February 2014 – Page 4

The Strong, Detached Female Leads in ‘Bones’ and ‘The Tunnel’

'Bones' & 'The Tunnel' Posters — *Bones* and *The Tunnel* Posters

True confession: I love the emerging trope of strong, detached female leads in procedural crime shows. Temperance “Bones” Brennan, internationally acclaimed forensic anthropologist, from the TV show Bones was a seminal figure in this movement, and Elise Wasserman, workaholic, brilliant police officer from The Tunnel is a more recent iteration. (The Tunnel is the French/British remake of the Danish/Swedish series The Bridge. The Bridge has also been remade for American audiences as a US/Mexico TV crime drama.)

Though Bones is a kind of cheesy show (and getting cheesier and boring-er all the time), I have long loved Emily Deschanel‘s characterization of the logical, methodical scientist who solves crimes alongside her more emotional, intuitive male FBI partner, Seeley Booth. When we first meet Brennan, she is not only the leading forensic anthropologist in her field, but she is a physically capable women who’s an expert in martial arts and good with a gun. She also has a pragmatic attitude towards relationships and sex, often comparing both to animal and tribal cultures throughout the world and throughout history to explain human tendencies. Love, Brennan explains, is a chemical process in the brain and not the romanticized notion in which her partner, Booth, believes.

Bones: She's a badass in a labcoat — Bones: She’s a badass in a labcoat

I also immediately liked the stone-faced Elise from The Tunnel with her calm rationale, her unwillingness to lie, and her dedication to solving homicides. Though difficult to work with, everyone respects Elise’s abilities as a detective (much like Brennan). Also like Brennan, Elise views sex as a practical necessity. She prefers to be alone, isn’t seeking companionship, and doesn’t become emotionally attached to her sex partners. She even tells her partner, Karl Roebuck (a more empathetic character for Stephen Dillane than his Stannis Baratheon of Game of Thrones fame), that her current lover wants her to change and that she doesn’t want to change.

Though I love this strong, intensely logical female lead character trope, it also raises some questions for me. I like the idea of reversing traditional gender roles by making the female lead the analytical one and the male lead the emotional one, but I wonder if, in a way, this is an attempt at the masculinization of the shows’ female characters? These characters literally have their emotions and their ability to express their emotions almost completely removed. Why did the writers think it was necessary to remove the emotions of its female characters in order to make them logical? This isn’t Star Trek; Brennan and Elise aren’t Vulcans. This subtly promotes the idea that logic and emotions are mutually exclusive, even part of a binary opposition. In particular, this dichotomy suggests that a women who is in touch with her emotions cannot possibly be rational, too. As women are so often associated with emotion, is muting Brennan and Elise’s emotions an attempt to make them more masculinely rational?

Elise hard at work, eschewing sleep and a social life for her job

Interestingly enough, over the many seasons of Bones, the writers are actually changing Brennan, making her more readily emotional, quicker to cry or acknowledge her love, her fear, her sadness. At the same time, they have systematically made her more “feminine” by having her suddenly wanting many of the trappings of the traditional female role that she once dismissed (having a baby, cohabitating, and getting married, in particular). Brennen also seems to have forgotten her martial arts skills, is in need of frequent rescues, and no longer uses her gun. Not only that, but they gave her an unexplained supernatural experience that defies her atheism and points to the existence of a higher power. All these things undermine her identity and have slowly rewritten her into less of that subversive, independent female powerhouse role.

Another thing that gives me pause is that both Brennan and Elise are…abrasive. To strangers, they can come off as rude, insensitive, and self-important. Both women are, though, strikingly beautiful. Emily Deschanel brings her stark blue eyes and sexy, husky voice to the characterization of Brennan.

Brennan is a detached scientist when it comes to bones, but does the fact that she's a looker make her more likable? — Brennan is the perennial detached scientist, but she’s a looker.

Even though they try to make Clémence Poésy look disheveled as Elise and maybe they’re attempting to make her seem plain because she’s not obviously made-up, but she’s model gorgeous.

Messy hair and combat boots add to Elise's allure in 'The Tunnel' — Messy hair and combat boots add to Elise’s allure in *The Tunnel*

This makes me question whether or not audiences would like these women and find their quirks so endearing if they weren’t so beautiful? Or, maybe, audiences might like them, but would studios trust audiences to like these unusual women if they weren’t knockout stunning…since pretty much all women on TV are required to meet a specific standard of beauty no matter what their personality may be?

Now, it’s my theory that both Brennan and Elise are most likely somewhere on the autism spectrum. Both women have trouble understanding the humor of others, reading the social or emotional cues of others, and observing social niceties.

A Joan of Arc joke is completely lost on Elise.

I love that their communities are accepting and inclusive, that these women lead productive, successful lives, and their capability is rarely questioned. But why aren’t we talking about it? Why aren’t these shows acknowledging the truth about who these women are, the challenges they face, and the multifaceted nature of their triumphs? By not talking about it, these shows not only deny the identity and experiences of these women but also those of autism spectrum viewers and their community members. Announcing that your lead character is part of an underrepresented, marginalized group is a hugely important step in de-stigmatizing and giving a voice to that group.

Let Brennan be the superheroine she was meant to be!

Despite my speculations on the institutional sexism and shortcomings of the creators of Brennan from Bones and Elise from The Tunnel, I dig these women. They’re both smart, ambitious, unique, highly moral, and compassionate women who are fantastic role models for their female audience members (in spite of the apparent taming of Brennan through marriage and child rearing). I wish the shows were doing a few things differently…more better-ly, but all in all, Brennan and Elise are great characters who I love to watch, which says to me that both shows are doing something very, very right.

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Amanda Rodriguez is an environmental activist living in Asheville, North Carolina. She holds a BA from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio and an MFA in fiction writing from Queens University in Charlotte, NC. She writes all about food and drinking games on her blog Booze and Baking. Fun fact: while living in Kyoto, Japan, her house was attacked by monkeys.

The Women Both Admired and Ignored in ’20 Feet From Stardom’

The background vocalists are mostly women of color often singing behind white, male leads and the film poses the question of why these white guys (whose voices are not as strong as the women featured) became stars and their backup singers did not. The answer turns out to be more complicated than we might have thought.

When I was in high school, The Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter” wasn’t new, but it didn’t have the baggage of being associated with Martin Scorcese films, Dexter, or The Simpsons. I remember wondering about the woman whose powerful vocals make up half the song. In those days duets between men and women were a staple on the radio with both artists’ names above the title. But no one ever mentioned this woman. Years later with the advent of the internet and Wikipedia I looked up her name, Merry Clayton, and was surprised I didn’t recognize it. When I had heard the song I was sure I was hearing someone who had gone on to record other hits.

In a way, I had been right. Among many other songs, Merry Clayton sang on Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama,” Joe Cocker’s “Feelin’ Alright,” and Ringo Starr’s “Oh My My,” but because she was a backup singer, her name was buried in the credits and never mentioned on the radio when stations played these songs over and over. So even though many of us have heard her voice throughout our lives and maybe have even bought the songs and albums she sang on, most of us do not know her name.

The Oscar-nominated documentary 20 Feet From Stardom (directed by Morgan Neville) attempts to right this injustice by focusing on Clayton and a number of other backup singers whose voices we know, but whose names we often do not: Judith Hill (though some may recognize her from The Voice), Claudia Lennear, Lisa Fischer, Táta Vega, The Waters, as well as former back-up singers whose names became well-known like Darlene Love, the 60s girl-group singer who is in The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and Luther Vandross, who went from singing background on and cowriting and arranging hit David Bowie songs to his own successful solo career.

Anyone who has worked in the arts has seen enough examples to know talent is no guarantee of success– which some of the popular artists who have worked with the backup singers featured admit in the film. We see and hear solo performances from Clayton and Fischer and although they’re good (Fischer’s single won a Grammy), the songs they perform are not close to the caliber of “Gimme Shelter.” What makes a song (and its singer) a hit is tricky: sometimes the vocalists’ collaborators are the key (Mick Jagger with Keith Richards–or Bowie with Vandross), sometimes grooming from a powerful recording executive and producer does the trick (like Clive Davis for Whitney Houston) and sometimes artists become successful on the strength of their songwriting skills instead of their vocal prowess (Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits, and Bob Dylan among many, many others).

As Darlene Love mentions she and the other girl-group singers modified their sound according to the wishes of producers so, for example, in the background vocals for “The Monster Mash” they changed their style to “sound white.” A singer’s popularity often depends on a distinctive style. Even Aretha Franklin didn’t become the Aretha Franklin we know today until she was allowed to sing and play piano as she had when she had sung gospel. In previous, secular recordings she was backed by an orchestra including plenty of strings, in a effort to try to replicate the success of Sarah Vaughn. The backup singers’ flexibility and skill in creating generic vocals might have also been their downfall in achieving success on their own.

