12 - The Michigan Daily - Wednesday. October 13, 1999 Feminist author stirs up more bacdash with Los Angeles TIimes If you ran into feminist Susan Faludi in a dark alley, would you recognize her? Probably not, and with good reason. The author of the 1992 best-seller "Backlash" (Crown) hasn't been around. at least not where cameras are concerned. She's been turning down talking-head media opportunities for years. She's been too busy reporting. "I wanted to return to being a shoe- leather, more anonymous, more tradition- al reporter who just goes out and talks to people without arriving as a celebrity with an entourage," says the Pulitzer Prize winner. "Dan Rather descending on whatever hot spot with his dressers and makeup artist - that, to me, isn't jour- nalism. It's performance." Shying away from the limelight proba- bly helped Faludi - a big, bad feminist - get men to open up for her latest trea- tise, "Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man" (William Morrow). Many didn't know who she was, and when they found out, they were impressed that she'd written a much- talked-about book. "None of this was particularly diffi- cult,' she says. "I really think that part of the distress for a lot of men is that they don't feel listened to. They don't feel acknowledged. That's one of their big beefs about feminism. So when a woman, and even a feminist woman, shows up and wants to hear them out, that's enormously appreciated". She heard from men who felt margin- alized, men who didn't feel valued by their employers or their families, who felt pressure to live up to the media's car- toony images of masculinity. And the sto- ries were similar whether from the shut- tered California's Long Beach Naval Shipyard or Hollywood, from Citadel cadets, porn stars or men who'd blasted off at Cape Canaveral Flu.. or from Promise Keepers or mcmbers of the Spur Posse, which preyed sexualy on young women. Amid this diversity, she found men "in crisis." "Out of that feeing thai they were made obsolete by something they could- n't put their finger on came a crisis that took the form of anger at women, vio- lence in the workplace. shooting in schoolyards and in less dramatic form, widespread confusion and distress among avemrge men just tying to get through the da There's such an unattain- able vision of what masculinity is sup- posed to be that is erptrated by the cul- ture flhat it leaves most men feeling like losers: Already men in the media are putting up their dukes. iln an essay in the October issue of Esquire magazine titled "Are We Not Men? Susan Faludi Says W"'re Not' Sven Birkerts bridles at the notion that he might feel "stiffedsa "This woman is clearly on a mission: Find a soft place in the colective ale self-esteem and drive at it until the lance runs redthe writes.m Birkrts and otherk bsed their arly critiques on a slim pamphlet of excerpts released to the media by the publisher. Stories about the nearly 700-page book were embargoed until after Newsweek magazine came out with its Sept 13 issue featuring "Stuffed" on the cover. But then, Faludi's public pe'rsona precedes her "There've been a numbe'r of incr 'dibly boneheaded pieces by people who haven't read the book, who've actually said, 'I haven't read the book," she says. "What's misunderstood is this is not a book about men in the Qenerne. saying, 'This is how men are at all times.' lt's a book about how, right now, many men are facing a crisis, and I know that because I talked to hundreds of men and spent six years investigating this." Faludi, who lives with author and jour- nalist Russ Rymer in Hollywood's Beachwood Canyon, has just launched her book tour. The 40-year-old came by her activist bent growing up in Yorktown i i a 'Stifed' "Los Angeles i juit the place whe things happen first and most acutelv And I wanted to look at the crisis in its most acute form. because I thought that what' going on in the extremes otien illumi- nates the middle. As she talked to more and more mer she discov red that feminists' foils weren' men, per se, but the postwar cul- ture that left everybody adift, especially when many companies began switching their loyalties from employees to stock- holders in the '90s. On that spectrum, Faludi places both Ike Burr. a project superintendent at the Long Beach Shipyard who was laid off when the base closed in 1995, and Sylvester Stallone, an icon of media-dr- yen masculinity who tried to break out4 that mold two years ago with the movie "Copland" and met a tepid response. Stallone felt like he had been turned into some 1940s Javne Mansfield pinup girl, so he tried to flee the action market, but, of course, that didn't work either.YoU either move toward the light and kind of disappear in the blaze ofcamera lights,or you pull back and feel lost in the anonymity of a culture that doesn't rec- ognize people who are just