Whatshername as a Great Actress: A Celebration of Character Actresses

Stop me if you’ve heard this one. A young woman–poised, talented, above all enthusiastic–performs a scene in acting class and is praised by the teacher. The teacher can’t say enough good things about the student, but the main thing she keeps going back to is, “I think you’d be a wonderful character actress!”
Now, the student can’t help but beam about this, seeing a brilliant career flashing before her, her name up in lights. She steps back into the group and the woman sitting beside her whispers in her ear, “That’s what they call an actress who isn’t pretty.”

Written by Elizabeth Kiy as part of our theme week on The Great Actresses.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one.

A young woman–poised, talented, above all enthusiastic–performs a scene in acting class and is praised by the teacher. The teacher can’t say enough good things about the student, but the main thing she keeps going back to is, “I think you’d be a wonderful character actress!”

Now, the student can’t help but beam about this, seeing a brilliant career flashing before her, her name up in lights. She steps back into the group and the woman sitting beside her whispers in her ear, “That’s what they call an actress who isn’t pretty.”

 

Thelma Ritter
Thelma Ritter

 

Though overly simplistic, this is an unfortunate truth about mainstream movie-making. In Hollywood, an actress who doesn’t meet a certain unrealistic beauty standard or fall into an extremely small definition of beauty (generally white, thin, and tall with delicate features and mid-size breasts), she need an addendum to be referred to as an actress. Or, more accurately, she’s not allowed to be a proper actress, the type that plays the everywoman lead we’re all meant to identify with.

Like their male counterparts, a character actress plays eccentric, off-beat characters. Usually they’re defined by distinctive voices, unusual features and a certain look, that allows casting directors to easily picture them as a type. Other descriptions for character actresses include, “Hey, I know that woman,” “whatshername,” and “that girl who’s in everything.” You usually don’t know her name, but you know her face. She’s not going to be named above the title or on the poster, but she’s great, a legend at what she does though she’ll probably never fall in a tradition pantheon of acting greats.

Character actresses are also easily typecast and in some ways, their livelihoods rely on being typecast. Their careers can involve steady work in a variety of genres across TV and film, and the typical character actress has a long filmography full of small, memorable roles in amazing productions. Usually that means being a type, like the valley girl, the woman with an annoying voice, a woman with absurdly large breasts, with a weight problem, or a port wine stain birthmark.

 

Audrey Wasilewski
Audrey Wasilewski

 

It must take a lot of self-confidence and backbone to be a character actress. Imagine being on the shortlist of names called in when a production needs “a fat girl” or a woman with a crooked nose or teeth the main characters can make fun of. Imagine being an actress whose career will (probably) never move beyond playing different iterations of the “sassy Black friend” who objectifies all the male character or the stiff older lady who disapproves of everything, the sexless soccer mom, or the unattractive high school girl the male leads would only date as favor (“C’mon you owe me, she said she’ll only go out with me if her fat friend has a date”) or a dare.

The basic idea behind character acting is pretty insulting. On the most simple terms, the term posits two types of actresses: “normal” actresses who can play ingenues, femme fatales, or warm mothers, and character actresses who play the exotic or unattractive other. While the female lead has her unattractive flaws ironed out, leaving only acceptable “likable” flaws like clumsiness, shyness, or a lack of awareness of her beauty, as the lead, the character viewers are supposed to identify with.

 

Sherri Shepherd
Sherri Shepherd

 

Though usually seen as simplistic roles easily explained in one or two words (e.g. nasal voice), because a character role generally has messy and inconvenient flaws, in some ways she is a more realistic idea of a woman. Is it a coincidence that these roles are referred to as “characters,” a common dismissal of a woman who attempts to speak her mind.

Whereas male character actors are beloved and recognized as adorable or, as a friend of mine was once fond of saying, handsome in an offbeat kind of way, female character actresses fade into the background as mothers, maids, and nosy neighbors. They’re generally considered unattractive both in appearance and personality, while the part played by male character actors are not generally telegraphed as unattractive or unappealing. Female character roles rarely get a love interest.

Female character roles are defined more by perceived deficits in appearance, while male character roles can be better described by certain jobs: a mob guy, a military guy, a fashion designer. Even characteristics that would forever limit an actress to character roles can be found in leading men. There’s no shortage of meaty roles for older men, who continue to be considered sexy and powerful as they age, there are many prominent overweight A-List men (although most of these actors star in TV shows or are comedians).

Melissa McCarthy is held up as the counterpoint to any such argument these days, but she’s just one person, and though a great comedic actress, most of the roles she’s played have used her weight for humor or cast her as unattractive, butch, or otherwise unkempt.

 

Viola Davis
Viola Davis

 

Character roles do provide opportunities for women of color and women over 40, although in extremely limited roles, which must be frustrating to a talented actress who wants to showcase her range. In an interview with USA Today, Oscar nominee Viola Davis said that before The Help, “ I had to channel my talents in narratives that were incomplete, and those two or three scenes in a movie, I’ve had to try to make them work, flesh them out as real human beings. I haven’t had the benefit of a full journey, a character who’s been in every frame of the movie.” The character roles offered to women of color, things like the subservient Asian woman, the selfless lady’s maid (usually a Black woman), or the otherworldly wise native woman, also display Hollywood’s racist attitudes of the types of roles that can be played by women of color.

However, it’s hard to give a precise definition of who counts as a character actress. Is a woman a character actress if the general public knows her name? If she plays a lead role? What about a woman who plays a lead role, but continues to pop-up in thankless character parts? Is there a point where she ascends out of the character acting ghetto and becomes a leading lady, or by virtue of the roles she pays, by her appearance and personality will she always be a character?

 

Frances McDormand
Frances McDormand

 

Is that necessarily a bad thing? Many actresses, like Holly Hunter , Jennifer Jason Leigh , Frances McDormand, and Kathy Bates have said how much they enjoy playing character roles and playing these imperfect characters who display a wider conception of what a woman can be.

And some character actresses are recognized for their roles with Oscar wins or nominations in Best Supporting Actress category, one which allows for more quirky characters and underrepresented populations of actresses. Some of these women include Melissa Leo, Marcia Gay Harden,  and Octavia Spencer .

So it’s debatable.

Melissa Leo
Melissa Leo

 

 

A Partial List of Character Actresses:

Beth Grant
Beth Grant

Beth Grant
Audrey Wasilewski
Kathy Baker
Judy Greer
Sherri Shepard
Cleo King
Elsa Lanchester 

Beulah Bondi
Beulah Bondi

Beulah Bondi
Thelma Ritter
Hope Emerson
Agnes Moorehead
Mary Wickes
Ellen Corby
Eve Arden
Conchata Ferrell

Mildred Natwick
Mildred Natwick

Mildred Natwick
Ruth McDevitt
Miranda Richardson
Margo Martindale
Missi Pyle
Carol Kane

Jennifer Coolidge
Jennifer Coolidge

Jennifer Coolidge
Catherine O’Hara
Illeana Douglas

Arguably Ascended Character Actresses:
Viola Davis
Marcia Gay Harden
Melissa Leo

Octavia Spencer
Octavia Spencer

Octavia Spencer
Kathy Bates 
Frances McDormand
Jane Lynch
Catherine Keener

 

_________________________

Elizabeth Kiy is a Canadian writer and freelance journalist living in Toronto, Ontario. She recently graduated from Carleton University where she majored in journalism and minored in film.

In Honor of ‘Veronica Mars’: A Spotlight on Father-Daughter Relationships

Mainly though, the movie’s release has reminded us of all the supposedly simple and universal the show portrayed so well, the things that shouldn’t be notable in today’s movies and TV, but somehow are: a platonic male-female relationship, a strong friendship between teen girls who never came to blows over looks or boys, a willingness to hold its heroine accountable for her flaws, and above all, an amazing father-daughter relationship.

Frequently repeated lines:
Keith Mars: Hey…who’s your daddy?
Veronica Mars: I hate it when you say that

There was a lot of talk about Veronica Mars this week.

If you’re anything like me, you’ve read countless tributes. 1000 words here, 500 there on the class wars , miscarriages of justice and police corruption on the show that got us talking, agonizing and gleefully applying story lines to our own political climate. Tumblr raves praising the series for taking its audience seriously: delivering compelling season-long mysteries as well as episodic ones, developing character far beyond labels of good and bad, rich and poor, and committing to a dark, noir tone not often seen on a teen drama. As explored elsewhere on Bitch Flicks, Veronica Mars was also unprecedented for putting a rape survivor at the centre of a high school-set series.

Mainly though, the movie’s release has reminded us of all the supposedly simple and universal things the show portrayed so well, the things that shouldn’t be notable in today’s movies and TV, but somehow are: a platonic male-female relationship, a strong friendship between teen girls who never came to blows over looks or boys, a willingness to hold its heroine accountable for her flaws, and above all, an amazing father-daughter relationship.

 

No matter what, Keith will always support Veronica
No matter what, Keith will always support Veronica

 

Sadly neglected in the movie, where Keith Mars (Enrico Colantoni) stepped in periodically to guide Veronica (Kristen Bell) between set pieces, their relationship was notable for the great deal of understanding within it. Throughout the series, Keith was a great friend to trade sarcasm and snark with, a colleague to discuss investigations with, a partner to help make major life decisions, but never forgot his role as a parent. Even when it led to fights and weeks of radio-silence, Keith was capable of stepping out of his friend role to dish out groundings, forbid self-destructive and often criminal antics, and (attempt to) quash romantic and platonic relationships he believed capable of robbing his bright, shining daughter of her light. He always respected Veronica and her interests, independence and what’s more, genuinely liked and appreciated her as a person. Back in season one, the depth of Keith’s unconditional love was clear when we learned he had been unsure whether Veronica was biological daughter for quite some time though never let the uncertainty color his feelings for her.

It bears repeating that nuanced, complicated and respectful relationships between fathers and daughters are disturbingly rare on our screens these days. As most of us know from our everyday lives, there’s no shortage of great stories within the father-daughter (or father figure-daughter) dynamic.

Sure mother-daughter stories are important too and there are so many movies, so many TV shows that have given us mother-daughter relationships to cherish. And in every variation: jealously of the daughter’s youth coming from the mother, jealously of her mother’s independence from the daughter, disturbing romantic rivalry, close friendship that borders on symbiosis, a mother’s disappointment that her daughter is not a mini-version of herself and the mother who worried that her daughter will make the same mistakes she did (Lauren Graham seems to have made a cottage industry out of these roles in Gilmore Girls and Parenthood), and many more. You name a variation and someone’s made something about it.

All the talk about the Veronica Mars Movie got me thinking about the kind of story lines we generally see between fathers and daughters. The general population of TV dads are bumbling idiots, who don’t know their kid’s bedtimes or whether or not to give them sugary snacks. As a group, they lag behind TV mothers, who are most often called upon to play bad-cop against the over-grown man-children they married.

Fatherhood in movies brings to mind disapproving curmudgeons, gruff off-duty cops wielding a shot gun on their daughter’s dates or an absence commonly used as a ham-fisted explanation of why the female character likes older men or works as a stripper. In a growing sub-genre of action movies, it falls to a father to get revenge for his daughter’s rape or murder or try to save her (Taken, The Limey, Traffic ). 2010’s Winter’s Bone was notable for reversing this common narrative.

A young woman’s relationship with her father is rarely the focus of a narrative unless the mother is out of the picture. Usually she’s been killed off, sometimes she left the family or is somehow ill, often she chose to focus on work over family (a plot line used to make a negative point about women in the workforce).

It seems like his role is only allowed to be prominent in his daughter’s life if he is the sole parent, he can shape her only if there are no other options. Most often the single father as a character is used to explain why the female lead is a tomboy or to delve into his discomfort addressing the sex talk and menstruation. As a character, it’s unusual for the married father to do the heavy lifting or even do his share in an equal partnership. Sadly these story lines may mirror mainstream ideals of real life, where a man taking care of his children or showing an interest in his daughters is seen as effeminate or labelled as “Mr. Mom”.

Thinking about this, I made a list of notable and interesting father-daughter relationships, presented here in no particular order. Got any additions to the list? Let me know in the comments.

