August 2014 – Page 3 – Bitch Flicks

Top 10 Superheroes Who Are Better As Superheroines

There are soooo many superheroes out there. These gents get top billing in comics, movies, and TV shows while their superheroine counterparts tend to get the shaft, existing in unwarranted obscurity or playing second fiddle to a male lead. Do these super-dudes deserve all this limelight? Is there something inherently male about them that makes them special, or would some of these superheroes be just as good, if not better off, as women?

Women versions of Avengers superheroes and villains — What if women had starred in *The Avengers*?

Written by Amanda Rodriguez.

There are soooo many superheroes out there. These gents get top billing in comics, movies, and TV shows while their superheroine counterparts tend to get the shaft, existing in unwarranted obscurity or playing second fiddle to a male lead. Do these super-dudes deserve all this limelight? Is there something inherently male about them that makes them special, or would some of these superheroes be just as good, if not better off, as women? Many superheroes have been re-imagined as superheroines (Batwoman, Supergirl, Spidergirl, etc.), and some of them should be re-cast as superheroines. Here’s my Top 10 list of super-dudes who are or should be super-ladies.

1. Thor from The Avengers

Re-casting Thor as a woman is a done deal. Marvel has taken one of its oldest and most popular heroes who’s appeared in a slew of films and announced that henceforth Thor will be a female god. She won’t exist alongside the original Thor, as so many female re-imaginings of superheroes do (even some on this list), but, instead she will supplant her unworthy predecessor, taking his place as God of Thunder in Asgard, wielding his magic hammer and his titan strength.

Thor comic panel — Thor as a woman in comic form

Despite my love of the Norse mythology from which the comic hero is derived, I’ve never much cared for Thor. He often struck me as a dumb, self-important brute of a man. Now, though, I’m curious to see how Marvel handles the transition (though I’d love if Thor was trans*, pun not intended), and I’m excited to see how a female all-powerful god handles herself.

2. Venus from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Venus: the "aquamarine" turtle — Venus: the “aquamarine” turtle

Venus de Milo is a somewhat obscure addition to the TMNT canon of humanoid, intelligent mutated turtles. Unlike the male turtles, she’s named after a work of art rather than an artist, and I’m definitely reading some lack of female subjectivity into that choice. In the short-lived live action series Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation, Venus reunites with her brothers, and while she doesn’t know martial arts like her brothers, she uses magic instead.

While it’s pretty cool that this brief and obscure series added a female turtle, it begs the question, “Why wasn’t one of the four original turtles a girl?” While apparently comic writers were mandated to not include a female turtle, for this reviewer who was once so into the Turtles that she drew their portraits and hung them over her bed, there’s really no satisfying answer. Now that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have made another comeback and are back on the big screen, it’s time to bring back Venus…only please make sure she can kick some ass with a weapon, too, and not just float around some weird balls David-Bowie Labyrinth-style.

3. Spawn

Um...yes to a badass Lady Spawn — Um…yes to a badass Lady Spawn

Todd McFarlane’s popular comic Spawn features Al Simmons, a military man of questionable morals, who dies and is brought back as a supremely powerful demonic figure to collect souls for hell. Like all good anti-heroes, Spawn refuses to play nice for heaven or hell. The comic is lush, dark, and gritty, featuring a Black hero. Spawn was turned into a moderately successful cartoon series and a craptastic film series.

Though the comics have briefly featured women having or taking over Spawn’s powers and the dreaded angel Angela has had her own miniseries, a female Spawn has never been given a real chance as a lead. We also need more superheroines of color, and since the original Spawn is a Black man, there’s no reason why a female version couldn’t also be Black. Frankly, I’d love to see a strong, dark, morally complex woman deal with being a putrefying corpse reanimated to perform an eternal mission in which she doesn’t believe. Now that’s a rich role that a woman could really dig into.

4. The Question from 52

The original DC comic book version of The Question is the male Vic Sage. Though The Question doesn’t have any super powers to speak of, he wears a faceless mask that obscures his features. In the series 52, a terminally ill Vic trains Renee Montoya, a lesbian ex-Gotham City cop and on-and-off love interest of Batwoman, to be his replacement. Thus, The Question was born anew.

The Question sometimes fights alongside her ex-lover Batwoman — The Question fights alongside her ex-lover Batwoman

I love Renee Montoya because she’s an exceedingly rare Latina superheroine, she’s also an exceedingly rare lesbian superheroine, she doesn’t have any superpowers or a trust fund but still manages to fight the good fight, and she questions everything. She’s an interesting, emotionally messed up character who figures out answers for herself, lives by her own moral compass, and every once in a while, gets to save the girl (even if that girl is a totally hardcore Batwoman). Dear Montoya, you are so much win.

5. She-Hulk

Jennifer Walters is the cousin of rogue scientist Bruce Banner a.k.a the Hulk. After a blood transfusion from him, She-Hulk is born. A star lawyer who defends the rights of the disenfranchised and an Avenger, She-Hulk also maintains much of her personality when she transforms into her green-skinned form. Often considered the strongest woman in the Marvel universe, She-Hulk is incredibly intelligent and skilled at combat. Despite (or perhaps because of) her extremely tall, muscled, green body, She-Hulk is a huge sex symbol in the comics industry.

Like her male counterpart the Hulk, She-Hulk also contends with an antihero version of her powers in the form of Red She-Hulk (Banner love interest Betty Ross who’s had a couple of cameos over the years). Both of these women are differing, but intriguing representations and applications of female power and psychology, often becoming more confident and/or aggressive in their Hulk-ified bodies, choosing when to transform, and internalizing positive or negative feelings of self-worth based on their bodies. Now if we can just get one or both of these badass babes a movie…

6. Captain Marvel

Though Carol Danvers has been known by many different names over her 46 years in comics (Ms. Marvel, Binary, and Warbird), I like her best as Captain Marvel. Though Danvers derives her latest title directly from the male Captain Marvel, the name itself has a long history with both men and women indiscriminately donning it over time. I also prefer the current Captain Marvel because she’s now penned by female comic writer Kelly Sue DeConnick, and her costume has been altered to be far less revealing and far more practical than Danvers ever enjoyed before.

Danvers has the powers of the Captain Marvel hero (and, at times, antihero) line with superhuman strength, endurance, speed, and flight. Over the years, she’s also developed abilities of her own, including light speed travel, shooting energy beams from her hands, and absorption of energy to boost her own powers. Along with that, she also has combat, flight, as well as tactical and strategic skills from her air force days. As an Avenger and a member of Guardians of the Galaxy, it’s a possibility that she’ll appear in one or both of those franchises. Lately, rumors also speculate that Katee Sackhoff will aptly play the title role in a Captain Marvel an upcoming film. Considering studios’ extreme and groundless resistance to making a woman-fronted superhero flick, it’s doubtful, but a girl can dream.

7. Darth Talon

Darth Talon: so...much...badassery — Darth Talon: so…much…badassery

My first encounter with Darth Talon of the Star Wars universe was at Dragon-con in Atlanta (yes, I’m that nerdy) where a very dedicated woman cosplayed the hell out of that dark side Twi’lek, and I lost my shit at Talon’s sheer awesomeness. With her red skin, Sith tattoos, yellow eyes, and dedication to the dark side, Darth Talon is basically a female version of Darth Maul, the primary antagonist in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace.

Though Darth Talon is the villainess female equivalent of a villain (and not a superheroine at all really), she deserves a spot on this list because she has the potential to be an iconic female version of a male figure. With her strength, cunning, and loyalty to the dark side, I’ve got my fingers crossed that she’s one of the characters we’ll be seeing in the upcoming Star Wars: Episode VII.

8. Black Panther

The male Black Panther (T’Challa) was the first ever Black superhero to hit mainstream comics. The lover and sometime husband of X-Men‘s Storm, Black Panther is the chief of a powerful nation in Africa known as Wakanda. To protect his people and lands from inevitable exploitation for their valuable natural resources, Black Panther hides his country from the outside world. He is a much needed Black African hero who, in a sense, rewrites the colonial history of the African continent by guarding his country from very real greed and imperialistic forces. When T’Challa nearly dies and loses his powers, his sister Shuri takes on the Black Panther mantle.

Like her brother, Shuri leads her country and possesses superhuman strength and agility along with a protective suit constructed from Wakanda’s precious, coveted mineral vibranium. Being the Black Panter, imbued with such great power and responsibility, changes Shuri. She learns the value of humility and self-sacrifice while becoming a respected diplomat and a fierce leader who makes it abundantly clear that her country is not to be fucked with. We need more representation for badass Black superheroines like Black Panther who can help us re-imagine and therefore empower a continent that has been brutally and tirelessly exploited for hundreds of years.

9. Hellgirl

A fan rendering of a Hellgirl action figure

There is no Hellgirl female version of Hellboy, the crusty but loveable demon beautifully rendered by creator Mike Mignola. There’s nothing inherently gendered about Hellboy’s red tail, sawed off horns, giant stone fist, and propensity for cigars. There’s nothing inherently male about his dark origins and his desire to overcome them to do good in the world.

In fact, I’d argue that a physically and emotionally rough-around-the-edges superheroine is just what we need. Enough of these drawings of women with stereotypically unrealistic bodies and their giant, barely covered breasts. Give us a superheroine who has to shave her horns instead of her legs, a woman who, like Hellboy, hides a gentle heart behind a jagged exterior, who struggles with depression and low self-worth but still manages to save the world.

10. Link from The Legend of Zelda

Zelda as Sheik Photo Realistic — Princess Zelda disguised as Sheik

Lastly and dearest to my heart, we’ve got the hero of Hyrule, Link, who is already pretty androgynous with his gender neutral name, dress-like tunic, long blonde hair, lithe build, and elven ears. He could easily be re-cast as a female character, if not removed completely, giving Zelda the agency to save Hyrule. Don’t get me wrong, I love me some Link, but is there a reason Zelda even needs him to save the day in a video game that’s named after her?

