Author: Bitch Flicks

Older Women Week: Telling Stories: ‘My House in Umbria’

Film poster for My House in Umbria

This is a guest post by Amanda Civitello.

Emily Delahunty is a writer of fiction. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of My House in Umbria, a beautifully atmospheric film by Richard Loncraine starring the inimitable Maggie Smith. Smith shines in a rich role that takes advantage of her great skill. Too often we praise her – as I did for Bitch Flicks here – for her fantastic comic timing and cut-glass wit, forgetting that she is a dramatic actress as well, and worthy of much better parts than those that ask her to do little more than deliver a one-liner. That’s sadly what seems to garner her recognition these days: an impeccable demonstration of acerbic wit in the form of what Smith deems a “spiky old lady.” In a season of melodrama and over-the-top performances on Downton Abbey, for example, there was one standout moment of arresting, extraordinary acting, and it belonged to Maggie Smith, standing alone beneath the stone arches in the aftermath of her Lady Sybil’s death. She looked for all the world as if burdened by innumerable sorrow, and it was an utterly heartbreaking image. My House in Umbria gives Smith the opportunity to exercise her considerable mastery in a part that provides ample moments of similarly reflective silence as well as witty repartee.
In contemporary Italy, a terror attack on a train leaves only four survivors from a carriage of eight. Mrs. Delahunty, of course, is a survivor, as is the General (Ronnie Barker), a young German man (Benno Fürmann), and a little American girl (Emmy Clarke, in a remarkable performance for such a young actress). When the survivors can’t return to their homes until the investigation is complete, Mrs. Delahunty, an English expat, welcomes them to her villa in Umbria. There, they all find healing in each other’s company, the quiet routine of the countryside, and the presence of the little girl orphaned by the tragedy. Aimee arrives at the house rendered mute by the tragedy and the loss of her parents, but through the persistence and attention of Mrs. Delahunty, the others, and the staff – including Timothy Spall in a great turn as Quinty, manager of the estate – she soon finds her voice again, and it is she who inspires healing, forgiveness, and hope in the others. Their insular little community is rocked, however, by the arrival of Aimee’s estranged uncle, who comes to take her back to America, as Aimee’s departure threatens to destroy their tentative peace. 
Maggie Smith as Mrs. Delahunty in My House in Umbria
“We are the stories we tell ourselves,” director Shekhar Kapur asserted in a TED talk about creativity, and that’s true; put differently, “We tell ourselves stories in order to live,” wrote Joan Didion in 1979. We tell ourselves stories to overcome hardship, to reason ourselves out of the incomprehensible. We dream up explanations and embellishments. We protect ourselves and entertain ourselves, and in the end, there is often little difference between what actually happened and what we say happened. After a while, we come to believe the story, to find it true rather than fictitious, and our perspective is shaped accordingly.

“We survived,” Emily is fond of saying to a number of characters in the film – and while she’s obviously referencing the terror attack when she speaks to her fellow “walking wounded” – it’s apparent from its very first utterance that Emily has survived far more than the explosion in carrozza 219. As her story unfolds, we come to discover that Emily is a survivor of childhood abandonment: she was sold as an infant to a childless couple by her parents who had no place for a child in their circus-act lives. She’s a survivor of sexual abuse and a survivor of a succession of abusive relationships. She traveled extensively with boyfriends pursuing extraordinarily odd jobs. Emily recounts her own troubled history as a kind of story, her memories tinged with a distinctly literary tone, and at times – and like the characters – one questions the veracity of some of her stories, particularly when her version doesn’t exactly mesh with another’s. But does it really matter if they’re true or not? 
The surrealist depiction of the terror attack itself
For Mrs. Delahunty, these kinds of stories seem to come as naturally as breathing: she invents entire lives for the strangers around her – like this writer has done since she started dreaming up stories for the staid nuns teaching her lessons – and relates them with such authority that it’s difficult to retain a critical air about them. We believe the stories Mrs. Delahunty tells because she believes them. Maggie Smith underscores this over and over again. She crinkles her eye, purses her lip, fiddles with her sunglasses or her ever-present glass of grappa in such a way that, even as we believe wholeheartedly in the story Mrs. Delahunty weaves, we can’t help the flicker of incredulity that creeps up. Of course, we do believe her, as the writer intended, but our perception of Mrs. Delahunty is marked by the subtle reminders from Smith to listen with a critical ear.

Because of this, My House in Umbria succeeds primarily on the strength of Smith’s acting. Much of the film consists of an internal narrative, in which we hear through voiceover Smith’s thoughts on the fellow passengers who become her houseguests. She concocts background stories for each of them, a mixture of dreams, astrology, and deductions liberally sprinkled with what she wants their stories to be. She wants to create, for example, a love story between Werner and the young woman accompanying him. When the General takes to Aimee, she decides that it’s down to a bit of guilt about the way he raised his own daughter who perished on the train. These ideas are rooted in her observations, of course, but they aren’t necessarily real. The General might have actually had a very good relationship with his daughter, for example, barring his dislike of her husband, and might not harbor any regrets over her childhood. Of course, he might not, but it doesn’t matter; what matters is that Mrs. Delahunty believes these stories, and we believe them right along with her. It’s to the credit of actors like Timothy Spall, Ronnie Barker, and Chris Cooper that they deliver the kind of quiet, restrained performances that render Mrs. Delahunty’s musings believable. 
Emmy Clarke as Aimee and Maggie Smith as Mrs. Delahunty in My House in Umbria
Her stories ultimately influence the ways in which she interacts with her guests, most notably Mr. Riversmith (Chris Cooper), Aimee’s estranged uncle. Through a bit of eavesdropping and her own tendency to dramatize a situation, Mrs. Delahunty – to her mind – fleshes out Mr. Riversmith’s character, melding bits of reality (he’s a professor who studies the carpenter ant) with logical extensions and explanations, some of which require her to dismiss the observations that don’t quite fit her narrative. (She steadfastly refuses, for example, to leave him alone as his body language would attest, convincing herself that it’s a front.) Mr. Riversmith, however, is the one guest who fights back against her, refusing her repeated offers of a drink – “You could do with a drink,” Mrs. Delahunty asserts time and again, to which Mr. Riversmith replies, in escalating anger, that he drinks little, if at all, and certainly not at 9am – and suggesting she kindly get her nose out of his business. Yet, Mrs. Delahunty persists, and it’s to Smith’s credit that we cheer her on, and see the value in it, even when it becomes uncomfortable to watch.
The film’s climax sees Mrs. Delahunty, sloshed beyond belief on her grappa, stumble into Mr. Riversmith’s bedroom in the middle of the night, clutching a bottle and two glasses, and demanding that he speak to her (and share a drink, of course). She levels all of her conjectures at him – her reasoning about Werner, her thoughts about healing as a group, the defaults she finds in his character, and, above all, her desperate need to keep Aimee in Italy. She is practically paralyzed with fear and sorrow at Aimee’s leaving; her anxiety reveals itself in a surprising way. There’s always been an undercurrent of latent romance on Mrs. Delahunty’s part; here it bubbles to the surface in a scene achingly sad in its desperation. She opens her robe and offers him her breast, and, to her shock, he shields his eyes and turns away. The anger melds with crushing disappointment in Smith’s expression – but at what? At Riversmith’s refusal? (She is a woman, after all, who remarks in the opening scene that men still continue to give her a second appreciative glance.) At Riversmith’s defiance? We aren’t sure, and neither is Mrs. Delahunty. 
The General teaching young Aimee the Cha-Cha
For the real truth of Mrs. Delahunty’s stories has nothing to do with actual events or actual personalities and everything to do with seeing the heart of a person or a situation. She has a knack, through her fictionalizations, to make blatantly, disturbingly, brutally honest observations of the people around her. (She cracks the case before the inspector does; not by research and detective work, as he does, but on the strength of a dream and eagle-eyed observation.) And it’s Mrs. Delahunty, therefore, who manages, in a web of conjecture, to get at the core of Mr. Riversmith’s character: his guilt. “Colpa,” she tells him before he throws her out of his room, her voice wavering in her drunkenness. “It means guilt. We all of us feel colpa about something. Do not, I beg you, let colpa stand in the way of your actions.” He responds with an angry, “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about!”
“I think you do,” Mrs. Delahunty replies. “You feel colpa because you never made peace with your sister. And because of that, you feel obliged to take the child back with you.” He’s never said as much to her, of course – he never mentioned Aimee’s mother apart from a brief acknowledgment that he had never met Aimee because of his falling-out with her mother, his sister. 
The tension between Mrs. Delahunty and Mr. Riversmith comes to a head when she argues with him late at night
And yet she is right: he does feel guilty, and, the following morning, Aimee returns home, welcomed back into Mrs. Delahunty’s arms in a beautifully shot scene. This parallels the shot of Aimee standing at the window as the carriage explodes, the light bright behind her; in this scene we see her lit from behind, away from the window, locked in a loving, maternal embrace. There’s no need to emphasize the Italian, or to couch her words in bumbling poetry. It’s a literary trick, to use a foreign word in place of an English translation, and one we’d expect to find on the page rather than on screen. But in Smith’s hands it transfers marvelously to film, and we’re reminded, once again, that all of this has been made possible because Mrs. Delahunty sees the world as a writer of fiction.

