Author: Stephanie Rogers

YouTube Break: Reality Rehab With Dr. Jenn

Back in March, we featured Jennifer L. Pozner’s book, Reality Bites Back: The Troubling Truth About Guilty Pleasure TV, as a Quote of the Day. I just ran across something awesome: a satirical and hilarious video series called, Reality Rehab with Dr. Jenn, in which Pozner hosts a mock-reality-rehab show. Her main responsibility as host involves revealing and critiquing reality TV stereotypes by attempting to help those stock characters “learn how to be three-dimensional human beings again.” The featured stock characters include The Desperate Bachelorette, The Angry Black Woman, The “Real” Housewife, The Top Model, The Slutty Bitch, The Douchebag Dude, and The Gangsta Guy. I’m posting the trailer below, but definitely go to her site, and check out the entire series!



Bio from the Web site:

JENNIFER L. POZNER (“Dr Jenn”; Executive Producer) is the author of Reality Bites Back: The Troubling Truth About Guilty Pleasure TV, and the producer and cowriter of this Reality Rehab project. She is founder and Executive Director of Women In Media & News and editor of WIMN’s Voices. A widely published journalist who freelances for corporate and independent print and broadcast outlets, Jennifer is also a noted lecturer on women, media, politics and pop culture. Jennifer has appeared as a media commentator on NBC, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, ABC News Now, GRITtv, Democracy Now!, National Public Radio, and Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. She has served as an adviser for and has been featured in several documentary films, including I Was a Teenage Feminist and Miss Representation. Jenn is extremely indebted to and impressed by the entire Reality Rehab team, who worked entirely for free to pull this indy project together. This is her first time writing and producing a video project…she hopes you enjoy it! (Tell her what you think on Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube.)

Guest Writer Wednesday: Incendies

Incendies: Lebanon Is Scorched, Burned and Blistered

To say that the Middle East has been scorched, burned and blistered by war is an understatement. In Incendies–a ground-breaking diaspora film, set in both present day Canada and in Lebanon in the recent past–we get to see in painful detail the intricacies of how the war burned many families into horrific mangled messes.
The idea of return is common among diaspora films of the last few decades. Usually the protagonist of the film returns to their family’s place of origin and discovers the rubble and ruins that have been vacated by their parent’s generation. Usually we do not see the atrocities that happened, but we are told that they are too terrible to talk about or to show. The protagonist walks around looking traumatized which, I have to admit, despite my devotion to these films, is part of the growing pains in the development of a genre.
Where Incendies distinguishes itself is in the crafting of a story that really is too terrible to tell and too terrible to witness. And then it makes us witness every terrible moment of it.
A cinematic moment. The image comes first and the explanation comes much much later.
The brilliance of Incendies is not simply in the visceral moments of violence–the shock of a child being ripped from her mother’s arms before the mother is burned alive–it is in the crafting of a story that makes visible the back and forth of retaliation: like an equation where each variable, each action has a predictable and increasingly despicable reaction. Details were planted early in the film and later revealed their terrible significance. At the same time, the film avoids didacticism, and instead reaches for and finds mythological resonance.
Violence and pain become sources of empathy and identification for the audience.
The film is based on a play written and directed by seasoned writer, actor and director extraordinaire, Wajdi Mouawad. He is of Lebanese origin and has received the highest accolades for his creative work in Canada. The Incendies stage play has traveled the world and has received rave reviews. Mouawad directed a film in 2004, Littoral, that was also an adaptation of a script he had written and directed for the stage. His initial transition to film was bumpy. Littoral was similarly a story of returning to Lebanon to burying a parent. Unfortunately, it was heavy in dialogue and the emotional tone of the film was forced. This time, Mouawad’s story has been better cinematically served by teaming up with director Denis Villeneuve. Villeneuve has spent the last decade working on the project of cinematic representations of violence. Even with an Oscar nomination in the Foreign Language category, Incendies is doing far better than its distributor had expected.
Seen through a feminist lens, the intersecting oppressions on the protagonist’s life do not simply come from the war planes overhead–which are never named, but are likely from Israel. The old world familial relationships that are what could loosely be referred to as pre-capitalist are further entrenched rather than displaced by war. The political, religious, and gender divides as well as ideas about honor and group loyalty are part of the web that entraps the protagonist. The story is written with non identical twins, a boy and girl, returning to Lebanon to search for their father and brother while uncovering their mother’s past. Each child is able to search in different spaces based on their respective genders, further revealing a splitting in the already fractured narrative.
The now classic diasporic subject returning to the ‘homeland’ and looking.
The incredible violence we witness in the film is shot and edited with emotional rawness and, importantly, respect for women’s bodies. The rape scene is a good example; we are first told through dialogue that it is going to happen. We see the woman sitting in a chair and then see the rapist enter the room. The camera cuts to a close-up of her face as she is waiting, then cuts to a close-up of the rapist’s face as he looks at her. It cuts back to her on the ground crying. The editing implies the act of rape, and reduces the voyeuristic impact on the audience. Instead, we share in the victim’s anticipatory fear and in her pain afterward.
The protagonist is played by Lubna Azabal, a Moroccan actress who is a contender to be the next generation Hiam Abbas.
Hiam Abbas is the Arab world’s Meryl Streep.
The press releases claim that the film is set in an unnamed Arab country. The film itself evades realist details that would pin it to an exact location: the cityscapes are not Beirut, because they were shot in Jordan. The prison which is referred to as “in the South” is undoubtedly modeled after the notorious Khiam prisons in Lebanon, but in the film it is given a new name. The Nationalist party and its leader are fictional, although they occupied a similar position in the ideological landscape of Lebanon. License plates on cars are from several countries. The protagonist is modeled after Souha Bechara, a famous Lebanese freedom fighter who was in prison for assassination and sang through her solitary confinement. Unlike the character Nehal, the historical figure of Souha did not have children. Obscuring, renaming, and deliberate obfuscation are perhaps the historical equivalent of mythological strokes in narrative structure. The lack of geopolitical specificity is perhaps what allows the film to breathe the symbolic into the Lebanese situation. Make no mistake – some things are obscure, but the important details situate the film with utter literalism in Lebanon over the last few decades.
The film is traumatic to watch and perhaps cathartic too, especially for anyone from the region. I sobbed at least six times. The film allows a flood of memories to return, and stimulates after-film conversations about things people have repressed for years. In one of these conversations someone asked why the mother would bring the memories of violence onto her children. “They live in Canada, they don’t even speak Arabic, why do they need to unearth a painful and terrible history? Why not live in ignorant bliss,” she asked. What are the assumptions operating here? Do those in diaspora ever really live in ignorant bliss, when they are raised by parent(s) who have been through trauma, and war trickles down through their actions onto the children somehow? In Incendies, the children were raised without a father and without an extended family on either their paternal or maternal sides. The film asks us to think about whether their lives were ever really free of violence, even though the violence may have been displaced and unnamed. Traces of violence and the reality of unknown origins haunted them. The film suggests both that there is violence implicit in the return of the exile and the inevitability of that return. In this story, the boundaries between ‘here’ and ‘over there,’ past and present, families and strangers are found to be more permeable than many would like to think.
Vicky Moufawad-Paul is a curator, artist, film programmer, and the Artistic Director at A Space Gallery in Toronto. She earned a Masters of Fine Arts from York University, where she conducted research on the visual culture of Palestine. She was previously the founding Executive Director of the Toronto Arab Film Festival, and has worked at the Toronto International Film Festival Group. She was a member of the Visual and Media Arts Committee at the Toronto Arts Council, a founding member of the Advisory Board of the Palestine Film Festival, and a member of the Board of Directors at Trinity Square Video. Her writing has been published by Fuse Magazine, E-Fagia, the Arab American National Museum, and the Journal of Peace Research. She was also a contributor to the anthology Decentre: concerning artist-run culture/a propos de centres d’artistes (YYZ Books, 2008). Moufawad-Paul’s video art has been exhibited nationally and internationally.

