Films by Women – Page 12

Vintage Viewing: Elizaveta Svilova, Mastering Montage

Born Elizaveta Schnitt in 1900, she became an editing assistant for Pathe in Moscow at the age of just 14. By 1918, she was editing feature films at Goskino, the Soviet state cinema, and from 1922 to 1924 she was their chief editor. Thrilled by Vertov’s dynamic early documentary reels with the agit-propaganda trains, she would be his most vigorous champion toward mainstream support and feature documentaries. In 1922 she joined the Kinoglaz group, serving as chief editor and later assistant director on Vertov’s films.

Part of Vintage Viewing, exploring the work of female filmmaking pioneers.

Who gets the credit for a collaborative art-form? When the makers are a husband and wife team, the answer seems to be the husband. We are only now beginning to give credit to Marcia Lucas for her major creative input into the original Star Wars, as both Oscar-winning editor and source of feedback and ideas. A similar fate has met Elizaveta Svilova. Though Sergei Eisenstein is the best-known theorist of film montage, the most striking Soviet documentaries of the 1920s to use kinetic and dialectic montages were made by Kinoglaz (Cinema-Eye), who issued their manifesto in the name of a ‘Council of Three’ – futurist poet and agit-prop director Dziga Vertov, Vertov’s brother and cinematographer Mikhail Kaufman, and Vertov’s wife and editor, Elizaveta Svilova. In June 1923’s LEF magazine, the Council of Three, published “Kinoks: A Revolution” which was a call to arms for cinema verite that could record real life “caught unawares,” while lambasting the falsity and backwardness of fiction film. This manifesto is usually studied by students of Vertov’s art, but what of the woman who was one third of the Council of Three? Who was Elizaveta Svilova?

Dziga Vertov and Elizaveta Svilova were married in 1924, the year they produced the film Kino Eye: Life Caught Unawares. In 1927, Dziga Vertov fell out of favor of the regime and was fired from Sovkino studio (the Soviet cinema studio), with his avant garde and Futurist ideas clashing with the new style of Socialist Realism and the demands of Soviet propaganda. VUFKU, the All-Ukrainian Photo-Film Directorate, which was staffed at the time by administrators sympathetic to Ukrainian Futurism, hired Vertov and Man With A Movie Camera was the sensational result, screened in Germany, France, England, and the United States, and regarded as the most formally experimental film of the silent era. It was followed by an experimental “Symphony of Noises” in Vertov and Svilova’s first sound film, 1930’s Enthusiasm: Symphony of the Donbass. After releasing Three Songs About Lenin in 1934, Vertov was awarded the Order of the Red Star for his most popular film. Though physically unscathed by the Stalinist purges, Vertov’s health began to fail in the 1930s and he and Svilova struggled to find new patronage from the state-monopolized studio system. Since 1938, virtually all Vertov’s many script ideas went unproduced. He had fallen from favour.

During World War II, Vertov’s Jewish family was destroyed by the Nazis and he suffered a nervous breakdown. It would be Svilova who would edit the first film about Auschwitz in 1945. Svilova’s own skills as an editor and filmmaker saw her strike out to direct feature documentaries, including combat documentaries of the Second World War, showing a keen eye for sweeping crowd scenes and the rhythm of military action, taming the avant-garde aesthetics of Kino-Eye into something more palatable to mainstream Soviet audiences. In 1946, she was awarded a Stalin Prize for her work co-directing The Fall Of Berlin, while another film, The Atrocities of the Fascists (Zverstva Fashistov) supplied visual evidence of death camps to the Nuremberg Trials. Vertov died of stomach cancer in 1954, and Svilova retired from the industry to faithfully catalogue his manuscripts, overseeing the publication of many of his theoretical writings and cementing the recovery of his reputation. She passed on herself in 1975, and was buried in Moscow’s Novodevichy Cemetery.

Man With A Movie Camera – 1929

One of the most influential silent films ever made, Man With A Movie Camera passes in a blizzard of dynamic montage, illustrating an impressionist portrait of a day’s life in the USSR. By a trick of superimposition, the cinematographer Mikhail Kaufman sets up his camera on top of a giant camera. Clouds race over the streets in speeded time. An empty cinema awaits, the chairs magically springing open for the crowds that stream in as the film is loaded. Light ignites and the frozen orchestra springs to life. A girl sleeps, representing the sleeping city, in a film that offers us Everyman’s little used colleague, Everywoman, as an equal representative of the human race. Shots of homeless children sleeping rough suggest why this film was not universally admired by the authorities as Soviet propaganda.

From storefront dummies to machines, the city is frozen. Only the cinematographer’s car is in motion. Pigeons fly backwards, in a film that revels in the power of editing to alter, flip and juxtapose, with the camera editing a suggested collision between man and train, suggestively framing it as the sleeping woman’s nightmare. Tramps awaken and react playfully or defensively to being filmed. Rather than manipulating with invisible editing, the film systematically draws attention to the cinematic gaze’s power to manipulate. The attractive woman’s morning wash is mapped onto the washing of streets and windows, while her eyes opening is intercut with shutters snapping open, disarming voyeurism. Later, the voyeuristic impulse itself is explored as a man’s ogling eyeball is superimposed onto the camera lens when giving a close-up of a napping woman’s legs on a park bench. Women and their labour are often the focus of the film, from seamstresses to older women working as street vendors. We see the woman’s eye creating the film as frozen shots of rolls of film capturing women young and old become sped up, reviewed and spliced by Elizaveta Svilova herself, filmed at work at her editing desk. With the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media highlighting the fact that only 17 percent of cinematic crowds are women, Person With A Movie Camera portrays a refreshingly gender-balanced world simply by allowing women of all ages to take up half the space on screen, while highlighting the gender balance of the film’s own authorship through Svilova’s visible role as editor. Women give birth, marry, divorce, mourn, play sport and work long hours, and their dramas are the film’s, as much as that of male laborers. The film is fascinated by mechanics and industry, but not to the exclusion of humanity. Women are half the audience onscreen at the film’s end, watching and commenting on the action.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zeCdQJcA88″]

Enthusiasm: Symphony on the Donbass – 1930

Everywoman returns in earphones as the onscreen listener to Vertov’s symphony of noises, which applies collage and dialectic principles of montage to the accumulation of noises, in one of the first feature documentaries of the era of sound. The majestic tolling of a church bell becomes the bourgeois sound of a cuckoo clock, undermining the majesty and intimidating power of the church. The camera staggers with drinkers outside, intercut with the prayers of the faithful to associate both as opiates of the masses, before Soviets swarm the church, demolish its towers and carry away its icons as part of the “struggle against religion.” A female sculptor moulds a bust of Lenin, icon of the liberated “Soviet New Woman.” Model tractors and tools illustrate the first Five Year Plan of collectivization, industrialization and increased production (at least theoretically). The models meld into the real factories of the Donbass mines. Industrial sounds replace the orchestra, including discordant squeals and whistles. Vertov defended his use of discordant “noise” as a feature of proletarian cinema opposed to bourgeois ideas of music: “We really are domestic, and for us these sounds are ‘noise’—but for the worker in the Donbass every sound has a specific meaning; for him there are no ‘noises.'” Made before the cruelest years of collectivization, Vertov’s film is a hymn to the industrial laborers of the first Five Year Plan and to the optimism of early Stalinism. Speakers lays out the need for mass mobilization. A triumphal march plays as the workers exit the mines to cheering, low angle shots amplifying their heroism. In its experimental loopings of industrial noise, Vertov and Svilova’s film anticipates the musique concrete movement, setting up elaborate call and responses between chugging heavy machinery and squealing whistles, before the machines and laborers themselves are made to play the soundtrack’s triumphal march with their synchronized hammering. Women singing in the fields and threshing grain are given equally triumphalist framing, before a workers’ brass band plays the film out.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUInm2dC6Ug”]

Brigit McCone writes and directs short films and radio dramas. Her hobbies include doodling and learning new things.

What’s in a Name: Anxiety About Violent Women in ‘Monster,’ ‘Teeth,’ and ‘The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo’

The first college course I ever developed focuses on women and violence. Stemming from my interest in women who enact violence on and off the page, I wanted to ask students to think about our perceptions of women as “naturally” peaceful.

This post by Colleen Clemens appears as part of our theme week on Violent Women.

When I tell people that I teach a course on women and violence, the conversation almost always goes like this:

Interested and well-meaning person: “What are you teaching this semester?”

Me: “One of the classes is the course I developed on women and violence in films and literature.”

Interested and well-meaning person: “Wow, there is so much to focus on. Domestic violence, rape, such a hard subject. Are you going to use The Accused?”

Me, trying not to sound like a jerky academic: “Actually the course focuses on women who perpetrate violence. I want to think about what it means when women enact violence as well.”

Long pause. Furrowed brow. Another beat.

Interested and well-meaning person: “Oh. I never really thought about that. Will you talk about Lorena Bobbitt?”

And that is why I developed the course. Because even the most thoughtful among us rarely take the time to consider women beyond the role of victim. When a woman enacts violence, we feel great anxiety because she is dismantling the binary of woman as natural caretaker (see Katha Pollitt’s “Marooned on Gilligan’s Island” for a great discussion of this concept. I start the course with this text). Only men are supposed to be violent. And the texts that portray women as violent actors anticipate this anxiety. When a woman is violent in a film or novel, she often has a reason–often sexual assault–that motivates her violence. The titles of several of these films demonstrate the anxiety we feel about a text displaying women actors of violence. And all of the films tell the story of a woman who was wronged–because that is the only way a woman would ever break out of the rigid mold of care-taking, peaceful earth mother.

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Monster

Based on the true story of Aileen Wuornos, this film follows Theron’s character through the development of her serial killing. When raped while working as a prostitute, Aileen kills her attacker. She comes to see that the world she lives in is dangerous and attempts to find a job off of the streets, but those positions won’t take her because they see her as unqualified. She wants to enter the world of “legitimate female work,” i.e., a secretary, only to be told that she doesn’t get to just jump into the world of law.

[youtube_sc url=”https://youtu.be/sraDVyksYMs”]

The film shows us that she has no other choice but to return to the streets, and once there, she kills her johns because she is terrified of being raped again. Until the murders turn. Aileen spares one man only to kill another who offers her help. When is enacting fear of being raped, the audience feels some kind of pity for her. When she takes the life of an “innocent,” she loses the audience’s sympathy and becomes the eponymous “monster.”

Here is where titles start to matter. I ask my students–and you–why isn’t the film titled Aileen? Because that would humanize her. And there is no humanity allowed for a woman that enacts violence. We cannot sit with such an idea that there is something human to her. She MUST be a monster for us to reconcile our ideas of femininity with the character we feel for during the majority of the film. Interestingly, the documentary about her life does use her first name.

If we look at a list of films about serial killers that are based on true stories, most of the titles allude to the name given to the male killer: Jack the Ripper, Doctor Death, Jeffrey Dahmer, Zodiac, the Green River Killer. Monster‘s title does no such thing. She is a monster. No human woman could ever do such a thing. Perhaps this is why so much was made of Theron’s transformation, as if we all needed to be reminded “It is OK. Remember, this is all fake. The most gorgeous woman in the world is under all of that makeup!”

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Teeth

Though I have written about this film before on a piece about the rape revenge genre (for a summary, head on over there for a recap), here I would like to focus on the title of the film.

We see a similar trope: girl gets raped; therefore, girl becomes violent. Dawn is literally a lily-white virgin, a “good” girl, until the horrors of patriarchy completely turn her. And her body protects her from further harm.

[youtube_sc url=”https://youtu.be/IA5l86aluqQ”]

Again, the film creates a space for sympathy for Dawn. We can “understand” why she becomes violent through–and in spite of–her biology. Her vagina dentata takes over her thinking self. Then Dawn learns to use it for her own good. And then Dawn becomes a vigilante.

This movie poster is telling. Her vagina makes her squeamish. The power of it is too much to handle for her. Again, why isn’t this film called Dawn? Are her teeth more important than herself? Her toothed vagina is anxiety producing. She is monstrous. Her vagina is all she is, and she must simultaneously protect it and use it protect other women.