Zelda, her alter ego Sheik, and her hero Link

Zelda, herself, is wise, magical, and skilled in combat. She even cross-dresses as Sheik, a figure who guides Link to important knowledge he needs to complete his quest. Why can’t Zelda be the Heroine of Time, supplanting Link as her savior? And while we’re at it, why the hell haven’t we had a movie version of The Legend of Zelda yet? Other than that they’d probably butcher it, I can’t think of a single good reason.

Men dressed up as female superheroes in Big Bang Theory — Men dressed up as female superheroes in *Big Bang Theory*

Though some argue the valid perspective that turning existing male superheroes into superheroines is lazy or doesn’t give female heroes their own identities, I mostly think that turning popular iconic male figures into women shows that gender isn’t that important when it comes to being powerful, capable, and a force for good in the world. In a time when female representation is often limited to sexual objectification, re-presenting male heroes as heroines in particular shows young girls that gender roles are arbitrary and that women can accomplish the same goals and be just as amazing as men. We need that right now.

Bitch Flicks writer and editor 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. Her short story “The Woman Who Fell in Love with a Mermaid” was published in Germ Magazine. 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.

‘Our Song’: Teen Girls Of Color As Heroines of Their Own Lives

In the 90s and early 2000s we seemed on the cusp of a sea change in which a white male teenager wasn’t the default character audiences were supposed to identify with. While films about grown women had stars like Whitney Houston (in ‘The Bodyguard’) Angela Bassett (Oscar-nominated for ‘What’s Love Got To Do With It’) and a pre “J. Lo” Jennifer Lopez (in ‘Selena’), films about teenaged girls of color popped up too. Leslie Harris’s ‘Just Another Girl on the IRT’ was released in the early 90s. In 2000 writer-director Jim McKay’s gorgeous, melancholy ‘Our Song,’ about the friendship of three teenaged girls of color (which starred Kerry Washington–in her film debut) opened in theaters.

Coming-of-age films like the current art house hit Boyhood usually focus on…boys. A girl character can be, like in the Harry Potter films, The Sidekick, (Emma Watson as Hermione) or just The Girlfriend as in Wes Anderson’s early film Rushmore. If we’re lucky we get to see a complex teenage girl character who is The Daugher, like Shailene Woodley in The Descendants. Until recent YA adaptations like The Hunger Games and The Fault in Our Stars a teenaged girl was rarely The Person the film was about. And teen girls of color? Movies are still pretty much never about them.

In the 90s and early 2000s we seemed on the cusp of a sea change in which a white male teenager wasn’t the default character audiences were supposed to identify with. While films about grown women had stars like Whitney Houston (in The Bodyguard) Angela Bassett (Oscar-nominated for What’s Love Got To Do With It) and a pre “J. Lo” Jennifer Lopez (in Selena), films about teenaged girls of color popped up too. Leslie Harris’s Just Another Girl on the IRT was released in the early 90s. In 2000 writer-director Jim McKay’s gorgeous, melancholy Our Song, about the friendship of three teenaged girls of color (which starred Kerry Washington–in her film debut) opened in theaters.

McKay (who is white) has said in interviews that part of why he wanted to make the film was to include the Jackie Robinson Steppers marching band (now known as The Brooklyn Steppers) a Brooklyn institution of Black and Latino young people which incorporates R and B and hip-hop music and dance moves into its repertoire. The scenes with the band (which the three girls all belong to) are a resounding success: all marching bands should be like this one! The real marching band members and the main actresses, Anna Simpson as Joycelyn, Melissa Martinez as Maria, and a very young Washington as Lanisha blend seamlessly into the group. The band leader (Tyrone Brown) is a character many will recognize from their own lives, especially when he lectures the band in the manner of every teacher, advisor and coach who has implored students to please try harder. Also seamless is the way other scenes of the girls interacting with their acquaintances leaves us unaware of who is a professional and who is not (the film cast people in the neighborhood alongside actors with long lists of credits): this smooth interweaving of scripted and documentary elements reminded me of the Chilean film No and its mix of vintage documentary video with scripted scenes that take place during the same events. McKay also seems to have a talent equal to Lukas Moodysson’s in writing believable and affecting dialogue for teenage girls. The naturalistic acting of the leads, especially Washington, but also Simpson and Martinez, elevates the sometimes pedestrian talk about clothes and boys into a music of its own.

oursong-bandpractice — During band practice

Seen today, the film is an unwitting nostalgia piece: the Crown Heights neighborhood in Brooklyn where the scenes were shot is largely gentrified now. In the film’s action we rarely see a white face, a contrast with recent, independently made films that take place in Brooklyn like Obvious Child and It Felt Like Love in which–as in most mainstream films, no matter where they take place–the audience rarely sees anyone onscreen who is Black or brown. We get a hint of the white influx to come when Joycelyn learns from her new high-status friends what a “mocha” is and teaches it to Lanisha and Maria who, in their mostly low-income neighborhood (which they rarely leave) have never heard the term before. Joycelyn’s job is at what seems to be The Body Shop while Lanisha and Maria work at a local, decidedly non-artisanal bakery.

At work and off Maria and Lanisha sometimes speak Spanish to each other (in one of the film’s many instances of casual bulldozing of stereotypes, Maria starts out knowing no Spanish even though her family is Latino). In one scene Maria tells Lanisha she’s “embarazada.” Lanisha, used to correcting her friend, laughs and says, “‘Embarazada’ doesn’t mean ’embarrassed.’ It means you’re pregnant.”

Maria answers, “I know what it means. I looked it up.”

LanishaOurSong — Kerry Washington as Lanisha

Maria’s passivity and seeming apathy when confronted with making decisions about her pregnancy, practice with the band, or enrolling in a new school feel true-to-life: her response to these challenges, except in the scene where she confronts the father of her baby–who doesn’t even bother to take off his headphones when she tells him the news– seems to be one big shrug, with a teenager’s lack of regard for later repercussions. Of course, of the three mothers we see, Maria’s is, by far, the least understanding and most strict: teenagers who figure out that their parents are unreasonable are usually the ones who get into the most trouble.

The film is a treasure trove of thoughtful characters who are women of color, not just the three girls but also Marlene Forte as Lanisha’s mother, gently trying to warn her daughter about her charming father’s broken promises, and even, in a brief scene, a counselor (Iris Little Thomas) who makes Maria laugh when she tells her that she too was quiet when she was her age, but now nobody can get her to shut up. About Maria’s pregnancy the counselor says, “I was just remembering ’15’ and just wondering what you might like to do.”

In the film’s closeups (the stunning cinematography is by Jim Denault) we see how little imagination fashion magazines and mainstream TV and films have in their extremely narrow vision of what makes girls and women “beautiful.” On nights out, when she undoes her usual thick braid, Maria has a glorious, long, full, frizzy lion’s mane of hair, set off by huge hoop earrings; Joycelyn’s almond eyes and velvety, dark skin are highlighted by her sparkly eyeshadow (which her very young mother, to whom she has a strong resemblance–and who acts more like her buddy and roommate–seems to borrow) and Lanisha, whose radiant, expressive face is both familiar to us, from Washington’s later stardom, and not–Washington is less slender here than we’re used to seeing her, with shorter hair and in belted, baggy jeans (fashionable for teen girls then) instead of the well-cut designer clothing she wears on the red carpet or on Scandal.

At a time when neighborhoods of mostly Black and Latino people were demonized as full of gangs and lawlessness, the only crime we see is when the girls shoplift new clothing for themselves. The film’s one instance of deadly violence is a despair-ridden murder-suicide. At the makeshift, poster board memorial for the victims, the three girls solemnly place the roses Joycelyn, though she is spending more and more time with her new friends, bought at the bodega for each of them.

The “our song” of the title is “Ooh Child” which the band rehearses and we also hear on the radio (the 1990s Chyna version, not the original Five Stairsteps’ version from the 70s). The girls first hear the song together and then, more poignantly, when they’re apart.

The girls’ increasing estrangement is a reality not often depicted on film, where friendship (unless it involves an obvious villain or some big blowout fight) usually equals “forever.” But for most of us, different people drift in and out of our lives in high school and beyond. In the last shots of the film we see a long closeup of Lanisha by herself, without either friend at her side. We recognize she is having her first, sad inkling that most of her “best friends” will move on and away from her–or she will move on from them.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jINf6OTWyUE”]

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Ren Jender is a queer writer-performer/producer putting a film together. Her writing. besides appearing every week on Bitch Flicks, has also been published in The Toast, RH Reality Check, xoJane and the Feminist Wire. You can follow her on Twitter @renjender.

I Scream, You Scream, We All ‘Scream’ for Feminism!

The ‘Scream’ franchise, after all, is about the women. It could be argued that most horror movies are about the women; female victims make for easy targets and garner more of a reaction from the audience. But ‘Scream’ was one of the first mainstream horrors to advocate for equal-opportunity killing: where the men are as fair game as the girls, and two out of the seven killers have been women. More than that, they’ve been the masterminds of the whole operation; using the clueless and fame-hungry men as pawns in their bloody chess game.

Neve Campbell as Syndey in Scream — Neve Campbell as Sidney in *Scream 4*

This guest post by Scarlett Harris originally appeared on The Scarlett Woman and is cross-posted with permission.

Scream 4 marked the most recent installment of the horror franchise, which ended in much the same similar way as the past three chapters.

The killer comes back from the dead, gun-wielding Gale Weathers fires a bullet, and central scream queen Sidney Prescott gets the last laugh, with fellow original Woodsboro survivor Dewey fumbling around on the sidelines.

Fifteen years after the original, it is still unbelievable as to how Dewey is on the police force, Gale is still a ball-busting rogue sleuth, albeit with a lot more Botox than the last time we saw her, and Sidney has finally wiped that weepy-eyed look off her face and is kicking ass and taking names.

In the first installment, Sidney is an ineffectual twit who berates horror movie starlets for “running up the stairs when they should be going out the front door” when, only moments later, she does exactly the same thing!

But as I watched each movie, I slowly started to root for Sid. Not only was she dealing with the fallout of her mother’s death and the wrongful allegation against Cotton Weary for the crime in the first film, but she was also dealing with a rat of a boyfriend, Billy, friends, high school and trying not to crumble under the pressure of it all. So I’ll cut her a break.

