Films by Women – Page 15

Vintage Viewing: Zora Neale Hurston, Open Observer

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

“Mama exhorted her children at every opportunity to ‘jump at the sun.’ We might not land on the sun, but at least we would get off the ground. ” – Zora Neale Hurston

The seven principles of Kwanzaa (Nguzo Saba), designed to foster community empowerment in the face of racial stigma, include Kujichagulia, the right to “define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves and speak for ourselves.” Though we often debate choice of imagery on Bitch Flicks, it is impossible to create an image that represents another group’s equality, because their right to define their own image is fundamental to that equality. Caribbean-American comedian Bert Williams became the first Black artist to write, produce, direct and star in a film, with 1916’s A Natural Born Gambler, having already broken boundaries as writer-star of In Dahomey (1902), the first Black musical on Broadway. Williams’ performances exploited the blackface conventions of his age to be acceptable to a wider audience, while illuminating them with humanity and subversive subtext, as he continually fought for greater creative control. At the climax of A Natural Born Gambler, his character plays an imaginary poker game in prison. By losing, even in his own fantasy, Williams makes virtuoso mime into poignant commentary on internalized stigma, also the theme of his hit song, “Nobody,” from the 1906 musical Abyssinia. The same year, Williams’ Fish cast himself, then in his 40s, as a young boy who escapes his chores to catch fish and is punished for his entrepreneurship. In a society where even Black children were often viewed as prematurely adult, Williams’ demand that audiences recognize the child in the man was challenging, and audiences reacted unfavorably. Neither of Williams’ surviving films feature significant roles for women.

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Bert Williams masked biting commentary under comic delivery

In 1920, Oscar Micheaux wrote and directed Within Our Gates, the oldest surviving feature film by a Black director. The film argues for education and against the unquestioned domination of the church, while breaking many taboos, including depicting a lynching and the attempted rape of a Black woman by a white man. However, its heroines remain stilted and rigidly defined by Madonna/Whore framing. Micheaux’s 1925 film, Body and Soul, features a powerful performance by Mercedes Gilbert as a rape victim, opposite a menacing debut by Paul Robeson. Yet, the heroine must demonstrate her virtue by dying of shame, harnessing the martyrdom of the female body to score Micheaux’ points about oppressive religious hypocrisy. 1910’s White Fawn’s Devotion by James Young Deer (the Nanticoke director of 34 Westerns, whose role in shaping the genre is rarely acknowledged), uses the martyred suicide of White Fawn to prove to her Euro-American husband that she is attached to homeland and kin, once more scoring its racial points through female martyrdom (even if the heroine recovers for a happy end).

Once tipped for an Oscar, Louise Beavers remained typecast as 'Maid' — Once tipped for an Oscar, Louise Beavers remained typecast as “Maid”

“As long as the plays are being written and produced by whites for whites, there will be the same chance for criticism. The only remedy is for such plays as would meet popular favor to be produced by us.” – Louise Beavers

Mabel Normand‘s star vehicle, Mickey, featured sympathetic scenes of bonding between Mickey and her foster mother, played by Cheyenne comedienne Minnie Devereaux, while Mae West’s films showed extensive, sympathetic banter with maids played by Louise Beavers (whose performance in Imitation of Life was acclaimed as Oscar-worthy, without promoting Beavers from supporting roles) and Soo Yong (cast as aunt to a yellowface protagonist in The Good Earth). Though these displays of interracial female solidarity by Normand and West would be considered progressive for their time, they limit women of color to supporting roles, reinforcing their heroines’ white supremacy. The fact that white female filmmakers tended to reinforce white supremacy with their representations, while male directors of other races utilized disempowering sexist tropes, surely illustrates why they cannot collectively represent women of color.

