Robin Hitchcock – Page 7

The Grifters; Yeuch

Written by Robin Hitchcock

The Grifters poster

The Grifters (1990) is a movie that’s been on my “to see” list for years. I knew it had epic critical acclaim at the time of its release. I’ve liked nearly every film I’ve seen by director Stephan Frears. I absolutely adore all three members of the main cast (Anjelica Huston, John Cusack, and Annette Bening). And it gets bonus points for having two women as central characters.

But when I finally caught The Grifters this week, it was a big disappointment. There are plenty of things to recommend about this film: It’s not quite like anything I’ve seen before even though it’s in the trope-heavy noir genre. There is some wonderful acting, with Anjelica Huston in particular delivering a riveting performance. Frears brings in some directorial flourishes worthy of the opening credit “A Martin Scorsese Production,” but others feel awkwardly dated, such as the disjointed flashback sequences.

What overshadows these good qualities is that The Grifters is incredibly unpleasant to watch. Unlike most con artist movies, there is no outsider “mark” character to identify with. Roy (John Cusack), his mother Lilly (Anjelica Huston), and his paramour Myra (Annette Bening) are all in the game. The question becomes, as the poster reads, “Who’s conning who?” [sic, I think; I went to public school ;)]

Seductress Myra (Annette Bening)

But the question is actually a distraction from the real plot of the movie, a relationship-focused tragedy. None of the players is naive enough to trust anyone else, so no one gets conned. When Myra suggests to Roy that they team up, he flat out refuses. The inevitable betrayals and violence are all crimes of passion, not the planned schemes we’d expect.

Small-time con Roy (John Cusack)

Seeing this play out is an exercise in misery. And here is where I must issue spoilery trigger warnings for incest and violence against women. One scene that turned my stomach so badly I did not recover for the rest of the film depicts Lilly being intimidated by her racketeering boss Bobo Justus (how’s that for a character name with “sub”textual meaning?) after she fails at the odds-fixing racetrack scheme she works for him. I can’t even bring myself to type a description of the scene, but it is available streaming online if you want to look for it. Lilly is clearly terrified of Bobo (with good reason), but treats him with a kind humility; she hopes her sweetness and deference can save her life. The terrible thing is that it’s clear her actions and demeanor aren’t what let her survive the confrontation, but rather the whims of the man terrorizing her.

Lilly (Anjelica Huston)

Then there is the shocking violence of the third act, with such graphic gore as a woman with her face blown off on a morgue table. The Oedipal twinge to Roy’s relationship with Lilly, who had him when she was only 14 years old, comes to the fore in one of the film’s final scenes. I don’t enjoy incestual themes in any circumstances, but I found Lilly’s attempted seduction of Roy especially disturbing because she does it as a last-ditch effort to convince him to give her the cash she needs to flee Bobo’s wrath. It’s mutually non-consensual. It gets no further than a kiss, but that relief is immediately side-swept by more graphic violence.

And so The Grifters is a well-made and fantastically-acted movie that I would never recommend. Certainly some people will have a stronger tolerance than I do for its dark themes. My guess is that it’s easier to be entertained by this sort of thing when you are at the top of the kyriarchy like most film critics from the early 90’s (and sadly, today as well). But everyone else comes from a position of heightened awareness of their own vulnerability to violence and sexual assault. And that makes a movie like The Grifters seem more like a psychological weapon than a great film.

Robin Hitchcock is an American writer living in Cape Town, South Africa.

‘Terms of Endearment’ IS NOT a Melodrama

Written by Robin Hitchcock

Debra Winger and Shirley MacLaine in Terms of Endearment

Terms of Endearment has a lasting reputation as a melodramatic, emotionally-manipulative chick flick. This is a film that grossed over $100 million (an even more significant benchmark in the early 80’s) and won five major Academy Awards (Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay for James L. Brooks, Best Actress for Shirley MacLaine and Best Supporting Actor for Jack Nicholson). If Nicholson’s performance as astronaut playboy Garrett Breedlove had been shuffled into the lead actor category (I didn’t do an exact minute count, but I’m fairly certain he appears in as much if not more of the film than Anthony Hopkins did for his Best Actor winning performance in Silence of the Lambs) Terms of Endearment would join that film, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and It Happened One Night in the rarefied Big Five Sweep club.

But Terms of Endearment is now oft-cited as one of the worst Best Picture winners and an example of the Oscar’s fleeting fascination with family dramas instead of “Important” issues. 1979’s Kramer vs. Kramer and 1980’s Ordinary People also make worst best picture lists, at least in part because they “unjustly” beat out Apocalypse Now and Raging Bull for those top prizes. Those also-rans are undeniably powerful films that have had a lasting impact on cinema, but is part of what made their “worthiness” of the title Best Picture their focus on men? [See also Shakespeare in Love’s much-derided win over Saving Private Ryan].

James L. Brooks, Shirley MacLaine, and Jack Nicholson with their Oscars for Terms of Endearment

The muddled legacy of Terms of Endearment, and the seeming unlikeliness that such a picture would find such box office and awards success today, supports my fear that movies focused on women are seen as inherently less important and respectable. When I was watching Terms of Endearment this week, all traces of its reputation fell from my mind as I fell into simply enjoying watching the film. It is incredibly easy to be swept into caring about the lives of Aurora Greenway (Shirley MacLaine) and her daughter Emma (Debra Winger). Their mother-daughter dynamic is very recognizable: they are eternally frustrated with each other but nevertheless co-dependently needful of each other’s love, and can switch from delightfully supportive of the other person’s happiness to cruel about the other person’s problems and back in seconds. These relatable characters are made alive by incredible performances, and the film is generously sprinkled with the winning dialogue (“I don’t think I was treating her badly.” “Then you must be from New York.”) and memorable moments (Emma and Aurora instantaneously making up over the phone after Aurora has boycotted Emma’s wedding) that create that undeniable feeling of “movie magic.”

