But what if I spent my time, instead, helping another female filmmaker make her movie involving female friendship? Wouldn’t that be just as meaningful? And could it perhaps be making an even bigger statement—promoting the “cause,” so to speak?
Producer Liz Franke, Writer/Director Augustine Frizzell and Casting Director Tisha Blood having fun during the casting session of Never Goin’ Back.
This guest post by Liz Cardenas Franke appears as part of our theme week on Female Friendship.
The desire to have more female-driven films is such a hot topic in the entertainment industry right now. And it should be. There is definitely a need for more fully developed, complex female characters in cinema and for stories that are told from a female point of view.
But let’s take it a step further. What I believe is truly lacking are stories that specifically center on female friendships. It seems to me most female-oriented movies often just look at sexual relationships from a female perspective. (OK, sometimes they also show what it’s like to be a mother or juggle family and a career.)
But if you asked someone off the street to name a movie about two female friends, a real movie, not some over-the-top, unrealistic comedy, you would most likely hear Thelma & Louise. Maybe Beaches. And that’s probably it. Sure, there are others. But you have to really think about it for a minute. The same is not true for the male counterpart of this question. Most people would have no problem rattling off a list of pictures that concentrate on male friendship. That’s because there are a ton! There’s even a subgenre for them: the male “buddy” movie.
Liz Franke directing Augustine Frizzell, who had a lead role in the Hungry Bear film, Finding Glory, which is in post-production.
So, as a female filmmaker myself, what could I do to make a difference? Of course, I could go ahead and make one. I do, after all, write and produce films, alongside my husband, and many of them have strong female lead characters. For example, in our family feature, Summer’s Shadow, the protagonist is a bright and independent 12-year-old girl who rescues a sweet, stray dog and will stop at nothing to save him. And it’s her determination that ultimately impacts those around her, both children and adults. And I just directed (for the first time!) a short film, titled Treading Water, which I also wrote, and it is about a woman in her 30s who tries to come to grips with her new reality of caring for her elderly father in her childhood home.
But what if I spent my time, instead, helping another female filmmaker make her movie involving female friendship? Wouldn’t that be just as meaningful? And could it perhaps be making an even bigger statement—promoting the “cause,” so to speak?
Well, that is what I’ve done. I am currently a producer on the feature film of a fellow female filmmaker (say that three times fast!) who also happens to be a dear friend of mine. Her name is Augustine Frizzell, and she is the writer/director of Never Goin’ Back. Her movie centers on the friendship between two 16-year-old girls who come from lower socio-economic backgrounds (also grossly underrepresented in cinema) and their misadventures as they try to win back their jobs at the local Pancake House in order to make rent. They have absentee parents and are high school dropouts living on their own, except for an older brother and his friends. So, ultimately, they only have each other. And they go through the ups and downs of life together.
Producers and friends Augustine Frizzell, Liz Franke and Kelly Snowden watching the monitor on Franke’s short film, Treading Water.
This is a personal story for Augustine. It is based on her own experiences. So by working as a producer on her feature, I am helping her tell her own story. And I believe if we really want to see more narratives about true female friendships on screen, then we must actually experience them in real life, as well.
Augustine and I have worked on each other’s projects in the past— I was an executive producer on her short film, she was a producer and acted in mine. However, due to the magnitude of this project (a full-length feature with an ultra low budget and a three-week shoot), it has taken our relationship to the next level. And through it all, it’s been such a positive experience.
Being filmmakers in a male-dominated industry (who also happen to be married to male directors), we can relate to each other. We can also be vulnerable and let down our guards in front of each other. And that is what has been so special and has, quite honestly, blown me away. We do not let ego get in the way. There is no jealousy. No backstabbing. No ulterior motives. We truly support and encourage each other and want each other to be successful, and you hardly ever see that in movies or on TV.
I have to be honest. I have never really had that before in this business. Of course, my husband is always extremely supportive and encouraging, as is hers. But it has been so rewarding to make a real girlfriend in this business, and someone who is pursuing the same thing as I am. It makes me feel like anything is possible. By helping each other, I think we will make a difference. One movie at a time.
Liz Franke and Augustine Frizzell, who both happen to be actresses as well as writers and directors, filming a scene.
And it doesn’t end there. We have so many women working on this project, many of whom are donating some or all of their time or services. Kelly Snowden, my fellow female producer on this project, (there is one male producer—we don’t discriminate after all) has worked tirelessly from the beginning to help our director obtain her vision. And from the Casting Director to our Costumer Designer to our Production Coordinator —they are all women. All of them work regularly in the industry and have still found time to help on this project. This support system of women we’re creating is truly amazing. I was always taught to lead by example, as opposed to simply talking about wanting change. That’s what we’re doing. And it feels really good.
Liz Cardenas Franke is an actress, writer and producer. She and her husband have made seven feature films through their production company, Hungry Bear, including the successful “Adventures of Bailey” series. A member of Women in Film and SAG-AFTRA, Liz was a former reporter for The Dallas Morning News and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, as well as the Vice President of International Sales for Engine 15 Media Group. She is a graduate of Texas Christian University with a B.S. in Broadcast Journalism.
Even you’re not in school, September feels like a time for beginnings. It’s when you met the people who would become your close friends, bought new school shoes, and settled into a new year. With that in mind, I decided to look at a selection of coming of age films loosely based around school and learning. As an extra bonus, all five films come from female writer-directors.
Even you’re not in school, September feels like a time for beginnings. It’s when you met the people who would become your close friends, bought new school shoes, and settled into a new year.
It’s also when you were a bundle of nerves. Will my classes be too hard? Will I wear the right thing? Will anyone want to hang out with me?
I still feel that way in September, and I don’t think it’s an accident; I still have a lot to learn about life–we all do.
With that in mind, I decided to look at a selection of coming of age films loosely based around school and learning. As an extra bonus, all five films come from female writer-directors.
The D.A.R. support each other in their career ambitions.
It’s 1963 and headstrong Odette “Odie” Sinclair (perennial 90s coming of age star Gaby Hoffman) is being sent to Miss Godard’s Preparatory School, an all-girl boarding school, against her will. Her parents have discovered she plans to have sex with her boyfriend and believe the all-girl environment will keep her safe from boys. It’s this tension between ambitious girls and their growing attraction to men that sets the films conflict in motion.
At Miss Godard’s, Odie joins the D.A.R. (Daughters of the American Ravioli), a group of girls (including Kirsten Dunst) with the shared belief that they can be more than wives and mothers. When they discover plans for the school to go co-ed, the D.A.R. girls are torn. They like boys and want them about, but at the same time are concerned that the pressure to look good and appear feminine would detract from their learning. In addition, they believe the teachers will concentrate on teaching the boys as their education is seen as more important. First, they try to sabotage the plans and make the boys at a near-by school appear as sex-crazed drunks, then they take over the school and hold a strike.
Writer/director Sarah Kenochan based the film loosely on her own school experiences in that period and it definitely feels true to life. In addition to being immensely quotable (“Up Your Ziggy With a Wa-Wa Brush!”), it’s packed with memorable, off-beat characters and great 60s fashion. Though it’s set in the 60s, the central conflict of girls fighting for the quality of their education and their ability to be successful career women is something we can all relate to.
Lesson: Though many think otherwise, feminism doesn’t mean hating men. You can have crushes and romances without giving up your self and your ambitions. It may have been harder to learn these lessons in the 60s, especially as they didn’t always appear true, but unfortunately women are still fighting for recognition of these basic truths.
In 1963, the Canadian province of Quebec was having a crisis of identity (and many feel it still is). Much of the population felt they needed to their own country rather than a part of Canada. This identity crisis is mirrored in teenage Hanna (Karine Vanasse). Her life is marked by in-betweens: she is not a child or an adult, she is not technically Catholic or Jewish (as her mother is Catholic and her father is Jewish), and as she begins to experiment, she finds she is neither straight nor gay.
She attempts to create an identity for herself by imitating her favourite film star, French New Wave star Anna Karina in the Godard film, Vivre Sa Vie. In one scene, the film cuts between shots of her and Anna Karina doing the same dance. This imitation gets her into trouble when she experiments with prostitution, which she sees as romantic because of Karina’s role in the Godard film, and is raped. After her attack, she finds her own voice by picking up a video camera and creating her own images.