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The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Series

I find everything about the titling of this series fascinating. Stieg Larrson’s orginal title, Men Who Hate Women, has been completely lost on American audiences. Want to blow someone’s mind? Tell her this was the title. So now that we got that fact out of the way, let’s talk about the content and title. Again, we have an assaulted woman who uses violence to enact revenge on those who have wronged her and her family.

Lisbeth is certainly NOT a girl. She is a woman in this film. Infantilizing her and naming the film “the girl” and then pointing out something on her body is similar to naming Dawn’s film Teeth. The body becomes the girl. Because a “true” girl would never, ever do the things these women do–even if their bodies were violated. And why is Lisbeth behind Blomkvist when the trilogy is her story (don’t forget she’s still a “girl” when she kicks the hornet’s nest)? Making Lisbeth Salander a “girl” denies her womanhood because we don’t want to see her as a woman. A “natural woman” would never do what she does in the trilogy.

We shouldn’t forget that all of the characters are being failed by the patriarchal system. Aileen wants to get out of prostituting and is mocked for her attempt. Dawn is told that being a virgin is all that matters, and she is now dirty. Lisbeth is raped by the people in the system who are supposed to be protecting her welfare. Because all three revolt against the system of oppression, we have to “other” them and distance themselves from femininity. It is the only way society can sleep at night.

Death of the (Male) Author: Feminist Violence in Lynne Ramsay’s ‘Morvern Callar’

How significant it is, then, that Ramsay changes the ending from the novel where Morvern discovers she’s pregnant to instead give her a narrative of hopeful escape and adventure. Through the economic, cultural and narrative capitals gained from the violence enacted on the male author both inside and outside of the text, the female protagonist is offered a radical feminist alternative. Rather than by trapped by her class position, socio-economic position, job possibilities or pregnancy, Morvern is, instead, offered freedom, autonomy and authority.

The poster for Lynne Ramsay’s 2002 film, Morvern Callar

This post by Sarah Smyth appears as part of our theme week on Violent Women.

What would you do if you found your boyfriend dead on the kitchen floor after committing suicide? Panic? Cry? Call the authorities? This is not the case in British director Lynne Ramsay’s delicious 2002 film, Morvern Callar. The film opens with the titular character, Morvern (Samantha Morton) lying on the floor by her dead boyfriend as the lights on the Christmas tree flash in the background. The scene is silent and utterly absurd. Morvern sits quietly, perhaps contemplating what has happened, although the film never quite reveals what she’s thinking. She then touches and caresses the body in a way which is both sensual and erotic. The scene is visceral and private; it’s almost tender. Yet, underneath it’s silent and passive exterior, there’s a subtle kind of violence, a violence in not doing anything through Morvern’s refusal to act in a “moral,” “normal,” and “citizenly” way. This violence quietly yet insidiously perforates the scene. Morvern eventually gets up and looks at the computer where, on the screen, bears the instructions “read me.” This is her boyfriend’s last command but one to which Morvern gainfully obeys. From here on out, Morvern resolutely and, I argue, violently stakes out her place and takes control over her own trajectory by, ironically, reinterpreting the very instructions which her boyfriend left on the computer.

The violence in the opening scene is of Morvern not acting following her boyfriend’s death

Morvern Callar is based on Alan Warner’s 1995 novel of the same name. It centres on Morvern, a young supermarket assistant, who lives in a cold and bleak Scotland. Her boyfriend commits suicide on Christmas day, leaving behind presents for Morvern including a cassette player, mix tape, and a manuscript of his novel with instructions for Morvern to get it published. The instructions read, “I wrote this for you. I love you,” and Morvern takes this quite literally. She deletes his name from the title page and inserts hers instead. After sending the manuscript to a publisher, she then escapes on a hedonistic holiday to Spain with her best friend and colleague, Lanna (Kathleen McDermott), where they spend their time clubbing, taking drugs and having sex. When she’s there, a couple of publishers seek Morvern out and offer her a lucrative book deal, which Morvern gladly accepts. When she returns to Scotland, she plans to use the advance from her deal to leave home and, perhaps, start a better life. She extends this offer to Lanna who declines, and the film ends on an ambiguous but hopeful note as Morvern sits at the station waiting to begin her new life.

Morvern Callar is not obviously nor overtly a violent film. The opening scene – quiet, muted, subtle – informs the tone and even the theme of the rest of the film. Yet, Morvern’s act of deleting her boyfriend’s name – James Gillespie in the film, unnamed in the book – from his manuscript is a violently feminist act. Since the beginning of literature itself, male authors have continually appropriated the voice, narratives and identities of women Perhaps with the flexibility creative licence, this in itself shouldn’t be problematic. After all, women have also appropriated the voice, narratives and identities of men in their work. Rather, the problem arises with the profusion by which this occurs, the privileging of the male-authored narrative within the canon, and the consideration of these narratives as universal rather than explicitly gendered. Morvern’s act, then, is a protest against this and reclamation, perhaps even reparation, for the years of oppression enacted on female voices within literature.

The realisation of this reparation is significant. Morvern gets paid an extraordinarily large sum, £100,000 (about $270,000 today) to be exact, from the publishers for her book deal. Given her background and socio-economic status, this sum is doubly significant. In fact, its life changing, enabling her to reclaim an authority and autonomy over her life not (literally) afforded to her before. When Morvern asks Lanna to go with her on this new adventure, she tells her not to worry about money; Morvern can take care of it. This offer positions Morvern in a traditional heteronormative male role as she proposes a promise of financial security to the woman. Of course, this involves a level of female dependence of male power, here economic, inducing a loss of female independence and freedom so crucial to the subject of modern feminism. Lanna declines, perhaps for this reason or perhaps because she’s too tied to home. But ultimately, this is journey for Morvern to take, for Morvern to reclaim, and the film leaves us hopeful that it will be successful.

Lanna chooses not to leave with Morvern despite the tempting financial offer…

In order for Morvern to follow through effectively on this violent act, however, this violence must be literalized on her boyfriend’s body. If she informed the authorities of his death, Morvern would also risk sacrificing his financial and intellectual property. She, therefore, leaves his body on the kitchen floor for a while before eventually cutting it up in the bath and burying it in the forest. The film makes no attempt to suggest any moral quandary on that part of Morvern. As Williams says, “Morvern never reports the death, and deals with the body herself. She mourns Him but shows no remorse, no guilt for -as it were- dancing on His grave. If she gets away with it, it’s partly because she doesn’t lie: Morvern is guileless as well as guiltless.” The scene in which Morvern cuts up the body is, in fact, blackly comic as the blood splatters on Morvern’s body accompanied by the Velvet Underground’s “I’m Sticking with You.” Although we get no point-of-view shot – the body is, in fact, never seen – we are privy to Morvern’s subjectivity and interiority through the music which Morvern is listening to on her cassette player. Our sympathies, then, are directed towards Morvern, not her boyfriend. This violence, then, is both an extension and a literalization of the violence enacted on the (male) authorial authority, and, crucially, I argue, an explicit feminist statement.

Morvern’s authorial violence is literalized on the boyfriend’s body in a darkly comical way

The violence enacted on the authorial authority within the film is also mirrored outside of the film. The novel is written by a man but is narrated by a woman. The film is adapted and directed by a woman, reclaiming the female narrative voice through this female vision. As Shelley Cobb argues in Adaptation, Authorship and Contemporary Women Filmmakers, Ramsay inverts the gendered appropriation by excluding Warner’s narrative voice, reflecting Morvern’s usurpation of the ideal figure of the male author. If as Linda Ruth Williams claims, Morvern “purloin[s] a man’s cultural capital,” Ramsay also purloins the symbolic, cultural and economic capital of (male) authorship. This purloining of capital and the subsequent signature of Ramsay’s (female) authorial authority within the film is most obviously found in the changes Ramsay makes when adapting the novel for the screen. How significant it is, then, that Ramsay changes the ending from the novel where Morvern discovers she’s pregnant to instead give her a narrative of hopeful escape and adventure. Through the economic, cultural and narrative capitals gained from the violence enacted on the male author both inside and outside of the text, the female protagonist is offered a radical feminist alternative. Rather than by trapped by her class position, socio-economic position, job possibilities or pregnancy, Morvern is, instead, offered freedom, autonomy and authority.

In this way, then, I disagree with Lucy Bolton who argues that Morvern’s journey is about establishing the lasting communion with her dead lover. In Film and Female Consciousness: Irigaray, Cinema and Thinking Women, Bolton claims that Morvern lodges the memory of her boyfriend in her mind, using her body as a cradle to preserve the memory of touching him. This reading crucially neglects the violence Morvern enacts on her boyfriend both on his body and his authorial identity. Morvern deletes his name and buries his body; it’s a separation rather than a preservation. Morvern Callar, then, is about violence, a reclamation and reparation through violence, which enables women to radically remove themselves from oppressive male structures, and, instead, construct their own narratives, their own voices and their own journeys through this very destruction.

From ‘Ginger Snaps’ to ‘Jennifer’s Body’: The Contamination of Violent Women

Thematically, ‘Jennifer’s Body’ mirrors ‘Ginger Snaps’ in many respects: the disruption of suburban or small town life, the intersection between female sexuality and violence, the close relationship between two teen girls at the films’ centers, and—perhaps most strikingly—the contagious nature of violence in women.

This guest post by Julia Patt appears as part of our theme week on Violent Women.

“Hell is a teenage girl.” So Anita “Needy” Lesnicki (Amanda Seyfried) informs us in the opening voiceover monologue of Jennifer’s Body.

At first glance, it’s kind of a throwaway tagline sort of quote reminiscent of Mean Girls or Heathers. Teenage girls are the worst—they might even be evil, but just “high school evil,” to borrow another line from Diablo Cody’s highly quotable script for Jennifer’s Body. But we should note that the line isn’t, “The devil is a teenage girl” or “Teenage girls are demons.” Rather: “Hell is a teenage girl.” Which suggests not only evil, but also suffering. Teenage girls may make other people suffer but, more than that, they suffer profoundly themselves. And although Needy’s flashback indicates she’s thinking about her friend, Jennifer Check (Megan Fox), when she makes this observation, her present tense delivery and its placement in the script at least suggest the possibility that she’s also thinking about herself.

Megan Fox as Jennifer Check

Jennifer’s Body comes from a long, proud tradition of possession movies about women, particularly young women, from The Exorcist to Paranormal Activity. But given the conspicuous absence of old priests and young priests—indeed any mention of exorcism at all—the film’s closest analogue is, I’d argue, its pre-9/11 sister movie and cult werewolf flick, Ginger Snaps. Thematically, Jennifer’s Body mirrors Ginger Snaps in many respects: the disruption of suburban or small town life, the intersection between female sexuality and violence, the close relationship between two teen girls at the films’ centers, and—perhaps most strikingly—the contagious nature of violence in women.

Look familiar?

Ginger Snaps takes place in a Canadian suburb called Bailey Downs, where a mysterious creature, the Beast of Bailey Downs, has been picking off house pets, mainly dogs. The movie begins with the discovery of another such canine victim, but the attacks happen with enough frequency that, aside from the hysterical owner, no one bats an eye at this newest fatality. Other than the beast, the community is distressingly normal to the film’s two protagonists, Brigitte (Emily Perkins) and Ginger (Katharine Isabelle) Fitzgerald, who as children vowed to be “out by 16 or dead in this scene, but together forever.” Ginger at least appears to have opted for the latter option, as the sisters’ first scene together is a lengthy discussion and staging of various forms of suicide, which they put together as a photo slideshow for class. Although Ginger hails suicide as the “ultimate fuck you,” Brigitte is markedly less certain, worrying aloud that people will just laugh at her in her casket, her death having changed nothing.

Excellent show-and-tell project

There is of course much about the Fitzgerald sisters’ plan that conforms to the status quo. Suicide is an undeniably violent act, but it’s a self-directed violence, physically harming only the sisters and expected of women whom society views as predominantly nonviolent towards others. Given the abandonment of “out by 16,” it seems evident, too, that the sisters have succumbed to what they believe to be an inalterable, futile situation. They have no power to truly challenge the structures that make them so miserable. That is, until the Beast of Bailey Downs, a werewolf, attacks Ginger and she begins to change.

