Frankly My Dear: Molly Haskell's Exploration Of Nation And Of Self

Disfigured: Director Glenn Gers
reviewed by Linda Z

Plot: Lydia, a buoyant overweight woman, and Darcy, a recovering anorexic become friends. Their friendship brings to the screen similarities between the two women, and the destructive way we view our bodies.


Genre: Dramas

Starring: Deidra Edwards, Staci Lawrence, Ryan C. Benson, Elizabeth Sampson, Sonya Eddy

Composer: Kayla Schma

Commentary:
living in America
being exposed to easily accessible food, mostly junk: soda, chips, french fires, devil dogs and candy
that cost relatively little money

living in American where children are targeted for high caloric,
high fat foods at
fifty cents an item such as honey buns
or Twinkies

living in America where milk products are pushed as if milk is the answer to the health needs of every citizen rather than a source of obesity
living in America where corn syrup is seemingly in everything although it is known to cause obesity
diabetes
living in America where cows are force fed corn of the lowest the poorest nutritional value
killed at an ever younger age to avoid the premature onset of detectable disease
living in America where the forced fed cows achieve slaughter weight that used to take two and a half years to achieve, now done in forty to sixty days

living in America where food is genetically engineered,
without our knowledge, or any one's knowledge of what happens when people mess with the genetic make up of food, of people.

how, in America, can you avoid being fat, or morbidly obese at an early age? How can you avoid the early death, that is the fate of the cows and cow by products we eat daily with the yogurt, the cheese, the meat, the hamburgers and french fries laced with corn syrup
Anorexia.
Is that the answer?.

It is almost impossible to remember that this is a film, that the people on the screen are actors, not real people opening their hearts and soul to us, their audience. It is hard to believe because this film is so well directed, so well acted and the content so compelling. It articulates an unspoken dilemma of every American women's psyche.

Disfigured presents the impact of living between consuming the slow poison of the deliberately addictive food sold in America that inevitably leads to being "fat" and the cultural abhorance of "fat" women that filters into the lives of the ordinary citizens; educate, homeless or not, to the too thin women, the Anorexic, who suffers from death by starvation. Neither extreme is particularly pretty.

Feel the pain. Struggle to find an answer with women actors and Glen Gers who articulated with consummate skill the American women's dilemma with whom we can and do identify

Recommendation:
See this film. Let our children see this film. Then buy it and have discussion groups on food; what to eat, what not to eat and why.


Linda Z
WBAI Women's Collective
RT Vine: Witches Brew