Meryl Streep Has a Blast in ‘Ricki and the Flash’ and You Will Too

Meryl Streep is having the time of her life in ‘Ricki and the Flash’ — playing rock star, acting alongside her daughter Mamie Gummer, macking on Rick Springfield, and wearing leather pants. Her joy is infectious, and lends an overall lighthearted tone to what could be a very sad movie about estranged families.

Meryl Streep in 'Ricki and the Flash'

Written by Robin Hitchcock.


Meryl Streep is having the time of her life in Ricki and the Flash — playing rock star, acting alongside her daughter Mamie Gummer, macking on Rick Springfield, and wearing leather pants. Her joy is infectious, and lends an overall lighthearted tone to what could be a very sad movie about estranged families.

More of Meryl Streep having the time of her life

Streep plays Ricki Randazzo, formerly known as Linda Brummer back in her square suburban mother days. She left her marriage and her three children to escape intractable dissatisfaction; basically, imagine if Streep’s character in Kramer vs. Kramer went on to become frontwoman for a dive bar’s house band.

Ricki’s life is far from perfect: she struggles to get by with her cashier job at a Whole Foods stand-in, she won’t commit to her boyfriend/lead guitarist Greg, but she doesn’t seem to regret her life or her choices.

Mamie Gummer as a very depressed Julie

Then: a phone call. Her daughter Julie’s husband has abruptly left for her for another woman. She’s falling apart and “needs her mother,” a role Ricki hasn’t played in decades.

Mamie Gummer is fantastic in her role as Julie. She genuinely portrays the devastating depression of grief while milking plenty of humor from her character having absolutely zero fucks left to give. Streep and her daughter perfectly utilize their natural chemistry as Julie’s inability to play at normalcy jibes with Ricki’s counterculture vibe, both sticking out awkwardly behind the Brummer’s white picket fence.

Streep and daughter Gummer have natural chemistry

There’s a fantastically tense dinner where Ricki’s also reunited with her sons Josh (Sebastian Stan) and Adam (Nick Westrate), who are revealed by Julie to be respectively engaged and gay, though they haven’t felt moved to tell their biological mother either of those things. As strained as Julie and Ricki’s relationship is, there’s a wider chasm between Ricki and her sons.

Ricki, Julie, and Pete revisit old memories.

Even though Ricki does bond with Julie and with her ex-husband Pete (Kevin Kline), Diablo Cody’s smart script avoids excessive sentimentality; it is clear that Ricki can never make up for lost time, and that her children will always have a family she’s not entirely a part of, including their seemingly perfect stepmother Maureen (Audra McDonald). Maureen is stunningly polite and kind when she basically kicks Ricki out of her house, and subsequently reaches out to Ricki with an invite to Josh’s wedding. I really liked seeing these two women not hate each other despite their obvious conflict, and Audra McDonald is really good in her few scenes.

Audra McDonald and Kevin Kline in 'Ricki and the Flash'

At the big wedding in the end, everyone gets along despite some awkward moments, and when Ricki and the Flash crash the wedding stage (sorry, other band!) they get all the uptight rich people in their boogie shoes. (The third act felt a bit like a condensed version of director Jonathan Demme’s previous wedding movie, Rachel Getting Married.) We know it can’t really be happily ever after for this family, but there is hope for much-less-unhappily ever after.

Ricki and her children reunited on stage

A significant portion of the film’s run time is Ricki’s band rocking out, so if that’s not your jam, you might get bored (my husband sure did). But director Jonathan Demme has made some incredible concert movies (Stop Making Sense and Neil Young: Heart of Gold), and he puts those talents to use here. And giving the band significant screen time allows us to see the joy in Ricki’s life, so she’s not just some pathetic deadbeat mother who ruined her life. And also lets us see Meryl Streep sing “Bad Romance,” which is worth the price of admission.

Ricki and the Flash is not a movie of great consequence, but it is nearly perfect for what it is. Unless you’re a weirdo like my husband who hates rock ‘n’ roll, you should see it.


Robin Hitchcock is a writer based in Pittsburgh who was born in the same hospital as Meryl Streep.

The Women of the ‘Mission Impossible’ Franchise

‘Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation’ is kicking it at the box office and getting great reviews. And I can confirm that it is fantastic. If you like action movies or spy thrillers at all, you should see it. You’ll love it. But after you see it, I would like to spoil your fun by unfurling my feminist criticism by looking back at the previous entries in the nearly 20-years-running Mission Impossible franchise to see how women have fared overall. The news isn’t great.

Rebecca Ferguson and Tom Cruise in 'Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation"
Rebecca Ferguson and Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation

 

Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation is kicking it at the box office and getting great reviews. And I can confirm that it is fantastic. If you like action movies or spy thrillers at all, you should see it. You’ll love it. But after you see it, I would like to spoil your fun by unfurling my feminist criticism.

Rogue Nation has a great central female character in Rebecca Ferguson’s Ilsa Faust. The Daily Beast calls Ferguson “The Second Coming of Lauren Bacall” and, astonishingly, that passes the smell test. Ilsa is the kind of gal who can run at breakneck speed in heels but is also practical enough to take them off before jumping off a roof: the perfect spy movie fantasy of a woman. And Ferguson plays her with enough mystique we spend the whole movie never quite sure which side of the Bond Girl Axis (good girl who is actually bad vs. bad girl who is actually good) she’ll land on.  Ilsa is so captivating that I didn’t even notice until I got home that she was the only named female character in the movie. The only other woman with any dialogue, “Shop Girl,” is killed off within a minute or so. Rogue Nation is the perfect example of a movie that fails the Bechdel Test BADLY, while patting itself on the back for presenting a “strong female character.”

I decided to look back at the previous entries in the nearly 20-years-running Mission Impossible franchise to see how women have fared overall. The news isn’t great.

Emmanuelle Béart in 'Mission Impossible'
Emmanuelle Béart in Mission Impossible

 

Mission Impossible (1996)

Number of named female characters: 4
Named female characters who survive the film: 1 (not main female character)
Women of color: 0
Bond Girl Axis: Good girl is actually bad.
Love Interest for Tom Cruise: Yes
Bechdel Test: Fail (second prong)

Thandie Newton in 'Mission Impossible II"
Thandie Newton in Mission Impossible II

 

Mission Impossible II (2000)

Number of named female characters: 1 (seriously, just one)
Named female characters who survive the film: 1
Women of color: 1 (main female character, obviously)
Bond Girl Axis: Bad girl is actually good.
Love Interest for Tom Cruise: Yes
Bechdel Test: Fail (first prong)

Maggie Q in 'Mission Impossible III'
Maggie Q in Mission Impossible III

 

Mission Impossible III (2006)

Number of named female characters: 3
Named female characters who survive the film: 2
Women of color: 1
Bond Girl Axis: Not applicable. All women are what they seem (all three good).
Love Interest for Tom Cruise: Yes
Bechdel Test: Fail (third prong)

Paula Patton in 'Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol'
Paula Patton in Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol

 

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol (2011)

Number of named female characters: 3 (one a cameo, without dialogue)
Named female characters who survive the film: 2
Women of color: 1 (main female character)
Bond Girl Axis: Not applicable. All women are what they seem (two good, one bad).
Love Interest for Tom Cruise: Only in cameo
Bechdel Test: Near-pass (do grunts during a fight count as a conversation?)

Rebecca Ferguson as Ilsa Faust in 'Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation'
Rebecca Ferguson as Ilsa Faust in Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation

 

Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation (2015)

Number of named female characters: 1
Named female characters who survive the film: 1 (2 unnamed characters die)
Women of color: 0
Bond Girl Axis: [Spoiler] Morally ambiguous girl is actually good.
Love Interest for Tom Cruise: No
Bechdel Test: Fail (first prong)

Some obvious themes emerge: There are shockingly few women in the Mission Impossible movies, they generally don’t interact, and a lot of them die.