That the change happens simultaneously with puberty—her first menstrual cycle literally begins on the night she’s bitten—only heightens the sense of power Ginger now feels. Although still a weird Fitzgerald sister, her sexual appeal only increases throughout the movie until she fully transforms. This on its own is insufficient to manifest as a disruption. Ginger’s male classmates are only too happy to view her as a sexual object, albeit a slightly unsettling one. Even her confidence is unthreatening as long as it is confined to the context of their own desires. No, the difficulty is that Ginger remains unsatisfied and is no longer content to be so.

Unfortunately, nothing in this aisle for lycanthropy

In Jennifer’s Body, Needy and Jennifer play somewhat different roles in an otherwise familiar setting. Rural Devil’s Kettle, named for an unusual waterfall, may differ geographically from Bailey Downs but the sense of limitation and confinement remains. At the beginning of the film, Jennifer urges Needy to come to a concert with her because the band, Low Shoulder, is from the city. Her desire to leave Devil’s Kettle is evident in her enthusiasm, a fact Needy appears to wistfully recognize as they watch Low Shoulder perform at the local drinking hole. But Jennifer is no social outcast in the vein of the Fitzgerald sisters. She is, as Needy unnecessarily informs us, “a babe.” And though she characterizes herself as a dork in comparison, Needy herself hardly qualifies as a weirdo. “We were our yearbook photos,” she explains in her voiceover. “Nothing more, nothing less.”

Hard to make Amanda Seyfried look “dorky” but they tried

Jennifer and Needy’s desires similarly do not disturb societal structures. Even Jennifer, extremely cognizant of her sexual powers, is ultimately unthreatening. She is not much of a party girl either, saying longingly at the bar: “I can’t wait until I’m old enough to get trashed.” In other words, she plays by the rules. And despite her assertive attitude, willingness to manipulate men, and apparent confidence, the right sort of masculinity is enough to overcome her. This is painfully evident in her interactions with Nikolai, the lead singer of Low Shoulder, who continues to fascinate her, even after he insults Jennifer and the town.

Satanists with awesome haircuts

In fact, Nikolai brutally uses Jennifer’s desire for and idealization of the outside world against her. After a fire breaks out in the bar, killing several people, she and Needy flee through the bathroom window. Outside, Nikolai finds them and leads Jennifer away to the band’s van—the last time Needy will see her alive, as the members of Low Shoulder intend to sacrifice her in exchange for their commercial success. (It’s a hard world for an indie band. They’re just all so pretty.) When Jennifer appears again, covered in blood, she is possessed by a demon—and as with Ginger, her desires can no longer be sated by ordinary means. As Devil’s Kettle becomes a place of tragedy, Jennifer transforms into an agent of gleeful destruction, lusting not for attention or boys or society dictates for a teenage girl, but rather for power, violence, and fear.

The new Jennifer doesn’t care about gender roles

Ginger comes to a similar conclusion about her longing. “I get this ache,” she confesses to Brigitte. “I thought it was for sex, but it’s to tear everything to fucking pieces.” This conflation between sex and violence is hardly unique to Ginger Snaps or Jennifer’s Body, but the emphasis on female sexuality and female power subvert our expectations in the violent scenes. Nor are these neat, orderly killings—both Ginger and Jennifer tear open and partially consume their victims. These films are bloody and that blood belongs almost exclusively to men. Of the two, Ginger is much more erratic in her selection of victims, striking out mostly at male authority figures as they threaten her. This is fitting for her affliction and the gradual nature of her change, which, in an unusual twist on the werewolf trope, happens over the course of the month until the full moon instead of all in one night.

Jennifer, conversely, makes a full transition to her new undead, possessed state of being although her feeding patterns notably also occur on a monthly schedule as the life forces of her victims wane. As a hungry demon, as Needy points out, Jennifer appears remarkably like a woman in the throws of PMS: “She gets weak and cranky and ugly.” Being full, Jennifer explains, is an incredible high—and she’s basically indestructible. It’s no wonder that each month she seduces and consumes another boy after the juice from the last runs out. Externally, this does not manifest as a large behavioral shift. Jennifer is flirty, appealing, and deliberately submissive as she lures in her next meal. The difference is she no longer figuratively attains her sense of self-worth from her conquests—they are literally making her more beautiful and powerful.

Confidence is terrifying

We can understand why Ginger and Jennifer become so insatiable and simultaneously why their hunger appears so monstrous in the context of patriarchal society. Their love of killing makes them a serious threat. It’s the full realization of their powers and the traditional means by which they might be subdued—control over their self-image, social standing or physical wellbeing—no longer work. For the first time in their lives, both are completely uninhibited. They are free to want. There is something almost laudable about their transformations, too; they’ve gone from almost certain victims to powerful killers. And it’s all the more telling that we can characterize both films as macabre comedies as well as horror flicks; they are often as funny as they are frightening and their delight in the upending of social convention is palpable.

But it is the way of horror that normalcy often reasserts itself and the monster is destroyed. In the case of both Ginger Snaps and Jennifer’s Body, the agent of that destruction is not a man but another teenage girl—and not just any girl, but a literal or metaphorical sister.

Inseparable…until one of us gets bitten by a werewolf

Ginger’s relationship with her sister remains the only reliable element in her life, although her encroaching transformation certainly strains it, as she abandons, threatens, and ignores her at various turns. It’s clear from the outset that their relationship has always been one of distinct inequality with Ginger as the leader and Brigitte the follower. Brigitte, who grows more assertive as the story progresses, is determined to find a cure for her sister’s condition and teams up with local drug dealer and apparent lycanthrope enthusiast Sam. However, this new alliance irritates Ginger, who as they go to consult with him drolly remarks, “Romeo, Romeo, where for art thou, Romeo?” In fact, although there is real affection at the heart of their relationship, Ginger is undeniably possessive and jealous regarding Brigitte, accusing even the school’s elderly janitor of checking out her sister and then killing him in a fit of werewolf-induced rage. Neither is it accidental that Sam becomes her intended target, as she first attempts to seduce him and then attacks him when that fails. However, she does not target Brigitte until the very end of the film, at which point Brigitte resigns herself to killing Ginger in self-defense.

There are striking similarities in the relationship between Needy and Jennifer. Jennifer is often possessive and controlling of the weaker-willed and aptly named Needy. But they genuinely care for one another, as Needy observes, because, “Sandbox love never dies.” Despite her altered state, Jennifer avoids harming her friend, even when the demon inside her would clearly be glad to rip her to pieces, too. Instead, Jennifer settles for consuming the boys around Needy, including her goth friend, Colin, and her boyfriend, Chip. This last murder drives Needy to finally take action against Jennifer and the two exchange barbed insults in two confrontations that eventually result in Jennifer’s death. Needy flatly exposes Jennifer’s insecurities, revealing a dynamic that has subtly developed over the course of the film: Needy is the stronger and more capable of the two.

Jennifer confides in Needy

It is tempting to read these two endings as a reassertion of patriarchal values in the vein of conservative horror: the well-behaved, sensible girl saves the day and survives to tell the tale while the sex-crazed, uninhibited female monster is destroyed. This is accurate but for two facts: the tragedy of our two heroines and the contagion of violence. Brigitte and Needy are devastated by what they have to do, both visibly mourning the women they loved. For them, these moments are personal, not political. It’s worth asking if they would have intervened at all had Ginger and Jennifer ranged farther afield. Both look for other solutions; both permit at least one person to die despite what they know; both keep the confidences given to them. At the end of Ginger Snaps, Brigitte leans over the body of her transformed sister and sobs; having killed Jennifer, Needy is broken, bitter, and changed, spending her days in a mental health institution for criminals. Neither looks much like a heroine of the patriarchy; neither returns to the strictures of society.

Not so Needy anymore

And both are marked in more significant ways. Brigitte deliberately infects herself to gain Ginger’s cooperation. Jennifer scratches Needy as they struggle, thus communicating some of her demonic powers to her friend, a fact Needy reveals at the end of the film as she levitates out of solitary confinement and escapes. Although Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed show us more of Brigitte’s fate—which also involves institutionalization—it’s unclear at the end of the first movie what the outcome of her infection will be. Jennifer’s Body gives us rather more, because Needy has one thing on her mind: revenge. The closing credits of the film reveal the gruesome deaths of Low Shoulder, and security footage shows Needy strolling towards their hotel room, her intent unmistakable.

Brigitte and Needy’s reactions remind us what we might forget over the course of these films: both Ginger and Jennifer are victims. They did not intentionally become what they are. But their survival makes them strong, even as it changes them in other more horrific ways. Those changes and that power are, the films seem to suggest, communicable. And despite their destruction, something of what they’ve gained persists in the women who love them and survive. Although the immediate threat may have passed, the possibility for further violence lingers.

Julia Patt is a writer from Maryland. She also edits 7×20, a journal of twitter literature, and is a regular contributor to VProud.tv and tatestreet.org. Follow her on twitter: https://twitter.com/chidorme

Patty Jenkins’ ‘Monster’: Shouldering the Double Burden of Masculinity and Femininity

In this narrative we see masculinity float free from any ties to the male body, femininity float free from any easy connection to frailness – we see them meet in the one body of this working class woman to excruciating effect.

This guest post by Katherine Parker-Hay appears as part of our theme week on Violent Women.

When film explores the lives of women who kill, the audience is well-versed in where to locate their corruption: femininity. Think Fatal Attraction’s Alex (1987), Gone Girl’s Amy (2014), the woman shaped alien of Under the Skin (2013). If these figures are evil it is because they choose to act out in ways that contradict traditional views of women. As such they linger on the outside of what is knowable. Again and again, the audience is asked to make intelligible these creatures that don’t quite belong to this world but, as they never quite belong to us, unravelling the secrets of their inner selves is a task that – no doubt intentionally – will forever elude. Patty Jenkins’s Monster is therefore refreshing, bemusing even, because it doesn’t resort to this logic. It refuses this well-worn trope of a female killer whose mysterious inner core we are all so relentlessly on the tail of.

Monster is based on the real life story of Aileen Wuornos, a homeless serial killer who received the death sentence after murdering seven men that picked her up as a prostitute. Wuornos is an enigmatic figure that haunts the public imagination as “America’s first female serial killer” but, rather than rehashing the trope of a mysterious/failed femininity, Jenkins locates Lee’s (Charlize Theron) violence in the fact that she is under pressure to perform both classic femininity and classic masculinity at the same time. Coerced by girlfriend Selby (Christina Ricci), Lee has to be both sole provider and an object endlessly open to exploitation. This pressure is too great for one person. Jenkins’ film charts the excruciating process of Lee crumbling, unable hold the most toxic attributes of both genders together in one body.

The final murder: unable to contain both

Lee finds herself falling for a woman unexpectedly when she stumbles into what happens to be a gay bar and is approached by a naïve and wide-eyed Selby. In the scenes that follow we witness a spellbinding vacuum of roles and Lee, dizzy with first-time desire, soon promises to offer more than she can realistically provide. After a first kiss on the roller skate rink, we quickly cut to the street where the couple are in a hurried embrace behind buildings. Selby has to stop Lee in her tracks, warning that they should find somewhere less public to continue. After offering a nearby yard as a realistic option Lee quickly backtracks, realising that to be with Selby she needs to be ready promise the world. This is an ominous sign of what is to come. Willing to shoulder the burden of classic masculinity, Lee promises to do whatever necessary and they arrange to meet the following evening.

As this scene of erotic discovery transitions into the next, we witness Lee tumbling along the full spectrum of gender – from classic masculinity (unshakable provider, picking up the bill) to classic femininity (vulnerable, able to draw out chivalry from all those around). With the musical score sweeping in to capture the heights of her elation, Lee quite literally spins into the next scene; we roll with her: music still playing from the night before, we see her “hooking” with newfound determination. Her face is steely, ready to take on any role that she might need to in order to accommodate her newfound desires and stay true to her promise. Charlie Shipley makes the point that the musical score of this film doesn’t merely heighten tension as traditionally understood – pop music comes from the world of the characters themselves and marks points where their fantasy lives begin to stretch the bounds of what is ordinarily possible. This certainly appears the case for the poignant transition between these two scenes. In order to surmount the impossible heights of classic masculinity that are now laid at her feet, Lee gathers momentum to beyond herself in an embrace of the hyper-feminine.

