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Best Picture Nominee Review Series: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

This is a guest post from Jesseca Cornelson.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button occupies a curious space in my imagination. I asked to review it because I have long wanted to view the film—it’s been pretty high on my Netflix streaming queue for more than a year—and yet, every time I sit down to watch something on Netflix, I pass it over. Even though TCCOBB was one of those must-see movies when it came out in December 2008, and as much as it seemed a neat little imaginative tale in reviews and commercials, I just found it really hard to get terribly excited about anything Brad Pitt is in. I’m not an anti-Brad Pitt snob, it’s just that I get enough Brad Pitt coverage in my favorite gossip blogs that I really don’t feel like seeing him any more than I have to.

Once I settled into the movie, however, I was able to enjoy it like the popcorn fare that it is—pleasant, but not terribly complex and with little nutritional value. My very first impression of the film was that it is one of those movies whose story is designed simply to make the viewer cry, and for me, it succeeded quite effectively in that regard. I’m a sucker for stories shaped like sadness. My second impression was to wonder why on earth I was being made to cry about the tragic love story of two imaginary white people against the back drop of Hurricane Katrina, which was a very real and epic tragedy for the city this story is set in (as well as for areas well outside New Orleans). To this second point I will return shortly.

But first, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, based on a short story of the same name by F. Scott Fitzgerald, bears a family resemblance to another film adaption of a literary source, Forrest Gump, so I wasn’t terribly surprised to find out that screenwriter Eric Roth penned both films. In each film, we follow a quirky white boy in the south from his childhood through his adventures in adolescence and early adulthood and on into maturity. Covering such a large time span, the plots are largely episodic in nature but the feeling of an overarching structure is achieved through the protagonist’s varied and lifelong relationship with a woman he’s known since childhood. Both Benjamin’s Daisy and Forrest’s Jenny are remarkable, I think, only for their beauty and their rare understanding and appreciation of their respective misfit men. Both films also present what I think of as problematically unproblematic racial relationships. I don’t necessarily believe that every film, much less those that are comedic or fantastical in nature, needs to radically explore gender and racial relationships and stereotypes, but I suppose I don’t believe that we’re sufficiently post-racial to be able to gloss over historical struggles without such glossing over itself feeling like a distraction. And I think that’s part of what renders both TCCOBB and Forrest Gump ultimately conservative films.

Before I take on what I think is Benjamin Button’s most interesting relationship—that with Queenie, the African-American woman who adopts him, I want to talk about the film’s magical realism. While TCCOBB is clearly grounded in familiar historical periods and places—1918 New Orleans, Russia pre-World War II, a Pacific marine battle (if I recall correctly), not to mention the frame story set in a 2005 New Orleans on the brink of Hurricane Katrina—the world Benjamin Button lives in is also one of magic and wonder. In the frame story, Daisy’s daughter reads to her mother from Benjamin’s diary as Daisy prepares to die. The narrative in Benjamin’s diary is further framed by the story of Mr. Gateau’s backwards running clock, built out of Mr. Gateau’s desire for his son who died in World War I to return to him. Presumably, this backwards running clock had some kind of magical influence over Benjamin, who was born the size of a baby but with the features and ailments of an old man and, as anyone who is remotely familiar with the film’s concept knows, appears to grow younger as he in fact gets older. [I have to admit that I totally thought Benjamin was going to end up as a man-sized baby at the end, an idea I got from reading too much Dlisted where Michael K would go on and on about Cate Blanchett as an old lady having sex with Brad Pitt as a old man baby. Oh, Dlisted, I can’t believe I believed you! Also, try as I might, I cannot find the posts where Michael K says this, so maybe I imagined the whole thing.]

Other than these very important magical elements, the universe of TCCOBB is relatively realistic, save for its gliding over of both the women’s movement and the Civil Rights Movement. What are we to make of this? The way I see it, since TCCOBB works hard to incorporate historic events like World Wars I & II and Hurricane Katrina, (1) the filmmakers don’t think that race and gender figure very largely in 20th century and early 21st century American history; (2) they imagine that in the same magical world where a baby can be born with the features and ailments of an old man, issues of gender and race are magically non-issues; or (3) since this is Benjamin Button’s story, he just doesn’t give a crap about race and gender. Choice three is definitely the least plausible. Benjamin Button is one very nice guy who definitely gives a crap! (Maybe the point is “Here is a really nice white guy!”) He loves his black momma Queenie (as portrayed by Taraji P. Henson)! He loves Cate Blanchett’s Daisy, even when she’s an unlovable prick. I sympathize with filmmakers and writers of all kinds, for that matter, who want to tell stories set in the historic south about something other than race. Must every story set in the historic south be about race? No, certainly, I don’t think so. But when race comes up—as it most definitely does here since Benjamin is adopted by an African-American woman—it seems strangely unrealistic to neglect the complexity of historic race relationships.

