Author: Bitch Flicks

2013 Oscar Week: The Roundup

Academy Awards Commentary:

“Oscar Hosts Preferable to Seth MacFarlane: An Abbreviated List” by Robin Hitchcock

“This Needs No Explanation” by Stephanie Rogers

“Fun with Stats: Best Actor/Actress Nominations vs. Best Picture Nominations” by Robin Hitchcock

“5 People Who Should Host the Oscars at Some Point” by Lady T

“Fun with Stats: Winners of Oscars for Acting by Age” by Robin Hitchcock

“2013 Academy Awards Diversity Checklist” by Lady T

“Race and the Academy: Black Characters, Stories and the Danger of Django“ by Leigh Kolb

“5 Female-Directed Films That Deserved Oscar Nominations” by James Worsdale

“Best Actress Nominee Rundown” by Rachel Redfern

“Feminism and the Oscars: Do This Year’s Best Picture Nominees Pass the Bechdel Test?” by Megan Kearns

“Academy Documentaries: People’s Stories, Men’s Voices” by Jo Custer

Amour: nominated for Best Picture; Best Actress, Emmanuelle Riva; Best Director, Michael Haneke; Best Foreign Language Film; Best Original Screenplay, Michael Haneke

“Best Actress Nominee Rundown” by Rachel Redfern

Life of Pi: nominated for Best Picture; Best Cinematography, Claudio Miranda; Best Director, Ang Lee; Best Film Editing, Tim Squyres; Best Original Score, Mychael Danna; Best Original Song, Mychael Danna, Bombay Jayashri; Best Production Design, David Gropman, Anna Pinnock; Best Sound Editing, Eugene Gearty, Philip Stockton; Best Sound Mixing, Ron Bartlett, D.M. Hemphill, Drew Kunin; Best Visual Effects, Bill Westenhover, Guillaume Rocheron, Erik-Jan De Boer, Donald R. Elliott; Best Adapted Screenplay, David Magee

Argo: nominated for Best Picture; Best Supporting Actor, Alan Arkin; Best Film Editing, William Goldenberg; Best Original Score, Alexandre Desplat; Best Sound Editing, Erik Aadahl, Ethan Van der Ryn; Best Sound Mixing, John Reitz, Gregg Rudloff, Jose Antonio Garcia; Best Adapted Screenplay, Chris Terrio

“Does Argo Suffer from a Woman Problem and Iranian Stereotypes?” by Megan Kearns

Lincoln: nominated for Best Picture; Best Actor, Daniel Day-Lewis; Best Supporting Actor, Tommy Lee Jones; Best Supporting Actress, Sally Field; Best Cinematography, Janusz Kaminski; Best Costume Design, Joanna Johnston; Best Director, Steven Spielberg; Best Film Editing, Michael Kahn; Best Original Score, John Williams; Best Production Design, Rick Carter, Jim Erickson; Best Sound Mixing, Andy Nelson, Gary Rydstrom, Ronald Judkins; Best Adapted Screenplay, Tony Kushner

“In Praise of Sally Field As Mary Todd Lincoln” by Robin Hitchcock

Beasts of the Southern Wild: nominated for Best Picture; Best Actress, Quvenzhané Wallis; Best Director, Benh Zeitlin; Best Adapted Screenplay, Lucy Alibar, Benh Zeitlin

“Best Actress Nominee Rundown” by Rachel Redfern

“Beasts of the Southern Wild: Gender, Race and a Powerful Female Protagonist in the Most Buzzed About Film” by Megan Kearns

“Beasts of the Southern Wild: I Didn’t Get It” by Robin Hitchcock

“Cosmology, Gender, and Quvenzhané Wallis: Beasts of the Southern Wild“ by Max Thornton

“Beasts of the Southern Wild: Deluge Myths” by Laura A. Shamas

Silver Linings Playbook: nominated for Best Picture; Best Actor, Bradley Cooper; Best Actress, Jennifer Lawrence; Best Supporting Actor, Robert De Niro; Best Supporting Actress, Jacki Weaver; Best Director, David O. Russell; Best Film Editing, Jay Cassidy, Crispin Struthers; Best Adapted Screenplay, David O. Russell

“Best Actress Nominee Rundown” by Rachel Redfern

“Silver Linings Playbook, or, As I Like to Call It: fuckyeahjenniferlawrence” by Stephanie Rogers

Django Unchained: nominated for Best Picture; Best Supporting Actor, Christoph Waltz; Best Cinematography, Robert Richardson; Best Sound Editing, Wylie Stateman; Best Original Screenplay, Quentin Tarantino

“From a Bride with a Hanzo Sword to a Damsel in Distress: Did Quentin Tarantino’s Feminism Take a Step Backwards in Django Unchained?” by Tracy Bealer

“Heroic Black Love and Male Privilege in Django Unchained“ by Joshunda Sanders

“The Power of Narrative in Django Unchained“ by Leigh Kolb

“Race and the Academy: Black Characters, Stories and the Danger of Django“ by Leigh Kolb

Zero Dark Thirty: nominated for Best Picture; Best Actress, Jessica Chastain; Best Film Editing, Dylan Tichenor, William Goldenberg; Best Sound Editing, Paul N.J. Ottosson; Best Original Screenplay, Mark Boal

“Best Actress Nominee Rundown” by Rachel Redfern

“Jessica Chastain’s Performance Propels the Exquisitely Sharp But Aloof Zero Dark Thirty“ by Candice Frederick

“Zero Dark Thirty Raises Questions on Gender and Torture, Gives No Easy Answers” by Megan Kearns

“The Zero Dark Thirty Controversy: What Does Jessica Chastain’s Beauty Have to Do With It?” by Lady T

“Maya from Zero Dark Thirty Is an Emotional Character” by Alison Vingiano

Les Misérables: nominated for Best Picture; Best Actor, Hugh Jackman; Best Supporting Actress, Anne Hathaway; Best Costume Design, Paco Delgado; Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Lisa Westcott, Julie Dartnell; Best Original Song, Claude-Michel Schonberg, Herbert Kretzmer, Alain Boublil; Best Production Design, Eve Stewart, Anna Lynch-Robinson; Best Sound Mixing, Andy Nelson, Mark Paterson, Simon Hayes

“Extreme Weight Loss for Roles Is Not ‘Required’ and Not Praiseworthy” by Robin Hitchcock

“Les Misérables: The Feminism Behind the Barricades” by Leigh Kolb

“Les Misérables, Sex Trafficking & Fantine as a Symbol for Women’s Oppression” by Megan Kearns

“Les Misérables: Some Musicals Are More Feminist Than Others” by Natalie Wilson

Flight: nominated for Best Actor, Denzel Washington; Best Original Screenplay, John Gatins

“The Women in Whip Whitaker’s Life: Representations of Female Characters in Flight“ by Martyna Przybysz

“Flight‘s Unintentional Pro-Woman Message” by Lady T

The Impossible: nominated for Best Actress, Naomi Watts

“Best Actress Nominee Rundown” by Rachel Redfern

“It’s ‘Impossible’ Not to See the White-Centric Point of View” by Lady T

The Master: nominated for Best Actor, Joaquin Phoenix; Best Supporting Actor, Philip Seymour Hoffman; Best Supporting Actress, Amy Adams

“The Master: A Movie About White Dudes Talking About Stuff” by Stephanie Rogers

The Sessions: nominated for Best Supporting Actress, Helen Hunt

“On Sex, Disability, and Helen Hunt in The Sessions“ by Stephanie Rogers

“The Transformative Journey of Sex in The Sessions“ by Rachel Redfern

“Depicting Sex Surrogacy in The Sessions“ by Alisande Fitzsimons

Brave: nominated for Best Animated Film

“Why I’m Excited About Pixar’s Brave & Its Kick-Ass Female Protagonist … Even If She Is Another Princess” by Megan Kearns

“Will Brave‘s Warrior Princess Merida Usher in a New Kind of Role Model for Girls?” by Megan Kearns

“The Princess Archetype in the Movies” by Laura A. Shamas

“Brave and the Legacy of Female Prepubescent Power Fantasies” by Amanda Rodriguez

Frankenweenie: nominated for Best Animated Film

ParaNorman: nominated for Best Animated Film

“The Brainy Message of ParaNorman“ by Natalie Wilson

The Pirates! Band of Misfits: nominated for Best Animated Film

Wreck-It Ralph: nominated for Best Animated Film

“Wreck-It Ralph Is Flawed But Still Pretty Feminist” by Myrna Waldron

Anna Karenina: nominated for Best Cinematography, Seamus McGarvey; Best Costume Design, Jacqueline Durran; Best Original Score, Dario Marianelli; Best Production Design, Sarah Greenwood, Katie Spencer

“Anna Karenina, and the Tragedy of Being a Woman in the Wrong Era” by Erin Fenner

5 Broken Cameras: nominated for Best Documentary

“Academy Documentaries: People’s Stories, Men’s Voices” by Jo Custer

The Gatekeepers: nominated for Best Documentary

“Academy Documentaries: People’s Stories, Men’s Voices” by Jo Custer

How to Survive a Plague: nominated for Best Documentary

“How to Survive a Plague: When Aging Itself Becomes a Triumph” by Ren Jender

“Acting Up: A Review of How to Survive a Plague“ by Diana Suber

“Academy Documentaries: People’s Stories, Men’s Voices” by Jo Custer

The Invisible War: nominated for Best Documentary

“The Invisible War Takes on Sexual Assault in the Military” by Soraya Chemaly

“Academy Documentaries: People’s Stories, Men’s Voices” by Jo Custer

Mirror Mirror: nominated for Best Costume Design, Eiko Ishioka

“Trailers for Snow White & the Huntsman and Mirror Mirror Perpetuate Stereotypes of Women, Beauty & Aging and Pit Women Against Each Other” by Megan Kearns

“Happily Never After: The Sad (and Sexist?) Rush to Cast Some of Our Most Promising Young Actresses as Fairy Tale Princesses” by Scott Mendelson

Searching for Sugar Man: nominated for Best Documentary

“Searching for Sugar Man Makes Race Invisible” by Robin Hitchcock

“Academy Documentaries: People’s Stories, Men’s Voices” by Jo Custer

Skyfall: nominated for Best Cinematography, Roger Deakins; Best Original Score, Thomas Newman; Best Original Song, Adele Adkins, Paul Epworth; Best Sound Editing, Per Hallberg, Karen Baker Landers; Best Sound Mixing, Scott Millan, Greg P. Russell, Stuart Wilson

“The Sun (Never) Sets on the British Empire: The Neocolonialism of Skyfall“ by Max Thornton

“Skyfall: It’s M’s World, Bond Just Lives in It” by Margaret Howie

Snow White and the Huntsman: nominated for Best Costume Design, Colleen Atwood; Best Visual Effects, Cedric Nicolas-Troyan, Philip Brennan, Neil Corbould, Michael Dawson

“Trailers for Snow White & the Huntsman and Mirror Mirror Perpetuate Stereotypes of Women, Beauty & Aging and Pit Women Against Each Other” by Megan Kearns

“Snow White and the Huntsman: A Better Role Model?” by Allison Heard

“Happily Never After: The Sad (and Sexist?) Rush to Cast Some of Our Most Promising Young Actresses as Fairy Tale Princesses” by Scott Mendelson

“A Feminist Review of Snow White and the Huntsman“ by Rachel Redfern

“The Princess Archetype in the Movies” by Laura A. Shamas

“Matriarchal Impositions of Beauty in Snow White and the Huntsman“ by Carleen Tibbets

Chasing Ice: nominated for Best Original Song, J. Ralph

A Royal Affair: nominated for Best Foreign Language Film (Denmark)

