Emma Kat Richardson – Bitch Flicks

‘Hard Candy’: The Razor Blade Hidden in an Apple-Cheeked Confection

Hogtying and drugging Jeff is only the tip of Hayley’s sadistic iceberg: over the course of the next several hours, she subjects him to a series of tortures more at home in Guantanamo Bay than a sleepy suburban neighborhood, including spraying his screaming mouth with chemicals, temporarily suffocating him with cellophane, and attacking him with a taser in the shower.

This guest post by Emma Kat Richardson appears as part of our theme week on Violent Women.

Even around Halloween time, Hollywood doesn’t hand out movies like Hard Candy all that often. It’s a difficult morsel to swallow, and, despite the presence of adorably teenaged Ellen Page peering meekly from the cast list, not the slightest bit sugary – indeed, much of the exposition is skin-crawling enough to make the hardiest of trick-or-treaters lose their appetites. And yet, beneath its decidedly gruff exterior (understatement of the year, perhaps?) lies the timeless tale of a boy and a girl. But in this case, he’s a man merely masquerading as a responsible adult, and she’s a girl wearing the wiles of a woman in order to achieve a purpose much more sinister than the initial set up would lead one to believe.

Just five minutes into the film, and you’d think it was easy to ascertain the obvious villain: Patrick Wilson, playing a 30-something photographer named Jeff, seduces Page’s 14-year-old Hayley Stark through an online chat window, with the practiced precision of a well-equipped Internet predator. The two agree to meet at a coffee shop, where awkward flirtations quickly lead them back to Jeff’s house. Feeling sick to your stomach yet? You should be, but not because Hayley is dangling on the precipice of statistical tragedy. No, she’s far from being some helpless victim, as Jeff quickly learns when he finds himself waking up in a state of confusion, limbs bound to an office chair as Hayley gleefully rummages through his drawers and cabinets. “You know how they tell us pretty young things not to drink anything we haven’t mixed ourselves? That’s good advice…. for anyone.” Touche. Seems like the only thing more humiliating that being exposed as a pedophile is to be outwitted by the expected target of one’s predatory efforts. Hogtying and drugging Jeff is only the tip of Hayley’s sadistic iceberg: over the course of the next several hours, she subjects him to a series of tortures more at home in Guantanamo Bay than a sleepy suburban neighborhood, including spraying his screaming mouth with chemicals, temporarily suffocating him with cellophane, and attacking him with a taser in the shower.

May December, or murder and dismember?

But Hayley’s plan isn’t merely to make Jeff suffer the consequences of what he might have intended for her. She’s on a mission to find out what happened to Donna Mauer, a local teenager who’s gone missing. Did Jeff have something to do with it? He lives in a house decorated with near-naked pictures pubescent models; he brought Hayley back home and let her drink copious amounts of alcohol while stripping. Most tellingly of all, he has a picture of Donna locked away in a hidden safe, beneath a decorative living room rock garden. Poor Donna likely fell into a trap from which very few victims of sexual violence manage to emerge unscathed, and Hayley is determined to see that justice is served, no matter what lengths she’s forced to go to in Jeff’s kidnapping and torture.

And speaking of torture, do we need to get into detail about the castration scene? Yup, Hayley is so committed to defanging this predator (to use a rather pointed analogy) that she rigs up a makeshift operating table, lashes an unconscious Jeff down to it, and proceeds to undergo such a wicked game of psychological fuckery, it’s hard to know who to keep rooting for. The scene itself is exquisitely shot – all agonizing closeups and angles designed to elicit maximum proxy discomfort. The dialogue exchanged between the two principle actors is a mastery in cat and mouse tension; best of all is when Hayley draws a brilliant comparison between Jeff’s forthcoming mutilation and the anguish suffered by the victims of rape and abuse on a daily basis. Do your friends know? Do your neighbors know? Who can tell just by looking at you that you’ve been subjected to the most vile sort of personal attack?

Should have just signed up for Ashley Madison.

