I thought a lot about why Jackson created Tauriel. He’s already messing with the events, chronology, and mythology of the books, so why didn’t he just change the gender of a handful of major characters to make them into women? Why couldn’t we have a female dwarf or two? Why couldn’t the last remaining “skin-changer” the bear-man Beorn have been a woman? Or the Brown Wizard Radagast have been a lady forest foraging force of nature? Answer: Because none of those characters have the potential to be love interests. Instead, Jackson created a throw-away character that he could shape into a love object. I am so tired of seeing women have to give up their identity, their goals, their independence, and their power for love.
Spoiler Alert
My fellow Bitch Flicks writer Rachel Redfern recently posted a review of The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug that was insightful, and I agree with most of her points. She touches on the discomfort surrounding creating a whole new major character for the film in the form of Tauriel played by the athletic Evangeline Lilly. As a purist, I was certainly uncomfortable with the idea. I got over it. I had to admit that without Tauriel, a brilliantly capable captain of the guard for the Mirkwood elves, the film would be a dwarvish sausagefest. Redfern also highlights the ick-factor in the love triangle in which Tauriel gets enmeshed. The important thing that I’d like to add to our Bitch Flicks conversation about The Desolation of Smaug is that the representation of Tauriel brings into sharp focus the primary purpose of women within the world of Middle Earth: to be love objects for male characters.
For some context, let’s take a look at the only other two women who have a character arc in all of Middle Earth. First, there’s Éowyn, shieldmaiden of Rohan.
Éowyn is a fierce warrior who longs for the freedom men are afforded.
Éowyn had the biggest role of any of the women in J.R.R. Tolkien‘s beloved fantasy novel series The Lord of the Rings. The books themselves as well as the films actually chronicle her regret at not having the freedom to fight to defend her people and win honor and glory in battle as men are allowed to do. Éowyn (in both the books and films) single-handedly takes down one of the Nine, a Nazgûl, a Ringwraith. She faces off against the debilitating terror it exudes, and she wins. That is so hardcorely badass. She was hands-down my favorite character in the books.
Éowyn & Faramir gaze lovingly into each other’s eyes.
The twist is that Aragorn then has to save her life from the poison of the Ringwraith, and Faramir, the second son of the Steward of Gondor (and Boromir’s little brother), saves her life again by showing her how to love…i.e. how to be a woman. The fire goes out of Éowyn when she settles down and learns her place as the consort of Faramir. All her dreams of being considered an equal to men, of standing side-by-side men on a battlefield and commanding respect goes out the window because, apparently, all women really want and are good for is love and marriage.
Then we have Arwen, the daughter of Elrond and elvish princess of Rivendell. Director Peter Jackson takes a lot of liberties with this character in the film version of The Lord of the Rings. He generally made Arwen more visible (I think she’s only in two scenes in the books) and more active in that she saves Frodo from death at the hands of the Nine, which seemed cool at first, but with the introduction of the similar character of Tauriel in The Desolation of Smaug, this whole healing trope gave me pause. In The Fellowship of the Ring, Arwen uses herbs and elvish magic to heal Frodo from the poisonous wound he took from a Morgul-blade, offering up her immortality in prayer for his life.
“What Grace is given me, let it pass to him.” – Arwen
Tauriel abandons her quest to destroy the orc infestation at their source, and she also abandons Legolas, her friend of 600 years, to perform a similar healing rite on a dwarf she’s known for a couple of days. What could be more important than friendship? More important than the personal quest that she defied her sovereign to follow? Hmm…
Jackson also plays up the tragic love story between Arwen and Aragorn to a nauseating level, making her life tied to the fate of the quest to destroy the ring. This renders her helpless and in need of saving after he’d already built her up as an elvish warrior with mad healing abilities. Arwen is divested of her prowess as well as her immortality for love. In the end, she’s simply a prize for Aragorn to claim at the end of his journey because her story is completely suspended until the dudes can rescue her…Sleeping Beauty style.
Arwen & Aragorn get all lovey-dovey.
This brings us to Tauriel. I’m glad she was included in the storyline of The Desolation of Smaug. She’s an elegant, fierce, and brilliant warrior.
Fierce Tauriel in the heat of battle.
She’s strong, defiant, and makes her own choices.
Tauriel faces off against her elvish king.
I’m glad that Peter Jackson recognized that having a movie with no women in it is absolutely absurd.
Tauriel ready to let loose an arrow.
BUT. There it is, the big but. But Jackson, like so many other male storytellers, can’t imagine a path for Tauriel that doesn’t include love. Tauriel is the love object of two male characters creating a noxious love triangle, and she, like Arwen and Éowyn, must sacrifice everything for that love.
I thought a lot about why Jackson created Tauriel. He’s already messing with the events, chronology, and mythology of the books, so why didn’t he just change the gender of a handful of major characters to make them into women? Why couldn’t we have a female dwarf or two? Why couldn’t the last remaining “skin-changer” the bear-man Beorn have been a woman? Or the Brown Wizard Radagast have been a lady forest foraging force of nature? Answer: Because none of those characters have the potential to be love interests. Instead, Jackson created a throw-away character that he could shape into a love object. I am so tired of seeing women have to give up their identity, their goals, their independence, and their power for love. And why is female love synonymous with sacrifice?
Drawing of proud, strong Tauriel.
I can’t say how Jackson will tie it all up in his conclusion to the ridiculously drawn out trilogy of The Hobbit. Who knows? Maybe he’ll end the series with Tauriel having been instrumental, self-actualized, and above the pressures of our pitiful contemporary love culture that insists all a woman needs is love to be whole. Based on his current trajectory and track record, though, it’s not looking so hot. Sigh. It doesn’t look like a good day to be a woman on Middle Earth.
—————— Amanda Rodriguez is an environmental activist living in Asheville, North Carolina. She holds a BA from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio and an MFA in fiction writing from Queens University in Charlotte, NC. She writes all about food and drinking games on her blog Booze and Baking. Fun fact: while living in Kyoto, Japan, her house was attacked by monkeys.
Philomena is based on the true story of Philomena Lee, an Irish woman who got pregnant as a teenager and was relegated to a convent where she was forced to perform grueling manual labor before her young son was sold to an adoptive US family. Fifty years later, Philomena works with a washed-up ex-journalist to find her son while he uncovers the dark truth behind her son’s adoption and the church’s betrayal. Overall, I’d say this is a feminist film that tries to expose oppressive gender roles that linger on today and allows its heroine, played by the exquisite Dame Judi Dench, to be her own person: a woman who makes her own decisions and mistakes while remaining irrepressibly full of humor and love.
I wouldn’t exactly characterize Stephen Frears much-praised film Philomena as a comedy. I’d describe it as more of a dramatized exposé of the corruption of the Irish Catholic church with moments of levity that give a desolate story warmth and humanity. Philomena is based on the true story of Philomena Lee, an Irish woman who got pregnant as a teenager and was relegated to a convent where she was forced to perform grueling manual labor before her young son was sold to an adoptive US family. Fifty years later, Philomena works with a washed-up ex-journalist to find her son while he uncovers the dark truth behind her son’s adoption and the church’s betrayal. Overall, I’d say this is a feminist film that tries to expose oppressive gender roles that linger on today and allows its heroine, played by the exquisite Dame Judi Dench, to be her own person: a woman who makes her own decisions and mistakes while remaining irrepressibly full of humor and love.
Philomena is in the business of critiquing institutions; specifically: religion, gender, class, and media. The interactions between ex-journalist Martin and Philomena highlight class disparity. Sometimes the exposure is subtle. Martin flies to the convent while Philomena drives with her daughter. Philomena is giddy at the prospect of free champagne on the flight to America as well as the complimentary grand breakfast buffet and the posh hotel room. She doesn’t “get” Martin’s sense of humor or cultural references, and she reads romance formula fiction, never guessing at the “formula” obvious in all her books. These moments are designed to make the audience chuckle at the sweetness of Philomena’s naivete while underscoring her lack of privilege, education, and wealth.
Philomena feels like royalty for riding on the airport transport service.
Other times, the class disparity is stark and painful. Philomena realizes she could never have given her son the opportunities and lifestyle he enjoyed as a result of his adoption. Martin is, on occasion, cruel to her because the things that excite her are old hat for him; he’s jaded and has come to expect a life of comfort and privilege. He also mocks Philomena for her faith, insinuating that her class status is why she believes in a higher power (because he is too learned and intellectual to believe in anything). The movie shows that though Martin is more worldly, wealthier, and better educated than Philomena, he doesn’t enjoy life the way that she does. She refuses to be bitter or angry like he is. He begins to understand and accept the fact that Philomena needs him, with his connections and his status as an upper-crusty white man, to find out the truth about her son.
Martin rebuffs Philomena & her excitement about an omelet station
Philomena‘s religion and gender critique go hand-in-hand. Religion judges and punishes young women (some as young as 14) for giving in to “carnal” desires that they haven’t been educated about to even understand the potential consequences. The film also highlights forced labor along with constant recriminations to show how religious forces incite fear, shame, and blame that Philomena and countless others carry for over 50 years. Philomena experiences a particular guilt because she enjoyed the sexual encounter that led to her pregnancy. The church teaches that female bodies and female pleasure are sinful, and many of the nuns are revealed to be bitter and vengeful, a perfect example of patriarchy-complicit female figures of authority. There is no discussion of the culpability of the male cohorts whose sperm was a necessary part of the baby-making equation. Sound familiar? The religious right continues this mentality with its abstinence-only education while heaping stigma galore onto young women who become trapped in pregnancy, insisting that the female body is a breeding ground for impurity and that all the fault lies within the woman, who is, in many cases, forced to suffer all the consequences.
Young, inexperienced Philomena at the fair.
The kicker is that “female sin” is big business for the church in Philomena. The convent forces young women to “pay off” their debt/sin by working ungodly hours (pun intended) in the convent, and then they illegally sell the babies to the US for a great deal of money. The church destroys evidence and refuses to help families reunite even after 50 years of separation. The film claims that this was in part due to a continued resentment and desire to punish the sins of the young mothers, but it’s perhaps more true that the church is covering its tracks. Here, the church, a religious institution, takes advantage of the weak, the helpless, the poor, and the disenfranchised. Here, the church, targets women in particular using the notion of female sin to solidify their dogma and to reinforce their power (financial in this case). The exploitation of women by religious institutions is not new and continues today, as female reproductive rights are leveraged to cause divisiveness and to reinforce the power of political groups, religious groups, and the patriarchy.
