Author: Bitch Flicks

Women in Sports Week: ‘The Blind Side’: The Most Insulting Movie Ever Made

Movie poster for The Blind Side
This guest post by Nine Deuce previously appeared at Bitch Flicks on March 23, 2011.
Davetavius and I consider ourselves the world’s foremost authorities on watching movies for reasons other than those intended by their producers. As such, we go way beyond just watching “cheesy” (whatever that means) movies, 80s movies, or kung fu movies (which I refuse to watch but which every dork on Earth has been pretending to like in some attempt at letting everyone know how “weird” they are since Quentin Tarantino’s ridiculous ass popularized kung fu movie fandom as the #1 route to instant eccentricity cred in True Romance) to focus our attention on recently-released romantic comedies, those obnoxious movies in which two assholes just sit around and talk to each other for 98 minutes, and “serious” movies for which people have been given gold-plated statuettes. One can learn an awful lot about the faults and failings of our social system and corporate entertainment’s attempts to sell us its version of culture by watching movies created by and for the anti-intelligentsia, and if one were to try hard enough, I’m sure one could find the string that, if tugged, would unravel the modern world system buried somewhere in a melodramatic Best Picture Oscar contender intended to make people who refer to beers as “cold ones” feel like they’re considering The Big Issues. There was no way we were going to miss The Blind Side.
Spoiler alert: this is the worst movie I’ve ever seen, and I’m going to spoil your desire to see it yourself by writing this post. Also, I may, if I can manage to give a fuck, divulge important plot elements. But it’s based on a true story that everyone has already heard anyway, so who cares.

Sandra Bullock schools Michael Oher in The Blind Side

Let me say up front that I’m aware that I’m supposed to feel sorry for Sandra Bullock this week. She’s purported to be “America’s sweetheart” and all, she has always seemed like a fairly decent person (for an actor), and I think her husband deserves to get his wang run over by one of his customized asshole conveyance vehicles, but I’m finding it difficult to feel too bad. I mean, who marries a guy who named himself after a figure from the Old West, has more tattoos than IQ points, and is known for his penchant for rockabilly strippers? Normally I’d absolve Bullock of all responsibility for what has occurred and spend nine paragraphs illustrating the many reasons Jesse James doesn’t deserve to live, but I’ve just received proof in the form of a movie called The Blind Side that Sandra Bullock is in cahoots with Satan, Ronald Reagan’s cryogenically preserved head, the country music industry, and E! in their plot to take over the world by turning us all into (or helping some of us to remain) smug, racist imbeciles.

The movie chronicles the major events in the life of a black NFL player named Michael Oher from the time he meets the rich white family who adopts him to the time that white family sees him drafted into the NFL, a series of events that apparently proves that racism is either over or OK (I’m not sure which), with a ton of southern football bullshit along the way. Bullock plays Leigh Anne Tuohy, the wife of a dude named Sean Tuohy, played by — no shit — Tim McGraw, who is a fairly minor character in the movie despite the fact that he is said to own, like, 90 Taco Bell franchises. The story is that Oher, played by Quinton Aaron, is admitted into a fancy-pants private Christian school despite his lack of legitimate academic records due to the insistence of the school’s football coach and the altruism of the school’s teachers (as if, dude), where he comes into contact with the Tuohy family, who begin to notice that he is sleeping in the school gym and subsisting on popcorn. Ms. Tuohy then invites him to live in the zillion-dollar Memphis Tuophy family compound, encourages him to become the best defensive linebacker he can be by means of cornball familial love metaphors, and teaches him about the nuclear family and the SEC before beaming proudly as he’s drafted by the Baltimore Ravens.

The Tuohy family prays over mounds of food

I’m sure that the Tuohy family are lovely people and that they deserve some kind of medal for their good deeds, but if I were a judge, I wouldn’t toss them out of my courtroom should they arrive there bringing a libel suit against whoever wrote, produced, and directed The Blind Side, because it’s handily the dumbest, most racist, most intellectually and politically insulting movie I’ve ever seen, and it makes the Tuohy family — especially their young son S.J. — look like unfathomable assholes. Well, really, it makes all of the white people in the South look like unfathomable assholes. Like these people need any more bad publicity.

Quentin Aaron puts in a pretty awesome performance, if what the director asked him to do was look as pitiful as possible at every moment in order not to scare anyone by being black. Whether that was the goal or not, he certainly did elicit pity from me when Sandra Bullock showed him his new bed and he knitted his brows and, looking at the bed in awe, said, “I’ve never had one of these before.” I mean, the poor bastard had been duped into participating in the creation of a movie that attempts to make bigoted southerners feel good about themselves by telling them that they needn’t worry about poverty or racism because any black person who deserves help will be adopted by a rich family that will provide them with the means to a lucrative NFL contract. Every interaction Aaron and Bullock (or Aaron and anyone else, for that matter) have in the movie is characterized by Aaron’s wretched obsequiousness and the feeling that you’re being bludgeoned over the head with the message that you needn’t fear this black guy. It’s the least dignified role for a black actor since Cuba Gooding, Jr.’s portrayal of James Robert Kennedy in Radio (a movie Davetavius claims ought to have the subtitle “It’s OK to be black in the South as long as you’re retarded.”). The producers, writers, and director of this movie have managed to tell a story about class, race, and the failures of capitalism and “democratic” politics to ameliorate the conditions poor people of color have to deal with by any means other than sports while scrupulously avoiding analyzing any of those issues and while making it possible for the audience to walk out of the theater with their selfish, privileged, entitled worldviews intact, unscathed, and soundly reconfirmed.

Kathy Bates wants to fist bump Michael Oher in The Blind Side

Then there’s all of the southern bullshit, foremost of which is the football element. The producers of the movie purposely made time for cameos by about fifteen SEC football coaches in order to ensure that everyone south of the Mason-Dixon line would drop their $9 in the pot, and the positive representation of football culture in the film is second in phoniness only to the TV version of Friday Night Lights. Actually, fuck that. It’s worse. Let’s be serious. If this kid had showed no aptitude for football, is there any way in hell he’d have been admitted to a private school without the preparation he’d need to succeed there or any money? In the film, the teachers at the school generously give of their private time to tutor Oher and help prepare him to attend classes with the other students. I’ll bet you $12 that shit did not occur in real life. In fact, I know it didn’t. The Tuohy family may or may not have cared whether the kid could play football, but the school certainly did. It is, after all, a southern school, and high school football is a bigger deal in the South than weed is at Bonnaroo.