My House in Umbria is in many ways a meditation on fiction and characterization, on the way we writers create characters from those around us, and fictionalize our friends. It is, on a smaller scale, about grief and about survival. What it is not about is justice: there’s nothing more than the sketchiest of explanations for the perpetration of this crime; there is no arrest, and the terrorist ultimately gets away. This is unsurprising, perhaps, as the attack itself is presented in a dream-like, surreal manner, happening in slow motion as if it’s already a memory. In that particular sense, My House in Umbria is not especially satisfying. But as a film that grapples with the concept of forgiveness in the wake of tragedy, My House in Umbria is hugely successful. For Emily, writing and forgiveness (and guilt, yes) are inextricably linked. 
Aimee’s return home, with the sunlight streaming behind her
And yet, through all of this, Emily is a writer with a terrible case of writer’s block. She writes the odd phrase in her notebook, but throughout the film, we never see her write. Her literary career is in the past, her interest in her work having been eclipsed by a steadily increasing dependence on alcohol. The ending is happy not just because Aimee returns home but because Mrs. Delahunty seems to find her own footing again. “She’s happier than she’s ever been,” Quinty remarks to the General, and then, Mrs. Delahunty says it herself, marveling that she feels the inspiration to write returning to her after a long winter. What makes Maggie Smith a great actress, of course, is that she develops incredible depth to her characters. Far too often, an older actress must create that intensity for herself out of a supporting part that’s lacking in complexity or that’s rich in tropes. In My House in Umbria, Maggie Smith delivers an exquisite performance that should drive home to screenwriters the necessity of writing complex roles for older women: Smith takes a well-rounded character and rich scenario and makes them so compelling, so enthralling, so utterly fascinating that one wonders why screenwriters aren’t lining up to craft such parts for her. And, more importantly, why the parts waiting for her are reinventions of the same, tired tropes. 

Amanda Civitello is a Chicago-based freelance writer and Northwestern grad with an interest in arts and literary criticism. She is the editor of Iris, a new literary magazine with an LGBTQ+ focus for YA readers. She has contributed reviews of Rebecca, Sleepy Hollow, and Downton Abbey to Bitch Flicks. You can find her online at amandacivitello.com.

Older Women Week: Charlize Theron: Too Hot to Be Wicked?

Film poster for Snow White and the Huntsman
This is a guest post by Katherine Newstead.

When I first heard that Charlize Theron was going to play The Wicked Queen in Snow White and the Huntsman (Sanders, 2012) I thought this was completely ridiculous; Theron is way too young and, frankly, way too hot. However, that was kind of the point.

Ravenna, aka The Wicked Queen, Theron’s character, bases her whole existence on maintaining her beauty and youth and stands as a symbol for women’s supposed fear of ageing and anxiety toward the ageing female body.

Charlize Theron is the Queen of Wicked Hot
In a scene toward the beginning of Snow White and the Huntsman, during Ravenna’s and the King’s wedding night, she tells of how she has replaced his old (emphasis on the “old”) Queen, and how, in time, she too would have been replaced. Thus, Ravenna speaks of the “natural” cycle of youth replacing age and appears to blame patriarchy for this situation, as men “toss women to the dogs like scraps” once they have finished with them.
“When a woman stays young and beautiful forever, the world is hers.”
Mirror, Mirror … er, not on the wall
Ravenna truly believes that the maintenance of age guarantees success. And why not? How many anti-ageing adverts will be shown on television today, promoting the latest magical cure for the horrors of ageing. Such adverts have been labelled as responsible for cultivating a new trend for female narcissism as a form of liberation and emancipation yet, as Douglas writes, it is not patriarchy that women blame for the flaws and disappointments that they see in themselves, but themselves (1995).

What is the most obvious symbol of narcissism? A mirror, naturally. And who has a mirror? The Wicked Queen; I see a connection forming. Ravenna’s somewhat obsessive relationship with her mirror is what ultimately becomes her downfall, not her relationship with Snow White. It is the mirror that goads her, telling her that she is not the most beautiful woman in the land; that would be Snow White, who never looks in the mirror and therefore isn’t haunted by the need to find, and ultimately destroy, perfection. As Waugh states:

Mirrors offer an illusory image of wholeness and completeness, the promise of the security of possession, but they too are agents of oppression and control, enticing us with their spurious identifications. (1989:12)

See, this is what happens when you don’t moisturise
 
Thus, Ravenna’s narcissism is fuelled by her mirror, which has a male voice (funny, that), and reflects (literally) the views of society, a society that is told time and again that to be successful and like, wanted, you have to appear young and beautiful.

So, oppressed by the chidings of the man in the mirror, Ravenna tries to ensure that she remains the most beautiful woman of all, and God help you if you get in her way. Ravenna literally sucks the life force out of any young woman in her path, perhaps a tad symbolic? You may be young and beautiful, but your anxieties about your rapidly ageing body — *points at Ravenna* — will eventually suck all the goodness out of you. Not to mention the years of hard work you’ll no doubt face, what with menstruating, having babies, getting paid less than anyone with a penis … I digress. 

But, seriously, Ravenna stands like a team mascot for post-feminist discourse on doing it for yourself, looking out for number one, revelling in your new found ability to look hot — at whatever the cost — and mow those bitches down who dare get in your way. Oh, and the whole thing about women becoming invisible once they reach a certain age and being overlooked by a society that sees them no longer economically viable? Yeah, Ravenna is far from invisible, what with all the shouting, killing, turning into a murder (right?) of crows. It’s like she’s saying, “HELLO? I’m still here, I still exist. I can be beautiful (and economically useful to society) toooooooooo!”
Charlize Theron in Snow White and the Huntsman
Yeah, so Charlize Theron as The Wicked (though not so old) Queen? PERFECT casting. Wish I’d thought of it myself.

Bibliography

Douglas, S. (1995) Where the Girls Are: Growing up Feminine with the Mass Media, Times Books: United States.

Waugh, P. (1989) Feminine Fictions: Revisiting the Postmodern, Routledge: London.

