Bitch Flicks – Page 32

The Violent Vagina: The Real Horror Behind the ‘Teeth’

It’s a conundrum, one that Dawn faces head (or vagina) on. She is forced to confront these opposing views, and her body reacts the only way it knows how, it bites the penis of society, it castrates the men that want to turn her into something she doesn’t want to be: a sexual young woman.

I get the imagery, but this movie poster doesn’t really have a horror vibe to it.

This guest post by Belle Artiquez appears as part of our theme week on Violent Women.

Teeth (2007) is a horror film that was directed by Mitchell Lichtenstein based on the story of a young girl who finds out she has teeth inside her vagina. Mind blowing stuff, I know. It was not a good movie, it was not even a good story, in fact it was quite the opposite and anybody who has seen it will tell you that it was pretty much one of the worst movies ever. However, I’m one of those people who may hate watching a movie, may even feel bored during it, but will talk about it for months after if the correct themes are there. Teeth is one of those movies, and I’m still under the assumption that many people, myself included for a while, took away from the film something that was irrelevant, we missed the point, we missed the real issues the film was exploring, even if it was done in a very, very bad way.

Dawn, a young virginal, religious girl wishes to stay just that for as long as possible–society rejoices, she is following the rules! She meets a young man at her abstinence group and although he agrees to wait with her, on a romantic date with woodlands and waterfalls he ends up forcing himself on her because she’s still “pure.” Thus begins the sexual assaults literally thrown at the young Dawn. It is during this first forced sexual encounter with a boy she felt safe with that she realizes, to her and his horror, that she has teeth inside her vagina, that literally bite off the boy/rapist’s penis. We get a glimpse of his ripped-off genitals (and it’s not the only time we see gory, bloody castrated penis), so while this movie isn’t directed toward the male gaze in a conventional way (we never see Dawn’s naked body) it might be done in a horrific way.

Something new for the male gaze to enjoy…

Already I’m seeing a lot of messages and themes that are incredibly familiar. To start we have society’s golden girl, the girl that wants to wait, wants to be virtuous and good and clean so that when the right man comes along he won’t feel like he’s gotten soiled goods (I write gritting my own teeth…pun totally intended). Then we have sexual themes thrown at her; she is hit by the very thing that asked her to stay clean, virginal. She is forced to be sexual. She is inundated with sexual activity, as are all women who walk the earth–we are bombarded with images of sexualized women in underwear, in TV and magazine advertisements, in film and music videos, these are telling us that this is what society wants, sexual women. But we know that society also wants us to be virginal women to save ourselves. It’s a conundrum, one that Dawn faces head (or vagina) on. She is forced to confront these opposing views, and her body reacts the only way it knows how, it bites the penis of society, it castrates the men that want to turn her into something she doesn’t want to be: a sexual young woman.

I know, seeing your vagina for the first time can be bizarre, especially if there’s teeth in there, but I promise–you will get over it.

Not only is Dawn violated by a little boy who thought he was man enough to get some from a girl who actively told him she wouldn’t give him anything, she is also abused by her gynecologist, a healthcare professional who is far from professional. During this scene I felt extremely uncomfortable, it was too…familiar. Dawn seeks medical advice about her vaginal teeth, telling the doctor that she thinks ‘there might be something weird going on’ and I’m only going to assume that it was her first visit (she’s a virgin remember) so probably felt a wave of emotions from fear to pure horror at what was going to happen. Many first visits for women are filled with these emotions. But when her doctor takes his gloves off and continues to mess around down there, things really get weird and the wonderful doctor ends up having his fingers bitten off (serves him right too). Now, I’m not going to say this was exactly like my first experience with a gynecologist, far from it, however, it was equally as uncomfortable, and to this day I feel like something was amiss. I was nervous,very very nervous. I was literally a ball of emotions, on my own, and I’m only going to assume the male doctor noticed this because instead of offering a female nurse, or even trying to make me feel less exposed, he called in two female nurses to literally hold my legs open as he examined me, with no blanket, no comfort, just a horrifying shame that has been with me since that day (over a decade ago). So I understand why that scene was so horrific for me and not other people who laughed their way through it, but this only serves to prove that women are capable of understanding the discomfort of the plot, of the numerous sexual assaults Dawn faces, the reaction she has to her own body (hating and simultaneously fearing it) and then her final understanding that she has to own it, be in control of it and her sexuality. She has to have agency in her violent vagina because she knows how powerful it is.

If only we all had her power, and yes it pretty much is a super power!

She arrives, shaken and terrified after her gyno visit at a boys house, she takes a bath and comes out to find that said boy has lit around a hundred candles, stuck on ridiculous music and is waiting expectantly for sex. She is still shaken (who can blame her?) so he offers her a pill and wine to relax, or drug her. She assumes he has her best interest at heart so accepts, I know right? More fool her..but I did say it was a terrible movie. It gets even worse as this encounter unfolds. She falls asleep/unconscious only to wake and find him fondling her breasts, and although he asks her for consent and she tells him not to stop she is still under the influence of drugs and alcohol so cannot legally give consent. They have sex. He ‘conquers’ her, becomes the ‘hero’ (his words!) and gets to keep his penis. The next morning things don’t go so smooth, during consensual sex he answers the phone still inside her (big mistake) and begins to gloat and brag about it. His penis meets the same fate as the previous two men and he ends up being not quite the conquering hero he first thought, he will be stroking this male ego no longer.

I honestly don’t know why there’s a crunch, but again, bad movie.

From here Dawn eventually rids herself of her abstinence ring; if society wants a sexual girl they were going to get one, but only on her terms. If men are going to force it, they’re going to lose it, simple as that. The male fear of powerful vaginas really takes on a whole new meaning with this film; it portrays the many anxieties men and the patriarchy have where women are concerned. If women start to realize their inherent power, their violent vagina’s, then some men fear they will be cut down, castrated because of it. The fear lies within the notion that both sexes cannot have equal control. He will take (think virginity), she will give, not the other way around. That’s the dynamic society is used to, so a horror within the film is also connected to the fact that men fear the vagina and its power, they fear what will happen to them and their masculinity if the vagina (women) acknowledges its own power. The film blatantly gives shots of castrated male genitals, bloodied, and disgusting (I’m not a gore fan), and while many men will feel a kind of sympathy pain for the characters (who are rapists by the way), and apologise for showing it in blogs because the writer too felt a pain when posting it, I’m left wondering why women are expected to watch rape in film and TV and not feel the same? Because let’s be honest, it’s not everyday that we see mutilated male genitals, but the violent rape of a women which portrays the same kind of genital pain…yeah that’s pretty common. But for some reason neither of these things represent the same pain.

Dawn indeed does end up using her violent vagina as a tool of revenge and protection for other women. She actively engages with men whose intentions are not good just so she can castrate them in order to protect the future women these men would harm. She totally owns it, she takes on the violent nature of her unique vagina and uses it for good.

Now that’s the face of a woman who is owning her sexuality, even if it is a violent one!

Teeth was categorized as a feminist horror film, and I can see why many people didn’t quite agree with that–Dawn is sexually assaulted a lot, she is not in control of her own sexual behaviour (for most of the movie) and she certainly isn’t a feminist herself; I don’t think the literal biting off of men’s penises constitutes as feminist film. However, her having to come to terms with a part of herself that society both worships and fears is quite the feminist argument. One that rings true to nearly every woman on the planet. On the surface though this film just seems like a crude horror that involves a deadly vagina, a violent, razor sharp vagina. But maybe the horror of this film lies somewhere in the messages it portrays; maybe the real horror is the shit this poor girl, who just wanted to play by the rules, has to put up with on a daily basis, and as such, what women everywhere have little option but to just deal with, from the constant sexualization of women in every aspect of society, the slut shaming, the butt grabs instead of handshakes, the boob stares instead of eye contact, the cat-calling and street harassment, to the flat out sexual assault, the (not at all) blurred lines of consent, the daily beating down of women for having vaginas and showing some skin. Maybe that was the true horror of this movie and not the fact that a girl who endured all of this had the ability to cut some men down with the very thing they thought they had control of and a right to: her violent and powerful vagina.

Don’t they all…

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

‘High Tension’: Rethinking Female Sexuality and Subjectivity Through Violence

Rather than pander to the male gaze, Aja decides to reject these scopophilic pleasures in favour of championing female subjectivity, but he also chooses to reject heteronormativity by having the lesbian desires of Marie drive the plot of the film. Interestingly, it is these desires and subjective experiences that both initiate the use of violence and intensify the representation of violence throughout.

