New WWF Guide Helps Ships Avoid Vulnerable Arctic Species

Walruses - image via pixnio.com

A new WWF-Canada guide designed to help mariners in the Hudson Strait identify and avoid marine mammals is being unveiled at a Canadian Coast Guard and Transport Canada meeting in Montreal today.

Decreasing summer sea ice has led to growing interest in Arctic shipping operations. Mining, fishing and tourism industries will all contribute to increased ship traffic through the northern corridor, which connects Hudson Bay to the Atlantic Ocean.

The Hudson Strait Mariner's Guide is made up of two large posters to be hung on the ship's bridge: a chart that will help mariners identify whales, seals, polar bears and walrus, and maps of marine mammal habitat in both summer and winter. The guide lists phone numbers so mariners can report sightings and incidents at both the national and community level, and provides operational guidance when close to or encountering marine mammals.

WWF-Canada will be presenting the guide at the Canadian Marine Advisory Council meeting today and tomorrow, and will put copies of the guides directly into the hands of shipping company owners, operators and federal regulators.

How ship traffic affects marine mammals:

• Noise from ships can make it difficult for whales to communicate with each other;
• Passing ships can disrupt feeding patterns, and will often drive marine mammals away from their usual habitat;
• Ship strikes can seriously injure marine mammals;
• In the rare event of a spill, pollution from sewage, greywater, ballast water and fuel could damage marine mammal habitats.

Andrew Dumbrille, senior specialist, sustainable Arctic shipping, says:"This is an opportunity to create a high standard for sustainable shipping practices before we see a major increase in activity in the Hudson Strait due to longer open-water periods. We hope this guide will serve as a tool for mariners to minimize disruptions to important habitat, and increase awareness in the shipping community about the wildlife that share these waters. It will also encourage mariners to work with northern communities who depend on the continued health of marine mammals for their own survival. Sharing accurate, up-to-date information makes the waters safer for all involved."

Praise for WWF-Canada's Hudson Strait Mariner's Guide

Marc Gagnon, director, government affairs and sustainability for Fednav, says:"This guide should be on every ship that passes through the Hudson Strait. We at Fednav do our best to ensure our ships don't disrupt key marine habitats, and being able to properly identify the animals and know when and how to avoid them at different times of the year makes that so much easier. These kinds of tools go a long way to making sure our shipping practices only add value to northern communities."

Captain David "Duke" Snider, CEO of Martech Polar Consulting, says:"As someone who has been on the bridge of ships for more than 35 years, I would say that a guide like this on board will be an invaluable resource to inform mariners on species they may encounter, and help mariners avoid particularly sensitive species and habitats. I would encourage those operating ships through the Hudson Strait to make use of this guide."

The Mariner's Guide for the Hudson Strait includes a chart to assist mariners in identifying marine mammals they may encounter, and provides guidelines on safe distances. (CNW Group/WWF-Canada)

About World Wildlife Fund Canada 
WWF-Canada creates solutions to the environmental challenges that matter most for Canadians. We work in places that are unique and ecologically important, so that nature, wildlife and people thrive together. Because we are all wildlife. 

For more information, visit wwf.ca.

SOURCE: WWF-Canada

Racial Taunts For Chinese Students Haunt The Notice Boards Of UTexas

Protests at University of Texas (License: Image author owned )

There was a huge uproar over flyers targeting Chinese students that were posted on the University of Texas campus in the first week of April. What was more shocking was that these insults were posted right after the university declared its plans to make the campus more diverse. The offensive posters were categorically directed at the Chinese, accusing them of plagiarism to get high grades. They have been accused of “faking” skills to get plush jobs after graduation.

The President of the University of Texas, Austin, declared that they would be investigating the incident to identify the culprits. He voiced the university’s concern for such an act which he believed was both hateful and biased. It was stated by Fenves the next day that the students responsible had indeed been identified. He assured that the university was evaluating the crisis and appropriate action would be taken thereafter. He argued that every student and faculty member in the university should have total complete freedom to learn and teach others without fear. No one deserved to be made an object of discrimination. However, there is still no proof to suggest whether the student responsible for the heinous act was acting independently or not.

The university’s Chinese Student Association issued a statement highlighting that content of these posters did not rightly reflect the Chinese culture. The student organization referred to the act as one of discrimination. It called upon fellow students to join the organization and learn in-depth about Chinese traditions.

The issue of plagiarism has risen almost always when there have been talks of the Chinese gaining admission in US colleges.  Watch a video here.