 

Atticus and Scout
Atticus and Scout

 

Scout and Atticus Finch, To Kill a Mockingbird: Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck) is really a prince among fathers. Determined to teach his children to be good citizens who believe in fair treatment for all and are willing to take a stand for it, Atticus provides a great example. As a father to Scout (Mary Badham), he respects her tomboy identity and tries hard to allow her to have a childhood fun of innocent games, in the midst of important lessons. But he knows the way to raise her right is not shield her from tragedy and allow her to be naive about the injustice in the world. Notably for the time period, he doesn’t hold Scout and his son Jem to separate standards or unduly protect Scout as a member of the ‘weaker sex’. He holds both his children to a high standard and expects them use what they have learned in the adult world.

Howard and Samantha Newly, Samantha Who: In a twist on a common rift between fathers and daughters, Howard (Kevin Dunn) explains to an adult amnesiac Samantha (Christina Applegate), that they stopped being close when she hit puberty and stopped being the bright eyed little girl who followed him around and wanted to inherit his chicken farm one day. Unfortunately for Howard, the changes in Samantha went further than a concern for boys and fashion and she became a truly vile person, attempting to humiliate her parents at every opportunity. Rebuilding her life and trying to becoming a better person, Samantha must make amends with her father and gradually teach him to trust her again.

 

Richard and Olive
Richard and Olive

 

Richard and Olive Hoover, Little Miss Sunshine: Though he’s striving to be a motivational speaker, Richard (Greg Kinnear)’s greatest challenge may be supporting his seven-year old daughter, Olive (Abigail Breslin), who wants nothing more than to be a beauty queen. Like every father, he wants to believe his daughter is the most beautiful little girl out there, but the very fact of a beauty pageant makes it clear to him that she can’t compete and he’s certain she will be humiliated. But Olive has a trick up her sleeve, a risqué dance performance and the uproar caused by it, leads Richard to abandon his worries and join her on stage, preventing official from stopping her. Richard truly becomes a supportive father, after, when instead of lecturing Olive, he tells her how proud her late grandfather would be of her.

 

Tony and Meadow
Tony and Meadow

 

Tony and Meadow Soprano, The Sopranos: Tony (James Gandolfini)’s relationship with his daughter is complex: on one hand, she’s his smartest, most hard-working child, the one who reminds him of all the things he likes about himself, but on the other, she’s the girl. In the world of old-fashioned, frequently misogynistic values Tony inhabits, this means she’s always going to be second best and must be kept virginal. Like other fathers with Tony’s value system, protecting his daughter drives him to do despicable things, like threatening her half jewish, half black boyfriend. But the degree to which Tony values Meadow (Jamie-Lynn Sigler) and sees her as his great hope for a legacy (he dreams of her becoming a pediatrician), is one of the areas where he chafes against his mob lifestyle throughout the course of the series.

Mel and Cher Horowitz, Clueless: As a modern day update of Jane Austen’s Emma, Beverly Hills schoolgirl Cher (Alicia Silverstone) plays nursemaid to her father (Dan Hedaya), reminding him of his high cholesterol, planning his wardrobe and his birthday parties. A successful litigator, he scares and intimidates nearly everyone he comes into contact with, except Cher, who has learned to use negotiation tactics against him and usually gets her way. As no mention is made of Cher’s college prospects or the value she personally sees in good marks, her efforts to raise her grades seem intended to make him proud of her, something she values above all else.

 

Matt with Alex and Scottie
Matt with Alex and Scottie

 

Matt and Alex and Scottie King, The Descendants: It takes an accident that leaves Elizabeth, his wife, comatose to bring Matt (George Clooney) together with his daughters. Alex (Shailene Woodley), his elder daughter is a rebellious teenager that he was previously unable to understand, while Scottie (Amara Miller) behaves inappropriately with other children. The real story of the movie, is Matt’s connection to Alex which strengths through the tragedy as he comes to respect his daughter and she her as a person independent from him. In the search for Elizabeth’s lover, Alex reveals her ingenuity and her continuing loyalty to him even when their bond was troubled. Ultimately restructuring their family as a three-person unit, the King’s learn to rely on each other and find solace even in the hardest times.

Mac and Juno MacGuff, Juno: Mac (J.K. Simmons) supports Juno (Ellen Page) through two adult situations she is in no way prepared for: having a baby and falling in love. He’s always there for her and his wise, though ornery talks help her to work towards mature decisions and provide turning points for her character. He has a sense of humor about everything that’s happening, something he’s clearly passed down to his daughter and provides just the right balm to soothe, (though realistically not eliminate) her pain.

 

Homer and Lisa
Homer and Lisa

 

Homer and Lisa Simpson, The Simpsons: Homer (Dan Castellaneta)’s struggles to connect with Lisa (Yeardley Smith), lead to some of the most heart-warming episodes of the series. Homer is cartoonishly dumb even for a cartoon and Lisa’s genius IQ and sophisticated interests make her completely alien to him. On several occasions he breaks his back to make her dreams come true, notably taking a demeaning second job to get her the pony of a little girl’s dream. When he becomes temporarily intelligent after removing a crayon from his brain, Homer is able to see what Lisa’s life is like and comes to respect her strength in a way that was impossible before. Likewise, in each Homer-Lisa episode, Lisa gains a new appreciation of the sacrifices Homer makes for her happiness. However, because of the show’s format, any progress Homer and Lisa make understanding each other, resets by the end of the episode.

Clancy and George Lass, Dead Like Me: It is only after her death that grim reaper George (Ellen Muth) comes to understand her father, a man she hasn’t given a lot of thought to since she was a child. Sitting in on the poetry class he teaches, she comes to understand him as a person and to identify with him. Clancy (Greg Kean) is never shown as a great dad, already introverted to a fault, his grief over George’s death leads him to shut everyone out and ultimately, he has an affair and leaves his wife and surviving daughter. But George’s glimpse of him as an imperfect person, who loved her very much but had no idea how to show it, mirrors the realizations many of us have about our parents at some point as we grow up.

 

Jack and Andie
Jack and Andie

 

Jack and Andie Walsh, Pretty in Pink: To a teenager’s mind, anything wrong in her life her parents’ fault. As the chief conflict in Pretty In Pink is Andie (Molly Ringwald)’s status as a girl from “the wrong side of the tracks”, it’d be easy for her to see her underemployed father as a one-dimensional villain, keeping her from a better life. But through a painful confrontation scene, it becomes clear that Jack (Harry Dean Stanton) is still depressed about Andie’s mother leaving them and is so broken he is unable to move on and give his daughter what she needs. So far in her life, Andie has been the more mature of the pair, the one who’s forced to take care of him. It’s a difficult situation, but it’s an honest one and Jack and Andie’s conversation gives hope that things might get a least a bit better in the end. As Andie prepares her new look for prom, attempting to change her life, it’s clear Jack has also changed, symbolically moving on from his wife by putting her picture in a drawer.

More fathers and daughters:
Harold and Lindsay Weir, Freaks and Geeks
Sam Sotto and Carol Solomon, In A World…
Jake and Daria Morgendorffer, Daria
Damon and Mindy Macready, Kick-Ass
George and Tessa Altman, Suburgatory
Murray and Vivian Abromowitz, Slums of Beverly Hills
Disney Movies: Fa Zhou and Fa Mulan in Mulan, Maurice and Belle in Beauty and the Beast, King Triton and Ariel in The Little Mermaid

 

Also on Bitch Flicks: A Long Time Ago, We Used to be Friends: The Veronica Mars Movie, The Relationships of Veronica Mars

__________________________________________________________

Elizabeth Kiy is a Canadian writer and freelance journalist living in Toronto, Ontario. She recently graduated from Carleton University where she majored in journalism and minored in film.

Four Couples and the Apocalypse: ‘It’s a Disaster’

After years of special-effects heavy, testosterone-infused, end-of-the-world dramas, your Roland Emmerichs and your Michael Bays, lately there’ve been a lot of apocalyptic comedies. Still though, not much has changed. These comedies take place on the larger scale, with big effects and big death tolls and more disconcerting, a lack of prominent or believable female characters. ‘This Is the End’ was a bro-fest, ‘The World’s End’s lone female was a love interest, and ‘Seeking a Friend for the End of the World’ delivered another Manic Pixie Dream Girl to the list.
‘It’s a Disaster’ is a quiet, low-budget comedy about four couples, friends gathered for a monthly brunch, who become trapped in a house together when they hear that a terrorist attack nearby has spread deadly nerve gas in the air and they will all soon experience excruciating deaths.

It’s A Disaster film poster
It’s a Disaster film poster

 

After years of special-effects heavy, testosterone-infused, end-of-the-world dramas, your Roland Emmerichs and your Michael Bays, lately there’ve been a lot of apocalyptic comedies. Still though, not much has changed. These comedies take place on the larger scale, with big effects and big death tolls and more disconcerting, a lack of prominent or believable female characters. This Is the End was a bro-fest, The World’s End ’s lone female was a love interest, and Seeking a Friend for the End of the World delivered another Manic Pixie Dream Girl to the list.

It’s a Disaster is a quiet, low-budget comedy about four couples, friends gathered for a monthly brunch, who become trapped in a house together when they hear that a terrorist attack nearby has spread deadly nerve gas in the air and they will all soon experience excruciating deaths. But the movie isn’t even really about the end of the world. It’s an extended character study wearing the clothes of an apocalypse story. It’s a story about commitment and friendship and love, and how they’re all tested when disaster strikes and all lines of communication are down.

 

The group are stunned to hear the news and display a range of conflicting emotions and reactions
The group is stunned to hear the news and displays a range of conflicting emotions and reactions

 

The spectacle of the disaster takes place off-screen, we hear snippets over the radio and from the few people from outside who interact with the people in the house. Instead, the movie examines human nature and the disaster is just a catalyst that opens up the characters and strips away all pretense of civility. It’s the cheapest end-of-the-world movie, but it’s probably the most realistic; the characters, as narcissistic and bourgeois as they are, having their private brunches and mourning over watching The Wire, resemble people we all know, at least in the broad strokes.

Of the eight main characters, the cast’s four women are interesting and dynamic. They aren’t love interests, but equal protagonists, who get to tell their own stories and suffer their own break-downs. Emma and Peter Mandrake (Erinn Hayes and Blaise Miller), control-freaks with a seemingly perfect marriage who hide their plans for a divorce, are hosting the brunch. Their guests include Buck and Lexi (Rachel Boston and Kevin M. Brennan), a pair of free spirits with an open marriage and Shane and Hedy (Jeff Grace and America Ferrera), a conspiracy theorist and high school chemistry teacher who’ve been engaged forever with no wedding in sight. Completing their friend group is Julia Stiles’s Tracey, a neurotic doctor who complains that she’s always dating guys who turn out to be crazy.

As it always is in movies with large groups of friends, the viewer is forced to suspend disbelief to buy that all these people are close friends. Though the characters are all stereotypical, the ways they behave and react to each other and the apocalypse ring true. These are close friends kept together by their rituals; the monthly brunches that everyone feels obligated to attend hang like a millstone around their necks, but no matter how much they dread brunch, none of them feels comfortable ending a tradition. Especially as it means admitting they’re no longer as close as they were. With the news of the disaster, along with the hidden resentments, lusts and rages that come to the foreground, so does the news that many of them don’t actually like each other. For instance, Peter tells Tracey that after his divorce, he doesn’t want her to contact him any more as he can’t see them being friends.

 

Tracey and Glen, a new couple on their third date arrive at the Mandrakes’ house for their monthly brunch
Tracey and Glen, a new couple on their third date, arrive at the Mandrakes’ house for their monthly brunch

 

Our initial vantage point on the group is that of an outsider. Tracey’s new boyfriend Glen (David Cross) is meeting her friends for the first time. In a foreboding twist, Tracey is more anxious about introducing Glen to her friends than he is about meeting them. This is only their third date and poor Glen is completely alienated by her friends and caught in the middle when the chaos begins. The awkwardness is made worse by the intense gender segregation of the gathering, where men convene in one room to watch sports, while the women gossip in another.

It’s easy to see It’s a Disaster as two different films, split by the characters’ awareness of the attack. If you started watching it without reading any synopses, you might not know it’s an apocalypse movie until the Mandrakes’ neighbor, Hal (writer-director Todd Berger) comes by wearing a Hazmat suit and informs them.

If you were going to judge the movie on just its first part, it’d be a cliche, just whining hipsters complaining about their relationships, but the film’s second half causes the viewer to look back and reassess, noticing how the characters try to hide their problems and pretend everything is fine.