Keri Russell is killed off in the first act of 'Mission Impossible III'
Keri Russell is killed off in the first act of Mission Impossible III

 

What is worse is that even when female characters survive to the credits, they generally don’t appear in the following sequels (with no explanation of where they’ve gone). Thandie Newton’s Nyah, the only woman in Mission Impossible II, ends the film as the ally and lover of Cruise’s Ethan Hunt. She’s never spoken of again. Maggie Q’s Zhen in Mission Impossible III and Paula Patton’s Jane in Ghost Protocol were both women of color working alongside Ethan; they’re not secretly evil, they don’t die, they aren’t his love interest (maybe Nyah disappeared because it was a bad breakup?). But when the next movie comes around, they’re not on his team anymore. Sure, we never see the character Jonathan Rhys Meyers plays in Mission Impossible III again, either, but he is one of countless white dudes in the franchise. As you can see above, women in the franchise are so countable that a two-year-old would be like, “I got this.”

Michele Monaghan as Julia in 'Mission Impossible III', at gunpoint.
Michele Monaghan as Julia in Mission Impossible III, at gunpoint.

 

The only woman who appears in more than one Mission Impossible movie is Michelle Monaghan’s Julia, who marries Ethan in Mission Impossible: III and promptly becomes a damsel in distress. Bad Guy Philip Seymour Hoffman’s first words to Ethan are, “Do you have a wife or a girlfriend? Because if you do, I’m going to find her and I’m going to hurt her.” So even though Mission Impossible: III arguably does the best by women, it leans heavily on the trope of women in refrigerators (Ethan is also tormented by failing to save his protégé Lindsey Farris, played by Keri Russell).  At the start of Ghost Protocol we’re led to believe Julia was killed off-screen between movies, but she is revealed to be secretly alive in the final scene. Not alive enough to have any dialogue, though. Which means surviving to make a silent cameo is the best any woman in five Mission Impossible movies has done.

Which doesn’t make me optimistic for Rebecca Ferguson’s future with the franchise. Even if she does show up in the next Mission Impossible movie (they are planning a sixth), it will be frustrating that a white woman is the first to manage that. Or maybe Jane and Zhen will team up with Ilsa and Nyah in the next movie to save Ethan from mortal peril? There’s still time to write that movie, Hollywood.

 

 

 

‘Trainwreck’s Unexpected Dose of The Feels

‘Trainwreck’ made me cry. As in weep. I’m not talking about my eyes welling up, or having to furtively swipe a single tear off my cheekbone, but full on is-there-snot-leaking-from-my nose CRYING. I’m sitting there in the theater wondering if there was some alternate trailer for this movie cut to “Everybody Hurts” that I missed. And hoping I’m not ruining my eye makeup. [I did.]

Amy Schumer and Bill Hader in 'Trainwreck'
Amy Schumer and Bill Hader in ‘Trainwreck’

 

Trainwreck, WE HAD A DEAL. I go see you opening weekend instead of Ant-Man, you provide me with two hours of an effervescent blend of rom-com sweetness and dick jokes. Nowhere in this negotiation was there any discussion of GENUINE EMOTIONS. I didn’t sign up for this.

Trainwreck made me cry. As in weep. I’m not talking about my eyes welling up, or having to furtively swipe a single tear off my cheekbone, but full on is-there-snot-leaking-from-my nose CRYING. I’m sitting there in the theater wondering if there was some alternate trailer for this movie cut to “Everybody Hurts” that I missed. And hoping I’m not ruining my eye makeup. [I did.]

Things start off promising. I laughed out loud when we saw that Amy had a job writing for a magazine. Job in publishing is the free space in Rom-Com Bingo. That Amy writes for a grody men’s magazine called S’Tuffed signaled to me we were gonna get all the rom-com tropes but subverted in the same way our hard-drinking sexually-capricious heroine deviates from your standard female lead. That doesn’t happen. Hardly any other spaces on Rom-Com bingo get filled. There isn’t even a Meet Cute.

Amy doesn't like spooning.
Amy doesn’t like spooning.

 

Amy and her romantic interest Aaron (Bill Hader) Meet Normal when she interviews him for a story for the magazine. They interact like normal humans who genuinely get along (well, exceptionally funny normal humans). They start dating, and there are some hiccups because Amy isn’t used to Real Relationships, but those hiccups don’t even result in any wacky misunderstandings. When Amy and Aaron get to their necessary third act near-breakup, it looks like a real relationship struggling because of interpersonal differences.  Ugh, real life.

Amy and her sister Kim (Brie Larson)
Amy and her sister Kim (Brie Larson)

 

Meanwhile, in Trainwreck‘s most striking departure from the rom-com model, Amy has lots of stuff going on her life aside from dating this dude. Most notably, her complicated relationships with her family. Amy and her younger sister Kim (Brie Larson) get along, but Amy has trouble relating to Kim’s stable family life, with a square husband (Mike Birbiglia) and an oddly well-behaved stepchild. There’s further conflict between Amy and Kim as they deal with moving their father, who has multiple sclerosis, into assisted living. [Perhaps you can guess where the weeping kicks in.] The sister relationship in Trainwreck is as real and recognizable as the romance, if not more so. Schumer and Larson really nail the complicated interplay of jealousy and judgment between Amy and Kim.

There are also dick jokes. Trainwreck is very funny. Amy Schumer brings her magic, and the supporting cast is full of delightful oddball characters. I particularly liked a (TAN!) Tilda Swinton as Amy’s sociopathically brash editor and LeBron James as an extremely sensitive and supportive best friend to sports doctor Aaron. [Bill Hader is quite notably the straight man throughout, but he’s Bill Hader so he still gets in some big laughs.]

LeBron James as LeBron James
LeBron James as LeBron James is one of the comedic highlights of ‘Trainwreck’

 

Somehow, Trainwreck pulls off segueing between the risque comic bits we all came for and its unexpected side of pathos and heartbreak.  While Judd Apatow’s confident direction deserves some of the credit, I think the most important factor here is Schumer’s impressive acting chops. She’s charismatic and funny enough that she should be a movie star even if she can’t really act, but she can. I hope this is the first of many Amy Schumer movies.

But next time I see one, I will adjust my expectations and bring along a pack of tissues.

 


Robin Hitchcock is a writer based in Pittsburgh, where there was a rather chilly reception to the scene where LeBron James talks about how great Cleveland is.

 

 

The Feminist’s Box Office Call of Duty

Confession time: I really want to see ‘Ant-Man’ this weekend. But I feel it is my duty as a feminist to go see ‘Trainwreck,’ and moreover, to NOT see ‘Ant-Man.’

Marvel's Ant-Man
Marvel’s Ant-Man

 

Confession time: I really want to see Ant-Man this weekend. But I feel it is my duty as a feminist to go see Trainwreck, and moreover, to NOT see Ant-Man.

I’ve got a busy weekend. It’s my wedding anniversary, I’m performing in two shows, plus your standard weekend social obligations. At best I can squeeze in a Sunday matinee. There can be only one.

Amy Schumer and Bill Hader in 'Trainwreck'
Amy Schumer and Bill Hader in Trainwreck

 

And I must see Trainwreck to support women in comedy, specifically the rising stardom of Amy Schumer, whose Comedy Central series is refreshingly, delightfully, overtly feminist. I must do my part, spend my $10.50, help prove that female-driven movies can kill it at the box office. That romcoms can be summer tentpoles. I don’t know how sex-positive Trainwreck will turn out to be, but I should find out, and write a timely new-release Bitch Flicks piece about it. I must answer the call.

Ok, ok! I'll go see 'Trainwreck'
Ok, ok! I’ll go see Trainwreck

 

Conversely, I must reject Ant-Man. Not only to highlight the relative (hopeful) success of Trainwreck (my guess is Minions will carry the weekend again anyway). Because Ant-Man is the tipping point in Marvel’s frustrating over-reliance on white male superheroes, trotting out C-list characters before Captain Marvel and Black Panther (both flicks pushed back to accommodate the utterly pointless third go at Spider-Man, blerg), and with no Black Widow movie on the horizon. Because the #JanetVanCrime of fridging Wasp, a founding member of the Avengers. Because a sympathetic portrayal of Hank Pym might actually make my blood boil (OK, well, not literally, but it could spike my blood pressure to dangerous levels).

