Panda-ing to the Masses

Love / Shove blog post by Miriam Wolf, June 30, 2008 - 2:59pm;

We avoided the 100-degree heat in Portland this weekend with a trip to blessed air conditioning to see Kung Fu Panda. And while you can't escape its exploitive racial sterotyping and fat-phobia, it did provide a good takeaway lesson for my 8-year-old daughter.

Namely, as a woman you can train your entire life for a position, as Tigress does for the position of Dragon Warrior, but when push comes to shove, the powers that be will end up giving that job you've poured your heart into not to you, but to an incompetent hacklehead with no training who literally falls out of the sky--as long as he has a penis.

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Comments

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panda-rific!

Posted by veronica on June 30, 2008 - 5:44pm

In some ways I'm glad I missed the movie.

That take-away lesson is learned almost each day. *cough*Obama*cough*

haha!!

Veronica I. Arreola

http://vivalafeminista.blogspot.com
Also at:
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Tina Fey

Posted by jessiegill on July 7, 2008 - 8:54am

My dear and beloved Sister Bitches,

For a feminist magazine - mind you, I've been a subscriber since your inception - you're coming down pretty hard on a Sister. What's the deal with giving Tina Fey such a hard time?

Get a bloody sense of humor, won't you? The current edition is the second to give her a black eye. It's cowardly to list in the index (current edition) that it's an article in praise of her extraordinarily good writing, and give her nothing but backhanded compliments.

Please, watch the show (I'm not sure your columnist has).

That woman is brilliant, and funny as hell. Your magazine is maligning a woman who has opened many doors for other women writers - television or otherwise.

I don't imagine my comments will see print. However, I hope the staff will have the self awareness to at least take comments under consideration in future. WATCH the show and LISTEN to the subtle humor.

Regards,

Jessie Gill

Current issue article IS positive

Posted by Suka on July 7, 2008 - 10:55am

Might want to re-read the current issue's piece about Fey. It's *definitely* in praise of Tina.

mad comments on this

Posted by slithers on July 7, 2008 - 10:45am

By "mad," I mean like "mad hatter" mad.

Someone calling Sen. Obama an "incompetent hacklehead" (and incorrectly implying that Sen. Clinton, also a senator newbie, has many more years of training/skill akin to Tigress) is half-racist & completely silly. I feel relatively neutral about both Obama and Clinton, but I can at least recognize that they're both politically-savvy, intelligent people.

And then there's angry mad-hatter complaint about Tina Fey coverage (who I could've sworn has had some recent positive press in Bitch, but maybe I'm confused - not as confused as the blogger who wrote it though - this post has nothing to do with Tina Fey).

Anyways, I enjoyed the original post and I'm disappointed (but not surprised) that cartoon movies are still dragging out the same tattered stereotypes that I grew up with. I've heard good things about Wall-E, but nothing (yet) from a feminist perspective on that.