A simple Google search on Chinese students and plagiarism will reveal the shocking numbers of Chinese students who have been expelled on this ground. So, Chinese students have been accused of cheating and plagiarism in American institutions over the years. The truth is that the Chinese view of knowledge is quite distinct from the view adopted by other countries in the West. It's also definate that they dont have access to an ultimate referencing guide for assignments.

• The Chinese pedagogy has been primarily influenced by Confucian thoughts. These encouraged students to worship knowledge-givers and to avoid questioning established ideas. So, Chinese school-going students are actually encouraged to memorize texts, whether they are learning Math or Science or Humanities. No student is allowed to produce original work or nurture original ideas.
• Secondly, Chinese students have been taught that knowledge belongs to the entire society and not to any particular person. It is assumed that the Chinese students may actually have been told that citing sources is disrespectful. So, by informing their readers about the source, they may well be implying that the reader is ignorant of the source. 
• For the Chinese students, another major problem is that English is their second language. Learning this foreign language and using it to express complex ideas turns out to be challenging for them. At the same time, this is a necessity when you are writing an academic essay or assignment. So, very often the Chinese students tend to copy-paste texts without trying to rephrase the explanations in their own words. They resort to patch writing techniques to enhance their writing skill.

Chinese students learning English (License: Image author owned)

• It can be argued that the Chinese may not be genuinely aware of why it is immoral to indulge in plagiarism. They may not understand the reasons why the western culture treats this kind of patch writing as plagiarism. They fail to realize that the west views plagiarism as equivalent to dishonesty, cheating and stealing. So, there may not be a deliberate intention to cheat the professors.
• Students do not always cheat because of ignorance, according to a University of St.Thomas counselor. There are students who resort to copying in desperation because they do not know anyone who they can approach for help. In fact there are lot of open source tools which are useful for a student to do their assignment.
• Students often tend to put off their essays and assignments till the deadline approaches. Writing an essay at the last minute may be very challenging for someone who lacks proficiency in English. This also becomes the reason why students are late in their assignment submission. This is one of the biggest reasons why foreign students tend to plagiarize content. For instance, a student from Vietnam in a US college with little experience in writing essays or researching on topics will find it hard to start off an essay. The Vietnamese are encouraged to memorize answers and now show creativity.

Chinese Meme (License: Image author owned)

In this way, plagiarism is something that is not specific to the Chinese students alone. It is an issue of grave concern which needs to be explained to students during orientation. The incident at the University of Texas is not the first of its kind. Following President Trump’s ban on the entry of people from seven Muslim-majority nations, posters targeting Muslims had been put up. The time has come for American universities to handle this kind of racial discrimination with an iron hand.

Protest (License: Image author owned) 

About Today's Contributor:
This post is written by Bella Williams , who is private tutor in Information Technology at ExpertAssignmentHelp and loves working with students to help them out with IT assignments and software packages for their capstone projects. She has also helped many students to write books and market their books in most creative ways.

Kickstarter-Backed Gallery Turns Art into Charity Dollars

A woman washes her hands in clean water from a well in India.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Compassion Gallery, a newly established fine art gallery, says a picture is worth a thousand lives, and then some. Coming on the heels of a successful Kickstarter campaign, Compassion Gallery captures the emotions of people who have a combined love for beautiful images and helping others. Their business model: Sell beautiful limited-edition fine art photography prints, and donate 100% of the after-tax profits to charity.

The concept of selling fine art photography isn't new. Photographers like Steve McCurry ("Afghan Girl" / National Geographic) and Peter Lik have already tapped into the multimillion-dollar industry by selling their prints to art-loving consumers. In fact, the New York Times reported in February 2015 that Lik alone had sold more than $440 million dollars in prints.

So can Compassion Gallery run with the likes of Lik and McCurry? Only time will tell, but they're off to a positive start. Founders and photographers, Ray Majoran and Brian Klassen, tested the waters through Kickstarter to see if their photos and idea would hold up. Not only did it hold up, but they were featured by Kickstarter as a "Project We Love." That meant prime-time viewing on a site that gets millions of visitors each week, and has raised over $2.7 billion for independent projects (source: kickstarter.com).

"Our hope is to marry Compassion Gallery with people who love art and want to make a difference in the world," says Majoran. "We believe that hanging something on a wall is about more than just décor; it's about making a statement. And if hanging something on your wall helps some of the world's most vulnerable people, then that is quite a statement."

Compassion Gallery sells all of its work online. Recognizing the dilemma of not being able to touch a physical piece of art before it's purchased, they developed a virtual reality Room Preview tool. Using the VR tool, customers can preview any piece of art in multiple rooms, frame styles, wall colors and sizes, before they buy it.