“A Royal Affair“ by Rosalind Kemp

“More Royal Than Affair” by Atima Omara-Alwala

Hitchcock: nominated for Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Howard Berger, Peter Montagna, Martin Samuel

“Too Many Hitchcocks” by Robin Hitchcock

“Hitchcock Turns the Master of Suspense into a Real Life Dud” by Candice Frederick

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey: nominated for Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Peter Swords King, Rick Findlater, Tami Lane; Best Production Design, Dan Hennah, Ra Vincent, Simon Bright; Best Visual Effects, Joe Letteri, Eric Saindon, David Clayton, R. Christopher White 

“The Hobbit: A Totally Expected Bro-Fest” by Erin Fenner

“The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey: The Addition of Feminine Presence During a Quest for the Ages” by Elise Schwartz

No: nominated for Best Foreign Language Film (Chile)

Ted: nominated for Best Original Song, Walter Murphy, Seth MacFarlane

“Damning Ted with Faint Praise” by Robin Hitchcock

War Witch: nominated for Best Foreign Language Film (Canada)

“A Thorn Like a Rose: War Witch (Rebelle)“ by Emily Campbell

Kon Tiki: nominated for Best Foreign Language Film (Norway)

The Avengers: nominated for Best Visual Effects, Janek Sirrs, Jeff White, Guy Williams, Dan Sudick

“The Avengers, Strong Female Characters and Failing the Bechdel Test” by Megan Kearns

“The Avengers: Are We Exporting Media Sexism or Importing It?” by Soraya Chemaly

“Quote of the Day: Scarlett Johansson Tired of Sexist Diet Questions” by Megan Kearns

Moonrise Kingdom: nominated for Best Original Screenplay, Wes Anderson, Roman Coppola

“An Open Letter to Owen Wilson Regarding Moonrise Kingdom“ by Molly McCaffrey

Prometheus: nominated for Best Visual Effects, Richard Stammers, Trevor Wood, Charley Henley, Martin Hill

“Is Prometheus a Feminist Pro-Choice Metaphor?” by Megan Kearns

“A Feminist Review of Prometheus“ by Rachel Redfern

“Prometheus and the Alien Movies: Feminism and Anti-Feminism” by Rhea Daniel

Documentary Short Film: nominees include Inocente, Kings Point, Mondays at Racine, Open Heart, Redemption

Animated Short Film: nominees include Adam and Dog, Fresh Guacamole, Head over Heels, Paperman, Maggie Simpson in “The Longest Daycare”

Short Live Action Film: nominees include Asad, Buzkashi Boys, Curfew, Death of a Shadow (Dood van een Schaduw), Henry

2013 Oscar Week: Academy Documentaries: People’s Stories, Men’s Voices

Guest post written by Jo Custer.
The lifecycle of documentaries aspiring to global visibility begins each year at Sundance mid-January and ends in December when Oscar nomination voting begins. Of the five nominated this year, four premiered quietly at Robert Redford’s House of Docs, while The Gatekeepers — a series of interviews with former heads of Shin Bet, Israel’s NSA and CIA in one — slipped into the running even more quietly via Telluride, after its Jerusalem debut. 
Film writers often tout the launching success of the year’s first Academy qualifying festival and can even present bias which may be attributable to the competition structure, as the Wall Street Journal did when it printed that Kirby Dick’s expose on the treatment of military rape victims, The Invisible War, would be one to watch but overlooked How to Survive a Plague, David France’s long, slow grip on the fight to normalize healthcare for AIDS victims. Both nominees were in the U.S. documentary competition. Only one of the WSJ‘s picks for Sundance-projected success came from the world cinema documentary competition, and it wasn’t Searching for Sugarman, Malik Bendjelloul’s bizarre tale of a Detroit singer/songwriter who recorded two flop albums and then quietly became a demi-god in apartheid-era South Africa. Nor was it 5 Broken Cameras, in which Guy Davidi chronicles Palestinian Emad Burnat’s inability to keep a camera operational in the suffocating presence of the Israeli Army.
Without conflating the already hard to separate issues of press-generated success vs. Oscar-generated success, this year’s most monetarily rewarding mark of honor has drawn five films. That’s five films from a pool that increases yearly at a hard-to-measure growth rate. When Sundance first created the House of Docs in 1999, theatrical releases of non-fiction films represented less than two percent of all releases, according to figures collected from Box Office Mojo. Since 2001 non-fiction theatrical releases have grown, sometimes doubling or tripling in a year until in 2011 documentaries comprised 18% of all films released.
Coinciding with the growing interesting in non-narrative film, there has been a noticeable uptick in women documentarians as well. Dozens can be found in lists of 2012 docs to watch that didn’t make the Oscar list, including Amy Berg (West of Memphis), Alison Klayman (Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry), Katie Dellamaggiore (Brooklyn Castle), Lauren Greenfield (The Queen of Versailles), Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady (Detropia, Jesus Camp), Susan Froemke (ESCAPE FIRE: The Fight to Rescue American Health Care), and Kristi Jacobson and Lori Silverbush (Finding North). U.S. women represented fifty percent of documentarians at Sundance last year while international women documentarians were outnumbered eleven to four.
Disregarding for a moment whatever else the relationship between these numbers might suggest, two things continue to happen. First, despite the rise in the number of docs which garner theatrical releases, their box office revenues remain low, short-term. Second, the one body with the power to make a filmmaker’s career in the short term — the Academy — continues to play it safe in its selection of documentaries to bring into the limelight. What makes this year’s lineup incredibly hard to argue against isn’t the documentaries themselves, but rather what they represent: a carefully balanced melange of social justice issues, most of which effect women, but all of which were brought about by the storytelling devices of men.
The Invisible War
The most salient of these to American audiences, Kirby Dick, took on the U.S. military in The Invisible War, in defense of thousands of rape victims across all branches who are silenced far more often than their offenders are brought to justice. Dick began his David vs. Goliath track record with This Film Is Not Yet Rated, taking on the MPAA with an honesty that everyone but the ratings body itself cared about. According to the action kicker just before the credits, Defense Secretary Leon Pannetta disallowed commanding officers to govern processing for rape victims two days after seeing the film, which notes that officers aren’t just getting away with rape but learning how to maneuver the justice system before returning to civilian life with no record of being a sex offender. Hard-hitting and hard to watch, the film seems to have done part of its job. Perhaps more importantly to the Academy, it is the token women’s film this year. Not all victims of military rape are female, of course, but this was the year of the War On Women. Apparently, Kirby Dick’s take on that will serve as our commemoration.
How to Survive a Plague
Perhaps less salient — if only because memories are short — David France’s long-suffering piecing together of how gay men and lesbians banded together under a retired chemist and housewife to learn about AIDS and how to fight it rings truer to its subjects’ voices. Opening in “Year 6 of the Epidemic” in Greenwich Village, the epicenter of the plague, it tells the story the networks kept from the news each night of Reagan’s presidency. There were no drugs to treat the disease. People were being turned away. It was nearly one hundred percent fatal. People who were dying anyway laid down in the streets to protest and be arrested and went the opposite way of the closet eventually — away from the black market and into the realm of FDA tested, prescribable drugs. Archival footage from dozens of sources make this authentic look at what it means to be an activist layered but also fatiguing, as though France wants the viewer to feel the malaise of too many years of dying and not nearly enough justifying. Just as notable, the camera never gets too close to the women. It’s a men’s story, in the end. 
Searching for Sugarman
Another absorbing and visceral man’s story is Searching for Sugarman, which surprises and delights in its juxtaposition of two very different climes — Detroit in 1968 – 1971 and South Africa at the height of apartheid. The “Sugarman” of interest is none other than Rodriguez, whose career never really got out of the studio in North America. But his first album made its way to South Africa and got copied and redistributed and bought in such demand that he became, according to figures in the film, bigger than Elvis or The Rolling Stones. His music inspired a censorship sick society to rally behind music and a movement that eventually won. Filmmaker Malik Bendjelloul left Sweden to globe-trot and stumbled across the Rodriguez story while in South Africa. Considering how uplifting the storytelling is, he chose well.
5 Broken Cameras
In 5 Broken Cameras, Guy Davidi remains the silent silent director while Emad Burnat tells the story of his life in Palestine since the Israelis began encroaching actively upon his community and house and life. Showing footage from each of Emad’s cameras interstitially but linearly, it attempts to avoid the macrocosm argument of whose land it is by focusing on the microcosm but never quite makes it. The Israeli Army demonstrates its displeasure with Palestine time and time again, tearing up olive trees and soil for no other reason than its being there. Its most effective moment comes in a little seen glimpse of Islamic married life, in which Emad’s wife, beyond tired of her husband’s preoccupation with the distance the lens gives him, yells at him to turn off the camera while she performs domestic duties, but he does not. He can’t, not even when he is placed under house arrest. He films himself doing nothing because filming is what he does. Very heavy on the imagery of Emad’s son, it is another man’s story — set on the most unstable ground in the world, and still often seen as the center of it.
The Gatekeepers
Almost as if to be fair to the uprooters of innocent olive trees, the Academy also nominated Dror Moreh’s The Gatekeepers, which I did not get a chance to see thanks to a limited release and a tight grip on screeners. It features interviews with six former heads (all men) of Shin Bet, the “unseen shield” of Israel — a far more authoritarian point of view than Emad’s.
It seems more than safe to say that the Academy may have been influenced politically to seek a balance in representing both sides of an ongoing conflict. But safety was ever the problem with this year’s documentary lineup: A “women’s issue” delivered by a well-respected man during the War on Women; a pleaser for the LGBTIQ community who showed up a little less strong in this year’s Presidential election, but still showed; a token non-issue entertainment piece that also happens to shine in its unusualness; and two pieces from the Middle East. Under Academy auspices, docs play like little more than complementary copy.
In case you were wondering, Sugarman has my bet for best doc of the year. As does women’s continuation to make social justice documentaries for almost no monetary return, but rather making names for themselves that will last. Hopefully it will rub off in the darker places, too.
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Jo Custer is a New Orleans writer/director/producer, theatre director, blogger and sometimes a journo. She has just finished auditions for her next short film, Sonuvabitch, gearing up to shoot this May and will also be directing The Four of Us for the stage this spring. You can follow her sojourns as a filmmaker/cab driver here: http://jocuster.wordpress.com/