Steely with determination: “They had no idea what I could discipline myself to”

Lee understands how to tap into conventional femininity in order to make money. Importantly though, this femininity is not hers in the sense of being derived from some inner core – Lee is able to tune into well-worn tropes circulating society more widely, indeed she is an expert reader of these formulas and draws together a perfect damsel in distress narrative to solicit clients. Her routine is to walk the highway as if a vulnerable hitchhiker and, once inside the cars, she tells of how she is trying to make enough money to get back to her children. She then shows the driver a picture of the kids, his cue to make the chivalrous proposal of an exchange of sex for money. Lee has an exact understanding of how stylised femininity works and pounces upon it, knowing that this is just about the only means, for a woman of her class with dreams as big as hers, to get the money she needs. Hyper-femininity is simply an act that she has trained herself into and this has nothing to do with a mysterious essence that the reader has to bend over backwards in order to comprehend. “The thing no one ever realised about me, or believed, was that I could learn,” she reflects later in the film, “I could train myself into anything.”

However, as the film progresses it becomes clear that Selby is not content living within their means and, at the same time, Lee’s clients are not satisfied by a performance of vulnerability on Lee’s own terms. The men who pick her up are not interested in sexual intercourse alone. They feel entitled to titillating performances of conventional femininity and what’s more they expect her to improvise this free of charge. In one scene we see Lee and a client sitting in the front seats of a car and to Lee’s distress the man is delaying undressing. He badgers her: “Do you have a wet pussy?” Lee looks away and answers with a compliant, “Yeah sure.” “Do you like fucking?” he persists and, unable to draw out the right level of enthusiasm, he says, incredulous, “Jesus Christ, you’d think nobody ever talked dirty to you before.” Lee reassures him with all the energy she can muster: “I just like to settle first you know.” She is unable to keep going to these lengths, yet she is equally unable to disappoint Selby who is waiting for her to return to their motel room cash-in-hand. It is the impossibility of embodying these polar extremes of gender expression that leaves Lee ensnared and desperate. Rather than admit defeat Lee chooses to act out with murderous violence, killing the men who pick her up so that she can take their money.

Roger Ebert has celebrated the way that Theron perfects body language to capture the persona of Lee, writing that the character “doesn’t know how to occupy her body.” As the film goes on, Lee increasingly struggles to hold things together and this discomfort is evoked with every flinch, with every time she meets another’s eye for just that little bit too long. Lee is uncomfortable in her own skin and unable to endure being pulled in both directions. Monster shows a body increasingly stretched, pulled apart by a toxic clash of roles.

Interview: unable to act naturally

Through the character of Lee, Jenkins achieves a dazzlingly fresh approach to women and violence on screen. Watching one woman try and contain so much, trying to be so many different people just to get by, is what makes this film so fascinating. In this narrative we see masculinity float free from any ties to the male body, femininity float free from any easy connection to frailness – we see them meet in the one body of this working class woman to excruciating effect. This is a woman who kills because she is required to embody what so many of us cannot even handle the half of. She takes on all of it, and this proves to be much too much.

Katherine Parker-Hay has a BA in English from Goldsmiths University of London and an MA in Women’s Studies from University of Oxford. She writes on queer theory, women’s cultural output, temporality, and comic serials.

Feminist Fangs: The Activist Symbolism of Violent Vampire Women

The acts of violence by the female protagonists are terrifying, swift, and socially subversive. They target misogynistic representatives of the patriarchal society that oppresses and silences women, taking them out one by one.

This guest post by Melissa-Kelly Franklin appears as part of our theme week on Violent Women.

The apocryphal notion that women are intrinsically sensitive, gentle and maternal is an old one, so we rarely see aggressive women in film and television unless they’re either trying to protect themselves or are seriously unhinged. Sara Century writes that female characters are “so often victims, but even when they’re violent criminals, that violence is either quickly punished, or it’s normalised and reduced by audiences and creators alike.” It would seem that even the notion that women could stray so far from their natures as to be capable of serious violence is utterly inconceivable outside the context of self-preservation, or the protection of children. Well-trodden is the trope that a woman would do absolutely anything to protect her child; so violent acts by women can be easily explained away with the justification that their maternal instincts are kicking in, thereby restoring women to their place in the “natural order.” Similarly, rape-revenge is often used as a catalyst for driving women to violence, using rape as a means of pushing a character to her extreme, thereby asserting that only horrific trauma can compel a woman to act outside of socially constructed notions of gender. Neither of these reasons are shallow or unjustified – and I’d much rather see a female character take control, retaliate and fight back, than see her as a passive victim. However, what these more commonplace depictions of violent women do, is silence other motivations which might see women as actively engaging in calculated acts of violence for personal and political reasons.

Portrayals of calculated violence by women are few and far between. Sure, there is the recently released Suffragette, which portrays the militant action of the London-based suffragette movement, but as others have highlighted, it’s taken a good 100 years for that to see the light of day; and other celebrated examples of female violence in films like Alien and Terminator see women forced into violence to protect themselves and their families. (Megan Kearns wrote an interesting piece for Bitch Flicks about Sarah Connor’s identity being inextricably tied to motherhood and her baby-making potential.) So whether she’s saving her biological children, or her wider human “family,” these violent women subliminally remind us that women’s role in society is as nurturer, protector and mother.

Two films that throw the proverbial spanner in the patriarchal works are the feminist vampire films Byzantium by Neil Jordan, and A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night by Ana Lily Amirpour. The acts of violence by the female protagonists are terrifying, swift, and socially subversive. They target misogynistic representatives of the patriarchal society that oppresses and silences women, taking them out one by one. Both films reflect the social anxieties surrounding such subversive women – the notion that violent women violate the very laws of nature – making these idealised givers of life quite literally, harbingers of death. The subversion of traditional gender constructs within these films depict women actively working outside social norms, effectively using violent women within the vampire genre as a symbol of feminist activism.

In Byzantium, Clara (Gemma Arterton) and Eleanor (Saoirse Ronan) are a vampire mother and daughter duo living rough and on the run from a vampire brotherhood – all because Clara had the gall to disobey their sexist code forbidding women from creating more of their kind. As Katherine Murray discerningly points out, this is a rare vampire film where the vampire-protagonists are not rolling in cash or occupying vast estates, suggesting that we can easily attribute this to “the lack of opportunity they’ve had as women.” For over a century Clara and Eleanor have been relentlessly pursued by the brotherhood with the intention of killing the “aberration” that is Eleanor, thus restoring the status quo within their previously exclusive invitation-only boys club. Jordan introduces us to Clara and Eleanor’s desperate situation in a high-octane chase at the start of the film, which culminates in Clara’s capture. Believing he is close to finally achieving their aim, one of Clara’s assailants tells her, “I feel a great peace. As if order is about to be restored.” From the outset the film establishes an Us vs Them dichotomy, emphasising how everyone who chooses to function outside of patriarchal gender constructs is inevitably punished. Clara’s response? She shuts him up by taking off his head.

It appears throughout the film that Clara’s prevailing motivation is to protect the life of her daughter, making her one of the “violent mother” character types, but her acts of violence clearly go beyond protecting her daughter. Clara and Eleanor are targeted because they dared to violate the sacred code of the vampire brotherhood (a not even thinly veiled allusion to patriarchy) and the balance of power must be restored. The brotherhood is not actively seeking Clara’s death, rather they want to destroy the product of her disobedience – the reminder that Clara is the loose cannon that refuses to conform to their arbitrary gender rules. In their world, women are even denied the intrinsically feminine power to reproduce, as “women aren’t permitted to create.” While it is resoundingly clear that Clara would go to any lengths to protect her daughter, she is also driven by the desire for freedom so they can live unfettered by social rules which say they cannot do, say or share the same privileges that men enjoy. Clara’s deeply felt respect for individuality, freedom and personhood is made poignantly clear at the end of the film, when she acknowledges that Eleanor should make her own way in the world and discover her identity apart from being a daughter.

The boys gather to chat about whether Clara (Gemma Arterton) should be allowed to join their vampire club

Clara’s targeted attacks against patriarchy aren’t limited to members of the vampire brotherhood. The exploitation and persecution of women is also seen in the human world of the film. Desperate and struggling women are seen throughout the first half of the film, from the lone, drugged girl that Eleanor discovers barely conscious on a park bench, to the sex-worker being taunted by promises of a cigarette by the pimp in the amusement park. Clara sees an opportunity to gather together these women and free them from the power of the odious pimp, by first seducing him, then killing him. Clara’s rescue of the girls may well be self-motivated, but by taking them out of the hands of the pimp and into her matriarchy at the Byzantium hotel, she provides them with a safer, cleaner and fairer environment in which to work. And in case we didn’t get that this act of violence was done for a good cause, she croons to his corpse, “the world will be a better place without you.”

While we might laud Clara’s vigilantism, we feel conflicted in our admiration for her badass defiance of convention in the high-tension scene where she kills Eleanor’s teacher. We struggle more with this kill than previous ones, as the teacher is well-intentioned, inspires his students and is genuinely concerned for Eleanor’s welfare. It’s clear that Clara undertakes this execution to keep their secret and preserve their liberty, but the way she relishes her torturous performance leading up to the kill is chilling. We get a brief insight into why Clara isn’t about to take any risks on letting this man live. She tells him that once “I made a fatal error. I was merciful.” That mercy lead to the rape of her daughter, and her punishment for saving her is to be pursued for over a century by a brotherhood that seeks their destruction. While the murder is not justifiable, it’s understandable that Clara would have some serious issues trusting educated white men in positions of authority, and would not give pause to eliminating the threat. This scene reveals the desperation and degradation of the individual – and the wider repercussions – when denied all agency and personhood.

On the hunt: Clara’s first kill as a newborn vampire

Female agency – or lack thereof – is a similarly prevalent theme in A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night. Like Clara and Eleanor of Byzantium, the women in Amirpour’s film are searching for a way to free themselves from patriarchal oppression. Sex-worker Atti (Mozhan Marno) saves every cent and dreams of escaping Bad City to explore the places marked out on the huge map on her wall, and even the more privileged daughter of a wealthy family feels the need to conform to conventional beauty standards by having a nose-job. Only the Girl (i.e. the vampire protagonist played by Sheila Vand) moves freely about the city, addressing oppression with her own form of violent justice. The title of the film effectively draws on the inherent vulnerability ascribed to a lone woman at night in order to subvert our expectations of the narrative. In this film, the girl walking home alone is not the potential victim, but rather, the predator. In a nail-biting, but darkly comic illustration of this idea, the Girl meets a sweet, good-looking young man named Arash (Arash Marandi), drugged up from a party and dressed as Dracula. In his stupor he assures her that he wont hurt her, and in delicious moment of dramatic irony, we know that the Girl may well hurt him. Fortunately for Arash, something about his lost-kitten like vulnerability touches her, and a romantic connection between them develops.

Will she or won’t she? The Girl takes Arash home after finding him lost and alone one night

The Girl’s acts of violence are never gratuitous. Her first kill of the film is the pimp, Saeed, whom she witnesses taunt Atti and refuse to pay her, forcing her perform oral sex as an inducement. The Girl observes from a distance with eerie, omnipotent stillness. When Saeed later takes the Girl home and attempts to get physical with her (his seductive dance moves are met with a subtle eye-roll from the Girl which is just priceless), she attacks him, drinks him dry and steals his valuables to give to Atti later. As Ren Jender suggests, this vampire is a vigilante who stalks the streets of Bad City satiating her hunger only on exploitative men who mistreat desperate women.

Later in the film we see Arash’s drug-riddled father visit Atti. He watches her dance sensually, then insists that they share some drugs. When she refuses adamantly, making it clear she doesn’t want any of Hossein’s kind of “good time,” he decides to enforce the ‘fun’. In a moment looking disturbingly like a potential rape, he whips off his belt, binds Atti’s hands and violates her by forcibly injecting the drugs. While stalking the streets nearby, the Girl’s hypersensitive instincts alert her to Atti’s situation, and she swoops in like an avenging angel to show Hossein once and for all that no means no.

