‘Logan’: On Death and Dying. And Mutants.

‘Logan’ is a real film. In fact, it’s more real than any comic book superhero movie has business being. … It is a beautifully crafted film. If you still think that comic books and their offspring are incapable of being high art, I urge you to give it a chance.

Logan

Written by Andrea Morgan.


Have you ever cared for someone close to you as they were dying, slowly, from some dread disease? I have. It’s terrifying, and terrible. The anticipated grief, the pure sadness that comes with seeing someone you love torn down piece by piece, is often superseded by guilt. Caretaking is dirty, annoying work. By the hundredth time you’ve wiped someone else’s ass, you hate it, they hate it, and you know that they know that you hate it. You resent their illness, as if it was a punishment unjustly inflicted upon you as a result of their moral failings. But you know this isn’t true, so you feel guilty.

This is some real bleak shit.

Logan is a real film. In fact, it’s more real than any comic book superhero movie has business being. It opens with a semi-dystopian Southwestern scene filled with some rather graphic (and, admittedly, satisfying) violence, but then slides effortlessly into mutated human drama as the titular character (played by Hugh Jackman) heads south of the border to an appropriately-dusty abandoned power station. There, Logan, and another mutant, Caliban (Stephen Merchant), are caring for Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart), aka Professor X, who is suffering from the effects of Alzheimer’s. Logan, ill himself and looking much more his 100-plus years than in the previous X-Men films, houses Xavier inside of a toppled water tower. It’s a gorgeous and suggestive set piece, both expansive and confining, rusted and full of tiny holes backlit by the desert sun.

Logan 7

Hugh Jackman is excellent, but here, and throughout the film, Patrick Stewart is transcendent. His depiction of illness is absolutely authentic, as is the filial love between Logan and Xavier established through subtle tones, looks, and physical displays of vulnerability and sacrifice. That love shines brightly though the bitterness and pain. I came to the film already knowing that Stewart is one of the greats, but his performance still wrecked me like I was unprepared. More than once, I wept. During a Marvel movie.

We learn that Logan is a participant in the gig economy, working as a limo driver ferrying a stream of evermore repugnant white people to earn money to acquire pharmaceuticals. These drugs are needed to counter some of the more extreme manifestations of Xavier’s illness. During this setup, Logan encounters the film’s primary baddie, Pierce (Boyd Holbrook), who channels his best Val-Kilmer-as-Doc-Holliday — and does a damn fine job of it. Logan also meets Gabriela (Elizabeth Rodriguez), who begs Logan to take her adolescent daughter, Laura (Dafne Keen), to a safe haven in North Dakota.

Of course, Laura is not just some random girl. Xavier clocks her immediately as a mutant, which is strange, because there aren’t any mutants anymore. They’ve been hunted down and killed as part of a government-sanctioned pogrom; no new mutants have been born in years. Logan reluctantly agrees to escort Laura, but Pierce and his crew of delicious hipster cyborg mercenaries (seriously, these guys use their blood money to buy craft IPAs and beard wax) have other ideas.

Logan 8

There is a fight, and Laura is outed as a Little Miss Badass. This trope, where a young girl, often a waif, displays combat skills incongruent with her small size and our culture’s gendered expectations, is not new. But Keen’s take on it is truly something to behold. Unlike similar characters, say Firefly’s River Tam (Summer Glau), who round out their episodic violence with adorableness and mercy, Laura is all hard, sharp, pointy bits. The ferocity that Keen brings to the role, coupled with John Mathieson’s unflinching camera work, James Mangold’s direction, and the story’s frequent violence, give the viewer plenty of opportunities to contemplate their discomfort at seeing an adolescent girl kill.

At times, Laura seems like a spiritual pair, or maybe predecessor, to Javier Bardem’s Anton Chigurh. The parallels don’t stop there. Cormac McCarthy’s pitiless fatalism, and the Coen Brother’s reverence for the American West shown in No Country for Old Men (2007), clearly influenced Logan’s story and feel.

While there are several women with speaking parts, Laura is the only female character to be given much of an arc. Two older women, both mothers, are murdered by the bad guys to help establish their evil bona fides, and to perpetuate the film’s nihilistic aesthetic.

Logan 5

While Logan is set in 2029, the film is very much planted in the present. Things that concern us today, like rapid technological advancement (think genetic engineering, militarized drones, and driverless vehicles), and issues that consume us today, like authoritarianism, bigotry, and immigration policy, are checked. In fact, both the southern and northern borders figure largely in the story. Logan traverses a checkpoint, ominously crowded with armed Border Patrol agents, in his daily travels into Texas. Gabriela and Laura make the long journey from Mexico City to El Paso, with Gabriela receiving a painful wound while crossing the Wall. Later, Logan, Laura, and Xavier, an unconventional family to say the least, set off on a quest for a place literally called “Eden,” from where Laura and a group of young mutants of color will try to cross into Canada to escape persecution by the U.S. Government.

You are right to expect that Laura and company don’t have an uneventful road trip. People, good and bad, die, and often. As we watch the story unfold its familiar form against the backdrop of rural America, we are forced to face our own fears of regret, death, and of a future filled with cold tech and colder government.

Logan is a beautifully crafted film. If you still think that comic books and their offspring are incapable of being high art, I urge you to give it a chance.


Andrea Morgan is a Baltimorean currently living in Denver. A Bitch Flicks staff writer, they write about film and television. Andrea is a queer person of color, and their perspective stems from a life spent on the boundaries of race, class, and gender. Andrea’s writing has also appeared on The Bilerico Project and The Rainbow Hub.

Top Six Anthems Inspired by Kate Pierson’s ‘Mister Sister’

The painfully pungent overtones of Band Aid and Miley Cyrus kept me from appreciating the altruism.

Written by Andé Morgan.
Hey folks, remember that cis-origin trans anthem you didn’t ask for? Kate Pierson’s got you covered!
[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZzSgYQl2RY”]
This weekend Pierson released the video for her  new single, “Mister Sister.” She’s accompanied by Fred Armisen of Portlandia (and “Estro-Maxx”) fame.
It also features Alyson Palmer of the band BETTY. Palmer is well-known for her strong opposition to trans inclusion (e.g., her support for Womyn-born Womyn policies) at the Michigan Womyn’s Festival.
Pierson said “I hope this becomes a trans anthem.”

WATCH: The B-52s’ Kate Pierson Is Back With A ‘Trans Anthem’ http://t.co/mekSiGFvjT

— KATE PIERSON (@THEKATEPIERSON) December 5, 2014

Some lyrics from the song:

Hey mister sister
You raid that closet for fish nets
It’s lonely
But you keep wishing
I know there is no one that listens
and these:
You hear the words
You make a beautiful girl
A beautiful girl
And nothing hurts when you are a beautiful girl
A beautiful girl

sarcasm gif photo:  e6b49580.gif

Wow, she gets it.
I hate to shade Pierson. Her intent seems good, she’s family, and her music resonates with many, including some transgender women. HOWEVER, Pierson is cisgender, and I don’t like it when cisfolks co-opt the trans experience for fun, profit, or even do-goodery. Really, the painfully pungent overtones of Band Aid and Miley Cyrus kept me from appreciating the altruism. To her credit, Pierson has indicated a willingness to have a dialogue on this.
In the meantime, here are some upcoming “helpful” songs soon to be released by your favorite artists!
1. “Feminists are Pretty, Too!” by R. Kelly
2. “I Wanna Touch Your Hair” by Taylor Swift
3. “I Like Mexican Ladies ‘Cus They Salsa While They Make Salsa” by Kenny Chesney
4. “Pink Tutus and Barbie Dolls (The Transgendered Kid at School)” by Macklemore
5. “Do Secular Humanists Even Know it’s Christmas?” by U2
6. “Queers, Am I Right?” by The Fred Durst/Chad Kroeger Steamroller Collective
OK, I’m done. At least James Nichols, HuffPo Gay Voices associate editor, keyed in on what’s really important here: “We’re loving the retro sound of this new single from Pierson.”
o-FRED-facebook
Also on Bitch Flicks: “The Joyful Feminist Killjoy” by Leigh Kolb

Andé Morgan lives in Tucson, Arizona, where they write about film, television, and current events. Follow them @andemorgan.

Break the Cycle: Cultural Appropriation, Racism, and Kim Kardashian’s ‘Paper’ Magazine Cover

Jokes like these dehumanize Kardashian and all women with large buttocks. This is wrong, and the fact that Kim Kardashian lives in the public eye does not make it right.