2013 Oscar Week: Depicting Sex Surrogacy in ‘The Sessions’

poster for The Sessions
Guest post written by Alisande Fitzsimons.
One of the more moving films of 2012 was Ben Lewin’s drama The Sessions. Based on the life and articles of profoundly disabled poet and journalist Mark O’Brien (played by John Hawkes), The Sessions depicts the period in O’Brien’s life when he engaged with Cheryl Cohen-Greene, a sex surrogate played by Helen Hunt. 
Bitch Flicks Co-Founder Stephanie Rogers has already written about Sex, Disability and Helen Hunt in ‘The Sessions’ for this site, pointing out that, “Helen Hunt is awesome.” She’s right – the power of Hunt’s performance as Cheryl cannot be understated, and even though she’s already collected one Oscar (for As Good As It Gets in 1997), a lot of us are rooting for her to collect another in 2013. 
Helen Hunt as Cheryl Cohen-Greene with John Hawkes as Mark O’Brien
What Exactly Is A Sexual Surrogate? 
When she first meets Mark O’Brien, Hunt’s character takes care to explain that she is a sex surrogate, rather than a sex worker but is not shown explaining the exact differences to him on-screen. For the record, the difference is this: sex workers provide sexual services in exchange for money. These services can vary wildly and some sex workers do indeed work with disabled or sexually dysfunctional clients. 
A sexual surrogate on the other hand is a certified sex therapist who educates and sometimes engages in intimate acts with their patients in order to reach a therapeutic goal. 
In The Sessions Hunt’s character treats O’Brien over four two hour sessions. O’Brien has never had an intimate relationship when he first begins working with Cohen-Greene but makes rapid progress, becoming comfortable with his own body, then with Cohen-Greene’s body, before finally achieving full intercourse with her and bringing her to orgasm. 
Growing up in the UK, I wasn’t aware that this kind of therapy existed, and I found the film’s insight into it fascinating. The film was released there at a particularly useful moment in British culture. As I type, a former Brothel keeper called Becky Adams is getting a lot of press attention for a new charity she has founded called Para-Doxies. 
The aim of Para-Doxies is to introduce disabled people of all genders and sexuality to sex workers so that their sexual needs can be met. As far as I’m aware therapy such as the sort offered by Cohen-Greene is not available in the UK. Realising how much good the sex therapy O’Brien received did him makes me hope that Adams’ project succeeds and that disabled sexuality becomes more widely accepted. 
There’s Sex But It’s Not Conventionally Sexy. 
I don’t mean that section heading in a bad way. In fact, the depiction of sex in The Sessions is wholly refreshing. As well as giving audiences an insight into disabled sexuality (because for some people the fact that disabled people do indeed enjoy sex apparently came as a bit of a shock), the film also does a marvelous job of presenting a leading lady who has sex both with her husband and patients in a way that’s not meant to titillate. I know I don’t have to remind anyone that this is unusual. 
There are no bras or slips left on during sex in this film but even though we see Hunt naked and having sex, there’s no part of this film that makes a female viewer uncomfortable. Not because Hunt is made to look unattractive in the film – she’s simply not – but because the nudity is so much in keeping with the realist tone of The Sessions that the sex is in no way “pornified” and so does not cater to the male gaze. 
Even when O’Brien, whom Hunt’s character has come to love — but, crucially, has not fallen in love with – orgasms during sex with him, it’s not the sort of noisy When Harry Met Sally moment we’ve come to expect from Hollywood films. Rather, it’s a quiet but heartfelt moment of wholly convincing intimacy between the couple. 
Arguably this should make the moment on-screen even sexier because it reflects real-life lovemaking more than most sex scenes ever will. The catch though is that the scene is so beautifully written and performed that it felt hard to watch. I mean that too in a good way. I mean, who over the age of 13 can’t look at a sex scene? 
The emotional investment the audience makes in the characters of Cohen-Greene and O’Brien means that watching it is not unlike one of those moments when you walk in on a friend having sex – awkward. 
Helen Hunt as Cheryl Cohen-Greene
The Private Life of a Sexual Surrogate 
Apart from the sessions in which she treats O’Brien, Cohen-Greene’s professional life is depicted on-screen when Hunt is shown making notes about how the treatment is going. This part of the film is crucial, not only because it gives the audience insight into O’Brien’s state of mind from a healthcare professional but also because it is what will distinguish Cohen-Greene’s work as a sexual surrogate from that of a particularly sympathetic sex worker in the minds of less liberal viewers. 
Another interesting insight the film is careful to make is into Cohen-Greene’s private life. While most of the film does indeed concentrate on O’Brien – it’s his story, and based on poetry and articles he wrote so the world could really understand disabled sexuality – the small amount of time the camera spends with Cohen-Greene at home is interesting. 
What, for example, motivates someone to become a sexual surrogate over any other kind of therapist? It’s a role that hugely benefits patients but one that may cause problems for the surrogates themselves. 
Cohen-Greene, for example, is married with a teenage son in the film. Her husband, whom she describes as “a philosopher” is in fact unemployed, leaving the family to rely on his wife’s income. It’s apparent that he has no problem with the nature of her work – and all credit to the filmmakers for not reducing an unemployed character to a loutish stereotype – but rather accepts her job as a valid form of employment and therapy. 
In fact, until Cohen-Greene begins treating O’Brien it seems that the couple had no problems with jealousy at all. O’Brien though sparks something in his therapist that her husband recognizes as threatening. It’s not as if a man who was forced to spend at least 20 hours a day in an iron lung due to catching polio during his childhood should, in Hollywood terms at least, be much of a threat to any healthy marriage. 
Yet O’Brien’s flirty and lively personality, not to mention his superior mind that can conjure up incredibly beautiful poetry, do start to come between the couple, even though it’s clear that Hunt’s character does not actually fall for her patient so much as come to respect him and care for him deeply, the way most of us do for our closest friends. She never, in spite of the non-physical intimacy the therapy could foster between them, tells him much about her personal life at all. A sure sign of love and respect for the man she is married to. 
— 
That Cohen-Greene is not depicted as a kind of saint who can see the lovable in a disabled man is another strength of The Sessions. The character is undoubtedly a good person but also a real one, and perhaps most importantly given the delicate nature of this kind of sex therapy, a wholly professional one. 
When the patient-therapist relationship she has with O’Brien threatens her marriage, she reacts first with anger then with consideration and does what she needs to to make that relationship work. 
At the film’s end she is shown attending O’Brien’s funeral with her husband, to whom she is still married. When O’Brien’s girlfriend, whom he met after his sessions with Cohen-Greene have finished, reads out a love poem that is clearly about Cohen-Greene, Hunt just smiles. 
When the love you have for someone is that great, be it platonic or romantic, sometimes the fact that both of you know is enough. It’s a credit to Hunt that her characterization of a character who could easily have been made out to be brassy or manipulative never is, and I really hope she’s duly rewarded by the Academy for it. 

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Alisande Fitzsimons is a sex positive writer. She can be found tweeting @AlisandeF.

2013 Oscar Week: Matriarchal Impositions of Beauty in Snow White and the Huntsman

Kristen Stewart and Charlize Theron star in Snow White and the Huntsman
Guest post written by Carleen Tibbetts.
Despite the various twists on the classic fairy tale, there is a definite constant in Snow White: women are their own worse enemies. The storyline is essentially the same: jealous, vain stepmother wants to oust stepdaughter who will one day surpass her in physical attractiveness. Stepmother fails. Stepdaughter’s kindness, beauty, and naivete prevail as she triumphs over her would-be destructor. Rupert Sanders’s Snow White and the Huntsman, however, is a different animal. Yes, at the heart (pun intended) of the story are still the female archetypes of beauty, female rivalry and jealousy, whether or not “true” love will make a woman complete, etc. Sanders’s version also explores, though not fully enough, the fragile nature of mother-daughter relationships. True, her mother wishes Snow White into existence based upon her own ideals of beauty, but it is also the child’s tenderness that moves her. When Snow White is still small, before her mother passes away, her mother places her hand over the girl’s chest and tells her she possesses a “rare beauty” there. When the “evil” queen was a young girl, her mother placed a spell, a curse, really, on her that her beauty would be her protector, her bargaining tool, and also her undoing. 
Both Snow White and her “evil” stepmother were taught to view their worth in terms of beauty. For Snow White, it was her compassion, her sweetness, and her soul. For the “evil” queen, it was how far she could get by on her looks. The ways in which both Snow White and Ravenna’s “beauty” are reflected their mother’s eyes lays the groundwork for their respective indifference to or obsession with their own attractiveness.
The “evil” Queen is this adaptation is still a shape-shifting sorceress, however she doesn’t transform into a sweet octogenarian to play to Snow White’s compassion to give her the poison apple. This queen tries to stave off the aging process at all costs, appears to Snow White under the guise of true love, preying on her lonely heart in order to rip it from her chest. Prince Charming in this instance is no prince. He’s a widowed brute drowning his grief in beer and bar brawls. Female assertion of power is so central here that the Huntsman needs no name. He could be any man. He’s disposable yet indispensable in this fairy tale revenge fantasy. 
Charlize Theron as Queen Ravenna
Charlize Theron’s Queen Ravenna comes to power by preying on a benevolent king’s nature and masquerading as a prisoner of war. The first time we see Ravenna (a flaxen-haired, sanguine, statuesque counterpart to Snow White), she is shackled, bound in a cart, covered in gold dust and fur. The king wants to save her, and does so by making her his victory prize. To the victor go the spoils. He wastes no time and marries her that day. On the wedding night, Ravenna decides she’s not down to consummate this thing. Her language quickly changes from addressing him as her “lord,” acquiescing to his kisses, to telling him that he and his gender are vile, shallow creatures. As the king tries to make love to her, Ravenna, a former trophy wife several times over, says, “Men use women. They ruin us. When they are finished with us, they toss us to the dogs like scraps.” Using her powers, she paralyzes the king in the middle of his attempt at seduction, completely emasculating him, and then murders him without hesitation. 
Queen Ravenna
Literally overnight, sacks her own kingdom. She immediately has young Snow White locked in a tower and begins to consult the infamous mirror on the wall. In this version of the story, the mirror is truly stand-apart. It’s a giant gold circle that offers Ravenna a wavering, distorted reflection. She demands to be left alone with the mirror and her insecurities. As she asks it the timeless question about her fairness, liquid gold pours out of the mirror and morphs into a humanoid form (Very T-1000) as it assures her she is the most gorgeous woman around. Ravenna’s beauty even bewitches her (albino with a Page Boy haircut) henchman brother. Ravenna rejuvenates herself by literally inhaling life force from young women she keeps on hand. Whenever a wrinkle starts to manifest, she sucks their purity and innocence from them. Medieval Botox.
Ravenna spends her days this way, depleting girls of their youth, taking milk baths, sporting amazing headwear, snacking on small animals and picking through their flesh with her talon jewelry (ala Pamela Love) while her brother looks on in adoration, etc. Inevitably, the day comes when the mirror tells Ravenna that Snow White has already one-upped her in the fairest department. The spell her mother placed on her as a child haunts her: “By fairest blood it is done, and by fairest blood it will be undone.” Ravenna sends brother dearest to help with Snow White’s de-hearting.
Kirsten Stewart as Snow White on a white horse
We get our first glimpse of Kristen Stewart as the grown Snow White in her locked cell getting snatches of sunlight through the window, playing with crudely fashioned toy dolls, and sharing “conversation” with small birds that flit by. She manages to escape via the sewage system into the sea and washes up on a beach where she is led to a clichéd white horse. The horse takes her as far as The Dark Forest, where, for some inexplicable reason, Ravenna’s powers do not work. The horse doesn’t survive, however, and Snow White wanders the forest distraught and disoriented.
Enter Chris Hemsworth as the (definitely alcoholic, possibly Scottish) Huntsman the Queen recruits to fetch Snow White and instead becomes her protector/guide/love interest. The awkward sexual tension between Stewart and Helmsworth manifests in scenes such as his cutting off the muddy tails of her dress, under which she’s already wearing pants. Although he tells her not to flatter herself and aside from the fact that the gesture is completely sexually loaded, it also frees her from some gender-specific dead weight (literally and figuratively). Stewart’s various garment changes somewhat reflect her character’s rather quick transformation from bewildered girl-woman to a self-actualized adult, which, for the most part, occurs in the company of her “protector” menfolk.
Snow White’s “protector” menfolk
After meeting the dwarves who explain to the Huntsman that she is indeed a princess who gives off the essence of “life itself,” Snow White’s childhood friend, William, enters the rotation. Upon learning she’s alive and on-the-run, he volunteers to help hunt her down, then turncoats and joins up with her and the other eight men at her service. A William-Huntsman-Snow White love triangle follows. Snow White and her boyfriends have wandered into a corner of the kingdom where Ravenna can get to them. Ravenna shape-shifts and appears to Snow White as William, her supposed true love, a love that Ravenna tells her will betray her as she tricks her with, yes, a poison apple. The Huntsman and William attempt to kill Ravenna, but she breaks apart into hundreds of ravens (hence, the name Ravenna) that fly back to the castle.
The Queen and her raven nature
What follows is an exquisite scene, possibly the best in the film, where Charlize Theron emerges from a gooey mass of black sludge, half-dead birds flopping around, feathers everywhere, as she returns to her human form, wrinkled, crawling toward her beloved mirror. Unable to get Snow White’s heart, Ravenna must up her human injectible count, so when we see her next, she’s glaring into the golden mirror as dozens of spent dead girls lie at her feet.
Meanwhile, Snow White seems to have kicked it. William tries to revive her with a kiss. Nada. Her body is brought to her loyal subjects so they can mourn their loss. Dressed in a white, almost bridal gown, barefoot, and laid out on a concrete slab, the Huntsman finds her the most beautiful when she is at her most vulnerable (read: female) state in the entire film. In his grief/sexual arousal, the Huntsman cries to that Snow White she reminds him of his dead wife in strength and spirit (ironically). Tears of “true” “love!” The spell is broken! There’s nothing a mostly-dead girl loves more than a man telling her she reminds him of his fully-dead wife! Apologies, William.
Fierce Snow White
Gone is the meek Snow White. She emerges from her death stupor fierce and ready for a good smiting. She rallies her male subjects to join her, screaming, “I will be your weapon!” Next, we see Stewart doing her best Joan of Arc with her hair braided, tied back off her face, atop a white horse. She’s transformed. She’s ready to settle the score with the Queen, yet the Huntsman’s flirtatious remark, “So you’re back from the dead and instigating the masses? You look very fetching in mail,” undercuts her, for lack of a better word, makeover. This flattery has no effect on her. Or, if it is supposed to, we can’t really tell with that one facial expression Stewart so expertly emotes. Should she want to look fetching? What does that say about male gender norms if the Huntsman isn’t threatened but aroused by Snow White’s cross-dressing or her newly-acquired “uppity” nature?
Snow White assumes the throne
As aforementioned, yes, this is a revenge fantasy and it is about to get epically Elektra. What does it mean when one woman storms another woman’s castle? Snow White is leaping through fire in slow motion, taking life after life as her braided ponytail whips through the flames. Strange womb re-entry images come to mind as Snow White penetrates the castle and makes her way its utmost interior where Ravenna awaits her, all hopped up the teenage girl life essence she’s been sucking down. She throws Snow White around the throne room with superhuman strength, until, in what is one of the most anti-climatic scenes, Snow White manages to pierce Ravenna’s heart. Fairest blood spilled for fairest blood. She withers instantly and dies. Snow White in her battle gear is reflected in Ravenna’s golden mirror, truly the fairest of them all. Coronation. Roll credits.
Snow White and the Huntsman is a nominee for Best Costume Design, thanks to the brilliant Colleen Atwood (think almost any Tim Burton film), who has been nominated nine times in the past and won three. Atwood’s breathtaking designs evoke a cold alchemy, a fusion of Norse and Celtic metalwork. Her crow costume, her talon jewelry—Charlize Theron she could not embody the raven in Ravenna without Atwood’s creations.
One does not think “Oscar” without thinking “Charlize Theron.” The woman is undoubtedly a force, having won Best Actress for her portrayal of Aileen Wuornos in 2003’s Monster, in which she looked anything but gorgeous. Theron’s stature and intensity make her Queen Ravenna the most fascinating, complex, twisted, neurotic, tortured, and beguiled “evil” queen to date (Although, Sigourney Weaver’s queen in a 1997 adaptation comes fairly close).
Sadly, whether or not this film is Oscar-worthy, part of its hype is due to Sanders-Stewart . Rupert Sanders, a 41-year-old married man when his first major motion picture debuted, allegedly engaged in some dalliance with Kristen Stewart, some nineteen years his junior. Whether or not anything occurred during filming, photos were taken of the two being friendly beyond the prescribed working relationship. No matter the circumstance, the “other” woman is always to blame. K-Stew, you temptress! Rupert Sanders’s wife is beautiful! They have children! The fact that he cast his wife in the role of Snow White’s mother adds another unsettling layer to the scandal. Sanders’s king paid the ultimate price for his lust, and although Stewart and Pattison are going strong, Sanders himself may not find work easy to come by as talks for further Snow White installments remain open.
———-
Carleen Tibbetts lives in San Francisco. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Word Riot, Metazen, Monkeybicycle, Coconut Poetry, and other journals.