Katherine Newstead is a 27 year-old Film Studies postgraduate, from the University of Exeter. After completing her Masters dissertation on the representation of girlhood in the Disney fairy tale, she has returned to the University of Exeter to write her PhD thesis on the “Othering” of older women in the contemporary cinematic fairy tale.

Older Women Week: ‘The First Wives Club’: "Don’t Get Mad. Get Everything."

Film poster for The First Wives Club
This is a guest post by Jen Thorpe.

The First Wives Club is the story of four women who became friends with each other when they were in college. After graduation, the friends ended up drifting apart. This is a situation that happens to a lot of women. Life gets in the way.

People get married, have children, and (hopefully) find “real jobs.” It becomes increasingly difficult to find the time (or the energy) to socialize with friends who are no longer a part of our day-to-day lives. When you are in your 20s, you truly believe that you will be best friends forever. You intend to stay connected. Years later, you wonder whatever happened to those friends (whom you haven’t heard from in years).

In the movie, three of the friends reunite after learning that the fourth friend, Cynthia Swann Griffin (played by Stockard Channing) died by suicide after her husband divorced her. The surviving friends are now in their mid-forties. Each one is either divorced or is going through the process of divorce.

The movie does a good job of picking up on some of the thoughts that women who are 40 or over struggle with. Elise Elliot (played by Goldie Hawn) is overly concerned about aging. There is a scene where she begs her plastic surgeon to make her lips fuller (again). He resists, reminding her of all the plastic surgery she has already undergone and pointing out that she is beautiful.

Elise looking for wrinkles at the plastic surgeon’s office
Not every woman over 40 is going to turn to plastic surgery as a “fountain of youth.” Elise chose it because she is an actress who is having difficulty finding work. Suddenly (or so it seems to Elise) she is only being offered the role of “the mother.” For her, aging essentially means that she will no longer have a career. Elise is the perfect example of what really does happen to actresses once they turn 40.

She is a more extreme example of what many women (who are not actresses) feel when their hair starts turning gray and they begin to get “crow’s feet.” The fear is that these very natural parts of aging mean that the woman is no longer desirable, or sexy, or beautiful. There are women who are absolutely terrified of “getting old” because they worry that no one will want them.

Unfortunately, this fear is not an unfounded one. Elise’s husband, Bill Atchison (played by Victor Garber) is divorcing her and has started dating a woman who is much younger than than Elise. Tension builds when Elise is asked to play the role of “the mother” in a script where Bill’s new lover will play the lead role of the daughter.

A similar thing happened to Brenda Cushman (played by Bette Midler). She got married to Morton “Morty” Cushman when they were young, ran the cash register in his electronics stores, and had a son with him. Now, Brenda is 45 and Morty has left her and gotten into a serious relationship with Shelly Stewart (played by Sarah Jessica Parker). Brenda and Morty’s fifteen-year-old son has trouble coping with this situation.

Brenda laments to her friends that everything with she and Morty was just fine. Then, on their 20th wedding anniversary, Morty began having what Brenda calls a mid-life crisis. In short, he decides that she isn’t fun anymore and is holding him back. He replaces her with a thinner, younger, blond woman who is about half her age.

“Who’s supposed to wear that? Some anorexic teenager?”
There is a scene where Brenda is walking past a department store with a friend. She stops to look at a tiny black dress in the window. “Who’s supposed to wear that?” she rhetorically asks her friend, “Some anorexic teenager? Some fetus?” Her rant continues with her intent to lead a protest by never buying any more clothing until the designers “come to their senses.”
Her words are something I can personally relate to. I recently turned 40, and I am no longer the “anorexic teenager” that I was in high school. I’ve gained some weight since then. This is normal. We get older, our metabolisms slow down, and weight loss becomes more difficult. I, too, wonder when the designers will “come to their senses” and produce clothing that adult, women can actually fit into!

Annie Paradis (played by Diane Keaton) has a slightly different story. She isn’t actually divorced yet. She and her husband Aaron Paradis (played by Stephen Collins) are separated. They had been going to couple’s therapy but now are each seeing a therapist individually. Annie truly believes that they are in the process of working things out and getting back together.

Her daughter, Chris Paradis (played by Jennifer Dundas) describes her mother as a “doormat.” Chris is a college student and old enough to see that her father isn’t treating her mother very well. She is frustrated that her mom allows it. Unlike Brenda’s son, Chris doesn’t want her parents to get back together.

There is a scene where Annie is going on (what she believes) is a date with Aaron. She is convinced that he is going to tell her that he wants to get back together. Instead, after they have become intimate in his hotel room, he announces that he wants a divorce. This completely destroys Annie.

She is a woman who, like many women, has issues with self-esteem. After a lifetime of suppressing her anger, and striving to always be “nice,” Annie finally lets out her feelings in a loud, sobbing, messy way. At the same time, the phrase she uses most often during this catharsis is “I’m sorry.”

Annie screaming “I’m sorry!!!”
Annie, Brenda, and Elise form the “First Wives Club” and decide that they want to find a way to take revenge upon their husbands. The main plot of the movie focuses on the many ways the women do exactly that. Their ex-husbands find themselves losing favorite possessions, losing money, and (potentially) losing their jobs. Women who are going through a divorce may want to watch this movie simply to live vicariously through it. What happens is overblown and unlikely to happen in the real lives of most women.

Later, the women start to want more than revenge. They decide to turn their efforts toward helping other divorced women. Again, this requires their ex-husbands, whom they have now managed to blackmail, to spend more money. To me, this part of the plot felt a bit forced and strange. The change from “let’s get ’em” to “let’s open a charity” was rather abrupt.

The First Wives Club was released in 1996, a time when almost no one carried a cell phone. As such, the majority of phone calls that take place in the movie are done on land-line phones with clunky receivers. There is a scene where Brenda goes out to dinner by herself. She doesn’t spend the meal fiddling with her cell phone – and neither do any of the other people in the restaurant. Times have changed since the late 1990’s (and realizing this makes me feel “old”).

Jen Thorpe is a freelance writer, podcaster, and gamer. She is the cofounder of the No Market website (nomarket.org) and writes for it frequently on a wide variety of topics and subjects. You can keep up with everything she does by following her @queenofhaiku.

Older Women Week: Aging and Existential Crisis in ‘3rd Rock from the Sun’

Poster for 3rd Rock from the Sun

This is a guest post by Jenny Lapekas.

3rd Rock from the Sun follows the story of four aliens sent to earth in human form to study the ways of humans. Their mission was originally supposed to last only one day, but the High Commander, Dick Solomon (the delightful John Lithgow) extends it to six hilarious seasons filled with the flamboyant comedy and intelligent, pithy dialogue we rarely see or expect anymore in the American sitcom. What the crew doesn’t anticipate are both the joys and inconveniences of their human bodies: emotions, sexuality and relationships. Dick immediately falls for his office mate at Pendleton University, Dr. Mary Albright (Jane Curtin), who finds him pompous, arrogant and strange beyond belief. Although Dick mocks Mary’s thesis, wrecks her car and even breaks up with her to date the university’s new English professor, Mary comes to love Dick and can never keep away from him for too long. Harry (French Stewart), the “Transmitter,” is the clueless brother, Sally (Kristen Johnston), “Security Officer,” is the seductive but unrefined sister, and Tommy (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), “Information Officer,” is the eldest of the crew, but confined to an adolescent earth body. Throughout the series’ run, Jane Curtin was in her 50s, and the show’s treatment of her age reflects this.
Upon their arrival, the aliens count their fingers and toes in their Rambler.
Mary is a powerful presence in the series; she’s an attractive, articulate college professor with a Ph.D. and the heart of Dick Solomon, the High Commander in his wacky group of interplanetary adventurers. While Harry is undoubtedly a queer figure in his role as the buffoon within the somehow functional family unit, and Nina, Mary’s assistant, arguably remains stuck in her typecast role as the “sassy, black woman,” Mary’s position as an older woman propels her through the series as ironically naive, desperate for acceptance from a band of outsiders, and hopelessly in love with Dick. Although Mary is initially disliked by Dick’s family, Sally, Harry and Tommy warm up to her after she proves that her earnest sensibilities compliment Dick’s rashness, exuberance and incessant need for the spotlight. While Dick’s antics are endearing, certainly, Mary’s drive for stability is an unmistakable dynamic in the pair’s relationship, especially while in the company of Dick’s family.