Maybe the question I should be asking is what purpose does Queenie’s blackness serve? Does her blackness make her more accepting of Benjamin when even his own father abandoned him and others were repulsed by him? Does it make the film feel integrated and inclusive while still focusing mostly on white experience? Perhaps it’s better to ask what possibilities might Queenie’s blackness have presented in this magical version of historic New Orleans. If historical gender and racial issues are going to be ignored, I think it’s an exciting possibility to think of how they might have been re-imagined altogether. That’s one of the great possibilities of speculative fiction: it allows us an opportunity to imagine how else we might be—both in utopic and dystopic senses. But even as TCCOBB neglects historical oppression, it also fails to present an imaginative alternative, and that feels like a missed opportunity.

Essentially, Queenie, as a black woman, is limited in her employment as a servant to whites. And even though she fully accepts Benjamin as her son and Benjamin does seem to love and appreciate her, he seems to fail to see how the world treats her differently and, as he grows up, he surrounds himself with white people, almost forgetting about Queenie altogether. Ultimately, the stereotype of the nurturing black woman as a loving caretaker of whites is not greatly challenged or expanded upon. African Americans are presented largely as servants. And they are truly only “supporting” characters for the white characters. Benjamin doesn’t seem to see African-American women as potential lovers or mates—only as mother figures, or rather as his mother, since the only African-American woman presented in any kind of depth is Queenie. Most strikingly, he doesn’t use his inherited wealth to get Queenie her own place or otherwise take care of her, and the last time we see Queenie, she serves Benjamin and Cate cake before retiring to bed. My heart broke for Queenie that Benjamin didn’t see to her retirement in the same way that he looked after Daisy. Is TCCOBB saying that a black woman’s motherly love is expected for free but the romantic affections of a white woman are worth money? Certainly, I think the film suggests that while black women may make good enough mothers for white boys, those boys will grow up only to desire white women. Or perhaps the film simply suggests that black women are perfectly acceptable as caretakers, but they aren’t sexually desirable like white women are. If that last sentence seems far-fetched, think about how the black women who are seen as sex symbols in our culture have or affect features often associated with whiteness. At very least, it seems that the role of lover is elevated above that of mother.

This could have been a more radical movie—and not just one in which a white character has a revelation about what it’s like to know and love black people but one whose very imaginings might show how our racial conceptions and constructions might be otherwise. Instead, we get the opposite: race relations are sanitized of all conflict, while the segregation of family and romantic relations is upheld, with the sole exception of Queenie and Benjamin.

Queenie’s preposterous explanation that Benjamin is her sister’s son “only he came out white”—possibly the film’s most hilarious moment—suggests a missed opportunity. What if in this imagined world black women commonly had white babies and vice versa? Even in our own world, racial designations aren’t as clear cut as we often assume them to be. (See “Black and White Twins”; “Parents Give Birth to Ebony and Ivory Twins”; “Black Parents . . . White Baby”; and “My Affirmative Action Fail”.) What if TCCOBB totally upended everything we think we know about race and women’s roles in the south of the past? Wouldn’t that be interesting?

Moreover, it’s one thing to neglect race and gender issues of the past, but what about in the frame story of the present? All of the nurses and caretakers in Daisy’s hospital are also black women. Daisy is kept company by her daughter, Caroline, and a black woman the same age as Caroline, who eventually leaves to check on her son and never returns to the movie. WTF? Why is she there? Is she Caroline’s girlfriend? A good friend? If we’re not going to see her again, why is she there in the first place? Okay, I looked up the script. For what it’s worth, it specifies that she’s “a young Black Woman, a ‘caregiver,’” though nurses in scrubs are also present and Dorothy dresses in civilian clothes and spends most of her screen time thumbing through a magazine. I so wish that Dorothy had been Caroline’s girlfriend or wife.

And what of Hurricane Katrina? In the end, all we see is water rising in a basement, flooding the old train station clock. There’s nothing about what happened in the hospitals, in the Ninth Ward, in the attics, in the streets, in the Superdome. I don’t even know what to say about that. That the preposterously tragic love of two imaginary white people trumps and erases all the suffering of real, mostly black people? Even through my great big ole sappy tears as Daisy dies, that just doesn’t feel right to me.

Finally, I am reminded that part of my reluctance to watch The Curious Case of Benjamin Button lies with its format as a film. Over the past decade, I’ve grown to prefer serial dramas to just about everything—film, books, whatever (though I’ve recently become consumed with popular fantasy and horror novels). HBO led the way and remains at the top of the serious television game. Deadwood and The Sopranos developed true ensemble casts with richly developed morally-complicated characters shaped by their social, historic, and economic milieux, with deft dialogue that could be emotionally moving or belly-shaking hilarious. The mere invocation of Hurricane Katrina makes it impossible for me not to compare the long but ultimately light fare of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which aside from its technical and artistic wizardry is ultimately forgettable, with the robust, lifelike, brilliant work of art that is Treme. Where TCCOBB uses its historical setting like a painted backdrop to affect historic depth without actually engaging history, Treme is a masterpiece of the fictionalized drama of the everyday real life of one of America’s great cities. Where women and African Americans are given roles in TCCOBB that support white stars, every character in Treme’s diverse cast is treated as the star of his or her own life, and they are richly complicated people whose lives are never defined solely by their relationship to white main characters. So that’s my loopy recommendation about The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: you’re better off watching Treme.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was nominated for thirteen Academy Awards in 2009. It won three Oscars for art direction, makeup, and visual effects. It was nominated for cinematography, costume design, directing, film editing, original score, sound mixing, best picture, best actor in a leading role, best actress in a supporting role, and best adapted screenplay.

