#cowboysinparadise #femtheory #wheresmyextracredit

@adelinekoh's been up to all kinds of good lately, employing Twitter as an engagement tool in her Cultural Studies and Feminist Theory courses. (I introduced Adeline in the previous post. She's an Asst. Professor of Literature up at Richard Stockton College, NJ.)

A recent assignment in her Seminar in Feminist Theory course required students to live-tweet while watching Eat, Pray, Love and Cowboys in Paradise. Translation? Use your phone during the movie, kids! All cool, long as you talk about second-wave US feminism and minority/international feminism. (More on her assignment here. Meanwhile, Cowboys in Paradise academic DVDs are still available.)

I joined the conversation too, hoping my involvement would earn me the minimum wage-equivalent of 10 cents for every #femtheory- and/or #cowboysinparadise-laden tweet. No dice. But I had a blast. And for all the #femtheory students thanking me profusely since, a 'lil secret: creators like speaking to an engaged audience about their work. So thank you.

A highlight for Adeline: when student @taraeckel commented "I love that even though Virmani says he doesn't think Cowboys in Paradise is an academic film, [sic] the issues are there. Shows how important these issues are in the world, and not just in textbooks."

Highlight for me? This warning from @AvaSTK523: "May or may not throw up. Most likely WILL. Finishing touches on @AmitVirmani essay..." (She has since said it had nothing to do with me, but with her deadline-related nervousness, thus taking away everything that was cool about her tweet.)

Special thanks to @JamesPomar for archiving the highlights from one of the live-tweet sessions.

'Borrowed' top pic from www.kellimarshall.net and this interesting post on Twitter and the College Classroom.

"Cowboys" in feminist classrooms

Just read Adeline Koh's review of "Cowboys in Paradise" in Films for the Feminist Classroom. An assistant professor of literature at Richard Stockton College, Adeline had screened the film for a capstone class in the Women, Gender and Sexuality studies program. (You can order your academic screening copy here.)

Her much-too-generous review praises the film for:

(Calling to) attention the critique of second-wave feminism by minority and international feminists such as bell hooks, Chandra Mohanty, and Trinh T. Minh-ha: despite the common condition of being women, the same battles are not fought by women of privilege and their poorer counterparts.

I confess to smiling upon seeing bell hooks mentioned. It took me back to 1994 when I interviewed her for a student paper, and when she introduced me to the concept of 'white-lily feminism'. She wasn't discounting anyone's contribution to the cause, but merely highlighting the fact that all activists - feminists included - are driven by their own background and circumstance. Shortly after, I began to regard my own women studies courses with suspicion. Thankfully, my professors and mentors encouraged this rebellion.

Back to Adeline. I don't know if she considers herself a 'minority' or 'international feminist'. What I do know is that we share a disdain for the over-romanticization of Asia by Westerners. It's unfair, stifling, and counter-productive at best. At its worst, it's just fucking self-centered. Which naturally brings us to...

Eat, Pray, Love. Writes Adeline:

Students watched both Eat, Pray, Love and Cowboys in Paradise after reading second-wave feminist theory alongside its critique by minority and postcolonial feminists. Because they viewed Cowboys after reading theory, students were able to accurately identify the urgency of the inequality raised by minority and postcolonial feminists in their critique of feminisms of privilege.

My film serving as an indirect critique of feminisms of privilege? Somewhere up there, Dr. Ellis is shaking her head and smiling.

You knew it was brewing: Starbucks in Ubud

Caught up with Ryan Ver Berkmoes last Sunday. He's the co-author of Lonely Planet Bali & Lombok, and we'd first exchanged emails last year when he wanted to review "Cowboys in Paradise" for the guide's 2011 edition. On route from Bali to Portland, Journeyman Berkmoes had a few hours to kill in Singapore, so a round of drinks were in order.

