2009 Spirit Award Winners

Best Feature: The Wrestler

Best Director: Tom McCarthy (The Visitor)

Best First Feature: Synecdoche, New York

Best Screenplay: Woody Allen (Vicky Cristina Barcelona)

Best First Screenplay: Dustin Lance Black (Milk)

Best Female Lead: Melissa Leo (Frozen River)

Best Male Lead: Mickey Rourke (The Wrestler)

Best Supporting Female: Penelope Cruz (Vicky Cristina Barcelona)

Best Supporting Male: James Franco (Milk)

Best Foreign Film: The Class

Best Documentary: Man on Wire

The Power of Representation

Representing President Obama as a “Super-feminist” has ignited a debate over who the savior of feminism ought to be (see here for a good overview), and likely sold a lot of copies of Ms. magazine’s January edition. Praise for the new president’s political aspirations regarding women’s rights isn’t contended; it’s how the feminist magazine chose to portray Obama: tearing open his Clark Kent clothes to swoop in and rescue us. It’s the representation that has people peeved.

For our purposes here at BF, two articles were published last month–the weekend before the inauguration–about the impact the movies had on Obama’s election. Not that the movies got him elected, but how roles black American men play in the movies have a real effect on the people who see them, and how we can see, through the movies, our own cultural values reflected back on us.

If you ever question how important representation in film really is, I think these articles make the point well. While they specifically focus on male presidential aspirations (and on the unique history of black Americans), they also remind us how pop culture permeates our society and informs opinions and values.

The New York Times published “How the Movies Made a President,”written by A.O. Scott and Manhola Dargis, in their Film section. The article provides an overview of black male roles, from the “Black Everyman” of the ’60s to the “Black Messiah,” currently played and re-played by Will Smith.

Make no mistake: Hollywood’s historic refusal to embrace black artists and its insistence on racist caricatures and stereotypes linger to this day. Yet in the past 50 years — or, to be precise, in the 47 years since Mr. Obama was born — black men in the movies have traveled from the ghetto to the boardroom, from supporting roles in kitchens, liveries and social-problem movies to the rarefied summit of the Hollywood A-list. In those years the movies have helped images of black popular life emerge from behind what W. E. B. Du Bois called “a vast veil,” creating public spaces in which we could glimpse who we are and what we might become.

We hear from the likes of Elizabeth Banks and Katherine Heigl that the only roles really open to them—genuinely talented, lovely young actresses—are that of sidekick, buddy, and romantic object. It’s not that there haven’t been good, meaty roles for women; there have, for sure. But what movie roles do young girls imitate? What fictional figures can women look up to?

The Root’s “Hollywood’s Leading Man: From Sammy Davis Jr. to Dave Chappelle’s Black Bush, how pop culture tested the waters for a black president” offers a more nuanced and contrarian view of the power of pop culture (and reminds us of the egos of those who really believe their art makes a difference). The article surveys the satirical representations of a black president as representative of the racial divide in America, but cites the series 24 as a shift–although one not without its problems–and questions how television and cinema will change.

So now that we have a black president, how will we react to media portrayals? Will there be pressure among writers and producers to create black leaders who feel real and black-led administrations that feel plausible? Will we, as viewers, be able to enjoy over-the-top portrayals of black presidents, such as Terry Crews’ wig-wearing wrestler in Idiocracy, as merely fun entertainment, devoid of racial and social commentary?

Might we perhaps see a black actor playing the lead in a complex drama like The West Wing, or a romantic comedy along An American President, where the president gets to be a fully fleshed out human, and not a cardboard icon? And isn’t it about time that we saw a portrayal of an African-American president who just happens to be a woman, too?

I, too, would like to see that woman. And I think we’d all like to see her on the cover of Ms., wearing a t-shirt that reads “This is what a feminist looks like.”

2009 Spirit Award Nominees

If you thought the previous two posts were repetitive, here’s something different. The Film Independent’s Spirit Awards air the day before the Academy Awards, February 21, on the IFC.

Film Independent is everything the Academy is not. Notice their description:

Film Independent is an open enrollment and non-profit membership organization that champions independent film and supports a community of artists who embody diversity, innovation, and uniqueness of vision. Film Independent helps fimmakers make their movies, builds the audience for their projects, and works to diversify the film industry. Anyone passionate about film can become a member, whether you are a filmmaker, film industry leader, or a film lover.

