September 2015 – Page 3

‘Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries’: Killing the Stigma of Sex

Besides occasional sex jokes, ‘Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries’ features episodes about vibrators, abortion, and women’s rights. It also highlights a wealth of one-night stands, and while the men are attractive, the camera glances over the bodies of Miss Fisher’s lovers as lovingly as it does her gorgeous outfits. It is, in an odd way, the perfect combination of the male and female gaze.

This guest post by Emma Thomas appears as part of our theme week on Sex Positivity.

“My sin’s are too many and varied to repent. And frankly, I intend to continue sinning.” – Miss Phryne Fisher

Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries has been a popular show in Australia for years, and is based on a long-lasting series of books by Australian author Kerry Greenwood.

But, what did it take for American viewers to tune in? Why, slut-shaming, of course!

In a bizarre, but typically American, twist of fate, Netflix reviewers who bashed Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries by calling the lead character a “tramp,” a “tart,” and a “s!ut” (Netflix censors that one), made the show seem a hell of a lot more interesting. Jezebel writer Rebecca Rose and her readers definitely agreed.

A lady detective who loves sex? Yes, please.

From its very first episode, Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries is alive with sex positivity.

Indeed, the show’s treatment of sex is both blatant and tongue-in-cheek.

One needs only look at the main character’s name – Miss Phryne Fisher.

The original Phryne was a famous hetaera of Ancient Greece. She was, in other words, a high-class prostitute. And though her birth name was Mnesarete, which means to commensurate virtue, she was nicknamed “Phryne.” Which means toad.

The original Phryne was charged with impiety, and some say that when she was taken before the court she disrobed, baring her breasts to highlight her womanhood and arouse compassion. She was acquitted.

Still, the trial made Phyrne famous, and in ancient Greece, “Phryne” quickly caught on as a nickname for prostitutes and courtesans.

Thus, Miss Fisher bears the first name Phryne, and that alone serves as a hint of what is to come.

She is certainly not one to commensurate virtue.

However, despite what those Netflix reviewers believe, her name is also ironic – Miss Fisher is not a slut, or a tramp, or a tart.

Miss Phryne Fisher (Essie Davis) is a lady detective, who also happens to be sharp as a whip, with a shiny gold gun and a magnificent wardrobe to boot.

And, though it is 1920s Australia, she drives a car, flies planes, wears trousers, and sleeps with whomever strikes her fancy.

Her best friend, Dr. Mac, also happens to be a lesbian. Dr. Mac has plenty of (behind-the-scenes) sex of her own, and rarely has a problem finding a lover in the roaring ’20s.

It makes sense that Dr. Mac is such good friends with Phryne Fisher. As a character Phryne is many things, and one of those things is a woman who happens to love good sex–a woman who does not seek to hide her true self.

In a refreshing turn, the show doesn’t seek to hide this either, nor does it give excuses for it.

Take, for example, this exchange with Dr. Mac:

Dr. Mac: Looks like a nerve powder. Usually prescribed for women, of course, the hysterical sex, for nervous exhaustion, emotional collapse, wandering wombs…that sort of thing.

Miss Fisher: Why on earth would a womb wander?

Dr. Mac: Unnatural behavior will do it, according to Hypocrites. Like celibacy.

Miss Fisher: Oh good. Mine’s not going anywhere.

It’s a joke about sex but, television writers of America, it’s not in poor taste! And, once it’s said, the show simply moves on.

Besides occasional sex jokes, Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries features episodes about vibrators, abortion, and women’s rights. It also highlights a wealth of one-night stands, and while the men are attractive, the camera glances over the bodies of Miss Fisher’s lovers as lovingly as it does her gorgeous outfits. It is, in an odd way, the perfect combination of the male and female gaze.

While the show does feature Miss Fisher having a great deal of sex that, alone, does not make it sex positive. Sex positivity is not about having a lot of sex but instead focuses on removing the stigma and shame from sexual choices.

Miss Fisher just happens to want to have sex: that is her sexual choice.

In the very first episode, Phyrne has a sexual relationship with a dancer, Sasha de Lisse, and she later jokes that it was helpful for the investigation:

Miss Fisher: She pointed the finger at Sasha de Lisse, and I was forced to discount him with my own thorough investigation.

However, it’s clear to the viewer that is not the reality of the situation – Phryne had sex with Sasha because she wanted to.

You may wonder…if Miss Fisher has casual sexual relationships, how do the writers show the depth of her character? So often in American television, we rely on our lead actress’ relationship with a man, or potential relationship with a man, as a central plot device. This is particularly common in crime procedurals. Case in point: Castle, Bones, and Scandal.

In an interesting twist, there is a leading man in Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries: Detective Inspector Jack Robinson (Nathan Page). Yet, unlike Castle and Bones and a plethora of other shows, this time the male lead, Jack, is the emotionally reserved one. And, in many ways, Miss Fisher is key to his character’s development.

Without giving too much away, as the series progresses Miss Fisher’s love of life and, dare I say it, sex, leads Jack to ponder new possibilities.

In one instance Phryne, like her namesake, bares her breasts (season 2, episode 1) while performing an undercover fan dance (of course).

Yet, even in this instance her behavior is not frowned upon. Maybe her Catholic maid should be scandalized, but instead she simply sighs, while Jack – now accustomed to Phryne’s personality – smirks. Perhaps the closest one gets in 1920s Australia to rolling one’s eyes.

There is a will-they-won’t-they in Phryne and Jack’s friendship that is evident from the very beginning of the series.

But Miss Fisher never pines. It is clear that she loves sex for sex, and while a relationship with Jack may be somewhere on the horizon, well, she’s not going to be celibate in the meantime.

Some viewers cannot believe that Phryne could flirt with Jack, and truly be interested in him, yet continue to sleep with other men. Certainly, this is not an idea that is commonly shown on television.

But if sex positivity is the idea of informed consent and agency within one’s own sexuality, Phyrne’s relationship with Jack is a prime example of it.

Phyrne is making her own decisions about her own body, and only she can judge what is right for her.

In fact, there is one particular scene from the second season that proves a perfect thesis. Jack and Phryne sit down at a piano, and sing the classic Cole Porter song, “Let’s Misbehave.”

They both know they’re going against societal norms, but neither seems terribly concerned about it.

Jack knows that Phryne sleeps with other men, and she never tries to hide that from him. And while he may not be thrilled, he doesn’t try to stop her. He’s not ready for a relationship with her, so what right does he have to stop her from doing what she pleases?

Through the first three seasons, Phryne sleeps with numerous men. Her sexual conquests, and I’m using that term because I am quite sure that’s how Miss Fisher herself would see them, circumvent race and age.

In Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries sex can be serious, and have consequences (and sometimes lead to murder), but it is also often humorous. In one such scene, Phryne attempts to have sex with a boxer – who’s overly focused on proving how strong he is via push-ups (season 2, episode 4). Miss Fisher’s quite disappointed he won’t just come to bed already.

Miss Fisher: Why don’t you show me here? On the bed?

One of Miss Fisher’s most fleshed out sexual relationships occurs with a Chinese-Australian man, Lin Chung.

While they also socialize, eating meals together and walking through the streets of Melbourne, the purpose of their meetings is clearly sexual in nature.

When Phryne learns that Chung will be entering into an arranged marriage, she continues to sleep with him, but she also stresses that once he has met his bride their sexual relationship will end.

Yes, Phryne has a healthy sex drive and morals – an unusual combination in television.

In an interesting twist, Phryne ultimately helps facilitate the arranged marriage.

And, despite what American television writers may have conditioned us to expect, Phryne does not become a petty, jealous woman. She does not seek to destroy Chung’s relationship and win him back, nor does she feel disrespected.

Miss Fisher is a woman who knows what she wants – who made an educated choice.

Plus, there are other fish in the sea – the boxer, the old friend, the circus performer – after a while the murders do get a tad…outrageous. But the sex stays good.

Emma Thomas is a freelance writer, media development associate, and independent producer. Her musings can be found on Twitter (@EmmaGThomas) and her blog, while her newest film projects can be found at Two Minnow Films.

Let’s Talk About Sex (Positivity for Women) in Animated Comedies

However, there are animated shows that do present female sex positivity and appear to subvert the current patriarchal control of female sexuality in media. ‘Archer’ and ‘Bob’s Burgers’ are both refreshing examples of portrayals of positive female sexuality.

This guest post by Belle Artiquez appears as part of our theme week on Sex Positivity.

Satirical cartoons have been on the rise for about a decade now with a growing, dedicated fan base and I’m not surprised–anything can happen in animated worlds, the bonds between reality, plausibility and total fiction are non-existent. We’ve all seen it as children watching cartoons like Mickey Mouse or Tom and Jerry; these characters can be hit by a literal ton of bricks over the head and still survive without a scratch (maybe a bump though). Anything goes in the animated world. What we know and what we are willing to believe are things that simply don’t matter in these worlds.

Although animated satire and comedy live outside these rules of logic, they are still somehow typically governed by the laws of patriarchal sexuality (see: Family Guy). In essence, anything can happen, unless it’s connected to female sexuality, then and only then will the animation be controlled by what we actually already know and deal with in reality, which is that female sexuality is not accepted in the same regard as male sexuality.

However, there are animated shows that do present female sex positivity and appear to subvert the current patriarchal control of female sexuality in media. Archer and Bob’s Burgers are both refreshing examples of portrayals of positive female sexuality.

Archer may seem equally (if not more) as aggressively offensive as a show like Family Guy; every character has his/her flaws and disgraceful behaviour, but Archer doesn’t have the same approach or effect at all. Sterling Archer, the main protagonist and suave but cheesy 007 archetypal agent, is exactly what we expect of a spy with buckets of money and a handsome face; he treats everybody like crap and goes through women like he would bourbon–swiftly and with very little thought to his actions. He doesn’t respect women, but at the same time he doesn’t really respect anybody because he assumes he’s better than everyone around him. So while this one character portrays a kind of sex negativity when it comes to women (and men), he’s presented as a total jack-ass, so what he does and how he treats people is meant to enhance that. He also had an extremely oppressive and traumatizing upbringing, due to the fact that Malory was a spy herself and left him with Woodhouse, a butler, for the majority of his childhood before shipping him off to private school and forgetting to pick him up on Christmas (Eve!). So Malory fits the Bad Mother archetype too–we see that on numerous occasions–but this is not in any way connected to her sexual behaviour.

Basically just another Monday afternoon in the Archer residence; he rarely doesn’t have women on his mind

Malory Archer, the controlling, alcoholic and completely insincere boss, cares very little about anything other than money has had many flings with men in separate spy agencies and even has a long standing sexual relationship with the leader of the KGB; however, none of this she considers anybodies’ business but her own, and what a good message to send. She sees no problem with any of her relationships because they are personal, and her sexuality is displayed in a way that it is natural; she may a mother and a grandmother, but why should that stop her from enjoying a sex life the same as everyone else? Her body is seen in a positive light. Even with her wrinkles, she is accepted.