Janet Van Dyne  aka Wasp named the Avengers, but she's being erased in the Marvel Cinematic Universe
Janet Van Dyne aka Wasp named the Avengers, but she’s being erased in the Marvel Cinematic Universe
But I wannnnaaaaa see Ant-Man. I love superhero movies. And heist movies. Ant-Man is both. Matt Zoller Seitz, possibly my most trusted critic at present, says it is really good. It’s got some Honey, I Shrunk the Kids perspective stuff, which is always fun (probably less fun when it relies on CGI, but still). I’ve had a crush on Paul Rudd for 20 years. Twenty years! TWO THIRDS OF MY LIFE. And the post-credits sequence teases Captain America: Civil War, which I have been eagerly anticipating since, well, the post-credits sequence of Captain America: The Winter Soldier*. I don’t know if I’m strong enough to resist the Marvel machine.
Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.
Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.

 

So I start talking myself into how it is OK for me to go see Ant-Man. The superhero movie bubble is going to pop, but I’m not ready for that to happen yet. Not before Captain Marvel and Black Panther start filming. And Hera forbid this spilling over into the DC side of the superhero movie industry before Wonder Woman.

And if I had to pick the pin that would pop the bubble, it would be the new Spider-Man, or as I like to call it, Spider-Why. Three white boy Peter Parkers in 15 years? WHY. WHY. WHY. (I said it three times even though that’s painfully redundant. See what I did there?) So I should support Ant-Man to make the new Spider-Man look worse. That makes sense, right? OK, I’m really grasping at straws.

I'd rather see the superhero movie bubble pop with the third white boy Spider-Man
I’d rather see the superhero movie bubble pop with the third white boy Spider-Man

 

As I wrestle with which wide-release big studio movie I am going to see, I am reminded of the heroic efforts of some feminists to ONLY support female-directed or written movies. Or at least actively seek them out and promote them, instead of drinking whatever sand Hollywood just poured over the masses. I recognize applying feminist critiques to mainstream movies isn’t enough. This conundrum I’ve imposed on myself highlights the cracks in my feminism. (For what it’s worth, Amy Schumer wrote the screenplay for Trainwreck, so even though its advertising says “From the guy who brought you Bridesmaids” [also written by women!], I think it is fair to call Trainwreck is a film by a woman.)

Trainwreck promo image says "from the guy who brought you Bridesmaids", even though both films were written by women
Trainwreck promo image says “from the guy who brought you Bridesmaids,” even though both films were written by women

 

The compromise I will make is to see Trainwreck this weekend and hold off on Ant-Man for at least another week.  And then seek out some of the latest independent films directed by women. I will fulfill my feminist call of duty to the best of my ability.

Ant-Man gives a thumbs up.
Ant-Man gives my plan a thumbs up.

 

(*For those of you who think it is ridiculous to want to see a movie in part for its post-credits sequence, well, you are totally right. But let me remind you of a simpler time, before YouTube, when Meet Joe Black got a box office bump just from running the trailer for Star Wars Episode I. Geeks do silly things.)

 


Robin Hitchcock is a writer based in Pittsburgh who saw Meet Joe Black in the theater for reasons other than the Phantom Menace trailer. She has since improved her life choices.

 

 

“[Unbelievably Beautiful] Women Aren’t Funny”: Progress Through Modifiers?

A few months ago I wrote, “Today, no one who is relevant doubts that women are funny, at least not out loud.” And here we are in 2015 and Important Men are making casual declarations that only certain types of women aren’t funny. In this case, unbelievably beautiful women. Progress?

unbelievablybeautifulgoldie
The unbelievably beautiful Goldie Hawn

 

A few months ago I wrote, “Today, no one who is relevant doubts that women are funny, at least not out loud.” And here we are in 2015 and Important Men are making casual declarations that only certain types of women aren’t funny. In this case, unbelievably beautiful women. Progress?

Michael Eisner, in “honoring” Goldie Hawn last week, said “usually, unbelievably beautiful women, you being an exception, are not funny.” [He at least had the foresight to note, “boy am I going to get in trouble, I know this goes online.” Yes, you are in trouble.] And the media has responded by listing beautiful funny women. We’ve been down this road before.

In 2007, Christopher Hitchens’ infamous Vanity Fair essay, “Why Women Aren’t Funny” was published. People forget the first word in that title, which is a shame, because if anything is more objectionable than the assertion that women aren’t funny, it is the reasons Hitchens gave for that assertion. The essay is gone from the internet, so let me summarize (or you can see Hitchens’ own pull quotes in his 2008 follow-up piece):

  1. Women don’t need to be funny to convince men to have sex with them, so they never develop the talent.
  2. The onus of childbirth makes women too serious to be funny.

These ideas were mostly ignored, a) because they are terrible b) because we were too busy responding by listing all the funny women out there. Listing funny women is a good thing. We should be celebrating all the women in comedy. But the knights of the patriarchy are always going to respond with, at best, “maybe those women are funny, but they’re exceptional.”

Vanity Fair's cover responding to its Hitchens article
Vanity Fair‘s cover responding to its Hitchens article

 

Or they’ll shut it down with the nuclear option: “those women are funny, but they aren’t beautiful.” Because a woman who is not beautiful has no other relevant qualities. She might as well not exist.

This was gloriously satirized in the instant classic television episode Twelve Angry Men Inside Amy Schumer, where the jurors debate if Amy Schumer is hot enough to have her own tv show. This episode expands on an earlier sketch where a focus group is asked about the content of the show but will only talk about whether or not they’d do its star. All evaluations of women are eclipsed by one question: “could she get it?”

'Twelve Angry Men Inside Amy Schumer'
‘Twelve Angry Men Inside Amy Schumer’

 

So it really isn’t all that helpful to say, “but these funny women COULD get it!” I don’t need your list of beautiful funny women. Even if you do an admirable job including women who don’t all look the same. And even if you frame it as “funny is beautiful.” You’re perpetuating the idea that beauty is the be-all end-all decider of a woman’s worth.

Going back to Hitchens’ horrible reasons for his horrible opinions, the idea that beautiful women aren’t funny (which is distinct from the also-pervasive belief that funny women aren’t beautiful, to be examined at another time) suggests that women only develop their qualities to please men. [Forgive me, this whole conversation is incredibly cis- and heteronormative.] The idea is that beautiful women are empty shells, never bothering to become smart or funny or athletic or good at parallel parking because they’ve already achieved the ultimate goal: fuckability. Goldie Hawn responded to Eisner that maybe she’s an exception to his beautiful funny women rule because she was an “ugly duckling.” Basically, in her early years, she had to bother to cook up a personality, which fortunately stuck around after she became unbelievably beautiful.

In this equation, a woman has no worth if she isn’t doable, but if she is too doable, we must also assume she has no “real” worth.

Listen carefully: A woman is not the way she is because of how appealing that makes her to others. A woman is the way she is because that is who she is. We have complex identities. We are made up by qualities outside of and unrelated to our do-ability. We are people.

 


Robin Hitchcock is a Pittsburgh-based writer and founding member of the unbelievably beautiful all-female comedy troupe Frankly Scarlett.

 

 

‘Kingsman: The Secret Service’: An R-Rated Movie for 4-Year-Old Boys

‘Kingsman: The Secret Service’ wants to remount the early campy Bond movies for the 21st century. Kind of like ‘Austin Powers’ did, but without so many jokes, because they detract from how coooooool these spy dudes are. We’re talking gadgets, one-liners, babes, convoluted action sequences, and brooding permitted only upon the death of one’s father or mentor.

Fuck Daniel Craig’s haunting pathos and Oscar-caliber cinematography. Bring on the shark lasers.

Colin Firth and Taron Egerton in 'Kingsman: The Secret Service'
Colin Firth and Taron Egerton in Kingsman: The Secret Service

This review contains spoilers, but… I really don’t think that matters.

Remember when we talked about how exciting it was to see a woman at the center of a power-fantasy id-gone-wild movie Jupiter AscendingKingsman: The Secret Service (which just happens to have been released only a week after Jupiter Ascending) is a PERFECT example of what we normally see from those movies. In short: White Dudes Rule.

Kingsman: The Secret Service wants to remount the early campy Bond movies for the 21st century. Kind of like Austin Powers did, but without so many jokes, because they detract from how coooooool these spy dudes are. We’re talking gadgets, one-liners, babes, convoluted action sequences, and brooding permitted only upon the death of one’s father or mentor.

Fuck Daniel Craig’s haunting pathos and Oscar-caliber cinematography. Bring on the shark lasers.

Or, as the case may be, space balloons.
Or, as the case may be, space balloons.