2013 Oscar Week: Matriarchal Impositions of Beauty in ‘Snow White and the Huntsman’

Kristen Stewart and Charlize Theron star in Snow White and the Huntsman
Guest post written by Carleen Tibbetts.
Despite the various twists on the classic fairy tale, there is a definite constant in Snow White: women are their own worse enemies. The storyline is essentially the same: jealous, vain stepmother wants to oust stepdaughter who will one day surpass her in physical attractiveness. Stepmother fails. Stepdaughter’s kindness, beauty, and naivete prevail as she triumphs over her would-be destructor. Rupert Sanders’s Snow White and the Huntsman, however, is a different animal. Yes, at the heart (pun intended) of the story are still the female archetypes of beauty, female rivalry and jealousy, whether or not “true” love will make a woman complete, etc. Sanders’s version also explores, though not fully enough, the fragile nature of mother-daughter relationships. True, her mother wishes Snow White into existence based upon her own ideals of beauty, but it is also the child’s tenderness that moves her. When Snow White is still small, before her mother passes away, her mother places her hand over the girl’s chest and tells her she possesses a “rare beauty” there. When the “evil” queen was a young girl, her mother placed a spell, a curse, really, on her that her beauty would be her protector, her bargaining tool, and also her undoing. 
Both Snow White and her “evil” stepmother were taught to view their worth in terms of beauty. For Snow White, it was her compassion, her sweetness, and her soul. For the “evil” queen, it was how far she could get by on her looks. The ways in which both Snow White and Ravenna’s “beauty” are reflected their mother’s eyes lays the groundwork for their respective indifference to or obsession with their own attractiveness.
The “evil” Queen is this adaptation is still a shape-shifting sorceress, however she doesn’t transform into a sweet octogenarian to play to Snow White’s compassion to give her the poison apple. This queen tries to stave off the aging process at all costs, appears to Snow White under the guise of true love, preying on her lonely heart in order to rip it from her chest. Prince Charming in this instance is no prince. He’s a widowed brute drowning his grief in beer and bar brawls. Female assertion of power is so central here that the Huntsman needs no name. He could be any man. He’s disposable yet indispensable in this fairy tale revenge fantasy. 
Charlize Theron as Queen Ravenna
Charlize Theron’s Queen Ravenna comes to power by preying on a benevolent king’s nature and masquerading as a prisoner of war. The first time we see Ravenna (a flaxen-haired, sanguine, statuesque counterpart to Snow White), she is shackled, bound in a cart, covered in gold dust and fur. The king wants to save her, and does so by making her his victory prize. To the victor go the spoils. He wastes no time and marries her that day. On the wedding night, Ravenna decides she’s not down to consummate this thing. Her language quickly changes from addressing him as her “lord,” acquiescing to his kisses, to telling him that he and his gender are vile, shallow creatures. As the king tries to make love to her, Ravenna, a former trophy wife several times over, says, “Men use women. They ruin us. When they are finished with us, they toss us to the dogs like scraps.” Using her powers, she paralyzes the king in the middle of his attempt at seduction, completely emasculating him, and then murders him without hesitation. 
Queen Ravenna
Literally overnight, sacks her own kingdom. She immediately has young Snow White locked in a tower and begins to consult the infamous mirror on the wall. In this version of the story, the mirror is truly stand-apart. It’s a giant gold circle that offers Ravenna a wavering, distorted reflection. She demands to be left alone with the mirror and her insecurities. As she asks it the timeless question about her fairness, liquid gold pours out of the mirror and morphs into a humanoid form (Very T-1000) as it assures her she is the most gorgeous woman around. Ravenna’s beauty even bewitches her (albino with a Page Boy haircut) henchman brother. Ravenna rejuvenates herself by literally inhaling life force from young women she keeps on hand. Whenever a wrinkle starts to manifest, she sucks their purity and innocence from them. Medieval Botox.
Ravenna spends her days this way, depleting girls of their youth, taking milk baths, sporting amazing headwear, snacking on small animals and picking through their flesh with her talon jewelry (ala Pamela Love) while her brother looks on in adoration, etc. Inevitably, the day comes when the mirror tells Ravenna that Snow White has already one-upped her in the fairest department. The spell her mother placed on her as a child haunts her: “By fairest blood it is done, and by fairest blood it will be undone.” Ravenna sends brother dearest to help with Snow White’s de-hearting.
Kirsten Stewart as Snow White on a white horse
We get our first glimpse of Kristen Stewart as the grown Snow White in her locked cell getting snatches of sunlight through the window, playing with crudely fashioned toy dolls, and sharing “conversation” with small birds that flit by. She manages to escape via the sewage system into the sea and washes up on a beach where she is led to a clichéd white horse. The horse takes her as far as The Dark Forest, where, for some inexplicable reason, Ravenna’s powers do not work. The horse doesn’t survive, however, and Snow White wanders the forest distraught and disoriented.
Enter Chris Hemsworth as the (definitely alcoholic, possibly Scottish) Huntsman the Queen recruits to fetch Snow White and instead becomes her protector/guide/love interest. The awkward sexual tension between Stewart and Helmsworth manifests in scenes such as his cutting off the muddy tails of her dress, under which she’s already wearing pants. Although he tells her not to flatter herself and aside from the fact that the gesture is completely sexually loaded, it also frees her from some gender-specific dead weight (literally and figuratively). Stewart’s various garment changes somewhat reflect her character’s rather quick transformation from bewildered girl-woman to a self-actualized adult, which, for the most part, occurs in the company of her “protector” menfolk.
Snow White’s “protector” menfolk
After meeting the dwarves who explain to the Huntsman that she is indeed a princess who gives off the essence of “life itself,” Snow White’s childhood friend, William, enters the rotation. Upon learning she’s alive and on-the-run, he volunteers to help hunt her down, then turncoats and joins up with her and the other eight men at her service. A William-Huntsman-Snow White love triangle follows. Snow White and her boyfriends have wandered into a corner of the kingdom where Ravenna can get to them. Ravenna shape-shifts and appears to Snow White as William, her supposed true love, a love that Ravenna tells her will betray her as she tricks her with, yes, a poison apple. The Huntsman and William attempt to kill Ravenna, but she breaks apart into hundreds of ravens (hence, the name Ravenna) that fly back to the castle.
The Queen and her raven nature
What follows is an exquisite scene, possibly the best in the film, where Charlize Theron emerges from a gooey mass of black sludge, half-dead birds flopping around, feathers everywhere, as she returns to her human form, wrinkled, crawling toward her beloved mirror. Unable to get Snow White’s heart, Ravenna must up her human injectible count, so when we see her next, she’s glaring into the golden mirror as dozens of spent dead girls lie at her feet.
Meanwhile, Snow White seems to have kicked it. William tries to revive her with a kiss. Nada. Her body is brought to her loyal subjects so they can mourn their loss. Dressed in a white, almost bridal gown, barefoot, and laid out on a concrete slab, the Huntsman finds her the most beautiful when she is at her most vulnerable (read: female) state in the entire film. In his grief/sexual arousal, the Huntsman cries to that Snow White she reminds him of his dead wife in strength and spirit (ironically). Tears of “true” “love!” The spell is broken! There’s nothing a mostly-dead girl loves more than a man telling her she reminds him of his fully-dead wife! Apologies, William.
Fierce Snow White
Gone is the meek Snow White. She emerges from her death stupor fierce and ready for a good smiting. She rallies her male subjects to join her, screaming, “I will be your weapon!” Next, we see Stewart doing her best Joan of Arc with her hair braided, tied back off her face, atop a white horse. She’s transformed. She’s ready to settle the score with the Queen, yet the Huntsman’s flirtatious remark, “So you’re back from the dead and instigating the masses? You look very fetching in mail,” undercuts her, for lack of a better word, makeover. This flattery has no effect on her. Or, if it is supposed to, we can’t really tell with that one facial expression Stewart so expertly emotes. Should she want to look fetching? What does that say about male gender norms if the Huntsman isn’t threatened but aroused by Snow White’s cross-dressing or her newly-acquired “uppity” nature?
Snow White assumes the throne
As aforementioned, yes, this is a revenge fantasy and it is about to get epically Elektra. What does it mean when one woman storms another woman’s castle? Snow White is leaping through fire in slow motion, taking life after life as her braided ponytail whips through the flames. Strange womb re-entry images come to mind as Snow White penetrates the castle and makes her way its utmost interior where Ravenna awaits her, all hopped up the teenage girl life essence she’s been sucking down. She throws Snow White around the throne room with superhuman strength, until, in what is one of the most anti-climatic scenes, Snow White manages to pierce Ravenna’s heart. Fairest blood spilled for fairest blood. She withers instantly and dies. Snow White in her battle gear is reflected in Ravenna’s golden mirror, truly the fairest of them all. Coronation. Roll credits.
Snow White and the Huntsman is a nominee for Best Costume Design, thanks to the brilliant Colleen Atwood (think almost any Tim Burton film), who has been nominated nine times in the past and won three. Atwood’s breathtaking designs evoke a cold alchemy, a fusion of Norse and Celtic metalwork. Her crow costume, her talon jewelry—Charlize Theron she could not embody the raven in Ravenna without Atwood’s creations.
One does not think “Oscar” without thinking “Charlize Theron.” The woman is undoubtedly a force, having won Best Actress for her portrayal of Aileen Wuornos in 2003’s Monster, in which she looked anything but gorgeous. Theron’s stature and intensity make her Queen Ravenna the most fascinating, complex, twisted, neurotic, tortured, and beguiled “evil” queen to date (Although, Sigourney Weaver’s queen in a 1997 adaptation comes fairly close).
Sadly, whether or not this film is Oscar-worthy, part of its hype is due to Sanders-Stewart . Rupert Sanders, a 41-year-old married man when his first major motion picture debuted, allegedly engaged in some dalliance with Kristen Stewart, some nineteen years his junior. Whether or not anything occurred during filming, photos were taken of the two being friendly beyond the prescribed working relationship. No matter the circumstance, the “other” woman is always to blame. K-Stew, you temptress! Rupert Sanders’s wife is beautiful! They have children! The fact that he cast his wife in the role of Snow White’s mother adds another unsettling layer to the scandal. Sanders’s king paid the ultimate price for his lust, and although Stewart and Pattison are going strong, Sanders himself may not find work easy to come by as talks for further Snow White installments remain open.
———-
Carleen Tibbetts lives in San Francisco. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Word Riot, Metazen, Monkeybicycle, Coconut Poetry, and other journals.