It’s perhaps this sentiment that best exemplifies what sets Hayley’s violent tactics apart from the intent of her would-be attacker. While it’s safe to say her methods are probably too extreme for the To Catch a Predator crowd, her purpose is – on paper, at least – a noble one. You get the sense that she’s adequately prepared for taking down every neighborhood scumbag that slimes his way into her chatroom; there’s more than subtle indication that she’s done all of this before. For a kid not even in high school yet, she sure knows her way around a taser. It’s disturbing, but in a way that renders the viewer in a challenging state of narrative confusion. Indeed, one of very best elements to Hard Candy is that the primary action sequences make it almost impossible to sympathize with one protagonist over another. Even the most strident of feminists probably can’t help but shudder at Jeff’s predicament – sure, he seems to be a major sleeze-ball, but does Hayley really have to go to these lengths just to make him pay for crimes she can’t confirm that he committed?

In the end, one is forced to conclude that Hard Candy is no easy cinematic meal to digest. It’s a gripping, challenging, often-exceedingly painful film to take in. But like Hayley herself, the movie’s genius lies in its ability to construct so much thought-provoking narrative with so little in the way of material tools. Shot for less than a million dollars, the sets are simple, the cast consists mainly of just Page and Wilson (Sandra Oh, who gets top billing alongside the two principle actors, appears in just one fleeting scene). It’s rare to see a story accomplish such a lasting impression with a decidedly minimalist approach. Page’s performance is a hurricane of emotions; she’s the perfect foil to Wilson’s doughy and desperate Jeff, who probably wished he’d kept his freaky tendencies limited to just porn. If Hayley Stark is a prime example of a violent woman, than she represents the very strongest in lashing out to evade victimhood. She is the anger that lives inside us all when we are harmed or abused. As she declares to a defeated Jeff in the film’s climactic scene: “I am every little girl you ever watched, touched, hurt, screwed, killed.”

Emma Kat Richardson is a Detroit native and freelance writer living in Austin, Texas. Her work has appeared in xoJane.com, Bitch, Alternative Press, LaughSpin.com, Real Detroit Weekly, 944, and Bust.com. She’s enough of a comedy nerd and cat lady to have named her Maine Coon Michael Ian Cat. Follow her on twitter: @emmakat.

‘Ever After’: A Wicked Stepmother with Some Fairy Godmother Tendencies

This guest post by Emma Kat Richardson appears as part of our theme week on Bad Mothers.

Let’s face it: Ever After is pure fluff. Sure, as a late ‘90s girlhood staple, it’s been deified by 20- and 30-somethings old enough to remember when Drew Barrymore was touring with Hole and flashing David Letterman. And yes, there is some feminist gravitas about the film that makes it stand out; a streak of personal empowerment runs through this hip retelling of the classic, demur Cinderella tale. It was the perfect interpretation of a decidedly not-feminist fairy tale for the Girl Power! generation.

Revisiting Ever After now is a bit like biting into a Hot Pocket after 10 or more years of not having done so; it’s a bit more plastic than you last remembered. The shiny Hollywood gloss that decorates Ever After from head to toe becomes more transparent with age. To its credit, the film does a relatively competent job of co-opting the look and feel of a real Renaissance setting, but this doesn’t prevent the acting from being frequently overwrought, the plot devices predictable and contrived, and the fact that everybody speaks with a British accent, despite living in France. (No Francophile worth her weight in, well, Francs, would stand for it!)

That said, there is one compelling element to this fairy tale that makes it well worth a closer look: the utterly fascinating dynamic between Cinderella and her “wicked” stepmother.

As an orphan of common origins, Drew Barrymore’s spunky protagonist, Danielle de Barbarac, is forced into a life of servitude to her father’s widow, the Baroness Rodmilla de Ghent, and the Baroness’s two natural daughters, Jacqueline and Marguerite. As Baroness Rodmilla, Anjelica Huston is equal parts breathtaking as she is fearsome, as cruel as she is oddly sympathetic. Disney never could have dreamed up such a multi-layered villainess. Together, the two lock horns in a continuous battle for control over personal fortune and fate. It’s far from a healthy relationship, and Rodmilla is far from a nurturing force. Even toward her own daughters, she’s spiteful and manipulative; throughout the film, she continuously taunts Jacqueline about her weight, and spends a considerable amount of time trying to push Marguerite into bed with the prince. (Not that Marguerite is exactly unwilling; she’s certainly inherited more of the toxic elements of Rodmilla’s personality.)