Written by Andé Morgan.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last two weeks, you’ve probably seen Kim Kardashian’s butt.
Specifically, you’ve seen her PAPER Magazine cover shot. While this picture did not in fact break the Internet, it has prompted numerous think pieces, blog posts, and comment threads. Some have derided Kardashian for behavior that, in their ancient and wrong opinion, is unbecoming of a mother. Others have accused Kardashian of cultural appropriation. Still others have focused on photographer Jean-Paul Goude’s obvious (and admitted) fetishization of black women’s bodies as evidenced by a strikingly similar — and more overtly racist — series taken several years earlier.
Cultural appropriation — in this case the profitable co-opting by non-Black folks of features and styles typically associated with black women  — is a thing, and it’s not new. Even before Kardashian’s cover, this year alone has seen appropriation called on Miley Cyrus’ VMA performance, Katy Perry’s big-butted mummies, Meghan Trainor’s “All About That Bass,” and J.Lo and Iggy Azeala’s “Booty.” Here are some quotes from pieces you should read:
Taylor P. wrote about cultural appropriation and fashion for XOVain:
“I understand the argument that they are only trying to admire and honor our culture. But here’s the reality: when the dominant culture picks up pieces of our world, we [black women] get fetishized or, even worse, erased in the process.”
Tressie McMillan Cottom wrote about Cyrus’s VMA performance for Slate:
“That is how black round female bodies become inferior. That is the inferiority Cyrus is ostensibly rooting against in ‘We Can’t Stop’ when she encourages ‘homegirls with big butts’ to reject the ‘haters’ because ‘somebody loves [them].’ Just who is that somebody is left unanswered, but I suspect it isn’t the white male audience for whom Cyrus performs her faux bisexual performance. That is choreographed for the white male gaze against a backdrop of dark, fat black female bodies and slightly more normative café au lait slim bodies because the juxtaposition of her sexuality with theirs is meant to highlight Cyrus’ supremacy, not challenge it. Consider it the racialized pop culture version of a bride insisting that all of her bridesmaids be hideously clothed on her wedding day.”
Nikki Gloudman wrote about Meghan Trainor’s “All About The Bass” at Ravishly:
“The problem with our pop cultural fixation on female body parts isn’t which body part is being focused on—it’s the fixation itself. These songs, which aim to celebrate the female form, still reduce women to the sum of their physical parts—and in doing so, propagate that damning social more of female competition…[the song] for its part, has already faced backlash from skinny girls who feel the tune disses them. Are they to feel inferior because they do wear a size two and don’t have the ‘boom boom that all the boys chase?'”
Blue Telusma, for The Griowrote about the connection between Kardashian and the exploitation of Sarah Baartman in the nineteenth century:
“All of a sudden, my correlation between these images and Saartjie’s treatment as a sideshow animal don’t seem so far-fetched, do they? The parallels are so literal and un-nuanced you’d have to willfully ignore what’s right in front of your face. This idea that ‘black equals erotic’ is fetishism in its purest form; it mocks ‘otherness’ while pretending to celebrate it and defines human beings by their genitals instead of seeing them as whole people.”
Wow! Nobody's ever don't THAT before!
Wow! Nobody’s ever done THAT before!
Joyce Wadler, writing for The New York Times style blog last week, took the opportunity to expel droll jokes that are only tongue-in-cheek in the most unfunny sense of the word. For example, Wadler writes:
“Then there’s the issue of copycats. I have no interest in having a behind like Kim’s — like I said, I live in a little New York apartment. But there may be impressionable women out there who right now are marching into the surgeon’s office and saying, ‘Gimme that’ — women with whom I am going to have to share a subway seat one day.”
Wadler is part of the same body-shaming fashion journalism industrial complex that spawned September’s “seminal” Vogue article, “The Dawn of the Butt” by Patricia Garcia. That piece effortlessly reduced millennia of cultural evolution to an Internet Age fad: “Perhaps we have Jennifer Lopez to thank (or blame?) for sparking the booty movement.”
: |
It's funny because Kim Kardashian's body is funny?
It’s funny because Kim Kardashian’s body is funny?
In Essence, Elizabeth Wellington writes:
“What’s difficult to digest is this ‘praise’ of all things black – from cornrows and large booties to acrylic nails, door-knocker earrings, and tribal fabrics – only becomes ‘chic,’ ‘trendy,’ and ‘epic’ when worn by white women. When these same cultural markers are on black women, they are ‘ghetto,’ ‘urban,’ and ‘ratchet’ – meaning, unpretty.”
As you’ve read above, there are important discussions occurring about appropriation and the questionable underpinnings of Kardashian’s PAPER Magazine cover. But what strikes me most is the more subtly racist backlash often delivered in the form of jokes by white comedians and commentators.
I claim that booty for Spain!
I claim that booty for Spain!
Wadler’s piece is relatively mild, and more exemplary of the lazy, mean-spirited humor often aimed at the Kardashian sisters. A better example of the subtle, casual racism inherent in these jocular responses comes from the Nov. 15 episode of the beloved NPR weekend quiz show, Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me! In it, host Peter Sagal makes several jokes alluding to the supposed grossness and abnormality of Kardashian’s body; in one he goes so far as to refer to her as a “greased pig.” (As an aside, Sagal also told a flat man-in-a-dress so-called joke about guest Ron Perlman. But transmisogyny on Wait Wait is another post…)
Such jokes describe women as less than, e.g., as non-human animals, inanimate objects, or anatomical abnormalities. Consequently, they dehumanize Kardashian and all women of color (and really, all women) with large buttocks. This is wrong, and the fact that Kim Kardashian lives in the public eye does not make it right.

Andé Morgan lives in Tucson, Arizona, where they write about film, television, and current events. Follow them @andemorgan.

‘Big Hero 6’: Woman Up

The female team members are often shown as being more capable then the males, both as combatants and as scientists. Gogo Tomago , and Honey Lemon, are two bright, young scientists who exhibit strength of mind, body, and will. During a training montage, Gogo uses the phrase “woman up” to encourage one of her teammates to do better. This was a great, subversive line because it flowed naturally from the character and the context, rather than seeming like a forced injection of faux-feminism.

U.S. release poster.
U.S. release poster.
Written by Andé Morgan.
Big Hero 6 (2014) is a cinematic snack, lighter fare to counterbalance heavier offerings like Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar (2014), much in the same way that Wall-E (2008) contrasts with The Terminator (1984), or a pile of disgusting feces compares with Jack and Jill (2011). Still, the film does touch on universal themes that adults will appreciate: the trials of adolescence, grief, our wonder at science, and our fear of unrestrained technological development.
Other recent Disney animated films, like Planes: Fire and Rescue (2014), and Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good Very Bad Day (2014), were not, for good reason, box office or critical darlings. But Big Hero 6 is different — it’s an offspring of Disney’s 2009 union with Marvel. Like Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), Big Hero 6 draws on a little-known corner of the Marvel universe. Directors Don Hall and Chris Williams took the heart of that original comic and created a Happy-Meal-ready sequel factory. Thankfully, they left the spandex boob socks and impractical armor behind.
Yeah, this OG Gogo Tomago...
Yeah, this is OG Gogo Tomago…
The story is set in the fictional city of  “San Fransokyo.” While the name is a bit clumsy, the visual fusion of Bay Area landmarks and American and Asian architecture is beautifully done. The influence of Japanese comics and science fiction is tastefully overprinted on all the animation, and it works. I wish I could say the same for the character design. While adequate, it suffers from the same Disney animation facial blandness found in Frozen (2013) and Wreck-It Ralph (2012).
This should be IRL.
This should be IRL.

If you’ve ever seen a Disney animated movie, particularly one of the more recent ones, then you already know the plot beats to Big Hero 6. This is too bad, because after establishing an interesting origin story, screenwriters Robert Baird, Daniel Gerson, and Jordan Roberts let the effort devolve into a decidedly unoriginal superheroes vs. villain story. Hiro Hamada (Ryan Potter) is a 14-year-old orphan (of course) and robotics prodigy, although the puffy robotic heart of the film is Baymax (Scott Adsit), who resembles (at least to this child of the 80s) a futuristic Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. Despite an appearance that may appear androgynous to Westerners, Hiro is definitely a male protagonist, and this is definitely not Frozen. However, gender plays little role in his actions or interactions, and this is where the film really shines.

After rescuing Hiro from certain doom, his brother, Tadashi (Daniel Henney), takes Hiro to the robotics lab at the local R1 university. There he meets Tadashi’s friends and fellow students (who will later become his wrecking crew) and the department head, Professor Callaghan (James Cromwell). Hiro is impressed by the tech, and very badly wants to join Tadashi in college. In order to gain entrance, he competes in a pro-level science fair. He wins, of course, but tragedy ensues and sets the stage for the rest of the movie.

The cast of characters is diverse. In a subtle and pleasantly subversive move, the only white male characters of note are the “villains.” The Black character, Wasabi (flatly voiced by Damon Wayans), did come off a little token-ish, but it’s hard to level that accusation considering the diversity of the entire cast. Also, I have to credit the writers for avoiding race or gender-based humor throughout. This film does not have exceptional voice acting, animation, or story, but it does stand out in one other major way: the relative parity between male and female characters. And I don’t just mean numerical parity, I mean parity in the intent and essence of the roles.
From left to right: Fred, Gogo, Baymax, Hiro, Honey Lemon, and Wasabi.
From left to right: Fred, Gogo, Baymax, Hiro, Honey Lemon, and Wasabi.
Several main characters, and an important ancillary character, are women. Aunt Cass (Maya Rudolph), is Hiro and Tadashi’s guardian. She’s a single mother, and not once does she complain about it. No references are made to some horrible tragedy involving her former husband; there are no jokes about her wanting a man. Rather, she’s shown as a happy, competent business owner and caretaker.
The female team members are often shown as being more capable then the males, both as combatants and as scientists. Gogo Tomago (Jamie Chung), and Honey Lemon (Génesis Rodríguez), are two bright, young scientists who exhibit strength of mind, body, and will. During a training montage, Gogo uses the phrase “woman up” to encourage one of her teammates to do better. This was a great, subversive line because it flowed naturally from the character and the context, rather than seeming like a forced injection of faux-feminism. Also of note, the villain’s daughter, Abigail (Katie Holmes), is depicted as a brave test pilot, and her fate is key to the film’s climax.
Big Hero 6 will most strongly appeal to older kids. The heavier questions may be lost on younger children, and some of the fight and chase scenes are a bit violent (bloodless, and no more so than similar films) and frenetic. Adults will (or at least should) appreciate the themes, the gender equity, and the racial diversity of the characters. Most importantly, the film excels at imparting a sense of wonder about science. By showing strong, capable female characters, this film will, I hope, encourage both girls and boys to develop an interest in science.
The film has a trim 102-minute running time, so a six-minute appetizer, Feast (2014), precedes it. The story is told from the visual perspective of a young Boston Terrier, and quickly jumps from a series of hungry-dog sight gags to a saccharine love-marriage-baby-carriage parable. Despite having the look of an experimental short, the animation and the story are deliberate, targeted, and all conventional Disney fluff.
Also on Bitch Flicks: Wreck-It Ralph is Flawed, But Still Pretty Feminist by Myrna Waldron

Andé Morgan lives in Tucson, Arizona, where they write about film, television, and current events. Follow them @andemorgan.