 

Hal, a neighbor, who’s prepared for anything, arrives to inform the group about the disaster (and berates them for not inviting him)
Hal, a neighbor, who’s prepared for anything, arrives to inform the group about the disaster (and berates them for not inviting him)

 

There’s also the foreshadowing. They lose cellular signals, the cable and internet go out, and sirens recur in the background. Originally none of these things appear abnormal; the sirens seem like ordinary background noise, there could be issues with weather and then Emma and Peter fall into a tense fight, each believing the other didn’t pay the bills because of their divorce. All that comes before the reveal is imbued with a sense of impending doom as most viewers are aware going in of what the movie is about. Part of the fun of the movie is watching each small detail grow into a larger conflict which builds into convincing character development.

Though we begin the movie posed from Glen’s point of view, as the film progresses, it moves from Glen’s perspective to a more general, fly on the wall view of the action. Because the shift doesn’t happen exactly at the point of the reveal, viewers go seamlessly from outsiders entering a place we don’t understand and being forced to participate, to watching action we are not involved in.

Like the characters, there’s very little we know about the actual disaster. Insulted that he wasn’t invited to their brunch, Hal informs them that bombs have gone off downtown and they have to remain inside, before leaving them to their own devices. For a great deal of the film, the characters aren’t sure if the reports they’ve heard are real or how bad things are outside, so it isn’t until the very end that they start to think of concrete plans. The movie isn’t about how they’re going to survive the disaster (eventually they just decide they’re all going to die); instead, it’s about how they slowly learn to deal with each other and air their long-suppressed grievances.

For Emma and Peter, the disaster brings back them together, allowing them time to relax and listen to music in the car, reconnecting in a context far from their everyday problems. Lexi and Burt play around on an acoustic guitar, wear bedsheet togas and eventually realize they don’t have much that bonds them together; that in all their experimenting they were only trying to find something novel to share. Hedy, whose chemistry knowledge makes her hyperaware of what’s going to happen to them, stops caring about anything. She breaks up with Shane and then spends the day drinking and mixing chemicals to make ecstasy, feeling that  they can at least go out having fun. Later, when a suicide plot is considered, Hedy’s extensive knowledge of all the symptoms they will run through before they die, is what convinces them that it’s the best option.

 

The group meet in the living room for an impromptu sing-along that turns into an escape planning session
The group meet in the living room for an impromptu sing-along that turns into an escape planning session

 

Throughout the afternoon, the group had mentioned another couple who were supposed to attend the brunch, but who always show up late. Near the end of the movie, these friends arrive, clearly suffering from the effects of the toxin and everyone inside the house refuses to let them in. Tracey in particular, shuts them out, and even as they die on the porch and are eaten by crows, maintains that they deserved it for being late. Their inhibitions have been so loosened by the disaster that rules of order and civility have completely broken down. Things that were mere annoyances, like their friends’ habitual lateness take on outsized importance when the stakes are raised.

Meanwhile, Tracey and Glen bond fast and appear to have a real love connection, the conventional romantic comedy relationship set against a disaster. However, in the eleventh hour, Glen proves himself to be a religious fanatic and anti-Semite, when he serves everyone wine laced with rat poison. He believes they should all die together before the rapture begins and though the others don’t agree with his beliefs, they consider drinking the wine to spare themselves a painful death.

 

Glen, who is meeting the group for the first time, is an outsider, alienated by their relationship problems
Glen, who is meeting the group for the first time, is an outsider, alienated by their relationship problems

 

It’s an interesting, albeit abrupt, twist as Glen originally appeared to be the most logical one in the group. However, it does seem like a bit of a betrayal when the character whose perspective we were aligned with at the start turns out to be crazy and is suddenly shut out of the group as an outsider. Glen’s status as a “religious nut job” is the glue that binds the friends back together, allowing them to bond over laughing at him. It is also a form of redemption for Tracey as she explained earlier that her friends never believed her when she told their that her other boyfriends were crazy.

In the end, everyone has their own belief systems–among them science, superheroes, and the wisdom of crowds and they hesitate to drink the poisoned wine. They’re afraid of being wrong, of killing themselves a minute before help arrives. The film abruptly ends (recalling an earlier conversation between Tracey and Glen) with everyone poised to drink. Whether you believe they do or not depends on your opinion of each character and who they would be in real life.

The ending shows that no matter how much they try to change, the tightly wound taking a risk and dancing around in togas, the free spirits trying to think in concrete, logical terms, they’re all going to continue to be the same types of people until they die.

 

In the film’s final tension filled moments, the characters must decide whether or not to drink the poisoned wine and spare themselves a painful death
In the film’s final tension-filled moments, the characters must decide whether or not to drink the poisoned wine and spare themselves a painful death

 

Though I had many good things to say about the movie, there are also some criticisms that shouldn’t be ignored. It’s great that the movie focused equally on female and male characters, but as in most films, women’s characters are explored only insofar as they are as parts of couples. I have to wonder if screenwriters can conceive of a woman in a context outside of a romantic relationship. In addition, starting the film from a male character’s POV, even though he doesn’t end up playing a more significant role than anyone else, sets him up as a default protagonist.

Though this may be an attempt at satire, the characters refer multiple times to the destruction of multiple American cities as the end of the world. As they speak to a call centre worker overseas who is not experiencing anything out of the ordinary, it’s clear that only the US is affected and the characters’ occasionally self-centered view extends to their conception of the world.

It’s a Disaster is a unique twist on the disaster movie. The point of the movie isn’t the apocalypse, but the character’s relationships. Whether or not they’re going to survive isn’t the point either. It’s a disaster movie that isn’t a disaster epic, instead it’s a captivating and often hilarious comedy of manners.

__________________________________________________________________

Elizabeth Kiy is a Canadian writer and freelance journalist living in Toronto, Ontario. She recently graduated from Carleton University where she majored in journalism and minored in film.

Working Class Family With a Touch of Absurdity: ‘Raising Hope’

TV families are generally presented as aspirational. They usually live an upper middle class livestyle and frequently live comfortably on a single salary, have college degrees and wealthy backgrounds.
Usually when characters work menial labor or minimum wage jobs, they are presented as being in a transitory period. This is the stage before the character gets their life together, when the artist waits for a big break or where a youth supplements their allowance with their earnings. It’s rare that this work is presented as the character’s real life, how it will likely always be.

Written by Elizabeth Kiy as part of our theme week on Women and Work/Labor Issues.

Raising Hope Title Card
Raising Hope title card

 

TV families are generally presented as aspirational. They usually live an upper middle class livestyle and frequently live comfortably on a single salary, have college degrees and wealthy backgrounds.

Usually when characters work menial labor or minimum wage jobs, they are presented as being in a transitory period. This is the stage before the character gets their life together, when the artist waits for a big break or where a youth supplements their allowance with their earnings. It’s rare that this work is presented as the character’s real life, how it will likely always be.

Raising Hope is centered the “lower lower middle class” Chance family, Virginia (Martha Plimpton), a maid, is married to Burt (Garret Dillahunt), a struggling landscaper. They have a twenty-something son Jimmy (Lucas Neff), the result of a teen pregnancy, and act as caregivers to Maw Maw (Cloris Leachman), Virginia’s senile grandmother whose house they all live in. Their lives are decidedly unglamorous and everyone lacks maturity. That is, until, in a wacky series of events, Jimmy has a one night stand with a serial killer who gets pregnant, gives birth and is then executed, leaving the baby to the Chances to raise.

 

Family events like a camp-out on their lawn keep the Chances together and showcase their heart
Family events like a camp-out on their lawn keep the Chances together and showcase their heart

 

The baby, Hope is the catalyst for the maturation, not only of her young father, but of his parents who now have a second chance to fix some of their mistakes. Helping them along is Sabrina Collins (Shannon Woodward), Jimmy’s love interest and later girlfriend and wife, who works at the local grocery store, Howdy’s and comes to view Hope as her daughter.

Unlike creator Greg Garcia’s previous blue collar series, My Name is Earl, characters in Raising Hope are not presented as criminals or cons. The criminal acts undertaken by the Chances, such as illegally selling popular Christmas toys or switching price stickers at the grocery store gain the audience’s approval as they are undertaken merely to survive. For the most part, they’re happy with their lot in life, they complain about their jobs only in the usual way people complain about their jobs, and daydream only idly about winning the lottery or making it as a rock star. They’re are uneducated, but intelligent and they have a cramped house, but its full of love, the way the Chances see it, it could be worse.

 

The Chance most often live in Maw Maw’s small house, but have lived in their van at times
The Chance most often live in Maw Maw’s small house, but have lived in their van at times

 

Comedy with working class protagonists is difficult. There are serious problems in their lives that cannot always be easily and in all good conscience laughed at and the stakes are always high. The show, though allowed some degree of comedic license, could be criticized for its portrayal of a “lower lower middle class” lifestyle as full of charming eccentricity, rather than more realistically as a degrading experience. Indeed, most of the problems faced by a family like the Chances could not be solved in a half hour comedy or dealt with in a manner that could leave the viewer in a good mood after the credits. Thus, the show is to often outlandish, existing in a world of quirky characters, mythical town limits, unlikely resurrections and logical paradoxes, the same world enjoyed by other blue collar families on TV, like The Simpsons and Family Guy’s Griffins.

Except, it’s a live action show where the naked faces and emotions of the family are always on display, keeping it solidly grounded in a sense of reality unavailable to the working class cartoon. Burt, Virginia, Jimmy, Sabrina, Maw Maw and Hope are real people, played by real actors and it is to the show’s credit that every once and awhile, the greater reality behind the comedy-creating challenges in their lives is exposed. Under the coat of absurdity, Raising Hope is often a trojan horse of a sitcom, leading viewer to think about poverty and social issues, instead of mere escapism. The Chances didn’t have health insurance for Jimmy’s entire childhood because they couldn’t afford it, they have one GED shared between them, no one was properly educated on safe sex, they’ve lived in their van for prolonged periods and frequently acknowledge that they would be homeless if not for mooching off Maw Maw.

What’s refreshing about the show is that the women are the most intelligent characters, though because the show is a comedy, their intelligence manifests itself in complicated schemes and manipulations. Due to this, Virginia’s frequent use of words like “philostrophical” becomes an adorable quirk, especially as she is one of the show’s shrewdest characters. Virginia and Maw Maw are geniuses when it comes to scheming, usually to help their family members overcome a character flaw, get revenge on someone who has hurt someone they care about and make mild improvements to their lives and Sabrina has learnt from their example. Burt and Jimmy are well-meaning man-children, generally getting easily swept away by their wives’ plans.

 

Burt and Virginia prepare for wealthy guests, pouring box wine into empty bottles in an attempt to appear well-off
Burt and Virginia prepare for wealthy guests, pouring box wine into empty bottles in an attempt to appear well-off

 

Virginia and Burt are each other’s soul mates and have an egalitarian relationship where financial and childcare responsibilities are shared. However, Burt frequently takes care of handiwork in the home, while Virginia does the cooking and takes care of Maw Maw. They both also work in extremely gendered professions, highlighted by Virginia’s pink maid uniform and all female crews (though a male superior is sometimes glimpsed). While Burt is passionate about lawn work and is shown to have an encyclopedia knowledge of different mosses, Virginia sees her work as pure drudgery, and uses self deprecating humor as a means of coping. In her off hours, she has no shortage of things she is excited about, most of them blue collar passions straight out of reality TV. She’s a hoarder, she believed in the 2012 prophesy, is a doomsday prepper and collects like figurines of pigs dressed up for different jobs. Her great achievements are the small things that make her feel important, such as getting her granddaughter in the church nativity scene and winning the town’s annual bake-off, the sorts of community involvement usually portrayed as the past times of wealthy housewives who don’t have to work.

 

Virginia works as a maid for Knock Knock Knock Maid Service, cleaning the homes of wealthy families
Virginia works as a maid for Knock Knock Knock Maid Service, cleaning the homes of wealthy families

 

In a recent episode, Virginia refused a promotion because of a fear of confrontation and the stress that comes from it. Like many women, she has been raised to be non-confrontational and like many lower class women, she does not have any confidence that she move up in the ranks and make her life better. When she ultimately takes it and becomes crew chief, she finds she is good at the work and enjoys it. As the show displays time and time again, though she lacks formal education, Virginia is seriously talented in relating to people and figuring out how to serve their needs.