And then, there are hints at Rodmilla’s background that suggest more substance than one-dimensional wickedness. For one thing, she’s a noble woman who appears to have married Danielle’s father, a man far below her station, out of love. The de Barbaracs are not nobility; before she met Prince Henry, Danielle had never been to court. Her father, Auguste, is a country gentlemen of modest means and one small manor farm for property. On the other hand, the baroness brings with her a title and riches. Presumably she is a dowager baroness, since she has two daughters but no baron to keep her swathed in rich furs. We see more evidence of their love when Danielle tends to Rodmilla in her most intimate moments – brushing her hair before bed, sharing heartache over the memory of Danielle’s father, who died of a heart attack when she was just 8. “Did you love my father?” Danielle inquires earnestly. “Well, I barely knew him,” is the restrained reply. “No go away, I’m tired.” Visibly moved, Rodmilla stifles a tear and looks off into the distance, sobered.

While she may have loved her father, she merely tolerated Danielle, which is the most generous possible way of putting it. With his dying breath, Auguste reaches for his scrawny, weeping daughter–not his glamorous new wife, also howling with grief. It is an unintended slight for which Rodmilla never forgives Danielle, and the severity of Danielle’s punishment for this offense is boundless. Yet, Danielle can’t help but try at every turn to please her ceaselessly demanding stepmother. In lieu of any other parental figure, Danielle may have latched on to Rodmilla as the only viable role model in her young, fragile life. It’s possible she even learned how to cultivate self-reliance and independence from the formidable baroness; after all, Rodmilla spends the majority of the movie husbandless, scheming, and maneuvering her way into higher chances and better opportunities. In many ways, Rodmilla and Danielle are more alike than they are drastically different, as every other Cinderella narrative would have you believe. Both are rather unusual women for their era: Danielle is the daughter of a low-born farmer, but she can read and write, and even quote Thomas More from memory. Rodmilla, a woman born to privilege, actively chooses to be single and to make her own way in the world – even if this occasionally involves playing by the rules of the patriarchy, which govern both their lives.

Ever After 1 — I’m the thinking man’s helpless victim, don’t ya know?

But ultimately, of course, we all know how this story concludes. Danielle triumphs over her tormentor, capturing the heart of the prince and rising to a status so high it would have made even the grasping Rodmilla dizzy. Given that, however indirectly, she taught Danielle to follow her heart and live out her ambitions for a better life, can we really write her off as a bad – or, indeed, wicked – mother? Rodmilla is deeply flawed, and far from perfect. She’s narcissistic and hypocritical: “We must never feel sorry for ourselves,” says the woman who spends much of the movie moping about how under-appreciated she is. And yet, the pivotal role she plays in the development of Danielle’s self-actualization cannot be denied. Even more so than in her relationship with Prince Henry, Danielle is indelibly shaped by her stepmother’s influence. Driven to succeed on each of her own terms, these two remarkable women together fill the void left by far too many conventionally competitive mother-daughter dynamics. In the end, karma doles out adequate payback, with Rodmilla and Marguerite being sent to work in the royal laundries, as Danielle becomes queen-to-be through her marriage to Henry. “I only ask that you show her the same kindness she has always shown me,” Danielle says to the king and queen, while debating Rodmilla’s punishment for lying to the queen about Danielle’s identity. Even as Rodmilla acquiesces to her fate, there’s a glimmer of respect in her eye for her long beleaguered stepdaughter. Perhaps she has taught her ward well after all.

Anne Boleyn: Queen Bee of ‘The Tudors’

Anne Boleyn was considered by many contemporaries to be the very living, breathing definition of an unlikable woman. And perhaps “unlikable” is too soft a term here – at points in the 16th century, following her execution on trumped up charges of adultery and treason, Anne was so widely reviled that very few of her own words, actions, or even accurate portraits remain today, thanks to Henry’s redoubtable efforts to wipe her off the record completely.

This guest post by Emma Kat Richardson appears as part of our theme week on Unlikable Women.

“Write me letters and poems. Ravish me with your words. Seduce me.”