Movie Preview: Life, Above All

 

I saw a preview for Life, Above All when I went to see Woody Allen’s latest misogyny-fest, Midnight in Paris. For the record, I mostly hated Midnight in Paris–and should review it as the sexist piece of crap it is–but I’m trying to find examples of positivity in the film industry these days. The only truly great thing about attending Midnight in Paris was discovering the upcoming Life, Above All (now playing in New York and L.A.) and the upcoming Take Shelter–holy crap that’s a freaky trailer.

Michael Shannon scares me.
Anyway, the official Web site synopsizes Life, Above All as follows:
Just after the death of her newly-born sister, Chanda, 12 years old, learns of a rumor that spreads like wildfire through her small, dust-ridden village near Johannesburg. It destroys her family and forces her mother to flee. Sensing that the gossip stems from prejudice and superstition, Chanda leaves home and school in search of her mother and the truth. Life, Above All is an emotional and universal drama about a young girl (stunningly performed by first-time-actress Khomotso Manyaka) who fights the fear and shame that have poisoned her community … Directed by South African filmmaker Oliver Schmitz (Mapantsula), it is based on the international award winning novel Chanda’s Secrets by Allan Stratton.

The trailer itself gets me teary-eyed. I watched it and realized how rarely mother-daughter relationships grace the screen in a way that doesn’t portray the mother as smothering and ridiculous and usually insane, and at the very least, just … shitty. (See: Black Swan, Carrie, Mommie Dearest, Phoebe in Wonderland, Gone Baby Gone, Fish Tank, and the upcoming Ansiedad. Add screen portrayals of the Mother-in-Law to the list, and it’s a disturbing clusterfuck of epic proportions.) 

While a few reviewers argue that Life, Above All ignores the government’s responsibilities in the HIV/AIDS crisis in South Africa (like the film failing to mention former president Thabo Mbeki’s sympathies with AIDS denialists in the 00’s), I’m excerpting from several positive reviews that focus on the interpersonal relationships in the film:

By Liz Braun:

Life, Above All is an historical snapshot of the AIDS crisis in Africa and an indictment of sorts of the government bungling that allowed the epidemic to overwhelm South Africa. The culprits (ignorance, poverty, big pharma, religious and political leaders, etc.) are not so much the focus; the point of this quiet, heartbreaking drama is all those children left to cope, especially the orphans.

