Unpopular Opinions Theme Week

Unpopular Opinions Week: The Roundup

Check out all of the posts from our Unpopular Opinions theme week here.

My intent is not to claim that ‘Twilight’ is a perfect movie, but rather, I want to argue that it has more virtues than it is given credit for, and to point out that its dismissal is frequently based on pervasive sexist attitudes. I am not speaking for the other films in the series — all directed by men — but rather, the first film, which was written and directed by women (Melissa Rosenberg and Catherine Hardwicke, respectively), based on a novel written by a woman. There are many valid reasons why one may not enjoy ‘Twilight,’ but it is important to recognize that it is unfair and sexist to dismiss the film and its fans based on the fact that it is a romance told from a female perspective.

The Villainization of Claire Underwood on House of Cards by Abby Norman

Much of what makes besmirching Claire Underwood villainous is also what I can’t help but find admirable about her — and at first, this made me question myself. Do I have sociopathic tendencies? Am I, at my core, a heartless, ruthless shrew? But then I thought, perhaps, it could be possible that we’ve vilified every aspect of Claire Underwood because our culture is inherently threatened by her. She’s the personification of what a patriarchal society is most fearful of, so, in characterizing her firstly as this strong, successful, indurated woman she must also, therefore, be a remorseless murderer too. Because God forbid she’s a career-climbing, child-free, influential, and tenacious woman without also being an unambiguously horrible person…

Claire Underwood has to be a villain because we aren’t ready for a world where she’s a heroine.

The Ironically Iconic Wonder Woman by Brigit McCone

With D.C. superheroine Wonder Woman recently named UN honorary Ambassador for the Empowerment of Women and Girls and her forthcoming feature film building hype, her profile could hardly be higher as a feminist symbol. Yet Wonder Woman, who the U.N. hopes will focus attention on women’s “participation and leadership,” is an image entirely created by men. She represents, ironically enough, male domination of the struggle against male domination.

… Far from a step forward, Wonder Woman is worse than more simply offensive chauvinism, because it insidiously exploits the female audience’s desire to identify with Wonder Woman’s empowerment. … [The TV series pushes] female viewers into aspiring to a failed model of womanhood, one characterized by its hostility to other women, its punishing perfectionism, its sexual passivity and its self-sacrificing submission.

Does Pitch Perfect’s Fat Amy Deserve to Be a Fat Positivity Mascot? by Tessa Racked

It’s great to see a character whose fatness is a part of her identity without being a point of dehumanization, but the films try to make Fat Amy likable at the expense of other characters, positioning her as acceptably quirky, in contrast to the women of color, who are portrayed in a more two-dimensional manner, or Stacie, who is unacceptable due to her promiscuity. Ultimately, the underlying current of stereotype-based humor puts the film’s fat positivity in a dubious light, compounded by the erosion of Fat Amy’s status as kickass fat girl, as well as any thematic content about female friendship.

Parks and Recreation: Leslie Knope’s Problem with Women by Siobhan Denton

Leslie Knope, the much loved and indulged protagonist of Parks and Recreation, is by her own account, a feminist. For Leslie (Amy Poehler), feminism means, rather simplistically, that she admires women who are in power, believing that gender should be no barrier for achievement. Unfortunately, despite Leslie’s determination to highlight her dedication to furthering the feminist cause, her understanding is not only crude and rather rudimentary, but can, frequently, be damaging. Her identification as a feminist is, much like Tina Fey’s Liz Lemon on 30 Rock, hugely lacking in intersectionality. This is even more frustrating considering that three of the four female cast members are women of color.

Catherine Tramell in Basic Instinct Is a Subversive Anti-Hero by Alexandra West

The notion of Catherine (Sharon Stone) as a subversive anti-hero develops when you view the film not as a story about the supposed protagonist Detective Nick Curran (Michael Douglas) but as Catherine’s journey from mind games to almost domestic bliss but always returning to her basic instincts which threatens the Hollywood happy ending of established heteronormativity.

… Throughout the film, Catherine’s bisexuality is at the forefront of her character which marks her as transgressive to the hetro-male oriented police force while the other female characters in the film are also implied or explicitly coded as bisexual or lesbian. Any subtly or nuance in regards to the queer experience in a mainstream blockbuster is wiped away in favor of brash eroticism and the ultimate objectives of Nick who imposes his heteronormativity on his relationships, particularly with Catherine.

Privilege Undermines Disney’s Gargoyles Attempts to Explore Oppression by Ian Pérez

Yet Gargoyles is also a fantastic showcase of what can happen when creators possessing privilege write stories about the oppressed without their input. … Gargoyles, with its “protecting a world that hates and fears them and has been fairly successful in enacting their global genocide” premise, seeks to be about marginalized peoples. At the same time, it consistently centers and prioritizes the lives of the privileged over those of the oppressed, and places the burden of obtaining justice on the latter.

Manic Pixie Dream Girls Aren’t Problematic for the Reasons You Think by Ellie Carpenter

If Claire (Elizabethtown), Sam (Garden State), or Ramona (Scott Pilgrim vs. the World) were paired with a male lead who saw them as full people rather than objects to derive inspiration from (and fuck), perhaps the MPDG label never would’ve happened. It is typical, though, that the women in these films be blamed for the projections and fetishization they are subject to from their male counterparts.

… Manic Pixie Dream Girls aren’t problematic because they’re quirky and girly; that audiences only see them as such is often indicative of shitty male leads who are intent on making women fit into their fantasies. Perhaps we adopt these tendencies while watching films too, and maybe it is better male characters we should be lobbying for: ones who see women as autonomous beings and treat them as such.

Obsessed with Boyhood: The Latent Misogyny Running Rampant in Richard Linklater’s Films by Maya Bastian

On the surface, a lot of his female characters reflect strong ideals. Sooze (Amie Carey) in Suburbia is a hardcore third-waver and lashes out “angrily” about smashing the patriarchy. The lead female character Amy (Uma Thurman) in Tape presents as a strong woman and an accomplished lawyer. Celine (Julie Delpy) in Before Sunrise and the rest of the Before Trilogy, is intellectual, graceful, and human. Sure, they all seem like feminist role models. But take a deeper look and Linklater’s female characters tell another story: one of a creator deeply obsessed with ignorant male stereotypes and the women that encourage them.

After viewing Everybody Wants Some!!, I had to reassess my devotion to Linklater. It led me to review his earlier titles, only to realize that he is suffering from the classic virgin/whore rhetoric. Every one of his narratives are about male characters running rampant over women’s rights. … Looking back through his films, they all contain this running theme of underdeveloped man-children who are routinely validated in their anti-woman approach.

Grey’s Antomy: Dr. Arizona Robbins, PTSD, and the Exploitation of Trauma for Shock Value by Madison Zehmer

Dr. Arizona Robbins’ (Jessica Capshaw) leg injury, amputation, and subsequent PTSD in seasons 9 and 10 of Grey’s Anatomy was depicted for shock value and entertainment. As a result, the narrative surrounding Arizona’s recovery is insufficient and flawed, ignoring the extent of the real mental health challenges she faces, ultimately blaming Arizona for her inability to completely recover mentally and emotionally from the trauma she experiences. …Arizona’s amputation seems to serve as a plot device to create shock and tension in Callie’s and Arizona’s relationship.

How Captain America: Civil War Crystallizes the Problems with Marvel Movies by Deborah Krieger

Continuing this line of thought, I realized that while I had ultimately enjoyed Captain America: Civil War, it exemplified the worst tendency of the Marvel Cinematic Universe — namely, the avoidance of dramatic risk and legitimate emotional stakes in order to create and maintain a sense of delight and entertaining status quo.

Why, as an Intersectional Feminist, I Can’t Get Behind the TV Land Heathers Reboot by Emily Scott

In the world that the TV series is creating, the diverse members of the Heathers will seek to torment and tear down these vulnerable, pretty white kids, leading them to stage their murders. While this premise was likely chosen because it seemed edgy, this restructuring of the power dynamic between marginalized people and privileged people is ill-advised and, frankly, irresponsible. The writers and producers (who, notably, all appear to be white men) have used this concept to give marginalized people power that they don’t have in real life. As a result, they cast cis straight white people as the oppressed underclass. This misrepresentation of the real world will ultimately work to reinforce the fallacious idea that marginalized groups are “taking over” and gaining power over white, cis, straight, or otherwise privileged people.

… I am not at all against a Heathers reboot, but I want one that is progressive and intersectional, one that expands on the feminism of the original rather than scaling it back.

Why Lorelai Gilmore from Gilmore Girls Is a “Cool Girl” by Scarlett Harris

We all know the famous “Cool Girl” screed from Gillian Flynn’s 2012 novel, Gone Girl. … Watching Gilmore Girls for the first time in the lead up to the revival because, even though I was in its target demographic, somehow I missed it the first time around, it hit me that Lorelai Gilmore was a Cool Girl long before Flynn, and Buzzfeed writer Anne Helen Petersen, popularized the term…

Elektra Natchios (Daredevil) Is the Most Underrated Character in the Marvel Cinematic Universe by Sophie Hall

Furthermore, Elektra’s anti-heroine status adds more diversity to the female characters of Marvel. You wouldn’t place her in the same ranks as ‘Black’ Mariah Dillard and Whitney Frost, but she’s not up to the heroics of Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow, Misty Knight, or Agent Carter either. … This is yet another example why women and people of color need to tell their own stories. If Elodie Yung hadn’t fought for and included more layers to Elektra, she could very well have been a one-dimensional villain, a negative to female characters of color rather than a positive.

Gilmore Girls: Rory Gilmore Is an Entitled Millennial by Scarlett Harris

There’s a difference between savoring a milestone and resting on your laurels, but it doesn’t appear that Rory (Alexis Bledel) knows that. That’s because she’s never had to hustle; everything has been handed to her. She only watched her mother struggle to raise her on her own, and even then it’s established that Lorelai (Lauren Graham) went to great pains not to expose Rory to her struggles. … Despite her flaws, I relate to Rory because she displays all my — and my generation’s — worst characteristics.

The Revenant Should Be Left in the River to Drown by Celey Schumer

… The second galling part of the film is its abhorrent treatment of Native peoples. It is at best mediocre, at worst condescending, and at all times unremarkable lazy recycled fodder. Almost every time Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) has an interaction with a Native American person, they meet with disaster.

… Powaqa (Melaw Nakehk’o) is probably the most significant female character, as Hugh rescues her after being raped by French trappers. Unfortunately, this is historically accurate as many Native women were raped by white men, yet the film still perpetuates the same old white savior shit. Powaqa does get to exact her own revenge, and then we see her later reunited with her people. Can we see this whole movie from the Arikara tribe’s perspective? From Powaqa’s perspective? That would be an actual game changer.

‘The Revenant’ Should Be Left in the River to Drown

Don’t believe the hype. You have been conned. ‘The Revenant’ is a terrible film. … The second galling part of the film is its abhorrent treatment of Native peoples. It is at best mediocre, at worst condescending, and at all times unremarkable lazy recycled fodder. Almost every time Hugh has an interaction with a Native American person, they meet with disaster. … Can we see this whole movie from the Arikara tribe’s perspective? From Powaqa’s perspective? That would be an actual game changer.

This guest post written by Celey Schumer appears as part of our theme week on Unpopular Opinions.

[Trigger warning: discussion of rape and sexual assault]

Don’t believe the hype. You have been conned. The Revenant is a terrible film. And what’s more insulting is that it’s not even a new version of terrible; it’s been-there-done-that tale-as-old-as-time terrible. It’s Dances with Wolves meets Kill Bill in the White Walker woods without the badass female protagonist. You know why EVERYONE who worked on The Revenant (directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu) kept saying how HARD it was to make? How the harsh conditions were frigid, demanding, and grueling? This was to distract you from the fact that there was nothing else to talk about.

This white-man-against-all-odds tale of revenge has been told so many times, even Michael Bay is probably like, “Eh, can’t we find something more original?” The whole team wanted you to think the film was groundbreaking. They wanted you entering the theatre knowing all of these outlandish background stories of wading in freezing rivers and Leonardo DiCaprio the vegetarian eating a real bison liver because those stories swirling in your mind would prevent you from thinking, “Wait, why the fuck do I even care about this guy?” And on an elitist actor note, putting yourself in danger, and disgusting your body to the brink of repulsion is not, exactly, acting. Yes, bending your circumstances and “real world” experiences and research are essential to the craft. But the craft is, at its core, living truthfully under imagined circumstances. You don’t really have sex and you don’t really murder people, but actors pretend those characters and situations all the time. I’m not sitting here and awarding you gold stars for eating real liver and then jaw-clench screaming for 2 hours.

You know why people like The Revenant? Because the cinematography by Emmanuel Lubezki is gorgeous. Really. When the film focuses on the glorious and unforgiving landscape, it is a beautiful sight. Its highest calling is probably being a screensaver for a graphic designer named Theil in Portland. And I know, claiming the critic darling that finally won Leo his Oscar is terrible (who robbed an un-nominated Idris Elba, but I digress) and is certainly a thrown gauntlet. But I stand behind that gauntlet, and this is the most boring zombie movie of all time.