Virtual reality room preview tool. Customers can preview any Compassion Gallery art in multiple rooms, frame styles, wall colors and sizes, before they buy it.

About Compassion Gallery
Compassion Gallery exists to document the world with fresh eyes, to inspire humanity with God's beauty, and to bring hope to the most vulnerable. For more information, visit compassion.gallery. Download brand assets and photo samples from compassion.gallery/press.

SOURCE: Compassion Gallery

The So-Called Islamic State Group Has Weaponized Children

A girl leaves flowers for victims of an attack at Manchester Arena. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls

By Mia Bloom, Georgia State University

In claiming responsibility for the attack in Manchester at an Ariana Grande concert on May 22, the so-called Islamic State group has sunk to a new low.

We have seen terrorists target venues where young people congregate before – shopping malls, discos and schools. If IS was indeed involved, they have now deliberately targeted young children, tweens and teens and their parents in a horrific attack that has killed 22 as of this writing and wounded 59. The attacker used a nail bomb to maximize the carnage.

Through my research I have gained access to the Islamic State’s encrypted online propaganda platform, Telegram, where last night in the aftermath of the attack, IS supporters disseminated images of dead children from Mosul, saying, “The West’s children would not be safe if their (children) were not.”

This echoed a sentiment I heard many years ago when writing my book “Dying to Kill” about suicide attackers. In August 2001, a Jordanian woman named Ahlam al Tamimi researched a Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem to select a time in which the maximum number of families were present. In her attack on the restaurant, 15 people were killed, including seven children and a pregnant woman. Palestinians justified the attack, saying: “If our children are not sacrosanct, neither are theirs.”

As shocking as this attack was, it follows a tradition in which terrorists target children or venues specifically to maximize killing the greatest number of young people.

Children in IS propaganda
The IS propaganda machine uses graphic images of dead children to whip up their base and motivate people from around the world to join their so-called caliphate. These images of children are intended to persuade people that moving to the IS strongholds of Raqqa, Syria or Mosul, Iraq is the only way to halt Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s slaughter of children.

During the course of research for my forthcoming book, “Small Arms: Children and Terror,” I have found that the group has also increasingly been using children as terrorist operatives, on the battlefield in mixed commando units they call Inghimasi, as propaganda disseminators, building munitions and, since December 2014, as suicide bombers.

Akram Rasho Khalaf, 10, was captured at the age of 7, trained and sold into servitude by Islamic State militants. AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo

According to a report on children and armed conflict, “In rural Aleppo, Dayr al-Zawr and rural Raqqa, the U.N. found military training of at least 124 boys between 10 and 15 years of age. The use of children as child executioners was reported and appeared in video footage in Palmyra and specific executions.”

IS has used children as young as four to execute prisoners using a remote control, and recently disseminated a video of a four-year-old shooting a prisoner in the head.

One cannot emphasize enough that there is no childhood in IS. The terrorists do not recognize the innocence of the victims at the Ariana Grande concert. The terrorists likewise do not subscribe to the notion that children have, need or deserve an idyllic period of their life in which they are to be protected and cherished.

In fact, Ali Akhbar Mahdi, a professor of religion at California State University at Northridge, argues that the word “teen” has no equivalent in Middle Eastern languages. Instead, they refer to pre-puberty, pre-youth or pre-adult. In most contexts, childhood is simply understood to be a period of time characterized by the absence of reason (‘aql).

Killing children: New norm
Terrorist targeting of children has been more common than most people realize.

For example, from Sept. 1-3, 2004, Chechen terrorists held School Number One in Beslan, Russia hostage for three days. There were 1,100 hostages in the school, including 777 children. By the end of the crisis, 384 people were dead, among them the terrorists and more than 350 civilians.

This is not exclusively a Jihadi tactic. The Oklahoma City bombing of the FBI Murrah building included a day care center. “Of the 21 children who were inside the day-care center on the morning of April 19, the morning of the bombing, 15 died, including all four of the infants by the window.”

While IS has opportunistically taken credit for the attack, we do not yet have evidence to determine whether it was a directed or inspired attack. We do know, however, that the terrorist group has manipulated, brainwashed and exploited children for their own purposes and will continue to do so.

The average age for IS suicide bombers and executioners is skewing younger and younger, and they appear to be normalizing the use of children across its affiliates. For example, the terrorist group Boko Haram has used children against soft targets, civilians and marketplaces.

IS has gone from using children to inspire adults, to manipulating children and their parents to fight alongside adults, to targeting children instead of adults. They do not consider what they have done to be truly evil, although we know it to be.

About Today's Contributor:
Mia Bloom, Professor of Communication, Georgia State University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. 