There is one terrifyingly menacing scene when the Girl probes a little boy with questions, asking if he is good. “Don’t lie” she hisses, terrorising him with the threat of taking out his eyes if he’s ever bad. It’s an easy conclusion to draw that by ‘good’ she means not growing up to become like the exploitative men of Bad City. The threatened eye-gouging punishment is a clear symbol of her preventing him from ever seeing, and thereby objectifying women. While there is no physical violence in this moment, the mere threat of it is enough to achieve her aim. The Girl is the stuff of misogynists’ nightmares.

“I’ll be watching,” the Girl warns the Street Urchin, and she always is

Both Byzantium and A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night suggest that action against sexism and misogyny should be targeted and dramatic. Society has always deemed violent women as creatures to be feared, as by eschewing established gender structures they are unpredictable and uncontrollable, violating the supposedly natural laws that define their femininity. That’s not to say these films encourage bloody, criminal violence, rather they advocate the rejection of restrictive social constructs of femininity in redressing gender imbalance, using violent women characters as a potent symbol of feminist activism.

Melissa–Kelly Franklin is an international filmmaker, writer and actress collaborating in London, Bristol and Berlin. She holds an honours degree in English Literature and History, with one film soon to be released and another cooking in pre-production. Updates about her work can be found at melissa-kellyfranklin.tumblr.com and she occasionally tweets at @MelissaKelly_F.

‘Monster’: A Telling of the Real Life Consequences for Violent Women

Throughout her life, Wuornos experienced horrific instances of gendered abuse, which eventually lead to a violent outlash at her unfair circumstances. ‘Monster’ vividly documents the life of a woman whose experiences under a dominant patriarchal culture racked with abuse, poverty, and desperation led to a life of crime, imprisonment, and eventually death.

This guest post by Danika Kimball appears as part of our theme week on Violent Women.

American film audiences love the idea of violence, especially in regard to justice. From Bruce Wayne’s masked forays as Batman, to Frank Underwood’s signature House of Cards sneer, pop culture and media landscapes are bombarded with the image of a vigilante bringing matters into their own hands to enact justice. But what is almost more widely revered is the concept of a woman taking matters into her own hands, as it defies societal norms on numerous levels.

We see this depiction in numerous films. To the audience’s delight, heroine Beatrix Kiddo takes vengeance on her abusers in the Kill Bill series, and Furiosa defiantly defends her right to redemption from evil doers in Mad Max: Fury Road. But sometimes, females who resort to violence aren’t celebrated, and there is perhaps no greater depiction of this than Charlize Theron’s embodiment of Aileen Wuornos in the widely acclaimed dramatic film, Monster.

Monster is a film based on the life of Aileen Wuornos, who was one of the first female serial killers in the United States. Wuornos, an impoverished former prostitute, was executed in Florida in October 2002 for the murder of six men, each of whom were her former customers. She was only the second woman in Florida and the tenth women in the United States to receive the death penalty since the landmark 1976 Supreme Court decision that restored capital punishment.

The film made an impact on most for its graphic depictions of murder, but upon re-watching the film 10 years later, the portrayal of Aileen’s life in Monster was a cruel visualization of the impacts of patriarchy, poverty, and the ways in which the criminal justice system fails violent women.

In the opening scenes of Monster, we see Aileen as an adult sitting under a busy highway overpass, replaying her life story. We see her as a young child, dreaming of being an icon like Marilyn Monroe, wealthy, loved, and the center of attention.

Her fantasy fades as she walks into a gay bar with the five dollars she had just earned from a John which she was determined to spend before she ended her life. It’s here she meets a woman named Selby, a person she would later devote to protect at any cost.

The pair eventually find solace in their shared loneliness and fall in love, which pushes Selby out of her compulsory heterosexuality. Aileen, finally having someone to care for, takes it upon herself to be a provider for Selby. The film follows Aileen’s struggle to support her newfound family, her efforts in making sure that Selby is happy, and the struggle to maintain her own dignity.

After being raped and brutalized by a client, Aileen kills him in self-defense, vowing to quit prostitution. She confesses her crime to Selby, as Selby has been angry with her for not supporting the two of them.

Aileen’s efforts to find a job prove to be difficult she has no marketable skills, and no job history outside of her years of prostitution. Any prospective employers reject her, some openly volatile, accosting her for wasting their time. We see throughout the film that everyone in Aileen’s life believe that no man will ever pay her for anything aside from her body.

With nowhere to turn, Aileen returns to a life of prostitution, each time killing and robbing her Johns more brutally than the last, as she is convinced they are all trying to harm her.

In this context, it becomes difficult for a viewer to see her actions as evil. Aileen’s actions almost appear to be rational, even moral decisions, when viewed through the lens of extreme gender and class oppression. We see this in her explanations to Selby later, where she implores that she is helping to protect the other women in the world, who might also be victimized these men. She says,

Who the fuck knows what God wants? People kill each other every day and for what? Hm? For politics, for religion, and THEY’RE HEROES! No, no… There’s a lot of shit I can’t do anymore, but killing’s not one of them. And letting those fucking bastards go out and rape someone else isn’t either!

Eventually Aileen’s murders catch up with her, and she is arrested at a biker bar. While speaking to Selby on the phone, Selby reveals incriminating information over the phone while the police are listening in. As her last display of protection, Aileen admits she committed the murders alone. During the subsequent trial, Selby testifies against her in the courtroom hearings. Aileen is executed by lethal injection on October 9, 2002.

Part of what makes Monster so honest and relevant to feminists is the way that it recognizes and points to the patriarchal conditions in place that frame and constrain women’s choices, sometimes leading to a life of crime.

Throughout her life Aileen has been victimized, raped, and violence is a part of her day-to-day existence.

Emily Salisbury, a professor at Portland State University’s Criminology and Criminal Justice Program, suggests that patriarchal conditions are often a huge part of the reason for women’s participation in criminal activity and subsequent incarcerations. She remarks,

With the work of feminist scholars such as Mita Chesney Lynn, Kathleen Daly, Regina Arnold, Barbara Owen and many others, new ideas about female offending were established. The qualitative life history interviews that these scholars conducted with girls and women suggested that their lives leading up to criminal justice involvement were extremely complex and disadvantaged, with unique daily struggles…such as struggles with child abuse, depression, self-medicating behavior, self-hatred, parenting responsibilities, domestic violence and unhealthy intimate relationships. It’s argued that these problems create unique pathways to crime for women.

Many of the struggles listed are applicable to Aileen’s incarceration. In a documentary called Aileen Wuornos: Life and Death of a Serial Killer, director Nick Broomfield speaks to the infamous murderer, where she expresses that if her life leading up to adulthood had been more ideal, she wouldn’t have entered a life of crime in the first place. Family members and close friends remark throughout the film that she was the product of homelessness, violence, abuse, prostitution, poverty, incest, rape, and mental illness.

Throughout her life, Wuornos experienced horrific instances of gendered abuse, which eventually lead to a violent outlash at her unfair circumstances. Monster vividly documents the life of a woman whose experiences under a dominant patriarchal culture racked with abuse, poverty, and desperation led to a life of crime, imprisonment, and eventually death.

Though on-screen depictions of violent women are portrayed as empowering, as is the case with vengeful Furiosa in Mad Max, or the cathartic revenge plot for Beatrix Kiddo in Kill Bill, Aileen Wuornos’ story tells a different story for violent women. Monster illustrates that all too often, violent women’s pasts are rifled with oppression, and in defending themselves, they face consequences from legal systems that have proven to fail them in the past. For Aileen, violent self-preservation ended in demise.

Danika Kimball is a musician from the Northwest who sometimes takes a 30-minute break from feminism to enjoy a TV show. You can follow her on twitter @sadwhitegrrl or on Instagram @drunkfeminist.

‘Girlhood’: Observed But Not Seen

‘Girlhood’ starts on a peak note: a slow-motion scene of what looks like Black men playing American tackle football on a field at night, wearing helmets, shoulder pads and mouth guards, so we don’t realize–until we notice the players’ breasts under their uniforms–that they are all girls.

This repost by staff writer Ren Jender appears as part of our theme week on Violent Women.

When Boyhood was making its victory lap through critics’ circles and award ceremonies, I wasn’t the only person who thought, “I want a film called Girlhood.” We all got our wish near the beginning of this year when the out writer-director of Water Lilies and Tomboy, Céline Sciamma, gave us the art house US release Girlhood about a French, Black teenager, Marieme (Karidja Touré). The English title isn’t an exact translation of the original French Bande de Filles (“Group of Girls”) which was in production long before Boyhood was released–and perhaps even before that film was called Boyhood: the original title was 12 Years. Still, I was eager to see Sciamma’s film–until I read about its “bleak” ending and some talk from women of color that they found the writer-director’s take on Marieme’s life lacking. When the film played at my local art house as a revival months after its first run, I went to see it. I’m glad I did, but now I understand both reactions: the effusive praise and the cringing.

Girlhood starts on a peak note: a slow-motion scene of what looks like Black men playing American tackle football on a field at night, wearing helmets, shoulder pads and mouth guards, so we don’t realize–until we notice the players’ breasts under their uniforms–that they are all girls. Marieme and the rest of the team all live in the same neighborhood so after the game they walk home together with each saying “Good night” to the rest as she leaves the group to go home. Marieme is the only one left at the end, making her way up to her family’s apartment, where we see that she and her sister, who is a couple of years younger than she is, (Marieme is 15 or 16 at the beginning of the film) are the ones raising their much younger sister, cooking her meals and doing the dishes while their mother works. Their older brother is a physically abusive, petty dictator who kicks Marieme out of the living room when he comes home, so he can have the computer soccer game she was playing to himself.

Marieme finds out that she is flunking out of school and an unsympathetic counselor won’t listen to her excuses, or allow her to redeem herself. Dejected, she leaves, then just outside the school meets up with a group of three girls about her age, also not attending classes, who invite her to go to Paris with them (the film seems to mostly take place in the Parisian suburbs). At first she turns them down but when she notices the attention they receive from a group of local boys (including a friend of her brother’s she’s attracted to) she decides to go to Paris with the other girls after all.

In the city the girls unapologetically take up space, whether blasting music and teaching each other dance routines in a crowded metro car (with the white passengers turning their backs on them, pretending not to notice) or shaming and shoving a white clothing store clerk who profiles them. Marieme is entranced and becomes a permanent part of the group. She exchanges her long braids for the long straight weave/wig similar to that of the leader of the group Lady (Assa Sylla) and intimidates one of her former football teammates into giving her money that the group pool into a night in a motel room (with extra for food and booze). While she’s partying with her friends her brother calls, but Lady, while taking a bath, instructs her not to answer. She tells Marieme, “You do what you want.” When Marieme repeats the words back to Lady, she says she should look in her bag for a gift, a necklace that spells out “Vic.” “As in ‘victory,'” Lady tells her. We later find out “Lady” isn’t her real name either: it’s “Sophie.”

In another highlight the girls lip sync to “Diamonds” (the Sia Furler song sung by Rihanna) while in the room, wearing the new dresses they’ve shoplifted, dancing (shot stunningly by cinematographer Crystel Fournier) like they are in their own music video. But the high life never lasts–afterward when Marieme, now known as “Vic” returns to the apartment her brother chokes her, telling her to never ignore his calls again.

By this time Vic’s nearly silent mother knows that she is out of school and has arranged for her to join her at her job cleaning hotel rooms. We see the defeated expression on Vic’s face as she scrubs a bathroom sink but aren’t prepared when, at the end of the shift, Vic grabs the supervisor’s hand, as in a handshake but squeezes and twists it until the supervisor agrees to tell her mother that she doesn’t have a position for Vic after all.

We’re used to seeing teenaged protagonists, especially those who suffer physical abuse at home, turn to petty crime and violence in film, but they’re rarely girls: the only other unapologetically violent, girl-protagonist that comes readily to mind is Reese Witherspoon’s Vanessa in 1996’s Freeway. We see Lady and the others in the group call out insults to other groups of Black girls which sometimes leads to nothing and sometimes culminates in scheduled fights (complete with a crowd of spectators filming the event with their phones). One of these fights leads to a humiliating defeat for Lady and the chance for Vic to avenge it. In Vic’s fight, she not only takes off the other girl’s shirt, as the girl did to Lady, she takes out her switchblade and cuts off the girl’s bra as well. When she comes home, her brother, who apparently saw the fight on YouTube, instead of hitting her (as he usually does when he calls her into a room) invites her to play computer soccer with him.