The film feels earnest, identifying its main characters as a clearly working class family, several of whom are struggling with depression and highlighting the appreciation of movies and music so crucial to teenage dreams.
Lesson: You are never going to fit into an image. Your glamourous stars may have tragic pasts, you may have uncool conflicts and interests. Our favourite characters and stars even have fictional, streamlined images meant to tell us the stories we want to hear. They’re never as awkward or as painful as real life.
Harper meets Connie at her sister’s wedding, where she is an overlooked bridesmaid
Harper Sloane (Sarah Polley, now an acclaimed writer-director herself) is Harvard bound and not happy about it. She’s an overlooked younger sister from a buttoned-up, patrician family concerned with status and wealth. Though she plans to attend law school in the fall, she secretly feels uncomfortable about the decision though she’s never thought about what other kind of life there could be for her.
Enter Connie Fitzpatrick (Stephen Rea), a 40-something bohemian photographer, and the only person who sees her secret discomfort. They become lovers and Connie invites her to move in with him, his latest in a long line of muses all of which he calls, “Guinevere.” As a Guinevere, she has to learn some kind of art (Connie’s practices are often referred to as a school she will eventually graduate from), and Harper decides to take up photography. She follows him as an apprentice, not out of her passion for it, but because she enjoys seeing what he does. When she begins to enjoy it and gains confidence, however he is weary about even letting her take a single picture.
Guinevere is set apart from other films with similar stories of romance between young girls and older men, by the constant assertion that Harper is 19 and the relationship is between two adults, though they are often posed as teacher and student. Great care is also taken to show the reality of the relationship, as Harper ends up having to work to support him as his alcoholism and bohemian principles won’t let him. He is not a “sugar daddy” that takes her every care away.
Despite this, it’s unclear what the film’s stance on Connie is, as it makes his program look quite attractive. It helps Harper come out of her shell and establish a fulfilling career. When she returns to him years after their break-up, she is very affectionate toward him and sees it as her responsibility to take care of him as he dies.
Lesson: There’s a fine line between discovering your passion and coming into your own. Be sure you’re really discovering who you are, not who others, your family, your friends, even your mentors and lovers, want you to be.
Bethany graduates valedictorian in a class of one and sees the graduation ceremony as a prolonged humiliation
To Bethany Pruitt (Ashley Rickards), pink is the colour of oppression. All her life she’s been homeschooled and forcibly sheltered by her impossibly, even cartoonishly cruel mother June (Anna Gunn). June forbids her to go out with people her own age, has as never let her have a job and steals the money she has saved to go to college. Later on, when Bethany escapes, June even tricks her into coming home by telling her her grandmother is dying. As a budding fashion designer, Bethany’s predicament comes to her clearest in the wardrobe full of baby pink clothes her mother has bought for her.
So begins Bethany’s trip to independence. She packs up whatever clothes are salvageable, moves in with her father and his boyfriend and gets a job at a cool clothing shop where she falls in with a bad crowd and finds herself manipulated by a co-worker. But Bethany doesn’t stay down for long, she works hard and enjoys some success designing clothes for a small store. It’s refreshing how the fact that it is very hard to make it in the fashion world is never on Bethany’s mind, she’s just trying to break into its periphery.
The portrayal of Bethany’s mother, June, is the most contentious aspect of the film. She appears to be a terrible mother and possible sociopath through most of the film; however, it’s possible to interpret this view of her as Bethany’s point of view. In the last act, June’s humanity is carefully revealed and she becomes a sympathetic character.
Lesson: Even the worst monsters have their human moments. You don’t have to forgive the cruelty but you can try to understand it.
Vanessa and her FUBAR friends plan their strategy for Snowstream Survivor
Dear Lemon Lima is a charming story about outcasts fighting back, not with force but with friendship. It follows 13-year-old Vanessa (Savanah Wiltfong), a half Eskimo (note: Vanessa and the other characters refer to her as Eskimo, though this is not usually seen as a politically correct term) girl attending an Alaskan prep school on an ethnic scholarship. Vanessa is uncomfortable with the Eskimo cultural identity because her mother is Caucasian and she does not have a relationship with her father and his culture. It represents otherness to her, so she clings to her whiteness, claiming “I’m from Fairbanks!” as proof of normalcy.
To complicate matters, she has recently been dumped by her boyfriend, Phillip, whom she believes is her true love. They had a very close relationship, where she called him “Strawberry” and he called her “Onion.” The fact that Vanessa sees herself an a onion, sour and not easy to like, is interesting. She yearns to fit in and be popular, choosing to use the ordinary backpack from her ex’s parents over the cool sealskin bag from her grandmother. In school, she finds herself clumped into the FUBAR (military slang meaning fucked up beyond all recognition) group. The other outsiders who aren’t worried about their status and feel they have reclaimed the word FUBAR, are ready to befriend her, but Vanessa brushes them off.
It’s this that originally makes Vanessa difficult to identify with. In addition, Philip is so ridiculously terrible its hard to believe she still wants him. Then again, she’s a teenage girl blinded by love and sure popularity is the only important goal in life, so she’s probably more like most of us than we’d care to remember. Eventually she realizes she’s too good for Philip and becomes the leader and advocate of the FUBARs so it’s clear she realizes her mistakes.
An interesting facet of the film is its examination of cultural appropriation. Each year, the school holds a competition called the Snowstorm Survivor championship where the school’s all-white student body (Vanessa is the sole native student) compete in events inspired by native games. These activities include a cringe inducing scene where white students dress up in eskimo costumes and do elaborate cultural dances. In addition, Vanessa realizes her scholarship was sponsored by a known racist who instituted the program as a PR move. By the end of the film she connects to her Eskimo heritage by forming a Snowstorm Survivor team that values the principles of the World Eskimo Olympics, a games intended to bring people together rather than tear them apart through competition.
Lesson: Cheer for everyone, have fun and don’t worry about pointless competition and popularity contests. You’ll regret the friends and the fun you didn’t have.
Elizabeth Kiy is a Canadian writer and freelance journalist living in Toronto, Ontario. is a Canadian writer and freelance journalist living in Toronto, Ontario.
While watching ‘The Maze Runner,’ I couldn’t help thinking, wouldn’t this story have been so much more rich and interesting if it had been told from Minho’s or Teresa’s perspective? Why not feature a girl or a boy of color as the protagonist?
Like most Hollywood films, The Maze Runner — the latest young adult (YA) novel set in a dystopian future adapted for the screen — revolves around a white male protagonist. While mildly entertaining, rather than exploring new ideas and themes, it suffers from gender and racial tropes.
Echoing themes in Lord of the Flies (boys in the wild creating their own society) and The Hunger Games (dystopian setting, a treacherous obstacle course and adults manipulating children for a supposedly greater good), The Maze Runner follows Thomas, whose memories have been erased, as he’s transported into a community of boys living in a forest, called the Glade, in the middle of a fluctuating maze.
It’s a decent film. Nothing special, nothing great. Just fine. I couldn’t care less who lived or who died because all of the characters possess gossamer personalities. The beginning opens with disorientation dropping you right into the story. But beyond that, it didn’t really contain much suspense. Plus I was able to predict pretty much the entire plot about 20 minutes in. Despite a few similarities, The Maze Runner lacks the stellar acting, character development, gravitas and social commentary that helped catapult The Hunger Games to blockbuster success.
The racial diversity of the boys in the Glade pleasantly surprised me. Not only do we see multiple boys of color (who talk! who matter as characters!), it was fantastic to see boys of color in leadership positions: Albie, the group’s leader and the very first boy ever sent up, and Minho, the Keeper of the Runners. Now, I want to applaud this film for its diversity. However, the film (and the book too) can’t resist centering a white male protagonist who is considered “special” and “different” because he’s curious about things and asks questions. Of course, Thomas can figure out everything better and faster than everyone else, even the people who have been in the Glade for years. Sure, you could argue that perhaps that has to do with his repressed memories resurfacing. But I think the real reason is that heaven forbid we have a hero who isn’t white or male, aside from a few notable exceptions (Katniss in The Hunger Games, Tris in Divergent).