Trouble is, the filmmakers include a hefty dose of anglophilia in their love letter to early Bond, a fondness for the Empire Days that is inherently racist and also just really played out. (Director Matthew Vaughn, co-writer Jane Goldman, and source material authors Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons are all English or Scottish [and all white], but self-congratulatory anglophilia might be even more annoying than wannabe anglophilia. Keep Calm and Carry On Oppressing.)

Kingsman is an apolitical spy agency funded by a trust created when a bunch of aristocrats lost their heirs to World War I. There are a dozen (white, male) agents all named after the Knights of the Round Table. When one of them dies, each agent presents a candidate as a replacement, these candidates train together and face a series of potentially lethal elimination tests until there is only one. I am sure it will surprise you ZERO that the recruits are almost all white dudes, and the first person dispatched is a woman of color (leaving behind Sophie Cookson’s Roxy to play Smurfette for the rest of the movie). And that we’re meant to admire our working-class hero Eggsy (Taron Egerton) for his pluck and gumption standing up to the other candidates and their Eton educations. You break that glass ceiling, Eggsy.

"Do your best impersonation of a German aristocratic greeting"
“Do your best impersonation of a German aristocrat’s formal greeting”

And even though Eggsy is working-class, he’s still only in this position because of who his father is: a former recruit to Kingsman who threw himself on a grenade on his first mission, saving Eggsy’s sponsor and mentor Galahad (Colin Firth, having a lot of fun).  Galahad grooms Eggsy to be a proper gentleman (in one of the movie’s best gags, he alludes to the transformations in Trading Places and Pretty Woman, only to have Eggsy respond, “Oh you mean like in My Fair Lady?”), which is an integral part of his spy training because the only thing cooler than being an upper-class British person is becoming an upper-class British person, I guess. I am not lying when I say that the graduation present from the Kingsman academy is a bespoke bulletproof suit.

Samuel L. Jackson as the villainous Valentine
Samuel L. Jackson as the villainous Valentine

MEANWHILE, evil villains plot. And would you believe that the evil villains are PEOPLE OF COLOR? Whaat. No. Gasp! Shock. Truth be told, the villains are BY FAR the best part of the movie. We have Samuel L. Jackson as Valentine, an environmentalist communications mogul, if such a thing exists, and his right-hand-woman Gazelle (Sofia Boutella), who has two prosthetic bladed legs she uses as deadly weapons. I don’t fully understand the motivation behind Jackson’s lisping, peacocking approach to his character, but I always appreciate when he has the chance to play something other than Samuel L. Jackson. He made me laugh a lot. Boutella’s Gazelle is the perfect reincarnation of the mostly-silent, inexplicably loyal, undeniably badass Bond villain sidekick, and it is cool to see a disabled character be the best fighter in the room. But it sucks to see a bunch of “gentlemanly” white people battle a flashy black man and his buxom-but-deadly assistant. Again.

Sofia as Gazelle
Sofia Boutella as Gazelle

There’s a chance for some not-entirely-gross class commentary to make its way into Kingsman, but it’s wasted in favor of more extreme violence. You see, Valentine’s evil plan is basically to trigger the plot of Stephen King’s Cell: he gives away billions of sim cards, and then unleashes a signal that makes people near those sim cards go on violent rampages. He sells protective implants to the rich and powerful and provides an oasis for them to sit out this bloody culling of Earth’s population. (The rich and powerful who refuse to play Valentine’s game are locked in a dungeon. This list for some reason includes Iggy Azalea.) The implants can also be triggered to explode, giving Valentine a kill switch for every one of the world’s rich and powerful.

Eggsy with Michael Caine's Arthur, the leader of Kingsman
Eggsy with Michael Caine’s Arthur, the leader of Kingsman

Remember when I said there were going to be spoilers? Here are the spoilers. Eggsy finds out the head of Kingsman (Michael Caine) has one of the implants and is allowing the plot to move forward. When Eggsy goes on to thwart the evil plan, he triggers all the implants to explode. We watch a glorious montage of cartoonish mushroom clouds erupting from the necks of the world’s elite: from heads of state (including our president) to the socialites sipping champagne while waiting out the apocalypse in Valentine’s bunker.

Heads go boom.
Heads go boom.

If the movie ended there this would be a much more positive review. There’d be cool, meaty ideas here about Kingsman being corruptible because of its ties to aristocracy, and our working-class hero actually bringing about the revolution the villain only pretended to want by eliminating the 1 percent rather than seeking to control them. But, well, Matthew Vaughn wanted to shoot some really disgusting bloodbath scenes.

So Valentine gets his signal out for several minutes, and we cut around the world to regular people horribly murdering their loved ones and anyone else in proximity. Eggsy and co. eventually stop it, but it is clear that more of these literally poor innocent bastards ended up dead than the jerks who signed up for implants. I have a problem disassociating from mass destruction in movies, and I got really sad about how the world would be irrevocably broken by this slaughter, when the movie wanted me to be laughing about Eggsy getting “rewarded” with butt sex with a Swedish princess for “saving the world.” Yes, really.

I am, of course, overthinking it. Kingsman: The Secret Service is a very silly movie. I can barely remember the Spy Kids films, although I must have watched the first two 30 times back in my babysitting days, but I think this is pretty much Spy Kids + mild gore, sex jokes, and f-bombs. This is a movie made for your inner-4-year-old, but it’s only fully effective if your inner-4-year-old is a white boy.


Robin Hitchcock is a Pittsburgh-based writer whose blood is probably 6 percent Nyquil at this point. Take your vitamins and wash your hands, people. 

‘Welcome to Me’ and the Trouble with Mental Illness Comedies

‘Welcome to Me’ is pitched as “woman wins the lottery and uses it to finance her own daytime talk show.” I interpreted this as “Joan Calamezzo: The Movie” and immediately added it to my to-watch list. What that quick summary fails to mention is that Kristen Wiig’s character Alice Klieg has borderline personality disorder, and that her decision to produce her talk show coincides with her going off her meds.

Kristen Wiig in 'Welcome to Me'
Kristen Wiig in Welcome to Me

At the end of her now-legendary Tonight Show interview as Daenerys Targaryen, it is revealed Kristen Wiig is there to promote Welcome to Me, pitched as “woman wins the lottery and uses it to finance her own daytime talk show.” I interpreted this as “Joan Calamezzo: The Movie” and immediately added it to my to-watch list. What that quick summary fails to mention is that Kristen Wiig’s character Alice Klieg has borderline personality disorder, and that her decision to produce her talk show coincides with her going off her meds. Yes, Welcome to Me is in the perilous genre of the mental illness comedy. Is it the Silver Linings Playbook for borderline personality disorder or another Blue Jasmine offering a vague Blanche DuBois-esque mélange of symptoms in lieu of actual characterization? Welcome to Me falls somewhere in the middle of that spectrum.

A very special episode of 'Welcome to Me'
A very special episode of Welcome to Me

On her show, Alice describes her history of mental health diagnoses: manic depression, rapid-cycling bipolar disorder, and most recently, borderline personality disorder. As a mentally ill person myself, I nodded my head along to the ever-changing labels psych patients keep up with. But borderline personality disorder is outside my personal mental health history, and I know very little about it. I don’t even “know” anything about it from Hollywood; the only other borderline character I could think of was Winona Ryder in Girl, Interrupted, and that film strongly challenges the appropriateness of that diagnosis. So I cannot tell you if Welcome to Me “gets borderline personality disorder right” (but here are some articles that address that question, each with different conclusions).

Alice delivering one of her 'prepared statements' on television
Alice delivering one of her “prepared statements” on television

Whether or not Alice is a fair representation of borderline personality diorder, she is a clearly realized character. Wiig plays her with a flat affect most of the time, somewhat interpersonally detached and awkward, and either unaware or uninterested in social decorum (her “prepared statement” after her lottery win begins, “I was a summer baby born in 1971 in Simi Valley, California, and I’ve been using masturbation as a sedative since 1991”). But Alice’s emotions are easily and erratically triggered in ways that leave deep wounds, evidenced by her talk show segments re-enacting small slights from her past, like a friend swiping some of her makeup. Alice’s personal take on her condition becomes clear when she reflects on “all the times in my life when I was supposed to feel something but I felt nothing, and all the other times in my life where I wasn’t supposed to feel anything but I felt too much and the people around me weren’t really ready for all of my feelings.”