Some backup singers have crossed over to great, popular success under their own names. but Sheryl Crowe and Emmylou Harris are white women, Luther Vandross was a Black man and Leon Russell was a white guy. The door doesn’t seem open to women of color. The film touches on some of what the women have had to deal with, acknowledging the racism in “Sweet Home Alabama,” which Clayton says her now-deceased husband convinced her to take part in, so her voice could be a retort to the song’s lyrics. The opening credits unroll to the sound of Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side” with its infamous chorus of, “And all the colored girls sing…” When the song was released “colored” wasn’t as strong a slur as it is today, but it also was not a word that most Black people were still using to refer to themselves. Progressive white people didn’t use it then either. The song “Brown Sugar” was rumored to be written about Lennear (who dated Mick Jagger around the time it was written) and its lyrics are also cringe-worthy.

JaggerFischer20Ft — Mick Jagger and Lisa Fischer in the 90s

The women are often in the position of being not just ear candy, but eye candy as well. We see a younger, slender Lisa Fischer in spandex eventually replacing Merry Clayton when the Rolling Stones tour and play “Gimme Shelter”–though Mick Jagger and Keith Richards have become visibly older and more fossil-like in the intervening years. Fischer is now 55, and toured with the Stones in 2013 (as she has in each of their tours for the last 24 years), but the precariousness of these gigs for women as they age makes Lennear’s long-ago decision to quit the business and teach Spanish to kids instead seem like a sensible one.

Now that the music industry is collapsing onto itself, the women who are still singing backup complain “my phone has not rung,” and struggle to make a living. So I’m puzzled why so much of the audience and critics see this film as a “feel-good” experience. At the end I couldn’t help thinking what the future would hold for these women: if this film is the last vestige of an era, the way a stuffed passenger pigeon in a museum is all that remains of the flocks that used to cover the sky.

[youtube_sc url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kgRq_pGN2g” autohide=”0″]

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Ren Jender is a queer writer-performer/producer putting a film together. Her writing has appeared in The Toast, xoJane and the Feminist Wire. You can follow her on Twitter @renjender.

The ‘Heart of Darkness’ at ‘True Detective’s Core

HBO’s newest miniseries ‘True Detective,’ starring Matthew McConaughey (Rusty) and Woody Harrelson (Marty), has already spawned a substantial cult following, receiving universal acclaim, and it’s only just reached the halfway point at episode number four.

If you’re not watching it, you should be. ‘True Detective’ is being hailed as the “rise of the miniseries” (following on the heels of the mini-series sweep at the 2014 Golden Globes), a continuation of the TV excellence that has, and will continue to drastically reshape our visual storytelling experience (that’s a big claim, but one to bet on in the coming years).

[youtube_sc url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXwCoNwBSkQ”]

HBO’s newest miniseries True Detective, starring Matthew McConaughey (Rusty) and Woody Harrelson (Marty), has already spawned a substantial cult following, receiving universal acclaim, and it’s only just reached the halfway point at episode number four.

If you’re not watching it, you should be. True Detective is being hailed as the “rise of the miniseries” (following on the heels of the mini-series sweep at the 2014 Golden Globes), a continuation of the TV excellence that has, and will continue to drastically reshape our visual storytelling experience (that’s a big claim, but one to bet on in the coming years).

At the forefront of the True Detective conversation is its subversion of the overdone police procedural (finally) and its meshing of gritty realism and drug-fueled surrealism, creating narrative that is both poignant and disturbing. Its scenes blend sharp, cynical dialogue with the ever-changing landscape of rural Louisiana.

Rusty (Matthew McCaunghey) and Marty (Woody Harrelson) spinning out of control.

The cinematography is fantastic; episode four, “Who Goes There” features a visceral, though down to earth, six-minute, one shot, gun fight (meaning one take through several houses, a few backyards, and one chain link fence). The scene overwhelms when contrasted with the highly edited, over-wrought action scenes we are spoon-fed at every Hollywood blockbuster and police drama. In fact, the scene orchestrated by Cary Fukunaga is so impressive, many are calling it the best scene of the TV season.

The soundtrack is throbbing, underplaying the simple actions of a police investigation and turning it into an event of greater significance: This is isn’t just a race to stop a serial killer, it’s a metaphor for the battle of good and evil, punctuated by Nic Pizzolatto’s intricate character studies of Rusty in his obsessive nihilism and Marty’s downward spiral.

Yet, for a show that is steeped within the masculinity of a 1996 rural Louisiana police station, and the personal crises of its two male leads, how are the women of True Detective faring? Its women are murdered and raped, wives and prostitutes, stenographers and secretaries. In short, the gritty brush with which Pizzolatto has painted Rusty and Marty has been used on the female cast as well.

However, some of True Detective’s women are all the more compelling because of their flawed station in life, and not just because it’s sadly accurate. In 1991, less than 9 percent of the US police force was female, so the fact that these women operate within in a different capacity doesn’t make the show any less forceful.

In fact, the ways that these women, varied, and often pitiful, demonstrate an adaptability and survival for their incredibly hostile environment, takes a prominent role in the mini series; since True Detective shows so much of Louisiana during their search, it similarly shows much of its women (especially within the confines of poverty).

One of 'True Detectives' many prostitutes. — One of *True Detectives* many prostitutes.

As the show progresses, one character in particular shines (if you want to call it that) in his interactions with women: Marty. The easy possession that “family man” Marty exerts over the women in his life, beginning to show a penchant for violence in his need to continue that dominion towards his wife Maggie (Michelle Monaghan) and girlfriend Lisa (Alexandra Daddario), is the key factor in showing Marty’s breakdown.

Yet, for all of the effort to steep his characters in realism, some would argue that True Detective still relies on sexist cliché to communicate it’s character failings; Sean Collins of Rolling Stone points out:

“But the idea of a mistress not understanding that’s all she’s supposed to be good for, besides being sexist points back to the show’s reliance on stock characters.”

And Collins might have a point there; so far, the show has featured a lot of women as victims. Though in episode two, “Seeing Things,” the dame of a whorehouse (a sort-of victim) offers an either brilliant, or crazy, provocative reason for prostitution.

Dame: “What do you know about where that girl’s been? Where she come from?…It’s a woman’s body ain’t it? A woman’s choice”

Marty: “She doesn’t look like a woman to me. At that age she’s not equipped to make those choices, but what do you care as long as you get your money?”

Dame: “Girls walk this earth all the time screwing for free, why is it you add business to the mix and boys like you can’t stand the thought. I’ll tell you why, its cause suddenly you don’t own it the way you thought you did.”

Which is an interesting foreshadowing to Marty’s violence when he later discovers that the woman he is having an affair with is also seeing someone else. The line itself, “you don’t own it the way you thought you did,” is particularly meaningful when aimed at the wandering possessiveness of Marty; however, outside of the episode, it enters the heated discussion on female sexuality, shame, and the commercialization of the female body.

Beth (Lily Simmons) from 'True Detective' as an underage prostitute. — Beth (Lily Simmons) as an underage prostitute.

This comes around to the tagline for the show, “Heart of Darkness,” an obvious play on words from Joseph Conrad’s classic novella about the African jungle, Heart of Darkness, (fitting since Pizzolatto spent several years teaching literature and writing in academia). For True Detective, the audience is left wondering, is the “Heart of Darkness” the Louisiana landscape? A metaphor for the state of humanity? Or a more literal casting of the two heros’ state of being?

Effective, especially considering that HBO’s website pops up as “Touch the Darkness” (and “Darkness Becomes You”), inviting the audience to experience the demons without, and the demons within.

Nun Better: ‘Sewing Hope’ and ‘Radical Grace’

Nuns are the BEST. What’s so interesting about them is that they operate simultaneously within and against a hierarchy. Anyone who cares about social justice can relate to the frustrations of trying to change institutions from the inside, often wishing you could opt out, but never being able to. Recently I saw two documentaries about awesome nuns being awesome feminist warriors in very different circumstances.

I’m Episcopalian, which I like to tell people means I get the best parts of Catholicism and Protestantism – though it would probably be just as true to say we get the worst of both worlds. We do technically have nuns, but they don’t seem to be completely awesome the way Catholic nuns are.

Nuns are the BEST. What’s so interesting about them is that they operate simultaneously within and against a hierarchy. Anyone who cares about social justice can relate to the frustrations of trying to change institutions from the inside, often wishing you could opt out, but never being able to. Recently I saw two documentaries about awesome nuns being awesome feminist warriors in very different circumstances: Sewing Hope is about Sister Rosemary’s work to help women and girls in Uganda, while Radical Grace tells the story of three US nuns who fight for social justice.

The West does not have a very good image of Uganda. Hands up if you remember Kony 2012 and the associated controversy, not least of which was the issue of white saviorism. White people sure do love to swoop in and rescue brown people from themselves, completely eliding the history (and present) of western colonialism that is often the root of many of the problems in the Two-Thirds World. The cool thing about Sister Rosemary is that she is not a white savior. She’s a local Ugandan who runs a school for women and girls who were forced to be soldiers in Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army. Many of these women were also sex-slaves, and bear the burden of social stigma on top of single parenthood and personal trauma.