This guest post by Laura Minor appears as part of our theme week on Violent Women.

Named one of TIME magazine’s “10 most ridiculously violent films” [1], Alexandre Aja’s 2003 slasher High Tension (originally titled Haute Tension) is a visceral delight, a horrific spectacle of generic excess. Yet with the film’s synopsis describing the leading character, Marie, as a “beautiful young Frenchwoman,” High Tension could have easily been seen in GQ’s article “The 25 Sexiest Violent Women in Film” [2]. Rather than pander to the male gaze, Aja decides to reject these scopophilic pleasures in favour of championing female subjectivity, but he also chooses to reject heteronormativity by having the lesbian desires of Marie drive the plot of the film. Interestingly, it is these desires and subjective experiences that both initiate the use of violence and intensify the representation of violence throughout.

Before examining the film’s treatment of gender, sexuality and violence, however, its basic narrative needs to be understood. High Tension revolves around Marie (Cécile De France) and Alex (Maïwenn Besco), two college students who travel to Alex’s parents’ farmhouse in the French countryside so that they can relax and study in peace. After arriving at the farmhouse and settling down for the night, Marie begins masturbating in bed, presumably fantasising about Alex after she inadvertently spies on her in the shower. The killer arrives simultaneously and begins brutally massacring Alex’s family without reason. He then abducts Alex after blinding her, and Marie consequently emerges as the Final Girl, the protagonist who must save the day. What ensues is a cat-and-mouse chase, with the killer eventually hunting down Marie for the archetypal finale – a one-on-one confrontation between the protagonist and antagonist. However, when Marie ends the killer’s life, it is revealed that she is in fact the killer, thereby rupturing the classical protagonist/antagonist relationship.

Aja’s ending has received strong, negative criticism for its twist, but the purpose of this ending is to not merely shock. Of course, if we read it through a conservative lens, then Marie’s transgressions serve to maintain and perpetuate heterosexist discourse, as the lesbian protagonist is revealed to be the monster; she is the outsider who has destroyed the nuclear family. Indeed according to Harry M. Benshoff,

both movie monsters and homosexuals have existed chiefly in shadowy closets and when they do emerge from these proscribed places into the sunlit world they cause panic and fear. Their closets uphold and reinforce binaries of gender and sexuality that structure Western thought. To create a broad analogy, monster is to “normality” as homosexual is to heterosexual [3].

While this has been true for past representations, Marie’s psychotic creation of “Le Tueur” (meaning “The Killer” in English) complicates the idea that she is the tangible monster. This unnamed, unidentifiable man is the one who has committed cinematic sadism, and although the monster is a manifestation of Marie’s latent desires, he also personifies the fear and anger she feels about her own sexuality. This is implied at the beginning of the film through dialogue and lighting – when Marie and Alex arrive at the farmhouse, Alex tells Marie she’ll “end up an old maid” because of her lack of interest in men. Understandably, Marie reacts with dejection. Her face is deliberately shadowed by the darkness outside as she solemnly says “Don’t start with that”. Indeed though subtle, it is obvious that Alex’s ingrained, societal beliefs have affected her deeply, the feeling that she is an outcast, that she should settle down and find a nice husband. To have her best friend and love interest speak in such a way does not excuse murder (that much is obvious), but it could explain why Marie constructs an individual that represents heteronormativity (a white, heterosexual middle-aged man) committing these violent acts instead.

This fabricated part of her psyche, in some ways, conforms to Halberstam’s notion of “imagined violence,” which is defined as “the fantasy of unsanctioned eruptions of aggression” [4]. More specifically, Halberstam argues that “imagined violence does not advocate lesbian or female aggression but it might complicate an assumed relationship between women and passivity or feminism and pacifism” [4]. To imagine the possibility of female violence is to create a new source of pleasure for women, as resistance on-screen is a reaction against gender/sexuality-based prejudices. High Tension, however, takes this level of imagination to a disturbed and distorted level, as Marie/Le Tueur brutally kill an innocent family. Yet it could be argued that this (fe)male violence symbolises Marie’s anger, or more specifically, Marie’s inability to control the rage she feels about heteronormativity upholding “traditional family values” (these being strictly defined gender roles and heterosexuality). After all, she cannot control this part of her consciousness, as she desires to kill this part of her consciousness and rescue Alex.

The “imagined violence” against the heteronormative male within is a significant, internal battle that culminates in Marie defeating Le Tueur with a fence post covered in barbed wire. She uses this aggressive, phallic symbol to “challenge powerful white heterosexual masculinity and create a cultural coalition of postmodern terror” [4], the most significant aspect of “imagined violence.” Of course, such a reading is not so simple in a film that constructs a schizophrenic narrative and a schizophrenic character, but High Tension is aware of its supposed inconsistencies, which again can be seen in its ending. Before Le Tueur’s death, he wields his chainsaw in an attempt to kill Alex, only for his weapon to be replaced by Marie’s sweet and soft kiss. The act of (fe)male violence and gentleness in this scene unifies the binaries of masculinity and femininity, and therefore complicates the definitions of monstrousness and gender. For this reason, as Joshua Cohen has argued, High Tension “poses somewhat of a problem for the critic interested in allocating monstrosity into a neatly defined category such as masculine or feminine. Rather, High Tension requires a spectator whom assumes that gender is a subject that transcends the limitations of binary oppositions” [5].

Indeed because Aja has forced us to intimately identify with Marie and then Alex via specific camerawork, these acts of violence are intensified, but so are subtle character movements. The final scene is particularly significant in this regard; when Marie is in a psychiatric hospital, Alex watches her through a one-way mirror and extends her hand to the screen, almost as if she is visiting a lover in prison. Here we are forced to identify with Alex as the camera slowly follows her hand, and when she asks a doctor whether Marie can see her through the mirror, it is clear that she is also asking this question for us, the extra-diegetic spectators. Marie answers this question soon after. No, she cannot see Alex, she can sense her, and by extension she can sense the audience. Her face beams with delight as she opens her arms in a sudden forceful yet loving gesture, and the camera lurches back in horror with Alex, thus forcing us as spectators to mimic these movements. The jerky, violent actions of Marie are therefore ambiguous. Whilst we are initially drawn to her by the placement of Alex’s hand, we are then pushed away by her affection/violence. Perhaps it would be reading too much into the ending to view Alex’s hand gesture as an act of repressed sexuality, but it is interesting that Alex, now the audience surrogate, is both drawn to and disgusted by Marie’s affectionate/violent disposition. In this regard, High Tension offers no concrete resolution as to how we should view the protagonist. Instead, it offers multiple readings of gender, sexuality, and violence that typify our contemporary, heterogeneous culture. Indeed despite the monstrous actions of Marie, underneath the surface, Alex and the audience know that she cannot be simplistically defined – it is why we have returned to her at the hospital.

Overall, to define High Tension as conservative would be problematic, as we would have to ignore the ways in which it has transcended stereotypical ideals of gender and sexuality through acts of violence, whether these acts be blatant (such as the aggressive methods of murder) or subtle (such as the sudden erratic movements of Marie). It is certainly clear that the narrative does not advocate male or familial genocide as a strategy for achieving women’s emancipation. If anything, the film seeks to place itself in-between the rich, textured spaces of female subjectivity and identity, spaces that are not always straightforward, rational or prototypical.

Footnotes

[1] Sanburn, Josh. “Top 10 Ridiculously Violent Movies.” TIME., September 2, 2010. http://entertainment.time.com/2010/09/03/top-10-ridiculously-violent-movies/.

[2] “The 25 Sexiest Violent Women in Film”. GQ., June 30, 2009. http://www.gq.com/gallery/list-sexy-women-movies-violent-angelina-jolie-halle-berry-jessica-alba-slideshow.

[3] Benshoff, Harry M (1997). Monsters in the Closet: Homosexuality and the Horror Film. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press.

[4] Halberstam, Judith (1993). ‘Imagined Violence/Queer Violence: Representations of Rage and Resistance’. Social Text 37, pp.187-201.

[5] Cohen, Joshua. ‘‘’Will You Still Love Me in the Morning?’: Gender Representation and Monstrosity in Alexandre Aja’s High Tension.” Fear, Horror, and Terror, 2^nd Global Conference. Oxford: United Kingdom, 2008. Print.