The real-life Anthony with a nun before he was sold.
Despite it all, Philomena remains a good-hearted person. She stands up to Martin when necessary, insisting that this is her story. She asserts that she’ll be the one who makes the decisions and that her reaction is her own, not his or a media that seeks only to capitalize on her tale of woe and exploit her for its own gain. She continues to love and accept her son regardless of the many things she learns about him that an old-fashioned religious person like herself could have found alienating. In the end, she forgives the convent, proving that she is the bigger person and more Christian than the nuns and religious institution that tormented her. While the circumstances of the film are tragic and devastating, Philomena’s doggedness, her bravery, and her journey have exposed wide-spread corruption and opened the door for other mothers to reunite with their long-lost children. Though she’s an ordinary woman without means, a fancy education, or influence, she stood up to a powerful institution steeped in centuries of history, and she said, “No more.” Philomena’s quest shows us that the personal is political and that one woman can make a difference in the the world.
Judi Dench sits with the real Philomena Lee.
—————— Amanda Rodriguez is an environmental activist living in Asheville, North Carolina. She holds a BA from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio and an MFA in fiction writing from Queens University in Charlotte, NC. She writes all about food and drinking games on her blog Booze and Baking. Fun fact: while living in Kyoto, Japan, her house was attacked by monkeys.
Who doesn’t love Catwoman? She’s smart, sassy, independent, has her own moral code, and often outfoxes (or maybe outcats) Batman, one of the greatest superheroes of all time. Though I’d be hard-pressed to label her skin-tight, uber-revealing outfit as feminist, Catwoman is a famous sex symbol who uses her sexuality to her own advantage. The figure of Catwoman has gone through dozens of iterations over the years, which goes to show that this iconic figure is a potent anti-heroine or villainess who continues to appeal to audiences throughout the generations. Now I’m answering the question: which of is the most feminist representation?
The many faces of Catwoman
Spoiler Alert
Who doesn’t love Catwoman? She’s smart, sassy, independent, has her own moral code, and often outfoxes (or maybe outcats) Batman, one of the greatest superheroes of all time. Though I’d be hard-pressed to label her skin-tight, uber-revealing outfit as feminist, Catwoman is a famous sex symbol who uses her sexuality to her own advantage. The figure of Catwoman has gone through dozens of iterations over the years, which goes to show that this iconic figure is a potent anti-heroine or villainess who continues to appeal to audiences throughout the generations. I’ve done a bit of meditating on these incarnations and questioned which of them is the most feminist representation.
Illustrated
First, we’ve got her comic book origin as The Cat in 1940’s Batman #1.
Old school comic book Catwoman
That’s right. Catwoman was birthed alongside the legend of Batman himself. Unfortunately, her creator Bob Kane was a misogynist and sought to portray traits that he coded as feminine:
“I felt that women were more feline creatures and…cats are cool, detached, and unreliable…You always need to keep women at arm’s length. We don’t want anyone taking over our souls, and women have a habit of doing that. So there’s a love-resentment thing with women. I guess women will feel that I’m being chauvinistic to speak this way…”
All I have to say is, “You’re right, Bob: you are a chauvenist,” and, “ew.” That said, Catwoman was designed as an unattainable love interest that personified the aloof and perhaps vindictive qualities her creators saw within female sexuality. Her depiction is more about drumming up some sexual interest and excitement for Batman than creating a nuanced character.
In her earliest incarnations, Catwoman is an attention-seeking naughty girl type.
Though I’m a bit of a comic book nerd who’s absolutely drawn to strong female characters, I’ve never been interested in reading any graphic novel Catwoman series. Her later depictions always struck me as a lot of tits and ass without substance, which I’m primarily basing on the cover art. Her sexuality is showcased to the extreme where it’s hard to imagine anything else beneath it. (If you’re a reader of Catwoman comics and feel differently, please set me straight in the comments!)
Those are some ridiculously large boobies.
I am, however, intrigued by her more recent, vicious comic book portrayals. Those have grit and make me curious about her.
Fierce Catwoman comic rendition
There are also multiple cartoon renderings of Catwoman that are more or less underwhelming. In Batman: The Animated Series, Catwoman does get to have layers in that she’s a jewel thief, an animal rights activist, and has her alter-ego as Selina Kyle, but her main role continues to be an elusive love interest for Batman as opposed to a compelling character.
Cartoon Catwoman
Television
Catwoman made her television debut on the Batman series in 1966. Julie Newmar performed perhaps the most memorable version of Catwoman. I was certainly smitten with her. She was lovely, imposing, and “diabolical” (as Batman would say). She was a lone woman who commanded a group of male thugs. Among the great supervillains of the TV Batman mythology, she was the only woman, and she certainly held her own.
The (in)famous Julie Newmar Catwoman
Lee Meriwether was chosen for the film version of the Batman TV show. She, too, was stunning and very similar in appearance to Julie Newmar. Meriwether’s Catwoman also had a faux-alter ego as Miss Kitka, Russian journalist designed to seduce and lure “Comrade Wayne” into supervillain coalition custody to elicit Batman’s rescue attempts. This may have been the first sustained disguise Catwoman ever put on. She was never Selina Kyle in the TV show, which left her somewhat one-dimensional, but none of the other supervillains really had alter egos either.
Lee Meriwether: claws out
The last Batman TV show Catwoman is the late, great Eartha Kitt. A magnetic personality who brought more flare to the role than any before, Kitt was the first Black woman to play Catwoman…and, I believe, the first Black woman to prominently feature on the show. Race and inclusivity were and continue to be issues that most media fail to properly address. Eartha Kitt’s Catwoman was much like Nichelle Nichols‘ Uhura on Star Trek: a pioneer, a weather vane showing that times were changing, and a kickass character to boot. If it had been gratifying in Season 1 & 2 to see a solitary woman ordering around a gang of male minions, then it was even more so in Season 3 to see a Black woman calling the shots.
No other Catwoman purred quite like Eartha Kitt
Film
We got to see another talented Black woman, Halle Berry, reprise the role in 2004’s Catwoman. Unfortunately, the flick was universally considered a turd that was really a vehicle to showcase/exploit an Academy Award winning actress’s body with the most revealing catsuit of all time (and that’s saying something). I could really push the envelope to suggest a feminist reading of the film’s beauty industry critique, as Berry’s Patience Phillips struggles to destroy the anti-aging cosmetic corporation that employs her because it is selling a faulty and harmful product, but the fact that her boss (the one who kills her thus turning her into Catwoman) is a woman (Sharon Stone, no less) takes a lot of the steam out of that argument.
Halle Berry’s uber-revealing Catwoman costume
We also have the most recent depiction of Catwoman in Christopher Nolan‘s third installment of his Batman trilogy: The Dark Knight Rises in 2012. Though I’ve never been a fan of Anne Hathaway, I was nonetheless generally impressed with her Catwoman performance. Hathaway’s Selina Kyle was strong, independent, clever, and had a righteous sense of class justice, and in spite of the catsuit, she wasn’t quite as sexualized as earlier film incarnations.
Anne Hathaway’s tech-heavy Catwoman
That said, Hathaway technically isn’t Catwoman. She doesn’t give herself that name nor is she dubbed with it by an opponent or ally. Contrary to the opinion of fellow reviewer Kelsea Stahler, I think taking the title away from her divests her of some of the power, prestige, and legacy that is inherent in her name. Though I did admire Anne Hathaway’s smart-and-ruthless-with-a-smattering-of-conscience characterization, this version of Catwoman ultimately fails my feminist expectations because she ends up with Bruce Wayne in the end. She runs away to France and allows him to domesticate her. Stripping Catwoman of her counter-culture independence and settling her down with a man is tantamount to de-clawing her.
I bet Bruce Wayne will have a hard time housebreaking her
No, in this reviewer’s humble-ish opinion, the most feminist depiction of Catwoman is Michelle Pfeiffer from Tim Burton’s 1992 Batman Returns. Though this Catwoman is oozing sex, she always has her own agenda and is crafty enough to DIY-style make her own iconic cat costume. Pfeiffer’s Selina Kyle is mentally unstable and has periodic breaks with reality, which is a realistic rendering of a woman suffering post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after being attacked and murdered by her boss.
Catwoman mounts Batman and licks his face
The end of Batman Returns has Batman stripping off his mask and asking Catwoman not to kill her boss, but to leave town and come away with him instead. This is the inverse of what happens in The Dark Knight Rises as Hathaway’s Kyle begs Batman to abandon Gotham and run away with her. Pfeiffer’s response as Catwoman is, “Bruce, I would love to live with you in your castle forever just like in a fairy tale. I just couldn’t live with myself, so don’t pretend this is a happy ending!” She then claws Batman’s face and kills her boss, using up all but one of her nine lives to do so. Now, I’m not all about killing or anything, but the point is that Selina Kyle rejects Batman’s idea of who she should be, what her moral code should be, and how she should heal. She acknowledges the appeal of the traditional “fairy tale” conclusion that ends her story with a man and love, but her need for independence and for self-actualization becomes too important for her to sacrifice by relying on romantic love to save her as she once would have before her transformation into Catwoman. Instead, her story continues on, and we can imagine all the possible paths she may have chosen for her life.
Catwoman lounges with Miss Kitty
All the Catwomen are hyper-sexualized and mysterious. All of them wield power over Batman and Gotham’s underworld. Though Pfeiffer’s Catwoman is my pick as the most feminist of all the iterations I’ve seen, she’s still problematic as are all her Cat sisters. I see the feminist strength and independence in her, but I also see the way sex is her weapon and that she mostly exists as a foil for Batman, a temptation and a lesson on what rampant desires can lead to. Maybe I’m more like Batman than I’d care to admit in that I, too, recognize the appeal of Catwoman as a mixed bag, and I, too, am drawn to her against my better judgement.
—————— Amanda Rodriguez is an environmental activist living in Asheville, North Carolina. She holds a BA from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio and an MFA in fiction writing from Queens University in Charlotte, NC. She writes all about food and drinking games on her blog Booze and Baking. Fun fact: while living in Kyoto, Japan, her house was attacked by monkeys.