With her new salary, Virginia is no longer stressed financially and suggests she and Burt could now afford their own apartment. This development counteracts the earlier seasons of the show, which suggest that the Chances could never expect to be better off than they are, by showing that Virginia was one promotion away from being able to support them satisfactorily. It’s a troubling message, suggesting that the poor could easily build themselves up if they just decided to stop being lazy.

But the Chances have shown multiple time that they don’t particularly desire to move up in the world. In one episode, the family is saving money for a new toilet after theirs breaks, they are given an expensive model worth two thousand dollars by a wealthy friend. This appears to be the beginning of the familiar sitcom plot where someone receives and expensive gift and struggles with the morality of accepting it, with the blue collar twist that the luxury item in question is a toilet. Instead, Burt and Virginia worry that having a luxury item will begin to move them to a social strata they don’t belong in and give them a taste for the finer things in life, things they cannot afford. It’s played as a triumph (scored by a song repeating “don’t care about being a winner”) when they return it and come home with a grungy, used model.

 

Though Burt and Virginia are originally fascinated by the expensive toilet, they ultimately decide such luxuries aren’t for them
Though Burt and Virginia are originally fascinated by the expensive toilet, they ultimately decide such luxuries aren’t for them

 

They’re comfortable with who they are and luxury just not for them. Virginia, even in her unbridled fantasy, dreams of being given imitation diamonds sold on an infomercial by Fran Drescher for her anniversary.

There are always conflicts when the Chances encounter someone wealthy or well-educated. Hope’s serial killer mother, Lucy’s college degree is frequently brought up as evidence that she was too good for him. Several episodes explore the long standing rivalry between Virginia and her successful cousin Deliah, who often teases her about being poor. In another episode the family struggles to decide whether they can be friends with a rich family whose house Virginia cleans.

Most notably, in the second season, the Chances discovered that Sabrina’s family is extremely wealthy and she has chosen her working class life by refusing to accept their money. When Jimmy and Sabrina attend a party thrown by her father, it is clear that Sabrina assumes her wealth former friends are jerks and feels justified in mocking them. However, after spending time with them, Jimmy concludes that they are trying hard to be kind and include him even though he can’t relate to their stories of their lives. Sabrina, who feels she’s making a stand, the outsider exposing their gross entitlement, is the one who’s really being judgmental as she assumes her rejection of their lifestyle makes her superior. Here, Jimmy realizes that Sabrina is severely insecure and goes through life thinking she is superior to the people she meets, particularly her co-workers at Howdy’s who were born working class and did not make a choice to reject their privilege.

 

The Chances learn Sabrina is from a wealthy family when Burt sees this picture of her in a client’s house
The Chances learn Sabrina is from a wealthy family when Burt sees this picture of her in a client’s house

 

Though its uncomfortable for a man to point out her flaws and force her to work through them, within the context of a sitcom, it’s refreshing. Raising Hope has a male character, Jimmy at its centre, but the female characters never become axillary figures, merely his wife and mother. In fact in recent seasons, it functions more as an ensemble, where each character has multiple flaws pointed out by everyone around them. Sabrina is not just the hot chick that Jimmy, himself an anxious mess of neuroses (he eats his eyebrows when stressed) has a thing for, but an actual human being. She’s overly competitive, combative and sleeps with a “pantyho” over her head to keep out the spiders. The very things she feels makes her a hero are her character flaws, whereas the things she takes for granted: her unconditional love for her adopted daughter, her enduring friendship with Jimmy within their romantic relationship, her deep affection for his family even when they become embarrassing and her often comically misguided desire to do good are what make her likable.

In one episode, Sabrina leads Occupy Natesville. The Chance family aren’t the kind of people to discuss economic theory or the wide-ranging social and cultural inequities that make their lives a constant struggle. Jimmy takes the protests message as a comfort, letting him know that isn’t their fault they’re poor. None of the family take an interest in what it means on a broader level to be part of the lower levels of the 99% or get involved in working for institutional change to the lives of the working class, but of course, their world is solidly a comedic one where a serious exploration of poverty would be out of place. As often happens in life, it is privileged Sabrina who fights for the lower class, claiming to speak for a group in which she has only tenuous membership. This brings to mind the idea that economic discussions often exclude perspectives of the very people who need them the most, because their voices are stifled by things like lack of education or free time to attend discussions.

In early seasons, Sabrina  is a tourist, she exists in their world but doesn’t belong in it. She always be differentiated than the Chances, as she has her rich parents as a safety next. If she is ever desperate for money or in a situation where she just couldn’t take being poor anymore, she always has the option of accepting the money her father would willingly give her. The stakes for her are neither high nor impossible to transcend so she is able joke around at work, drawing faces on fruit and changing product labels.

 

Sabrina and Jimmy work together at Howdy’s Market
Sabrina and Jimmy work together at Howdy’s Market

 

Though coming from a background of more privilege than the average viewer, she functions as an audience surrogate: correcting the Chances when they make mispronounce worlds or misinterpret historical events and showing amusement at the ways they have had to improvise to keep their heads above water. The entertainment she gains from observing the Chances and participating in their traditions can border on exploitative. She views them as a sideshow, a carnival act, even a television show.  Her marriage to Jimmy, mandated by her grandmother’s will in exchange for a house, appears to bridge the gap between the Chances’ poverty and the Collinses’ wealth. Instead, it turns Jimmy into what Sabrina was, a tourist who frequently drops in on his parents’ hardscabble lives, but goes home to an expensive house he and his wife own outright. Though the series features lots of craziness and amplified reality, I feel this turn is where the show becomes really unrealistic.

Sabrina and Virginia are two women from very different backgrounds who ended up in a similar place. Though the series is an unrealistic portrayal of working class life, the women of Raising Hope are intelligent, dedicated to their families and coworkers and always well-meaning. The circumstances of their lives are far from ideal, but they way they manage to find reasons to be happy is admirable.

Throughout the series, Virginia is always looking for positive female role models for her granddaughter. Hope could do worse than do adopt some of these qualities from her mother and grandmother.

 

Also on Bitch Flicks: A Plea For More Roseannes and Norma Raes: Addressing The Lack of Working-Class Female Characters on American Screens

Recommended Reading: ‘Raising Hope’ is the Corrective to Poverty Porn , The Greatness of ‘Raising Hope’ And Hollywood’s Squeamishness About Working Class TV

____________________________________________________________________

Elizabeth Kiy is a Canadian writer and freelance journalist living in Toronto, Ontario. She recently graduated from Carleton University where she majored in journalism and minored in film.

‘Adult World’: Portrait of the Artist as a Self-Indulgent Brat

At 22, recent Syracuse grad Amy Anderson is sure she is already a great poet, like her hero, Sylvia Plath, the voice of her generation even. She’s going to be discovered any day now and everyone will realize, as an ‘artiste’ she shouldn’t need to worry about getting a job or paying rent or paying car insurance. She is sure the creation of her art should transcend all responsibility.
When success doesn’t immediately find her, she complains ad nauseam, that she did everything right: getting good grades, staying true to her art and refusing to get distracted by trivial things like parties and guys, so she deserves it more than anyone else. She doesn’t just want to be a successful famous poet (her father jokes that she will one day win a Pulitzer) but to be a wunderkind, a success before 23.

Adult World Poster
Adult World film poster

 

At 22, recent Syracuse grad Amy Anderson is sure she is already a great poet, like her hero, Sylvia Plath–the voice of her generation even. She’s going to be discovered any day now and everyone will realize, as an “artiste” she shouldn’t need to worry about getting a job or paying rent or paying car insurance. She is sure the creation of her art should transcend all responsibility.

When success doesn’t immediately find her, she complains ad nauseam that she did everything right: getting good grades, staying true to her art, and refusing to get distracted by trivial things like parties and guys, so she deserves it more than anyone else. She doesn’t just want to be a successful famous poet (her father jokes that she will one day win a Pulitzer) but to be a wunderkind, a success before 23.

Of course, where Amy really lives and dreams all her grandiose dreams, a bubble of middle class ennui, stacked accomplishment and precociousness, is far from the real world and it’s the real world she finds herself inadvertently tumbling into as she struggles to keep her head above water post-graduation.

Adult World, named after the mom-and-pop adult video store where Amy (Emma Roberts) finds herself underemployed, follows Amy as she stalks her “favorite living poet” Rat Billings (John Cusack), a morose, misanthropic literary superstar, and attempts to force him into being her mentor. Directed by Scott Coffey and written by Andy Cochran, the film treads similar territory to recent disappointed-artist-post-graduation stories like Tiny Furniture and Frances Ha, but delves further into the realm of character study, pulling no punches in its portrayal of a self-absorbed character’s slow, belabored entry into adulthood.

 

With her hero, Sylvia Plath looking over her shoulder, Amy contemplates suicide
With her hero, Sylvia Plath, looking over her shoulder, Amy contemplates suicide

 

Amy is a corollary to the kind of self-absorbed man-child character on which entire film genres are built. As a character she’s fairly unique, to the best of my knowledge, her only real kin is the similarly entitled and egotistical Hannah Horvath of Girls, and it’s both refreshing to watch her and depressing to be able to relate.

Similarly to how Hannah’s parents cutting her off provided the impetus for Girls, Amy’s father’s admission that he has serious financial worries and cannot continue to bankroll her lifestyle kickstarts her journey. Poetry, like other arts, is a vocation easily available only to the very wealthy and Adult World positions Amy at the difficult intersection of middle class reality and leisure class values. Unemployed and living in her parents’ house at the film’s start, Amy has $90,000 in student loans, frequently spends thousands on submission fees for poetry contests, and compares riding the bus to going through a war zone. She cancels her car insurance (with a poem), sure that paying submission fees is important in the grand scheme of things.

 

With her wall of blue ribbons, Amy is clearly not used to failure
With her wall of blue ribbons, Amy is clearly not used to failure

 

Throughout the film it becomes clear Amy expects that being a successful poet will allow her to opt out of all the parts of life she considers tedious and believes anything she has to do in the meantime, such as working at Adult World, is worthy of contempt. She embarrasses and runs off customers by criticizing their sexual interests and in one incidence where she is zoned out, allows a man to steal several things and run off. Her belief that she will be famous one day soon is so pervasive that she believes they are lucky to be graced with her presence and that at the end of the day, she doesn’t really need the job anyway.

Early in the film, Amy visits her college friend, Candace, who is participating in an Occupy protest, but declines either joining in or paying any attention to their message. Though presented as an anarchist and activist, Candace, like Amy, has a supreme sense of entitlement, announcing that the only house in Amy’s price range is a shithole and with a hint of glee, that her parents would be horrified if she lived there. Amy’s response, saying to the landlord, “We’re bohemians,” suggests an attempt at romanticizing poverty.

Both girls are sheltered to a level that is cringe-inducing, something that is shown most clearly through the character of Rubia, a transvestite Amy meets at Adult World, the most exotic figure sheltered Amy can imagine. When she first encounters her in the bathroom, Amy gawks and runs out to tell the other people in the shop, like she just saw a unicorn. Later, Candace complains that as they are not children, but not yet adults, they are an oppressed minority and the camera cuts to Rubia, a real member of an oppressed minority, rolling her eyes (her default mode with Amy).

 

Amy’s difficult relationship with Rat Billings keeps her from being a cartoon character or drawing the audience’s ire.
Amy’s difficult relationship with Rat Billings keeps her from being a cartoon character or drawing the audience’s hatred

 

As Amy’s reluctant mentor, Rat Billings is jaded and sarcastic, constantly putting her down. Under the belief that he will promote her to the right people and praise her brilliance, she works as his unpaid assistant, cleaning his house, curating his papers and assisting him in his lectures. Though Amy believes this is perfectly normal because “he doesn’t believe in money,” it’s clear to the audience that he’s taking advantage of her.

In her interactions with Rat, a sympathetic dimension of Amy’s character emerges.

She’s a young ambitious woman whose idol turns out to be a jerk but she can’t see it, who believes he has to be impressed just like all her teachers were, who believes him when he sarcastically calls her is muse. It’s incredibly refreshing to have a female character who isn’t a shrinking violet, who stalks her idol to get him to look at her art and without shame or the back stepping that most women are raised to do (“I think it’s pretty good” or “People have told me I’m good”) speaks without a qualifier, insisting “I’m good.” When Candace tells her she is getting published in Anarchist Quarterly, the first time she’s ever submitted writing anywhere, Amy goes off into her room, closes the door and screams.

