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posts about #unitedstatesoftara more → People: Please Shut Up About Diablo Cody's Sex Work Already
Loose Lips
New York, 10:00 AM
Tue Dec 15
69 posts in the last 24 hours
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People: Please Shut Up About Diablo Cody's Sex Work Already |
Loose Lips |
Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.
03/08/09
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2) Her work is mediocre at best - the fact that Juno won an Oscar for best screenplay says so. When something is mainstream and mediocre, does it really warrant giving a shit whether or not it's the work of a woman or a man or a polka-dotted Martian? Who cares who wrote it if it's largely forgettable?
3) Those of you who think she's just a cool chick, like "Diablo from the Block": get it through your heads. Her personality and representations of it are TOTALLY, CAREFULLY, MANUFACTURED and CONTRIVED by herself. Now, that's either brilliant to stupid people or stupid to brilliant people. Judge carefully.
4) I find it interesting that she has achieved the rare cultural status that reflects someone who was cool to like, then cool to hate, and has looped back around to being cool to defend. It's funny how relative mediocrity can stir up so much ire.
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I mean, her blog about it led to her book about it, which led to her eventually getting Juno and then US Tara made, which is relevant so far as it goes. She answers the questions about it, which isn't really the same as "flaunting". She hasn't given a poll dancing demonstration. She doesn't just go off about how she was stripper. She's asked about it a lot, so she answers. That's pretty much it.
I definitely think she wouldn't have quite the media attention without the stripper thing...but then she won an Oscar for her first screenplay. I think a lot of the resentment is a bit...dis-proportionate to the reality. I mean, not liking her work is fine, we all like different things. And hey, people don't like her and her point of view, that's fine too. But it's like all the other "celebrity" stuff. People are just way too invested in what other people are like.
At this point the vitriol about her is just ridiculous and frankly, very sexist a lot of the time. People seem to take it personally if you like her work, or don't like her work, and the problem is that it ends up ignoring the work itself. Like it or hate it, she's not writing Bride Wars. She wrote a successful film that appealed to a lot of people for various reasons, and created a main character who isn't like any of the other female leads we've seen in a loooong time.
Also, is there an unwritten rule that screenwriters have to be anonymous? It's like people resent the fact that she's okay with herself and promotes her work. I see nothing wrong with at all.
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03/08/09
are they asking mark wahlberg, ashton kutcher, josh hartnett, josh dehumel, or about their underwear modeling days? no not really.
01/22/09
I think people are fascinated by the whole thing, true I worked in the S&M side which is a lot more of a mystery to most than stripping. I still think most people are curious about the whole thing either openly or secretly and want to know about it. Which is why they will probably ALWAYS ask her about it.
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So yeah, people do want to see young charming writers who make it big. They want to fantasize that perhaps it'll happen to them too. Her story isn't just stripping.
01/22/09
Sex interests people, people see it as salacious and it sells. She wrote a freakin' book about it for pete's sake, I don't have a lot of sympathy for her getting asked about it often. She probably hoped for fame and attention for years. What was her behaviour if not attention seeking?
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I think Jimmy Kimmel's comments and jokes are inappropriate, but I don't think discussing it is bad. If anything it's good to have her out there as she gives sex worker's a better image for mainstream society.
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Well, exploting it was a bad word. But in a world where many women are forced into sex work by unfortunate circumstances, she decided to go into sex work in order to gain material for her writing. So I don't think it's unfair for people to continue to ask her about it. It's a decision that she has made, and profited from. And unfortunately, it's what makes her more interesting than all the other female writers out there. She wouldn't be on Jimmy Kimmel had she not been a stripper. It seems very silly to complain about it.
01/22/09
01/22/09
Well, first of all, she is not complaining. This post is Anna getting outraged on her behalf.
People like to ask Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, and Jen Aniston about their whole love triange relationship thing. People like to ask Tom Cruise about Scientology. People want to ask Britney Spears about shaving her head.
These people who get a disproportionate amount of media attention (as Cody does, as compared to other screenwriters) get it because there is something that makes them interesting to us as a society. As a society, we like titillation and are intersted in Diablo Cody's past as a stripper. That's the only reason she's even on Jimmy Kimmel, so to be outraged about it just seems insane to me. It's like saying "Why won't they stop asking the Duggars about all their children and talk to them about their handmade jewelry instead?"
01/22/09
Take out the stripping, and you have a good ol' Hollywood success story.
01/22/09