It’s fantastic that there is a “Blue is the Warmest Color” comic book French film adaptation that is receiving such praise. Not only that, but the graphic novel was written and drawn by a woman, Julie Maroh. However, because I really admire the graphic novel source material (…even though it is a bit overwrought…I mean, hey, what love story isn’t?), I feel compelled to critique the film for the myriad changes that were actively made from comic to screenplay, which remove much of the drama and complexity from the storyline.
Blue is the Warmest Color: comic vs. film.
Spoiler Alert
Though Bitch Flicks had a recent guest post by Ren Jender on the French lesbian film Blue is the Warmest Color called “The Sex Scenes are Shit, The Director’s an Asshole, but You Should Still See ‘Blue is the Warmest Color,'” I couldn’t help but weigh in on this graphic novel-turned-movie. Jender made a lot of really great points, namely that despite the director’s obvious prurience when it comes to lesbian sexuality, it’s still so important that we’re seeing a critically acclaimed three-hour film depicting the love affair between two women. I also think it’s fantastic that a comic book adaptation is receiving such praise. Not only that, but the graphic novel was written and drawn by a woman, Julie Maroh. However, because I really admire the graphic novel source material (…even though it is a bit overwrought…I mean, hey, what love story isn’t?), I feel compelled to critique the film for the myriad changes that were actively made from comic to screenplay, which remove much of the drama and complexity from the storyline.
Because they’re everyone’s pet topic, let’s go ahead and start with the sex scenes. Few will argue that the film’s sex scenes weren’t overly long and graphic. There were something like three repetitive sex scenes where nothing is happening to further the plotline or our understanding of the characters’ relationships, which makes the additional scenes seem gratuitous.
Check out this video of lesbians watching Blue is the Warmest Color sex scenes and evaluating them:
Though I personally thought the scenes were kind of icky and prurient and shot from an exploitative male gaze, they were also impersonal. There was a lack of intimacy between the two women that was obvious in that they rarely kiss, they don’t make eye contact, and they’re usually not facing one another. This dramatically contrasts from the sex scenes depicted in the graphic novel. Maroh’s sex scenes, like in the movie, are also quite graphic. The difference is that they’re not just about pleasure; they’re about connection, intimacy, and love.
Emma performs oral sex on Clementine (aka Adele).
In case you’re not familiar with French, Clementine (Adele in the film) is saying, “I love you,” to Emma during sex. There’s also a bit of insecurity and talking/checking-in to alleviate those lingering fears. Not only that, but there’s a whole lot of kissing. As a queer woman, I found the graphic novel’s sex scenes to be far more sensual and sexy than the sort of rutting that the film depicts.
Clementine/Adele performs oral sex on Emma.
The sex of the film version of Blue is the Warmest Color translates into our understanding of their relationship, which didn’t strike me as particularly loving either. We see Adele doing a lot of work to prepare for a party, and Emma being ungrateful for that by critiquing Adele for her lack of creativity. The two of them also share a mutual fear of the other’s infidelity. The break-up scene with Emma hurling slurs at Adele like “little slut” and “little whore” after slapping her is not in the graphic novel either. That hatred and that domestic violence coupled with their loveless sex left me to believe that the director could not fathom two women’s love for one another. He could understand their lust, but not their love. Their reunion scene in the cafe (another movie write-in) cements my theory because it indicates that sex was the primary tether holding them together. Though Emma confesses she doesn’t love Adele anymore, their near public-sex-act shows that their sexual desire is still intact.
The romance of their film relationship dies as soon as they have sex.
Very little of the complexity of Clementine/Adele’s sexuality along with its struggles remain in the film. We see the brutality of her homophobic friends ostracizing her on suspicion of her gayness, but we don’t see her parents finding out she’s gay and kicking her out of her house and disowning her. We don’t see how Emma never really believed that Adele was queer and initially refused to break up with her girlfriend, Sabine, fearing that Adele would wake up one day and suddenly want to be with a man, which made Adele’s infidelity that much more painful. We don’t see how Adele repeatedly freezes Emma out early on in their relationship, asserting her immaturity, individuality, and ability to make choices. We don’t see how Adele feels she must constantly prove her sexuality to Emma. We don’t see that Adele actually hated gay pride events and refused to go to them. We don’t see that she hid her sexuality from her friends/colleagues and became something of a reclusive introvert, which caused strife with her extroverted partner. We don’t see the way Adele battles crushing anxiety and depression due to her slippery identity and relationship troubles. We don’t see how it drives her to drug use. We don’t see how this kills her.
Why did the film cut these moments of tension? Why did it de-complicate its heroine’s sexuality and her personality, for that matter? These details, these events are what make these cardboard characters into people. These questions, struggles, and anxieties are hallmarks of queer sexuality, of queer life. To remove them is to dismiss the difficulties endemic to coming out and being gay in our world. If you also take away the joy and love inherent in those relationships, as the film Blue is the Warmest Color does, what are you left with?
This kiss is full of pain, passion, and love.
I’m not saying all lesbian sex is romantic or that all lesbian relationships are loving, but I’m left wondering what I was watching for three hours? It mostly seemed like a lot of mouth-breathing, sleeping, eating, and fucking. Is that what the film wants us to believe lesbian relationships are all about? The party scene even mouths the director’s inability to understand queer female sexuality with its ignorant conversations about what women do in bed and why women are drawn to each other. I can’t help but feel that there was so much beauty, depth, and complexity to the relationship in the comic that is inexplicably missing from the film. I can’t help but feel the movie gives us scraps and that the queer community is so desperate for a reflection of itself, that we hungrily accept those scraps.
I understand people liking this film, especially queer women. I might’ve liked it, too, if I hadn’t read the graphic novel first. If you liked this movie, do yourself a favor and go to your local comic book store. Pick up a copy of Julie Maroh’s beautifully illustrated graphic novel Blue is the Warmest Color. If you don’t have a comic book shop, I beg you to buy it online. See what you’re missing. See what the film is missing.
—————— Amanda Rodriguez is an environmental activist living in Asheville, North Carolina. She holds a BA from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio and an MFA in fiction writing from Queens University in Charlotte, NC. She writes all about food and drinking games on her blog Booze and Baking. Fun fact: while living in Kyoto, Japan, her house was attacked by monkeys.
I was surprised by Disney’s latest animated film “Frozen”. I was sure it was going to feed us Disney’s standard company line about princesses and marriage and girls needing to be rescued all the time. I was wrong. Though the film still showcases impossibly thin, rich, white girls who are princesses, this isn’t a story about romantic love or some dude rescuing a damsel in distress. “Frozen” is a story about sisterhood and the power that exists inside young women.
Spoiler Alert
Frankly, I was surprised by Disney’s latest animated film Frozen. Even though it featured the voice of my beloved heroine Veronica Mars (or as she’s known in real life: Kristen Bell), I was pretty sure Frozen was going to feed us Disney’s standard company line about princesses and marriage and girls needing to be rescued all the time. I was wrong. Though the film still showcases impossibly thin, rich, white girls who are princesses, this isn’t a story about romantic love or some dude rescuing a damsel in distress. Not only does Frozen effortlessly pass the Bechdel Test within five minutes, it’s a story that’s centered around sisterhood and the power that exists inside young women.
The most important relationship in Frozen, the one that drives all the action, all the pathos, is that of Anna and her sister Elsa. The two of them love each other very deeply, but they struggle to connect. Snow Queen Elsa strives to protect her little sister from harm first by hiding her own amazing abilities to create/manipulate snow and ice and then by refusing to allow Anna to marry a man she’s only just met. Elsa has donned the mantle of big sister with a great deal of seriousness, including all the responsibility that comes with it. When Elsa’s powers are outed at court, Anna’s unflagging love and determination prompts her to go after her fleeing sister who holes up in a pristine snow castle. We learn that Elsa was right to protect her sister from a hasty marriage, which is a huge change from Disney’s traditional espousing of the myth of love-at-first-sight, but we also learn that Anna’s love and acceptance is the only thing that can save her reclusive sister.
Sisters Elsa and Anna join hands.
In Frozen, female agency and power are paramount. Elsa has cosmically awesome winter powers (she should seriously consider a trip to Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters). Anna, our heroine, is normal, which is a refreshing change of pace from most fantasy stories where the lead is imbued with a striking talent or birthright. Though Anna has no unique skills or magical powers, it is her compassion that makes her extraordinary. Anna’s personality makes her special because she never gives up, never questions her own capability, and never thinks she can’t do something. With her courage and conviction, Anna is the driving force behind all the film’s action. The male characters are mostly along for the ride, lending support or acting as obstacles to the true goal of the film: the reconnection of two estranged sisters.
Let’s talk a little bit about Elsa’s winter superpowers. From adolescence, Elsa and her parents fear her growing powers. Elsa seeks to control, minimize, and hide her powers. With the “swirling storm inside”, Elsa loses her grip on her carefully guarded secret and outs herself at her coronation party. After fleeing the scene, she sings, “Conceal. Don’t feel. Don’t let them know,” before declaring she’s going to, “Let it go.” (Full song below.)
Elsa’s abilities that are connected to her emotions and mature with age are obviously a metaphor for her powerful sexuality, and I’d even go so far as to argue that Elsa and her family struggle with her queer sexuality, her parents even fearing that she would infect her younger sister. Yes, I think there is general discomfort around female sexuality in all its forms. However, Anna is blossoming sexually, and there is not the same stigma or fear surrounding it because her conventional hetero sexuality gravitates towards marriage to a prince. There is no male love interest for Elsa (despite Anna having two suitors). Elsa’s queer sexuality is so foreign that her subjects are horrified, and she must isolate herself, becoming a literal ice queen. While Elsa feels free to be honest with herself and to feel her feelings within her isolated castle, she does not believe acceptance is possible nor that she can be a part of normal society.
Elsa tries to scare Anna away and even accidentally hurts her in the process.
When Elsa accidentally strikes Anna with a shard of her ice powers, Anna’s heart becomes frozen, and only “an act of true love” can thaw it and save her from death. Everyone in the film assumes true love’s kiss will cure her, but, frankly, I had my fingers crossed (literally) that Elsa would have to kiss her sister to save her (platonically, of course). We were all wrong. It turned out that Anna had to perform the act of true love, keeping her firmly in the self-actualized role of heroine, making her own choices, taking action, and creating her own destiny. That’s an even better plot twist than I could have imagined! Anna’s act of self-sacrifice shows Elsa that acceptance is possible, that Anna knew about her dark secret and loved her anyway. They’re not saved by a man or romantic love. This is an act of true love between sisters, and that act saves them both. One word: beautiful.
