by Molly Ivors
In the thrilling conclusion of Neil Jordan's freaked-out 90's phenom The Crying Game, the actual woman, Jude, played by Miranda Richardson, becomes the enforcer for the eeeeevil terrorist IRA, and must take out Our Hero, played by Stephen Rea when he attempts to step away from the organization. Unfortunately for her, his heart has already gone another direction, toward Peace and Love and Dil, the light-skinned black boy so effeminate that he passes as a woman. Of course, as Elaine Showalter pointed out lo these many years ago, it's a narrative necessity that Jude end up crazy or tamed or dead. And so girly Dil has to be dressed in boys' clothes and learn to use his gun in order to protect the hapless Fergus. It sure is a good thing Freud has been discredited! Whew!
I can't think what brought this film to mind this morning.
Mistress Hillary started disciplining her fellow senator last winter, after he began exploring a presidential bid. When he winked at her, took her elbow and tried to say hello on the Senate floor, she did not melt, as many women do. She brushed him off, a move meant to remind him that he was an upstart who should not get in the way of her turn in the Oval Office.
He was so shook up, he called a friend to say: You would not believe what just happened with Hillary.
She has continued to flick the whip in debates. She usually ignores Obama and John Edwards backstage, preferring to chat with the so-called second-tier candidates. And she often looks so unapproachable while they’re setting up on stage that Obama seems hesitant to be the first to say hi.
With so much at stake, she had to do it again in Vegas, this time using her voice, gaze and body language to such punishing effect that Obama looked as if he had been brought to heel. It was a mesmerizing display, and at an event that drew the highest television ratings of any primary debate this year. The momentum Obama had gained from a vivid speech at the Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner in Iowa drained away by the end of the first half-hour.
Think it's too strong? I dunno. She all but calls Obama, a smart, principled guy whose meteoric rise through the Dem leadership has been truly impressive, a fag. Not just a fag, but a faggy fag, as my students would say. Hillary "cracks the whip," something he's conditioned to because "he lives with another strong woman who keeps him in line ... a master at the art of the loving conjugal put-down."
Dood, MoDo says, you are so whipped!
In MoDo's world, where strong women must be balanced out by weak men, the idea of a mutually strong relationship is unthinkable (which may be why Hill and Bill confuse her so much). I can see a similar dynamic with Michelle, who strikes me as less bitchy than funny and self-deprecating, realistic rather than idealistic about the person who shares her life, far from the doe-eyed adoration expected of your Jeris and Judis of the world.
And so Obama is a pussy, and Hillary a bitch: " The debate dominatrix knows how to rattle Obambi."
But Hillary will be crushed when faced with A Real Man, MoDo is sure. Or at least, a much less convincing cross-dresser.
We are all Fergus now.
UPDATE: watertiger notes that both NTodd and I are shying away from the truly horrific implications of the "cracking the whip" motif when used by a white candidate against a black candidate. Of course gender is the main deconstructive tool I use on the Idiot Princess, but it's an excellent point, the implications of which are stomach-churningly offensive.