Mary goes camping with the group, and Sally reluctantly bonds with Mary when, applying ointment to a blister on Sally’s foot, Mary shows her a scar on her chin, the result of a field hockey scuffle with a girl when she was younger. Mary claims, “I dropped my stick and opened her up like a melon,” and an impressed Sally responds, “Albright, you’re pretty tough…for a prissy little bookworm.” As the Security Officer of the mission, Sally relates to Mary through the theme of violence. This pleasant moment appears as the result of Mary’s wisdom and life experiences, which are, in this case, unexpected since Mary is, after all, only a “bookworm” in the eyes of Dick’s family. Because Sally is young and beautiful, and she arrives to earth gendered as a male who is bitter about his anatomy and not romantically attracted to men initially, she enters the scene with male privilege and feels entitled to dismiss Mary as a mere distraction for Dick, who should be focusing on the mission; however, we come to find out that Mary is the mission. Because Sally stands out as an obvious feminist character–an Amazonian warrior–it’s relatively easy for viewers to pass over Mary as the middle-aged, level-headed academic in favor of the Solomons’ shenanigans. While Sally is conflicted about being “the woman” once they land, Mary has already spent many years as an earth woman, which means that her past indiscretions are unearthed.

Throughout the show’s run, Mary is the object of ridicule by Dick’s family for her age and her alleged lascivious past. Her mother even tells Dick that she had to crush birth control pills and sneak them in Mary’s cereal every morning because Mary was so promiscuous as a teenager. However, Mary quickly becomes the unofficial matriarch of the Solomon posse as Sally is much too militant and oblivious to the ways of earth to practice responsibility and forethought, aside from cooking and cleaning for her family–her “duties” as a woman. Sally can certainly act the part, but it’s always fleeting and disingenuous. Not quite as stubborn as Dick and not nearly as clueless as Harry, Sally’s downfall is her conflicted approach to womanhood, which actually serves to reframe the face of femininity and its gendered expectations on the show; Sally intermittently embraces and rejects the roles she’s expected to take on as “the woman” of the mission while Mary welcomes all facets of womanhood, including her sexual exploits. 
Although Mary is immediately drawn to Dick’s zany genius, she finds him an obnoxious office mate.
When Dick convinces Sally to lose her virginity in season two, he explains, “Dr. Albright dove right in, and it was her first time.” At this, a nearby Tommy bursts out in incredulous laughter; the implication is not only that Mary has had many suitors in her lifetime, but that she’s apparently been on earth a very long time. Later, Mary tells Dick, “When I was a young professor on the fast track, there were things that I did.” When Dick asks what those things were, Mary admits, “The Dean.” While Mary seems mildly regretful, she readily offers this information, and Dick refrains from judging her. Mary, then, serves to guide Sally’s path as a woman while on this planet. Mary assures the long-legged alien that being a virgin is a personal choice that is no one’s business but her own. Because sexuality and old age seem contradictory to the aliens, it seems comically unnatural to Dick’s family that Mary is or was ever the object of sexual arousal.

Because Mary is teased for her old age, especially since she’s no longer viewed as the sexual being she was once known as, it’s at the forefront of particular episodes. In season three, Dick hounds a photographer who once took “tasteful, artistic” nude photos of Mary when she was younger, and he comes to terms with them only after he begins shredding them. He discovers that the shots are beautiful and capture how beautiful Mary was, but he also realizes that she’s still sexually appealing because he loves her; he tells her that she has aged “like a fine wine.” What’s striking about this resolution is that Dick must see the photographs to behold and master this young image of his lover in order to feel secure in his position as her boyfriend. When Mary sees the photos, she comments that she was a “hottie.”

Ironically, Mary’s love for wine renders her immune to the poison placed in her drink by alien-hunters.
While Mary’s love for indulging in all of life’s pleasures is a recurring source of amusement on the show, Mary never denies that she enjoys sex and booze. She even gets drunk with Dick while playing a board game and admits to sleeping with Dick’s nemesis, Dr. Strudwick, a conversation the anthropology professor can’t even recall the following morning. Despite her earth antics, mild by comparison, Mary is the unequivocal voice of reason in a show that features the traditional formula of three kooky men and the woman who spends her time proving that she’s as worthy as they are, despite her status as an empowered woman. Mary is our surrogate in an environment that has little to no handling on the Solomons. We then need Mary in order to navigate our way through the misinformed and sometimes deranged misadventures of the crew.
Mary is the only earthling who finds out that the Solomons are aliens, and Dick even points out their home planet for her.
When the teenage Tommy decides that he’s fed up with high school girls, he begins to pursue Mary, and even requests that she call him the more sophisticated “Tom.” Tommy spends time with Mary because he values her knowledge and wisdom as an older woman, but he eventually caves to Dick’s demands that he back off the woman Dick is “not in love with.” In this case, we see a reversal and a challenging of what we know to be the standard fantasy of most men: to be with young girls. However, Tommy is the crew’s Information Officer, and he seeks earth women who can offer just that: knowledge and maturity. Tommy is a feminist character in his conscious decision to reject vacant, naive beauty in favor of substance. Because Tommy is indeed the oldest alien, he recognizes the value in dating Mary, even if she doesn’t realize the two are dating. In this way, Mary is prized as an older woman rather than demeaned as one.
Tommy and Dick stand off outside Mary’s front door.  Tommy says, “For the first time on this planet, I’ve met a woman who appreciates me for what I think.”
Without the balanced mix of Mary’s centered cool and her willingness to participate in the farcical plots of 3rd Rock, we have no anchor securing our spot somewhere between the logical and the absurd. Mary acts as a catalyst for progress and learning within the aliens’ lives, particularly that of Dick, who is irrevocably enlightened by knowing her. It’s because of Mary’s endless array of neuroses–abandonment issues, childhood obesity, dysfunctional family relationships–and codependent relationship with Dick that we come to adore the aliens and also recognize that we may be the aliens instead. Jane Curtin also refuses to be overshadowed by the eccentric comedic presence of John Lithgow, which is no small feat. 
When their mission is canceled, Dick tells Mary that she’ll remember him as “a feeling.”
Although Dick is an alien, and therefore a genius and a master of physics, Mary gives Dick a lesson in feelings during the group’s mission, a subject that was thoroughly foreign to him. The High Commander’s decision to extend the mission is a direct result of Mary’s ability to incite human emotion in an otherwise clinical, dismissive Dick–to teach him how to be human. In other words, we can thank Mary Albright for six seasons of intergalactic comedy gold from writers Bonnie and Terry Turner. Shortly after arriving, Dick tells Mary, “I want very much to feel, and I want even more to be felt, and I mean that from the heart of my bottom.”

Jenny Lapekas has a Master of Arts degree in English, and she teaches Composition at Alvernia University in Pennsylvania. Her areas of scholarship include women’s literature, menstrual literacy, and rape-revenge cinema.