By Nora Lee Mandel:

Rather than focusing on the usual corrective lessons on the transmission and treatment of HIV/AIDS, the family’s struggles play out within systems of traditional care and limited modern medical facilities that are strained to the breaking point. Chanda rails against the stoic comforts of religion and receives only discouraging advice at an overcrowded clinic. Her illiterate and exhausted mother falls prey to the greed of a charlatan doctor, a demon exorcism, and horrific neglect by her revengeful sister, who has not forgiven Lillian for her flouting of tribal marriage traditions for the sake of love.

By Manohla Dargis:

Chanda’s silence is unnerving, as is the absence of tears, and while her calm conveys a preternatural strength of character it also suggests a lifetime of pain. No child, you think, should have to pick out her baby sister’s coffin. But she does, taking in the horror of the funeral home and its metal table without flinching and then pushing forward, still dry eyed, still determined, taking on life with an appealing (and enviable) toughness and grace that make this difficult story not just bearable but also absorbing. As the weight of the world bears down on her slender frame, she becomes the movie’s moral compass and its authentic wonder: the child who is forced to be an adult yet remains childlike enough to feel real.

By Mary Corliss:

Two years ago, a drama with a seemingly forbidding subject — an illiterate teenage girl, pregnant with her father’s child and hellishly abused by her drug-addicted mother — won over critics, audiences and the members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The film was Precious. Now comes Life, Above All, which deals with the tragedy of AIDS in South Africa, as seen by a 12-year-old girl named Chanda. At the end of its world premiere at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, critics cheered like schoolkids, giving it a 10-minute standing ovation.

By Alison Willmore: 

… when its focus narrows onto Manyaka and her mother (Lerato Mvelase), their deep mutual affection and the terrifying sacrifices they’re ready to make because of it, the film sings, becoming a moving tribute to love holding fast against suffering. The ending, which offers a hint of relief, is unfiltered, frankly unbelievable melodrama, but something grimmer and more measured would be intolerable after everything that comes before.

Quote of the Day: Judith Mayne

Directed by Dorothy Arzner by Judith Mayne
 
We have yet to talk about Dorothy Arzner at Bitch Flicks. But her work demands attention in any discussions of feminist film theory. While I haven’t seen all the films she directed, I can say with confidence that most, if not all of them, pass the Bechdel Test. (Which has become somewhat of a feat these days, with the misogynistic drivel churned out and sponsored by The Never Ending Hollywood Backlash From Hell.)
To give myself a reprieve from summer blockbuster depression, I’ve been rereading Judith Mayne’s book, Directed by Dorothy Arzner, and I’m especially captivated by her take on Dance, Girl, Dance. Of course, that famous speech in the film always gives me chills. But first, a little background: 
In the early to mid-1970s, when Arzner’s work was brought to the attention of feminists, her films were deemed particularly important for their criticism of Hollywood films “from within.” Pam Cook and Claire Johnston described how the universe of the male was “made strange” in Arzner’s films, how women’s “rewriting” of male discourse subverted the established conventions of Hollywood. At the time Cook and Johnston’s essays were published, film theory was very much preoccupied with the notion of “making strange,” with the possibilities of a Hollywood film that critiqued itself and its own assumptions. Cook and Johnston brought a strong theoretical approach to Arzner’s work, while other critics of the era were simply delighted to find a woman director among all of the men in Hollywood film history.

Mayne points out that Dance, Girl, Dance is probably Arzner’s most well-known film and is a staple in feminist film theory. She summarizes the plot as follows:
The plot of Dance, Girl, Dance concerns the differing paths to success for Bubbles (Lucille Ball) and Judy (Maureen O’Hara), both members of a dance troupe led by Madame Basilova (Maria Ouspenskaya). The dance troupe performs vaudeville-style numbers in bars and nightclubs, much to the chagrin of Basilova (who bemoans her status as a “flesh peddler”). Bubbles has “oomph,” a kind of dancer’s version of “it,” and eventually she leaves the troupe and enthusiastically pursues a career as “Tiger Lily White.” Judy, in contrast, is a serious student of ballet, and the protegee of Basilova. However, it is Bubbles who gets the jobs, and she arranges for Judy to be hired as her “stooge,” i.e., as a classical dancer who performs in the middle of Bubble’s act, and thus primes the audience to demand more of Bubbles.

Toward the end of the film, Judy stands on stage and refuses her role as stooge. She defiantly crosses her arms and moves closer to the audience, and she gives the spectators a piece of her mind: 

Go ahead and stare. I’m not ashamed. Go on. Laugh! Get your money’s worth. Nobody’s going to hurt you. I know you want me to tear my clothes off so’s you can look your fifty cents worth. Fifty cents for the privilege of staring at a girl the way your wives won’t let you. What do you suppose we think of you up here–with your silly smirks your mothers would be ashamed of? And we know it’s the thing of the moment for the dress suits to come and laugh at us too. We’d laugh right back at the lot of you, only we’re paid to let you sit there and roll your eyes and make your screamingly clever remarks. What’s it for? So’s you can go home when the show’s over and strut before your wives and sweethearts and play at being the stronger sex for a minute? I’m sure they see through you just like we do. 