Millennials Petition Trump to Give Them Their Own Day

Millennial leaders Ryan Avery and James Goodnow ask President Trump to recognize June 19 as "National Millennials Day."

"Millennials are entitled, disloyal, selfie-talking narcissists that need participation trophies." Sound familiar?  In popular culture, these types of sentiments are often used to describe the Millennial generation. Millennial leaders James Goodnow and Ryan Avery believe these stereotypes are "fake news," and they have launched an online petition to help set the record straight.

Starting today, Goodnow and Avery are asking the public to sign their Millennials Day Petition, which calls on President Trump and lawmakers to declare June 19 as National Millennials Day, correcting stifling stereotypes about Millennials.

But isn't this petition the ultimate example of out-of-control Millennial egotism? Now Millennials want a day named after them? Not so fast. Rather than being a day about celebrating themselves, National Millennials Day will be one of service – one where Millennials give back to their communities directly.

"As a Millennial, I cringe when I hear people write-off Millennials because of stereotypes" notes attorney James Goodnow. "For me, these are the worst kind of 'alternative facts.' Contrary to popular misconceptions, Millennials as a group are outward-focused and purpose-driven. My hope is that, by encouraging Millennials to give back on National Millennials Day, June 19 will be a turning point in upending many pervasive Millennial myths."

Avery and Goodnow note that Millennials are actually socially-conscious and passionate about improving their communities – and the world. According to research group Achieve, in 2015, 84 percent of Millennials made a charitable donation to a nonprofit, and 72 percent of Millennials spent part of their time volunteering. Goodnow and Avery also point to a Deloitte study that found six in 10 Millennials say that their current employer's "sense of purpose" is part of the reason they chose to work there.

"I couldn't be more proud to be a part of this initiative that affirms everything that is truly great about my generation – choosing your own path, pursuing your passions, and using your unique skills in the service of others," says motivational keynote speaker Ryan Avery. "Our main goal is to change the Millennial dialogue starting on June 19. How can Millennials participate? Mentor a child, become involved with a refugee organization in your community, volunteer at a homeless shelter – whatever inspires you to foster hope for a better future."

Goodnow and Avery have also recently collaborated on Motivating Millennials, a forthcoming book that teaches what companies can be doing to find, keep and motivate their next generation of leaders.

Image via millennialsday.org

SOURCE: James Goodnow; Ryan Avery

'The Angry Birds Movie 2' Takes Flight As Release Date Is Now Set

Sequel to animated blockbuster launches September 20, 2019

Following the success of The Angry Birds Movie, which slingshot to nearly $350 million in worldwide box office and launched a global movie brand, Columbia Pictures in association with Rovio Entertainment Ltd. are once again joining forces on the next high-velocity adventure as the flightless birds and scheming green piggies take their beef to the next level in The Angry Birds Movie 2; Sony Pictures will distribute the sequel.

The sequel is planned to hit theaters on September 20, 2019, coinciding with the 10th anniversary of the original Angry Birds game.

The Angry Birds Movie 2 will be directed by Thurop Van Orman (The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack, Adventure Time). Van Orman recently worked at Disney and Sony Pictures Animation.  

The film will be co-directed by John Rice (King of the Hill, Rick and Morty), who served as lead storyboard artist on The Angry Birds Movie and directed the popular Angry Birds Hatchlings shorts.

The film will be produced by John Cohen (Despicable Me, The Angry Birds Movie). Peter Ackerman (FX's "The Americans," Ice Age) is writing the screenplay.

The talented team at Sony Pictures Imageworks will once again be handling the animation for the film, which will be with the collaboration of Sony Pictures Animation. Also returning from The Angry Birds Movie will be production designer Pete Oswald and character art director Francesca Natale.

"We are thrilled to be teaming up again with Sony Pictures after the fantastic cooperation in the first movie and I can't wait to experience the new journey in the upcoming film," commented Kati Levoranta, CEO of Rovio Entertainment. "Rovio is continuing to focus on creating exciting new stories and experiences around our games and we're eager to take fans back into the vibrant Angry Birds world on the big screen."

"The Angry Birds Movie took the world by storm last year, creating a whole new legion of fans worldwide," said Sanford Panitch, President of Columbia Pictures. "We had an incredible experience working with our friends and creative partners at Rovio, and now we – including our team at Sony Pictures Imageworks – are ready to launch into this next adventure."