Here are some of the nominees. For the complete list, see the official Film Independent’s Spirit Awards website. (Whenever possible, I’ve provided links to the films’ official websites.)

Best Feature: Ballast; Frozen River; Rachel Getting Married; Wendy and Lucy; The Wrestler

Best Director: Ramin Bahrani (Chop Shop); Jonathan Demme (Rachel Getting Married); Lance Hammer (Ballast); Courtney Hunt (Frozen River); Tom McCarthy (The Visitor)

Best First Feature: Afterschool; Medicine for Melancholy; Sangre De Mi Sangre; Sleep Dealer; Synecdoche, New York

Best Screenplay: Woody Allen (Vicky Cristina Barcelona); Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck (Sugar); Charlie Kaufman (Synecdoche, New York); Howard A. Rodman (Savage Grace); Christopher Zalla (Sangre De Mi Sangre)

Best First Screenplay: Dustin Lance Black (Milk); Lance Hammer (Ballast); Courtney Hunt (Frozen River); Jonathan Levine (The Wackness); Jenny Lumet (Rachel Getting Married)

Best Female Lead: Summer Bishil (Towelhead); Anne Hathaway (Rachel Getting Married); Melissa Leo (Frozen River); Tarra Riggs (Ballast); Michelle Williams (Wendy and Lucy)

Best Male Lead: Javier Bardem (Vicky Cristina Barcelona); Richard Jenkins (The Visitor); Sean Penn (Milk); Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker); Mickey Rourke (The Wrestler)

Best Supporting Female: Penelope Cruz (Vicky Cristina Barcelona); Rosemarie DeWitt (Rachel Getting Married); Rosie Perez (The Take); Misty Upham (Frozen River); Debra Winger (Rachel Getting Married)

Best Supporting Male: James Franco (Milk); Anthony Mackie (The Hurt Locker); Charlie McDermott (Frozen River); JimMyron Ross (Ballast); Haaz Sleiman (The Visitor)

Best Foreign Film: The Class; Gomorra; Hunger; Secret of the Grain; Silent Light

Best Documentary: The Betrayal; Encounters at the End of the World; Man on Wire; The Order of Myths; Up the Yangtze

2009 Golden Globe Winners


The Golden Globes aired January 11, 2009. For those that missed it, or who want a reminder, here are the winners from some of my favorite categories. For a complete list of nominees and winners, go to the official Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s Golden Globes page.

Best Motion Picture – Drama: Slumdog Millionaire

Best Actress – Drama: Kate Winslet in Revolutionary Road

Best Actor – Drama: Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler

Best Picture – Musical or Comedy: Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Best Actress – Comedy: Sally Hawkins in Happy-Go-Lucky

Best Actor – Comedy: Colin Farrell in In Bruges

Best Supporting Actress: Kate Winslet in The Reader

Best Supporting Actor: Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight

Best Animated Film: Wall-E

Best Foreign Language Film: Waltz With Bashir

Best Director: Danny Boyle for Slumdog Millionaire

Best Screenplay: Simon Beaufoy for Slumdog Millionaire

Some other highlights include three awards for 30 Rock (Best Television Series Musical or Comedy, Best Actress for Tina Fey, and Best Actor for Alec Baldwin), four awards for HBO’s fantastic John Adams miniseries (Best Miniseries or Motion Picture Made for Television, Best Actress for Laura Linney, Best Actor for Paul Giamatti, and Best Supporting Actor for Tom Wilkinson). Laura Dern won for her role as Florida Secretary of State Kathleen Harris in HBO’s superb Recount–a surprisingly suspenseful and engaging movie.

2009 Oscar Nominations


Against my better judgement, I always get excited about the Oscars. Maybe I fit the stereotype that calls them the female answer to the Superbowl. They never fail to disappoint, however, from inexplicable nominations and wins, to the movies that aren’t even recognized. This year looks to be no different, but–for the first time in as long as I can remember–I haven’t seen any of the major nominations. The Dark Knight is the exception.

Here’s a list of the nominees from some of my favorite categories. For the complete list of nominees, check out the (very good) official website. The Academy Awards air on February 22, 2009, at 8 p.m. EST, on ABC.