Even though there are white boys in the Glade, The Maze Runner feels akin to a White Savior narrative. Now, the White Savior trope is typically reserved for movies about Black people and slavery or Indigenous people, who need to be “saved” or “civilized” by a lone white hero. Yet it still parallels the trope as the boys in the Glade need the new white guy to teach them about the maze and to attempt an escape. Minho has been mapping out the maze for three years, no small feat since the maze changes every night. Yet it’s Thomas, not Minho, who figures out how to kill a Griever and the code to use at the end of the maze. It’s Thomas who motivates the others to try to escape when the others have become complacent.
Thankfully, Thomas doesn’t play a role in “establishing order and peace,” which Albie says they have achieved after the “dark days” of panic and fear. Author James Dashner was inspired by Lord of the Flies to write a series about boys depicting how “instead of killing each other and being animalistic, they would form a brotherhood and do whatever it took to protect each other.” The boys do all work cooperatively together. But Thomas is the only one who breaks the rules and enters the maze as it’s closing to try to save Albie and Minho. While Thomas doesn’t civilize the boys, he does demonstrate a sense of bravery and morality the others seem to ignore or repress. The film’s message seems to be that we should question things, not passively accept them, which Thomas’s presence in the Glade embodies.
So where are all the girls? The movie never explains that. And no one seems to ask that question. The boys are shocked to see a girl, Teresa, come up the elevator the day after Thomas arrives. She is the only girl to ever arrive in the Glade. Aside from an extremely brief performance by Patricia Clarkson, Teresa is the only female character we ever see.
One nice change from most YA movies is the lack of a predictable love triangle or the emergence of a love story. With the presence of one girl, the film could have easily fallen into that trap. Love stories aren’t in and of themselves bad. In fact, I love them. It annoys me how often media denigrates love stories, typically because women and girls are the primary intended audiences. No, I’m glad no love story exists because it usually reduces a female character’s role to nothing more than an object of desire for the dudes in the film. It also typically reifies heteronormative relationships, also queer diversity would have been great to see here.
Teresa is the epitome of the Smurfette Principle. She is the only girl amongst 50 or so boys. Lacking true agency and personality, Teresa’s sole purpose in the film appears to be to potentially create confusion and chaos amongst the boys and to inspire Thomas. Sure, we see her acting feisty as she throws items off of a tower and tosses a torch at a Griever. But ultimately, her role only matters in how it relates to and impacts the male characters. Yes, Teresa tells Thomas that maybe there’s a reason they’re both different. And she encourages him that they should escape. But that’s about it. If I had any hopes for Teresa’s growth in the subsequent films in the trilogy (four books if you count the prequel), this article on the sexism in the books dashed that.
Ummmmmm, pardon me? No, no, no. Just. No. That’s an extremely problematic statement. So because there have been a few female-centric film franchises based on YA novels it’s “refreshing” for the main character to be male? Uh oh, lady movies have been doing well at the box office. Gasp! BRING BACK THE BOY MOVIES.
It matters that girls (and all genders) see diverse representations (gender, race, sexuality, age, body size, people with disabilities, etc.) on-screen. It matters that girls see themselves reflected in media.
While watching The Maze Runner, I couldn’t help thinking, wouldn’t this story have been so much more rich and interesting if it had been told from Minho’s or Teresa’s perspective? Why not feature a girl or a boy of color as the protagonist? Even though it’s framed as a male-centric story, it still could have contained complex, nuanced fully developed female characters. It could have made an intriguing commentary on constricting, stereotypical gender roles or the toxicity of hyper masculinity. It could have explored how gender and race impact social structures and people’s experiences. Maybe I expect too much from my movies.
Despite its racial diversity, instead of forging a new trail, The Maze Runner follows a fairly formulaic and familiar story filled with tired tropes.
Let’s face it, ‘Boyhood’ is a gimmick movie. Richard Linklater sporadically filmed it over a twelve-year period so we could see the child actors in it actually grow-up. If you loved Michael Apted’s ‘Up’ series but wanted more fiction and less wait, Boyhood is for you. But if you just love coming-of-age dramas, I’m not sure I can recommend this one.
Ellar Coltrane as Mason at the beginning of Boyhood
Let’s face it, Boyhood is a gimmick movie. Richard Linklater sporadically filmed it over a 12-year period so we could see the child actors in it actually grow up. If you loved Michael Apted’s Up series but wanted more fiction and less wait, Boyhood is for you. But if you just love coming-of-age dramas, I’m not sure I can recommend this one.
The child actors (Ellar Coltrane as central character Mason and the director’s daughter, Lorelai Linklater, as Mason’s sister, Samantha) are extremely natural and sufficiently likable. Patricia Arquette is fantastic as their mother, who faces a roller coaster of personal, professional, and economic ups and downs. And Ethan Hawke plays their intermittently available father as Ethan-Hawke-in-a-Richard-Linklater-movie, that is, opinionated and rambling and just-barely functioning as an adult human being, but I happen to like that character a lot.
Mason and Samantha’s mother (Patricia Arquette) reads them a Harry Potter book
As strong as their performances are, the problem is that Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke are recognizable movie stars, in stark contrast with the kids at the center of the film and the unknown Texan character actors in the supporting cast. This evaporates the faux-documentary feeling of Boyhood, and leaves in its place an overlong, meandering, plain-old movie.
What’s left is essentially the non-dinosaur, non-Sean Penn-on-limbo-beach parts of The Tree of Life, with fewer shots of light shining through trees, and nostalgia from the last decade instead of the 1950s. Six-year-old Mason rides his bike in endless loops around his block. Eight-year-old Mason plays Wii boxing. Twelve-year-old Mason finds out about internet porn. Fifteen-year-old Mason smokes weed and gets an earring. Seventeen-year-old Mason has sex with his girlfriend in his sister’s dorm room. Eighteen-year-old Mason wins a photography scholarship and does shrooms in the mountains and we can finally, FINALLY leave the theater. (Boyhood is two hours and 45 minutes long, with exactly zero explosions or giant robot fights. I do not have the patience for such things.)
Mason and his sister Samantha (Lorelai Linklater)
It is possible I lost interest because I never had a boyhood of my own. I kept wanted to see more of Samantha, because I could relate to her girlhood (my favorite scene in the movie was Samantha cringing through The Sex Talk with her dad at a bowling alley) and get my nostalgia kick. I was also more interested in Patricia Arquette’s mother character and her struggles because I could relate to them as an adult and as someone who plans to have children.
Sullen teenage Mason and his father (Ethan Hawke)
I may be placing too much importance on gender here, because there are loads of non-gendered experiences of childhood present in this movie. I played with dirt and found out my parents aren’t perfect and rejected authority figures and aggressively sulked, just like Mason. Maybe if Samantha and the mother hadn’t been there, just out of focus, I would have related more to his journey instead of yearning for more from the sidelined female characters.
And as I got bored with Boyhood, I got distracted by the logistics of its gimmick. The passage of time is largely expressed through changed hairstyles on the kids, and I wondered if that was mandated by the director (would Richard Linklater really make his daughter get a regrettable purple-red dye job? (ETA: he did not.) I morbidly wondered what kind of insurance they took out on the lives of the central actors and how they would have reacted to an untimely death. I tried to remember what year the songs on the soundtrack came out so I could figure out how much longer I had to wait to get out of there (I have never been so excited to hear that Gotye song. I turned to my viewing partner and whispered “only two years left!!”).
Eighteen-year-old Mason at the end of the film
Boyhood is a gimmick movie, but admittedly, the gimmick is pretty cool. If you don’t mind long runtimes and have a strong way to relate to this disjointed series of vignettes (having had a boyhood of your own, having a son around the age of the kids in the movie, growing up in Texas), you may well love Boyhood. I didn’t hate it. I just wanted to see more of the women in, it and have it be over an hour earlier. My own childhood felt shorter.
Robin Hitchcock is an American writer living in Cape Town who still plays with sticks in the dirt.
All art is political. That’s what they teach you in art school, and it’s what they teach you in criticism school. It’s apparently not what they teach you in internet troll school.