For a so-called melodrama, Terms of Endearment‘s plot is actually quite true to life. Emma and her husband Flip (Jeff Daniels) move to Iowa for Flip’s stalled academic career; their relationship falters as they struggle with money and child rearing and both take on affairs. Aurora has an opposites-attract fling with her self-satisfied cad of a neighbor (Nicholson), who eventually shows surprising tenderness toward her. These are the kinds of things that happen all the time in the lives of people we know but are hardly ever seen in movies. Emma’s affair with her banker Sam (John Lithgow) is presented as two people filling emotional and physical needs outside of their marriages, not as an epic romance that cannot be because of the constraints of society a la Anna Karenina and countless other works of fiction.

Aurora and Garrett in bed.

How is that melodrama? And how refreshing is it to see a wife and mother having extramarital sex be portrayed sympathetically? It’s even more refreshing to see a sexual relationship between two fifty-somethings treated as normal and—get this—sexy. They’re even played by actors ROUGHLY THE SAME AGE (contra Jack Nicholson’s next Oscar-winning romance with a woman a quarter-century younger than him in As Good as It Gets).

I’m guessing that the accusations of sentimentality mainly come about from the film’s third act, in which Emma discovers she has terminal cancer and dies. There are some very emotionally fraught scenes, like the Oscar clip reel-bait in which Aurora takes out her pain and frustration at watching her daughter die by screaming at the nurses that Emma needs a shot of pain medication. The most famous scene in Terms of Endearment may be Emma saying goodbye to her children when she knows she is dying. The scene does not hold back: her oldest acts sullen and distant, her younger son cannot hold back his sobs, and Emma finds the strength to say the exact right thing to each of them (including: get haircuts). I don’t think the choice to share such an emotionally raw scene with the audience should be dismissed as “manipulative.” It’s certainly no more manipulative than the countless examples in fiction where people just miss their chance to say goodbye.

Emma says goodbye to her sons.

Desperately attempting to find closure with a dying loved one is something that most people experience at some point in their life. Presenting a common problem with unflinching honesty is in fact THE OPPOSITE of melodrama. As such, I’m pretty sure that “Terms of Endearment is a sentimental melodramatic manipulative tear-jerker” is just another way of saying, “It can’t be good if girls like it.”

Robin Hitchcock is an American writer living in Cape Town, South Africa who would like to get one look at Des Moines before she dies.

Travel Films Week: Othering and Alienation in ‘Lost in Translation’

Written by Robin Hitchcock

Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson) and Bob (Bill Murray) in Lost in Translation

Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation is remembered mostly for the genuinely affecting romance between its leads Scarlett Johansson and Bill Murray, but it also offers a singular depiction of culture shock. Unfortunately, in representing the “strangeness” of Japan through the eyes of its American characters, Lost in Translation often veers into racist stereotypes and caricatures. When the film was up for several Academy Awards including Best Picture in 2004, the anti-racism group Asian Mediawatch advocated an Oscar shut-out for the film because it “dehumanises the Japanese people by portraying them as a collection of shallow stereotypes who are treated with disregard and disdain.” [Despite this protest, Lost in Translation did garner writer–director Sofia Coppola an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.]

Bob Harris (Bill Murray) stands tallest in a Japanese elevator

My viewing (as a white American) of Lost in Translation didn’t see disdain for Japan or Japanese people, but rather an aggressive othering, which of course is problematic in its own right. But emphasizing the differences between Tokyo and the American homeland of main characters Charlotte (Johansson) and Bob (Murray) is vital to the narrative of Lost in Translation: both characters are in crisis, unmoored in their daily lives, and the mundane discomfort of their foreign surroundings brings these deeper struggles to bear.

Charlotte looks out at Tokyo from her hotel room window

Focusing on the existential angst of two white Americans in Japan without any well-defined Japanese characters is enough to turn off many race-conscious viewers to begin with, and Lost in Translation doubles down with some cringeworthy Japanese stereotypes. The film gets alarming mileage out of its Japanese characters pronouncing l’s and r’s similarly, which feels even more dated than the also strangely boundless fax-machine humor in this 2003 film. Charlotte at one point asks Bob why “they mix up l’s and r’s” and he suggests it is “for yuks,” but it isn’t actually funny.

Take for example the biggest belly flop of a “comedic” scene in the film, in which an escort arrives at Bob’s hotel room; his host in Japan having gifted him with the “premium fantasy” package. She demands Bob “lip” her stockings. After a classic Bill Murray line reading of “Hey, ‘lip’ them, ‘lip’ them, what!?” the scene devolves as the escort one-sidedly plays out a rape fantasy. Too much of this scene rests on the “humor” of “lip” vs. “rip,” and the rest relies on judging sexism in Japanese business culture from a dubious moral high ground. It’s hard to watch.