Alice has an emotional breakdown on the set of her talk show.
Alice has an emotional breakdown on the set of her talk show.

 

While the writing and acting create a consistent vision of Alice, it is one wholly defined by her mental illness.  She’s not a person, she’s a DSM-V checklist. So it is impossible to relate to her character, even as a mentally ill person myself.

And it becomes very hard to watch Welcome to Me as a comedy because laughing at Alice feels cruel.  She is taken advantage of by the small-town tv station that airs her show, who keep telling her they need more money because she’ll robotically write them checks until she’s spent nearly all her fortune. Her therapist (Tim Robbins) is condescending and callous. And when people ARE kind to Alice (like her best friend Gina [Linda Cardellini] and her co-worker and occasional lover Gabe [Wes Bentley]), we see her hurt them terribly through her own self-involvement and volatility.  It is a very sad story. The absurdity of the talk show in the center stops being funny and becomes tragic. And not being able to laugh at Kristen Wiig riding a “swan boat” onto stage while she sings her own theme song is just a waste.

No one wants meatloaf cake
No one wants meatloaf cake

Welcome to Me offers the ingredients of a good drama about mental illness and a good comedy about a low-budget vanity talk show, but combined this comes out like the meatloaf “cake” with sweet potato “frosting” that Alice presents on her show.  It’s unpleasant and you wonder why anyone would make it in the first place.


Robin Hitchcock is a writer based in Pittsburgh. If she had her own TV show, she would hire a professional to sing the theme song.

13 Disappointing Things about ‘Grace and Frankie’

On the eve of the release of season 3 of ‘Orange is the New Black,’ and while the rest of the world’s feminist media critics still struggle to sort out ‘Sense8,’ I decided to take a look at one of Netflix’s least-buzzed-about original series: ‘Grace and Frankie,’ which premiered in May to little fanfare outside a late night tweet from one Miley Cyrus. ‘Grace and Frankie’ stars Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin as the title characters, whose husbands Robert and Sol (Martin Sheen and Sam Waterston) leave them for each other after admitting to a 20-years-running affair. Grace and Frankie move into the beach house the couples shared and forge an unlikely friendship while navigating the single life for septuagenarians. The show has its charms, such that I might have watched the entire season without journalistic integrity as a motivation, but ‘Grace and Frankie’ let me down in a lot of ways:

Promo image for 'Grace and Frankie'
Promo image for Grace and Frankie

On the eve of the release of season 3 of Orange is the New Black, and while the rest of the world’s feminist media critics still struggle to sort out Sense8, I decided to take a look at one of Netflix’s least-buzzed-about original series: Grace and Frankie, which premiered in May to little fanfare outside a late night tweet from one Miley Cyrus. Grace and Frankie stars Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin as the title characters, whose husbands Robert and Sol (Martin Sheen and Sam Waterston) leave them for each other after admitting to a 20-years-running affair. Grace and Frankie move into the beach house the couples shared and forge an unlikely friendship while navigating the single life for septuagenarians.  The show has its charms, such that I might have watched the entire season without journalistic integrity as a motivation, but Grace and Frankie let me down in a lot of ways:

You may also need vanilla ice cream bathed in whiskey, as enjoyed by Lily Tomlin as Frankie
You may also need big bowl of vanilla ice cream and whiskey, as enjoyed by Lily Tomlin as Frankie

 

1. The premise turns out to be rather boring. It is easy to imagine a late 90s pitch meeting, where “It’s like The First Wives Club—but their exes are gay. For each other!” is met with applause and pats on the back for cooking up something so “edgy.” And given that the creators of Grace and Frankie are 90s sitcom powerhouses Marta Kauffman (Friends) and Howard J. Morris (Home Improvement), you might expect something embarrassingly old-fashioned along those lines. Fortunately this is not the case, but Grace and Frankie overcorrects: everyone is so accepting of Robert and Sol coming out, and breaking up their marriages to do so, that most of the dramatic interest is obliterated.

2. This blandness coincides with an unfortunate case of bi-erasure. No one ever uses the B-word, even though Robert and Sol seem to have truly loved their wives romantically and sexually before falling for each other. [Spoiler alert!] A late-episode plot development will probably force reconsideration of this issue in season 2, but I’d rather bisexuality not be addressed through a negative stereotype like unfaithfulness.

She's a kooky free spirit, she's uptight and snobby!
She’s a kooky free spirit, she’s uptight and snobby!

 

3. The odd couple dynamic between Grace and Frankie is alarmingly unimaginative. One is a WASP and one is a hippie! Can you imagine the peyote-fueled hijinx that must follow?

4. It leans heavily on the HILARITY of old ladies saying dirty words while rarely bothering to weave those dirty words into otherwise funny dialogue.

"If anybody is gonna sit on Ryan Gosling's face, it's gonna be me!"
“If anybody is gonna sit on Ryan Gosling’s face, it’s gonna be me!”

 

5. And yet the series is remarkably chaste outside of its discussion of sandy vaginas and yam-based personal lubricants. Grace and Frankie wants to be celebrated for acknowledging the sex lives of seniors, but the most sexual chemistry we see on screen is between Lily Tomlin and the Scripps National Spelling Bee.

6. The characters are in the very boring As-Perpetually-Seen-on-TV Upper Upper Middle Class, and the show never engages with how the characters’ economic privilege intersects with their aging or sexual identity.

7. The first episode rips off the How to Get Away With Murder scene where Annalise removes her wig and makeup, which a) is significantly less meaningful with a white woman b) undermined by the drastically incomplete removal of Jane Fonda’s makeup. This is her “deconstructed” look:

Jane Fonda's "bare" face
Jane Fonda’s “bare” face

 

8. And for a show whose main selling point is celebrating women of a certain age, it is a shame they felt the need to shave eight years off Jane Fonda’s age and five years off Lily Tomlin’s to make both protagonists 70 years old. And then have Grace list her age as 64 on a dating website.

9. The one person of color in the cast is the least-developed character. That’s one of Sol and Frankie’s adopted sons, Nwabudike “Bud” Bergstein (Baron Vaughn). It feels like the one chance we get to know him is through his chemistry with his future sister-in-law Brianna (June Diane Raphael), but that relationship is sidelined in favor of…

June Diane Raphael and Baron Vaughn as Brianna and Bud
June Diane Raphael and Baron Vaughn as Brianna and Bud

 

10. The creepy “I stalk you because our love is so pure” “connection” between the other cross-section of future step-siblings: Mallory (Brooklyn Decker, who has surprising comic timing) and Coyote (Ethan Embry, who is disturbingly 20 years older than he was in Empire Records WHERE DOES TIME GO). Mallory has a hunky doctor husband and Coyote is a drug-addicted loser, but I think we’re still supposed to root for those two crazy kids to work it out? I am only rooting for a restraining order.

Brooklyn Decker and Ethan Embry as Mallory and Coyote
Brooklyn Decker and Ethan Embry as Mallory and Coyote

 

11. And June Diane Raphael is as underused as she normally is, in keeping with her place as television’s Judy Greer.

12. There is an episode in which some of the main characters are trapped in an elevator and one of the characters unexpectedly delivers a baby outside of a hospital setting, but these two storylines occur at different times and places. How dare you tease us with the cliché singularity, show, and not follow through.

Duty calls, Dolly!
Duty calls, Dolly!

 

13. Dolly Parton does not guest star, denying us the 9 to 5 reunion we want—no, need—no, DESERVE. This better be corrected in season 2.


Robin Hitchcock is a writer based in Pittsburgh who can personally attest to the deliciousness of whiskey-soaked vanilla ice cream.

‘Jupiter Ascending’: Female-centric Fantasy That’s Not Quite Feminist

So yes, ‘Jupiter Ascending’ provides women and girls the “you’re secretly the most important person in the solar system” narrative that is so often granted to cishet white men, the demographic who already are treated as the most important people by virtue of the kyriarchy. What’s missing, however, is the part where Jupiter taps into her secret set of special skills.