All art is political. That’s what they teach you in art school, and it’s what they teach you in criticism school. It’s apparently not what they teach you in Internet troll school. In a turn of events that is both terrifying and depressing, a feminist game critic was recently driven from her home by threats of violence after some men didn’t like a video she made. If you’ve been following the story, one of the ideas that keeps coming up is the notion that this critic was somehow imposing a political viewpoint on a space that was neutral before she arrived. She was, as the troll legends tell it, “ruining” something that was “pure entertainment” by “trying to make it political.”
Film has been treated as an art form, and been subject to the same critical analysis as art, for long enough now that it doesn’t gall people to see a review that focuses on more than the technical mechanics of how the thing was made. Even so, if you’re a critic who’s interested in gender, race, or sexuality, you still get blasted from time to time for “making things political” when they otherwise wouldn’t be.
With that in mind, may I present:
6 Types of Political Movies
Water
1. The Message Movie
The Message Movie explicitly takes a position on some political topic. Braveis about how women have the right to choose their own destinies. Born on the Fourth of Julyis an indictment of the Vietnam War. Quills at least thinks it’s about how freedom of expression is the most important good.
Message Movies don’t have to be blunt and simple – and I would argue that Brave and Born on the Fourth of July are fairly nuanced in their presentation – but the blunt, simple movies are the ones that are easiest to point to.
For example, Water, directed by Deepa Mehta, is a really nice-looking two hour lecture on how the Laws of Manu have led to women’s oppression in India. The two main story lines – about a young woman who’s forced into prostitution and then shamed into killing herself, and a child bride who becomes impoverished after the husband she’s only met once leaves her a widow – are shaped explicitly to drive this point home, and the movie ends with a third woman chasing after Gandhi’s train, begging him to help the untouchables.
Whether or not you agree with the film’s position on the issue – and I certainly don’t know enough about it to offer an opinion – Water is very straight-forward in its message and intent.It would be hard to walk away from it thinking that it wasn’t political, even if you didn’t know that Mehta’s films have sparked violent protest in India.
The Message Movie is the easiest kind of movie to discuss from a political point of view, because it frames the questions for you and draws attention to the issues it wants to debate.
Likelihood that you’ll get blasted for thinking the film is political: 1 percent – even if we don’t all agree with or about the film’s message, we all understand that it’s trying to tell us something. Most people think it’s fair play to discuss that.
Children of Men
2. The Implied Message Movie
The Implied Message Movie still offers a strong point of view on political issues, and still seems to be doing it deliberately – it’s just not as explicit as the Message Movie.
One of my favorite films ever, Children of Men, mashes together everything wrong in the world, from terrorism to racism to wrongful imprisonment to war, but never didactically spells out its message for viewers. At the same time, no one would leave the theater believing that director Alfonso Cuarón is agnostic about immigration policy or the human rights abuses at Abu Ghraib. The movie is full of disquieting, uncomfortable scenes and topical imagery that make the director’s position on real-life issues quite clear.
It’s the same way that no one would watch Brazil and walk away thinking, “I’m optimistic about the moral path our bureaucratic culture will be walking,” or feel like racial tension is not a pressing issue, based on watching Crash.
The Implied Message Movie has clearly dipped its oar in the river of politics, and has ideas it wants to share with us, even if they aren’t packaged and delivered quite as neatly as the message in the Message Movie.
Likelihood that you’ll get blasted for thinking the film is political: 30 percent – depending on how abstract the movie’s themes are, there’s a chance someone will tell you that you’re ruining it by making it about real life.
Zero Dark Thirty
3. The “I’m Just Telling You What Happened” Movie
The “I’m Just Telling You What Happened” Movie also has its oar in the river of politics, but it resists pushing off in any particular direction. Biographical movies, or movies based on a true story, are especially likely to land in this category, since the filmmakers may feel that they shouldn’t “impose” a viewpoint on events.
Zero Dark Thirty, which is about the hunt for Osama Bin Laden, was controversial, in part, because it didn’t come right out and say that torture was wrong. The scenes depicting torture are filmed in a cold, emotionally detached way, often taking us outside the point of view of either the victims or the perpetrators. Rather than discussing whether what happened was right or wrong, Zero Dark Thirty seems more interested in exploring the motivations behind it, from a fairly non-judgmental standpoint.
Michael Moore has a pretty persuasive argument for why the film is actually an indictment of torture as an interrogation technique, but your opinion on the events of the film will mostly depend on your opinion of torture in real life.
12 Years a Slave, though it’s not likely to be mistaken for a pro-slavery movie, is also far more interested in exploring the social and psychological dynamics of slavery than in arguing for why it’s wrong. As compassionate human beings, of course we understand that what we’re seeing is wrong, but the movie is leaving us to do the ideological work on our own.
Whereas Zero Dark Thirty and 12 Years a Slave use politically charged issues as their primary content, straight-up biographical movies like Walk the Line and The Runaways – especially when the subjects or direct descendants of the subjects are alive – often try to take a non-judgmental attitude toward the characters, simply reporting what they did, without examining the larger context.
In either case, the “I’m Just Telling You What Happened” Movie leaves you on your own to decide how you feel about what happened and your feelings are probably based on information drawn from outside the film.
Likelihood that you’ll get blasted for thinking the film is political: 30 percent – depending on how central the issue you want to discuss is to the movie’s themes, you may be accused of reading something into it that isn’t there.
The Help
4. The “Let’s Find Something Pleasant to Agree About” Movie
The “Let’s Find Something Pleasant to Agree About” Movie tells a benign, feel-good story that reaffirms what its target audience already believes, while steadfastly ignoring anything else that might crop up.
The Help exists to congratulate me, as a white person, for being less racist than the movie’s most villainous character. It invites the audience to identify with white people who Aren’t Racist, and completely limits the scope of its discussion to the Jim Crow era, avoiding any opportunity to draw a parallel or connection between racism as it existed in the 1960s and racism as it exists today.
Similarly, Forrest Gump takes a long tour through twentieth-century American history, reassuring us at every turn, through the simple, home-spun wisdom of its hero, that life is miraculous, love is important, and we should always have faith and feel hope. As Amy Nicholson recently pointed out in LA Weekly, the movie avoids discussing any of the difficult, contentious issues Forrest encounters, from the Vietnam War, to the AIDS crisis, to women’s rights, to civil rights – struggles that defined the national history it’s asking us to feel good about.
The “Let’s Find Something Pleasant to Agree About” Movie doesn’t just leave us to make up our own minds – it actively steers us away from controversial topics by drawing our attention to the topics we’re most likely to agree about.
Likelihood that you’ll get blasted for thinking the film is political: 50 percent – this is the tipping point where we start to talk about and criticize what’s not in the movie, and people don’t like that as much.
Sex and the City 2
5. The Helpless Shrug and Hand Wave Movie
The Helpless Shrug and Hand Wave Movie is aware that it should probably say something about the issues that it’s raised, but it would rather just do that quickly so it can move on.
Sex and the City 2, for example, makes the bizarre, kind-of-orientalist decision to send its characters to Abu Dhabi for most of the film. Once there, they are, of course, confronted with the very complicated and difficult issue of women’s rights within the UAE, which they address by:
Treating it like it’s none of their business, so they can have fun riding camels
Trying to make a culturally sensitive statement about how it’s probably OK to wear a veil
Deciding that the women of Abu Dhabi probably have things under control, since they meet to wear make-up in secret
Behaving in culturally inappropriate ways and then acting surprised when people get angry about it
Spilling a bunch of condoms all over the street and then screaming at people
Sex and the City 2 is in no way equipped to discuss a topic as complex and politically volatile as women’s rights in the UAE, and it doesn’t really want to do that, either. Instead, it awkwardly fluctuates through a series of attitudes wishing, like so many wayward travelers, that someone else’s political conflict didn’t have to ruin its vacation.
Similarly, 22 Jump Street, which I wrote about earlier, is aware that it should say something about gender and sexuality, given that so many of its jokes are essentially gay jokes, underneath. The best it can manage is an inconsistent pastiche of ideas, in which its characters sometimes deliver humorously-timed lectures on tolerance and equality.
The Helpless Shrug and Hand Wave Movie acknowledges that there’s something we might want to discuss about its content, but quietly begs us to just let it go.
Likelihood that you’ll get blasted for thinking the film is political: 50 percent – depending on how graciously the film has requested that you not do this, and how entertaining it otherwise is, you might get told you’re a buzz-kill.