Malory’s still got it, and the show is confident in its portrayal of an older woman’s sexuality

Then we have Pam Poovey, an overweight but confident, bisexual, and often outrageous woman. She says “sploosh” whenever anybody says anything slightly sexual, and is never afraid to ask for what she wants, she is open to anything and although she is overweight, this is never portrayed as a negative quality. Her naked body can be seen in many episodes, and both she and the creators are unafraid to show this in a way that is not done for pure laughs. She is accepting of her body and so are her lovers. If anything, people seem to have more of a problem with her vulgarity than her weight, as she is extremely sexually assertive and pretty outrageous.

Carol or Cheryl, depending on whose company she is in, is equally as assertive but certainly has the most outlandish sexual fantasies. She has a thing for strangulation, and loves rough sex, but again while her coworkers are horrified by her words (as would anybody upon hearing a sexual fantasy that involves a fireman choking you to death and drooling on your popped out eyeball!), they do not shame her for these fantasies; they do not make fun of her, or tell her she’s a disgusting human being for being the way she is, they accept it. Shaming the women simply does not happen. Nobody tells them to get some self-respect; instead, all of their sexual activity is presented as normal, even though each and every character has flaws and is in her own way quite selfish. The female characters are all very sexually expressive and different in their sexuality, fantasies, and preferences. Female sexuality is thus presented in numerous positive ways throughout the show.

Pam is never embarrassed by her body, and neither are her lovers

Another show that is equally as progressive is Bob’s Burgers. Similar to Archer, it does not shame, and it respects its characters for their flaws and weirdness. Set around a family struggling to live off a burger restaurant that isn’t doing so well, each and every one of them has their own bizarreness to them, but are equally loveable at the same time. Bob is the patriarch who will do anything for his family, is the typical Dad funny and is constantly feuding with the neighbouring restaurant. Linda, the matriarch, is obsessed with musicals (possibly missing her calling in life) and will occasionally (who are we kidding, it happens all the time) burst into song. Then we have the kids; Gene, who loves his fart music and appears to have gotten this passion from his mother; Louise, who always dominates her older siblings with cunning plans and devious behaviour; and Tina, who is the voice of reason but, let’s be honest, simply loves butts. Each character has his or her own quirks personalities without being a joke.They are loved by each other which adds to the acceptance of their choices. Tina and Linda both display female sex positive vibes, but the show is overall accepting of its characters sexuality, be it straight, gay, pan, or whatever they present, which is pretty damn cool.

Linda loves her daughter’s quirks

Back to female sexuality though: Linda is a fantastic mother, one who wants her children to feel loved, to love their bodies, and to be honest about who they are. We see her have mother daughter bonding time where they simulate birth using Vagasacks, and she never shies away from questions like, “Where do babies come from?” opting for the acutely honest “From my vagina.” She also wholly respects Tina’s erotic friend fiction, and encourages her to be honest and unashamed about it. Linda is possibly the best TV mother ever.

Then there is Tina herself. Whether people find her attractive or not is insignificant, as she is only a young girl, and although she is plagued by puberty-driven sexual fantasies, she is never sexualized in any way. Tina is simultaneously uncertain of herself, becoming nervous and groaning when addressed by anybody, and confident, proud of her sexuality and femininity and unafraid to vocalise it to her family: “I’m no hero, I put my bra on one boob at a time like everyone else.” She is the hero of the show, let’s just admit that now. While most media will portray female adolescence as wholly centred around damsel in distress situations, or dreaming of wedding days and the like, Tina’s fantasies are anything but. She dreams of zombie boyfriends, not just one or two, but an entire team of them, where she gets them to touch each others butts and make out. And this zombie fetish is not a throwaway joke; it’s not a one-off that’s soon forgotten about, it’s a recurring theme. She fantasizes about being in The Walking Dead and seducing the zombies with her feminine charm and hair flick. She knows what she wants, and she is always in charge; she’s never the damsel (“I’m sick of acting like a dumb helpless girl just so a hot boy who dances his feelings will notice me”), never the frail girl, she’s the proud confident (sensual) woman. These fantasies appear to give her confidence in reality even if she’s awkward at it; she openly likes/dreams/thinks of boys’ butts which subverts gender expectations; she flirts with boys, mostly Jimmy Jr., who she is very, very interested in. She is becoming a woman in control of her own sexuality as she aptly tells Bob, “If you believe you’re beautiful, you will be. I did.” I adore this line. Tina Belcher does not wait for a boy to tell her she’s beautiful because she does not need that validation. She knows she’s beautiful and that’s all that matters.

Tina’s a girl who knows what she wants, and isn’t afraid to say it

I could go on and on about how Tina not only subverts typical representations of adolescent female desires, but also how she owns it, and how her family support her in every way, but truth is, I want you to watch it for yourself, because it’s glorious, it’s passionate, and most of all, it’s damn funny. Tina Belcher is without a doubt the feminist hero of animated comedies directed toward adult audiences.

While there are pretty horrific representations of female sexuality in animated comedies, there are also really progressive, pro-female ones too. Sex positivity for women is pretty hard to find in most film and TV, but when I do find it, it makes me really happy. Like, can’t control the giant smile on my face happy, because we are all too aware of male sex positivity, but female positivity in general is either shrouded in public displays of misogyny (in an acknowledging it but laughing at it too kind of way), made out to be a joke, or quite simply non-existent. Both Archer and Bob’s Burgers refuse to adhere to these norms, and portray actual female sex positivity in dozens of ways. It’s really refreshing–like getting a nice cold glass of homemade lemonade on a hot summer’s day when you were expecting a cheap coffee kind of refreshing.

These progressive sex positive shows really are charming the pants off us…pun not intended–just a happy coincidence

Belle Artiquez graduated from film and Literature studies in Dublin and since has continued her analysis and critique of film, TV, and literature (mainly in the area of gender politics and representations) as well as cultural and societal critiques on such blog spots as Hubpages and WordPress.

Clitoral Readings of ‘The Piano,’ ‘Turn Me On, Dammit,’ and ‘Secretary’

But how can female arousal be visually expressed? If women stereotypically prefer to read literary erotica over watching porn, with erotica’s descriptions of the interior sensations of female arousal, is that because many women imagine that female performers of porn are uncomfortably simulating their pleasure? Can there be a clitoral cinema of female arousal, and what would it look like?

Written by Brigit McCone as part of our theme week on Sex Positivity.

In Lisa Cholodenko’s The Kids Are All Right, a lesbian couple justify their preferred choice of pornography – gay male porn – by the fact that erections make desire excitingly visible and unarguable. The essence of sex positivity is shared arousal, yet, as Nora Ephron and Meg Ryan famously reminded audiences of When Harry Met Sally, female arousal and orgasm are easy to visually fake. Male craving for confirmation of orgasm in their own porn-watching leads to the “cum shot” becoming a standard trope of male-oriented pornography. But how can female arousal be visually expressed? If women stereotypically prefer to read literary erotica over watching porn, with erotica’s descriptions of the interior sensations of female arousal, is that because many women imagine that female performers of porn are uncomfortably simulating their pleasure? Can there be a clitoral cinema of female arousal, and what would it look like?

I would like to investigate that question using examples from three female-authored films: The Piano, Turn Me On, Dammit!, and Secretary. Judged only by their premises, they appear to be the height of exploitation – The Piano explores the sexual blackmail of a mute woman, Turn Me On, Dammit explores the lustful fantasies of a slender, blonde Scandinavian teenager, and Secretary explores an inexperienced young woman’s desire to be spanked and dominated. Yet, by making the female erotic imagination and self-stimulation central to their aesthetic, each of these films became erotic classics for female audiences. How?

The Piano

Written and directed by Jane Campion, The Piano contains some equal opportunity nudity and straightforward sex scenes, but it also disrupts the male gaze and centers the female spectator at key moments. Consider the scene in which Harvey Keitel’s Baines is examining Holly Hunter’s Ada from every angle, with casual male entitlement, as she plays her piano. Lying on the floor, he discovers a small hole in her thick, woollen stocking. The hole is symbolically clitoral to the female audience, as Baines circles his finger slowly over the little patch of heightened sensation and Ada gasps, but for the male audience it offers no spectacle. It is, rather, an evocation of the sensation of clitoral stimulation, in the same way that a woman licking an ice-cream may evoke oral sex to a male sexual imagination.

With Ada reaching through a crevice of wood to play secretive piano notes, Campion portrays the instrument as inherently sensual. Later comes a lovingly lit shot of a naked Baines caressing and rubbing the piano itself with a cloth. The hetero-female audience can take pleasure in both the spectacle of his body, and the suggestive quality of his attentive and caressing touch, but the female body is removed from the realm of spectacle. Instead, Baines is caressing the piano as a symbol of Ada’s voice and will, representing his deeper appreciation for her. Some critics (including Bitch Flicks) have said that it is problematic for Ada to fall in love with a man who is sexually blackmailing her. I would suggest, however, that, in a society that normalizes the purchase and conquest of women, it is Baines’ initial desire to negotiate, and his eventual total rejection of models of ownership,to request that Ada shows active desire for him, that marks him as her chosen mate.

Sam Neill’s controlling husband Stewart voyeuristically peers through a chink in Baines’ cabin to see his sexual play with Ada. At the moment at which Baines performs oral sex on Ada, Stewart’s gaze is distracted by his dog licking his hand. If Stewart carries the male gaze and male identification in this scene, then Jane Campion playfully interrupts that gaze to turn the man’s own hand into a symbolically clitoral site, vividly evoking the sensation of being licked for female audiences. The Piano, and its reputation as peculiarly erotic to women, is perhaps the strongest evidence that the female imagination responds to clitoral symbolism on a level that equals male susceptibility to phallic symbolism.

When Neill’s Stewart submits to Ada’s exploring his naked body with her hands, the male body becomes available to woman as spectacle and tactile pleasure while the woman herself remains clothed. If the male audience is uncomfortable with this passivity, they can identify with Stewart’s own discomfort, which explodes when Ada reaches the taboo territory of his backside, and he pulls up his hose and dashes from her, eyes averted. Just as his relationship with the Maori is colonial and acquisitive, Stewart’s only model for sex is male conquest and female submission. Just as Baines has surrendered to Maori language and culture, so his model for male/female relationships is a negotiated dual surrender and an attempt to learn the meaning of Ada’s piano language. The film’s finale rewards Baines’ model of negotiated interdependence and dual surrender over the Stewart’s domineering conquest model, with clitoral cinema triumphant.

Turn Me On, Dammit!