But what would have happened to Oher outside of school had he sucked at football and hence been useless to white southerners? What’s the remedy for poverty if you’re a black woman? A dude with no pigskin skills? Where are the nacho magnates to adopt those black people? I mean, that’s the solution for everything, right? For all black people to be adopted by rich, paternalistic white people? I know this may come as a shock to some white people out there, but the NFL cannot accommodate every black dude in America, and hence is an imperfect solution to social inequality. I know we have the NBA too, but I still see a problem. But the Blind Side fan already has an answer for me. You see, there is a scene in the movie which illustrates that only some black people deserve to be adopted by wealthy white women. Bullock, when out looking for Oher, finds herself confronted with a black guy who not only isn’t very good at appearing pitiful in order to make her comfortable, but who has an attitude and threatens to shoot Oher if he sees him. What ensues is quite possibly the most loathsome scene in movie history in which Sandra Bullock gets in the guy’s face, rattles off the specs of the gun she carries in her purse, and announces that she’s a member of the NRA and will shoot his ass if he comes anywhere near her family, “bitch.” Best Actress Oscar.

Sandra Bullock braves the Black Neighborhood

Well, there it is. Now you see why this movie made 19 kajillion dollars and won an Oscar: it tells a heartwarming tale of white benevolence, assures the red state dweller that his theory that “there’s black people, and then there’s niggers” is right on, and affords him the chance to vicariously remind a black guy who’s boss through the person of America’s sweetheart. Just fucking revolting.

There are several other cringe-inducing elements in the film. The precocious, cutesy antics of the family’s little son, S.J., for example. He’s constantly making dumb-ass smart-ass comments, cloyingly hip-hopping out with Oher to the tune of  Young M.C.’s “Bust a Move” (a song that has been overplayed and passe for ten years but has now joined “Ice Ice Baby” at the top of the list of songs from junior high that I never want to hear again), and generally trying to be a much more asshole-ish version of Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone. At what point will screenwriters realize that everyone wants to punch pint-sized snarky movie characters in the throat? And when will I feel safe watching a movie in the knowledge that I won’t have to endure a scene in which a white dork or cartoon character “raises the roof” and affects a buffalo stance while mouthing a sanitized rap song that even John Ashcroft knows the words to?

Sandra Bullock reads a story to her child son and Michael Oher

And then there’s the scene in which Tim McGraw, upon meeting his adopted son’s tutor (played by Kathy Bates) and finding out she’s a Democrat, says, “Who would’ve thought I’d have a black son before I met a Democrat?” Who would have thought I’d ever hear a “joke” that was less funny and more retch-inducing than Bill Engvall’s material?

What was the intended message of this film? It won an Oscar, so I know it had to have a message, but what could it have been? I’ve got it (a suggestion from Davetavius)! The message is this: don’t buy more than one Taco Bell franchise or you’ll have to adopt a black guy. I’ll accept that that’s the intended message of the film, because if  the actual message that came across in the movie was intentional, I may have to hide in the house for the rest of my life.

I just don’t even know what to say about this movie. Watching it may well have been one of the most demoralizing, discouraging experiences of my life, and it removed at least 35% of the hope I’d previously had that this country had any hope of ever being anything but a cultural and social embarrassment. Do yourself a favor. Skip it and watch Welcome to the Dollhouse again.

Nine Deuce blogs at Rage Against the Man-chine. From her bio: I basically go off, dude. People all over the internet call me rad. They call me fem, too, but I’m not all that fem. I mean, I’m female and I have long hair and shit, but that’s just because I’m into Black Sabbath. I don’t have any mini-skirts, high heels, thongs, or lipstick or anything, and I often worry people with my decidedly un-fem behavior. I’m basically a “man” trapped in a woman’s body. What I mean is that, like a person with a penis, I act like a human being and expect other people to treat me like one even though I have a vagina.

Women in Sports Week: ‘Edge of America’: Indigenous Communitism on the Hardwood

Movie poster for Edge of America

This is a guest post by Amanda Morris.

The opening images of Showtime’s movie, Edge of America, directed by Chris Ayre (Cheyenne/Arapaho), and inspired by a true story, are of a journey. A car drives through a peopleless desert landscape on an open and carless road. The driver, Kenny Williams (James McDaniel), is the new English teacher for the Three Nations Reservation in New Mexico. Our first view of the reservation is through his eyes as he stops at the edge of a pond and consults his map as he tries to find his way. But the first spoken words we hear are the Navajo language as two tribal women dicker over a price at a roadside stand. This outsider/insider construct continues throughout the movie as Kenny navigates and learns reservation life and culture through his female colleagues and students and especially his players once he agrees to coach the girls’ basketball team.

Movie still of the Lady Warriors on the basketball court
Based on the opening scenes, the viewer might assume that this story is about Kenny, but it is not. This movie ultimately focuses on community, defining one’s own identity, and the grounding strength of women. Cherokee scholar Jace Weaver created the term “communitism” by combining “community” and “activism” in his book, That the People May Live: Native American Literatures and Native American Community. The concept works well to describe what happens in this movie. Weaver writes, “Native peoples find their individual identities in the collectivity of community” (160). Edge of America is also a good example of representational sovereignty, in which “the Native is self-defining” instead of being colonialist minstrels for the dominant culture (163). The girls that Kenny recruits to play as Lady Warriors certainly face identity challenges in academic terms: None of them performs well academically and so were not allowed to join the basketball team, despite being the best players. As a result, the team is filled with lesser-skilled girls who flounder and have an impressive losing streak. School radio DJ Dwayne (Cody Lightning, Plains Cree), frequently reminds his listeners that the Lady Warriors are “all losers, all the time.”

James McDaniel, Delanna Studi, and Irene Bedard in Edge of America
Being defined as losers is something that the girls struggle to reverse as the movie progresses. Kenny guides them through physically hard practices and mentally hard readjustments of their personal expectations, and the Lady Warriors begin to coalesce into a self-defined community of proud women basketball players, but the road toward this goal is not straight.

This film privileges the indigenous perspective from the start and specifically shows strong women guiding the action either explicitly or implicitly. From Mother Tsosie (Geraldine Keams, Navajo) telling Kenny, “Drive” when he gives her a ride to the res in the movie’s second scene, to Annie Shorty (Irene Bedard, Inupiat/French Canadian/Cree) saving Kenny by giving him a ride to school the first day when his car breaks down, to Carla McKinney (Delanna Studi, Cherokee) teaching Kenny a lesson about humor and stories in his classroom. Each woman that Kenny encounters has something to teach. Annie challenges Kenny’s coaching strategy when he runs the girls hard during basketball practice and again near the end of the film. After the Lady Warriors have made it to the state finals, Annie and Kenny face off in a hotel room over his anger and his inability to accept imperfection in his players. Annie tells him that the girls have done everything he’s asked, from practicing hard and getting good grades, to winning. Kenny asks, “Then you tell me why I’m pissed off.” Annie retorts gently, “Because you’re a black man in America.” Kenny snidely agrees and Annie yells, “Well then get over it. You’re talkin’ to Indian people here. Get over it, get on with it, or get the hell out!”

The Lady Warriors look on as their coach sings the National Anthem
Many scenes involve such confrontations of assumptions, whether subtle or overt. In one softer scene, “Baby” Tsosie (Trini King, Navajo) experiences a traditional healing ceremony by her mother before a practice after she loses her ability to sink a basket, which Kenny disrupts and dismisses, saying, “Look, anybody who’s been witched, stand over there; the rest of us have basketball practice.” The community of women in whose presence this ceremony takes place is broken, and when Mother Tsosie calls African American Kenny a “white man” in Navajo and leaves, Annie asks Kenny, “Are you out of your mind? Insulting an elder like that?”

