Patsey can be the only the source of her violent hatred; and while Mistress Epps turns her spite on her husband occasionally, she is quickly reminded by her husband of her place in a patriarchal American Southern society–if he tires of her, she is gone. McQueen handles these situations with a frankness and humanity that is not overdone and he brings the best perfomances out of all his actors. The film got a standing ovation at Telluride, several times over, which is rare to happen at the festival.
From Red Tails to Lee Daniels’ The Butler and Django Unchained, there have been a lot of “Black Exodus” movies lately, and by Black Exodus, I mean every time there is major motion picture with a mostly African American cast (and usually a historical plot), every black person I know (including myself) goes to see the movie on opening weekend. Usually because there are so few movies, especially great films, that are made with African Americans as a major focus it’s an event to go see such a movie and we want to make sure Hollywood knows it has support.Well if there is any movie worth going to see whether you are black, white, woman or man, I urge you to go see 12 Years a Slave.
12 Years a Slave is based on the autobiographical account of Solomon Northrup, a successful, middle class African American attorney born free who lives in upstate New York with his family in the 1840s. He is kidnapped on his way to Washington DC to pursue a business deal and is sold into slavery at its xenith in the American South. The story accounts his experiences as an enslaved man and his struggle to get back to his family. British (and black) director Steve McQueen (of Hunger and Shame) directs an all-star cast of Chiwetel Ejiofor (Solomon Northrup) Brad Pitt, Michael Fassbender, Benedict Cumberbatch, Paul Giamatti, Alfre Woodard, and outstanding newcomer Kenyan actress Lupita N’yongo.
Unlike Django Unchained, it is not particularly rough to watch in its violence. As a matter of fact, because I saw Django Unchained I think I was better prepared to see the brutality portrayed in 12 Years a Slave. To me the most brutal scenes were not of the requisite whipping or hanging of the slaves, but of the systematic emotional break down of Solomon as he realizes what has happened to him and no matter how hard he protests, no one will believe who he is, and if they do, they beat him physically or emotionally until he eventually gives up. Solomon’s breakdown from freeman to slave provides the most interesting twist, because it’s not just about a man who was born a slave, lived a slave, and died a slave. This story was about a freeman with the privileges and rights of any other freeman who had them ripped away. And it’s this that allows the viewer to see the full brutality of American slavery, and how it thrived off depriving the human spirit. It’s Solomon’s determination to get back to his family that keeps him surviving, but it’s his fear and occasional brushes with nearly getting caught, that increase his fear (e.g. writing a letter to his family when slaves aren’t supposed to read and write) and keep him a slave.
The movie does not shy from the gender dynamics that were also at play in American slavery through Solomon’s female counterparts. From a slave woman named Eliza, who is separated from her children, to Patsey (played by outstanding newcomer Lupita Nyong’o), who is the unfortunate object of her slave master’s sexual advances. Through Mistress Shaw, the black mistress of a white plantation owner (played with sass by Alfre Woodard) we hear of the “choices” that many enslaved black women have then as she tries to counsel Patsey. Submit to the master’s sexual advances or feel the whip on your back and work hours in the fields, she admonishes. However, sometimes even if you submitted to the master of the plantation’s desires, it didn’t guarantee your safety. As Patsey finds out from her sociopathic Master Epps (Michael Fassbender), who has an obsessive fascination with her that results in him brutalizing her and others around her who might get in his way as he “pursues” her. One such object of Epps’ hatred and source of distress for Patsey is Master Epps’ wife, a Bible-thumping bitter woman (Sarah Paulson), who in a fit of jealous rage throws a glass at Patsey’s head when she sees her husband ogling her.
Patsey can be the only the source of her violent hatred; and while Mistress Epps turns her spite on her husband occasionally, she is quickly reminded by her husband of her place in a patriarchal American Southern society–if he tires of her, she is gone. McQueen handles these situations with a frankness and humanity that is not overdone and he brings the best perfomances out of all his actors. The film got a standing ovation at Telluride, several times over, which is rare to happen at the festival. The music is by renowned musician Hans Zimmer. 12 Years a Slave is a must-see by all accounts.
Atima Omara-Alwala is a political strategist and activist of 10 years who has served as staff on eight federal and local political campaigns and other progressive causes. Atima’s work has had a particular focus on women’s political empowerment and 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, and RH Reality Check.
Although I don’t share a common background with many people that I meet, I can relate to them thanks to my shared vocabulary: the lexicon of water-cooler moments provided by Bright/Kaufman/Crane, Angelou, Sorkin, Kaling, Chaiken, Fey, and so many others — and I will always be grateful for that. Entertainment and popular culture are universal languages that anyone can buy into as long as she’s willing: social capital as accessible as cable (and the Internet). That the same 35 lesbian-related films are available to stream on Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime — which is only about 20% of the overall “Gay and Lesbian” Genre tag — is frustrating because we’ve made so much progress offline. The fact that there are fewer than 200 films total that we can rent, stream, and buy on major platforms is discouraging, but it doesn’t mean that’s how it has to be forever.
Casablanca (reimagined)
This is a guest post by Allie Esslinger.
I grew up at the knee of amazing storytellers; talk was cheap and all we could afford. There was never a nest egg, but I always had a cache of stories…and I had television. And…I watched a lot of it. Malcolm Gladwell theorizes a person needs 10,000 contact hours to be brilliant in any one area: serialized, episodic content is my only shot.
I should also mention that I was raised in Alabama — home of the Crimson Tide, Rick Bragg, and the only ABC affiliate that did not air Ellen’s coming out episode in 1997. It took me a long time to understand myself in the context of the world at large because I didn’t have much access to it. A lot of progress has been made, but there’s still a lot to be done.
The idea that I made it through thousands of hours of programming and 20 years of life before I ever saw another mixed race lesbian is astonishing. There are 200+ LGBTQ film festivals each year, but only 17 films with a queer female character made it to theaters in 2012. If you aren’t lucky enough to get to OutFest or Gaze or Frameline, it can take months or even years to find a film that got buzz when it premiered– and especially ones that didn’t.
Last month I was finally able to see the full short film Social Butterfly, which was at both Sundance and SXSW in 2013. It stars Anna Margaret Hollyman and was writtern and directed by Lauren Wolkstein, one of Filmmaker Magazine’s Top 25 to Watch, among other accolades. It’s a different circumstance — the film was bought at the festival and is currently playing on television in France — but there are so many films that go undistributed out of festivals and then aren’t available again unless the filmmaker themselves are willing to promote, distribute, and make us all aware of their film rather than start a new project.
Despite my love for the gang on Friends, my affinity for high schoolers on the CW, and my complete and utter sympathy for every doctor to ever time an inner monologue to a catchy indie rock tune, I never felt like I had a character who I could identify with on a personal level. Although I generally agree that the beauty of the best films and series is that their stories transcend their characters and their settings, I also maintain that sometimes it’s nice to have the film do the leg work. I don’t always want to be metaphorically related to the person I’m watching on screen. I want it to be obvious (like this new campaign we started on our Tumblr that will re-imagine classic romances as lesbian romance films through their key poster art). It’s not just that the lack of well-produced, well-developed lesbian stories has a negative effect on queer women — it hurts society to never see diverse depictions of this diverse segment of the population. And that’s something we can fix.
When I was a sophomore in college, I walked into an Honors seminar with a blank index card waiting for me as I sat down. On one side, Dr. McKenzie had us write the most important question we could ask ourselves, and on the other side, we wrote the one thing the world needs most. Before he read the answers aloud, he explained that the exercise is the foundation for politics–the work of connecting the self with the needs of others. Since we only had 30 seconds to think of these answers, I learned in less than a minute what is most important to me as an individual and a world citizen.
What does the world need most?
Hope.
What’s the most important question I can ask myself?
Am I being helpful?
That index card was like a globe spinning on its axis, and then all of a sudden, it was laid out flat like a roadmap–self-awareness and optimism as the compass.
Although I don’t share a common background with many people that I meet, I can relate to them thanks to my shared vocabulary: the lexicon of water-cooler moments provided by Bright/Kaufman/Crane, Angelou, Sorkin, Kaling, Chaiken, Fey, and so many others–and I will always be grateful for that. Entertainment and popular culture are universal languages that anyone can buy into as long as she’s willing: social capital as accessible as cable (and the Internet). That the same 35 lesbian-related films are available to stream on Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime–which is only about 20 percent of the overall “Gay and Lesbian” Genre tag–is frustrating because we’ve made so much progress offline. The fact that there are fewer than 200 films total that we can rent, stream, and buy on major platforms is discouraging, but it doesn’t mean that’s how it has to be forever.
Until 1968, “Section II” of the Motion Picture Production Code outlawed lesbian characters in film. I am reclaiming our namesake as the premier space for relevant content and the people who love it. We want to help deliver diverse content with strong minority characters in major roles so that more people are included in–and compelled to be a part of–more water cooler moments.