Best Picture: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button; Frost/Nixon; Milk; The Reader; Slumdog Millionaire

Best Original Screenplay: Courtney Hunt (Frozen River); Mike Leigh (Happy-Go-Lucky); Martin McDonagh (In Bruges); Dustin Lance Black (Milk); Andrew Stanton, Jim Reardon, and Pete Docter (Wall-E)

Best Adapted Screenplay: Eric Roth and Robin Swicord (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button); John Patrick Shanley (Doubt); Peter Morgan (Frost/Nixon); David Hare (The Reader); Simon Beaufoy (Slumdog Millionaire)

Best Director: David Fincher (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button); Ron Howard (Frost/Nixon); Gus Van Sant (Milk); Stephen Daldry (The Reader); Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire)

Best Foreign Film: The Baader Meinhof Complex (Germany); The Class (France); Departures (Japan); Revanche (Austria); Waltz With Bashir (Israel)

Best Actress: Anne Hathaway (Rachel Getting Married); Angelina Jolie (Changeling); Melissa Leo (Frozen River); Meryl Streep (Doubt); Kate Winslet (The Reader)

Best Actor: Richard Jenkins (The Visitor); Frank Langella (Frost/Nixon); Sean Penn (Milk); Brad Pitt (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button); Mickey Rourke (The Wrestler)

Best Supporting Actress: Amy Adams (Doubt); Penelope Cruz (Vicky Cristina Barcelona); Viola Davis (Doubt); Taraji P. Henson (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button); Marisa Tomei (The Wrestler)

Best Supporting Actor: Josh Brolin (Milk); Robert Downey Jr. (Tropic Thunder); Philip Seymour Hoffman (Doubt); Heath Ledger (The Dark Knight); Michael Shannon (Revolutionary Road)

I’d love to hear your reactions to the nominations in the comments section.

Coming Soon to a Theater Near You: The Invisible Woman?


Like a lot of women I know, superhero movies don’t really thrill me.

It wasn’t always this way. I have a clear memory of parading through the classrooms of my elementary school, when I was in fourth grade, dressed as Batman. I remember clearly that I felt powerful—not just because I was the Caped Crusader, but because my peers couldn’t tell if I was a boy or a girl.

Fast forward twenty years, when I enjoyed Batman Begins and looked forward to seeing what Maggie Gyllenahall would do for the role Katie Holmes tiptoed through. Turns out that Ms. Holmes wasn’t the problem with Rachel Dawes–Rachel Dawes was.

Although I had She-Ra action figures as a child, He-Man and Batman proved much more influential. While my childhood proclivities may be more revealing of my own personality than evidence of a lack of strong female characters, as an adult looking at representations of super-human power in the media, it’s more of a man’s world than ever.

Alyssa Rosenberg takes on the issue of female superheroes in the age of testosterone-fueled CGI blockbusters in her superb article “The Invisible Woman,” published this past September in The American Prospect. She talks of how comic books have numerous strong female characters—and a strong, growing female readership—but how Hollywood can’t seem to follow suit.

After a summer during which women flexed their box-office muscle, giving Sex and the City the highest-grossing opening for an R-rated comedy in movie history, it’s not inconceivable to think that a superheroine flick could draw on both the “girls’ night out” crowd and the already broad fan base for comic-book movies. That would be a great development, and not just for the studios that would experience a revenue bump of the kind provided by the Spider-Man and X-Men franchises. Superheroine movies could instantly provide badly needed quality roles for talented female actresses of varying ages and ethnicities, helping to address a gender imbalance in summer movies that’s caused critics like The New York Times’ Manohla Dargis (herself a minority in a world of mostly male reviewers) some serious heartburn.

Here’s hoping 2009 might bring some super-heroines whose shoes and sexuality aren’t her defining features.

Black Snake Moan: A Review in Conversation

Welcome to the first installment of a new feature on Bitch Flicks: Reviews in Conversation. We take a movie that’s worth talking about, and do just that.

“This is some revolutionary shit. We’re tying up white women in Mississippi.” –John Singleton, on filming Black Snake Moan in the South

Why does the revolution necessitate wholesale exploitation of women?

Since Black Snake Moan was one of the initial movies (along with Hustle & Flow…maybe we should officially thank Craig Brewer for the inspiration) that made us want to start this site, it’s fitting that we discuss the movie in our first Review in Conversation segment.