In the second film, Sidney undergoes remarkable growth due, in part, to going off to college, but the audience can see in the way Sidney carries herself that she believes the murders are over. Oh, how wrong she was! I especially love the final scene in Scream 2, with Sidney outsmarting (one of) the killer(s), Mrs. Loomis, with the help of Cotton. Gale’s there, too, holding on til the bitter end.

The Scream franchise, after all, is about the women. It could be argued that most horror movies are about the women; female victims make for easy targets and garner more of a reaction from the audience. But Scream was one of the first mainstream horrors to advocate for equal-opportunity killing: where the men are as fair game as the girls, and two out of the seven killers have been women. More than that, they’ve been the masterminds of the whole operation; using the clueless and fame-hungry men as pawns in their bloody chess game.

Traditional horror operates on the premise that “she alone looks death in the face.” Not Scream, though.

Ashley Smith in “Final Girl(s) Power: Scream”, writes of not only Sidney, but Gale and Dewey, staring death in the face:

“The success of the narrative is predicated now on not an individual woman, extraordinary and significantly boyish, but on the cooperation of two women who together stab, shoot and electrocute the two killers into oblivion. This moment is also notable because it is one of the many instances in Scream that utilizes very self-referential language, not only does it rework the figure of the Final Girl, it talks about itself reworking the figure of the Final Girl. This moment is an example of how the film explicitly works on behalf of the female spectator. Sydney/Campbell is speaking for and speaking as one of the girls in the horror audience who want to see active female characters fighting for each other, and significantly not even bound by a sentimentalised friendship.”

Sidney and Gale start out as sworn enemies (as murdered bestie Tatum Riley says after Sidney punches Gale: “‘I’ll send you a copy.’ Bam! Bitch went down! Sid: super bitch! You’re so cool!”), but I suppose bonding over the murders of pretty much everyone you know will solidify your connection, whether or not it’s one of mutual affection for each other, or mutual hatred for the killer(s).

And then there’s Dewey. He’s a funny character and David Arquette plays him to perfection, but the sum of his survival involves him always arriving to the party 10 seconds late and missing all the action. Sure, he’s been stabbed a few times, but he’s more of the token surviving male than a fully well-rounded character. As Smith writes, “the text allows for powerful and active female figures [that] it compensates [for] with weak, ineffective male ones.”

Before Scream, to survive as a “final girl” you had to be a virgin. This works well for high school victims, as a lot of high school students are virgins. And hey, this is the movies, so so what if it doesn’t reflect real life?

Rose McGowen as Tatum in Scream — Rose McGowen as Tatum in *Scream*

The first Scream begins with Sidney as a virgin, but in the height of the killings, she throws caution her virginity to the wind and has sex with Billy. In any other horror film, this would mean she dies. (Casey Becker, Drew Barrymore’s character, and her boyfriend, Steve, die in the opening scene, as does Tatum, girlfriend of Stu, later on in the movie in the doggy-door scene, above. You might imagine these kids to be non-virgins, as they’re in seemingly committed, loving relationships, but this is never directly addressed.) But Scream, being the “meta-text” that it is, takes a page out of Buffy’s book, and the non-virgin fights to live another day.

Drew Barrymore as Casey in Scream — Drew Barrymore as Casey in *Scream*

But the exemplar of a strong female character in Scream is Gale. She’s not only a ball-busting, high-powered tabloid journalist who fights to see an innocent man go free but, as I mentioned above, she’s always the last one standing, alongside reluctant partner-in-crime Sidney.

In Scream 4, she’s a struggling stay-at-home novelist with writer’s block, so when Sidney—and the subsequent murders—return to Woodsboro, she jumps at the chance to help with the investigations. Dewey, and his lovesick underling Deputy Judy, don’t want her interfering with the case, so Gale goes rogue.

It is Gale who uncovers most of the developments in the case, including who the killer is. And, according to Melissa Lafsky at The Awl, she’s breaking a lot of other ground, too :

“She [Courteney Cox] slashes her way out of the 40-something female stereotype, and takes over this movie with a flick of her scorn-ready… brow. Let’s face it: Few film archetypes are more brutal than the ‘older woman in a horror movie’—either you’re the psycho nutcase… or you’re the pathetic victim… And no matter what, you’re ALWAYS an obsessive mother.

Courtney Cox as Gale Weathers in Scream 4 — Courtney Cox as Gale Weathers in *Scream 4*

“Cox pulls off a pretty impressive coup, upstaging not only the cute flouncing teens, but also her 15-years-younger self. Her character—now successful, childless(!), and utterly bored with the ‘middle-aged wife’ role—shrugs off all orders to ‘stay out of it’ and leaps back into the murderous fray, husbands, younger blondes and kitchen knives be damned. She takes nothing for granted, and thinks not a second about sneaking into dark corners to catch homicidal fruitcakes (and bitch is 47!!!). While Arquette and Campbell slide into their ’90s cliché groove, Cox reinvents and one-ups, kicking this meta-fest to life and providing the only sexy thing onscreen, gelatinous lips and all. Gale Weathers is shrewd, aggressive, cunning, but never heartless; despite it all, she still loves that stupefied ass clown Dewey. And she does it all while sporting a better ass than the 20-somethings. And… she doesn’t even have to die for it!”

You go, Gale!

Scarlett Harris is a Melbourne, Australia-based freelance writer and blogger at The Scarlett Woman, where she muses about feminism, social issues, and pop culture. You can follow her on Twitter.

Add It To Your Netflix Queue: ‘The Returned’

‘The Returned’ is not explicitly about male violence against women, but this is an unmistakable through-line for those who are watching for it. Violence against women is, perhaps, more normalized in our culture than death itself; yet in truth it is as damnably unnatural as the dead returning.

Written by Max Thornton.

Carol Ann Duffy, the British Poet Laureate, has a poem called “Mrs Lazarus,” a characteristically feminist and unsettling take on the biblical story of Jesus’ resuscitation of Lazarus. “I had grieved,” it begins, and the mourning process is definitively pluperfect, the dead man “dwindling … vanishing … Until he was memory.” The man’s revival is not exactly a source of joy:

He lived. I saw the horror on his face.
I heard his mother’s crazy song. I breathed
his stench; my bridegroom in his rotting shroud,
moist and dishevelled from the grave’s slack chew,
croaking his cuckold name, disinherited, out of his time.

The French TV series The Returned (Les revenants) takes a similar approach to the question of the living dead. These are not the faceless, flesh-chomping hordes of popular lore, but individuals returned from the grave to reunite with family and friends who have moved on.

If you type “The Returned” into the Netflix search bar, you get two almost identical results. “The Returned (2013)” is a movie that takes a slightly more cerebral approach than many zombie films, but is still recognizably a zombie flick. “The Returned (2012)” is a tense, atmospheric French television series that acknowledges the z-word while maintaining its distance from it.

In a small French mountain town, the dead are returning. Whether days or years after their deaths, they return with no memory of dying and no knowledge that the intervening time has passed. Families who have completed all five stages of grief and found some sort of post-tragedy equilibrium, even a fragmented one, are suddenly reunited with loved ones who are, like Lazarus, “disinherited, out of [their] time.” The returned themselves find a world in which they no longer fit.

Each of the first seven episodes is named for a character, but the plot tends to be fairly evenly spread in focus across all the characters.

Fifteen-year-old Camille, killed in a bus crash, returns to a broken family and an identical twin who is now four years her senior.

Simon died on the morning of his wedding, and is now literally haunting his erstwhile fiancée, as she prepares to marry another man, and the daughter he never knew.

Julie survived a horrific serial killer attack seven years ago. She is followed home by the almost mute little boy whom she names Victor, a superbly unsettling instance of the creepy child trope.

Serge and Toni are brothers, Toni the manager of local watering hole The Lake Pub, Serge a revenant with a dark past.

Lucy, an employee of Toni’s, is violently attacked in an underpass late one night.

Adèle, Simon’s ex-fiancée, at first believes she is experiencing a resurgence of old nightmares and hallucinations.

There are, of course, significantly more characters than those named in episode titles, and their interlocking lives and intersecting pasts are elegantly unveiled over the course of the show’s eight hours.

There’s a lot to like about this show. It’s very French, slow and creeping, profoundly visual, wonderfully acted, beautifully directed, layered with meaning.

There’s also undeniably a focus on the abjection of the female body, women’s bodies as the site of violence and rupture. The violence against women on this show is never explicitly sexual, but there is a consistently sexual subtext to it: repeated stabbings, the biting of flesh, a mysterious wound opening up – it’s all a-quiver with invagination. Moreover, the water levels of the town’s reservoir are in flux, suggestive of the fluids of pregnancy, the grave birthing forth the dead back into life. As the normative cycle of reproduction is fissured, so there is also a challenge to (cis)sexist imaginings of the female body as the site of generativity and procreative sexuality. Motherhood is bestowed on Julie, whose uterus is surely rendered inoperative by the knife-blows that have scarred her lower abdomen, whose sexuality is shown only as queer. Unlike Simon, who is impotent and superfluous as a parental figure to the child he fathered from beyond the grave, Julie, the nurse, takes on the role of parent to the near-silent little boy who follows her home. The child chooses the parent; the grave rebirths the dead; barrenness is no impediment to parenthood and potency no guarantee of the same. Heterosexist logics of reproduction are disrupted, but so too are the bodies of women. Simply reversing the logic of reproduction is no guarantee of female bodily integrity. All the major male characters, including Adèle’s new fiancé and Camille and her sister’s father, sin against the women in their lives, committing betrayals that manifest as violence and/or controlling behavior.

The Returned is not explicitly about male violence against women, but this is an unmistakable through-line for those who are watching for it. Violence against women is, perhaps, more normalized in our culture than death itself; yet in truth it is as damnably unnatural as the dead returning.

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Max Thornton blogs at Gay Christian Geek, tumbles as trans substantial, and is slowly learning to twitter at @RainicornMax. His friend Catherine told him to watch this show at least a year ago. Catherine, you were right.

‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ – A Missed Opportunity for a Strong Female Lead

By far the most disappointing aspect of film is the verbal sexual objectification of April O’Neil. She may not be scantily clad, but the male characters (mostly Mikey and Vern) in the film frequently make sexual comments to her, to which her response is complete and total silence. For an actress who has expressed plenty of feminist quips and spoken so adamantly about “refusing to flirt on set,” even going into detail on how she handles it, saying “you never have to feel like someone has power over you,” I’m surprised to not see that influence on this character. There was no script when she signed on to star in the film, and from interviews I’ve watched it seems like the storyline was a collaboration between her, the director, and the producers.

This is a guest post by Melanie Taylor.

There has been no escaping the onslaught of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles promotion that’s been inundating every media outlet over the past few weeks. The hype has been huge and the hate has been heavy, even from the beginning back when there was first talk of Michael Bay making the turtles into aliens. Everyone protested Michael Bay “ruining their childhood.” Many fans also lamented the presence of sexpot actress Megan Fox filling the shoes of journalist April O’Neil, the protagonist of the film and the human connection to the outside world. Hate and hype aside, the film carried on, and the cast was filled out by Will Arnett playing Vernon Fenwick, her goofy cameraman sidekick, and William Fichtner as Eric Sacks, the obligatory evil genius.

I, for one, was excited to see Megan Fox in a film that does not revolve around her sexuality. In promotion for the film, Fox says that her character is “courageous” and “ambitious…fighting for the truth,” a Joan of Arc type of character. The director, Michael Liebesman, echoes her sentiment, stating that he didn’t want April to just be eye candy, that she is meant to be an integral part of the Turtles’ survival and mission. While the film starts strong and leads with April aggressively interrogating a source, determined to find an opportunity to report something beyond a fluff piece, the “ambition” teeters off and is never fully realized.

Megan Fox as April O'Neil — Megan Fox as April O’Neil

The first half of the film we follow her character in her quest to uncover the truth, get a story, and stop the destructive Foot Clan that has been causing havoc in the city, but in the second half of the film April completely abandons her career ambitions and is basically just along for the ride in what seems like an endless 45 minute long action scene. I say “first half” and “second half” because there is no third act in this film. There is no wrap up of the main character’s goals or problems, only a stop-the-bad-guy-and-say-goodbye-to-the-Turtles sort of ending. However, you can see from released B-roll footage that at one point there was a third act of some kind at some point.

On top of the lack of a third act, the film almost seemed like a rip off of the 2002 Spiderman storyline — bad guy scientist has a plan to take over the city and kill people with some kind of chemical and the good guys must stop him. The film was practically a parody of the action superhero genre, which actually made the generic dialog more tolerable to think of it that way.

By far the most disappointing aspect of film is the verbal sexual objectification of April O’Neil. She may not be scantily clad, but the male characters (mostly Mikey and Vern) in the film frequently make sexual comments to her, to which her response is complete and total silence. For an actress who has expressed plenty of feminist quips and spoken so adamantly about “refusing to flirt on set,” even going into detail on how she handles it, saying “you never have to feel like someone has power over you,” I’m surprised to not see that influence on this character. There was no script when she signed on to star in the film, and from interviews I’ve watched it seems like the storyline was a collaboration between her, the director, and the producers.

Vern jokes about the nice view of her rear end when she’s leaning out a window, and Mikey makes comments throughout the entire film about being attracted to her, including implying that she’s giving him a boner. Her response is to stare blankly at him like a personality-devoid sex object. Not once does she tell him to cool it, chill out, stop, or respond with some witty come back at least. Aside from the fact that he’s a teenager and she’s a grown woman, she’s there to get a story and help the turtles, not give them boners.

April leans out of a window to snap a pic

Although she does have moments of strength where she saves them, the Turtles don’t seem to care about her beyond thinking she’s hot. Fox has repeatedly stated that she doesn’t mind being the sexy aspect of a film and while a little sex appeal in an action film makes sense, it’s a bit of a contradiction to talk about April being this great role model for girls because she confronts danger and has career goals, both great traits, when that character is also painfully silent in the face of unwanted sexual attention. You can have a sexy character who is not a silent sex object.

This was a missed opportunity for Megan Fox to showcase a truly strong female action hero. When Mikey makes comments about how she can always find him “here” as he points to her “heart” aka chest, she could have shut him down with something like, “Cool it, kid. I’m here to get a story!” or something more clever like what she does in real life. Instead we got deer in the headlights silence as the audience laughs at how much he is drooling over her.

For what it’s worth, this film technically passes the Bechdel Test – April has conversations with her female boss, played by Whoopi Goldberg, and her female roommate in two cute scenes that get a laugh, but the film and entire franchise still suffers from the “Smurfette Principle.”

Shredder, the whitewashed bad guy with boomerang-like knife hands, and Splinter, the rat father of the turtles, could not have been less developed and less interesting as characters. There was little to no backstory for them. Splinter was hideous to look at and Shredder had no personality. Megan’s performance was enjoyable, but kind of weak compared to her performances in This is 40 and Friends With Kids. I’ll give her a pass though, because she was pregnant throughout the entire film, nauseous almost every day on set. Pretty badass to make an action film while pregnant.

The saving grace for TMNT was the humor of jokester Michelangelo. He got the most laughs and was the only thing to make the nonstop, over-the-top action that dominates the second half of the film bearable. He provides the much needed levity to the excessive machismo of the film. Another positive aspect of the film was Will Arnett as Vern, who was charming and likable, even if he was that sort of annoying guy-friend-who-can’t-take-a-hint type. Sexual objectification and lack of a character arc aside, Megan Fox comes off as very likable as well in this film. She’s determined and brave and her backstory and connection to the Turtles gives her character heart substance.

The film ended on a note that very much implied a sequel, and considering the big box office numbers of opening night, a TMNT 2 is inevitable. Let’s just hope that in the second installment, at the very least, that April learns to shut down sexual harassment and gets to reach her career goals and have some kind of character arc along with the Turtles and the bad guys.

Melanie Taylor graduated from CSUN with a degree in screenwriting. She writes for her blog The Feminist Guide to Hollywood and is also a musician who shares her music on soundcloud.com/phantomcreatures. Follow her on twitter: twitter.com/tigersnapp.

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!

Carrie Brownstein Writing Lost in Austen Film Based on Unfinished Nora Ephron Script by Evan Minsker at Pitchfork

Hollywood films ‘do not reflect diversity’ in US at the BBC

Allison Janney On Sex, Sorkin And Being The Tallest Woman In The Room at NPR

The True Story of Star Trek’s First “Green Girl” by Jarrah Hodge at Gender Focus

From ‘Good Times’ To ‘Honey Boo Boo’: Who Is Poor On TV? by Elizabeth Blair at NPR

Covering Youth Sexuality: How the Media Can Do Better by Regina Mahone at RH Reality Check

Highbrow No Homo: The Art of Queer Representation in “Clouds of Sils Maria” by Shannon Keating at Bitch Media

Modern Office with Christina Hendricks at Funny or Die

Study: Latina Women Most Likely to Be Naked On Screen by Inkoo Kang at Women and Hollywood

‘Orange’ Showrunner Jenji Kohan on Hollywood’s Pay Inequality, ‘F— You’ Money and Her ‘Friends’ Regrets by Lacey Rose at The Hollywood Reporter

Watch 1981 TV Report ‘Racial Stereotyping: Inside & Out’ (What’s Changed 30+ Years Later?) by Tambay A. Obenson at Shadow and Act

L Word Mississippi: Hate the Sin, a Great Documentary With a Terrible Title by June Thomas at Slate

Popaganda Episode: Myth of the Strong Black Woman by Sarah Mirk at Bitch Media

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

She’s Pretty for a Black Girl: ‘Dark Girls’ and Colorism in America

I can remember an episode of ‘Chappelle’s Show’ (a sketch series that offered some valuable commentary on race and race relations in America) where Paul Mooney says, “Everybody wanna be a nigga, but nobody wanna be a nigga.” How does this seemingly crude sentiment translate to reality? to a social framework? To color? What he means is this: being Black is still considered “cool” and trendy by some, and it can be a mark of power and subversion. On the other hand, those who find race to be an accessory are more than happy to avoid the consequences and negative stereotypes associated with blackness, such as prejudice and discrimination. ‘Dark Girls’ investigates what causes colorism, how it’s begun to poison Black women, and how Black communities can heal from it.

Written by Jenny Lapekas.

I can remember an episode of Chappelle’s Show (a sketch series that offered some valuable commentary on race and race relations in America) where Paul Mooney says, “Everybody wanna be a nigga, but nobody wanna be a nigga.” How does this seemingly crude sentiment translate to reality? to a social framework? To color? What he means is this: being Black is still considered “cool” and trendy by some, and it can be a mark of power and subversion. On the other hand, those who find race to be an accessory are more than happy to avoid the consequences and negative stereotypes associated with blackness, such as prejudice and discrimination. Dark Girls investigates what causes colorism, how it’s begun to poison Black women, and how Black communities can heal from it.

A 2011 documentary, Dark Girls details colorism in America, particularly amongst the Black female population. Since learning about this phenomenon in college, I’ve been fascinated by this idea that the darker your skin, the more poorly you’re potentially treated not only in America, but across the globe. Dark Girls touches on stereotypes such as dark-skinned girls coming from impoverished communities, or even simply having too much “attitude.” The film is a touching and inspiring examination of blackness, with layers of social and psychological insight, culminating in a poignant conclusion that urges dark girls to “rise,” to reclaim what’s been forgotten, oppressed, or effaced.

Before I evaluate or scrutinize anything: I don’t know the Black experience firsthand. I’m not Black, so I always approach the subject of race with caution. Watching this film won’t make me “get” the Black experience, and neither will reading Malcolm X or watching a Tyler Perry film. It’s insulting and reductive to assume that we can absorb the struggles of an entire people simply by exposing ourselves to a piece of art or media, such as a dramatic performance or a book of poetry–these things must be lived. To reduce a whole race to a 70-minute film like Dark Girls is to limit ourselves. In short, I admire Black women and the strength they embody, I find “ethnic” hair aesthetically pleasing, and I’ve dated Black and Hispanic men who were absolutely guilty of practicing colorism.