2013 Oscar Week: A Thorn Like a Rose: War Witch (Rebelle)

Guest post written by Emily Campbell.

If you reel off its vital stats, War Witch sounds like a shoo-in for an Oscar.

It tackles the delicate topic of African child soldiers and was filmed entirely in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Its main character is a girl who bravely forges forward even though her life has more obstacles than The Hunger Games.
It stars a leading actress who grew up on the streets of Kinshasa and was cast at the age of 15.
It’s in French.
So why has it slipped under the radar?
After hosting an impromptu watch party, I posed the question to a few friends. “It’s because it’s Canadian. That and there are no white people,” one said.
“There are if you count the albino guy,” another countered, unwittingly opening a whole new can of worms.
Eventually the discussion culminated in a long, detailed dissection of the official Oscar nominees and it was concluded that, since there were already Best Picture nominations for a French language film (Amour) and two films about a young people of color overcoming adversity (Beasts of the Southern Wild and Life of Pi), there just weren’t any bases left for War Witch to cover. Despite being comprised of components that typically make the Academy salivate left and right, War Witch is nominated in only one category: Best Foreign Film, otherwise known as that part of the Oscars dedicated to movies only a handful of people have actually seen and several handfuls of people will inevitably decide to see but still probably never get around to it.
War Witch (2012) poster
Canada’s seventh nominee in this category, War Witch begins with a seemingly innocent narrative hook: the voiceover of a woman speaking to her unborn child. The camera pans through a Congolese village, where the residents live in houses constructed of everything from towels to tarpaulins and wear sandals made of plastic water bottles. Inside one of these ramshackle houses, a girl sits patiently while her mother braids her hair.
Within two minutes, everything takes a turn for the decidedly less innocent and never looks back.
It turns out the girl and the narrator are one and the same: Komona, age 12, is abducted from her village by rebel soldiers along with a handful of other children. In order to ensure the loyalty of their new recruits, the rebels eliminate any other contenders and waste no time in doing so, putting an AK-47 in Komona’s hands and instructing her to kill her parents.
“This is your mother,” her kidnappers say, passing around sticks for the children to practice gun-handling. “This is your father. Respect your guns. They’re your new mother and father.”
As a member of the Great Tiger’s rebel army, Komona is trained to do battle against the government alongside other kidnapped children. What sets her apart from them is her ability to see visions after drinking the “magic milk” from a certain tree—a gift that leads to her foreseeing and surviving a government attack. Ultimately, Komona’s visions catch the attention of the Great Tiger himself and, at age 13, she is anointed his personal war witch.
Throughout the course of the film, Komona’s voiceover continues narrating her story to her child. “Listen good when I talk to you because it’s very important that you know what I did before you come out of my belly,” she tells it. “Because when you come out, I don’t know if God will give me the strength to love you.”
War Witch delivers its share of chilling lines, such as Komona calmly explaining that she sees fallen soldiers not as dead bodies but as walking ghosts, or how a local butcher always keeps a pail at hand since every slice of his machete reminds him of what happened to his family and makes him want to vomit. But interspersed with the grimness are moments of levity. At one point, the child soldiers are watching a movie on a bus, yelling and clapping like kids on a school trip. At another, after Komona’s friend Magicien informs her it’s only a matter of time before her visions are faulty and the Great Tiger has her executed like the three witches before her, they flee the army together and Komona accepts his proposal of marriage. However, this is only after she requests that Magicien first bring her a white rooster (which her father once told her is the hardest thing to find in the country), a challenge he takes very seriously.
The brainchild of Montreal director Kim Nguyen, War Witch (billed as Rebelle in French) was filmed entirely in Kinshasa, after Nguyen had spent the past decade researching the plight of child soldiers in central Africa. “I learned that there are actually more women child soldiers than men,” he said, “which was surprising. What’s tragic, of course, is that they’re used as sexual slaves.”
Rachel Mwanza, who stars as Komona, has already racked up Best Actress awards from the Berlin Film Festival, the Tribeca Film Festival, and the Vancouver Film Critics Circle. She and Serge Kanyinda, who plays Magicien, have earned respective nominations for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor at the 2013 Canadian Screen Awards. “This character is ten-dimensional,” Nguyen has said of Mwanza’s portrayal of Komona. “She’s a child but she’s an adult, she’s a killer and a victim, she’s a mother but she’s a child. You cannot imagine a more paradoxical figure.” But, as he relayed during a TIFF interview, War Witch’s accolades are far more an exception than a rule: “I had brutal answers that would tell me a Black main actor doesn’t sell.”
In only ninety minutes, War Witch packs a thousand punches. Komona is abducted at 12, a renowned war witch by 13, and pregnant by 14. Her loved ones are snatched away with ruthless precision and her time as a soldier leaves its marks in the form of Stockholm syndrome, post-traumatic stress, and an unborn child. Her superiors beat her, and even Magicien and his protective talismans can only prevent so much harm. The ghosts of her parents give her nightmares, urging her to return to her village and bury them. Inevitably, she becomes a product of her environment, learning to kill or be killed. This comes to a head during one especially harrowing scene wherein she becomes a “poisoned rose” in an effort to kill her commanding officer.
But War Witch is more than just atrocity layered on top of atrocity. There are allies: for a time, Magicien and Komona take shelter with Macigien’s uncle, who abhors the war and provides a safe haven. There’s ingenuity: in one of the film’s lighter moments, Macigien throws himself against the side of a passing van and kicks up a fuss about being injured until the bewildered driver quickly leaves him some money and speeds away. And there’s hope: Komona’s resilience leads to her turning on her commanders multiple times, with eventual success, and stubbornly seeking closure that seems forever just out of reach. 
And yet, it’s a Canadian film. No Canadian film has ever won Best Picture and only one (2003’s The Barbarian Invasions) has won Best Foreign Film. Only three Canadian actresses and one African actress have nabbed the Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role. The Academy has also been known to neglect giving credit where it’s due, a fact that has even more unfortunate ramifications regarding actors of color. Black actresses have been nominated for Best Actress in a Leading Role a mere ten times, with Halle Berry’s 2001 turn in Monster’s Ball resulting in the solitary win. As noted in a study titled “Not Quite a Breakthrough: The Oscars and Actors of Color, 2002-2012,” no winner in any Oscar category has ever been Latino, Asian American, or Native American. More recently, Life of Pi’s Suraj Sharma, who carried the entire film by acting opposite a bluescreen and lost 20% of his body weight for the role and is only 17 years old, was passed over for a nomination although the film itself garnered eleven of them.
Actor Rachel Mwanza
As noted by Jorge Rivas in his 2012 article, an overwhelming majority of the Academy consists of white men. Rachel Mwanza, pictured above with the Silver Bear she won at the 2012 Berlin Film Festival, was the first African woman to do so. Mwanza is currently slated to star in the upcoming Marc-Henri Wajnberg-directed drama Kinshasa Kids.
———-

Emily Campbell has taught English on three continents, been involved with dubious theatrical productions on four, and recently acquired an M. Ed. on one. She has previously written a review of Cracks for Bitch Flicks and still not-so-secretly wants to be an Animorph when she grows up.

2013 Oscar Week: 5 Female-Directed Films That Deserved Oscar Nominations

This article originally appeared on Thought Catalog. You can follow Thought Catalog on Twitter here.
In what’s become something of an unfortunate tradition, James Worsdale applauds the work of five female-directed films who the Academy failed to recognize in its allotment of Best Director nominations, opting to, yet again, bestow the honor to five dudes.
Bigelow and her Oscar

This post is the Groundhog Day of blog posts. This post is a post that I didn’t expect to have to write while watching Seth MacFarlane and Emma Stone announce this year’s crop of directors to receive Oscar nominations. This post is a post that I was nearly CERTAIN I wouldn’t have to write for a third year in a row. But, alas, the nominations for the 85th Academy Awards were announced and not a lady to be found in the director’s category.

