I first met Marlon Brando in my 12th grade English class, when our teacher screened The Island of Dr. Moreau one afternoon for the whole grade. It was disastrous, the kind of movie meant to be screened solely for horny high school students more interested in the opportunity to turn off the lights than watch a film.  

So, it’s not surprising that my relationship with Marlon got off to a rocky start. We didn’t meet again until college, when my housemate threw a Godfather marathon and somewhere around the same time, I watched A Streetcar Named Desire in film class. It’s hard to resist the combination of the two when viewed in close proximity: Brando’s iconic performances defined masculine sex and power for generations. If my high school English teacher had chosen carefully, he’d have had a much more attentive audience.

Brando passed away on Thursday at the age of 80. He leaves behind a legacy that separates screen acting from before Brando and after Brando, forever changing American cinema.

Like most American icons, we use Brando as malleable subject material, with infinite capacity to contain our myths and metaphors. David Thomson’s editorial in The New York Times today posits Brando as an ever-changing symbol of America’s identity confusion. It’s a tempting analogy — as Thomson writes:

At the end, he was huge, stranded, nearly alone, his life littered by the needs (or the appearance) of more and more children, and by what was reported as near penury.

Brando’s film career as simile for the ascent and plateau of the American empire isn’t a seamless fit, but it seems particularly timely as we celebrate our country’s heady birth and debate its current position (particularly if you too have seen The Island of Dr. Moreau, one of Brando’s later films). As Thomson suggests, we want our country to fulfill its potential and capitalize on its early triumphs.  Even when we celebrate our nation’s diversity of opinion and voice, we sometimes wish it would stop being so argumentative and divisive, and start acting heroic.

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David A. Passaro’s first ex-wife says he used to hit her when he got drunk.  His second wife filed court papers saying that he was “verbally abusive and threatening.” Passaro, a CIA operative, stands accused of beating an Afghan man named Abdul Wali to death while Wali was in custody.

Charles Graner’s ex-wife filed for three protection orders against him over five years. In the last one, she stated that he had dragged her out of bed by her hair and pulled her down the hallway.  Then he banged her head into the floor while her children sat in their bedrooms. Army Spec. Charles Graner now faces charges of inmate abuse and misconduct for his behavior as a guard in Abu Ghraib.

In 2002, four military wives at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, were murdered by their husbands in a span of six weeks. Three of the perpetrators had recently returned from active duty in Afghanistan.

Violence against women is an epidemic in the military, and not just behind the front lines. To date, more than 100 incidents of sexual assault have been reported by service women in Iraq and Afghanistan. The statistics and stories flood the Internet, and finally — thanks to the prominent scandal at the Air Force Academy — the Department of Defense is beginning to take its problem seriously. Re-entry counseling is now required for all military personnel returning from active duty, and all military branches are rewriting their domestic violence and sexual assault protocols.

Is that enough? The cases of David Passaro and Charles Graner beg the question: Does the military make its servicemen and women controlling and violent, or does its system attract individuals with a tendency towards aggressive, unchecked behavior? Probably both.  

Changing response protocols to sexual assault or incidents of domestic violence and providing support groups isn’t going to change the military culture that both breeds and accentuates abusive characteristics in its members. Men and women will still return to civilian life carrying violence and trauma with them. We will still send “bad boys” to the army, hoping it will straighten them out. The need then, is to change the way the military teaches its recruits to think about violence and its use.  

In her piece, What Abu Ghraib Taught Me, Barbara Ehrenreich says,  

In short, we need a kind of feminism that aims not just to assimilate into the institutions that men have created over the centuries, but to infiltrate and subvert them.

A feminist infiltrated army sounds eerily close to Dennis Kucinich’s “Department of Peace,” and about as farfetched. The military doctrine is ancient. I can’t even begin to imagine what it would look like if turned on its head. Doing so would mean not only radicalizing military training, but also the ways we use our army, since teaching men and women to think about violence is probably not conducive to operating as a smooth-running, terrorist-killing machine.  

But then, neither is raping the woman standing next to you in line for the latrine.

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Here’s the problem — I can’t decide whether I find Sí TV’s new reality show “Urban Jungle” revolting or delicious.  

The show extracts “nine suburban yuppies from their oh-so-comfortable lives” and drops them in East Los Angeles’ barrio to survive on low income wages. The teenagers are charged with adapting to their new life in the ‘hood, and are judged by three padrinos, who “evict” a cast member each episode.