‘Wetlands’: Vile Beauty, with Schnitzel

This visual powerhouse contains many explicit scenes depicting bodily functions and some of the more interesting aspects of human sexuality. But don’t be fooled, ‘Wetlands’ excels at using shocking imagery to break down walls and build our connection to the characters. The result is distinctly warm and expressive take on the female coming-of-age story.

U.S. release poster.
U.S. release poster.
Written by Andé Morgan.
Wetlands (2013) is the “most WTF, NSFW movie,” or at least that’s what its promotional materials can’t wait to tell you. So you might be forgiven for expecting a one-note gross-out film with copious amounts of Euronudity, and you would be (sort of) right. Explicit unsanitary behavior is the film’s party piece, but it’s much more than that. It’s the best kind of gimmick: the kind that works.
6_5
Wetlands was written and directed by German auteur David Wnendt (Combat Girls, 2011). It was adapted from the 2008 book of the same name by Charlotte Roche (actually, Feuchtgebiete, if we’re going to keep it real Deutsch). The novel was a well-received bestseller, though some critics have described it (often while clutching their pearls) as erotic fiction or pornography.
The film was originally released at the Locarno Film Festival in 2013, and was shown at Sundance in 2014. It’s currently in limited release in the United States through October. The story follows Helen Memel (Carla Juri), a young woman with an almost pathological obsession with filth, as she hits common Bildungsroman beats, e.g., sex, friendship, rebellion, divorced parents, and family secrets.
wetlands11
The films opens with Helen skateboarding barefoot down a grey street in a generic German city. She stops to apply hemorrhoid cream in what may be the filthiest abandoned subway restroom ever. Helen’s voiceover details her long suffering with the affliction, and we’re also told that her mother always says good hygiene Down There (in the wetlands, get it?) is important because a “pussy is dirtier than a penis.” Helen shows us her own feelings about hygiene by grinding her vulva in a circular motion around the dirty toilet seat.
This opening sequence also establishes three overarching elements:
1. Helen represents the antithesis of the modern western woman and her pedantic attention to personal hygiene fostered by years of exposure to patriarchal cultural norms and manipulative advertising.
2. The restroom is flooded, covered in two inches of chocolate-brown water filled with cigarette butts and other refuse. As she sits on the toilet, we see Helen’s bare feet firmly planted in the water. Her acts and the filthy water seem like part of a perverse baptism, one that rejects the symbolic purification and rebirth associated with traditional Christian baptism. Later, critical moments often involve Helen’s or someone else’s immersion in water in line with the more conventional symbology, culminating with Helen’s inundation in the final scene.
3. This film is pretty. For example, midway through the sequence we get a beautiful, slick opening credits animation that will ensure that you never think about pubic hair and pee stains in the same way. It also sets the precedent for the look of the rest of the film: simultaneously cozy and disorienting, with the commercial refinement of a car advertisement (BMW or Mercedes, of course).
The action quickly shifts to Helen’s hospital room (these scenes may have been filmed in the local IKEA’s nurse’s station). She’s recovering from surgery done to remove an anal fissure gained while she was shaving her anus. By this point, we’ve heard Helen expound favorably on men’s preferred vaginal discharge texture (cottage cheese, in her experience), so her desire to be completely clean shaven seems discordant. Through flashbacks, we learn her motivation for this act. We’re then introduced to her best friend and neighbor, Corinna (Marlen Kruse), who has recently been alienated at her high school due to her willingness to indulge her former boyfriend’s coprophilia. Helen instructs Corinna to dab some of her own vaginal secretions behind her ears to attract the attention of their mutual acquaintance and dealer, Toni (Ludger Bökelmann).
We also meet Helen’s divorced parents, played by Meret Becker and Axel Milberg. Quite unlike Helen, Becker’s character is tidy to a fault. She also suffers from depression and personality disorder, and once cut off 8-year-old Helen’s eyelashes to teach her a lesson about vanity. Milberg’s character is oblivious to the pain he causes his family by his self-centered nature. In another childhood flashback his inattentive and ineffective application of sunscreen to 8-year-old Helen’s back results in a severe sunburn. Another scene shows a young Helen delighted to be allowed to suck on her father’s used avocado pit, saying that it was “almost like they’d kissed.” This exemplifies her desperate desire for acknowledgment by her father. Present-day Helen’s only non-sex-and-drugs hobby is tending several avocado pits suspended in plastics water cups, a group she calls her “family.”
The balance of the story concerns Helen’s use of her hospital stay as the linchpin of a guileless scheme to get her parents to reconcile and remarry. She also courts Robin (Christoph Letkowski), the male nurse assigned to monitor her recovery. By court, I mean she alternates between crying out for relief from her loneliness and attempting to seduce Robin with faux Cool Girl grossness.
jgqK4BYAgo1ZGFaZlamCa0hv4bA
Helen’s relationship with her mother doesn’t progress very far, but it is eventually implied that a family secret involving her mother may be the root cause of Helen’s self-destructive behavior. More dynamic is Helen and Corinna’s friendship. We see them share drugs, a bath, and, later, their used tampons. After swapping cotton, Helen runs her bloody fingers over Corinna’s face and deems her “blood sister.” Corinna reciprocates. What this scene lacks in subtlety it makes up for in impact.
While the first two acts imply otherwise, in the final act we learn that Helen is actually much more dependent on Corinna than vice versa. When she discovers that Corinna is pregnant by Toni, Helen, driven by her fear of loneliness, lashes out at her friend and contemplates suicide. Helen has recently been sterilized by choice because she refuses to perpetuate the mental illness that afflicts the women in her maternal lineage.
Helen’s graphic disregard for hygiene as a symbol of her rejection of conventional gender and familial norms does begin to feel a bit gimmicky towards the end of the film, but it is also very effective at relaying the impact of her mother’s illness and her parent’s divorce on her development. Some other symbolic imagery, like the surreal scene of an avocado plant growing from pit to several feet high from Helen’s vagina, is similarly heavy handed.
Other commentary on the plight of women include the male medical staffs’ casual disregard for Helen’s autonomy or ability to assess her own health. Following the surgery, Dr. Notz (Edgar Selge), laughs off Helen’s concerns about malpractice by saying “girls her age are prone to hysteria.” Later, a scene involving four men, a pizza, and some Olympics-level synchronized ejaculation evokes conventional concerns about the dehumanizing effects of pornography and subsequent propagation of rape culture by male viewers.
To his credit, Wnendt is largely successful in avoiding employment of the male gaze. The camera rarely lingers on Helen’s body during scenes with incidental nudity. Sex scenes depict both male and female nudity with either cozy familiarity or clinical coldness. So, while it is certainly explicit, and may be erotic, Wetlands is hardly pornographic.
Wetlands_704
Don’t be fooled by reviews that focus on the bodily fluids and sex — Wetlands excels at using shocking imagery to break down walls and build our connection to the characters. The result is singular, warm take on the female coming-of-age story for the whole (very modern) family.


Andé Morgan lives in Tucson, Arizona, where they write about film, television, and current events. Follow them @andemorgan.

Three Reasons Why ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ is Not a Feminist Film

I dreaded seeing this trite sexism applied to Saldana’s character, Gamora. To be fair, while she does require saving by male characters on multiple occasions, Gamora has moderately strong agency throughout, and her character is a load-bearing beam rather than a Trinity-esque distraction. If only her last lines could’ve been less deferential.