Kenny may be the English teacher and girls’ basketball coach, but he has a lot to learn about tradition, community, ceremony, and the ideas that are important to Three Nations peoples. In this respect, Kenny is the viewer’s guide, helping us to understand, even superficially, that indigenous peoples still exist and have ideas and practices that may sound and feel unfamiliar–but that resonate with truth. Eventually, a fellow teacher, Cuch (Wes Studi, Cherokee), takes him out into the desert for a talk.

Cuch offers Kenny a new perspective

Judgments and assumptions frequently threaten to subvert or ruin relationships and weaken the strength of community as each scene builds to the final game, but strong women are often the reason those relationships and community sense don’t fall apart in this film. Kenny learns to adapt his colonial assumptions and expectations to the needs of his Lady Warriors and discovers his own identity in the process.

The cast of Edge of America
In the skillful hands of director Chris Ayre, Edge of America presents the idea of indigenous peoples as communities with dignity, humor, intelligence, and skill, which is in direct opposition to the typical Hollywood “Indian.” Truly, this film is a refreshing change from that norm and a more realistic presentation of the realities, challenges, and joys of modern reservation life. Viewers likewise learn to think in new ways about American Indians today, thanks to the vivid storytelling and representations of one corner of indigenous experience in Edge of America.

Watch the trailer here. 

Amanda Morris, Ph.D. is an assistant professor of multiethnic rhetorics at Kutztown University in Pennsylvania, and when she’s not writing or wrangling students, she loves shark fishing, gardening, and cooking with her man.

The Ten Most-Read Posts from July 2013

Did you miss these popular posts on Bitch Flicks? If so, here’s your chance to catch up.
 

“Sixteen Candles, Rape Culture, and the Anti-Woman Politics of 2013″ by Stephanie Rogers

“The Killing and the Misogyny of Hating Bad Mothers” by Leigh Kolb

“Does Hollywood Revolve Around Men? ‘One Man’ Video Says Yes” by Megan Kearns

“Glee‘s Not So Gleeful Representation of Disabled Women” by Erin Tatum

“The Flattening of Celine: How Before Midnight Reduces a Feminist Icon” by Molly McCaffrey

“Cool Robots, Bad-Ass Monsters and Disappointment in Pacific Rim“ by Leigh Kolb

“Am I the Only Feminist Who Didn’t Really Like The Heat? Or Why I Want My Humor Intersectional” by Megan Kearns

“Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Consent Issues (Seasons 1-2)” by Lady T

“The To Do List: The Movie I’ve Been Waiting For” by Leigh Kolb

“The Strong Yet Traditional Women of World War Z“ by Amanda Rodriguez

‘Elizabethtown’ After the Manic Pixie Dream Girl

DVD cover for Elizabethtown
This is a guest review by Amanda Civitello.
When she was ten, my little sister pronounced herself a “Young Feminist in Training” and authored an editorial for a school newspaper entitled, “Sarah Palin: Feminist? No!” I was surprised, then, when she said last week that she wanted to watch Elizabethtown for our girls’ movie night. “Really?” I asked. “The film that launched the Manic Pixie Dream Girl?” She shrugged, and, as she predicted, I loved it. I loved it for what it is: a fun little moralistic summer movie with a good soundtrack and an interesting – if somewhat farfetched – premise, as well as an incredibly moving final fifteen minutes. The story of a failed shoe designer whose plans for suicide in the wake of his “fiasco” are foiled by his father’s premature death, writer/director Cameron Crowe’s Elizabethtown stars Orlando Bloom as Drew, the brooding architect of a catastrophic business failure, and Kirsten Dunst as Claire, the woman who descends from the sky – practically literally; she’s a flight attendant – to rescue him from his melancholy with an overabundance of quirky good cheer. But rather than find it a guilty pleasure, something I liked in spite of the inadequacies and disappointments of its manic pixie of a female lead character, I found that Claire didn’t really merit the MPDG moniker at all.
From its first appearance, in a review of Elizabethtown by film critic Nathan Rabin, the “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” seemed preternaturally possessed of staying power. It had two things going for it: a catchy name and truth. There are too many films in which a female lead seems to exist solely to improve the outlook of the male lead with a winning combination of pep, quirkiness, and vintage clothing. Unsurprisingly, it’s very easy to find a plethora of examples of characters fitting this trope.
Kirsten Dunst (Claire) and Orlando Bloom (Drew) in Elizabethtown. This is just before Drew tells Claire she needn’t make jokes to be likeable.

 