Here’s the IMDb summary:

In Mississippi, the former blues man Lazarus is in crisis, missing his wife that has just left him. He finds the town slut and nymphomaniac Rae dumped on the road nearby his little farm, drugged, beaten and almost dead. Lazarus brings her home, giving medicine and nursing and nourishing her like a father, keeping her chained to control her heat. When her boyfriend Ronnie is discharged from the army due to his anxiety issue, he misunderstands the relationship of Lazarus and Rae, and tries to kill him. (Claudio Carvalho)

Before I address the film’s atrocious sexism, which the above summary characterizes well, I’d like to say what I love about BSM. The music, first and foremost, is outstanding. Brewer calls this a movie about the blues, and I’d like to take that a step further and say the movie is the blues. Or it tries to be, at least. The movie and its story are too small, conflicted, and tone-deaf to achieve greatness. It tries to be the blues and ends up being a blues music video, where Lazarus (Samuel L. Jackson) is the tortured and tired star, and Rae (Christina Ricci) is the video vixen, shaking her ass for the camera.

This is a movie that I want to love. It’s gritty, unique, and aware of class and race—a rare combination. However, there is no female perspective in the movie. Is it really too much to ask for a sharp film to also be sharp about gender? Is it right for a film like BSM to claim gender as a theme, while not really exploring women at all? Rae is the only female character (brief appearances by Lazarus’ wife, Rae’s mother, and a kind pharmacist easily fit into the angel/monster dichotomy), but she isn’t quite a real person. What is wrong with her? She is talked about as a nymphomaniac, and has strange, demonic fits of desire, but she’s really a victim of rape and abuse. Lazarus, whose trauma is that his wife aborted his baby and left for his younger brother, takes it upon himself to “cure” her by chaining her to a radiator. Even if the movie isn’t to be taken literally (but as a metaphor of sorts), why are the other characters so human and she so other, so animal?

Response by Stephanie R.

I, too, fell in love with the music in this film. It complements the key themes—race and class, as you mentioned, religion, and I’d also take it a step further to include sex. The scenes with Ricci shaking her ass for the camera are wonderfully sexy, and I found myself wavering back and forth during those scenes, wondering, is this just another female character being exploited by the camera? Or, is this a female character finally owning her sexuality?

Early on, she’s portrayed as a woman who’s at the mercy of her untamable sexual desires, and I didn’t ever get the feeling that she enjoyed them. She’s often shown squirming around on the ground, rubbing her hands all over her body, and moaning, like she’s struggling to fend off an attack. It’s at that point that she must find someone, anyone to screw, in order to make that feeling go away.

Later though, after Lazarus “cures” her by wrapping a giant chain around her waist and attaching it to a radiator, Rae is allowed to enter society again, showing up at a bar with Lazarus, drinking, rubbing up against everyone on the dance floor while Lazarus watches her from the stage, almost approvingly. What’s going on here? I truly want to read this as much more complicated than a man giving a woman permission to flaunt her sexuality, and I think it is.

But I also can’t help getting a little unnerved by the frivolity with which her sexuality is treated earlier in the film, when she’s portrayed as nothing more than the town whore. (At one point, the local mechanic says, “It’s already noon, Rae. Do you think those shorts should still be on?”) And when she’s described as “having the sickness” by another character (meaning nymphomania), it’s impossible not to think about the double-standard we still hold for men and women, especially when it comes to sexual desires.

As you mentioned, she is portrayed as “other,” often animalistic in her sexual conquests. Since I don’t think a film like this would work at all if a man were the one with the sexual “disease” (it’s natural for men to have uncontrollable sex drives, after all) then what does one make of using the myth of nymphomania to drive the plot? (See Peter Green’s “All Sexed Up,” a review of Carol Groneman’s 2000 book Nymphomania: A History, for a brief discussion of the myth.)

Response by Amber L.

I agree that the scene in the bar was very sexy, and I think I agree with what you said about that being a moment of Rae owning her sexuality. I think we’re supposed to understand that scene as a very important moment in which both characters are owning something that they’d lost—or lost control of. For whatever reason, Lazarus had lost his music (and I suspect it had to do with his wilting marriage), and Rae had lost control of her sexuality. However, that scene was exhilarating, and I think it has to do with reclamation and individual victory.

But back to the way gender and sex intersect. If nymphomania is itself largely fictitious, the strange way Rae’s fits were portrayed—moments in the film that were suspended between fear and comedy—reveals some of the ideological confusion of the film. If not for her nearly-naked body, battered and bruised and constantly displayed, I might have more sympathy for the film’s motivations. Add that to Rae’s moment of catharsis where she beats the shit out of her mother with a mop handle (for allowing Rae to be raped, either by her father or another male figure in her home), and we see women destroyed by sex who we’re supposed to sympathize with.

