A brief flirtation with unreality 2
Today I didn’t read a script written by a dude about the daily life of a lesbian woman. He didn’t want to contradistinguish her femininity from the power of the car he was advertising. And no, he didn’t at any point say, “Sensuality vs dexterity and horse power,” or something like that.
I didn’t write the Mexico City-based production firm which didn’t contract me to translate that Spanish script into English a snarky note telling them they would be (absolutely, unequivocally) eaten alive by those marketers in the US poised to review them. Even though I only hoped they would get eaten alive, I swear I didn’t write this.
Then too many (not including the first) dudes in a single Condesa office didn’t start arguing that it is politically incorrect to call a women “compleja,” that we need instead to speak of the richness of women’s lives or this whole campaign might go awry. And they didn’t go and write all of their friends to prove this to themselves.
Finally, I didn’t get dismissed for speaking the wrong language first. My ethnography of real women living real, complex lives, likewise, did not get dismissed, dismissed by some Argentine in an office in Mexico City who has decided deadlines matter more than ethics. And I didn’t, not even for a second, feel my blood boil.