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

Wrinkle-Washed: Female Faces in Film Marketing by Lisa Wade at Sociological Images

Calming the Controversy: “After Tiller” Directors Lana Wilson and Martha Shane Discuss the Complexities of Late-Term Abortion by Christopher Campbell at RogerEbert.com

Infographic: Why Don’t Women Directors Win Emmys? by Imran Siddiquee at Miss Representation 

Where’s the Diversity? A Look at the Emmy Awards and TV by Jason Low at Lee and Low Books

‘Saturday Night Live’ Adds 6 New Cast Members Which Is Nice. But What’s Wrong w/ This Picture? by Tambay A. Obenson at Shadow and Act

Jess and Mindy–A Look at the Progression of Female Comedy Characters by Alyssa Rosenberg at Women and Hollywood

Stephen King Calls Out Stanley Kubrick for “Misogynistic” Shining Character by Jill Pantozzi at The Mary Sue

New Reality Show “Modern Dads” is Extremely Boring by Jill Moffett at Bitch Media

How to Crack the Film World’s Glass Ceiling by Kate Sheppard at Mother Jones

Forbes Announces Top Female Earners on Television by Melissa Silverstein and Karensa Cadenas at Women and Hollywood

BULL’S-EYE: Geena Davis Tells Hollywood Where To Stick Its Ageist, Sexist Representations Of Women at Upworthy, via Funny or Die

John Singleton Channels August Wilson – Pens Op-ed On White Directors Helming Black Films by Tambay A. Obenson at Shadow and Act

8 Ways to Make a Movie About a Female Superhero Happen by Charlie Jane Anders at io9

“Once Upon a Time” Rewrites Fairy Tales–But Misses A Big Opportunity by Hannah Strom at Bitch 
Media

Sirens, Succubi and Slut-Shaming: Why Are Women ‘Evil’ Once They Have Sex? by Alex Henderson at feminspire

A Feminist Cook Portrayed in New Movie ‘Haute Cuisine’ by Anne Dulce at The Daily Meal

The 17 Faces Of The Future Of Feminism at Refinery29


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

Why We Need More Women Filmmakers: A Review of ‘Legend of the Red Reaper’

Movie still from Legend of the Red Reaper

This is a guest post by Aphrodite Kocięda. 

When actress Tara Cardinal initially approached me and asked if I could write a review for her new film, Legend of the Red Reaper, I was a bit hesitant. I have never really been fond of films that are hyper-masculine and assume that they’re automatically progressive because they cast one woman as a lead in a “strong” position without changing the overall framework. In fact, many films replace their protagonist men with women who are doing the exact same hyper-masculine shit and assume they should automatically get brownie points for casting a vagina.

However, I was thoroughly surprised by Legend of the Red Reaper because Cardinal’s character, Aella, broke through stereotypical representations of women in action films. In fact, I found myself enamored with Aella and her ability to transform trite traits associated with strength into something progressive. She wasn’t afraid to be “feminine” and “masculine” simultaneously. Aella is not hypersexualized or deemed “incompetent” because she is a woman. She is a multi-dimensional, complex character who transcends the normative ideas of femininity and masculinity.
Tara Cardinal as Aella in Legend of the Red Reaper
Legend of the Red Reaper is a fantasy/action film that centers on the tensions between demons, humans, reapers, and witches. Reapers are half human and half demon and are protectors of humans. Cardinal’s character, Aella, plays a reaper who is destined to save the human race, and her journey is complicated by love, familial conflict, and identity issues. Cardinal is both the director and producer of the film which might explain why Aella’s character is so progressive. Additionally, Cardinal does all of her own stunt and sword work.

Aella doesn’t fit into any of the cliché tropes for women that are routinely reproduced in mainstream films. For example, Aella is in love with a man named Eris who is a human—someone who she could never be with because she is a reaper. A young townswoman named Indira attempts to gain the attention of Eris and wants to marry him. Aella, however, does not exact revenge upon Indira. In fact, at one point, Aella saves Indira’s life. Aella actually gives up Eris so that he can marry Indira. This was very different from the clichéd narratives centering on women’s relationships in other mainstream films where women fight and focus all of their energy on ruining each others’ lives. Aella respectfully steps out of the picture without any conflict.
Movie still from Legend of the Red Reaper
Aella’s battle scenes also transcend stereotypical representations. During one scene in particular, Aella fights off more than four men with her sword in one hand while holding a crying baby in the other. I have N-E-V-E-R seen this before. All too often, film writers and producers assume that in order to showcase women in masculine positions, they must strip women of any semblance of womanhood, which is problematic. Therefore, I thought it was a smart move on behalf of Cardinal to show this. Unlike other films that feature women in lead fighting roles, Aella was not sexualized, nor was she attempting to emulate a man.

For me, this is what art and film are supposed to be like. Oftentimes films can reproduce patriarchal values that make it that much more difficult for women to see a good film. Women are not granted the privilege of imagining themselves in roles that transcend patriarchy and white supremacy. All too often women are cast as one-dimensional background nameless beings, or topless random women who are mere accessories to a multidimensional man. Legend of the Red Reaper allowed me to escape my reality and provided me with a chance to finally imagine a narrative beyond the confines of my social reality. As bell hooks says, “…we do not need more art to give us shit. Art should and can be the place where we are given an alternative, a redemptive vision.”

Aph Kocięda is a graduate student at the University of South Florida in Communication. She also holds a B.A. in Women’s and Gender Studies. You can find Aph on Vegan Feminist Network. 

Girl Meets Girl, The Movie: On the Color-Drenched Postcards from Paradise in Al Benoit’s ‘Warpaint’

Movie still from Warpaint
This is a guest post by Jaye Johnson previously appeared at Gay Agenda and is cross-posted with permission.
“All that I know is I’m breathing.” —from an untitled song on the Warpaint soundtrack
Carey and Audrey, the two totes adorbs heroines in Al Benoit’s coming-of-age girl-girl drama Warpaint fall delightfully in line with the 20-something-year-old indie filmmaker’s aesthetic, in that there is (seemingly) no aesthetic—that’s how seamless this fully Kickstarter-funded production is.
In her own words, here’s a nice little backgrounder from the director.
Warpaint, a short film, tells the story of Carey and Audrey, two seventeen-year-old girls who fall in love over a summer at their parents’ lake houses. Warpaint was a passion project, inspired by a someone very close to me. We made it on a very minimal budget and a tight 4-day shooting schedule. We had just enough budget to rent out the C300, which was extremely lovely. I hope you enjoy our little film.

As you fall in love with Benoit’s narrative and her characters, you feel like you’re flipping through picture postcards of private, sweet memories. You recall similar memories of your own.
Movie still from Warpaint
Many kids are self-aware and snarky, sarcastic and so on, but Audrey and Carey only lightly touch upon such nuanced, grownup humor. It’s evident they’re still kids when they argue about one of them almost saying a “bad word,” or say curse words such as “bull poop.” They’re still figuring things out, and that element is one of the many enchanting elements in Warpaint.
There’s no prurience here, only innocence. Even though the characters’ dialogue can be snarky and naughty at times, the vibe is entirely about young women acting their age … both girls are only 17. Nobody’s trying to be precocious here, and as their relationship evolves, romance hits them both as a pleasant yet natural surprise, as they’re both still at that nebulous age where holding hands may or may not be read as having lesbian tendencies. Their relationship is given time to breathe, and they’re able to figure out their own footing, no matter how uncertain the steps are.
Movie still from Warpaint
Benoit’s directorial work brings to mind the lyricism of filmmaker Ang Lee, in that the soundtrack does a lot of the talking for the characters, and the landscape, environment, and scenery evoke much of the mood. No talky dialogue is needed. This filmmakers knows the craft enough to leverage all its pieces and tell a story well. The soundtrack selections are light and playful, at times wistful, glittery, summery, sweeping, and reflective.