Laura Minor is currently undertaking a Master’s in Film and Television Studies. She runs a blog at lrjdmnr.wordpress.com where she discusses feminist media studies, film/television aesthetics and genre theory.

In ‘Difret,’ Executive Producer Angelina Jolie Puts Spotlight on Horrors of Child Marriages

Angelina Jolie executive produced ‘Difret,’ a drama based on the true story of a 14-year-old Ethiopian girl, Hirut, who is kidnapped in her rural village by a much older man and kept captive as his future bride. When Hirut, played beautifully by Tizita Hagere, fights back and accidentally kills her captor, she faces the death sentence, as dictated by tribal law.

Difret producer and director at the 2015 Athena Film Festival

This is a guest post by Paula Schwartz.

Angelina Jolie executive produced Difret, a drama based on the true story of a 14-year-old Ethiopian girl, Hirut, who is kidnapped in her rural village by a much older man and kept captive as his future bride. When Hirut, played beautifully by Tizita Hagere, fights back and accidentally kills her captor, she faces the death sentence, as dictated by tribal law.

The abduction of young girls by much older men who make them their wives is a cultural tradition in rural villages in this part of the world, as is the death penalty for Hirut’s so-called crime. But a tough, steely lawyer, Maeza (Meron Getnet), from the women’s legal aide practice takes on the case and fights for her client’s life. The movie also works well as a thriller and procedural courtroom drama with twists and heart-pounding reversals. That the story is based on a riveting true story gives the movie a timeliness and urgency that makes it understandable why Jolie, who directed In the Land of Blood and Honey, about the plight of women abused and raped during the Bosnian War, has attached her name and support to the film.

Difret is written and directed by Zeresenay Berhane Mehari, who was born in Ethiopia, but raised in Virginia, and is produced by Mehret Mandefro. The two married while shooting the film in Ethiopia. Difret closed the Athena Film Festival in February, and the director and producer brought along their two-year-old son and seven-week baby to the screening and Q&A moderated by Athena Film Festival co-founder Melissa Silverstein.

Following are selected highlights from the Q&A.

How did you get the movie made?

Mehret Mandefro: I’ve been working on it for over five years. I joined this project in 2009 … I started this project in 2007 technically. Zeresenay is a classically trained filmmaker and went to film school. I’m actually very non-traditional in my background. I’m a physician by training … I came to film through the back door. And about five years ago, I was speaking at a health and human rights conference, and Zeresenay was pitching his script to some NGOs.

He had exhausted his possibilities in Hollywood. The script was actually incredibly strong, so people had offered to buy it in Hollywood, but they wanted it done in English. They also wanted Hollywood actors, and Zeresenay had a very specific vision of the film to do it in Addis Ababa, cast it locally, which meant it took longer. But thankfully, when he brought it to me, I read the script, and it was such a page turner, and I was already very interested working on kind of women’s issues that I was like, “Oh, I know how to raise money for this. We’re going to do it.” So I actually started. I was producing the film before I married him, before we had babies and all that, so we joke that we had twins actually … I was pregnant with Lucas when we went into production, and Mena came along this year.

Difret producer and director at the 2015 Athena Film Festival

What was the inspiration for this script?

Z: By chance really. I met Meaza Ashenafi by chance … In 2005, I was in Ethiopia working on a documentary, and I was at a friend’s house, and her brother said, “You should make a film about my sister.” Like yeah, sure, why not? I didn’t know who she was and didn’t know about that organization that she started. By the time I met her, she’d helped more than 30,000 people, women and children … She was a judge and left her seat because she thought that the country was ready to move forward in human rights, so she started working with the constitution commission … From a filmmaker’s standpoint, that is a very interesting character, and you can already imagine what kind of difficulties that she’s going to face, so I was already locked in on that and then started reading about the organization, and it was amazing, so I found this story, and I left home in May 1996 to go to school, and this particular case happened literally four or five months after I left.

And it was also the organization’s biggest case then or since, and it kind of put the organization on the map, but it also was the first time that the country as a whole had a conversation about tradition, and that was my entry point. Another very strong subject matter to tackle is this tradition. My true point is always the characters and the struggles that they face.

Shooting in Ethiopia must have been intense, especially since you shot in some of the rural villages. Describe shooting some of those scenes.

Z: When we were doing the abduction scene with the horses, we rented the horses from the village and we had particular riders because we wanted to do it in a certain way, and also, there were insurance issues, and we didn’t want to be liable, and then so they went, “You guys are doing it wrong.” So they literally wanted to get all the guys, the professional riders that we brought from the city to ride the horses, and they wanted to show us themselves how it’s done.

So they showed you how they abduct girls?

Z: Right. See you have to understand because in their context, in that traditional context, it’s not something that’s bad. It is part of life. It happens there, and so it’s part of who they are.

How did you find your female leads? The little girl never acted before, so how did you guide her through the most emotional scenes?

Z: The lawyer, played by Meron Getnet, is a classically trained actor and had been in 10 or 11 movies before we got her, and she had two or three television shows and was taking her masters in theater … With Tizita Hagere, we got lucky. Two weeks before we shot, we had almost given up, and we weren’t going to shoot at all if we didn’t have the right person to play her because she is the core of the film. She has the emotional trigger that goes on through the film, and so, it’s too much to ask for a young person to play that, right? So you kind of have to find that person already born with those elements. She was 13 when we cast her. And I knew that I didn’t want to overwhelm her, so I didn’t give her the script. So we started working on a daily basis. And I would tell her exactly what happened for that scene. And so I’d tell her what happened before it, and then what’s going to happen after. So we would have a conversation, not about her, but about the character, Hirut. That is a real person. So she kind of felt like she got to know her as a friend, so she always talked about the part as a third person, so it’s not about her. She’s actually emulating somebody else’s story, which helped us because you can see when you talk to her. Most of the takes were first or second takes.

How did Angelina Jolie happen to become an executive producer for the film?

M: After really working hard to try and raise the money, we actually had the finishing cut and it was a month before we were going to premiere it at Sundance. And you know we were sitting there, and there were all these amazing films that get made and don’t really get out there, and so we were talking with one of the executive producers, and said, “Wouldn’t it be great to try and, like, get somebody,” and actually our executive producer was like, “You know, I know someone who knows Angelina; this is so up her alley, let’s try it.” Me and Z were like, “Whatever.” We were so tired at that point.

We sent the cut of the film and literally didn’t think anything of it and literally like a week later, she called us. We were sitting on a porch, and she called Z and was like, “Hi, it’s Angie. I love your film.” You know? And she’s been amazing. Like kind of opening doors and making sure. You know, a foreign language film about Africa. I mean this is a very hard market in America to try and get this film seen, so having her name totally helped in terms of, like, helping profile and just getting it known. She’s actually been a wonderful ambassador. She took it with her to the Global Seminar on Sexual Violence last June in England and had a screening with dignitaries in the U.N. She’s on the cover of Ms. Magazine this month actually talking about our film and the campaign that we’re doing about child marriage, so she’s been a true angel and so supportive of the film. It’s been awesome.

Difret opened October 23 at Lincoln Plaza in Manhattan.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hz4NbqGeEZQ”]

Paula Schwartz is a veteran journalist who worked at the New York Times for three decades. For five years she was the Baguette for the New York Times movie awards blog Carpetbaggers. Before that she worked on the New York Times night life column, Boldface, where she covered the celebrity beat. She endured a poke in the ribs by Elijah Wood’s publicist, was ejected from a party by Michael Douglas’s flak after he didn’t appreciate what she wrote, and endured numerous other indignities to get a story. More happily she interviewed major actors and directors–all of whom were good company and extremely kind–including Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Morgan Freeman, Clint Eastwood, Christopher Plummer, Dustin Hoffman and the hammy pooch “Uggie” from The Artist. Her idea of heaven is watching at least three movies in a row with an appreciative audience that’s not texting. Her work has appeared in Moviemaker, more.com, showbiz411 and reelifewithjane.com.

‘Freeheld’ Beautifully Captures the Notion that “Love Is Love”

Like waves lapping persistently against the shore, the film is a succession of small, understated moments. Images of water and the sea are trickled throughout while the power of persistence functions on various symbolic levels.

This guest post by Natalie Wilson previously appeared at Ms. blog and is cross-posted with permission.