The Way Way Back
6. The Invisible Perspective Movie
The Invisible Perspective Movie realistically presents ideas and attitudes that are so normalized within our culture that we’ve forgotten that they form one particular perspective, rather than an objective view of reality.
In The Way Way Back, the film’s teenage protagonist forms an emotional bond with a surrogate father figure who helps him come of age as a man. The film, which is otherwise very thoughtful and enjoyable to watch, takes for granted that part of becoming a man involves learning to objectify women, and battling with other men to win a woman’s loyalty.
Someone watching the movie might say, “Well, that’s what boys learn to do,” and I’m sure that, for some boys, it is. But the fact that the movie doesn’t label or examine this as a political issue – the fact that it treats this as a completely unremarkable feature of gender – doesn’t mean the issue’s not there.
Edge of Tomorrow casually presents a female soldier as being competent and skilled – something that many critics did comment on, since it’s not what we usually see – and it also casually presents the fact that the male soldiers she serves with don’t like her and call her “Full-Metal Bitch” behind her back. Both of those things – the idea that a woman can be a competent soldier and the idea that that means nobody will like her – have political meanings, though you might notice only the first one – or neither – on the first pass.
Every movie that exists is made from a certain perspective, whether the movie calls attention to that perspective or not. And, since we live in a world full of constant political struggle, the perspective a movie is made with can necessarily be read as offering a political viewpoint.
That doesn’t make the movie good or bad – The Way Way Back doesn’t “lose” at politics because it didn’t spend a lot of time interrogating its perspective on gender – it just means that we frame our discussions about it differently. A movie that isn’t specifically trying to impart a political message is still a mirror to the culture that produced it and, by examining what we see in the mirror, we can learn new things about ourselves.
Critics add the most value when they talk about things that aren’t obvious, and help us to consider our assumptions from an alternate perspective. They do, indeed, “go looking for things” to talk about rather than taking films at face value, because that’s how you engage with art as something that’s culturally relevant.
Likelihood that you’ll get blasted for thinking the film is political: 99 percent – people hate it when things are culturally relevant.
Katherine Murray is a Toronto-based writer who yells about movies and TV on her blog.
On the subject of female comediennes, A.O. Scott, ‘New York Times’ movie critic, recently wrote, “The ‘can women be funny?’ pseudo-debate of a few years ago, ridiculous at the time, has been settled so decisively it’s as if it never happened…The real issue, in any case, was never the ability of women to get a laugh but rather their right to be as honest as men.” I love A.O. Scott and his writing is brilliant, and I agree with him—the “can women be funny?” argument is a weird pseudo-debate that managed to gain traction on the big world of the web.
On the subject of female comediennes, A.O. Scott, New York Times movie critic, recently wrote, “The ‘can women be funny?’ pseudo-debate of a few years ago, ridiculous at the time, has been settled so decisively it’s as if it never happened…The real issue, in any case, was never the ability of women to get a laugh but rather their right to be as honest as men.” I love A.O. Scott and his writing is brilliant, and I agree with him—the “can women be funny?” argument is a weird pseudo-debate that managed to gain traction on the big world of the web.
However, I disagree slightly. I don’t think its as if the debate never happened, because for some insane reason, women have to keep proving that they are funny. Studies have been done to discover why woman might not be perceived as humorous as men and documentaries have explored the topic with famous comedians. Why people seem to believe that there aren’t funny women out there when there seem to be a million examples of hard-working funny women producing and creating funny material everyday, remains a strangely resilient, sexist mystery.
I mean SNL has been a hot spot for female comediennes for about 30 years—have people not noticed that a staple of modern comedy has been staffed by women for a LONG time?
Tina Fey and Amy Poehler
Tina Fey and Amy Poehler: the two incredibly popular, insanely talented funny women just sort of rule over popular comedy on TV—did you see them host the Golden Globes when they were awesome and made fun of George Clooney, Leonardo DiCaprio, made out with Bono (who makes out with Bono?) and cross-dressed. No one could ever deny that those two women aren’t talented and ridiculously hard working. Both of them write and produce TV shows and movies all the time. Do you know how hard that is? To write a full-length feature film and multiple episodes of TV shows? Oh, and books. I’ve been working on a novel for like five years and it’s still not finished.
There’s also Julia Louis-Dreyfuss who just racks up awards for TV comedy (also an alumni of SNL) and has been producing fantastic comedy since 1987 (longer than most of our readership has been alive). She’s an all-around comedienne whose portrayal of a self-centered, out of touch, Vice President of the United States of America on VEEP is absolutely spot on and fantastic. I love that she can portray someone so unlikeable and still make us love her.
I know that she’s probably not on many “funny women lists,” but she should be. Drescher is not only a writer, producer, and actress (The Nanny, The Simpsons, Thank God You’re Here, Living With Fran), she’s also one of the strongest, most inspiring women in Hollywood. Just Google her and understand exactly what this woman has been through in her life and how’s she not only, still funny and optimistic, but also a legit activist and US diplomat for Women’s Health Issues. Respect Fran Drescher.
Isla Fischer: First off, she’s married to Sascha Baren Cohen so you know she has a sense of humor. But more than that I love the way she completely commits to ditzy, hilarious roles (The Bachelorette, Confessions of a Shopaholic, Hot Rod). In fact, I can’t even think of any Isla Fischer role that wasn’t comedic.
Sarah Silverman: that woman has a mouth like a sailor and I want to be with her all the time. She says the C-word more than a drunk me and I love her. Oh, and she’s also hilarious, her standup is fantastic and she’s also not a bad actress (she was the best part of that weird movie,Take This Waltz).
Melissa McCarthy is bold and incredibly brave with her comedy—she’s a master of gross physical comedy and as a woman, that takes guts. I would actually consider one of the most cutting-edge female comediennes out there right out, and definitely the bravest. I want more interviews with a woman who is incredibly versatile and not afraid to take risks—Also, her gun-loving, foul-mouthed, “sex-goddess” role in The Heat was just fantastic, more funny characters with contradictions please!
Sandra Bullock unfairly has a very “girl next door” reputation, despite the fact that 90 percent of her career has been devoted to very silly, funny, relatable comedy.
Mindy Kaling: we all know her, and obviously this lady is one hell of a comedy writer. She started writing for The Office at an insanely young age (thanks for making me feel like a failure at life—you too, Lena Dunham), and then creating her own show. The Mindy Project is, I think, actually a high-cut above your standard sitcom, the jokes are funny and pointed, and Kaling has managed to cobble together a very silly, pop-culture-obsessed, shallow woman, and mix her up with an insanely smart, outspoken gynecologist, normal-sized, woman of color. Hello complex character that more accurately reflects women in America!
Amy Sedaris: if you don’t know who that is, go and Google her. If I could go to any dinner party in the world, I would ask that it be at Amy Sedaris’ house. Sedaris’ straight-faced comedy is in its own category of genuine silliness, biting sarcasm, and sheer absurdism. I died when I read her Simple Times: Crafting for Poor People book and desperately wish that she would bring back her show, Strangers with Candy, on Comedy Central and go back to writing that insane advice column.
Broad City: Have you seen this quirky new show on Comedy Central? Created by newcomers Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson (and produced by Amy Poehler) as a spin-off of their web series, there’s a scene in ep. 6 that had me in tears it was so brilliant. Again, young, talent-ridden comediennes bursting with genuine, funny girl comedy that is so “buddy-buddy” and focused on female friendship that we could just talk about it for days.
Chelsea Handler: I get that a lot of people find Chelsea Handler a bit in-your-face with her, “I got drunk and slept with my boss” kind of humor, however I think she’s marks a really important step for comediennes. Handler is crass, sexual, wildly inappropriate, brags about her lack of self-awareness, and most importantly, doesn’t apologize. Handler has put herself out there as an unreformed party girl and carved out a great space for funny women who also may or may not be alcoholics and sex addicts. Cool. The world needs all kinds and her unabashed account of one-night stands in My Horizontal Life is hilarious and awe-inspiring.
Oh, and she was also the only female comedy-based late-night talk show host for about eight years and told off Piers Morgan for being an idiot.