Section II is a new Benefit Corporation dedicated to improving the representation of queer women in popular culture. Even in 2013, part of that equation remains “visibility,” but I’m also talking about divergent stories, different formats, contemporary issues being presented without making “issue films.” We’re building a destination platform for curated, high-quality, lesbian-related films and series committed to the idea that seeing positive portrayals of people we identify with is good for us and good for the people who love us. We’re a new option for both filmmakers and audiences alike — a place for all the best content. The model for releasing a film is changing, but I don’t think that should worry filmmakers. Knowing where a film can live takes away the pressure to modify a film’s premise in order to find an audience. Of those 17 films with a theatrical release, Pitch Perfect was the only one was from a major studio that GLAAD deemed a positive portrayal based on their Vito Russo Test. You won’t find a bigger Pitch Perfect fan than me, but after years of looking for queer women in film, 1 positive portrayal out of 101 studio films remains disheartening.
Last year I produced a sizzle reel for a film that is currently looking for funding, called Pretty Girls. It will be a second feature for the talented team at Invisible College, Andrew Gitomer and Jonathan Stromberg. My plan for last summer was to follow suit and produce three trailers for films that I wrote or co-wrote, all of which would fit nicely (I’m biased) on Section II. Last Spring I was in the throes of pre-production and creating comps and worrying about finding investors for the slate of films when the idea for the platform emerged. And then the opportunity to develop it was presented through the Dogfish Accelerator, a program designed to make filmmakers think more like start-ups and give themselves better odds for longevity. It’s been a long sprint as we work to test and plot-out enough of this idea to pitch to investors next month, and it’s been invaluable to have the chance to talk with film lovers, filmmakers, and distributors to make sure we’re creating an ecosystem that will sustain all the different segments who want to see an increase in quantity and quality of lesbian-related films.
I was so excited to have the chance to write a post for Bitch Flicks because it’s a site that has taken matters into its own hands–it addresses a void by building a community around conversations that want to take place. It’s what we want to do at Section II.
I considered writing a fan letter about Ingrid Jungermann’s post-gay agenda and Julie Goldman’s irreverently endearing brand of stand-up comedy. I could write about how I geeked out when Lauren Wolkstein accepted my Facebook friend request or when I finally had a good reason to introduce myself to Lena Waithe. I could’ve recycled my analogies about how Brooklyn is like Paris of the 20s because everyone is doing cool things that spur me to figure out the anatomy of a platform launch. But I realized that Section II is a fan letter, and that what I’m most excited about is this process of delivering it to everyone else who is excited about the direction lesbian-related films and series are heading.
We launch this month with a showcase site designed to show you that we’re serious about outstanding content and the talent behind it. I hope you’ll join in on the fun.
Allie Esslinger is a Southern transplant living in Brooklyn. Her company, Olive Juice Films, has produced projects across genres, including documentaries, feature films, web series, live comedy, and commercial campaigns. She earned her BA in International Affairs at the University of Alabama, her MA in International Affairs and Media Studies from The New School, andher MFA in Creative Writing (Screenwriting) from Full Sail University. She is developing Section II, an online and streaming platform for curated, high-quality lesbian content.
Miss Piggy taught me that femininity and glamour are constructs. They are costumes anyone can wear providing you have the right attitude. I was a slightly effeminate little boy who collected My Little Ponies and owned a pair of Jelly sandals. Miss Piggy showed it was okay to be girly, that there was even power in being feminine.
The Muppet Movie
This is a guest post by Maximilian Mosher.
I’m sorry to disappoint you but Bert and Ernie are not gay. They’re not. When Jim Henson and Frank Oz created them for Sesame Street they were intended as a tribute to the grand tradition of mix-matched comic duos—Laurel and Hardy, Abbot and Costello, Felix and Oscar of The Odd Couple. The fact that in the decades since people have come to view them as a gay couple says more about the normalization of homosexuality and the decline of the comic duo than anything intended by the Children’s Television Workshop.
“They’re puppets,” explained Steve Whitmore, who’s performed Ernie since Henson’s death. “They don’t exist below the waist.” But denials have only added fuel to the fire. With a smirk, gay men enjoy “outing” these symbols of childhood with the same relish they used to reserve for “outing” Hollywood actors. With a continued dearth of same-sex role models in popular culture, Bert and Ernie have been enlisted as gay marriage symbols, appearing on placards, buttons, and t-shirts. Men dressed in Bert and Ernie costumes have even been married at gay pride parades. When it came to celebrating the Supreme Court’s ruling on the Defense of Marriage Act last June The New Yorker chose not an image of a flesh and blood couple but an illustration of the two Muppets cuddling.
It’s not just allies who suspect same-sex shenanigans at 123 Sesame Street.
“Bert and Ernie are two grown men sharing a house and a bedroom,” claimed the Reverend Joseph Chambers on his radio show. “They share clothes, eat and cook together and have blatantly effeminate characteristics… If this isn’t meant to represent a homosexual union, I can’t imagine what it’s supposed to represent.”
The Reverend clearly knows nothing of the show or, for that matter, fashion. Ernie has only ever worn horizontal stripes. Bert, being the more practical one, wears vertical, along with a very 1970’s turtleneck. As for being effeminate, Ernie is a disorganized mess while no stylish gay men would allow the caterpillar that stretches across Bert’s forehead to go un-tweezed.
Bert and Ernie sleep in separate beds, are rarely physical with each other, and never say lovey-dovey things. In fact, they seem ready to murder each other most of the time. (“Sounds like a lot of couples I know,” I can hear you saying.)
But everyone has it wrong. Bert and Ernie are meant to teach children they can be friends with people different from themselves. There’s nothing “gay” about them, save for Ernie’s love of bubble baths. If Reverend Chambers is really worried about kids being introduced to queer culture he needs to move past Bert and Ernie. He should condemn an entirely different show and an entirely different Muppet.
It was Miss Piggy who turned me gay.
The Great Muppet Caper
Despite the celebrity cameos and pop culture spoofs, Sesame Street was always meant for children, but Jim Henson was wary of being seen as a kids’ entertainer. It took years for him to get it on the air but The Muppet Show, which ran from 1976 to 1981, was meant to correct this misconception. Henson sought to prove a show with puppets could have universal appeal.
Like Walt Disney and the creators of the Warner Brothers’ cartoons before them, Henson and his Muppet Workshop forgot to create female characters. (When a girl was needed on Sam and Friends, Henson’s first TV show, he’d throw a blonde wig on Kermit. If only Reverend Chambers had seen that!) There was the odd exception, such as a purple Muppet named Mildred who, with a perm and cat’s eye glasses, resembled a Fraggle librarian. But at the beginning The Muppet Show was an overwhelmingly male affair with male characters performed by male puppeteers. Like a true star Miss Piggy would have to invent herself.
The Muppet performers had used a homely lady-pig puppet in a few TV specials but she lacked a name and distinctive personality. Before the first season of The Muppet Show, Muppet designer Bonnie Erickson replaced the puppet’s beady black eyes with large blue ones and dressed her in a silk dress with lilac gloves. A permanently attached handkerchief was used to conceal the puppet’s arm rod. Paying tribute to Peggy Lee, Erickson named the puppet Miss Piggy Lee, but the “Lee” was swiftly dropped to avoid offending the singer.
Initially Miss Piggy lacked a distinctive voice. Frank Oz and Richard Hunt shared the responsibility of performing her, with the latter giving her a flouncy British accent and a stuffy, Margaret Dumont-ish character. But as Oz gradually took over, Miss Piggy’s personality asserted itself.
During one rehearsal, Henson and Oz were working on a scene in which Piggy slapped Kermit. Oz thought a karate chop was funnier, paired with a dramatic “hiii-yah!”
“Suddenly, that hit crystallized her character for me,” Oz told the New York Times. “The coyness hiding the aggression; the conflict of that love with her desire for a career; her hunger for a glamour image; her tremendous out-and-out ego…” As they say, a star was born.
Miss Piggy in prison
Befitting a diva who stepped out of the chorus, Miss Piggy soon took over. With practically no other females to compete with (other than the androgynous guitarist Janice, originally designed as a big-lipped tribute to Mick Jagger) Piggy would grow in stature to become the only woman the Muppets needed. Her costumes multiplied. Her production numbers became more elaborate. She peppered her speech with ridiculous bastardizations of French, a habit perhaps inspired by the legendary Hollywood agent Sue Mengers. Miss Piggy thought nothing of throwing herself at male guest stars, or stealing scenes from great beauties like Raquel Welch.
Pigs, despite their documented intelligence, are thought of as dirty, rotund, and as far away from showbiz glamour as possible. But as a little kid I never took Miss Piggy as a joke. I accepted her beauty and elegance sincerely. For me, she was the star she believed herself to be. This was perfect training for my eventual love of drag queens, who also don sequined gowns, feather boas, and demand you take their star personae seriously.