In the opening scene, a little girl tells us that she doesn’t like to be called “Black” because she’s not: a nice preface for the negative connotations we can attribute to that one word. Several people interviewed, most of them psychologists, explain the “paper bag test,” which dictates that if your skin is lighter than a brown paper bag, you’re considered beautiful, but if you find yourself darker than the bag, you’re dark and unattractive, and thus undesirable. This seems an unnecessary exercise in masochism, but hey, women also have the “pencil test,” which lets us know if our boobs are too saggy to be considered sexually attractive (see Breasts, another great documentary where women are interviewed topless). How very queer to think of mundane items like pencils and paper bags as tools to assess we all are or what we’re worth.

A drawing that reflects such tragic self-doubt at a surprisingly young age.

One psychologist explains that Black women who experience insecurity about their color cannot count on Black men to “liberate” them from this “slave mentality”: that lighter-skinned Black women are more desirable than dark Black women. Those of us who saw Django will recall that Broomhilda is light-skinned, which meant that she was a house slave (or a “house nigger”); darker slaves worked largely in the fields since they were considered less valuable or unpleasant to look at. This observation brings to mind the popular idea that “good” black men are difficult to find; one participant even explains that she knows black men must exist who are capable of giving her a family and a pleasant life, but she fears they all must be in prison.

Black women are generally insulted when Black men declare their romantic and sexual preference for white women.

To help offset some of the negative commentary in this short film, we meet many articulate and upfront men who explain that they actually prefer dark women for a variety of reasons: Black women are sexier or have nicer skin, dark-skinned men want dark babies with other dark women, and even “the darker the berry, the sweeter the juice.” Whether or not we agree with any of the men interviewed, we have to appreciate their honesty and willingness to share their feelings about race, color, and Black women on camera. Some Black women we meet speak to the sexualization of their bodies and their refusal to allow men of any racial background exoticize their skin color. Some of these women also report that while Black men reject them, white men revere them and their blackness. While much of this film focuses on racial issues in the United States, it discusses the global prevalence of colorism in countries where we wouldn’t expect such behavior, such as Thailand or the Gambia.

Actor/Comedian Michael Colyar says, “I really believe everybody wants to be Black except Black folks,” a thought that echoes Paul Mooney’s. The Black experience seems to be coveted and glamorized, despite the knowledge that racism runs rampant. “They call us colored–but–but–but we always our color, whatever color we are, if we come out, we brown, we always brown, we end up brown. White people, when they’re born, they’re pink, when they’re mad, they’re red, when they’re cold, they’re blue, when they die, they’re gray. Them the colored people!” Clearly, Colyar offers some much needed humor to an otherwise sober look at colorism and what it means to be a dark woman. Just as Chappelle’s Show utilized humor to diffuse the racial tension it unveiled, comedy seems to be the most effective antidote (besides education!) when combating everything from racism and misogyny to political strife.

Dark Girls also references the absence of dark-skinned people on television; it’s this invisibility that suggests that these people don’t exist for the rest of us. Colyar goes on to say, “Usually when you see Black people on TV, we’re on our way to jail or we’re rapping or we’re in sports. You don’t get to see us in a positive light continuously.” Colyar’s astuteness here demonstrates just how both racism and colorism are perpetuated quietly via our seemingly innocuous television sets.

This woman used to worry that her children would be too dark, but tearfully says that she now loves her beautiful “chocolate baby.”

We come full circle as the documentary ends with the same little girl from the opening scene, the beautiful little girl who already struggles with her skin color, believing that Black equates to “bad” and “ugly” while white equals “good” and “pretty.” This girl represents future generations of dark girls who will hopefully embrace their color and challenge Western beauty ideals.

Colorism seems to be a misguided attempt to better understand your own self-appointed rank of blackness while belittling others in the process. This practice is maybe prevalent amongst the Black population due to a lack of self-esteem, one’s own self-loathing, or misdirected anger that is perhaps meant for hegemonic masculinity or non-Black cultures. Because women and Black people are still oppressed, it’s especially problematic when Black women become oppressors of one another; solidarity, at times, can be an illusion if colorism continues within Black communities. While the little girl we meet–perhaps unnamed because she represents every dark girl everywhere–relies on her family to encourage her, we should all be cognizant of our own inclination to attach negative stereotypes to something as superficial as color. I was glad to see that Dark Girls concludes on a hopeful note: that you are not beautiful in spite of your color, but beautiful because of it.

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Jenny holds a Master of Arts degree in English, and she is a part-time instructor at a community college in Pennsylvania. Her areas of scholarship include women’s literature, menstrual literacy, and rape-revenge cinema. She lives with two naughty chihuahuas. You can find her on WordPress and Pinterest.

The Superman Exists and She is American: Scarlett Johansson in ‘Lucy’

First off, busting the industry perception that men will never flock out to see a movie about a woman, Lucy’s audience was split evenly between the sexes. Moreover, it’s a female led action flick without a romantic subplot or scenes that unnecessarily exploit the lead actress’s sex appeal.
It’s a great showcase for Johansson, as she runs through Europe showing off her action chops and her steely determined expression, and an entertaining delivery system for a mix of pseudo-science and scraps of intriguing philosophy, but feminist game changer it is not.

Posters for Lucy showed only Scarlett Johansson — Posters for *Lucy* showed only Scarlett Johansson

Lucy’s release is a bit of a David and Goliath story.

In one corner, you have a traditional action-adventure based on an age-old legend with universal familiarity and a male lead, who’s proven himself by carrying several films, while in the other, is a female led action film, with a completely original story and pretensions towards high art. Add to that a lead who’s never carried a blockbuster, an R-rating and European provenance and Luc Besson’s film, Lucy seems risky.

While both films were successes, with Lucy earning a cool $44 million its opening weekend and Hercules, $29 million, the big story on their release was the industry’s surprise that the great hero, Hercules, was beaten by “a girl.” Headlines posed it as a physical fight: Lucy alternately beat-up, slayed, pummeled, over muscled, and overpowered Hercules, and that was something to gawk at.

Of course, Hercules couldn’t be defeated by a mere “girl.” She has to be a super-powered engine.

Way back in April, when the film’s first trailer was released, Lucy went viral. The story of an American party girl transformed by a drug that lets her access 100 percent of her brain, it looked like a crazy, brutal ride with Scarlett Johansson morphing into a merciless and unstoppable god-like killer; like Bradley Cooper’s well-received Limitless, but with a woman holding a gun. Even the mind-expanding drug at the centre of the story is gendered feminine, a synthetic form of CPH4, a hormone produced by pregnant women.

It all sounds rather wondrous. A female led-action film is always something to take notice of (they’re as rare as unicorns), especially when it’s successful. Sure, every time a film with a female lead dominates at the box office, feminist critics have to cheer it on a bit regardless of its quality, because of its potential as a game changer (though I’m not sure how many times we need a success before it will actually change the game), but Lucy has a lot going for it.

First off, busting the industry perception that men will never flock out to see a movie about a woman, Lucy’s audience was split evenly between the sexes. Moreover, it’s a female led action flick without a romantic subplot or scenes that unnecessarily exploit the lead actress’s sex appeal.

It’s a great showcase for Johansson, as she runs through Europe showing off her action chops and her steely determined expression, and an entertaining delivery system for a mix of pseudo-science and scraps of intriguing philosophy, but feminist game changer it is not.

American party girl Lucy is manipulated by her boyfriend into becoming a drug mule

Lucy is set up like a rape revenge film, a controversial idea in of itself. Our heroine is manipulated into working as a drug mule by her new boyfriend, who forces her to deliver a briefcase by flirting with her and then handcuffing her to it. Next, she’s lifted off the ground and abducted from a hotel lobby by a group of mobsters who refuse to explain anything to her and promise to kill her and her family if she refuses to cooperate. After being knocked unconscious, she wakes up in a strange bedroom stripped to her underwear to find her body has been violated, except, instead of raping Lucy, her captors have cut her open and sewn a bag of drugs inside her body which she will have to deliver for them. Through all this, Lucy is helpless and relentlessly victimized; she has no idea how to save herself from these men who have claimed ownership of her body and her will.

Lucy wakes up in an unfamiliar room, in a scene reminiscent of a woman discovering she has been drugged and raped

Until one of her captors kicks her in the stomach, which causes the drugs to leak into her body, inadvertently unlocking her mind and eventually giving her superhuman abilities like telekinesis, telepathy, invulnerability to pain, mind control, and time travel as the area of her brain she is able to access rises. Along with this, comes a Greek god’s sense of morality, as she begins to see human beings as insignificant creatures that she can kill for simply being in her way.

And what is Lucy to do with her superpowers? Does she want to save herself from the effects of the drug, which promise to kill her within 24 hours? Does she want revenge or to stop others from being victimized as she was? No, she just wants all the CPH4 left so she can accumulate all human knowledge and build a supercomputer. Really, that’s the plot.

Lucy gains superhuman abilities and invulnerability

Though she does kill off the mobsters, it’s only incidental to her goal. In fact, she helps the police arrest the other drug mules, people who have been victimized just as she was, with no concern to the punishment they will face.

The problem with creating a god-like protagonist with no concern for humanity is that she has no concern for humanity. Lucy has no passion or anger about what has happened to her and after a few early scenes, there’s no reason to sympathize or identify with her. Because she no longer has human concerns, the stakes are no longer personal. Because she’s become so powerful, there’s also no struggle for her, no question of whether or not she will succeed. Lucy is an unstoppable force and her enemies are nothing more than bugs on a windshield. A good action film should have character development as well as fight scenes and explosions, and Lucy is sorely lacking in that department.

As an action heroine, Lucy wields a gun and kills without hesitation

Shortly after the drug leaks into her system, Lucy makes one final phone call to her parents, where she tearfully says goodbye and thanks them for raising her so well. This short scene is all we really get of Lucy’s past or of her humanity and once she hangs up the phone, she quickly loses any determination to stay alive or return to her old life. By the time she arrives at the apartment she shares with her friend, Caroline ( Analeigh Tipton), she is cold and impartial.