Love is forged in small moments. Like ragged bits of bottles polished into sea glass, Freeheld‘s lead characters, Laurel Hester (Julianne Moore) and Stacie Andree (Ellen Page), are rugged and tough, tumbled unwittingly by societal pressures and personal illness into gems fighting for LGBTQ equality.

In one early scene in the film—which is based on the true story of Laurel and Stacie’s landmark legal battle—the couple walks on the beach. They find a piece of sea glass, joking about wether or not it is an item worth keeping. Later, after Laurel’s death from lung cancer, Stacie lovingly puts this gem from the sea into a box of remembrances.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blk27Jj9UE8″]

Though the word feminism is never used, the film drips with feminist undercurrents. As a detective, Laurel must fight to be valued on the police force and hopes to become the first woman lieutenant in New Jersey, while Stacie has to prove she can rotate tires better than a man to get a job as a mechanic.

At one point, Laurel references the white male privilege of her detective partner, Dane Wells. Though he’s an ally to the couple through the film, such privilege is shown to shape the political landscape as well as the law—the five “Freeholders” that make up the county’s governing body are an “old boys network” using their white and male privilege to block Laurel’s attempts to ensure her pension will go to her domestic partner, Stacie.

In addition to documenting how Laurel’s battle with cancer became a battle for marriage equality, the film shows the small daily micro-aggressions one must endure as queer person in a heteronormative society, such as when Laurel’s police colleagues take swipes at her same-sex relationship, or when a group of men attempt to rob the couple while they’re out together in public.

The film has not garnered rave reviews—in fact, it has been written off for having cardboard characters and by-the-numbers drama that “undermine its noble intentions.” I disagree. True, the film is not brimming with action scenes or pulsing with dramatic soundscapes—it builds slowly and ends rather quietly. It is, in fact, far more like life and death than most of the movies that try to capture such stories; life is often slow and undramatic, death is often unexpected and quiet. Freeheld is not a crashing wave of drama—it is, rather, characterized by ebb and flow and captures the change of tide towards justice for LGBTQ people.

Like feminism, which is often characterized as coming in waves, Freeheld depicts the slow build of a changing tide; right now, U.S. culture is experiencing such a change in the tide regarding LGBTQ justice. Women like Laurel and Stacie are part of the wellspring that made this wave possible; part of the multitudes of people trying to live their lives and love who they love, despite living in a culture that uses religion, government and the law to keep the tide turned against them. Freeheld may not shine like a diamond, but it certainly offers us a beautiful piece of history—one that has tumbled and turned lives made jagged by injustice into beautiful, unbreakable bits of sea glass.

Natalie Wilson teaches women’s studies and literature at California State University, San Marcos. She is the author of Seduced by Twilight and blogs for Ms., Girl with Pen and Bitch Flicks.

Seed & Spark: “Not Even Once”

I don’t know yet if we made a good movie, but I’m pretty sure we made an honest movie—and you can’t do that while you, or your characters, are busy pretending to be “strong.” Being vulnerable, and weak, and pushing ahead anyway is what’s interesting about anyone, fictional or real.

Bre Mueck and Matthew Luret at the park in a scene from All Earthly Constraints

This is a guest post by Ryan M. Moore.

My first memory of being exposed to a feminist film (and one of my first memories, period) is of my mom setting up a projector in our basement (8mm? 16mm? I am old), loading it with a reel she had borrowed from the library (yes, you could do that!) and showing my brother and me an animated film called Reverse-a-quake! It was set on an island which was hit by a big earthquake, which caused all of the men to have to switch to doing what had previously been women’s work, and vice-versa. That there was anything political about this storyline sailed right over my 6-year-old head, but knowing what I know now, it must have sunk in a little.

I call myself a feminist without reservation, but I didn’t set out to make a feminist statement, or any kind of political statement, when I wrote and directed my feature film debut All Earthly Constraints. The lead character, Emily (played by the amazing Bre Mueck) is a struggling screenwriter (“Write what you know!”) who works in a gelato shop. Emily’s screenplay is about a struggling screenwriter named Emma (“Write what you know!”) who works in a coffee shop, and is also secretly a superheroine named Emmageddon. Emma is Emily’s “Mary Sue” (a character that is a thinly veiled, idealized version of her author), and Emmageddon is Emma’s. It’s Mary Sues all the way down.

In one scene, Emily has just left her writer’s group in tears after having her script “Emmageddon” savaged (“Self-indulgent! Masturbatory!”) by the sadistic self-proclaimed group leader, John. Soft-spoken Dylan goes after Emily, and they end up talking and drinking at a local park. In the course of their first-ever real conversation, this happens:

DYLAN: I guess I just think about… sometimes, you know, a real job, a family, stability. No “someday when I make it.” Is that so wrong? I mean, haven’t you ever thought you might be worthwhile, or good enough, or whatever, just how you are—just being you?

EMILY: Not even once.

DYLAN: (after a long pause) Me neither.

Shooting this scene was incredibly strange. To hear and see the most honest thing I’ve ever written about the creative process brought to life by two amazing actors, seemed, at the time, like an affirmation of all the choices I’ve ever made. I fell largely on Emily’s side as I thought, “Yeah, I’m doing the right thing with my life.”

Three months later, mired in the post-production process, I can see Dylan’s side too. Maybe it should be enough to just work your job and live your life and be happy with you are. Maybe I would’ve been happier that way. Maybe it’s just my ego that tells me I can’t possibly ever settle for “normal.” It’s been an incredibly difficult process trying to finish this film—making a movie is hard. Trying to do anything well is hard. Life is hard.

Bre Mueck as Emmageddon in a scene from All Earthly Constraints

But what I learned in the process of shooting that scene (and of tangling up my reality and emotional state with that of my character’s to a frankly disorienting extent that I hope would make Charlie Kaufman proud), was this: Emily is not a “strong female character.” Emily isn’t “strong,” at least not exclusively. She starts the scene in tears, and continues by admitting her deepest self-doubts to Dylan, not because she has any real connection with him (yet), but because he’s there and willing to listen and pay for the booze.

And Emmageddon isn’t always “strong” either, even though she’s a self-proclaimed superhero. Who would be interested in seeing a story about someone who was nothing but “strong,” all the time, in every situation? It would be like watching a film about a slab of granite. I don’t know yet if we made a good movie, but I’m pretty sure we made an honest movie—and you can’t do that while you, or your characters, are busy pretending to be “strong.” Being vulnerable, and weak, and pushing ahead anyway is what’s interesting about anyone, fictional or real.

I have a lot of problems with the current crop of superhero movies. While the artistry and craft that goes into their creation is almost literally unimaginable, all too often they exist exclusively in the realm of black and white, “good guys” and “bad guys,” strong, wise-cracking male heroes and female sidekicks who exist mostly as window-dressing, or as sexual conquests for the men. One of my goals in creating All Earthly Constraints was to create a female superhero who was also human: Yes, she kicks, punches, and slaps people who deserve to be kicked, punched and slapped, and she’s good at it. But she has no special powers and she can be hurt, physically and emotionally. Under the costume, she’s still a person. I’m not quite delusional enough to believe that All Earthly Constraints will ever be playing in your local multiplex next to the latest Summer tentpole, but I hope it starts a few conversations, or adds a little bit to some that are already happening.

You can learn more about All Earthly Constraints, and follow or support our crowdfunding campaign at Seed & Spark.

Ryan M. Moore is a writer and director living in Silver Lake, Los Angeles. All Earthly Constraints is his first feature film.

Secondhand Embarrassment in ‘Chewing Gum’

‘Chewing Gum’ is a gem and let’s hope that this is a good indication of the bright future that’s ahead of Michaela Coel.

This is a guest post by Giselle Defares.

At the 67^th prime time Emmy Awards, Viola Davis dropped several truth bombs during her acceptance speech after becoming the first African-American to win an Emmy for best actress in a drama: “The only thing that separates women of color from anyone else is opportunity.” Well, when no doors open you have to kick them in. In the UK there has been an underrepresentation of BAME (Black, Asian, and minority ethnic) actors in TV and film; most shows give an incorrect reflection of the British society, especially when it’s filmed in London, where 40 percent of the population is non-white. There are several initiatives such as The Act For Change Project lead by Danny Lee Wynter that campaigns to strengthen diversity in live and recorded arts. The lack of diversity is especially noticeable when it comes to British comedy. There were only a handful of comedy sketch shows in the last 20 years from Desmond’s to The Real McCoy to Little Miss Jocelyn, and that’s about it. Black British humor is underrated, period. Some artists venture out on their own thus leading the way. Enter Michaela Coel.

