These don't have much in common.. or do they?

Here's an article about Muslim womens' headscarves & fashion:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-hijab-20101007,0,4649314.story?page=2

I think it's interesting because when I was in Egypt, I definitely noticed how the women took liberties with their headscarves. Walking down the street, you would see some women with very modest colors, like black, brown, gray, beige. But there were also women with bright colors or sparkles or shiny streaks engrained on their scarf (in this article, a woman is looking for leopard-print fabric to make a hijab!). I think this is an interesting way that Muslim women have taken an object that is meant to cover them and appropriated it into a statement of identity. Maybe on a slightly different note, but remember that law that France passed about women wearing headscarves? If you don't know what I'm talking about - France just created a law banning women from covering their heads with the hijab. (Incidentally, it was in the news today: http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/10/07/france.burqa.ban/index.html.) It was meant to protect women from oppression, because French officials see the headscarf as a means of covering and suppressing women's liberties. Of course, if you talk to a Muslim woman or man, they will probably say otherwise. For them, covering a woman's head has more to do with respect, I think. So when a woman appropriates the scarf that is meant to be protecting her, and makes it into her own individual fashion statement, is this promoting the original values, or offering an opposition to it?


And on a completely different note: Glee vs. The Tea Party!
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/music_blog/2010/10/critics-notebook-glee-is-at-a-crossroads.html

Ok, it's not all about Glee and their political opposites. But I enjoyed this line "it's a potent pop-cultural force in opposition to the rightward push of that other pop phenomenon of the moment, the Tea Party movement."

Honestly, I think I'm checking out of the Glee Train. It does feel like the singles-driven, empty-plot, echo of society that this article calls it. It feels like the scenes are only there in order to lead up to the songs they chose to put in the episodes. So because of this, they can't develop character lines in ways that might be more plot-driven (and interesting). For instance, Rachel. Yes, the whole bit with her mother coming back was something like a twist. But what function did it serve, other than to provide an opportunity for some sentimental songs and a cover of Pokerface? It certainly didn't advance Rachel emotionally, she hasn't developed as a character because of it. In fact, at the end it brought the story right back to where it began.

I guess the hospitalization of Kurt's father in the most recent episode is some attempt to make the story more dramatic - in a misguided conception that more drama makes for a better plot. But it was really a catalyst for a new genre of singles that the show could sell on iTunes immediately after it aired. Did any of the characters start exploring their own mortality, or taking risks to savor their short lives, or show any emotional depth in reaction to Kurt's dad's near-death experience? No, they cried and sang, which tells us nothing about them as individual emotional characters.

It's like this article said, that the characters are high-school stereotypes presented in the broad humor of vaudeville. They're pretty much flat surfaces, despite being not quite the cookie-cutter stereotype that they look like. The head cheerleader is actually pregnant. We can't look into what made her let down her guard in the first place, and what emotional stresses tore apart her life and made her into an outsider. We just saw her crying a lot, and in the end she had her baby and then the plot was back where it started. It's because we need the characters to stay as broadly-cut as possible so that the story doesn't get too complicated and confuse an audience that just wants more music. The minute the show starts to let you in on a character's secret (like, the night Quinn got pregnant), it quickly pulls back and makes you forget what you saw. It's not in the business of character exploration, it's the business of flashy stars that sell singles.

And a show without plot is boring, no matter how many exact-copy-frame-for-frame music covers you put in.

I guess you might argue that the purpose of the songs is to fill in this emotional void in the show, that the songs written by strangers somehow exactly express a character's emotional make-up and account for the way they are feeling. I'm not sure how I feel about this, except that I don't agree.
chloe

ps, I realize this all sounds unedited and rambling. it's a blog, get over it.