Directions during a whiskey ad shoot are literally lost in translation

In contrast, the comedic highlights of the film are the shoots for the whiskey advertisement that brought Bob Harris to Tokyo. The humor in these scenes doesn’t come so much from mocking the Japanese characters as it does mining the disconnect between them and English-speaking Bob (alluding to the film’s title). The flashy director of the ad gives detailed, impassioned instructions in Japanese which are relayed to Bob in brief and inscrutable English directions (“Turn from the right, with intensity!” “Like an old friend, and into the camera.”)

Scarlet Johansson spends a lot of this movie looking out of windows.

Charlotte’s interactions with Japanese culture aren’t comedic, which is likely because Scarlett Johansson is not the established comedic actor that Bill Murray is. Instead, we get a lot of her gazing with wonder at beautiful scenery and meekly participating in ikebana. I think anyone who has ever been a tourist can relate to Charlotte’s wide-eyed stares out of cab windows, but her fascinated observation gets laid on a little thick and starts reeking of Orientalism. Early in the film she peers into a Buddhist temple and cries over the phone to a friend back home that it didn’t make her “feel anything.” That moment lends a lot of credence to those who would dismiss this film out of hand for its white-centricism.

Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson) and Bob (Bill Murray) in Lost in Translation

But the true heart of Lost in Translation is the relationship between Charlotte and Bob, a sudden and profound connection between two lost souls that transcends its blurred line between friendship and romance. This connection is only credible because of these characters’ alienation in their surroundings, so the emphasis on Tokyo’s foreignness to them is important to the film. And from my limited and privileged perspective as a white American living abroad, the representation of culture shock as alternately funny, sad, and spiritually moving rings true. But Lost in Translation‘s othering of Japan too often crosses into racism and xenophobia, which makes it much less of a movie than it could be.

Bob and Charlotte say goodbye.

I would love to see a Before Sunset type follow-up to this film, to revisit Charlotte and Bob and see what might come of a second meeting between their characters, but also to give us a new take on the experience of being in an unfamiliar location. A more nuanced take reflecting the advancing maturity of the characters and of Sofia Coppola, crafting a better film that’s not only enjoyable with privileged blinders on.

Robin Hitchcock is an American writer living in Cape Town who usually wears pants when she stares out her window to gaze wistfully upon the city.

How The Office’s Jim & Pam Negotiated their Conflicting Dreams

Written by Robin Hitchcock

Jim and Pam of The Office

The US iteration of The Office concluded its nine-year run last week with a somewhat mawkish but nevertheless emotionally satisfying finale. We left these characters in a place of personal fulfillment—Dwight and Angela marry, Dwight is regional manager of the Scranton branch of Dunder Mifflin, Andy has turned his embarrassing experiences into something positive and returned to the site of his glory days, Kelly and Ryan foolishly and selfishly run off into the sunset, Erin meets her birth parents. And Jim and Pam, the emotional core of the series, leave Scranton together for Austin so Jim may rejoin the sports marketing startup he and Darryl began working for earlier this season.

In case you haven’t been watching The Office in its autumn years, Jim and Pam’s relationship has followed the push and pull of the conflict between their commitment to each other and their own personal dreams. In season 5, aspiring artist Pam moved to New York for a graphic design program. The series mined the pressures of long-distance relationships for both comedy and drama, but Jim and Pam’s partnership stayed strong and they got engaged at the gas station midpoint between Scranton and New York. Shortly thereafter, Pam left New York “the wrong way” because she failed a class and doesn’t want to remain in the city for another three months to retake it. She insists it is not because of Jim, but because she doesn’t actually like graphic design, but the viewer knows it is a complex combination of those two forces.

Pam and Jim after the birth of their first child.

This dynamic is flipped in the final season when Jim joins a friend in Athlead, a new venture connecting famous athletes to sponsorship opportunities. With Athlead, Jim is finally able to work a job he feels passionate about, in stark contrast to his years as a paper salesman. But Jim’s new job puts an immense strain on his marriage with Pam—with whom he now has two children—as he divides his time between Philadelphia and Scranton and has less attention to give to his family.

Pam is driven to tears by the growing conflict between her and Jim

This is exacerbated by a lack of communication as Jim inexplicably keeps his initial involvement with Athlead from Pam, and increases his commitment to this new job without consulting her several times over. Jim and Pam’s relationship reaches the breaking point, and Jim finally decides to leave Athlead and return to Scranton full-time to save his marriage.

Pam is wracked with guilt and fears that she is “not enough” to justify Jim abandoning his new career direction. Notably, we saw nothing of this type of guilt in Jim when Pam left art school. With the help of the documentary crew that is finally explicitly woven into the story in this finale season, Jim presents Pam a video montage of their relationship and tells her “not enough for me? You are everything.”

The series finale is set some time in the future, after the documentary has aired on PBS and Jim and Pam’s relationship is as important to in-universe fans as it is to those of us watching The Office in the real world. During the public Q&A at a reunion panel, several women criticize Pam for stifling Jim’s career. Jim does a satisfactory job of dissuading these questions, but they clearly affect Pam. She’s also moved by seeing the success and happiness Darryl, who has followed Athlead (now Athleap) to Austin. So she secretly sells her and Jim’s house (secrecy is a recurring and frustrating undercurrent in their relationship; this is the same house Jim bought without consulting Pam first) and tells Jim it’s time for them to move on from Dunder Mifflin and relocate to Austin.

Pam and Jim decide to move on from Scranton

From a Doylist perspective, this gives the audience closure; without Jim and Pam present, the story of The Office feels complete. But on the Watsonian side of things, it means Jim’s career path decidedly beats out Pam’s after many years of back and forth, which puts a damper on my personal satisfaction as a viewer.