Miss Piggy taught me that femininity and glamour are constructs. They are costumes anyone can wear providing you have the right attitude. I was a slightly effeminate little boy who collected My Little Ponies and owned a pair of Jelly sandals. Miss Piggy showed it was okay to be girly, that there was even power in being feminine.
Of course, simmering just below her fuzzy peach surface, Miss Piggy had a well of anger and aggression that busted out in karate chops, punches, and kicks. When she got mad, Frank Oz lowered her voice from its regular high-pitched coo to a low, gruff, streetwise snarl. Being a lady is all well and good, but when the going gets tough, the pig gets rough. A lilac glove can sometimes conceal a fist.
Miss Piggy is a pushy, bullying, manipulative, insecure, egoist. There’s more Diana Ross in her than Peggy Lee. She should be unlikeable.
But she has one trait that humanizes her. She loves Kermit. He’s her Achilles Hoof. Her love for him is pure, passionate, and pathetic. She humiliates herself over and over just to get his attention. As Frank Oz said, quoted in Brian Jay Johnson’s new biography of Jim Henson, “She wants that little green body so badly.” And Kermit, for the most part, brushes her off and ignores her. Loving someone incapable of reciprocating is a tragedy every queer person who’s fallen for a heterosexual can understand.
Miss Piggy and Joan Rivers
Miss Piggy eventually snagged Kermit via a surprise wedding at the end of The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984). The ceremony was performed by an actual New York City minister, and in the years since, puppets and performers alike have enjoyed teasing fans about whether the characters are “actually married” or not. Either way, the union of frog and pig and the nullification of their romantic tension brought a symbolic close to the Muppets’ Golden Age.
I love Miss Piggy, but I realize her characteristics as I’ve listed them aren’t exactly those of a role model. With her diva behavior and camp aesthetic, Miss Piggy is a throwback to the closeted gay world before the Stonewall Riots, when queer men worshipped Mae West and a sharp, sardonic tongue was their only weapon. By the time The Muppet Show was at its height, gay men had already moved on to body-building and Donna Summer. Perhaps this is why Pride Parades feature Bert and Ernie and not Miss Piggy. Miss Piggy, with her exaggerated femininity, barely concealed aggression, and pining love of a “straight” man, reminds gays of their past. Bert and Ernie as a committed couple is a more useful symbol for gay activists still fighting for same-sex marriage, even if it is a projection of fans. Puppeteers aren’t the only ones who can pull the strings.
Max Mosher is a freelance writer who has written for the Toronto Standard, WORN Fashion Journal, the Utne Reader, and Hello Mr. magazine. He tweets under @max_mosher_. Despite his best efforts, he’s more Kermit than Miss Piggy.
There is no denying that 2013 has been a tough year for women. As a North Carolinian, I have watched as all but one Planned Parenthood in my state got slated for shut-down due to “health requirements” passed by our Republican lawmakers. At the national level, politicians have made too many rape-apologist comments to keep track of. As a feminist and former Women’s Studies major, it’s important for me to develop thick skin, and with it, an arsenal of uplifting weaponry that will keep me sane and optimistic about our future as women. Which is what has brought me to love the Fox television show New Girl. Yes, New Girl is, ultimately, a sitcom, and it is questionable whether sitcoms can hold up to serious feminist criticism or if we should just laugh along and not take them too seriously. But what’s the fun in that? When “lighthearted” media is so often blatantly sexist (the song “Blurred Lines” and its accompanying video have given feminists enough ire to last the entire year) we should acknowledge those forms of media that, even in subtle ways, subvert the sexist norm.
The cast of New Girl
This is a guest post by Susan Mackey.
There is no denying that 2013 has been a tough year for women. As a North Carolinian, I have watched as all but one Planned Parenthood in my state got slated for shut-down due to “health requirements” passed by our Republican lawmakers. At the national level, politicians have made too many rape-apologist comments to keep track of. As a feminist and former Women’s Studies major, it’s important for me to develop thick skin, and with it, an arsenal of uplifting weaponry that will keep me sane and optimistic about our future as women. Which is what has brought me to love the Fox television show New Girl. Yes, New Girl is, ultimately, a sitcom, and it is questionable whether sitcoms can hold up to serious feminist criticism or if we should just laugh along and not take them too seriously. But what’s the fun in that? When “lighthearted” media is so often blatantly sexist (the song “Blurred Lines” and its accompanying video have given feminists enough ire to last the entire year) we should acknowledge those forms of media that, even in subtle ways, subvert the sexist norm.
The premise of New Girl is as follows: Jess (played by Zooey Deschanel) is a recently-single thirty-something-year-old woman who moves into an apartment with three men: Nick, Schmidt, and Winston. The underlying feminist elements in New Girl are often subtle, which is what lends them so much power. Just when we’re expecting another average romantic-comedy sitcom, the rug gets pulled out from under us. This happened to me while watching Season 1 of New Girl for the first time. Jess picks up her best friend Cece from the bar and brings her back to the apartment to crash. Jess warns the boys that when Cece’s drunk, “She’s really grabby, really physical, really loose with her body.” Immediately the scenario seems too predictable: a bunch of men will take advantage of a beautiful, drunk girl. In fact, the opposite occurs. Cece practically forces the boys to dance drunkenly with her, while they try clumsily to impress her. It’s an interestingly equal power dynamic; Cece is drunk and thus not in control, and yet, the boys succumb to her every whim. They couldn’t take advantage of her if they tried. The episode takes an interesting turn when Schmidt offers to let Cece sleep in his bed. He “sheepdogs” her into his room, closes the door, and says he’ll sleep on the couch. This scene took me completely by surprise and illustrated how deeply ingrained sexist imagery is in our imagination: I was abruptly surprised by the fact that Schmidt was not going to take Cece to bed when she was drunk. It was a shocking and somewhat sad realization that I expected the wrong thing to happen; it had almost never occurred to me that a man would not take advantage of this beautiful, drunk woman.
Jess and Julia
Jess vs. Julia: Second Wave vs. Third Wave
Jess is a prime example of third-wave feminism because she is a new image of what independence and power look like. In Season 1, her roommate Nick begins dating a lawyer named Julia. From the first time Julia and Jess met, Julia was standoffish and cold, quite different from Jess who is friendly and bubbly to a fault. When Jess needs Julia’s help getting out of a traffic ticket, Julia tells Jess condescendingly that her whole “thing” (meaning Jess’s ultra-femininity and friendliness) might work in front of a judge.
The tension between Julia and Jess reminds me of the very real tension between those who identify with second wave feminism and those who identify with third wave. Julia has had to combat sexism within her line of work and has done so by taking on traits that would typically be deemed “masculine.” Jess, on the other hand, is unapologetically feminine. When the two women break down and finally have it out in the bathroom of Nick’s bar, Julia tells Jess, “If I acted like you at work, no one would take me seriously.” This is a sad but true fact for women who work in male-dominated fields, like law. However, Jess counters, “Well if I acted like you at work, my students would turn in really weird, dark dioramas.” Second-wave feminism of the 1960s and 1970s often took the physical form of women who were trying to stake their claim in society by emulating men in manner and appearance (think of the “hairy legged man-hater” stereotype of feminists). Third-wave feminists know that female and feminist power can and should be claimed by everyone, including those second-wave feminists, but also by men, people of color, trans-people, and, finally, feminine women. Jess sums up this point perfectly when she tells Julia that even though she works with kids all day and wears polka-dots, “that doesn’t mean I’m not tough, and smart, and strong.”
Nick and his girlfriend (who happens to be a stripper)
I got another jolt while watching New Girl when roommate Nick begins dating a stripper, and receives no judgment from Jess or any other female character. Jess supports Nick’s girlfriend’s decision to strip and even pushes Nick to date her because she’s such a headstrong woman. It is so rare in television and in real life to find women who accept other women’s career and life choices, especially if that choice is to work in a sex industry. But that is one tenant of third-wave feminism that has caught on particularly well with young feminists.
The feminist movement, like any social movement, has had its fair share of shameful, or at least embarrassing, moments. Recall the 1968 anti-Miss America pageant demonstration, in which feminists paraded a sheep in front of the event to represent contestants. Organizers of the demonstration later regretted the tone of the protest because it pitted woman-against-woman instead of uniting them against an oppressive institution. Now, in the era of New Girl, feminists have realized the power of female friendships and mutual support.