Saint Monica’s, the school run by Sister Rosemary, trains the women in tailoring and baking, providing them with skills that are in demand both in the local hospitality industry and for the international sale of goods. The school not only helps them work toward economic independence, but it also provides a holistic, person-centered environment for healing.

What’s really extraordinary about Sister Rosemary’s work is that she’s not just providing skills from a brute economic bottom line – she’s helping trauma survivors recover. Early in the film, Sister Rosemary speaks about the importance of listening, and this is immediately followed by several women telling their own stories of horror and brutality. Sister Rosemary explains that her method is not to welcome girls by saying she knows what they have been through, but to provide a supportive environment. This includes both emotional support and very practical things like childcare.

Sister Rosemary is working within her context and making a difference from the ground up using the resources available to her and to women in her culture. The US context is very different, and so concomitantly are the methods and tactics of Sisters Simone, Jean, and Chris.

I saw a rough cut of Radical Grace at the Athena Film Festival. — I saw a rough cut of *Radical Grace* at the Athena Film Festival.

Being censured by the Vatican for “radical feminism” (no, not that kind of radical feminism) didn’t stop the sisters from fighting the injustices of their own society. As Nuns on the Bus, they traveled around assorted US cities and petitioned a number of politicians, campaigning for healthcare reform and now immigration reform.

The sisters are tackling issues both of wider society (poverty, the prison-industrial complex) and specific to the Catholic Church (women’s ordination). They are undeterred by the backlash they face, which ranges from the disapproval of the Church hierarchy to on-the-ground accusations of being “worse than pedophile priests” (yes, one protestor really says that).

The sisters are grounded in their commitment to the social gospel, which sees Jesus’ message as being primarily one of radical justice for the people on the margins of society. At the same time, the nuns are committed to thoughtful interrogation of their own faith, and to challenging the institution – which, as they say, is “always going to be ten years too late, if not a hundred” when it comes to social issues.

In some ways these nuns are an embarrassment to the hierarchy. They make the institutional Church look like a reactionary dinosaur; and yet it’s clear that they are working from a place of love. The Church is something they want to be better, and they’re taking matters into their own hands.

Vatican-approved picture of nun being badass

The filmmakers want us to see these stories and be moved by them to get involved. Whether it’s donating to Sister Rosemary and her women, or helping to get the final cut of Radical Grace finished so the story can get out there, they are hoping to motivate us to action. As Rebecca Parrish, director of Radical Grace, notes, there is potential for alliance between secular feminism and progressive religious movements, and we must overcome the divisions of ideology if we want to make the world a better place.

You can learn more about Sewing Hope here, or donate to the Radical Grace kickstarter here.

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Max Thornton blogs at Gay Christian Geek, tumbles as trans substantial, and is slowly learning to twitter at @RainicornMax.

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

Check out what we’ve been reading this week–and let us know what you’ve been reading/writing in the comments!

The Best Super Bowl Tweets from the Real Feminist Bookstore by Melissa Locker at IFC

The Most Terrible Super Bowl Commercials by Rachel Lindsay at Bitch Media

Finally, A Super Bowl Ad Feminists Can Be Proud Of by Elizabeth Plank at PolicyMic

Review: ‘The New Black’ Offers Complex Portrait of Black Same-Sex Marriage Debate by Nijla Mumin at Shadow and Act

Is “The Wolf of Wall Street” Punk Rock? Hardly. by Karina Eileraas and Pye Ian at Ms. blog

Six International Films to Have On Your Radar (Or See this Weekend at PIFF) by Kjerstin Johnson at Bitch Media

The Big O: What’s at Stake for Cate in the Woody Debate? by Susan Wloszczyna at Women and Hollywood

Watching Gonzo Netflix: A Selection of Films I’d Really Like To See by Ella Risbridger at The Toast

Hollywood Needs To Redefine What Makes A Movie “Mainstream” by ReBecca Theodore-Vachon at Film Fatale NYC

Playwright Rebecca Gilman on Feminism, Class and Flawed Heroes by Paula Kamen at Ms. blog

What have you been reading/writing this week? Tell us in the comments!

Becky, Adelaide, and Nan: Women with Down Syndrome on ‘Glee’ and ‘American Horror Story’

Characters with physical or developmental disabilities are rarely given prominent roles on television ensembles, much less well-developed characters. ‘Glee’ and ‘American Horror Story,’ TV shows created by Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk, both feature important characters with Down Syndrome and have received much praise for it. However, the mere existence of these characters is not enough to suggest they are well portrayed and in each character there are several questionable areas that warrant discussion.

Characters with physical or developmental disabilities are rarely given prominent roles on television ensembles, much less well-developed characters. Glee and American Horror Story, TV shows created by Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk, both feature important characters with Down Syndrome and have received much praise for it. Glee’s Becky Jackson and AHS’s Adelaide Langdon and Nan are all portrayed as flawed women and are allowed their own inner lives, desires, and triumphs.

However, the mere existence of these characters is not enough to suggest they are well portrayed and in each character there are several questionable areas that warrant discussion. Though one must take this criticism with a grain of salt, as Glee is a surreal over-the-top comedy where everyone is made fun of to a degree (though has been consistently problematic in its portrayal of women, the disabled, bisexuality and transwomen, among others) while American Horror Story is literally a horror show, where nearly everyone suffers and dies and indulges in many horror movie cliches–among them the child-like prophet and the martyr.

Becky

Becky Jackson (Lauren Potter) was introduced in Glee’s first season to as a means to character development for the show’s previously one-dimensional villain, Sue Sylvester. She was a shy, young girl with Down Syndrome, a social outcast who just wanted to be a cheerleader.

When Sue put her through a rigorous audition process, viewers and Glee Club leader Will Schuester assumed this was yet another of Sue’s cruelties. Obviously Sue was just torturing this girl for her own amusement with no hope of her actually making the squad, but this assumption was proved wrong when the show revealed that she reminds Sue of her sister Jean, who also has Downs.

Sue tells Will she is treating Becky just like everyone else because that’s what she wants and from then on Becky is a Cheerio, Sue’s constant sidekick and assistant and frequently recurring character.

Becky also continues to aid in the development of Sue’s character, as she becomes her voice of reason, being the the only one who can criticize Sue’ behaviour and talk to her on her level without fear of retaliation. For example, when Becky learns that Sue’s baby will likely have Downs, she is able to tell Sue that she needs to work on her patience to be a good parent. Becky functions as Sue’s heart and when Sue is shattered by her sister’s death, she expresses her grief by casting aside the only other thing that made her human, and kicks Becky off the Cheerios. Their bond is restored when Sue welcomes Becky back to the squad and promotes her to captain, after realizing how much it helps her to have Becky in her life.

Becky and Sue have a strong relationship that gives Sue humanity and Becky, a role model

However, for Becky, her relationship with Sue results in the loss of her own personhood. In a relatively short length of time, Becky gives up any other interests or ambitions she had and becomes a miniature version of her hero, Sue (even dressing her for Halloween). For most of the show, Becky is Sue’s mouthpiece, echoing her criticisms and opinions and making snarky and frequently offensive comments in the same manner that Sue is known for. She even shares Sue’s grossly inflated sense of self worth and importance (Helen Mirren is her inner voice) and heckles and sabotages other students when given the opportunity.

For brief period, it was fun that Becky could be as mean and snarky as almost all the other characters, but as the show dragged this on to become Becky’s defining characteristic, it become patronizing and unfunny. Becky is not portrayed as an otherwise ordinary teenage girl with interests in sex and blue humour but as low comedy, like a child swearing. The joke wasn’t what she was saying but that she was saying these kind of things at all.

Becky is disturbingly infantilized as Baby Jesus in the school’s nativity scene

In addition, Becky is constantly prepositioning other characters and making crude sexual comments about them. She lusts over the Glee Club’s Men of McKinley calendar and claims ownership of one-time date, Artie Abrams when she sees him kissing his girlfriend, calling him her future husband. However, none of her attractions are treated as valid. When she pays for a kiss at a kissing booth run by quarterback Finn Hudson, he kisses her on the cheek; when she and Artie bond over their disabilities on their date, he breaks up with her after she asks him to “do it” with her (in an alternate reality where Artie never went out with her, Becky became “the school slut”); and when she seems to find happiness with Jason, who also has Down Syndrome, she claims the relationship couldn’t work because he liked hot dogs and she liked pizza. By hypersexualizing a character who is treated as humourous for having a sexual desire and never considered as a viable romantic option, she is also desexualized and infantilized, treated like a child who doesn’t understand that (from the narrative’s perspective) the conventionally attractive characters aren’t interested in sleeping with her and she’ll never be prom queen.