The idea of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl was, at the beginning, a critique of those films that view women through an unabashedly male gaze, in which the viewer identifies primarily with the leading man and is therefore predisposed to regarding the leading lady as an extension of the man. (Elizabethtown makes Drew the identifiable character from the first few moments, which consist of voiceovers from Orlando Bloom. We’re definitely supposed to watch Claire, not stand in her shoes.) In many cases – as in the case of Elizabethtown, as Nathan Rabin so rightly argued – the female character does serve to remind the male of his zest for life, and that’s all she seems to do. The MPDG was meant to describe a phenomenon of the male gaze as evident in scripts written by men and films made by men, as Rabin explicitly stated: “The Manic Pixie Dream Girl exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures.” At its inception, therefore, the MPDG was all about critiquing men. In recent years, however, as writers have pointed out, the MPDG label has expanded to become more broad. It’s often used to describe a kind of woman, rather than how she is written/seen by a man, and to incorporate characters and films – like Annie Hall – without good reason, and has actually been used to describe real women. It’s even become shorthand for one real woman in particular: Zooey Deschanel. It’s ridiculously simplistic and extraordinarily misogynistic to reduce a real woman to a trope.
For me, then, the MPDG label, while it started out as a catchy, if somewhat simplisti, truthism, turned problematic and even pejorative in recent years. (As a side note, because it isn’t really germane to this post: using the word “manic” is troubling as well. After all, “manic” is a weighty word, associated as it is with bipolar disorder. There are other, but less memorable, words that could better describe the kind of peppy, preternatural cheerfulness that hangs about these characters. My discomfort with the use of “manic” is compounded when the character demonstrates depressive tendencies, as does Claire in Elizabethtown. When the term is applied to real people with real conditions it’s even more troubling, as it is here to Edith Bouvier Beale, who suffered from a stress-related condition with tragic consequences.) It was, therefore, with great relief that I read the many articles this past spring/summer heralding the demise of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl. You don’t need me to summarize them, so check out these posts from Jezebel and xojane, and let’s get back to Elizabethtown, because now that we have poked holes in the trope itself, and others have concurred or found other reasons to get rid of it, I think the film that launched the MPDG deserves a second look.
“Do you ever just think, ‘I’m fooling everybody?'” — Claire
Elizabethtown is an interesting little indie-esque effort from Cameron Crowe. By and large, it succumbs far too readily to mistakes that detract from the enjoyment of the film. The great moments – and there are two – manage to redeem it in my estimation. The first is a long conversation between Drew and Claire, in which Bloom and Dunst really manage to capture the joy of recognizing oneself in someone else, and in which Crowe effectively contrasts their discussion – alternately probing and amusingly shallow – with the ordinary tasks we all do while on the phone. The second sequence is Drew’s cross-country road trip with his father’s ashes, following a map that Claire has (mostly unbelievably) made for him. The stops on Claire’s map are all places of historic, national, or cultural importance. Drew scatters some of his father’s ashes in the waters of the Mississippi and along a stretch of flat American highway surrounded by farmland. He visits the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel and Earnestine and Hazel’s Bar & Grill in Tennessee. It’s a reminder of all the things worth seeing and visiting in this country (and, like lots of other reviewers, has made me totally game for a road trip). Drew’s trip is juxtaposed with memories of his childhood, and we see little Drew dancing and roadtripping with his dad, and it’s this connection – the idea that someone’s dad can be to him as great a man as Martin Luther King, Jr. – that is really compelling. But these effective and moving scenes are hampered by the many, many scenes that don’t work, most notably Drew’s mother Hollie’s (Susan Sarandon) big moment at her husband’s memorial. That, unfortunately, is the victim of poor editing: the first part of her scene is a comedy routine detailing all the things she’s tried to learn since her husband’s death, and at one point, borders on the ridiculously crass (it is a memorial service, after all). The second part, the part that should have stood mostly on its own, with only a few words of introduction, is a moving little tap dance she performs to their favorite song. Like the road trip that follows, it’s a quiet, personal moment that’s deeply rooted in the little things that give life meaning.
With regard to its female characters, Elizabethtown has far more issues. Of the three female characters – Claire, Drew’s sister Heather, and their mother, Hollie – each is the victim of poor writing. The characterization of Heather in particular is downright egregious: it seems that her only personality trait is a kind of modern-day hysteria. She’s a woman who begs her brother to “handle everything” with regard to their father’s death because he’s the only one capable of it, who watches her mother flit from activity to activity in a frantic display of unmoored grief, and occasionally widens her eyes and throws up her hands and shrieks. While deep, raw grief is to be expected, as a grown woman with a kid, Heather is the caricature of the stereotypical woman who just can’t deal with it, because she’s just too darn emotional.
Drew and Claire

 

Claire, on the other hand, is at least compelling in spite of her faults. She’s interesting, and she has an admittedly underdeveloped back story. She’s a self-described “helper” and a “substitute person.” She invents trips to Hawaii and waxes on about boyfriends that don’t exist. She is, at her heart, immersed in much the same pursuit of happiness as Drew. She has her own struggles which we grasp only tenuously. The problem with Elizabethtown is that it doesn’t explore that complexity nearly enough – but not that it doesn’t exist in the first place. Claire isn’t a vacuously vapid MPDG; she has beginnings of a complex characterization that the writer only hints at, but doesn’t seem to think is worth developing. There were opportunities to do so: Why doesn’t the conversation about Claire’s unnecessary jokes continue? Why don’t we get to see an answer to Drew’s confrontation about the faux-boyfriend? Why, when we know as well as Drew that she has something slightly darker lurking beneath the quirky veneer, do we not get to see it? In my book, that’s a bit worse than creating a one-note plot device of a character.
So: did Claire deserve to be the original Manic Pixie Dream Girl? I don’t think so. I think it was perhaps a fair assessment upon a single viewing. But tucking her neatly into the MPDG box denies vital aspects of Claire’s character. True, we don’t know much about her ambition or life apart from Drew. That’s absolutely a failing on Cameron Crowe’s part as screenwriter. And for part of the film, Claire certainly does fill that role for Drew. She’s there to answer the phone when he wants someone – anyone – to talk to, happy to sit on hold waiting for him while he bounces between his fuming ex-girlfriend and crying sister, neither of whom – credit where it’s due – particularly like being kept on hold. Claire is the placid one, patiently waiting her turn to work her magic, as Drew expects. What saves Elizabethtown is that Drew comes to recognize that his sort-of girlfriend is not an MPDG.
“I’m impossible to forget, but I’m hard to remember.” — Claire

 

When Drew says, “You don’t have to make a joke. I like you without the jokes,” he pinpoints Claire for what she is: a complex character hiding behind a cheerful façade. Midway through the movie, he realizes that he doesn’t need Claire to be anything but who she is. He calls her out for the jokes he previously found engaging and attractive and confronts her about her imaginary boyfriend Ben. It’s a shame that Elizabethtown doesn’t show us this new Claire. We’re presented with a glimpse of the real woman, and then she slips away. This most interesting shift, when Drew realizes that he doesn’t want an MPDG for a girlfriend anyway, is given the least amount of exploration, because the film almost immediately switches to the long closing sequence of Drew’s cross-country road trip, back to the overarching theme of grief.
Drew isn’t the only one to think this way. Claire’s theory of “substitute people” actively refutes the MPDG pigeonhole. In describing this theory – which basically sounds a whole lot like Manic Pixie(-ish) Dream People – Claire is asserting that she knows perfectly well the image she projects. The implication, of course, is that it’s nothing but an image. She knows just as well as Drew that what she’s saying is a convenient label, nothing more. She’s aware of it in much the same way as is Clementine in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, although Clementine is far more direct in her refutation of the MPDG label: “Too many guys think I’m a concept, or I complete them, or I’m gonna make them alive. But I’m just a fucked-up girl who’s lookin’ for my own peace of mind; don’t assign me yours.”
“You shouldn’t be a substitute for anybody.” — Drew

 

Elizabethtown’s major problem is that it makes a halfhearted attempt to be a love story, when really, it’d have done far better to focus on grief. It would have been a much more compelling movie, because the moments that shine are the ones which have Drew – sometimes with Claire – facing the full implications of what happened. Would we have read the film differently from the start if there’d been no sex scene, no agonizing introspection over whether or not they’re dating? I think so. And it would have been refreshing to see a movie featuring a male/female friendship that wasn’t aching to become more.
In the end, from the oversaturated colors to the overwhelming (but expectedly awesome) soundtrack and the entirely implausible narrative, Elizabethtown is a kind of fairy tale: the kind of story that sticks with you in spite of its tenuous grip on reality, the kind of confection that you enjoy even though it falls apart when you look too closely. Cameron Crowe would have been better to structure Elizabethtown like 500 Days of Summer. 500 Days of Summer works because of its nonlinear narrative and impressionistic array of short scenes. Where Elizabethtown explicates far too much, spelling out each character’s thought process and motivation, 500 Days of Summer allows for the audience to draw conclusions and make connections between scenes. When the story is written in such a way, when there’s no need to explain everything, the characters can be more spontaneous. They can have moments in which they do not conform to our expectations of them. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind works, in part, for the same reason. ESotSM and 500 Days of Summer are not passive films. They require far more thought from the audience than does a film like Elizabethtown, where all plotlines seem to find a neat little happy ending. They work precisely because they’re impressionistic, which is, at least in my opinion, the most effective way to treat a modern fairytale.
Amanda Civitello is a Chicago-based freelance writer and Northwestern grad with an interest in arts and literary criticism. She has contributed reviews of Rebecca, Sleepy Hollow, and Downton Abbey to Bitch Flicks. You can find her online at amandacivitello.com.