SOURCE: Rovio Entertainment

Hag, Temptress or Feminist Icon? The Witch In Popular Culture

Child dressed as a witch/ EPA/Filip Singer

By Chloe Germaine Buckley, Manchester Metropolitan University

You would have thought that Western society might have grown out of the habit of portraying powerful women as witches, but a trope that usually ended badly for women in the Middle Ages is still being used in the 21st century. Those who portrayed Hillary Clinton as a witch during the 2016 presidential campaign, or have given Theresa May a pointy hat and broomstick in Britain’s general election, may not be calling for them to be burned at the stake, but they do call down political destruction on their heads.

Witches have featured in fairy tales and fiction for centuries. In her earliest incarnations, the witch served as a warning. Stories about the witch-as-hag demonised and punished women for attempting to exert power outside the bounds of the domestic sphere. Beyond the fairy tale, women with “occult” knowledge (of folk medicine, for example), or simply poor, social outcasts (such as the infamous Pendle Witches hanged at Lancaster castle in 1612), were the victims of persecution and prosecution in 16th and 17th-century Britain.

Nowadays, though, the witch is often praised as a feminist figure, who pushes boundaries, breaks the rules and punishes patriarchal authority. Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Willow Rosenberg (Alyson Hannigan) and Disney’s Maleficant (Angelina Jolie) (2014) are two oft-cited examples of the feminist witch.

In preparation for an upcoming academic conference on “Gothic feminism”, I have been researching these contrasting representations of the witch. Which witch (sorry!) does our popular culture currently favour? And can stories about the witch really be reclaimed as feminist parables?

The witch was a recurring feature of horror film in the 1960s and 1970s. British folk horror films such as The Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971) and The Wicker Man (1973) offer deeply ambivalent representations of the witch. In The Blood on Satan’s Claw, teenage temptress, Angel Blake (Linda Hayden) seems to be an anti-authoritarian heroine – the 1960s flower power movement transported to 17th-century England. But in the end she is killed by male authority figures after she oversees the rape and murder of one of her school friends. In contrast, The Wicker Man’s siren, Willow MacGregor (Britt Eckland), gleefully triumphs over the stern Christian policeman, Sergeant Howie (Edward Woodward).

Wildly feminist
The way witches are portrayed on screen has been refashioned many times over the decades. From 1964 to 1972, ABC’s Bewitched turned the witch into the subject of a suburban sitcom as domesticated Samantha (Elizabeth Montgomery) used her magic to serve her try-hard husband. The late 20th century favoured soft focus, “white” witchcraft, epitomised by the popular American television series, Charmed (1998 - 2006). More recently, the witch has taken on an explicitly Gothic guise. The big-budget TV series, American Horror Story: Coven (2013), Penny Dreadful (2015), and Game of Thrones (2011-) represent witches as glamorous and beautiful, but also suggest that their sexuality is deadly.

In cinema, Robert Eggers’ award-winning feature, The Witch (2016), returned to the folk horror genre in its stark portrayal of a Puritan family struggling to survive in 17th-century New England. The film’s bare aesthetic slips into nightmarish horror as it restages the American folk tale of the witch in the woods to a particularly gruesome conclusion.

The film received a lot of plaudits, particularly from feminist cultural commentators. A recent article on film website Little White Lies praises The Witch as a “feminist horror fantasy” that “celebrate[s] the inherent power of femininity”. Likewise, Wired magazine called the film “wildly feminist”.

Disempowering women
However, there is another side to the witch. Mary Beard, in a recent lecture, Women in Power, argued that stories of monstrous women and witches dating back to antiquity, such as the tale of the Medusa, are parables aimed at disempowering women.

Over and again, such stories seek to reinforce the male right to defeat female (ab)users of power, suggesting that women are not entitled to power in the first place – and there’s been much of that in the way both Clinton and May have been portrayed as witches.

The Witch acknowledges this history in its return to the folk horror tradition. Early in the film, a witch pounds the flesh of a dead baby into a paste. Yet at the end of the film, the teenage heroine, Tomasin, agrees to join the witches who had so gruesomely murdered her baby brother. Even though these hags cause the deaths of the rest of Tomasin’s family, their offer of “some butter” and a “pretty dress” seems far preferable to the harsh strictures of Puritan life.

What freedom and power is there in becoming a witch? Joining the witches is Tomasin’s last, desperate resort and it places her forever on the outside of a patriarchal social system in need of reform by and for its female members. More than this, Tomasin becomes one of the gruesome hags who have murdered her baby brother. In this respect, The Witch echoes old misogynist fairy tales, which often feature actual or attempted infanticide, as much as it revels in the witch’s power to destroy an authoritarian patriarch.

Eggers’ complex depiction is not a roadmap to female empowerment. A glimpsed-at moment of freedom (an aerial broomstick ride) for Tomasin occurs on the outside of acceptable social spaces – deep in the woods and far from civilisation. At the same time, the murderous witches continue to communicate centuries-old patriarchal fears about female power.