Why is it a zombie movie? Because Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio), aka the Land Lover, SHOULD BE DEAD. Yes, I know it’s based on real events, and to that I say, PSHAW. “Based on real events” covers a thousand half-truths. For a movie ostensibly obsessed with authenticity, the simple fact that Hugh Glass survives past minute 28 is utterly ridiculous. Here is a (not exhaustive) list of things Glass’ character has absolutely no business surviving: a full on bear attack; woodland “surgery”; being buried alive (Really? No dirt infection?); swimming in a BEAR SKIN (that MUST weigh upwards of 50lbs when wet) in a FREEZING turbulent river with a gaping neck wound; cauterizing said neck wound with gunpowder; swimming in the freezing river again (Really? No hypothermia? A tiny 3-log fire warms him and dries his bearskin? His body fights off all the infections? No blood poisoning? No missing toes?); falling with a horse into a pine-tree and then to the bottom of the pine-tree ravine; spending a sub-zero night inside the horse Tauntaun style… I could go on.

“But it’s a MOVIE!” you cry. “It’s supposed to be sensational.” Shove it. Fast and the Furious is supposed to be sensational. This sold me a bill of goods claiming realism and grit and the power of nature and honesty, and gave me instead a revenge-driven snow-zombie.

The second galling part of the film is its abhorrent treatment of Native peoples. It is at best mediocre, at worst condescending, and at all times unremarkable lazy recycled fodder. Almost every time Hugh has an interaction with a Native American person, they meet with disaster. Honestly, Chief Elk Dog (Duane Howard) and his men are the only ones operating with their own agency and justice in their quest to rescue his kidnapped daughter, Powaqa (Melaw Nakehk’o). But we hardly see them and are left to infer all of this information, until of course Hugh the White Man comes to Powaqa’s rescue. The only two even partially developed Native characters are Hugh’s son Hawk (Forrest Goodluck), and the wandering gent Hikuc (Arthur Redcloud) — whose name you never learn, I had to IMDb it — with whom Hugh shares the bloody snack carcass and a rollicking night of tongue-snowflake catching.

Hawk is killed early in the film (after Hugh is not killed by the bear) because he sees the half-scalped John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy) trying to smother his father. Glass sees Fitzgerald murder his son but he’s so injured that he can’t do anything (maybe he’s tied to the stretcher, hard to tell) even though he has the strength to literally drag himself from a grave a few hours later. So, revenge for his son’s death inspires Hugh’s entire life from that point forward; it’s problematic to see Native characters fridged to propel the narrative of a white man. Hikuc offers Hugh shelter, food, and a dollop of friendship before he is later found hanging from a tree. Really? The film had to kill Hikuc? Why? To prove this land is brutal? Hugh was buried alive, his son was killed by a man who escaped his own scalping, and he’s performing self-surgery with gunpowder. We get that it’s brutal.

Even lazier than the film’s treatment of Native peoples — and even less surprising, as this is supposedly a “guy’s movie” made by guys being cool guys — is its treatment of women. There are 3 women on-screen in the entire 156-minute film. Not 3 female characters. 3 women. Ever. I scanned the entire IMDb page and included the extras. Powaqa is probably the most significant female character, as Hugh rescues her after being raped by French trappers. Unfortunately, this is historically accurate as many Native women were raped by white men, yet the film still perpetuates the same old white savior shit. Powaqa does get to exact her own revenge, and then we see her later reunited with her people. Can we see this whole movie from the Arikara tribe’s perspective? From Powaqa’s perspective? That would be an actual game changer.

The second woman on-screen is Hugh’s wife (Grace Dove), credited only as “Wife of Hugh Glass” who is brutally murdered along with most of the rest of her village and people (minus Leo and Hawk), and is seen only in dream flashbacks. He never speaks of her, neither does her son, and her entire narrative purpose is pretty much to make you think Hugh is a good guy and also, in case you weren’t sure yet, the West was really fucking brutal. The last woman is simply “Crying Arikara Woman.” I’ve seen the film twice and don’t even remember her.

In the smallest of silver linings, at least the actors playing Hawk, Hikuc, Powaqa, Chief Elk Dog, Hugh’s wife, and the rest of the Arikara are actual Indigenous actors and not whitewashed roles. Really though, the only true achievement of The Revenant (besides its gorgeous cinematography) has been the awareness and activism it helped bolster. DiCaprio’s Oscar acceptance speech, and subsequent environmental activism (which he has advocated for years now but has gained more pop-culture traction because of the buzz surrounding the film) have been hugely beneficial for many causes important to Native peoples as well as our teetering climate. Stars like DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, and Shailene Woodley have protested alongside Native people and raised awareness for the Standing Rock water crisis. For my money, you can have an Oscar for that. It’s a far greater accomplishment than most things we put on-screen.

Yet, wonderful as this activism may be, it does not make a good film. Nor does it justify the problematic depiction of Native peoples on-screen. In fact, the noble aspirations of the filmmakers — which they screamed about constantly, every chance they got — make the lazy and decidedly NOT groundbreaking treatment of Native peoples even more disappointing. Why NOT develop those characters? Why not allow them their own independent storylines? Hell, why not make a movie honestly and genuinely from a Native person’s perspective? “Because this was Leo’s passion project, a vehicle to finally win his Oscar,” you’ll say. And I will respond, “Of course it was. It also sucked.”

Celey Schumer is an actress, comedian, and writer. She is embarrassingly good at Harry Potter and Friends trivia. Her degrees in physics (Middlebury College) and structural engineering (University of Washington) look very impressive while they collect dust. She was definitely not eating chocolate as she wrote this. You can follow her on Twitter @CeleySchumer.

‘Gilmore Girls’: Rory Gilmore Is an Entitled Millennial

That’s because she’s never had to hustle; everything has been handed to her. She only watched her mother struggle to raise her on her own, and even then it’s established that Lorelai went to great pains not to expose Rory to her struggles. … Despite her flaws, I relate to Rory because she displays all my — and my generation’s — worst characteristics.

This guest post written by Scarlett Harris appears as part of our theme week on Unpopular Opinions.

Like any pop cultural product that features archetypal women, viewers are apparently permitted to identify with only one of the Gilmore Girls: Lorelai or Rory. While there are personality traits from both mother and daughter Gilmore that I recognize in myself, I’ve never been a fan of Lorelai (Lauren Graham), so Rory (Alexis Bledel) it is. Like her, I’m bookish, introverted, and a writer. However, since the premiere of the revival, Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, there’s been a backlash of sorts to the original television series as a whole, but particularly to Rory and her entitled millennial status.

We rejoin Rory nine years after her graduation from Yale and her first reporting gig on the campaign trail for Barack Obama. What’s Rory been doing since then? Well, it’s hard to tell but the show definitely wants us to know that she’s a capital-W writer. The problem is, though, that the Gilmore Girls writers clearly have no idea what it’s like to be a journalist in 2016. First, who the hell has three phones? Second, who can afford to flit between London, New York, and Stars Hollow on an on-spec dime (ie. nothing)? And third, who coasts on their lone byline in an albeit prestigious publication like The New Yorker. Luke can get away with proudly printing Rory’s “Talk of the Town” piece on the back of his diner menu, but most writers know it’s all about the hustle and where the next paycheck is coming from. I’ve managed to have a couple of articles published in my dream publication, but from there I was looking to what’s next. There’s a difference between savoring a milestone and resting on your laurels, but it doesn’t appear that Rory knows that.

That’s because she’s never had to hustle; everything has been handed to her. She only watched her mother struggle to raise her on her own, and even then it’s established that Lorelai went to great pains not to expose Rory to her struggles. But when Rory’s met with what appears to be the first hurdle in her professional career (and we don’t really get a sense of what she’s been doing since covering Obama’s campaign in 2007 and The New Yorker), she goes running to Mitchum Huntzberger (Gregg Henry), a man the show vilified for so long for telling darling little Rory that she didn’t have what it took to be a writer. Though he is an asshole, he was kind of right. And having her suck up to him (through Logan no less: she doesn’t even have the intestinal fortitude to ask him to put in a good word for her at the hallowed Condé Nast personally) after establishing him as the Big Bad for the better part of fifteen years undoes a lot of character development.

To be fair, Rory is largely a product of her upbringing. Until the events of Gilmore Girls as we know it — Lorelai’s reconciliation with her rich parents so Rory can go to an expensive private school and then Yale — Rory was raised by an independent, struggling, small-town single mom. Whatever life lessons she learned there were swiftly erased by the ensuing plot developments: her rich grandparents and then her rich father paying for her education and European holidays, her rent-free accommodations, and breaks in school and work to “find herself” similarly bankrolled by Richard (Edward Herrmann), Emily (Kelly Bishop), and Logan (Matt Czuchry). Judging from social media, while much of A Year in the Life’s audience felt like slapping the painfully unself-aware Rory at several points throughout the revival, who among us would turn their noses up at the privilege to write their memoirs in a stately Connecticut home? Say what you want about her (and I have), but Lorelai is one of the only characters in the show who springs to mind.

Despite her flaws, I relate to Rory because she displays all my — and my generation’s — worst characteristics. The number one complaint about millennials is that we were raised to believe we were better than everyone else, that we should win the ultimate prize just for trying, and that things should be handed to us. Then the global financial crisis hit and we had to reassess everything we had been led to believe was true. I went to college for professional writing and thought I would have a high-powered career in magazines. Instead, I’ve spent the intervening years hustling for the smattering of bylines I’ve had. I struggle with incredulity when my pitches are rejected because I, like Rory, have been socialized to believe that I am a special snowflake and what I think and feel matters so much that any publication would be lucky to print my words.

But some of us have also had a lot of safety nets put in place for these inevitable failures. Like Rory, I’ve also moved back home (to a house that I won’t inherent as my parents have no assets) to save money for a long-term overseas trip, so I wasn’t really “back,” also like Rory. And what my mum can’t offer in financial support she makes up for in home-cooked meals (sorry, no pizza and Tater Tots) and dog-sitting, so it’s not like I’m at a destitute loss compared to Rory’s multiple financial backers. But it took me a long time to reckon with the fact that my parents couldn’t support me financially if I took a misstep like Rory has and, as a single woman with no designs on getting into a relationship anytime soon, I don’t have the emotional and financial support of a partner. The Emily to my Rory has six children, twelve grandchildren and countless great-grandchildren, so there’s likely no inheritance coming my way. And I’m fine with that now. I know that anything I do or have is because I worked for it. The rare things I achieve through luck make me uncomfortable: am I entitled to them if I didn’t work for them? Can Rory Gilmore say the same?

It’s unlikely that the inevitable second/ninth season of Gilmore Girls will address Rory’s privilege: her pregnancy (#LastFourWords) is a convenient scapegoat for her to escape her floundering writing career and throw herself into being a mother. Not that women can’t have both, as Lorelai did, but it seems more like an excuse for Rory to give up than a challenge for her. And we all know what happens to women (again, women who aren’t Lorelai) that teeter outside the guidelines society/Stars Hollow prescribes for them: pregnant with twins the first time they have sex, thus informing their negative opinion of the act, or pregnant with a child they didn’t want because they thought our husband had a vasectomy. Like other shows that depict millennials (and particularly millennial women) as entitled layabouts, Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life does nothing to dispel this stereotype.

See also at Bitch Flicks:

Why Lorelai Gilmore from Gilmore Girls Is a “Cool Girl”

Emily Gilmore and the Humanization of Bad Mothers

The Kims Next Door: Korean Identity on Gilmore Girls

Pop-Tarts and Pizza: Food, Gender, and Class in Gilmore Girls

The Paradox of the Gilmore Diet in Gilmore Girls

Scarlett Harris is an Australian writer based in New York City. You can follow her on Twitter @ScarlettEHarris and read her previous published work at her website The Scarlett Woman.

Elektra Natchios (‘Daredevil’) Is the Most Underrated Character in the Marvel Cinematic Universe

In a world where female characters in television are hated for minor flaws (compared to that of their spouses, anyways), I think it’s fantastic that Daredevil asks us to root for this woman whose flaws are on par with many other male anti-heroes. … This is yet another example why women and people of color need to tell their own stories. If Elodie Yung hadn’t fought for and included more layers to Elektra, she could very well have been a one-dimensional villain, a negative to female characters of color rather than a positive.

This guest post written by Sophie Hall appears as part of our theme week on Unpopular Opinions. | Spoilers ahead.

When Daredevil’s first season debuted in the spring of 2015, comic book fans were basking in a nerdy afterglow. Not only were they given Marvel Studios’ first piece of R-rated entertainment, fans and casual viewers alike were captivated by Vincent D’Onofrio’s portrayal of Kingpin, now considered to be Marvel’s greatest villain since Loki.

The hype train for Daredevil gained even more passengers when the fan favorite character Frank Castle aka The Punisher was confirmed to appear in the show’s second season. Expectations were met; actor Jon Bernthal’s portrayal was loved so much that he now has his own spin-off set for 2017.

The character that I feel fans forgot to love though? Elektra Natchios.

Elektra makes her first appearance at the end of episode four in season two. Since purring her first line, “Hello, Matthew,” audience reactions have been divisive on the character. Some found her a breath of fresh air in this mainly white male-dominated show; some found Elektra’s plot problematic, particularly the series’ depiction of race, women of color, and Asian stereotypes; others found her a reduction of The Punisher’s screen time, responsible for a storyline that many viewers found muddling and worse, un-noteworthy. Not only do I strongly disagree with the latter, I believe that she is needed not only in the show, but also in the Marvel Cinematic Universe in general.