We Need More Coming of Age Films With Female Leads and Characters of Color

“We’ve All Been There” (“we” being young white males).

This guest post by Candice Frederick previously appeared at her blog Reel Talk and is cross-posted with permission.

Lately there has been a lot of attention paid to the new crop of coming of age films turning up everywhere, most recently The Way, Way Back and The Spectacular Now. I get it; we all want to revisit that warm and fuzzy (and sometimes awkward) time in our lives when we weren’t quite sure who we were and what we wanted to become, but we were excited–or fearful–about the possibilities. 

But have you noticed that many of these films share one glaringly common theme among them? I’m talking about the fact that in most cases they’re about young white males, or even their older–and apparently still directionless–counterparts. Michael Cera and Paul Rudd aren’t the only ones who could play wondrously clueless wusses on screen. What about all the young girls who struggle with the pains of adolescence, or women who may for whatever reason be looking for a new beginning, or even the characters of color who must contend with a whole other set of challenges as they set out into the world on their own? They’re inexplicably–and unforgivably–being overlooked.

Another white male protagonist.

While Hollywood has promoted and accepted this trend (relying on the fact that some of the themes may be universal), audiences are starting to take notice and voice their discontent about it. Black Girl Nerds posted a piece questioning “Where Are All The Twenty-Something Black Actresses?” The writer lamented over the fact that young actresses of color are rarely sought after for coming of age tales. You’ll also notice that whenever many writers construct a list of the top coming of age films, you’d be hard pressed to find many (or any) where the main character is a female or of color. 
So why the imbalance? Is there any need to rehash the fact that Hollywood’s virtually unwavering focus on the white male goes far beyond the coming of age genre? While the industry timidly tries to break out of that pattern with films like Girl in Progress or The Kids Are all Right, the overwhelming number of white male films not only take precedence but are often the ones that garner more critical accolades. 
Girl in Progress

I wonder whether the common misconception that females tend to be the more focused and mature gender has anything to do with their virtual absence in the genre. However, Kristen Wiig seems to be single-handedly fighting against that stereotype as she’s carved out her very own “hilariously hot mess woman who desperately tries to get her act together” category of films. I’m just saying, it would be nice to see more stories like that of Eve’s Bayou, Under the Tuscan Sun, or Eat, Pray, Love–imperfect films that at the very least more eloquently illuminate the term “coming of age.” 
Pariah — a coming of age film about a young black lesbian.

And I don’t know about you, but I am tired of the so-called coming of age stories featuring characters of color who “come of age” by taking part in some kind of a crime or witnessing something equally devastating. That image has been played to death and is just a crutch at this point (note: that angle is not restricted to films with characters of color, but still). With the critical success of Pariah, you’d think Hollywood would be interested in promoting similar films, ones that illuminate that the drama that comes along with growing pains is often triggered by internal not external circumstances. 

Let’s do better, Hollywood. It’s 2013.
Candice Frederick is an NABJ award-winning print journalist, film critic, and blogger for Reel Talk.

How to Navigate a Film Festival


Bushwick Film Festival
This guest post was written by Kweighbaye Kotee and edited by Casey Johnson-Aksoy. 

Film festivals can be overwhelming, scary, frustrating, and a major blow to the ego of any filmmaker–times ten if you’re new to the scene, especially if it’s a big one. You show up, no one really knows who you are. The festival planners check you in, get a photo of you with their major sponsors, then you just sort of disappear into the wide vast industry ocean. But on the flip side they can also be rewarding, career changing, relationship building, and just really freaking amazing! It’s all up to you to decide. With a little bit of planning and managed expectations, you can really plant a lot of seeds and watch them grow for weeks or even years. Here is a list of five things you should do (or not do!) to make sure you get the most out of your film festival experience!

1. Have a website for your film. Seriously, it’s very easy, and these days you can have a pretty professional website for free or for a small monthly fee. We all know as indie filmmakers the budget is tight or non-existent. Especially if you’ve just submitted your film to a gazillion film festivals at 25-75 bucks a pop. But you need that website and the Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and while I’m at it, DEFINITELY GET BUSINESS CARDS. Filmmakers need to build an audience and cultivate relationships, and that takes promoting and reminding. No matter how breathtaking your film may be, people get amnesia the second it’s over. They need to be reminded over and over again by receiving your newsletter, interacting with you on Twitter or just simply hanging out on your website. Taking care of the relationship with your audience is the most important thing. Everyone loves to see a star rise every step of the way. So keep their attention.

Bushwick Film Festival
2. This one is three-fold. If your film is not in the festival, buy a package, create a schedule, and attend with someone who has the same goal as you do. Yes, packages can be expensive, but they get you in the rooms with people you need to talk to. On the bright side, there are different levels of pricing, and if you plan ahead I’m sure you can swing the least expensive one. When you get the package and festival program, create a schedule! We all know that a little planning leads to a lot of efficiency. Festivals are fast, so if you’re not careful you’ll end up just wasting a whole lot of time and getting stuck with a thought bubble of burning cash. So dedicate a few evenings to creating a master plan. Turn up the notch and go out and buy a large 30 x 25 Post-it pad and make a day by day schedule, post it to your wall, and take a step back and refine it until the plan is solid. Then put it into your planner or online calendar and stick to it. Remember that you’re there to have character-growing conversations, make connections, build relationships, and talk about your work.

3. Swallow that fear and accept there will be lots of awkward. Every time you feel that little fear gremlin creep up, remind yourself why you are there. This is your opportunity to get your story out, grow as a filmmaker, and expand your circle. There will be lots of awkward moments. Like when you’re trying to talk to someone who’s stuffing their face and looking at all the other people they would rather talk to. If that happens, that’s okay. Politely end the conversation and move on to the next person. Talk to people who are interested in carrying on a conversation with you. Don’t force it. So what if that super famous producer won’t give you the time of day. One day he will. Until then, be happy with who is nice enough to share their time with you. Remember, the most important person is the person in front of you. So engage.

Organizers of the Bushwick Film Festival
4. DON’T GET WASTED. Actually, try not to drink at all. It may seem like a fabulous idea, especially if you saved up for months and got that V.I.P. package that comes with an open bar, but it’s a waste of time. You have to be sharp and ready to deliver that 5-, 10-, or 15-minute pitch you’ve been working on. Ask good questions that lead to better conversations and even a coffee date with an industry professional the next morning. So stay sharp. While everyone else is throwing back whiskey gingers and getting loose on the dance floor, continue working the room, pitching, exchanging business cards, and leaving gracefully.