These words, spoken by Anne Boleyn to Henry VIII, are an arrow dipped in love potion, shot through the king’s heart – a direct command from the courtly lady he might worship and serve. From then on, Henry will stop at nothing to have her; and the consequences of this maddening obsession will go on to tear England nearly asunder with the initiation of the Reformation. That’s… quite a bit of exposition for a mere poetry request. How, exactly, did this ordinary woman of average background and breeding manage to ensnare one of the most powerful men in Christendom? With as much information as is publicly available on these grand historical events, it’s hard to say with certainty what Anne really did to pull off such an unprecedented feat. What we can say for sure is that these words never make an appearance in any textbook or scholarly treatise on the discarded queens of England’s eccentric eighth King Henry; rather, they are a snippet of sensationalistic dialogue accorded to Anne as portrayed in Showtime’s epic, sexed up costume drama, The Tudors.

But first, before we dive into the realm of heaving bosoms and salacious, soapy one-liners, a little historical background: as the second wife of England’s first Renaissance king, Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn was considered by many contemporaries to be the very living, breathing definition of an unlikable woman. And perhaps “unlikable” is too soft a term here – at points in the 16th century, following her execution on trumped up charges of adultery and treason, Anne was so widely reviled that very few of her own words, actions, or even accurate portraits remain today, thanks to Henry’s redoubtable efforts to wipe her off the record completely. Her unpopularity with the public stemmed mostly from the fact that Henry had moved heaven and earth (almost literally, since he all but kicked the national religion of Catholicism out of England just to have her) to divorce his first wife and marry Anne in her place. That first wife, Catherine of Aragon, had been a Spanish princess whose marriage of almost two decades to Henry had produced one daughter but no living sons to inherit the crown. With the royal succession dangerously in jeopardy, Henry began casting about for a way out of his marriage, and “Mistress Boleyn,” as she was then known, was more than ready to provide not only the ends but the means to Henry’s little marital dilemma as well. A committed reformer, Anne was a vocal advocate for reforming the abuses of the clergy and papacy, and even today is widely regarded as being responsible for England’s violent split with Rome and the “old faith.”

So, clearly, she was a little bit controversial. The whole home-wrecking aspect didn’t do much to bolster Anne’s personal approval ratings, either. But, especially as she’s played by Natalie Dormer on The Tudors, it’s impossible to deny that there’s just something about Annie. She’s easy to hate, in patches, but one who manages to be both polarizing and magnetic; indeed, Dormer’s Anne is a quick-witted, razor sharp intellectual with enough sex appeal drive a wedge not only between Henry and his wife, but Henry and his mistress, Anne’s own sister Mary.

If you can believe it, this chalice isn’t filled with blood and the tears of children.

Many recent portrayals of Anne depict her as utterly ruthless and oozing with ambition – the appallingly bad screen 2008 adaptation of Philippa Gregory’s novel The Other Boleyn Girl springs immediately to mind. But Dormer’s Anne is more coy and calculating than toxic and reckless. In early episodes of the series, while Jonathan Rhys Meyers’ Abecrombie-ized Henry is flitting from one court lady’s bed to another, it is difficult to know Anne’s thoughts as her family arranges for her own physical entrapment of the king. Dormer plays Anne as cool and aloof – so much so that the show nearly refrains from giving Anne a perspective at all in the nascent days of her courtship with Henry. Whether Anne is fending off his sexual advances for strategy, as her scenes with her family patriarchs suggest, or if she has legitimate concerns about her maidenly reputation is anyone’s guess; however, once it becomes clear that Henry has his hose in a bunch at the prospect of bedding Anne, the proverbial gloves come off, and, eventually, so do Anne’s gowns.

Not that Dormer’s Anne is without her moments of pure malice, of course. As supreme seductress of the king, Anne, riding high on ego and self-confidence, boldly spars with the queen, her rival. “I care nothing for Catherine,” she declares haughtily in the first season’s finale. “I would rather see her hanged than acknowledge her as my mistress.” On another occasion, Anne viciously tears in to Henry after she discovers that Catherine is still sewing his shirts; a truly intimate betrayal in 16th century terms. And, in the face of so much antipathy toward her presence, she even changes her public motto to, roughly translated, “this is how it’s going to be; let them grumble”!