Depictions of female masturbation as erotic spectacle tend to focus on a woman moaning softly as she caresses her face, breast and thighs, running her fingers through her hair. The clitoris, effectively, becomes dispersed and distributed across any secondary sexual characteristics that the male audience happens to find attractive, hence the weirdly clitoral scalp of compulsive hair caressing. Female writer-director Jannicke Systad Jacobsen of Turn Me On, Dammit!, by contrast, opens with her teenaged heroine lying clothed on the floor, her hand jammed down her panties, frantically rubbing her clitoris, breathing rapidly and screwing up her face in unphotogenic arousal. This realistic depiction of masturbation immediately establishes the woman as sexual agent, not object. Because it is solitary and largely unphotogenic, masturbation has no function but to be the expression and release of female arousal.

Alma is masturbating to a phone sex hotline, where a male voice describes a hot encounter in the imaginary realm, like narrated literary erotica. Despite its sexed-up publicity, Turn Me On, Dammit! features only one brief, confusing sex act, as Alma is poked in the thigh by the naked erection of her crush, before he immediately withdraws. Instead, the film is saturated with Alma’s erotic imagination as she narrates imaginary encounters over fragmented photographs, ridiculous surrealism and vivid close-ups. Fragmenting the encounters in this way evokes the partial and inadequate imagination of a sexually inexperienced girl, attempting to project what sex might be like. Her fantasies include older men to whom she is not attracted, as well as female rivals, capturing the wide ranging of a horny teenager’s exploratory imagination. By combining fragmented visuals with Alma’s own narrated voiceover, the female viewer never feels an intrusive male gaze. The teenaged female voice of desire and sexual curiosity dominates and narrates throughout.

Secretary

Although the film is directed by Steven Shainberg, he is sensitive to the female origins of his story, adapted by Erin Cressida Wilson from a short story by Mary Gaitskill. Determined to portray the sexual awakening of a submissive woman, rather than the focussing on the pleasure of a dominant man, Secretary harnesses many of the same techniques used by the fully female-authored The Piano and Turn Me On, Dammit. Where Baines demonstrated his attentive, caressing nurture by lovingly wiping Ada’s piano, James Spader’s Mr. Grey demonstrates attentive, caressing nurture to the delicate, vulva-reminiscent orchids in his office. The flowers symbolize burgeoning arousal and desire explicitly in the heroine’s own fantasy sequence, as giant blooms burst open behind Mr. Grey. This fantasy sequence is alternated with shots of the heroine’s frantic, realistic masturbation. Like Turn Me On, Dammit!‘s Alma, Secretary‘s Lee is fully clothed during her masturbations, emphasizing that they are expressions of arousal rather than spectacle. After the film’s most potentially degrading act of domination, where Lee is required to bare her ass while Mr. Grey masturbates over it, the act is reclaimed for audiences as having been arousing for Lee, by her immediate withdrawal into the bathroom to masturbate over the memory of it. A middle-aged woman in a neighbouring stall is shown overhearing her masturbation with a look of compassionate understanding that emphasizes the universal female experience of arousal and desire. Finally, however, it is Lee’s own narrating voice, like Alma’s, that owns the film and challengingly asserts her active role in submitting.

So, can we say that these three films – The Piano, Turn Me On, Dammit! and Secretary – are sex-positive films? I would argue that their clitoral aesthetic of female-authored desire and imaginative sensation make them sex-positive for their female audience. However, in the world of the film, its men are still technically committing acts of sexual harassment where the woman consents by her imagination rather than her voice. This harassment is reclaimed for the female audience by our insight into the heroine’s desire. Can we assume that the male heroes are aware of the women’s desire, because they’ve read it on her face or in her subtler physical responses? We are still a long way from a society that takes it for granted that women should voice their desires, and that sex should be openly negotiated. But recognizing and developing a clitoral aesthetic of film is a step in the right direction. A cinematic language of female desire can be harnessed to support conversations about female needs and sensitivities.

Brigit McCone became obsessed with Harvey Keitel after seeing The Piano at an impressionable age. She writes short films and radio dramas. Her hobbies include doodling and reveling in trashy romances.

‘Fear the Walking Dead’: I’m From the Government, and I’m Here to Help

As with the writers on ‘The Walking Dead,’ these writers haven’t yet proven they have any idea how to write strong roles for women. But if they ever figure it out, they’ve got the right actor for the job.

Well, this was unexpected. Despite its occasional heavy-handedness and several key moments where characters did things that no one in their situation would ever actually do, the fourth episode of AMC’s Fear the Walking Dead was actually the best yet. And they didn’t even need a zombie attack! Or for Alicia (Alycia Debnam Carey) to do anything worth mentioning!

They haven’t added any Black characters since the purge of the first two episodes, but the Latino characters on the show are a relatively rich and varied lot, with Ruben Blades’ Salvadoran barber Daniel being given some of the show’s best dialogue. Toward the end of the episode, as he was preparing to go to a military field hospital with his wife Griselda (Patricia Reyes Spindola, who mostly just gets to groan in pain and suffer nobly), he talks to Madison (Kim Dickens), whom he clearly recognizes as the household’s most astute and proactive observer of the encroaching zombie apocalypse, about the Salvadoran government’s massacre of some people from his village, and about how his father said the perpetrators were not evil, but committed evil acts out of fear. I got a chill when he told Madison that his father was a fool “to think there was a difference.” Daniel is a strong enough character to make the show’s over-the-top anti-government paranoia seem downright rational.

The engaging performances of Blades, Dickens, and — I have to admit he’s growing on me — wild-eyed Frank Dillane as Madison’s heroin-addicted ninja son Nick go a long way toward selling the silliness of the plotting. There was also a pretty strong opening with Madison’s beau Travis (Cliff Curtis) jogging around the now militarized, fenced-in, and seemingly safe neighborhood to the strains of Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day” and then Travis’ son Chris (Lorenzo James Henrie), from his perch on Madison’s roof, sees a flash of light from a building outside the fenced in area, from the area that was supposedly cleared of all residents by the military. It looks like someone’s using a mirror to signal the folks within the perimeter, perhaps for help. Or perhaps it’s a warning.

In any case, Chris shows Travis his video of the mysterious flash, and Travis, who firmly believes that their problems will soon be over now that the government/military has stepped in, shrugs it off. Travis has ingratiated himself to the local military commander, Moyers (Jamie McShane), by helping out when a frightened neighbor locks himself in the bathroom. He eventually tells Moyers about what Chris saw, but Moyers is using the neighborhood’s streets as his personal driving range (this is what I meant by heavy handed) and blithely assures Travis that the area’s been cleared.

Meanwhile, Ofelia (Mercedes Mason), Daniel and Griselda’s daughter, has struck up a romance with a guardsman played by Shawn Hatosy. There’s the suggestion that she’s using him in an effort to get medicine for her mother, which would not be wise in this scenario, as these military types clearly have too much power over the locals’ lives.

Chris eventually shows Madison the video, and she clearly takes it more seriously, because she responds by sneaking up to the fence, cutting a hole in it and slipping through, presumably so she can go find whoever is signalling and clear up what that’s about. I might have tried a pair of binoculars first, but anyway, using her training as a high school guidance counselor, she eludes the soldiers with relative ease.

On the other side, she finds a bunch of people shot dead in the street, and they don’t appear to have been “sick” (i.e. zombies) so her suspicion about the military’s methods grows.

Meanwhile, Nick was supposed to be kicking heroin, but he has another idea. He sneaks into the house next door, where Travis’ ex-wife Liza (Elizabeth Rodriguez) has been using her nursing training to administer morphine to an elderly man with a heart condition. Even though Madison complains at one point about how much time she has to spend watching Nick, and even though the elderly guy’s wife lives with him and presumably keeps a pretty close eye on him, Nick somehow gets into their house undetected, and manages to unhook the guy’s IV and use it himself, while resting comfortably under his bed. It’s a shame he’s not using his superpowers for good.

When Madison gets back from her adventures beyond the fence, she catches Nick looking for the old man’s drugs, and slaps him around. Under these circumstances, who can blame her?

Liza is helping folks with their medical needs all throughout the neighborhood, and draws the attention of Dr. Exner (Sandrine Holt of House of Cards), the pretty face of the government/military carting away your loved ones in the dead of night. Liza tells Exner about Nick’s drug problem, and later regrets it when the guardsmen come to pick up Griselda that night, and instead of letting Daniel go with her, as Exner told him they would, they take Nick against his will.

Early on in the episode, Madison makes an odd complaint to Travis about all the cooking and cleaning and, ahem, watching Nick she has to do, and wonders not why Travis isn’t helping — he has importantly manly town duties — but why Liza isn’t. Well, clearly it’s because she’s going around the neighborhood helping those with medical needs, but maybe she’s keeping that a secret for some reason. At the end of the episode, when Nick is taken away, Liza takes the mendacious Dr. Exner up on her offer to go to the medical facility and help out, in part, it seems, to look out for Nick, but Madison still tells Travis as Griselda, Nick, and Liza are carted away, “This is Liza’s fault.” It’s not that there aren’t people who would see the zombie apocalypse as a conflict between them and their significant others’ ex, but Madison seems too smart, brave (foolhardy, even) and clear-headed for that. This kind of trumped-up domestic drama seems a bit silly in this context, and Madison is not a silly character. As with the writers on The Walking Dead, these writers haven’t yet proven they have any idea how to write strong roles for women. But if they ever figure it out, they’ve got the right actor for the job.

The show ends with another effective, chilling moment, as that night Travis sits on the roof in Chris’ old perch, and watches as several flashes erupt in the house where Chris saw the mirror signal earlier. This time, the lights appear to be muzzle flashes, and the look on Travis’ face suggests that he recognizes his own culpability in what’s transpiring, as he told Moyers about the house. Hopefully, this means Trav will be pulling his head out of his ass soon. It would make for a better show.

Recommended Reading

“Fear the Walking Dead Pilot: Can It Be More?”

“Fear the Walking Dead: The Black Guys Die First”

“Fear the Walking Dead: Liberals Try to Stop Zombies with Words!”

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!

10-Year Study Reveals Women in Key Roles Make Up Less Than a Quarter of Emmy Nominees by Inkoo Kang at Women and Hollywood

Emmy awards face the future as television becomes more diverse by Brian Moylan at The Guardian

The ‘Golden Age for Women in TV’ Is Actually a Rerun by Nell Scovell at The New York Times

Aiming to diversify storytelling, Ava DuVernay expands scope of film distribution collective by Glenn Whipp at Los Angeles Times

The Bechdel Bill is Working to Put the Bechdel Test Into Action by Emily Gagne at The Mary Sue

Denzel Washington Is Bringing August Wilson’s Entire American Century Cycle Plays to the Screen Via HBO by Tambay A. Obenson at Shadow and Act

What “The Golden Girls” Taught Me About Bioethics by Elizabeth Yuko at Bitch Media

Enough With the Queer and Trans Films That Are Actually About Straight People by Kyle Buchanan at Vulture

5 Ways The Movie Industry Still Fails Women by Sarah Aoun at BuzzFeed

We Heart: East Los High‘s Representation of Genderqueer Youth by Anita Little at Ms. blog

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

Johanna Hamilton’s ‘1971’: A Thrilling Portrait of Activism

Bonnie offers a very different take, one that speaks volumes about her resoluteness, level of engagement and selflessness: “We felt that just because we were parents didn’t mean that we could remove ourselves from responsibility, that that would have been kind of a cop-out. We decided that we weren’t going to be content when we continued to see things that really disturbed us.”