The final topic I want to bring up is religion. We can’t deny the role Christianity plays in the film. From the name of the main character to the supporting cast (which includes a preacher), the issue of faith (and a very certain brand of faith) comes up again and again. If the movie is a metaphor for “anxiety, fear, and unconditional love,” according to Brewer himself, then religion is the element that holds it all together. The instantiations of religion, however, are clunky at best; the radiator is God, the chain is faith, et cetera. I don’t really know where to go from here, except to acknowledge the large role of religion, although it plays out in hackneyed ways.

Response by Stephanie R

While I would like to see both characters in this film actually achieve some level of reclamation and individual victory, I think it fails for the most part, but the film especially fails Rae. She remains “chained” in a metaphorical sense, even in the final scenes. I don’t believe her character discovers much, or achieves much of an arc; she remains, for me, completely static. In fact, the film pretty much uses her as a vehicle to showcase the success of Lazarus, (which is yet another example of female exploitation that Brewer has either no awareness of or no desire to address).

I was left feeling no hope for Rae in that final scene—she’s imprisoned, (in a stuffy car, surrounded by semi-trucks) stuck in a relationship with a man who’s essentially a child needing to be coddled, with only the memory of her radiator-chain to keep her from jumping from the vehicle and fucking her way across the interstate. But Lazarus has his music again. He’s managed to overcome his anger about his wife leaving him, and he’s even got a nice new chick to look after him. See how chaining up a white woman in Mississippi can revolutionize an entire worldview?

The truth is I never gave a shit about Rae. I could’ve cared for her, if Brewer hadn’t used her sexuality against her—it’s filmed as if the abuse she suffers is deserved. (See what you get when you go around whoring yourself? Tsk, tsk.) By the time we get to know her character, when, as you mentioned, she divulges her history of sexual abuse, then beats the shit out of her mother with a mop handle, it’s way too late for sympathy. By that point, Brewer has already managed to turn a young woman’s sexuality into a cross between sketch comedy and porn, where nothing about it feels real.

In that moment of catharsis with her mother, I found myself detached. Instead of sympathizing with Rae and coming to some kind of realization myself, I just rolled my eyes at the ridiculous, clichéd consequences of her abuse—girl gets raped by father-figure while mother does nothing to stop it, girl develops low self-esteem, girl becomes town slut, girl develops a fictional sex disease, girl gets chained to radiator by religious black man. Wait, what? Ah religion, how you never cease to reinforce the second-class citizenship of women, perpetually punishing them for their godless desire to fuck.

So Rae is possessed by an evil sex demon, and, at one freaky moment, Lazarus’s ex-wife. Lazarus and his brother are Cain and Abel. There’s adultery, lust, preachers, fire-and-brimstone, bible passages, and judgmental townsfolk. Basically, the religious themes receive the same clichéd treatment as women’s sexuality. Rae is pretty much “saved” by Lazarus, and Lazarus pretty much gets his shit together and “rises from the dead” (as Lazarus in the bible).

And, after this conversation, I’m starting to wonder if I’m the problem, if I made the mistake of taking this film seriously, when what it really wants to be is one big sensationalist metaphor. A metaphor for what, though? I’ll conclude with something Brewer says in an interview.

“I’m not writing from a place of progress. I’m not writing a movie that I want people to necessarily intellectualize. And I think that really messes with people who feel that they need to make a statement against this, and they don’t quite know what it is they’re against. Because man alive, you look at this imagery on this poster, and I’m so obviously banging this drum. It’s like, you really believe that I believe this? That women need to be chained up? Can we not think metaphorically once race and gender are introduced?”

Rent Black Snake Moan from Netflix
Read Carol Groseman’s article, “Nymphomania: The Historical Construction of Female Sexuality,” published in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society
Read the Salon.com interview with Craig Brewer

A Few Good Women

In honor of Veteran’s Day, I thought I’d highlight female veterans and some movies featuring female soldiers.

The news about female vets has been plentiful as of late, and none of it particularly good or encouraging. More female veterans than ever are homeless, and government-sponsored housing is in short supply, according to the Air Force Times.