leading * meaningful but ordinary life" Faludi says, unlike men, women have a tool for grappling with a culture that judges people according to their image -- feminism. "Feminism is women's attempt to con- front these same forces that now have men by the throat. That was a big breakthrough for the women's movement, knowing that we're not a bunch of hysterics, there actu- ally are social and economic and politic influences that are buffeting us. "But men. because of the way the cu- ture defines masculinity, aren't even allowed to acknowledge that, because they're supposed to be dominating their environment, not the other way around. Actually, feminism has all these tools for analyzing the culture that would be quite useful to men if they could get beyond hating feminism and blaming it for men's travails." Assockaued Press Susan Faludi, best known for her feminist treatise "Backlash," recently published "Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man." Heights, N.Y., the daughter of Steven Faludi, a photographer and Holocaust survivor from Budapest,, Hungary, and Marilyn Lanning Faludi, a late-blooming cditor who once helped derail a petition that would have prevented a black family from moving to town, At Harvard, Susan dove into advocacy journalism with the campus newspaper. She wrote a piece blasting sexual harass- ment on campus. forcing an implicated professor to take a leave of absence. Later, as a reporter in the Wall Street .journal's San Francisco bureau, Faludi won a Pulitzer for a 190 artile about laid-off worker4eoned in a 5.bil- lion 1evera'ed buvoa by Safewav Stor'. In between, Flil reported for t he Miami Herald the Atata Constituion and West the Sundi magazine ot the San ose M'r urv News. In a piece for Wet she decimated Newsweek': notorious 198 article alle - ing that women over 40 were "more like- ly' to be kiled by a terrorist" than to find a husband That artile led to "Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women, which won a National Book Critics Circle AwardFand gave her a name as a prominent feminist. {Faludi acknowledges the "delicious irony" in Newsweek's trumpeting of her new book aiter its inauspicious conuibu- tion to her fitst one, but she adds, "I think it has more to do with how Newsweekis changing. There are some strongly femi- nist people at the magazine.") In "Backlash," Faludi argued that fem- inists were undermined by a culture that blamed them for their problems. When she began "Stiffed,' she set out to deter- mine why men resissted women's rights. in, I 1.11 is am I Travolta tangles with tax court GI-t9 "A Civil A' ion' may' be an apt name for the tussle John Travolta has been involved in with the Internal Revenue Service. The actor has be'n embroiled in a dispute that is slowly winding its way through U.S. Tax Court, in which the star is fighting an IRS demand that he pay Sli million in back taxes and penaltie: for the years 1993 through 1995 It may be a lot of money for most of us, but it's not about to break someone who now makes S20 mil- lion or so a picture. Nonetheless, in court papers, Travolta's lawyers arieue that the IRS unfairly wants to disallow losses and deductions that Travolta claimed. Details are sketchy in the court papers, but they show the dispute stems mostly from 52.27 million in losses Travolta claimed from a com- pany called ATLO Inc. In addition, the IRS disallowed more than 550,000 in itemized deductions in 1994 and 1995. Many top Hollywood stars, direc- tors and producers operate through various corporations for tax reasons. ATLO is a so-called S corporation, a device wealthy people often use for tax advantages. Earnings and losses flow through to the owners. The tax court documents don't specify the nature of the losses and deductions at issue, but they do say that Travolta claimed losses of 5576,014 in 1993, $921.502 in 1994 and 5775,466 in 1995 related to ATLO. The IRS said Travolta's taxable income should have been $2.2 mil- lion for both 1993 and 1994, and LUJ HARDKNOX OUSTER Hardknox Lost And Gone Forever Courtesy of New Line Cinema John Travolta may play an angel, but the IRS demands he pay $1.1 million. uJ z STUCK MOJO HVYI 0 S4.7 million for 1995. The dispute dates back to some leaner years in Travolta's career, which was reignited in 1994 with the movie "Pulp Fiction." He is now among Hollywood's top-paid stars. Travolta's recent films include "A Civil Action" and "The General's Daughter." Tax disputes usually get sett before they become public, unless taxpayer decides to appeal, as Travota did. Neither IRS officials nor Travolta's tax lawyers would com- ment. I1 BRENDAN PERRY Eye Of The Hunter I _s f wI, ac U4 0 Sf 54 <'5 ILORI CARSON Stars I ITOSHI REAGON The Righteous Ones I , 1 . . London...........$472 Paris .............. $496. New York.......$270 Amsterdam....$583 (72A66940,5 F I I U ~ I - ~ I I ma - -