5. FOLLOW UP. Don’t let those business cards go to waste. If you’re following up via email, be specific. Remind the recipient of who you are, where you met, and maybe mention highlights from your conversation. You can’t expect everyone to remember who you are, especially if they didn’t follow step #4. When ending the email, be clear about what you’re asking for. Would you like to set a coffee date? Follow up with a phone call? Send them a film you’ve been working on? Don’t be afraid to ask for what you want. The worse that could happen is the person says thank you, but no thank you. Also, remember silence does not equal no. People tend to be busy, so if they don’t reply the first time, don’t feel bad. You can always send them a second email following the same format as the first. Be patient; good things come to those who wait.

Kweighbaye Kotee is the CEO and Director of Programming for the Bushwick Film Festival. She runs the festival with her amazing partners Casey Johnson-Aksoy (Director of Social Media & Marketing) and Meenakshi Thirkude (Director of New Media) and their all-women staff. The Bushwick Film Festival celebrates the art of filmmaking, provides a platform for artists to showcase their work, and brings diversity to the film industry.

Kweighbaye Kotee
Casey Johnson-Aksoy

Women with Disabilities Week: The Roundup

At its core, Girl, Interrupted strives to be a feminist film. However, I find the film’s representations of “mad women” problematic, particularly the ways in which mental illness becomes so closely linked with eroticized otherness. And here is where the film’s deep ambivalence comes into play: it attempts to dispel the myth of what it means to be a mentally ill woman, while at the same time reinforcing cultural stereotypes that portray mentally ill women as hypersexual, dangerous, amoral, or inherently unfeminine. In the end, Girl, Interrupted posits mental illness as a choice from which one, like Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, can always return.  

So to sum up, women with disabilities are constantly compelled to address the elephant in the room that is their presumably absent sexuality. You are allowed two modes: sad, stoic, and sexless; or cruel, bitchy, and promiscuous. Both are media stereotypes that women have faced before, but it becomes especially problematic when disability is thrown into the mix. No matter how sexually active a given character is, trying to achieve and maintain healthy sexuality is seen as a futile pursuit because disabled people and especially disabled women can never hope to have the “real thing.” Unfortunately, Glee happily perpetuates the myth that the sexuality of ladies with disabilities is either tragic or hilarious for cheap pity or laughs where appropriate.

Benny agrees not to put Joon in a group home but have her live in her own apartment (conveniently managed by his now-girlfriend, Ruthie) with Sam. EVERYTHING IS SUPER AWESOME FUN TIME! LOOK HOW ADORABLE SCHIZOPHRENIA CAN BE! The credits roll with Sam and Joon making little grilled cheese sandwiches with an iron! Yes! They’re going to make it on his video store wages and illiteracy, and she’s presumed jobless and in the care of another male authority figure! She doesn’t need professional treatment! She just needs a boyfriend! 

A Patch of Blue portrays disability as a part of a woman’s life that only defines her because she’s grown up with an abusive and neglectful family. As soon as she gets access to a world (literally and figuratively) outside of their little apartment, she thrives, and we know she’s just going to continue to grow. She’s beginning her life–a life that won’t be defined by her blindness. 

I think the motivation behind “Melora” was great, but overall I thought the messages were a little unclear. I saw that Melora doesn’t have to change her disability, but she does have to change her attitude. Ultimately, that personal transformation to being more “dependent” was what tied the story together more than a reaffirmation of her uniqueness… 
But ultimately, no matter what happened in this episode, you’re always going to have problems using a single character as a stand-in for an entire group of people. To really do justice to the diverse experiences of people with disabilities, we need more people with disabilities in TV shows generally (actors and characters), playing a range of parts, including recurring roles that give us a chance to see more complete and complex identities. 

It is easy to place an incomprehensible diagnosis inside a box and throw away logic. Back in the turn of 19th century, people of Helen’s delicate condition would have been sentenced inside “madhouses” because no one knew how to communicate with them or even try. Jimmy is oblivious in seeing that Helen’s manic outbursts are not signs of mental disorder. Helen’s incoherent mumbles, cries, and physical punches stem from frustrations of an isolated mind desiring to learn how to address humankind–not doctors, needles, and shock therapy. It doesn’t help that Kate wants to keep Helen just to baby her and Captain Keller simply obliges Kate’s wishes to have their daughter close. They love her, but none of them realize what Helen sincerely needs.

 

Bitch Flicks Weekly Picks

It’s Not Easy for Black Celebrities Like Raven-Symoné to Come Out by Allison Samuels via The Daily Beast

Women Directors Take Record Number of Emmy Nods, If Not TV Jobs by Amy Dawes via The Los Angeles Times

She Did That! Issa Rae Brings ‘Awkward Black Girl’ to HBO via Madame Noire

The Banal, Insidious Sexism of Smurfette by Philip Cohen via The Atlantic

More Leading Roles for Asian Actresses Shows Hollywood’s (Slow) Progress by Vera H-C Chan via Yahoo! Movies

‘Orange is the New Black’ Offers New Opportunity to Discuss Trans* Issues by Mychal Denzel Smith via Feministing

Why Talking About Women Directors Matters by Melissa Silverstein via Women and Hollywood
Damsel in Distress (Part 3) Tropes vs. Women by Anita Sarkeesian via Feminist Frequency
What have you been reading/writing this week? Tell us in the comments!

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

It’s Not Easy for Black Celebrities Like Raven-Symoné to Come Out by Allison Samuels via The Daily Beast

Women Directors Take Record Number of Emmy Nods, If Not TV Jobs by Amy Dawes via The Los Angeles Times

She Did That! Issa Rae Brings ‘Awkward Black Girl’ to HBO via Madame Noire

The Banal, Insidious Sexism of Smurfette by Philip Cohen via The Atlantic

More Leading Roles for Asian Actresses Shows Hollywood’s (Slow) Progress by Vera H-C Chan via Yahoo! Movies

‘Orange is the New Black’ Offers New Opportunity to Discuss Trans* Issues by Mychal Denzel Smith via Feministing

Why Talking About Women Directors Matters by Melissa Silverstein via Women and Hollywood
Damsel in Distress (Part 3) Tropes vs. Women by Anita Sarkeesian via Feminist Frequency
What have you been reading/writing this week? Tell us in the comments!

The Answer Is in the Questions

This is a guest post by Erika McGrath.

I do not have all the answers. Or should I say, I do not have all the right answers. Maybe there’s no one with the right answers? Ahh, yes. That’s it. Nobody has all the right answers.

I am days away from beginning principal photography on Half Life, my first go at directing a narrative. And just in case I forgot that I was making an independent film, the universe was able to drum up two significant and totally unrelated events in the past 48 hours just to remind me. First, one of our crew members was arrested. Second, we were sold down the river when our equipment rental house completely backed out on the production. While getting arrested is no barrel of laughs, being three days from getting the first shot off and suddenly having no equipment lined up has been the real catastrophe. Just to put any producer who might be reading this at ease, the tough got going and in less than eight hours we were able to set up accounts with three new vendors, adjust our insurance, secure all the equipment we needed, and lay out a new travel plan.