The homeless female veteran is a relatively new phenomenon because only recently have so many women — more than 190,000 in Iraq and Afghanistan alone — been serving in the military, said Todd DePastino, a historian at Waynesburg University who wrote a book on the history of homelessness.

The number of homeless female veterans have gone up — from 3 percent of all homeless veterans a decade ago to 5 percent, the VA says.

“It’s a national embarrassment,” said Paul Rieckhoff, executive director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.

Last March, Salon.com published an article titled “The Private War of Women Soldiers” about widespread sexual assault in the military, which has currently serving women refusing to leave their cots at night for fear of being raped on their way to the latrines. Columbia professor Helen Benedict also writes of the intensity of dealing with Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSD) from combat and sexual assault.

Not everyone realizes how different the Iraq war is for women than any other American war in history. More than 160,500 American female soldiers have served in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Middle East since the war began in 2003, which means one in seven soldiers is a woman. Women now make up 15 percent of active duty forces, four times more than in the 1991 Gulf War. At least 450 women have been wounded in Iraq, and 71 have died — more female casualties and deaths than in the Korean, Vietnam and first Gulf Wars combined. And women are fighting in combat.

Officially, the Pentagon prohibits women from serving in ground combat units such as the infantry, citing their lack of upper-body strength and a reluctance to put girls and mothers in harm’s way. But mention this ban to any female soldier in Iraq and she will scoff.

“Of course we were in combat!” said Laura Naylor, 25, who served with the Army Combat Military Police in Baghdad from 2003-04. “We were interchangeable with the infantry. They came to our police stations and helped pull security, and we helped them search houses and search people. That’s how it is in Iraq.”

Women are fighting in ground combat because there is no choice. This is a war with no front lines or safe zones, no hiding from in-flying mortars, car and roadside bombs, and not enough soldiers. As a result, women are coming home with missing limbs, mutilating wounds and severe trauma, just like the men.

With the surge of women serving in the military, there doesn’t seem to be a correlative rise in female soldiers depicted in film. Here are a few movies featuring female soldiers. All plot summaries are from IMDb.

Courage Under Fire (1996)

The pilot of a rescue copter, Captain Karen Walden, died shortly before her helicopter crew was rescued after it crashed in Desert Storm. It first appears that she made a spectacular rescue of a downed helicopter crew, then held her own crew together to fight off the Iraqis after her copter crashed. LT Colonel Serling, who is struggling with his own demons from Desert Storm is assigned to investigate and award her the Medal of Honor. But some conflicting accounts from her crew and soldiers in the area, cause him to be question whether she deserves it. Written by Brian W Martz {B.Martz@Genie.com}

Rent Courage Under Fire from Netflix

A Few Good Men (1992)

In this dramatic courtroom thriller, Lt. Daniel Kaffee, a Navy lawyer who has never seen the inside of the courtroom, defends two stubborn Marines who have been accused of murdering a colleague. Kaffee is known as being lazy and had arranged for a plea bargain. Downey’s Aunt Ginny appoints Cmdr. Galloway to represent him. Also on the legal staff is Lt. Sam Weinberg. The team rounds up many facts and Kaffee is discovering that he is really cut out for trial work. The defense is originally based upon the fact that PFC Santiago, the victim, was given a “CODE RED”. Santiago was basically a screw-up. At Gitmo, screw-ups aren’t tolerated. Especially by Col. Nathan Jessup. In Cuba, Jessup and two senior officers try to give all the help they can, but Kaffee knows something’s fishy. In the conclusion of the film, the fireworks are set off by a confrontation between Jessup and Kaffee. Written by Matt Curtolo {curt@epix.net}

Rent A Few Good Men from Netflix

G.I. Jane (1997)

When a crusading chairperson of the military budget committee pressures the would be Navy secretary to begin full gender integration of the service, he offers the chance for a test case for a female trainee in the elite Navy SEALS commando force. Lt. Jordan O’Niel is given the assignment, but no one expects her to succeed in an inhumanly punishing regime that has a standard 60% dropout rate for men. However, O’Niel is determined to prove everyone wrong. Written by Kenneth Chisholm {kchishol@execulink.com}

Rent G.I. Jane from Netflix

Home of the Brave (2006)