A film with an emotionless, inhuman god or robot figure only works when there is also a human character we are meant to connect and sympathize with–John and Sarah Connor to the unyielding Terminator. Here, Lucy tries to be both human and inhuman, giving us no real reason to care about her. Though she’s joined by a French police officer, Pierre Del Rio (Amr Waked), playing the usual female role of grounding their superhuman partner, he is given no backstory and we are given no indication that we are meant to switch to identifying with him. His purpose in the story is unclear as, though she kisses him in one scene, saying she needs him to keep her connected to humanity, but we never see this actually happen and the kiss is very dry and perfunctory, indicating he is not meant to be a romantic interest.

Morgan Freeman explains Lucy’s actions as she becomes less and less human

Morgan Freeman is also along for the ride as a scientist whose lectures on the human brain are paired with scenes of Lucy’s transformation as if she is his object lesson. Though Lucy apparently has surpassed his knowledge by the time she speaks to him and knows enough to criticize his theories, he is still posed as an expert who she needs to help her on her quest. By the last segment of the film, Lucy has lost so much humanity that she becomes nothing more than a beautiful object, a Marilyn Monroe mannequin, moved around and explained by men. As she sits silently in a chair absorbing CPH4 and watching spectacular effects only she can see, Morgan Freeman narrates what is happening to her. While her body transforms, she becomes less human, less verbal and therefore less of a character. By the film’s end, her physical form and anything that was specifically the human woman named Lucy cease to exist. Instead, she becomes a force of knowledge that exists “everywhere” and a supercomputer that the male characters can use, a literal object that will somehow save them, though what she hopes they will do with it is never explained.

In addition, there’s definitely some racism at work in the film, which is set in Asia and filled with Asian villains who violate a “‘pure white woman.” There is no real reason the crime story has to to take place in Taiwan aside from vague cultural perceptions that Asia is full of drugs and crime. In one scene, Lucy kills three men after they tell her they don’t speak English, suggesting that they deserved to die for not speaking her language, though she’s the one in a foreign country.

Set in Taiwan, the film shows Asian men preying on a white woman

The filmmakers appeared to take for granted that they would be viewed as progressive for using a female lead, but instead, merely transform the standard white savior from male to female without paying attention to the problematic idea of the white savior itself. Viewers who praise the film as feminist ignore the idea the idea that feminism does not only include white women.

Like any successful female led film, Lucy should also be looked at for its potential to change the media landscape. Scarlett Johansson definitely gives it her all and shows her potential as an action star, capable of helming a film even without her fellow Avengers. Perhaps Lucy’s success will lead to a solo film for her popular Black Widow character or to films for some of our other favorite superheroines.

On its own, Lucy is a cheesy and entertaining ride if you don’t think too much about it. It casts a woman in a superhuman role that women rarely get to play and never plays it as a surprise or irony that the person tasked with advancing the human race is female. That much is admirable.

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Elizabeth Kiy is a Canadian writer and journalist living in Toronto, Ontario.

Seed & Spark: Finding the Female Voice

When I contemplate women in film, two thoughts come to mind: women in front of the camera, and women behind the camera. We are all familiar with the stereotypical female characters in movies and TV shows that portray traditional, predictable roles. There’s nothing wrong with that, I suppose, but it isn’t teaching us anything new about what it’s like to actually be a woman. When I fell in love with independent film in the early 2000s, it was for one reason: I had never experienced anything as risky or as honest as filmmaking without rules or boundaries. This was especially true in terms of exploration of female characters. It was refreshing, enlightening and, eventually, life changing.

This is a guest post by Jen West.

One of my favorite films of 2013 was Blue is the Warmest Color. It’s an outstanding example of including high-impact female characters. I stumbled into it one rainy afternoon in Atlanta, flying solo on a weeknight. I grabbed my bag of popcorn and took a seat in the nearly empty theater. I was originally intrigued by the trailer I had seen and the artwork of the mysterious girl with the bright blue hair. I soon saw that there was something different happening between these characters that I had never experienced before— a depiction of a true lesbian love affair on screen. I was sucked into the world of Adèle, a 15-year-old girl exploring love and sexuality for the first time. I know some would argue that the characters were a little too pretty, making the film feel a little like soft porn at times, but I found it to be intimate and intense. It wasn’t afraid to take us in the bedroom and expose the passion that existed between the two girls. Isn’t sexuality a part of all of our lives, whether in abundance or lack thereof? We shouldn’t be afraid to explore that. It was a brave film and the actresses held nothing back for those parts. That’s what independent film is all about— taking risks and pulling out raw emotions in the viewer. I liked that it made me feel vulnerable. I loved that snot dripped out of Adèle’s nose every time she cried. It was female authenticity. I want more of that.

Another recent stand-out performance for me was from Brie Larson in Short Term 12. This is a great example of not shying away from the ugly parts of life. Her character, Grace, deals with past sexual abuse as a life-changing event and she continues to deal with it while working at a adolescent treatment facility. She shows us the face of an abuse survivor, which isn’t always pretty. Everyone has demons that chase them down eventually. Each person’s coping process is unique. Grace is a beautifully broken and complex character who will go down as one of my favorites of all time. If you haven’t seen it, then you are missing a pivotal film in the indie universe.

I want the ugly. Give me the behind-closed-doors intimate moments that really mean something to my own struggles. I don’t care about surface appearances and the masks that each of us wear every day in order to fit in. The true self lies far beyond that. It’s a scary, but unifying experience to be let into another’s intimate universe. Film is a great medium to explore this concept, especially with female characters.

Nothing turns me on more than a powerful female performance, whether it be the actors on screen or the writers and directors behind the camera. As I’ve traveled the film festival circuit with short films of my own, I’ve always kept an eye out for my peers. Through this self-initiated challenge I’ve found the likes of Josephine Decker, Eliza Hittman, and Leah Meyerhoff. You should become familiar with these women. When you aren’t paid yet for your craft, when each film comes from your soul—that’s how you know someone is a real artist. It’s hard, sometimes even nearly impossible, but you do it anyway. There is absolutely no shame in wanting to be paid for your work, however there is something to be said for pursuing your passion just because it’s a part of your being. That’s the kind of filmmaker I strive to be.

For all of you female filmmakers out there— let’s keep creating characters that reveal something important about our humanity. It doesn’t matter if it’s done through humor or drama. For those of you who are film fanatics, or just the occasional theater dweller, I challenge you to discover more independent female-focused content and filmmakers. It’s easy to turn on Netflix and watch what’s on top of your recommended viewing list. Instead, why not dive into something different (but equally convenient) like Seed & Spark, or just dig a little deeper into your preferred medium for that independent film you’ve never heard of. Better yet, attend your local film festival and see what’s surfacing beyond the TV and movie theater. I guarantee that you’ll discover amazing female-focused content once you start searching.

Born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama, Jen West is a writer and director living in Atlanta, Georgia. She is known for Piece of Cake (2006), Crush (2011), Bubble (2013) and “Call Me” (2014 – music video for St. Paul and the Broken Bones). She wrote her feature script, Electric Bleau, as part of a creative residency with the Cucalorus Film Festival in 2014. Currently she is in preproduction for her next short, Little Cabbage and is crowdfunding on Seed & Spark.

‘Orange Is the New Black’: The Crime of Passion in Media

‘OITNB’ does not always blame the id. It also wonders whether larger societal forces are culpable too. Take, for instance, adorable Lorna (Yael Stone) a modern day zeitgeist for Bridezillas. As a compulsive shopper, she’s a victim of the consumer industrial complex that taught her happiness and fulfillment can be bought. When a cute man rejects her after one date, she realizes she can’t buy or scam her way into love so it triggers a fatal attraction in her. Pornstache’s adopted patriarchal mindset that women are merely pleasure objects leaves him jobless, in jail, and alone. Officer Healey’s misogyny leads him to procure a “traditional” wife via mail order, only to discover that true companionship can’t be bought or found through biased gender roles.

This is a guest post by Katrina Majkut.

Orange Is The New Black’s second season reveals more about the lives and crimes of its supporting characters. What lies at the heart of season two is not the misdeeds these women committed that account for their imprisonment, but the relationships surrounding them and their personal desires that ultimately contributed to it.

This is a recurring theme in Jenji Kohan’s work. Consider Kohan’s first breakthrough female character, Nancy Botwin in Weeds. Botwin, a dependent housewife, turns to drug dealing once she realizes her lifestyle choice left her financially destitute. Kohan, like many women before her – Simone de Beauvoir to Betty Friedan, iterates that the real crime is the one where women believe relationships are a means to an end.

The Atlantic’s Megan Garber argues that traditional Rom-Coms are a dying Hollywood genre because they don’t include contemporary online dating. I respectfully disagree; OITNB is arguably a new age Rom-Com (plus drama) that still operates on dial-up (Wi-Fi is too fancy for that prison). It merely takes the genre’s traditional trite heterosexual storylines, the romantic city backdrops, and the saccharine plots and puts them into solitary confinement. It then throws away the key.

OITNB reinvigorates this genre by exploring more dynamic and diverse relationships: platonic and romantic, internal and external. Unlike in Rom-Coms, sex is not a driving force in OITNB. It’s merely a perk and even then can lead to complications like Officer Bennett (Matt McGorry) and Dayanara’s (Dascha Polanco) pregnancy. And the show breaks new ground in this obsolete genre with its almost all-female cast. Rom-Coms want viewers to believe that problems will resolve themselves within a relationship; Kohan’s version suggests that’s where they start.

Piper (Taylor Shilling) lies at the heart of this theory. Season two reveals how much her relationship with Alex (Laura Prepon) has negatively impacted her life. However, Piper is not committing crimes in the name of her passion for Alex. In fact, we learn her poor decision-making stems from her relationship with her parents, their habit of obscuring the truth, and her father’s infidelity. Piper’s story makes a compelling argument that one’s nurturing is more influential over personal nature. Maria Ruiz (Jessica Pimental) supports this idea by begging her taciturn boyfriend to talk to their daughter so she grows into a well-adjusted child.