Elektra exists within a show titled Daredevil, so a lot of her story is unfortunately tied to his and we are meant to perceive her the way stringent Matthew Murdock, the titular character, does. Elektra and Matthew are old flames and after the end of their relationship ten years prior (when Elektra’s idea of a fun date turned out to be Matthew’s from hell), the pair reunite to take down the Yakuza in Hell’s Kitchen. Matthew says that if they team up, Elektra must abide by his no killing rule. She reluctantly agrees. A few episodes later, she of course breaks it (unfortunately for a teenage ninja) and the pair call it quits again. However, Elektra isn’t the one who has to ultimately transform for Matthew; Matthew ultimately has to accept Elektra. Most importantly, this implies the audience is meant to accept her too.

In a world where female characters in television are hated for minor flaws (compared to that of their spouses, anyways), I think it’s fantastic that Daredevil asks us to root for this woman whose flaws are on par with many other male anti-heroes.

In one of my favorite scenes, Elektra is leaving New York after her second breakup with Matthew with a new booty call in tow (until he tries to assassinate her). Not only does she then win a fight to the death, she wins her signature weapons (sai), and wastes no time in tracking down the man who placed the hit on her. This moment is reminiscent of practically any male lead in any superhero movie ever, yet is happening to an Asian woman instead. It shows us that her story doesn’t end after hers and Matthew’s does, it merely evolves.

Similarly to anti-heroes, Elektra’s sexuality is treated with respect. In her flashback with Matthew, she is shown to be dominant and a tad kinky in the bedroom. Coincidentally, after Elektra returns into Matthew’s life, he’s just started a rather quixotic relationship with the sweet-natured, sexually tamer Karen Page. Elektra’s sexuality could easily have been used as a way to slut shame her or mark her as inferior, yet she remains unscathed. The problems that Elektra faces are many but her sex life is not one of them. There easily could have been a scene where Elektra uses her sexuality to turn Matthew away from Karen but their most intimate moments this season involve hand-holding and touching each other’s scars (whatever floats their boats).

This leads to another thing I love about Elektra’s character: her motivations are not influenced by and do not rely on a history of sexual violence. The topic is even part of her comic book lore, yet the TV series still chose to omit it. As noted by pop culture critic Anita Sarkeesian at Feminist Frequency when she reviewed Jessica Jones:

“Just like Veronica Mars and many other “strong female characters,” Jessica Jones’ rough edges, the aspects of her character that fuel her internal conflicts and make her tough, badass, and emotionally wary, originate in her history as a survivor of rape and psychological abuse. Of course, we need stories about survivors, models of women (and men) who do the heroic work of putting one foot in front of the other and trying to heal after suffering traumatic experiences. But too often, a history of abuse is used as part of a female hero’s origin story, part of what gives them their strength.”

Elektra Natchios’ story runs parallel with The Punisher’s plotline. If audiences don’t question the fact that he doesn’t have sexual trauma to motivate his story, why should they question hers?

Furthermore, Elektra’s anti-heroine status adds more diversity to the female characters of Marvel. You wouldn’t place her in the same ranks as ‘Black’ Mariah Dillard and Whitney Frost, but she’s not up to the heroics of Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow, Misty Knight, or Agent Carter either. Elektra may kill for kicks in one scene, but in the next she contemplates suicide after discovering that she is the lethal weapon the Black Sky to protect innocent lives lost. She’s flawed, seriously so, but deep down, she ultimately strives towards the greater good.

However, this complexity isn’t solely attributed to the showrunners and writers but also to the actress playing Elektra, Elodie Yung. In a promotional interview for the show’s second season, Yung states that:

“The writers told me that they see her as a sociopath… I didn’t want to reduce her to a sociopath because I don’t think she is. I tried to combine the sociopath that they wanted with her essence from the comics and a bit of myself in her to try and get her a bit more human.’”

This is yet another example why women and people of color need to tell their own stories. If Yung hadn’t fought for and included more layers to Elektra, she could very well have been a one-dimensional villain, a negative to female characters of color rather than a positive.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3g9CjhcNEWk

In some ways I found Elektra Natchios’ character more of an accomplishment than The Punisher’s, as I feel she breaks stereotypes while he conforms to them. The Punisher is a hyper-masculine, ex-military soldier on a bloody rampage for those responsible for the death of his family. His daughter seems to be at the center of his grief though, as he divulges the most about her when he breaks down to Daredevil in his graveyard monologue; his “penny and dime” catch phrase is a line from her favorite book. The Punisher’s emotional core relies on the common trope of fridging, using a woman’s death to fuel a male character’s motivation, whereas I feel Elektra breaks free of any tropes thrown her way.

I feel like I’m in the minority who feel this way though (hence this “unpopular” think piece). Thousands view Elektra’s scenes on YouTube, whereas hundreds of thousands view The Punisher’s scenes. Critic Bob Chipman at Screen Rant, wrote an article titled “How Marvel’s Daredevil Got Elektra Wrong.” He states:

“Miller/Marvel’s Elektra’s life may be a long list of unfortunate decisions, but at least they’re hers – born of her own agency and comprising her own identity. In fact, that’s the core of the tragedy on Daredevil’s end: His tortured, self-flagellating moral code can’t rationalize away the evil things Elektra does because there’s nothing external to blame. She is what she is because she’s chosen to be so. As reimagined for Netflix, just about all of that is gone.”

Although his points are reasonable and well explained, I have to disagree. Yes, Elektra from the Netflix series has many things placed upon her instead of her seeking them, but it’s how she reacts to those things that I find the most intriguing. If she were to follow Miller’s comics storyline faithfully, her death would occur to propel Matthew’s storyline. However, in the show, she dies because she chooses to die for something. When she is dying in Matthew’s arms, her dialogue isn’t, “I died for you, Matthew,” or some other tripe, instead she says, “I now know what it feels to be good.” The attention remains on Elektra.

Her choice wasn’t all for naught either. Yes, she was resurrected, so her decision to sacrifice herself was taken away. But the reason she died was to save Matthew’s life; that wasn’t taken away. For once, a female character can have her cake and eat it too: she gets what she wants, which is to save Matthew’s life, yet she doesn’t have to suffer the long-term consequences for it.

Granted, Chipman is correct in that the last two episodes prove the most troubling for her agency. After it is revealed that Elektra is the Black Sky, the men around her see her as an object to be controlled. Stick, the man who raised Elektra for most of her childhood, throws out lines like, “I tried to housebreak her,” and tries to have her killed when she breaks their alliance. Villain Nobu calls Elektra “it” and says that she “belongs” to The Hand. However, I feel credit is due to how she reacts to this objectification. In her final conversation with Stick, she tells him to stick it that “this is my life” and ignores his advice. She snarls at Nobu, “Call me ‘it’ again and I’ll cut you in half.” When Nobu states that she belongs to The Hand, she fights Nobu and The Hand. No matter what situation is placed upon her, her voice will always be heard.

Even though Elektra’s thrill for killing could be the cause of her being the Black Sky, it hasn’t been confirmed and more importantly, shouldn’t be. Elektra states that they could just want to lock her away “and do terrible things in my name,” using her as an excuse for The Hand’s actions rather than a literal weapon. We need more flawed women, female characters who have committed terrible acts but aren’t necessarily terrible people. Also, we have an abundance male characters that unnecessarily kill and their motives are rarely critiqued. As dire as it sounds, killing on-screen shouldn’t be a boys club. If it’s solely Elektra’s murderous nature that causes audience indifference to her character, why are so many male anti-heroes beloved for the exact same thing? Han Solo kills his enemies without a second thought and fans love him for it. In the “who shot first argument,” what are the fans most overwhelming answer? Han Solo is getting a prequel trilogy on his youth. Daryl Dixon from The Walking Dead used racist language and called a grieving mother a “stupid bitch” (more than once) yet his character is a fan favorite.

As Elektra is confirmed as a series regular for The Defenders, the Avengers-esque team up with more blood, sex, and cursing featuring Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, and Iron Fist, we should all be excited to see how her character evolves. Daredevil season two was an exciting set up for one of the most underrated characters to be introduced to the MCU. Everyone should be excited too. In the words of Matt Murdock, “What if this isn’t the end? What if it’s just the beginning?”

See also at Bitch Flicks:

Elektra in Daredevil: Violence, White Masculinity, and Asian Stereotypes

Daredevil’s Elektra and the Problem of Destiny

Daredevil and His Damsels in Distress

Sophie Hall is from London. She is a barista trying to perfect her latte art by day and perfect her writing by night. You can follow her on Twitter @sophiesuzhall.

Why Lorelai Gilmore from ‘Gilmore Girls’ Is a “Cool Girl”

The Cool Girl is positioned as being so because she’s not like other women. You’ll notice that apart from Sookie St. James, Rory, and the select few townswomen that put the Gilmore Girls on a pedestal, Lorelai doesn’t play nice with other women. In fact, I would go as far as to say she disdains them.

This guest post written by Scarlett Harris appears as part of our theme week on Unpopular Opinions.

We all know the famous “Cool Girl” screed from Gillian Flynn’s 2012 novel, Gone Girl. But since it’s been four years since the book’s release, and two years since its big screen adaptation, here’s a refresher:

“Men always say that as the defining compliment, don’t they? She’s a cool girl. Being the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex, and jams hot dogs and hamburgers into her mouth like she’s hosting the world’s biggest culinary gang bang while somehow maintaining a size 2, because Cool Girls are above all hot. Hot and understanding. Cool Girls never get angry; they only smile in a chagrined, loving manner and let their men do whatever they want. Go ahead, shit on me, I don’t mind, I’m the Cool Girl.”

Watching Gilmore Girls for the first time in the lead up to the revival because, even though I was in its target demographic, somehow I missed it the first time around, it hit me that Lorelai Gilmore was a Cool Girl long before Flynn, and Buzzfeed writer Anne Helen Petersen, popularized the term and Jennifer Lawrence became the living embodiment of it. Let me count the ways.

Not Like Other Girls.

The Cool Girl is positioned as being so because she’s not like other women. You’ll notice that apart from Sookie St. James (Melissa McCarthy), Rory (Alexis Bledel), and the select few townswomen that put the Gilmore Girls on a pedestal, Lorelai (Lauren Graham) doesn’t play nice with other women. In fact, I would go as far as to say she disdains them. While the problems between Lorelai and her mother Emily (Kelly Bishop) are for another article, one of Lorelai’s many criticisms of her mother is that she’s concerned with manners, proper presentation, and social acceptance, all traditionally feminine markers. Lorelai — and the television show as an extension of her — vilifies other women who share traits similar to her mother, such as Sherry (Madchen Amick) and Lindsay (Arielle Kebbel), for catering too much to others, particularly men. For example, Lorelai mocks Sherry for being excited for her baby shower and Dean’s (Jared Padalecki) new bride, Lindsay, for bringing baked goods to his workplace and wanting to be a good wife. But in Lorelai’s cultivation of her Cool Girl persona, she also makes a covert effort to appeal to men in just as damaging ways, placing herself as different from and therefore better than those other girls. Even the long-suffering Michel (Yanic Truesdale) displays too much femininity for Lorelai’s taste, making him the butt of her jokes. Gilmore Girls creator and showrunner, Amy Sherman-Palladino, said that the character “was pretty tough, made her own money, but she also liked men. She wasn’t demonizing them.” Because Cool Girls love men while other girls don’t.

All About Lorelai.

In the mini-series Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, during an argument with her daughter — because what would a revival be without at least one? — Emily says, “Nothing ever matters to Lorelai Gilmore except what she wants, what she feels,” a recurring theme for Lorelai throughout the show. One of her paramours, Digger, picks up on this on their first date. “Does everything have to be fun for you?” he asks when Lorelai expresses restlessness with an intimate dinner in a private room of a happening club. Lorelai doesn’t care that she shows up to Rory’s first day of Chilton in cowboy boots and tie-dye, or about the parade of on-again off-again men affecting her daughter’s life, or about Luke’s (Scott Patterson) obvious discomfort with the workmen renovating their house seeing her naked because she’s just one of the guys except, you know, one they want to fuck. There are no gay men in Stars Hollow, a fact the revival makes light of when the town struggles to find LGBTQIA residents to march in its first ever gay pride parade. Lorelai’s a cool mom who just wants to have fun and [insert whatever other pop cultural stereotype about women here].

Food. Oh, the Food.

If Gilmore Girls can be associated with one thing, it’s food. Cherry danishes, coffee, pizza, Pop Tarts, Tater Tots and Red Vines. As we read above, Cool Girls are all about eating the food that other, not-as-Cool Girls would shun in favor of their diets. Though Lorelai and Rory hate exercise as much as they love junk food, at least Gone Girl’s protagonist Amy Dunne had the decency to expose the lie that eating junk food while movie marathoning and seldom exercising won’t get you the lithe bodies of the Gilmore clan.

Gilmore Girls, Indeed.