Beautiful sisterhood.
Disney was clearly doing their feminist homework when they came up with Frozen. They created a story about young women that didn’t revolve around men, where family and sisterhood trump everything else, where two sisters save each other. They even have Kristoff ask Anna for consent before he kisses her, and the movie doesn’t end with a wedding. Disney still has to work on its depiction of impossible female bodies that are usually white. They need to start telling stories about regular girls and not just richie-rich princesses. They need to be more open and honest about their queer characters instead of hiding them under metaphor, but all in all, Frozen is a huge leap forward for Disney. I’m glad I went to see it. I’m glad I took my six-year-old niece to see it with me, and though their white skin and privileged lifestyle doesn’t match hers, I think Frozen imparted an important lesson about sisterhood, love, and acceptance that is invaluable to young girls everywhere.
——————- Amanda Rodriguez is an environmental activist living in Asheville, North Carolina. She holds a BA from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio and an MFA in fiction writing from Queens University in Charlotte, NC. She writes all about food and drinking games on her blog Booze and Baking. Fun fact: while living in Kyoto, Japan, her house was attacked by monkeys.
As a little girl growing up in the 80s, I loved the show Jem & the Holograms. I confess that I still have a bunch of the songs from the show that I listen to from time to time (occasionally subjecting my spin class attendees to a Jem track on my workout playlists). Looking back now as an adult feminist, I’ve wondered how the show influenced me and whether or not that influence was a positive thing. *I did a similar assessment of another of my much-loved 80’s cartoons called: She-Ra Kinda Sorta Accidentally Feministy.*
There are a few potential not-necessarily-empowering aspects of Jem. Firstly, the show is fashion-obsessed and revolves around the characters’ fashionability. Unlike most cartoons where the characters mostly wear the same outfit in every episode, the thin female bodies of Jem‘s characters are adorned in multiple wardrobe changes often within a single 20-minute episode. Fashion and modeling, we know, are traditionally coded as female. The fashion world is extremely hard on women, placing undue emphasis on their bodies, especially on the thinness of those bodies. The drummer (and Black bandmate) Shana, however, designs clothing, so there is an aspect of fun creative expression at play here. Not only that, but the band Jem & the Holograms gets into the world of fashion and music in order to maintain the foster home for young girls that they run.
In this light, being on the cutting-edge of fashion, making money, being famous, and maintaining their record label (Starlight Music) is all a means to a philanthropic ends. The band often performs benefit concerts, singing many songs that deliver a positive message about fair play, hard work, creativity, education, and friendship to its young, predominately female audience. Jerrica Benton (Jem’s alter ego) must become a savvy business woman in the advent of her father’s death in order to run her inherited huge record label while living with her beloved foster girls, trying to give them good, happy lives. Jerrica and her friends are capable, ambitious women who thrive in the business world and do so for noble reasons. That type of female representation is all too rare in any pop culture medium, and it definitely had a positive effect on my impressionable younger self.
Another aspect of the show that could be a negative for little girls was all the female rivalry. The primary focus of the show was the often high-stakes band rivalry between Jem & the Holograms and their nemeses (another all-female band), The Misfits.
The Misfits: Roxy, Pizzazz, & Stormer
The Misfits were mean, reckless, and ruthless in their pursuit to beat Jem at everything. They’d lie, cheat, commit crimes and sabotage, and endanger the lives of Jem and her bandmates in order to win at any cost. They even had a song called “Winning is Everything.” True story.
Though Jem passes the Bechdel Test with flying colors, this dangerous female rivalry is troubling, reinforcing mainstream media’s insistence that women can’t be friends; they must, instead, compete for resources, men, and general approval. Instead of the bands being able to cooperate and collaborate, they are mostly at each other’s throats (with The Misfits, of course, being the instigators). The upside of this rivalry is that the major players are all women. The characters with all the talent, power, and agency are women. The epitome of this is the all-powerful matriarchal figure of Synergy. She’s a basically sentient hologram generating computer system. She gets Jem and her crew out of countless jams, operates as home base for their operations, and acts as a concerned, maternal mentor for them. Though Synergy is a computer system, she has awesome power and Jerrica/Jem often goes to her for counsel.
“Synergy, create a hologram of Jem.”
Not only that, but even the cruel Misfits are given depth over time. My favorite character (on whom I had a serious girl-crush) was Stormer, the blue-haired Misfit who was a bad girl with a heart of gold. When her bandmates crossed the line, she would always undermine their machinations in order to do the right thing, often saving the day. We also learn that Pizazz, the ringleader and front woman for the band, struggles with her former identity as: Phyllis, a rich girl with a neglectful father whose approval and attentiveness she could never garner. Despite the contentiousness of the rival bands’ relations, the fact that women are the primary actors and reactors gives the show a variety of female perspectives and permutations, which is what’s so often lacking in current female representations in film and on TV.
My beloved Stormer storms off.
In fact, there are hardly any male characters in the show at all. There are only two to speak of: Jem/Jerrica’s love interest and road manager, Rio Pacheco, and The Misfits’ slimy band manager, Eric Raymond. Later the lead singer of The Stingers, Riot, enters the scene with his ridiculous hair and obsession with Jem. These male characters’ relevance and even usefulness was often in question. Eric was incompetent at all of his scheming in a distinctly Road Runner style. Jem/Jerrica couldn’t even confide her secrets in Rio, and he was often left waiting in the dark for situational resolutions. I often questioned how healthy for young girls the representation of the love triangle involving Rio, Jem, and Jerrica was. It was bizarre that Jem was Jerrica, so Rio was essentially cheating on his girlfriend…with his girlfriend. There was even an episode where Jerrica gets tired of being herself and her Jem personae, so she dons a hologram of a completely new appearance. Rio falls in love with her, too, and they share a kiss. Though the inherent deception on all sides of the relationship is not good role modeling, maybe it’s important that Rio loves Jerrica no matter what physical form she takes on.
I am in love with this Rio & Jem cosplay duo.
The band itself, Jem & the Holograms, was also surprisingly racially diverse. The drummer, Shana, was Black, and the lead guitarist, Aja, was Asian. They later added a new drummer, Raya, who was Latina, when Shana took up bass guitar. Though the front woman for the band (who couldn’t actually play an instrument) remained a white woman, with the addition of Raya, there were actually more women of color in the band than white women. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen that kind of ratio on a TV show that wasn’t specifically targeted at people of color.
Jem, Kimber, Aja, Raya, & Shana
Though the show’s focus on romantic love, fashion, and female rivalry are of dubious value, there are definitely a lot of good things going on with Jem & the Holograms: the notion that fame and fortune should be used for philanthropic means, that female friendships can be strong and form an important network of support, that a sense of community is crucial, especially that of an older generation of women actively participating in that of teenage girls, that the arts should be respected and fostered, and that the virtues women should value in themselves should include honesty, compassion, fairness, determination, and kindness. Maybe I’m biased because I always thought the show was “truly outrageous,” but the good seems to outweigh the bad, giving us a series about women that tried to teach little girls how to grow up to be strong, ethical, and believe in themselves.
“Why,” you ask, “are you writing about Veronica Mars, a TV show that’s been off the air for years?” A few reasons. Mainly because the show is, was, and ever shall be kickassly awesome. The premise always sounds silly: teenage girl detective solves cases and fights crime, but it’s so much more than that. Veronica (embodied perfectly by Kristen Bell) is wicked smart and a wicked smart-ass. She’s an independent, dogged, talented, funny, intelligent, perpetual underdog with an enviable fashion sense (I always wanted to dress like her) and a knack for getting into and out of trouble. My other reason for writing this review is because creator/writer/director Rob Thomas is fulfilling every V Mars fan’s fantasy and making a movie that follows up on the canceled show.
Veronica Mars movie poster
It’s hard to say whether or not the movie will be any good. It takes place at Veronica’s 10-year high school reunion where she’ll be, once again, solving a murder. I think it’s worth checking out because the show itself was smart, funny, and engaged in important social issues with its strong female protagonist. Now, you might be asking, “If I’ve never seen the show, why should I care?” Answer: Because the show Veronica Mars is simply put great television. I admit, I’m something of a hater. Even the shows I like, I usually find a lot to critique. While Veronica Mars isn’t perfect, it tackled big issues with wit, compassion, and ovaries, such as class, race, the intersectionality of class and race, homosexuality, trans parenting, adoption, suicide, abuse, abandonment, addiction, animal cruelty, the stigma surrounding female teen sexuality, and on and on. In Season One, the two major mysteries that Veronica is trying to solve are:
Who murdered her best friend?
Who raped her?
Veronica taking seedy pictures for a surveillance job.
How many shows have you seen where the heroine is a struggling rape survivor? How many shows have you seen where the heroine is hunting down her rapist to make him pay (because Veronica doesn’t just believe in justice…she believes in revenge)? The theme of Veronica’s rape is on-going, continuing into Season Two when she finally solves the crime, and painful feelings and memories are dredged up in Season Three when she sets out to catch a serial rapist on her college campus, truthfully representing the fact that sexual assault survival isn’t something people just “get over”; it’s something they must deal with in multiple ways throughout their entire lives. I love the way Veronica refuses to be silent. Despite being humiliated at the sheriff’s office when she reports the crime, despite the fact that she can’t remember who her assailant is because she was drugged, Veronica’s doggedness allows many of us who were cowed into silence to vicariously live through her strength and perseverance. In Season Three, Veronica shares her power with the survivors of the serial rapist (who shaves his victims’ heads to further humiliate them). She shares her story with them and repeatedly declares herself to be their advocate and champion when no one else seems to care whether or not justice is served. For that alone, I love this show.
I also admire the relationship she has with her father.
Keith giving Veronica a directive that he knows she’ll ignore.
Keith Mars (another case of perfect casting with Enrico Colantoni) is raising his very smart, independent (read: defiant) teenage daughter on his own. Together, they joke and laugh and communicate. Keith may give Veronica too much freedom and may trust her a bit too much, but, in the end, we always know he’s doing the best he can, making all of his choices with her best interest at heart. What really gets me is that they unabashedly love each other. Veronica chooses her father over her unsupportive so-called “friends” and peers. Keith doesn’t stifle his daughter, while teaching her that hard work and tenacity is what sets her apart from her wealthy classmates. It’s rare to see a single father scenario on TV, and it’s even rarer to see it done half as well as Veronica Mars does it.