“Henry, you keep leaving the lid to the chamber pot up. I thought we talked about this.”

But really, what lies beyond Dormer’s ability to fill Anne with fire is her careful attention to the qualities that render Anne sympathetic, too. During the show’s first season, Dormer reportedly fought with Showtime’s producers to transform Anne into more of a reformist intellectual and less of an overheated sexpot. As she told Susan Bordo in The Creation of Anne Boleyn, Bordo’s probe into the continued cultural relevance of Anne: “Men still have trouble recognizing that a woman can be complex, can have ambition, good looks, sexuality, erudition, and common sense. A woman can have all those facets, and yet men, in literature and in drama, seem to need to simplify women, to polarize us as either the whore or the angel. That sensibility is prevalent, even to this day. I have a lot of respect for Michael [Hirst, creator of The Tudors], as a writer and a human being, but I think that he has that tendency. I don’t think he does it consciously. I think it’s something innate that just happens and he doesn’t realize it.” By the show’s second season, Dormer’s Anne had made the leap from elaborately dressed cock-tease to a fully formed, charismatic and courageous individual. Her execution in the season two finale saw an 83 percent spike in viewership over the first season’s finale episode, and once Dormer left the show, ratings dropped drastically.

Just as with the real Anne Boleyn, who once ruled over the kingdom of England and its monarch’s fickle heartstrings, Dormer’s Boleyn may have an unlikeable surface, but she’s so much more than a mere strumpet with a couple of decent lines. Right down to her alluring smile as she reads from the holy Scripture aloud in English, Dormer has created an Anne for all seasons: the very embodiment of just how complex and riveting she must have been during her all-too short life.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6-ThCEeTJU”]

‘Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion’: Bosom Buddies Against The World

While there’s quite a bit that’s frivolous about Romy and Michele – the film’s tagline is “The Blonde Leading the Blonde” – there is also, much more importantly, the heartwarming love story at the film’s creamy center. But this love has nothing to do with the complications and disappointments that romantic relationships can bring; rather, it’s what the Greeks called agape, or a deeply spiritual, passionate love between intimate friends.

This guest post by Emma Kat Richardson appears as part of our theme week on Female Friendship.

“God, sometimes I wish I were a lesbian.”

“You wanna try having sex sometime, just to see if we are?”

Romy pauses to consider, then scoffs dismissively. “Yeah right Michele, just the thought of having sex with another woman creeps me out.” Then, an afterthought. “…but if we’re not married by the time we’re 30, ask me again.”

Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion was released theatrically in 1997. Presumably at the time, the titular characters – beloved besties, roomies, and even, rather shockingly, bunkies in twin beds – were around 27 or 28 years old. Which would, in 2014, make them both either 44 or 45. Have they done it yet? By this time, I’m even hoping for a marriage license.

Any ‘90s girl worth her weight in Polly Pockets is bound to be intimately familiar with this movie. My first encounter with the duo happened at a sleepover, in middle school. One trip to the video store and credit card swipe from a friend’s “cool mom” later (you know, the kind not deterred by a pesky R rating), and I was suddenly plunged neck deep into the world of gaudy pink boas and four letter words. Admittedly, much of the humor was over my young, inexperienced head – there’s a recurring joke about a male character schlepping around a giant notebook to conceal his erection whenever Michele is around, which I assumed was just a zing at a nerds and their wacky obsession with doing homework. But there was much to love in the brassy confidence, bold aesthetic choices, and chirpy self-empowerment in the two heroines, and it’s this aspect of RMHSR that makes it one of the most important female-driven comedies.

As high school compadres living together in a sizable beachfront Los Angeles apartment (paid for, somehow, by Romy’s cashier salary alone), Romy and Michele are played with aplomb by Mira Sorvino and Lisa Kudrow, respectively. Through a chance encounter with a former classmate from Tuscon (Heather Mooney – a breakout role for the indomitable Janeane Garofalo) the pair finds out that their 10-year high school reunion is coming up, providing the perfect opportunity to stun adolescent tormenters with their adult impressiveness.