The Ghanaian-British actress/writer/poet Michaela Coel has forged her own path in the industry whilst being vulnerable and honest in her creativity. Coel was “discovered” by playwright and director Ché Walker during one of her poetry slams. He invited her to visit the masterclasses he held at RADA and from there she later obtained her degree from the Guildhall School for Music and Drama. In her last year, Coel created her own graduation piece, a 15-minute monologue that became the first version of her one-woman show Chewing Gum Dreams, which she later performed at the National Theater in London. In an interview with The Evening Standard, Coel explained that she wanted her show to reflect “the sort of life you don’t see very often on TV. Tracey’s sexual naiveté, for example, reflects [my own] celibacy between the ages of 17 and 22… I had a massive conversion to this very Pentecostal, demon-exorcising church. Getting to the point where I started to do not such a good job of being celibate, was awkward and horrible. So much guilt. Psychologically, I was in a whirlwind.”

Chewing Gum centers round Tracey Gordon (Michaela Coel), a 24-year-old who grew up on a council estate in east London in a strict religious environment who’s trying to alter her path in adulthood. She’s innocent and wise and equally adores her idols Beyoncé and Jesus. She stumbles her way through London and finds out the hard way what she should and shouldn’t be doing. While Tracey is trying to broaden her world, her sister Cynthia (Susan Wokoma) is content with their solemn life as long as she can play the board game Ludo with her family every night. Her overly religious mother Joy (Shola Adewusi) sermons innocent bystanders on the street with quips such as: “My dear, your vagina is holy. I command you to leave your nether regions be.” Tracey’s best friend Candice (Danielle Walters) and her grandmother Esther (Maggie Steed) are more worldly and they often gives her disastrous life advice. Tracey has been in a six-year relationship with her Pentecostal Christian boyfriend Ronald (John MacMillan) and is eager to lose her virginity with him, while Ronald says in his prayers, “We will wait till we die if it brings you glory.” Luckily for Tracey there’s the neighborhood poet Connor (Robert Lonsdale), who seems to really like her.

The first episode was enjoyable, filthy, funny, and loaded with secondhand embarrassment, but the balance between all the characters wasn’t quite there. Before Coel got the greenlight for her six episodes on Channel 4, she got the opportunity to create two comedy blaps to present her idea (unfortunately Channel 4 made them private on YouTube). She changed certain elements from the shorts and at some moments they worked better than what was aired in the first episode. It’s especially noticeable with the new Connor. The old Connor (Morgan Watkins) was slightly better at pulling off the dumb yet dorky character in a less self- conscious way. The new Connor feels a bit out of place (and dorkier) in the first episode, but it seems that Lonsdale will improve in the upcoming episodes. However, the addition of her Christian boyfriend Ronald is a great move.

Chewing Gum is refreshing since it breaks the mold of the overriding limited representation of minorities in the UK. Coel shows us a protagonist who deals with love, religion, classism, pop culture, and it’s set against the background of a council estate. Yet Tracey isn’t the archetype of the Black girl who’s often portrayed as either: unhappy, uneducated, poor, highly sexualized and surrounded by aggression and criminal behavior or other tropes that seem to be prevalent when it comes to the portrayal of the Black British experience within the media. – see Top Boy (fun fact: Coel had a small part in this show). The factor that binds the people on the estate together is, according to Coel, “class and community.”

Coel shines in her leading role. Tracey is kind, grounded and sweet whilst her best friend Candice has a more distinct personality: brash, bubbly and definitely more experienced when it comes to sex. Her advice to Tracey on her date with Ronald: “Just sit on his face.” Well, it went from innocent to filthy (yet funny) real quick. The relationships and the conversations that Tracey has with her friends and family are natural, see for instance the scenes where Tracey discusses her upcoming date with Candice:

Tracey: “ Candice, I’m 24, I’m a virgin. Yes. That doesn’t mean I wanna have sex with my boyfriend, yeah.”

Candice: “ You don’t have to. Bag someone on Tinder. It’s free. Set the thing to find someone in your borough, and walk. A tinder bang is not even a bus-fare, bruv.”

Tracey (looks into the camera): “Candice is like the buffest girl I’ve ever seen on the whole of my estate but she has learning difficulties so it sort of balances it all out. I can be best friends with her and I’m not even jealous or anything.”

Candice: “ You know if you leave it too long, you tear when he enters you. You need stitches.”

Tracey: “Yeah, well, thank god for the NHS then, innit.”

Tracey gives us a glimpse how awkward (extremely guarded) twentysomethings can operate. Comparisons are made with Girls by Lena Dunham or that the show is the British equivalent of The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl by Issa Rae. While Rae and Coel both managed to create their own space when there were no opportunities that’s where the similarities end. It’s fair to say that Chewing Gum stands on its own.

The appeal of Chewing Gum lies in the humor, the familiarity and quite frankly the second hand embarrassment when you see Tracey trying to fulfil her sexual fantasies. Coel gives us a Black female lead who doesn’t shy away from graphic (offensive) sexual humor. Susan Wokoma shines as the religious, younger sister Cynthia. The character could be one note but Wokoma shows her comedic chops. There’s great chemistry between Tracey, Candice and her grandmother Esther, hopefully their relationship will be explored. All the characters are well cast, but Candice and Connor need to be more fleshed out in the upcoming episodes.

Chewing Gum is the comedy with a Black female lead some of us have been waiting for. It’s not the representation of Blackness but it’s certainly nice to see a Black leading character who isn’t molded in archetypes, which can be damaging society’s perception of Black women. Tracey is open, vulnerable, filthy, funny and just trying to live life the best as she can. Chewing Gum is a gem and let’s hope that this is a good indication of the bright future that’s ahead of Michaela Coel.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dpm3UcJd3no”]

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

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

Check out what we’ve been reading this week – and let us know what you’ve been reading/writing in the comments!

Sister Suffragette: ‘Slave’ T-Shirts Highlight White Feminism’s Race Problem by Kirsten West Savali at The Root

The High Stakes for “Quantico” and its South Asian Star by Stephanie Abraham at Bitch Media

Watch 1981 Report on Racial Stereotyping & Lack of Opportunities for Black Actors (What’s Changed 30+ Years Later?) by Tambay A. Obenson at Shadow and Act

Female-Driven Movies Make Money, So Why Aren’t More Being Made? by Thelma Adams at Variety

The Hollywood gender discrimination investigation is on: EEOC contacts women directors by Rebecca Keegan at Los Angeles Times

Ava DuVernay: For Women and People of Color, Hollywood is “A Whole Bunch of Locked Doors” by Inkoo Kang at Women and Hollywood

Study shows how women directors get blocked in Hollywood by John Anderson at Fortune

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

Seed & Spark: The “Flawed” Female Protagonist Is, Quite Simply, My Favorite

Not everyone who loves romantic comedies, lives them. Not every happy ending looks like happily ever after. If you feel like you don’t know which box to check, find four lines and create your own.

This is a guest post by Christina Morelli.

In many ways, I am a traditional “girl.” I love getting dressed up. I’m a sucker for every romantic comedy ever made (particularly the solid run of Nora Ephron flicks in the late 80s/early 90s). I read chick lit, and I tend to sob right through it. I live for a good night in with a bottle of wine and my baking supplies. I’m a hybrid of Julia Roberts in “My Best Friend’s Wedding,” Debra Messing in “The Wedding Date,” and Renee Zellweger in “Bridget Jones’ Diary,” with a hint of Kate Winslet in “The Holiday.” My all-time favorite movie is, “When Harry Met Sally.”

Throw a pumpkin spice latte in my hand, turn the camera to selfie mode, and slap on the hashtag- #basicbitch.

And yet, that’s where it ends. For the most part, I’m lacking in several of the adult female stereotype categories. I have an averse reaction to the color pink, unless I’m supporting breast cancer. I don’t like glitter or anything on my body to be adorned with something large and/or sparkly. I’d prefer to elope, if I ever actually get married, and I have puppy fever far more often than I have baby fever. At the moment, “nesting” refers to the being too lazy to fold laundry so I simply sleep on top of it, like a baby bird. Large groups of women give me anxiety. Staying in one apartment, city, job or even room for too long gives me anxiety. And now that I live alone, I’m not going to lie- shaving, primping, and even sometimes, showering, are on an “as needed” basis. (Maybe that’s somewhat connected to the missing bride gene.)