As scholars, it’s tempting to see our favourite genres and cultural products as proof texts for our politics – but Gothic horror, in particular, has always refused that role. Its monsters do not act as representatives for either the right or the left of politics, but instead slide troublingly between the poles. Given the current lurch to the right in Western politics – and the rise of anti-feminist sentiments – the ambiguity of the witch is perhaps even something to be wary of rather than to celebrate. Though she seems to be a powerful figure for feminists, we cannot forget the witch’s origins as a figure used to delegitimise powerful women and locate them on the outside of society.

About Today's Contributor:
Chloe Germaine Buckley, Senior lecturer in English, Manchester Metropolitan University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. 

Darkest Taboos: How Fleabag Busted Unrealistic Portrayals Of Women On TV

Fleabag - BBC, CC BY-NC-SA

By Helena Bassil-Mozorow, Glasgow Caledonian University

Cringeworthy moments, eye-watering sex scenes, gleeful swearing, naked vulnerability and vulgarity of every stripe: groundbreaking BBC sitcom Fleabag fully deserved its recent BAFTA award.

Fleabag (2016-) is part of an extraordinary new trend in television that kicked off a few years ago with Netflix prison drama Orange is the New Black (2013-). Both are shockingly stark and deliberately vulgar when it comes to exposing the taboo corners of female psychology, biology and anatomy. Both are realistic to the extent of being naturalistic in terms of visuals, dialogue and narrative.

This is writing by women which promises to show female characters as they really are, and not through society’s obligatory filters that exist to pigeonhole women.

Fleabag’s titular protagonist, played by its writer Phoebe Waller-Bridge and adapted for the screen from her one-woman play Touch, is a twenty-something Londoner struggling to find meaning in life. She is a promiscuous, pornography-watching sex-addict juggling a string of grotesque relationships and random encounters with managing a failing café business.

She is also trying to come to terms with the death of her best friend who committed suicide after her boyfriend cheated on her. Halfway through the first season, we learn he cheated with Fleabag herself.

Defying expectations
Waller-Bridge’s character comes from an upper-middle class family, but defies all expectations that normally come with this kind of background. For example, she is a compulsive liar and a thief. The stealing bit comes from a deep sense of insecurity and the need to attract the attention of her emotionally unavailable father.

Fleabag’s entire life is a series of shameful mishaps, ranging from taking her top off at a bank interview to stealing a statuette of a naked woman, made by her infuriating stepmother (wonderfully played by Broadchurch actress Olivia Colman) who considers herself to be an artist. Fleabag’s unpolished “neglected orphan” image (the opposite of what a young woman is expected to be) is partly the result of her mother’s death from breast cancer.

Traditionally, female protagonists in TV dramas have been “presented” to us rather than speaking for themselves. We can’t hear their real voices as they are obscured by various societal roles and expectations collectively reflected in narratives: passive, objectified sexuality, longing for a partner and a family, looking elegant and groomed, emotional maturity, readiness to provide emotional support, sacrificial motherhood, and so on. They are “clean” characters.

This “cleanliness” is both internal and external – the purity of character and body. A “proper” woman does not steal, or lie to your face, or swear, or talk about inappropriate things at the table. Likewise, she does not sweat or smell, does not have hairy legs, is not seen to have periods, or use the toilet.

Nudity on screen has become so common that it no longer shocks. Yet filmmakers are still reluctant to show a female character who wakes up looking terrible; who has spots or rolls of fat (particularly outside comedic settings). Fleabag offers true naturalism; this is what is truly groundbreaking – not the increasingly dull sex scenes involving toned bodies to which film and TV audiences are treated to every day.

Of course, there were the four heroines of Sex and the City who candidly discussed sex and the perils of modern dating, but they were beautifully made up, successful, and fashionable. None of them evoked associations with a “fleabag”. Waller-Bridge’s creation is much closer to Lena Dunham’s series Girls (2012-1017), but still deliberately avoids HBO’s polish. Everything about Fleabag is rough and raw, from the music and camerawork to the POV (point of view) and monologues.

The Sex and the City girls: candid but glossy. Shutterstock

In fact, cinema and TV are generally still operating along the lines of these stereotypes for both female protagonists and secondary characters, making any deviation from the norm look refreshingly gritty. A “proper” woman is therefore so sterile she practically smells of chlorine.