Release Poster.
Release Poster.
Written by Andé Morgan.
Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), one of the summer’s most anticipated blockbusters, was released today. It was directed by James Gunn and written by Gunn and Nicole Perlman.
Guardians stars Chris Pratt (Parks and Recreation) as Peter Quill, Bradley Cooper as the voice of Rocket Raccoon, Vin Diesel as the voice of Groot, Dave Bautista as Drax the Destroyer, and Zoe Saldana (AvatarStar Trek) as Gamora.
Full disclosure: I’ve never read the comics and I knew nothing about the characters, their backstories, or their places in the Marvel Universe. I’m guessing that most viewers will share my ignorance. That’s OK, just go with it and let the tongue-twisters and blasters work their magic.
Make no mistake — Marvel Studios’ Avengers franchise is big business with plenty of big business oversight. Wisecracking animals, walking trees, pratfalls, space battles…it can be hard to fit in all of those beats while preserving some directorial distinctiveness. Fortunately, Gunn’s style comes through well and gives Guardians a joyful spark missing from its brethren (I’m looking at you, Iron Man 2). [Note: While writing this, I was unaware of the controversy surrounding Gunn due to the 2012 spotlighting of some awful, terrible, horrible, homophobic, misogynistic so-called satire that he spewed on his blog two years before before he was confirmed for GotG. I am now aware. The original post has long since vanished from the interwebs, but you can read about it here.]
Fans of Pratt’s Andy Dwyer will recognize the same genial man-child at the heart of Quill, but Pratt also shows that he can play the street smart pirate when necessary. More surprising is Bautista’s excellent performance as Drax. Athletes-turned-actors tend to have issues with timing and diction, but Bautista nailed it.
The most compelling characters in the movie are both animated. Rocket’s sullen abrasiveness belies palpable loneliness. Groot carries some of this sorrow as well. In the third act we learn just how strong the connection is between the two, and I was moved.
Quill is a thief and scavenger with a type of situational morality — sort of like a less violent, more personable Mal. He steals a blue orb that the Big Bad, Ronan (Lee Pace), covets. Pace lays the evil on thick, and it works. Ronan has genocidal ambitions, and wants to Death Star the peaceful planet Alderaan Xander. An aggressively shiny utopia, Xander looks like a cross between Dubai and a new outdoor outlet mall.
What unfolds is a standard space western, but with excellent performances, animation, and humor. It even has a female authority figure, Glenn Close (she’s the one with pieces of the set between her teeth) as Nova Prime, leader of Xander. You will be entertained. Aside from the somewhat clunky exposition sequences, I don’t really have much to criticize.
Except:
1. The first act features not one, but two disposable women. We learn that Quill suffers from parental abandonment. His father is absent, and his mother succumbs to cancer in the prologue. Later, Melia Kreiling portrays Bereet, a vaguely-alien humanoid whose key scene involves Quill shamelessly admitting to forgetting her existence even though they’d recently had sex. In the next scene (two of two for her), she speaks broken English and is servile to Quill; it struck me as an extraterrestrial variation of the Asian girlfriend trope. This was one of the few moments in the film where I actually didn’t like Pratt’s character. Unfortunately, this a-girl-in-every-spaceport sexism is leaned on for laughs throughout the film. Pratt is still playing a heterosexual white male lead, and Gunn won’t let you forget it.
Soldana as Gomora.
Saldana as Gamora.
2. I dreaded seeing this trite sexism applied to Saldana’s character, Gamora, the cybernetic assassin (why is it that sexy female aliens are always either green or blue?). When I saw her catsuit and a gratuitous booty shot towards the end of the first act, I felt that my fears were partly born out. To be fair, while she does require saving by male characters on multiple occasions, Gamora does display moderately strong agency throughout the film. Her character is a load-bearing beam rather than a Trinity-esque distraction. If only her last lines could’ve been a little less deferential.
More troubling are some of Saldana’s comments in recent interviews. For example, she told the Los Angeles Times that part of the appeal of the character was the chance to play someone “…so different from herself…”
“Gamora, she’s not feminine in the typical sense of how women are supposed to be. I feel like she has to melt that ice for you to find that little girl in there. She’s very tough, she’s able to relate to the hard talks of it all. When Quill comes at her with that luscious, ‘Hey baby’ [attitude], I’m pretty sure she’s throwing up in her mouth. I liked that, and I thought, ‘OK, that’s something I can incorporate of myself and just shave off a little bit of my femininity.’ Even though I like to believe I’m a tomboy, I’m very feminine, so I just always have to de-train myself and allow my masculinity to seep through because Gamora is much more masculine than I am.”
Her comments seem to imply that combat prowess and femininity are necessarily mutually exclusive, and that it’s not feminine to rebuff the advances of horny dudebros. Those connections elicited a little side eye from this critic.
3. There is a female character credited only as Tortured Pink Girl (Laura Ortiz). For some reason, Benicio Del Toro plays the sadistic Collector (kind of an older, huskier Ziggy Stardust), with whom Quill seeks to do business. We see that the Collector has enslaved at least two women; both are displayed in pigtails and pink jumpers. One is forced to wash the glass cage of the other. The woman in the cage is on her knees, bound and gagged with electric sci-fi ropes, a clear look of pain and fear in her eyes.
Quill and crew are less concerned with the fate of the women than with money and exposition. When the uncaged woman, Carina (Ophelia Lovibond), desperately attempts to use the power of an ancient artifact to free herself, she’s immolated instead. We’re left to assume that the other captive woman is also killed in the subsequent cataclysm (though a dog and an arguably misogynistic duck survive).
Despite these faults, the film is still just too good to skip. While its story and characters are hardly groundbreaking, Guardians of the Galaxy’s combination of dopey humor and frenetic action hits the sweet spot between stupid, exciting, and endearing.

Andé Morgan lives in Tucson, Arizona, where they write about film, television, and current events. Follow them @andemorgan.

‘Dawn of the Planet of the Apes:’ My Dear Forgotten Cornelia

‘Dawn’ lacks strong female characters. How much more interesting the story could have been if Ellie had taken the lead in negotiating with Caesar and restoring the dam! Likewise, a fighting female ape could have provided interesting contrast while either avoiding or spotlighting appearance-based tropes about violent women.

Written by Andé Morgan.
Release poster.
Release poster.
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014) is an artful and visually appealing summer blockbuster, and it almost makes up for Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014). Unfortunately, like that movie and almost every other recent film in its genre, Dawn has a dearth of significant female characters.
Dawn was directed by Matt Reeves and written by Mark Bomback, Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver. It is the sequel to Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011).
Featuring much less James Franco (thank you, Noodly One) than RiseDawn stars Andy-Serkis-in-a-digital-monkey-suit as Caesar, Gary Oldman as Dreyfuss, leader of the surviving humans, and Jason Clarke as Malcolm, an utterly unmemorable white male lead. Keri Russell plays Ellie, a former CDC doctor and Malcolm’s companion.
Andy Serkis as Caesar.
Andy Serkis as Caesar.
The introductory news montage dovetails with the end of Rise. The Simian Flu, unleashed by Franco’s character, has killed almost everybody. A clutch of genetically-immune humans has outlasted the violent first 10 years of the apocalypse. Like characters in a late ’70s sitcom, they’re scraping by and doing the best they can in the bottom of a San Francisco high-rise.
In contrast the apes, led into the Muir Woods by Caesar in the previous film, have built a cellulose utopia. No cages, no electricity, no artisanal cat videos, no bullshit. Reeves and company do an excellent job of establishing a believable community, and of illustrating the depth of the inter-ape relationships. The father-son drama between Caesar and Blue Eyes is particularly well done, both in movement and in dialogue (such as it is), and was my favorite element of the film.
Malcolm and Ellie form a post-apocolyptic nuclear family with Malcolm’s son, Alexander (Kodi Smit-McPhee). Malcolm leads them and a small group of stock characters into the Muir Woods to locate and renovate a hydroelectric dam so that the survivors can power their peripherals. This quest precipitates the inevitable confrontation between the humans and the apes.
That's Ellie in the back.
That’s Ellie in the back.
Did I mention less James Franco? Also, the visual elements were excellent. Filming took place on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, and Reeves and Michael Seresin (cinematographer) really sell the lush rain forests of the Pacific Northwest. The scenery works well with the CGI and motion capture techniques, and the scenes where Caesar and family hunt and fish are beautiful and seamless.
If only the humans could have been apes. I know the film was really about the apes, anyway, but it was hard to identify with the human characters enough to care about their fate. Speaking of humans and unsympathetic characters, Gary Oldman was woefully miscast as a former military special operations badass. Judging by his stilted and unenthusiastic delivery, he wasn’t sure what he doing there, either.
Also, dystopia, again. I know, the whole series is about the fruits of war and hubris, but I’m just feeling saturated. Lately, it seems like every wide release can’t wait to tell me about how humanity is so over. What’s more, the dystopia in Dawn is not dystopic enough (if it sounds like I’m complaining out of both sides of mouth, I am). It’s too shiny, and the humans are too happy and well fed. The survivors’ colony looks more like a saturday morning farmers’ market than the last remnant of humanity. Post-tribuation San Fransico actually looks more livable covered in vegetation and sans traffic.
Similarly, the ape community is shown as a bit too idyllic (at first, anyway), and initially conveyed a subtle look-at-the-happy-natives vibe.
The movie so badly wanted to be taken seriously, but the score did not help. It alternated between ineffective back ground movie muzak and hokey homage to the cheesiest riffs of the original films. The film was best in its dark moments, and it should’ve gone darker instead of relying on poorly-aged instrumentals and noble savage tropes.
As Kyle Buchanan notesDawn’s dystopia is similar to its contemporaries in one important way: women need not apply. Of the many female survivors depicted, only Ellie has any lines. Almost all of which constitute her comments on or validation of the acts of Malcolm and Alexander. For example, Sam Adams references a scene where Ellie marks Malcolm’s development by saying, “That was a brave thing you did.” What little we see of her trails off to nothing in the third act as Malcolm goes adventuring solo, as a man should, apparently.
The Muir Woods don’t fare any better. It’s a bit more difficult to tell, but I reckon that the only female ape shown on screen was Caesar’s spouse, Cornelia (Judy Greer). We meet her as she gives birth (it’s a boy!) in the first act. She spends almost the entire remainder of the film in the same place, suffering and shivering from an infection contracted during the birth. As a device designed to humanize Caesar and to foster a bond between the survivors and the apes, I guess she works. As a well developed, depthful character, not so much. In fact, no one even addresses her directly — you won’t even know her name unless you stay for the credits.
Maurice, a male orangutan and Caesar’s confidant, was played by female actor Karin Konoval (she also played Mrs. Peacock in the infamous X-Files episode Home). Unlike the other male apes, Maurice doesn’t seem particularly conflict-oriented. While he acknowledges that his experience as a circus ape exposed him to the bad side of humanity, he seems to understand Caesar’s sympathy for the survivors. In one of the best scenes of the film, Alexander looks up from reading a graphic novel in his tent to see an observant Maurice quietly sitting outside. He goes to Maurice, and they read together.
Karin Konoval as Maurice.
Karin Konoval as Maurice.
Dawn was sorely missing a strong female character. How much more interesting the story would have been if Ellie had taken the lead in negotiating with Caesar and getting the dam up and running! Similarly, a fighting female ape could have provided interesting contrast while either avoiding or spotlighting appearance-based tropes about violent women.
Some critics have posited that Dawn’s lack of female characters was justified due to the film’s supposed focus on “primal urges.” Primal usually means essential or original, but apparently primal means violent when we’re talking about hominids. And women, and stereotypically feminine values like empathy and non-violence, just aren’t primal. Except that they are. Indeed, even modern male apes aren’t universally violent or paternalistic. I wonder, where were the Bonobos?
Regardless, Dawn isn’t about primal urges. Instead, it is about the physical and mental frailty of humankind. Like most other contemporary blockbusters, it reflects our modern anxieties, including our feelings of helplessness and discord — feelings held by men and women alike.
Also on Bitch Flicks: Depictions of dystopias in television and film.