Bridget Jones’ is my spirit animal.

I’ve never completely felt like I fit in anywhere. Far too introverted for most of the women I know, far too emotional for most of the men. So when I ventured into scriptwriting a few years back, I naturally felt compelled to write leading ladies with the same notable flaws that I too experienced. “Write what you know!” they said. Well I know commitment issues, creativity ADD, heartbreak and friendship. I know shifting career paths and fear of the unknown. I know travel. Solo travel, to be exact. I know what it’s like to have trouble letting go. And I know the challenge of approaching something with no experience, including writing, and figuring out a way to make it work.

When I completed the first draft of the script for my full length play, Chasing Shadows, I was eager to get feedback. Chasing Shadows told the story of four fairies who decided to leave Never Land in pursuit of New York City. They traded their wings and magic for the chance to become “real women,” and were granted the exact lives they had wished for back when they were fairies. Tink, the last of the group to give up her freedom, was offered the opportunity to give the real world a one-month trial run. But upon arriving in New York, she found herself torn between her past and her present.

The idea came from the notion that it was socially acceptable for men to embody the “Peter Pan Syndrome” for their entire lives, but women who did not “grow up” and follow the same paths as their family and friends were viewed in a negative light. The Tinker Bell Effect. It was funny, it was dark, it was sarcastic, and it was about fairies- bound to be a hit!

Not so much. The first feedback I received from the few people I shared it with was that my protagonist was not likable. She was too angry, too bitter. No one was rooting for her.

The fairies of Chasing Shadows will be recreating their roles for the web series DUST: A Fairy Tale.

I threw out that draft and started all over again. It took me close to a year to figure out Tink’s new story. I’m sure part of the reason was because I was trying to write what everyone else wanted to hear, and not the characters in my head. I struggled with the fact I was writing a “girly” script, in an age where people seem to crave blood, action, diversity and darkness. Even after several drafts and a few staged performances, people still questioned her journey. She seemed a little lost. She didn’t have an “arc.” It didn’t wrap up in a pretty little bow. I’m sure on some level, she simply made everyone uncomfortable. With all of those opinions in mind, I fought with the decision to keep pursuing the script.

About a month after the second staged reading of Chasing Shadows was performed, I came across an article in the Huffington Post called “Rise of the Woman Child,” by Lauren Duca. The article opened with discussing the predominant criticism Preggoland star Sonja Bennett received regarding her lead character- which was that she wasn’t likeable. The skies parted, the angels sang, a giant beam of light circled my head and I raised my arms victoriously… I wasn’t alone.

A must-read for today’s crop of new female writers.

It goes on to site other contemporary female protagonists, such as Annie (Kristen Wiig) in Bridesmaids and Jenny (Anna Kendrick) in Happy Christmas, who embodied similar qualities that made viewers lack empathy. Unlike their male counterpart roles, such as the characters in Old School, The Hangover, or any Adam Sandler movie, it seems that women who have a different definition of happily ever after, audiences find difficult to relate to.

After reading that piece, I knew I had to continue sharing Tink’s adventures. I made the decision to adapt the play into something online and episodic, allowing me flexibility to develop the characters one tale at a time… and so DUST: A Fairy Tale was born. The thought of taking on yet another huge endeavor (and another career path) with little experience and just a small team behind me was terrifying, but I was inspired by the growing voice of women in the industry. I desired the opportunity for mine to be heard. We launched our Seed & Spark campaign two and half weeks ago, and every day I have to remind myself I don’t write to be liked or to fit in, I write because I have a story to tell.

Not everyone who loves romantic comedies, lives them. Not every happy ending looks like happily ever after. If you feel like you don’t know which box to check, find four lines and create your own.

Because perhaps, the most grown up thing anyone can do, is simply to accept another person for exactly who they are. Flaws and all.

Writer. Director. Producer. Creative consultant by day, fairy by night. From her first ballet shoes to her first computer, Christina Morelli has been immersed in the arts for as long as she could walk and write. Her passion for creating paired with a strong entrepreneurial spirit carved the way for a number of lucrative business opportunities, from owning her own dance studio to producing staged readings of her original full length play in New York City and London. In addition to fueling her own artistic desires, Christina has worked as a writer and consultant for a number of sectors in the entertainment world, including music, production, dance and theater. She is currently thrilled to be bringing her favorite fairies from stage to screen in the upcoming web series, DUST: A Fairy Tale. When she’s not creating a new world of words, characters and scenarios, Christina loves photography, travel, wine and surprising people with her latest adventure. www.christinamorelli.com

The Disappearance of Sexism and Racism in Dystopian Fiction

Certainly, teenagers strain against authority and exert their independence. This doesn’t mean they’re immune to other big issues that plague society – issues such as sexism and racism. If the novels being written for this demographic want to call themselves true dystopias based on a futuristic society in which our current way of living led to some global disaster, then the writers of the novels and the film adaptations shouldn’t shy away from some of the biggest issues in current politics and society.

This is a guest post by Maria Ramos.

If book sales and box office numbers are any indication, young adults love their dystopian fiction. So much so that the creative powers that be are intent on keeping the momentum going with more and more additions to this fairly recent genre phenomenon, for better or for worse. Unfortunately, the repetition breeds dilution of the initial idea of a dystopia as an opposite of a utopia, or perfect world.

The idea of dystopia takes into account basic and flawed human nature, hinging on the idea that power, political in this case, corrupts, leading to a small group of oppressors and a greater group of oppressed. YA dystopian fiction tends to present this oppression as a necessary sacrifice to save the rest of humanity after some global and apocalyptic disaster, often environmental in nature and with the clear message that we should take care of our environment now or suffer our own dystopia later.

The common element in a true dystopia is politics, but in these YA versions, the politics have become metaphors for the seemingly oppressive nature of adult and school rules under which teenagers often chafe. This conversion leaves the stories one-sided and shallow, expecting the reader to assume that, because this is a common problem within the young adult mindset, it is also the biggest problem facing young adults today. At best, such an assumption stems from laziness, and at worst, it’s insulting.

Take The Hunger Games, for example. Society is divided by geography and profession as each of the 12 districts supplies the capital city with a specific product or skill. The districts live in various extremes of poverty and deprivation. While some would argue that such suffering would bring out the best in some people, the situation is also ripe for the desperation that leads to an irrational fear of other, a prime motivator of racism. And yet, while the author created a diverse group of characters, including Katniss who was described as “olive-skinned,” the discrimination based on this diversity is simply missing.

The same could be said for The Maze Runner series (the first film is available on demand through Google Play and DirecTV), which provides representation of various races to include Asian and African American and yet never a hint of racial tensions either in the grove or once they’re out of it and into The Scorch Trials, the second installment of the book and movie trilogy. Possibly the worst offender of recent offerings, however, is the Divergent series, in which society is divided by faction only, with each faction based on a particular character trait. Not only is there no hint of racism anywhere in any of the three novels of this trilogy, but sexism is gone, too.

This latter is particularly hard to swallow given that the domestically abusive and oppressive male leader of one faction (while actively opposing the female leader of another) never once makes a disparaging reference to her being deficient because she’s a woman, even after his true character is brought to light and his crimes against his own family are revealed to all. There is one comment made by a male to the lead female Tris when Peter tells her she has nice legs for a “stiff,” but this is a reference to her previous faction only. No reference to her appearance as a female, only faction.

Overall, if writers and filmmakers wish to reach the widest possible audience, they’ll need to take a harder look at more than struggles with authority. By leaving out other important problems faced by today’s young people, they leave a glaring hole in the message.

Maria Ramos is a writer interested in comic books, cycling, and horror films. Her hobbies include cooking, doodling, and finding local shops around the city. She currently lives in Chicago with her two pet turtles, Franklin and Roy. You can follow her on Twitter @MariaRamos1889.

Dead Woman Walking: ‘Phoenix’ and the Resurrected Femme Fatale

This is a guest post by Amy Woolsey.