As Deborah Riley Draper points out in her Bitch Flicks post, “#EarlyCinemaSoBlack,” many Black women were striving to bring their perspectives to the screen at this time. Tressie Souders became probably the first Black woman to write and direct a film with A Woman’s Error in 1922, but her film is now lost. However, considering how Chinese-American writer-director Marion Wong’s 1916 feature, The Curse of the Quon Gwon: When the Far East Mingles With The West, turned up unexpectedly in a basement in 2005, Souders’ film might yet be similarly rediscovered. Wong showcased traditional Chinese ceremonies to satisfy Western curiosity about the exotic Orient, but she also explored Chinese-American cultural tensions with the nuance of an insider. The Curse of the Quon Gwon uses superimpositions and dissolves in a short fantasy sequence to represent the heroine’s own imagination, predating similar effects by Germaine Dulac. It’s worth remembering that Dulac made a series of conventional films before developing the impressionist and surrealist styles that she is celebrated for, while The Curse of Quon Gwon was Marion Wong’s only film (denied financing, distribution or promotion, despite her striving to secure them). With the same support as Dulac, how far could Wong have developed, described by the Oakland Tribune as “energy personified”?

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Where they did not face the stigma of a racial minority, women of color found more filmmaking success. In India, Fatma Begum directed the first of eight fantasy epics in 1926. The following decade, Sakane Tazuko became the first female director in Japan, while Elena Sánchez Valenzuela directed a feature documentary in her native Mexico, acclaimed by journalists for “hundreds of the most beautiful, evocative scenes” but now lost. Esther Eng began writing and directing in Hong Kong in 1937 (documentary clip). Still, the ethnographic films of Zora Neale Hurston remain a rarity: vintage footage directed by a woman of color, available online. Better known as the playwright of 1925’s prize-winning Color Struck, as a leading light of the Harlem Renaissance, and as the author of novels including Their Eyes Were Watching God (see Bitch Flicks‘ review of Darnell Martin’s adaptation), Hurston also studied anthropology under Dr. Franz Boaz, who dedicated his life to challenging assumptions of Western cultural superiority. Believed to be part of Hurston’s wider research into African-American folklore, these ethnographic films were made in the Southern United States between 1928 and 1929. The footage is scored in the embedded video with Hurston’s own performance of folk songs that she collected. At first glance, her films seem like simple anthropological records. However, they are equally revealing when read as explorations of our ways of seeing, framing and interpreting others.

Logging (1928) – Children’s Games (1928) – Baptism (1929)

“She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulder. So much of life in its meshes!” – Zora Neale Hurston

The Palestinian-American founder of postcolonialism, Edward Said’s Orientalism explored how the psychological needs of the observer shape their observations, as much as the nature of the thing observed. Criticizing the constant framing of “things Oriental in class, court, prison or manual for scrutiny, study, judgment, discipline or governing,” Said noted that imperial observers tended to interpret the Orient through “synchronic essentialism,” as something fixed and unchanging. Essentialist interpretations deny responsibility: if something is unchanging, it is impossible for oppression to impact it. If women are essentially and eternally nags, you aren’t responsible for your wife’s annoyance. If colonized people are hotheaded savages, they need no reason for rebellion. If dispossessed peoples are permanently lazy, it isn’t a symptom of their demoralizing dispossession. Oppressors become invisible to themselves through their interpretative framework.

Fictions of objective and invisible observers (oppressors?) are the traditional framing of anthropology. A “native” may be scowling because the photographer is intrusive, but their image will be frozen as an “objective” record of the “hostile native”, with viewers instinctively imagining themselves in the photographer’s place. Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North charmed audiences with its warm intimacy, popularizing the art of the documentary feature. But by claiming objectivity and obscuring his sexual relationship with his subjects, however, Flaherty distorted their shared banter and flirtation into essentialized features of the “happy-go-lucky Eskimo” and his “smiling one” wife, fueling a popular image of Inuit naivete and availability.

In her ethnographic films, Hurston, by contrast, strikingly resists fictions of objectivity and pointedly draws attention to herself as observer. A woman and a dancing child smile directly into her lens in extreme close-up, with shy pride or beaming pleasure at her clearly encouraging attention. Instead of merely observing their games, we join the circle of clapping children and they interact with the camera as it pans over their faces. Hurston’s camera is dynamic, tracking up a logging railway and lingering on tapping feet. We instinctively warm to her subjects, as we share Hurston’s sense of belonging through her camera’s gaze. She contrasts the work of an elderly lumberjack with the machinery of professional logging, showing a world of changing realities, and lingers on sawmill workers’ leisure rather than fetishizing their labor, casually noticing a woman among them. Is their mechanized modernity an improvement on the old man’s axe?