Blundering and failing
It is this sense of blank sterility that Waller-Bridge defies with her depiction of a blundering, failing young woman. Her hilarious asides to the camera, often including candid, uncensored remarks on uncomfortable subjects such as anal sex, masturbation and survivor guilt, show that not only she is not ashamed of her behaviour – she is proud of it.

The hyper-naturalism, which is the hallmark of the series, is the result of this pride. After all, male protagonists in TV and film have been allowed to be make mistakes for decades. Men on screen are allowed to be funny, ridiculous, ugly, promiscuous and terrified of settling down. Why can’t women?

When asked what constitutes the “female journey” (that is, the difficulties the female protagonists have to overcome on their path in narratives), the American mythologist and author Joseph Campbell allegedly replied that there was no such thing as a female journey as a woman didn’t have anywhere to go in the first place.

In his books Campbell explored the path of the male hero in world mythology. The path consists of multiple steps, and is full of problems to be dealt with, puzzles to be solved and monsters to be killed. A woman need not bother to activate her agency like a man would: she is already “there”, already perfect. She is born at peace with herself, whereas the man has to endure trials and tribulations to become the true hero of his own story.

Fleabag is imperfect and unhappy and aching to go on her own journey to fight her demons. Soho Theatre, CC BY

This view implies that a woman does not have to face the journey of finding who she is, blundering and looking for meaning through trial and error, let alone looking stupid in the process. Her chlorine perfection stays unchanged through her life and guarantees happiness – particularly if she finds the right man with whom to start a family.

Fleabag’s rebellious naturalism successfully challenges this vision of the female protagonist (of whom we still have very few, although their number is growing – particularly on TV). Fleabag the woman is imperfect, unhappy, itching to go on her journey and fight all sorts of internal and external monsters: addictions; insecurities; the neglectful father; the dead mother; the chilly sister; the fake pompous stepmother; the weird arsehole guy; the rude bank manager. This is her way of becoming herself, of finding her own voice.

At last there is a trend that frees women from the bland stereotyped portrayals of feminine perfection and the need to conform to good girl expectations. We should be grateful to Fleabag for showing female characters who are not ashamed of being imperfect and real.

About Today's Contributor:
Helena Bassil-Mozorow, Lecturer in Media and Journalism, Glasgow Caledonian University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. 

Bonus Video:

From Nazis to Netflix, The Controversies and Contradictions of Cannes

Students and striking workers occupy the projection hall of the Cannes Film Festival Palace to prevent showing of films in 1968. AP Photo/Raoul Fornezza

By David Scott Diffrient, Colorado State University

On May 17, the 70th edition of the Festival de Cannes kicked off with the opening-night screening of director Arnaud Desplechin’s “Ismael’s Ghosts.” It will wrap up 11 days later, when the Pedro Almodovar-led jury bestows the highly coveted Palme d’Or on one of the 19 international productions in the festival’s main competition.

In between, dozens more motion pictures will flicker to life in theaters along the Croisette, a sun-kissed promenade dotted with luxury hotels that attracts a swarm of paparazzi with the promise of celebrity sightings and scantily clad starlets.

But behind the pageantry, controversy has been brewing. Netflix has two entries premiering during this year’s event. The popular streaming service will then release the films to its millions of subscribers – foregoing the exclusive run in French cinemas requested by the organizers. In turn, they’ve threatened to ban Netflix from submitting any films to future editions of the festival. Telegraph reporter Robert Mendick called this dustup Cannes’ “most explosive.”

If it is, it’s only the latest.

As Lucy Mazdon, one of the few film scholars to have studied this annual event, points out, the Festival de Cannes has long functioned as an expression of France’s national identity. It reinforces the important place that film occupies in the country’s culture, along with its reputation as a purveyor of artistic – rather than strictly commercial – cinema.

But Cannes has sometimes struggled to live up to this ideal, and the competing agendas of art, commerce, international politics and national pride have long roiled the festival.

Anti-fascist origins
In 1938, French diplomat Philippe Erlanger, film critic René Jeanne and Minister of National Education and Fine Arts Jean Zay were disturbed by that year’s Venice Film Festival, when pro-fascist films from Germany and Italy – Leni Riefenstahl’s “Olympia” and Goffredo Alessandrini’s “Luciano Serra, Pilot” – jointly won the top award (the tellingly named Coppa Mussolini).

They were also appalled by the hostile reception given to Jean Renoir’s anti-war masterpiece “The Grand Illusion” one year earlier. (Joseph Goebbels, the Third Reich’s minister of propaganda, who had been a “guest of honor” at the Venice Biennale, had called it “Cinematic Public Enemy Number One.”)