There have been two particularly problematic plot lines featuring Becky in Glee’s recent seasons, both which could be essays in their own right. In season four’s much-maligned Shooting Star , Becky brings a gun to school because she fears the world outside the safe bubble of McKinley High, suggesting individuals with Down Syndrome are unstable and dangerous. In season five episode, Movin’ Out, frequent misogynist Artie decides to “save” Becky and helps her find a college with programs for people with developmental disabilities, something she hadn’t considered previously. While this recent story has a positive message about Becky’s future and her abilities, the fact that another character, one who she stalked after he rejected her, imbues it with the same patronizing dynamic found in much of the plot lines featuring Becky.

Adelaide

The first episode of American Horror Story: Murder House opens in 1978 with Adelaide Langdon, a young girl with Downs ominously warning two boys they will die if they go into the titular house. In the next scene, her warning comes true.
As an adult over 30 years later, Adelaide (Jamie Brewer) continues to given warnings, frightening the Harmon family who have just moved into the house, next door to where she lives with her mother Constance (Jessica Lange). Though she is well meaning and friendly, her warnings are constantly misconstrued as threats due to her creepy habit of starring unblinking and appearing out of nowhere in the Harmon house.

Addy’s mother Constance is relentlessly cruel to her

Being a character on a horror television show, Addy’s Down Syndrome is used to frame her as an uncanny figure, an other in the style of Tod Browning’s Freaks. In horror or gothic media, the uncanny is something that is familiar, yet strange at the same time, producing an unsettling and comfortable feeling, such as identical twins, mutes or people with developmental disabilities. Seemingly, Addy is able to enter the house whenever she desires, no matter what barriers are in her way, suggesting a magical, otherworldly aspect of her character. Her Down Syndrome alone is meant to produce discomfort in the viewer, manipulating them into wondering if she is evil or will, even unthinkingly, harm the family, for no other reason than that she is so othered.

Raised to believe she is an ugly monster who should keep out of sight, Addy wants nothing more than to be “a pretty girl” and mourns that she doesn’t look like the women in her fashion magazines. Her mother frequently insults her, calling her a burden and a ‘mongoloid’ and reinforcing over and over that Addy’s dream will never happen. Cruelly, Constance punishes her by locking her in the “Bad Girl Room,” a closet full of mirrors, further reinforcing Addy’s monstrous self-image.

As punishment, Addy is terrorized in a closet full of mirrors, where she is forced to see her face

Addy’s story ends sadly on Halloween when she is hit by a car and killed. Here, the show’s treatment of Addy continues to be problematic as it tries to have it both ways, portraying her as both something to fear and as an object of pity, a tragedy for viewers to mourn. When Addy dies she is wearing “a pretty girl” Halloween mask and just minutes before, she was ecstatically happy to finally be the person she’d always wanted, even if it was only in a small, temporary way. Like Sue, Addy is also used to humanize a bigoted character, as Constance, who caused most of the problems in Addy’s life puts makeup on Addy’s corpse and cries while telling her she’s “beautiful.” This suggests that Addy’s purpose in the narrative was chiefly to facilitate Constance’s character development, rather than a storyline or a life of her own.

Dressed as a “pretty girl” Addy is hit by a car and killed on Halloween

Nan

Unlike Adelaide, whose story is presented as a tragedy centered around her Down Syndrome, Nan’s condition is never mentioned but subtly informs how she is treated by the narrative and the other characters. A young clairvoyant on American Horror Story: Coven, Nan (Jamie Brewer) is in most ways, portrayed as a normal girl. She admires the hot neighbor with her classmates, joins in on their catty comments and using her powers for cruel, teenage girl teasing (trying to make Madison put her cigarette in her vagina) in a way that doesn’t seem like the joke is that she is saying these things at all.

Nan is however, constantly dismissed even within the group that tacitly includes her (problematically, Queenie who is Black is treated as the real outsider). She is never considered a serious contender in the season long competition to see who is the most powerful witch of her generation, the Supreme, called ugly by Queen Bee Madison and the discovery that the neighbor, Luke is interested in her is treated as unbelievable by other characters.

Nan and Madison (Emma Roberts) compete for the affections of their neighbor Luke

However, sad as it may be, this is probably be an honest portrayal of how such a character would be treated in such an environment full of bitchery and backstabbing over any character flaw or deficit in appearance. Unlike Queenie, whose difference and feelings about her exclusion from the coven’s majority of white witches are explored in detail, Nan’s feelings are glossed over. She is different, but her difference is never examined, so it becomes an elephant in the room.

Like Adelaide, Nan insists she is not a virgin when it is assumed by other characters. She says she has sex all the time and men find her hot, however because the show never gives any background on who Nan was before she came to the school (as is given for all other characters), it is not clear whether this is true. The storyline of her romance with Luke is never able to progress to a romantic or sexual relationship as he is quickly murdered by his mother so he will not reveal her secrets.

Nan is portrayed as the moral center of the school/coven as her power, allows her to see into the hearts of the people around her. She mediates in fights and threatens to tell the police about the baby Marie Laveau had kidnapped earlier. However, Nan has a dark side which is briefly explored when she uses her powers to kill Luke’s mother, by compelling her to drink bleach, as revenge for her murder of Luke.

After her murder, Nan’s spirit looks down at her body and decides to leave the coven

She is ultimately murdered by matriarchs Marie and Fiona Goode, functioning bringing them closer together. Her death is used as the sacrifice of an innocent soul, but it is suggested that Nan had some choice in the matter and decides to leave the coven to destroy each other so she can be at peace. The one bad thing she does, the neighbor’s murder is excused because it was deserved and as she is accepted as an innocent, a soul too pure for this world. In this manner, Nan comes close to the stereotype of the saintly disabled person, and is portrayed as a martyr, the lone character over the season who is never resurrected.

Ultimately, though are three characters discussed here have problematic and debatable qualities, both in their personalities and in the way they are framed by their respective narratives, they offer unique portrayals of women with Down Syndrome. If nothing else, they are all prominent characters who are treated as people rather than public service announcements in major television shows. Hopefully they are seen as steps in the right direction.

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Elizabeth Kiy is a Canadian writer and freelance journalist living in Toronto, Ontario. She recently graduated from Carleton University where she majored in journalism and minored in film.

Seed & Spark: Go Big or Go Home

Elena directing The Catch — Elena directing *The Catch*

This is a guest post by Elena Weinberg.

Being a female filmmaker isn’t hard, but it is definitely interesting. Maybe that statement isn’t true for everyone; maybe I just surround myself with good people. Either way, making films has been great for me as a person, but especially as a woman.

In December of 2012, my partner, Duncan Coe, entered into a screen writing contest. He has been a playwright for years and thought “Why the hell not? I’ll try my hand at the screen too.” The catch was that if he made the top 20, they wanted to see films he had written, produced or directed. So, it looked like we needed to make a film, just in case. But in Texas we have this phrase: “Go Big, or Go Home.” So, instead of just making one little short film in case he got in, we decided to go on a 12 month long journey. See, I got my degree in acting, and he got his in acting and writing. Neither of us knew anything about the behind the camera stuff. But hey, we live in the digital age, we could learn, right? So, we did. We decided to make one short film a month for the year of 2013. Each month we would focus on something different that we hadn’t learned yet. The first month, we did a music video for a friend’s band so that we didn’t have to worry about sound. The next month, we focused on specific shot techniques. March and April focused on voiceovers and live sound. By August, we were getting creative and even tried our hand at stop-motion. He didn’t make the top 20 of the contest, be we had grown into something much bigger than that. We had formed a production company, TurtleDove Films, out of sheer will and determination. We finished the twelve months and not only came out alive, but even have 2 film festivals under our belts and one award. What an accomplishment, right?

Still of actress Kimberly Gates, who plays Jamie in The Catch — Still of actress Kimberly Gates, who plays Jamie in *The Catch*

That’s all great on paper, but let’s dig a little deeper. What was this experience like for me, as a woman? It was pretty crazy good. Duncan and I fell into our roles early on: he wrote and did cinematography and I directed and business managed. As the female in our duo, I got to be in charge. Now, that has nothing to do with the fact that I AM a woman (I’m just naturally better at taking charge and more organized than he is) but it definitely feels good to be a female in that position. I found myself looking for ways to empower myself and other women on my sets. In November, I decided to challenge Duncan on the writing end. I pointed out that we hadn’t had a full female cast yet, and that most of our female characters hadn’t been particularly strong. He’s a “write what you know” kind of guy, so he blamed that on being a dude and not really understanding women. I called bullshit and told him he just needed practice. So, “The Catch” was born. (Watch it free to play, here: https://vimeo.com/80720328).