Faith Ringgold: 'In Picasso's Studio' — Faith Ringgold: “Picasso’s Studio”

“She had an inside and an outside now and suddenly she knew how not to mix them.” – Zora Neale Hurston

Of most interest for questions of self-representation, Hurston briefly portrays woman’s life in the community. Opening with the woman framed against her home environment, a wooden cabin, in the pose of a typical anthropological subject, Hurston’s woman then holds our gaze purposefully and walks up close. Hurston instructs her to smile, turn and present her profiles; she is reframed as a model, or an actress on a casting call. Compare Faith Ringgold‘s “Picasso’s Studio”: her nude heroine models against a backdrop of African “primitivism” that has been reframed by Picasso as “modernism,” while Ringgold playfully reframes Picasso himself in the African-American, feminine “folk art” of quilting, challenging the gendered and racialized ways art is interpreted and (de)valued, just as Zora Neale Hurston challenges the devaluing subtext of the anthropological frame through glamor modeling. As Hurston cuts to her woman sitting with another woman on the porch, laughing in each other’s company, this is surely the silent film equivalent of a Bechdel pass. Bouncing to a wide angle on the cabin environment, the next shot reframes the woman again, draping her over her porch railing in the “Venus reclining” pose. Hurston’s use of this classical pose recalls the 19th century African-American/Ojibwa sculptor Edmonia Lewis‘ use of Classical Grecian styles to visually code her African and Indigenous subjects as noble. From this static pose, Hurston cuts to the woman’s feet tapping as she rocks, adding musical sensibility. Hurston has thus reframed her subject five times: 1) as a product of her environment, 2) as a glamorous beauty, 3) within a community of female friendship, 4) as an iconic goddess and 5) as an appreciator of music. In total silence, in under a minute and with a mediocre camera, Hurston achieves a multi-faceted portrait. Imagine what she could have done with a budget and a distributor.

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The world’s first animated feature film, 1926’s The Adventures of Prince Achmed, was a celebration of Middle-Eastern folklore, animated by Lotte Reiniger. Reiniger’s concept, for creating feature-length animations based on classic folklore, would become box office gold for Walt Disney, winning him a special Oscar for innovation, while he also patented a design for a multi-plane camera almost identical to Reiniger’s. Despite his debt to Lotte Reiniger, Disney would exclude women from creative work in his company. Next month’s Vintage Viewing: Lotte Reiniger, Animating Innovator. Stay tuned!

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

The Making of a Caribbean-Canadian Sci-Fi: ‘Brown Girl in the Ring’

When speaking over the phone, Sharon’s enthusiasm for this pioneering adaptation of a Caribbean Canadian sci-fi novel emanates as though this was a fresh and newly discovered idea. In fact, Sharon has been working on creating this film for the past 15 years (while also establishing herself as a published playwright, writer, actor and award winning director) and although the journey has been long, she strongly believes that now is the perfect time to transition this well-nurtured idea into tangible reality.

This guest post by Amanda Parris appears as part of our theme week on Dystopias.

Interview with the filmmaker below.

I was in my first year of university when I first read Nalo Hopkinson’s critically acclaimed novel, Brown Girl in the Ring as part of a Humanities course entitled Cultures of Resistance in the Americas. It had never occurred to me to think of futuristic dystopias and sci-fi literature as part and parcel of a resistance culture that has sustained African Diasporic cultures in the Americas until I was introduced to this work. A few pages into the novel, I was hooked. Located in the city where I have spent most of my life, the story is set in Toronto, a downtown core cordoned off from the surrounding suburbia where the rich and wealthy have fled. In the opening pages Hopkinson sets the scene:

When Toronto’s economic base collapsed, investors, commerce, and government withdrew into the suburb cities leaving the rotten core to decay. Those who stayed were the one’s who couldn’t or wouldn’t leave. The street people. The poor people. The ones who didn’t see the writing on the wall, or who were too stubborn to give up their homes. Or who saw the decline of authority as an opportunity. As the police force left, it sparked large-scale chaos in the city core: the Riots. The satellite cities quickly raised roadblocks at their borders to keep Toronto out. The only unguarded exit from the city core was now over water, by boat or prop plane from the Toronto Island mini-airport to the American side of Niagra Falls.