I love that moment. I love it because she critiques the men who look at women as sexual objects, and the women who do so as well. I love it because Dorothy Arzner directed this film in 1940. It’s now 2011. And I can’t even imagine a speech like this existing in a current Hollywood film. (If you can think of any that make such astute observations about sexual politics, please, clue me in.)
Mayne further complicates this famous scene in her analysis of it, so I’ll leave you with that, and the always impossible-to-answer questions surrounding self-objectification as either a form of empowerment for women, or as nothing more than internalized patriarchal exploitation. Or neither. Or both. Hmmmm:

I see Judy’s confrontation less as a challenge to the very notion of woman as object of spectacle than as the creation of another kind of performance. Oftentimes the scene is discussed as if the audience were exclusively male, which it is not, even though Judy addresses men in her speech. When the camera pans the reactions of the audience to Judy’s speech, the responses of women are quite clearly visible. Women squirm uncomfortably in their seats just as surely as men do, and when release occurs in the form of applause, it is a woman–Steven Adams’s trusty secretary–who initiates it. Arzner’s view of performance and her view of the relationship between subject and object were never absolute; women may be objectified through performance, but they are also empowered; men may consume women through the look, but women also watch and take pleasure in the spectacle of other women’s performance.

Thoughts?

Guest Writer Wednesday: African American Romantic Comedies: Colorism

This guest post by Renee Martin also appears at her blog Women’s Eye on Media. 

I love a good romantic comedy, but I must admit I am especially partial to those that star Blacks. It is a rare thing to see a dominant Black presence in media, and romantic comedies happen to be the only genre that this consistently happens in. Unfortunately, these movies still fall into specific tropes that are a direct result of being produced in a White supremacist culture.

Many of the male stars like, Morris Chestnut and Taye Diggs are dark skinned Black men. In fact, you could reasonably argue that Morris Chestnut is the king of the African Romantic comedy. These dark skinned men are always described as fiiiine, hot, and a real catch. When it comes to colourism and Black men, it would be fair to say that it is not an issue in African American comedies, because the actors range from Morris Chestnut to the ever so lovely LL Cool J (and yes, I love him).

The same is not necessarily true when it comes to women. From Stacey Dash in VHI’s new series Single Ladies, to Paula Patton in 2011’s Jumping the Broom, to Sanaa Lathan in The Best Man, to Zoe Saldana in Guess Who, to Vivica Fox in Two Can Play That Game, and Queen Latifah in Just Wright, light skinned women have a tendency to dominate the genre. The darkest skinned women that you will find in the genre are Monique, who played the ghetto woman Two Can Play That Game, Kimberly Elise, who played Helen in Diary of a Mad Black Woman (the title says it all doesn’t it), and Gabrielle Union, who starred in Deliver Us From Eva.

What is perhaps most interesting, is that in Deliver Us From Eva, Union played the stereotypical angry Black woman who had been burned countless times. She was absolutely vicious to anyone that approached her, and her brother in laws absolutely detested her, that is until they paid LL. Cool J to date her, and suddenly she became soft, and loving. Here we go again with another Black woman being saved from her angry ways by the love of a good Black man. (Tyler Perry is somewhere dancing a little jig.) All the things that allowed her to support her sisters up to and including putting them through school, and saving money for the benefit of their family, were seen as negative character traits. When Union played opposite Vivica Fox in Two Can Play That Game, she played the role of Jezebel. That’s right, a dark Black woman out to steal away Morris Chestnut from the light skinned, smart, and in control Vivica Fox. Union was slut shamed throughout the movie, and yet when Vivica Fox chose to sleep with Chestnut in his office it was simply being freaky and keeping your man happy. Particularly telling, is that no reference was made to differentiate between the two women, except for the visually obvious difference in hue. Why one was necessarily deserving of being slut shamed, when she was essentially no different than the other, was left for the viewer to determine. Even in movies, the strong dark skinned Black woman can never get a break.

Colourism can be just as damaging to Black men as Dr. Michael Eric Dyson explained, when he examined the relationship between himself and his incarcerated dark skinned brother, yet in movies, the hue of Black men can range from LL. Cool J and Terrence Howard to Taye Diggs and Richard T Jones, without any real issue. In fact, the very range in hue of Black men suggests that Black men are all uniquely valuable and sexually attractive. This is why it is hard to comprehend why the same universal acceptance is not given to Black women.

In Jungle Fever, Wesley Snipes leaves his light skinned Black wife played by Lonette McKee, for an Italian woman. In a scene with McKee’s girlfriends, they discuss how the trend for a long time was for Black men to seek out light bright and damn near White women as partners, and how that changed as inter racial relationships became acceptable. You see, the White woman has always been held up as the epitome of beauty, and failing that, the WOC who was closest in appearance to Whiteness was then the chosen prize, thereby leaving dark skinned women completely out of the loop. A new documentary entitled Dark Skin being released this fall discusses this issue. If you doubt that this is an issue, a simple look at what L’Oreal Feria haircolor did to Beyonce, or what Elle Magazine did to Gabourey Sidibe is more than enough to settle this issue.