The day after they get the word they’ll go home in two weeks, a group of soldiers from Spokane are ambushed in an Iraqi city. Back stateside we follow four of them – a surgeon who saw too much, a teacher who’s a single mom and who lost a hand in the ambush, an infantry man whose best friend died that day, and a soldier who keeps reliving the moment he killed a civilian woman. Each of the four has come home changed, each feels dislocation. Group therapy, V.A. services, halting gestures from family and colleagues, and regular flashbacks keep the war front and center in their minds. They’re angry, touchy, and explosive: can a warrior find peace back home? Written by {jhailey@hotmail.com}

Rent Home of the Brave from Netflix

Lioness (2008)

Lioness presents the untold story of the first group of women soldiers in US history to be sent into direct ground combat, in violation of official policy. Told through intimate accounts, journal excerpts, archive footage, as well as interviews with military commanders, the film follows five women who served together for a year in Iraq. With captivating detail, this probing documentary reveals the unexpected course of events that began with using US women soldiers to defuse tensions with local civilians, but resulted in the women’s fighting in some of the bloodiest counter-insurgency battles of the war. Together the women’s candid narratives and scenes from their lives back home form a portrait of the emotional and psychological effects of war from a female point of view. Lioness is the first film to bridge the gap between perception and reality of the role women in the military are playing in Iraq, capturing an historical turning point for American society.

Read an interview with filmmakers Meg McLagan and Daria Sommers.

_____________

Have we missed some good ones? Compared with the problems female vets face, most of these movies feel like token representations. Demi Moore actually won a Razzie for Worst Actress in G.I. Jane. I’ve left out the many depictions of female soldiers in science fiction films and TV shows (Starbuck from Battlestar Gallactica immediately comes to mind), perhaps unfairly. Tell us movies we’ve left out in the comments section.

‘One Woman, One Vote’: A Documentary Review

Seneca Falls. Susan B. Anthony. Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Alice Paul. Lucy Burns. Iconic American names that we recognize from our last history course, but often without knowledge of the full extent of their courage and suffering. The suffrage movement is one filled with small victories, setbacks, and defeats, and with men and women of often clashing ideas and ideologies.

Women’s suffrage was a 72-year movement that finally attained nation-wide victory in 1920 with the ratification of the 19th constitutional amendment prohibiting sex discrimination at the polls. Up to this point, women met, organized, marched, fought amongst themselves, lobbied, and protested. They were threatened, ridiculed, attacked, beaten, tried, arrested, and placed in solitary confinement for their actions. In retaliation, they fought harder. They organized hunger strikes in prison. They surrounded the White House in protest, despite angry mobs of men who dragged them to the ground and tore not only their banners, but also clothing from their bodies.

One of the more shocking discoveries I had from watching One Woman, One Vote was that women were not united in the cause of suffrage. There were a number of women who believed that politics were corrupt, and that women would only participate in the corruption, and sully their clean, domestic image, by voting. There was even strong disagreement amongst the suffragettes; they divided and formed separate groups on different occasions, opposing each others’ strategies and tactics for earning the vote, and finally unified when ratification of the amendment seemed inevitable. There were many diverse opinions and motivations driving the movement and its opposition, including racism, temperance, religion, and cultural norms.

The documentary was made in 1995, but only the graphics seem dated (and, despite the fact that One Woman, One Vote is part of the PBS American Experience series, the film has no official website). Susan Sarandon narrates, and the film is full of varied voices, letters, film reels, photos, and cartoons. There are great clips of historic songs throughout, too, which are often funny, incisive, and scathing. I learned so much about a part of American and women’s history that is so often summarized into a single paragraph.

Here are a few highlights of the women who made the movement.

On November 5, 1872, Susan B. Anthony led a dozen women to the polls in Rochester, New York, and convinced the worker there to allow her and the others to vote—despite the fact that it was against the law. Four hours later, U.S. Marshals arrested and handcuffed Anthony. She was later convicted of a federal crime by an all-male jury–after being forbidden to testify on her own behalf (women were deemed incompetent to testify because of their sex). Before her sentencing, however, she was permitted a statement:

“In your ordered verdict of guilty, you have trampled underfoot every principle of our government: my natural rights, my civil rights, my political rights. I have been tried by law made by men, interpreted by men, administered by men, in favor of men, and against women. May it please, your honor, I shall never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty. Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God.”

African American women were quite unified in their support of suffrage. However, mainstream groups were seeking the support of Southern Democrats, who strongly opposed suffrage for black women, and thus largely left black women out of their cause. Mary Church Terrell was one of the few black women invited to speak at national conventions, and there she urged white suffragists not to forget black women:

“Not only are colored women handicapped on account of their sex, they are everywhere mocked on account of their race. We are asking that our sisters of the dominant race do all in their power to include in their resolutions the injustices to which colored people are victims.”