You can scarcely read a review of Phoenix, the latest movie by German director Christian Petzold, without encountering a reference to Vertigo. Like Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 classic, Phoenix deals with trauma, mistaken identity, and male authority. Stylistically, it leans more toward restraint than melodrama, but it still makes use of double imagery and lush colors (red in particular) to create a surreal atmosphere that drifts through each frame like cabaret music onto nighttime streets.

As in Vertigo, red suggests romance – and danger.

Both films also include a woman who comes back from the dead. In Vertigo, Kim Novak’s Madeleine Elster inflames the passion of Jimmy Stewart’s ex-detective Scottie Ferguson, only to apparently commit suicide halfway through the movie by jumping off a bell tower. Later, the grief-stricken Scottie runs into a woman named Judy Barton who reminds him of Madeleine, and he grows obsessed with molding her into his former lover’s likeness. It turns out that the two women are the same person: Judy had been impersonating Madeleine as part of an elaborate murder scheme. In Phoenix, Nina Hoss plays Nelly Lenz, a Holocaust survivor who gets surgery to reconstruct her mutilated face. When she reunites with her husband Johnny (Ronald Zehrfeld), he doesn’t recognize her, but noticing a resemblance, he convinces her to masquerade as his “dead” wife so they can collect and split her inheritance.

The similarity isn’t a coincidence. Petzold, along with late screenwriter Harun Farocki, deliberately designed Phoenix as “Vertigo in reverse,” as he explained in an interview with The Film Stage:

“We always thought about the male perspective. We always thought about a man who creates a woman, but we never thought about the perspective of a woman… It was Harun that said we had to change the perspective, so we started thinking about what the male subjectivity had done to Kim Novak, and the studio system — to the actor and to the character in Vertigo. Why all these stories are made by men, huh?”

Far from a cheap gimmick, the point-of-view switch in Phoenix sheds new light on Vertigo and film noir, demonstrating how the genre has evolved since its World War II-era heyday.

As a genre, noir is somewhat nebulous. The term did not enter popular usage until the 1970s, applied in retrospect to a set of films from the 1940s and ‘50s with similar aesthetic and thematic qualities. Some critics don’t consider it a genre at all, but rather a cycle or style. Still, there are a number of conventions commonly associated with noir, from dramatic lighting that emphasizes shadows to a gloomy, even nihilistic mood, not to mention archetypes such as the world-weary detective and, most notably, the femme fatale – in the words of Roger Ebert, a woman who’d “just as soon kill you as love you, and vice versa.”

Barbara Stanwyck epitomizes the femme fatale as Phyllis Dietrichson in Double Indemnity.

Vertigo was released at the tail end of the classic noir period, but Madeleine Elster still displays the characteristics of a quintessential femme fatale. Slender, white, and platinum-blond, she has a statuesque, if patently artificial beauty, her face blank in a way that conveys mystery rather than vacuity – a discomfiting amalgam of sensuality and reserve. Yet even as she emanates danger, an air of tragedy surrounds her. Madeleine is doomed from the moment she appears onscreen; we’d already heard Gavin, her husband, speculate that she’s being possessed by the ghost of her suicidal great-grandmother, causing her to act “like someone I don’t know.” She may be an agent of death, but she’s also captive of it, perpetually haunted by the specter of her mortality. At one point, she tells Scottie that she feels “as though I’m walking down a long corridor that once was mirrored… and when I come to the end of the corridor, there’s nothing but darkness. And I know when I walk into the darkness that I’ll die.”

The femme fatale, then, embodies noir’s obsession with death – not only its inevitability but also its allure. Unlike the male hero, who strives to defy fate at every turn, the femme fatale is acutely aware of her vulnerability. As scholar Elisabeth Bronfen posits, she “accepts her death as the logical consequence of her insistence on a radical pursuit of personal freedom,” embracing ruin rather than wallowing in denial. It isn’t passivity so much as cynicism; as a woman in a patriarchal society, she’s familiar with the limits of autonomy and has no illusions of grandeur or righteousness. Judy describes her reunion with Scottie as “the moment I dreaded and hoped for,” suggesting she expected and possibly wanted to be found (she did stay in San Francisco and keep several items of clothing she’d worn as Madeleine). She accepts the immorality of her actions and the futility of avoiding retribution.

In theory, Madeleine’s “suicide” should humble Scottie, a reminder of his own vulnerability. But being a noir hero, he shuns enlightenment and clings to the very American, very masculine belief that individuals have absolute mastery over their destinies and the world around them. His efforts to manage Judy stem from not only male hubris, but also an obsessive need to regain a sense of control and repel knowledge of life’s impermanence. Instead of directly confronting his guilt and failure, he deflects blame onto Judy, convinced that by vanquishing her, he can attain redemption and subdue his inner turmoil. While driving back to the bell tower where Madeleine died, Scottie declares, “There is one final thing I have to do and then I’ll be free of the past.” Novak’s dubious expression articulates what her character has no doubt learned: you can’t escape the past.

A more prevalent interpretation of the femme fatale reads her as a male fantasy, a screen onto which spectators can project their erotic desires. Although the narrative often penalizes the hero for succumbing to lust, it implicitly encourages the audience to participate in his temptation, establishing his point-of-view as dominant and rarely developing the woman beyond her surface. As Laura Mulvey’s oft-cited male gaze theory goes, men look, while women are looked at. Is it any wonder that the most memorable image from Vertigo is a shot of Madeleine sitting in front of a painted portrait, her back to the camera? She’s anonymous, part of the surrounding artwork. In this case, the femme fatale doesn’t personify fate but transcends it, her temporary demise and subsequent resurrection reinforcing her abstract nature – her fluid identity, otherworldly glamour, and general elusiveness. She’s not mortal because she’s not real. If that sounds contradictory to the “femme fatale as the essence of mortality” theory, it’s because the femme fatale is a fundamentally contradictory figure: elegant yet violent, volatile yet cunning, egocentric yet self-destructive, catering to female empowerment yet also male pleasure.

Hitchcock frames Madeleine herself as a work of art.

At Vulture, Angelica Jade Bastién lamented that noir has shriveled into an empty shell of its former self, tending to appropriate the genre’s most superficial aspects (the violence, the hardboiled dialogue) while neglecting its underlying meaning (the commentary on power, sexuality, deviance, and the American Dream). As a result, the femme fatale has lost much of her potency. Her influence is visible in the demented predators of psychosexual thrillers like Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct and the ravishing, albeit ultimately harmless sirens of neo-noirs like L.A. Confidential and Drive, but these characters lack their predecessors’ complexity and subversive edge. Along with David Fincher and Gillian Flynn’s twisted romance Gone Girl and Alex Garland’s sleek science-fiction parable Ex Machina, Phoenix takes strides toward salvaging the modern femme fatale, playing with perspective in order to deconstruct gender dynamics and genre tropes.

By situating her at the center of the story, Phoenix grants Nelly an agency Madeleine was denied, turning her into a fully realized individual with her own arc and interior life instead of a mere manifestation of the male hero’s subconscious. Behavior that could come across as illogical and contrived makes sense because Petzold exhibits genuine interest in understanding Nelly and what drives her. Without compromising subtlety, he peels back the layers of his heroine’s enigmatic façade, hinting at her willful nostalgia (she implores the surgeon operating on her face to make her look how she used to) and simultaneous, conflicting urge to find the truth about her husband. Hitchcock, meanwhile, never bothered to devise an explanation for why Madeleine/Judy goes along with Gavin’s plan to murder his wife; she just does what the plot requires of her.

It’s clear right away that Nelly is not a conventional femme fatale. She first appears huddled in the passenger seat of a car, her face covered with bandages and shadows – a stark juxtaposition from Madeleine’s introduction in Vertigo, with Scottie furtively eyeing her emerald-clad figure as Bernard Hermann’s score swells. There’s no attempt to hide Nelly’s fragility; as she wanders through the desolate streets of postwar Berlin, she seems to fade into the background, a ghost haunting ruins. Here, the false death illustrates the effects of trauma, the feeling of having witnessed the end of the world and no longer belonging in the present. Johnny’s manipulation isn’t just inconvenient for Nelly; it’s oppressive, a refusal to acknowledge her personhood. When the bandages come off and she undergoes her transformation, Nelly starts to occupy more of the screen, but that initial sense of alienation and repressed anxiety lingers, etched in Hoss’s searching gaze and tentative walk.