Nalo Hopkinson

Seventeen years after the publication of Brown Girl in the Ring, Toronto was named the No. 1 city in the world to live in by The Economist. But who benefits or lives the reality of this status? The rise of condo-mania in the downtown core has also led to the rapid gentrification and resulting dislocation of numerous communities – the individuals affected fit a disturbingly similar profile to the ones that Nalo envisioned eventually cordoned off from health care, electricity and technology. Her description of The Burn, that walled-off section of Toronto, feels hauntingly familiar and it is this resonance that writer/director Sharon Lewis feels will hook people into the film adaptation of the novel that she is currently working on: Brown Girl in the Ring – The Prequel.

The Prequel puts the coming-of-age story of the novel’s protagonist, a young girl named Ti-Jeanne, front and center. The film will illustrate her first steps as she moves into the role of the heroine that she becomes in the novel. Beyond an exploration into the particular otherworldly gifts Ti-Jeanne possesses and her ability to navigate the dystopian landscape that defines her home, Ti-Jeanne’s character is also challenged by a more familiar narrative of conflict between her Caribbean and Canadian cultural identities. When speaking over the phone, Sharon’s enthusiasm for this pioneering adaptation of a Caribbean Canadian sci-fi novel emanates as though this was a fresh and newly discovered idea. In fact, Sharon has been working on creating this film for the past 15 years (while also establishing herself as a published playwright, writer, actor and award winning director) and although the journey has been long, she strongly believes that now is the perfect time to transition this well-nurtured idea into tangible reality. Last week Sharon successfully completed a crowdfunding campaign to support the film. Achieving this recent milestone has affirmed her belief that there is an audience out there excited for a story like this and that the moment is now for the film to be realized. She says,

Well I think we’re in the zeitgeist. I think that the novel and the film are coming to life in an appropriate time. I’m not sure if in 1998 we would have understood that this is so relevant to our present day lives. I think that with the rise of social media and technology we have a lot more access to those images so all of a sudden Ferguson, Baltimore, Detroit, all of those are in our consciousness in a way that it wouldn’t have been in 1998 because we didn’t have the same kind of access and the people living within those situations didn’t have the same kind of access. We see the rise of public videos being used in legal battles. That was never the case in the late 1990s. So all of a sudden police officers are being held accountable according to public videos. It doesn’t mean that they’re always being held to justice but they’re actually being held accountable which again is being used as a catalyst for people to riot. In the film that is the trigger for all of the things that happen. There is an economic collapse and the poor people are tired of being poor and they rise up. I think that if you look at why they are rising up it’s because there’s an access to social media in a way that they didn’t have before and then the only way to shut them down is to seclude them and cut off their electricity and cut off their ability to communicate with the outside world where their reality is going on.

Corporate and government decisions to seclude a section of the population following their mass politicized mobilization as a result of increased connectivity and communication feels eerily prophetic in the current era recently dubbed “Black Spring.” Sharon revealed that part of Nalo’s inspiration for the novel came from poignant observations of the harsh realities occurring south of the border:

When I talked to Nalo she was inspired by Detroit in terms of what post-apocalyptic Toronto would look like and this is 1998. So she was in Detroit and looking at a city that basically had an invisible wall around it. You had all the wealthy industrialists living in a particular area and then all the Black neighbourhoods were burnt out, abandoned, policed – heavily policed and the public school system was on its way down. So that’s the Toronto that you’re going to see in my film.

Although set in Toronto, Sharon recognizes that this story of economic flight and extreme disconnection and alienation is one that can resonate beyond the city’s borders. As a child of the Caribbean Diaspora, the extremes of wealth and poverty sitting side-by-side in an imbalanced yet normalized fashion is disconcertingly familiar for Sharon:

I spent a lot of my childhood in Jamaica and Trinidad and a lot of that reality is already there. There were already people that were cut off from technology or cut off from electricity who were having to make do. And right across the street they were seeing the glistening lights. I remember in Jamaica driving through Kingston and on the hillside you’d see people living in zinc shacks, still walking to the river to get water and then just a couple of feet down from them was this massive, beautiful house with satellite dishes and massive technology.