Jess and Cece
Female Friendships
New Girl’s ability to portray female friendships accurately is noteworthy. The premise of the show–that a recently single woman moves into an apartment full of men and hilarity ensues–seems clichéd at first. And it is, at times. There are countless scenes of the seemingly hilarious debacles when two genders live together (in one episode, Schmidt finds one of the tampons that Jess has hidden around the house). But, after all, it is a cable sitcom, and so we must cut it some slack. After all, the show does make up for the predictable three-guys-and-a-girl scenario with scenes of genuine friendship among women. For starters, Jess has a diverse group of friends (for television standards); her best friend is an Indian woman (Cece) and her other friend who appears regularly is a lesbian (Sadie). Within these women there is no gossiping or snarky behavior. When Jess suspects that Nick’s aforementioned girlfriend Julia may not like her, she confides in Cece and Sadie for their support. Nick tries telling the women that they’re imagining things, but Jess points out to Nick something about female relationships that is all too true: when girls fight, a lot of it goes unsaid. There is real conflict between the women in New Girl, but none of it is the catty back-stabbing behavior that we are used to seeing on television.
Winston, Jess, and Schmidt
Writing Diversity
Unsurprisingly, New Girl’s main character, played by Zooey Deschanel, is an attractive white woman (despite the show’s best efforts to portray her as awkward, she is still undeniably cute). For this reason, New Girl is not particularly revolutionary in its racial makeup. With the advent of Orange is the New Black, feminist viewers have gotten a taste of race done right in television (although, not without problems; OITNB has been called a “modern slave narrative” because of its use of a white protagonist as a vehicle to portray black and Hispanic characters). However, New Girl’s ability to successfully joke about race deserves notice. OITNB has garnered a lot of praise–and rightly so–for addressing race in a serious and respectful manner. But New Girl is a sitcom, after all, and has to be funny to be successful.
Modern Family, another sitcom, positions itself as a, well, modern representation of American families. Unfortunately, many of their jokes rely on tired clichés about race and gender (including the nagging wife, the fiery Latina woman, the effeminate gay man, the crotchety old Conservative white man). One episode in particular that made me roll my eyes consisted of the family’s newborn baby conveniently throwing up any time gay marriage was mentioned. It seems to me that Modern Family is trying to get away with these lazy, stereotypical jokes by positioning them as ironic; after all, how can it be offensive if it’s purposefully trying to be modern?
Winston and Cece
New Girl, while driven by a traditional female protagonist, has a surprisingly diverse cast. Schmidt is Jewish, Winston is Black, and her girlfriends include an Indian woman, Cece, and a lesbian named Sadie. The show is surprisingly, almost shockingly, successful in its abilities to joke about race and sexuality in ways that are truly original and funny, and not at all hurtful (disclaimer: because I am viewing the show from a straight, cisgender, white point of view, it is always possible that my privilege allows me to miss offensive humor). One episode in particular delves into the issue (or rather, the perceived issue) of Winston being the only Black housemate. Upon seeing Winston interacting with a group of strangers who are Black, Schmidt begins to fear that Winston is not being “his blackest self.” The episode continues with Winston taking advantage of Schmidt’s naïve idea of what it means to be Black. Instead of Black stereotypes being the joke (i.e., Black people smoke crack), Schmidt’s assumptions, laced in liberal open-mindedness, are the joke. (We’re laughing at Schmidt for having the assumption that Winston smokes crack.) Along the way, clever jokes of racial differences are made: Schmidt tells Winston that both of their “people” have done great things for America; African Americans have produced some of the best jazz music, while Jews have produced some of the best managers of jazz musicians. Another episode concludes with three white roommates taking turns at making Woody Allen jokes, while Winston simply ads, “Yeah, I have nothing to contribute here.” New Girl doesn’t pretend racial differences don’t exist; it acknowledges them, laughs at them, and moves on.
At the end of the day, it’s difficult to assess how great an impact a sitcom can have on society. Can twenty-five minutes of cable television enact real change in a society so permeated by racism, sexism, and every other damaging –ism? I’d like to think so. The people whose minds need to be changed are not always the ones marching on the streets, reading feminist blogs, and participating in grassroots activism. They are the ones sitting on their couches, watching television. So if a show like New Girl can subtly inject feminist values into the mainstream canon, that is something to celebrate. And now, more than ever, feminists need something to celebrate.
Susan Mackey is a recent graduate from Appalachian State University. She lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, where she teaches preschool and writes about art and feminist issues in her spare time.
When we talk about feminism and action for gender equality, we often focus on women–those who fight and create and push against patriarchal forces. For our November Theme Week here at Bitch Flicks, we are focusing on the male feminists and allies who are fighting and creating and pushing against patriarchal forces. We want writers to consider fictional male characters (from film and television), men who are activists and allies in and out of media, and the importance of men in the fight for equality–both on screen and off.
“Sexism doesn’t just hurt women, it breaks our very humanity. And ultimately, that’s why I’m a feminist. Because women deserve to be treated as equal human beings, and it hurts every single one of us when that’s not the case.”
Many men get this. We love those men. This month, we want to give a week of Bitch Flicks to these male feminists and allies who get it.
We would like to avoid as much overlap as possible for this theme, so get your proposals in early if you know who or what you would like to write about. We accept both original pieces and cross-posts, and we respond to queries within a week.
Most of our pieces are between 1,000 and 2,000 words, and include links and images. Please send your piece in the text of an e-mail to btchflcks[at]gmail[dot]com, including links to all images, and include a 2- to 3-sentence bio.
If you have written for us before, please indicate that in your proposal, and if not, send a writing sample if possible.
Please be familiar with our publication and look over recent and popular posts to get an idea of Bitch Flicks’ style and purpose. The final due date for these submissions is Friday, Nov. 22 by midnight.
Slumber Party Massacre came up while I was searching for female directors in the exploitation genre. Although it came off as yet another sensationalistic and gory 80s slasher, it stuck out, mainly due to its ridiculous title or the fact that most of the characters were female. Upon viewing it, what shocked me was not so much the gore and violence, but I was surprised by the clever humor, the funny characters, and most of all the incredibly veiled feminist satire.
Angel, a 1984 cult film, attempts to be both a melodrama about a teen hooker forced to face her life choices (as the trailer proclaims it “A Very Special Motion Picture”) and a very 80s crime thriller where a tough-talking street kid teams up with a cop to catch a killer, but the resulting film is a mess of clashing tones that seems more campy than hard-hitting.
For the uninitiated, Nikita was the often too realistic story of a drug-addicted young woman who finds herself in jail after a robbery gone horribly wrong. Most filmmakers would have ended there, a cautionary tale of the woman led down the wrong path who ends up punished for her sins. But Besson took the story further; this broken young woman gets turned into an assassin that is used by her government to kill. The killing takes its toll on her, but she values her life and freedom over the other option provided her: death. She meets a guy, falls in love, and at the end of the day Nikita turned out to not be the same story I was used to.
In terms of gender representations, both men and women are shown as the worst possible version of themselves. Barbra swings back and forth from being near catatonic and unable to communicate, to wild and hysterical. Ben even slaps her at one point to get her to snap out of her state. She is weak and unable to deal with the emotions of seeing her brother attacked. Barbra would have already been killed and reanimated were it not for the über masculine Ben to save her from the perils that lie outside.
Perhaps for the movie’s purposes, that doesn’t matter: the story seems to be far more driven by the desire to create an artistic film, rather than an intellectually/ethically/scientifically engaging narrative. The scientific aspect for example—the part of the film I found personally most engaging, that it is possible to tamper with the natural life-cycle, halting the aging process in its tracks—is touched upon but it seems, at least to me, to be more of a plot device for bringing Sarah into Miriam’s life than an attempt to explore an ethically challenging issue. The biology behind Miriam’s present state and the fate of her lovers is similarly irrelevant.
When the movie begins we’re introduced to Brad, a hero (Barry Bostiwck) and Janet, a heroine (Susan Sarandon), two straight-laced representations of the all-American, white middle class Christian boy and girl who are suddenly thrown into a den of loose morals and provocative dancing. At all turns, we’re blatantly reminded of their status as a proxy for a nice boy and a good girl, and it’s reinforced with every cliché possible.
Being set in the Valley in the 80s, the film portrays much of the vapidness and consumerism popular at the time, with two of the film’s songs, “Brand New Girl,” and “’Cause I’m a Blonde,” focusing on changing or criticizing women’s appearances. “’Cause I’m a Blonde” is purposely satirical, however, and really serves more to make fun of the blonde “Valley Girl” stereotype than to support it.
Populated by mostly male characters, The Big Lebowski is, to some extent, a tale of male friendship. Nevertheless, the cult comedy should never be interpreted and celebrated as exclusively a guy’s film. The Big Lebowski offers an amusing, subversive portrait of masculinity and features an excellent comic performance by one of the most gifted actresses working today. What’s more, it suggests that the future is matriarchal.
Consistently, then, femininity in men is dangerous. It may be actively dangerous, as in Uncle Monty, who assaults Marwood whilst in near-drag, or passively dangerous, in that it makes the feminine man a target for harassment, as in the lout at the pub who calls Marwood a perfumed ponce. Ultimately, it is dangerous because it marks the other, and to be other is to be in danger.
