Erica Lindquist's Blog, page 14

Boxtrolls

I actually saw Dracula Untold more recently, but it sucked a lot more than blood and it’s really worth talking about. So I want to go back the movie I saw before the, Boxtrolls.

I really wanted to love this movie. It was made with such obvious love and care. There was some great ideas, but those diamonds were pretty rough and trussed way in the boxes. The worst thing about Boxtrolls was that I could see the gems, but just not reach them. I feel like there was the chance for a really amazing story here, but no one pulled it off.

[Here be spoilers!]

Let’s talk about the transmisogyny (prejudice against trans women). I’m pretty sure it was an innocent attempt at humor, but the central villain, Archibald Snatcher, spends a fair amount of the movie in a dress and playing the part of Madame Frou Frou, who is a popular performer and well-liked among the White Hats that Snatcher wants so badly to be inducted into.

First off… why? Snatcher doesn’t seem to get any information in his Madame Frou Frou persona. It doesn’t help him further any of his plans at all. In fact, it seems to take time away from his Boxtroll-catching exploits. Frou Frou seems to serve only to show Snatcher lying and deceiving the people of the town. Again, I’m pretty sure it was innocent, but under this thin attempt at humor, Boxtrolls risks perpetuating the idea that trans women are nothing more than men attempting to deceive the cisgendered majority.

And Boxtrolls really didn’t need to be like this! You know, the only time Snatcher seemed truly happy was during the movie was as Madame Frou Frou. One of the (conflicting) messages of Boxtrolls is to accept yourself, that white hats and cheese don’t change the fundamental truth of ourselves. There’s even a scene where Eggs tearfully tells Snatcher not to eat the cheese that he’s allergic to and which will never make him a part of the aristocracy he aspires to.

How great a moment would that have been to have Snatcher realize that Eggs was right, that his true self, the one that was respected and which he loved was Madame Frou Frou? Put down the cheese, Snatcher, and put your awesome dress back on! End the movie with another performance to the applause of the entire town.

(Which would have served the ending better to explain what the hellhappened to the White Hats. They were ass-hats, to be sure, but… how exactly did the boss fight at the end or the cheese explosion dissolve the ignorant and self-absorbed council…?)

But no… Snatcher eats the cheese and explodes. Because reasons.

Today

Can’t tell you how good it feels to be writing again today. If you know the feeling, you know it. If not, I’ll never be able to explain it.

But I guess I’ll try! Some days, being a writer is a wretched bowl of vomit soup, full of hating my own work and frustration with editing or formatting. But other days, like today, it’s glorious rainbows and endless cupcakes of awesomeness.

It’s rainbow and cupcake day, bitches!

A Story

Taylor’s birthday was Monday, so it seems right to tell these stories now.

I grew up in an small, pretty much all-white town in the Sierra Nevada foothills. That’s where I made most of my oldest friends, so most of them are white, too. The exception to this was Taylor, the boyfriend of another friend. He was this huge, funny, gothy, outrageous black guy.

Taylor was a massive vampire fan and played in our local V:TM LARP. One evening, though, while our group was gathering at a local cafe for a game, a fight broke out. Not among our players, I think. I wasn’t there when the fight started. But I was there when it ended – Taylor got right into the middle of it and put a peaceful stop to the brawl.

But someone had already called the cops. By the time they arrived, things had pretty well died down. One of the first people the cops talked to was my then-boyfriend, now-husband; a tall, clean-cut white guy. Their first question: “Was it the black guy?”

What? We were all utterly aghast. Hell no, it hadn’t been “the black guy”! Taylor was the hero of the damned night! We all made this perfectly clear to the cops – who, naturally, didn’t take Taylor’s word for it – and eventually they cleared off.

Later, we moved down to the nearby city of Sacramento and this ridiculous instance of racist cops seemed far behind us. Late one night, Taylor was riding somewhere with Aron and some more of our male friends. I no longer recall where they were going or coming home from. Maybe another LARP gathering.

But a cop pulled the car over. Taylor immediately put his hand on the dashboard, went perfectly still and told all of the other guys to do the same. The other boys – all white – laughed and didn’t do anything different. They thought he was joking.

Aron was driving and addressed the cop, who as it turned out, was just concerned because four sweaty young men had fogged up the windows considerably and the officer was concerned about visibility. At least, that’s what he said. He probably wondered if it was smoke. Pot was still highly illegal at the time. Taylor remained still and silent, with his hands on the dashboard the entire time, staring straight ahead. He wouldn’t even reach into the glove box to hand Aron the registration.

So Aron turned on the defroster full blast and they moved on. The guys teased Taylor for months about his reaction to the cop who had pulled them over. Taylor was a sweet man and took it all in stride. He never got angry with us for the jokes. Maybe he realized that a bunch of white kids from a moderately wealthy mountain town just didn’t understand. Taylor wasn’t joking this time.

It wasn’t until years later that we really began to understand what had happened. Not until it was far too late to apologize, to tell him that we understood – even if our skin color prevented us from ever truly empathizing – why he reacted the way he did. By then, he and our friend had ended their relationship (peacefully and equitably, of course) Taylor had moved out of town. And died too young of a heart attack.

We miss you, man. I’m sorry we didn’t understand.

Birth control can’t be OTC

Let’s talk about birth control. Since the whole Hobby Lobby SCOTUS decision, there’s been talk of simply making birth control pills available without a prescription. Sounds like a good idea, right? Make these pills easily available to all women and eliminate the question of whether or not religiously-inclined employers need to “pay” for them.

Well… no. Birth control pills are drug with serious potential side effectsand contraindications that need to be monitored by a physician. That’s like saying that we should make people regulate their own heart meds or anti-anxiety pills. What could possibly go wrong?

A fatal stroke, for one. A few years back, I went in to my gynecologist about some oddities and was diagnosed with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS). Not a big deal – it’s common enough and fairly easy to treat. My doctor prescribed exercise and birth control pills. Not for contraception – Aron had a vasectomy years ago – but to regulate my hormones.

Sure, I said with a shrug. I didn’t like the pill, but I’d take them during high school and survived the experience. The doctor told me that the name she wrote on the prescription pad was for a pure estrogen pill, an older variety that was great for treating PCOS. So I took the prescription and headed off to get it filled.

No sooner had I stepped out the door and gone to my car did my cell phone ring. It was my gynecologist telling me not come right back and get a new prescription. Just as a matter of routine caution, she reviewed pulled up my medical records from my GP and reviewed them before going on to her next patient that day. She noted there that I suffered from ocular migraines and had been to the hospital several times for them.

As it turns out, estrogen pills and ocular migraines don’t mix.Chances are low, but they can result in potentially fatal strokes. Without my gynecologist doing her due diligence, I never would have known. It never would have even occurred to me that hormones and headaches might be the closely related. It’s a damned good thing she was watching out for me. If I had just been able to walk into Walgreens and purchase the pills, I might be fine.

But I might not have been.