Especially telling is the scene where Nelly enters Johnny’s basement, looking like her old self for the first time. The camera establishes a close-up of her shoes before gliding upward, revealing her body in fragments as she descends the stairs. It’s a familiar technique, used to elicit awe at a female character’s appearance in movies as varied as the Bette Davis romance Now, Voyager and the James Bond-esque spy romp Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol. In Phoenix, however, the sequence unfolds with an unease that defuses the sensationalism and, as a result, undercuts its effectiveness as a tool of the male gaze. Gone is the mystique that shrouded the femme fatales of classical noir; we’re too conscious of Nelly’s suffering to romanticize her. That’s not to say she is depicted as weak: even at her most ostensibly docile, when Johnny dictates her appearance and movements, Nelly is in command of the narrative. She obtains power not through violence or seduction but knowledge, her willingness to exploit the discrepancy between her real identity and Johnny’s perception of her.

A silent power struggle

Noir is traditionally regarded as the realm of men, with its unsentimental look at crime and corruption. Yet, at its best, the genre has always been as much a portrait of femininity as of masculinity, showing how women navigate and resist the social, moral, and sexual standards imposed on them. After all, one of the reasons for its enduring popularity is its fascination with outsiders, the people lurking in the margins and dark corners of society. Phoenix succeeds where so many have fallen short because it recognizes the value of women’s experiences, presenting a heroine who exists for her sake, not the hero’s, who is neither vilified nor fetishized. At last, the femme fatale manages to transcend the male imagination and become human – free.

Amy Woolsey is a writer living in northern Virginia. Since graduating from George Mason University in May, she has started interning at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. She spends her free time consuming, discussing, and generally obsessing over pop culture. You can follow her on Twitter and Tumblr, and she keeps a personal blog that is updated irregularly. In addition to freelancing at The Week, she wrote about The Bling Ring for Bitch Flicks’ “Unlikable Women” theme week.

Recommended Reading

The Modern Femme Fatale in Nicolas Wending Refn’s Neo-Noir Drive

No Place for a Woman: The Family in Film Noir

Vertigo by Jim Emerson

Hoss Is Boss: The Enigma of Christian Petzold’s Muse by Scott Tobias

‘Sleepy Hollow’: The Phoenix Rises From Its Ashes?

While the episode wasn’t perfect we can only hope that ‘Sleepy Hollow’ will pull off what it has planned and at least for the time being there’s no need to dust off the #AbbieMillsDeservesBetter hashtag.

This is a guest post by Giselle Defares.

Will FOX be able to save Sleepy Hollow? That was the question that bothered critics and fans alike these past nine months. Not since NBC’s Heroes has a show sunk its own ship from season 1 to 2. FOX and TPTB promised to reboot the story and go back to the magic of season 1.

In the wake of the season 3 premiere this has to be said. The bar for Sleep Hollow’s promotion was set very low and they still missed the mark leading up to the premiere on Oct. 1. All the budget on FOX must have gone to the Empire promo but there had to be someone in the PR department who could have thought of utilizing social media to drum up the interest and the show’s scattered fan base (at least earlier than a week before the show starts). It’s ridiculous that Emmy-winner Viola Davis drummed up more buzz for Nicole Beharie in her speech than the PR department has accomplished in three seasons. That is something else.

There were many things that had to be dealt with in the first episode. There was a nine-month time jump, the broken relationship between Ichabod and Abbie, Jenny back on the forefront, the introduction of two new characters, and last but not least: the case of the week.

In the opening we’re directly introduced to the new villain Pandora (Shannyn Sossamon), who captures the Headless Horseman into her box (or in her own words “it’s more of a dowry”) whilst singing a song. By capturing the Headless Horseman, Pandora gave the box “the power of death” and thus she was able to summon the yaoguai. This is a battlefield demon who paralyzes people and feeds on their fear, which ultimately kills them. This was a great move to tie up the storylines of season 2, hand the baton from one villain to another, but leave the door open. Sossamon plays her role well and it’s interesting to note that during one episode she successfully performed more magic than Katrina in two seasons. How’s that for progress?

We find out that Abbie Mills (Nicole Beharie) has moved on with her life and is fully focused on her career. She finished her training with the FBI and is now a working agent under the leadership of her new mentor Mitch Granger (C. Thomas Howell). During their bust of the multi-state drug trafficking ring – with the cheesy name Anaconda- she receives a phone call with news regarding an old friend.

After the loss of his wife Katrina and son Henry in the season finale, Ichabod Crane (Tom Mison) told Abbie that he was going to “clear his head” and then never came back: “I required solitude. Then it became a habit. A deeply regrettable one.” This was a nice touch. He was grieving after all and needed time to find himself again. Ichabod traveled back to Scotland and searched for answers in his family’s tomb. He found a 4,000-year-old tablet marked with Sumerian engravings which translated to “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” OK.

Ichabod travelled back to the States and his family heirloom ensured that he got locked up and he has been in the custody of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement for five days before he called Abbie. The reason? He was ashamed and the necklace that Abraham gave Katrina (that contains his soul) lost its power, which means that something is wrong with the Headless Horseman, and they need to find out what it means. (Side note: Team Witness was still in sync during their time apart since they opted for the same haircut.)

The scene of the first demon attack is in a national park. Two men end up dead and the authorities suspect an animal attack. Abbie knows the area and states that it doesn’t have the right kind of predators. It was a nice moment to see the dynamic between the two. Ichabod the believer and Abbie the sceptic working together as a team; both brought their knowledge to the table. Or as Ichabod dramatically states, “Evil has returned to Sleepy Hollow.”

The duo heads back to the archives and there’s a lovely reunion with Jenny Mills (Lyndie Greenwood). Unfortunately, Irving won’t be coming back but Jenny explains what happened to him and hints that she helped him disappear. Jenny now works as a paralegal and is slowly finding her way back into society. She helps Ichabod and Abbie find out what the substance is that they found in the national park. She quips, “I spent years recovering obscure artifacts from all over the world – this is what I do.” Amen.

It wouldn’t be Sleepy Hollow without a historical connection and a flashback. They find out that when Benjamin Franklin wrote about the “red devil” at Bunker Hill, it didn’t refer to the redcoats names but to the yaoguai. In the flashback that follows we find out that it was Betsy Ross (Nikki Reed) who delivered the message to Colonel Prescott and thus turned history at Bunker Hill. While Sossamon fares well in her role, Reed doesn’t really make a lasting impression. In part because she didn’t really have much to do in her scenes. Her foreshadowing with the line “one day you’ll meet someone who make you forget all those manners” was a nice touch. It’s certainly funny that all the female characters of Ichabod’s past – historic icons no less- have been sexified and all have romantic ties with Ichabod. Betsy Ross felt modern, thus out of place and was dressed like a lost extra on the set of Pirates of the Caribbean.

Abbie is pulled back into work mode when the FBI receives a tip on their drug bust. She finds out that aggression and gunpowder attracts the yaoguai. Unfortunately, the yaoguai paralyzes her mentor Granger and slashes his throat. Why does she need to lose her mentors this way? Abbie does fire some shots and injures the yaoguai, which is a surprise to Team Witness since the demon is supposed to be invulnerable. The yaoguai has one weakness: it can be wounded when its eyes flash white in order to steal someone’s fear. Whilst Abbie is focused on the drug ring. Ichabod and Jenny hastily conduct a plan to trap the yaoguai. It seems to go well but in the end it’s Abbie who saves the day.

The episode is definitely miles better than most of season 2, yet there are some things that are hit or miss. There was no need for an Asian drug ring just because Team Witness was dealing with a Chinese demon. Hopefully Betsy Ross will be less bland in the upcoming episodes. The dialogue is sometimes very on the nose. Whilst trying to find out what demon there up against, Ichabod finds a book where it states that the demon looks for fear and it’s a servant not a master, to which Jenny states: “ Meaning that someone summoned it here, someone evil.” Jenny had some other questionable lines such as “ Guns, knives, things that go boom. We’re back in the demon-fighting business and I think we’re going to need them.” Alright, didn’t think of that. By the way, we still don’t know how Ichabod was able to travel to Scotland (and back) and how he made his living in the past year. How Sway? At least he’s entertaining the idea of finding a job.

While the episode wasn’t perfect we can only hope that Sleepy Hollow will pull off what it has planned and at least for the time being there’s no need to dust off the #AbbieMillsDeservesBetter hashtag.

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