What I like about this film is that not only did we come up with a full female driven story, but every woman in this film is a bad ass. No meek characters here. Every single one of them has a strong point of view and sense of self. Those are two things I think we need to focus on in this male dominated industry. As characters, and as women on sets, we can’t be afraid to take charge, voice our opinions and be ourselves. Maybe I’m just lucky, but when I’m directing on set, it feels really really good. People listen to me and value my opinions. Since TurtleDove’s inception, I’ve grown exponentially as a director: after just one three hour directing class in college, I had no idea if I was going to be able to do it. Spoiler alert: I did it. And I now identify as a director. But guess what else that has done for me? It’s made me a better actress. On top of that, it’s made me a stronger person. It’s even made me a better audience member.

I’ve discovered that I’m capable of anything I set my mind to. TurtleDove is now a licensed LLC and we are crowdfunding through Seed & Spark to raise start-up funds for our in-home studio. Before last year, I never dreamed of being a business owner. But, I stood up, owned my woman-hood and said “yes, I can.” So, whether you’re a female director, producer, actress or film buff, I encourage you to keep your strength in mind. Being a female in film is anything but boring. But if it was boring, what would be the point?

Elena Weinberg is an actress, director and producer. She graduated from Saint Edward’s University in Austin, Texas with a BA in Theatre Arts. She co-owns TurtleDove Films, LLC in Austin, Texas. TurtleDove Films is currently running a 60 day campaign on Seed&Spark to fund start-up costs for the production company (www.seedandspark.com/studio/turtledove-films) In addition to filmmaking, she is active in the local theatre community, a yogi, a cat lady and an avid San Antonio Spurs fan. The way to her heart is with wine, cheese and pickles.

The Life and Art of Mercedes Sosa

I’m not quick to apply the word “intimate” followed by “portrait” to anything outside of the Lifetime series by the same name, but this description accurately characterizes Rodrigo H. Vila’s documentary ‘Mercedes Sosa: The Voice of Latin America.’ The film is a retrospective of the Argentinian alto whose career spanned 60 years and encompassed the tumult of 20th century political and cultural shifts in Latin America.

I’m not quick to apply the word “intimate” followed by “portrait” to anything outside of the Lifetime series by the same name, but this description accurately characterizes Rodrigo H. Vila’s documentary Mercedes Sosa: The Voice of Latin America. The film is a retrospective of the Argentinian alto whose career spanned 60 years and encompassed the tumult of 20th century political and cultural shifts in Latin America.

Sosa was born in the northwestern Argentine province of Tucumán, where she and siblings went to bed hungry more often than not. At the age of 15 she won a singing competition organized by a local radio station and was given a contract to perform for two months, much to the chagrin of her parents, who at the time did not think highly of folk music. She started her career in Tucumán and performed under the name Gladys Osorio. In 1957, she married Manuel Óscar Matus and together with Armando Tejada Gomez and Jose Segovia, they created the manifesto of the “Nuevo Cancionero”: a people’s movement anchored in traditional Argentinian folk music and poetry. Sosa began performing and recording music under her given name, and soon drew much attention for her powerful voice and fervent commitment to championing the rights of the poor and oppressed in Latin America. As she says in one of the many interviews incorporated in the film, “The life of people in America is a suffering people. They are a very poor people. They don’t deserve this poverty. We’ve been robbed of so much, really.” In the early 1970s, she recorded concept albums that celebrated the art and music of Latin American poets and composers, like the Chilean poet and folk musician Violeta Parra. Parra’s “Gracias a la Vida” would become one of Sosa’s signature songs. Even translated into English and flat on the page, the lyrics are beautiful, and in Sosa’s voice truly transcendent:

Thanks to life, which has given me so much.
It gave me two stars, which when I open them,
Perfectly distinguish black from white
And in the tall sky its starry backdrop,
And within the multitudes the one that I love.

By 1975 Sosa herself would be robbed of the freedom to perform in her home province, and many other sites in Argentina, due to increasing presence of a military dictatorship, which would install Jorge Rafael Videla in 1976. Targeted as a communist, she started receiving death threats and was forced to leave Argentina after being arrested on stage in 1979. In an interview reflecting on this Sosa says, “Kicking me out was a big mistake because they let loose on the world a famous artist. And in Europe the press was already against them.” In 1982 she returned from exile in Europe to sing in Argentina, and gave a series of performances at the Opera Theatre in Buenos Aires, where she invited many fellow musicians to join her. The recordings from these performances have since become well known, especially Sosa’s version of “Solo le Pido a Dios,” written by León Gieco (who also joins her in performing the song in the film). This song in particular has an anthemic quality, and it didn’t surprise me to learn it’s been covered by artists as wide ranging as Bruce Springsteen and Shakira. Until her death in 2009 at age 74, Sosa would go on to tour extensively and even collaborate with artists like Renee Perez.

While the expansive collection of still photographs and concert and interview footage comprising the main source material of the film make Mercedes Sosa: The Voice of Latin America a rich and inspiring viewing experience, there’s a subtler element that adds a sweet, if melancholic depth: that Sosa’s adult son Fabián Matus is our principal guide through his mother’s life. In his conversations with friends and family who have known his mother longer than he’s been alive, Matus quietly seeks the truth of his mother’s motivations and emotional life. We feel as though we’re seated at the dining room table as he hears from one his mother’s closest friends that his father mistreated and abandoned his mother. Though we don’t know what Matus knew before this scene (or what he went on to find out later, if anything), there is gravitas in these pauses, in the way the subjects take time to think of exactly what they want to tell Matus about the woman they knew as Mercedes Sosa, their friend and sister. Beyond being just a fascinating and well-constructed portrait of a great artist, Vila’s film is a love letter conceived of by her son and generously shared with audiences who, like myself, have the great delight of coming to her art in the afterlife that is her musical legacy.

Why We Need to Stop Worshiping the Elusive Heteroflexible Femme

Queer inclusion has become downright trendy lately. Even Disney has jumped on the bandwagon. However, as we all know, just because a minority makes an appearance in the media doesn’t mean the mainstream won’t continue to compulsively shape their narratives. One thing show-runners can’t seem to get enough of is sad lesbians (and I say lesbians because according to most representation, bisexuality clearly doesn’t exist!).

Written by Erin Tatum.

In the event that these go-to methodologies of misery are rightfully perceived by the powers-that-be as cheap and melodramatic, they’ll opt for the next best thing–an unrequited crush on a straight girl!

Our beloved lesbian (usually endowed with enough snark, swagger, or sheer adorableness to easily claim her place as estrogen brigade bait among the queer fandom) will pine her little heart away, hoping that the object of her desire will see the rainbow-tinted light. She may also spend a lot of time wallowing in self-loathing for loving someone who could never love her back.

Crushes on straight girls are a pretty common occurrence among queer women, and I’m sure it’s comforting to be able to relate to what the characters are going through. However, sexually incompatible crushes between women are used to codify some pretty unfortunate biases around gender, orientation and sexual expression that are frankly hella problematic.

I couldn’t think of a better segue to discuss Betty and Kate from Bomb Girls.

Bomb Girls is set in early 1940s Canada, about a group of women who work in a munitions factory during the war. Its storylines are almost exclusively focused on feminist issues and female empowerment, so of course it had to be canceled. But I digress. One of the central B-plots of the series involves the relationship between Kate Andrews (Charlotte Hegele), a wide-eyed runaway who fled the clutches of her abusive pastor father, and Betty McRae (Ali Liebert), a deeply closeted lesbian who also works in the factory. The two quickly become close friends, and Betty even helps Kate protect her false identity. Naturally, Kate’s strict religious upbringing makes her very naïve, giving her a fixed worldview of how things are supposed to operate in society. Betty feels incredibly protective of her. Can you see where this is going? Unable to hold back her growing feelings any longer, Betty impulsively tries to kiss Kate, much to the latter’s shock and disgust. Kate is so rattled that she contacts her father to take her back home and tearfully leaves the factory in spite of Betty’s desperate last-minute declaration of love.

Betty and Kate share a seemingly platonic moment in bed together at the end of season 2.

The second season renders them even more ambiguous, if that’s possible. Betty rescues Kate and they become friends again, with Kate doing her best to pretend nothing ever happened. Betty briefly dates her other coworker, Ivan (Michael Seater), in an effort to deflect growing suspicions around her sexuality and as a means of denying it to herself. Although she quickly drops the ruse and actually manages to find a girlfriend, Theresa (on the DL), it’s clear that Betty still harbors unresolved feelings for Kate. Making matters more complicated, Kate begins dating Ivan soon after Betty dumps him. It also doesn’t take Kate long to connect the dots between Betty and Teresa, but it remains deliberately unclear whether or not her apparent discomfort with Teresa stems from homophobia, friendship possessiveness, romantic possessiveness, or some combination of the three. Needless to say, it’s all confusing and resolves nothing. When Betty’s crush does creep indirectly into the conversation, Kate either dodges the topic or something will conveniently interrupt them. The season two finale kept them firmly within the same innocent cat and mouse territory that they’d been in since the beginning.

Betty gets up close and personal with Kate.