I also adore Veronica’s friends. Her best friend Wallace Fennel (portrayed by Percy Daggs III) is so sweet and so genuine. He proves time and time again that he’s a much better friend to Veronica that she can ever be to him. Veronica is humanized as we see her flaws when she takes advantage of Wallace’s friendship, but Wallace is so good-natured that he that he usually just goes along for the ride (though he does call her on her selfishness from time to time). I think it’s great that there’s NEVER any sexual tension between them. They are friends and neither of them wants or seeks more EVER. This is a good example of realistic friendships and Rob Thomas knowing there’s a line between drama and melodrama.
Veronica and Wallace plot and scheme.
Then there’s Mac, played by the adorable Tina Majorino. Cindy Mackenzie is known as “Mac,” in part, because of her last name, but mostly because of her badass computer skills. When Veronica and Mac team up, it’s like fireworks of awesome gooey brains just flying all over the place. I love that these two smart gals find each other, and they talk about waaaaay more than just boys (another instance of the show passing the Bechdel Test), for starters: hacking databases and email accounts, setting up remote surveillance, and dealing with Mac’s discovery that she was adopted. Their relationship is pretty great because they’re encouraging of each other, supportive, and they have complementary skills, all of which make them an awesome sleuthing team.
Veronica and Mac aren’t afraid to get goofy.
There’s a lot to love about this show. Its plethora of cameos, quick wit, and hilarious pop cultural references are part of the amazing package deal. If you’re a V Mars fan, you’re probably wondering why I haven’t mentioned the Duncan and Veronica vs. Logan and Veronica vs. Piz and Veronica deal. I guess it’s because most shows geared towards women and young girls have a love triangle scenario. Though I got sucked into the love triangle like everyone else did, I think what’s so special about Veronica Mars is that its heroine isn’t defined by her romantic relationships. She is so much more. She’s a daughter, a friend, a spy, a scholar, an excellent snickerdoodle baker, a photographer, a dog lover, and, above all, a confident, sassy young woman who lives by her own rules and has an amazing, unlimited future ahead of her. Do I even need to say it? We need more role models like Veronica Mars in film and on television, and we need them STAT.
At its heart, this film is about how young Wadjda, played by newcomer Waad Mohammed, navigates her culture and adolescence as a Saudi girl, her relationships with other girls and women, and what seems to be the changing attitudes of her country
I’ve been waiting for Wadjda to come to my local Fine Arts Theatre for months so that I could review it for Bitch Flicks! Wadjda is noteworthy because it’s the first Saudi Arabian film to ever be directed by a woman, Haifaa Al-Mansour. At its heart, the film is about how young Wadjda, played by newcomer Waad Mohammed, navigates her culture and adolescence as a Saudi girl, her relationships with other girls and women, and what seems to be the changing attitudes of her country (more on all that later).
Personally, though, I was intrigued by the storyline of her new-found passion and desire for a bicycle.
Some background: I’m a late bloomer. I learned how to drive a car and ride a bicycle at the ripe age of 28. As a woman in my late 20’s, I became obsessed with learning to ride because of the freedom and exhilaration that the bicycle promised. The speed, the control, the sexiness of the road bike, the hint of danger, and the allure of the new experience all kept me riding clumsy circles around my parking lot with a neighbor friend holding the saddle (and therefore keeping the bike upright). For me, learning to ride a bike was not a matter of course as it was with most of the people I know, so I could identify with that longing for the unattainable that Wadjda embodies. Eventually, I learned to ride and became obsessed with it, pedaling my Bianchi 30, 40, 80 miles at a time. I also got really into following professional cycling (more on that later, too…I promise it’s relevant).
Director Monsour, herself, knows a thing or two about doing that which seems impossible. Though she had the permission of the Saudi government to make her film, she was forced to hide in a van for most of the outdoor filming, as it would be unseemly for a woman to give direction, especially to her male actors.
Monsour’s heroine also defies convention with her insistence on buying a bike to race her male friend, Abdullah.
Wadjda also wears brightly colored hair clips, Converse sneakers with green laces, and listens to American music. I find it somewhat troubling that Wadjda’s markers of rebelliousness are primarily associated with her exposure to Western culture, but her mother (a generation older) is a complex mix of culture and gender role compliance as well as rebelliousness: her daily work commute is three hours because her husband doesn’t want her working with men, she scolds one of her friends for not wearing a veil with her abaya, she claims Wadjda’s Western music is evil and that girls can’t ride bicycles because it will affect their childbearing abilities, she threatens frequently to marry Wadjda off, and when Wadjda must don a full abaya at the command of the school headmistress, she looks on with glowing pride as it is a treasured rite of passage.
On the other hand, Wadjda’s mother values her daughter’s happiness and ability to dream, she wears a nose stud, and she rejects the idea of her husband taking a second wife, willing to face drastic consequences if he doesn’t respect her wishes. This shows that over the generations, Saudi women are changing, with mothers imparting traditional values to their daughters while still giving them an increasing measure of freedom and autonomy. Monsour says of her own parents, “They are very traditional small-town people but they believed in giving their daughters the space to be what they wanted to be. They believed in the power of education and training. They taught us how to work hard.” Monsour also asserts that, “[P]eople want to hear from Saudi women. So Saudi women need to believe in themselves and break the tradition.”
I admit that when I saw all the women in the streets and in cars wearing full abayas, I was shocked at the imagery. I immediately perceived them as ghosts flitting through the public sphere with heads down, trying to escape all scrutiny, all notice. As a feminist, I bristled against these uniforms that hide the female form, declaring it taboo and the property of her husband. As the women sat waiting in a hot van with only their eyes visible, I realized, though, that the plight of women in Saudia Arabia isn’t that different from that of women in the US. It is a spectrum, with the US on the opposite end. Saudi culture insists women be completely covered, whereas US culture demands skin, cleavage, form-fitting clothing, and sexiness while simultaneously judging the women who do and those who don’t conform to that standard of femininity. Both cultures insist that the female body is a matter for public debate with the dominant patriarchy making the final judgment (as is apparent in US culture with the current backsliding on reproductive rights due to conservative male decision-making). The female body in both cultures then does not belong to individual women.
The strangely similar treatment of the female body in both US and Saudi culture brought up another intriguing comparison for me: women and bicycles. Abdullah (among others in the film) declare to Wadjda that, “Girls can’t ride bikes.” Now, you might think in the US we get off the hook because most little girls (unlike myself) do, in fact, learn how to ride bikes at an early age, and nothing is thought of it. However, how many of them are encouraged to become professional cyclists? Though there are plenty of American women just like Wadjda who won’t take no for an answer, who follow their dreams to become competitive athletes and cyclists, what does the cycling world look like for them? They’re grossly underpaid, under-represented, and there’s hardly any media coverage of their events. Female cyclists (and, in most cases, female athletes in general) aren’t taught to dream big like their male counterparts, and if they do actually achieve success in their sport, where does it leave them? Mostly, it leaves them in anonymity (do you know the name of the most acclaimed female cyclist in the word? doubt it, but I bet you know the name Lance Armstrong) without nearly the recognition, range of events in which to participate (there is NO female equivalent of the Tour de France), and their rate of pay is a mere fraction of that of male professional cyclists. In essence, US culture is telling us that girls can’t ride bikes. Think about that whenever you want to get all righteous on the Saudi gender inequality issue because we sure as hell haven’t gotten it figured out here in the States.
If there is one theme in Wadjda that cannot be overstated, it’s: The personal is political. In Wadjda, the story of a young girl learning to ride a bike has profound cultural, religious, and gender implications. Her stand is powerful and brave, but more importantly, she never questions the rightness of it. Wadjda never once doubts that she should be able to own and ride a bike. It takes many, many small, personal commitments and triumphs like Wadjda’s to build the foundation of a movement for change.
Amanda Rodriguez is an environmental activist living in Asheville, North Carolina. She holds a BA from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio and an MFA in fiction writing from Queens University in Charlotte, NC. She writes all about food and drinking games on her blog Booze and Baking. Fun fact: while living in Kyoto, Japan, her house was attacked by monkeys.
Birth of the Living Dead is Rob Kuhns’ documentary of the making of George Romero’s 1968 cult horror genre game-changer Night of the Living Dead. Bitch Flicks writers Max Thornton and Amanda Rodriguez discuss both the documentary (BOTLD) and the original film itself (NOTLD).
Bitch Flicks writers Max Thornton and Amanda Rodriguez discuss both the documentary (BOTLD) and the original film itself (NOTLD):
MT: I spent my teens as an ardent fan of all things zombie (and I have a lot of theories about what this says about my relationship to embodiment as a trans person, but that’s another discussion). I went on a zombie walk in London for the 40th anniversary of NOTLD in 2008. I skipped a college class to go meet George Romero when he was doing a signing for the Creepshow re-release. My first academic publication is a chapter on zombies (and queerness, and Jesus, because those are my other favorite things). My cred as a Romero fan is well established, and I’m guessing yours is, too. Do you think someone who’s less of a zombie nut — or perhaps even someone who hasn’t seen NOTLD — could enjoy Birth of the Living Dead?
AR: I am a huge horror and zombie fan, but I didn’t start out life that way. I saw NOTLD when I was 4. I can empathize with Ebert’s observations of the younger children who didn’t have the resources to protect themselves from the fear and dread engendered by the film. I refused to watch NOTLD again until I’d graduated college because it was so formative and so terrifying. Perhaps in large part because of NOTLD, I have always been fascinated with what frightens us and why. The deep psychology of fear and what that fear represents within a larger cultural context have been the subjects of much of my critical analysis and fiction writing. I love the idea that horror, in particular the zombie, is a physical manifestation of our societal fears.
Karen cannibalizes her father, illustrating society’s fear of the brutality of youth.