Sharon Lewis

Prescient in the film will be the way that these kinds of divergences in experiences create walls between people – sometimes physical but often subconscious – thereby separating them from each other in ways that enable the current world order:

There is a wall but like any ghetto there’s an invisible wall. There’s a wall that basically you don’t step into the other world because you don’t belong there. And you won’t see the wall in the film because again my whole point is your own psychological barriers are much more destructive than any actual physical wall that’s built.

The setting constructed by Nalo Hopkinson in her novel was, as are many dystopian landscapes, a prophetic warning of what will come to be if we continue to ignore the signs of the times. And yet it sets itself apart from other popular dystopian literary tales with a distinctly Caribbean Diasporic influence, one which director/writer Sharon Lewis is excited to push aesthetically in the cinematic adaptation. She cites Marcel Camus’ 1959 Oscar Award-winning film Black Orpheus as a key inspiration in imagining an aesthetic that is steeped with a heavy Carnival influence:

I’ve never seen a Caribbean set in a dystopia. I’ve never actually seen a dystopia that has a Caribbean aesthetic. For me it makes sense because what I saw in the reality of Jamaica or Trinidad where people had to adapt with little resources…it’s dystopia. Aesthetically it will be interesting because you’ll see Caribbean people and that will affect the way they dress and you know the food and all of that, but also in the way that they talk and the way that they relate to each other in terms of what those moral values are.

To step into the unchartered territory of Caribbean-Canadian sci-fi film, Sharon has cast a wide net in considering her aesthetic and story inspirations. She celebrates the rise of female heroines in Sci-Fi and Fantasy film such as Bella Swan in Twilight, Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games and Imperator Furiosa in Mad Max: Fury Road. Although an avid fan of sci-fi, the unbelievable dearth of Black female heroines in the film genre has meant that Sharon has had to look elsewhere for reference points when conceptualizing the heroine Ti-Jeanne for Brown Girl in the Ring – The Prequel. She cites Julie Dash’s seminal film Daughters of the Dust as a key inspiration in seeing Black women as magical, full, and rich characters.

With the success of her crowdfunding campaign, Sharon has launched a Brown Girl Movement, led by women of colour who are coming together to tell this story in a new genre that will inevitably feel strangely familiar for so many: that of the Caribbean-Canadian sci-fi.

To learn more about Brown Girl in the Ring – The Prequel, visit the website.

Amanda Parris is writer from the 6ix who dreams of screenplays to come, has a couple of theatre plays under her belt and sometimes really geeks out and writes for “the academy.” In her spare time she is an actor, Critical Hip Hop educator, and producer of all things cool, creative, and disruptive that started from the bottom. You can follow her on Twitter at @amanda_parris

“You’re Not My Mother!” Bodies, Love, and Survival in ‘Advantageous’

In these moments, and in those unspoken moments when she savors placing long sweet kisses on Jules’s cheek, we see Gwen’s resistance. “Know your value,” Gwen tells Jules. It’s not found in good grades, not in getting into the best school, not in a newer and “better” body, but in sensory and emotional human pleasures.

Gwen and Jules talking in the park, surrounded by green grass, tall trees, and the river.

Written by Colleen Martell as part of our theme week on Dystopias.

Advantageous, which began streaming on Netflix on June 23, is a dystopian science fiction film that asks, “Are women really going backwards going forward?” It explores this question through the relationship between a single mother, Gwen (played brilliantly by Jacqueline Kim, who co-wrote the film), and her daughter Jules (Samantha Kim, also brilliant), and the painful choice Gwen makes in order to give her daughter a chance at succeeding in a misogynist, racist, ableist, and economically unjust world. It’s a subtle and slow film, as visually beautiful as it is haunting.

Writer and director Jennifer Phang first produced Advantageous as a short film in 2013. The short offers some helpful background information: we learn that the year is 2041; the world population is 10.1 billion, and the U.S. unemployment rate is at a staggering 45 percent. Technology has rapidly advanced. The significance of these facts is fleshed out in the full-length film. Homeless, destitute women people the world of Advantageous. Child prostitution is on the rise. Income inequality has been made drastically worse by the dismantling of the public school system. The only educational opportunity for children who aren’t from elite families is to win a spot in the few remaining magnet schools. Jules doesn’t get into a magnet school, and at the same time Gwen loses her job as the spokesperson for the Center for Advanced Health and Living because they are looking for a younger, “more universal” (which, according to Phang in an interview with Mark Asch at The L Magazine, in this case means “non-specific, multi-racial”) face to market the company.