No woman of colour can ever be light skinned enough. What is particularly disgusting, is not only do these movies have all Black casts, in quite a few instances, they have Black directors to boot. What does it say about Black cinema, that we constantly reproduce our internalized racial hatred? Since we know that colorism is an issue for the entire community, why is it that, Black women are particularly targeted with erasure? Watching these movies really brought to mind the conversations in media about the lonely Black woman, who is destined to die a single woman. As much as African American romantic comedies constantly end with a Black woman and a Black men either in a committed relationship, or getting married, the near erasure of dark skinned women plays into the whole idea that unless you are light skinned you are not worthy of being loved. When we add in the fact that these movies are not aimed at White people, it seems to me that Blacks have come to find this idea acceptable, otherwise when given the opportunity to tell our stories, darker Black women would appear in this genre more regularly, rather than being restricted to films like The Color Purple and Precious.

Editors Note: This is an ongoing series. You can find part 1 here on class. Next week, we will be looking at the ubiquitous usage of the word nigger in these movies.



Renee Martin is a disabled mother of two, and a freelance writer who focuses on social justice. On her blog Womanist Musings she largely writes about social justice generally. She also is a contributor and co-creator of the blog Fangs for the Fantasy, where she writes critically using a social justice lens on the urban fantasy genre. Each week she also participates in the Fangs for the Fantasy podcast, where she discusses the latest in urban fantasy. At Women’s Eye on Media, where she is also a co-creator and shares editing and writing duties with fellow creator Holly Ord, she writes about social justice and the media. Her work has been published at The Guardian, Ms Blog and several small newspapers. She previously cross-posted her review of The Big C at Bitch Flicks. 


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HBO, You’re Busted from the Los Angeles Times



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From the Archive: Pay Discrimination in Hollywood, Who Knew?

In honor of the recently released Forbes 2011 List of the Highest Paid Actresses, I thought I’d repost this little gem from 2009. Enjoy!
Forbes recently published a list of Hollywood’s top-earning actresses, for films completed within the previous year.
Please note the following:
“As is still typical for Hollywood, our actresses earned significantly less than their male counterparts. Harrison Ford was the top-earning actor this year with $65 million, $38 million more than Jolie earned. All told, the top 10 actors earned $393 million, compared with $183 million for the top 10 actresses.”
Take a look at the 15 Top-Earning Actresses, along with their respective career Oscar wins and Oscar nominations (as of 2009).

1. Angelina Jolie: $27 million

1 Oscar win, 2 Oscar nominations

2. Jennifer Aniston: $25 million

0 Oscar wins, 0 Oscar nominations

3. Meryl Streep: $24 million

2 Oscar wins, 15 Oscar nominations

4. Sarah Jessica Parker: $23 million

0 Oscar wins, 0 Oscar nominations

5. Cameron Diaz: $20 million

0 Oscar wins, 0 Oscar nominations

6. Sandra Bullock (tie): $15 million

0 Oscar wins, 0 Oscar nominations

7. Reese Witherspoon (tie): $15 million

1 Oscar win, 1 Oscar nomination

8. Nicole Kidman (tie): $12 million

1 Oscar win, 2 Oscar nominations

9. Drew Barrymore (tie): $12 million

0 Oscar wins, 0 Oscar nominations

10. Renee Zellweger: $10 million

1 Oscar win, 3 Oscar nominations

11. Cate Blanchett: $8 million

1 Oscar win, 4 Oscar nominations

12. Anne Hathaway (tie): $7 million

0 Oscar wins, 1 Oscar nomination

13. Halle Berry (tie): $7 million

1 Oscar win, 1 Oscar nomination

14. Scarlett Johansson: $5.5 million

0 Oscar wins, 0 Oscar nominations

15. Kate Winslet: $2 million

1 Oscar win, 6 Oscar nominations

Total Amount of Money Earned: $212.5 million
Total Number of Oscar Nominations: 35
Total Number of Oscar Wins: 9

***************************************************************

And, just for kicks, here’s the Forbes list of the 15 Top-Earning Actors:

1. Harrison Ford: $65 million
(0 Oscar wins, 1 Oscar nomination)

2. Adam Sandler: $55 million
(0 Oscar wins, 0 Oscar nominations)

3. Will Smith: $45 million
(0 Oscar wins, 2 Oscar nominations)

4. Eddie Murphy (tie): $40 million
(0 Oscar wins, 1 Oscar nomination)

5. Nicolas Cage (tie): $40 million
(1 Oscar win, 2 Oscar nominations)

6. Tom Hanks: $35 million
(2 Oscar wins, 5 Oscar nominations)

7. Tom Cruise: $30 million
(0 Oscar wins, 3 Oscar nominations)

8. Jim Carrey (tie): $28 million
(0 Oscar wins, 0 Oscar nominations)

9. Brad Pitt (tie): $28 million
(0 Oscar wins, 2 Oscar nominations)

10. Johnny Depp: $27 million
(0 Oscar wins, 3 Oscar nominations)

11. George Clooney: $25 million
(for acting: 1 Oscar win, 2 Oscar nominations)

12. Russell Crowe (tie): $20 million
(1 Oscar win, 3 Oscar nominations)

13. Robert Downey Jr. (tie): $20 million
(0 Oscar wins, 2 Oscar nominations)

14. Denzel Washington (tie): $20 million
(2 Oscar wins, 5 Oscar nominations)

15. Vince Vaughn: $14 million
(0 Oscar wins, 0 Oscar nominations)

Total Amount of Money Earned: $492 million
Total Number of Oscar Nominations: 31
Total Number of Oscar Wins: 7