Though Lorelai raised a child on her own as a teenager and the Cool Girl is more than capable of handling day-to-day inanities and complex hijinks herself (hello, Amy Dunne), the archetype is imbued with a certain childlike quality. Despite her propensity for playing 40-year-old mothers, Hollywood Cool Girl Jennifer Lawrence (who’s 26) certainly has that carefree youthfulness about her. As does Emma Stone and Anna Kendrick (you’ll notice that Cool Girls are almost always white). Because Lorelai’s childhood was cut short, plus the fact that her best friend is her teenage daughter, her immaturity often shows through. She doesn’t care that she disturbs the sleep of Rory during exams or Luke when he has to get up for an early delivery: it’s snowing in the middle of the night, damn it, and Lorelai will frolic in it because she’s quirky like that.

What a Difference A Year in the Life Makes…

Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life does make some strides in dismantling the Cool Girl stereotype. When Rory tells her mother that she’s writing a book about their relationship, Lorelai is displeased, asserting that, “I went to all this effort for many, many years making sure that people only knew what I wanted them to know.”

Cool Girls are supposed to not give a fuck, cultivating an air of carefree- and go-with-the-flow-ness. In actuality, a lot of effort goes into the artifice of the Cool Girl, just like the no-makeup look. Lorelai drives a beat-up old jeep because a less conspicuous car just won’t do, but as season seven draws to a close we saw it starting to sputter and, ten years later in the revival, she’s still hell-bent on keeping it, if much of her other Cool Girl traits have dissipated with age. Because as Flynn writes, the Cool Girl doesn’t exist effortlessly: a lot of work actually goes into maintaining her air of apathy leading us to wonder what even is a Cool Girl and why is Lorelai — and by extension, us — holding on to her so dearly?

Lorelai Gilmore and Gilmore Girlsitself were products of their time. Seldom would television shows of today get away with the homophobia, ableism, and racism of the original series except, you know, in its Netflix revival, which was just as blatant, if not more crafty, in its bigotry.

Ten years have passed since husband and wife team Amy Sherman-Palladino (creator, showrunner) and Daniel Palladino (producer, writer, director) departed the series but you wouldn’t know it from the stagnant feel of the revival. Their vice-like grip on the penultimate season and their apparent bitterness that Gilmore Girls continued without them meant that Rory regressed while Lorelai tried desperately to find some meaning after her father’s death while reckoning with her fading Cool Girl persona.

Maybe a modern-day Lorelai would be more informed, and thus, angrier at the feminine ideal she and the women around her have been forced to embody. Angelica Jade Bastién writes of “the particular brand of anger that blooms in intelligent women when you realize how hard it is to live by your own definition of being a woman,” in a piece about Gone Girland the femme fatale. Lorelai left a stifling home for a just-as-stifling small town that equates her worth as a woman with what she can offer the town (’s men), of which the Stars Hollow basket auction is just one example. Perhaps a thoroughly modern Lorelai would be forging her path through single motherhood in the big city, as Rory attempted in her career as a journalist. We may never know, even if there is a second/ninth season of the show, because Lorelai Gilmore’s creators seem intent on upholding archetypes instead of examining what it actually means to be a woman — and not the titular Girls — today.

See also at Bitch Flicks:

Emily Gilmore and the Humanization of Bad Mothers

The Kims Next Door: Korean Identity on Gilmore Girls

Pop-Tarts and Pizza: Food, Gender, and Class in Gilmore Girls

The Paradox of the Gilmore Diet in Gilmore Girls

Scarlett Harris is an Australian writer based in New York City. You can follow her on Twitter @ScarlettEHarris and read her previous published work at her website The Scarlett Woman.

Why, as an Intersectional Feminist, I Can’t Get Behind the TV Land ‘Heathers’ Reboot

The television reboot will give marginalized people power that they don’t have in real life. As a result, they cast cis straight white people as the oppressed underclass. This misrepresentation of the real world will ultimately work to reinforce the fallacious idea that marginalized groups are “taking over” and gaining power over white, cis, straight, or otherwise privileged people. … I am not at all against a ‘Heathers’ reboot, but I want one that is progressive and intersectional, one that expands on the feminism of the original rather than scaling it back.

This guest post written by Emily Scott appears as part of our theme week on Unpopular Opinions. | Spoilers ahead.

The cult classic status of the 1988 black comedy movie Heathers is firmly cemented in modern culture. The particular combination of high school hierarchy and gallows humor has struck a chord with millions of teenagers throughout the decades. The advent of Netflix has exposed the film to a whole new audience, and its campiness lent itself well to a highly popular Off-Broadway musical adaptation. Maybe most importantly, its portrayal of the power of young women has made it a favorite of many smart and self-aware girls, from its creation to today.

As with most cult classics, Heathers is ripe for a television reboot, and TV Land jumped at the opportunity. The network ordered a pilot for an anthology series based on a script by Jason Micallef and executive produced by Tom Rosenberg and Gary Lucchesi of Lakeshore Entertainment. But those who were hoping for a modern update to a dark, goofy, yet empowering story remain disappointed. The announced concept of the TV series adaptation makes extreme changes to the premise of Heathers, and not in a good way.

The original Heathers follows the top tier of the high school hierarchy, a group of three wealthy girls all named Heather and one girl named Veronica. Veronica (Winona Ryder) is somewhat of an outsider; she likes the benefits and privileges of being popular, but she has conflicted feelings about their treatment of those they consider beneath them. She starts to divulge her disillusionment to J.D. (Christian Slater), a mysterious, trench coat-clad new kid. After a fight with Heather Chandler (Kim Walker), Veronica decides to play a prank on her by serving her a mug of milk and orange juice. But when J.D. pours a mug of liquid drain cleaner, ostensibly as a joke, Veronica accidentally takes it to her instead, inadvertently killing Heather. Panicked, J.D. convinces Veronica to help him stage her suicide by forging a note. Throughout the rest of the film, it begins to become clear to Veronica that J.D. is orchestrating these killings because he feels disenfranchised by the system of power; he is trying to shake up the social hierarchy by destroying everyone in it.

Heathers represents a certain set of feminist ideals that makes it an empowering experience for young women. While the film engages heavily in the “mean girls” trope, the inclusion of the protagonist (Veronica) in the antagonistic group (the Heathers) subverts the standard popular vs. unpopular dichotomy. But even though Veronica originally believes the Heathers to be evil and worthy of punishment, she comes to realize that there is a bigger threat – J.D. The Heathers are mean girls, but they are just that. They don’t deserve to die. In this way, the movie allows Veronica to condemn the practices of the Heathers while still acknowledging their humanity.

Ultimately, the feminism of the film is centered on Veronica’s journey to finding and reclaiming her own power. As Alize Emme discusses in her Bitch Flicks article, Veronica is initially unable to stand up for anyone, even herself, against the Heathers. But at the end of the movie, she literally saves their lives. By the time she finishes with J.D. — the greater evil — Veronica has the strength to denounce the conniving, judgmental ways of the Heathers. She goes on to engage in friendships with Martha Dunnstock (Carrie Lynn) and Betty Finn (Renée Estevez), girls who were considered beneath the Heathers. By saving the Heathers, but rejecting their hierarchy and condescension towards other women, Veronica proves to have grown as both a person and a feminist.

The television adaptation of Heathers, however, presents a set of competing, feminist ideals that, if the show progresses in the way the film does, will send a message of exclusivity and non-intersectionality in feminism. In this new version of Heathers, the TV series will portray a world that does not exist in reality. In the updated Westerburg High School, the popular crowd, including the Heathers, will be made up of marginalized people. The new Heather Chandler (Melanie Field), the queen bee, will be a plus-size woman. The new Heather Duke (Brendan Scannell), the bookish turned diabolical one, will be “Heath,” who identifies as genderqueer. The new Heather McNamara (Jasmine Mathews), the cheerleader, will be a Black lesbian. And if they are the oppressors in this new world, then who will be the oppressed? White, thin, cis, straight people.

In fact, the new Veronica is Grace Victoria Cox, a talented young actress who fits very much within the white, thin, stereotypically feminine beauty ideal of Hollywood. James Scully, the new J.D., looks more like Kurt and Ram, the football players from the original movie, than the murderous high school outcast that Christian Slater once embodied. In the world that the TV series is creating, the diverse members of the Heathers will seek to torment and tear down these vulnerable, pretty white kids, leading them to stage their murders.

While this premise was likely chosen because it seemed edgy, this restructuring of the power dynamic between marginalized people and privileged people is ill-advised and, frankly, irresponsible. The writers and producers (who, notably, all appear to be white men) have used this concept to give marginalized people power that they don’t have in real life. As a result, they cast cis straight white people as the oppressed underclass. This misrepresentation of the real world will ultimately work to reinforce the fallacious idea that marginalized groups are “taking over” and gaining power over white, cis, straight, or otherwise privileged people.

If the television adaptation follows the plot of the original movie, then Veronica and J.D. will be killing and staging the suicide of at least one of the Heathers, as well as other members of the popular crowd. J.D. enacts this plot because he feels oppressed by the high school hierarchy, and he seeks to destroy all those who have power within that system in order to gain power himself. In the original film, which is virtually devoid of identity politics, this notion is extremely troubling, but realistic, as proven by real-life cases of high school shootings. In the world of the TV Land Heathers, this plot makes J.D. into, at best, an internet troll, and at worst, a violent alt-right vigilante. J.D. perceives the Black, queer, non-thin Heathers as having too much power, more than they deserve. His plot to kill them reads as an effort to take them down a notch, to put them in their place as marginalized people, so that he, a privileged white boy, can rise to his rightful place at the top. In the television adaptation of Heathers, J.D. is not just a messed-up kid. He’s a misogynist, homophobic, white supremacist. In a world where such rhetoric is becoming increasingly common, the idea that a purportedly comedic television show would represent such a character is disturbing and endlessly problematic.

Additionally, this restructure of the hierarchy causes Veronica’s journey to become problematic as well. One could argue that J.D.’s implicit racism, sexism, and homophobia will not be an issue, as he is clearly set as the antagonist, and because the protagonist (Veronica) ultimately rejects his ideas and plans. But again, if the plot of the TV adaptation is parallel to the film, Veronica’s rejection of J.D.’s extremism will only result in a more insidious form of white supremacy. As mentioned previously, Veronica ultimately saves the Heathers but rejects their cruelty, choosing instead to befriend the kind but unpopular Martha. In the series adaptation, Veronica’s decision will act as an affirmation of White Feminism. Even as Veronica rejects J.D.’s racism, sexism, and homophobia, her ultimate choice will be to ditch her marginalized friends for the other privileged white kids of the adaptation’s false underclass. Veronica can claim a lack of prejudice because she didn’t want them to die, but she doesn’t want to include them in her personal life. She, like many white feminists, doesn’t seek to understand what they may be going through or how their experiences may have differed from her own. Instead, she decides that she would just rather hang out with people like her — cis, straight, white, and thin. In the original film, her decision to befriend Martha, who’s plus size, was a way of confirming the value of every person, regardless of their outward appearance or social standing. In the adaptation, it will act as an exclusion of marginalized people from Veronica’s conception of worthiness.

When a movie becomes as iconic as Heathers, remakes and revivals are inevitable. Any production company that takes on such a project has a responsibility to take the current sociopolitical climate into account. It appears that TV Land and Lakeshore Entertainment have attempted to do so with the inclusion of people of color, LGBTQ, and plus size characters. But the concept of the Heathers television adaptation uses these characters to give legitimacy to false ideas about the power of minorities and marginalized groups, as well as giving credence to the idea of White Feminism. Though the original Heathers features all white characters and largely avoids commenting on race or sexual orientation (although it does feature the deaths of two homophobic jocks, staged as the suicides of gay lovers), it culminated in a feminist, inclusive shake-up of the social order. But the ill-conceived premise of the TV Land reboot will only serve to reinforce power structures and harmful gender and racial dynamics that already exist everywhere. By restructuring Westerburg High School’s social order, the Heathers series will only solidify the inequality of our social order. The one that sets minorities and marginalized folks beneath cis, straight, white people; the one that perpetuates hate and intolerance; the one we all live with everyday.

While a pilot is currently being filmed, the television adaptation of Heathers has not yet been ordered to series. Hopefully, the studio will take the sociopolitical context into account when choosing whether to continue with the adaptation. I am not at all against a Heathers reboot, but I want one that is progressive and intersectional, one that expands on the feminism of the original rather than scaling it back. Ideally, the ill-advised concept behind the TV Land adaptation will be abandoned, and then the world can have the new, forward-thinking, inclusive Heathers that it deserves. This time, let’s make Veronica a Black lesbian.

See also at Bitch Flicks:

“I’m a Veronica”: Power and Transformation Through Female Friendships in Heathers

Veronica Decides Not to Die — Heathers: The Proto-Mean Girls

Cult Films that Changed Cinematic History

Teenage Girl Gang Movies Through the Years

Emily Scott is an actress, writer, and filmmaker currently living in the Bay Area. In addition to freelance work, she writes regularly for Culturess. You can find her on Twitter @Emascott92 or at http://emily–scott.weebly.com.

How ‘Captain America: Civil War’ Crystallizes the Problems with Marvel Movies

I realized that while I had ultimately enjoyed ‘Captain America: Civil War,’ it exemplified the worst tendency of the Marvel Cinematic Universe — namely, the avoidance of dramatic risk and legitimate emotional stakes in order to create and maintain a sense of delight and entertaining status quo.

This guest post written by Deborah Krieger appears as part of our theme week on Unpopular Opinions. | Spoilers ahead.