Poster for 'Jupiter Ascending'
Poster for ‘Jupiter Ascending’

If you’re not on Tumblr, you might have entirely missed the existence of The Wachowskis’ space opera Jupiter Ascending. Bumped from last summer to a mercy-kill February release, it was panned by critics and ignored by audiences. Save the fannishly inclined, largely female Tumblr users who happen to populate my dashboard, who completely lost their minds over this movie. I blinked and missed its momentary theatrical release and had to wait for it on video to find out if it met the subculture hype. And I am here to report that Jupiter Ascending is a delightful cheesy sci-fi flick, if you’re into that sort of thing. And while it isn’t a feminist triumph in the way that Mad Max: Fury Road is (and even that movie’s feminism has been called into question), Jupiter Ascending is unusually suited to a female viewership, which is sadly still rather revolutionary, particularly for a genre flick.

Why does this spaceship look like a fancy mechanical fish? Why doesn't yours!?
Why does this spaceship look like a fancy mechanical fish? Why doesn’t yours!?

Gavia Baker-Whitlaw’s Daily Dot piece “Why Women Love Jupiter Ascending notes that its story “is the precise gender-flipped equivalent of all those movies where some weak-chinned rando turns out to be the Chosen One” usually with a hyper-competent and hot “Strong Female Character” acting as his guide through his Newly Discovered Destiny.  In Jupiter Ascending, Mila Kunis’s Jupiter Jones is a mild-mannered housecleaner who discovers she is actually solar system royalty after Genetically Engineered Space Werewolf Channing Tatum rescues her from an alien attack. Jupiter finds that she is at the center of a war between three royal Jovian siblings (yes I just had to look up the demonym for Jupiter I love my life) who all seek to control Earth and its seven billion harvestable humans so they can rejuvenate their youth by bathing in Soylent Green Espom Salts. She has a claim to Earth because she is the reincarnation of their mother and is also immune to bee stings. Or something. (The intricacies of the plot are not important, I only recount them here because they amuse me.)

Bees don't sting solar system royalty for some reason.
Bees don’t sting solar system royalty for some reason.

So yes, Jupiter Ascending provides women and girls the “you’re secretly the most important person in the solar system” narrative that is so often granted to cishet white men, the demographic who already are treated as the most important people by virtue of the kyriarchy (you really need to be MORE important, cishet white dudes?). What’s missing, however, is the part where Jupiter taps into her secret set of special skills, as we see with our once-mundane male Chosen Ones from The Matrix‘s Neo to The Lego Movie‘s Emmett to Wanted‘s Whatever-James-McAvoy’s-character-was-named.  She never eclipses the badassness of her Trinity-equivalent, the aforementioned Genetically-Engineered Space Werewolf, Caine Wise (one of the great joys of the film is when people call him “Wise” while he’s doing foolishly reckless things. I’m not sure if that was intentional). Caine needs to rescue Jupiter throughout the film; his preferred style of rescue is to give her a piggyback ride while he zooms around on his gravity-defying space rollerblades. If all these absurd details haven’t convinced you to watch this movie  yet, I’m not sure what will. When she’s on her own, Jupiter’s “action” is largely about contract  law.

Jupiter gets a lot of piggyback rides from Caine
Jupiter gets a lot of piggyback rides from Caine

Because Jupiter’s secret importance doesn’t come with previously untapped hyper-competence or the unique importance of her particular abilities, it is simply a royal birthright. She’s more along the lines of The Princess Diaries‘ Mia Thermopolis than Neo. And women aren’t really wanting for “you are actually a princess!” narratives.  There are 30-odd Disney movies about that. Jupiter Ascending isn’t a power fantasy, it is a wish-fulfillment fantasy.

Women already have "you're really a princess!" stories
Women already have “you’re really a princess!” stories

But it is still a fantasy for women in a big-budget sci fi movie, which is incredibly rare. Is that why Jupiter Ascending flopped at the box office, or at least why the studio lost confidence in it as a potential summer release? I suspect it has more to do with the current difficulty selling big movies without source material. If even the Wachowskis’ own Matrix trilogy (which provided the very namesake of Tasha Robinson’s Trinity Syndrome) couldn’t bring in a new era of original sci-fi blockbusters (the only two I can think of are Avatar and Pacific Rim), the failure of Jupiter Ascending seems foretold. So hopefully studios will focus on Jupiter Ascending‘s lack of source material rather than its female protagonist when they try to avoid making other movies that meet its fate. Then again, only basing movies on properties that already exist will perpetuate male-dominated stories.  So we’re kinda screwed either way, which isn’t an unfamiliar position for feminist film fans.

Eddie Redmayne as Balem Abrasax (that's the kind of character name you get with 'Jupiter Ascending')
Eddie Redmayne as Balem Abrasax (that’s the kind of character name you get with Jupiter Ascending)

Jupiter Ascending might go on to be a cult classic, and if you like bizarre scifi you should help it get there. I didn’t even get into Academy Award Winner Eddie Redmayne’s astonishingly campy performance as Balem Abrasax, who prefers the cape-but-no-shirt look and only speaks in whispers and screams (in the alternate universe where Jupiter Ascending was released in Summer 2014, Michael Keaton gazes lovingly upon his Best Actor Oscar). While Jupiter Ascending deserves accolades for providing female-centric fantasy, it doesn’t go the distance to become a truly feminist film (it is certainly nine or ten notches below Mad Max: Fury Road, which doesn’t even meet the bar for some people). But while I can’t recommend Jupiter Ascending as a feminist film, I do recommend it as a fun film. They can’t all have Furiosa.

 


Robin Hitchcock is a Pittsburgh-based writer who sadly has been stung by bees.

“I Want to Name My Daughter Furiosa”: The Feminist Joys of ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’

But don’t let the buzz mislead you into thinking ‘Fury Road’ is some sort of feminist watershed, a 21st century cinematic ‘Feminine Mystique’ with monster trucks. I would have enjoyed this flick even if it had typical gender politics, because I love car chases and over-the-top action sequences and the sort of high camp that yields a vehicular war party having its own flamethrower-enhanced metal guitarist. If you don’t love those things, you probably don’t want to see this movie. But if you are into that kind of action flick, this is a really good one that has the bonus of a thick layer of sweet, sweet feminist icing.

Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron in 'Mad Max: Fury Road'
Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron in Mad Max: Fury Road

 

This review contains some minor spoilers for Mad Max: Fury Road.

Thank you, MRAs, for calling for a boycott of “”feminist piece of propaganda” Mad Max: Fury Road.  You certainly got this feminist fired up to see it opening weekend, and I loved it just as much as you promised me I would.

But don’t let the buzz mislead you into thinking Fury Road is some sort of feminist watershed, a 21st century cinematic Feminine Mystique with monster trucks.  I would have enjoyed this flick even if it had typical gender politics, because I love car chases and over-the-top action sequences and the sort of high camp that yields a vehicular war party having its own flamethrower-enhanced metal guitarist. If you don’t love those things, you probably don’t want to see this movie. But if you are into that kind of action flick, this is a really good one that has the bonus of a thick layer of sweet, sweet feminist icing.

If you like double-neck guitar flamethrowers, you'll like 'Fury Road'
If you like double-neck guitar flamethrowers, you’ll like Fury Road

 

Even though it is his franchise and his name is right there in the title, Max (Tom Hardy) is really the sidekick to Fury Road‘s true hero, Charlize Theron’s Furiosa. Furiosa is the one with the mission and the character arc, Max is pretty much just along for her ride. He ends up feeling like a gender-flipped version of the Hot Action Chick, a Studly Action Dude of sorts. Now, Furiosa isn’t the most well-rounded character you ever did see, but there’s precious little downtime between bouts of vehicular warfare for serious character development (though Charlize does put her acting chops to work in the moments she has). But she is 100 percent glorious badass, the kind of female action star I could never get enough even if Hollywood didn’t churn out only a couple every decade.

Charlize Theron as Imperator Furiosa
Charlize Theron as Imperator Furiosa

 

And what sets Furiosa apart from her cinematic foremothers Ellen Ripley and Sarah Connor is that she is surrounded by other strong women. She was raised in what appears to be a matriarchal community, and the women we meet from her home are, like her, fearsome warriors.  The plot (other than “cars explode”) of Fury Road concerns Furiosa smuggling out the “wives” (sex slaves/”prized breeders”) of evil warlord Immortan Joe. These five beautiful women (supermodel Rosie Huntington-Whiteley and perfect genetic specimen Zoë Kravitz among them) wear strategically placed strips of white fabric, and are the only people in this universe with access to soap, hot wax, and hair brushes.

