Female programming lacks quality

Illustration by JARRETT QUON/Daily Bruin Senior Staff  
Doug Lief Lief is a fourth-year English student
who thinks the phrase "dumb-stick" has worn out its cuteness. Work
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You probably know that women were not allowed on stage in
Shakespeare’s day, but you probably don’t know why. The
vagabond laws, which applied to wandering English citizens such as
a touring acting company, would have by a technicality, rendered an
actress a prostitute. With the advent of the Lifetime Channel, this
prophecy has come to pass.

As a betesticled American, I have noted a distinct lack of
quality, or if you prefer, an abundance of suck-in programming by,
for, and about women. My first reaction is that this is the result
of hysteria, a wandering womb. This condition causes the afflicted
woman to behave erratically, which is what makes it so hard to
detect. It is best solved by a decade or so of bed rest, and a
daily dose of Professor Clive M. Pilliganswortz’s
Vitalitiffical Nervular Moth-Ball and Iodine Tonic.

My attention was first turned to this scourge of estro-tainment
upon learning that a friend had been cast in a production of
“The Vagina Monologues.” Frankly, I find the idea of a
talking vagina extremely distasteful, but we must move with the
times. I’m sure somewhere a disaffected grad student is
penning, “Kooch! The Musical” as we speak.

For those of you who don’t know, “The Vagina
Monologues” are to actors what shooting someone is to the
Mafia. You make your bones, you’re in the club. If
you’re, say, Stockard Channing or Sean Young and you
haven’t done “The Vagina Monologues” you can
actually have your uterus revoked. I’m sure the next Broadway
cast will include Sarah Michelle Gellar and at least one Olsen
twin. You actors gotta get yourselves some street cred, yo.

For the sake of science, I actually forced myself to watch four
hours of the Lifetime Channel. The vast majority of their line-up
consists of reruns of old TV movies with names like,
“Shattered Roses: The Story of One Woman’s Struggle to
Find Her Place in a Big City After Getting Knocked Up By Guatemalan
Freedom Fighters.”

These movies send an important message to women, that no matter
how abysmal they are at choosing a mate (and they are borderline
retarded in this respect), they can triumph over their own poor
decision-making skills based on pure ovary power. I can only
conclude from these movies that women find unemployed alcoholics
extremely attractive. Somehow women register Treat Williams, in a
wife-beater, sporting a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon as soul-mate
material.

Now where did I put that bottle of Jim Beam?

I also subjected myself to watch their show called “Strong
Medicine,” a medical drama about a hospital where 95 percent
of the characters and cases revolve around women. My question is,
why aren’t more men watching this show? Finally, the Lifetime
Network gives us what we’ve been clamoring for: girls, girls,
girls! The doctors on the show are blazingly hot and can’t
act their way out of a Vagina Monologue paper bag. It’s
“Baywatch” in scrubs. Feminism never looked this good
and this inarticulate. Let the drooling begin.

Now there’s even a knock-off network called Oxygen,
something the people over at Lifetime obviously aren’t
getting enough of. The main purpose of Oxygen seems to be to inform
women that one in four of them will get breast cancer in their
life. It’s part of a campaign by The Association of Duh, We
Already Knew That, or TADWAKT. TADWAKT brings you such fun-facts
every year as, “Did you know you can contract HIV by sharing
bodily fluids?” and “Don’t eat a live
cat!”

This kind of charade stands in stark contrast to the glory that
is male-centered television. Who among us cannot help but be
humbled by the dramatic achievement that is a Ja Rule video? The
juxtaposition of buxom women and glittery cars has not been, nor
ever will be repeated; a shining hallmark of originality and heart
which asks every one of us to imagine slappin’ da bi-otch
within.

Although women have attempted to portray an image of themselves
as strong and independent, the cartoonish farce they actually
created is really the feminine equivalent of a minstrel show. These
women aren’t examples of compelling human depth and
complexity. They are navel-gazing sad sacks who solve a problem
every week by reaching deep inside themselves and embracing the
uniqueness that they don’t actually possess.

I began this column with a mention of Shakespeare, and I feel it
apropos to close with an example of a strong woman from a tale of
abuse and jealousy far greater than “Shattered Roses: A Story
of One Woman’s Courage as She Retrieves Her Kidnapped Son
from A Ukraine Wife-Beating Cult.” I am speaking of
“Othello, the Moor of Venice (not of a Trailer
Park).”

In that play Desdemona says, “”¦Men’s natures
wrangle with inferior things, though great ones are their object.
‘Tis even so; for let our finger ache, and it indues our
other, healthful members to a sense of pain. Nay, we must think men
are not gods, nor of them look for such observancy as befits the
bridal. Beshrew me much, Emilia, I was, unhandsome warrior as I am,
arraigning his unkindness with my soul; but now I find I had
suborned the witness, and he’s indicted falsely.”

Top that, Oprah.