There’s much laughter … there are many long takes of one girl or another gazing directly at the camera (and into your soul). Much of the sadness and complexity of their love for each other happens off camera and is only vaguely referred to in the conversations we get to hear. Their time is limited, and they’re going to make the most of it, as joyfully as possible, paying little or no mind to any restraints, parental pressures, or closets to speak of.

Movie still from Warpaint
Too, these young women aren’t punished for loving each other or for having lesbian tendencies (that all too common go-to film trope is hopefully so easy and so over), and what the girls go through together is realistic and authentic. Nothing’s easily solved or resolved, but we, along with the characters, see their time together as something to be savored, no matter how bittersweet.

We clock time with the characters as they frolic, muse, sail (yes, child–sailing!), play make believe, run, skip, jump … just all of it. Benoit isn’t afraid to let these young girls go there … stories don’t always have to be about kids who are 17 going on 35. And haven’t you had a gorgeous memory or two memories like that? Y’know, playful, happy?

Sweet?

Click here to visit writer-director Al Benoit’s homepage. To watch Warpaint, click here.  

Jaye Johnson is a social media & content manager (plus: VA and writer, ‘natch). If you’re looking to connect with an LGBTQ-inclusive editorial assistant and/or manager for content curation (a.k.a. White Hat editorial SEO, social shares), PR help, “content massage,” admin assistance and overall good vibes, she welcomes you to get in touch.

‘Despicable Me 2’: One of These Things Is Not Like the Other

Despicable Me 2 poster

This is a guest post by Margaret Evans.

I really enjoyed the first Despicable Me movie. The characters were all a lot of fun, the bond between Gru and his adopted daughters was believable, and the world that the movie built was interesting. When the sequel came out, I saw it in the cinema, and it was just as good as the first, if not better. However, one scene in the movie troubled me.

 

At one point, the main character, Gru, is set up on a date with a woman, and the date doesn’t go well. When Shannon (his date) threatens to reveal his wig, he is “saved” when Lucy (one of the female leads) tranquilises her. Gru and Lucy drop Shannon off at her house, and slapstick humour ensues on the way.

 

So, why does the slapstick humour aimed at Shannon bother me when I have no problem with either slapstick humour as a concept or even the slapstick humour inflicted upon Gru, his minions, or later the main antagonist? I believe that the answer to this question can be found by taking a look at how the characters react when they are the focus of slapstick.
Lucy spies on Gru during his date with Shannon
In the case of Gru, the best example of slapstick is when he gets hit by Lucy’s lipstick taser. His response is to start frantically moving; he even does a little bit of the dance from Saturday Night Fever. He is very animated and clearly in pain.

 

Shannon’s experience, on the other hand, is very different from Gru’s. The major difference between the two is that Gru is conscious …  whereas Shannon is out for the count the whole time. Because of this, the humour doesn’t come from her reaction to the injuries that she is experiencing–but from her lack of reaction.

 

When Gru and Lucy take Shannon home, they don’t put her in the car or call for a taxi; they put her on the roof of the car, the same way you would put your luggage on the back of the car. When they arrive at Shannon’s house, she is unceremoniously thrown off of the car, and the other characters laugh about it. Now, imagine this scene again and–instead of Shannon–picture any inanimate object that you think fits. If you play this scene again in your mind with the changes, it will still make sense and be funny for the same reason.
Lucy and Gru
That is what troubled me about the scene with Shannon. In the case of Gru being tasered, the joke was his reaction and his pain, but in Shannon’s case, it was how she showed the exact same “reaction” that an inanimate object would (because she was unconscious). In Gru’s case, the humour has a humanising effect, but in Shannon’s case, the humour very literally objectifies her.

 

Now, it has been suggested to me that the reason Gru and Shannon are treated differently in this regard is that we are meant to sympathise with Gru because he is the good guy, and we are rooting for him, whereas we are meant to take delight in Shannon’s pain because she is cruel and obnoxious.

 

To counter this argument, I would like to take a look at the main villain. Near the end of the movie, the villain is defeated, in part by Gru using the same lipstick taser that Lucy used on him. The villain reacts in the same way that Gru did, and we can very clearly see the pain that he is experiencing because of the electricity. Yet, the humour still comes from his defeat rather than our feeling sorry for him. The movie does not use the character’s villainy as some sort of excuse to treat him as anything less than human.
Shannon from Despicable Me 2
Therefore, the fact that we are meant to strongly dislike Sharon and be rooting against her can’t be pinned down as the reason that her experience is so noticeably different from Gru’s. Neither can it be used as justification for the problematic elements.

 

The slapstick involving the other characters throughout the movie only serves to show that if the writers really wanted to pull some humour at the expense of Shannon, they could have easily done so without the need to reduce her character to the level of a piece of luggage.
The scene with Shannon is, for me, the sole off-putting scene in the movie. It is a scene in which being an irritating person and a bad date is used to justify knocking someone out–and in which a character gets treated the same way someone would treat an object that they felt didn’t need to be particularly handled with care. We, the audience, are meant to laugh along with Gru and Lucy, to view this all as an evening of comedic antics rather than what it actually is, complete disregard for her as a human being.
Gru, Lucy, and Shannon’s unconscious body
This scene didn’t ruin my enjoyment of the movie, but the rest of the movie doesn’t give this scene a free pass. Personally, I thought it was a real shame to see the direction that the movie temporarily took considering how good the movies had been up to that point at humanising its characters, (especially Gru, who played an archetype traditionally demonised in the first movie). I just wish that the people behind this movie could have put the same thought into writing the character of Shannon, however personally irritating they intended her to be.

 

Margaret Evans is a blogger from Godalming, a small town in south England. She contributes to the website www.paranerds.com. When she isn’t writing she volunteers as a receptionist for the local Citizen’s Advice Bureau and works as an admin for a local building firm.

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

 


Women’s Films and Social Change by Maggie Hennefeld at Highbrow Magazine
Toronto: ’12 Years a Slave’ Wins Audience Award by Etan Vlessing at The Hollywood Reporter
Double Consciousness in Lee Daniels’ The Butler by Jonathan Harrison at Sociological Images
Is There Any Satisfying Way to End a Modern Drama? by Matt Zoller Seitz at Vulture

My Life as a Warrior Princess by Jennifer Sky at The New York Times

Danai Gurira talks Mother of George by Wilson Morales at blackfilm.com

My Summer With Agent Scully by Sarah Mirk at Bitch Media

Salon Pictures Announces Slate of Women Directed Films by Kate Wilson at Women and Hollywood

The Feminist Power of Female Ghosts by Andi Zeisler at Bitch Media
Do We Really Need a Feminist Press? by Leora Tanenbaum at The Huffington Post
 
What have you been reading/writing this week? Tell us in the comments!
 
 

Millenials These Days

Masthead for Chicana From Chicago, Christine Davila’s blog

 
This is a guest post by Christine Davila.

If you hear someone utter, “Kids These Days,” it’s usually in a disapproving tone toward the younger generations’ fresh attitude or their breaking with tradition (or their tendency to speed while driving). When I think about Kids These Days, though, it is in sheer awe. I am so impressed by their confidence and transcultural expression with which they carve out their bold self-individuality. I don’t remember ever being that loud and proud in my teens. I, like most, just wanted to fit in. But the Millennial generation has spoken: Assimilation is out; non-conformity is in.