Written by Rachael Johnson.

The documentary 1971 (2014) tells the gripping story of a group of peace activists who broke into an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania on March 8, 1971. They called themselves the Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI and their aim was to expose abusive, anti-dissent practices by the Bureau. The activists found what they wanted and were never caught. Making off with a trove of office files, they uncovered an immense and illegal government surveillance program of domestic political groups. One of the stolen documents referred to the now notorious COINTELPRO, a political surveillance program that targeted Black, left-wing, Puerto Rican, and women’s rights organizations as well as the anti-Vietnam war movement. Overseen by FBI head, J. Edgar Hoover, it was both unlawful and un-American as it violated First Amendment rights. The group anonymously dispatched photocopies of the damning evidence to national newspapers. The Washington Post published the story and the FBI was later investigated by Congress.

Directed by Johanna Hamilton, 1971 mixes present-day interviews with members of the group who have broken their silence with footage from the period, photographic stills, documents, and dramatic recreations of the event. Interesting and diverse in terms of personality, age, and background, the group included a married couple with three young children, Bonnie and John Raines; anti-war activist and physics professor, Bill Davidon (the leader of the group); and two younger men, cab driver (and lock-picker) Keith Forsyth and social worker Bob Williamson. The interviews give us a clear sense of what motivated and united them. Keith, still visibly moved decades after, explains that it was his revulsion at the Jackson State shootings that drove him to more “confrontational” political action. “I was done talking,” he says. John speaks eloquently of how surveillance, agent infiltration, and the engineering of paranoia and fear impair both political debate and the morale of activists. “It shrinks the discourse, it shrinks the possibility of resistance,” he observes. It was Bill’s intention to expose the FBI’s anti-dissent aims and practices.

Although very much a committed activist, Bonnie recalls how she was, also, expected to perform a traditionally feminine, domestic role at meetings: “I felt a little bit like I was the den mother for the group…I was fixing meatballs and spaghetti but it was expected that I was going to play that role almost exclusively and I was not real happy about being a little bit marginalized in that kind of way.” It’s a telling reminder that chauvinist, patriarchal attitudes persisted even in progressive circles in the so–called sexually liberated early seventies. John, however, does seem very much a partner and recognizes that Bonnie’s determination to carry out the mission was greater than his. She, also, plays a key part in the break-in.

Bonnie and John are an interesting, admirable couple. Family life did not turn them insular and self-absorbed. They remained committed to caring about the world around them. John had been a freedom rider in the South and he explains how his experiences gave him an understanding of how power operates. John and Bonnie’s situation was, of course, unique. Both parents could have been locked away for a long time. They made plans for close relatives to look after the children if the worst happened but I suppose many would judge them irresponsible and selfish. Bonnie offers a very different take, one that speaks volumes about her resoluteness, level of engagement and selflessness: “We felt that just because we were parents didn’t mean that we could remove ourselves from responsibility, that that would have been kind of a cop-out. We decided that we weren’t going to be content when we continued to see things that really disturbed us.”

Hamilton’s dramatic recreations of the extraordinary event bring to life this real-life political thriller. They are evocative and quite nail-biting, a good deal less phony than most recreations. We follow the group’s preparations and witness the break-in itself, which took place during the night of the Madison Square Garden Ali-Frazier fight of March 8, 1971.

1971 conveys an understanding of the oppressive nature of the FBI’s power as well as an acute awareness of the nastiness of its methods. For many years, the Bureau dedicated itself to stifling freedom of thought and expression through the spread of fear and paranoia, invaded the private space of American citizens and destroyed personal lives. Their schemes were plain evil. The viewer is reminded of that anonymous letter send by the Bureau to Martin Luther King encouraging him to commit suicide.

1971’s depiction of one of the most politically fascinating eras in modern U.S. history is vibrant and characterful but it doesn’t romanticize its subjects. It doesn’t have to. The activists come across as principled, courageous people. Their transgressive act of daring exposed extraordinary abuses of state power. It is a troublesome truth for conservatives and historical amnesiacs but injustice is not always uncovered by strictly lawful means. Hamilton recognizes the story’s historical parallels with Snowden and Wikileaks (Laura Poitras, interestingly, is one of the film’s co-executive producers) as she underscores its importance in the history of American anti-surveillance activism. 1971 is an informative, exciting documentary that needs to be seen.

‘Grandma’–and Lily Tomlin–in a Minor Key

Paul Weitz, who is about my age and is probably still best known as the director of ‘American Pie,’ grew up with Tomlin too, which may be why he centered his latest film, ‘Grandma’ (for which he also wrote the script) around her. 76-year-old women are not often the leads in mainstream American movies, especially not current ones, so I suppose I should be grateful, but I kept wishing this vehicle (and I don’t mean the antique car Tomlin’s character drives in the film) were a better one.

Lily Tomlin was the first woman on television who ever made me laugh. She appeared on Laugh-In as Ernestine, the telephone operator with the ’40s hairstyle and quick temper who snorted at her own jokes, back when the US had telephone operators–and only one phone company. Tomlin was also Edith Ann, a little girl about my age in an oversized rocking chair who ended every monologue by lisping, “And that’s the truth,” and blowing a raspberry.

I didn’t see Nashville when it first came out though my parents did, and afterward my father played its soundtrack incessantly. When I saw the film as an adult I didn’t really care for most of it–except the scenes with Tomlin’s not-at-all-comic (but Oscar-nominated) role, the married, gospel singer, a mother of two, young, deaf children, who has an affair with the young up-and-coming singer/songwriter (Keith Carradine). He has sex with many women but only has eyes for her. When he invites her to a club to watch him perform, she shows up but has obviously never been to a nightclub before. She is struck motionless when Carradine’s character sings a love song he’s penned (many of the actors in the film wrote their own songs, including Carradine, who won a “Best Original Song” Oscar for this one) looking straight at her. The camera doesn’t look away from her either.

Paul Weitz, who is about my age and is probably still best known as the director of American Pie, grew up with Tomlin too, which may be why he centered his latest film, Grandma (for which he also wrote the script) around her. 76-year-old women are not often the leads in mainstream American movies, especially not current ones, so I suppose I should be grateful, but I kept wishing this vehicle (and I don’t mean the antique car Tomlin’s character drives in the film) were a better one.

One of Weitz’s best ideas is to make Tomlin’s character queer, since none of us knew as children in the ’70s that the woman who wrote much of Tomlin’s most famous work, Jane Wagner, was also her romantic partner. The two legally married a couple of years ago, the final unambiguous, public “coming out” of many in that generation (and those who are a little older). Although Tomlin has maintained in interviews that she was always open about her sexuality and the media simply didn’t report it, the history some of us remember is a little more complicated. In the ’90s writer Armistead Maupin (Tales of the City) objected to Tomlin narrating The Celluloid Closet (which he wrote) a ’90s history of queers in film because he felt having a semi-closeted narrator was antithetical to the film’s message.

In the film Elle Reid (Tomlin) is a lesbian poet whose heyday was in the ’70s: she’s now an underemployed academic whose talent and reputation is enough to attract a much younger girlfriend, Olivia (Judy Greer). Greer has a warm presence and hilariously wears the anti-fashion sometimes donned by queer women of a certain age (batik pants!), but we see no chemistry between these two characters who are supposed to be hot and heavy lovers, so their breakup in the first scene is a blessing. When Elle’s only granddaughter Sage (Julia Garner) comes to her and confesses, “I’m pregnant,” Elle is too broke to give Sage the money she needs for an abortion. So the two set off in Elle’s old car (which actually belonged to her late partner, Vi) to try to track down the money for the procedure. Another nice touch is that this film doesn’t make a big deal about abortion; Sage is a high school student who seems to have self-esteem issues and her boyfriend (Nat Wolff) isn’t exactly great father material (Elle asks him, “Why didn’t you use a condom, or for humanity’s sake get a vasectomy”), so this choice makes the most sense for Sage, the way it does for many women and girls in real life. I’ve loved Garner in other films, but here she doesn’t demonstrate much of a flair for comedy, especially in reaction shots–or maybe she doesn’t seem skilled in comparison to a master like Tomlin.

The problem is the script isn’t very funny and when it’s serious, it’s not very acutely observed. Everything this film knows about women’s studies and lesbian poets could have been cribbed from a Wikipedia page (though Weitz knows some queer women writers, and is familiar enough with the work of Eileen Myles to quote it at the very beginning of the film). Some straight men can make very good films about queer women–Show Me Love and Blue Is the Warmest Color (with some reservations) are two of my favorites. But Grandma doesn’t really go much under the surface; Elle misses Vi (who was Black–directors, when we ask for more characters of color onscreen, we don’t mean dead ones whom we see only in still photos and drawings), and had good sex with Olivia and that’s… about it. When we see Elle trying to raise money by selling her first editions of famous feminist books, one by a notorious homophobe, Betty Friedan, and another by transphobe Germaine Greer–even though we find out Elle’s friendly enough with one trans woman (Laverne Cox, majestic as always) to have lent her money–Elle doesn’t let on that she might have any objections to these authors or that she knows anyone who does (and with plenty of transphobes among some self-described feminists, especially older ones, today, this detail would be a relevant one).

Although we see artifacts of ’70s Southern California (a dream catcher and wind chimes in Elle’s home), we don’t get a sense of Elle as a person who lived in that time and subculture the way a film that was actually shot in the ’70s, the underrated, under-seen detective story The Late Show, gives us; Tomlin’s character in that film wrote affirmations on her mirror. An interesting film could be made about a character like Elle’s transition from ’60s free spirit to 2010s misanthrope (which Sage confuses with “philanthropy”), perhaps with a script by Wagner (if she’s not retired) since she did such a good job writing the transformation of feminist women and not-so-feminist men from the ’70s to the ’80s in Tomlin’s ’80s hit, one-woman, stage show The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe.