Andé Morgan lives in Tucson, Arizona, where they write about film, television, and current events. Follow them @andemorgan.

Girls Film Project

In Hollywood, business as usual means that the top ten highest-grossing films of 2014, so far, were all directed by men. In fact, between 2009 and 2013 only 4.7 percent of feature films were directed by women. Courtney Martinez is helping to close this gender gap. Martinez is the creator of Girls Film Project, a program designed to educate young women about film production and media literacy.

Written by Andé Morgan.

Courtney Martinez started Girls Film Project, a non-profit program that teaches young women and girls about film production, media literacy, leadership, and teamwork. 

219949_10150162540263346_3369567_o-2
Courtney Martinez

The top ten highest-grossing films of 2014 have had exactly zero female directors.

This is the movie business as usual. In fact, as this infographic from Indiewire’s Women and Hollywood column illustrates, between 2009 and 2013 only 4.7 percent of feature films were directed by women.

How can we close this gender gap? Well, personal and social change go hand in hand. Or, in bumper sticker form, we can be the change. For example, if you follow our weekly tweet chat (#BitchFlicks, Tuesdays at 2 p.m. ET), then last week you caught our conversation with film critic Miriam Bale. Bale started the #HireTheseWomen hashtag to compile a list of the many talented women directors that Hollywood should hire. Social media is a powerful tool, and #HireTheseWomen has been effective at raising awareness. In the interim, since there are still few well-known female director possibility models, it is important that young women and girls know that they can make movies.

Courtney Martinez is helping to do that. Martinez is the creator of Girls Film Project (GFP), a program designed to educate young women about film production and media literacy. It’s based in Tucson, Arizona, and has been operating since 2013. Sessions are free to participants, are one week long, and cover six courses:

  • Media Literacy: The student examines how gender, race, and culture are represented in the media. This course is intended to encourage students to engage in positive discourse, and to think critically about media and their impacts on society.
  • Writing and Script Analysis: The students learn how to write a script, create storyboards, and deconstruct scenes to examine subtext and develop writing skills.
  • Pre-production/distribution: This course describes the issues that often come up prior to filming, e.g., how to get started, budgeting, and the importance of a good story. The students also explore the requirements for film festivals, develop a pitch proposal and address promotional issues such as poster development, social media, websites and local screenings.
  • Production: A hands-on course where students handle equipment and get training on how to operate cameras, tripods, microphones and other film equipment.
  • Editing and Sound: The students learn the basics of editing with Final Cut Pro software. Students edit a short clip with pre-recorded footage.
  • Final Project: Students put their skills to use and work as a team to make a short film, from start to finish, using submitted proposals from the course. The films may be distributed to local film festivals.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyJei-DrbJw”]

 

Martinez agreed to an interview to discuss GFP.

Bitch Flicks: Tell us about yourself.

Martinez: I came to Tucson in August of 2010 to attend graduate school at the University of Arizona. I received my master’s degree in Mexican American Studies, and worked as a teaching assistant and summer class instructor. My undergraduate degree is in film and media, and I am interested in documentary work, so I developed an interdisciplinary education focusing on cultural and gender identity in film and media.

I came to Arizona just as SB1070 was passed into law and I began thinking about how people form opinions on certain topics, my research focused on how influential media are…I wanted to harness that energy and turn it into something positive.

Magic Laces
Girls Film Project students.

Bitch Flicks: How did you get interested in film?

Martinez: I worked in human services for several years (treatment centers and homeless shelters for women). I worked second and third shifts so I got to visit with the women more and listen to their stories of struggle and empowerment. I would hear comments on the streets or from local agencies about how “they got what they deserved,” or “it’s their own fault,” and I was shocked. I thought if these women could share their stories with a wider audience, society may change its negative perspective about addiction, homelessness and domestic violence. That was when I decided to use film as a means of communication.

Bitch Flicks: Do you have a philosophy of film production that you teach your students?

Martinez: My philosophy on filmmaking is to enjoy what you do and don’t limit yourself. I think it is really easy for people to get caught up in the process of filmmaking, thinking they can’t afford the right camera, or a light kit or whatever. I try to encourage students to use what they have around them to tell their stories. It does not have to be “Hollywood” to be a successful film, it just has to be authentic because that is what’s missing in mainstream media today.

Bitch Flicks: What is your teaching style?

Martinez: I enjoy the sharing of ideas and inspiration. I try to avoid lectures and use a more conversational teaching method. I am so impressed by the students’ ideas and their outlook on the world. They approach things fearlessly, which inspires me to be fearless! Mutual learning is key!

We just had a week long workshop and none of the participants had ever done animation before, but by the end of the week they all created these amazing little animations with free apps they downloaded to their phones. It is truly amazing what you can do these days with technology!

GFP photo_Kitty
Students use technology and teamwork to produce films.

Bitch Flicks: What do your students take from GFP?

Martinez: The goal is to teach them to look at media through a critical eye, the first course covers media literacy and we do fun projects looking at gender stereotypes, hypersexuality, and commercial advertising. One participant in our last session actually found an ad about how to be sexy with the flu!

We want them to have a sense of self confidence, familiarity with technology, and inspiration to keep creating once they leave. We encourage them to find ways to get their voices and messages out there whether through writing, film, music, dance… just to get them to take an active role with media and deconstruct mainstream media messages.

Bitch Flicks: Who are your students? 

Martinez: We have been fortunate to have students with a variety of backgrounds. They come from all over Tucson and range from ages 12-17. There is economic diversity as well; some students bring in iPhones, others don’t have a computer at home. Because of generous grantors, the programming is free. I hope to keep things that way so that all women and girls (i.e., anyone who self-identifies as female) have the opportunity to participate.

Bitch Flicks: How long has GFP been around, and how many student have you taught?

Martinez: Not quite a year yet, we started last fall. We had the opportunity to work with a local charter school here in Tucson and have reached out to collaborate with many great non-profits. To date we have had approximately 35 participants, and we have an almost full class at the end of July (around 15 students).

Bitch Flicks: Where do you see GFP in five years? 

Martinez: I would like it to be its own fully functioning non-profit providing after school programming and weekly workshops for young women and girls. There is so much potential and I hope it continues to grow. Pan Left Productions has been instrumental to Girls Film Project getting off the ground. We also received a grant from the Women’s Foundation of Southern Arizona Unidas Program, which provided economic support for the students productions and materials. We have also been discussing crowdsourcing as a means of fundraising. 

Bitch Flicks: What are you influences?

Martinez: I was raised by a single mom who worked two jobs. We struggled but she did a great job raising two kids on her own. She was a powerful role model in my life.

As a young woman, I didn’t fit society’s vision of pretty. I was a total tomboy. I thought I was weird until I found other punk rock girls who weren’t afraid to get dirty and make some noise. For me, Kathleen Hanna was a HUGE influence. I was a teenager right around the time Bikini Kill was formed and seeing such powerful women, singing about serious topics and addressing issues of sexual abuse, rape and bullying made a profound impact on my life.

In high school, being in a band helped me to find confidence and gave me the opportunity to be heard as a woman. I was fortunate enough to meet some really great guys and we started a band called Fashion Sense. We were terrible but we had a lot of fun and it was a self-defining moment for me as punk rock allowed me to explore different notions of femininity than I had learned growing up.

My film influences vary greatly from Hitchcock to Tim Burton, but I will say PBS has always inspired me to think about topics I had previously thought were boring. I blame PBS for my love of new information!

Follow Courtney Martinez and Girls Film Project on Facebook. Other examples of student work can be found here.

Also on Bitch Flicks: The New Adult: Generation Delayed.


Andé Morgan lives in Tucson, Arizona, where they write about culture, race, politics, and LGBTQ issues. Follow them @andemorgan.

‘Snowpiercer’: How Hungry Are You?

It becomes apparent that the characters are facing not just a disagreement over who gets to use the sauna, but also the prospect of being the last remaining humans on a dead planet, on a train, with nowhere to go and nothing to do.

Written by Andé Morgan.

Release Poster.
Release Poster.