As a first generation Mexican-American I’m naturally drawn to bi-cultural narratives because they relate to my own culture dash – American clash. Speaking Spanish at home, making tortillas with abuelita, and my parents’ late night dance and Tequila parties, blasting Sonora Santanera or the passionate cries of Vicente Fernandez, all formed a very specific childhood. There is something really powerful about seeing a reflection of your roots in a contemporary context in the biggest form of entertainment: the movies. You may have read the numbers; there are 55 million+ Latinos in the country, making us the fastest growing and youngest demographic. Brands clumsily chase after this market and miserably try to coin terms to define us like New Generation Latino, Young Latino Americans, Hispanic Millennials. The term Latino attempts to encompass far too many diverse ethnic and social cultures that it is a useless denomination, a limited view failing to recognize the fluidity of our social zeitgeist in the 21st century.
It is critical to adapt with the changing times and engage the new generations of our immigrant nation. It’s time to reframe our notions and classifications on race and identity. Más American is my humble attempt of doing away with outdated and ill-defined terminology like Hispanic or Latino. It is meant to convey the real, inclusive and radical reflection of society’s eclectic fabric found in fiercely independent filmmaker voices. More aptly, it speaks to the transcultural identity and non-conformist spirit of today’s characters and narratives. It’s not necessarily confined to speak about people of “color.” It is about all kinds of shifting identities, from conventional, traditional and sociocultural norms to a more progressive evolution. It is about gender – equality, reversal of roles, gender variant. Filmmakers are out there telling these unique perspectives through independent film. These stories are out there. I can attest to that with some authority because of the volume of screening I do for film festivals year round. Films from underrepresented communities usually have an outsider/insider perspective, which in turn provokes highly original and compelling narratives by its very nature. This emerging class of individualism is what embodies American spirit.
Más American also speaks to the influence Latinos have on non-Latinos. You don’t have to have the blood in order to appreciate or acquire a sensibility of the Latino experience. Many non-Latino filmmakers have made extraordinary films capturing the US Latino experience. It’s only natural considering the countless generations who originate from before the Hidalgo treaty was signed. We are your neighbors, friends, colleagues, lovers, wives, husbands, in-laws, in each of the 50 states. Indeed, a long time ago my mom and I learned to stop talking trash when out in public about non-Latinos in proximity realizing that many people understand some Spanish.
Más American
And so it is with much pleasure, and gratitude toward the filmmakers, the Más American conversation on Seed&Spark is rolling out. These films purely conceive of characters and a world more reflective and authentic of our reality. Perhaps the freshness comes from a subconscious in which they derive and embody a defiant individuality, outside of any identity politics. Más American hopefully is a starting point for a more forward and richer conversation toward genuine, original and underrepresented narratives. I hope to add more titles to the mix in this Conversation, championing filmmakers who get America’s evolving sense of cultural self-identity and who are on the pulse of the rapidly shifting zeitgeist.

In THE CRUMBLES, written and directed by Akira Boch, the acting talent naturally inhabit LA’s Echo Park hipster artist scene in such a sincere and rocking way. The lead happens to be a Latina and her co-lead happens to be Asian. Their color is so not the center of the tragicomic slice-of-life. Yet it does make them who they are: badass rock ‘n roll girlfriends who resist quitting on their dream of hitting it big with their band.

In THE NEVER DAUNTED, writer/director Edgar Muñiz explores the toll and cross a man must bear who can’t conceive, in such a profound, heartbreaking and uniquely creative way. The film explores a modern masculinity more open to vulnerability, clashing with the Western stoic cowboy machismo image imposed on men from boyhood.

GABI – director Zoé Salicrup Junco’s impressive NYU thesis film – centers around its titular business-smart, sexy and confident 30-something woman living an independent and successful life, whose main conflict is the reminder that, in her hometown, her success represents a failure within the context of the marriage, kids and housewife model. 
Seed&Spark logo
In all of these stories, new definitions of traditional norms are celebrated, and scripts are being flipped. I’m thrilled that with Seed&Spark the public at large can discover these rebellious voices.
I want to thank the filmmakers for sharing their inspiring non-conformist narratives on Seed&Spark and for, whether they know it or not, breaking type.

Christine Davila is film festival programmer, festival strategist, script consultant and blogger (chicanafromchicago.com). As a first generation Mexican-American from Chicago, she loves multi-cultural stories and has the privilege of screening hundreds of US Latino and Spanish language films throughout the year as a freelance programmer for film festivals like Sundance, Morelia, Los Angeles Film Festival, San Antonio’s CineFestival, among others. In her blog, Chicana From Chicago, she focuses on the diaspora of American cinema made by people with roots/origin/descendant in Mexico, Central & South America, Cuba, Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. You can follow Christine @IndieFindsLA.

Top Ten Reasons Why I Am Thankful for Lake Bell’s ‘In a World’

Movie poster for In a World …
This is a guest post by Molly McCaffrey.

1) Number one and most important of all, I’m thankful this movie was written and directed by a woman and that it’s a story about a strong, smart, interesting woman.

Director and screenwriter Lake Bell at the Sundance Film Festival

I am incredibly thankful about that.

2) I’m thankful this movie stars an actress who doesn’t look like every other Hollywood actress. Yes, Bell is beautiful, but she also doesn’t have the button nose, full lips, perfect posture, and blond hair that has become so annoyingly ubiquitous among our female movie stars.

Louis (Demetri Martin) and Carol Solomon (Lake Bell) sing their guts out in In a World …

And neither do her co-stars…

Louis (Demetri Martin) and Cher (Tig Notaro) watch Carol Solomon (Lake Bell) record a voice-over.

(You also gotta love a movie that has both Tig Notaro and Geena Davis.)

3) On a related note, I’m thankful Bell’s protagonist, Carol Solomon, doesn’t always act like a leading lady—she shuffles, lurches, and acts generally spazzy. She doesn’t always look glamorous either—she doesn’t always wear makeup or look perfectly primped and often wears regular-people clothes (sweatpants, thermal underwear, t-shirts, football jerseys, overalls, ill-fitting dresses, etc.)—just like the rest of us.

Louis (Demetri Martin) and Carol Solomon (Lake Bell) hatch plans to take over the voice-over industry.

At the same time, I’m glad Carol looks attractive when she wants to without looking trashy or showing off all the goods.

4) I’m also thankful that several men are attracted to Carol even though she doesn’t know how to dress or stand up straight (and that the men who are drawn to her are attractive but not perfect either).

Carol Solomon’s love interest, Louis (Demetri Martin)

5) I love, too, that this film shows an intelligent, driven, attractive young female protagonist in a relationship, but it isn’t what defines her. Let me say that again: Thank God her relationship doesn’t define her!

I was equally thrilled that Carol had casual sex with some random guy she met at a party and celebrated it. And that she didn’t end up regretting her actions or have something bad happen to her as a result. In this movie, sex was just part of life—no big deal—much like it is in real life.

Louis (Demetri Martin) and Carol Solomon (Lake Bell) karaoke the night away in In a World …

6) I was also head over heels over the fact that the two sisters—Carol and Dani—were so close and leaned on each other for everything.

Carol Solomon (Lake Bell) and her sister, Dani (Michaela Watkins)

I was glad, as well, that the person who had an “affair” in this movie was a woman (rather than a man) and that she didn’t actually go all the way.

7) I really appreciate, too, that this movie shows a young person living at home with a parent and that she isn’t doing so because she’s a lazy, lost, unmotivated slacker.

Carol Solomon (Lake Bell) and her father (Fred Melamed) argue about her career.

And I was truly blown away by the film’s characterization of Carol’s family—a real family having down-to-earth, regular problems.

No, nobody is dying of cancer, nobody is mentally ill or disabled, nobody is in prison, nobody is an alcoholic. The characters in this movie are just average people with average problems—like jealousy, resentment, miscommunication, and selfishness.

I am very grateful about that.

Carol Solomon (Lake Bell) and her father (Fred Melamed) on the way to an industry party.

8) I’m thrilled about several things relating to Carol’s job…

I’m relieved Carol works in a non-glamorous industry that we don’t usually see featured in movies—the voice-over industry.