To what purpose Piper is driven to commit these crimes has yet to be revealed, but the question highlights OITNB’s most interesting angle on the new age Rom-Com genre – desire. Season two unveils that the characters’ relationships are merely conduits to attain more intangible, inherent passions like – power, safety, belonging, fortune, favor, excitement, loyalty, relevance, etc.

A bloody Piper on OITNB — A bloody Piper on *OITNB*

This is most evident with Season two newcomer, Vee (Lorraine Toussaint), who, rather than quietly ride her jail time out, is driven by a passion for power and sets out to take Red’s. She’s highly aware of her psychological needs… and others’, which is how she manages to manipulate several women into doing her bidding. She plays off these characters’ needs for family, connection and approval, like Taystee’s (Danielle Brooks), who despite her book smarts, turns to drug dealing in the pursuit of motherly love. Viewers quickly learn that one can only be as healthy and wise as the company one keeps.

That also includes the relationship people have with themselves. In OITNB’s subtle exploration of nature versus nurture, viewers are also shown a compelling argument that personal nature also influences decision-making. As nature drives needs, a person can easily become his or her own worst enemy. Take for instance formerly pro-choice Pennsatucky (Taryn Manning), who, eager for affection from an inattentive boyfriend, quickly switches sides when she realizes how to earn the esteem of the pro-lifers. She’s willing to permanently win their worship by taking the life of a clinic doctor. Sister Ingalls (Beth Fowler) continues to protest despite ones from the Catholic Church, because who is she without her activist conviction more so than without Jesus? Miss Rosa’s (Barbara Rosenblat) boyfriend introduced her to bank robbing, but it was after her first heist that she realized she had a knack for it.

OITNB does not always blame the id. It also wonders whether larger societal forces are culpable too. Take, for instance, adorable Lorna (Yael Stone) a modern day zeitgeist for Bridezillas. As a compulsive shopper, she’s a victim of the consumer industrial complex that taught her happiness and fulfillment can be bought. When a cute man rejects her after one date, she realizes she can’t buy or scam her way into love so it triggers a fatal attraction in her. Pornstache’s adopted patriarchal mindset that women are merely pleasure objects leaves him jobless, in jail, and alone. Officer Healey’s misogyny leads him to procure a “traditional” wife via mail order, only to discover that true companionship can’t be bought or found through biased gender roles.

Lorna & Suzanne "Crazy Eyes" in OITNB — Lorna and Suzanne “Crazy Eyes” in *OITNB*

None of these characters is committing crimes in the name of passion per se, but their unrequited desires are usually leading them toward a perpetual cycle of bad decisions, which, for most, result in crimes. With such skewed risk and reward results, viewers have to wonder if they’re aware of what drives their poor decisions.

The prison setting provides good insight into this. Stripped of life’s comforts, the prisoners are faced with meeting the basics of Maslow’s hierarchy. Meals and a roof are nominally provided, but their social and psychological needs remain elusive. It’s not that people in love do stupid things (though that can happen), but people are willing to assume certain risks if it means earning, winning, or attaining whatever it is that they are seeking. Whether the individual characters know these desires does not ensure their survival or success, which is perfectly captured in Vee’s final scene. Soso (Kimiko Glen) sums up the importance of well-rounded relationships: “We should be leaning on each other, finding support in our fellow prisoners. So we’re not isolated…. I need a friend.”

Viewers learn that community is necessary to survive inside prison, but more importantly outside too. Matriarch Red (Kate Mulgrew), who has struggled the most with family, power, and support, appears to be reaching this important arch. This becomes evident as she gathers with her estranged prison family to break bread and offer an olive branch. Her benevolence and selflessness is rubbing off on her family too, such as when Nicky seeks help with her sobriety, who then offers Lorna the recognition of love she’s always desired (even if it’s platonic). Red mirrors the sentiment Kohan is not so subtly reaching at – that failure is inevitable if we let unhealthy relationships and desires define us. Like jail, they can easily hold people back.

Kohan’s spin on female media dives much deeper into characters and relationships than the now-suffering traditional Rom-Com genre. Rom-Coms’ superficiality is its biggest crime, which ultimately led to its lack of popularity and box-office support. OITNB is a compelling game-changer by highlighting the true nature and depth of women’s desire and making their relationships secondary.

However, it’s important to bring up The Atlantic’s controversial article by Noah Berlatsky, “Orange Is the New Black’s Irresponsible Portrayal of Men,” who accuses OITNB from his seat of male privilege that “the problem is that the ways in which OITNB focuses on women rather than men seem to be linked to stereotypically gendered ideas about who can be a victim and who can’t.” It seems that OITNB has also shaken up the crime and punishment genre.

First, he couldn’t be more off the mark about people being overly generous in their sympathy toward female victims of violent crime. If he were right, rape on US campuses wouldn’t be such an egregious current event. His lack of sympathy for victims sounds eerily like victim blaming, but I digress. Secondly, neither OITNB, nor this article, is suggesting these women are victims of their own unfulfilled desires; many take pride in their crimes! The show is merely trying to get to the psychological root of the misdeeds and decisions and if the prisoners can learn from them.

What makes OITNB such compelling entertainment is the same substance that Berlatsky criticizes. The show redefines an entertainment genre and the traditional characterization of women and prisoners. Based on Berlatsky’s argument, for example, there wouldn’t be any dynamic movies featuring female CEOs because 95.2 percent of Fortune 500 CEO positions are filled by men and they’ve only ever been portrayed as Gordon Gekkos. So in Bertlatsky’s, world men deserve better portrayals first. That’s the thing he misunderstands about OITNB‘s psychoanalysis of desire–if we don’t understand what drives us, we run the risk of using our male privilege to ostracize and enrage minorities. ¿Comprende, Bertlatsky?

Media’s crime is portraying women or prisoners with limited scope and vapid storylines. Kohan’s desire to shake up two very stagnant media genres has left many feeling blindly robbed of a genre they once controlled, but for others it’s filling an empty gulf in entertainment. Season two begins to unravel the mysteries surrounding the inmates’ incarceration. It offers an intimate peek into how the nature of relationships is ultimately driven by personal desires. OITNB is honest in admitting that healthy, trustworthy, selfless, and supportive relationships are as elusive for everyone as that freedom all the inmates desire. But the real culprit is that passion, which without understanding, can get anyone in trouble in the first place.

Katrina Majkut (My’ kit) is the founder of www.TheFeministBride.com. It hopes to inspire a new generation of newlyweds who want unique and egalitarian wedding ideas to fit their modern lifestyles. It aims to empower couples to walk down the aisle as equals. As a writer, lecturer, and research-based artist, Majkut is dedicated to understanding and exploring social narratives and civil issues in Western marriage and wedding culture. She is represented by Carol Mann Agency in New York City. Please follow The Feminist Bride on Twitter @FeministBride and on Facebook.

The Women of ‘True Detective’ – Madonnas and Whores

Shots of Lisa emphasize her youth, her beauty, the perkiness of her breasts, and the roundness of her ass. Unlike Maggie, she is very sensual and perhaps the opposite of nurturing. She is openly mocking toward Marty and refuses to cater to him emotionally. Marty seems to see Lisa as a necessary evil; she allows him to deal with all the pain and degradation he sees in his job. At one point Marty says in a voiceover sequence says: “You gotta take your release where you find it, or where it finds you. I mean, in the end it’s for the good of the family”–implying that having Lisa in his life allows him to get out his “animal” urges, allowing him to be able to be a good husband and father to his family when he gets home.

As often happens when you live on an island in the South Pacific, I was late to the party with True Detective. Despite the fact that at its core it’s a show about two white dudes trying to save a bunch of ladies who are already dead, I found the show to be quite captivating because of the relationship that grows between the two anti-hero leads: Marty, played by Woody Harrelson and Rust, played masterfully by Mathew McConaughey. Unfortunately the depth afforded the two leads is not replicated for any female characters on the show. These are largely made up of sex workers who Rust and Marty come across in their investigations. There have been many analyses of the show’s portrayal of sex workers so I won’t delve into that. However I do want to talk about how the two female characters, who are perhaps most central to the show, personify a Madonna-Whore dichotomy. These are Maggie, played by Michelle Monaghan, who portrays Marty’s long-suffering wife and Lisa, played by Alexandra Daddario, who is his much younger mistress.

It is pretty easy to see how Maggie is the classic Madonna. She is portrayed as feminine and virtuous, taking care of Marty, raising his children, looking after their home, etc. At the beginning of the season she is essentially sexless. Her initial interactions with Rust are not really flirtatious but simply an extension of her maternal role. She expresses caring and concern over his mental health and shares in his sorrow over the death of his child. She nurtures him and he appreciates her for it. We don’t really know anything about Maggie outside of her relationship to Marty; everything about her seems to be subsumed into caring for him and their children.

For Lisa on the other hand, her sexuality is the largest part of her character, casting her as the Whore to Maggie’s Madonna. Shots of Lisa emphasize her youth, her beauty, the perkiness of her breasts, and the roundness of her ass. Unlike Maggie, she is very sensual and perhaps the opposite of nurturing. She is openly mocking toward Marty and refuses to cater to him emotionally. Marty seems to see Lisa as a necessary evil, she allows him to deal with all the pain and degradation he sees in his job. At one point Marty says in a voice-over sequence: “You gotta take your release where you find it, or where it finds you. I mean, in the end it’s for the good of the family”–implying that having Lisa in his life allows him to get out his “animal” urges, allowing him to be able to be a good husband and father to his family when he gets home.

Rust dismisses Lisa as “crazy pussy” despite the fact that all of her behaviour seems to be quite reasonable considering the circumstances. When they end up in the same bar on their respective dates it is not Lisa who loses control, it is Marty. He is unable to keep his eyes on her and ends up approaching her to harass her. It is Marty, not Lisa, who cannot accept that she has ended the relationship, and it is most certainly Marty, not Lisa, who gets intensely jealous and completely crosses the line by going to her house and beating and threatening her new boyfriend. By any reasonable measure it is Marty not Maggie who is acting “crazy,” but Marty is a man and is entitled to a degree of autonomy and the ability to act out from time to time without facing any consequences for it. Lisa has no such luxury as a woman who has sex with a married man. This is made abundantly clear when she tries to confront him at the courthouse where she works and where Marty is testifying.