There’s just one problem: their lives aren’t terribly impressive. In fact, on paper, they’re kind of losers. Quite literally, on paper – filling out a pre-reunion questionnaire reveals some startling facts to the blissfully ignorant pair: both are in their late 20s, still single, and stuck in menial jobs. Or no job at all, in Michele’s case. Worse still, a clique of popular mean girls from their teen years, the A Group, is bound to show up at the reunion, along with Romy’s senior year crush, a good-looking meathead who agrees to dance with her at the prom, and then disappears with his wicked girlfriend, the alpha of the A Group. Naturally, there’s a bit of pressure to get appearances here just right. What’s the point of going if you’re not going to impress people, Romy moans.

The answer to this sticky situation, it turns out, is to fight sticky with sticky notes. Why not say they invented Post-Its? Roll into town with a “flip phone” in hand (oh, the ‘90s!), conservatively attired in homemade business suits….Everybody’s bound to believe this incredible fib, right? Wrong. This being a warm and friendly comedy, the nature consequence of grandiose foolery is the spectacular flameout.

"As usual, we’re the only ones who don’t look like we’re going to a hoedown." — “As usual, we’re the only ones who don’t look like we’re going to a hoedown.”

While there’s quite a bit that’s frivolous about Romy and Michele – the film’s tagline is “The Blonde Leading the Blonde” – there is also, much more importantly, the heartwarming love story at the film’s creamy center. But this love has nothing to do with the complications and disappointments that romantic relationships can bring; rather, it’s what the Greeks called agape, or a deeply spiritual, passionate love between intimate friends. Romy White and Michele Weinberger are heterosexual, and to some degree obsessed with their appearances. Who could forget the sensational mid-movie argument scene; yelling “I’M THE MARY, YOU’RE THE RHODA!” at a friend is still a thing to this day. And yet, it’s the friendship between Michele and Romy that transcends the bounds of what a typical female interaction on screen ought to be, by conventional standards.

Together, the two women draw strength from each other: they face down the members of the A Group in the film’s climactic scene, and in the process expose the cruel, manipulative version of “friendship” that so often plays out in movies. In confronting Christie Masters, a prototype of Mean Girls’ Regina George, Romy and Michele gain a sense of self-actualization by exposing her for the insecure, jealous, hateful person always found at the rotted core of an aggressive, abusive bully. Less-than-princely men are, too, an obstacle of no legitimate threat to the relationship maintained by the duo. As Romy tries and fails to secure reunion-ready boyfriends for them in some of the film’s establishing scenes, she repeatedly strikes out, or finds excuses not to follow through on leads. (“Would you excuse me?” she tells a man at a club, “I cut my foot before and my shoe is filling up with blood.”) One has to wonder if the women might not be intentionally single – after all, aren’t they really the loves of each other’s lives? Their sense of inter-personal connectivity is so ingrained that even a dance with a lover is impossible without the other. “May I have this dance?” Sandy Frink, the aforementioned notebook carrier, gingerly asks the grown up Michele at the reunion. “Only if Romy can dance with us,” is the answer, and it’s hard to imagine such a request being met with any other outcome.

Amid so much calculated superficiality among female friendships portrayed on screen, now, even more than 10 years later, it’s still wonderfully refreshing to watch a movie with such a strong girl-powered relationship at its central focus. Romy and Michele are themselves far from perfect, but that’s the whole point: perfection can never be a substitute for true happiness, itself a thing derived from real love in its most unadulterated sense. The lessons of Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion are pure and positive: the love between friends is a potent force against the evils of the world, and remaining faithful to one’s self is the derivative of uncomplicated happiness. Take a lesson, here, and whether you think you’re the Mary or the Rhoda, always do your best to have a Romy and Michele day.

Emma Kat Richardson is a Detroit-reared freelance writer living in Austin, Texas. Her work has appeared in Bitch, Laugh Spin Magazine, 944, Alternative Press, Real Detroit Weekly, and on Bust.com. Tweet her: @emmakat, and read her: emmakatrichardson.com.

Animated Children’s Films: Ferngully: Last Rainforest and Great Gender Equalizer?

