Virginie

Virginie Despentes, who crossed the periphery of the American consciousness with her film (from her novel) Baise-Moi, has a new book out, King Kong Theory. She gives good interviews, as Bookslut notices:

I'm surprised men barely question masculinity. I'm amazed, for example, that no male Hollywood actor complains that he has to carry guns or play soldiers, rapists, serial killers, stupid macho men. . . . Are they not fed up? Don't men want to show their legs in miniskirts and on high heels? Don't they want to dance like creatures on MTV? Don't they want to use the anus they've been gifted with for better sexual intercourse? Are they that happy to die for countries that won't give a goddamn fuck for them once they're back home? Most of them don't even enjoy the privilege of their gender. . . .

In this narrow frame, of course, gay men are the few. The elite. Trying something different. And lesbians, also, are the elite of womanhood. Obviously. Because who wants to have to deal on an intimate level with regular straight men? It can only be interesting if they might help you with money or your career. Otherwise, how depressing. Then, of course, gays and lesbians are still human. . . . We all live in the same shitty world. I guess only really hard drugs or death can be radical exits.

Your reading of Peter Jackson's film King Kong is quite unexpected. What made you see this latest version as a feminist fable?

Because I was working on the book when King Kong was released in France. . . . It struck me that any article I read about the movie would start from the point of King Kong being a male character, when nothing in the picture itself says so. It could be an asexual creature. And it could be female. Kong makes no particular reference to masculinity except that the creature is strong and the blonde is weak.

What effect do you think pornography has on desire? Does it make us believe that all of our sexual fantasies can come true?

Pornography feeds desire, helps the imagination, and lowers anxiety. The advertising we endure daily is more likely to make us believe that all our fantasies can come true. Pornography, I believe, does not: It's a message you can hardly confuse with reality. It's inconvenient that pornography has been kept in an economic ghetto, so we can hardly see quality porn. We could so much enjoy a huge-budget sodomic orgy filmed by Hollywood. Violence is good on the big screen, but nothing is better than sex.

Another interview:

3:AM: You say you speak on behalf of the “ugly” ones – is this not perhaps creating another cage by which to define women?

VD: Do you think I created this cage? Do you have any male heterosexual friends? Have a talk with them: the cage is already there. It’s not a cage, actually, it’s our main field. If you have any really fat friend, you should also have a talk with her or him: the cage is pretty tough to escape.

I am not creating anything, the space is already created. I am just standing from there to express what I have to express. Because I felt that the most important reaction to any feminist work in France is: she is so ugly that she can not provoke male’s interest, so she is angry and feminist. So I thought that was the good starting point: yes I am, and so what?

3:AM: OK, to you, who is the most important woman in existence, either living or dead?

VD: Is Jesus Christ a correct answer ?

FWIW, any notion that VD (heh) is "so ugly that she cannot provoke interest" is misplaced.