Jesseca Cornelson, who has finally finished her damn PhD already, is an assistant professor of English at Alabama State University. Every now and again, she updates her blog, Difficult History, where she writes about all manner of crap. She previously reviewed An Education for Bitch Flicks‘ 2010 Best Picture Nominee Review Series.

Best Picture Nominee Review Series: The Reader

This is a guest post from Megan Kearns.

When we read books or watch movies, we often do so to feel inspired, educate ourselves or escape our daily lives. We frequently look for stories filled with passion, love, sacrifice, revenge, wit and camaraderie. We don’t usually examine how shame gnaws away at us, unraveling our lives. I had a hard time writing this review for The Reader, which shines a light on shame. The film intrigued me with its compelling acting and moral complexities. But it remains a difficult terrain to navigate. Confronting the sins of the past, the film begs the question: can you ever forgive someone you love for committing horrific crimes? And can you ever forgive yourself for loving them?

Threaded with secrecy and guilt, The Reader weaves a tale that tackles the nebulous boundaries of morality and justice. Based on the best-selling book by Bernard Schlink, it features two of my all-time favorite actors as two tormented souls forever haunted by their past. With a quiet intensity, Kate Winslet gives a subtle Oscar-winning performance as Hanna Schmitz, a brusque yet sensuous woman. A complicated and unsympathetic character, Winslet imbues her not with empathy but with a tinge of humanity. Ralph Fiennes effortlessly plays the relentlessly wounded Michael Berg, full of longing and regret, never able to let anyone into his life or his heart but Hanna. The film unfolds as Michael, the tale’s moral compass, remembers his life in flashbacks as a sensitive love-struck young boy (played perfectly with a charming innocence by David Kross) who gets involved in a steamy and tumultuous affair with an older woman until she abruptly disappears. Initially tormented by her absence, Michael moves on with his life, until Hanna unexpectedly emerges 8 years later, on trial for war crimes.

In 1958 Germany, 15-year-old Michael meets 36-year-old Hanna, a train conductor, when she helps him home after finding him sick in the street. Drawn to each other, the two eventually enter a sexual relationship. They fall into a routine pattern of sex, bathing and books. Hanna requests Michael read aloud to her; the words of Tolstoy, Homer, D.H. Lawrence and Chekov leap to life. The reading becomes an emotional aphrodisiac and a means of connection.

As if shedding layers of clothing, the film attempts to unveil the layers of Hanna’s life. Yet it always feels diaphanous, never fully within one’s grasp. She shrouds herself in secrecy. Michael and ultimately we as the audience are never meant to completely see Hanna. She’s often harsh, only showing vulnerability when she sobs in Michael’s arms as he reads to her a heartbreaking tale or when a village choir’s music brings her tears of joy. Through art, Hanna is able to express her emotions, connecting with her sensitivity and humanity. But as quickly as she enters Michael’s life, she evaporates. A tragic story laced with sexual awakening and emotional enlightenment, the film reveals that we may never really know the people we love.

When Michael sees Hanna again, she’s a defendant on trial for her actions as a former SS guard. I found it interesting that the film shows the trial of 6 former SS guards, all of whom were women. As the case unfolds, Michael realizes Hanna’s secret shame she’s been so desperate to hide. SPOILER -> She can’t read. As Germany had the highest rate of literacy in Europe, it’s unusual that Hanna would have been illiterate. And some have been quick to criticize the book and film for insinuating that a person would be more ashamed of illiteracy than perpetrating human rights atrocities. <- END SPOILER While reading is a crucial component of the plot, the movie isn’t really about reading or the saving grace of literature; rather it’s used as a metaphor for “moral illiteracy.” Illiteracy analogizes feigned ignorance, for those who claimed they didn’t know what was truly happening in the concentration camps despite the existence of over 10,000 camps and the notoriety of the Nazi massacres.

So much has been written and filmed about the Holocaust. But rarely have tales been told from the perspective of those who have committed unspeakable crimes or the people who loved them. Yet The Reader never condones, empathizes or excuses Hanna’s behavior. Whenever I see a film about the Holocaust, I’m reminded of the saying “never again,” that we can never let this happen again. But genocide didn’t end after WWII; numerous genocides continued to be waged (Cambodian, Rwandan, Palestinian, Kurdish, Croatian) and are still happening today. The film and book it’s adapted from serve as an allegory for how the subsequent generation dealt with the shame of the Holocaust and atrocities their parents’ and grandparents’ generations committed. And Hanna is the character symbolizing the people who committed those unspeakable acts.