Most feminist criticism of Stephen King’s Carrie has focused on the male fear of powerful women that the author said inspired the film, with the anti-Carrie camp finding her death at the end to signify the defeat of the “monstrous feminine” and therefore a triumph of sexism. But Stephen King’s honesty about what inspired his 1973 book notwithstanding, Carrie is as much an articulation of a feminist nightmare as it is of a patriarchal one, with neither party coming out on top.
Birth of the Living Dead is Rob Kuhns’ documentary of the making of George Romero’s 1968 cult horror genre game-changer Night of the Living Dead. Bitch Flicks writers Max Thornton and Amanda Rodriguez discuss both the documentary (BOTLD) and the original film itself (NOTLD).
The ethics of the film are one thing, but it says a lot about the world of the movie that it’s able to go nearly two hours without a single important female character showing up on screen. There are no women cops, there are no women in the mob, there are only a couple of wives or passers-by or maybe a drug-addled girlfriend or two. But no one who matters. The acting characters in the film are all overwhelmingly and vocally male.
Even the ethos of the characters, that they will destroy that which is evil, but leave alone the pure and blameless, is inherently sexist. Because when they say pure and blameless, what they mean is the women and children. In this universe, women are not even people enough to do things wrong. We do not have enough agency even to commit evil.
On any dark and stormy night in the fall, it is a wonderful thing to curl up with a mug of mulled cider and watch Clue. The murder mystery based on the eponymous board game may have been a huge flop when it was released in 1985, but it has gained a passionate cult following in the last 28 years, probably due to its infinitely quotable dialogue and gleeful disregard for the pile of bodies amassed as the movie progresses – as well as being shown on cable about once every two hours.
I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve watched Fight Club. Every time I view it, I end up noticing something new. How did I miss that before? This time, Marla Singer (played by Helena Bonham Carter) captured my attention. What would the situations in the movie look like from her viewpoint?
The midwestern, puritanical values that American Gothic seems to represent so well win at the end of the film, and quite literally kill difference and sexual and gender subversion. While Riff Raff and Magenta go back to their home planet Transsexual, in the galaxy of Transylvania, Brad, Janet and Dr. Scott are left on the cold ground, crawling and writhing in their fishnets.
Here are some game-changing cult classics, divided into handy genre sections. And while we’re looking at the influence of these cult films, why not check out how they portray and treat women? Almost entirely coincidentally, they’re all from the ‘80s. What can I say? It was a culturally rich period.
So I asked Twitter the following question: “Who’s scarier: Jason or Jason’s mom?” Surprisingly, despite all the movies (12 in total) in which Jason is seen slashing throats and hanging victims, his mom (who’s only alive and running amok in the first film in 1980) is apparently considered the more horrifying killer. But I’ve always had a soft spot for Pamela. Not that I condone the gruesome murders of innocent people (of course not). But, unlike Jason, Pamela committed crimes of passion. Her crazy antics were actually revenge for her young son’s fatal drowning, which she felt was caused by the unjustifiable neglect of the camp counselors who failed to watch him (a longtime rumor has faulted the counselors for being too busy fornicating and not paying attention to Jason’s cries for help).
The Craft presents a lesson that coming-of-age films don’t typically make a point to show. A ballot is cast for prom queen or SAT prep sits on the horizon with college days looming, a girl must get a boy to like her, losing her virginity in the process. But this film is about serving the self—the craft of empowering oneself to surmount the archaic persecutions against women—taking back the threat of female power. But like a genie in a bottle that allows three wishes, this craft must be practiced and understood, respected completely before it can be outwardly used, or else it will perpetuate transgression.
Freaks (1932) is a true cult movie, one that’s ridden a rollercoaster of opprobrium and acclaim since its initial release. Tod Browning’s sideshow-set horror-romance destroyed his career (and several others), caused such disgust in early audiences that one woman (allegedly) miscarried, outraged critics and moral guardians, traumatized some of the performers who appeared in it, languished in obscurity after being banned for three decades, resurfaced on the exploitation circuit in the 1960s, and earned a spot in the National Film Registry archives in 1994 before enjoying its current status as a one-of-a-kind classic. It’s been repeated to the point of cliché, but Freaks, once seen, is never forgotten. Love it or hate it, it will stay with you for the rest of your life.
I was neither a discerning nor an educated viewer, but even so I quickly cottoned on to the fact that certain Italian directors had produced some above-average horror flicks in the 1970s, characterized by a cavalier attitude toward nudity, pervasive Catholic imagery, and lashings of gore. Ignorant of the term giallo, I proceeded to dub this subgenre “spag-horror,” which isn’t actually an awful name for it.
As my initiation into the worlds of sex and violence, many European horror films of the 1970s no doubt occupy a Freudian subspace of my psyche. Probably the Ur-example of this genre and its strange, ambivalent attitude toward women and sexuality is Dario Argento’s 1977 meisterwerk, Suspiria.
I found myself wondering about the designation of sexploitation. Female nudity in itself isn’t exploitative. Women fighting and women being abused are things that happen in prison. Are representations of women in these situations inherently exploitative, or are we conditioned to see women’s bodies and women’s actions and think: object? Certainly frame after frame of powerful, complex, awful and good, sympathetic and loathsome women has some kind of effect on the viewer. Since we are conditioned to only really consider the straight white male gaze as the norm, we see these movies as highly sexualized and exploitative.
On the surface, Sleepaway Camp isn’t much different than your average 1980s slasher movie. The comparisons to Friday the 13th can’t be ignored – Sleepaway’s Camp Arawak, much like Friday’s Camp Crystal Lake, is populated by horny teens looking for some summer lovin’, and is the site of a series of gruesome and mysterious murders that threaten to shut down the camp for the whole summer. But unlike Friday the 13th and other slasher films, the twist in Sleepaway Camp isn’t the identity of the murderer, and the final girl isn’t exactly who you’d expect.
Indeed, the social structure of Westerburg High School is unsettling to say the least. Teens there would rather commit actual suicide than “social suicide.” Their alienation from both reality and ethical values is mirrored not only in J.D., Veronica and the Heathers, but also in the rest of the students. Peer pressure and the dream of popularity result in the “Westerburg suicides,” causing a downright suicide craze. Their supposed actions gave the popular kids depth and humanity and made them more popular than ever. When an unpopular girl attempts to kill herself, the new Heather in charge asserts, “Just another case of a geek trying to imitate the popular people of the school and failing miserably.”
Indeed, the social structure of Westerburg High School is unsettling to say the least. Teens there would rather commit actual suicide than “social suicide.” Their alienation from both reality and ethical values is mirrored not only in J.D., Veronica and the Heathers, but also in the rest of the students. Peer pressure and the dream of popularity result in the “Westerburg suicides,” causing a downright suicide craze. Their supposed actions gave the popular kids depth and humanity and made them more popular than ever. When an unpopular girl attempts to kill herself, the new Heather in charge asserts, “Just another case of a geek trying to imitate the popular people of the school and failing miserably.”
If Heathers (1988) has taught us anything, it’s that “it is one thing to want somebody out of your life, it is another thing to serve them a wake-up cup full of liquid drainer.”
In one of the first and foremost films about the chronic struggle of queen bees versus wannabes, Veronica Sawyer is up against a ruthless trio of Heathers. Led by Heather Chandler, they are the most popular clique in school and, being their newest member, Veronica has already had enough – she longs to return to her “geekish” old friends. The three Heathers can be read to represent the uniformity of the queen bees as well as high school structures in general. As Veronica’s boyfriend J.D. argues, they function in much the same way everywhere: “Seven schools in seven states and the only thing different is my locker combination.” The popular girls seem to be interchangeable templates that, in addition, are the same in every school and, most importantly, every teen movie. But high school as a technicolor battleground has just taken on a new opponent.
Fed up with using her smarts “to decide what color gloss to wear,” Veronica is more self confident and not as obsequious as Heather Chandler’s other minions. Having a strong sense for right and wrong, she is reluctant to accept the regime of an individual adolescent in the social fabric of the school. In order to function as the blatant satire that it is, the film works with an array of cliché characters, yet it offers a remarkable complexity of female characters that transcends the “smart girl in need of a makeover vs. the popular airhead” shtick. Moreover, it blends juvenile delinquency with girlhood without making use of the “outrageous” John Waters style badass girl gang trope.