My personal life is clearly influencing my reaction to this storyline: I moved 8,000 miles away from home so my partner could accept his dream job. Obviously, every couple needs to resolve these issues on their own, and it is dated and heteronormative to think this is always going to be a gendered struggle. But for many mixed-gender couples, gendered expectations of whose career matters more and the importance of career vs. family often play a part. And it’s a bit of a let down to see one of the iconic on-screen couples of the last ten years fall into the traditional resolution of the man’s career coming first.

Robin Hitchcock is an American writer living in Cape Town who works out her personal issues by writing about sitcoms.

The Terminatrix Problem

Written by Robin Hitchcock

Kristanna Loken as the T-X or “Terminatrix” in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines

On round one thousand seventy eight of the eternal “do the time travel rules in the Terminator movies make any sense?” debate, my partner and I decided the only reasonable course of action was a Terminator movie marathon [we excused ourselves from having to suffer through Terminator Salvation, because life is too short to watch that dull abomination more than once].

The time travel debate, of course, rages on, but watching the first three Terminator films in short order made their relative strengths and weaknesses all the more clear. [Or, in the case of T2: Judgment Day, relative strengths. That movie HAS NO WEAKNESSES.] I held out hope that Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines might have some new charms or interest placed directly next to its legendary big sister. It’s a movie I want to like more than I do, despite the crippling absence of Sarah Connor, awkward recasting of John Connor, and the distractingly aged Schwarzenegger. Oh, and James Cameron out of the director’s chair, half-heartedly replaced by some “I made one of those submarine movies from the early aughts, and no my name isn’t Kathryn Bigelow” hack (Jonathan Mostow).

I know now why you Botox

And then there’s that whole thing where Terminator 3 completely defies the defining spirit of the series “no fate but what we make for ourselves” and goes all predestination on our asses. You have a fate! You have a fate! EVERYONE HAS A FATE! Man, this movie has a lot of problems.

But allow me to expand on just one of them: The T-X, or Terminatrix, played by Kristanna Loken. Judgment Day had one of the most memorable movie villains of all time in Robert Patrick’s T-1000. Living up to that standard is a tall order. T3’s only answer for how to up the ante is boobies.

Inflatable boobies! [To be fair, they also give the T-X various and sundry additional powers like technopathy and plasma weapons, but they feel thrown against the lingerie billboard and they don’t quite stick.]

From a gender studies point of view, there’s a lot of potential in introducing the first female terminator. What are the tactical advantages of boobies? Why do robots (shape-shifting robots, at that!) even have gender identities? Why does the T-X have a “sexy” curvy endoskeleton?

That’s not how skeletons work!

Spoiler alert: none of these questions will be answered or even adequately addressed by T3. Instead, Kristanna Loken will do her best Robert Patrick impression whilst having boobies, and it will fall completely flat (pun perhaps subconsciously intended).

Nothing will ever be this scary.

There’s several problems with Loken (as well as the writers and the director) deciding to go the T-1000 imitative route. First, obviously, is that it’s essentially impossible to live up to the memory of Robert Patrick’s chilling performance. Secondly, it throws away the fascinating idea introduced in T2 that different Terminators have distinct personalities (thankfully, the Battlestar Galactica reboot would pick up their fumble).

And finally, a beautiful woman acting robotic just isn’t that notable in our culture of objectification.

Women are so often used as beautiful emotionless props it can be hard even for feminists to notice when it’s happening. In the era of widespread photoshop abuse, images of women are increasingly not quite human: everyone has the same glowy, flawless, fresh-off-the-factory line look.

3-D printed Natalie Portman

Emma Stone with upgraded robolashes

Olivia Wilde is a female pleasure unit.
She requires a new coat of paint.

These images should freak us out, but they’re all too easy to accept as honest representations of a inhuman beauty to which we should all aspire. This objectification is such a pernicious part of the cultural DNA that the usual rules of the uncanny valley don’t apply to beautiful women. When Robert Patrick played the T-1000 with inhuman rigidity and emotionless focus, it was terrifying. But when Kristanna Loken played the Terminatrix using exactly the same mannerisms, she was just another sexy fembot.

Ask your beautician about mimetic polyalloy, the new revolution in skincare

Even when something is as thoroughly pre-ruined as Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, the patriarchy finds ways to make it even worse.

—————-

Robin Hitchcock is an American writer living in Cape Town. She always leaves the room when Sarah Connor starts carving “no fate” into a picnic table during T2 because she’s afraid to watch the nuclear attack dream sequence that comes next.

Let’s Re-Brand "Disney Princesses" as "Disney Heroines"

Written by Robin Hitchcock

A piece of fan art and the particularities of French to English translation may have solved our Disney Princess problem:

Disney Heroines Simple Lines, by David Gilson

Feminist parents (and grandparents and aunts and uncles and siblings) often worry about their young girls getting sucked into Disney Princess culture, and not just because of the intimidating price tags at the Disney store. We don’t want our kids growing up with female role models solely labelled with the coveted status of “princess,” and therefore defined by their relationships with men (be they fathers or husbands), and admired largely for their status over others. It’s pretty much the last thing a feminist would want for their kids.

A more typical (but still very clever) piece of fan art depicting
Disney Princesses as cover models on women’s magazines. Artist unknown.