Recently I was discussing Captain America: Civil War with a friend, when he brought up the treatment of the character of T’Challa in the narrative of the film. Namely, he pointed out that the three Black male characters in the film — James Rhodes (Don Cheadle), Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie), and T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) — all serve comic relief purposes, fulfilling the stereotype of the wisecracking Black best friend. While I acknowledged that Rhodey and Sam — especially Sam — bore traces of this characterization, I was surprised that he viewed T’Challa in the same vein. After seeing the film, one of the aspects that stood out for me was Chadwick Boseman’s performance as the Black Panther, and how it brought an unexpected gravity to the proceedings of the film, and in a sense, he had the most complete character arc and greatest sense of closure in the film. Yet the more I thought about what my friend had pointed out, the more I realized that he was ultimately right: while some characters treated T’Challa with the respect his role as the King of Wakanda required (namely, Natasha), for the most part, he was a bit of a sore thumb in the way he interacted with the other characters, and tonally did not fit within the overall atmosphere of Captain America: Civil War.

Continuing this line of thought, I realized that while I had ultimately enjoyed Captain America: Civil War, it exemplified the worst tendency of the Marvel Cinematic Universe — namely, the avoidance of dramatic risk and legitimate emotional stakes in order to create and maintain a sense of delight and entertaining status quo. Upon seeing the highly-overrated Doctor Strange earlier this fall, this assessment was ultimately cemented, but I want to focus specifically on the faults of Captain America: Civil War in terms of how the Marvel Cinematic Universe plays it safe to a fault, and how the film suffers as a result.

Insufficient Stakes

When I was developing my argument for this piece, I kept coming back to the incredible commentary by my favorite film writer, Film Crit Hulk (I’m totally serious) about Star Wars: The Force Awakens. In particular, Film Crit Hulk says of The Force Awakens (de-capitalized for easier reading):

“When discussing the film J.J. openly admitted that there was a popular mantra they used while crafting The Force Awakens, where they would stop frequently and ask themselves:

‘Is this delightful?’

“Which Hulk can certainly understand, for there’s nothing inherently wrong with wanting to be delightful, nor with an audience wanting to consume something delightful… But boy howdy did the filmmakers go full-tilt in that aim and that aim alone. To the point that it seems they looked at every moment and worked backwards from the intended result.

“… And they never, ever cared if it was earned.”

When thinking about Captain America: Civil War, Film Crit Hulk’s point kept coming back to me as something that made a lot of sense about certain sequences in the movie; in particular, the much-vaunted (and extremely well-paced and choreographed) tarmac fight, when Team Cap and Team Iron Man are assembled and deliver the big fight every trailer and poster for this film promised. And it certainly is “delightful” to watch how smaller clusters within each team branch off to fight one another at varying points, how the action cuts deftly and swiftly from moment to moment: Bucky (Sebastian Stan) and Sam tackling the excitable, downright naive Peter Parker (Tom Holland) inside the terminal; Clint (Jeremy Renner) fighting both T’Challa and Natasha (Scarlett Johansson) at various points with both quips and arrows; Scott (Paul Rudd) flitting around inside Tony’s (Robert Downey Jr.) suit in his ant-size form, et cetera. Yet what should be an actual dramatic and tense sequence is undermined by the need for nearly every character to make jokes and self-referential comments, and as a result, we really don’t care what happens in this fight until Rhodes ends up its only true victim (more on that aspect later). Clint and Natasha’s exchange during the fight perfectly exemplifies the total lack of stakes:

NATASHA: “We’re still friends, rights?”

CLINT: “Depends how hard you hit me.”

Where is the danger for these two clearly-established fast friends who find themselves on opposite sides of an incredibly important and divisive conflict? Why isn’t there any risk or sense of worry that this issue might tear them apart? Even the immediate lead-up to this ultimate showdown is lacking in actual drama, opting instead to pander to the audience expectations that this scene is going to be cool and fun, which it really, really shouldn’t be. The half-hearted delivery of Steve’s (Chris Evans) attempt to convince Tony that Bucky was framed actually demonstrates a poor acting choice by Evans, and fails to match Robert Downey Jr.’s evident pain and desperation in trying to convince Steve to back down one last time.

Over the course of the fight, I kept finding myself “delighted,” to use J.J. Abrams’ word, but I wasn’t actually concerned that any of the characters were going to become a casualty of this conflict. Indeed, this entire sequence logically doesn’t even need to exist: Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen), who has telekinetic powers, could have used her gift to freeze Team Iron Man in place, allowing Steve and Bucky to get to the jet while the rest of Team Cap handled Vision (Paul Bettany), whose powers (and personality) still don’t really have much definition. In order to satisfy the studio and fan demands for this ultimate Avenger versus Avenger fight, it seems, internal continuity and danger had to exit the equation.

Character (or Lack Thereof) Issues

In Marvel’s infinite quest to match and best DC films, what once was going to be a proper sequel to Captain America: The Winter Soldier (still the best MCU film) was turned into a superhero-vs-superhero film, likely to compete with the then-upcoming Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. The film added more and more characters and gave them each important little moments of characterization and interaction, but managed to, as many have pointed out, turn Civil War into an Avengers story rather than a Captain America one. So while Civil War has been rightfully praised for introducing T’Challa and the third iteration of Peter Parker, it ultimately gave Steve’s and Bucky’s story short shrift, as well as Peggy Carter’s (Haley Atwell) passing and really anything to do with Sam Wilson — and let’s not forget Sharon Carter (Emily VanCamp), sadly reduced to a love interest, replete with a kiss absolutely no one in the theater was rooting for when I saw it. According to Emily VanCamp, the characters would spend Civil War “getting to know each other” — but what we got was a kiss that was totally unearned and completely lacking in chemistry, simply because we didn’t get much of Sharon and Steve getting to know one another. Additionally, the comics have turned Steve into a deep-cover Hydra agent and Steve has had more chemistry over the films with Bucky, Sam, or Tony, and it ultimately leaves a bad taste in my mouth: Marvel is more okay with having a Nazi Cap than a potentially bisexual Cap (who makes out with his old love interest’s niece for good measure).

Furthermore, Civil War does its titular hero a disservice by focusing so much on Tony Stark and his emotional journey at the cost of Steve’s own development. Take the crucial scene in which Tony learns that Bucky killed his parents. Somehow in Steve’s journey chasing down Bucky, he learned, off-screen, that Bucky killed his old friend Howard and Tony’s mother Maria. But we are robbed of Steve’s reaction to this news, as the film completely shifts its focus to how this secret affects Tony. When, exactly, did Steve learn this terrible truth, and when did he decide to keep it from Tony? It is, frankly, a lazy writing solution to what could have been a much more affecting climax of the film: say, for instance, that Tony and Steve both see the video of Bucky killing the Starks at the same time. Then not only would we get a glimpse at how Steve, the title character of this movie, must choose between defending Bucky or standing with Tony; additionally, if Steve and Tony find out at the same time, but Steve still chooses Bucky, that would have actually been more much more dramatic and affecting, because it would have allowed Steve to have to make this choice — this choice that defines the whole conflict of the film. Tony would still have been completely heartbroken and upset beyond all reason, but at Steve’s failure to choose his side rather than some off-screen moment where Steve decided not to tell Tony this truth we never saw Steve actually learn properly. But it seems that after the tarmac fight, Captain America: Civil War becomes, essentially, Iron Man 4, and forgets who its actual protagonist is.

The friend with whom I discussed T’Challa, and who ultimately prompted this essay, made this salient point about the way Captain America: Civil War: “His behavior played out tropes of this exotic figure doing strange/elusive things in a way that makes audiences entertained.” He also had this further general critique of the Black characters in Civil War as a whole: “The three Black characters are heavily reduced to comic functions.” These critiques are important: T’Challa’s seriousness and lack of witty quips at times makes him out to be from a different film entirely, occasionally framing him and his determined attitude as humorous, and the shroud of mystery around the whole character could be seen as an exoticizing touch. But the larger problem with the Black characters in this movie can be seen in the storylines (or lack thereof) of Sam Wilson and James Rhodes.

At least T’Challa has his own narrative and character arc; Sam, introduced in The Winter Soldier as a thoughtful ex-soldier who shares the pain of loss and the uselessness of civilian life with Steve, is in this movie to support Steve and make funny jokes the entire time, playing into the trope of the wisecracking Black sidekick friend (see: Frozone in The Incredibles). In a world in which the third Captain America movie didn’t have the Civil War plotline, we might have actually learned a little more about Sam Wilson, and his admittedly-entertaining antagonistic buddy relationship with Bucky would have had more prominence. But Sam is one of the characters from the Cap side of things, as are Bucky and Steve himself, who loses out by following this plotline.

Rhodey also performs the wisecracking friend role for Tony Stark, but also is the sole casualty of the tarmac battle — he is partially paralyzed — which is used not to develop Rhodey’s character or even give him something to do, but to create pain for Tony and incentive for him to stop Steve. Indeed, Sam’s involvement in Rhodey’s injury might have given both of these characters something more to chew on, as Sam lost his best friend to a similar kind of accident, but instead of focusing on this kind of aftermath, Rhodey’s suffering functions as motivation for Tony, who already has three-plus movies full of development and action. Where was the thematic parallel between Rhodey and Bucky, who both have military experience, similar ride-or-die relationships with their marquee-name best friends, and are both named “James”? (Where was the “Martha” moment in the final battle?!)

Lastly, the lack of an existing friendship between Steve and Tony for Civil War to destroy, makes the fact that these two square off not exactly emotionally fraught. After all, Tony and Steve, in the context of the MCU, have never actually been good friends, spending most of their interactions in the Avengers movies bickering and clashing with one another. While many fans read into these moments in shippy ways, textually, there’s no weight to Tony’s “so was I” comment: they never actually seemed to like each other, which is largely due to mischaracterization in both Avengers films, courtesy of Joss Whedon. But somehow X-Men: First Class managed to create an incredibly significant and loving friendship between Erik and Charles in just one film, only to exhaust audiences’ tear ducts at the end of the movie. But the lack of care taken with developing the rapport between Tony and Steve means that their falling-out just repeats earlier conflicts between these two, rather than actually creating something meaningful and sad.

Also, there are three women in this film with any significant screen time and they are all white. Although Florence Kasumba, as a member of the Dora Milaje, is a scene-stealer delivering the line, “Move or you will be moved.” Does Captain America: Civil War even pass the Bechdel test? Does Wanda’s and Natasha’s brief exchange about undercover work on the Lagos mission even count? Why doesn’t Natasha get more to do as Steve’s other new close friend??

Tone Problems, and What They Mean for the Future of the MCU

After a string of uniformly successful films, Marvel now has a massive problem as it plans to (hopefully) retire Steve and Tony and introduce new heroes like Black Panther, Captain Marvel, and Doctor Strange. Namely, there’s so little tone variation among characters and films that when serious characters like Black Panther are introduced, they stick out like sore thumbs. With the exception of Black Panther and Tony, Steve, and maybe Natasha, pretty much every character in Civil War is the comic relief, particularly Peter and Scott, but also Clint and Vision. Nearly every single character in these movies has the same habit of throwing out one-liners in the middle of fight scenes, mingled with references to popular culture that will probably get dated in ten years. (Doctor Strange, which relies on Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) referencing Adele and Beyoncé, is a particularly bad offender). There isn’t any sense of trying to create a story that will stand on its own merits. Instead, people come out remembering the jokes and how cool the battles were; a trend that is generally true for all MCU films (especially Avengers, Ant-Man, and Thor). In contrast, Fox Studios’ X-Men movies, X-Men and X2: X-Men United, focus on characterization and the place of mutants within society and still hold up over a decade later. The scene in X2 where Bobby’s mutant “coming-out” scene poignantly resembles a painful coming out of the closet for LGBTQ people, and so it actually matters. Who is going to remember Ant-Man in ten years, despite Paul Rudd being a national treasure worthy of protection by Nic Cage?

In short, while Captain America: Civil War, is a competent, largely well-acted film, it’s far enough in the studio mold of the MCU that it is a major example of where the cracks are beginning to show. It presents the MCU with a major decision to make: will the next phase take T’Challa as its cue and focus on narratives with a more dramatic, serious tone, or will they all be light, pseudo-intellectual Doctor Strange clones (who is in turn a knockoff of Tony Stark in these movies)? “With great power comes great responsibility,” and with the cultural cachet and economic influence of the MCU, they arguably have the responsibility to do better.

See also at Bitch Flicks:

Scarlet Witch and Kitty Pryde: Erased Jewish Superheroines

Why Black Widow Is the “Realest” Superheroine of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (Yes, Even After All Those Tropes)

Why Scarlet Witch May Be the Future of Women in the Marvel Cinematic Universe

Deborah Krieger is a senior at Swarthmore College, studying art history, film and media studies, and German. She has written for Hyperallergic, Hooligan Magazine, the Northwestern Art Review, The Stake, and Title Magazine. She also runs her own art blog, I On the Arts, and curates her life in pictures @Debonthearts on Instagram.