After knocking my beloved Austin ("I don't care! It's still in Texas!"), he updated me on the goings-on in Ubud. X wrote another book, Y launched a donation drive for a new children's charity, there's now a Starbucks in Ubud, and there's an expat who -- Wait, what?! Starbucks?

Turns out it was only news to me. The Mother of Third Spaces set shop in Ubud a while back. Come to think of it, is it even news if you, me and everyone we know saw it coming? Where did we think those "retrace Elizabeth Gilbert's footsteps" tours would lead?

And why just pick on Self-Fulfilled Liz for the hell she unleashed. I know, I know, it's fun but...

The question was never whether Ubud was touristy (it was), but whether its brand of commercialism was crass (it wasn't, until it was.) Hell, the very notion of Ubud being the island's spiritual centre, the balm for rat race-weary Westerners and the muse for artists seeking inspiration was an image carefully cultivated by Walter Spies et al in the 1920s. (Recommended read: "Bali: A Paradise Created" by Adrian Vickers.)

Am I disheartened that there's now a Starbucks in Ubud? Yup.

But then globalization has no regard for how I feel. As a Texan pal used to say, "You can build a town and call it No Fucking McDonald's, but the bastards will just buy the rest of the country and christen her Fuck Yeah McDonald's."

Also, the town's expat business owners - apparently the ones who were most vocal in their protest - can't have it both ways. You can't vie for tourists to flock to your villas, take cooking lessons and hum Om on your verandahs as you serve them faux enlightenment, and then suddenly find a Starbucks to be in violation of the town's spirit. It's only as inauthentic as your infinity pools once were.

Besides, Starbucks has some credible fair trade and wage policies. If they pay their staff better than some local and "local" employers do, then good for them. Shit, I'll go one better. If they benefit the immediate community more than some of the existing businesses do, then I want every damn tour bus to unload their thirsty, "Eat, Pray, Love"- lugging Ubud fan at their doorstep.

(Photo courtesy of DC Allen.)

"Cowboys" vs Orientalism

"Cowboys in Paradise" will screen this Thursday, March 31st, at Richard Stockton College, NJ, as part of the "Eat, Pray, Love and Contemporary Orientalism - An Asian Response" programme.

Advance props to students Stephanie Cawley and Leah Shockley who will lead a post-screening discussion, and my thanks to A. Prof. Adeline Koh for organising the event.

Full screening details (though I reckon it's a closed event):

Thursday, March 31, 230 PM

Richard Stockton College, WQ 103

UPDATE: The event is open to the public!

Lewis Black on Eat Pray Love merch-madness

Thanks for the link, Donna L. Hadn't seen this one before. And the "smells like Gelato, which is Italian ice cream" bit made me want to poke my eyes out too.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Back in Black - Eat Pray Love
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor The Daily Show on Facebook

Huddled masses yearning to breathe free

Huang C.K. asked me what I thought of this . It's a new "8 Day Eat Pray Love Tour" organised by a Chinese travel agency.

First things first, it's hardly new. Tour operators have been milking the EPL cow for some time now. As a result, hotel rates on the island are reportedly up 57% this year. How much of these boomtown dollars go to the Balinese (as opposed to foreign villa owners and Jakarta conglomerates)? Anybody's guess.

This one here had me LMAO, promising you'll "enjoy Bali like (Liz Gilbert) did, like a native..." Ya-huh.

They've got all their bases covered. The itinerary offers "all the benefits of traveling solo, with all the peace of mind of a group!" And if you scroll all the way down, you'll find this honest disclaimer:

Elizabeth Gilbert will not be leading this trip. Julia Roberts has probably never even heard of xxxx xxxx Tours. Javier Bardem will not marry you. Richard from Texas will not give you advice. James Franco will definitely not make out with you.

"Eat, Pray, Love", the bible for First World problems, has unleashed millions of blind followers bent of filling personal voids - real or imagined - by retreading another's footsteps. Here's a vid of a woman living vicariously through the palm reader Gilbert found solace from:



Navel-gazing is big business, even if it's really Gilbert's navel you're staring at.

