The radical notion that women like good movies
The first college course I ever developed focuses on women and violence. Stemming from my interest in women who enact violence on and off the page, I wanted to ask students to think about our perceptions of women as “naturally” peaceful.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is up for four Academy Awards in addition to Rooney Mara’s nomination for her portrayal of Lisbeth Salander: Cinematography, Film Editing, Sound Mixing, and Sound Editing. It has received numerous other awards and nominations. This piece, by Megan Kearns, first appeared at Bitch Flicks on January 10, 2012. … Continue reading “Oscar Best Actress Nominee: Rooney Mara in ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’”
Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara) in “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” Cross-posted from The Opinioness of the World. Lisbeth Salander consumes my thoughts. I’ve spent the last year and a half reading, writing, analyzing, debating and discussing the punk hacker. As a huge fan of the books and the original Swedish films, I was NOT … Continue reading “In ‘The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo’ Remake, Rooney Mara’s Captivating Portrayal Proves Lisbeth Salander Still a Feminist Icon”
Rebel with a Cause: A Feminist Heroine Emerges in film The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo This is a cross post from Opinioness of the World. Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past year, you’ve undoubtedly heard about the international phenomenon that is Swedish author Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon … Continue reading “Guest Writer Wednesday: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”
The film captures the self-deconstructions, the collisions, the rebuilding, and the acceptances of women who live with and in spite of brokenness. It functions as a kind of thesis for resilience, and a specific female-driven resilience, unafraid of battle wounds, that often is reserved only for men.
Perhaps the depiction of “the girl” in ‘The Girl in the Train’ will reassure my fears by allowing the woman to literally “grow up” on-screen. Yet, the title makes me very pessimistic. Presenting women as “girls” continues to fetishize women’s powerlessness in cinema. By situating this girlhood in a similar way to the male fantasy construction of the Final Girl, and by enforcing an infantilizing return to post-feminism’s “girliness,” these films offer ultimately disempowering images of female subjectivity.
Enemy of the State: Heroine Lisbeth Salander Fights Back in The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest This is a cross post from Opinioness of the World. I am usually not a fan of trilogies; the third film often pales in comparison to the crescendo of emotion and suspense built in a series. And while … Continue reading “Guest Writer Wednesday: The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest”
Good Girl Gone Bad: Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth Salander Burns Up the Screen in The Girl Who Played with Fire This is a cross post from Opinioness of the World. I’ve been utterly consumed by Swedish author Stieg Larsson’s gripping Millennium Trilogy (I’ll be reading the third book soon…so excited!). I loved the first film, … Continue reading “Guest Writer Wednesday: The Girl Who Played with Fire”
Most people (rightly) expect more from art than they do from porn; we expect art to offer a perspective or point of view, to have a message, to be more than a spectacle to press the pleasure centers of our brains. … And, while I don’t think it’s wrong to say that ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ fares pretty poorly as art, I do think it’s wrong to single it out, as if our cinemas aren’t full of spectacle already.
Check out all of the posts from our Violent Women Theme Week here.
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.
The female gaze, such as it exists in a world that denies its existence, is an insular one that exists between Adele and Emma as opposed to how the film itself is shot. The film presents the case for the female gaze by examining what happens when it’s withheld.
