On Sunday there was a marathon of Dungeons & Dragons going on in my living area. So I took that as a prime opportunity to watch Georgy Girl, the 1966 film starring Lynn Redgrave and Charlotte Rampling. While not as swinging' London as I had hoped, mainly due to my false hopes from the The Seekers' theme song, it is the lovely kind of movie which is not made, or at least not seen, anymore.
Georgy Girl is not at all about window shopping on Carnaby, but the choice not to. The entire movie is really surprisingly feminist...and I'll try to explain without giving anything away. There are love triangles and babies involved, we'll leave it at that. There are also choices that are made by characters that could easily be condemned by the viewer, if not conceptualized as feminist. "Having everything" does not necessarily mean doing everything without any less desirable aspects of life. Rather, "having everything" is understood to mean making choices to be sure that what is desired from life is possible.
It's refreshing to view such complex portrayals for women, expressing beliefs that are rarely legitamized. I'm having similar feelings about the main character in a book that I'm reading, We Need to Talk About Kevin, which is a novel comprised of ficticious letters written from Kevin's mother to Kevin's estranged father. Kevin was the sole gunman in a Columbine-esque school shooting, and most of it has to do with the reprecussions from that. (To be honest, I'm not very far, I forgot how time-consuming it can be to read adult literature.) But, the character relates very openly feelings about deciding to have a child and raising a child that are very seldom heard outside of feminist discourse. In any case, the book is supposed to be really disturbing, so when I'm finished with it, I'll let you know. I'm taking a break to read the new John Green, which, unfortunately, is ending his streak for me.
Oh, and I've also been watching this a lot, in an attempt to perfect some of the moves:
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