***************************************************************

In the past year, the top-earning men made over twice the amount of money as the top-earning women. Perhaps the Oscar info might seem arbitrary; the films that usually gross the most money (summer blockbusters, Apatow, etc) don’t necessarily line up with the many low-budget films that garner Oscar nominations for the performances (The Reader, Rachel Getting Married).
But I still find it disheartening, to say the least, to look at a list where the highest paid women in the previous year, who have won more Oscars overall (arguably the most prestigious award in the history of fucking filmmaking), and who have been nominated for more Oscars overall, still earned less than half of what their male counterparts earned.
***************************************************************
Now, to get really super-crazy, let’s look at the highest grossing films that the top five earning actors and actresses released last year, specifically noting who starred, the exact box office gross, and the overall “fresh” rating on rotten tomatoes (a high percentage means critics thought it rocked; anything lower than 60% usually means it was a piece of shit).

Actresses

1. Angelina Jolie: Kung Fu Panda
Box Office: $215,395,021
RT Rating: 89%

2. Jennifer Aniston: Marley & Me
Box Office: $143,084,510
RT Rating: 61%

3. Meryl Streep: Mamma Mia!
Box Office: $143,704,210
RT Rating: 53%

4. Sarah Jessica Parker: Sex and the City
Box Office: $152,595,674
RT Rating: 50%

5. Cameron Diaz: What Happens in Vegas
Box Office: $80,199,843
RT Rating: 27%

Total Box Office Gross: $734,979,258
Average RT Rating: 56%

Actors

1. Harrison Ford: Indiana Jones … Crystal Skull
Box Office: $316,957,122
RT Rating: 76%

2. Adam Sandler: Bedtime Stories
Box Office: $109,993,847
RT Rating: 23%

3. Will Smith: Hancock
Box Office: $227,946,274
RT Rating: 39%

4. Eddie Murphy: Meet Dave
Box Office: $11,644,832
RT Rating: 19%

5. Nicolas Cage: Knowing
Box Office: $79,911,877
RT Rating: 32%

Total Box Office Gross: $746,453,952
Average RT Rating: 38%

***************************************************************

Basically, the women made much better films according to critics. And while the men grossed more at the box office, by $11.5 million, it’s hardly worth mentioning when you’re talking about $746 million versus $735 million. And yet, the top five actors still earned more than double ($245 million) what the top five actresses earned ($119 million).
Will someone please explain to me how this isn’t blatant gender-based discrimination?

From the Archive: Business Trip Wishes

NOTE: After reading over this letter (originally posted July 2, 2009), I’m struck by how many of these stereotypes were included in Bridesmaids. I’m not sure how I feel about that yet; I ultimately found Bridesmaids to be a fairly subversive film. (Stay tuned for my Review in Conversation with Amber–she may completely disagree with me on that.) But yeah, Bridesmaids failed the shit out of this list of no-nos. Hmmmmm …   
According to several entertainment sources, a new comedy called Business Trip has been picked up by Universal Pictures. Written by Stacey Harman, the film focuses on four women who take a business trip together and, instead of getting any real business-oriented work done, shenanigans ensue. Apparently, it’s being produced by the same people involved with The Hangover, so I speculate that Business Trip will contain similar comedic elements, but from a female perspective.

How do I feel about this? It’s hard to say. I’ve longed to see a film that focuses on what women actually do when they’re screwing off together. I’m pretty sure they get high sometimes. They might even sleep until noon and not have jobs and live in their parents’ basement at the age of 34 (although probably not in a film about women in corporate America). I guess I’ll at least experience some satisfaction if the filmmakers manage to stick to a few basic rules.
Dear Business Trip filmmakers,

As you work toward developing this film, and if you’re at all interested in breaking some new ground by portraying real women on-screen (rather than the conventional stereotypes of women we’ve gotten so used to seeing) please be advised of the following:

1. Do not cast Jessica Alba, Megan Fox, Katherine Heigl, and Anna Faris, and then parade them around in giant heels, wearing some semblance of revealing business suit-esque attire, probably involving excessive cleavage and certainly showcasing thirty gratuitous inches of bare leg.