So often, we see a man playing the villainous role of a Nazi so it’s interesting to me that a woman embodies that role instead. Yet, I can’t shake the unease I feel with the portrayal. Hanna has no children, no family and never marries. This may not have been the intended consequence, yet it comes off as a cautionary tale. Hanna appears to possess no maternal instinct; rather than protect, she seduces a sweet and naïve boy, alternately treating him tenderly as a passionate lover or with curt callousness. She stands trial for war crimes as a former SS guard, participating in the deaths of hundreds of women and girls. I can’t shake the feeling that if she had been scripted to bear a child or to have lost a child, she wouldn’t have behaved this way. Are single, childless women more cruel and apathetic? No, of course not. Yet Hollywood continually seems to reinforce the notion that women without children are cold and calculating.

Gender role reversals weave throughout The Reader. In the beginning, Hanna helps Michael when he’s sick. By the end of the film, the roles have switched and Michael aids Hanna. It’s interesting watching a movie with an affair between an adult woman and a teenage boy. While I certainly don’t condone it, and it made me feel squeamish rather than erotic (as many reviews described their relationship), I couldn’t help but feel relieved that it wasn’t a 15-year-old girl in this situation as we so often see men with much younger women. In the book, Hanna becomes physically abusive in one scene when she’s overcome with rage whips Michael with a belt. While she’s softened slightly for the film, I still can’t shake my apprehension that there’s an element of sexual predator.

The film slightly expands the roles of the other female characters in the book, which relies heavily on Michael’s internal monologues and narratives. By removing voiceovers, the movie does a fantastic job showing us rather than telling us the story. We see other women in the film including Lena Olin in a dual-role as holocaust survivors, Michael’s mother and sisters, a female law student (added to the film) and Michael’s daughter Julia. Yet most, save for Olin, speak minimal or no lines and none of them have any personalities to speak of.

The only woman existing in Michael’s world is Hanna, whom he uses as a scale in which to weigh all his other relationships with women. Hanna never lets Michael into her world, everything is on her terms. Yet we the audience rarely see the story from Hanna’s perspective. Occasionally we watch Hanna’s face; her terrified expression when she learns she’s going to be promoted, lest anyone discover her secret or her joy when she first unwraps Michael’s packages of recorded books, which she comes to rely on later in life. Literature is also used in the film “as a powerful means of communication, and at other times as a substitute for communication.” Michael eventually uses reading to communicate with Hanna while she uses reading as a way to deal with her emotions and grapple with her past. But even the sole female protagonist, who serves as Michael’s sun, moon and stars, still has her thoughts and views removed. SPOILER -> In the book, Hanna eventually reads books by Holocaust survivors like Elie Wiesel. <- END SPOILER She can’t muffle the sounds of the dead, they continue to haunt her. But the film adaptation erases this crucial point. The only part that even comes close to addressing Hanna’s perspective on her past actions is when she declares:

“It doesn’t matter what I feel. It doesn’t matter what I think. The dead are still dead.”

A tragic yet powerful film that raises so many crucial questions about collective action and individual choice. It’s interesting to me that so much buzz surrounded Winslet’s Oscar-winning performance. Don’t get me wrong, she was sublime in it. But while she gives a commanding yet nuanced performance, the movie often treats women as cursory. Hanna merely serves as a vehicle to express the capacity for human cruelty and apathy, to look away and ignore the brutality happening in society. Even the film’s message isn’t really about Hanna or women in general for that matter. The women merely exist as satellites, all orbiting around Michael. Just like so many other films, it still boils down to a story revolving around a man; his feelings, his perspective and his world.

Megan Kearns is a blogger, freelance writer and activist. A feminist vegan, Megan blogs at The Opinioness of the World, where she writes about gender in pop culture, sexism in the media, reproductive justice and living vegan. Her work has also appeared at Arts & Opinion, Italianieuropei, Open Letters Monthly, and A Safe World for Women. She earned her B.A. in Anthropology and Sociology and a Graduate Certificate in Women and Politics and Public Policy. Megan lives in Boston, MA with her diva cat and more books than she will probably ever read in her lifetime. She contributed reviews of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, Something Borrowed, !Women Art Revolution, and The Kids Are All Right (for our 2011 Best Picture Nominee Review Series). She was the first writer featured as a Monthly Guest Contributor.

Best Picture Nominee Review Series: Michael Clayton

Best Picture nominee Michael Clayton (2007)

This is a guest post from Robin Hitchcock.