However, criticism of Disney Princess culture often overlooks that Disney has created a battalion of strong female characters who are in fact fantastic role models for children, particularly since the dawn of the Disney Renaissance.

There’s a recurring theme of headstrong rebellion against societal expectations (Ariel, Jasmine, Mulan, Merida), which might sound a little scary from a parenting point of view but is certainly a vital part of a developing feminist consciousness. Disney Heroines are accepting of people their peers reject and other because of their differences (Belle, Pocahontas, Esmerelda, Jane). And Disney Heroines are self-assured even though they themselves can be awkward and not really fit in (Ariel, Belle, Mulan, Lilo, Rapunzel), even when they are actively scorned by society (Esmerelda, Vanellope Von Schweets).

Particularly in the most recent films, Disney Heroines expressly have their own interests, skills, and goals completely unrelated to romance and social status (Tiana, Sgt. Calhoun). And they’re smart and sassy and lovable (pretty much all of them, but I just want to give a special shout-out to my homegirl Megara).

These are characters we should want our kids to be obsessed with. Shifting from “Disney Princesses” to “Disney Heroines” widens the field on a semantic level to include a lot more fantastic characters, but more importantly highlights what really makes these women special. It’s not their status as princesses; it is who they are.

———–

Robin Hitchcock is an American writer living in Cape Town, South Africa. Disney movies are her favorite cold medicine, hangover cure, and anti-depressant.

School of Rock: Where Shrewish Women are "The Man"

Written by Robin Hitchcock

Jack Black in School of Rock

The first decade of this millennium was a pretty good time for American culture, all in all, George W. Bush notwithstanding. YouTube was invented, the pound symbol was saved from oblivion by hashtags, and Tina Fey got famous.

But the early-to-mid aughts also brought something really unpleasant to our culture, something that had been brewing since the dawn of Generation X: the celebration of The Man Child. In everything from Old School to Role Models to the Complete Works of Judd Apatow, male characters Peter Pan’d their way through life, even as pesky forces like bills and harping girlfriends tried to harsh their mellow.

Perhaps the most troubling aspect of the Man Child trope from a feminist point of view is his female counterpoint: the Nagging Killjoy Shrew. This woman tells the Man Child to grow up, to accept responsibility, to stop acting exactly like he did when he was 19. To which the Man Child responds, “stop crushing my soul and my dreams! I just gotta be me.”

I have no idea where the cultural idea that women are better at being grown-ups than men came from. I think it may have been some misguided attempt to correct previous sexism while simultaneously getting out of having to do the dishes. I’m also not sure how the patiently suffering Sitcom Wife of the Man Child so prevalent in the 80’s and 90’s turned into the Hellish Shrewbeast of the 2000’s Aptovian comedy.

School of Rock, the 2003 film written by Mike White and directed by Richard Linklater, typifies the Man Child vs. Shrewbeast dynamic, which is a shame, because it is otherwise an extremely entertaining and lovable film, and I wish I could recommend it without reservation.

Jack Black plays Dewey Finn, a man-child whose unyielding pursuit of a rock n roll stardom has thwarted his maturation and upward mobility toward certain signifiers of adulthood like having an actual bed in an actual bedroom instead of a mattress on the floor of your buddy’s living room. Dewey’s roommate Ned Schneebly (Mike White) has given up the rock and roll dreams he shared with Dewey in his younger days for the more stable and adult life of a substitute teacher. Dewey assumes Ned’s identity, taking a substitute teaching job at an elite prep school in order to make rent, with the side bonus of recruiting a bunch of children into his new rock band. Events occur, life lessons are learned by all, young selves are actualized by the transformative power of music, and humble offerings are made to the gods or rock. Like so many stunted artists, Dewey and Ned discover that teaching their craft to the next generation of dreamers allows them to stay active with their passion while earning a respectable living doing it. Roll adorable credits with the kids’ band playing an AC/DC song.

Dewey vs. The Man, including a cop, the man whose identity he stole, his employer, and Patty

But along the way, Dewey (and Ned) conflict with various Hellish Shrewbeasts. First, Ned’s girlfriend, Patty (Sarah Silverman), who instigates Dewey’s deception by insisting he GASP, actually pay rent to continue staying in her boyfriend’s apartment (that bitch.) I cannot for the life of me figure out why Sarah Silverman accepted this role. Every word out of Patty’s mouth comes out sounding like a verbal a punch in the face (to Dewey) or yank on the leash (to Ned). She’s one of the most unpleasant characters I’ve ever seen on screen, indisputably the villain of the piece, even though her attitudes (Dewey should get a job so her boyfriend doesn’t have a Man Child living on his living room floor anymore; Dewey should not be casually forgiven for fraud and child endangerment) are entirely reasonable. I don’t know if Silverman was miscast and/or misdirected, but her caustic performance unfortunately bolsters the Man-Child-Good/Responsible-Adult-Woman-Bad dynamic in School of Rock. Silverman is fantastic at playing the elusive female variant of the Man Child [see also Dee Reynolds in It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (after the pilot, where her character is a much more pedestrian voice of reason), and Daisy Steiner in Spaced] so she might have exaggerated the shrewish aspects of her character in an attempt to show range.

