Skyfall

I should preface this blog post by pointing out that I did really enjoy Skyfall - the new James Bond film.  Daniel Craig is hot, Javier Bardem was an awesomely camp bad guy and in general it was full of happy James Bond-y feel-good action excitement.
And I  can cope with the playful misogny that goes hand in hand with the James Bond ethos - shagging indiscrimanately, making sexist jokes, shrugging off the death of the Bond Girl - all these things are naturally occuring Bondisms which, although perhaps damagingly sexist, we have come to expect from the franchise.

What bothered me in an angry feminist kind of way was the total and complete degradation of any strong female role in the film.  Judi Dench's 'M' has been an awesome cinematic role to encourage young women that positions of power and responsibility (and ultimately the top job in the man-centric world of espionage) are not something that is beyond their means.  M is female, in control (mostly), authoritative, responsible and undoubtedly earning top civil service wages, all the things that young women should be able to aspire to.  In Skyfall, she is beginning to fail the service, and gets a grilling from a government committee.  Yes, the MP in charge of the enquiry is female, but when she starts to get a bit 'naggy' one of the 'boys' just tells her to shut up - good that she can be put in her place by the entirely male committee right?  Thankfully, poor old M has a strong male agent (Bond) to take her to safety and hide from the nasty bad guys.  OK, so she has incredible skill at making lightbulb nail bombs, but without the presence of some masculine types she would just be dribbling in the corner, unable to take care of herself, or dead already.  And, of course, as the head of MI6, with years and years of experience in counter-terrorism and espionage, she would be completely unprepared for actually defending herself, right?  She wouldn't be so stupid as to use a torch in the pitch dark when trying to escape from the baddies... oh no wait, that's exactly what she did, with all her years of training and experience.  Come on, Ms Broccoli, you can do better than that - killing off a strong female character via a series of her own ineptitudes, allowing a good old-fashioned man to take the helm, sort out all her silly mistakes (no doubt caused by those pesky hormones) and get the service back to its former strength (round about the Stone Age, it seems).

And what about Moneypenny?  A cool, exciting field agent zipping round the world taking on interesting missions and shooting people; "Cool" my 15-year old self yells "I want to be an MI6 agent and go around shagging catching bad guys!". She misses that vital shot and gets recalled to London where she spends the rest of the film (invisibly) at a desk job.  Sure, she doesn't succumb to Bond's wily charms and manages to remain chaste in such trying circumstances, but any semblance of equality is shattered.  By the end of the film 15-year old me is sighing and saying to myself "Oh, she gets to be a secretary after all... err... ace..?"

I was angry by the end: angry that the film-makers had two relatively good opportunities to promote a bit of sexual equality and general female awesomeness and both were dashed to bits on the chiselled torso of the patriarchy.  M ends up as a withering incompetent and Moneypenny is only fit to be a secretary in the gentlemens' club MI6 headquarters. 

Shame, 'cause otherwise it was a stonker. K x

Market Research Telephonists

To celebrate my unemployment, I decided to take a low-paid part time market research telephonist job to while away the empty hours.  In my naivety, I thought that doing some kind of paid work would make me feel more useful and fulfilled than spending the days in my dressing gown, eating left-over Christmas chocolate and watching Jeremy Kyle.  Oh, how I have regretted that decision.

For five hours at a stretch I have sat in a small three sided booth on an old, uncomfortable office chair (which has done WONDERS for my back) and made hundreds and hundreds of phone calls on behalf of various companies to unprepared and mostly unwilling recipients.  A stream of constant rejections, general disinterest and mild disdain has come my way, only to be broken by the few who were willing to take part in my survey.  A few brief moments of amusement were to be had, specifically during the Friday evening shift when one respondent decided to err from my carefully worded script and tell me just how "satisfied on a scale of 1 to 10" he was with me personally and bemoaned the fact that I had his phone number but that he didn't have mine.

Never again will I angrily hang up the phone on a market researcher - partly through a feeling of solidarity, though mainly because I now know that by not responding, my phone number will simply be thrust back into the swirling mist of numbers, waiting to be randomly plucked again by the computer and re-dialled.  The computer will continue to dial my number again and again until I politely explain to a caller that I would prefer not to be recontacted.  It is the only way.

A friend of mine who has worked for the same company described the work as being 'the closest thing to being lobotomised' and I have to say that I agree with her.  I would not have been surprised to find a trail of saliva hanging from my mouth by the end of a shift, or to be informed that I had been talking to the plant.  In all the years that I have been working I have never yet done any job so mind-numbingly dull and ultimately so completely unrewarding.

All the supervisory and management staff were lovely: kind; helpful; genuinely complimentary of  my telephone manner and capabilities.  I had to bite my tongue during quality control meetings (where a supervisor had listened in on one of my calls and made comments on how I was performing) to stop myself from pointing out that a basic level of literacy and a small amount of common sense was all the job required.  Instead I smiled sweetly at the comments I was given and went back to my box cubicle. 

Thankfully, I have found a full-time day job which will start in a week's time.  I have given myself the gift of sanity and decided not to return to the call centre this week, but to enjoy a week of real rest and relaxation before getting back into the 9-to-5 world.  I can understand now why some people would prefer to stay on benefits than to do a mindless job, however I still believe that were I to find myself unemployed again, I would rather be working doing anything, even market research, than languishing in self pity and benefit forms.

But in the meantime, spare a thought for the poor people at the end of the phone who want to ask for ten minutes of your time to complete a survey - they are doing a very boring, repetitive job for which they are not being paid much, and the only way to pass the time is to speak to you.  Decline if you wish, but please do so politely :)

K x