Michael Clayton seems like an unlikely Best Picture nominee: a legal thriller that I would have sworn was adapted from an airport novel if I didn’t know that it was nominated for Best Original Screenplay. Can’t you see yourself reading this plot description on a dust jacket while you half-listen to gate change announcements? Michael Clayton is the fixer for the elite Manhattan law firm Kenner, Bach & Leeden, making the deals and greasing the wheels for the tough cases that need to go away and stay under the radar. But when he’s sent to clean up the mess when his firm’s legendary attorney Arthur Eden goes off his medication and starts sabotaging their defense against a billion-dollar toxic tort class action, Clayton is reunited with his long-dormant conscience… and it might cost him his life.

It’s a film completely lacking in the epic trappings or topical social commentary usually characterizing Best Picture nominees, especially back in 2007 when the field was still only open to five films. Sure, it has a slick look, dashes of symbolic pretension (sorry, I have no. earthly. clue. what the horses mean) and an over-the-top and sometimes offensively unrealistic portrayal of mental illness, but it seems a more likely contender for heavy basic-cable rotation than for Best Picture.

Except for the part where it is really, really good.

Tilda Swinton’s phenomenal, Oscar-winning performance as Karen Crowder, general counsel for the toxic tort defendant United Northfield and villain of the story, does much of the work of pulling the film into the prestige league. It’s the best kind of supporting acting: a tremendous richness of character is developed in a few short scenes, leaving an impression so great it is hard to believe she doesn’t appear in more of the film.

Swinton demonstrates incredible control, imbuing characterization into the barely perceptible twitches of individual facial muscles. [It’s worlds apart from Tom Wilkinson’s scenerey-chomping (but also nominated) performance as the unbalanced Arthur, which makes that character seem even more out of place in the film.] In one of my favorite scenes, Karen awkwardly contracts with a hit man with a light-voiced forced professionalism that gives me flashbacks to my worst phone interviews, while reading over a stolen memorandum held in a hand stuffed in a plastic bag. She seems so comfortable with her improvised evidence-prevention, and it stands in such strong contrast with her hesitant negotiations, that we learn a great deal about what lines this character has already crossed that have brought her to the point of contract killing. Even Swinton’s HAND can act, when it’s hidden away in a plastic bag.

It’s a terrific performance in a rich role, but unfortunately some of that richness of character is rife with sexism, or at least relies on the sexism of the audience. We first see the character breaking down in a bathroom stall, pouring sweat broadly staining the pits of her conservative blouse. Her first dialogue is anxious practice for an interview discussing her recent promotion to general counsel as she dresses in the morning. Karen sits on her hotel bed in a practical nude bra and slip, posture slumped enough that some rolls of fat form on her midsection. Rarely is a half-dressed woman so de-sexualized in Hollywood film, and that captures our interest, but only because it relies on our presumption of sexist exploitation. So much of the complexity of the character is derived from our sexist expectations of what a cold-blooded corporate killer would be like and the “feminine vulnerability” (a phrase woefully common in reveiwers’ discussions of Swinton’s performance) of Karen Crowder. Swinton’s performance is strong enough to transcend this and actually earn the mantle of “complex villain”, but it is nevertheless problematic from a feminist perspective.

And my brow furrow deepens when I consider the only other female role with any meat to it—Anna, one of the class action plaintiffs (played by Merritt Wever). Anna is a young, painfully naïve country girl, and her “purity” draws a deep love from Arthur, who calls her “God’s perfect little creature.” Arthur’s love for Anna inspires his crusade to expose U/North’s guilt. [Sidebar: As a lawyer, I hate hate hate when characters are portrayed as heroes for betraying their clients when they find out they are guilty. That is not heroic. It is unethical and WRONG. I’m looking at you, Perry Mason! And Matlock, you oughtta be disbarred! /rant] So: female character that only exists to provide motivation for male character? Check! But why stop the sexist cliches there? Anna is flattered by the (creepy and grossly ethics-violating) attention that Arthur gives her, even after he strips down and professes his love to her while she is being deposed about HER PARENTS DYING OF CANCER. She accepts the plane ticket to New York he buys for her even though she’s never been farther away from home than Milwaukee, and has to lower her voice to an awed whisper when she recounts that the ticket cost eight hundred dollars. Anna’s simplicity and innocence stands in start contrast to Karen’s ruthless professionalism, creating an unpleasant dichotomy where the dumb, docile country mouse is “God’s perfect creature” and the professional, competent city mouse is Pure Evil. I doubt this message was intentional, but it still grates. The lesson is that passing the Bechdel test (Michael Clayton flunks on the second prong) not only appeases us feminists but helps avoid undesired inferences of sexism.

Despite these shortcomings, I thoroughly enjoyed Michael Clayton. The movie is worth watching just to bask in the awesomeness of Tilda Swinton’s performance, which truly is one for the ages, but it’s got plenty else to recommend it as well. It’s gripping, good-looking, thought-provoking, and hey, George Clooney’s face is on screen like 90% of the time.

Robin Hitchcock has a card in her wallet that proves she’s an attorney, but she practices writing more than she practices law. You can read her series of reviews of wedding movies at her blog HitchDied and her reviews of everything else at The Double R Diner.