The escapists

Had an interesting conversation with someone who caught "Cowboys in Paradise" at our recent Vancouver screening. It started with her reminding me how I bungled my response to the 'Eat, Pray, Love' question during the Q&A.

Cue dreamy music for a flashback.

Moderator asks me to comment on EPL. It's a predictable question. I should have a response prepared. I'm pretty sure I HAD a response prepared. It's only been asked a million times.

But I don't. Or I'm too tired to remember it. So I fumble and mumble, then recount how I met a couple of Canadian women while shooting in Bali. They were inspired by EPL to travel the world. Not sure if they devoured pizzas and pasta along the way (it certainly didn't show), but there they were in Bali.

They busted the squeal-fuse when my colleague told them he personally knew "Philipe", the expat dude Liz Gilbert found at the end of her self-discovery rainbow. They couldn't wait to meet someone like him. He sounded soooo perfect. And so on.

I spotted them a few days later, each with her own Cowboy.

True story, but neither here nor there as far as the question was concerned. Kinda like the attached picture. (Awesome film, though.)

So... woman reminds me how I bungled my response. "Well, how would you have responded?" I asked her. "I mean, sure, both films have Bali in common. And female tourists, I suppose. But beyond that..."

"The other thing they have in common," she proposed, "is that they're both about people trying to escape to something better."

Interesting notion. Certainly true for the Cowboys but, like many, I was never quite sure what Ms. Gilbert was running from.

Box office battle of the sexes

Did this fan-generated, nut-up-or-shut-up rallying cry help "The Expendables" beat "Eat, Pray, Love" at the box office?

Won't matter. EPL will make more money in the long run. Its devoted fan base of middle-aged women (Sony's declaration, not mine) is in no hurry to see a film on Opening Day. And they're less likely to watch a pirated download. Which might explain the poor performance of "Scott Pilgrim vs the World".

(Note: This is an amended version of the fan vid. Apparently someone cried foul over the original.)

Eat, Pray, Love / Love Not

Article poking fun of caftan-wearing middle-aged female navel-gazers in Ubud, Bali: "How Elizabeth Gilbert Ruined Bali".

Article proving Gilbert was not the last Western woman to find a (Western) lover in Bali: "My ironic Eat, Pray, Love' romance".

Both written by the same woman and, perhaps not by her design, appearing just two days apart. If you can't get a book deal out of a Bali trip, you may as well wring two columns from it.

To each her Om

An article in Time.com explores the tourism boom in Bali fueled by Eat, Pray, Love. Arrivals between January and March this year stood at 551,886, more than double from the same period in 2006.

The new tide of tourists include those from a "life changing luxury travel" group who, between meditation sessions and cleansing dips in a community pool, read select passages from EPL on their iPads. ("It really did feel like Liz was helping us experience some of the same spiritual growth she did.")

And the ones who flock to Ketut, the palm reader/seer who gave Gilbert a glimpse into her future and, some argue, a reason to base EPL's third act in Bali. Today, for $25 each, Ketut gives just about everyone the reassurance that they'll live to be 110.

Officials confirm "the island has been repopulated by tourists looking to develop their spirituality." Which, it appears, is another way of saying 'tourists retracing Gilbert's path.'

(Link alert from @ryanvb, via @emmajwestwood)

That "Eat, Pray, Love" question

Is EPL good for the Cowboys? Absolutely!

Not directly because of anything Gilbert wrote or prescribed, but her book inspired countless women to set forth and 'find themselves' in Bali. And the film will only spike the kool-aid further. It's unlikely anyone will find an enamored Javier Bardem in Ubud, but a good many will discover the Cowboys. And like thousands before them, they'll realize the 'Boys can be the most appealing indulgence on Bali's pastry cart.

And really, why shouldn't the Cowboys benefit from EPL? Better them than the enlightenment pushers and faux healers.