Throughout the film, Amy’s lack of sexual experience is glaringly apparent. In the first scene, she develops feelings for a boy in her poetry class because he compliments her poems and when she discovers he had friends hiding in the closet filming their make-out session, he knows her well enough to try to use art as an excuse. When she first enters Adult World after seeing the Help Wanted sign, unaware of what the store is, she is scared and embarrassed. Recoiling from a vibrator as if she expects it to attack her, she runs back to her car and sits there for several minutes, shivering as if trying to get the filth off of her.

 

Job hunter Amy runs from Adult World just as she runs from adult responsibility
Job hunter Amy runs from Adult World just as she runs from adult responsibility

 

Amy uses feminism as an excuse for her discomfort and within the narrative; her views that the videos are sexist and models are being objectified are connected to insecurity over being a virgin, rather than true conviction. She is uncomfortable with people who are secure in their sexuality, looking down on Le Passion magazine’s cover model because her breasts are biggest than Amy’s head, and compensates by placing herself above them, superior as an artist. Holding this view is convenient for Amy as it allows her to dismiss a suggestion by her coworker, Alex (Evan Peters), that she write erotica based on her sexual experiences for the magazine, saying it is a bad idea because she feel anything sexualized is anathema to art not because she doesn’t have any experiences.

To this end, Amy assumes a serious mentorship involves a sexual relationship and one night, Rubia gives her a makeover so she can go seduce Rat. Dressed “like a prostitute,” Amy’s idea of seduction involves, speaking in 40s movie dialogue and tossing her head like cat, preening, while Rat sits watching her like a zoo animal. Here she becomes truly pathetic in his and the film’s eyes, admitting her virginity to him and describing sex in laughable poetry metaphors, a budding delicate flower and a grand voyage, in a stark contrast to the seedy sexuality sold in the store where she works.

Rat does not take her seriously when she insists she is a woman not a child. It’s difficult to watch her throw herself at him, a grown man moaning over his second-hand embarrassment for her and alternately patronizing and laughing at her.

 

In the film’s most disturbing scene, Amy begs Rat to “deflower her”
In the film’s most disturbing scene, Amy begs Rat to “deflower her”

 

At this stage in her life, Amy is  young enough that her life is still marked by what she hasn’t done. Even as a poet who idolizes Sylvia Plath, Amy does not understand depression, putting it on as a theatrical costume meant to inspire poems, before quickly shedding it to eat a grilled cheese sandwich brought to her by her mother.  As such, she constantly measures herself against artists she admires, antagonizing that Rat became famous so much younger than she is now, and in the darkly comic opening scene, sticks her head in the oven and then wonders if this is suicidal plagiarism. Immediately after announcing that she doesn’t do drugs, she does pot because Rubia suggests it is something a poet would do.

Having not had any real pain in her life, nor love or anything exciting or dangerous, it is unclear what Amy has to write about. She is shocked when Rat tells her he made up his poems about heroin when he didn’t use it, feeling that one should only write about what they know. Rat’s admission ultimately leads her to try her hand at writing erotica, a place where her speculative purple prose makes her a mild success.

It’s uncomfortable how the movie surrounds clueless Amy with three men–Rat, Alex and her father–who always know better than her and constantly call her out on her naiveté. Viewers are clearly meant to see Amy as a satirical character and not take her seriously, sharing Rat’s view of her as a silly little girl following him around. When they are trading off quotes and he ends off without attribution, “You’re dumb but you’re not stupid,” she stands there silently for a beat, mulling it over, trying to find something flattering in it. It’s unclear whether we meant to laugh at her submissiveness or feel pity for her as she is being taken advantage of?

 

Still a child in many ways, Amy throws a temper tantrum after learning of Rat’s deception
Still a child in many ways, Amy throws a temper tantrum after learning of Rat’s deception

 

She is overjoyed when he accepts her poem into an anthology mostly out of pity, not realizing that he never said he liked it or thought it was good, just that it was uniquely her. The pinnacle of Rat’s cruelty occurs when he reveals that the anthology he published her in is of “hilariously awful” poetry meant for reading on the toilet. Amy’s response, a temper tantrum wherein she breaks his things and screams about how special she is, proves only that she is even less mature than he thought.

Alex, Amy’s love interest, also gets a moment to criticize her work, yelling at her for thinking she’s better than the store, a place where good people work hard to support themselves.

Visiting Alex’s house, she learns he is a talented painter, but unlike her, is also an adult. He works a day job and makes the most of it, he never brags about being an artist, and he doesn’t see fame as his ultimate goal. He sees the purity of art, in making things for yourself, not to share with other people, something Amy realizes, shocked, that she has never experienced.

It’s a little unsettling for the film’s female lead to be contrasted with a man, a love interest, who is presented as superior to her in every way. Amy’s entire identity, as a talented artist, though it was probably inaccurate, is taken from her by these men in her life and she is utterly shattered by them.

 

Alex and Amy take a quiet moment while working at Adult World to feed their mutual attraction
Alex and Amy take a quiet moment while working at Adult World to feed their mutual attraction

 

However, regardless of who delivered these lessons, they were ones Amy needed to be a complete person and an adult. Rat turns out to be the kind of mentor she needed, as he makes her a better writer and gives her a harsh, but necessary wake-up call. She isn’t a bad poet, but she isn’t a good one either, to be anything she needs to go out into the world and experience it.

Alex, though unsettling as both her new role model and first sexual partner, teaches her to be responsible and accept the life she is living now as real life,  not just something she’s doing to kill time while waiting to become famous.

Though it was men that taught her these crucial lessons about herself, the film succeeds  by presenting the ultimate proof of  Amy’s growth as self directed. She doesn’t become an adult by losing her virginity, getting a job, or by getting published, but by reading her shit poem and being able to laugh at it, already so much more grown up that she wonders how she could have ever been so naive. In the last shot, she is an adult reading words she wrote so recently as a child.

 

Recommended Reading: Into an Adult World with a Quirky Coterie to Assist

___________________________________________________________________

Elizabeth Kiy is a Canadian writer and freelance journalist living in Toronto, Ontario. She recently graduated from Carleton University where she majored in journalism and minored in film.

Diablo Cody’s ‘Paradise’: Manic Pixie and the Napkin of Sin

It probably says something about Diablo Cody’s directorial debut, ‘Paradise,’ that despite its creator’s celebrated career and feminist street-cred, it premiered and disappeared without me hearing a thing about it. And it’s easy to see why: ‘Paradise’ is cloying, tone-deaf and awkward, and such a perfect storm of awful and offensive that I’m kind of obsessed with figuring it out. How did Cody, who has written such memorable female characters fall so far off base with Lamb Mannerheim?

The survivor of a horrific plane crash, Lamb wears compression body stockings over her burns and constantly taking pain pills
The survivor of a horrific plane crash, Lamb wears compression body stockings over her burns and constantly taking pain pills

 

It probably says something about Diablo Cody’s directorial debut, Paradise , that despite its creator’s celebrated career and feminist street-cred, it premiered and disappeared without me hearing a thing about it. And it’s easy to see why: Paradise is cloying, tone-deaf and awkward, and such a perfect storm of awful and offensive that I’m kind of obsessed with figuring it out.

How did Cody, who wrote such memorable female characters as quippy Juno McGruff (say what you want about Juno, but the film knew what it was and stuck to it), and antiheroine Mavis Gary in the much adored Young Adult, as well as deconstructing toxic female friendships in Jennifer’s Body, fall so far off base with Lamb Mannerheim?

As sugary sweet as the cotton candy on its title card, Paradise is the story of a young girl (Julianne Hough) raised in extreme Christian church who renounces her faith after she is scarred in a horrific plane crash. After giving a speech to her congregation about her newfound atheism, she uses the money from a massive settlement to jet off to Las Vegas, the fabled den of vice condemned in her pastor’s sermons, to complete a list of sins she believes she’s missed out on.

It’s an interesting enough set-up, fruitful ground for several interesting stories, that could delve easily into topics like survivor’s guilt, sex addiction, pain killer addiction (rumor has it an earlier draft went further down this road), white guilt, or a nuanced examination of modern day extreme christianity. As a young woman who grew up in a religion so extreme that she could only listen to Christian music, and wasn’t allowed to drink, wear pants, cut her hair or associate with Muslims or LGBT individuals, there’s certainly areas to explore in Lamb’s relation to herself as a woman, her opinion of her own vanity and how she feels looking back on how bigoted she used to be. But this is not that movie.
So what went wrong?

 

Loray gives Lamb a mini-makeover, converting her maxi-skirt to mini
Loray gives Lamb a mini-makeover, converting her maxi-skirt to mini

 

To start with, Paradise never establishes its tone or its stance on religion. Though in some parts, it’s atheistic, attempting to make a point about problems and hypocrisy associated with religious belief in general, in some its taking on Lamb’s extreme christianity specifically, but throughout the film, Lamb is still presented as being better than everyone she encounters because for all her pretense, she maintains her christian values and fear of anything she was taught led to damnation.  Lamb is a magical, pure unicorn whose quest to sin never goes very far, but who, just by being herself, fixes the lives of her new friends, womanizer William (Russell Brand) and Black stereotype Loray (Octavia Spencer). Rather than giving depth to her character, Lamb’s religious upbringing is used as a device to explain her social handicap and ignorance of anything in pop culture. She’s written like a time traveller or an escapee from an Amish cult, except every so often she stops to make one of Diablo Cody’s signature referential jokes. As the film ends without Lamb forming any stance on religion, nor deciding to compromise with her parents, the way it is stressed throughout the film makes no sense, for something that ultimately becomes a complete non-issue.

 

Over the course of the night, Lamb is trying to complete the sins written on this napkin
Over the course of the night, Lamb is trying to complete the sins written on this napkin

 

Even Lamb’s quest to sin is held back from getting to the darker places one would expect. Lamb takes a drink and spits it out, Lamb pees in an alleyway, Lamb bets a couple dollars on a slot machine, Lamb peeks through her finger at a dirty magazine, Lamb buys pot but doesn’t seem to use it, Lamb eats a dessert called a chocolate orgasm, but never has a real one. There are no anticipated scenes of Lamb playing for big money surrounded by a group at a blackjack table or ducking into a strip club. The most adult thing Lamb does is have a long conversation with Amber, a prostitute in a club bathroom, where again her mere presence seems to be enough to ‘save’ someone. There are no real stakes, so it never feels like an actual movie for adults, only the set-up for a sugary sitcom. Her new friends are roped into following Lamb around the city for no other real reason than that they find her innocence exotic, and the only real conflict is when they lose her, only to quickly find her again, having never been in any real danger.

Lamb, as her name implies, is written as an innocent who needs to be cared for, and is constantly infantilized. Her religion and the naiveté caused by it gives the other characters a reason to treat her this way and it’s shocking when midway through Lamb mentions being in college and that the man who died in the plane crash was her fiancé.

 

The one glimpse we are given of Lamb’s past is a video of her performance at a church talent show
The one glimpse we are given of Lamb’s past is a video of her performance at a church talent show

 

Because viewers never get a solid sense of what Lamb’s life was like when she was faithful and are only given brief glimpses of a video of her singing gospel songs, the reveal that she was courting the boy who died seems unbelievable for the character who has neither before or after suggesting she is mourning a lost love or has ever cared for anyone romantically. Lamb doesn’t seem like a grown woman grappling with a challenge to her faith and the consequent  rewriting of her system of values, but a sheltered child who has decided on something (atheism) without thinking about it and refuses to reconsider even though her heart doesn’t really seem to be in it, and the film treats her that way as well.

Paradise seems to adopt the disturbing stance that if Lamb were allowed a real descent into dens of vice, she would lose what supposedly makes her interesting as a character: her purity. She attempts to have sex with William but is rejected out of hand because he doesn’t want to ‘take her innocence’. And that is what this film really is, it gives the character enough autonomy to run around a bit and see things, to meet a prostitute to pay her for a conversation, but never to do anything that might risk her purity or the sugary foundation that is her personality just under the thin veneer of snark and acidity. Lamb is not allowed to grow and experiment and get to know herself on her own terms.