YouTube Break: Peggy Olson on Women in the Workplace

Ah, Mad Men. I have such mixed feelings about the show, which is part of the reason I haven’t written about it here. Yet.* With seasons 1-4 now streaming on Netflix, and with the fifth season premiering sometime in 2012 (delayed while star Jon Hamm inked a 3-year, 8-figure deal), now is a good time to really look at the show. (Hint.)

Here is a cheeky little ad the FX network created for the show, highlighting feminist fave Peggy Olson.

If you haven’t seen Mad Men, how do you feel about this advertisement? If you’re familiar–or a fan–devoid of its context, doesn’t the ad appear to be promoting the very sexist ideology the show attempts to critique? (Oh, right, but it’s ironic, which excuses it from everything, am I right?)

*Stay tuned for our announcement and Call for Writers for Mad Men Week here at Bitch Flicks!

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

Hermione Granger: The Heroine Women Have Been Waiting For from Huffington Post

Spotlight on the Samsung Women’s International Film Festival from Gender Across Borders

Best Ever Hindi Films by Women Directors from Rediff Movies

Mila Kunis Is SO HORRIBLE! (This, too, is sarcasm.) from Shakesville

2011 Kids’ Movie Titles Feature 11 Male Stars from Reel Girl

Violence Against Women in Peru, and the Films of Claudia Llosa from Bad Reputation

Murder, She Blogged: Mrs. Columbo from Bitch Magazine

Tell Got Milk to End Its Sexist “PMS” Ad Campaign from Change.org

Leave your links in the comments!

2011 Emmy Nominees

Something to break up the long, hot summer: the 2011 Primetime Emmy nominations are out. Here is a selection of the women nominated for acting. Stay tuned for an analysis of female nominees behind the camera. For the entire list of nominees, visit the official Academy of Television Arts & Sciences website.

Lead Actress in a Comedy Series
Laura Linney for The Big C
Edie Falco for Nurse Jackie
Amy Poehler for Parks & Recreation
Melissa McCarthy for Mike & Molly
Martha Plimpton for Raising Hope
Tina Fey for 30 Rock

Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series
Jane Lynch for Glee
Betty White for Hot in Cleveland
Julie Bowen for Modern Family
Kristen Wiig for Saturday Night Live
Jane Krakowski for 30 Rock
Sofia Vergara for Modern Family

Lead Actress in a Drama Series
Elizabeth Moss for Mad Men
Connie Britton for Friday Night Lights
Mariska Hargitay for Law & Order: Special Victims’ Unit
Mireille Enos for The Killing
Julianna Margulies for The Good Wife
Kathy Bates for Harry’s Law

Supporting Actress in a Drama Series
Kelly Macdonald for Boardwalk Empire
Christina Hendricks for Mad Men
Michelle Forbes for The Killing
Archie Panjabi for The Good Wife
Margo Martindale for Justified
Christine Baranski for The Good Wife

Lead Actress in a Miniseries or Movie
Kate Winslet for Mildred Pierce
Elizabeth McGovern for Downton Abbey
Diane Lane for Cinema Verite
Taraji P. Henson for Taken from Me: The Tiffany Rubin Story
Jean Marsh for Upstairs Downstairs

Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or Movie
Evan Rachel Wood for Mildred Pierce
Melissa Leo for Mildred Pierce
Mare Winningham for Mildred Pierce
Maggie Smith for Downton Abbey
Eileen Atkins for Upstairs Downstairs

Any thoughts about the kinds of roles being highlighted this year? I don’t watch a lot of current television, so I can’t speak with much authority on the nominees. I’m thrilled to see Kristen Wiig nominated for SNL, as I think she’s one of the few bright spots on that show, and Amy Poehler is great in Parks & Rec. Share your comments!

Call for Writers!

We’re turning back time to the first couple of years of Bitch Flicks to plug some holes–namely, we want reviews of Best Picture nominees from the 2008 and 2009 Academy Awards.

As for guidelines, reviews should be from a feminist perspective and (when applicable) focused on the films’ female characters. If you’re still not sure, take a look at reviews of the Best Picture nominees from 2010 and 2011.

We are looking for reviews of:

2009
Slumdog Millionaire
~~The Curious Case of Benjamin Button~~
~~Frost/Nixon~~
~~Milk~~
~~The Reader~~

2008
~~Atonement~~
~~No Country for Old Men~~
~~Michael Clayton~~
~~There Will Be Blood~~

Email us at btchflcks(at)gmail(dot)com if you’d like to contribute a review. We accept original pieces or cross-posts.

Documentary Preview: Dark Girls

Dark Girls (2012)

Set to premiere this October at the International Black Film Festival in Nashville, Dark Girls is a documentary by D. Channsin Berry and Bill Duke that explores the prejudice against and the often-internalized feelings of self-hatred experienced by dark-skinned Black women in the United States.