As in Tangerine the straight writer-director tips his hand by making a straight white-guy supporting role the most complex and best thought-out character in the film–Sam Elliott’s, Karl, an old flame of Elle’s (who explains this relationship to Sage as, “I knew I liked women. I just didn’t like myself”)–completely avoids cliché, the only character to do so. Elle’s daughter and Sage’s mom is a cold workaholic, the type of woman we’ve see in movies before, over and over. Elle is the dirty-talking, no-filter, “surprisingly” antagonistic stereotype many older women are called on to play these days, which stretches back to Dorothy on The Golden Girls and beyond: nearly 50 years ago, when Tomlin’s Laugh-in co-star Ruth Buzzi played her most famous character, an older woman who hits men with her handbag, it was already a tired trope. When people talk about how in this supposed “golden age” of TV that premium television is “just like” film, Grandma is the type of predictable, middle-of-the-road, haphazardly written movie that they mean. My advice is to watch other films and see if they change your mind.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XspFo3jiVR8″ iv_load_policy=”3″]

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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

‘Lady Detective’: ‘Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries’ Explores Feminism in the 1920s

Phryne acts just as independent and liberated outside of the bedroom. She knows how to fly a plane, she delights in driving her own car, a Hispano-Suiza, and totes around a golden revolver with a pearl-encrusted handle. Oh, she also has impeccable taste in clothes.

This is a guest post by Lauren Byrd.

The Australian TV show, Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries (the first two seasons are available on Netflix), is set in the roaring 20s, famous for its jazz, gin, shorter hemlines, bobbed hair, and Art Deco design. The protagonist, Phryne Fisher (pronounced Fry-nee), is an heiress to a small fortune, but she also possesses a sense of adventure and a knack for solving crimes, often outshining her male counterparts at the Melbourne Police Department. Sound like just another Miss Marple or Sherlock Holmes? Think again. Phryne is also a feminist.

Based on the series of novels by Kerry Greenwood, Phryne is an independent woman. Having inherited a small family fortune during World War I, Phryne doesn’t have to work. She could have her pick of a husband and spend the rest of her days reading, knitting, or traveling. Instead, she decides to start solving crimes to earn money. She builds her business from the ground up like any modern day entrepreneur.

However, the television series has made one significant change. In the books, Phryne is 28, which according to Downton Abbey, is past marriageable age. This seems modern enough (and probably quite scandalous for the time), but in casting Essie Davis–who is in her 40s–as Phryne, the series has created one of the few “older,” independent, sexually liberated female characters in television history. Davis herself cited Samantha Jones in Sex and the City as the only other television counterpart to Phryne.

So let’s talk about sex. Phryne has a string of lovers, both in the show and the book series. However, she perhaps possesses a unique set of feelings for her emotionally reserved male counterpart on the Melbourne police force, Detective Inspector Jack Robinson (Nathan Page). The show plays off their chemistry by trotting out the somewhat tired will-they-won’t-they dance, yet these two still make it a compelling tango to watch unfold. Their relationship is an example that speaks even further to Phryne’s independence. Like some female characters might, she doesn’t sit around and wait for Jack to figure things out. She continues to be herself, which means falling into bed with next man she takes a fancy to.

But it is precisely for her sexual liberation that Phryne has been criticized by American viewers. In 2013, the first season became available on Netflix. Shortly afterward, some viewers left comments saying the show would be more enjoyable if Phryne wasn’t such a “tramp” and “obnoxious airhead.”

Jezebel wrote a piece about the comments. Miss Fisher author Greenwood said she had been expecting outrage over her liberated, independent heroine for ages. But she didn’t receive a single complaint when the show aired on Australian television. “Not once. Not even from old ladies. Not even from nuns,” Greenwood said in an interview with The Sydney Morning Herald.

In fact, Greenwood finds Miss Fisher no different than similar male characters who solve crimes for a living. James Bond woos and beds a different woman in every film and is a hero to men and boys. “No one thinks their multiple lovers are indications of slutishness,” Greenwood pointed out.

Davis said in an interview with NPR that she was sent the Jezebel link and thought the reactions to it were fantastic. “The reactions towards the outrage were so powerful and outspoken. And that so many people who, on the Jezebel site, were like, ‘Right, well, if that’s what everyone’s saying about it, I’m watching it.’”

The series, when it comes to sex and violence, is actually quite tame. Even though the show features a different murder every week, the killings and violence are downplayed, and the sexual liberation of Phryne receives the same treatment. There’s the flirting, the first embrace, but then the show cuts to the next scene, leaving everything after implied. Or at the most, the pre-coital scene cuts to the post-coital, a pair of lovers ensconced in bed.

Her backstory, which comes out in bits and pieces in the series, is just as fascinating. She grew up poor in Melbourne and only after her English cousins died during World War I did her father inherit their peerage line, making him a count and her the Honorable Miss Fisher. During the Great War, Phryne ran off to France where she joined a French woman’s ambulance unit, where she received an award for bravery. After the war, she worked as an artist’s model in Montparnasse for a few years, before continuing to hop around Europe. In the book series, she’s returned from England back to her roots in Melbourne.

Phryne has an amazing cadre of characters she’s befriended and employed. Despite her statement that she’s “never understood the appeal of parenthood,” she’s certainly not selfish and takes in a young girl, Jane, as her ward in the second episode. Her relationship with her new maid/assistant, Dorothy “Dot” Williams, blossoms into a true friendship throughout the course of the series. At first, Dot is quite reserved, sheltered, and very Catholic, but under Miss Fisher’s influence and tutelage, she becomes much more than confident in herself and turns into a true asset to Phryne’s business.

Phryne met her best friend Mac while she was serving on the French ambulance unit. Mac is a physician and dresses androgynously, but her sexuality is never a point of contention or question in her friendship with Phryne. To round out her household, Phryne employs—funnily enough–a man named Mr. Butler as her butler and Bert and Cec, former dock workers, who drive a taxi and conduct odd jobs for Miss Fisher, both around the house and as part of her investigations. In the books, Bert and Cec are also “red raggers,” a term from that era for socialists.

The show is a delightful romp through the decadence of the late 1920s and while hemlines are higher, Phryne still butts heads with menfolk about her line of work. Frequently referred to as a “lady detective,” Phryne seems to have taken this sexist term and turned it into a calling card for herself, but she still gets talked down to by plenty of men. In fact, her relationship with Detective Inspector Jack Robinson is at first antagonistic. He wants her to butt out of his investigations and mind her own business, he threatens to arrest her for breaking and entering, and only allows her to stay in the room during an autopsy if she won’t say a word. Over time, however, they become partners. He wants her opinions on his investigations, and she wants him there for a second line of defense and in order to use his official title to secure records and information she otherwise wouldn’t be able to obtain.

Australia was one of the first countries that gave women the right to vote, passing the law in 1902. Once soldiers left for the war in Europe, women emerged from the home to fill the jobs left empty by men, which included factory and domestic work, nursing, teaching, and clerical and secretarial positions. Of course, women were paid less than men so even once men returned from the war, many employers wanted to keep women on the payroll because they cost less. Australian politician M. Preston Stanley openly confronted male arrogance and encouraged women toward independence. In 1921, Edith Cowan was the first woman to be elected to the Australian parliament. And of course, the 1920s were the age of the flappers, women who believed in social equity, rather than political. Social equity for the flappers meant women were allowed to drink in bars like men and enjoy all the recreational activities that men did. Not all women embraced this new movement, however. Some women of an older generation, called “wowsers,” objected to these new-fangled practices. (See Phryne’s Aunt Prudence.)

If you have a penchant for 1920s fashions, love detective shows, or just enjoy watching a sassy woman kick some ass, then Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries is a shiny gem of a show in a sea of superhero movies, True Detectives, and Game of Thrones.

Lauren Byrd has worked in the entertainment industry in Los Angeles and New York. She currently writes a weekly series on her blog, 52 Weeks of Directors, focusing on a female filmmaker each week.

The Angry Young Man in Horror

These films work to varying degrees, and the circumstances are diverse, but the core of each story is the same – one violent little boy. In a society where privileged young men (i.e. heterosexual, white, young adult males) are committing heinous crimes like date rape and mass shootings on an alarmingly regular basis, a fear of angry young men seems valid, and reason enough for a trend in horror.

This guest post by Claire Holland previously appeared at Razor Apple and is cross-posted with permission.

Be warned: This post is full of spoilers for Goodnight Mommy, Cub, and The Boy.

More often than not, horror movies reveal the fears of our time. In Axelle Carolyn’s excellent book, It Lives Again! Horror Movies in the New Millennium, the author illustrates how our collective fears end up reflected in different ways on screen. Carolyn makes the argument (and backs it up) that the popularity of every big horror trend originated somewhere in our collective consciousness, connecting trends to a country’s political climate, terrorist attacks, and other big events that resonant deeply throughout cultures.

As the late and great Wes Craven said, “Horror films don’t create fear. They release it.”

Carolyn’s book came to mind recently as I watched a crop of new films, each about the potential for violence in young boys: Goodnight Mommy, Cub, and The Boy. These films work to varying degrees, and the circumstances are diverse, but the core of each story is the same – one violent little boy. In a society where privileged young men (i.e. heterosexual, white, young adult males) are committing heinous crimes like date rape and mass shootings on an alarmingly regular basis, a fear of angry young men seems valid, and reason enough for a trend in horror.

Of course, these are horror movies, not case studies. As much as horror reflects society’s fears, it distorts them, making them ever more monstrous. In Goodnight Mommy, a young boy, Elias, suffers from a break with reality, imagining his dead twin brother is still alive and the woman living in his house is merely masquerading as his mother. In Cub, Boy Scout Sam stumbles onto the lair of Kai, a feral child living, and killing, out in the woods. The Boy takes the most realistic tack by far, examining the lonely childhood of a budding murderer, Ted, growing up in the middle of nowhere. These are the origin stories of the Angry Young Man, told through the lens of the horror genre.

There are numerous parallels between the three boys, who all engage in gradually escalating forms of violence: they kick chickens, kill dogs, and eventually wind up super gluing their mothers’ lips together or setting buildings full of people aflame. They’re all isolated: Elias’s brother and father are dead, his mother distant; Sam is a foster child without friends, a kid whom even the Boy Scout troop leader disdains; and Ted lives in a desolate motel with only his alcoholic father and a few passing guests for company. Most importantly, though, their attempts at connecting with others are constantly thwarted, or even actively discouraged.

When Elias, out of grief and guilt, insists that his mother speak to Lukas or make him breakfast, his mother reacts furiously, verbally and physically berating Elias. She slaps him and makes him to repeat aloud, “I will not speak to Lukas,” over and over again, when what Elias clearly needs is his mother’s love and understanding – and therapy. Bafflingly, Elias and his mother live in a lavish house that seems completely sequestered from the rest of the world, making the boy’s isolation all the more palpable. Given no one to talk to or work through his feelings with, Elias lashes out at the only person he can, creating an elaborate fantasy wherein his mother is an evil imposter who must be tortured until she can bring back his real mother and, presumably, the rest of his family.