 

Nick Offerman and Holly Hunter are criminally underused as Lamb’s parents
Nick Offerman and Holly Hunter are criminally underused as Lamb’s parents

 

Even in her own movie, her function is to fix William’s womanizing ways and teach him to “respect” women in only the most patronizing, virtue guarding way and to force Loray into abandoning her cynicism and reconnecting with the family she had said earlier on she felt uncomfortable around. Sassy nightclub singer, Loray also plays into the offensive magical negro trope, something the film acknowledges, attempting (and failing) to make it okay by having the character say she doesn’t like that she is treated as a magical negro and explain what it means.

Lamb is so thinly developed and grounded in reality that her ultimate decision to go home to her parents and make peace with her community cannot be viewed as the victorious end of her internal journey. She doesn’t change or grow as a person, instead her own journey as a character is to cause the journeys of her friends. It’s quite a feat to write a character who is both protagonist and narrator, yet still manages to be a Manic Pixie Dream Girl , and especially sad for a film written and directed by a woman.

Paradise is not the journey of a young girl who’s lost her faith as it purports to be because Lamb continues to hold onto vestiges of it and be both constrained and defined by it, always pulling back before committing to sinning. Even her decision to use her settlement money to help Amber, William, and Loray isn’t the about face in character the film wants it to be.

 

Lamb, with Loray and William, consults her list
Lamb, with Loray and William, consults her list

 

This could work if Lamb’s reaction to the plane crash had been to become a self-absorbed person, living only for herself and committed to living in luxury and at the end of film decided to spend her life and money helping others while living an ordinary life, however, even on her night of sinful abandon, Lamb is always sweet, always thinking of others and frankly, not concerned enough about herself and what she wants.

And it’s sad because it could have been an interesting and unique story. I felt Paradise had the potential to be great fun as a TV show and indeed, watching the movie felt like watching a repackaged pilot. On a network, Lamb could be checking off a list of sins while giving away money in her adventures, based in Las Vegas hotel and indulging in Vegas iconography. On cable, the events of Paradise would be only the pilot episode, after which Lamb would go home and function as an outsider/former insider commenting on religious culture and small-town life, while trying to start her own charitable foundation.

Also worthy of discussion is the film’s portrayal of Lamb as a burn victim, which is complicated by cultural beauty expectations. In an interview, Cody said there was a lot of discussion of the extent of Lamb’s burns. She wanted Lamb to have burns on her face, but the studio would not allow the film’s lead to look less then conventionally beautiful. Cody also acknowledges that Lamb’s hair would have burnt off in the crash and could not have grown back to its massive length in the year since, but again, Lamb was not allowed to be bald.

 

Lamb doesn’t quite enjoy her first sip of alcohol
Lamb doesn’t quite enjoy her first sip of alcohol

 

A young female character grappling with the gulf between her extreme religious background and the forbidden things that interest her as a young modern woman is a narrative we don’t often see, and I wish Diablo Cody had done a better job with it.

________________________

Recommended Reading: The Way We Talk: Cody’s ‘Paradise’ and Hess’ ‘Austenland’ , Diablo Cody’s Directorial Debut is Not Ready for the Big Time

______________________________________________________________________________

Elizabeth Kiy is a Canadian writer and freelance journalist living in Toronto, Ontario. She recently graduated from Carleton University where she majored in journalism and minored in film.

Becky, Adelaide, and Nan: Women with Down Syndrome on ‘Glee’ and ‘American Horror Story’

Characters with physical or developmental disabilities are rarely given prominent roles on television ensembles, much less well-developed characters. ‘Glee’ and ‘American Horror Story,’ TV shows created by Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk, both feature important characters with Down Syndrome and have received much praise for it. However, the mere existence of these characters is not enough to suggest they are well portrayed and in each character there are several questionable areas that warrant discussion.

Characters with physical or developmental disabilities are rarely given prominent roles on television ensembles, much less well-developed characters. Glee  and American Horror Story, TV shows created by Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk, both feature important characters with Down Syndrome and have received much praise for it. Glee’s Becky Jackson and AHS’s Adelaide Langdon and Nan are all portrayed as flawed women and are allowed their own inner lives, desires, and triumphs.

However, the mere existence of these characters is not enough to suggest they are well portrayed and in each character there are several questionable areas that warrant discussion. Though one must take this criticism with a grain of salt, as Glee is a surreal over-the-top comedy where everyone is made fun of to a degree (though has been consistently problematic in its portrayal of women, the disabled, bisexuality and transwomen, among others) while American Horror Story is literally a horror show, where nearly everyone suffers and dies and indulges in many horror movie cliches–among them the child-like prophet and the martyr.

Becky

Becky Jackson (Lauren Potter) was introduced in Glee’s first season to as a means to character development for the show’s previously one-dimensional villain, Sue Sylvester. She was a shy, young girl with Down Syndrome, a social outcast who just wanted to be a cheerleader.

 

As a Cheerio, Becky is among the most popular girls in school
As a Cheerio, Becky is among the most popular girls in school

 

When Sue put her through a rigorous audition process, viewers and Glee Club leader Will Schuester assumed this was yet another of Sue’s cruelties. Obviously Sue was just torturing this girl for her own amusement with no hope of her actually making the squad, but this assumption was proved wrong when the show revealed that she reminds Sue of her sister Jean, who also has Downs.

Sue tells Will she is treating Becky just like everyone else because that’s what she wants and from then on Becky is a Cheerio, Sue’s constant sidekick and assistant and frequently recurring character.

Becky also continues to aid in the development of Sue’s character, as she becomes her voice of reason, being the the only one who can criticize Sue’ behaviour and talk to her on her level without fear of retaliation. For example, when Becky learns that Sue’s baby will likely have Downs, she is able to tell Sue that she needs to work on her patience to be a good parent. Becky functions as Sue’s heart and when Sue is shattered by her sister’s death, she expresses her grief by casting aside the only other thing that made her human, and kicks Becky off the Cheerios. Their bond is restored when Sue welcomes Becky back to the squad and promotes her to captain, after realizing how much it helps her to have Becky in her life.

 

Becky and Sue have a strong relationship that gives Sue humanity and Becky, a role model
Becky and Sue have a strong relationship that gives Sue humanity and Becky, a role model

 

However, for Becky, her relationship with Sue results in the loss of her own personhood. In a relatively short length of time, Becky gives up any other interests or ambitions she had and becomes a miniature version of her hero, Sue (even dressing her for Halloween). For most of the show, Becky is Sue’s mouthpiece, echoing her criticisms and opinions and making snarky and frequently offensive comments in the same manner that Sue is known for. She even shares Sue’s grossly inflated sense of self worth and importance (Helen Mirren is her inner voice) and heckles and sabotages other students when given the opportunity.

For brief period, it was fun that Becky could be as mean and snarky as almost all the other characters, but as the show dragged this on to become Becky’s defining characteristic, it become patronizing and unfunny. Becky is not portrayed as an otherwise ordinary teenage girl with interests in sex and blue humour but as low comedy, like a child swearing. The joke wasn’t what she was saying but that she was saying these kind of things at all.

 

Becky is disturbingly infantilized as Baby Jesus in the school’s nativity scene
Becky is disturbingly infantilized as Baby Jesus in the school’s nativity scene

 

In addition, Becky is constantly prepositioning other characters and making crude sexual comments about them. She lusts over the Glee Club’s Men of McKinley calendar and claims ownership of one-time date, Artie Abrams when she sees him kissing his girlfriend, calling him her future husband. However, none of her attractions are treated as valid. When she pays for a kiss at a kissing booth run by quarterback Finn Hudson, he kisses her on the cheek; when she and Artie bond over their disabilities on their date, he breaks up with her after she asks him to “do it” with her (in an alternate reality where Artie never went out with her, Becky became “the school slut”); and when she seems to find happiness with Jason, who also has Down Syndrome, she claims the relationship couldn’t work because he liked hot dogs and she liked pizza. By hypersexualizing a character who is treated as humourous for having a sexual desire and never considered as a viable romantic option, she is also desexualized and infantilized, treated like a child who doesn’t understand that (from the narrative’s perspective) the conventionally attractive characters aren’t interested in sleeping with her and she’ll never be prom queen.

There have been two particularly problematic plot lines featuring Becky in Glee’s recent seasons, both which could be essays in their own right. In season four’s much-maligned Shooting Star , Becky brings a gun to school because she fears the world outside the safe bubble of McKinley High, suggesting individuals with Down Syndrome are unstable and dangerous. In season five episode, Movin’ Out,  frequent misogynist Artie decides to “save” Becky and helps her find a college with programs for people with developmental disabilities, something she hadn’t considered previously. While this recent story has a positive message about Becky’s future and her abilities, the fact that another character, one who she stalked after he rejected her, imbues it with the same patronizing dynamic found in much of the plot lines featuring Becky.

Adelaide

The first episode of American Horror Story: Murder House opens in 1978 with Adelaide Langdon, a young girl with Downs ominously warning two boys they will die if they go into the titular house. In the next scene, her warning comes true.
As an adult over 30 years later, Adelaide (Jamie Brewer) continues to given warnings, frightening the Harmon family who have just moved into the house, next door to where she lives with her mother Constance (Jessica Lange). Though she is well meaning and friendly, her warnings are constantly misconstrued as threats due to her creepy habit of starring unblinking and appearing out of nowhere in the Harmon house.

Addy’s mother Constance is relentlessly cruel to her
Addy’s mother Constance is relentlessly cruel to her

 

Being a character on a horror television show, Addy’s Down Syndrome is used to frame her as an uncanny figure, an other in the style of Tod Browning’s Freaks. In horror or gothic media, the uncanny  is something that is familiar, yet strange at the same time, producing an unsettling and comfortable feeling, such as identical twins, mutes or people with developmental disabilities. Seemingly, Addy is able to enter the house whenever she desires, no matter what barriers are in her way, suggesting a magical, otherworldly aspect of her character. Her Down Syndrome alone is meant to produce discomfort in the viewer, manipulating them into wondering if she is evil or will, even unthinkingly, harm the family, for no other reason than that she is so othered.

Raised to believe she is an ugly monster who should keep out of sight, Addy wants nothing more than to be “a pretty girl” and mourns that she doesn’t look like the women in her fashion magazines. Her mother frequently insults her, calling her a burden and a ‘mongoloid’ and reinforcing over and over that Addy’s dream will never happen. Cruelly, Constance punishes her by locking her in the “Bad Girl Room,” a closet full of mirrors, further reinforcing Addy’s monstrous self-image.

As punishment, Addy is terrorized in a closet full of mirrors, where she is forced to see her face
As punishment, Addy is terrorized in a closet full of mirrors, where she is forced to see her face

 

Addy’s story ends sadly on Halloween when she is hit by a car and killed. Here, the show’s treatment of Addy continues to be problematic as it tries to have it both ways, portraying her as both something to fear and as an object of pity, a tragedy for viewers to mourn. When Addy dies she is wearing “a pretty girl” Halloween mask and just minutes before, she was ecstatically happy to finally be the person she’d always wanted, even if it was only in a small, temporary way. Like Sue, Addy is also used to humanize a bigoted character, as Constance, who caused most of the problems in Addy’s life puts makeup on Addy’s corpse and cries while telling her she’s “beautiful.” This suggests that Addy’s purpose in the narrative was chiefly to facilitate Constance’s character development, rather than a storyline or a life of her own.

 

Dressed as a “pretty girl” Addy is hit by a car and killed on Halloween
Dressed as a “pretty girl” Addy is hit by a car and killed on Halloween

Nan

Unlike Adelaide, whose story is presented as a tragedy centered around her Down Syndrome, Nan’s condition is never mentioned but subtly informs how she is treated by the narrative and the other characters. A young clairvoyant on American Horror Story: Coven, Nan (Jamie Brewer) is in most ways, portrayed as a normal girl. She admires the hot neighbor with her classmates, joins in on their catty comments and using her powers for cruel, teenage girl teasing (trying to make Madison put her cigarette in her vagina) in a way that doesn’t seem like the joke is that she is saying these things at all.

Nan is however, constantly dismissed even within the  group that tacitly includes her (problematically, Queenie who is Black is treated as the real outsider). She is never considered a serious contender in the season long competition to see who is  the most powerful witch of her generation, the Supreme, called ugly by Queen Bee Madison and the discovery that the neighbor, Luke is interested in her is treated as unbelievable by other characters.