‘Grey’s Anatomy’: Dr. Arizona Robbins, PTSD, and the Exploitation of Trauma for Shock Value

Dr. Arizona Robbins’ (Jessica Capshaw) leg injury, amputation, and subsequent PTSD in seasons 9 and 10 of ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ was depicted for shock value and entertainment. As a result, the narrative surrounding Arizona’s recovery is insufficient and flawed, ignoring the extent of the real mental health challenges she faces, ultimately blaming Arizona for her inability to completely recover mentally and emotionally from the trauma she experiences.

This guest post written by Madison Zehmer appears as part of our theme week on Unpopular Opinions.

[Trigger warning: discussion of rape, trauma, and PTSD]

Shonda Rhimes, the creator of Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal, and How to Get Away with Murder, is known for putting her characters in unpredictable, shocking, and even tragic situations. Over the course of Grey’s Anatomy’s 13 seasons, the surgeons of Grey-Sloan Memorial Hospital have faced a bomb explosion, a shooting, a plane crash, and multiple car crashes. Major characters, including Derek Shepherd, Mark Sloan, George O’Malley, and Lexie Grey, have been killed, and others have experienced serious physical and mental health problems as a result of the tragedies they have endured.

Because Rhimes and the writers of Grey’s Anatomy choose to put their characters in situations that in real life would yield enormous consequences, the writers arguably have a responsibility to portray the character’s responses to these events as realistically and honestly as possible. The writers also have to be careful not to exploit serious issues, such as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), for the sole purpose of entertainment. Dr. Arizona Robbins’ (Jessica Capshaw) leg injury, amputation, and subsequent PTSD in seasons 9 and 10 of Grey’s Anatomy was depicted for shock value and entertainment. As a result, the narrative surrounding Arizona’s recovery is insufficient and flawed, ignoring the extent of the real mental health challenges she faces, ultimately blaming Arizona for her inability to completely recover mentally and emotionally from the trauma she experiences.

The plane crash at the end of season 8 of Grey’s Anatomy leaves two surgeons dead and the other four wounded. Arizona, a bubbly, lesbian, pediatric surgeon, suffers a serious injury to her left thigh. When the surviving surgeons are rescued after 4 days in the woods, the doctors that treat the survivors in the immediate aftermath recommend that Arizona undergo an amputation of the majority of her left leg. She refuses and goes back to Seattle, where her wife, orthopedic surgeon Dr. Callie Torres (Sara Ramirez), attempts to treat the infection in the wound without resorting to amputation. When Arizona began to go into septic shock while Callie is operating on Dr. Derek Shepherd’s injured hand, Callie reluctantly gives Dr. Alex Karev permission to amputate Arizona’s leg, knowing that Arizona would die without the procedure.

Over the course of a couple of weeks, Arizona’s life changes dramatically. Before the plane accident, she is an able-bodied, characteristically joyful mom and surgeon in a relatively happy marriage. The wreck, serious infection, and amputation greatly restrict her ability to function the way she had before the accident; the aspects of her life that she deems to be most important no longer seem to be guaranteed. Arizona begins to question whether she will be able to perform surgeries and adequately take care of her child in the future. As she is extremely angry at Callie because she believes Callie amputated her leg, she resists her wife’s efforts to help her and to motivate her.

In the wake of the accident, Arizona develops a flat affect and stops communicating with her friends and her wife. This is especially striking, because prior to the accident she was the token “happy” character on Grey’s Anatomy, known for her enthusiasm and cheer in less than ideal situations. In addition to a blunted affect, Arizona experiences multiple symptoms of PTSD after the accident, including outbursts of anger, nightmares, panic attacks, and impulsive behavior.

Because of the brain’s plasticity, traumatic events often cause connections in the brain to “rewire,” which can cause the dysregulation of Cortisol (often called the “stress hormone”) and other hormones and neurotransmitters and the reduction of hippocampal volume, among other neurological changes. PTSD is a mental disorder that is helped by medical treatment (medication, counselling, therapy), just like other disorders or illnesses.

Although Arizona clearly suffers from many of the symptoms of PTSD, she does not receive any psychiatric treatment or therapy. Since her wife and the majority of her friends are medical doctors, it is surprising that they do not suggest that she pursue treatment and that none of the plane crash survivors receive therapy. As Grey’s Anatomy has set a precedent of characters going to therapy (Meredith in season 3, Owen and Cristina in season 6), it is concerning that the writers chose to ignore that aspect of Arizona’s (and Cristina’s, Meredith’s, and Derek’s) recovery.

Additionally, Callie’s and Arizona’s exchange in the first episode of season 9 is unsettling, demonstrating the attitude towards Arizona’s mental health that the show seems to take. Callie walks into their bedroom to find Arizona lying in a hospital bed, faced away from the door. Callie yells at Arizona to, “Get the hell out of bed and snap out of this!” Arizona turns to face Callie and replies as she pulls back a blanket to reveal her amputated leg, “Snap out of this?” Although it’s not inherently problematic for the series to show this exchange, it’s troublesome that they chose to perpetuate the idea that Arizona should have just “gotten over” her trauma without therapy. It’s also problematic that the writers used this scene to reveal the fact that Arizona had lost her leg, suggesting that the choice to put her character through this ordeal was for shock value.

In season 4, episode 7 of the Grey’s Anatomy spinoff Private Practice, Dr. Charlotte King is raped in her office by a patient. Although there are significant problems with this storyline (the rapist is a mentally unstable man who is a stranger to Charlotte, which perpetuates false stereotypes about rape and stigma surrounding mental illness), the Private Practice writers do a significantly better job in regards to the careful depiction of PTSD. KaDee Strickland, the actress who played Charlotte, Rhimes, and the writers consulted the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network (RAINN) to realistically depict the aftermath of Charlotte’s rape with care and sensitivity. Strickland agreed to the storyline only after being assured that the aftermath would be handled realistically and the trauma would not be forgotten in a couple of episodes. The impact of the trauma on Charlotte is clear and visible, if not always explicitly stated, for the rest of the show’s duration. In addition, Private Practice and RAINN released a PSA for rape survivors. Charlotte’s recovery is depicted with care and discernment, demonstrating that the writers are aware of the responsibility they have to ensure that the storyline does not exploit trauma for shock value or for entertainment.

If the Grey’s Anatomy writers had treated Arizona’s storyline in seasons 9 and 10 with the same sense of sensitivity and responsibility in approaching PTSD that the Private Practice writers treated Charlotte’s storyline, they would have been able to portray a significant issue often overlooked in media in a realistic and respectable way. However, Arizona’s amputation seems to serve as a plot device to create shock and tension in Callie’s and Arizona’s relationship.

Before the accident, Arizona already has a difficult time expressing her emotions. Her PTSD and resentment for Callie in the wake of the accident amplifies her tendency to keep her problems to herself. After she suffers from a miscarriage (only shown in flashback scenes) that also seems to exploit Arizona’s grief and feeling of a loss of control for shock value, Arizona ultimately ends up cheating on Callie with a visiting surgeon in the season finale of season 9.

It’s wrong for Arizona to cheat on Callie. However, the way Arizona is depicted in an extremely negative light for the beginning of season 10 paints Arizona as some sort of cold-hearted villain and Callie as the helpless victim. This is a gross over-simplification of the complicated problems in their relationship and the factors leading up to the infidelity, including Arizona’s amputation and PTSD (of which impulsive behavior is a symptom), Callie’s repeated insistence that Arizona “get over” the accident. Arizona and Callie end up getting back together for a short time and going to couple’s therapy (which – again – highlights that Arizona did not receive therapy in the wake of the plane crash) before ultimately deciding to divorce. Now in season 13, Arizona’s personality is very similar to her personality before the crash. Although this is probably ideal for many fans, the show now tends to overlook the fact that Arizona has a disability, erasing part of her identity, only bringing it up back again when it can add to the drama of the show.

The depiction of trauma in media can be very powerful and informative when done correctly. However, when trauma is exploited to shock the audience and create drama, the film or television series often ends up perpetuating dangerous ideas surrounding trauma. Arizona’s recovery from an amputation in the wake of a plane crash could have depicted PTSD honestly and explored issues people with disabilities face, but the storyline mostly just serves to advance the drama that Grey’s Anatomy is known for.

See also at Bitch Flicks:

Interracial Relationships on Grey’s Anatomy

A Love Letter to Dr. Callie Torres on Grey’s Anatomy

Being the Sun: Women and Power in Grey’s Anatomy Season 11

Madison Zehmer is a first-year student at Wake Forest University, where she studies psychology on the pre-med track. She enjoys writing in her spare time. You can find her at Twitter @maddieemz, where she mostly talks about politics and her love for cats.

Obsessed with Boyhood: The Latent Misogyny Running Rampant in Richard Linklater’s Films

On the surface, a lot of his female characters reflect strong ideals. … But take a deeper look and Linklater’s female characters tell another story: one of a creator deeply obsessed with ignorant male stereotypes and the women that encourage them. … Looking back through his films, they all contain this running theme of underdeveloped man-children who are routinely validated in their anti-woman approach.

This guest post written by Maya Bastian appears as part of our theme week on Unpopular Opinions.

Disappointed. That would be the first way to describe how I felt after walking out of Richard Linklater’s latest release Everybody Wants Some!!, 20 minutes into the film. Disgusted. That was my second response. These feelings quickly turned to outrage as I realized that I had just played witness to the reversion of cultural ideals that has overtaken our society as of late.

Hailed as “achingly perceptive” by Variety and “utopian” by The New York Times, Linklater himself refers to the film as a “spiritual sequel” to his earlier nostalgia-laden hit Dazed and Confused. In reality, it’s an intensely sophomoric and outdated romp through the lives of five college jocks who bandy around, seducing girls, and partying until they drop. The male protagonists refer to women as “bitches” when they get rejected and intelligent women are thought of as “dykes.” Set in 1980s Texas, it’s a throwback to Porky’s–era films, where the women are idly brutalized and consent is disregarded several times throughout the course of the movie.

What is astounding is that the glaring misogyny that runs rampant throughout is completely brushed aside by just about every critic. The Guardian gave it a rave review, saying, “The attitudes towards women are unenlightened but the freshman of Linklater’s joyful 80’s campus movie reveal occasional complexity.” RogerEbert.com called it a “gentle film” but I would argue the opposite. There is nothing gentle about flouting consent and flaunting camera angles that are meant to denigrate the female form.

The disappointing part is that I’ve been a fan of Linklater’s films for some time, excited by his subversion of narrative techniques and his bold commitment to strong characters that buck the status quo. Waking Life was startlingly moving and profound. Tape was cinematic genius in its execution.

Looking back through his films, they all contain this running theme of underdeveloped man-children who are routinely validated in their anti-woman approach. These characters often appear fun and exciting. No one really challenges them on their behavior, most simply laugh it off. A glaring example is Steve Zahn’s character in Suburbia, aptly named Buff. He primarily exists to reflect an attitude that glorifies acting poorly, hurting others, and treating women as objects. Yet no one ever seriously addresses his behavior except for Sooze, the token feminist, who gets quickly shot down by her peers.

While he does include the occasional strong female voice, Linklater tends to tokenize these women. They are often one-note characters who are stereotypes of themselves. Even Celine in the Before Sunrise series falls victim to this pattern. Though she starts off as a thinking, feeling woman with complexity in Before Sunrise, by the end of the series, she has devolved into a bitter, nitpicky wife, treading alongside all of the female “married woman” stereotypes that we fight so hard to deflect and dismantle. In Before Midnight, her character presents as “flat” and one-dimensional, with Linklater adhering to the school of thought that strong, intelligent women are incapable of compromise and empathy.

Linklater marginalizes his female characters in almost every movie that he has made. Tape, while brilliant in its technical prowess, reduces the only female character (Uma Thurman), as an object to be fought over. Dazed and Confused is another glaring instance of hyper-sexualization, where practically every woman lacks definition. The only substantial female character is the nerdy redhead Cynthia (Marissa Ribisi), who ends up being objectified by the much older Wooderson (Matthew McConaughey) in what is considered one of THE classic lines of the film.

As Linklater’s oeuvre evolves, the sidelining of his female characters increases. In School of Rock, the only two adult female characters (Sarah Silverman and Joan Cusack) are both uptight, angry, and only serve as foils to guitarist Dewey Finn’s (Jack Black) brilliant plans. Even in the much lauded Boyhood, we see signs of the director’s tendency to tokenize women. In Linklater’s world, we can only ever be seen on one side of the virgin/whore rhetoric. Either he focuses his camera on our bodies and our loose morals or he martyrs us, as is the case with the long-suffering single mother (Patricia Arquette) in Boyhood. While it’s worth mentioning that Patricia Arquette’s performance is brilliant, it still serves as further proof that Linklater perpetuates male-centric stories where women exist as an afterthought, only putting them front and center when they can fulfill society’s categorization of women into tiny, little boxes.

Which brings us back to his latest effort. Shockingly produced by a woman, Megan Ellison of Zero Dark Thirty fame, Everybody Wants Some!! continues to receive rave reviews. Apparently bro culture has reached its cultural apotheosis.

Salon writer and self-proclaimed feminist, Joanna Novak, even professed that she didn’t see anything wrong with the throwback and glorification of bro culture, though she jokes that looking past the “casual sexism” and enjoying the “bro-centric ideology” might make her a “bad feminist.” But here’s the thing. The longer we as a society continue to glorify boys acting badly, laugh at a bunch of jocks using women and lying to get them into bed, jeer along with them at so called “imperfect” bodies, the longer rape culture will exist and the objectification of women will reign supreme. Why is it so hard to convict a rapist? Perhaps it’s because the media sees handsome, swagger-ful boys as cute and cheeky as opposed to predatory. Perpetuating this social construct of masculinity in a time when we need desperately to dissect it and deflect it instead, is a dangerous path.