That said, I find myself back inside a truth I came to know several years ago, which is, the best and most important thing you could do in any given situation is listen with vigilance and ask all of the right questions. However, more often than not, I find myself pursuing the right answers—the clear and exact opposite of said lesson I fought so hard to learn. Solving problems, finding solutions, fixing anything, making everything OKAY—all seems to be in the “Answer” business, don’t ya think? Well, not really. No answer will fit just right until all the questions have been tested. The answer is in the questions.

We find Gary, the lead character in Half Life, in a similar position–pursuing a path toward something he can’t quite get a grip on and along the way he is thrown up and down and then straight into living his way through all the questions. This is an experience commonly referred to as “being tested.” At the beginning of the film, Gary seems content; everything in his life is pretty peachy. Little by little, he starts to see fractures from his past, new ones creeping in, each one unto itself not so damaging, but all together, they break his world wide open. Now, Gary is standing in the middle of a wide open pile of broken pieces, staring at it saying, “What the hell? Where was the wrong turn? How do I put it all back together and make it work again? Is there a different way to do this? A better way? A truer way?” Well, my advice to Gary—Go climb a tree.

There are many different ways to climb a tree. As a kid, I took every chance I had to get up in one of those beasts. The thing to remember as you climb, no matter which way you take them on, each branch and each step will have its own set of challenges and its own set of consequences. Standing around staring up into the leafy green unknown, trying to figure out which combination of challenges and consequences will be the least damaging or difficult, just keeps you on the ground. You’ll never get anywhere by trying to figure it all out before you start. And, as my grandmother always reminded me, if you stand there looking up at the sky with your mouth hanging open, a sharp shootin’ bird will probably come along and poop in it.

Some of you might be saying, “Girl, get real. Clearly you’re up in a tree right now and too far off the ground to see what is really happening.” Okay sure… you might be right. But I’ll say this, the tree I’m climbing is an ancient oak and its roots are deeper in the ground than any of us probably ever will be. The tree will let you know what you need to know; you’ll feel it every time the wind blows. Yes, the climb is dangerous and scary—at times you’ll feel lost and unsure of your next move, your feet will slip, your hands will lose grip, you’ll get a few cuts and take a few knocks. But, if you keep your head up and remember what you’re there for, listening for signals each step of the way, you’ll find what you need and you’ll make your way to peer out over the tippy, uneasy top. What that looks like? Well, I don’t know; I imagine it looks different for everybody. I’ll let you know when I get there. And if I do, you’ll see it in Half Life.

To come out of this analogy and into real tactics, the message I want to share with you here is that the answers are relative and none of them are stopping points. Every answer you land on will still contain questions, whether or not you acknowledge them, that will lead you to your next step. The experience of making a movie is bigger than the sum of its parts. As a director, I think we have to accept that the film is bigger than us; most everything is beyond your control after a certain point. At that turn, it’s our job to listen to the film and let it become what it wants to be. The right questions are your guideposts. They will save you in times of reeling panic and maybe keep you from passing out. My wise assistant director, Chi Laughlin, reminds me daily, “Whatever your movie needs will happen… just maybe not the way you expected.” And that brings me to the last piece of advice I’ll bother you with—Nobody can make a movie alone. So, I say, gather around people who will work hard, tell truths, make you laugh, dance a little—And listen.

Erika McGrath is currently developing her first feature length picture and is in production for her short film Half Life, which  was successfully crowd funded on Seed&Spark this summer. When not making movies, she is also an active dog lover, motorcycle rider and pie enthusiast. Born and raised in Ohio, McGrath now resides in New York City.

Our Stories: ‘Babylon Sisters’

Writer Pearl Cleage and Filmmaker Ayoka Chenzira
This guest post by Yvonna Russell previously appeared at The Huffington Post and is cross-posted with permission.

New York Times bestselling author (What Looks like Crazy on an Ordinary Day, Some Things I Never Thought I’d Do) and playwright (Blues for an Alabama Sky, Flyin West) Pearl Cleage has teamed up with filmmaker (Alma’s Rainbow) Ayoka Chenzira to produce the feature film adaptation of Pearl Cleage’s novel, Babylon Sisters.
Single mother Catherine Sanderson has her hands full with her job helping immigrants and a college-bound daughter, Phoebe. But when news journalist Burghardt Johnson blows into town, she finds her world turned upside down. Catherine, impassioned, asks, 
I wondered if it was possible to be in love with a man and develop a vocabulary free of the responses that make every conversation a minefield of hurt feelings, half-truths, and dashed expectations.

Not only do they have history, BJ enlists her help in a story on a female slavery ring operating in Atlanta. Pearl Cleage fans agree with director Chenzira: 
I love the flaws in the romance — it’s so human. The romantic leads have personal struggles but also understand that they are also fighting for something greater than themselves. Rarely do we see this in American cinema.

The story casts light on the fight against human sex trafficking. USA Today reported, “According to the U.S. Department of Justice, human trafficking has become the second fastest growing criminal industry — just behind drug trafficking — with children accounting for roughly half of all victims.” Atlanta Fox 5 reporter Tacoma Perry uncovered, “Atlanta is a hub for human trafficking — where sex or labor is forced, and it’s not just a city problem.” Chenzira echoes the condition of modern-day slavery in Metro Atlanta exposed in the plot by the lead characters Catherine and BJ:
Babylon Sisters honors the everyday heroes in the fight. There are people dedicated to rescuing those who are being exploited, abused and held captive by modern day slavery, and despite their own personal struggles they manage to make a crippling impact on sex trafficking … Atlanta is one of the largest sex trafficking cities in the country, and Babylon Sisters is centered in metro Atlanta — this brings a focused light in exposing this international criminal activity by unearthing the real tragedies taking place under our noses.

The film project has a platform on Junto Box Films. Junto Box Films, the brainchild of Oscar winner for Best Actor (The Last King of Scotland), director (Waiting to Exhale) and producer (Fruitvale Station) Forest Whittaker has established a social media platform to fund, produce and distribute films. Chenzira chose Junto Box Films over other crowdfunding platforms because,

The Junto Box platform allows people to support Babylon Sisters from the development process by signing up to follow, rate, and share the project through social media. Substantial support translates into a real chance of being green lit and fully funded through Junto Box Films. Junto Box allows supporters of Babylon Sisters to hear why Pearl and I decided to collaborate. It also allows them to hear from notable people about their support of this project through video. From the legendary Susan Taylor who served as editor-in-chief of Essence Magazine for twenty seven years and who is considered one of the most influential African-American women, to Broadway stage and film director Kenny Leon who produced Pearl’s plays. Junto Box uses a democratic process that gives people a voice to determine the success of a film about people with little or no voice. It is important for women in the film community to come together to tell the stories of women who donʼt have a voice.