Nan and Madison (Emma Roberts) compete for the affections of their neighbor Luke
Nan and Madison (Emma Roberts) compete for the affections of their neighbor Luke

 

However, sad as it may be, this is probably be an honest portrayal of how such a character would be treated in such an environment full of bitchery and backstabbing over any character flaw or deficit in appearance. Unlike Queenie, whose difference and feelings about her exclusion from the coven’s majority of white witches are explored in detail, Nan’s feelings are glossed over. She is different, but her difference is never examined, so it becomes an elephant in the room.

Like Adelaide, Nan insists she is not a virgin when it is assumed by other characters. She says she has sex all the time and men find her hot, however because the show never gives any background on who Nan was before she came to the school (as is given for all other characters), it is not clear whether this is true. The storyline of her romance with Luke is never able to progress to a romantic or sexual relationship as he is quickly murdered by his mother so he will not reveal her secrets.

Nan is portrayed as the moral center of the school/coven as her power, allows her to see into the hearts of the people around her. She mediates in fights and threatens to tell the police about the baby Marie Laveau had kidnapped earlier. However, Nan has a dark side which is briefly explored when she uses her powers to kill Luke’s mother, by compelling her to drink bleach, as revenge for her murder of Luke.

After her murder, Nan’s spirit looks down at her body and decides to leave the coven
After her murder, Nan’s spirit looks down at her body and decides to leave the coven

 

She is ultimately murdered by matriarchs Marie and Fiona Goode, functioning bringing them closer together. Her death is used as the sacrifice of an innocent soul, but it is suggested that Nan had some choice in the matter and decides to leave the coven to destroy each other so she can be at peace. The one bad thing she does, the neighbor’s murder is excused because it was deserved and as she is accepted as an innocent, a soul too pure for this world. In this manner, Nan comes close to the stereotype of the saintly disabled person, and is portrayed as a martyr, the lone character over the season who is never resurrected.

Ultimately, though are three characters discussed here have problematic and debatable qualities, both in their personalities and in the way they are framed by their respective narratives, they offer unique portrayals of women with Down Syndrome. If nothing else, they are all prominent characters who are treated as people rather than public service announcements in major television shows. Hopefully they are seen as steps in the right direction.

 

Recommended Reading: Will This Depiction of Down Syndrome be a Horror Story? ; Exploring Bodily Autonomy on American Horror Story: Coven ; Glee’s Not so Gleeful Representation of Disabled Women; The Complicated Racial Politics of “American Horror Story: Coven”; Disability Advocates Call ‘Glee’ Portrayal ‘Poor Choice’

___________________________________________________________________________________

Elizabeth Kiy is a Canadian writer and freelance journalist living in Toronto, Ontario. She recently graduated from Carleton University where she majored in journalism and minored in film.

Consent, Taboo Reading and Vanity: Lifetime’s ‘Flowers in The Attic’

If you were once a certain type of precocious, fanciful preteen girl chances are you encountered ‘Flowers in the Attic.’
Maybe it was the cover drew you in, the face of a young girl, pale and uncertain, peering through red shutters, and when you opened it, three other eerie blonde children huddled together under the spectral form of a sinister old man. Who were these strange beautiful children? And why was unquestionably evil figure about to crush them with his bare hands? If you saw the cover, surely you had to wonder.

Lifetime promoted their 2014 TV movie with full knowledge of the book’s significance to readers
Lifetime promoted their 2014 TV movie with full knowledge of the book’s significance to readers

 

If you were once a certain type of precocious, fanciful preteen girl chances are you encountered Flowers in The Attic.

Maybe it was the cover drew you in, the face of a young girl, pale and uncertain, peering through red shutters, and when you opened it, three other eerie blonde children huddled together under the spectral form of a sinister old man. Who were these strange beautiful children? And why was unquestionably evil figure about to crush them with his bare hands? If you saw the cover, surely you had to wonder.

And then you had to read it, in secret most definitely, huddled under your covers gasping, passing it around at a sleepover, maybe you snooped through your parents’ or other sister’s copies or pursed through it at the house where you babysat. Or that one loud friend who gave you all the facts on sex recapped the story over school lunch.

The famous keyhole cover for Flowers in the Attic
The famous keyhole cover for Flowers in the Attic

 

Even if you didn’t read it, a lot of us did. First published in 1979, V.C. Andrews’s trash-classic has since sold more than 40 million copies worldwide and spawned 4 bestselling sequels known as the Dollanganger series. It also was the beginning of a ghostwritten empire of family saga books, full of Andrews’s favorite themes: incest, child abuse, rape, imprisonment, slut-shaming and beautiful girls wandering around in flimsy peignoirs.

Flowers is the story of four children hidden away in their grandparents’ attic so their mother can inherit a fortune from her father, who will disinherit her if he ever learns she had children with her late husband, her father’s brother and her half-uncle.

Like any book that couples salacious elements with overwrought highly purple prose, it’s both chilling and laughable, part fairytale, part gothic horror story, and as its success makes clear, it’s a delicate formula. The 1987 film adaptation starring the original Buffy (Kristy Swanson) and Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher) was reviled by fans for excluding one element they felt crucial to the story: the incestuous relationship between brother Chris and sister Cathy. So when Lifetime announced plans for a TV movie remake they were quick to note their version would keep the incest intact.

Despite poor reviews, ratings-wise it was a huge success; according to the Hollywood Reporter , 6.1 million viewers tuned in to the film’s premiere Saturday night. The 1950s-set drama was also the highest rated basic cable TV movie since 2012.

Like the book, the film is full of heightened emotions. Every other line is delivered with a slap and an exclamation mark and the acting vacillates between wooden and frighteningly animated. Mad Men ’s Kiernan Shipka (maybe someday we’ll see her in a modern day role) who plays Cathy does as well as she can with a poorly paced script and clunky dialogue, often lifted directly from the book. It’s really not such strange territory for Shipka after playing Sally Draper through her difficult adolescence. Mason Dye as her onscreen brother/lover and Ava Telek and Maxwell Kovach as twins Carrie and Cory gave unremarkable performances, with the twins just hovering around the room not given anything to do.

Ellen Burstyn gave a nuanced performance as the children’s grandmother
Ellen Burstyn gave a nuanced performance as the children’s grandmother

 

As the children’s cruel grandmother, Ellen Burstyn gave her character some degree of ambiguity and humanity, particularly in her reaction to the children’s Christmas present. Burstyn allows the grandmother to become an interesting character when she visibly struggles with her affection for the children and at the film’s end, her own fears of the attic. I’ve gone back and forth on Heather Graham’s portrayal of the children’s mother, Corrine. Her line reading range from flat and vapid to manic and bug eyed with no sane middle ground, but if it’s an acting choice, it may be a good one as it does suit the character.

The Grandmother teaches the children a lesson about disobeying her by showing them their mother’s whipped back
The Grandmother teaches the children a lesson about disobeying her by showing them their mother’s whipped back

 

For a story about people tempted to inflict and endure suffering for the promise of wealth, the film has cheap production values and poor effects (such as the whip marks on Corrine’s back that look like lipstick streaks) and never shows viewers the house’s glamour or gives the sense of opulence that gave the children their hopes even in the darkest moments. We are also informed of the passage of time, but never truly feel it, so it becomes difficult to relate to the characters’ ordeal. Though most of the creepy elements from the book are there: the beatings, the taring, the poisoned doughnuts, the film never becomes creepy as it should. For all its Gothic dressing, it’s still a Lifetime movie, cheesy and tonally awkward.

There are interesting ideas about vanity and appearance carried over from the book that become more significant in the film as a visual medium. The book’s premise, that Corrine refuses to work to support her family after her husband’s death, is given more sympathy in the film thanks to the constant reminders from the backdrop and clothing that the film is set in the 50s where this would be difficult for a woman.

Corrine explains why she needs her parents’ money
Corrine explains why she needs her parents’ money

 

Born wealthy and raised to be a wife, she is also given a sad Daisy Buchanan quality, absent in the book, as she tells the children, she can’t support four children because she only knows how to look pretty. Her assertion in the book, that her incestous marriage was not sinful because her children are not physically deformed and are “perfect” is given more weight as the viewer can actually see the children and their grandmother’s appraisal of them. Here and in Cathy’s refusal to cut her hair when given the choice of cutting it or allowing herself and her siblings to starve, vanity is heightened to hubris as it leads Chris and Cathy into their relationship, which shows they are far from the perfect children their mother had assured herself they were.

There are some changes from the original story, the addition of electric fence as a pointless obstacle, the heavy handed symbolism of the deer being shot, but the most problematic (though it does make the film easier to watch) is the change of the main incest scene from a rape into a consensual encounter between siblings. I have to wonder if Lifetime felt they could tell story of incest and imprisonment, but that incest and imprisonment punctuated by rape (a Lifetime staple) would make the story too dreary.

Chris and Cathy engage in consensual romance
Chris and Cathy engage in consensual romance

 

Though Chris explicitly acknowledges that it was a rape in the book, Cathy forgives him saying it was her fault because she could have fought him off if she didn’t want it, leaving it unclear to young readers what they supposed to believe about Cathy’s rape and who to blame in real life. A blogger who writes as The Fifth Dollanganger runs the blog, The Complete Annotated VC Andrews Blog-o-Rama frequently posts the search terms readers use to access her blog. Some of them include things like “flowers in the attic chris and cathy make love” and “flowers in the attic sex excerpt”, showing at least some readers misinterpreted the dynamics of the scene. By making a rape scene into a love story, Lifetime lessens the gothic horror of the story, as well as romanticizing and confusing the abusive conditions Cathy faces. Though there is one scene where Chris is rough towards Cathy and grabs her wrists, he stops quickly when he is asked to, suggesting Cathy has the power in the situation and could indeed stop him if he wanted to hurt her, a very problematic message for the film to give.

The removal of Chris’s aspiration to be a doctor from the film takes away the authority the book allows him, adding power imbalance to the conditions leading up to the rape. As a would-be doctor, he approaches the removal of the tar from Cathy’s hair as an experiment and gives the excuse of clinical interest for his fascination with Cathy’s naked body and developing breasts. Whittled down to such easy gender roles, Chris and Cathy are starkly contrasted as boy doctor doll and girl ballerina doll. In caring from their young siblings, Chris’s aspiration towards this ideal 50’s husband profession casts him as the ideal masculine father, paired easily with ballerina Cathy as a feminine mother. It also allows his to take over from his father in his authority over his sister, as he frequently knows more about Cathy’s body than she does. It is Chris who tells their mother to buy bras and pads for Cathy and instigates the sex talk between mother and daughter. Cathy’s relationship with her father is given an incestous element in the film as she refers to the ring her gave her as a promise ring, a deeply creepy custom which allows him guardianship of her virginity. As Chris becomes the male head of the family, her also takes “ownership” of Cathy.

We’ll have to see what happens with the upcoming sequel based on the second Dollanganger book, Petals on the Wind, which Lifetime green-lit even before the first film aired. The book includes three additional rapists as love interests for Cathy.

Corrine lounges on the legendary swan bed, living in luxury while her children suffer
Corrine lounges on the legendary swan bed, living in luxury while her children suffer

 

But I have to wonder who is meant to enjoy this movie. There’s no fun at all if you have no familiarity with the material, be it nostalgia or morbid curiosity. Though its suggested for teens on Lifetime’s website, the film has a mature content warning and airs on a channel targeted to older women. And anyone who read the books when they were younger is at that stage where their former interest amuses or embarrasses them, to watch it and talk comfortably about it, I think you need a mix of both.

Flowers in the Attic is ultimately the kind of story you’d act out with your Barbies, it’s appeal belongs in your youth, before you’re too self aware, too conscious of reality, the workforce and job training, of sex and money. They belong to that time when you think adult women just lie around in silks and feathers, eating pastel candies and periodically putting on gowns and dancing with gentlemen. They have to pass into your consciousness like a young girl’s daydream, Cathy’s salacious horror, her sexual curiosity, her bright ambition for attention and beauty and love. When you encounter it you have to be the type of girl who reads too much, plays elaborate fantasy games at recess and runs through long scenarios in math class of what she’d do with millions upon millions of dollars. A girl who wanted to be a ballerina, then an actress, then an artist, then a witch and then an impossibly glamourous authoress lounging around in marabou heels and furs.  A girl who puts on Shakespeare plays in the backyard and wears cat’s eye sunglasses, a feather boa and jean shorts  and it never occurs to her to find it crazy.