While the reviews of this pointless, nostalgia-saturated narrative are shocking, the response isn’t surprising. The current swath of the films’ reviewers are primarily men who seem to be joyfully reliving their youth.

One shining light in this otherwise woeful collection of reviews is Jill Richard’s article in the Los Angeles Review of Books. She delineates that as a culture, we are past the age of Animal House style fraternity. Richard writes:

“If one is a bro, the bro squad looks like a great time. But I suppose I feel like that squad wouldn’t have me as a member, or would rape me, and that makes all the difference. […] …There is no non-sinister defense for the ‘American male birthright’ as a conceptual category.”

On a larger scale, Linklater has not just disappointed me as a filmmaker, but as an artist. We have reached an apex in our society, where art must be a voice for the under-represented. Artists have an obligation to create pieces that speak to the condition of our culture and of the world. The time to laud ego-centric films that glorify the glory days of its maker have passed. We no longer need to see work that makes us laugh but that does not make us think.

During the release of Boyhood, one Los Angeles Times critic refused to pander to the flow of warm reviews. While just about everyone was hailing the film as genius, Kenneth Turan took a solitary stance against the film, amid consternation from fellow critics. What he said rings profoundly true in our age of hyperbole and over-hyped cinema. While he did not end up reviewing the film, he did write an incredibly astute article on the nature of genius and the way our society creates cultural impunity by lauding films that don’t deserve it. Turan writes:

“…The fuss about ‘Boyhood’ emphasized to me how much we live in a culture of hyperbole, how much we yearn to anoint films and call them masterpieces, perhaps to make our own critical lives feel more significant because it allows us to lay claim to having experienced something grand and meaningful.”

As Indiewire‘s Sam Adams writes in response to Turan’s perspective, asserting the need for diverse opinions in film criticism:

“Masterpieces, however, are not made so by unanimous praise, but by careful scrutiny. Criticisms, and the extent to which they illuminate the fascinating imperfections beneath those ‘masterpieces’ surfaces, only make them stronger.”

Turan’s and Adams’ points ring true to many socially conscious ears. Richard Linklater is no longer a genius in my eyes, but simply a talented filmmaker who has achieved success by pandering to societal norms, sadly failing to use his indefatigable intelligence to see through them.

Disappointing at best, destructive and debilitating at worst.

See also at Bitch Flicks:

The Flattening of Celine: How Before Midnight Reduces a Feminist Icon

The One Night Stand That Wasn’t: Before Sunrise and Before Sunset‘s Jesse and Celine

Boyhood (Featuring Girlhood)

The Bad Mamas of Contemporary Cinema

Maya Bastian is a writer and award-winning filmmaker who focuses on socio-political issues. She sits on the board of Breakthroughs Film Festival, a short film fest championing new generation female filmmakers. Follow her on social media @mayabasti or check out her website for more info: www.mayabastian.com.

Manic Pixie Dream Girls Aren’t Problematic for the Reasons You Think

If Claire (‘Elizabethtown’), Sam (‘Garden State’), or Ramona (‘Scott Pilgrim vs. the World’) were paired with a male lead who saw them as full people rather than objects to derive inspiration from (and fuck), perhaps the MPDG label never would’ve happened. … Manic Pixie Dream Girls aren’t problematic because they’re quirky and girly; that audiences only see them as such is often indicative of shitty male leads who are intent on making women fit into their fantasies.

This guest post written by Ellie Carpenter appears as part of our theme week on Unpopular Opinions.

When Nathan Rabin wrote at The A.V. Club about Elizabethtown in 2007, he likely didn’t anticipate that four of the review’s 799 words would be the subject of apology seven years later. The disparaging label given to Kirsten Dunst’s character Claire and Natalie Portman’s Sam in Garden State — Manic Pixie Dream Girl — referred to the emerging trend of women characters in film who exist “solely […] to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures.” His succinct identification of the trope didn’t inspire audiences to be critical so much as it inspired imitation.

After films such as Garden State and Elizabethtown, Manic Pixie Dream Girls (MPDGs) seemed ubiquitous. Free-spiritedness and quirky girlish charm manifested repeatedly on-screen throughout the mid-2000s and 2010s. In this time, the MPDG label was applied liberally to nearly any female character who might fit in the parameters even tangentially. Mainstream and feminist critics alike used it to indict female characters as poorly-written, misogynist, and shallow, but few questioned whether the supposed failings of the MPDGs may actually be the fault of the male leads in these films.

The criticism most commonly leveraged against MPDGs — and that which Rabin initially referred to — is that their only apparent purpose is being in service towards the male lead. A viewer who can only see this in a character such as Garden State’s Sam, though, has perhaps adopted the shortcomings of the film’s other lead. Out of context, Sam is an imperfect yet realized character. She lies, dances strangely, has epilepsy, and works as a paralegal. Some of these traits may now seem cliché, but they exist as part of Sam’s character whether or not she has an audience.

It is another of her traits, however, which has perhaps invited so much criticism. When his friends propose watching porn and doing coke, Andrew objects and says that Sam has already been corrupted enough. “I’m not innocent,” she responds, but Andrew insists: “Yes, you are. And that’s what I like about you.” He becomes angry until Sam seemingly begins to mock him: “He was protecting me. He likes me. You’re my knight in shining armor!”

Andrew sees only her whimsy, charm, and a host of other obvious projections. That he fetishizes these traits is no fault of her own, and to dismiss her character is to do the same. This pattern, though, is the one established by most of the characters who fell prey to the MPDG label. Much like Sam, Mary Elizabeth Winstead’s Ramona Flowers in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World was maligned as a shallow object of Scott’s fantasies. Overlooked, however, are her bisexual identity, job working for Amazon, and apparent ability to travel through dreams.

If Claire, Sam, or Ramona were paired with a male lead who saw them as full people rather than objects to derive inspiration from (and fuck), perhaps the MPDG label never would’ve happened. It is typical, though, that the women in these films be blamed for the projections and fetishization they are subject to from their male counterparts. This is never illustrated better than in the film that might have ended Manic Pixie Dream Girls once and for all: 500 Days of Summer. Zooey Deschanel’s Summer is the subject of infatuation for Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s Tom, but his objectification is revealed in retrospect after the relationship ends. Her initial appearance as little more than a cliché is the result of his immaturity rather than any character flaw on her part.

Manic Pixie Dream Girls aren’t problematic because they’re quirky and girly; that audiences only see them as such is often indicative of shitty male leads who are intent on making women fit into their fantasies. Perhaps we adopt these tendencies while watching films too, and maybe it is better male characters we should be lobbying for: ones who see women as autonomous beings and treat them as such. Many critics have now recognized the overuse of the MPDG label, but it was the originator of the term who touched on an enduringly problematic part of the trope.

In his 2014 apology, Rabin made clear what should have always been known: the Manic Pixie Dream Girl phrase was intended to identify misogynist trends in film rather than perpetuate them. He also shifted focus to the male characters in these films who had previously managed to largely escape critique. He identifies them as “miserable” and “mopey, sad white men” who rely on the cheeriness of a flighty muse to overcome their ennui.

Examining Manic Pixie Dream Girls reveals a group of characters with diverse interests, ambitions and stories, but unfortunately, that’s where the diversity stops. Rabin merely mentions whiteness as a hallmark of the trope, but it is this trait which is the most troubling. If there is a single attribute that all MPDGs model as an ideal, it is the obligatory whiteness that they all have in common. He specifically names “white men,” but the unanimous whiteness of the women in these films, too, suggests that to be white is a prerequisite for the relationships depicted.

One of the lesser known bearers of the MPDG label, Emily Browning’s character Eve in God Help the Girl, is the subject of Sarah Sahim’s Pitchfork essay The Unbearable Whiteness of Indie. She articulates what persists as a problem in indie film, music, and culture: “White is the norm,” and the “movie serves as a microcosmic view of what is wrought by racial exclusivity.” Indeed, Eve’s character succeeds in rejecting conventions of the MPDG trope by maintaining her autonomy and resisting the objectification of her would-be partner. Like Summer did, however, she also illustrates the presence of a much bigger problem. The casting call indicates producers are “open to Eve’s nationality” yet goes on to restrict it to British, French, or Australian (and there are plenty of people of color in these nations).

An unpopular opinion though it may be, MPDGs are not and have never been a major problem in film — at least not for the reasons typically cited. They sure are a great distraction from other issues, though! Instead of critiquing whether or not our idealized white characters are complex or empowering enough, perhaps we should turn our attention to advocating for the inclusion of more diverse casts and people of color, not to mention LGBTQ people and people with disabilities, in the films we watch. Manic Pixie Dream Girls haven’t been cool since 2012 anyways.

See also at Bitch Flicks:

Elizabethtown After the Manic Pixie Dream Girl

Women Empowerment and LGBT Issues in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

Movie Review: 500 Days of Summer, Take 1

(95) Minutes of Pure Torture: 500 Days of Summer, Take 2

Take Away This Lonely Man: 500 Days of Summer and Musical Storytelling

God Help the Girl: Sunny Glasgow Hosts a Twee Musical

Ellie Carpenter is a writer and graduate student from California currently living in Nashville. After barely surviving two years in Portland, she decided to move to the deep south, but don’t read too far into it. Areas of interest include relationships, feminism, sex work, pop culture, music criticism, and celebrity. Commentary on all of the above can occasionally be found on Twitter @ersatzelevator.

Privilege Undermines Disney’s ‘Gargoyles’ Attempts to Explore Oppression

Yet ‘Gargoyles’ is also a fantastic showcase of what can happen when creators possessing privilege write stories about the oppressed without their input. … ‘Gargoyles,’ with its “protecting a world that hates and fears them and has been fairly successful in enacting their global genocide” premise, seeks to be about marginalized peoples. At the same time, it consistently centers and prioritizes the lives of the privileged over those of the oppressed, and places the burden of obtaining justice on the latter.

This guest post written by Ian Pérez appears as part of our theme week on Unpopular Opinions.

[Trigger Warning: Discussion of allegorical rape]

The Disney animated series Gargoyles, created by Greg Weisman (The Spectacular Spider-Man, Young Justice) is often noted for being progressive in an industry that often was even less so than it is now. Debuting in 1994, it expressed this primarily via its co-protagonist Elisa Maza (Salli Richardson-Whitfield), the Black, Native detective for the NYPD who served as the secret-keeper, partner, best friend, and love interest to gargoyle-out-of-time Goliath (Keith David) decades before Sleepy Hollow raised our hopes and shattered our hearts with Abbie Mills.

Elisa wasn’t just a fantastic character in her own right, although she certainly was that. A large part of what made her special was that she was not dropped into the world of Gargoyles alone and contextless to be an accent in a white narrative. She has a family, whose members all take part in the story — her father, Peter (Michael Horse), who belongs to the Hopi nation and like Elisa works for the NYPD; Diane (Nichelle Nichols), her mother, an academic who we eventually see in Nigeria, connecting with her roots; and siblings Derek (Rocky Carroll), who flies helicopters for the NYPD (being a cop is in the Maza blood) and Beth, off in college. In short, thought was placed into this. While Elisa was not conceptualized with her canonical heritage in mind, once established, the writers did not shy away from it, and it seems on its own like solid evidence that Weisman, to some degree, gets the importance of diversity and inclusivity.

Yet Gargoyles is also a fantastic showcase of what can happen when creators possessing privilege write stories about the oppressed without their input. Weisman and his staff had good intentions, and yet that didn’t stop them from writing “Heritage,” a perennial contender for the award of Most Racist Story That Tried Not to Be Racist (Television). In the episode, Elisa essentially tells the chief of a failing First Nation village, whom she’s only just met, that he’s performing his identity wrong, and is proven correct by the narrative. While that episode is an outlier, it is not alone — despite the show’s attempts to be about oppression and about being the Other, it falls down in multiple and consistent ways featuring more than one episode where the message they wish to send is not the message they are actually sending.

The first of these episodes is “Revelations,” an episode focusing on Matt Bluestone (Tom Wilson), who is Elisa’s partner on the force and a white man. A conspiracy theorist, his private investigation into the Illuminati society leads him to discover that Elisa has been lying to him as part of her attempts to keep the gargoyles’ existence from him. Incensed, he one night insists on driving Elisa’s car (something she normally never allows) and then threatens to send it careening over a cliff with them in it unless she tells him the truth. The gambit works and Elisa not only spills, but actually apologizes for keeping the secret. Matt apologizes for threatening her and the episode acts as if the two offenses were somehow equivalent, and as if both characters are equally worthy of sympathy.

It’s entirely possible Matt’s threat was just a bluff, that Elisa was never really in danger; she takes control before tragedy can strike, so we can’t know. It doesn’t really matter; he threatened her. The way the episode shoves it under the rug indicates that his concerns, priorities, and feelings are more important than Elisa’s. Matt doesn’t need to accept Elisa’s secret-keeping, despite the fact that she has every right to keep secrets from him; Elisa will have to accept that she’s partners with a man who feels entitled to threaten her, and the show won’t even allow her to be uncomfortable or fearful about it. She just has to be the better person and forgive him.