The light-skinned bias is easily recognized in film and media, but rarely do we get to hear from women who experience this bias in their lives, workplaces, and relationships. I’m looking forward to watching this documentary, and hope it gets a wide release after its festival showings.

Writing for Clutch, Jamilah Lemieux says:

While many people would love to believe that color is no longer an issue, and that we are post-racial, post-color struck–post-anything that forces them to admit that all things are not even in this world, and that we have much work to do–the many subjects interviewed for the film sing a very different tune.

[…]

Though we know that not all darker sisters suffer great indignities or issues with self image, nor is life a crystal stair for those of us who are lighter, this film continues a long conversation that is still very important. So long as we have people amongst us who gladly uphold the damning “White is right” standard–assigning favor to people based upon their proximity to it, we can’t let this one go. This is something we can get past, this does not have to continue.

Watch the trailer and share your own experiences on the official film website:

From the Archive: Movie Review: Juno

This review originally appeared at Bitch Flicks in October 2008. With Diablo Cody set to direct her first film, it’s interesting to go back and look at the film that launched her career.

Juno(2007)

It took me a long time to see the film Juno. I was thrilled when Diablo Cody won the Oscar for Best Screenplay, but at the same time suspicious about her little movie being so lauded. To win an Oscar, the film must be saying the “right” things to the “right” people, a dynamic that rarely favors progressive thinking (see the movie Crash as a recent example). In other words, when too many people love a movie, there’s probably something wrong.

Aside from critical praise and popularity, the topic of teen pregnancy is rarely done without a hefty dose of morality. While we are in a peculiar cultural gray area on the subject—consider the cover of OK Magazine, featuring smiling teen mom Jamie Lynn Spears, or the Republican VP nominee’s pregnant teenage daughter—there seems to be an anti-choice undercurrent running through pregnancy plots, not to mention the culture at large.

The expectations I had going in were also based on reading commentary about the ultra-hip dialogue and soundtrack of the film. While certainly not negative in themselves, coupled with a controversial topic, these features could be enough to couch a conservative, anti-woman message in a hip, fresh film.

It turns out, however, that after an initial adjustment period to the dialogue (and a question about whether the film is set in the early ‘90s), Juno turns out to be planted in a feminist worldview, and is a film that teenagers, especially, ought to see. It was thoroughly enjoyable, funny and touching. I liked it so much that I watched it again, but when I started to write about it, what I liked about the movie became all the more confusing. I loved the music, although Juno MacGuff is way hipper than I was (or am), and I saw a representation that reminded me of myself at that age. I saw a paternal relationship that I never had and a familial openness that I’ve also never had. I saw characters who I wanted as my childhood friends and family.

And while in Juno we have a strong, unconventional female character—and a lead character, at that—the film itself was very, very safe. And I worry whether that’s a good thing. It’s certainly understandable for a first film. A Hollywood outsider would have a much more difficult time making an overtly progressive movie about teen pregnancy, but if she plays the politics safe, and if her own personality is enough of a draw, she just might make it.

I was worried when Juno visited the dumpy abortion clinic and met her pro-life classmate protesting in the parking lot, and I was worried by the very dumpiness of the clinic. I was struck by the notion that a clinic like that would look and feel much more sterile—even in the lobby, as far as Juno went. The thought of fingernails sent her running out of the building. A detail like “fingernails” made the abortion too real for Juno, a teenager, I suppose. Is this a good or bad thing? I don’t know.

Juno, in a rather nonchalant way, seeks permission of the baby’s father, her good friend Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera), for the abortion. Or, rather, she seeks his opinion; she seems to want him to resist her plans. But his lack of resistance causes her to make the following decisions on her own. This straddles the line somewhat. She wants to be told what to do, and rather than seeking out someone smarter and more experienced than she is, she asks the boy whose approval she’s still seeking.

Juno wants her baby to have the perfect family; one unlike her own, which her mother abandoned. Her family now consists of her father, her stepmother Bren (Allison Janney), and her half-sister Liberty Bell. Juno doesn’t have a bad deal going. Her folks are markedly working class (they’re both members of the labor class, a group that doesn’t see much Hollywood recognition; he’s an HVAC repairman, she’s a nail technician). Yet Juno imagines a perfect life to consist of two loving parents and a McMansion.Why would she seek out people of this particular class? Is this a case of Juno’s lack of class awareness or the film’s?

The film’s real progressive moment comes when Juno realizes that her idea of perfection isn’t perfect. She realizes that a father who doesn’t want to be there would be as bad as a mother who hadn’t wanted to be there. She sees that a father isn’t a necessity–or perhaps simply that two parents aren’t a necessity. Yet what does this all add up to mean? There’s certainly a moment of female solidarity (and this isn’t the only one, certainly, in the film), and a difficult decision that she makes independently. But, as with other conclusions I’ve made, I’m left with the question of “So what?”