The film project Babylon Sisters deserves our support for a master storyteller’s passionate and compelling voice on the inhumane issue of human trafficking today.

Follow Yvonna Russell on Twitter: www.twitter.com/StilettoFilms.

Alice Morgan and the Luther Effect: More Female Villains, Please

Image and video hosting by TinyPic
Ruth Wilson as Alice Morgan and Indris Elba as John Luther in BBC’s Luther

 

This guest post by Lauren C. Byrd previously appeared at her Web site and is cross-posted with permission.
With all of the summer tent pole movies premiering, there’s been outcry from audiences (and critics) for the studios to make superhero movies with a woman as the lead. Wonder Woman, understandably, tops this oft-cited list.
While wondering where else in our pop culture there are a lack of female characters—the answer, sadly, is everywhere—something struck me upon viewing the third season of BBC’s Luther.
There was something missing this season. It was harder to get invested in the characters and storylines, even though Idris Elba as Luther is charming and troubled as ever.
The thing missing was: Alice Morgan. In the first series premiere, Alice (Ruth Wilson) commits the perfect crime: the murder of her parents. DCI John Luther, a brilliant detective, who knows criminals’ minds as well as he knows his own, engages in a game of wits with the deliciously evil Alice. Their intriguing relationship becomes the through-line of the first series, tying Luther and Alice together, even as he solves other crimes and deals with his marriage falling apart.
Even with the glut of crime dramas now on television, several of which have female detectives as a lead (The Bridge, The Killing, The Fall), none features a woman committing crimes. All of these series involve women as victims of crimes perpetuated by men.
Maybe it seems a weird question to posit, in a day and age when women are not equally represented in Hollywood, in the boardroom, or in Congress, to ask why there aren’t more female villains on our screens.
One common argument for more parts for women is women make up 51% of the population, yet in last year’s top 100 grossing films, only held 29% of the speaking parts.
Out of homicide offenders (from 1980-2008), only 10.5% were women. White females of all ages had the lowest offending rates of any racial or age group, according to the U.S. Department of Justice’s study of homicide trends.
So maybe choosing to have male villains over female is something Hollywood actually got right? You could look at it that way. But isn’t the point to have more equality when it comes to every part of the industry (acting, directing, writing, producing, etc)? If there are well-written female superheroes, there should be well-written female villains.

Image and video hosting by TinyPic
Glenn Close as Alex in Fatal Attraction
Female villains are difficult to portray without easily falling into trope territory. Female “baddies” tip over easily into emotionally unstable women—often stalkers–like Alex in Fatal Attraction (coincidentally, a role that earned Glenn Close an Academy Award nomination). Women are often thought to commit crimes motivated by emotion rather than with a purely evil intent. Interestingly, in criminological and sociological studies, gender in regard to crime has largely been ignored. Until recently, the extent of female deviance has been marginalized. According to sociology professor Frances Heidensohn, one of the first to study female criminology, one reason for this is because female crime has been dealt with by mostly men, from policework to legislators.
But back to fictional female villains. Even as far back as fairy tales, evil women were often portrayed as obsessive. In Grimm Brothers’ Snow White, Snow White’s step-mother, the Evil Queen, is vindictive and obsessed with being the most beautiful in the land. According to John Hanson Saunders’ book The Evolution of Snow White, when Walt Disney started to develop the fairy tale into an animated film, early concepts characterized her as “fat, batty, cartoon type, self-satisfied.” Walt Disney was not satisfied with this concept and spent time further developing the character. He saw her as a cross between Lady Macbeth and the Big Bad Wolf and wanted her to be stately and beautiful
For a character that is obsessed with her appearance, it is rather ironic that she would choose to temporarily relinquish her beauty when she transforms into the Evil Witch—also referred to as the Old Hag—undertaking an ugly demeanor in order to poison Snow White. In 2003, the Queen (Queen Grimhilde) was named by the American Film Institute as one of the 50 Best Movie Villains.

Image and video hosting by TinyPic
Charlize Theron as serial killer Aileen Wuornos in Monster
The transformation of the Queen into an “Old Hag” speaks to other frequent characterizations of female villains by Hollywood. They must either be ugly, sometimes old women, or they must be beautiful sirens. In 2003’s Monster, a film based on the life of serial killer Aileen Wuornos, Charlize Theron was cast to play Wuornos. Much of the discussion about the film circled around the choice of Theron, a statuesque model turned actress, as the lead. Rather than discussing the merits of her acting, many simply wondered how it was possible to make such a beautiful woman ugly. Theron won an Academy Award for Best Actress for the role.
On the flip side of old crones and hags, Hollywood uses beauty and the sexualization of women to make them acceptable as villains, most often as femme fatales. The most notable example of this in Hollywood is the use of these characters in film noir, but the archetype dates back to Greek and Roman myths, as well as Biblical figures. A femme fatale is described as a mysterious or seductive woman, who uses her wiles to capture men and lead them into dangerous situations.

Image and video hosting by TinyPic
Example of the Femme Fatale
Luther‘s Alice Morgan has a bit of femme fatale in her. “Kiss me, kill me, something…” she tells him in the first season. She flirts with Luther, has red hair and large lips and eyes, but her attraction and fascination with John Luther centers around his intelligence. He deals with London’s criminal minds every day, yet still believes there’s good and love in the world. This baffles Alice. A child prodigy, she enrolled in Oxford at the age of 13 and holds a Ph.D in astrophysics, studying dark matter distribution.
After the murder of her parents, Luther is questioning Alice and discovers she’s a psychopath through her lack of empathy. She doesn’t yawn when he yawns, a telling sign to Luther. However, he is unable to prove she committed the murders and moves on to other cases.
The relationship between Luther and Alice is so well-drawn and complex because it is not simply a protagonist vs. antagonist relationship. Alice is a foil for Luther and becomes a trusted friend, despite her psychopathic and narcissistic tendencies. While DCI Luther is on the right side of evil from society’s point of view, sometimes he uses questionable methods to get what he needs to solve a case.

Image and video hosting by TinyPic
Alice Morgan, a villain in Luther
An increase of female villains in film and television always edges on a slippery slope, as it may lead to characters embodying common tropes and archetypes. Even if there were more female villains, it doesn’t mean they would be as carefully developed and well-written as Alice Morgan.
But just as there are those asking for superheroines, there are actors asking to play the villain. “I would like to play a villainess in some great big action movie. That would be really fun,” actress Allison Janney said during the press tour for The Help.
Wouldn’t it be great if Wonder Woman was up against an evil female mastermind? And if the film was directed by a woman?
Lauren C. Byrd is a former post-production minion, but prefers to spend her days analyzing television and film. She studied film and television at Syracuse University and writes a blog, Love Her, Love Her Shoes, about under-appreciated women in film, television, and theater. She is currently working on an academic essay about Kathryn Bigelow & the controversy surrounding Zero Dark Thirty.