Channeling both James Dean and Jack Nicholson, J.D. remains the driving force behind the murderous madness. However, there is a certain darkness to Veronica’s character that wavers between desperation and spite and contrasts the teenage girl known from the works of John Hughes and the like. Whereas in the 1970s the cinematic image of (pre-)teen girls was defined by a more demonic form of terror in films like Carrie and The Exorcist, a more subtle kind of horror emerged in the decades to come: the everyday kind. Heathers has paved the way for films like Jawbreaker (1999) and Mean Girls (2004), as well as TV series like Gossip Girl (2007-2012), about a bunch of conniving high school girls with cruel intentions and relentless dress codes. We owe this in part to the Waters brothers, who have found a voice to express the fear and loathing popular high school girls can evoke without demonizing the feminine by its very nature. Incidentally, Daniel Waters (the writer of Heathers) and Mark Waters (director of Mean Girls) have recently teamed up for an upcoming film adaptation of the best-selling teenage fantasy novel Vampire Academy.
Frienemies
The effort of negotiating one’s position in high school’s bizarre pecking order is an anguish many teenagers face. The struggle is real. However, in the case of Veronica, it is not an outsider trying to make his or her way into the popular crowd but an insider trying to get out. “Are you a Heather?” J.D. asks Veronica as they first encounter. “No. I’m a Veronica”; she clearly distinguishes herself from the trio and later on explains, “I don’t really like my friends. It’s just like they’re people I work with and our job is being popular and shit.” Popularity came at a price for Veronica. She had to give up her true friends who, by Heathers-standards, are “the scum of the school.” Heather Chandler runs a tight ship. She considers conversing with the “geek squad” to be “social suicide” and forbids Veronica and her other minion Heathers to do so. Veronica feels oppressed and harbors thoughts of deadly revenge: “Tomorrow I’ll be kissing her aerobicised ass, but for tonight, let me dream of a world without Heather – a world where I am free.”
It becomes clear that, similarly to that of the Mean Girls, the Heathers’ friendship is merely a superficial camaraderie based on phony flattery and a feeling of superiority when it comes to fashion choices. And, of course, power.
Power Dangers
From the very start, J.D. takes control of Veronica and her decisions. She describes their unhealthy relationship in her diary, saying, “I’ve got no control over myself when I’m with J.D.” and concludes with, “Are we going to prom or to hell?”
Upon comprehending that her “teen angst bullshit has a body count,” she declares her “Bonnie and Clyde days” to be over and attempts to break up with J.D. As he explains to Veronica that this will not bring back the dead, she responds, “I am not trying to bring anyone back except maybe myself.” Clearly, she has had enough of being bullied by the Heathers as well as her boyfriend and wants to get back in touch with her true self. Moreover, Veronica is well aware of how the mean girl torch is merely being continuously passed on to the next queen bee. In a dream she realizes with distress that “tomorrow someone else is just gonna move into her place,” and, in a worried tone, adds, “That person could be me!”
Within the Heathers, it is Heather Chandler who’s boss. Just like hoop earrings are “Regina’s thing” in Mean Girls, wearing the color red is Heather Chandler’s thing. After her death, the next Heather takes her place and genuinely revels in wearing red. The red scrunchie that we see in the very first shot of the film is passed on from one queen bee to the next and when asked why she is “such a mega bitch,” the new head of the Heathers replies, “Because I can be.”
But as J.D. blackmails her, she goes from controller to controllee and it is once again him who is in charge. The film’s title song, “Que Sera,” stands in great contrast to J.D.’s urge to manipulate those around him and, essentially, “play god.” Eventually, he explains his plans to blow up the entire school by disputing the underlying problems within society itself, his argument being: “The only place different social types can genuinely get along is in heaven.” Basking in his outburst of mansplaining, J.D unmasks high school as a type of societal microcosm and blames it for his own issues as well as structural complications and hierarchies.
Indeed, the social structure of Westerburg High School is unsettling to say the least. Teens there would rather commit actual suicide than “social suicide.” Their alienation from both reality and ethical values is mirrored not only in J.D., Veronica and the Heathers, but also in the rest of the students. Peer pressure and the dream of popularity result in the “Westerburg suicides,” causing a downright suicide craze. Their supposed actions gave the popular kids depth and humanity and made them more popular than ever. When an unpopular girl attempts to kill herself, the new Heather in charge asserts, “Just another case of a geek trying to imitate the popular people of the school and failing miserably.”
In the end, we get a happy ending of the macabre kind. J.D. loses to Veronica’s bravery as she stands up to him and saves the school from a deathly massacre. It is a victory of fairness, feminism, and friendship. Veronica is the new queen bee. While it becomes clear that, on the whole, high school will remain a place dominated by “the cool crowd,” at least Veronica’s authority might allow for a more humane form of leadership.
Artemis Linhart is a freelance writer and film curator with a weakness for escapism.
On the surface, Sleepaway Camp isn’t much different than your average 1980s slasher movie. The comparisons to Friday the 13th can’t be ignored – Sleepaway’s Camp Arawak, much like Friday’s Camp Crystal Lake, is populated by horny teens looking for some summer lovin’, and is the site of a series of gruesome and mysterious murders that threaten to shut down the camp for the whole summer. But unlike Friday the 13th and other slasher films, the twist in Sleepaway Camp isn’t the identity of the murderer, and the final girl isn’t exactly who you’d expect.
This piece by Carrie Nelson previously appeared at Bitch Flicks on October 24, 2011 and is republished as part of our theme week on Cult Films and B Movies.
Sleepaway Camp (1983)
On the surface, Sleepaway Camp isn’t much different than your average 1980s slasher movie. The comparisons to Friday the 13th can’t be ignored – Sleepaway’s Camp Arawak, much like Friday’s Camp Crystal Lake, is populated by horny teens looking for some summer lovin’, and is the site of a series of gruesome and mysterious murders that threaten to shut down the camp for the whole summer. But unlike Friday the 13th and other slasher films, the twist in Sleepaway Camp isn’t the identity of the murderer, and the final girl isn’t exactly who you’d expect.
(Everything that follows contains significant spoilers. Read at your discretion.)
The protagonist of Sleepaway Camp is Angela, the lone survivor of a boating accident that killed her father and her brother, Peter. Years after the accident, her aunt Martha, with whom she now lives, sends her to Camp Arawak with her cousin Ricky. Angela is painfully shy and refuses to go near the water, which leads to the other campers tormenting her incessantly. Ricky’s quick to defend her, but the bullying is relentless. One by one, Angela’s tormenters are murdered in increasingly grotesque ways (the most disturbing involves a curling iron brutally entering a woman’s vagina).
So come the end of the film, when it’s revealed that Angela is the murderer, there’s no particular shock – after all, why wouldn’t she want to seek revenge on her tormentors? But the fact that Angela is the murderer isn’t the point, because when we find out she’s the murderer we see her naked, and it is revealed that she has a penis. We quickly learn through flashbacks that it was, in fact, Peter who survived the boat accident, and Aunt Martha decided to raise him as a girl. The ending is profoundly disturbing, not because Peter is a murderer or because he is a cross-dresser (because his female presentation is against his will, it isn’t accurate to call him transgender), but because he has been abused so deeply by his aunt and his peers that he can’t find a way to cope.
Unlike most slasher movies I’ve seen, I wasn’t horrified by Sleepaway Camp’s body count. Rather, I was horrified by the abuses that catalyze the murders. Peter survived the trauma of watching his father and sister die, only to be emotionally and physically abused by his aunt and forced to live as a woman. At camp, he’s terrified of the water, as it reminds him of the tragic loss of his family, and he’s unable to shower or change his clothes around his female bunkmates, as they might learn his secret. But rather than being understanding and supportive, the other campers harass Peter by forcibly throwing him into the water, verbally taunting him and ruining his chance to be romantically involved with someone who might truly care for him. Not to mention, at the start of camp, he is nearly molested by the lecherous head cook. Peter may be a murderer, but he is hardly villainous – the rest of the characters are the real villains, for allowing the bullying to transpire.
The problem, of course, is that the abuse of Peter isn’t the part that’s supposed to horrify us. The twist ending is set up to shock and disgust the audience, which is deeply transphobic. Tera at Sweet Perdition describes the problem with ending as follows:
But Angela’s not deceiving everybody because she’s a trans* person. She’s deceiving everybody because she’s a (fictional) trans* person created by cissexual filmmakers. As Drakyn points out, the trans* person who’s “fooling” us on purpose is a myth we cissexuals invented. Why? Because we are so focused on our own narrow experience of gender that we can’t imagine anything outside it. We take it for granted that everyone’s gender matches the sex they were born with. With this assumption in place, the only logical reason to change one’s gender is to lie to somebody.
The shock of Sleepaway Camp’s ending relies on the cissexist assumption that one’s biological sex and gender presentation must always match. A person with a mismatched sex and gender presentation is someone to be distrusted and feared. Though the audience has identified with Peter throughout the movie, we are meant to turn on him and fear him at the end, as he’s not only a murderer – he’s a deceiver as well. But, as Tera points out, the only deception is the one in the minds of cisgender viewers who assume that Peter’s sex and gender must align in a specific, proper way. Were this not the point that the filmmakers wanted to make, they would have revealed the twist slightly earlier in the film, allowing time for the viewer to digest the information and realize that Peter is still a human being. (This kind of twist is done effectively in The Crying Game, specifically because the twist is revealed midway through the film, and the audience watches characters cope and come to terms with the reveal in an honest, sensitive way. Such sensitivity is not displayed in Sleepaway Camp.)