2. Do not institute a plot point that involves one of the lead actresses finally feeling complete because she finds a man who rescues her from her horrible life as a lonely, over-achieving corporate executive i.e. childless, feminist spinster.
3. Do not include a scene where one or two or all of these women make out, possibly in a hot tub, but definitely in front of a man, just for the sole purpose of performing some lightweight pornographic male fantasy.
4. Do not kill one of them off with a melodramatic deadly-illness twist.
5. Do not include a scene where one or two or all of these women get depressed about a man, and as a result, gorge themselves on any carbohydrate-infused junk food within reach, while simultaneously sobbing (for extra comedic effect).
6. Do not ever allow any character to utter the phrase “cat-fight” … ever.
7. Do not script any of the following: klutzy falling scenes, food fights, cake-decorating, aerobics classes, weepy arguments with Mom, random bursting into song, lip-synching and/or dancing around in pajamas to 60s music, a wedding, an ice-queen who can’t feel, an infantilized, codependent ditz, group slut-shaming, or group competition for a man.
8. Do not even go near “scheming-vindictive-bitch” territory; we get enough of that in the male-dominated comedies of the Apatowverse.
9. Do not try to balance out the characters’ personalities by making one a good, sweet, virginal Madonna and another a fucked-ten-men-in-one-night, “crazy party girl” who dances topless on bar tables with a cigarette in one hand and a tequila shot in the other.
10. Do not make one or more of the characters “baby-crazy” and/or desperate to be inseminated by a gay best friend.

11. Do not turn this into Sex and the City Takes a Business Trip, even though that’s undoubtedly what everyone will encourage you to do.

Good luck! 

Love,
Bitch Flicks

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

The Racial Politics of X-Men from Race-Talk

Human Rights Watch International Film Festival: The Price of Sex–directed by Mimi Chakarova from Women and Hollywood

Movie Review: Polytechnique, A Fictional Killer of Women Who Is All Too Familiar from the New York Times

8 Real Women Who Deserve Their Own Action Movies from The Mary Sue

Thelma & Louise Would Blush from the Globe and Mail

Bridesmaids Buries Hollywood’s Fear of Feminism from the Guardian UK

Movie Preview: Horrible Bosses

This guest post by Melissa McEwan also appears at her blog Shakesville. 

[Trigger warning for rape “humor,” fat hatred, sexual assault, violence.]

Deeky texted me last night after he saw a new TV spot for the previously discussed upcoming film Horrible Bosses, in which murder and sexual assault are central “comedic” themes. This spot ran during a primetime re-run of NCIS.

“Tool Boss” Colin Farrell tells “Disrespected Employee” Jason Sudeikis, “We’ve got to trim some of the fat around here.” Sudeikis says, “What?!” to which Farrell replies, “I want you to fire the fat people.”

“Maneater Boss” Jennifer Aniston, who is a dentist, suggests to “Harassed Employee” Charlie Day that they have sex on top of an unconscious female patient. “Let’s use her like a bed,” she says, to which Day exclaims in response, “That’s crossing the line!”

“Psycho Boss” Kevin Spacey tells “Abused Employee” Jason Bateman, “I own you, you little runt,” to which Bateman sheepishly replies, “Thank you.”

At a bar, with “murder consultant” Jaime Foxx, one of them says, “I guess we’re just gonna be miserable for the rest of our lives,” and Foxx offers, “Why don’t you kill each other’s bosses?” Sudeikis says, “That’s actually a good idea.”

Montage of someone flying out the window of a highrise building; the three men in a car spinning out of control; police cars with sirens blaring.

Cut to Sudeikis and Bateman walking down the street together, evidently discussing the murder plan. “I can’t go to jail,” Sudeikis says. “Look at me, I’ll get raped like crazy.”

“I’d get raped just as much as you would, Kurt,” says Bateman, in a sort of hurt voice because rape is totes a compliment.

“No, no—I know you would,” Sudeikis reassures him.

Yiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiikes.

And, no, the fact that it is a prison rape joke between men does not make it funny. There is nothing funny about prison rape.

Call Time Warner and let them know that you don’t think rape jokes, especially rape jokes that suggest rape is a fucking compliment, are funny.

If you’re on Twitter, you can tweet directly at Warner Brothers Pictures: @WBPictures.

Melissa McEwan is the founder and manager of the award-winning political and cultural group blog Shakesville, which she launched as Shakespeare’s Sister in October 2004 because George Bush was pissing her off. In addition to running Shakesville, she also contributes to The Guardian‘s Comment is Free America and AlterNet. Melissa graduated from Loyola University Chicago with degrees in Sociology and Cultural Anthropology, with an emphasis on the political marginalization of gender-based groups. An active feminist and LGBTQI advocate, she has worked as a concept development and brand consultant and now writes full-time.

From the Archive: Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay

The movie picks up where the last one (Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle) left off, with Harold on his way to Amsterdam to meet up with the girl he fell in love with. Kumar tags along for the sheer excitement of being legally stoned for the first time in his life. But, because Kumar can’t wait until Amsterdam to toke up, he sneaks his smokeless bong invention onto the plane, which is mistaken by other passengers as a bomb.

Naturally, Harold and Kumar are accused of working together as a “North Korea and Al Qaeda alliance,” and they get shipped off to Guantanamo Bay. All this happens within the first 15 minutes of the film, and by the 20-minute mark, they’ve already escaped Guantanamo. The rest of the film follows their wandering across the United States, looking for a way to prove to the paranoid government that they aren’t, in fact, terrorists.