Lisa repeatedly tells Marty that he cannot disrespect her like this, that his actions will have consequences. When she confronts him at court, he treats her like a hysterical female despite the fact she has very legitimate reasons for both being furious at him and confronting him openly. It seems logical for her next move to be to tell his wife, however Marty’s reaction is one of fury and confusion. He seems deeply confused that Lisa would firstly, act with her own agency and secondly, act in a way to hurt him. Despite everything he has done to Lisa, Marty seems think that Lisa might be a whore but she is HIS whore and the fact that she would act against him is incomprehensible.

Maggie, being the long-suffering and virtuous Madonna that she is, takes Marty back eventually and he behaves himself for a time. The upshot of all of this is that in the True Detective universe women are clearly categorized – women who are valuable and worthy and women who are not. As Lisa fulfills the role of whore in his life he feels like he can treat her however he pleases. Whereas with Maggie, who is a virtuous Madonna, Marty must work hard to earn back her love and trust. This explains why Marty reacts so violently when his daughter is found in a car with two boys. He has to punish the boys for marking his daughter as a Whore and not a Madonna. The dichotomy also plays out in the final end of Maggie and Marty’s marriage. In order to ensure that the relationship will end for good, Maggie has to cast herself in the role of Whore by having sex with Rust. To her this is the only way by which Marty will not try and earn his way back into her life and her guess is correct. Once Marty realizes she has slept with Rust she is ruined to him and the relationship is finally over.

The one positive to me in all of this is the portrayal of Lisa. While Marty does his hardest to push her down and treat her like she is worthless because she sleeps with him, she constantly asserts her agency. From the very first time we see her, turning the tables on Marty and handcuffing him to the bed, right to when she tells Maggie about their affair, she is constantly challenging Marty’s assumptions about her place. This at least serves to disrupt the notion that women who fit the role of Whore are passive and subject to the whims of men. Lisa is also not disposable; she is the one who decides when the relationship should end and firmly asserts the boundary even when Marty acts in ways that are both violent and childish.

Overall, however, the show fell into lazy tropes about women and the ways in which it explored them were not particularly interesting or revolutionary. Hopefully the next season does better.

Gaayathri Nair is currently living and writing in Auckland, New Zealand. You can find more of her work at her blog A Human Story and tweet her @A_Gaayathri

’22 Jump Street’ is That Awkward Moment When You Want to be Progressive and Don’t Know How

’22 Jump Street’ alternately endorses and makes fun of the idea that we should be sensitive, tolerant people, but it isn’t mean-spirited or offensive – it’s just sort of harmlessly dumb.

Written by Katherine Murray.

22 Jump Street alternately endorses and makes fun of the idea that we should be sensitive, tolerant people, but it isn’t mean-spirited or offensive – it’s just sort of harmlessly dumb.

The premise of 22 Jump Street is that the characters from 21 Jump Street — two undercover cops played by Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill – have to do the exact same thing they did in the first movie, but with a bigger budget, and in a slightly different setting. I’m not being sarcastic – that’s actually the brief they get from their Captain at the start of the movie, because 22 Jump Street is one long, self-referential joke about making a half-assed sequel.

In this particular case, the cops, who went undercover as high school students in 21 Jump Street, are now undercover as college students. There are jokes about college, jokes about movies, and jokes about how the characters look really old, but the dominant theme in the movie is that it, and its characters, try really hard to be not homophobic, not sexist, not racist… and don’t always figure out how.

The most obvious example of this, and the one that’s been discussed the most often in reviews, is that the friendship between Tatum and Hill’s characters – Jenko and Schmidt – plays out as if it’s a romance. Jenko becomes friends with a football player, making Schmidt jealous, and leading them to fight about whether they should split up and “investigate different people.” There’s a sad musical montage while they think about how much they miss each other, before they agree to team up again as “a one-time thing.” When they reconcile, in the end, Jenko’s football player friend looks on with a mixture of joy and regret, declaring, “That’s who he should be with!”

Despite their cover story being that they’re brothers, and the fact that Schmidt starts dating a woman, other people mistake them for a couple, too. A school counselor makes them hold hands and attend couple’s therapy; some drug dealers think they’re having oral sex during a bust.

The movie is trying hard to be not homophobic – there’s even a part where Jenko, who’s forced to take a seminar on human sexuality, explains why you can’t use gay slurs – but, when you boil it down, the joke is still, “They seem gay, but they’re not!”

After a long period of time where movies couldn’t allude to homosexuality at all, and a shorter period of time where they could only do it in a derogatory or pejorative way, we’re now in a place where mainstream movies are totally cool with joking that their leading men are gay… as long as it’s clear that they don’t have gay sex. It’s a step forward, for sure, and you can argue that 22 Jump Street is just making fun of the homoerotic subtext that’s already present in buddy cop movies, but the joke is still based on the idea that actually being gay is a bridge that can never be crossed.

This kind of humor has gotten more and more prevalent as public acceptance toward the LGBT community has increased. Homosexuality is no longer something so taboo that we can’t even talk about it – and it’s no longer a career killer for heterosexual actors to play a gay character, or to joke about their masculinity. “They seem gay, but they’re not!” has shown up in R-rated comedies, and most of the recent Sherlock Holmes adaptations – including the Robert Downey Jr. movies, House, and, most notably, BBC’s Sherlock – and the punch line is always the same: “Ha ha ha. This looks gay, and we’re fine with looking gay – and doesn’t it reflect well on us, that we’re not afraid to look gay – but, just so you know, we’re not gay.”

If you were watching a movie or TV show about a man and woman who really, really acted like a couple, and people mistook them for a couple, and there were constantly jokes introducing the idea that they should be a couple, chances are they’d end up as a couple. Usually, the point of making those sorts of observations in the early part of a movie or series is to plant the idea in the audience’s mind that the characters should get together, and introduce tension about whether or not they will. It’s the same principle as We’re the Millers, where Jennifer Aniston and Jason Sudeikis pretend to be married as part of con, but end up falling in love. Or the second season of Orange is the New Black, where Larry and Polly are mistaken for a couple, and it makes them realize that they should be one. Or even the later seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where Buffy and her mortal enemy, Spike, fall under a spell that makes them act like they’re in love, which leads to them actually falling in love.

With 22 Jump Street and its contemporaries, we’re under no illusion that the story will resolve itself that way. In fact, part of the point of the joke is that we take for granted that it won’t. That’s what makes it a “safe” joke to tell. That doesn’t offend me, and I understand that joking about things in a non-judgemental way can be a step toward acceptance. The movie just isn’t as progressive as it seems to want to be.

Speaking of things that aren’t as progressive as they seem to want to be, 22 Jump Street, intentionally or not, dramatizes the same type of struggle in Schmidt. While the movie is awkwardly trying to avoid homophobia without being sure what to do, Schmidt awkwardly tries to avoid being sexist or racist, with mixed and confusing results.

There’s a running joke in the film where he tries to suck up to the Captain (played by Ice Cube) by saying what he clearly thinks are appropriately sensitive things about race. When the Captain flips out and starts yelling for the waiter in a restaurant, Schmidt defends him by saying, “He’s black! He’s been through a lot!” When the case is initially explained to him – that a black woman died after taking drugs sold to her by a white man – Schmidt comments that’s it’s refreshing to have a black victim, and that the fact that she’s black makes him care so much more. Jenko corrects him that he means to say he cares equally, but Schmidt’s adamant that he cares more.

In both cases, everyone else in the scene is confused or annoyed by his comments, and the joke seems to be that he’s trying too hard to seem sensitive without knowing how to go about it. (In the second case, the joke might also be that people who criticize casting decisions in movies are similarly misguided about it).

Schmidt’s also confused about how to relate to women. One of the antagonists in the movie is his girlfriend’s roommate, Mercedes (played by Jillian Bell). Her idea of conversation is to crack deadpan jokes about his age, even when they’re in life or death situations (which is funny), and, at one point, they get into a fistfight, where he’s not sure if it’s okay to hit her. She yells at him that, if he saw her as a person, he’d punch her in the face, and he does it, but he feels really awkward and uncomfortable. (There’s also an improvised moment where they become confused about whether they’re going to kiss during the fight.)

The fistfight scene stands out as one that captures Schmidt and 22 Jump Street’s dilemma pretty clearly – as a reasonably progressive straight, white guy, he wants to do the right thing and not be racist, sexist, or homophobic, but he has no idea what he is and isn’t supposed to do and say. The absurdity of a situation where, in order to be feminist, you have to punch a woman in the face sums up the conflict pretty clearly – in this brave new world we live in, well-meaning people still get confused about how they’re supposed to behave.

The film also has less thoughtful sequences. Schmidt hooks up with a woman named Maya, and we’re supposed to laugh at the idea that he wants to have a relationship while she’s looking for a one night stand (because women are supposed to want relationships, and men are supposed to want one night stands, get it?). He does the walk of shame in the morning, where it appears that he’s the only man among a group of women, and a later scene in the movie follows this up by showing us that Schmidt is now on a first name basis with the same women (implicitly because he’s done this so often that they’ve all gotten to know each other).

The joke “Schmidt makes friends with the other people doing the walk of shame, because he does it all the time” is funny in itself, but Jonah Hill, for some reason, adopts a more effeminate posture and delivery during those scenes, making the joke more like, “Schmidt’s become one of the girls!” Which is funny because… it’s emasculating? Like being gay?

I honestly don’t know.

22 Jump Street exists in a sort of no-man’s-land where we don’t want to be bigoted or hateful, but where even the least homophobic person in the world can reach for a gay slur in anger, and where, even a movie that’s trying to be progressive can reach for jokes that tacitly confirm the same stereotypes it’s opposing. It’s a snapshot of where mainstream culture is, now, where we want to be better, and thoughtful, and kind, but we haven’t dismantled the language that came before. We’re in a transitional stage between the generations that would find this movie offensively tolerant, and those that will find it offensively backward.

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