not so bad. Cadbury (soon to be Kraft) eggs, available from January through April, expressly designed to fatten us all up? A win. Debit cards with chips in them? Convenient. Everyone dressed in navy, grey, and brown? Easy to blend in.
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