Cathy looks out the attic window, uncertain if she will ever be free
Cathy looks out the attic window, uncertain if she will ever be free

 

I think the film’s real failure is in its removal from the forbidden environment of taboo consumption, presented onscreen and sanitized for grown-ups where there’s nothing to fear in engaging. As with the books, the only way to give the story its enduring significance is to watch in secret, imposing your prepubescent imaginings over the narrative. It’s the type of story that needs the constant fear that someone will burst in the door and find you, engaged in the literary equivalent of masturbation.

 

_______________________________________________________

Recommended Reading: “Oh, I Get It!  *They’re* the Flowers in the Attic!”,  The Complete Annotated VC Andrews Blog-o-RamaThe Complete V.C. Andrews“Whither Flowers?”: The Future of Illicit Reading

 

___________________________________________________________________________________________

Elizabeth Kiy is a Canadian writer and freelance journalist living in Toronto, Ontario. She recently graduated from Carleton University where she majored in journalism and minored in film.

First Jane Tennison DCI: Revisiting ‘Prime Suspect’s Complex Lead

In the final episode of ‘Prime Suspect,’ the long-running British series, Jane Tennison (Helen Mirren), a hardworking, hard drinking detective who has sacrificed so much of her life for her job and made more than a few enemies, skips her own retirement party and walks out and into the rest of her life. In the other room, her colleagues are jovial, waiting for the stripper they hired, preparing balloons, and liberally dipping into the refreshments.
But Jane is uncertain.

In the final episode of Prime Suspect, the long-running British series, Jane Tennison (Helen Mirren), a hardworking, hard drinking detective who has sacrificed so much of her life for her job and made more than a few enemies, skips her own retirement party, and walks out and into the rest of her life. In the other room, her colleagues are jovial, waiting for the stripper they hired, preparing balloons, and liberally dipping into the refreshments.
But Jane is uncertain.

Jane in the final episode, the weight of everything she’s seen finally catching up with her.
Jane in the final episode, the weight of everything she’s seen finally catching up with her.

 

She’s triumphant as she’s solved her last case, but it’s taken a clear toll on her. She’s tired, she’s unsure what else she can be other than a cop, is struggling with her alcoholism and the reality of how few people she has in her life to lean on, and yet, she’s free of the relentless politics and bureaucracy she’s faced throughout her career and has finished it she way she intended. For all she’s sacrificed, she’s lived the life she wanted and refused to compromise either personally or professionally. And after seven series of watching and cheering her on, we’re sure she’ll be okay. If she’d gone to the party, there’d be cause to worry about her.

Prime Suspect ran for seven series airing between 1991 and 2006, earning Emmys, Golden Globes, and BAFTAs as well as serving as an inspiration of several character-driven and female-led police dramas. The series was created by mystery writer Lynda La Plante after discovering there were only four female Detective Chief Inspectors (DCIs) in Scotland Yard at the time and Tennison was based on Jackie Malton, a celebrated officer with success in homicide, fraud, and robbery divisions.

Prime Suspect Title Card
Prime Suspect title card

 

The first series followed Jane’s journey to gain the respect of her male colleagues as she leads her first investigation, fighting to be taken seriously at every turn. The idea of the police force as a boys’ club colors much of the first series and  continues to a gradually lessening degree throughout the rest of show’s run as Jane earns respect (and contempt) for her own merit. Subsequent series feature groundbreaking investigations for a show of the time period, probing into institutional racism, pedophilia, agism, genocide, police brutality and misconduct and well as a rather shakily handled portrayal of gay prostitution, a mistreated Transwoman character, and a sensitive depiction of abortion.

Prime Suspect relentlessly delves into dark territory; the cases are horrific and the victims ghettoized by police bureaucracy, and without Jane at its centre, never losing focus of the goal of obtaining justice for the victims and securing convictions and Mirren’s fierce portrayal of her, it could easily become depressing and marred by its focus on interviews and interrogations over of gun fights and chases. Jane is the rare female character who is allowed to be flawed, yet continues to be likable both in the perspective of the narrative and in the viewer’s eyes. Even if you dislike her as a person, it’s impossible not to respect her and to be a bit awed by what she does. And she is not always easy to like.

The show doesn’t shy away from graphic forensic evidence and interesting police science, such as reconstructing a face from this skull
The show doesn’t shy away from graphic forensic evidence

 

From the start, Jane is abrasive and difficult, as in the first episode, she begins angling for a promotion right after her colleague dies. Frequently, she is too harsh on suspects after deciding their guilt and asked variations of, “What kind of person are you?” She also feigns empathy to get information, a tactic that works even accidentally as it becomes her default mode (notably in series 4). Most interestingly, Jane is often wrong and insensitive: she commits the cardinal sin of a woman in power by not supporting other women, goes after the wrong man and causes a hostage situation, appears racist for not wanting to work with a her former lover, a Black detective, as well as several other incidences.

In series 4, Jane’s breakthrough case is reopened and with her entire career called into question, she goes off investigate on her own. This involves visiting her suspect’s elderly mother, pretending to be a family friend and bringing her out to an isolated pier when Jane harshly interrogates her, in a manner bordering on abusive as the old woman grows increasingly frightened. In the end, she proves her suspect’s guilt but in a manner that sets her in the worst possible light for the audience.

Before she is given an investigation to lead, Jane is invisible to her male coworkers, who talk about cases around her, but never asking for her opinion
Before she is given an investigation to lead, Jane is invisible to her male coworkers, who talk about cases around her

 

As a leader, her refusal to compromise means she is determined to catch the guilty party, while her co-workers urge her just to get someone to confess, guilty or not. She’s tough, telling her squad in her first briefing, “All I ask is your undivided loyalty and attention. … You don’t like it, put in for a transfer.” She is also very clever, shown in series 2, when she eliminates a possible identity for a murder victim by putting her own watch with the victim’s effects and allowing her mother to falsely claim it.

Mirren’s acting skills are highlighted in tense interrogation scenes
Mirren’s acting skills are highlighted in tense interrogation scenes

 

But for all her prickly meanness and seeming detachment, Jane really cares about getting justice for victims and becomes deeply emotionally involved. After long periods of procedural drama, the show imbues a great deal of cathartic release in the moments when she celebrates a victory by pumping her fists and cheering and in the private moments where Jane, overwhelmed and exhausted, breaks down and cries.

It’s her frustrations dealing with bureaucracy or snags in her investigations that frequently lead her to do things like snap at her subordinates, splash wine on her supervisors, and find solace in smoking, drinking, and sex.

Prime Suspect is also noted for its straightforward depiction of workplace sexism. Rather than catcalls, pranks, or groping, sexism manifests itself in subtle gestures meant to undermine her authority, such as suggestions that she is irrational or hormonal and her male coworkers being promoted over her.

Jane’s biggest detractor is Detective Sergeant Bill Otley, while DI Frank Burkin and DS Richard Hawley become two of her supporters
Jane’s biggest detractor is Detective Sergeant Bill Otley, while DI Frank Burkin and DS Richard Hawley become two of her supporters

 

Moreover, as the first series goes on, Jane slowly gains the respect and support of her colleagues, they take orders willingly and the entire squad sign their names on a petition to keep her on the case when their superiors threaten to remove her. Throughout the program, Jane’s constant refrain (made humourous thanks to Mirren’s role in The Queen) is: “Don’t call me Ma’am I’m not the bloody queen.” She tells people she wants to be called “boss or guv,” but never ma’am. At the end of the first series she knows she has gained their respect once the squad calls her guv.

Jane is an interesting character to examine in a feminist critique as it doesn’t seem that she would consider herself a feminist. Even as Jane advances through the force, within the show’s narrative, the pinnacle of her success is not when she reaches the highest rank but when she gets to a point where her colleagues complain about her and her supervisors sabotage her not because she’s a woman but because of her personality and her leadership. In the last episode, as she prepares to retire, she is celebrated as the first female DCI, to which she responds, a detective first, woman second: “First Jane Tennison DCI.”

Still, there are several incidences when Jane uses her gender to her advantage. Notably, in the first series, she hides in the women’s locker room when she knows her supervisor is looking for her to pull her off the case, knowing it’s the only place he can’t go. Later, when interrogating her suspect’s girlfriend, she fusses over her appearance to uncharacteristic degree as she knows the girlfriend will be less contrary if she believes Jane is concerned with her appearance. In another series, she gets information unavailable to a male officer when she has a drink with two prostitutes and talks to them about their friend’s murder, establishing a friendly bond when a man propositions her that makes them comfortable with her.

Hyperaware of how she is perceived, Jane knows that if she shows any weakness, she will lose all the respect she’s gained. In series 4, she has difficulty dealing with DS Christine Cromwell (Sophie Stanton), a woman who does things a lot like she did in earlier series: going off on her own to investigate, losing her temper in front of the press, and sharing a close relationship with a male colleague. These things make Jane fearful both of associating herself with a woman who could be perceived to be sleeping her way to the top, and of the perception that she could be giving Cromwell special treatment or unearned sorority. As a result, Jane in harsher to female subordinated than males and sets them to a higher standard as she believes they need to be tougher to make it in the department.

After Cromwell proves herself, Jane takes her under her wing and acts as her mentor
After Cromwell proves herself, Jane takes her under her wing and acts as her mentor

 

Eventually Cromwell proves herself clever and determined, leading Jane to develop a productive partnership with her, as the two investigated in a pair for much of the rest of the investigation.

Another recurring theme in the series is Jane’s struggle maintaining stable relationships. Her relationship in the first series is introduced as loving and supportive, with Jane excited to meet his son, but quickly crumbles with the stress of her new job. Jane, as anyone who knew her would expect, puts the investigation first, complains when he laughs about what the tabloids are saying about her, and is unable to make dinner for his business partners. The boyfriend yells at her that she cares more about “your rapists and your tarts” than him, and leaves her without discussion after a fight. In the next series, she has moved on and taken the break-up in stride, but in the rest of the  program Jane seems lonely when she is given silent moments, begins to a routine of eating frozen dinners and drinking alone and puts up with less before ending her relationships. In series 4, she has new boyfriend, who makes question her priorities: “This is the first time in my life I’ve had the feeling that I don’t want to get up, go to work, don’t want to screw up another relationship.” Still though, he refuses to support her when things get difficult and is gone by the next series. Without fail, Jane refuses to stay in a relationship with any man who can’t acknowledge the importance for her career.

The pressure begins to get to Jane as she talks a moment to collect herself.
The pressure begins to get to Jane as she talks a moment to collect herself.

 

At the end of series 3, Jane finds herself pregnant and despite realizing this is her last chance to have a child, decides to have an abortion. It’s a difficult decision for her and not one she takes lightly, but it’s presented as the right thing for her to do based on where she is in her life and what she wants for her future. True to the character, Jane’s decision-making process is not fraught with meaningful glances at mothers with babies or discussion with her friends or family; instead, she when she calls the doctor to arrange it, she is calm and businesslike. Only after it’s arranged does she take a minute to mourn, turning away from the camera and the audience to cry,  showing only her shoulder moving up and down for an extended shot.

Jane Tennison is a fascinating character whose DNA is found in several of its predecessors. Notably, the failed American remake, a serviceable cop show with Maria Bello as its strong lead and The Closer, whose creators have acknowledged the debt they owe to Prime Suspect. Gillian Anderson has also compared her role in The Fall to Jane Tennison

But there is only one Jane, the kind of woman who leads with a quiet integrity who manages to be both poised and ruthless, who tries to wear different lives that don’t fit her and has the courage to cast them off, always knows what she wants and what she values: giving justice to her victims, and solving crimes instead of succeeding in departmental politics and earning promotions. It’s a series that deserves revisiting.

Recommended Reading: Saying Goodbye to ‘Prime Suspect’ and One of My Fave Badass Female Characters ; The Haunting New Serial-Killer Thriller Heading to Netflix

_______________________________________________________

Elizabeth Kiy is a Canadian writer and freelance journalist living in Toronto, Ontario. She recently graduated from Carleton University where she majored in journalism and minored in film.