The escaped wives
The escaped wives

 

In a lesser movie, the wives could be an embarrassing cliché of damsels in distress.  But in Fury Road, they are women with agency, choosing their own liberation as they experience a feminist awakening (when one considers going back, she’s reminded “we are not things”). They’re not as capable as Furiosa or the other women from her homeland, but they don’t shy away from the fight either. I was surprised to see one (several months pregnant) become a causality of war, not killed off in a particularly dramatic fashion. It’s strangely humanizing to see a pregnant woman be killed among the hoards of other victims in a movie where countless cars crash and things blow up. (However, I did not think her dead son being cut out of her dying body added anything to the film, and suspect it would trigger some people in the audience.) But that death underscored that women are people in Mad Max: Fury Road, not just plot constructs: because people can get killed in a tornado of violence, even if they’re eight months pregnant.

And ultimately, Fury Road is a parable about bringing down the patriarchy, which makes all of its orgiastic destruction a thoroughly satisfying outlet for feminist rage. I saw the movie with a mixed group of male and female friends, who all loved it, but it was the women who walked out saying things like, “I’m so pumped up I could run home right now” and “I might name my daughter Furiosa.”

Patriarchy go boom
Patriarchy go boom

 

So is Mad Max: Fury Road going to bring us equal pay, sexual liberation, a woman in the White House, and ladies’ jackets with inside pockets? Probably not. In fact, it’s probably better news for women that Pitch Perfect 2, a film by, about, and marketed to women, soundly beat Fury Road at the box office (HT to my friend @MattMarcotte to pointing this out to me).  But a teenage boy leaving the theater behind me shouted that Fury Road was the “MOST F***ING AWESOME MOVIE EVER!” He might not have realized it was about women destroying male power structures, but I can rest easy tonight knowing that he enjoyed his experience with this feminist piece of propaganda. I hope he gets to see many more.

 


Robin Hitchcock is a writer based in Pittsburgh who was in an improv troupe with one of the stunt performers in this movie. DROP. (Hi, Anneli!)

‘Age of Ultron’s Black Widow Blunders

‘Avengers: Age of Ultron’ succeeds in all the places you’d expect it to fail, but while Joss Whedon was tiptoeing around all the expected pitfalls of a major franchise sequel, he stumbled over a cliff when it came to the one character I would have most trusted him to get right: Scarlet Johansson’s Natasha Romanoff, or Black Widow.

Scarlet Johansson as Black Widow in 'Avengers: Age of Ultron'
Scarlet Johansson as Black Widow in Avengers: Age of Ultron

 

I liked Avengers: Age of Ultron. A lot. What follows is going to read like a very negative review. If I could selectively switch off my feminism, I could write you the most thumbs-uppiest of glowing reviews for Age of Ultron. But I cannot, and this is why my dad would say “it’s hard to be Robin.” But if you’re a regular Bitch Flicks reader, it is also probably hard to be you (that’s sort of why we exist). And you also will probably walk away from this movie with some serious reservations.

Age of Ultron succeeds in all the places you’d expect it to fail: the new characters are compelling; the amped-up battle sequences manage to be as coherent as they are thrilling; and for a movie with 17 actors listed on its poster, it somehow manages to not feel that overstuffed.  But while Joss Whedon was tiptoeing around all the expected pitfalls of a major franchise sequel, he stumbled over a cliff when it came to the one character I would have most trusted him to get right: Scarlet Johansson’s Natasha Romanoff, or Black Widow.

Spoilers from here on out, friends.

Black Widow under the male gaze
Black Widow under the male gaze

 

When Black Widow was introduced in Iron Man 2 (a sequel which DID fail in all the predictable ways), her character was so fully entrenched in the male gaze it was kind of gross. We’re first introduced to her cover identity, Natalie Rushman: a submissive secretary who modeled in Japan and suggestively asks, “is that dirty enough for you” after leaning over to present her boss Tony Stark with a martini. But what’s even hotter Natalie Rushman? Natasha Romanoff pretending to be meek and accommodating while in fact being a badass superspy who can take out fifteen guys, hack computers, and save the day without mussing her flowing red curls (one of the worst wigs in the history of cinema, but that’s just a personal bugaboo of mine). This kind of sarcastic-quotation-marks “strong female character” is a dime a dozen in action movies and not someone I’d beg to see a standalone movie about.

Black Widow beating people up in a terrible wig in 'Iron Man 2'
Black Widow beating people up in a terrible wig in Iron Man 2

 

But then came The Avengers,  where Black Widow was so much more than the Fighting Fucktoy. She was still a sexy badass, but she also got to be wickedly clever, dryly funny, warm and loyal to her friends, and in what was probably the biggest revelation for a Strong Female Character: fearful of scary things. This more solid characterization carried over to Captain America: The Winter Soldier, where we continued to see Natasha’s rare moments of emotional vulnerability alongside her intellectual and physical competence.

In 'Avengers' and 'Captain America 2', Black Widow was more than eye candy
In Avengers and Captain America 2, Black Widow was more than eye candy

 

Black Widow had become a character I loved. And I would have given a lot of credit for that to Joss Whedon. But then he went and did this all this to her.

These two? Seriously?
These two? Seriously?

 

AoU‘s first sin against Natasha is awkwardly shoehorning her into a romantic subplot with Bruce Banner, of all people. Maybe I’d be less disgruntled about Natasha in lurve if the pairing worked better for me? But it felt pretty out of left field, and lacking in chemistry.  Like they crossed off the crossed off the characters who already had love interests and flipped a coin to settle on Bruce.

Now, one of the benefits of being a well-rounded character should be the chance for a love interest. The rest of the core six all have their sweeties! But note how all of them had outside characters as their love interest. Usually our male Avengers have their own movie or movies to make space for that character, but Hawkeye’s previously-unseen wife was given screen time in Age of Ultron.  It is unthinkable for Natasha to have a similar surprise husband, because “doting pregnant wife” is a complete female character as far as Hollywood is concerned. A side character male love interest is much harder for Hollywood to handle, because they see “man” and think “center of the story.”

Natasha is responsible for de-Hulking Bruce with a "lullaby"
Natasha is responsible for de-Hulking Bruce with a “lullaby”

 

So Natasha had to be connected to another main character, and it happened to be Bruce, and even if that didn’t feel as random to you as it did to me, it brings about some problems. First, I wasn’t crazy about Natasha having the role of soothing Bruce out of Hulk form with their”lullaby” ritual to begin with, but adding romantic overtones makes it even more skeevy. There are unavoidable allusions to domestic violence inherent to the Hulk. Having his romantic partner hold the responsibility for talking him down from his rage state, and portraying this as part of their bond, underscores this in an unpleasant way.

Scarlet Witch induces a vision of Black Widow's past
Scarlet Witch induces a vision of Black Widow’s past

 

Worse, Natasha’s arc in Age of Ultron got completely wrapped up in her feelings for Banner, even though we finally—finally! In her fourth appearance in a Marvel movie—got to see Natasha’s backstory, her childhood training/brainwashing into superspyness by the sinister Red Room. (Granted, we see it in a dream-like flashback that’s only long enough for you to go, “Hey, is that Julie Delpy?”).

Natasha’s history gets rolled over into her romantic subplot in the most bizarre, uncomfortable—let’s just say worst—scene in the film. Bruce is giving Natasha the speech about how she could have no future with him, gesturing around to the child’s room they are in. She tearfully reveals that she can’t have children either, because she was sterilized as part of her “graduation” from the Red Room. She speculates the forced sterilization was to avoid problems, attachments, and that “It made everything easier, even killing.” And then she calls herself a monster.

WAIT WHAT?
WAIT… WHAT?

 

RECORD SCRATCH. Wait, a woman who can’t get pregnant is A MONSTER? On a level comparable to a dude who turns into an actual unstoppable force of destruction we had just seen level a city? What… I just… what? What!!!!????? The idea that anyone—*cough* Joss Whedon *cough*—would think infertility makes a woman something less than human is extremely gross, but it’s even worse to see Natasha internalize such warped misogyny and biological essentialism.