That said, I’ve only properly seen NOTLD once, so I think the documentary can be interesting to people who aren’t as entrenched in zombie culture; although who isn’t these days, considering they’re such a popular horror subgenre? I found Romero’s continued enthusiasm for the film all these years later to be quite endearing. Film nerds and aspiring indie filmmakers could find value in this documentary. People interested in history, particularly the civil rights movement and the Vietnam war could benefit from seeing this documentary, as it and NOTLD deal with those huge cultural landmarks from a different angle than we’re used to seeing. I also really appreciated the way the documentary casts NOTLD as a meta-narrative of the actual making of the film: the DIY approach and guerrilla tactics the crew used despite the huge filmmaking machine that is Hollywood. The process of making the film becomes its own protest against the Hollywood status quo, the insistence on professional actors, the elitism of art and entertainment. In a way, this is exactly the function of zombies; to disrupt the normalcy and complacency of institutions.
MT: Is this documentary perhaps a little too much of a hagiography? Does it give Romero too much credit for inventing the zombie as we know it, provide too little contextualization of the Haitian origins of the zombi, and thus perhaps whitewash the racism, colonialism, and cultural appropriation inherent in our cultural enthusiasm for the zombie?
Haitian Zombi in ‘I Walked with the Dead’
AR: Though I thought Romero was a sweet man, and as a fan, I couldn’t help but gobble up his nostalgic reminiscences, the documentary underscored for me the importance of the concept of the death of the author and the fallacy of the notion of authorial intent. It is clear that Romero had no idea what he was making. This film is considered a cult classic and of cinematic significance in spite of him. He makes it clear that he didn’t intend to comment on race by casting a black protagonist, and I doubt he had any idea he was critiquing the Vietnam war or truly upsetting the horror genre in a profound way. I think the film does all those things in a compelling way, which is why it withstands the test of time and is infinitely imitable. Without divesting him of his agency completely, the documentary shows that film experts and filmmakers today understand the important work he created more than Romero himself does.
You’re right that the documentary seems to gloss over the true origins of the zombi, which does divorce it from its racially-charged roots. However, I always thought the movies that predate NOTLD featuring Haitian zombis were painfully racist. Romero zombies are different from the Haitian zombi and speak to our culture in a different way…probably because the Romero zombie is versatile and can morph into any of our greatest fears. It would have made sense, though, to have the documentary further explore the origins of the zombi. Since BOTLD is so racially aware, I would have enjoyed seeing it tackle the implications of colonialism and appropriation. Do you think Romero’s so-called reinvention of the zombi is ultimately racist? Does his malleable notion of zombies only address first-world fears and insecurities?
George Romero Portrait
MT: I think this is something that deserves more interrogation than it tends to receive — consider the fact that he always cites I Am Legend as a huge influence, and not the Haitian voodoo roots or even the massively racist earlier zombie films like White Zombie — but then NOTLD doesn’t actually use the term “zombie.” As well as getting more credit than he deserves, perhaps Romero gets more flak than he deserves when we criticize his appropriation of the zombi, because, as you point out, he doesn’t necessarily know quite what he was doing. (I would note that some people are attempting to balance out the deification of Romero as inventor of the modern zombie: the editors of my zombie chapter, for example, were very insistent on giving Romero’s co-writer Russo equal credit.)
I really enjoyed the film’s emphasis on the social context of the late sixties and how that shaped much of the imagery and message of NOTLD: race riots, Nam, anger, disillusionment with the hippie movement’s failure to elicit major structural change. Are we currently in a comparable period of crisis and distrust in institutions, reflected in the renewed zombie boom of the past decade? And yet is the profound social consciousness of NOTLD largely missing from zombie stories today? For example, I rage-quit The Walking Dead at the end of Season One because it seemed to me so profoundly the white men’s story, with the female characters and characters of color remaining firmly secondary to the almighty White Man. I think maybe I find this particularly disappointing in zombie stories because I want more out of a genre rooted in a movie that was so far ahead of its time in its attitude toward race.
‘Night of the Living Dead’ hero Ben played by Duane Jones
AR: I think zombies will always appeal to us because our society is a house of cards. Zombies remind us of a life without the comforts of technology, safety, and structure. The more complicated and reliant we become on institutions and corporations, the more relevant dystopian fantasies like zombies become because we are one global crisis away from that house of cards collapsing on us, leaving us weak, reeling, and unable to fend for ourselves.
I think zombie movies are being made left and right because they’re a hot item, but a zombie movie isn’t truly great unless the zombies are a compelling metaphor. The last zombie movie I remember adoring was 28 Days Later because it explored the terrifying fear of pandemics, the brutality of the military, and the rage that exists inside us, constantly questioning whether or not human nature is really as pure and good as we’re led to believe. Though Naomie Harris’ Selena was its secondary protagonist and her characterization falters at the end, she is a majorly badass, smart Black woman who kicks some serious keister with a machete. (However, I didn’t love the sequel 28 Weeks Later because I thought that was some misogynistic bullshit.)
Selena slays first and asks questions…not at all.
I, too, have been struggling with the TV show version of The Walking Dead. I even wrote a Bitch Flicks article comparing the superior graphic novel series to the show. You’re totally right; the show is reactionary, racist, and sexist. It’s not doing much new or interesting with its post-apocalyptic material, which has vast potential to make meaningful commentary about what day-to-day life looks like when you’ve stripped our society away. There are questions ripe for the asking, such as: What do morals look like? How do you raise children? Can we work together against a common enemy (as touched on in the BOTLD), or are we inherently self-motivated?
What do you think the zombie trope “means”? Why do you think it’s still got such a stranglehold on us after over four decades?
Are zombies then not really a horror subgenre but a dystopian subgenre? Maybe the words “zombie” and “apocalypse” always go together. Can you think of any zombie film examples where the threat of utter human and societal annihilation were not issues?
MT: I wonder — and this is highly speculative, and clearly born out of my perspective as a theologian with seminarian friends who worry a lot about the decline of mainline Christianity in the US — if the zombie’s place as a monster of the 20th and 21st century is intertwined with secularism. Is it a manifestation of a certain cultural anxiety related to the “rise of the nones” — that is, a cathartic expression of a fear of being swallowed up by materialism (in both the philosophical and the economic senses of the term)? As mindless masses of rotting flesh whose only drives are the basest physical urges, zombies represent the logical extreme of pure materialism, and I suspect it’s not a coincidence that our cultural psyche is obsessed with them in a time when global capitalism is engulfing everything while traditional channels for religious/spiritual sensibilities are on the decline — among the young westerners who are the primary audience for zombie culture, at least.
Zombies gravitate to the mall in ‘Dawn of the Dead’, capitalist consumers even in death.
It’s an odd and frustrating paradox that zombie stories are always these grand-scale, global apocalypses, and yet they always focus on your straight-white-male protagonists. This piece does a grand job of addressing this issue. I’d take World War Zas an example of the paradox: the book actually does take on the geopolitics of the zombie apocalypse on a truly global scale, whereas the film is a by-the-numbers Hollywood disaster flick where the global disaster is mere backdrop to the story of whiterocis dude hero and his perfect(ly passive) white family. I think that’s perhaps symptomatic of the increasing polarization of mainstream and independent content in our age of digital distribution, and I suspect that mainstream pop culture zombie tales are only going to get more anodyne and more unthinkingly supportive of the heteropatriarchal status quo, while we’ll have to look to non-traditional channels of production and distribution for interesting stories. I haven’t yet watched Ze, Zombie, a queer zombie film, but I’m deeply intrigued — not least, I admit, because the top update on the website is currently an apology for the film’s excessive whiteness…we’ve a long way still to go, it seems.
For all its social consciousness, though, does NOTLD (and BOTLD – only one of the talking heads is a woman; African-American men are interviewed, but African-American women are not) fall into the trap of so many progressive social movements, both in the sixties (e.g. black power) and still today (e.g. movement atheism): failure to properly include, address, and account for women? Do you know of any actually feminist zombie films (I can’t think of any)? Why is this such a cultural lacuna? Other movie monsters have been reinterpreted in explicitly feminist ways: vampires (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), werewolves (Ginger Snaps) — doesn’t the zombie have feminist potential as a movie monster?
In ‘Ginger Snaps’, werewolf Ginger revels in her new power.
AR: I’m totally with you on your critique of World War Z the film vs. the book. We’re like E.T. and Elliott here because I wrote a Bitch Flicks review critiquing the film: its narrative choices that narrowed the scope of the book until it was unrecognizable, the way it cast Gerry as a messianic figure, and its under-development of its potentially fierce female characters, rendering them as nothing more than symbols to reflect back upon Gerry’s manly manliness.
I’ve always thought that NOTLD wasn’t feminist when I consider all the female characters in the movie. I wish someone would have commented on the flat female NOTLD depictions in the documentary, but I guess the movie wouldn’t come out looking so well…the documentary does kind of lionize NOTLD.
They were coming to get you, and they got you, Barbara.
I think Jennifer’s Body could maybe be categorized as a female zombie flick, but it’s debatable whether or not its feminist. Return of the Living Dead 3 was kind of a big deal because the protagonist was a woman and a zombie, and she became a sexual icon for teenage boys everywhere. I think part of the problem with associating zombies and women is that zombies aren’t usually sexy, and it seems like a requirement that women and sexuality are linked in cinema whether it’s in a feminist or a non-feminist way. So, I’d say that the lack of feminist zombie films speaks to a larger issue, in which our culture insists on associating women and sexuality.
Sexay zombie in ‘Return of the Living Dead 3’
There’s no real reason, however, why a woman can’t be the zombie killing heroine, though it happens so infrequently. We’ve got shitty examples like the Resident Evil series, but I think there’s a lot of potential to critique the patriarchy in a film that sets up a lone woman (or a small group of women) working against the never-ending onslaught, the plague of patriarchy. Wow, now I’m stoked to see that movie! Think it’ll ever get made?
Romero identifies as “Spanish” as per his Sharks vs. Jets anecdote in BOTLD, but he’s of Cuban & Lithuanian descent. He’s never represented as a director of color (I bet his last name, as he mentions, is often mistaken for Italian), and I wonder if that has an effect on the distribution and reception of his films? Would horror films directed by a POC known to have an underlying social and political commentary be shunned by the mainstream or turned into an even more exclusive niche (i.e. something like “politically-charged cult horror films by people of color”…ugh)? I also wonder if that’s why he’s well-known for casting characters of color in his films without sort of thinking about it: because he views race differently than, say, his white director counterparts?