And yet, despite its cissexism, Sleepaway Camp has some progressive moments. Most notably, the depiction of Angela and Peter’s parents, a gay male couple, is positive. In the opening scene, the parents appear loving and committed, and there’s even a flashback scene depicting the men engaging in romantic sexual relations. Considering how divisive gay parenting is in the 21st century, the fact that a mainstream film made nearly thirty years ago portrays gay parenting positively (if briefly) is certainly worthy of praise.
Sleepaway Camp is incredibly problematic, but beyond the surface-layer clichés and the shock value of the ending, it’s a fascinating and truly horrifying film. Particularly watching the film today, in an era where bullying is forcing young people to make terrifyingly destructive decisions, the abuses against Peter ring uncomfortably true. Peter encounters cruelty at every turn, emotionally scarring him until he can think of no other way to cope besides murder. Unlike horror movies in which teenagers are murdered as punishment for sexual activity, Sleepaway Camp murders teenagers for the torment they inflict on others. There’s a certain sweet justice in that sort of conclusion, but at the same time, it makes you wish the situations that bring on the murders hadn’t needed to happen at all.
Carrie Nelson was a Staff Writer for Gender Across Borders, an international feminist community and blog that she co-founded in 2009. She works as a grant writer for an LGBT nonprofit, and she is currently pursuing an MA in Media Studies at The New School.
I was neither a discerning nor an educated viewer, but even so I quickly cottoned on to the fact that certain Italian directors had produced some above-average horror flicks in the 1970s, characterized by a cavalier attitude toward nudity, pervasive Catholic imagery, and lashings of gore. Ignorant of the term giallo, I proceeded to dub this subgenre “spag-horror,” which isn’t actually an awful name for it.
As my initiation into the worlds of sex and violence, many European horror films of the 1970s no doubt occupy a Freudian subspace of my psyche. Probably the Ur-example of this genre and its strange, ambivalent attitude toward women and sexuality is Dario Argento’s 1977 meisterwerk, Suspiria.
This post by Staff Writer Max Thornton appears as part of our theme week on Cult Films and B Movies. It was previously published as part of our theme week on Women and Gender in Foreign Films.
I started getting into film when I was a teenager. Growing up with daily power cuts, both scheduled and unscheduled, is not conducive to childhood as a cinephile, and anyway my parents did not consider film a “real” art like literature or music – I can vividly remember being forced, at age seven, to quit Video Club and join Chess Club instead, because my mother did not think that sitting around watching videos constituted a worthwhile extracurricular.
(I am still breathtakingly terrible at chess.)
So, partly as the cultivation of an indoor hobby in response to the unpleasant British climate, and partly as the world’s meagerest teenage rebellion, I started watching films. In particular, I sought out horror films, thanks to the friendly proprietor of our local video rental store (now sadly gone the way of all such places in the Netflix age), who would happily rent the bloodiest, goriest, most revolting 18-ratedmovies to an obviously-14-year-old me, always with a cheery, “Enjoy!”
Most of these.
I was neither a discerning nor an educated viewer, but even so I quickly cottoned on to the fact that certain Italian directors had produced some above-average horror flicks in the 1970s, characterized by a cavalier attitude toward nudity, pervasive Catholic imagery, and lashings of gore. Ignorant of the term giallo, I proceeded to dub this subgenre “spag-horror,” which isn’t actually an awful name for it.
As my initiation into the worlds of sex and violence, many European horror films of the 1970s no doubt occupy a Freudian subspace of my psyche. Probably the Ur-example of this genre and its strange, ambivalent attitude toward women and sexuality is Dario Argento’s 1977 meisterwerk, Suspiria.
Suspiria poster
From its kickass score by prog-rockers Goblin to its borderline incomprehensible plot, I love damn near everything about Suspiria. For starters, it’s set in a ballet school, which is a direct line to my heart; and it features Udo Kier (UDO! KIER!); plus, it’s a strikingly female-dominated story. Argento says of the film: “there are only three men in it: one is blind, one can’t speak and the other is gay. It’s the women who have the power.” Which is such a problematic statement on so many levels, but let’s just focus on the undeniable fact that the film is mostly about women.
The film opens with American dancer Suzy Banyon (played by a young Jessica Harper – did you know she writes children’s books and has a cookery blog now??) arriving at a German airport on a rainy night. Pretty much the first thing we see is her repeated attempts to hail a taxi; her young face, rain- and wind-swept above the virginal whites of her clothes, expresses a vulnerability that will recur throughout the movie. Her big, frightened eyes peer out of the taxi at the gushing storm-drains, the phallic tree-trunks in the spooky woods, the bright red facade of the ballet school (on the subtly named Escher Strasse). Untoward goings-on, shockingly enough, are underfoot at the school, and Suzy soon finds herself completely out of her depth as things get steadily creepier.
Suzy and Sara, swimming.
What’s particularly interesting about Suspiria, especially in relation to the giallo genre as a whole, is its lack of nudity or overt sexuality. There’s a pretty good reason for this, as Argento explains:
To begin with, I imagined the story set in a children’s school, not of teens. I thought that it could be interesting that the school was for very young girls, eight, ten years old. This was the first version. The distributor strongly opposed this choice, and the film was made also with American money, from Fox, and they were against that too. So I changed the script and raised the girl’s age, but I kept a sort of childish attitude, so the characters behaved like children. The decor too… I used little tricks, for example the doors have the handles not at a normal height, but at face level, the height at which a child of 8 years old would find the handle. It gives the impression of dealing with children, even though they have adult bodies.
I don’t think it’s reading too much into the film to find some Freudian undertones in the whites and reds, in the repeated motif of water, in the pivotal role of irises. There is a strong fairy-tale quality to the film’s artifices, its primary colors, scenes awash in blue or red; the story of the young girl entering a world of danger and threat carries echoes of Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel, Snow White – Bruno Bettelheim would surely have something to say about that.
Make no mistake, this is a pretty violent movie. There are some quite fantastically grotesque murders. Within the first fifteen minutes, we see a still-beating heart stabbed and a woman’s face split in two by plate glass. Throughout, the lily-white garments of the murdered women are streaked and splattered with bright red blood. We also get a revolting maggot infestation, some magnificently scary chase scenes, and a truly bonkers climactic sequence.
Red, the color of a very murdered woman.
And yet Suzy retains a sense of childlike innocence and vulnerability throughout, relating to her friends and teachers like the little girl she was originally written to be. It’s a very weird juxtaposition, and I think it crystallizes the strange combination of female empowerment and ingrained misogyny that characterizes classic European horror. What, in the end, are we to make of stories where women are both the brutally murdered corpses and the proactive investigators of the mystery; both the pure childlike heroine and the monstrous villain; both desexed and penetrated by sharp objects; both agents and victims?
It speaks volumes to the general lack of such female-dominated stories in our broader culture that I even find myself asking this question.
Freaks (1932) is a true cult movie, one that’s ridden a rollercoaster of opprobrium and acclaim since its initial release. Tod Browning’s sideshow-set horror-romance destroyed his career (and several others), caused such disgust in early audiences that one woman (allegedly) miscarried, outraged critics and moral guardians, traumatized some of the performers who appeared in it, languished in obscurity after being banned for three decades, resurfaced on the exploitation circuit in the 1960s, and earned a spot in the National Film Registry archives in 1994 before enjoying its current status as a one-of-a-kind classic. It’s been repeated to the point of cliché, but Freaks, once seen, is never forgotten. Love it or hate it, it will stay with you for the rest of your life.
Freaks poster
This guest post by Karina Wilson appears as part of our theme week on Cult Films and B Movies.
Cult movies are lightning in a bottle, a one-time only circumstance of story, director, cast, crew, location and budget that defies original intentions and transmutes into something unforgettable, unrepeatable, unsurpassable. Cult movies are accidental, born of a mismatch between the scenes filmmakers thought they were shooting, and what ended up in the can. Cult movies are magic, of a puckish sort, and we shouldn’t probe their mysteries too closely. They’re best regarded from a distance, after a significant amount of time has passed.
Freaks (1932) is a true cult movie, one that’s ridden a rollercoaster of opprobrium and acclaim since its initial release. Tod Browning’s sideshow-set horror-romance destroyed his career (and several others), caused such disgust in early audiences that one woman (allegedly) miscarried, outraged critics and moral guardians, traumatized some of the performers who appeared in it, languished in obscurity after being banned for three decades, resurfaced on the exploitation circuit in the 1960s, and earned a spot in the National Film Registry archives in 1994 before enjoying its current status as a one-of-a-kind classic. It’s been repeated to the point of cliché, but Freaks, once seen, is never forgotten. Love it or hate it, it will stay with you for the rest of your life.