At first I was appalled. The show panders to all of the simplest stereotypes: silly, rich, naïve white kids from Burbs vs. bad-ass, street-wise, and pragmatic residents of the inner city. You can predict the encounters between the visitors and the residents almost without watching. The presence of a TV camera reasonably guarantees that no serious danger will come to the show’s stars, but simultaneously ensures that people will act as they think they should — that is, that both the teenagers and the residents will play up the roles they know their audience is assuming they’ll fulfill.

Maybe I’m particularly sensitive to the perpetuation of these stereotypes because the neighborhood I’ve worked in the for the past several years lives with the same kind of experiment. West Philadelphia is home to a large, low-income African American community — and the University of Pennsylvania. It’s jarring to ride the bus to work and watch shirtless fraternity brothers playing drinking games on their porches alongside the falling down homes of my clients and the delis where you can buy a single cigarette for 50 cents. There’s an unsurprising tension within the community, and little is done to bridge the gaps of understanding between the disparate groups. No less jarring are the non-students in the neighborhood — kids living and squatting in communal houses and playing Frisbee in the parks. They’re almost more out of place because of their attempts to fit in: they shop at the cheaper supermarkets and visit the free health clinic.

Assimilation is a tricky business. I’ll go out on a limb and argue that we can’t even begin to address it within the confines of a reality TV show. Jeff Valdez, the show’s creator and founder of the network says:  

This is more than just a reality show, it’s a social experiment. We’re taking these kids, whose only window into the barrio is a crime story on the late night news, and immersing them into a brand new environment. This show will humanize the Latino barrio and hopefully teach these kids a thing or two about life on the other side of the tracks.

A social experiment? A simplistic one at best, because while playing at poverty isn’t very funny, playing at poverty for an audience ensconced in their arm chairs isn’t funny at all. But maybe I’d feel a little less sympathetic towards the show’s hapless stars if they were making their mistakes on a major cable network, instead of Sí TV. The network is the only English-language Latino network available on your remote — in itself, a grand experiment in assimilation. As The New York Times points out, the network caters towards the projected 33 million Latinos who will live in bilingual or English-speaking households by the year 2010.

So, I confess: When the show premieres this Sunday, I’ll be watching. I’m expecting something thrillingly awful from “Urban Jungle.” Part of that is the ironic glee with which I can’t help but view all reality TV. But part of it too is that I’m hoping that by exposing the blatant frustrations and mistakes of culture-bending, it’ll make it a little easier for us to talk about what assimilation and differences really look like.

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On Monday morning, when municipal buildings across Massachusetts open at nine o’clock, hundreds of couples will already be standing in line with blood tests, state identification, and 50 bucks in cash. Despite conservative efforts to petition the Supreme Court for intervention, on May 17, the pilgrims’ state will become the first in the nation to marry same-sex couples.

We learned in elementary school that the pilgrims founded Massachusetts in order to find religious freedom, and so in a way it’s fitting that the former colony now resume its position as a civil liberties trailblazer. Its governor is not so happy with this honor. Mitt Romney’s orders for municipal employees to block out-of-state residents from marrying surely pleases the protestors who line up outside Faneuil Hall to protest sexual sin.

But do those protestors support a constitutional amendment to protect marriage? As Sunday’s New York Times reports, maybe not. The amendment, now dead in Congress, isn’t gaining the kind of support hoped for among conservative Christians. Groups such as the Alliance for Marriage are getting nervous and hoping that the sight of the Massachusetts marriages prompts a greater outcry.

When President Bush called for the amendment back in February, he stated that ”On a matter of such importance, the voice of the people must be heard.“ But perhaps Bush and Romney and their fellow conservatives are mishearing. Perhaps the people are more concerned with other issues. It’s hard to believe that the sight of men and women in wedding dresses will stir up greater wrath or sorrow than the pictures we’ve seen these past weeks in our newspapers. To condemn commitments made out of love seems almost petty in comparison. The conservative mission to stop gay marriage is far from over, but maybe it’s getting old, and a little hard of hearing.

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On Sunday, April 25, I marched across the National Mall in Washington, D.C., amidst a sea of 1,150,000 pro-choice women, men, and children. It was dusty and muggy, but the weather and dirt didn’t deter our intent to send a message to legislators: that a woman’s right to make choices about her reproductive health care is hers, and hers alone.

“Whose choice? Our Choice!”

The March for Women’s Lives was orchestrated by a coalition of seven liberal advocacy groups.  Designed to raise visibility for reproductive rights as the presidential campaigns heat up, it was the largest such march in more than a decade. Speakers ranged from Hillary Clinton to Susan Sarandon, and while the march was billed as non-partisan, the speakers took a decidedly anti-Bush tone.