When Vic sees her younger sister with a group of other girls her age robbing a woman’s purse she ‘s upset. On the train ride home she implies she too will swear off stealing and fighting–only to find her brother waiting for her in the apartment with a beat-down, angry that she’s had sex with his friend (this boyfriend is one of the only Black men or boys in the film who is presented as more than a cardboard thug).

Sciamma is at her best when the girls are alone together (including an early funny scene between Marieme and her slightly younger sister) and also as in her earlier films when her characters seem to be exploring their sexual orientation and gender expression. Unlike every other woman or girl character in a movie, when Vic is in a dress and high heels it’s only until she can change into sweats and sneakers. At one point she wears her hair in short cornrows and binds her breasts, to protect herself as a woman alone on the street, but she continues to wear her “disguise” when she is at home as well. The scenes when she talks to Lady in the bathtub as well as a later dance with a sex worker/roommate have a sexual tension to them that Vic’s scenes with her boyfriend (even as she, just before they have sex together for the first time, objectifies his bare ass) don’t equal.

But during other scenes I felt Sciamma was observing these girls as a sociologist or tourist might, as opposed to truly seeing and understanding them or giving their scenes the same nuance the white male director of Our Song gave to the girls of color who were his main characters. The sometimes careless cinematography doesn’t help; although Touré is photographed beautifully in most of the first part of the film (she’s never lovelier than when, in the presence of the boy she likes, she looks down and smiles) in some latter parts she’s poorly lit (a persistent problem of white photographers and cinematographers with dark skinned actresses/subjects), so we can’t clearly make out her features.

Other reviews made me dread a downer ending. Needlessly degrading or deeming “hopeless” a woman or girl character is one of the biggest clichés writers, especially male ones, have at their disposal and I’m not the only woman who is sick of it. But the last shot of Vic isn’t any more hopeless than the one of another, very famous teenaged protagonist in French film who had also gotten into a lot of trouble, Antoine Doinel in François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows. And unlike him, Vic wears a look of determination on her face as she walks purposefully away from us.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AabCFCREVbQ” iv_load_policy=”3″]

Ren Jender is a queer writer-performer/producer putting a film together. Her writing besides appearing every week on Bitch Flicks has appeared in The Toast, xoJane and the Feminist Wire. You can follow her on Twitter @renjender.

Nine Pretty Great Lesbian Vampire Movies

Almost unfailingly exploitative in its portrayal of queer women, this specific sub-genre of film stands alone in a few ways, not the least of which being that the vampires, while murderous and ultimately doomed, are powerful, lonely women, often living their lives outside of society’s rules.

This guest post by Sara Century appears as part of our theme week on Violent Women.

Vampires. Lesbians. These two things are as intertwined as the stars and the sky, at least in popular fiction. The vampire lesbian sub-genre finds its basis in an unfinished poem by Coleridge 1797-ish, and continuing onward and up to the modern era with entries such as 2010 German film We Are the Night, and beyond. There are hundreds of lesbian vampire stories in the world, and very few of them deviate from the basic plot of the 1872 novella Carmilla by Joseph Le Fanu. You can just read that story and you’ll have the basic gist: lesbian vampire seduces straight woman, is murdered by men. If that sounds like a flimsy plot excuse for violence against women, that’s because that is 1,000 percent what it is. On the other hand, if there’s hundreds of anything, at least a few of them are bound to be good. I personally have a pretty strong love for lesbian vampire films, which, for better or worse, helped me to define my own images of sexuality as a young gay. Almost unfailingly exploitative in its portrayal of queer women, this specific sub-genre of film stands alone in a few ways, not the least of which being that the vampires, while murderous and ultimately doomed, are powerful, lonely women, often living their lives outside of society’s rules. And I love everything about that… except the part where they’re all mass murderers. When there is so little representation of powerful queer women in film, it becomes difficult to fully dismiss the few that exist, even if they are ultimately negative or problematic.

For all these reasons, I felt a need to compile a list of lesbian vampire films that impacted me in some way, or that I found particularly enjoyable to watch. Without further ado, my nine favorite lesbian vampire films.

9. The Moth Diaries – 2011

I liked this one. It’s a little meta, in that the girl is reading and narrating the short story Carmilla while in a movie based on the short story, Carmilla. If you can handle that, you’ll be pretty down with most of this film. There’s no organ music, which is a solid fail on the part of many films, but it’s from a female writer/director team, and I don’t think it gets enough props for being as enjoyable as it is. Lily Cole is impressively creepy as Ernessa, the Carmilla analog of the film. The main character Rebecca is immediately distrustful of Ernessa, but her friend Lucy (yep) falls under Ernessa’s sway. And so on, and so forth. There’s some pretty disturbing stuff in here: suicide features prominently in the story, the general lack of consent during sex scenes that you often see in lesbian vampire movies is definitely in there, and Rebecca makes out with her teacher, which freaks me out more than most of the rest of the movie. My critique would be that, as meta as the story gets, it never really resolves any of the questions it asks itself. There’s little in the way of socially relevent commentary here, which seems odd for a film that immediately opens a gaping hole in the fourth wall and then leaves it there for the entire course of the narrative. That said, I like this film’s self-awareness, and there’s definitely a few creepy moments that are worth the price of admission.

8. Blood and Roses – 1960

This movie makes a lot of “best of” lists, mostly because it was the first lesbian vampire film that explicitly expressed the queerness of its main character in no uncertain terms. We see a lot of what would ultimately become alternately beloved and maligned tropes of the genre: the love triangle, the arty dream sequence in the middle of the narrative, the bizarre similarity of a character to a portrait of a long-dead ancestor, and the sexually confused girlfriend character.

Our vampire Carmilla’s sexual agency, as well as her frustration, are equally compelling. She flirts with her crushes, and is upset by their rejection of her. She feeds on village girls after playing with them like a cat with a mouse. She is clearly doomed from the very moment she first appears onscreen, and yet, for all these reasons, she’s by far the most interesting character in the film.

What Blood and Roses said to me when I watched it as a young queer woman could be a much longer piece of writing, but, briefly, these images were among the first moments of queer visibility in North American cinema. As problematic as they are, they deserve analysis, and they deserve to be considered for their impact on both queer and straight audiences of their time. Besides all that, though, Blood and Roses is a campy and fun horror film from the 1960s, so if that sounds up your alley, definitely check it out.

7. Daughters of Darkness – 1971

In the 1970s, there was a fad in horror films where privileged, angry men with Beatles hair and snappy wardrobes were the main characters of pretty much every single movie. That’s going strong here, where the main character looks exactly like this:

Wowza. Anyway, the real main character is obviously not that guy, but this extremely fictionalized version of Elizabeth Bathory, at this point hundreds of years old, played by the wonderfully over-the-top Delphine Seyrig. Delphine has a respectable history in art house films of the 1970s, and worked with several of the best directors of her day. She seems to have great fun with the hypersexualized Bathory, and the whole film gets much more interesting when she shows up. The beginning of the movie is just the straight couple getting married and talking a lot, so bring on the lesbian vampires, my friends. Can I just say, as messed up as she is, Bathory is just shockingly beautiful through this whole movie. All of her outfits are the best outfits I have ever seen, and she is my style icon from here to eternity. Also perfectly fashionable, her vampire sidekick, whose simple style and bobbed hair are based on the glorious silent film star, Louise Brooks. I’m just letting you know, this movie rules. Persistent themes of the sexually aggressive and sadistic vampire focusing on the confused, flippant blonde woman are in full force here, and I would say this portrayal of the ancient and wicked lesbian vampire character is one of the more fascinating.

6. The Countess – 2009

This film is about Countess Elizabeth Bathory, widely considered to be one of the most sadistic mass murderers of all time. I say “considered to be” because, to be honest, nobody has the slightest damn idea what actually happened there. Was she a mass murderer? Probably? People were not keeping extensive records of this sort of thing in 1610, and, in fact destroyed all evidence of wrongdoing to prevent a scandal. She was of royal blood, and therefore never went to trial. What I’m saying is that all the information currently available surrounding this case is strongly based in rumor. Still, she is the person on whom much of Western World vampire mythology is based on, so if anyone has the right to be on a list about lesbian vampires, it’s the countess. The story follows the legends of what we believe to be true about her life, and carries us all the way through to her bitter end, with the entirely fictional subplot of a doomed affair with a younger man. I wasn’t personally that into the added love story of the film, but it definitely sets up some of the creepiest scenes in the whole movie, so I’ll allow it. This movie was done by Julie Delpy, who both directs and stars as Bathory, like a boss. Honestly, this film is just flat out better made than anything else on the list in concern to production values, budget, and acting skill, so if you’re into watching something less campy and more real, this is the one for you.

5. The Blood Spattered Bride – 1972

This movie starts with one of my least favorite opening scenes of all time, but if you can get through the weird rape fantasy that kicks it off, the feminist commentary actually gets really interesting as the movie goes along. The tale follows two newlyweds, Susan and her nameless husband, who exists not so much as a character, but as a representation of director Vincente Aranda’s perception of the fascist patriarchy. He comes across about as likeable as a fascist patriarchy, too, more or less crying a river every time his wife doesn’t respond to his aggressive sexual advances. A great portion of this film is Susan progressing through the story arc tropes of most major feminist characters of the 1970s: bride, to unhappy bride, to lesbian, to misandrist, to murderer. That said, honestly, I don’t really blame her, because she is literally married to the human embodiment of misogyny. As an audience member, you’ll find yourself rooting for this guy’s death pretty hard I think, so I can’t imagine what it’d be like to be married to him. She literally locks herself in a cage to get away from him, uses quotes from a book to tell him she hates him, and finally flies into a full-out screaming fit that, let’s be real, is not entirely unprovoked. So, when the dreamy and beautiful Carmilla shows up in a totally bizarre scene that I’m not even going to describe right now because you should just watch it, it’s obvious that Susan is about to get straight up seduced. When your options are “man you hate who borderline rapes you a lot” or “ghostly vampire with really pretty eyes that tells you to kill your legitimately terrible husband,” I guess I’d probably go with the latter, too. I mean, let’s be real, the third option of “get the Hell out of there” is the only real option, but if she did that, there’d be no movie, so spree of murder and terror with dreamy girlfriend it is. To the credit of the film, Susan is a very interesting character. She ultimately goes the really wrong direction with it, but her feminist theory begins in a good place. Societal loathing of queer women ultimately causes her to snap when she realizes that, as a lesbian, the world will punish her sexuality and turn her into a pariah. That is a totally legit concerns for 1972. Susan is by far the best and most interesting part of this film, which is otherwise mostly a campy horror film with unsettling moments of sexual violence and the familiar art house dreaminess of most of the films on this list.

4. The Hunger – 1983

The Hunger is one of the more famous entries in the lesbian vampire canon, so, if you’ve seen one movie on this list, the law of averages would imply that it’d be this one. The beginning of this movie finds David Bowie as John Blaylock and Catherine Deneuve as Miriam Blaylock in a goth club watching Bauhaus. They are vampires, swinger vampires. They pick up another Goth couple and kill them with a tiny blade kept inside the ankh (yes, ankh) Miriam keeps around her neck.

It. Is. Nine. Teen. Eighty. Three. As. Fuck. Right. Now.

There’s a lot of cool stuff in this movie. It’s really well shot, Catherine Deneuve is pretty much the greatest actor on the planet, the soundtrack rules, and David Bowie… just, David Bowie. This film also has one of the most famously great lesbian sex scenes in cinema history. Miriam and Susan Sarandon’s character, Dr. Sarah Roberts, hook up for the first time (only time? I don’t know) to the most lesbian song EVER, aka “The Flower Duet” from Léo Delibes’ opera Lakmé. “Sounds like a love song,” says Sarah. “Then I suppose that’s what it is,” says Miriam. You bet it is, Miriam! Moments later, those two are making out. Another slight alteration on the standard lesbian vampire tropes is that Dr. Roberts, the supposed victim of the film, is the one that initiates sex, here, rather than, as we so often see in film, the vampire preying on a human’s naiveté and weakness.