This is not due to a dearth of films released in 2012 with female directors, there were plenty of those, though obviously still not as many as male-directed films, but an uptick from 2011. It’s also not due to a lack of quality of the films directed by women, as several female directors received multiple accolades by venerable bodies. What is it due to, then?
Sasha Stone, of Awards Daily, in her “Female Trouble: Why Powerful Women Threaten Hollywood” piece from last month says:
Let’s face it, powerful women just freak everybody the fuck out. Everywhere in general, but especially in Hollywood… Sure, no one ever wants to kick up a fuss about anything. Everyone would prefer we stay in our corners and continue to talk about Anne Hathaway’s cooch and Kate and Will’s baby… the last thing we want to talk about is a systemic breakdown in our glitzy annual pageant, as pathways for female filmmakers are blocked at every turn.
To which I have little more to add other than, “HERE HERE!” And with that, here are five female-directed films released in 2012 that deserved Oscar nominations:
Zero Dark Thirty, Directed by Kathryn Bigelow
Perhaps the most egregious of omissions, or at least the one that’s garnering the strongest reactions, Bigelow’s absence from the big list, in spite of having been nominated for a Golden Globe, a DGA Award, a BAFTA award, among others, not to mention being the only woman to ever win an Oscar for Best Director, was a shocker. The question of whether the politics of her film were her demise remains, or maybe the Academy opted out of her as a choice because of this year’s presence of the reassuring and uplifting over the darkly complex. But with a nomination in Best Picture, Best Editing, Best Screenplay and a Best Actress nod to boot, you have to wonder why.
Middle of Nowhere, Directed by Ava DuVernay

The complicated characters in DuVernay’s film reflect the confusion and compromise that comes from teetering between two planes, two worlds. These characters are real and DuVernay’s writing gives these gifted actors room to breathe within their roles without the constrictions of stereotype and instead with the liberty of nuance. DuVernay was the first black woman to take home the Best Director honor at Sundance with this film and many thought that the film had legs to make it to the greater award circuit. Though with the positions DuVernay has articulated in the past, she understands and takes pride in this film being a truly independent project and the structural limitations in narratives about people of color being received in those circles.

The Queen of Versailles, Directed by Lauren Greenfield

A documentary that centers around billionaire couple David and Jaqueline Siegel and their family as the crashing of the financial markets leaves them broke and living in an excessively opulent mansion inspired by Versailles sounds sympathetic and relatable right? Well Greenfield’s documentary takes a reprehensible family and actualizes them as real people while still being able to represent them as symbols of the thoughtless decadence of American life. By the film’s end, you don’t like these people, you hate them, in fact, but you recognize them, worry for them, and worry for us.

Take This Waltz, Directed by Sarah Polley

A love triangle with an apprehensive and restless heroine who destroys herself by defining herself through her relationships with men, Polley’s premise may seem hackneyed but it plays out poetically and ends up elating you in blissful confusion. Similarly to Middle of Nowhere, it deals with issues of liminality through a relatable yet distinctive tale. It also really pays homage to the legacy of Leonard Cohen and gives a picturesque view of Montreal. Polley has an Oscar nom already for her writing of Away From Her and her innovative documentary, Stories We Tell, recently shown at Venice, has been getting a lot of great buzz as well.

Your Sister’s Sister, Directed by Lynn Shelton

Shelton is one of the pioneers of the Mumblecore genre, a label many of the directors associated with it, including Judd Apatow, Mark & Jay Duplass, don’t necessarily embrace or, more accurately, don’t necessarily pay attention to. The style is very naturalistic and low-budget. Shelton takes this aesthetic and tells outlandish tales through it in a way that is both hilarious and credible. In this film, Jack, who has fallen into a depression following the death of his brother, takes his friend Iris’s offer to stay in her family’s cabin in the country. Upon his arrival, Iris’s sister Hannah, a lesbian, is also unexpectedly present and nursing a depression herself. A drunken hookup between Jack and Hannah sparks a catharsis of sorts for the three of them, forcing them to confront latent and suppressed emotions. Shelton’s funny and original script in conjunction with her unique style of working with actors makes for a film grounded in verisimilitude but not lacking in entertainment value.
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James Worsdale is a local government employee who lives in Durham, NC. He is a regular contributor on women and film to Canonball.

2013 Oscar Week: The Women in Whip Whitaker’s Life: Representations of Female Characters in ‘Flight’

Guest post written by Martyna Przybysz.
It is difficult to talk about strong female characters in a film, where one male actor overtakes the screen completely. Flight is indeed a tour de force performance by ever so excellent Denzel Washington. His protagonist, Captain Whip Whitaker is a pilot with many years of experience, and I am not necessarily referring to flying here – he’s become an expert on covering up his abuse of alcohol and drugs while on duty. 
The opening scene finds Whip in a hotel room with his co-worker, and lover, an attractive and visibly younger than him flight attendant, Katerina, as they awake at the crack of dawn after what looks like a heavy night of alcohol and sex. With its brave nudity, and seeming objectification of a female body, the scene sets the tone of the film, or rather introduces us to our leading man – middle aged, evidently hedonistic, as well as arrogant and reckless in his approach to work, and, well, life. It is hard to shake off the feeling that Nadine Velazquez (known to some as ditzy and very likeable Didi from the CW Network’s show ‘Hart of Dixie’) fills in a stereotypical role of a young hot ethnic woman, and her nude body only accentuates the male lead’s aforementioned characteristics. It later becomes apparent that Whip has a tendency to go for younger women of different ethicities, but sadly, interracial relationship element never develops into a discourse here. It is the substance abuse that is placed at the heart of each relationship that Whip has with women in the film. 
Katerina is not just any sexy Latina to Whip – she’s his partner in crime, a relapsing acoholic and a confidante of sorts, who covers up for Whip’s addiction, as well as hiding her own. His relationships with women for that matter are nothing but simple – as the director wants us to believe – but on screen they fall short of that ambition, and simply feel flat. What he has with Katerina is ended abruptly by the plane crash. At first glance, it’s a casual arrangement between the two, but we are later left wondering whether it is really just that. The cues are perhaps hidden in the way Whip’s friend, Charlie, looks at him when the NTSB delivers the news of two fatalities on the crew (one being ‘Trina’, as referred to by Whip), or it may be those few moments later when he quietly sheds a few tears when left alone in the room. And it is in relation to Katerina that Whip feels an enormous sense of guilt, that subsequently makes him break the vicious circle of lies: ‘Katerina Marquez did not drink the vodka, because I drunk the vodka’ he confesses. 
There is also a cliched ex-wife figure lingering somewhere in the background. Deana (played by Garcelle Beauvais) is the ‘one that got away’, and the one who probably got hurt the most by Whip’s self-destruction. It’s one of those ‘he never got sober for her, so he lost her’ stories, and we have heard it all before. Then, there is a loving mother figure and a loyal colleague, Margaret (Tamara Tunie) – a woman who, in a seeming resignation, for years of working together with Whip watches as he drinks himself into oblivion. We never really find out whether she stays loyal or moral, and that is how yet another female figure in Whip’s life dissolves into the background. Finally, in the films most poignant scene, Melissa Leo, in a role that feels more like a cameo – she is only on screen for about 10 minutes – is Ellen Block, a NTSB’s Hearing Officer for Whitaker’s hearing. She is the only female character in ‘Flight’ that demonstrates some traces of depth – she is confident yet composed, direct but subtle in her approach. She already knows the answer to her questions, but could it be sadness and compassion that we see in her eyes as she looks at Whip as he admits to his crimes? 
I would like to think that, as the only real ally that Whip has had in a female up to this point was a rather unconvincing Kelly Reilly’s Nicole. A character previously described by critics as “lyrically melancholic” and a “fragile heroin addict who embraces rehab and Whitaker at the same time, with patchy results.” And rightly so, because the central love story between the two is devoid of romance. Yes, there is an element of some kind of higher power bringing them together – they meet at the hospital stairwell, and after listening to a rather unconventional cupid, a dying cancer patient, Nicole says to Whip: ‘That was a trip, ha? He made me feel like, I don’t know, like you and me were the last people left on this planet’. There is also a theme of ‘sameness’, a common ground – her relationship with a needle is analogical to the one Whip has with a bottle of vodka. But Nicole is a few steps ahead of Whip, she has already faced her problems and is desperate to redeem her mistakes. It isn’t until the morning after she comes home to Whip pass out drunk on the floor (only to repositions his chin so that he doesn’t choke on his own vomit) that we learn that in fact, Nicole does have a bit of a personality. Or does she? It is all rather bleak, very underwritten, and however she may exhibit some hugely likeable (by nerds like myself) traces of being a melancholic artistic soul – it is all too dubious to put one’s finger on it, let alone relate to. 
I did like how unobtrusive she remains throughout her slowly developing bond with Whip, however frail that bond may seem. On the other hand, that is what proves how self-absorbed she actually is (both of them are in fact!) – helping Whip is not really on her agenda, because she is the one looking for acceptance and love. It may be that she sees what she is looking for in him, because, and in spite of, the demons that they are both dealing with. This would then make this into a beautiful tale of love and redemption, but that is an entirely different movie, and it certainly wouldn’t be called Flight. However predictable in terms of the direction the relationship is heading towards (Whip fesses up, she visits in jail, all live happily ever after), I give kudos to the writer John Gatins for the effort put into creating an unconventional romantic subplot, however superfluous. And to the casting director for allowing us to indulge in the redhead beauty that Kelly is. It is still however disappointing that for a film with so many female characters the potential for developing at least one soulful female protagonist was pretty much wasted. I would like to blame it on Denzel and his breathtaking performance, but for the love of Denzel…may I blame the scriptwriter? 
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Martyna Przybysz is a Pole, living in London, UK. She works in media and the arts. A sucker for portrait photography and a salted caramel cheesecake. This is her blog: http://martynaprzybysz.tumblr.com.