Joan Cusack as Principal Mullins with Jack Black

Patty isn’t the only flavor of Shrewish Nemesis Dewey must work around in School of Rock, and I’m not sure if that makes matters better or worse. Next up is the principle of the school Dewey has conned his way into, Rosalie Mullins (Joan Cusack). Ms. Mullins is a stickler for rules and discipline, but it is clear that her straight-laced authority is part of what makes her school so exceptional. While Ms. Mullins inspires fear in her students and isn’t exactly liked by her colleagues (which she laments), but she is undeniably respected, both by the characters (even Dewey!) and by the film itself. Unlike Patty, we see the lighter side of Ms. Mullins, first when Dewey discovers the key to loosening her up is a third of a beer and a Stevie Nicks jam on the jukebox, and later when she jubilantly congratulates her students after their climactic performance at the battle of the bands.

Miranda Cosgrove as Summer Hathaway, class factotum and band manager.

Finally, there is a mini-Shrew in the form of “Class Factotum” Summer (Miranda Cosgrove). Summer has learned to play the game at her elite school, racking up gold stars and grade grubbing her way to the top. She and Dewey butt heads at first, but Dewey quickly deduces he can manipulate Summer into going along with his antics by giving her a somewhat specious mantle of authority as Band Manager. The twist is that Summer takes on this role with aplomb and ends up being a vital part of the Band’s production team (her new interest leading her father to ask in one of the best lines of the movie, “Why has my daughter become obsessed with David Geffen?”). One of the many ways that School of Rock is exceptional is how much dignity it affords its well-rounded child characters, which makes it no surprise that young Summer is the most sympathetic of the Shrews.

It’s unfortunate that School of Rock relies so heavily on the Man Child vs. Shrewish Woman dynamic, because it is otherwise a funny, heartwarming, endlessly entertaining film. It’s a comfort food flick for me, something I put on to pull me out of a funk. I was almost mad at my feminist goggles for revealing this unfortunate pattern.

“Write me a better reference!”

One more quick feminist gripe before I go: I know the character speaking this line of dialogue is nine and wouldn’t necessarily know any better, but it is a CRIME that when drummer Freddie challenges Bassist Katie to name “two great chick drummers” she offers up Meg White before Moe Tucker or Gina Schock. A CRIME.

RIP Roger Ebert

Written by Robin Hitchcock

Film critic Roger Ebert, 1942–2013

Roger Ebert died at age 70 yesterday, only days after announcing he would be taking a “leave of presence” from his career because his cancer had returned. Hearing the sad news of his passing, those words stand out in my mind: “leave of presence.” Even though Ebert has gone to that great movie theater in the sky, his presence will always be felt by movie lovers, cultural commentators, and writers of all stripes. As someone who not only loves movies and writing but writes about movies, I am feeling the loss of Roger Ebert to my very core.

Watching Siskel & Ebert At the Movies was a Sunday morning ritual in my house growing up. Other people went to church; my family watched a syndicated film review program. And I was indoctrinated as a movie lover. I remember that even as a child I was struck by Ebert’s joyful love of film. His job title may have been “film critic,” but he often seemed to be more of a “film appreciator.” Unlike pop culture’s caricature of critics, from Waldorf and Statler in the Muppets to Jay Sherman on The Critic, Ebert wasn’t looking for things to complain about. He wanted to like movies. One of Ebert’s core principles of movie reviewing was to evaluate a movie in its own standing: he wouldn’t detract a kids’ movie for being childish or a broad comedy for failing to take on serious social issues. This guy gave four stars to The Karate Kid. He knew a great movie when he saw one.

Nevertheless, Ebert may be better remembered for his negative reviews, because his biting wit was well-employed in take downs of the worst that the cinema had to offer. Ebert published two books compiling his harshest reviews, I Hated Hated Hated This Movie in 2000 and Your Movie Sucks in 2007. On his television program, many of Ebert’s “thumbs down” takes on film had the air of “I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed.” It took a lot to get Ebert to really let loose the vitriol, but when he did, it was priceless. (Ebert also published several volumes on The Great Movies, well worth your time!)

While Ebert was able to fully enjoy and celebrate mainstream entertainment, he was still a great advocate for smaller and independent films. He’s hosted a film festival colloquially called EbertFest for the past 15 years, meant to champion “overlooked” films, in later years placing them alongside revisited classics. We here at Bitch Flicks know all to well that women-centric films can be overlooked by Hollywood, and EbertFest gave a select few of them, including Vera Farmiga’s Higher Ground and Lena Dunham’s Tiny Furniture, a second day in the spotlight. I also clearly remember Ebert selecting Eve’s Bayou as the best film of 1997, which is what brought me to watch it, and it is one of my favorite films of all time.

As a champion of both low-brow but satisfying flicks and brilliant works outside of the mainstream, Roger Ebert’s pure love of movies brought an inclusiveness to his work that is exceptionally appealing to this feminist critic. He would never dismiss a rom-com for being a “chick flick,” and he was an advocate for the smaller women-centric films that so often go overlooked. Ebert’s incredible perspective on the cinematic landscape, his infectious love for movies, and his inimitable writing skills have shaped the last forty years of media criticism. His influence will live on, his memory will inspire and guide us, and film reviews and films themselves will be all the better for it. Thumbs up, Mr. Ebert.

‘Clueless’: Way Existential

Written by Robin Hitchcock

With Bitch Flicks celebrating its fifth anniversary this week, I wanted to write a positive and celebratory post. So I thought I would revisit one of my favorite flicks, Amy Heckerling’s Clueless, for which I have not a single unkind word.