Sticking well within queer tropes, however, Miriam is honestly a real U-Haul vampire, and waits all of 10 seconds after John’s death before she tries to marry Sarah pretty much out of nowhere. We are talking about someone that has an eternity ahead of her that can’t even wait like a month after her husband’s “death” before she starts moving her girlfriend in. Which is cold as Hell, because they were married for something like 300 years. Well, I don’t want to spoil the twists and turns this story takes for y’all, so I guess I’ll cut myself off there, but, more or less, this movie is famous for a reason, and if you’re in the mood to watch a scary film that is just the most ’80s thing you’ve seen in your life, this is likely going to be your best option.

3. Nadja – 1994

I feel like this film gets overlooked by both the vampire crowd as well as the indie crowd, and it’s kind of a shame, since it has all the requirements of being a cult classic. There’s nothing particularly new in this film, but there’s a lot to like about it. The creepy vampire as played by Elina Lowensohn really sells the film. She’s one of my all time faves. The cinematography is really great, and the film looks just stunning in black and white. Especially interesting is the use of a child’s toy camera for some scenes, lending a simple, stylized perspective at key moments. There’s a lot of pretty amusing mid-90s, Generation X style soul-searching from the white, heterosexual couple at the center of the film, as well as some genuinely on point observations on the human condition from the impressively coherent vampires. As many of these films are products of their time, I must say that Nadja is about the most 1994 film you’re liable to watch in your life. Instead of the standard skintight dress fluttering softly in the wind, the female love interest of the vampire is wearing a straight up flannel shirt and jeans, and if she had slight stubble I would definitely mistake her for Kurt Cobain. At certain moments, the film looks and sounds a bit like a music video for a Portishead song, but the aesthetic is pulled off to perfection, and it really works. The overall stylishness of Nadja has only aged for the better in the two decades since its release.

2. Vampyros Lesbos – 1971

This is where I start to get emotional. Vampyros Lesbos features my favorite opening to a film probably ever, with a bizarre shot of the vampire accompanied by noise music as the credits roll, followed immediately by our hero, the vampiric Nadine Carody, doing an erotic dance in a mirror with herself. She kisses herself in the mirror while holding a candlebra, while a blond-haired mannequin watches her. Ultimately, the countess turns, and begins kissing the mannequin, while her future lover Linda Westinghouse looks on, as intrigued as her mustached boyfriend is uncomfortable. The whole time, one of my all-time favorite songs is playing, a dark, dreamy song with an irrestistably basic Hammond organ pre-recorded drumbeat and chilling yet seductive organ sounds. And that is how you start a movie, everyone. You now have my full attention. Vampyros Lesbos is honestly just a flawless victory. It’s over-the-top, set very much with a psychedelic backdrop, and Soledad Miranda is absolutely enchanting as the countess. The comparatively less interesting “girlfriend” character Linda Westinghouse is really great in this movie. Her acting is stilted, but it works perfectly for this agonized and hestitant character, who is as attracted as she is repelled by the beautiful vampire. What I’m getting at here is that Vampyros Lesbos is a great movie (greatest movie?), and well worth your time if you’re a horror fan, a lesbian fan, an art house fan, or basically anyone (who is over the age of 18). Yes, this film is just as exploitative to queer women as any other lesbian vampire movie, but if you just focus on the intriguing, mysterious countess and her compelling monolgues, the brilliant soundtrack, and the beautifully shot and haunting love scenes between Linda and Nadine, you’ll do OK.

1. Fascination – 1979

The No. 1 spot is a tie between Vampyros Lesbos and Fascination, because I definitely love both equally, but loving things equally is not how internet listicles work, so Fascination it is. I’ve seen dozens of lesbian vampire films, but there’s something about this one. It doesn’t just slightly deviate from the tropes, it starts with a weird premise, introduces multiple tropes, and then just goes completely off the rails with them, until it concludes on a note that could only be described as utterly bizarre. To me, adding art house weirdness to horror films just makes a good thing even better, so I find Fascination to be delightful, haunting, and aesthetically beautiful. The movies of Jean Rolin are often about vampires, definitely well within the realm of art house cinema, and always highly eroticized. Fascination in specific has a just bananas plot trajectory: it pretty much starts with a whole lot of lesbian sex, which then becomes straight sex, which then goes back to being lesbian sex. They’re kind of vampires, or not? One of the main characters terrorizes the countryside with a scythe, there’s a coven of witches, someone gets devoured alive… it is goddamned epic. I especially love the characters, despite how weird and evil they all are. I particularly love the character of Eva, who is very much a problematic favorite, in that pretty much every action she takes in the film ends with her committing murder at some point. The scenery is gorgeous, the cinematography is simple and beautiful, the actors seem like they’re having fun… it’s all in all a perfect 1970s horror film.

Sara Century is a multimedia performance artist, and you can follow her work at saracentury.wordpress.com.

‘Maggie’s Plan’ Is Just as Awkward and Charming and Grim as Gen-Y’s Struggle with Adulthood

Like ‘Frances Ha,’ ‘Maggie’s Plan’ resonates with the gen-Y, mumblecore picture of adulthood that says, “We’re all average, imperfect, confused people trying to stay afloat in a world that feels random and chaotic.” Everything Maggie does comes out of a sincerely-felt – if slightly selfish – desire to be authentic and live truthfully while not having anyone get mad at her. It’s emblematic of a generation full of people who are re-discovering and re-inventing How To Be A Person while ignoring all the models that came before. It’s messy and screwed-up and sometimes stupid-looking, but there’s an optimism to it, too. There’s a sense that we can all cut our own paths through the wilderness, even if we mess it up and go the wrong way.

Written by Katherine Murray.

It’s no Frances Ha, but this romantic comedy directed by Rebecca Miller takes full advantage of its cast, including Greta Gerwig’s trademark brand of awkward charm.

If there’s one criticism I would make about Maggie’s Plan, it’s that the story is a little bit too complicated. When the film starts, we’re dropped into some pretty blunt exposition about how Gerwig’s character, Maggie, has come up with a plan to have a child through self-administered artificial insemination. The next 30 minutes or are devoted to a prologue that develops that idea by introducing us to an old acquaintance of Maggie’s who has now become a pickle baron and wants to be the sperm donor. Just as that seems to be gaining momentum, though, the film changes direction as Maggie falls in love with a married colleague, played by Ethan Hawke.

John – her colleague – is a would-be novelist trapped in a miserable marriage with superstar academic Georgette (Julianne Moore, with an extremely committed Danish accent). Just as she’s about to inseminate herself with the pickle man’s sperm, Maggie instead begins an affair with John, launching us three years into the future, where the action really begins.

In the near future of the main plot, Maggie and John live together with their daughter and she supports him while he works on his never-finished novel. Georgette has written a book about how their affair destroyed her life, and John and Georgette’s children shuffle back and forth between their parents. It doesn’t take Maggie long to figure out that John’s kind of a loser, once you get to know him well, and she soon hatches a plan to get him back together with Georgette, so that she doesn’t have to feel guilty for misguidedly wrecking their home.

The movie gets a lot more funny, purposeful, and creative once Maggie decides to offload John onto Georgette, but it takes a long time to get there. On top of that, as charming and likable as Greta Gerwig is in this and every role, Julianne Moore is the most entertaining person in this movie, and things pick up once she takes centre stage.

Like most romantic comedies, Maggie’s Plan isn’t especially daring in its social commentary – it’s designed to go down easy. The premise of the story – that Maggie would, ideally, like to be a mother without having a man involved – is never really explored beyond its value as a wacky situation, and the characters are drawn in such goofy, likable terms that none of the pain of divorce or failed relationships really seeps in.

The jokes that get the most traction – excepting the ones about winter in Canada, which were a hit with the crowd at TIFF – are mostly about the absurdities of writing and academia. John works in a super-specialized, esoteric field that no one understands but that is, nevertheless, outstandingly important to the handful of researchers he meets at conferences. His novel, when he first shares it with Maggie, is clearly a thinly-veiled story about his own life and how oppressive he finds it to live with a woman who’s always breaking out in stress-related rashes.

The central plot, when we finally get to it, is a nice twist that balances a sense of realism with the same absurdity that underpins most of the jokes. It’s funny that Maggie’s plan is to get her loser boyfriend back together with his wife, but there’s also a sober realization that John seems different after the glow of new love has faded around him. Maybe the most radical thing Maggie’s Plan proposes – radical for a romantic comedy; not radical in life – is that sometimes, when you’re sure you’ve met The One, it turns out to be a mistake. No because anyone was lying to you – not because you were tricked somehow – just because our feelings about and perceptions of people change over time. Sometimes we act impulsively, because we feel certain in the moment, and then regret the impulsive things we’ve done.

It isn’t fair to compare Maggie’s Plan to Frances Ha, which was helmed by different people, but there’s a strange combination of worldliness and innocence that Greta Gerwig brings to her roles, and that makes a kind of sense in both films. Like Frances Ha, Maggie’s Plan resonates with the gen-Y, mumblecore picture of adulthood that says, “We’re all average, imperfect, confused people trying to stay afloat in a world that feels random and chaotic.” Everything Maggie does comes out of a sincerely felt – if slightly selfish – desire to be authentic and live truthfully while not having anyone get mad at her. It’s emblematic of a generation full of people who are re-discovering and re-inventing How To Be A Person while ignoring all the models that came before. It’s messy and screwed-up and sometimes stupid-looking, but there’s an optimism to it, too. There’s a sense that we can all cut our own paths through the wilderness, even if we mess it up and go the wrong way.

Maggie’s Plan picked up a distribution deal with Sony after it premiered at TIFF, so there’s a chance it will end up in a theatre near you some time next year.

Katherine Murray is a Toronto-based writer who yells about movies and TV (both real and made up) on her blog.

Five Female Directors Who Helped Shape Nollywood

Amaka Igwe (1963 – 2014)

Nollywood, the Nigerian film industry, has overtaken Hollywood in terms of its volume of output, and is now second only to Bollywood. What were once dismissed as stilted, static, and amateurish films made on home video, have now developed into their own distinctive visual style and genres, which are popular and influential across Africa and the African diaspora worldwide. One of the visionaries who helped to shape the Nollywood phenomenon, Amaka Igwe ran her own production company and owned a radio station, as well as writing and directing films such as Rattle Snake and Violated, and their sequels, having debuted as writer and producer of the award-winning TV soap Checkmate. Her work with Amaka Igwe Studios is credited with raising standards in the Nollywood industry as a whole. Using the Igbo language, Igwe’s films were aimed squarely at a national audience, allowing people to see their own everyday lives and conflicts mirrored in her works.