Romero contextualizes his sense of his race using ‘West Side Story’
MT: Your point about Romero and race is really interesting, and I hadn’t considered that before. The idea that he’s a POC who’s never read that way does go a long way to explain the use of race in his films. The history and theory of the “passing” POC is too often elided or overlooked in a lot of critical race discussions, and perhaps this element nuances the question of misappropriation of zombi above? It definitely merits more analysis!
And I think Romero’s engagement with both race and gender does get more explicit in his later films, notably Day of the Dead (clearly a heavy influence on 28 Days Later) and the very underrated Land of the Dead. It’s not an accident that Land‘s Big Daddy, the first zombie to develop a sense of consciousness, is African-American, and Land‘s whole narrative of class warfare is extremely relevant. (Now I kind of want to have future discussions about each of Dawn, Day, and Land of the Dead, looking at the evolution of Romero’s social consciousness over the years and films!)
AR: I’m in complete agreement about Romero’s evolution as a socially and politically conscious director in his later films. Dawn of the Dead‘s critique of consumerism is probably the reason that I insist upon socially relevant zombie interpretations. I also find it fascinating and a bit depressing that the 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake was lazy in that it eschewed the critical commentary inherent in a mall-based zombie flick, proving once again that we’re not necessarily getting better or more self-aware as a people. Romero’s Diary of the Dead I also thought was an interesting engagement on the notions of the viral connection of online media and the viral nature of information, despite its ultimate disappointment as a film. Although Land of the Dead wasn’t as commercially successful nor as engaging as some of Romero’s other films, I, too, was impressed by its class critique and some of its underlying racial commentary. However, I think the Black man emerging from the water with his new sense of self-awareness is a problematic depiction, putting Africans and African Americans on a slower time line for evolution than white people, claiming (perhaps unintentionally) that their consciousness is nascent, which is a disturbing paternalistic attitude.
Zombie leader, Big Daddy, emerging from the water.
This is one of my long-held issues with the horror, sci-fi, and fantasy genres. In order to tell these socially and politically charged stories, they embody the Other in monster flesh: think the apartheid conversation in District 9 with the grotesque alien bug people or Oz, the werewolf, along with Angel, the vampire, in Buffy and even more so in the Angelseries or the way all the Star Trek series are rife with the creation of Othered alien species to elucidate the plight of an oppressed people (not to mention the racism inherent in the vicious warrior Klingons as stand-ins for Black people or the antisemitism of the greedy, urbane Ferengi as stand-ins for Jewish people). While the metaphor comes across, it often dehumanizes and further Others those it is attempting to bolster.
I could talk about this stuff for days and days! Count me in for future convos on the rest of the Romero zombie films! I’m planning to watch his Survival of the Dead, the last of Romero’s zombie series, for a Halloween-y treat since I’ve shockingly never seen it before.
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Thanks for joining us for this conversation between Max Thornton and Amanda Rodriguez on ‘Birth of the Living Dead’ and ‘Night of the Living Dead’. Keep an eye out for Max’s upcoming interview with Esther Cassidy, producer of ‘Birth of the Living Dead’.
A friend of mine turned me onto the show Hit & Miss, which is a six episode British series currently streaming on Netflix. Hit & Miss follows Mia, played by the ever-talented Chloë Sevigny. Mia is a transgender hit woman who finds she has an 11 year-old son, Ryan.
A friend of mine turned me onto the show Hit & Miss, which is a six episode British series currently streaming on Netflix. Hit & Miss follows Mia, played by the ever-talented Chloë Sevigny. Mia is a transgender hit woman who finds she has an 11-year-old son, Ryan. When Mia’s ex-girlfriend and Ryan’s mother dies unexpectedly, Mia must balance the demands of her brutal, secretive work while trying to build a family with her son and his three other siblings of whom Mia is also now the guardian.
My strongest critique of the series is that the producers did not choose an actual transgender woman to play the role of Mia. Sevigny is, no doubt, an ally and advocate for trans rights as is evinced by her involvement with Hit & Miss as well as Boys Don’t Cry, and while her rendering of Mia is nuanced, strong, and sensitive, it’s just not enough. On Homorazzi.com, Sevigny is quoted as saying, “I was worried people would be angry that they didn’t cast a real person who was transitioning, I asked why they didn’t, and the producers said they didn’t find the right person. It’s a big responsibility toward that community, and I wanted to do them right.”
All I have to say is: bullshit. Bullshit they couldn’t find a capable transgender actress to give authenticity to the character and agency to the transgender community. Look at how amazingly gifted Laverne Cox is as Sophia on the women’s prison series Orange is the New Black. Cox’s portrayal has been successful, breathing life, humanity, and humor into Sophia, proving that there are plenty of transgender actors who are not only talented, but who audiences will receive positively. It’s time to give another under-represented and marginalized group the freedom to represent themselves. Blackface is offensive and is generally accepted as grotesque and hateful. In 20 years, how will people view our insistence that no transgender actors are capable of representing their own lives, struggles, weaknesses, and triumphs?
Chloë Savigny as Mia on a job.
My second major critique of the series is that the camera is obsessed with Mia’s body. Her penis is shown in every single episode. She is often nude or getting dressed, and the audience is encouraged to stare at her body. The camera is fascinated with the incongruity between the curves of Mia’s female form and her (prosthetic) penis. It feels gratuitous and exploitative, objectifying an already marginalized character. The camera’s obsession with Mia’s body tells us two things: 1) Mia is her body; her body is her most important and defining attribute, and 2) Mia is abnormal. The way the camera lingers on her breasts and penis echoes carnival freakshows that insist audience members pruriently gaze at the Other. This isn’t a humanizing, inclusive technique. The camera should not internalize the judgements that Mia and much of the world put on her body because we, the audience, are effectively the camera, it guides our gaze, which should be one of acceptance of the integrity and beauty of its heroine.
Mia nude montage
My third major critique is the show’s rendering of Mia’s sexuality. She identifies as a straight woman trapped in the biological body of a man. That would be fine, but she also insists to the kids that she loved Wendy, their mother, and that they were happy together, claiming, “We’d probably still be together if I weren’t a transsexual.” (The use of the word “transsexual” makes me cringe…maybe it’s a British thing?) The idea seems to be that Mia was a straight man, and now she is a straight woman. That decomplicates human sexuality, not to mention trans sexuality, in a disappointing way. Why can’t Mia’s sexuality be fluid? The underlying assumption seems to be that it would make her less of a woman to be attracted to both men and women. That is deeply problematic not only to queer sexuality, but to trans sexuality.
I appreciate that Hit & Miss, however, allows Mia to be more than a gender stereotype. Though she is a very feminine woman (wearing make-up, dresses, lingerie, and cute cowgirl boots), Mia is skilled in weaponry and hand-to-hand combat. Some of the most touching sequences in the series are when Mia and her son, Ryan, work out together, bonding as she teaches him the discipline of fitness and boxing for self-defense.
Mia teaches her son, Ryan, to defend himself from bullies.
Not only that, but Mia is gratifyingly self-possessed when it comes to threats against her person. Watching her beat the ever-loving shit out of the waste-of-space, misogynistic, pedophile, rapist, dumb fuck landlord, John, as he threatens her and the kids is one of the most satisfying scenes of all time. He soooo had it coming.
Mia fucks John’s shit up. It couldn’t have happened to a nicer person.
Mia’s new lover, Ben, accuses her of still having “too much man left in” her because of her penchant for violence. She rightly tells him to fuck off. Her life is fraught with violence because of her profession and because of her dark, abusive upbringing on the carnival Fairgrounds. I also wonder if the show is saying that violence is inherent in transitioning. It is true that many transgender people face violence and the threat of violence as part of their daily lives. Being who they are is, for some reason, perceived as a threat to hegemony, and fear, aggression, and hate are all too common responses. Hit & Miss also, though, plays with the metaphor of rebirth, and the violent struggle that accompanies it. In a montage sequence, as the children don their sleeping bags (reminiscent of cocoons) to play their favorite game, a butterfly flits across Mia’s sniper rifle scope, causing her to miss her target, which changes her life forever. Mia is in the process of being reborn from a man to a woman, a loner to a family member, and a father to a mother.
Her new lover, Ben, struggles with his own sexuality and masculinity as they relate to Mia’s transition. To prove his straightness, masculinity, and capacity for intimacy, Ben cheats on Mia. He makes a point of performing oral sex on his fling; the significance of which is obvious, but it is also important because Mia isn’t comfortable with Ben touching her penis (understandably so because Mia doesn’t feel her penis is part of her identity). On the morning after the woman has left, Ben finds a handful of hair extensions in his bed. This moment was very compelling for me as a feminist because it is saying that to some degree femininity is a performance even for cis women. This posits the query, “What makes a real woman?” This scene questions the validity that any such creature exists. It subtly asserts that genitalia is as arbitrary as hair length for determining who is and who is not a woman.
Mia and Ben have sex for the first time.
“Family’s got fuck all to do with blood.” – Mia
That is the best quote of the entire series, and it is one of the major themes of the show. If I had to pick one word to describe the series, it would be: bleak. Hit & Miss is full of violence, trauma, and despair. These are highly damaged people, but together they form a unique family and a new life. Mia pulls them together with her strength, her vulnerability, and her love. By the end of the series, Mia has drawn all the wounded characters together. She senses their need for love and safety, and she gives it freely, in spite of how many curses and slurs they hurl her way. In the depths of darkness, Mia’s indomitable spirit is a beacon, guiding all of them towards hope.
Mia’s new family
This show has a lot going on; I even question whether or not it’s got too much going on. The primary characters have complex inner lives with myriad painful issues that stem from poverty, neglect, and abuse. A fledgling family getting to know and learning to love each other while navigating these landmine issues; a trans woman learning she has a son, owning her identity, finding romance and family in unexpected places; a hitwoman balancing her seedy career with a desire to give, belong, and build a wholesome life for her family…each of these could be its own storyline. Is it too much to make Mia a hitwoman? Is it purposely sensationalist in order to draw attention to the meat of its tale: family and identity? Is making Mia a hitwoman underscoring Chloë Sevigny’s sentiment that, “There’s a lot more going on with her than just her gender”? Or is an ambitious, often contentious, and always thought-provoking short series like Hit & Miss that’s packed with meaning, metaphor, and depth exactly what we need?