Clueless movie poster

Clueless repositions the basic plot of Jane Austen’s Emma into a Beverly Hills high school. Like Austen’s title character, Clueless‘s heroine Cher (Alicia Silverstone) is a somewhat spoiled rich girl who operates in her own reality, one slightly off-kilter from everyone else’s perception of the world. But she is not stupid, or unkind, or even particularly egotistic. Although her matchmaking and various schemes to help others are almost always somewhat self-motivated, you wouldn’t call her selfish (not to her face). Cher is an extremely likeable (and relentlessly quotable) character. This entire movie could have easily been an exercise in “look at this dumb shallow bitch,” but Heckerling’s affection for her character (echoing Austen’s for Emma) and Silverstone’s charisma sidestep that antifeminist pitfall.

Dionne and Cher

Another delightfully feminist feature of Clueless is its depiction of female friendships. There are plenty of romantic subplots to go around in this movie, but the most important relationships are between Cher and her best friend Dionne (Stacey Dash) as well as Cher and her new friend/”project” Tai (Brittany Murphy). These relationships show a lot of love, mutual support, and genuine enjoyment of time spent together, reflecting real-life female friendships in a way that is STILL woefully underrepresented in media. But these friendships are not devoid of conflict or competitiveness, which also rings true. One of my favorite scenes is when Cher and Tai make up after a blowout fight, a conversation beginning with shy small talk but quickly escalating to mutual apologies and tearful appreciation of one another. Who hasn’t had this moment with their best girlfriend?

Cher and Tai make up after a fight

Clueless also boasts an exceptionally nuanced and respectful depiction of teen sexuality. When Cher, Dionne, and Tai discuss their respective levels of sexual experience (Tai has had sex, Dionne is “technically a virgin”, and Cher is “saving herself for Luke Perry”), no one’s choices are judged. Later, when Cher finds out the guy she’s crushing on is gay, she’s surprised but almost immediately embraces him as a close platonic friend.

In general, Clueless is extremely respectful of its teen characters, even as it satirizes their naïveté and superficial tendencies. Cher can be ditzy but still corrects a pretentious college student’s misquotation of Hamlet. Dionne’s boyfriend Murray is able to eloquently justify calling her “woman”: “street slang is an increasingly valid form of expression. Most of the feminine pronounces do have mocking, but not necessarily misogynistic undertones.” Tai marvels, “you guys talk like grown-ups.” This was three years before Dawson’s Creek forced awkwardly sophisticated through it’s teen mouthpieces, and leagues more successful.

Heckerling’s unexpected adaptation worked so well that Clueless launched an entire sub-genre of the high school-set classic literary adaptations; yielding everything from the delightful 10 Things I Hate About You (a take on The Taming of the Shrew), to the enjoyable but problematic She’s All That (one of Hollywood’s many Pygmalion adaptations), the drearily self-serious Cruel Intentions (Les Liaisons Dangereuses), and the brutally faithful O (Othello). And that’s a significantly abbreviated list (anyone else remember A Midsummer Night’s Dream-inspired Get Over It? Sisqó was in it! Does anyone else even remember Sisqó?). I for one would love to see a revival of this trend. If we’re going to bring back floral prints from the graveyard of the 1990s, why not this?

I strongly suspect there was some kind of magic radiation on set that dramatically slowed the aging process in the main cast, because Paul Rudd and Stacey Dash are basically the male and female poster children for “ageless,” and Alicia Silverstone and Donald Faison are still looking remarkably fresh faced themselves. [And now, I shall pour one out for gone-too-soon Brittany Murphy. RIP] But that is neither here nor there. Clueless is timeless not because of its preternaturally ageless cast, but because it is much more than just the cultural parody it appears to be at first blush.

The Journey of Natty Gann: Family-Friendly and Feminist-Friendly!

Written by Robin Hitchcock.

The Journey of Natty Gann

When I was a young girl, I was obsessed with the trailer for The Journey of Natty Gann (for which I will issue a spoiler warning, although I find it dubious that a Disney family film could be spoiled):

I remember popping in my VHS copy of The Sword in the Stone just to watch this trailer, sometimes three or four times in a row. It hit all my little girl id buttons: A tough kid (a tough GIRL!) on an epic adventure without the assistance of adults! Baby-faced John Cusack! A pet wolf! (I’m terribly afraid of dogs, so I’ve always weirdly loved characters who aren’t even afraid of wolves. See also, Julie of the Wolves, Young Robin’s favorite book). And yet, I never saw the actual movie before this week, through a combination of poor availability on home video and a nagging fear that the actual movie could never live up to my love for the trailer.

But when I caught The Journey of Natty Gann on South African satellite this weekend, I knew the time had come to actually watch it. And the film managed to live up to my impossibly high expectations. If you can’t stand live action Disney family films, there is nothing for you here, but Natty Gann is a fine example of the form.

For those unable to watch the trailer above, here’s a rough outline of the plot: In the middle of the Great Depression, twelve-year-old Natty Gann runs away from her neglectful reluctant caregiver (Lainie Kazan) in Chicago to find her father, who has gone out west for work. Everyone cynically tells Natty that her father abandoned her, but in truth he is a good man (despite being played by Ray Wise, who I suppose had not yet been saddled with the typecasting that has defined the last twenty years of his career) and is trying to save enough money to buy Natty a train ticket of her own to join him. Natalie faces a series of adventures along the way, picks up a pet wolf, and meets another young kid on a journey of his own, Harry (John Cusack).