In The Boy, Ted seems like a fairly normal kid, albeit one who is very comfortable with death. His father pays him pennies for picking up road kill, a pastime that eventually morphs into Ted luring animals onto the road. This is troubling, but the sort of behavior that might be curbed by an involved parent (preferably one who doesn’t demand road kill in exchange for attention). Under the nonexistent supervision of his father, however, Ted’s interest in death blooms, as does his inferiority complex – a dangerous combination. As with Elias, when Ted reaches out for companionship and acceptance – first to his father, and then to a kind but troubled drifter – he is beaten down, emotionally and physically. His pain and anger eventually culminate in murderous arson. This doesn’t seem like the story of a cold, calculating sociopath, no matter how much the filmmaker bills it that way. Ted is full of feelings, but because those feelings are never validated, he can only find destructive ways to express them.

Cub carries out this same model, but to cartoonish heights. Sam is the odd kid out in his Boy Scout troop, so when he encounters feral Kai on a camping trip in the woods, he feels an immediate kinship with the outcast and the two form a cautious rapport. At one point, the troop leader sics his dog on Sam as a mean joke, so Kai kidnaps the dog and hangs it from a tree so that Sam can kill it. Kai, a boy who has been used and abused by those bigger and stronger than him, considers this a gift. Sam is initially shocked and repulsed, but when he tries to help the dog and is bitten for his trouble, he retaliates, sick of being hurt by those he reaches out to again and again. Unable to truly forge a bond with anyone, Sam finally kills Kai so that he can take over the feral boy’s malevolent, vengeful persona.

The shared element in these three stories of angry young men is an unwillingness of the guardians and role models to nurture, or even condone, sensitivity in these boys. They constantly demand that the boys be tougher, thicker-skinned, less vulnerable, regardless of their actual feelings or needs. When Ted’s father allows a prom afterparty to take place at the motel, sans parents, he tells Ted, “The boys’ll be boys and the girls’ll be girls; good, harmless fun. You get what I’m sayin’?” One can easily imagine the kind of behavior Ted’s father is allowing, and tacitly condoning. “Boys will be boys” encompasses all manner of sins. When those same boys hurt Ted and his father blames him, Ted sees no other option than to become a stronger (read: hyper-masculine) version of those cruel boys in order to survive.

We can’t excuse violent criminals for their actions just because they may have had bad childhoods, but our society’s emphasis on the masculine above everything else is a real problem. Forcing young boys to “toughen up” before they’re ready only forces them to give up their empathy, and that benefits no one. These three stories are horrific, but they are, after all, just stories. Unfortunately, the real crimes committed by angry young men – Sandy Hook, Steubenville, Aurora – are as gruesome as fiction.

Claire Holland is a freelance writer and author of Razor Apple, a blog devoted to horror movies and horror culture with a feminist bent. Claire has a BA in English and creative writing, but she insists on writing about “trashy” genre movies nonetheless. You can follow her on twitter @ClaireCWrites.

The Hacker in the Rye (and the Gender Politics in ‘Mr. Robot’)

All the women in the show are fairly fleshed out characters who are allowed to be angry, manipulating, sweet, caring, and experience all the emotions that lie in between. So, basically they’re regular human beings.

This is a guest post by Giselle Defares.

Hollywood remains fascinated by the concept of ones and zeros. The idea that technology will take over our hegemony in the world is anchored in our pop culture. The bastion of the tech world is clouded with toxic masculinity, yet there are still women who’ve managed to crack these walls. This even translated into film, see wide-eyed Sandra Bullock in The Net, hipster Angelina Jolie in Hackers, and of course Noomi Rapace in The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. It’s been reported by the U.S. Department of Commerce that men dominate the hacker subculture, yet 28.5 percent of all computer programmers are women. Mr. Robot has been widely praised for its accurate portrayal of technology and the tech industry, but how do the female characters fair in the show?

Sam Esmail is the brain behind the show. In 2014, Esmail wrote and made his directorial debut with the film Comet, so Mr. Robot will be (for the time being) his pièce de résistance. The show was initially created as a feature film, but Esmail changed his mind and turned the screenplay into a TV pilot. He shopped the play around and ended up with the USA Network. This seems like a surprising choice since the USA Network has a reputation for their – let’s be honest here –mediocre programming. In recent years the network has tried to turn their image around and churned out several gems such as Psych, White Collar (well, at least the first two seasons), and Suits. Still, the obvious choice for the hacker, vigilante saga would be HBO, FX, OR FXX. However, USA Network gave Esmail total control of all aspects of the show. The show is produced by Universal Cable Productions and Anonymous Content. Esmail hired Niels Arden Oplev, who was behind the Swedish version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, to direct the pilot. The pilot won the Audience Award after the screening at SXSW, and was named an official selection of the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival. Mr. Robot was renewed by the network, for a second season of at least 10 episodes, before the official series premier. Esmail has mapped out five seasons of the show.

The fascination with hacker groups is nothing new. In our information society, it seems even more prominent seeing how digitally networked our society is, how much we rely on social media and automatic systems, which highlights the vulnerability of our privacy. Inspiration behind the show can easily be traced back to old hacker groups such as Cult of the Dead Cow and Cyberpunk (which inspired Wikileaks founder Julian Assange), and more recently hacker groups such as Anonymous or the Lulzsec group who placed attacks on high profile sites such as Sony Pictures Entertainment and the CIA. Let’s not forgot about the Guardians of Peace, who were behind the Sony leak and (for a short amount of time) shook up Hollywood. For some, the recent wave of hacker groups have launched a new form of organized crime.

Hacker groups are often marginalized in the media and portrayed as the equivalent of terrorist groups. It seems that most hacker groups toy with the political and economic complexity of their ideology. What also comes into play is their struggle between power and anger. The groups are angry at the status quo and want to see change – especially with the large conglomerates who are deemed abusive. Yet, they enjoy the power that their actions bring. They often perform morally questionable actions – which are sometimes necessary – in order to bring about justice.

The instant success of Mr. Robot comes as no surprise. The show is confident in which direction its headed and how the story will evolve. Mr. Robot is a breath of fresh air in our current TV-landscape since it doesn’t hide behind fictional names, brands or political situations and completely embraces its dogmatic world. The show even takes jabs against our consumer society and the goal of “living a normal life.” The season finale was postponed for a week since the episode contained a scene where a character sustained a fatal gunshot wound during a TV interview, which had an uncanny resemblance to the way that WDBJ journalists were killed on live TV in Roanoke, Virginia. In the season finale there was also a quick reference to the recent Ashley Madison hack.

The premise of Mr. Robot is fairly simple. The show centers around Elliot Alderson (Rami Malek), a 28-year-old programmer who during the day works as a cyber security engineer at Allsafe and in his free time is a vigilante hacker. Elliot ends up in a tough situation when the leader of the underground hacker group FSociety, Mr. Robot (Christian Slater), eggs him on to destroy Evil Corp, the firm he’s paid to protect. Spurred by his personal beliefs, Elliot struggles to resist the opportunity to take down the multinational CEOs he believes are running/ruining the world. Elliot functions as the eyes and ears of the audience – and provides the voice-over narration. Quite frankly he’s one of the most unreliable narrators seen on TV in recent years. He’s struggling with clinical depression and has social anxiety disorder. Elliot deals with his own paranoia and hallucinations and is most of the time high or going through withdrawal.

Most TV critics rave about Esmail’s attention to detail. Well, it has to be said, Esmail works with surgical precision. When you see code on a computer screen, you better believe that it’s real. Esmail hired a cyber-security engineer to provide the data that appears on computer screens during various hacking scenes. He also put attention to the social engineering aspect of hacking since hackers have to figure out human behavior patterns in order to find the weak spot in the system. Well, that certainly brings the drama to the show.

The cinematography of the show is stunning. This is the work of veteran DOP Todd Campbell (Friday Night Lights, Boyhood). Esmail and Campbell picked out various framing and height techniques. From the use of shortsighting (especially during Elliot’s internal dialogues) and the “leading room” technique, these are the elements that give the show such an unique look. “Leading room” means that there’s a lot of room between the characters faces and the physical space that they occupy. Characters are often seen on the sides of a larger frame. This makes you feel that you’re in the shot with the characters. Esmail chose to incorporate several 70s and 90s influences in the show. This can be seen from the beautiful title screens, to the references to Christian Slater’s earlier work and films such as American Psycho and Taxi Driver, to the perfect soundtrack. One of the more remarkable moments in the show surrounds Tyrell Wellick during a particular angsty rooftop scene, which was highlighted by the use of the FKA twigs song “Two Weeks.”

The show’s clear trajectory has led to frequent comparisons with Fight Club, Dexter, and Breaking Bad. Similar to Walter White, we follow Elliot on his descent into amorality. The show highlights the idea of power and raises the question if Elliot undertakes action for the right reasons. While Elliot has good intentions, he certainly enjoys hacking everyone left, right, and center, which momentarily makes him feel powerful. Elliot can be seen as one of the more “morally grey” antiheroes on TV (though some would argue that Elliot’s journey is a typical hero vigilante origin story). The interesting part is that the viewer can see that Elliot is a mess from the start. His struggles with depression and anxiety aren’t glossed over, he’s very unstable, and he doesn’t play the role of the charming yet genius misfit.

The female characters in Mr. Robot consist of Elliot’s co-worker and childhood friend Angela (Portia Doubleday) – who could be Amanda Seyfried’s twin. Elliot regularly visits his psychiatrist Krista Gorden (Gloria Reuben). In order to suppress his emotions, he uses morphine which he gets from his neighbor and occasional fuckbuddy (later girlfriend) Shayla (Frankie Shaw). He works at FSociety with the stubborn Darlene (Carly Chaikin) – who’s unrecognizable from her role as Dalia in Suburgatory. Also at FSociety works the subdued Iranian hacker Trenton (Sunita Mani), who doesn’t want to follow in her parents’ footsteps while chasing the unattainable American Dream. There’s also Joanna Wellick (Stephanie Corneliussen), the Lady Macbeth wife of the antagonist of the show, the Swedish Patrick Bateman Tyrell Wellick (Martin Wallström) who’s the Senior Vice President of Technology at Evil Corp and has an insatiable hunger for power.

Lenika Cruz of The Atlantic states that the show’s “treatment of its female characters feels like an extension of its broader portrayal of those typically marginalized on TV.” That’s a valid point. All the women in the show are fairly fleshed out characters who are allowed to be angry, manipulating, sweet, caring, and experience all the emotions that lie in between. So, basically they’re regular human beings.

At first sight, it seems that Elliot’s relationship with Angela has a White Knight undertone. In the first episodes Elliot reacts, overprotecting and constantly tries to stand up for Angela (see the meeting with Evil Corp sexist CTO, to which Angela states: “Even if I’m losing, let me lose, OK?”). Angela comes across as a cookie cutter character but she has an interesting arc. She’s the epitome of our current generation of young professionals who are forced, as a result of the current state of the job market, to be sucked in by the empty promises of corporations because of debts and lack of job mobility. Plus she can’t lean on her dad who is financially struggling. Her strength can be seen in several moments throughout the show: when she finally stands up for herself against her insufferable, cheating boyfriend, and in the season finale when she powers through after horrible events at her job – let’s hope that her new Prada shoes remain squeaky clean.