And I haven’t even mentioned the part where Black Widow gets kidnapped by the bad guy and locked in a dungeon. That really happens. For real for real. I assume this was to accommodate Scarlett Johansson’s pregnancy during filming, but there are plenty of ways to write her out of the story for a little while without making her a damsel in distress (send her on a side mission, any side mission, DON’T LOCK BLACK WIDOW IN A DUNGEON).  And thinking about how Johansson was pregnant at the time somehow manages to make that horrible sterilization confession scene even more unpleasant.

Elizabeth Olsen as Scarlet Witch in 'Age of Ultron'
Elizabeth Olsen as Scarlet Witch in Age of Ultron

 

The only good news when it comes to Black Widow in Age of Ultron is that she’s no longer saddled with being the Smurfette, as Elizabeth Olsen’s Scarlet Witch provides us with a Sassette Smurf of sorts. Cobie Smulders is also back as Maria Hill, but she doesn’t have much to do. Claudia Kim plays Dr. Helen Cho, who does things that are important for the plot but gets less character development than Hawkeye’s wife, who might as well be listed in the credits as “Hawkeye’s wife.” But even though Natasha isn’t the only woman in Age of Ultron, she’s still the one nearest and dearest to the audience, and it is heartbreaking to see her utilized so poorly.

Black Widow deserves better
Black Widow deserves better

 


Robin Hitchcock is a writer based in Pittsburgh who has never been pregnant. Is she, too, a monster!?

 

 

‘Garfunkel and Oates’ and the Sea Change for Women in Comedy

You probably know Garfunkel and Oates from their funny songs on YouTube, but you might have missed the eight-episode series they had last summer on IFC (I’m guessing most people did, because it got cancelled). But the series is now available on Netflix Streaming, and it is just the right level of quality where you’ll be happy you watched it but not miserable that there won’t be any more episodes.

It’s also an interesting study on some of the issues facing (caps-for-seriousness) “Women in Comedy.”

Kate Micucci and Riki Lindholme are Garfunkel and Oates.
Kate Micucci and Riki Lindholme are Garfunkel and Oates.

 


Written by Robin Hitchcock.


You probably know Garfunkel and Oates from their funny songs on YouTube, but you might have missed the eight-episode series they had last summer on IFC. (I’m guessing most people did, because it got cancelled.) But the series is now available on Netflix Streaming, and it is just the right level of quality where you’ll be happy you watched it but not miserable that there won’t be any more episodes.

It’s also an interesting study on some of the issues facing (caps-for-seriousness) “Women in Comedy.”  We’re nearly a decade out from Christopher Hitchens mansplaining why women aren’t funny and the tidal wave of backlash it wrought. Today, no one who is relevant doubts that women are funny, at least not out loud. But there are still issues of how women are permitted to be funny, and Garfunkel and Oates illustrates both the limitations and opportunities created by our expectations for female comedians.

1. How much can we talk about “girl stuff”?

Some people have the attitude that truly funny women prove their worth by not “relying on” their gender. (See also: white people praising Black comedians and other funny PoC for not “always talking about race.”) This is a fabulous silencing tactic, telling marginalized groups that their lived experiences are boring and unfunny while reinforcing the white male point of view as universal. The idea that telling jokes about “girl stuff” limits funny ladies to being “funny, for a girl” is predicated on the idea that womanhood is a deviation from the fundamental human experience. Which is sexist bullshit.

From the "Pregnant Women are Smug" video
From the “Pregnant Women Are Smug” video

 

The good news is that this sexist, silencing notion means a lot of funny material has been under-explored and is ripe for the picking. Garfunkel and Oates is at its best when it deals directly with “girl stuff.” In one episode, a club manager gives Riki and Kate the unsolicited creative note, “Please, no material about your periods.” When he leaves, Riki asks, “Why do guys think we talk about our periods?” and then they immediately start sharing details about their periods. They aren’t even that funny, but I still laughed like crazy, just because NO ONE EVER MAKES JOKES ABOUT THEIR PERIODS. Even though periods are hella funny. And guys are WORRIED about hearing about periods from female comedians. Very, very concerned.

My favorite episodes are the ones about dating (especially the one where they test the “Little Mermaid theory” and see if the guys they date will notice or mind if they don’t say any words, at all), the pressures of “aging” (“29/31“), and family planning (“Sometimes my womb is all like ‘hey girrrl’ and my mind is like ‘shhhhhhhh’ but right now I feel like, ‘yeah, maybe?'”).  This perspective separates Garfunkel and Oates from simply being a retread of Flight of the Conchords.

From the "29/31" music video
From the “29/31” music video

 

Fortunately, I think Garfunkel and Oates is part of a sea change for female comedians where it’s not only okay to tackle female experiences, but applauded, by both women and men (see this interview with writers for Inside Amy Schumer).  Of course I don’t think funny women should only cover “women’s issues” (G&O also get great mileage out of weed, awkward social situations, and adult immaturity), but I’m so glad that there is less pressure to shy away from it. Bring on the period jokes, ladies.

2. Is it OK to “use” our sexuality?

Sexy bathtub promo image for 'Garfunkel and Oates'
Sexy bathtub promo image for Garfunkel and Oates

 

If you’ll recall (and I’ll forgive you if you’ve blocked it from your mind), Hitchens’s main argument for the unfunniness of women was that men will have sex with us even if we don’t make them laugh. A corollary to this is that those rare funny women that exist are “making up for” being unattractive in some way. And it also follows that if an attractive woman succeeds in comedy (or in any other field, really) it isn’t on the basis of her talent, but rather her looks.

This is a tricky minefield to navigate, and it gets all the more complicated when you’re telling jokes about sex. Which Garfunkel and Oates do (my all-time fave of their songs is still “I Don’t Understand Job“).  And all the bullshit of Hollywood, wherein these skinny, pretty, able-bodied white women would be considered too “weird looking” to be conventionally attractive, it is even more of a mess. Unfortunately, Garfunkel and Oates doesn’t seem to know how to approach these problems, either, yielding some of their flattest material. In the second episode, Riki and Kate meet their porn parody counterparts Garfinger and Butts, who briefly eclipse their fame with their innuendo-laden track “Come on Me.”

Garfinger and Butts (Abby Elliott and Sugar Lyn Beard) spell out the Garfunkel and Oates formula.
Garfinger and Butts (Abby Elliott and Sugar Lyn Beard) spell out the Garfunkel and Oates formula.

 

Garfinger and Butts crack the G&O formula, but are also portrayed as total idiots. The message is unclear: are Riki and Kate admitting that some of their success is owed to their sex appeal, or bemoaning that they’d be more famous if they landed somewhere else on the hot vs. cute scale.

And the attempts to explore the hot vs. cute spectrum through tall blonde Riki and short brunette Kate also generally fail. In one episode, they “swap hair” with wigs, and blonde Riki is treated nicely by women for the first time, where normally friend-zoned Kate seals the deal for once. It was a little over-the-top for me, as was the episode where Kate is accidentally sent to an audition meant for Riki and looks ridiculous trying to be sexy.

3. Haters gonna hate

Steve Little as anti-fan Dennis
Steve Little as anti-fan Dennis

 

I think my biggest disappointment with Garfunkel and Oates was the episode where an anti-fan trolls one of their shows. I thiiiiink the joke with Dennis is that if people did the stuff they do online (shout “make a sandwich”) in the real world it would be more obviously pathetic. Unfortunately, it wasn’t funny, and the cartoonishness of it felt like it was trivializing online harassment, and minimizing the harm of more subtle IRL sexism. The same episode has the “no period talk” manager and a hostile, condescending sound guy, who would have been more pointed characters without the straw man Dennis drawing attention away. And I would have loved to see more about the subtle forms of sexism women in comedy have to deal with (like in the first episode, where a male comedian Riki is seeing tweets her joke as his own, which if he’d done to a male friend would be a sin akin to murdering their mother).

Of course, all of this was of more interest to me because I am a woman who writes and performs comedy, but I think civilians would agree with my “good but not great” take on the Garfunkel and Oates series. Fortunately, one of the benefits of having more female-driven comedy out there is that it isn’t the end of the world when some of it comes out as just OK.

 


Robin Hitchcock is a writer based in Pittsburgh and a member of the all-female comedy troupe Frankly Scarlett. She is on an eternal quest for the perfect tampon joke.