While many viewers expressed frustration with Kate for leading Betty on, this follows the same whiny friend-zoning logic that we see all the time in any portrayal of heterosexual friendships. Kate doesn’t “owe” Betty anything for being treated kindly, and Betty’s actions post-kiss make it clear that she she loves Kate independently of romantic ulterior motives. On the flipside, I still find Kate to be a pretty shitty person, not because she might not reciprocate Betty’s feelings, but because she continues to knowingly deny Betty formal closure. Betty remains totally helpless, and the outcome of the whole scenario hinges on Kate’s every whim. I know you can try to pass it off on the fact that it’s a period piece and homosexuality was a criminal offense, but why is Betty’s lack of control so romanticized? Just kidding, we all know the answer to that. Kate’s a pretty femme straight girl, and Betty will always be socially perceived as a grotesque deviant, no matter how many friends she has! Hell, Betty herself validates the gay inferiority complex by repeatedly putting someone on a pedestal who she knows full well has zero implications of returning the same level of emotional investment, whether romantic or otherwise. But it’s okay, because we can always hope against hope that Kate will turn out to be queer, right?

And that’s the problem. We can’t keep worshiping straight femme agency as central to our validation. If they choose women, it’s some impossible Herculean feat that solves all of the lesbian’s problems forever. If they don’t, you’re still expected to trail after them like a lost puppy at their every beck and call because they’re clearly superior to you, and you’re just perennially unlovable. Why is that noble or sympathetic in any way? Neither outcome reflects a coherent grasp of self-worth or healthy relationships. Don’t let women who aren’t even in our community dictate the way you view yourself.

Another radically different example can be pulled from Orphan Black. The relationship between everyone’s favorite dreadlocked scientist Cosima (Tatiana Maslany) and sexy French biologist Delphine Cormier (Evelyne Brochu) quickly became a fan favorite. Orphan Black handles the subject of sexual fluidity very well, which is one of the many reasons that you should be watching it, if you aren’t already. Following an awkward failed first move, Cosima apologizes for assuming Delphine was gay. Delphine says that while she’s never considered bisexuality, she can’t deny her attraction to Cosima. Refreshingly, none of the angst in their relationship is caused by gay panic. However, all of that is tarnished when it’s revealed that Delphine has betrayed her by orchestrating their relationship as a pretext for spying on her (trying to avoid too many spoilers). This drags the authenticity of her queerness into question because it raises the real possibility that she was faking her feelings for Cosima. The storyline may not villainize straight/fluid/questioning women explicitly, but you can’t deny that Delphine’s moral duplicity serves as a fairly obvious metaphor for cautionary tales against the untrustworthy bisexual or the illusory, unattainable straight girl. Faced with the reality of Cosima’s discovery and understandable outrage, Delphine insists her feelings for her are genuine and begs forgiveness. Cosima is heartbroken, but unmoved.

By the end, after seeing Delphine’s remorse, the audience is arguably compelled to feel more sympathy towards her than Cosima herself. As usual, it’s supposed to be incredibly romantic, playing on common themes of finding love with the wrong person and love conquering all. I like them together and think there’s still potential, but I’m not digging the free pass and endless showers of adulation Delphine receives from the fandom. She fucked up massively and that shouldn’t be forgiven in the span of an episode because of some tears and melodrama. Who’s to say she isn’t still lying? What if she isn’t even queer? Who am I kidding? They’ll end up together next season with minimal reconciliation because they’re obviously ~meant to be~!

Delphine tries to explain herself to Cosima.

I don’t mean to pour on the cynicism, but we can’t let our cravings for sentimentality obscure our perspective. Love stories formed on the premise of sexual incompatibility should not be idealized. The only message that it sends to queer women is that it’s noble to martyr your own happiness by wishing for the improbable. Not only does it build up your unrealistic expectations, but it’s also kind of uncomfortable for your crush if you persistently carry a torch for them based on the off-chance that you could turn them one day. Sure, feelings oftentimes can’t be helped and it can be cathartic to see characters sharing your experiences onscreen, but treating potentially heteroflexible straight girls as the Holy Grail of love objects doesn’t exactly set yourself up for the most positive of queer futures. You don’t need their validation, and for the media to suggest otherwise is counterintuitive because straight girls have absolutely no bearing on our sexuality. If they want us, cool. If they don’t want us, that shouldn’t inherently make us pathetic.

You might not flip her, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be a confident, kickass queer woman.

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Erin Tatum is a recent graduate of UC Berkeley, where she majored in film and minored in LGBT studies. She is incredibly interested in social justice, media representation, intersectional feminism, and queer theory. British television and Netflix consume way too much of her time. She is particularly fascinated by the portrayal of sexuality and ability in television.

Racebending and the Academy Awards: Get Ready to Cringe

The very sad moral of the story is that Hollywood never “has to” cast a person of color. White supremacy in Hollywood finds a way.

The Academy Awards’ gross under-recognition of performances by people of color, both in terms of nominations and wins, is pretty much universally acknowledged. Check this thorough list from Your Media Has Problems on tumblr if you had any doubts.

One of the interesting dimensions covered in that piece is that the majority of people of color nominated for Oscars played roles that “had” to be portrayed by a person of that race. This is a sad reflection on the limited roles available for actors of color.

Linda Hunt as Billy Kwan in The Year of Living Dangerously — Linda Hunt as Billy Kwan in *The Year of Living Dangerously*

But what’s even sadder is the fact that Hollywood has a long history of squeezing that limitation even further by casting white people as PoC characters. From Racebending.com‘s crucial “What is racebending?” primer:

The term “racebending” refers to situations where a media content creator (movie studio, publisher, etc.) has changed the race or ethnicity of a character. This is a longstanding Hollywood practice that has been historically used to discriminate against people of color. In the past, practices like blackface and yellowface were strategies used by Hollywood to deny jobs to actors of color… Because characters of color were played by white actors, people of color were hardly represented at all–and rarely in lead roles. While white actors were freely given jobs playing characters of color in make-up, actors of color struggled to find work.

(The term “racebending” is also used refer to the usually positive and exciting practice of casting a person of color in a role previously/traditionally played by a white person, but this article focuses on the sadly much more common dark side of racebending.)

I decided to take a look back at the acting nominations in the Academy Awards’ 86-year history to see how many examples of racebending were honored with nominations or awards. The results are unsurprising, yet still incredibly disappointing.

There are a few distinct forms of the bad kind of racebending. The most obvious and arguably most egregious is “black/brown/yellow/red-face,” where a white actor plays a person of color by wearing makeup.

Hugh Griffith's Oscar-winning brownface performance in Ben-Hur — Hugh Griffith’s Oscar-winning brownface performance in *Ben-Hur*

Then there is the strange Hollywood treatment of all “vaguely ethnic” actors as interchangeably castable in any PoC role. In the past, this meant actors we’d now code white playing characters of color, e.g. George Chakiris as Bernardo in West Side Story, but this lives on today with “brown is brown!” casting, e.g. Maori actor Cliff Curtis‘s globe-spanning character roster. There’s some overlap between this and the first category.

Greek American George Chakiris as Puerto Rican Bernardo in West Side Story — Greek American George Chakiris as Puerto Rican Bernardo in *West Side Story*

And then there is whitewashing, the insidious form racebending that erases the race or ethnicity of a character (often a real-life figure) to cast a white person in the role.

Jennifer Connelly's Oscar-winning portrayal of a whitewashed Alicia Nash in A Beautiful Mind — Jennifer Connelly’s Oscar-winning portrayal of a whitewashed Alicia Nash in *A Beautiful Mind*

Each of these types of racebending are represented in Academy Award-nominated and -winning performances. My list below is most likely incomplete. Lists on Wikipedia and TV Tropes and articles by Michelle I. on Racebending and Tanya Ghahremani on Complex.com got me started. I then attempted to thoroughly review the complete lists of winners and nominees to find other instances. I am sure I missed some, particularly in the whitewashing category. If you can think of other examples, please share in the comments!

There are also “gray area” examples such as half Indian Brit Ben Kingsley playing Gandhi in heavy brown makeup, Siberian Russian Yul Brynner playing the King of Siam, and Robert Downey Jr.’s role as Kirk Lazarus as Lincoln Osiris in Tropic Thunder, which was meant to parody this entire phenomenon, but, you know, was still a white actor in blackface receiving an Oscar nomination in 2008. I’ve left these examples in the list but with asterisks.

