BODIES OF WORK

I found Barbra Streisand’s comments within your excellent series on women directors to be most unkind: “Women directors have a unique vision of the world. It is our instinct to create life, not destroy it.”

Such a statement implies that the female sensibility stands for peace, goodness and love--while the men are hacking away at the world with their big, hairy arms.

For an artist as sensitive as Streisand to make such a generalization, not only about men, but about women, disheartens me. I would think that, as a role model and major talent, she would be more interested in portraying our universal humanity rather than constructing additional barriers.

If anything, Streisand’s sensibility is the destructive one.

JONATHAN KARP

North Hollywood