Snowpiercer (2013) is timely, and in more ways than one. I live in southwestern Arizona, and it’s exploding-eyeballs hot. So I was all like, “Snowball Earth? We should be so lucky.” But, the premise…the film opens by tuning us into 66.6 FM The Exposition, which informs us that scientists have decided to fight gas with gas by releasing a chemical, the innocuously-named CWX-7, into the atmosphere to combat our global warming non-problem. Chemtrails, man…

Somebody must’ve misplaced a decimal point in a metric conversion factor, because too much of the chemical is released, and the Earth quickly becomes very Hoth-like. Just about everything and everybody dies. A train magnate, Wilford (played with creepy awesomeness by Ed Harris), quickly converts one of his luxury lines into a perpetual-motion Ark that circles the globe endlessly, completing a full circuit once a year.
Seems reasonable.
Wilford packs it full of rich people, support staff, and (because he’s a nice capitalist) a bunch of riffraff who were complaining about their juicy babies freezing solid or something.
The thing about trains is that they have two ends. The front cars feature hot tubs, mahogany, and club kids. The rear has roach-flavored jello and bed-head. And that’s the movie – a bloody, single-column metaphor for the ongoing clash between the haves and have-nots, wrapped in sheet metal and a plausibly implausible apocalypse.
Chris Evans as Curtis.
Chris Evans as Curtis.
Chris Evans plays Curtis, the White Male Lead, and early on he works his grungy antihero shtick to good effect. He’s first mate to John Hurt’s character, Gilliam, King of the Poors. In the first act, we learn that the train has been running continuously for 17 (almost 18) years since the big freeze. During that time, the rear passengers have attempted several uprisings, only to be viciously put down each time by Wilford’s security force. But Curtis and Gilliam have new plan, and this time It Just Might Work.
Director Bong Joon-ho (The Host, 2006) does an excellent job, particularly in the early scenes, of making the viewer feel claustrophobic in a large auditorium. The angles he chooses, the play of light and shadow, and the constant, subtle rocking make the audience feel as if they were on the train, too. As Curtis and crew move towards the front, each car is visually distinct, like the rooms in Willy Wonka’s factory. My favorite was the school car – bright, yellow, and eerily cheery.
Less subtle is the film’s exploration of its class struggle theme. The rear units are more like cattle cars than coach cars, and the haves take perverse pleasure is abusing the have-nots. Bong spares no expressions of pain, misery, and grief as Wilford’s goons rip children from their mother’s arms or engage in freestyle amputation. Much of this malice is directed by women, including Wilford’s moll, Claude (played by Emma Levie).
Tilda Swinton as Minister Mason.
Tilda Swinton as Minister Mason.
But Tilda Swinton steals the show as Minister Mason. I mean, she aced it. While her actions are deplorable, fascistic, and cruel, we never quite can tell if she’s inherently evil or if she’s merely been pushed to a place we all could go if we knew we were going to live out our days on the Polar Express. She presides over the bloodiest scene in the film, as Curtis leads his army of unwashed against a larger force of Wilford’s thugs, who are armed with wicked axes, sickles, and pikes.
The scene is blood-drenched with stylized hackery, and it’s actually quite good. We feel each blow of the axe and it takes, as it would, many blows to bring down an enraged prole. The scene also features Curtis performing some slow-motion, ballet-quality jugular slicing that actually feels fresh and not at all like a weak replication of the slow motion fight scene effects in the Matrix films.
snowpiercer-1rlf5h1280
But there’s comedy, too. The film develops a rhythm–an illustration of crushing inequality, some tension, and then some bloody ultraviolence punctuated on both ends by jarringly quirky humor or esoteric symbolism. For example, other critics have noted the scene where, while in the middle of the aforementioned battle, the train crosses a specific bridge that marks the new year. Each side stops fighting and stands in place during the crossing, both so as to not knock the train from the track and to observe the event. Wilford’s death squad, imposing and faceless in their black masks, turns en masse to the bloodied resistance fighters, counts down from ten as if they were in Times Square, and deliver an obscenely cheery and sincere “Happy New Year!” Then the carnage resumes.
However, my favorite discordant instance was the propaganda video played for the kids in the schoolhouse car. In black and white, with campy mid-century aesthetics, it details Wilford’s early obsession with trains. Young Wilford looks at the camera and says, “I want to live on a train, forever!” As the story progresses, it becomes apparent that the characters are facing more than just a disagreement over who gets to use the sauna, but the prospect of being the last remaining humans on a dead planet, on a train, with nowhere to go and nothing to do.
Octavia Spencer as Tanya.
Octavia Spencer as Tanya.
There are several other interesting female characters in Snowpiercer. Octavia Spencer puts in a strong performance as Tanya, one of the rear car passengers whose child is stolen by Wilford. She is extremely believable, and the viewer clearly registers the grief and resignation in her eyes. Ah-sung Ko plays Yona, the daughter of one of the train’s designers, Namgoong Minsoo (played by Kang-ho Song). While her performance didn’t move me, her character is written well, and proves vitally important to the plot. But really, the film is too busy focusing its dark symbolism on human extinction to really comment very pointedly on the plight on women in the world, or on the train. In fact, aside from Mason, the female characters with speaking parts are fairly one-dimensional; either they’re victims of horrible injustice, or psychotic perpetrators of horrible injustice.
Bechdel? Nope.
Two scenes did give me pause: at one point, Curtis has the upper hand on Mason. She pleads, removes her partial dentures and, as interpreted it, offers to fellate Curtis in exchange for her life. It seemed out of character, as if the directer really wanted to punctuate, in a spiteful way, Mason’s reduction in power at the hands of a man. In a later scene, one of the rebels kills a pregnant woman. Granted, she had just shot his friend in the head. When considered against the nihilistic, slightly insane tone of the movie, and some of the stories Curtis tells, maybe the act contributes meaningfully to the story. I’m not so sure, and I’ll level with you: I’m not a big fan of violence in film for its own sake, and violence against pregnant women just jerks me out of a movie and puts me in an uncomfortable place. Speaking of, if you haven’t seen Shoot ‘Em Up (2007) or Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007), don’t.
I want a gun basket.
I want a gun basket.
I have to admit that I was a little disappointed overall. The film didn’t quite live up to the hype for me, and I can’t really give it as glowing a recommendation as Rebecca Phale did at The Mary Sue. The dialogue was clunky at times, the theme delivery was sledgehammer-heavy upfront yet muddled at the end, and the third act suffered from ponderous pacing.
Still, Snowpiercer is a good film, and you should see it. The dystopia is very tangible, and you will appreciate the carefully crafted visuals and the tantric tension throughout. Swinton’s performance is worth the price of admission, if nothing else.
Note: Snowpiercer is based, loosely, on a French graphic novel.

Andé Morgan lives in Tucson, Arizona, where they write about culture, race, politics, and LGBTQ issues. Follow them @andemorgan.

‘Transformers: Age of Extinction’: A Three-Hour Explosion of Contempt for You and Your Family

You don’t have to be an intellectual elitist to hate ‘Transformers: Age of Extinction.’ It is a terrible movie for reasons that have nothing to do with a lack of originality and everything to do with an abundance of vulgarity, violence, misogyny, and racism.

Written by Andé Morgan.

Here is all you need to know about Transformers: Age of Extinction: You Don’t Have To See It.

I'm pretty sure that's not in the Bible.
I’m pretty sure that’s not in the Bible.

The fourth installment of the Transformers movie franchise, Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014), dropped this Friday, June 27. It has done well at the box office, becoming the first film this year to break $100 million in its opening weekend, and dwarfing the returns of competitors like 22 Jump Street (2014) and How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014). Directed by Michael Bay (again) and written (such as it is) by Ehren Kruger, it features Mark Wahlberg as Cade Yeager, the heroically hunky everyman hero. Shia LeBeouf was unavailable, as lately he has been fully occupied with losing his shit.

Yeah, the critics don’t seem to like the movie very much – it’s currently coming in at 17 percent at Rotten Tomatoes, the lowest rating yet for a Transformers film. I didn’t like it, either. In fact, I hatedhatedhated it, for all the reasons that every other critic mentions. Very original, I know. Actually, my original angle for this review, originally, was to gripe about the film’s lack of originality. You see, it’s very important to me that as many people as possible know that I listen to NPR while driving my Subaru to the farmer’s market, and I was going to tie in my theme with the subject of the latest TED Radio Hour episode, What is Original. However, maybe I’m maturing as a critic, because I’ve concluded that it’s just not fair to expect a film like Transformers (2014) to be original. I mean, it was loud, senseless, clunky, and almost THREE HOURS LONG. But, as Stephanie Palmer wrote recently, summer blockbusters aren’t usually intended to be original. Rather, they’re designed to minimize risk and maximize profit. Fair enough.
I also thought about making the best out of it, as Charlie Jane Anders does in her review of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2011). After all, when life gives you poop, make poopjuice, right? No. Nope, in fact. It doesn’t matter that this is an action figure movie designed to appeal to adolescent males, I just can’t muster the good will to hold my nose, wink, and keep my tongue in cheek.
You don’t have to be an intellectual elitist to hate Transformers: AOE. It’s a terrible movie for reasons that have nothing to do with a lack of originality and everything to do with an abundance of vulgarity, violence, misogyny, and racism.
By vulgarity, I don’t mean expletives, I mean excessive tastelessness. Shiny, five gallon buckets of Dom Pérignon tastelessness. Bay is a master of landscape cinematography, and it shows since almost every shot in the movie is a landscape onto which a CGI robot will be projected. For example, after the prologue (dinosaurs), we’re introduced to Yeager. He’s just a regular guy – he drives a rusty blue pickup, he’s dirty, he wears tight T-shirts (yeah, his biceps are dreamy), and he cares about his teenage daughter, Tessa (Nicola Peltz). He’s also a single dad and a small businessman, struggling to make ends meet with his barn-based cassette tape and film projector repair shop/ROBOTICS ENGINEERING LAB. While establishing Yeager’s down home bonifides and cat-saving prowess, Bay treats us to endless shots of cornfields, soybean fields, and field fields. I haven’t seen so much lingering on a cornfield since Field of Dreams (1989) mated with Children of the Corn (1984).
Similarily, the viewer endures an excess of shallow, inarticulate references to the concerns of the day. Posters and billboards in the background allude to our national discussion of immigration policy, while mean Kelsey Grammer and his très chic CIA deathsquad reflect our trepidations about government surveillance.
Violence certainly has a place in storytelling but, like its predecessors, Tranformers (2014) has an excess of violence. Mr. Bay, where is the blood? We see countless buildings ravaged by rockets and errant robots, but where are the human bodies falling from the 55th story, blown out or jumping to escape the flames? Likewise, those same rockets strike countless vehicles, robots slice cars in half, space magnets lift tour buses half a mile into the air only to drop onto elevated trains full of commuters. I’m guessing Paramount couldn’t afford to break off some of that $210 million budget to cast a few hundred thousand dead bystanders. To be fair, I could ask that same question of Godzilla (2014) or Pacific Rim (2013) (and I do).
Was that one of those driverless Google cars?
Was that one of those driverless Google cars?
It’s not like this so-called family film shirked from depicting violence and death entirely. In one disturbing scene, a government agent holds a gun to Tessa’s head while she pleads for her life as Cade looks on, helpless; later, we see Cade’s affable best friend Lucas (T. J. Miller) burned to death, leaving an obscene smoldering effigy that Cade and Tessa…absolutely do not react to. Maybe they’re just like the film’s young audience as the exit the theatre – numb to death.
Bay doesn’t just excel at bloodless mass murder or at getting actors to stare skyward at imaginary robots, he’s also good at casual racist caricature. Early on, our white male protagonist has to defend his home from a real estate agent who is not a black woman who is also large, she’s a Fat Sassy Black Woman. Later we’re reacquainted with Brains, a small robot with a cybernetic afro and dialogue co-opted from a minstrel show. We also see Orientalist cliches, including Every Asian Knows Martial Arts and a Wise (Robot) Samurai.
While the film passes the letter of the Bechel Test, women don’t fare well, either. Bay’s camera often lingers on the female character’s bodies. Lucas’ introductory scene begins with his verbal sexual harassment of two women crossing the street separating him from Yeager. This harassment goes unrebuffed by Wahlberg’s character. Boys will be boys, I guess.
Yep.
Yep, that looks about right.
Sophia Myles plays a geologist, Darcy Tirrel; while she’s the first main character to be introduced, she spends the remainder of the film playing The Watson for Stanley Tucci’s Steve Jobs character, Joshua Joyce, to explain Transformer tech to. During the climatic battle (I think it was the climatic battle, it’s kinda hard to tell), she marks Joyce’s development (now he’s a friendly capitalist!), saying “I’m proud of you.”
Bingbing Li plays Su Yueming, Joyce’s Chinese attaché. She wears tight pantsuits, knows Kung-Fu, and can drive a motorcycle. While initially she rebuffs his creepy-boss advances, she relents in the end and they sunset into the credits.