Darlene is introduced as the girl who’s one of the guys. She’s loudmouthed, smart, but we find out that she has a softer side. Presumably she became this tough because she’s always been the only one – or one of a few women – within the male hacker society. Season one was mostly Elliot’s story and slowly the plot unraveled and we got glimpses of the other characters. It took several episodes before her character was fleshed out. Darlene really came into her own in the last three episodes. The show had an interesting twist at the end, where it flipped the relationship between Elliot and Darlene upside down, and their interactions got a whole other meaning.

One of the smaller plotlines contained Elliot’s girlfriend Shayla. Shayla was under a lot of pressure by her violent drug supplier. The relationship between the two seemed pure because Shayla was aware of Elliot’s drug habits and his neurotic behavior, while he hid most of it from his childhood friend Angela. One of the more hilarious scenes is in episode 3, “d3bug.mkv,” when Elliot asks Shayla to be his girlfriend and she joins him for a dinner at his boss Gideon’s house and lots of awkward small talk ensues. It all goes down after that for Shayla and it can be said that she was thrown under the bus for Elliot’s man pain.

Gloria Reuben is excellent in her role as Elliot’s psychiatrist – Malek and Reuben have electric chemistry in their scenes. She tries her hardest to get him to open up. Elliot in his turn only sees a connection with her since they’re both lonely and he confesses his hacking tendencies at the end of their therapy stint. In episode 7, “v1ew-s0urce,” he totally comes clean and says, “ I don’t just hack you. I hack everyone. But I’ve helped a lot of people. I want a way out of loneliness, just like you.” Her expression during his confession is marvelous. In the season finale we find out that she hasn’t given up on Elliot yet.

While FSociety plays an important role in Elliot’s life, most of the characters remain in the background. It’s still a diverse group especially with the Muslim hacker Trenton and the African American Romero. We see Trenton performing her prayers at one point. One of the only other tidbits we get to see of her is in episode 7 “v1ew-s0urce,” when she has a conversation with Darlene why she joined FSociety. Trenton then says, “My parents were born in Iran. And came here like everybody else. For the freedom. But my dad works 60-hour weeks to determine tax loopholes for a millionaire art dealer. My mom, she ran up loans in the five digits to get an online degree. They won’t shut up about how great America is. But they are going to die in debt. Doing things they didn’t want to do.”

Esmail made an interesting choice when he picked B.D. Wong for the role of Whiterose who is a transgender woman; arguably he could have chosen a transgender actor but all along he had B.D. Wong in mind. Whiterose is the head of the dangerous Chinese hackers group The Dark Army. Wong plays a small part in the show but has a short, tense scene with Elliot. Whiterose is the complete opposite of the unstable Elliot: she is competent, intimidating, and focused.

Joanna remains the most mysterious character. She fully supports her husband Tyrell in all his endeavors. She even knows that he will use sexual favors – with men and women – to get where he thinks he needs to be. She plays Tyrell like a fiddle. One of their most amazing scenes is in episode 6, “br4ve-trave1er,” when Tyrell is upset and destroys their kitchen and she calmly keeps munching on her food.

Mr. Robot is one of the best new shows that has come out in recent years. The immaculate attention to details, cinematography, pop culture references, and critique on our digital society are delicious. The show is not without its faults since there are some questionable lines of dialogue, (i.e. Elliot says of Trenton: “She may look innocent, but I’d be careful, she has some Allah Akbar in her”). Furthermore, it’s quite unbelievable that Angela and her boyfriend (who also works at Allsafe) play unknown media on their computer without checking it out first. The episodes can drag at certain points with all the critique on the large evil corporations, manipulation of the public and greed of the top dogs.

We get it.

What’s up for season 2? There are so many unanswered questions. Who was knocking on Elliot’s door? Where’s Tyrell? Will Joanna and Darlene have a bigger roles in the second season?. We’ll have to wait and see. Everything constantly changes in the world of Mr. Robot. Nothing is set in ones and zeros.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ug4fRXGyIak “]

Giselle Defares comments on film, fashion (law) and American pop culture. See her blog here.

Frankenstein and His Bride: Mapping Maternal Absence

However, Whale challenges Shelley’s automatic association of the maternal with the absent female: the Bride’s rejection of Frankenstein’s monster shows that the maternal can be absent even when the woman is present, while the blind man’s nurturing care suggests that man can embody the noblest maternal impulse.

As the daughter of pioneering feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley inherited radical ideas about the intellectual abilities and sexual freedoms of women. She learned these ideas from her mother’s books rather than her presence, however, because Wollstonecraft died soon after her birth. Anne Mellor points to compelling evidence that the undated events of Frankenstein are set over the nine months of Mary Shelley’s own gestation, in 1797, with the date of Victor Frankenstein’s climactic death coinciding almost exactly with Mary Wollstonecraft’s. Created lovelessly as a theoretical experiment, Frankenstein’s monster is the ultimate icon of the unmothered child. Mary’s own beloved father, philosopher William Godwin, would disown his teenaged daughter when she became pregnant by married poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, a deeply personal betrayal that contradicted his theoretical conviction in anarchy, and motivated Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin to rename herself Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. Mary Shelley was thus shaped by the trauma of parental rejection as a result of her sexuality, an experience common to girls of the 19th century and queer youth of the 20th.

How appropriate, then, that the greatest screen adaptation of Frankenstein should be the work of a gay man, James Whale, whose own identification with Shelley’s monster is explored in fictionalized biopic Gods and Monsters. Though there have been adaptations more technically faithful to the novel, none has been truer to its central pathos of maternal absence. It was because Whale acknowledged him as the film’s emotional core, that we now associate “Frankenstein” with the abandoned monster rather than his egoistic creator. Where Mary Shelley’s monster rapidly acquires educated speech, while his stigma is a physically undefined “ghastliness,” Whale’s monster evokes intellectual disability by his realistically slow learning, and his distorted physique equally provokes the audience’s ableism, luring them into complicity with the persecuting mob and challenging them with their own temptation to reject the “monster.” In sequel Bride of Frankenstein (whose very title suggests the monster as “Frankenstein”), Whale demonstrates his sympathetic understanding of Shelley’s emotional identification with her monster, by casting Elsa Lanchester in the dual role of Mary Shelley and the monstrous Bride. However, Whale challenges Shelley’s automatic association of the maternal with the absent female: the Bride’s rejection of Frankenstein’s monster shows that the maternal can be absent even when the woman is present, while the blind man’s nurturing care suggests that man can embody the noblest maternal impulse.

Elsa Lanchester as Mary Shelley and as Bride

“The Body,” the acclaimed episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer‘s fifth season that portrays the death of Buffy’s mother, features a symbolic art class in which Dawn is instructed to draw the negative space around an object, rather than the object itself. In art teaching, drawing negative space is a recognized technique for breaking preconceptions and allowing the viewer to perceive with fresh accuracy. In a society that chronically undervalues the labor of motherhood, drawing its negative space is one technique for reassessing its worth. Opening with the narrative of a polar explorer who has abandoned his loving sister for territorial conquest, Frankenstein portrays the execution of a girl falsely accused of infanticide, the destruction of the monster’s bride and the murder of Victor Frankenstein’s own bride in vengeance. It may well be claimed that Shelley’s entire novel is a mapping of the negative space surrounding female nurture.

By choosing to bring forth the Bride (in the novel, Victor destroys the Bride before she’s completed), Whale develops Shelley’s theme from woman’s absence into her rejection, touching on painful legacies of maternally rejected queer and disabled youth. Frankenstein’s monster is created with a brain labelled “abnormal,” raising issues of inborn and predestined sinfulness, yet his violence is always directly provoked by cruel treatment and maternal absence. In Bride of Frankenstein, Whale conflates Mary Shelley with her monster through their joint embodiment in Elsa Lanchester, insightfully converting the Bride’s climactic rejection of Frankenstein’s monster into the author’s rejection of herself. To become adult is to assume responsibility for self-parenting. Because adults instinctively base their self-care on the model of their own parents, many suffer for life from absent nurture in youth. Frankenstein’s monster seeks a Bride-mother-lover to supply his lack of parenting, but the new monster is as lacking as himself. Though women are often imagined as unlimited sources of nurture, rather than humans wrestling their own psychologies, James Whale allows his Bride to be broken. Those to whom nothing is given, have nothing to give. Bride of Frankenstein should be celebrated for powerfully reclaiming the maternal as a learned capacity and a voluntary commitment, rather than an automatic quality of womanhood.

Elizabeth (Mae Clarke) rejects Boris Karloff’s “monster”

From its eerie opening of grave-robbing, Frankenstein cuts straight to the rejection of the female, as Henry Frankenstein (Shelley’s Victor Frankenstein is renamed Henry, while friend Henry is inexplicably Victor) writes to his fiancé Elizabeth, instructing her to wait for him: “My work must come first, even before you. At night the winds howl in the mountains. There is no one here.” In its howling winds, the film evokes Shelley’s endless polar wastes, visualizing fields of masculine achievement as deserts of desolation. Though his own father assumes that Henry must have abandoned Elizabeth for another woman, his scientific research is a substitute for all women, perhaps echoing William Godwin’s substitution of philosophical theories of liberation for personal support of his daughter’s freedom. As Henry successfully animates the monster, he cries out, “In the name of God! Now I know what it feels like to be God!” As Christianity teaches that we are sons and daughters of God, so Henry’s assumption of the divine role is surely the ultimate assuming of responsibility for self-parenting, leading to catastrophe precisely because of the deep flaws in his internalized parental model. Boris Karloff’s monster is justly iconic, his sinister appearance contrasted with the mute yearning in his eyes, his palms spread and beseeching for warmth, whether of companionship or simple sunlight. The instant that his monster becomes burdensome, Henry’s first impulse is abandonment: “Leave it alone! Leave it alone!,” displaying an assumed freedom to disengage that is typical of society’s model of fatherhood.