Rachel Redfern has an MA in English literature, where she conducted research on modern American literature and film and its intersection, however she spends most of her time watching HBO shows, traveling, and blogging and reading about feminism.
When characters on TV shows or in feature films encounter “a scientist,” that person is usually a man. The rare times when actresses play scientists in mainstream films, they’re more likely to be a punchline than a real character, like Denise Richards in the James Bond film ‘The World Is Not Enough.’ Audiences have to look to documentaries like ‘Particle Fever’ (released earlier this year) about the discovery of the Higgs boson, to see women scientists in prominent roles on film. The new Netflix documentary ‘Mission Blue’ focuses on one woman scientist, Sylvia Earle, a former chief at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and pioneering oceanographer and marine biologist who is on a quest to save the world’s oceans from dying.
When characters on TV shows or in feature films encounter “a scientist,” that person is usually a man. The rare times when actresses play scientists in mainstream films, they’re more likely to be a punchline than a real character, like Denise Richards in the James Bond film The World Is Not Enough. Audiences have to look to documentaries like Particle Fever (released earlier this year), about the discovery of the Higgs boson,to see women scientists in prominent roles on film. The new Netflix documentary Mission Blue focuses on one woman scientist, Sylvia Earle, a former chief at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and pioneering oceanographer and marine biologist who is on a quest to save the world’s oceans from dying.
If that last sentence seems like an exaggeration, you should probably see this film. Earle, now 79, has been scuba diving as part of her research for the past 60 years (where she got her undergrad degree was one of the first places to adopt this “new” technology) and has seen firsthand the destruction that pollution and overfishing have wrought–even in areas “in the middle of nowhere” we (and she) think might be unaffected. She points out plastic bags and bottles she encounters on the ocean floor along with long stretches of dead coral and hardly any fish in places where both previously flourished.
She asks, “”How can we use the ocean and not use it up?” She’s not afraid to take on the fishing industry, describing her stint at NOAA: “I went to one meeting of the fisheries council. And I was never allowed to go again.” When she warned of the (still) impending extermination of bluefin tuna (because of overfishing) she earned the nickname, “The Sturgeon General.” She resigned from her government position so she could further ocean conservation without being tethered by politics.
The film isn’t all doom and gloom. We also see, in some stunning underwater cinematography (both reminiscent of the Jacques Cousteau documentaries and surpassing them) places where ocean life is plentiful: huge schools of fish that seem like shimmering silver walls along with harmless whale sharks and sea turtles touchingly unwary of divers. Earle is a great advocate of everyone exploring the ocean in this way, theorizing that people care more about wildlife and its environment if they can see it: if wildflowers, birds, trees and deer were hidden away from us we might not have many protections for them either. Earle points out that even though she’s not “big and muscly,” she’s been diving her entire adult life and was able to convince her own mother, at 81, to give it a try. She loved it.
Sylvia with a whale shark
The film shows us the deep sea animals that Earle first encountered over 30 years ago in a special atmospheric diving suit she, along with her third husband, helped design. The natural flashing luminescence of fish and other sea creature at these depths look like city neon signs and gaudy Christmas displays all at once.
We also hear of Earle’s own journey first as a child allowed to explore, alone and for hours at a time, the wild places around her home (as few children now get the chance to do) and later her career as a scientist. She is careful to include herself when she says repeatedly that no one foresaw the depletion of a resource–the ocean and its inhabitants–that seemed too vast for human beings to impact. But now Earle says, “No ocean, no life. No ocean, no us.”
We see the ocean in this film as a living thing.
Earle became a scientist before second-wave feminism, when hardly any women entered that profession and we see in the media coverage of her accomplishments (when she was often the first or only woman but usually called a “girl”), the sexism of the era, which she undoubtedly encountered on the job as well. But the film’s co-director and interviewer Fisher Stevens (yes, the same one who acted in films like Short Circuit–but more recently was a producer for The Cove) doesn’t ask about these instances, only gushes about how “beautiful” she was. Earle is polite to him, but, at 79, she might be wondering when she will finally be excused from the unofficial beauty pageant all women are subjected to.
This film could use more women. We barely see Earle interacting with other women scientists or divers in Blue (except very briefly in Australia and in vintage footage of her time as part of an all-woman team of researchers)though many more women are in the field now than when she started her career. Not enough women are behind the scenes either: the film was directed and written by men. When we consider Earle is not just a scientific pioneer, but also writes books about ocean conservation for the general public (including one released to coincide with thisdocumentary—as well as children’s books) and is an effective enough speaker for lay audiences that she won a substantial monetary award as part of TED Talks, the omission of her from the film’s writing team is baffling. If her own writing had been included some elements, like a casual mention of the acidification of the ocean (thanks to carbon dioxide emissions) might have been better explained.
I also would have appreciated more of Earle’s take on her personal life. She was married three times and had three children (with the addition, for about a decade, of stepchildren too) but as her daughter (who now runs the deep sea equipment company Earle founded) tells us she “wasn’t June Cleaver.” Earle was taking part in underwater expeditions halfway across the world from her family at a time when wives and mothers were expected to make their homes and their husbands (and their husbands’ careers) their first priority. Her marriages suffered because of her absences, even though each of the husbands shared her interests. In this era of Lean Inand “having it all,” I’m sure I’m not the only one who would like to hear in more detail about the experience of someone who attempted this balancing act before most of the so-called “experts” were born.
When we see the “Happiness is being in over your head.” sticker (illustrated with a scuba diver) in her office we think Earle may be a lot more interesting than the documentary makes her (an impression that Earle in interviews seems to confirm), but she’s still able to get in some good, informative quotes like, “What we’re doing to the ocean, what we’re doing to the planet as a whole comes back to us in bigger storms, more powerful storms, more frequent storms.”
A better film might have tied in Earle’s past status as an outsider (when she was one of the few women in her field) and rebel (in not conforming to the ’50s and ’60s cultural expectations of what a wife and mother should be) to her current role as an environmentalist. When we see (in graphic footage) gleeful fisherman cutting the fins off living sharks and then dumping their mutilated bodies into the ocean to die, we can’t help thinking that this boys’ club gives its members permission to behave badly–as most boys’ clubs do. Because she’s never been one of the boys, Earle can see their cruelty–and its consequences–more clearly: she even films a fishing boat “vacuuming” up its catch–from the vantage point of the fish.
In spite of its flaws, Blue is well worth seeing–and succeeded in making me want to try scuba diving. Some of the shots in the film seem more magical than the brightly colored, hologram illustrations in my childhood copy of The Little Mermaid. As Stevens accompanies Earle through storybook seascapes I thought, “This is the ‘beauty’ he should be gushing over.”
In her debut feature, 2011’s ‘Sleeping Beauty,’ director Julia Leigh examines consent, voyeurism, and passivity through the character of Lucy, a beautiful college student who sleepwalks through life as if it doesn’t involve her. Lucy becomes a literal Sleeping Beauty when she takes a job that involves her being drugged to unconsciousness while men are allowed to do anything they please to her naked body, with the exception of penetration. She exists in an eroticized, dream-like landscape and the film often feels like a painting come to life.
Poster for Sleeping Beauty
In her debut feature, 2011’sSleeping Beauty, director Julia Leigh examines consent, voyeurism, and passivity through the character of Lucy (Emily Browning), a beautiful college student who sleepwalks through life as if it doesn’t involve her. Lucy becomes a literal Sleeping Beauty when she takes a job that involves her being drugged to unconsciousness while men are allowed to do anything they please to her naked body, with the exception of penetration. She exists in an eroticized, dream-like landscape and the film often feels like a painting come to life.
As a character, Lucy is defined by what we as an audience don’t know about her, the blank spaces in her characterization that match those in her working life and it is as if we have slept through parts of the film along with Lucy. Her passivity in life mirrors her sleeping, as she moves around, distant from her surroundings and unattached to anyone. She is also indifferent to her job, in one scene she haphazardly applies lipstick and is told to take the work seriously, as “it is not a game.” Lucy’s narrative arc is her process of waking from the stupor she has existed in.