Li BingBing as Su Meuyung.

Tessa exists a perpetual protectorate for Yeager. For example, an hour and a half, i.e., midway, through the film, Yeager boards an alien prison ship to rescue her. While Tessa is hiding from her captors, a masculine green alien prisoner wraps a slimy green tongue around her bare leg. As the tongue gets longer and longer, it starts to reach for her genitals. I was reminded of the infamous tree rape scene in Evil Dead (1981).

Buy a Chevy.
Buy a Chevy.
As Rebecca Phale at The Mary Sue notes, the most disturbingly misogynistic scene is also the most subtle. On the aforementioned prison ship, Hound, a horribly erratic and violent Autobot voiced by John Goodman, murders an alien – essentially, a walking vagina dentata with an unfortunate sniffle – because it is “too ugly to live.” He punctuates the act by calling the corpse a “bitch.”

Buy a Chevy!
Buy a Chevy!
And so on. I intended to discuss the plot, but there wasn’t one. I was going to use phrasing like “soul crushing,” but I will decline in the interest of originality. How about “a long, loud, and dreary exercise in post-postmodern nihilism,” has that been taken? I will say that you, reader, are free to not see this movie. By all means, see a summer blockbuster, but hold out for one that shows more respect for women, minorities, and your ears.
Buy a Chevy, goddammit!
Buy a Chevy, goddammit!
OK Mr. Bay, I’m done, I’m broken, just leave me alone and I’ll buy a fucking million pack of Bud Light.

Andé Morgan lives in Tucson, Arizona, where they write about culture, race, politics, and LGBTQ issues. Follow them @andemorgan.

‘Edge of Tomorrow’: Yesterday’s Tom Cruise

Please don’t let my snarky tone fool you – I love science fiction, particularly near-future stories with a dystopic veneer. So does everyone else, which is why this film genre has been so strongly represented lately, e.g., ‘RoboCop’ (2014), ‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier’ (2014), and ‘X-men: Days of Future Past’ (2014), to name a few. And that’s the problem – it’s difficult to watch ‘Edge’ without comparing it to its contemporaries.

Written by Andé Morgan.

Edge of Tomorrow stars Emily Blunt and Tom Cruise as near-future warriors battling alien invaders. It was directed by Doug Liman.

Release Poster.
Release Poster.
There is something perverse about attacking a film for its lack of originality when the central conceit is that the main character repeats the same day over and over again. So, in an effort to preserve my purity, now for something completely different. You remember Groundhog Day (1993), yes? It had plenty of Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell, but it was lacking… sci-fi. Specifically, it needed some quantum pseudoscience and a horde of generic squido-mechanical pod people.
Anyway, Edge of Tomorrow (2014). Released this weekend (June 6), it stars Tom Cruise as military PR weasel Major William Cage. We meet him after a trite news reel intro composed of an anthology of worldwide unrest footage (most, it seems, from the last century for some reason). He has been summoned by a large man who commands the world’s unified armed forces. Instead of spinning war from afar, Cage will be imbedded with the troops during the imminent (second) landing at Normandy. This time, humanity is attempting to take back continental Europe from an alien aggressor, so far only vaguely referenced as the “Mimics.” Cage is a coward, and clumsily threatens blackmail in an attempt to avoid combat. It doesn’t work. Instead, Cage is arrested and sent to a forward base to meet his fate as a deserter conscript. Behold, the premise.
Tom Cruise does ride a motorcycle.
Tom Cruise does ride a motorcycle.
Please don’t let my snarky tone fool you – I love science fiction, particularly near-future stories with a dystopic veneer. So does everyone else, which is why this film genre has been so strongly represented lately, e.g., RoboCop (2014), Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014), and X-men: Days of Future Past (2014), to name a few. And that’s the problem – it’s difficult to watch Edge without comparing it to its contemporaries.
Like the films mentioned above, Edge features frenetic action sequences and trailer-worthy tech pieces. Most notable are the exo-suits (“jackets”) employed by the Earthican forces. Exoskeletons are having something of a moment recently; see RoboCop (2014), The Amazing Spiderman 2 (2014), the Iron Man franchise, and others. So, who wore it better? My sense of aesthetics favors Murphy in RoboCop. Perhaps this is not a fair comparison, as RoboCop was much more concerned with the ethics and practical reality of cyborgism. Still, the exosuits in Edge, which are really the film’s party piece, were just so mundane compared to those envisioned in RoboCop. Instead of a fresh vision of technological advancement, they seemed like a regression from the Caterpillar P-5000 Powered Work Loader in Aliens (1986). In fact, they seem like tech that might really only be a few years away, much to the detriment of their wow factor.
That loader.
That loader.
The Mimics too, are unremarkable. Spastic glowing balls of slashing alien death have been done better by the Matrix films, and, even, by Battleship (2012). It’s explained that the mimics have a hierarchal structure composed of a legion of small fiery footsoliders, rare blue “alphas,” and a central “server” being (I was reminded of the brain bugs in Starship Troopers). During the first iteration of the beach landing Cage is, of course, killed. On his way out, he kills an alpha and the alien’s blood mingles with Cage’s. The brain mimic has the power to TURN BACK TIME, and does so whenever an alpha is killed. However, while the head mimic can list time travel, telepathy, organo-metallic bioengineering, and interstellar travel as hard skills, it is unable to discern that Cage is actually a human. Time is reversed, and Cage awakens to face battle once again.
And again.
And again.
And again.
Hilarious.
Hilarious.
Yeah, I am down on this movie. I can forgive a lack of originality if the other elements of a story shine, but we don’t even find out why the aliens are called mimics! What do they mimic? Aliens from other movies? What the hell, man?
The supporting cast doesn’t fare much better. Cage’s fellow soldiers are a rag tag crew in the vein of every war movie ever. There is a mean southern (y’all can tell by the accent, y’all) drill sergeant, a fat guy, a “crazy” guy, a black guy, a foreign guy, and a woman. It can be refreshing to see women depicted in combat roles, but Edge, like so many other films before, falls into tropes in its depiction. The female solider is shown as less clean, less sensible, and gratuitously gruff, as if she has to curse and posture constantly to defend her presence in the unit.
Blunt’s character, Rita Vrataski, is something different. She is a battle-hardened soldier that Cage has set up as a figurehead for the military to rally around. She wears practical armor (except for a helmet – no one has time for hat hair on the battlefield), and dispatches her foes with a badass Final Fantasy sword. To his credit, Liman avoided eroticizing her combat moves and generally stayed away from FFD clichés, save for a few superfluous yoga poses. A superior warrior, she teaches Cage in anti-chrome-cephalopod techniques in a training montage filled with hilarious homicide sight gags.
It is great to see a feature with a woman warrior who is not also a sex object, but there are a few problems. The other soldiers in the film refer to Rita as the “Full Metal Bitch,” a term she clearly does not care for.  And while she initially trains Cage, he soon takes over a protector role, and attempts to use time travel trickery to seduce her. This scene is kinda creepy, and it does not help that Blunt and Cruise lack chemistry.
The best image in the film.
The best image in the film.
Rita does make it to the climax without getting well and truly fridged, and joins Cage in making a heroic sacrifice. Unfortunately, the script fails both the spirit and the letter of the Bechdel test. I did not note any female characters talking to each other, and the several women in the film were always either talking to Cage or talking about Cage.
Edge of Tomorrow is not a repugnant film – its treatment of women is uneven, but trending towards positive. But neither is it a great film (despite what the interwebs may tell you). For example, the dialogue was hokey in a way befitting it’s genre. Midway through the film a wild-haired-scientist tells us that the aliens’ “only vulnerability is…humanity.”
Post climax, a feel-good ending closes with a slapsticky shot of Cruise laughing to camera right. As the credits start to roll, the viewer is left with a quickly fading memory of an unremarkable vision of the future. The film does borrow heavily from the other movies mentioned above, as well as from previous Cruise vehicles like Minority Report (2002) and Oblivion (2013). In fact, Rachel Redfern was on point in her review of Oblivion: “Tom Cruise’s latest movie…is exactly that, a movie about Tom Cruise.”
I agree. Likewise, it’s best not to evaluate Edge as an original film, a science fiction film, or a feminist film – it’s a Tom Cruise film.
Note: For more information on things like “why are they called mimics,” and “what the hell is this movie supposed to be about,” here’s the source material: All You Need is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka.