This sort of false equivalency is part of a pattern for Gargoyles. Elisa is just as bad as Matt because she kept a secret. As seen in the episode “Shadows of the Past,” the would-be ally and actual traitor responsible for the death of Goliath’s clan gets to move on to the afterlife because he saved Goliath that one time, minutes after abandoning his own attempts to kill the gargoyle.

In another storyline, a rapist gets to get back together with his ex because he feels really, really bad about raping her. Okay, so it’s not technically rape, although there are certainly enough parallels in “Mark of the Panther” to make the comparison inevitable. The episode focuses on Tea (Roxanne Beckford), a Nigerian villager who breaks up with her boyfriend Fara Maku (Don Reed) because she wishes to start a new life in the capital. Consequently, Fara Maku seeks and finds Anansi (LeVar Burton), the trickster spider god, and implores it to turn him into a were-panther, so that he may then turn her into a were-panther, forcing her to remain and binding her to him. Granted this boon, Fara Maku attacks Tea and marks her, causing her to uncontrollably take feline form during moments of great emotional stress. Furious, frustrated, and ashamed, she becomes a poacher and returns to her village to hunt down panthers, and it is then that she discovers the truth. Upon doing so, Tea lays the blame for everything not on Fara Maku, but on Anansi, and after defeating the trickster god (with the help of the gargoyles and Elisa, who are also in this episode) both were-panthers decide that, as penance for what they’ve done, they should get back together and use their powers to protect the jungle. Note that for Tea, “what they’ve done” is “illegally hunt animals” and “attempt to kill the man who ruined her life in a situation where justice by legal means is impossible” (and all but impossible, had it been an actual rape) while for Fara Maku, it’s “violate his ex in a way that prevents her from having the life she wanted so that she would stay with him.” The show insists that these are equivalent. The show is wrong.

One could, if one wanted to, surmise that Gargoyles — in presenting Matt Bluestone and Fara Maku’s actions as the result of frustration and ignorance rather than malice and entitlement — is attempting to express that things are not always simple and that good people can do harm. If that is the case, it misses the mark entirely. What it does instead is normalize the male characters’ entitlement, obfuscate the misogyny behind it, and then reward the characters with what they wanted in the first place. In the face of injustice, women’s — Black women’s, at that — only recourse is to forgive and be okay with things because, hey, at least the men feel bad about what they’ve done. Their lives, safety, and comfort are secondary.

Gargoyles, with its “protecting a world that hates and fears them and has been fairly successful in enacting their global genocide” premise, seeks to be about marginalized peoples. At the same time, it consistently centers and prioritizes the lives of the privileged over those of the oppressed, and places the burden of obtaining justice on the latter. It is on Elisa to de-escalate the situation by giving Matt what he wants. It is on Tea to get used to circumstances which she never asked for, and to be okay with living the life Fara Maku wanted for her. More generally, it is on the gargoyles to continuously be the better species, until humanity decides that it is willing to treat them like people.

Perhaps no one exemplifies how the writers reward privilege better than David Xanatos (Jonathan Frakes). An Unscrupulous Billionaire™, he purchases the castle the gargoyles lived on and protected and breaks the spell that has kept them frozen in stone for a thousand years. He acts as their benefactor, but soon enough it becomes clear that his motives are not altruistic. What he actually wants is to have superhuman servants, and he’s willing to lie and manipulate the gargoyles in order to keep them under his thumb, or kill them if he cannot. Thanks to Elisa, Goliath and clan see the truth about who Xanatos is and leave him behind, although the plutocrat will remain one of their two core enemies, enacting multiple plots against them and Elisa — even hiring her brother Derek as his bodyguard so that he can then “accidentally” and permanently mutate him into a winged cat creature. (Derek, too, is forced to accept this turn of events.)

Eventually, though, Xanatos’ attitude towards the gargoyles softens, most notably after they help him save Manhattan from a spell that turned every person in it to stone — a spell whose execution he facilitated, if accidentally — and then even more so after the gargoyles prevent his son from being taken by the Faerie King Oberon, after which Xanatos considers himself to be in the gargoyles’ debt. Not long after, after the gargoyles’ second home is destroyed by gargoyle hunters, Xanatos invites his former enemies to return to their first one, in the process getting the super-human guardians he always wanted. He’s still the same bastard he always was; he’s just now the gargoyles’ bastard. (He is a fan favorite. He used to be one of mine.)

With the proper context, this wouldn’t necessarily be a problem: a world in which the people with the most privilege are the ones who win most often, and where the underprivileged must often make moral compromises in order to survive is, disappointingly, an accurate representation of the one we actually live in. However, the show’s worldview is incomplete and one-sided. It delegitimizes anger as a response to injustice — the only gargoyle who is consistently angry at human’s genocidal instincts and consistently questions gargoyles’ protective instincts is the villain, Demona (Marina Sirtis), and initially the series’ only female gargoyle. The series argues that marginalized peoples will always be alright, in the end, eliminating the need for reparations or actual change: Matt is the perfect partner after learning the secret; Derek will eventually find a measure of contentedness, as will the gargoyles; we have no idea what happens to Tea, but she is presumably not again being abused by her former attacker. This is not actually the case in real life: being the better people and turning the other cheek has not, traditionally, been a recipe for large-scale social change. The show might have understood this, with more women and people of color behind the scenes.

I first began watching Gargoyles during college, long after the series had ended and I’d stopped being its target audience. It is in many ways my Buffy the Vampire Slayer, catching my attention with its character relationships and cleverness and what was then an attractive version of social consciousness. Like with Buffy, it took time for its limits to become apparent. My love for the series has survived a thorough examination of its flaws, although now it becomes impossible to praise it as I may have once done. Elisa is still fantastic, sure, and I love her to pieces; but the series is now also largely a reminder of how little things have changed since 1994 and how good intentions aren’t enough.

Years after its cancellation, Gargoyles got resurrected in comic book form in 2006, continuing Goliath and his clan’s adventures under the hand of their creator. It is in some ways an improvement, reflecting an increased understanding of the importance of diversity in world-building. In other ways, however, it is still problematic in the same places. Its first original story has Xanatos invite the gargoyles to a Halloween party at his castle, ostensibly as a way for the gargoyles to befriend the New York City elite in a safe environment at a time when anti-gargoyle sentiment has spiked. The gargoyles, still acclimatizing to their new situation, are nothing less than over the moon about this. Elisa, who has been invited to the party independently from the gargoyles, also attends, in costume and with a date. If she has reservations about attending a party hosted by the person who destroyed his brother’s life, and who has neither apologized or attempted to mitigate the harm he has caused, they remain unsaid. It, too, shall pass.

Ian Pérez is a Puerto Rico-based translator, editor, and writer currently working on doing at least one of those professionally. He thinks a lot about Gargoyles and writes about it at Monsters of New York and about other things, which he writes about at Chasing Sheep. He is also @DoKnowButchie on Twitter.

Catherine Tramell in ‘Basic Instinct’ Is a Subversive Anti-Hero

The notion of Catherine as a subversive anti-hero develops when you view the film not as a story about the supposed protagonist Detective Nick Curran but as Catherine’s journey from mind games to almost domestic bliss but always returning to her basic instincts which threatens the Hollywood happy ending of established heteronormativity.

This guest post written by Alexandra West appears as part of our theme week on Unpopular Opinions.

What happens when we love something problematic? What happens when in the middle of something problematic there’s something unique, interesting, and incredibly refreshing? How do we as audience members look for the potentially progressive nuggets that drive a filmic narrative forward in new and interesting ways while also understanding that nugget can come wrapped in a basket of deplorable politics? One such case worthy of examination is Catherine Tramell (Sharon Stone) as a progressive anti-hero in Paul Verhoeven’s blockbuster erotic thriller Basic Instinct (1992). The notion of Catherine as a subversive anti-hero develops when you view the film not as a story about the supposed protagonist Detective Nick Curran (Michael Douglas) but as Catherine’s journey from mind games to almost domestic bliss but always returning to her basic instincts which threatens the Hollywood happy ending of established heteronormativity.

Set in San Francisco, notably one of the most queer-positive cities in North America, Basic Instinct centers on the murders of men possibly committed by Catherine, a beautiful, wealthy, murder mystery author with a degree in psychology. The murders all mirror crime scenes directly from her books and homicide detective Nick Curran becomes entangled in the crimes and obsessed with Catherine. Nick can’t decide if Catherine is behind the murders or if he’s in love with her or both.

Throughout the film, Catherine’s bisexuality is at the forefront of her character which marks her as transgressive to the hetro-male oriented police force while the other female characters in the film are also implied or explicitly coded as bisexual or lesbian. Any subtly or nuance in regards to the queer experience in a mainstream blockbuster is wiped away in favor of brash eroticism and the ultimate objectives of Nick who imposes his heteronormativity on his relationships, particularly with Catherine. Nick’s hope is that he’ll be enough for Catherine to settle down for. Catherine is framed in contradistinction to Nick’s almost girlfriend Beth (Jeanne Tripplehorn) a police therapist who plays the typical “good girl” with a maybe sinister past. Nick (and the film) can’t help but conflate both Catherine and Beth in his mind through the lens of the virgin or the whore. Ultimately, Nick’s desire to render Catherine as his own private virgin drives the film towards a mainstream conclusion.

But what of Catherine, the object and prize of the film? Through all the gross biphobia, homophobia, and misogyny of Basic Instinct, Catherine remains an enigma. Her role in the film as foil to Nick’s heteronormative dream is what’s most subversive about her as a character. Her alluring presence confounds those around her; her placement in the film is a clear nod to the femme fatale role, but Catherine occupies the role of narrative driver. The ultimate satisfaction of Basic Instinct in subsequent viewings stems from watching her manipulate the narrative and those around her, watching protagonist Nick succumb to her charms and power. Catherine continually and enjoyably plays with Nick prodding him towards his reckless ways of drinking, drugging, and indiscriminate sex. However, instead of attempting to create husband material out of Nick, Catherine utilizes him for her own purposes of her new book. Her means to an end finishes with her book, her creation, her narrative – not wedded bliss. Catherine’s role as an author is posited by the film as a potential red herring when in fact it actually marks her as the maker of meaning, conducting research through her own means.

It is her manipulation which allows Nick to reflect, grow and change throughout the film for better and for worse allowing him to be the hero he thinks he is. Nick completes the narrative she constructs for him. If he did not play along with her suggestions and supposed whims the film could have had a very different outcome but as Basic Instinct stands, Catherine developed Nick’s narrative of one of toxic masculinity viewing everything other as a threat which in its dark ending suggests that Nick’s white-picket fence goals are as unfounded as the film’s dangerous portrayals of homosexuality. As Nick views Catherine as a prize, she views him as a character in one of her books and just as disposable. Ultimately, Nick needs Catherine more than she needs him.

While Catherine does inhabit the role of the Dangerous Woman (a seemingly modern version of the film noir femme fatale character) cliché and the Murderous Bisexual Women trope, it’s important to acknowledge what is unique and perhaps even progressive about her. She is both the architect of the narrative and her own destruction as she struggles against giving up her agency in favor of a “normal” life. In order to act as a good mother or wife, she’d have to give up the things that made her interesting and alluring in the first place, illuminating the flaws of the patriarchal “happy ending” and ultimately mocking the very thing the film attempts to confirm as an “acceptable” way of life. The role she never gives up on is that of author and creator; her sexuality, identity, and motives are all fluid based on the situation but her God-like power in the film is unmistakable. The film even flirts with a near happy ending for Nick and Catherine which is where the film would have ended if Nick was the true protagonist but instead, the film ends with the vantage point of Catherine’s true intention.

Stone would go on to reprise the role of Catherine Tramell in Basic Instinct 2 (2006) as the only holdover from the previous film. Stone has had a problematic relationship with the original film herself, decrying that the infamous leg-crossing shot was achieved and exhibited without her consent which in essence is the film doubling-down on its problematic nature. Watching the film in this day and age, its troubling and problematic elements ring through clearer than church bells, but the film is also a hugely important cultural touchstone for 1992 as it was the 4th highest grossing film of 1992. The film is marked by Verhoeven and screenwriter Joe Eszterhas’ penchant for creating watchable chaos and mayhem (see also Showgirls) with the film perpetually creating a new audience for itself based on the film’s taboo-inclined nature. Looking back at Basic Instinct as a piece of media that was so widely and readily consumed, its façade is still marred by biphobia, homophobia, and misogyny, yet it’s satisfying to know that Catherine still remains at large, a threat to everything Hollywood deemed acceptable.

See also at Bitch Flicks:

The Trope of the Murderous Bisexual Woman

Biphobia in Basic Instinct

Alexandra West is a freelance horror journalist and playwright who lives, works, and survives in Toronto. Her work has appeared in the Toronto Star, Rue Morgue, Post City Magazine and Offscreen Film Journal. She is a regular contributor to Famous Monsters of Filmland and a columnist forDiabolique with “The Devil Made Us Watch It.” In December 2012, West co-founded the Faculty of Horror podcast with fellow writer Andrea Subissati, which explores the analytical side of horror films and the darkest recesses of academia.