2013 Oscar Week: More Royal Than Affair

A Royal Affair (2012)
Guest post written by Atima Omara-Alwala.
Anyone reading the synopsis of A Royal Affair wonders if it will be more of the same. I mean what else can be said about a high-born woman trapped in loveless marriage to an awful unsophisticated idiot who finds love in the arms of an enlightened dashing sensitive man? (Looking at you Keira Knightley, in The Duchess or let’s be real, any movie about Marie Antoinette). However it is saved by actually not being about the affair but a story of the fight for enlightenment and freedom. These ideals are at the center of Danish director Nikolaj Arcel’s film, which is based on the lives of Danish King Christian VII, his wife and Queen Caroline, Mathilde, and their royal physician, Dr. Johan Streunsee. 
The protagonist is Caroline Mathilde (Alice Viksander), who is the primary orator of the movie. We find her in exile in an undescribed place where she begins to write her story to her children. Caroline, who is English by birth, is betrothed at a young age to the equally young King Christian VII (Mikkel Følsgaard) of Denmark. Though the story does not go into great detail about her family origin, she is the youngest child of the then-ruling British royal family. 
Being a young woman of royal birth, the best that women of Caroline’s station can hope for is a powerful marriage, with love as a luxury. This expectation is driven home in the scene where Caroline frets over whether her husband should like her. Her mother, actually trying to be very kind, says, “Dear, if you are able to get your husband into your bed on your wedding night, you will be a great success.” 
And so with that Caroline’s married life begins as she is sent to a foreign land she has never visited to a place with a language she barely speaks. King Christian the VII as a husband leaves much to be desired. He is relatively childish and awkward but, beyond that, something is mentally off about him. His mental instability is made apparent in a scene where King Christian’s stepmother, the Queen Dowager Juliane Marie (Trine Dyrholm), warns him his wife’s prettiness and artistic abilities can eclipse his reign. Very suddenly, Christian moves from happiness to anger, as he takes his insecurity out on Caroline in front of their guests and demands that she “move her fat thighs” away from the piano she is playing for guests. A real Prince Charming, to be sure. Caroline, justifiably, is horrified into shocked silence as is everyone else in the room. The King’s mental capability and his mercurial nature becomes an important player in the film later. 
The following wedding night scene is so painfully awkward you can’t help but feel sorry for Caroline right away. Thankfully, the filmmaker saves us from the rest of the inartful consummation by fading to black. The unhappy marriage is summed up very quickly in the next few scenes as her only solace is her friendship with lady-in-waiting, Louise Von Plessen who is sent away eventually. Christian VII is revealed to not only be verbally abusive but a heavy drinker, carouser and frequenter of Copenhagen’s finer houses with ladies of ill-repute. All of which rightfully disgusts and angers Caroline but she endures with relative matriarchal silence. Eventually, Caroline completes her most important royal duty and becomes pregnant with her first child and heir to the throne Frederik. 
Around this time, enters Dr. Johan Struensee (Mads Mikkelsen, a former Bond villain in 2006’s Casino Royale!). What is interesting about Johann is that besides being a doctor he is also a man of the Enlightenment movement that is sweeping the continent. A well-read man, Johann bonds with the king over their mutual love of Shakespeare. It is for this major reason he is selected to be the royal physician and then elevated to overall trusted adviser. 
King Christian’s irritation with his wife’s continued moodiness over their marriage leads to him encouraging Johann to give his wife a checkup to find out what exactly ails her, so she can be more “fun” in the King’s words. 
In her own right, Caroline has an excellent education and it is revealed before she came to Denmark that she also enjoyed the writings of Voltaire, Rousseau, and other idols of the Enlightenment. Her bond forms with Johann, whom she has regarded with suspicion and complicit in her husband’s behavior, when she realizes he has smuggled and hidden many of these banned writers’ books into Denmark. In Johann, Caroline finds someone who can understand her, and in her Johann instantly respects a woman he greatly underestimated as clearly just another pretty and mindless royal wife. The bond is further cemented when Johann convinces the King and Queen that their son and heir, Frederic,k needs to be vaccinated from smallpox, something never done, but Johann successfully does also gaining him admirers at Court. 
While Johann and Caroline eventually enter into the expected royal affair, the story becomes more about what their illicit partnership cultivated. Johann often accompanies the King to his Council meetings where the conservative Council men enact oppressive rulings of the state of Denmark. Due to his clear mental incapabilities, the Council treats the King like a puppet. And Johann and Caroline are both frustrated by the Council’s anti-Enlightenment, conservative, aristocratic policies of censorship and the unequal rights of men etc. It is Caroline who reminds Johann of his power over the impressionable King. And it is then that the light turns on for Johann of how the King can be used to promote a greater good. 
And so it unfolds, King Christian, through the influence of Caroline and Johann’s affair, becomes the arbiter of the Enlightenment movement in Denmark. He abolishes the conservative Council, establishes freedom of the press, ends prison torture, etc. Denmark becomes a pioneering country in freedom even at the notice of Voltaire himself. Like Caroline and Johann, strangely even King Christian appears most happy during this time, as Johann is careful with his power over the King encouraging him to think actively and use his power as king but for enlightenment ideals. The political intrigue and fight for power is at the heart of this film as both Caroline and Johann fight for control from the conservative council with the King as their proxy. 
Like all movements challenging the status quo, the conservative Council challenges the ideals of the Enlightenment celebrated by Caroline and Johann and their informal salon they have gathered around them. For US viewers the conservative Council’s arguments against social reforms is very familiar.. “Where is the money?” “Must be paid for” etc. And certainly viewers around the world can related to the ideals of equality and freedom. The unfolding chess match, with the mentally unstable King as its chess piece, has its consequences finally as the conservative council reaches a major checkmate against Queen Caroline and Dr. Streunsee. Caroline and Christinan’s enemy at the court, Queen Dowager Juliane Marie discovers her infidelity through the questioned birth of Caroline’s second child, Louisa. 
The consequences of political infighting and manipulation even for a greater good plays itself out in a less than idealistic fashion and as a result we find Caroline back as we did at the start of the movie, in exile, penning the final pieces of her story to her children, in hopes they at least understand, if not accept her motivations. What the children do with that knowledge makes for an interesting ending. 
This movie is Oscar worthy and passes the feminist smell test because A) Despite the title has “affair” in it has surprisingly little gratuitous sex in it, especially at the expense of Caroline. B) She controls the narrative and not someone else which is often the case with women who end up in her situation (read: Henry VIII’s unlucky wives) C) She is an equal partner in the Enlightenment discussion with Johann. D) it is less about an affair and is more about the coming together of two unlikely revolutionaries whose intellectual partnership became a major historical turning point for a nation’s history and political system. 
While Alice Viksander didn’t carry a ton of emotional range as Queen Caroline she does command your respect, and your interest in the movie to the very end.

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Atima Omara-Alwala is a political strategist and activist of 10 years who has served as staff on 8 federal and local political campaigns and other progressive causes. Atima’s work has had a particular focus on women’s political empowerment & leadership, reproductive justice, health care, communities of color and how gender and race is reflected in pop culture. Her writings on the topics have also been featured at Ms. Magazine, Women’s Enews, RH Reality Check.


2013 Oscar Week: Acting Up: A Review of ‘How to Survive a Plague’

Guest post written by Diana Suber.

At the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, I was a child and only vaguely aware of the crisis as hundreds of people, mostly young gay men at that time, were dying from an unknown virus with no cure in sight. As a teen in the late eighties and early nineties, I do remember seeing the “Silence = Death” posters, t-shirts, and buttons with the iconic pink triangle, but I realize now that I did not know the full scope of what it all meant. So I was intrigued to watch the documentary How to Survive a Plague directed by journalist David France. Nominated this year for an Oscar in the Best Documentary Feature category, How to Survive a Plague chronicles the organization ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) and its offshoot TAG (Treatment Action Group) from 1987 to 1996 and these organizations’ dedicated efforts to pressure the United States government and other authorities to prioritize HIV/AIDS research and treatment and to approach the epidemic as a healthcare emergency and not merely an isolated scourge among homosexual men.

“Silence = Death”
The principal setting of the film is Greenwich Village, New York, considered to be “ground zero” of the HIV/AIDS activist movement, where activists meet to organize, having been motivated to stop their friends, family members, lovers, and themselves from dying. The film is rich in archival footage of ACT UP and TAG meetings, protests against the federal and local government and various agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and interviews with ACT UP and TAG activists at the forefront of the movement, including Peter Staley, Mark Harrington, and David Barr, just to name a few. Many of the activists featured in the film are white gay men; yet almost all of them attributed the long-term success of the movement to Dr. Iris Long, a straight woman and chemist, who gave the activists a crash course in drug testing protocols and working through the FDA/NIH bureaucracy. Other women activists featured in the film include Garance Franke-Ruta, Ann Northrop, and Dr. Ellen Cooper.

Director David France, who was a journalist at the time these events were unfolding, has said that his goal as a journalist and then as a filmmaker was to bear witness. Consequently, the film is a very detailed account of the power of grassroots activism. Not only did these activists–gay and straight, young and old, male and female, healthy and dying–use protest in the streets as a means of garnering attention to what activist and playwright Larry Kramer described as a plague that was killing hundreds of thousands, but they educated themselves and became experts on medical research, experts at navigating the bureaucracy of drug testing and drug approval protocols, experts on creating policies for the treatment of HIV/AIDS patients, experts at wrangling the media, and experts at placing pressure on key decision-makers in the FDA and NIH. The activists also partnered with and prodded drug companies to find and manufacture drugs to treat the disease. In fact, ACT UP and TAG’s open dialogue with scientists at pharmaceutical companies like Merck & Co. ultimately lead to the discovery of the combinations of protease inhibitors which have stopped HIV/AIDS from being a death sentence.

Although the movement was very successful, it was not without its drawbacks. Activists interviewed stated great disappointment when drugs for which they had advocated for and invested much time and resources did not ultimately work on the virus or its symptoms. Many activists did not survive to see the fruits of their labor realized. Indeed, a very poignant part of the film is when activists march to the White House, occupied at that time by President George H. W. Bush, and dump the ashes of their loved-ones on the lawn while yelling “Shame!” The documentary also explores some of the internal politics and strife that occurred within ACT-UP over the years as personalities clashed over the direction and focus of the movement. This strife led to a segment of ACT-UP leadership breaking off and forming TAG. Fortunately, neither organization allowed politics to derail their existence or the ultimate goal.

To his credit, France tempers the emotional frustration and urgency that permeates the film with moments of humor. One of my favorite scenes was footage of TAG activists placing a giant condom over the home of the late Senator Jesse Helms. And as I watched other archival footage of protesters with signs saying “Healthcare is a Right” scrolling across the screen, I was struck by how much the echoes of the past tend to reverberate in the present. The activists featured in this film — through their tireless work, their courage, and their deafening lack of silence — saved millions of lives. (The film states that more than 6 million lives have been saved since 1996 when the three-drug combination of protease inhibitors was identified as a viable treatment). But the fight is not over because there is still no cure for HIV/AIDS, the virus is still spreading worldwide especially among communities of color, and millions of people cannot afford and/or have no access to the life-prolonging drugs that are now available. And so the greatest take-away from How to Survive a Plague is the knowledge that silence is still not an option.

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Diana Suber is a movie-loving lawyer who lives in Atlanta. She writes movie reviews and other thoughts on film at her blog http://www.atlflickchick.com/.

2013 Oscar Week: ‘Beasts of the Southern Wild’: Deluge Myths

Quvenzhane Wallis as Hushpuppy in Beasts of the Southern Wild

 Guest post written by Laura A. Shamas, Ph.D.

Warning: spoilers ahead!
With the Oscar season in full swing, many of the nominated films released in 2012 are in the spotlight again. Beasts of the Southern Wild is nominated for four Academy Awards: Best Actress, Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Director. Post-Sandy especially, the flood mythology motifs of Beasts of the Southern Wild deserve further examination, as they point to important symbols and mythic tropes active in the film. Water, personified as a character, reminds us of the potency of tales of the Deluge. Although floods are associated with destruction in mythology, they may also be seen as harbingers of renewal; Hushpuppy, the young female protagonist, leads with hope and wisdom at the film’s end.
Beasts of the Southern Wild, written by Lucy Alibar and Ben Zeitlin (based on Alibar’s play Juicy and Delicious), and directed by Zeitlin, is set in The Bathtub, a fictional delta region similar to parts of southern Louisiana. The story centers on Hushpuppy (Quvenzhané Wallis), a six year-old girl growing up in a ramshackle compound in a boggy bayou, raised solely by her ailing caring and erratic father, Wink (Dwight Henry). Hushpuppy’s mother left a long time ago, and in her own special house, the girl sometimes converses aloud with a symbol of her mother — an old sports jersey her mom left behind. In Act Two, Hushpuppy links a flashing white light over water in the distance to her mother’s identity.

WATER AS SYMBOL
We see that Hushpuppy and Wink’s lives are impacted by the presence of Water, as it incites much of the film’s plot. In Act One, a powerful storm of hurricane-force comes at night; their compound is flooded. In the downpour, the monsoon is personified when, with a rifle, Wink shoots up in the torrential rain and yells: “I’m comin’ to get you, Storm.” The next day, Hushpuppy and Wink navigate their rusty boat, crafted from an old truck, through swollen, overflowing waterways; a lone pet dog joins them. They look for survivors and take stock of the crippling destruction in their region. At first, it seems that no one else has survived, and Hushpuppy remarks, in voiceover narration: “They’re all down below trying to breathe through water.” Their square boat resonates as an ark-like image in this sequence. In Symbols of Transformation, C. G. Jung identifies Noah’s Ark as “an analogy of the womb, like the sea into which the sun sinks for rebirth.”[i]

In A Dictionary of Symbols by Jean Chevalier and Alain Gheerbrant, the meaning of water “may be reduced to three main areas. It is a source of life, a vehicle of cleansing and a centre of regeneration.” [ii]

All three of these aspects are depicted in Beasts of the Southern Wild. In Act Two, water is shown as a source of life in a teaching sequence: Wink shows Hushpuppy how to catch fish by hand (“You have to learn how to feed yourself. Now stick your hand in this water!”). Also in Act Two, the ocean feeds the community in the celebratory scene of The Bathtub’s storm survivors feasting on crawfish in their makeshift shelter in Lady Jo’s seafood shack. Wink tells Hushpuppy to “Beast it!” as she eats a crab. We gradually understand that Wink, as Mentor, is teaching his daughter bayou survival skills.