Andé Morgan lives in Tucson, Arizona, where they write about culture, race, politics, and LGBTQ issues. Follow them @andemorgan.

‘The New Adult’: Generation Delayed

‘The New Adult’ is a small slice of life in the post-Aughts. Amber Morse plays Amber, a 30-something who, after being kicked out of the family home, is living uncomfortably with her best friend, her best friend’s husband, and their young child. The pilot opens with Amber passed out in the backyard. Upon waking she goes inside to get breakfast, and what follows is almost seven solid minutes of excellence.

Review and Q&A with creator/director Katherine Murray-Satchell.

Written by Andé Morgan.

Screenshot 2014-03-31 21.59.06

Can we talk about this awesome new web series pilot?

It’s called The New Adult, and it’s the brainspawn of Katherine Murray-Satchell (creator and director).

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsX91lHd5VI” title=”The%20New%20Adult”]

The New Adult is a small slice of life in the post-Aughts (how’s that unpaid internship working out?). Amber Morse plays Amber, a 30-something who, after being kicked out of the family home, is living uncomfortably with her best friend, Jamie (Lauren Augarten), her best friend’s husband, Joe (Daisun Cohn-Williams), and their young child. The pilot opens with Amber passed out in the backyard. Upon waking she goes inside to get breakfast, and what follows is almost seven solid minutes of excellence.

While this is Murray-Satchell’s directorial debut, it doesn’t feel like it. The dialogue is real, snappy, and engaging. The cinematography is flawless, and the editing is on point. The cast exhibits great chemistry. The overall effect is that TNA feels polished.

A minor gripe–occasionally, Morse and Cohn-Williams’ deliveries come across a bit stilted, but only momentarily.

Amber is beautifully unlikable. She’s ungrateful, she smokes, and she curses in front of children. But, thanks to Morse and Murray-Satchell, I feel her, and I want more.

She’s also not the typical female protagonist. She’s Black, and she rocks, literally. This also makes her atypical for a Black protagonist, because, as we all know, Black People Don’t.Like.Rock. (or cosplay). Yeah, that cake is a lie.

Amber Morse and
Amber Morse and Lauren Augarten in The New Adult.

Murray-Satchell graciously agreed to an interview to discuss TNA.

Bitch Flicks: When will we see more TNA?

Murray-Satchell: The purpose of making the pilot episode is to use it as a fundraising tool for getting the rest of the episodes made…I have five other episodes written and ready to go, so once the other factors fall into place, I’ll have a better answer for you…I chose for it to be a six-episode season, modeling after the “British Brevity” approach to television production.

Bitch Flicks: How did you get interested in film?

Murray-Satchell: I was a freshman in high school at the Philidelphia High School for the Creative and Performing Arts (CAPA), majoring in Creative Writing. A friend introduced me to the world of screenwriting and filmmaking…me, not really having any knowledge of making movies (or even seeing it as a viable way for me to express myself creatively). My friend gave me a screenwriting book by Syd Field and I was hooked.

My writing became more visual as the years went on, and I would find ways to con my way into the school’s TV/Film class. I got interested in film because it combined everything that I loved into one neat little package: acting, writing, and music. I started to look at movies and TV differently, seeing how emotion could be portrayed much more quickly with one shot than it could with a paragraph. My desire to open people’s eyes to different cultures and philosophies has always been a part of me, and I saw filmmaking as a way to express that.

My ultimate goal is to be a showrunner…By creating TNA, I became a showrunner in my own right.

Bitch Flicks: Adult-child/failure-to-launch stories are part of the post-2008 zeitgeist. What was your inspiration for TNA?

Murray-Satchell: I’ve actually been working on this show idea for three years, I think. Maybe four. It’s been a while. And since then, so many other failure-to-launch stories have come out that for a while, I felt discouraged in making anything of TNA. It’s inspired by a bunch of people I know, and my own inner demons.

I experienced what most people refer to as a quarter life crisis. Back when I was 25, I had a bit of a meltdown when I just kept thinking “Is this my life now?” I had a full-time job, a daily routine, paying rent, paying bills. And I literally just wanted to drop everything and run away because it just became so mundane and not at all what I pictured adulthood to be like.

Building on that, seeing how my friends from high school and college had changed and evolved, I knew that in some way, we were all lamenting about this whole adult thing. No one prepared us for those feelings of despair and confusion. So, the show is an exploration of the different types of adults out there. And it’ll pose the question of what defines being an adult, and what this modern grown-up looks like.

Bitch Flicks: What distinguishes TNA from similar series?

Murray-Satchell: The New Adult will set itself apart from other stories by focusing on the female perspective. While, yes, there are a handful of woman-children in fictional media right now, Amber’s character adds to this mosaic. Most of the things out there really go for the slapstick when it comes to adult-child characters, putting them in situations where they then showcase how immature and silly they are. TNA is a dark kind of funny. It’s a character study on a woman stubbornly going through this adulthood transition.

My intent is to make it real enough to see her torn apart by this whole situation, but funny and absurd enough to keep the auidience wondering how she’s going to dig herself out of this mess. Additionally, making Amber a woman of color gives an alternative representation of the black female–she’s not “ratchet,” the strong single mother, or some stoic professional… there’s a massive gray area that has hardly been tapped (kudos to Mara Brock Akil and Issa Rae for bringing them out), and I’d like to introduce that person to the public.

Bitch Flicks: Tell us more about Amber Morse.

Murray-Satchell: Amber [the character] is a tough pill to swallow when she’s first introduced. She’s deeply flawed, honest, charming when she needs to be, rude, and comes off as a bit of a rebel.

Amber Morse is a super talented woman who could relate to the background of the character. The character was a very specific kind of personality, and casting was extremely tough. She nailed the audition, and I knew that she could add the charming but rough-around-the-edges vibe to the character…I feel like her screen presence is so commanding that she’d be able to carry the show, and I believe in her ability to take the character to the depths that she’ll inevitably have to go to as the story develops.

Bitch Flicks: There’s a distinct lack of female (or WOC or POC, for that matter) directors in the Hollywood system. As Lexi Alexander and others have noted, this may be because Hollywood is less willing to give female directors opportunities, rather than because there are few women who want to be directors. What are your thoughts?

Murray-Satchell: There’s a lack of female and POC directors in the Hollywood system because newcomers don’t see enough of them already present, and they feel that the opportunities are not there, which discourages them from pursuing it…I don’t think of myself as a Black female filmmaker. I like to think of myself as a filmmaker who happens to be a Black female. But I’m not blind. I feel like there are a lot of women who want to be in a more creative filmmaking role like directing but feel like they can’t, or won’t be given the chance. Or maybe they feel like they don’t have what it takes to be a director, or that people won’t take them seriously. It’s a shame, really. With filmmaking tools being more accessible now, anyone can make a movie.

Bitch Flicks: Does the web series format give women and POC an opportunity to be heard that is absent in the traditional system?

Murray-Satchell: Absolutely. So many up-and-coming filmmakers who are women and people of color have been recognized because of how they used the web series format–and the internet in general–to their advantage. The obvious example is Issa Rae, who created a web series to not only showcase her talent, but to give viewers a refreshing take on the modern African American experience. For me, I’m using it as a platform for showing what I’m capable of as a showrunner. By creating a series outside of the Hollywood system, it allows me the flexibility to experiment, to make mistakes, to look at this format as a microcosm for the bigger television industry.

Women and people of color definitely have an opportunity to get their voices heard more easily with a web series… it’s just a matter of getting the audience’s attention.

Bitch Flicks: Who are your cinema and television heroes?

Murray-Satchell: Joss Whedon initially comes to mind. When I really started to break down television series, I loved what he did with the characters on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Of course as a teenager, you go into the show for the glamour of the vampire saga, but as an adult, I can appreciate it for so much more. I loved the flexibility of television writing and development that could introduce a character, build them up, knock them down, build them up again, change how we as the audience feels about them… it was incredibly influential in my decision to pursue series development and showrunning.

As a cinematographer, one of my heroes was Emmannuel Lubezki. I took a lot of notes watching his work, and I was so glad that he finally got an Oscar in recognition of his work. He’s one of the great DPs who “paints” with the light, and thinking about it in those terms made me approach cinematography in a completely different way.

Bitch Flicks: What are you watching?

Murray-Satchell: I’m a television junkie…I’m watching The Walking Dead, True Detective, Breaking Bad, Scandal, Revenge (the guiltiest of pleasures, but hey), Kroll Show, Bob’s Burgers. Movie-wise, the last few things I watched were Friends With Kids and It’s A Disaster. Netflix streaming is an evil, evil goddess and I love it.

Follow Katherine Murray-Satchell on Twitter @KatStreet1

Also on Bitch Flicks: Flat3 is the Little Web-Series You Have Been Looking For


Andé Morgan lives in Tucson, Arizona, where they write about culture, race, politics, and LGBTQ issues. Follow them @andemorgan.