John Cusack as Harry

Harry was one of the best surprises of the film for me. I’m pretty much powerless in the face of young John Cusack, but I still worried that his character might be too much of a mentor figure for Natty or merely part of a boring old romantic subplot. There are touches of both, but ultimately Harry comes across as Natty’s fellow adventurer. He thinks of himself as more street-wise (or rail-wise?) than Natty, but very quickly learns not to condescend to her.

Natty Gann (Meredith Salenger) gets her Katniss on

And Meredith Salenger is absolutely terrific as Natty Gann. Even feminist-in-training Young Robin recognized some of the problems with the “tomboy” character archetype: that the way for a girl to be cool was for to not be “girly.” What’s remarkable about the character Natty Gann as written by Jeanne Rosenberg and played by Salenger is that her personality is just that–her personality, given even rougher edges by the hard circumstances of her life. Her toughness isn’t meant to make her any less of a “real girl.” Natty struggles to be accepted as equal to adults, rather than equal to the boys. When Harry tells her, “You’re a real woman of the world, kid” we know she’s earned the respect she seeks.

The Journey of Natty Gann is a movie I’ll want my hypothetical children to see; to entertain them, teach them life lessons, and help begin their feminist indoctrination. And as an adult, I still found myself enjoying every minute of it. What more could you ask of a family film? [Perhaps the absence of an attempted rape scene, although said scene if fleeting, not exploitative, and ripe to become a Teachable Moment]

And in the meantime, let’s find Meredith Salenger her career-redefining role. She’s talented, gorgeous, and clearly a sweetheart: she tweeted me after I praised Natty Gann on Twitter while I was watching it: [I’d love to go back and time and tell Young Robin about that, although explaining Twitter to a child in the late 1980s sounds even more difficult than inventing time travel.]

Also based on Twitter, I see that Meredith Salenger is good friends with Parks & Rec‘s Retta, so I may have an idea how to go about reinvigorating her career: *cough* SPINOFF *cough*

‘The Journey of Natty Gann’: Family-Friendly and Feminist-Friendly!

Written by Robin Hitchcock.

The Journey of Natty Gann

John Cusack as Harry

Natty Gann (Meredith Salenger) gets her Katniss on

Also based on Twitter, I see that Meredith Salenger is good friends with Parks & Rec‘s Retta, so I may have an idea how to go about reinvigorating her career: *cough* SPINOFF *cough*

Women of Color in Film and TV: ‘Eve’s Bayou’ belongs in the canon

Written by Robin Hitchcock.

Eve’s Bayou dvd cover

Eve’s Bayou, Kasi Lemmons’s 1997 debut as a screenwriter and director, should be seen by every movie lover, every filmmaker, every storyteller. It’s a nearly perfect narrative feat, but it only generated minor waves among film critics upon its release (although Roger Ebert did name it his Best Film of 1997), and failed to garner mainstream awards nominations (it did better at the Independent Spirit Awards and NAACP Image Awards). In the intervening sixteen years I would have expected it to build up a huge following and status as a cult classic, but it is, at best, remembered as “a contemporary classic in black cinema.”

To be fair, one of the most remarkable things about Eve’s Bayou is that it features an all-star cast of black actors (including Lynn Whitfield, Debbi Morgan, Dihann Carroll, and Samuel L. Jackson), all playing characters informed by race, but not defined by it. Race and culture give Eve’s Bayou some of it’s richness and depth, but are not the main driving forces of the story. It’s sadly very rare to see a film about black people that isn’t entirely about their blackness.

Eve’s Bayou is also unusual in that it focuses on women, and is told through women’s point of view. Mainly, that of ten-year-old Eve (Jurnee Smollett), whose adult self provides the bookending narration: “Memory is a selection of images, some elusive, others printed indelibly on the brain.“

The power of memory and the unreliability of perception are the main themes of Eve’s Bayou, but these themes are infused into the story without reducing its clarity or straightforwardness. A bit of magical realism is used (in one stunner of a scene, Eve’s many-times-widowed aunt recounts how one of her husbands was murdered, and both women see the events play out behind them in a mirror’s reflection as the story is told), but these devices help ground the more fantastical elements of this story (including psychic visions and voodoo).

I was reminded of last year’s Beasts of the Southern Wild while rewatching Eve’s Bayou this week, as both take place in Louisiana, contain elements of the fantastical, and feature a powerfully-realized young black girl as their main character. Beasts of the Southern Wild didn’t work for me because I felt it sacrificed storytelling at the expense of its lyricism, which may be why the brilliant plotting of Eve’s Bayou stood out for me upon this rewatch. Eve’s Bayou leads you down a path where you think you know what is going to happen, but turns those expectations on their head in a ways that are both heartbreaking and moving.

Jurnee Smollett as Eve in Eve’s Bayou

I also think Eve’s Bayou is remarkably truthful and recognizable in its depiction of childhood, with all its joys, confusions, frustrations, and fears. There are many charming moments where Eve and her older sister Cecily (Meagan Good) and younger brother Poe (Jake Smollett) torment each other in ways very relatable to anyone who grew up with siblings or other children. But this film’s depiction of the challenges of childhood go deeper: we see Eve and her siblings wanting desperately to be included with and seen as equal to the adults (sometimes in very shocking ways), but also their anxiety and discomfort with growing older and leaving childhood behind.

All in all, Eve’s Bayou is a remarkable film that should have more fame and esteem than it does. If you haven’t seen it yet, it deserves the top spot on your to-see list.