Because the first film was such an unexpected surprise in its intelligent dissection of both racial stereotypes and stoner culture (ha, seriously), I was excited about seeing the sequel. Unfortunately after sitting through most of the movie feeling somewhat uncomfortable, I left the theater entirely enraged.

To say this film is misogynistic is an understatement. What most upset me wasn’t merely that women were unnecessarily objectified (I can’t remember the last time I saw so much gratuitous nudity), or that women were basically one-dimensional morons (and were given some of the most ridiculous dialogue I’ve heard in awhile, which is saying a lot in the age of Judd Apatow).

What bothered me most was that I couldn’t help but laugh at and appreciate the subversive way the film deals with race; the writers manage to satirize traditional perceptions of racial groups by using stereotypes to reveal the ridiculousness of racial stereotypes (yeah, I just defined satire), but for some reason, the writers couldn’t manage to treat traditional stereotypes of women with the same care.

While the audience laughs with the characters when race is addressed (when an old white woman on a plane stares at Kumar in fear, he morphs into a terrorist right before her eyes, complete with full beard and turban), the audience laughs at the female “characters” (like when two prostitutes, confronted with the question, “Have you found the love of your life?” get all ditzy and say, “No, we’re whores!”). Welcome to the films of the millennium: if we’re talking about race, forget about gender (see also Black Snake Moan, Hustle & Flow, maybe even Borat).

Two of the more extreme examples of sexism in the movie are scenes involving gratuitous female nudity (“the bottomless party”) and clichéd portrayals of prostitutes in a brothel.

The Bottomless Party

You know you’re in for a real treat when Harold and Kumar show up at a pool party where all the women walk around completely naked—oh, except for their tops. When they enter their friend’s mansion, in hopes of getting some help in avoiding Guantanamo again (they’ve escaped by now), they’re confronted with an array of tanned women’s asses and barely-there pubic hair, and whose mouths are wide open. In similar reaction, the group of men sitting next to me in the theater couldn’t stop making comments (“yeah man, hit that, daaaaaamn, that’s what I’m talkin’ about”), and this scene lasted at least seven hours from my perspective.

My favorite part of the scene was when one of the women started to take her top off, and the host responded with something along the lines of, “What the hell do you think you’re doing? Put your top back on; I don’t know what kind of party you think this is … ” Of course, she rolled her eyes as if to say “silly me” and apologized while covering her breasts. The audience got a terrible kick out of that. Because, if you didn’t know, it’s hilarious to watch women walk around naked while men tell them what they can and can’t do with their bodies. Sure, in the final moments of the scene, Harold and Kumar pull down their pants, but then the camera cuts away. What, no cock-shot?

The Brothel

Neil Patrick Harris is gay in real life, so I’m still coming to terms with Neil Patrick Harris supposedly playing himself, when what he’s really doing is playing a heterosexual, drug-addicted character named Neil Patrick Harris. Regardless. Neil insists on taking Harold and Kumar to a brothel to get [insert several degrading comments about screwing women here]. Harold refuses, instead choosing to sit with a group of prostitutes, who he then complains to about his devolving friendship with Harold, while the prostitutes console him. (It’s unfortunate here that the writers rely so heavily on conventional clichés regarding “the hooker with a heart of gold” stereotype and the mother/whore fantasy.) Kumar, of course, takes two prostitutes into a room, while Neil goes through several choices before deciding on the one with the biggest breasts.

Kumar gets his girls to make out with each other, but then bursts into tears about his ex-girlfriend marrying some government-employed douchebag. So we’ve got two naked women sitting on either side of him, consoling him, helping him feel better about himself just after they’ve made out with each other—what more could a guy want? Is it just me, a feminazi audience member, who’s expecting too much? Maybe I’m over-analyzing. Maybe this is funny. They’re just whores after all. And Neil reminds us ever-so-subtly by literally branding his giant-breasted whore’s ass.

Throughout the film, the audience can’t help but be positioned as a collective participant in this sexism, and while I appreciated the intelligent discussion of post-9/11 race relations, I couldn’t help but hate the film’s mistreatment of women. The writers had many opportunities to complicate gender issues, and yet, as always seems to be the case in films geared toward male audiences, they chose to exploit the women instead, turning them into nothing but naked body parts; their only importance is the fulfillment of male desires. I hated that. And I hated how, when I got up to leave the theater, the group of men sitting next to me talked about needing to wait out their hard-ons before they could stand up to leave.

YouTube Break: Jean Kilbourne’s "Killing Us Softly" Lecture

From her website:

Jean Kilbourne, Ed.D. is internationally recognized for her pioneering work on the image of women in advertising and her critical studies of alcohol and tobacco advertising. Her films, lectures, and television appearances have been seen by millions of people throughout the world. She was named by The New York Times Magazine as one of the three most popular speakers on college campuses. She is the author of the award-winning book Can’t Buy My Love: How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feel and co-author of So Sexy So Soon: The New Sexualized Childhood and What Parents Can Do to Protect Their Kids. The prize-winning films based on her lectures include Killing Us Softly, Spin the Bottle, and Slim Hopes.