Oscar-winning race-bent performances with a white actor in makeup to play a PoC:

Luise Rainer's Oscar-winning yellowface performance in The Good Earth — Luise Rainer’s Oscar-winning yellowface performance in *The Good Earth*

1937 Best Actress: Luise Rainer as O-Lan in The Good Earth
1959 Best Supporting Actor: Hugh Griffith as Sheikh Ilderim in Ben-Hur
1982 Best Supporting Actress: Linda Hunt as Billy Kwan in The Year of Living Dangerously
*1982 Best Actor: Ben Kingsley (light-skinned half-Indian in makeup) as Mohandas Gandhi in Ghandi

Oscar-nominated race-bent performances with a white actor in makeup to play a PoC:

Marlon Brando in Viva Zapata! — Marlon Brando in *Viva Zapata!*

1937 Best Supporting Actor: H.B. Warner as Chang in Lost Horizon
1944 Best Supporting Actress: Aline MacMahon as Ling Tan’s Wife in Dragon Seed
1952 Best Actor: Marlon Brando as Emiliano Zapata in Viva Zapata!
1955 Best Actress: Jennifer Jones as Han Suyin in Love is a Many Splendored Thing
1959 Best Supporting Actress: Susan Kohner as Sarah Jane Johnson in Imitation of Life
1965 Best Actor: Laurence Olivier as Othello in Othello
*2008 Best Supporting Actor: Robert Downey, Jr. as Kirk Lazarus as Lincoln Osiris (a white character in blackface, meant to parody this phenomenon, still offensive to many cultural commentators)

Oscar-winning race-bent performances with an “interchangeably ethnic” actor playing a PoC not of his race or ethnicity:

Yul Brynner in The King and I — Yul Brynner in ‘The King and I’

*1956 Best Actor: Yul Brynner (Russian of Buryat/Mongolian descent) as King Mongkut (Thai) in The King and I
1961 Best Supporting Actor: George Chakiris (Greek American) as Bernardo (Puerto Rican) in West Side Story

Oscar-nominated race-bent performances with an “interchangeably ethnic” actor playing a PoC not of his race or ethnicity:

Jeff Chandler as Cochise in Broken Arrow — Jeff Chandler as Cochise in *Broken Arrow*

1936 Best Supporting Actor: Akim Tamiroff (Armenian) as General Yang (Chinese) in The General Died at Dawn (also in yellowface makeup)
1950 Best Supporting Actor: Jeff Chandler (American Jewish) as Cochise (Apache) in Broken Arrow (also in redface makeup)
1962 Best Supporting Actor: Telly Savalas (Greek American) as Feto Gomez in Birdman of Alcatraz
2003 Best Actor: Ben Kingsley (Half-Indian Brit) as Massoud Amir Behrani (Iranian) in House of Sand and Fog

Oscar-winning race-bent performances with a white actor playing whitewashed PoC:

Whitest Dude Alive runner-up William Hurt as South American prisoner Luis Molina in Kiss of the Spider Woman — Whitest Dude Alive runner-up William Hurt as South American prisoner Luis Molina in *Kiss of the Spider Woman*

1984 Best Actor: William Hurt as Luis Molina in Kiss of the Spider Woman
2001 Best Supporting Actress: Jennifer Connelly as Alicia Nash in A Beautiful Mind

The very sad moral of the story is that Hollywood never “has to” cast a person of color. White supremacy in Hollywood finds a way.

See also on Bitch Flicks: The Academy: Kind to White Men, Just Like History

Robin Hitchcock is an American writer living in Cape Town, South Africa

‘Battlestar Galactica’: The Show Where All of the Women Die

Taken in the larger scope of what’s available, it’s so rare to find a TV show with so many great parts for women – so many characters who are interesting and smart and competent and vital to the stories they live in – that it’s kind of a bummer when all of them die. That said, I do think there’s a case to be made for why this may not be a horrible choice.

Um… spoilers for Battlestar Galactica.

What Battlestar Galactica is
To recap for anyone who isn’t familiar with the show but still wants to hear about death, Battlestar Galactica (2004) is a remake of the original series, in which humanity lives on a ragtag group of spaceships because robots are trying to kill everyone. The robots are called Cylons, and they look like human people, and it’s a metaphor for how the Other is really the same as we are, and that’s a lesson we need to learn to make peace.

In practical terms, there are twelve models of humanoid Cylon and multiple copies of each. So, whenever a Cylon dies (with a few specific exceptions) he or she downloads into a new, identical body and gets to come back again.

The main story line is about how the ragtag band of humans tries to find a mythical planet called Earth with the Cylons acting (mostly) as antagonists along the way. There’s also a supernatural/religious element in which there are prophecies and angels, and God has a special plan to save both the humans and Cylons by making the most vile man in their number his prophet.

Laura Roslin is the president, Kara “Starbuck” Thrace is the hotshot viper pilot, and there are videos on YouTube that recap the first three seasons if you want to know what happens.

As other Bitch Flicks writers have previously discussed, there are a lot of really good, well-written, interesting female characters, human and Cylon alike. And almost every single one of them gets killed.

Teach the Controversy: What We Mean When We Say “All of the Women Die”
As the show was winding down in its final season, Slate ran an article by Juliet Lapidos called “Chauvinist Pigs in Space” that criticized several aspects of the way women are filmed and portrayed on BSG. Among other points, Lapidos argued that, “The main female characters are all dying, dead, or not human” and that this trend sent the unintentional message that “women…just can’t hack it when the going gets rough.” The piece prompted several responses, including this one from Slant, but Lapidos wasn’t the only one saying it; similar comments were popping up on message boards and blogs (by which I mean Live Journal, because that’s where we all hung out in 2009, amirite?), especially after the series finale aired, and both Starbuck and Roslin were down for the count.

One common response to Lapidos’ article, and to the more general complaint that so many women die on this show, is to either start listing all of the male characters who died – and, since the overall death toll on this series was high, it’s a very long list, or to argue that, hey, there are still cylon women alive at the end of the show, and they’re women, too, goddammit. The problem is that comparing the number of dead characters, or human versus Cylon characters, doesn’t get at the real issue. A better way to ask the question is, “Who, of all the characters on the show, was able to survive four whole seasons without getting killed?”

On the men’s side, we’ve got all three of the leads (William Adama, Apollo, and Gaius Baltar), several important secondary characters (including Chief Tyrol, Colonel Tigh, and Helo), and a few other randoms who we never got to know that well. On the women’s side, we’ve got more randoms and (probably) a minor character named Seelix who does not appear in the final episode.

That’s all.

All of the non-Seelix women we know, including all of the lead female characters, have died. The human women are gone, and every Cylon woman left standing at the end died on screen earlier in the series. Tyrol and Tigh are also Cylons, and they didn’t have to die ever.

While I don’t like her phrasing that much, I have to agree with Lapidos that there’s a sense in which this doesn’t sit well. A sense in which it seems like, intentionally or not, the show is telling us that capable women need to die, either as a warning to the rest of us (“the price for being good at things is that you won’t survive”), or as a way of making the audience feel safe around them. Sort of like how you feel safe at the end of a monster movie when the monster gets swallowed by lava – like, don’t be afraid! These women are not roaming the Earth, continuing to be really awesome. They’re dead, like Xena, and the threat is contained.

Um… spoilers for Xena: Warrior Princess.

On a personal note, as a woman who’s watching TV, it’s also just kind of a downer. Taken in the larger scope of what’s available, it’s so rare to find a TV show with so many great parts for women, so many characters who are interesting and smart and competent and vital to the stories they live in – that it’s kind of a bummer when all of them die.

That said, I do think there’s a case to be made for why this may not be a horrible choice, so…

Why This May Not Be a Horrible Choice
Like almost every TV show, Battlestar Galactica is a mixed bag when it comes to storytelling. Some of the women die stupid deaths, but some of them die pretty good ones that follow from actively participating in the world in which this story takes place.

Starting on the Bad Death side, the main example that Lapidos focuses on is Chief Tyrol’s wife, Cally, and how she gets murdered by Tyrol’s Cylon mistress on her way to commit suicide. That’s a fair death to focus on, because it’s probably the worst, especially when paired with the mistress’ murder (by Tyrol!) in the series finale, which was just a WTF moment that got buried in all of the other explosions and stories that came to a close.

After she’s married to Tyrol, Cally is almost completely defined by her relationship with him and, even before they get married, it sometimes feels like her only role in the story is be jealous because he’s with someone else. Her death happens firstly as a surprise switcheroo for the audience, and secondly as a way to complicate Tyrol’s relationship with his boring, boring mistress who was never that great of a character, either. The show does this last minute thing where it tries to take us inside Cally’s experience when she finds out her husband’s a Cylon, but it’s really too little, too late.

Also in the not-such-a-great-death category are popular secondary characters Dualla (who shoots herself in the head out of nowhere during the final season) and Kat, who gets a very special, very manipulative episode all about her, so that we can learn about her backstory and feel bad when she gets radiation poisoning, which she gets by addressing a problem that also only exists in that one episode.

In fairness to the show, though, there are plenty of pointless, annoying, cannon fodder, and/or emotionally manipulative deaths to go around for both men and women. Starbuck has a dead boyfriend who exists only to create tension between her and Apollo, and she’s lost some male pilots just so she’ll feel bad about what a crap teacher she was. Roslin’s sidekick Billy gets offed pretty randomly when he no longer serves the story, and the whole point of his death is to show us that Dualla and Apollo were mean to him on the last day that he was alive (and he was too gentle to live in this world, or something).