Despite the efforts of Terrell and other African American leaders, they never enjoyed mainstream acceptance from the suffrage movement. Regardless, they organized and grew their supporters to half a million members, including active support from men.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who first called for women’s rights at Seneca Falls (the right to vote was her most radical demand; the group met to call for property rights, divorce rights, and a woman’s right to her children), told her friend Susan B. Anthony that as she grew older, she grew more radical. Their relationship is widely considered one of the greatest relationships of the 19th century, and Stanton’s radicalism seems to be one of the few areas of disagreement–though it did not end their friendship. When Stanton was in her 70s, frustrated by women who still refused to join the suffrage movement, she denounced the church as responsible for the oppression of women.

“The Bible teaches that woman brought sin and death into the world. I don’t believe that any man ever talked with God. The Bible was written by man, out of his love of domination.”

She rewrote every section of the Bible that degraded women, and published The Woman’s Bible, which was translated into six languages. The Woman’s Suffrage Association denounced the work, and rebuked Stanton. After her death, Stanton’s daughter, Harriet Blatch, led the movement.

Alice Paul earned numerous academic degrees in her lifetime, and also served numerous prison sentences for acts of civil disobedience in her campaign for women’s suffrage. When she arrived in Washington in 1913, she was one of the few women in the United States who held a doctorate degree in political science. While in prison she led hunger strikes, and was tortured with forced-feedings:

“Dear Mama,
The forcible feeding was terrible. They tied me to a chair because I struggled. One wardress sat astride my knees, two others held my arms and hands while two doctors forced a tube five or six feet long through my nose, like driving a stake into the ground.”

Rather than defeat her, the experience only made Paul more determined to devote her life to the suffrage movement. Among her many accomplishments were the organization of a parade that essentially upstaged the inauguration of newly-elected president Woodrow Wilson and caused a riot in the streets that brought out the U.S. Cavalry, and a “perpetual delegation” of women who picketed outside the White House, six days a week, in which women from all backgrounds stood silently with banners protesting the administration’s refusal to support a federal amendment to enfranchise women, and even outrageously mocking the president’s hypocrisy. Finally, police began to arrest the silent protesters, who were regularly being physically attacked, and charged them with obstructing traffic and imprisoned them–sometimes for months at a time.

The year was 1917. It took an additional three years for the 19th amendment to be passed and ratified by all of the states.

Remember the women who fought for women like us. We’ve only had the vote for 88 years. Exercise your right: Vote today.

Rent One Woman, One Vote from Netflix.
Purchase the DVD from PBS.

Elizabeth Banks on a Porno

The number two movie at the box office this past weekend was Kevin Smith’s comedy Zack and Miri Make a Porno. Classically-trained actress, Elizabeth Banks, calls the role the best she’s ever played, and enthuses that director Kevin Smith “actually put a woman’s name in the title of a movie.”

Yeah, but he also put the word “porno” as the title’s direct object.

Read the LA Times interview with Banks, titled “Actress Elizabeth Banks is as versatile as they’ll let her be.”

About Banks, Smith says “She’s got that ‘guy’s girl’ thing going for her, so she can roll with dudes and be funny, but scrape that away and you realize this chick is way better than an R-rated comedy.”

I’ve heard the movie is funny and sweet, but I can’t help but to be skeptical of a celebration of this role, particularly with the bizarre and sexist statements that pop up in the very positive article.

Banks, like many actors in Hollywood, struggles with her desire to be taken seriously and do important work, but to be successful, too.

“You can go be in a female-driven indie and make two cents and maybe get an Independent Spirit Award, but then you can’t pay your car lease,” she says. “So Vince Vaughn makes movies, he needs a girl to be in it with him, it might be me.”

It Isn’t Just the Movies

Female playwrights, too , have trouble getting their work produced.

A group of female playwrights met yesterday in New York to talk about reasons why the NY market is so difficult, when other areas produce more of their plays.

Some blame the lack on mostly-male artistic directors’ inability to connect with plays written by women, while others suggest characters written by women tend to be unlikable.

Here’s a chart, from the New York Times article linked above, that lists the top five Off-Broadway theatres and the number of produced plays written by men versus women:

Click on graphic to enlarge.