“President Bush is a sexist; Send that bastard back to Texas!”

The current administration’s opposition to abortion and family planning (save for funding abstinence education) has been evident since President Bush cut funding for international family planning services on his second day in office. President Bush has held firm to his position that while he does not believe in abortion, except in cases of incest, rape, or lethality risk, the country is not ready for the Roe v. Wade decision to be overturned. This position infuriates Gloria Feldt, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America:

My friends — make no mistake. There is a war on choice. We didn’t start it, but we are going to win it! They’re not just after abortion rights. This is a full-throttle war on your very health — on your access to real sex education, birth control, medical privacy, and life-saving research.

The administration responded to the masses gathered on the mall with the following statement:

The president believes we should work to build a culture of life in America. And regardless of where one stands on the issue of abortion, we can all work together to reduce the number of abortions through promotion of abstinence education programs, support for parental notification laws, and support for the ban on partial-birth abortions.

“Pro-life, that’s a lie! You don’t care if women die!”

While pro-life groups such as Operation Witness had a permit to counter protest along Pennsylvania Avenue, their presence was far less disturbing than the homogeneity of the crowd.  There was significant diversity with respect to age — multiple generations marched together carrying banners stating, “We are the result of family planning!” — and speakers emphasized the need to pass the torch to the next generation. The emphasis placed on the movement’s youth was refreshing, since there has often been friction between second and third wavers in the past. But despite this, I found myself growing increasingly uncomfortable. The crowd of 1,150,000 was predominantly Caucasian.  

The Black Women’s Health Imperative and the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Rights were among the organizers of the March, and other leaders in the fight, such as Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice, have recently begun women of color initiatives. Nonetheless, the reproductive rights movement remains largely a middle-class white woman’s cause. That’s disturbing because this isn’t a fight any of us can win single-handedly. If the key to motivating legislators to action is voting, then no group of women can be ignored in the fight to preserve a woman’s right to choose. In order to succeed, we must examine our lack of diversity with open eyes, and not merely focus on the fight.

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In the Western world, it is a truth universally acknowledged that beauty equals height, weight, and stunningly shiny hair.  When “plus-size” models are used, it’s usually an event that needs to be labeled, so as not to confuse innocent viewers.  In Russia, the same standards of beauty are also now the norm.  Accordingly, it rattled the Russian media when Alyona Pisklova, a normal looking 15-year-old, was entered in the Rambler Media Group beauty pageant by her friends and swept the contest with at least 40,000 votes.

Rambler organized the pageant as a preliminary round for the June Miss Universe contest in Ecuador, and enthusiastic Russians were able to vote via the Internet and cell phones for their favorite contestants. Rambler made a profit on the process — it cost 86 cents to submit a vote — and was no doubt shocked when the winner was a curly haired, average-sized 15-year-old girl without any makeup.  They disqualified her, requiring all contestants to show their passports and prove their single status. While Alyona is single, she is under 18.

Alyona supporters struck back with a web site called “Say No to Barbie Dolls.” The English language statement on the site says, “Alyona represents a catalyst to reveal problems of our society. People who vote for Alyona voted against not naturally looking beauties, who cannot be distinguished from each other … mass-media standards and the models it imposes; products of the same type and trademark, which are made into cult objects for specific layers of the populace …” Anti-globalization groups such as Globalynaya Alternativa also threw themselves into the protest: “In this spontaneous protest the denizens of the Russian Internet — bored office workers, secretaries fed up with work and sexual harassment, middle management with its permanent attitude problem, journalists sick to death of their own cynicism — have all come into their own.” While objecting to the anti-globalization press, Rambler media officials and pageant organizers called the contest a success based on the participation rates, and offered Alyona a booby prize “Viewer’s Choice Award.”

Initially, I was thrilled to see that people were not willing to silently accept Alyona’s disqualification. From the comments posted on the “Say No to Barbie Dolls” site, women around the world feel similarly. It’s rare that anyone challenges the beauty standard outside fringe media, and Alyona feels like a breath of fresh air. Despite this, I began to wonder where the 15-year-old girl in this story was. How would it feel to be a high school student and know that people around the world were touting you as an icon of normalcy, or to have friends submit your photo to the contest as a joke, supposedly disguising your identity with the last name of a boy you secretly crushed on?  At least in the English speaking press, Alyona’s voice has been lost while her image is everywhere. I suppose I’d rather examine images of an average-looking woman in a “Barbie No Pasaran” t-shirt over an airbrushed model, but really, I’d like to hear what both have to say.

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