This is a guest post by Emma Kat Richardson.

If you’re the parent of a child who has outgrown mindless fare like the Teletubbies but not quite ripened toward Harry Potter levels of sophistication, stumbling upon a film like Ferngully: The Last Rainforest to share with your family must be nothing short of an epic “Eureka!” moment. Released in 1992, this movie has managed to simultaneously entertain and educate young minds for close to 20 years. It upholds within the Western film canon something of a timeless, iconic quality for those in the age group most likely to become Wall Street Occupiers. Indeed, a trip beneath the leafy canopy of Ferngully, a lush, fictitious rainforest set in the Australian outback, always proves a nostalgic harkening back to that brief period in animated film history when female protagonists were front and center, relative to the action. At the same, its the sort of film that presents an upbeat outlook for young viewers, regarding the many ways that a world stripped of suffocating gender norms could help build an egalitarian playing field.

At such an empowering crossroads do we find Ferngully, a stunningly animated early ‘90s classic that preaches an important lesson on environmental protection in the simplified language of children. Leading the charge is Crysta, a spunky, quasi-adolescent forest fairy who begins the film frivolous and carefree, but finishes it as a respected leader among the forest sprite community. Alongside her mentor Magi Lune, the two flit about Ferngully’s dense and lovely layers of vegetation, using their combined magical powers to conjure up the forces of nature and help all sorts of exotic plants grow. Things turn problematic, however, when an evil, primordial force of destruction – a demonic smog cloud called Hexxus, voiced by Tim Curry in always reliably flamboyant Dr. Frank mode – is released from his tree prison, trapped there generations earlier by Magi, to wreak havoc on the serene oasis of Ferngully. Its perhaps no coincidence that the moniker “Hexxus” sounds like it could double as a brand name for a major chain of gas stations, seeing as how the villain spends the bulk of his time on screen sucking down human produced poisons and plotting how best to capitalize on manmade machinery, to aide in Operation: Rain Terror. (And acid rain.) Assisting Crysta and co in the struggle against Hexxus are Batty Koda, a fruit bat who has been experimented on by humans and has the voice of Robin Williams, among other afflictions, and Zak Young, a hunky human forester whom Crysta accidentally shrinks down to fairy size while trying to protect him from a rapidly falling tree aimed at his head. (Obviously, shouting “timber!” is not a phrase found in fairy vernacular.) And of course, there’s the aforementioned Magi Lune, whose flowing, matronly robes provide an early contrast to Crysta’s biker chick meets lady Tarzan look.

But, in spite of their differences, the movie’s climactic sequence finds the two female protagonists dovetailing in strength of character, each embarking upon a courageous suicide mission of self-sacrifice for the benefit of all. In Magi’s own parting words, “We all have a power and it grows when it’s shared,” the sort of sentiment that lends vocal credence to one of Ferngully’s most prominent tropes: we all have the ability to make positive change, but that power multiplies when there is community cooperation readily at hand.

Through it all, the film presents a very positive perception of female role models, set amidst a piece of media targeting an impressionable audience. In classical tradition, coming of age quests don’t often revolve around a heroine, preferring instead to linger in strict hero territory. (Here’s looking at you, J.R.R.) But Crysta, she of the spunky, tomboyish haircut and quick giggle, does just that – growing from a lackadaisical teen to a noble warrior, willing to die for the sake of protecting the forest community. And the fairies themselves, in a number of ways, appear to be a genderless society: over the course of the movie’s scant 75 minutes, there is no talk of getting serious about marriage, children, or domestic obligations. There is only the reinforcement of protecting one’s home and working for the benefit the place you call home. Perhaps the message here could even be interpreted thusly: free from the confines of limiting gender roles, the forest fairies are better able to practice magic and serve the planet.

Probably the worst you could say about Ferngully’s representation of gender is that its main motif gently reiterates some stereotypes about the nurturing quality of women and and the rough, aggressive nature of men, but, in my view, the use of female characters as the plot’s central exemplars more than compensates for this small fact. Ferngully is where good environmental stewardship and positive female role models meet. It’s a film that surely has more uplifting things to say about approaching the working world than any lesser, gender norm promoting contemporaries might.

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