Advantageous struck me as an incredibly embodied, earthy story. Jules and Gwen are outside in parks a lot, walking through green grass and sitting under tall, shady trees. They listen to music together, eyes closed and breathing deeply. They play piano and sing together sitting shoulder to shoulder; they sleep cuddled in bed together; and they eat pecan pie out of the pan together. Jules is often dancing or drawing. She wants to have children; she wants a big family. Gwen and Jules play a guessing game in their apartment: is it the woman upstairs or downstairs who is sobbing? Sometimes the answer is both. Sometimes the answer is Gwen. We see women sleeping on park benches, living in flower beds. The physicality of women, Asian American, Black, and white women, and of Gwen and Jules’s bond, is palpable.

Jules listens to women cry, above, below, and in her apartment

In contrast, the Center for Advanced Health and Living promises freedom and liberation from bodily limitations: “Be the you you were meant to be.” The Center encourages people of economic means to discard their diseased or disabled bodies, or even just their disliked bodies, and to transcend “race, height, or health” by transferring themselves into “better” bodies. A new body is “a pragmatic response to today’s unforgiving job market,” they promise. Economic disparities and unfair hiring practices got you down? Become someone who is hirable. Their message, propagated by Gwen, is one of empowerment: free yourself from anxiety and depression by overcoming your disadvantages in a new body.

This contrast is one of the film’s most deeply felt questions: if women could change their bodies to fit the latest trend, could they succeed in a discriminatory, patriarchal society? But at what cost?

Gwen’s answer to these questions is complicated. Unable to find work elsewhere, Gwen agrees to be a test subject for the Center’s mind-body transfer so that she can keep her job and put Jules through school. An experienced spokesperson in a younger, more ethnically desirable woman’s body: the perfect employee. Although we might celebrate her sacrifice for her daughter at whatever cost to herself, this act shows Gwen playing along, putting her faith in a system that has not really served her. In agreeing to undergo an extensive, self-altering procedure she in effect tells Jules to also keep playing along. “I can’t let her become one of these women who would do anything,” Gwen explains her choice to her boss at the Center. And yet Gwen is now one of those women, willing to do just about anything the system asks her to do in order to stay afloat in it.

On the other hand, Gwen spends much of the film offering Jules a different narrative. Jules asks her mother, “Why did you have me, when you knew the world was so bad and you had to struggle so much?” She agonizes, “I don’t know why I’m alive.” Gwen answers that life is worth living because of music, good food, and being loved by your mother. The head of the Center, Ms. Cryer (Jennifer Ehle), undermines Gwen’s optimism about finding another job at her age when technology has advanced so much. Gwen pushes back: “There must be something in a mere human existence that has value.” In these moments, and in those unspoken moments when she savors placing long sweet kisses on Jules’s cheek, we see Gwen’s resistance. “Know your value,” Gwen tells Jules. It’s not found in good grades, not in getting into the best school, not in a newer and “better” body, but in sensory and emotional human pleasures.

This double message is what makes the film so heartbreaking: Gwen shows that life is worth living because of all of these embodied experiences, but then she gives up experiencing those things in her own body so that Jules can compete in the socioeconomic system as it is. What we as viewers are witnessing is the deal Gwen strikes between her resistance and her compliance. We are left to wonder if what she got (economic security for Jules) was worth the price she paid (her body).

Gwen grieves as she prepares to say goodbye to her body

There are hints of civil unrest all throughout the film. A broadcast refers to a rebel group called the “Terra Mamona” (according to my subtitles) bombing (corporate?) buildings (is this some sort of ecofeminist activist group? A girl can dream). Her boss Fisher (James Urbaniak) informs Gwen that corporations fear what might happen with so many unemployed desperate men on the street, and so “there is talk among recruiters about letting women stay unemployed” and forcing them back into the home in favor of hiring men. In other words, there are dissenters, and if recruiters are afraid that unemployed men will revolt, it’s easy to imagine the unemployed women we see sleeping in flower beds and on park benches organizing their own revolution. Women — specifically women of color — have long been at the forefront of resistance movements in the U.S. and elsewhere, after all.