The film does love all of its characters, which is a refreshing change for a high school flick. Juno’s best friend, Leah, is a cheerleader who exhibits some flaky, teenage qualities (her crush on the chubby, bearded, middle-aged math teacher takes a cliché and gives it a twist), but the film loves her nonetheless. Vanessa Loring (Jennifer Garner) is an obsessional, middle-class mommy blogger type, but we see that she would be a good mother, and the film cares for her. We even have sympathy for Mark (Jason Bateman) who, through his relationship with Juno, realizes that he and his wife no longer want the same thing (if they ever did). There are cringe-worthy moments with Mark and Juno, but none that damn him completely. It’s a rare film that gives us no bad guys, which is a large part of its charm.

It’s easy to want to live in a world like this, where a pregnant sixteen-year-old seems to get by pretty well, with her parents’ support and a relationship with her baby’s adoptive family. She has a sweet teenage love affair and doesn’t seem to struggle much. While teen angst is the stuff of Hollywood cliché, things just seemed too easy for Juno. I wish my teenage years could’ve been a bit more like Juno’s. Hell, I wish my life now could be.

The final question remains, though, about whether we should criticize a movie like Juno. Representations of role models for American girls tend to inhabit the poles; either young girls are encouraged to be the beautiful bimbo or the chaste Christian. This film has a strong personality (that masquerades as strong values—even an ethic) without being preachy or moralistic. That can’t inherently be a bad thing. Yet I find myself asking for more, wanting more–something that steps outside of the realm of safety. Perhaps Juno isn’t the film to give me more.

In all, I fear Juno suffers from the same postmodern condition afflicting so many films today. It strives for a non-message in order not to offend anyone, thus allowing anti-choice advocates to cheer the film as loudly as pro-choice feminists. There’s a problem here. If a film that almost universally passes as hip and progressive is so murky in its values and allegiance that we’re not really sure what to think of it, how can a truly hip and progressive film make it today?

Quote of the Day: ‘Movie-Made America’

Movie-Made America by Robert Sklar

I came across this interesting piece from Movie-Made America: A Cultural History of American Movies, in which author Robert Sklar talks about a fairy-tale aspect of acting (being “discovered”), the patriarchal foundation of casting, and the behind-the-scenes women of the 1910s and 1920s. I’ve added some links to the original text for further reading.

In the World War I era–an unsettled period when late-Victorian mores persisted side by side with an emerging image of a “new woman”–it could only have been disconcerting to respectable Americans to see photographs of determined young women in the ankle-length dresses, high-button shoes and broad-brimmed hats standing in long lines outside a Hollywood casting office. The American middle class had only just begun to regard movies as something other than immoral trash for working-class people; and suddenly their daughters were packing up and leaving home to seek their fortunes in the movies.

If they had to go, the least one could do was give them sound advice, most of it intended to be discouraging. A girl should plan to have enough money to survive for a year without additional income; authors of advice books and articles for the movie aspirant set the minimum figure at $2,000. She should have resources enough to be able to acquire her own wardrobe, since extras in those days had to supply their own outfits for scenes of contemporary life. She should consider what abilities she possessed and perhaps direct her ambitions to other interesting work in motion pictures.

Studios needed talented dress designers, set decorators, film cutters, all jobs that were open to women. In fact, the motion-pictures studios in the 1910s and 1920s gave more opportunities to women than most other industries, far more than they ever did again. Many of the leading scenario writers were women, among them Anita Loos, June Mathis, Frances Marion and Jeanie Macpherson. Lois Weber was a well-known director and independent producer, and Elinor Glyn, Dorothy Arzner and other women directed films during the 1920s. Women were occasionally found in executive positions in Hollywood producing companies. And if a woman possessed none of these talents, there were always jobs as secretaries, mail clerks, film processors, and in other modest but essential roles in the making of movies.

But what women wanted was to be actresses. They could see that other girls, many still in their teens, without acting experience, were making it. Why not they? But no one informed them that a fair share of the young girls with film contracts were “payoffs,” as Colleen Moore called them: players who were hired as a favor to influential people or to pay back a favor they had done the studio. Moore got her start because her uncle, a newspaper editor, gave D.W. Griffith help in getting his films approved by the Chicago censorship board, and Griffith repaid him with a contract for his niece. In Silent Star, Moore reports that Carmel Myers, Mildred Harris (a bride at sixteen to Charlie Chaplin) and Winifred Westover, who began acting as teen-agers, were all “payoffs” in similar ways.

YouTube Break: ARTHUR – The Agent of Change

We often lament the state of girls’ representation in animated films–an issue that the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media is working hard to improve. If you spend some time on the site and look at the stats, what most of us already know about children’s programming becomes undeniable–boys are the norm, girls the exception.

Brought to our attention by reader Alli (on Facebook), this clip from the PBS cartoon Arthur –called “The Agent of Change”–takes on gender in a smart and kid-friendly way. After sitting through a popular animated film (ahem, Cars) in the theatre, one character asks “Are there any kid movies with decent girl characters?”

Makes us wonder, too. The girls in this episode take matters into their own hands.

Watch the clip and share with the kids in your life.