Shelley and Whaley question whether a man who has abandoned family for science can successfully parent his scientific creations, as Shelley’s prologue describes herself parenting the novel Frankenstein. Where Dr. Frankenstein understands public work and domesticity to be in opposition to each other, a patriarchal logic that segregates male and female, Shelley and Whale suggest rather that maternal care is demanded inseparably of both public and domestic spheres. It is Henry Frankenstein’s assistant Fritz, a hunchbacked “dwarf,” who viciously torments the monster with a burning torch, perhaps acting out his own parental model of hostility and rejection. Unlike Shelley’s novel, in which the monster kills as calculated punishment for Victor Frankenstein’s abandonment, Whale presents the monster’s first killings as justifiable self defense. Escaping the tortures of Frankenstein’s laboratory, the monster encounters Little Maria, a young girl who accepts him as a playmate. Through Little Maria’s moving acceptance, in the absence of parental supervision, Whale implies that intolerance must be learned from parental models. Little Maria shows the monster how flowers float, and he accidentally drowns her in compliment to her flower-like beauty. Meanwhile, Henry Frankenstein is driven back to his fiancée by revulsion at what he has created. Leaving Elizabeth at the monster’s mercy, by protectively locking her into her room, illustrates how counterproductive Henry’s efforts to control life have become. The film ends with the iconic image of a mob with burning torches, united to persecute the outsider and avenge the death of Little Maria. As the mob sets fire to Frankenstein’s windmill, Whale dwells on the monster’s agonized screams, panic and isolated death. He then cuts to Henry Frankenstein’s being tenderly nursed by a flock of maids and his loving fiancée, ending his masterpiece with harsh contrast between the abandoned and the cherished.

Meeting the maternal man: “Alone: bad. Friend: good!”

Bride of Frankenstein opens with Mary Shelley narrating the sequel to her tale to Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, in a setting of elegant luxury–a choice that foregrounds the story’s female authorship. Marvelling at Mary Shelley’s youth and femininity, Byron booms: “Can you believe that bland and lovely brow conceived of Frankenstein?” Yet, though Byron postures in his grinning celebrity as “England’s greatest sinner,” it is the woman, Mary Shelley, who has truly suffered for unsanctioned love. When Byron brands her “angel,” she smiles enigmatically: “You think so?” Whale’s portrait of Mary Shelley revels in her dainty, feminine appearance and twinkling grin, before unveiling her secret kinship with the monster through her reincarnation as his Bride. Fading from Shelley’s luxury to Frankenstein’s burning windmill, from which the monster makes his improbable escape, we witness two women in the persecuting mob: one who weeps at the “terrible” sight, and another who gloats that she is “glad to see the monster roasted to death.” What sharper illustration that woman is “naturally” neither merciful nor cruel, but individual? Henry Frankenstein is lured back to science by the amoral Dr. Pretorius, who has grown life “from seed” to create a menagerie of shrunken authority figures. In this empowerment fantasy, the overbearing, lecherous king can be plucked from his targets with tongs, while the squeakily disapproving bishop may be bottled in a jar. By shrinking authority figures to ludicrous insignificance, Dr. Pretorius is giddily liberated from the constraints of social conditioning: “Sometimes I have wondered whether life wouldn’t be much more amusing if we were all devils, with no nonsense about angels and being good,” recalling Elsa Lanchester’s skepticism, as Mary Shelley, when described as an angel.

By introducing a second creator figure rebelling against nature (Dr. Pretorius and his menagerie are not in the novel), Whale allows the procreation of two men: “Together, we will create his mate!” Meanwhile, the wandering monster shows self-loathing inability to nurture himself, by attacking his own reflection in a pond, before finding kinship with a compassionate, blind man in the forest. The blind man welcomes the monster, assuming a maternal role: “I shall look after you, and you will comfort me.” Through the excellence of his care, and the rapid progress of the monster under his tutoring, we understand that the maternal is a nurturing quality independent of sex. Men like Dr. Frankenstein do not lack maternal nurture as a fact of their maleness; they willfully reject it in their pursuit of fortune and glory, the social rewards for masculine achievement. In Whale’s ending, it is those who have found mutual nurture – Henry Frankenstein and his fiancée Elizabeth – that Frankenstein’s monster chooses to spare, while those who are unable to care for others – Dr. Pretorius, Frankenstein’s monster and the Bride – “belong dead.” Though they center male characters, Shelley’s novel and Whale’s films reverse male priorities, elevating the maternal to reign supreme.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is credited with inventing science fiction, while her follow-up, The Last Man, founded sci-fi dystopia. After more than a century of male-dominated authorship, science fiction continues to obsessively echo Shelley’s themes of fatherly inadequacy and the vain hubris of the inhumanely over-rationalizing man. Like the persistence of Ann Radcliffe and Lois Weber’s Final Girl in the male-dominated horror genre, or the inability of female creators like Kathryn Bigelow to rewrite the masculine conventions of action film, this persistence of female themes in male-dominated sci-fi demonstrates the power of a genre’s original creators to fix its conventions and shape its expectations. The cultural contributions of female creators like Mary Shelley may be undervalued by society but, like mothers and maternal fathers, they’d leave one hell of an absence.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkSbwiKP3mo”]

Brigit McCone covets the Bride of Frankenstein hairdo, writes and directs short films and radio dramas. Her hobbies include doodling and hanging out with her friends. Friends: good!

‘Fear the Walking Dead’: Liberals Try to Stop Zombies with Words!

The audience knows so much more than the characters that at a certain point, it doesn’t work as dramatic irony anymore; it’s just frustrating.

I know I called Fear the Walking Dead reactionary two weeks ago (they took last week off for Labor Day), but I want to retract that. The show is not really conservative, in the same way that the current crop of Republican presidential candidates isn’t really conservative. It’s more radical and disturbing than a simple longing for a bygone fantasy era of law and order when everyone knew their place.

This week, tough, smart widow Madison (Kim Dickens, still doing better than the material deserves), heroin-addicted Nick (Frank Dillane, whose perpetually wild-eyed countenance and exaggerated limp are certain to get him mistaken for a zombie and shot some day), and Alicia (Alycia Debnam-Carey) are stuck at home waiting for Travis (Cliff Curtis) as the neighbors begin eating each other. Travis is stuck in an L.A. barbershop with his ex-wife Liza (Elizabeth Rodriguez) and their petulant teen son Chris (Lorenzo James Henrie).

The barber, an El Salvadoran immigrant named Daniel (the great Ruben Blades) doesn’t seem to like Travis much, and it’s not clear why. He takes offense when Travis reassures Chris, who’s worried about the rioting and looting outside, that they won’t break into the barbershop because they wouldn’t be interested in stealing a bunch of combs. “There’s more than just combs in here,” Daniel indignantly tells Travis, thankfully out of earshot of Chris, who would probably be terrified to learn that the shop also has scissors, shaving cream, hair gel, and other loot-worthy items. In any case, the writers clearly struggled with how to introduce Daniel’s mistrust/dislike of the generally likeable-enough Travis, and ultimately failed to come up with anything compelling. So, the combs thing.

Eventually, rioters burn down the building next door, forcing Travis, Chris, Liza, and Daniel to run, along with Daniel’s wife Griselda (Patricia Reyes Spindola) and their adult daughter Ofelia (Mercedes Mason). It’s mayhem on the streets, as protesters, rioters, and looters dissolve into a violent mass, including some who have turned and are eating each other. Kind of the way the mainstream media depicted Occupy Wall Street. Cops are eating each other, too, though, adding to the madness. While Daniel wants to split away from Travis and his people (you remember, because of the whole combs thing), Griselda is injured when cops using firehoses on the protesters knock down a scaffolding. Travis offers to drive them to a hospital, but hospitals are pretty much zombie central, so Daniel convinces Travis to take them to Madison’s home.

Meanwhile, Madison and the kids are staying up late playing Monopoly. Hey, they don’t know it’s the apocalypse yet. It’s a reasonable way for a mom to keep her kids from thinking about what’s going on outside while they wait for Travis to come home. It doesn’t make sense for Madison not to tell Alicia what’s going on out there, but it’s for the girl’s own good, right, and I’m sure she won’t do anything stupid and reckless because she doesn’t understand the threat. Later, after a dog startles them, they decide to go to the neighbor’s house, because they have a shotgun, but for some reason they leave the back door wide open, which is unwise in L.A., even if you don’t know there are zombies everywhere. After they find the gun, they hear the dog barking, and look back at their house to see the zombie neighbor go in. Do zombies eat dogs? Why yes, they do. Then Madison sees Travis pulling up to the house.

In a recurring motif, Madison is too slow, or doesn’t yell loudly enough to keep someone from entering a dangerous situation. Travis goes inside, followed by Daniel and them. He finds the neighbor munching on the dead dog, and surmises, “He’s sick.” While Travis struggles to keep the “sick” neighbor from biting him, Daniel comes up with the shotgun and fires. The first shot just gives us the best gore effect so far (and that’s what this is all about, for a lot of viewers), but the second one goes straight into the brain. It’s almost like Daniel has seen those George Romero movies that don’t exist in this universe.

Travis’ compassion is clearly meant to be seen as a liability. When he finds Daniel showing Chris how to use a shotgun, he gets angry. “You know how I feel about guns,” he chastises Madison. Yes, because gun control is not a reasonable response to the insane level of gun violence in our society, but something that weak-ass people will still be worrying about in the midst of a zombie apocalypse.

And then there’s the neighbor, Susan. Susan was apparently Madison’s rock after her husband died. She tries to eat Alicia, so Madison considers braining her, but Travis has a hard time accepting that she’s not just “sick.” He convinces Madison not to end Susan, while Daniel looks on from a distance and pronounces Travis “weak.” When Ofelia tries to convince him they should leave with Travis and Madison because they’re good people, Daniel says flatly, “Good people are the first ones to die.” Well, on this show, after Black people, apparently.

The next morning, Travis, Madison and their families are set to leave town, but as they’re driving off, Madison spots Susan’s husband returning home. I didn’t catch the name of this actor, but his obliviously cheerful calling out to his wife as though he was in a soap commercial (“Honey, the airport was closed because of the zombie apocalypse! What’s for breakfast?”) was another welcome dose of unintended comedy. Anyway, Madison tries to warn him, but again, she’s too late. She needs to take yelling lessons, or something. Just as Susan is about to bite the poor guy, the army moves in and takes her out. It should be a poignant moment, after all the hand-wringing over Susan. Instead, it’s just more ridiculousness. Travis thinks the cavalry’s arrived, and they’re saved. Daniel, who probably came to this country fleeing death squads in El Salvador, knows better, yet again.

It would help if the show was more coherent and focused in its direction, and sure, if the writing were stronger, but the aesthetic problems already seem like they’re inherent to the premise. The audience knows so much more than the characters that at a certain point, it doesn’t work as dramatic irony anymore; it’s just frustrating.

Beyond that, the show’s themes are troubling. After killing off every Black character, and depicting police brutality protesters as ignorant buffoons and lowlifes last week, this week, the show slams gun control and suggests a dystopian future where the government stepping in during a crisis is the worst possible thing that could happen. Fear the Walking Dead is falling more and more in line with radical right-wing politics every week. It can only end with Donald Trump vanquishing the zombie curse while calling Travis a “loser” and selling his new book, The Art of Zombie-Killing.

Recommended Reading

“Fear the Walking Dead Pilot: Can It Be More?”

“Fear the Walking Dead: The Black Guys Die First”