Gravity survives on the merit of its spectacle. It’s beautiful, terrifying, and gripping. The characters, while feeling real, are underdeveloped. The story itself is one big metaphor for Stone’s journey into isolation and despair after suffering personal tragedy. It is an epic allegory about the journey toward life, toward connection with the earth. I couldn’t tell you what kind of card player Stone is, though, or what made her want to become a doctor. Her life is a blank because she’s not an individual; she’s an archetype.
Alfonso Curon’sGravity is primarily an experience. It’s an edge-of-your-seat survival tale set in the vastness, the darkness, the solitude of space. I was eager to review this film because I love sci-fi, and I love women in sci-fi flicks. I can take or leave Sandra Bullock (mostly leave her), but her performance in Gravity‘s opening sequence sold me:
It’s silent in space. Astronauts are working on the exterior of a space satellite. George Clooney as astronaut Matt Kowalski is floating about making pleasant conversation. We can hear the labored breathing of Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock). Her heart rate is elevated, and she’s not taking in the majesty of space because she’s too focused on her work, too focused on keeping herself under control. Dr. Stone is not an astronaut. She’s a civilian medical engineer who’s designed some special program that NASA wants to use. Trained solely for this mission, she’s fighting not to have a panic attack while perched outside the world, and then she is violently wrenched from that perch, from that narrow margin of the illusion of safety into…chaos.
Sandra Bullock as Dr. Ryan Stone desperately holds on as a debris storm wreaks havoc.
No other film has communicated to me the desolation of space the way that Gravity does. Dr. Stone’s vulnerability and lack of awe translate into a visceral feeling within this audience member of the true terror and anxiety of being in space, the smallness of the human animal, and the rawness of her grip on survival.
Gravity‘s cinematography is stunningly beautiful. The film is shot with such a unique style, and its zero gravity environments faced so many challenges that the movie’s innovations are being lauded as “chang[ing] the vocabulary of filmmaking.” They used puppeteers for Christ’s sake! How cool is that? Some shots did seem indulgent, perhaps trying too hard to convey Cuaron’s metaphor. The best example being when Stone makes it into a damaged space station that still has air. She disrobes in slo-mo from her suit, and the exactness of her body’s poses are anime-esque in their echoing of the fetus in the womb and birth metaphors.
Though in booty shorts, Stone is never stripped to only her bra & panties.
I liked Ryan Stone’s vulnerability and her constant battle with blind panic (that she sometimes loses). It made her and her experience more accessible. It’s iffy whether or not Gravity, though, manages to be a feminist film. Gravity certainly doesn’t pass the Bechdel test, but to be fair, there are very few characters at all in the movie. The only personal detail we’re given about Stone is that she was once a mother who lost her daughter to a tragic accident. This irks me because it casts Stone as the grieving mother archetype. Boooorrriiiinggg. It too simply explains her unhappy adventure beyond the ends of the earth. It forgives her for being a woman who would give up familial ties to go into space because she, in fact, has already lost those ties. Because her loss consumes her, Stone’s despair and lack of connection, in fact, justify her trip.
Clooney’s Kowalski calmly tows an oxygen deprived Stone to safety.
Veteran astronaut Kowalski is a bit too perfect, too in-control, and too optimistic. When we contrast his cool command with Stone’s panic attacks, freezing up, and bouts of giving up from which he must coax her, Kowalski seems like more of the hero. That leaves Stone to be the basketcase woman whom it is Kowalski’s chivalrous duty to rescue. Stone finally encounters a situation that seems unbeatable, and she resigns herself to death. She hallucinates Kowalski comes to rescue her and gives her the information lurking in the back of her memory that she needs to save herself. He is her savior even within her mind. Not only that, but as she rouses herself from her hallucination, she says something like, “Kowalski, you clever bastard.” This leaves open the interpretation to spiritual types that she may not have, in fact, hallucinated; instead she may have had a supernatural experience in which her friend’s ghost did save her life from beyond the grave deus ex machina style. Frankly, that is just poop. Either way, Clooney as the noble, infinitely calm and self-sacrificing astronaut dude is just spreading it on a bit too thick for my taste.
Kowalski helps a flustered Stone speed up her slow work.
Gravity survives on the merit of its spectacle. It is beautiful, terrifying, and gripping. The characters, while feeling real, are underdeveloped. The story itself is one big metaphor for Stone’s journey into isolation and despair after suffering personal tragedy. It is an epic allegory about the journey toward life, toward connection with the earth, which is a poignant, compelling story, but I couldn’t tell you what kind of card player Stone is or what made her want to become a doctor. Her life is a blank because she’s not an individual; she’s an archetype. If Gravity could have accomplished its visual feats, told its epic story about survival and rediscovering the self all the while giving us rich characters, I would have loved this movie. Instead, I merely like it for its grandness of vision and its ideas; I like it in spite of its tepid storyline and lukewarm characterizations.
Two out of the three female characters are women of color: Melinda May played by Ming-Na Wen and Skye played by Chloe Bennet. They’re both of Asian descent, which leaves me wishing there were also prominent Black and Latino characters, but maybe more will be introduced over time. I’ve got to say that the Asian hacker and the Asian martial arts expert are pretty stereotyped roles, but I’m living on faith in Joss that he’ll flesh those characters out in a way that takes them beyond their trite origins into fully rounded characters to whom we’re heartbreakingly attached.
Wow, the title of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D is a mouthful. It doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. That said, I’m a huge fan of Joss Whedon. I should clarify, though. I loved Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly, Serenity, Much Ado About Nothing, and The Cabin in the Woods. I did not love DollhouseORThe Avengers. My critique of Dollhouse was that it really underplayed the slavery and prostitution implications of the “dolls” who must do whatever they are commanded to do, never truly acknowledging that the Dollhouse was, in reality, a very high-priced brothel of sorts. As far as The Avengers go, frankly, I was just disappointed. It was better than, say, Thor, but that’s setting the bar a whole lot lower than I tend to expect from the smart, feminist, socially conscious Whedon. However, I’m always game and will always watch with an open mind a TV show with Whedon at the helm.
We’ve now got two episodes of the new Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D under our belts, so we have a bit of a base to gauge whether or not this show will be everything old-school Joss Whedon fans are looking for or if it’ll be superhero comic book fans’ hearts’ desires, or both (as the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive). As far as gender and diversity go, we’ve got three women and three men on the team (that’s right, Coulson is back), so there’s more of a balance than Whedon struck on his first go around in The Avengers with its lone female superhero, Black Widow.
His resurrection bears untold secrets that will doubtless unfold over time.
Two out of the three female characters are women of color: Melinda May played by Ming-Na Wen and Skye played by Chloe Bennet. They’re both of Asian descent, which leaves me wishing there were also prominent Black and Latino characters, but maybe more will be introduced over time. I’ve got to say that the Asian hacker and the Asian martial arts expert are pretty stereotyped roles, but I’m living on faith in Joss that he’ll flesh those characters out in a way that takes them beyond their trite origins into fully rounded characters to whom we’re heartbreakingly attached.
Melinda May is a veteran operative with a past to be reckoned with. Her asskickery is fluid and natural.
Melinda May getting it done.
Skye is a brilliant and gifted hacker who values information, truth, and humanity above all else. She’s also quick-witted and sharp-tongued.
Coulson and Agent Ward discover Skye broadcasting from her seemingly secret mobile base…the van out of which she lives.
Episode one was a little lackluster. With too much going on, too many characters being introduced, too many techno gadgets, too much CGI, and too many awkwardly placed Joss Whedon signature jokes, I was left feeling the show was trying too hard, and I was longing for the character depth and subject matter substance that Joss tends towards. The episode’s final speech is delivered by Gunn, I mean J. August Richards playing, Mike, the artificially enhanced unemployed ex-factory worker, and it refocused the show into what is important:
“You said if we worked hard, if we did right, we’d have a place. You said it was enough to be a man, but there’s better than man—there’s gods. And the rest of us? What are we? They’re giants. We’re what they step on.”
Mike performing a rescue using superpowers borrowed from
alien technology that will most likely kill him.
This isn’t just a speech about superpowers. This is a speech about our society, about the lie of the American dream. It’s saying that it’s no longer enough to work hard and be a good person. It’s a critique of the disparity of wealth and power, of our healthcare system, and our employment system (as Mike was fired for a workman’s comp back injury, which led him to undergo such drastic experimentation). This is a speech about the 99%. Having a Black man deliver it makes it all the more potent, referencing the deeply embedded racism in our country that insists upon assimilation but offers little reward or acceptance. Bravo, Joss.
Pilot episodes are notorious for trying to cram too much into an hour, and the trajectory of shows often change after that pilot, once they get their bearings. So how did Episode two, “0-8-4”, fare? It’s still a bit too flashy and gimmicky with too many explosions and frenetic fight sequences, but I enjoyed the use of the fancy-pants, newly commissioned S.H.I.E.L.D plane that seems as if it may serve as home base for the group…not unlike a certain ship helmed by the indomitable Malcolm Reynolds.
S.H.I.E.L.D’s apolitical mission with its interest in artifacts amongst a guerrilla war-torn Peru create a nice tension between its objectives and Skye’s very political, underdog/rebel sympathizing tendencies. I hope she will continue to put these missions in perspective, not allowing the group to forget the geopolitical ramifications of their actions as well as the history and context of the places in which they practice resource extraction.
Coulson and his former colleague/lover Camilla Reyes make a deadly team fighting off rebels in Peru.
Episode “0-8-4” is really about one thing, though: teamwork, a specialty of Joss Whedon’s. Kelly West of Television Blend even dubbed the episode “Smells Like Team Spirit”. Right you are, Ms. West. I easily grow bored of overwrought gun fights with CGI that just won’t quit. Don’t get me wrong, I love the action genre with kickass fight choreography and heart-pounding do-or-die situations where characters must make impossible choices, but it’s got to have a soul. The team-building aspect of this episode, while a bit cheesy, gave the characters time to bond and to reveal snip-its about themselves, which had a generally humanizing effect and gave the audience an opportunity to warm to them.
Am I sold on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D? Not yet. Do I think it has promise? Quite possibly. Will I keep watching? You bet your keister.
Bitch Flicks writer and editor Amanda Rodriguez is an environmental activist living in Asheville, North Carolina. She holds a BA from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio and an MFA in fiction writing from Queens University in Charlotte, NC. She writes all about food and drinking games on her blog Booze and Baking. Fun fact: while living in Kyoto, Japan, her house was attacked by monkeys.