As a result, I fantasized about a different narrative, one in which Gwen perhaps joins or starts a rebellion, fighting for her right to hold her daughter in her own arms, against exploitative corporations and cost-prohibitive schools and unemployment, fighting with and for the homeless women in the parks. But that is not this story. This story is an allegory of the terrible decisions disadvantaged women are often forced to make in order to survive in a corrupt social structure, clinging desperately to the hope that if they do certain things “right” the next generation will succeed in a system that was set up to fail them. In an interview with Emily Yoshida at The Verge, Phang said that, “most of my life I’ve been trying to humanize and normalize perceptions of people who are not your standard Caucasian-looking American.” If there’s any hope in the film, then, it’s that the loss of the tactile inter-generational bond between Gwen and Jules is so striking that it makes those relationships all the more meaningful in our own place and time.

See also at Bitch Flicks: Leigh Kolb’s “Advantageous: The Future is Now,” and Holly Derr’s “Advantageous: Feminist Science Fiction at Its Best”

Colleen Martell, a writer based in Pennsylvania, is apparently obsessed with watching dystopias this summer (see here and here). Find her on twitter to talk about bodies and film and the end times: @elsiematz.

‘Advantageous’: The Future is Now

“Are women really going backwards going forward?”

Jacqueline Kim co-wrote the screenplay for Advantageous and also stars as its lead, Gwen Koh. — Jacqueline Kim co-wrote the screenplay for *Advantageous* and also stars as its lead, Gwen Koh.

A version of this post by Leigh Kolb previously appeared at Bitch Media and appears now as part of our theme week on Dystopias. Cross-posted with permission.

“Are women really going backwards going forward?”

Advantageous, the new film by Jennifer Phang, paints a dystopia that shows a version of the future that is regressive for women. Perhaps one of the most poignant aspects of the film is that it barely seems futuristic at all; when daughter Jules asks her mother, Gwen, “Are women really going backwards going forward?” we can’t help but involuntarily nod our heads yes, bombarded with the realities of the fictional world in front of us.

In the film, Gwen Koh (played by the incredible Jacqueline Kim) is a single mother to Jules (who is played with remarkable talent by Samantha Kim). Gwen is a corporate spokesperson for the ominous Center for Advanced Health and Living. As she pitches their new technology, she says, “So many of us enter this world with disadvantages beyond our control.” The Center for Advanced Health and Living isn’t limited to face lifts and breast augmentation. Its slogan—”Be the you you were meant to be”—doesn’t merely mean an enhanced you. Instead, this vague empowering message means their technology is ostensibly meant to give you control over your physical disadvantages.

The film—which was awarded a special jury prize at Sundance and started streaming on Netflix June 23—features stunning cinematography, excellent acting, and beautiful writing (albeit sometimes heavy-handed, which I’d prefer to writing that does not attempt to say anything). Advantageous tackles a laundry list of feminist concerns. Gwen is told that she has aged out of her role as a spokesperson, especially considering the “new you” technology they want to sell. It’s noteworthy that the head of the corporation—and the one who seems to have made the decision about letting Gwen go—is a woman of a similar age. Ms. Cryer (Jennifer Ehle) pulls the strings, which shows that it’s not just male forces that destruct and construct the feminine ideal. The world in Advantageous is one that has been designed by women, too, but it’s still a capital of misogyny—radio broadcasts reference the rise in child prostitution, middle-aged women are homeless due to unemployment, and employers prefer to hire men lest they dangerously roam the street. Gwen’s single motherhood is a source of sharp judgment from her peers and her parents. Many of these examples aren’t futuristic at all (see here, here, and here) and Advantageous does a compelling job of showing how while we may advance technologically, we have a lot of social progress to make.

Samantha Kim plays Jules, whose mother faces hard choices about how to give her the best opportunities.

Advantageous is billed as a science fiction film, but it doesn’t feel sci-fi much of the time. Every once in a while, a drone or flying vehicle will jet past, the buildings will look futuristic, or the person on the other end of a phone conversation is a hologram. But for the most part, Advantageous is that kind of chilling dystopian science fiction that looks incredibly familiar. One scene that felt like it could have been any period in the past or present comes when daughter Jules asks Gwen, “Are women really going backwards going forward?” We can’t help but involuntarily nod our heads yes, bombarded with the realities of the fictional world in front of us.