Originally, Freaks wasn’t intended to achieve any of these feats. All MGM head honcho Irving Thalberg wanted was a box office hit, along the lines of Universal’s Dracula (1931), a movie that exploited the audience’s new-found appetite for the talking horror genre. So he called Tod Browning, Dracula‘s director, who’d had a run of success during the silent era working with Lon Chaney Sr., and asked the million-dollar question “What else have you got?”
Although “horror” wasn’t a label applied to film in the 1920s, Browning and Chaney’s collaborations dealt with mutilation, disfigurement, and the resulting heartbreak (see: The Phantom of the Opera and The Unknown), subjects dear to the hearts of those whose loved ones had returned home, scarred, from the war in France. Browning and Chaney had also worked together on box office sensation The Unholy Three, a macabre crime caper featuring the 3’ 3” tall circus performer, Harry Earles.
Earles enjoyed working in the movies but knew there weren’t many roles out there for actors his size. So he brought Browning’s attention to another short story by Unholy Three writer, Tod Robbins, Spurs, a mean little melodrama about a love triangle between a circus midget, a bareback rider, and her normal-sized lover. Browning had a carnival background (he ran away to join the circus when he was 16), loved the milieu, and, when MGM gave him carte blanche to direct a movie more horrifying than Dracula, he picked Freaks.
In those pre-television days, the circus sideshow ruled supreme as entertainment for the curious masses. Trumpeted as part edification, part education, the ‘Ten-In-One” tent showcased human oddities and provided a rare opportunity for those born with a difference to earn a living. People with all manner of abnormalities found a profitable home in the sideshow – armless, legless, eyeless, giant, dwarf, bearded, scaled, obese, skeletal. Some simply exhibited their unique bodies, others performed an act, introducing music, dance, stage magic or comedy into their routine; many earned good money and toured the globe. After auditioning the crème-de-la-crème of this international talent pool, Browning assembled his cast, the likes of which has never been seen on a movie screen before or since.
The cast of Freaks includes some bona fide female sideshow stars, women who projected glamorous images of considerable wattage despite being born different. They worked their way up through circuses and on the vaudeville circuit, often from a very early age. They viewed their divergence from the accepted norm as an opportunity to build a show business career, rather than as a debilitation. Self-sufficient, often with strings of admirers, they didn’t lead easy lives, but charted their own paths and lived to a respectable age. It’s difficult to imagine any of these performers working in the perfect-image-obsessed entertainment industry today.
Conjoined twins Daisy and Violet Hilton had been working professionally in vaudeville since the age of three. Renowned for their beauty, fashion sense and musicianship as well as their dancing skills (they performed onstage with Bob Hope and Charlie Chaplin), they had recently received $100,000 damages and emancipation from their predatory managers (they later said they were “paupers living in practical slavery”) and their appearance in Freaks marked the beginning of their independent career.
Daisy and Violet Hilton
The “midget Mae West,” Daisy Earles (Frieda), along with her brother Harry and two equally short-statured sisters Tiny and Gracie, was part of the Doll Family, a popular act who toured with both the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circuses, and appeared in Laurel and Hardy films.
Martha Morris billed herself as “Martha The Armless Wonder” and was a featured attraction at Coney Island and in the traveling Freak City Show in the 1920s. She entertained rubes by writing and typing with her toes as dexterously as if they were fingers. Frances O’Connor’s stage name was “the Living Venus De Milo,” and she loved to pose in specially designed costumes that showed her entirely smooth and armless (there were not even stumps) torso, whilst impressing admirers with her coffee-drinking, cigarette-smoking and sharp-shooting skills.
By contrast, the non-“freak” women (Cleopatra, the Peacock Of The Air” trapeze artist, and Venus, the animal trainer) are low profile. Myrna Loy supposedly begged not to play Venus, and, although mentioned in press releases, Jean Harlow failed to materialize as Cleopatra. Instead, Russian defector Olga Baclanova (a gifted physical actor who was struggling with the shift to talkies) got the villainess role, while hard-working contract player Leila Hyams was cast as Venus. Both women were regular Hollywood blondes, used to commanding the silent screen with the arch of an eyebrow or the flare of a nostril, but, at 36 and 27 respectively, they were aging out of leading roles and Freaks marked the last major stop on the Hollywood Express for both of them.
Given the luminaries in the cast, it’s not surprising that Freaks is a female-driven narrative, a deft illustration of Madame de Merteuil’s assertion in Dangerous Liaisons, that “When one woman strikes at the heart of another, she seldom misses, and the wound is invariably fatal.” The plot is simple and universal: unrequited love, greed, jealousy, revenge.
The beautiful Cleopatra knows her co-worker, Hans, is in love with her, although she does not reciprocate the feeling. She enjoys making fun of him, much to the chagrin of his fiancée, Frieda. When Frieda lets slip that Hans has inherited a fortune, Cleopatra (egged on by her boyfriend, Hercules) persuades Hans to ditch Frieda and marry her. The other co-workers are suspicious of Cleopatra’s gold-digging motives but, if Hans is happy, they’re happy, and they all attend a celebratory wedding feast to welcome Cleopatra to the family. Unfortunately, Cleopatra sneers at their attempts to be friendly, and humiliates Hans, who collapses thanks to the alcohol she’s been forcing down him all evening – along with a dubious substance from a tiny black bottle. Frieda is furious. From that point on, Cleopatra is doomed. Frieda and the other co-workers close ranks around Hans to protect him from Cleopatra’s nefarious schemes and will do whatever it takes to keep him safe.
This is the type of run-of-the-mill romantic retribution played out every night of the week on today’s Lifetime network. We enjoy seeing the man-stealing hussy get her just desserts, while the wronged party is reunited with her one true love. In terms of pure plot, Freaks presents nothing we haven’t seen before. It creaks. It’s clumsy. It’s barely even a horror story. That’s the point. That’s why, 81 years later, Freaks still resonates as a progressive text. By rejecting fantasy, by refusing to use freaks to populate a fairy tale (as The Wizard of Oz would do seven years later), instead slotting them into a bog standard kitchen sink melodrama (albeit with a circus setting) Browning succeeds in making us see his characters as people first.
Much of Freaks’ power comes from the humdrum nature of the narrative, coupled with the easy familiarity of the early scenes. The first half of the screenplay deals with housekeeping, where the circus performers sleep (and who they sleep with), how they peg laundry out to dry, roll a cigarette, sip coffee, present a new baby to their friends. Dialogue takes the form of petty squabbles, between husband-to-be and conjoined fiancée, and performers discussing the mechanics of their acts. We’re forced to vacate our circus spectator headspace; there are no sequins or spotlights to direct our gaze. We quit gawking and embrace domesticity. It’s O.K. to be “one of us.”
One of us. One of us.
This makes the second half all the more disturbing. After breaking down their Otherness, establishing the freaks as friendly, ordinary beings, not at all threatening, pussycats in fact, Browning lets rip. These freaks – even infantilized pinheads like Zip and Pip – have teeth. Masterminded (we assume, although we never see her giving the orders) by the cherubic Frieda, the freaks enact justice. We’ve been encouraged to recognize their inner contentment and beauty. In the spirit of reciprocity, the freaks pull Cleopatra’s inner hideousness to the surface. Sideshow justice is done, and, within the movie’s running time of little over an hour, it’s all the more terrifying for its swiftness.
Freaks still makes for startling viewing, and, even in these enlightened, CGI-weary times, challenges our expectations of the human form. We’re so used to seeing physical perfection as the standard, so conditioned to accept the narrowest definition of beauty, so ignorant of the spectrum of human shapes, that many frames of the movie seem like a slap in the face. Freaks stands as a reminder that, for all our talk about diversity and inclusiveness, we sideline performers with difference. Unless they are playing “grateful recipient of charity” or “pathetic victim” or “awkward dependent,” we’ve largely wiped them from our screens.
Perhaps the most shocking thing about Freaks is that the diverse human beings in this pre-Production Code picture take it for granted that they can go about their business, flirt, have relationships, express sexual desire and procreate without any hand-wringing, or guilt, or “professional intervention” (a la The Sessions) from the normals. They invite us to gaze upon them, not with pity, but as players with agency in a story as old as time. Although it’s often criticized for being exploitative (and the critics have a point), Freaks is still the only movie in over a century of cinema history to celebrate these characters so boldly on the big screen. Until someone steps up to the plate, Freaks remains a unique experience, my cult classic, lightning in a fascinatingly misshapen bottle.
Karina Wilson is a British writer and story consultant based in Los Angeles. She writes a regular column on horror fiction at Litreactor and can also be found at Horror Film History.