In response, they came up with the idea of a French “counter-festival” that would stand in opposition to Italy’s. Originally branded as the “Festival International du Film,” the organizers hoped the event would outshine its European counterparts, celebrating the art – rather than political value or propagandist content – of cinema.

The Jean-Gabriel Domergue-designed poster for the first film festival in Cannes, which was prematurely cut short after Hitler’s invasion of Poland in 1939. Cannes

However, politics almost immediately came into play. On the night of the inaugural gathering on Sept. 1, 1939 – as guests were arriving at the Casino Municipal, including Hollywood stars Gary Cooper, George Raft, Norma Shearer and Mae West – Nazi Germany invaded Poland. Following a single screening of the RKO production “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” organizers brought the festival to a sudden halt.

Great Britain and France declared war against Germany two days later. It would take another seven years before Erlanger, Jeanne and Zay’s vision was finally brought to fruition.

Art clashes with commerce
In 1946, the first full-fledged film festival held in post-Liberation France took place, featuring soon-to-be classics like Roberto Rossellini’s anti-fascist neorealist film “Rome, Open City” and Alfred Hitchcock’s psychological thriller “Notorious.”

Even then, the festival was torn between dueling agendas, with European ideals of art cinema rubbing up against popular Hollywood productions that many French audiences clamored for.

The contradictory nature of the Cannes Film Festival has only intensified since.
In 1959, the French Minister of Cultural Affairs André Malraux called for the establishment of an international “film market,” the controversial Marché du Film. Intended to strengthen the commercial appeal of the festival, the Marché brings together industry professionals for the purposes of networking and brokering deals between buyers and sellers. Meet-and-greet opportunities are formalized through the inclusion of daily breakfasts, round-table talks and workshops with industry leaders.

A 1967 photograph of French film director François Truffaut. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

Significantly, that initial foray into the business side of cinema took place just as the festival helped launch the “Nouvelle Vague” (French New Wave), a hugely influential, decidedly noncommercial film movement. Led by François Truffaut, whose autobiographical coming-of-age tale “The 400 Blows” earned him a Best Director award that year, French New Wave cinema privileged the personal expression of young filmmakers. Films like “The 400 Blows” and Jean-Luc Godard’s “Breathless” (made one year later, in 1960) also expanded storytelling possibilities through a reflexive foregrounding of the cinematic medium itself (with characters frequently “breaking the fourth wall” and looking directly at the camera). (Ironically, Truffaut had been banned from Cannes one year earlier after he criticized the festival for prioritizing entertainment and spectacle over art and personal expression.)

A decade later, in 1968, student and worker protests swept through Europe. Truffaut and other French filmmakers and intellectuals, including Jean-Luc Godard and Claude Lelouch, called for a premature end to the 21st edition of the festival. The festival, which was supposed to run between May 10 and May 24, was shut down six days early in a show of solidarity with those who were opposed to American cultural imperialism, the Vietnam War and the global spread of capitalism.

Since then, other well-publicized episodes have disrupted the Festival de Cannes, from the discovery of a handmade bomb beneath a stage at the closing ceremony in 1978 to Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier’s explosive (if jesting) claims that he was a Nazi who “understood” Hitler in 2011.

Grappling with Netflix
This year’s edition of the festival is no exception to that history of politicized hullabaloo. Much of the recent commentary surrounding Cannes concerns the current state and future of film exhibition and distribution.

Specifically, the decision of the festival’s artistic director, Thierry Frémaux, to include two Netflix-produced films – South Korean director Bong Joon-ho’s “Okja” and American filmmaker Noah Baumbach’s “The Meyerowitz Stories” – has been criticized.

The move has drawn the ire of the National Federation of French Cinemas (FNCF), an organization that represents the interests of local theater owners who worry international streaming services will threaten not only their own livelihood but also the quality of cinema in the years to come.

Almost immediately after this year’s Cannes program was announced in early April, speculation arose in the pages of U.S. trade magazines as to whether online streaming services and small-screen platforms would be blocked from entering forthcoming film festivals. According to The Hollywood Reporter and Variety, a new rule set to go into effect next year will require any competing film at Cannes to be distributed in French theaters before being made available for online viewing.

Moreover, current French law requires a window of 36 months between theatrical release and streaming availability, a stipulation that Netflix, Amazon Studios and other streaming services aren’t likely to abide by.

The wrenching changes brought by streaming services to the TV and movie industries mark a departure from the political conflicts of years past. But controversy is certainly nothing new on the Cote d'Azur: a long view of its history suggests that strife and contention have distinguished this French cultural event since its very beginnings.

About Today's Contributor:
David Scott Diffrient, Professor of Film and Media Studies, Colorado State University

This article was originally published on The Conversation.