That said, because all of the women die, it makes sense that viewers would take a more critical attitude to examining how they die and to what purpose in the story.

And that’s where it starts to seem like it might not be a horrible choice because, while some of the women die stupidly, a lot of them die because women are the do-ers of Battlestar Galactica. They’re making things happen; they’re driving the story, and, when the supernatural element rears its head, they’re the prophesized saviors of the human and Cylon race.

Like a lot of militaristic stories, Battlestar Galactica measures its characters’ heroism partly through their capacity to suffer, both physically and emotionally. And unlike a lot of stories, BSG splits its heroic suffering pretty evenly between its male and female characters.

Starbuck is the action hero of the story – she goes on the dangerous missions, she gets the crap kicked out of her by robots, she has a tragic backstory with a dead boyfriend and an abusive mother, and she has a special destiny that requires her to sacrifice herself to save the people she loves. Roslin finds out that she has terminal cancer on the same day that she becomes President, and in order to lead, she has to overcome the fear that she feels for herself. During the last season, her body is falling apart just like the Galactica is falling apart, like tenuous hopes for the future are falling apart, and the question is whether any of those things will hold together long enough to find Earth. She and the beat-up old spaceship are both trying to complete their final missions by bringing the people to Earth.

Starbuck and Roslin are two of the most important characters on the show, and one could make the argument that, along with Gaius Baltar, they make up a trinity of the most important characters on the show, in terms of moving the primary story line forward. They die in the process, but it’s part the heroic journey.

Even some of the other, more perfunctory deaths come from a pretty strong place. Admiral Cain is there for three episodes before she bites it, but her character is right at the center of everything and killed as a direct result of the choices she makes as a leader (to place revenge above everything else). Athena, a Cylon, has her husband kill her so that she can download into another body on a Cylon ship and rescue her kidnapped baby – it’s pretty badass. Ellen Tigh gets murdered for betraying the humans to the Cylons. D’Anna Biers dies multiple times while investigating the identities of the final five Cylons (who are unknown to the remaining seven). The list goes on. In a universe where lots of people die as the product of doing, many female characters die because they do something that affects the story.

This is one of those instances where everyone’s a little bit right. It’s legitimately kind of annoying that, in a story full of strong, well-written women, none of them but (probably) Seelix can manage to survive. The television landscape being what it is, it makes you wonder what’s going on there. At the same time, and without this cancelling out the annoyance, a lot of the women died because they were such good characters and because the show was fairly egalitarian in determining who would drive the story.

Personally, I wish that in those last, sweeping shots of the surviving characters standing on Earth, we had seen Cally, or Dualla, or Kat, or someone we cared about who was female and lived for four years. I wish that it seemed possible, in the BSG universe, to be female and live for four years. And that feeling exists side-by-side with my joy at having such great characters to begin with.

Katherine Murray is a Toronto-based writer and couch potato who yells about movies and TV on her blog.

Bourgie White People Problems and Fat Shaming in ‘Enough Said’

To put it bluntly, I hated ‘Enough Said.’ The theme was trite, the characters were insufferable with their selfish pretensions, and there was a whole lot of fat shaming going on. Frankly, I’m surprised that Julia Louis-Dreyfus has been getting such high praise for starring in this turd, and I’m disappointed that I can’t be more supportive of a film written and directed by a woman: Nicole Holofcener.

"Enough Said" Movie Poster — *Enough Said* Movie Poster

Though guest writer Heather Brown wrote a Bitch Flicks review of Enough Said, I felt compelled to weigh in because my opinion of the film was the exact opposite. To put it bluntly, I hated this movie. The theme was trite, the characters were insufferable with their selfish pretensions, and there was a whole lot of fat shaming going on. Frankly, I’m surprised that Julia Louis-Dreyfus has been getting such high praise for starring in this turd, and I’m disappointed that I can’t be more supportive of a film written and directed by a woman: Nicole Holofcener.

Director Nicole Holofcener with stars Julie Louis-Dreyfus & Catherine Keener. — Director Nicole Holofcener with stars Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Catherine Keener.

Though I’d love to congratulate a female writer and director (especially one who employed kickass actresses like Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Catherine Keener, and Toni Collette), the storyline itself fell flat. Enough Said is about a massage therapist who ends up dating a man while giving massages to his ex-wife. Once she learns of the connection, she continues to probe the ex for information about her new beau despite the moral ambiguity of building a false friendship and essentially spying on her new boyfriend. Doesn’t that sound like a snore-fest sitcom episode of misadventure where you know the guilty party will be found out in the end and then realize the error of their ways? Well, that’s pretty much what happens. The themes admirably touch on the desire to make smarter relationship choices, to understand why relationships fail, and to avoid committing to the wrong person. In the end, though, the film claims that relationships, human compatibility, and chemistry are all a mystery…that over-thinking it doesn’t do us any favors. Talk about making a really simple point seem complex enough to warrant an entire movie. It’s also a very privileged upper-crusty perspective. Breaking out of destructive or abusive relationship cycles does require a good deal of introspection, honest analysis of choices, and recognition of personal patterns as well as a willingness and commitment to change. This movie basically pisses on the reality of the lives of people who aren’t wealthy (or at least financially comfortable), straight, white people. It pisses on the people who’ve faced major life struggles, crises, and trauma.

Speaking of which, the cast of characters is astoundingly shallow and self-involved with boring upper class bored-people pseudo-problems. Main character Eva’s best friend, Sarah, obsessively rearranges the furniture in her house and can’t bring herself to fire her (of course) Latin maid. Sarah’s husband, Will, has the least interesting or complicated case of middle child syndrome ever; he is simply obsessed with fairness.

Eva probes Marianne for dirt on her new boyfriend (& Marianne's ex-husband) Albert. — Eva probes Marianne for dirt on her new boyfriend (and Marianne’s ex-husband) Albert.

Eva’s new friend, Marianne, reveals that her marriage failed because she was annoyed by her husband Albert’s (played by James Gandolfini) annoying little habits and his weight.

Is there such a thing as oblivious daughter replacement syndrome? Eva's got it. — Is there such a thing as oblivious daughter replacement syndrome? Eva’s got it.

Eva herself comes off as sweet at first, but we learn she hates most of her massage clients, is selfishly and obliviously trying to replace her daughter, Ellen, who is going off to college with one of Ellen’s friends. Plus, she cultivates a faux-friendship with Marianne just to get dirt on Albert, which she then uses to humiliate him at a dinner party.

Eva gets drunk and humiliates Albert, the only nice person in the film.

Eva’s behavior at that dinner party sealed the deal for me. I wanted her to get everything that was coming to her. I wanted the incredibly sweet, gentle, intelligent Albert to realize he was dating a horrible person and ditch her ass. Eva’s callous treatment of Albert doesn’t end with her general mockery of his inability to whisper or her distaste for the way he eats guacamole. No, she fat shames him in front of her friends. Fat shaming is never okay, but this seems particularly cruel because Albert sheepishly admitted to her beforehand that he has a complicated relationship with his weight and wants to lose some. She picked a very sensitive point of insecurity for Albert and exploited it because she was insecure about their relationship and about how people would think of her for dating a fat person. How is that ever okay or forgivable? If Eva had been a male character and Albert was female, would people be so quick to excuse that fat shaming? I hope not. Not only that, but Eva is ignorant. She is oblivious to the struggles of people who navigate the world with bodies different from her own, bodies of which the world doesn’t approve. How is her fat shaming any better than if she’d mocked Albert had he been a person of color, trans*, or differently abled? It is not different. She is an inexcusable bigot.

Eva is appalled by the way Albert eats popcorn when they go see a movie.

What it boils down to is that the character problems in Enough Said are a function of class. They say more about how much money and comfort these people have than about the state of the human condition. Movies that advocate for hateful bigots like Enough Said‘s fat shamers, even the ones who learn their lesson in the end (can you say Shallow Hal?), appeal to people who have “isms” of their own. Seeing a lead character bully another character due to their marginalized status (whatever it may be) allows the audience to vicariously indulge in that behavior and to vicariously feel solidarity in the character’s eventual contrition. It doesn’t necessarily help the audience inhabit the Othered, marginalized character.

Another important point that I’ve been dying to make for years is: Understated performances from people who’re typically in comedies…does not good acting make. I’m so tired of people “breaking out” of their comedy typecast to reap countless praise for roles that simply didn’t have them laughing or cracking jokes or…emoting. I’m thinking of Jennifer Aniston in The Good Girl, almost every Jim Carrey, Bill Murray, or Adam Sandler “serious movie” ever made. Acting like a normal human being isn’t range. Don’t get me wrong, I think Julia Louis-Dreyfus is a stellar actress, but I don’t think bourgie, fat-shaming, linoleum Enough Said showed that.

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