Lucy is shot several other times in silent, passive positions. There are prolonged sequences of her sleeping, both in her original student apartment and her luxury pad, blinded by her sleep mask, as well as sitting alone while waiting at the bar, and on her way to meet her boss, Clara (Rachael Blake). Much of the film actually happens around Lucy while she waits, listens, and sleeps. Even when she is awake, things are done to her and her body: she sleeps with strangers because of a coin toss, endures a painful bikini wax and a test where she is examined like an animal as part of her job interview, and has lipstick roughly applied to her mouth, meant to match her labia. There is a marked focus on Lucy’s mouth throughout the film, from the opening where a scientist puts a tube down her throat as an experiment to the end where she hides a camera in her mouth and is later awakened by mouth to mouth resuscitation.
Lucy’s only real connection is with her ailing friend Birdmann
However, there are moments of rare activity from Lucy, usually brought about by unfortunate circumstances, where is person beneath her icy shell is revealed. She tends to a sickly friend, Birdmann (Ewen Leslie) and gets into bed with him when he overdoses, though she makes no effort call for help. More crucially, she becomes active when she decides, without an provocation, that she wants to know what happens when she is asleep. Though she this would allow the men to be blackmailed, she purchases and smuggles in a small camera.
Early on, the men who will come to be Lucy’s clients are introduced as a dramatis personae at the silver service dinner which suggests they are members of a secret society. This suggests they are microcosms of different types of clients of sex workers, such as the one who is abusive and takes out his frustrations on her as a woman he is allowed to beat inside of a wife, and the one who falls in love with her and just wants to hold her.
At the silver service dinner, Lucy is set apart for her youth and beauty
Lucy is much younger than the other women in the film and her youth, beauty and pale coloring cause her to be placed on a pedestal. As the silver service dinner, she is covered up with virginal white lingerie while the other women wear black bras with cut outs that reveal their breasts. She is the sole women in white and the main attraction, and even when she makes clumsy mistakes, she is continuously praised.
Because of the value placed in Lucy’s beauty, there is a tension between her and Clara. She scoffs at Clara’s suggestion that her vagina is a temple worthy of respect and ignores her warning that the money earned from her work should be seen only as a temporary windfall not a permanent income she can depend on. These scenes suggest Clara may have been in Lucy’s position one day and aged out of the role. In light at the story’s fairy tale connections, it is interesting that a woman, Clara, is the one who puts her to sleep and looks at her as a commodity.
Lucy is examined by Clara before given the job
In the film’s extended and graphic nude scenes, Lucy’s passive, often sedated body can also be examined by aroused audiences, a notion that suggests audiences use nude star as Lucy’s clients do, as she can never know what they do with her image. Once the nude image is out there, it, like Lucy’s consent to be used by the men while sedated, cannot be controlled and consent cannot be rescinded.
In addition, her motivations for agreeing to this work are left unexamined. Unlike films like Belle De Jour, where a bored woman turns to sex work without seeming financial need, it is never suggested that anything Lucy enters into is her fantasy. Instead, it seems to be something she does without thinking, a path she enters down because she cannot think of anything else to do, and only late into it, when she realizes she is making good money, does she begin to live in the luxury it affords her.
Lucy burns her earnings: is the money unneeded or is she unstable?
However, the constant suggestions of traumas in Lucy’s life: her relationship with Birdmann, mentions of her mother, and of the absence of family or friends, as well as her casual proposal to an acquaintance who alludes to parts of her character he finds flawed, may suggest a conflicted or even ailing mental status. In some scenes, Lucy, as a college student, appears to have great need for money, as she allows herself to be used for science experiments, works in an office doing filing and photocopies and lives in grotty apartment with roommates who are openly apprehensive to her about her failure to pay rent. In one scene where she burns the money she has earned from silver service waitressing, suggesting she either feels no need for the money or has become mired in the surreal sort of magic in the film and barely registers the experience was real. Because she stares at the burning money as if it has cast a spell over her, the second possibility seems most likely.
Lucy consents to be used for science experiments
Sleeping Beauty also raises questions of whether sex work is unfairly stigmatized and separated from other menial work. It is suggested that Lucy, highly confident and assured of her attractiveness as she is, has taken her looks into account and believes sex work would be easier and more lucrative than her other jobs. It is also posed as not dissimilar to consenting to be a guinea pig for science experiments with uncertain results, as she had previously done.
Though she has consented to the sexual nature of her sleep work, Lucy is not even given an opportunity to consent to her involvement in her final client’s suicide, plans which were clearly known to Clara as she appears unsurprised he is dead. In this final scene, Lucy realizes that her actions have weight, even if she doesn’t remember them, as she becomes part of these men’s lives. By signing over her body and memory, she allows them ownership of her and knowledge of her as well as agreeing to trust they will not penetrate her. Many of our most beloved fairy tales romanticize passive, sleeping women, such as the original version of Sleeping Beauty, where the prince rapes the unconscious girl. Though Lucy gives her consent, it is unclear whether person can ever consent to something that would happen while they were unconscious as there is no way she can object if she changes her mind or it crosses the line.
It is questionable whether Lucy can consent to things that would happen while she is not conscious
Depending on one’s interpretation of Lucy’s mental state throughout the film, its ending can be taken one of two ways. Either it suggests, Lucy, a literal Sleeping Beauty is waking up to the reality of her life and can begin to live a “normal life” or she is entering into a mental breakdown she has been staving off with her detachment. In addition, the dead man lying in beside her may remind her of Birdmann, whose death she did not fully grieve over and suggests she has been forcing herself not to become attached to him either. With either interpretation, Lucy regains her autonomy and awareness of reality only after negative events, which casts her sex work and her sexual encounters in a wholly negative light. She awakens into the film’s stark reality, where there are no happily ever afters even when the cinematography is this lovely.
As Lucy awakes, not with a kiss but with a slap to the face, it becomes clear that Leigh’s tale of detachment is no fairy tale.
Elizabeth Kiy is a Canadian writer and freelance journalist living in Toronto, Ontario. is a Canadian writer and freelance journalist living in Toronto, Ontario.
Characters play a key role in our individual process of self-discovery. Stories have always been there to help us learn, to see from another’s point of view, or think deeper than before. What makes us human is that we turn these lessons into reflections of what we want. Through the pairing of images and concepts, I can wrap together the “idealized” me. But what happens when I cannot find myself in what I see on screen? What happened to those who lived in times when LGBTQI content was more taboo than it is now? We create.
This is a guest post by E.A. Francis.
I am an other, an in-between. I use the term “gender fluid” and I don’t consider myself a woman or a man.
I am still perceived by the world as a woman, though, and was raised as such. Sometimes people study me in public, trying to figure out what I am. It can be an ostracizing experience to move through the world as a point of people’s interest. But at the same time, I realize the value of my position. Those that glance, stare, and make eye contact are looking for my story, even if only for a second. That story is a long one—coming into my own took time. I’ve moved through stages and terms and confines until I grabbed ahold of me. And that’s what I want to see on the screen: the rawness of what it means to be conflicted and confined within your own skin.
In some ways, we have come a long way. I can now turn on the TV or head to the movies and see gay, lesbian, or bisexual characters. Even more recently, I have even seen multiple transgender characters on shows like Orange is the New Black. But there was a time when these representations were less frequent, confined to art house films. I remember my fascination with transmen characters like Brandon in Boys Don’t Cry or Max from The L Word. I looked at them and wondered, “Is that me?” I used to deny just how much we ingest media into our personalities and our understandings of our physical beings, but I’ve come to recognize how I compare myself to the images presented. Since I have no gender fluid characters, I turn toward the lesbian and trans communities.
Characters play a key role in our individual process of self-discovery. Stories have always been there to help us learn, to see from another’s point of view, or think deeper than before. What makes us human is that we turn these lessons into reflections of what we want. Through the pairing of images and concepts, I can wrap together the “idealized” me. But what happens when I cannot find myself in what I see on screen? What happened to those who lived in times when LGBTQI content was more taboo than it is now? We create.
Just like an author who writes the book they wish to read, our first instinct with storytelling is to speak the truths and questions that are within us as individuals in the hope that others share the same thoughts. But there is a stretch, often very long, between conceptualization and the completed project. I applaud our film and TV communities that have pushed for the stories less told, that show us characters with whom the minority can relate—they assist the majority in understanding that we exist and matter. Understanding another’s plight is what has lead humans to our greatest feats and I believe that some of the earliest LGBTQI movements have taken place in film and TV.