Tope Oshin Ogun

“My films, I mean the ones that are my personal projects, have serious themes and deal with the situations and problems in our society today. I am not all for entertainment for entertainment’s sake” – Tope Oshin Ogun

Now the CEO of Sunbow Productions Ltd., the actress Tope Oshin Ogun credits Amaka Igwe for getting her into directing and inspiring her to think that she could take a broader control of her films. Igwe noticed that Ogun was asking intelligent questions about all aspects of production and told her that she had a director’s brain. Amaka Igwe’s legacy thus continues in the films of Tope Oshin Ogun, demonstrating the importance of mentoring and precedent between women in the industry. After she decided to take this direction, a number of the directors that she had worked with as an actress allowed her to intern for them, watching them at work while she prepared to make the transition herself. Ogun began by directing many episodes of the television soap opera Tinsel, which is popular across Africa. Tope Oshin Ogun’s feature film Journey to Self chronicles the bonding journey of four women, tackling personal details and reaching self-realization. Filmed from a female perspective, the four women leads are staying at the home of a deceased friend and reading her insightful letters, triggering their own journeys of self-discovery. An intense story of female friendship, empowerment, sacrifice, and self-respect, Journey to Self illustrates Tope Oshin Ogun’s commitment to telling women’s stories that have meaning for her audience.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPjJq3Xb7yw”]

Sandra Mbanefo Obiago

“I’m concerned about the fact that we download a lot about ourselves yet upload very little into mainstream media, no matter which media we are talking about”, – Sandra Mbanefo Obiago

Concerned about African women’s authorship of their own image, Sandra Mbanefo Obiago founded Communicating for Change (CFC) in 1998 with the mission of becoming a content provider for positive films documenting social challenges in ways that have a strong human interest and creative angle to engage the viewer. She points to Hollywood films like Blood Diamond with its diamond trafficking storyline, as having greater global impact in raising awareness than dry documentaries, while the popular South African series Soul City was able to reach more viewers with carefully researched HIV/AIDS storylines than the “awareness” films of NGOs. Recently, Obiago has taken her long-standing interest in visual art to found African Art Spectrum, and believes that closer collaboration between Nigeria’s writers, musicians, visual artists, photographers and filmmakers will be key to developing the artistic level of Nollywood film. In For Love of Indigo, Obiago celebrates the traditional Yoruba indigo textile artform of adire, through the figure of the internationally famed artist Nike Okundaye. Nike’s life story begins with hardships faced by many rural women, before rising to an extraordinary level of both individual success and generosity in giving back to the community. Among the many women that she mentored in adire were Nigerian emigrants to Italy, who had fallen into the sex industry from a lack of other money-making options, and who were able to use the craft as an alternative source of income.

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Watch Sandra Mbanefo Obiago’s films on culture unplugged.

Remi Vaughan-Richards

“The rest of the world documents… why do you think we have museums everywhere in the world? Because it’s important” – Remi Vaughan-Richards

Remi Vaughan-Richards is the Creative Director of Singing Tree Films, “a hub of creative minds with a mission to entertain, inform and educate using behavior change communication methods.” Based in Nigeria, the company provides content for diverse clients, including the BBC World Service Trust’s Nigeria branch, Sandra Mbanefo Obiago’s Communicating for Change and Ondo State Government. She is interested in defining Nigerian modernity that is rooted in history, and reimagines issues in a new light, integrating her Western training with her Nigerian culture. For examples, in Scent of the Street, a documentary exploring “area girls” from rougher neighbourhoods or “areas” of the capital city Lagos, the subjects Bisayo, Onyinye and Gift are given space to speak for themselves and define their own ambitions. Though she currently lives off dates, Onyinye is clear about her family loyalties and sense of responsibility as a provider for younger siblings, as well as ambition as a model and fashion designer. Bisayo’s role as “Area Mother” is highlighted for the diplomatic and leadership qualities that her hustle requires. Gift’s more modest ambitions for her own market stall, and for safety walking home at night, accepting the protection of her “fine” boyfriend, are equally honored. Scent of the Street reclaims the role of women in hustling street life from an ornamental role on the margins, to put it center stage. Finally, a partnership with Obiago’s Communicating for Change allowed all three of the documentary’s subjects to enroll in life skill classes, to help transform their outlook and the opportunities available to them.

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Watch Scent of the Street on vimeo.

Michelle Bello

“I love romantic comedies, you know, I’m a romantic at heart, so I was just like, ‘this will be fun to do’ “ – Michelle Bello

A film director and producer, Michelle Bello is the CEO of Nigerian-based film company Blu Star Entertainment Ltd.. After studying communications at the American University in Washington D.C., Bello made her first 16mm short, Sheltered, during a study-abroad program in Prague. After graduation she moved home to Nigeria, becoming an Associate Producer on Mo Abudu’s hit MNet TV Show Moments with Mo, then produced the award-winning music video for T.Y. Bello’s “Greenland.” In 2008, she completed her first feature film, Small Boy, which was nominated for two awards at the Los Angeles American Black Film Festival and won two African Movie Academy Awards in 2009 for its art direction and child star. A film about a young boy living on the streets of Lagos after fleeing abuse at home, it offered a true-to-life portrait of a child in crisis. In a complete change of tone, her next feature, 2013’s Flower Girl, was an escapist romantic comedy in which a shy florist teams up with a movie star to press her long-term boyfriend into proposing. As Africa can be stereotyped as a crisis zone or exotic backdrop, it is important to see films like Bello’s that celebrate universal human aspirations to love and laughter. Flower Girl became a number one box office hit in Nigeria and Ghana, before receiving a limited U.K. theatrical release, making Bello the first female director to have an international cinematic release, a core part of a new wave of Nollywood directors that are furthering the industry as global players. Together with the other women on this list, Michelle Bello seems to promise a strong female voice in African cinema going forward.

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Brigit McCone believes globalization ought to flow both ways. She writes and directs short films and radio dramas. Her hobbies include doodling and researching overlooked female artists.

Lies The Government Tells Us: ‘(T)ERROR’ Plus New Lyric R. Cabral Interview

To see a portrait of the inner workings of the FBI we have to look to films like the new documentary, ‘(T)ERROR,’ co-directed by Lyric R. Cabral and David Felix Sutcliffe, which opens in the US starting tomorrow, Oct. 7.

The following is partly a repost; scroll down for a brand new interview with filmmaker Lyric R. Cabral

In most movies, US government agents, whether they are from the FBI, like Mulder and Scully, or from the CIA, like Melissa McCarthy’s character in Spy, invariably play the hero (or heroine) thoughtful, competent, and above all, ethical. The news tells a different story; FBI protection was a key factor in organized crime head Whitey Bulger escaping prosecution for his crimes (which included murder) for decades. When the FBI was investigating the Boston Marathon bombing they interrogated an unarmed immigrant friend of the bombers, and even though he was not implicated in the crime they shot and killed him. Only a few months ago, after targeting a Boston-area Muslim man with surveillance for a number of months, the FBI (teaming with local police) stopped him near a CVS parking lot to “talk” to him. They ended up shooting him dead right there–at 7 a.m. on a workday morning.

To see a portrait of the inner workings of the FBI we have to look to films like the new documentary, (T)ERROR, co-directed by Lyric R. Cabral and David Felix Sutcliffe, which opens in the US starting tomorrow, Oct. 7. In a highly unusual coup, an FBI informant Saeed aka “Shariff” (who used to be Cabral’s neighbor) agrees to be followed by the camera (though he complains to Cabral during closeups, “You’re always getting the fucking headshots”) as he talks about his past cases and sets up a current one.

Saeed is an older Black American Muslim whom we see pull up stakes from his home (so he is away from his young son) and his job as a cook in a high school cafeteria to move to a strange city with his dog and his weed, working on getting entrée into the life of a younger American jihadi, Khalifah al-Akili, who makes mildly inflammatory YouTube videos but seems not to do much else. We see Saeed haggling with the FBI about money (he does not seem to earn much–at all–for his efforts) and admonishing them to stop being so obvious about setting this guy up.

Meanwhile, al-Akili, using Google and a piece of mail he sees on Saeed’s car dashboard figures out his FBI connection early in their acquaintance. We find out later that Saeed started his career with the FBI because he himself was charged with a crime, and then set up a man who was a friend of his to escape punishment, a chilling reminder of the questionable use of informants in the US justice system. This cycle perpetuates to the end of the film–someone barely getting by (al-Akili lives in public housing and does not seem to have a car) preyed upon by someone nearly as desperate, Saeed, as the FBI eggs him on. Saeed seems unrepentant about his targets, saying, “I don’t have no feelings for them. You making the Islam look bad, you gotta go,” but as he smokes blunts and bakes a succession of cakes he seems bent on convincing not just the directors and us, but himself too.

Interview with Lyric R. Cabral

I talked to Lyric R. Cabral, the co-director of the film (who has also worked as an acclaimed photojournalist) by phone a week after the back story behind (T)ERROR was featured on a segment of This American Life.

This interview was edited for clarity and concision and contains spoilers.

Bitch Flicks: When you first knew Saeed, and he was your neighbor and you were spending time hanging out in his apartment, did you ever think, not that he was an informant, because that seems so far-fetched, but that he wasn’t being 100 percent truthful with you?

Lyric R. Cabral: He had a lot of marijuana, like pounds of it in his place. And lots of money there too. One time he took out $2,000 (in cash) right in front of me. But I was busy. I was a student, so I didn’t spend a lot of time trying to fact-check him.

BF: After you found out he was an informant and you knew how much he had lied to you and everyone else was it difficult for you to trust other, new people that you met or believe what they said?

LRC: No, because I feel like I’m a good judge of character in spite of everything–and I didn’t feel like I would know two informants.

BF: Although Saeed sometimes complains when you film him in the movie, he did agree to be in this documentary, which you remind him of. Why do you think he did agree?

LRC: It’s his personality; he’s anti-authoritarian. He’s always kept papers, like old plane tickets that prove that he was in Germany at a certain time as, like, a fact check. And he knew because of the way I’d been with him, even after I found out he was an informant, that I would be fair. Not that I would idealize him but that I would be fair with him. I also think he thinks of his legacy. He has a 9-year-old son and some medical issues, so I think he wants to leave behind some answers for him.

BF: Previously, Saeed had turned in a friend of his, who, we find out in the film was pretty clearly entrapped. Saeed puts up a big front onscreen, but do you think he regrets this or any of the other times he has helped put someone in prison?

LRC: Tariq says they were friends, but Saeed says they only got to know each other as part of the sting operation. The FBI tries to match up people who have the same personality traits (as informant and target). Saeed did start to like him, but by then, because Saeed was wearing a recording device, he couldn’t really stop the operation from happening. The most he could do was turn the device on or off. So he would turn it off when Tariq would start talking about certain things. Or so he says. I do think Tariq weighs heavily on his mind, especially because he will be getting out (of prison) in two years.

BF: You’ve said that you became a filmmaker because you felt your work as a photojournalist sometimes couldn’t tell the whole story. Did you ever feel your previous work had been misunderstood?

LRC: Not really. But you can only show or say so much in a photo and a caption. I felt like filmmaking could show more nuance.

BF: I know you had a successful crowdfunding campaign after the film was completed and shown at festivals because legal worries made insuring the film very expensive. Has the FBI, which doesn’t come off very well in the film, contacted you or your co-director? Have either of you had any experiences that made you think you were being followed or otherwise spied on?

LRC: We tried to get a comment or statement from the FBI back in October of 2014 and they still haven’t given us one. We haven’t been harassed at the border when we have traveled internationally with the film. I did get a piece of malware on my computer though. After we were on Democracy Now someone sent me an encrypted message offering more information–and the keys (encryption) didn’t match up. So then I just emailed the address (without encryption). I got an attachment and my computer started acting crazy. We’re trying to track down who sent the attachment now.

BF: In the film, what turn of events or detail surprised you the most?

LRC: When Khalifah al-Akili was arrested. He was going to give a press conference the next day (about FBI harassment/entrapment). He had just gotten a plane ticket (to get to the conference) 12 hours before. I was surprised how quickly the government can act when they target someone.

BF: (T)ERROR is your first full length documentary. Do you have any advice for women who are making their first documentaries?

LRC: Patience. For anyone starting out, that’s my advice. Filmmaking can take a lot longer than you think. And unexpected expenses can come up, like the (high) insurance premium we had to pay. We started filming in October of 2011 and the film is being released this October, so that’s four years.

BF: Has either just knowing Saeed or making the film changed how you think about the government?

LRC: I didn’t realize how much an informant could set up, that the informant isn’t just observing but is acting and leading. I’m surprised by how much the government depends on these human relationships (between the informant and the target). (Cabral asked the following to be included in this answer in an email she sent shortly after the interview.) I would add, that first meeting Saeed, at the age of 19, informed me that I am a person of surveillance interest to the US government, particularly the FBI. Saeed’s disclosure, which in a way I appreciate because it told me that in essence I was a POI (person of interest), assures me that the government has taken interest in my journalism, personal activities, and social network (at the least because these are things which I openly shared with Saeed, throughout our relationship). Thus I have been able to adjust my communications and behaviors, knowing that active government surveillance may be taking place.

Ren Jender is a queer writer-performer/producer putting a film together. Her writing, besides appearing every week on Bitch Flicks, has also been published in The Toast, RH Reality Check, xoJane and the Feminist Wire. You can follow her on Twitter @renjender