Carol Solomon (Lake Bell) records a voice-over.

I love, too, that she cares so much about her work even though it doesn’t pay the bills.

And I’m glad that the film shows her having some success in that field without totally dominating it a la every other movie ever made (Erin Brockovich, Jerry Maguire, The Devil Wears Prada, Working Girl, etc., etc.).

9) I’m downright ecstatic about the fact that Carol didn’t have to trip or fall to make us laugh, avoiding the ridiculous formulas that often dominate movies about women.

Carol Solomon (Lake Bell) surrounded by her work notes in her bedroom at her father’s house.

Thank you for that, Lake Bell!

Tangentially, it was also awesome that Carol was irritated by stupid people doing stupid things and didn’t apologize for that.

10) And last but not least, I’m incredibly thankful this movie made me laugh and feel and, for God’s sake, think.

Carol Solomon (Lake Bell)

If only all movies did the same.

 

 
Molly McCaffrey is the author of the short story collection How to Survive Graduate School & Other Disasters, the co-editor of Commutability: Stories about the Journey from Here to There, and the founder of I Will Not Diet, a blog devoted to healthy living and body acceptance. She has worked with Academy Award winner Barbara Kopple and received her Ph.D. from the University of Cincinnati. Currently she teaches at Western Kentucky University and designs books for Steel Toe Books. She is at work on her first memoir, You Belong to Us, which tells the story of McCaffrey meeting her biological family. 

The Bechdel Test and Women in Movies

The original Bechdel Test

This piece by Magda Knight originally appeared at Mookychick and is cross-posted with permission.

A 1985 comic strip by US cartoonist Alison Bechdel, Dykes to Watch Out For, features a character who says they’d only go to see a movie on three conditions:

  • The film has at least two named women in it 
  • Who talk to each other at some point in the film
  • About something other than a man
The idea of the Bechdel Test caught on, and you can now visit the Bechdel Test Movie List, a giant community-run resource that catalogues over 4,000 films which have women talking to each other about not-man things. I highly recommend you check out it out. Partly because it’s really interesting and eye-opening (Straw Dogs just makes it), but mainly because you’ll see passionate and lengthy discussions of the merits of My Little Pony: Equestria Girls and whether the lead females, being ponies, pass the test. AND OH, THEY DO. THE NATURAL ORDER OF THINGS IS RESTORED.

My Little Pony: Equestria Girls

How do I feel about the validity of the Bechdel Test? My only reservation about it is that I think it’s terribly neat, and I fear tidy things because, as Erma Bombeck said, “My idea of tidy is to sweep the room with a glance.” Tidy is not something I demand of my hair, my house, my film theory or my beliefs. Tidy is rigid, and life ebbs and flows like a vast, floppy, wet and ultimately quite messy ocean teeming with potential and things with too many legs and other things, also with probably too many legs, all of which I’d honestly rather not have to tidy up. If you’re something with that many legs, you can tidy up after yourself. I’ll be on the sofa reading a book.
Einstein believed the universe would eventually boil down to just one universal constant, but I don’t even think art can be condensed into one neat little set of rules, however awesome they are. After all, Fight Club is one of many excellent movies that fails the Bechdel Test, and I’m not going to harsh on Marla the Magnificent’s buzz for not talking to any women in the movie. Hot damn, Marla.

Helena Bonham Carter as Marla in Fight Club

  
Bride Wars, on the other hand, gets a flying pass, and it’s a hideously cynical chick flick about two “best friends” who have sculpted their life ambitions around weddings. They discover they’re booked into the same hotel for a wedding on the same day and turn on each other like rabid dogs and dye each other’s hair blue without asking first because HEY THAT’S WHAT WOMEN BEST FRIENDS DO. The first rule of Fight Club is you don’t talk about Fight Club (unless it’s to gush about the wonderfully dark things it says about the human condition). The first rule of Bride Wars is, obviously, to just not watch it.

What I really do love about the Bechdel Test is the wonderful questions it encourages us to raise. I think it’s excellent for filmmakers and screenwriters to have in the back of their minds: Hey, wouldn’t it be nice if this film I’m creating had some women who talked to each other? Whose lives didn’t triangulate around men like bogeys on a radar screen?

Anne Hathaway and Kate Hudson in Bride Wars
A study by the University of California looking at the 100 most successful box office films in 2012 found that just under 30% of the speaking roles were for women, and nearly 30% of those had revealing clothes, a figure which jumped to 56% for teenage girls. And never mind the clothes–how many of those speaking roles were for first or second billing, I wonder, and how many of them involved saying something other than, “We showed each other our private parts yesterday so let’s talk about where this relationship is headed, Dave,” or “Honey, of course you’ll make it through the robot jungle alive. I knitted you a robot handkerchief for good luck; now kiss me, you great big loveable robot fool”?

Helen Mirren
2013 has been a particularly tricky and vocal year for women in films and visual entertainment: 
  • In March, Helen Mirren publicly criticised Sam Mendes for not including any women filmmakers in his list of inspirations and spoke out against the lack of women in the film industry when accepting her Empire Legend Award. BOOM.
  • Professor Maggie Gale of the University of Manchester revealed to the Daily Telegraph that more plays were written by women in the Sufragette era than there are today.
  • Thandie Newton told CNN how she’d been forced to have a movie camera stuck under her skirt as a teenager for a screen test. And how the resulting footage had been played to other people privately. Eurgh.
  • Audrey Tatou (Amelie, The Da Vinci Code) told the Radio Times that she decided not to pursue a Hollywood career because she did not want “every single millimetre” of her body being scrutinised, because the Hollywood approach to an actress’s figure was “unforgiving.” If even Audrey Tatou feels she can’t aspire to be Audrey Tatou, what chance does a young female actress following in her footsteps have?
  • It’s not just western cinema, either; Aruna Irani has spoken out against the lack of good roles for middle-aged women in Bollywood, saying, “There is no role for female characters, especially of my age group. Actresses like Hemaji, Rakhiji and Moushmiji, they all are just at home. And if sometimes they get the chance to be part of a film, then that is for three or four scenes.” 
Audrey Tatou

It’s almost a case of: if you’re a young and talented actress, you better make the most of those apples in your cheeks while you’ve still got them, apple-face, because only three women of your generation will get to be Maggie Smith or Helen Mirren, and you’re going to be expected to fight other actresses tooth and nail–almost as if you’d booked a wedding in the same place on the same day–to be one of them. And that percentage of women with speaking parts in film? The number’s been going down since 2009, not up. Speaking roles for women in film are currently at their lowest in five years.

Sony’s Amy Pascal, who ranks 14th on Forbes‘ 20 Most Powerful Women in Business list, gave a really interesting interview on closing the pay gap between men and women in Hollywood, and why women get paid less than men. I literally couldn’t figure out how to fit that into this article tidily (see above), so I’m just going to throw it in there. Enjoy!

Sony’s Amy Pascal

If we take some positives from this…
  • If you’re creating a film or play, consider the Bechdel Test. Could your script do with more speaking parts for women? Even older women? About non-man things?
  • If you’re not creating a film or play but have always wanted to, give it a go. There are more Jane Campions and Kathryn Bigelows out there in the filmosphere, and one of them might be you.
  • If you’re an actress, ALL POWER TO YOU. Things will be addressed, and they will get better. If it gets to the point where you’re giving an interview to CNN or accepting an Empire Legend Award? It’s not just acknowledgement for your talent and hard work, it’s a platform. If you speak out, people will hear you… 

@MagdaKnight is the Co-Founding Editor of Mookychick. Her YA fiction and other writings have been published in anthologies and in 2000AD. She likes you already, so Email her and say hi, or visit her blog. She is on Google+.