But there is a timeline, more or less, when a queer character is introduced in media. Often they are alone in their queerness and are there only to act as a foil, or as a stereotype, or to confirm that it is easy to place this type of person into a single category. Worse still is the implication that their storylines can be disregarded. The audience is supposed to believe that it is enough that the character is onscreen. I watched it happen on The L Word with Max. Quick scenes of transitioning from a female body to a male body, which is a massive process of its own, and then some confusion from the other queer characters about the authenticity of this “new other’s” experience. Here, I watched fictional lesbians, who had faced stigmas and hatred, turn the same bias to another in their queer community.
In Orange is the New Black, Sophia, who is struggling to stay on estrogen as she transitions from a male body to a female body, has a storyline that includes her son distancing himself from her and her wife moving on to be with an actual man. These points were left behind in season one and in season two we watched Sophia cut other, more “important” characters’ hair in the same salon— as though they filmed all of Laverne Cox’s scenes in one day. Where was the development? Where was her conflict? A single scene of dialogue between her and the nun about her relationship with her son skirts around the actual emotional turbulence of that time.
As an audience member, I was waiting for the moment her son expressed his thoughts to her in person, where the tension could either rise and peak or leave us hanging and thinking. But we were left, instead, to follow the story of the bisexual white woman, Piper. There are still many, many issues that lesbians, gays, and bisexuals face (including having their sexuality constantly challenged), but they are becoming more “mainstream,” more commonplace, and even deemed acceptable for families (as suggested by the popularity of Modern Family). The queer communities that lie outside of that newly developed safe zone are next in line for scrutiny in the public eye though they have always suffered massively and violently.
This is why it is crucial that our community, filmmakers and audience alike, help lift up projects that explore the experiences of a wider array of people. Frankly? I have all the hope in the world that we will accomplish this goal. It will take time, but perseverance will rule out. Let’s do this.
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E.A. Francis is an activist and interdisciplinary artist based in Chicago, Ill. Their work examines social issues surrounding gender, culture, and politics. E is a graduate of Columbia College Chicago’s Fiction Writing Department. Their current project is Kendra & Obi, which follows an African American couple working to stay together while yearning to understand themselves as individuals. Patch of Prodigy Productions LLC is hosting a live twitter event on Saturday, Sept. 20, 2014 from 1-3 p.m. CT which discusses POC in the predominantly white world of higher education. Join the conversation, which features guest speakers Sophia Nahli Allison (visual storyteller @SophiaNAllison) and Andrea Hart (Teaching Artist @lenifaye) by using the hashtag #kendraobi. Reach out to E on twitter @eafrancis2 or Facebook at Official EA Francis.
The fact that I need “cover” for watching this movie is not because it is a “chick flick.” I’m a feminist, so I don’t think things have less value when they are geared towards women. It’s not that its a lowbrow romcom. It’s 2014, and I try to pretend I don’t believe in guilty pleasures. It’s that this lowbrow romcom chick flick appears to presuppose that a woman could have too many sex partners. And I could pretend I watched this so I could tear it apart on this website, but the truth is I wanted to watch a romantic comedy and this one has Anna Faris and Chris Evans in it. Even though I was 90 percent sure it was going to be sexist. That, my friends, is a guilty pleasure.
Anna Faris in What’s Your Number?
Man, I wish I knew that What’s Your Number? had a wedding in it back when I was writing weekly wedding movie reviews, because that would have been the perfect excuse to watch it. The fact that I need “cover” for watching this movie is not because it is a “chick flick.” I’m a feminist, so I don’t think things have less value when they are geared toward women. It’s not that its a lowbrow romcom. It’s 2014, and I try to pretend I don’t believe in guilty pleasures. It’s that this lowbrow romcom chick flick appears to presuppose that a woman could have too many sex partners.
And I could pretend I watched this so I could tear it apart on this website, but the truth is I wanted to watch a romantic comedy and this one has Anna Faris and Chris Evans in it. Even though I was 90 percent sure it was going to be sexist. That, my friends, is a guilty pleasure.
Ally’s number is 19, which is allegedly a problem of some kind
Here’s the sexist premise in full: Anna Faris plays Ally Darling, who gets dumped and fired in the same morning, and then discovers an even bigger problem with her life: she has nearly twice the average American woman’s number of lifetime sex partners, and is one partner away from the scientifically determined unmarriagable boundary of 20. She decides she can’t have sex again until she meets “The One.” Oy.
But for about 90 seconds during the opening credits of What’s Your Number? I got really excited that this might be a stealth-feminist film. The camera pans over pages from women’s magazines, with headlines perfectly illustrating the judgment, shame, contradictory advice and demented priorities that populate those pages: “Change Too Much For Your Man?” “Decorating Your Bedroom *With Him in Mind,” “Does He Only Want You For Your Bod?” and my personal favorite:
“When Your Sister Is Just Plain Better Than You”
This movie gets it! Women’s magazines are sexist trash piles that primarily function to make women feel inferior. Ally is going to learn not to let a magazine define how many sexual partners she “should” have. Ally is going to learn to tell the slut shamers of the world to shove it and then she’ll go bone the hot guy across the hall.
Shirtless Chris Evans in What’s Your Number?
Well, spoiler alert: only the second part happens, and only after lots of get-together plot and mutual declarations of L-O-V-E, which she never would have found with this Chris Evans-shaped charmer who makes her laugh and gets her weird art and is shaped like Chris Evans had she just jumped his bones the first time she saw him mostly naked (which he is, in like, more than half of his scenes, adding another dimension of guilty pleasure. to this movie, because sexually objectifying people is wrong, but…):
I mean seriously. This happens in more than one scene.
Chris Evans-shaped Colin only has one night stands, you see, because he becomes paralyzed with fear of hurting women if he knows any humanizing details about them, such as “she once was a child.” So he loves ’em and leaves ’em to find their own way out of his apartment while he hides out in Ally’s. But there’s no article in GQ criticizing Colin’s sexual behavior, and neither he nor Ally really question it, even though her number teetering at less than one tenth of his has sent her life spiraling. This is one of many missed opportunities for What’s Your Number? to critically engage with its central premise.
Colin teaches Ally you can Google people.
The bulk of the plot is a High Fidelity-style tour of exes, as Ally figures out the loophole where she can get back with someone she’s already banged without adding to her number. [Colin helps her track down these guys with “cop family” secrets he has like being on Facebook.] So we get lots of amusing cameos and windows into different ways Ally has changed herself to get a man’s approval, from dressing like a senator’s wife to pretending to be British. And yes, yes, “You’ll be happiest with someone you can be yourself with” is a fine message, but movie, YOU ALREADY HAVE A MESSAGE, that no one should let a magazine tell them how many people they should have sex with. Right? RIGHT?
The caption of this gif is not “I’ll have sex with as many people as I want!”
Sigh, no. The “to hell with Marie Claire!” moment I was waiting for never came (I should have known that Marie Claire wouldn’t have agreed to product placement if that was coming). And worse, in the last scene of the movie, Ally gets a voice mail from one of the guys on the list clarifying their sexual history (they only did it “dry style”), and she can triumphantly declare that Colin “is my 20!” and their love is not doomed. Barf.
But, Hera help me, I still really liked this movie. Anna Faris is just so charming! Chris Evans wears nothing but a tea towel in multiple scenes! They have chemistry! Amusing cameos! Including Anthony Mackie miming handling four penises! No “my younger sister is getting married” panic! Said younger sister is Ari Graynor! Raunchy comedy geared toward the women in the audience and not just to appease their male dates! Sex positivity (yes, seriously, in the movie borne from slut shaming)!
“I’m like, super gay.”
Seriously, this would be a glowing review of an underappreciated gem if you could just cut out the bullshit last scene (although work the words “dry style” into some other part of the script, because that’s hilarious) and throw in some real talk about how ridiculous our obsession with “Numbers” is. We could have had it all, movie. Instead, What’s Your Number? only bumps up my number. My number of Antifeminist Guilty Pleasures. Which is way, way higher than 20.
Robin Hitchcock is an American writer living in Cape Town. Her number is somewhere between negative three and seventeen thousand.