Later, the water serves as a source for spiritual cleansing; Hushpuppy embarks on a search for her mother, and finds maternal nurturing from women who work aboard a pleasure ship, the “Elysian Fields Floating Catfish Shack” featuring “Girls Girls Girls.” Wink’s passing, with final ship burial rites that are similar to those of the ancient Vikings, is connected to a spiritual return to the sea.

The theme of “regeneration” is clear in the ending of Beasts of the Southern Wild, and discussed in further detail below. Much more than a mere setting, water is part of every major plot turn, and somehow young Hushpuppy must learn to live with it, on it, and sail through it. 

FLOODING: MEANING AND MYTHS
Key tropes from flood stories are featured in Beasts of the Southern Wild. In ancient flood mythology, deities send destructive waters to punish humanity; some flood myths are also categorized as part of creation myths because a new cycle may begin after the water recedes. A deluge brings fear, according to ARAS’ The Book of Symbols: “Floods are especially frightening because they intimate unpredictable forces of like nature within ourselves.” [iii] A deluge may herald a post-Apocalypse renewal — a spiritually cleansing effect, related to the purification function of baptism. From a myth perspective, it can be seen as a three-part process: ruination, revival, and purification. [iv] As Tamra Andrews writes in A Dictionary of Nature Myths: “Humanity returned to the water from whence it came, then began again.” [v]

Beasts of the Southern Wild

Classic tales from traditions worldwide feature flood motifs. The Sumerian Epic of Atrahasis predates Noah’s story; ARAS’ The Book of Symbols says the Atrahasis tale “describes casualties of flood strewn about the river like dragonflies.” [vi]

The familiar story of Noah’s Ark is one of many legends in which the deluge brings a renewal, the start of a new cycle, even a rainbow. In the Gilgamesh Flood Myth (which some scholars trace to The Epic of Atrahasis), Upnatishtim must build a boat to weather a storm so foul its verocity frightens the very gods who created it. Like Noah, Upnatishtim’s boat eventually lands atop a mountain.

In the Irish legend of Fintan mac Bóchra, Fintan escorted one of Noah’s granddaughters to Ireland. As one of three who lived through the deluge, Fintan “the Wise” survived the deluge by shape-shifting into a salmon and two birds; eventually he became a human again and advised the ancient Kings of Ireland. A Kikuyu story (Kenya) tells of spirits drowning a town with beer, as inhabitants find refuge in a tavern.

In China, the tales of “Yu The Great” center on flood fighting, with family sacrifices as part of the battles, and supernatural assistance in the form of a yellow dragon, or in some versions, Yu is the dragon. [vii] An ark features prominently in the Greek myth of Deucalion and Pyrrha, Prometheus’ son and Pandora’s daughter, who survive a flood unleashed by Zeus. Floods are also featured in numerous Native American tales, such as the Arapaho story of Creation, in which a man with a Flat Pipe enlists Turtle to help save the land or the Chickasaw Nation’s Legend of the Flood in which a raven delivers part of an ear of corn to a lone remaining family on a raft, post-Deluge.

Hushpuppy faces an Auroch in Beasts of the Southern Wild

In Beasts of the Southern Wild, the melting ice cap imagery is linked to the global warming rise of coastal waters — perhaps Earth’s way of punishing humankind (which could be seen as divine chastisement related to myths above). The “watery end of the world” theme, the motorboat as ark, the tavern as place of refuge, the release of supernatural beings (such as Hushpuppy’s vision of the frozen Aurochs unleashed through global warming), the connection to animals and earth as agents of healing (Hushpuppy listens to them): all of these elements in the film may be seen as related to flood myth tropes. Although there is no rainbow at the end, there is definitely as sense of renewal as Hushpuppy becomes the new Bathtub leader. The imagery and mythic tropes in the film overall resonate with symbols of giving birth: from the womb-like ark, to overwhelming water which could be seen as related to amniotic fluid, through Hushpuppy’s search for her long-absent mother.

HUSHPUPPY AS HEROINE
By the end, Hushpuppy emerges as a culture heroine, leading the surviving people of The Bathtub forward as they walk on a road with water lapping at them from all sides — with Hushpuppy as a signifier of renewal, in keeping with traditional motifs of flood mythology. This conclusion gives us a female-lead vision of hope for the future; Hushpuppy’s voiceover narration tells us that one day scientists will find evidence of a girl named Hushpuppy who lived with her father in the Bathtub.

With our collective experience of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and now Sandy in 2012, the poignant depiction of flood mythology tropes resonate strongly in this award-winning film. Watching Beasts of the Southern Wild allows us to consider the Deluge’s symbolic import to the human psyche not only as an image of destruction, but as an important signal of change, marking a time of transformation. 

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Laura Shamas is a writer, film consultant, and mythologist. Her newest book is Pop Mythology: Collected Essays. Read more at her website: LauraShamas.com.
NOTES
  • [i] Jung,C.G. Symbols of Transformation. Collected Works, Volume V. Edited and Translated by Gerhard Adler and R.F.C. Hull. Princeton University Press, 1977. Page 211, Paragraph 311.
  • [ii] Chevalier, Jean, and Alain Gheerbrant. Trans. John. Buchanan-Brown. A Dictionary of Symbols. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1994. Page 1081.
  • [iii] “Flood.” The Book of Symbols by The Archive For Research In Archetypal Symbolism (ARAS). Amy Ronnberg, Editor-In-Chief. Cologne: Tashen, 2010. Page 50
  • [iv] Andrews, Tamra. A Dictionary of Nature Myths: Legends of the Earth, Sea and Sky. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. Page 72
  • [v] Andrews, Tamra. A Dictionary of Nature Myths: Legends of the Earth, Sea and Sky. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. Page 72.
  • [vi] “Flood.” The Book of Symbols by The Archive For Research In Archetypal Symbolism (ARAS). Amy Ronnberg, Editor-In-Chief. Cologne: Tashen, 2010. Page 50.
  • [vii] Wilkinson, Phillip and Neil Phillip. “Yu Tames the Floods.” Eyewitness Mythology. London: Dorling Kindersley, 2007. Page 175.

2013 Oscar Week: ‘How to Survive a Plague’: When Aging Itself Becomes a Triumph

Guest post written by Ren Jender.

When the late Ed Koch, former mayor of New York City, saw How To Survive a Plague, journalist/director David France’s Oscar-nominated documentary about ACT UP (the AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power) New York, he wrote a review for his local neighborhood newspaper. The review was not just a rave but recommended the activists profiled receive Presidential Medals of Freedom! Koch didn’t mention those same people and many others spent much time (including a demonstration documented at the beginning of the film) protesting his administration’s criminally inadequate response to the AIDS crisis. Some of the people he praised in his review, including one of the founders of ACT UP, Larry Kramer, have called him a “murderer.”

Ed Koch image via Peter Staley, POZ Blogs

Koch is an extreme example of the mainstream’s counterintuitive embrace of this film in particular and ACT UP in general. Although we see video of hateful, reactionary Jesse Helms spewing venom toward the group from the floor of the U.S. Senate we would never know most mainstream (and even some of the gay press’) coverage of ACT UP actions, like the one disrupting a service at St. Patrick’s Cathedral (to protest the Catholic Church’s stance on safer sex) or the one shutting down the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) — archival footage from both actions is part of the film– was far from laudatory.

Still, France’s overview, fortified by his work on AIDS issues in the gay press during the crisis years, is impressive even to those of us who were there. Though I never attended ACT UP meetings I took part in my city’s ACT UP demonstrations (“demos”), did safer sex outreach with ACT UP members and went to the huge Kennebunkport demo, shown in the film, where George H.W. Bush was hung in effigy.

In the beginning of Plague intertitles and footage of people with AIDS close to the end of their lives set the scene, then archival video (including interviews) from ACT UP’s own media collective takes over most of the narrative. We see a loud, crowded meeting of the group where an action is planned and then the action itself, ending with activists being carted off one-by-one, screaming chants all the way to the police wagon. The film captures in this demonstration and the ones it shows later the camaraderie, exuberance and carnival-like atmosphere of ACT UP’s brand of activism, so necessary in an epidemic which devastated everyone in its path. 
AIDS decimated the population of gay and bisexual men during the period covered in Plague, and I’m not sure most young queers realize the effect that loss still has on our community. In the film, I noticed the t-shirts many of the activists wore (the film repeatedly captures on many bodies the unisex, activist uniform of: a t-shirt, motorcycle jacket, jeans and Doc Martins) were unmistakably designed by acclaimed artist Keith Haring (which he did as a fundraiser for ACT UP: he also makes a brief, wordless appearance in a demonstration in the film). The music in Plague is by cellist and vocalist Arthur Russell. Both men died of AIDS in the early nineties. They make up one small corner of the heart of queer culture lost during that time period. 
France expertly pieces together newsreel footage and present-day interviews, but for most of the story he culled hundreds of hours of ACT UP’s own electrifying videotape, some of which is also included in United in Anger another film released in 2012 about ACT UP New York. Audiences should see both, because at least as many riveting films could be made about the AIDS crisis as have been made about World War II. 
I’ve read some blog criticism that How To Survive a Plague is the rich, white, male version of United in Anger. In contrast to Plague,Anger spotlights many more HIV-positive women and women of color in ACT UP as well as men of color. It also makes clear that part of the schism (also documented in Plague) between ACT UP and the Treatment Action Group (which helped develop protocols for drug trials and accelerated drug approval by working with pharmaceutical companies) was because the latter was made up mostly of white, gay men. But since Plague is, in the end, about (spoiler alert) those who survived HIV, its focus on privileged, white, gay men, while not enviable, is inevitable.

How to Survive a Plague
Part of what galvanized these men into action was their outrage that even though they had been bond traders, movie producers, PR executives and Ivy League graduates, because they were gay (or bisexual) and because they were HIV-positive, the medical establishment and the government still treated them as if they were scum. The film documents in interviews with them as well as scientists their tireless work. We see, toward the beginning, a member of the drug buyer’s club rattle off a laundry list of medications before saying, “None of which work, by the way.” Toward the end, years later, we see how the Treatment Action Group helped bring to market the protease inhibitors and combination drug therapies that continue to extend the lives of many people with HIV (at least those with access to these drugs) today. 
Those drugs have not eradicated AIDS, but changed it from a virus that killed everyone it infected (we see one man quietly recite the ACT UP chant “ACT UP. Fight back. Fight AIDS,” to end the eulogy he gives at a fellow ACT UP member’s public funeral procession, then see his own obituary in the newspaper) to a disease that many people can now live with for decades. 
One of the most moving scenes in the film is close to the end when we see the survivors (many of whom we had seen only in archival footage up to this point) in a series of long, silent close-ups, as they are now, all of those twenty years etched onto their faces and the wrinkles, jowls, grey hair and aging itself becomes a triumph, as it rarely is on American movie screens. 
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Ren Jender is a writer/performer and producer whose work appears regularly on xoJane. She is currently soliciting work for a film anthology made up of short films by queer women writers. Follow her on Twitter at @RenJender.