As Gwen is let go from her job and has difficulty obtaining any new prospects (except for selling her eggs, since fertility rates have sharply declined due to pollutants—another not-so-futuristic plot point)–she asks, “Am I too old to be of use?” Again, we nod our heads, agreeing that in the world she lives in—a world that looks much like ours—the answer is yes. The Center also tells Gwen that they are looking for a more “universal look” to be their spokesperson. We assume that means “white” (and young), and director Phang addresses this in an interview with The L Magazine:

“In my mind the phrase ‘universal look’ wasn’t exactly a euphemism for ‘white’ (though it often goes that way), but for a non-specific, multi-racial look. … Jacqueline Kim is Korean-American. The subtext is that Gwen’s look was a benefit to the company for a moment, but that moment had passed.”

This “universal” look that Gwen is supposed to embody is an interesting end game of beauty standards: while beauty ideals may move toward a multicultural aesthetic, they’re still impossible to obtain without the winning genetic lottery ticket. We can hope that whiteness equaling “universal” will eventually change in the future as our population changes, however, Advantageous suggests that almost everyone will always be born at a physical disadvantage in a society that worships the unattainability of eternal youth and beauty.

It’s important to note that in Phang’s created world, “otherness” is highlighted mostly through age, gender, and beauty, and less about ethnicity. At The Verge, Emily Yoshida points out that “Advantageous also happens to have a mostly Asian cast without overtly being about Asianness, which makes it some kind of rare unicorn.” Phang critiques the desire to conform to a universal ideal while at the same time providing an excellent example of how storytellers and filmmakers don’t have to cast white actors for a story to be universal.

Gwen’s ethnicity isn’t what is most disadvantageous to her—it’s her age. How can a naturally aging woman convincingly sell a technology that promises to stop aging? The “ideal woman,” then, is seen as incredibly young and ethnically ambiguous.

Gwen must change so she can save her career and afford opportunities for her daughter. In the film, a woman’s sacrifice and a mother’s sacrifice are woven together to reveal that society continually sacrifices women—older women especially—at the altar of “never good enough.” While Phang beautifully addresses so many issues facing women in our society, she has highlighted her focus on women’s pressure to change. She says:

“One of the deeper concerns that I wrestle with in my work is how women around the world are encouraged to change themselves in many ways to carve out a place and survive. But it was also important to me to investigate, through Gwen, whether the act of choosing to change your surface appearance somehow altered your inner qualities. I wondered whether our self-respect might become altered for better or worse after we commit to a surface change. And does our respect for others increase or decrease if they don’t follow our example? And then… is this a world we can be at peace with? Can we accept a world in which these concerns occupy so much of our energies and potential for productivity?”

In Advantageous, Phang asks many questions, not only of the characters, but also of our own culture. Can we accept this world? Advantageous—and certainly feminists—would resoundingly answer “no.”

Leigh Kolb is a composition, literature, and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri.

‘Advantageous’: Feminist Science Fiction at Its Best

Though this happens in a future in which cosmetic surgery has become much more than a matter of lift and tuck, Koh’s struggle with whether and how to change her body for the sake of her daughter and her career, combined with the behind-the-scenes machinations of the corporation, casts a complicated light on the present struggles of women trying to succeed in both career and motherhood while facing the social pressure to stay young and be perfect.

This guest post by Holly Derr previously appeared at the Ms. blog and appears here as part of our theme week on Dystopias. Cross-posted with permission.

A sighting of that rare bird called feminist science fiction is truly a thing to celebrate. It does exist, sometimes by accident (see Alien), and sometimes on purpose (see almost anything by Octavia Butler). With Advantageous, a film written by Jacqueline Kim and Jennifer Phang, directed by Phang and starring Kim, the feminism is entirely purposeful.

Influenced during her studies at Pomona College by the work of such experimental filmmakers as Cheryl Dunye and Alexandra Juhasz, Phang has always tried to represent a diverse world in her films and to tell stories about identity, specifically Asian and Asian American identities. Speaking on the phone from her San Francisco office, she told the Ms. blog that when the Independent Film and Television Service approached her seeking proposals for science fiction shorts, she jumped at the chance to make an Asian American woman the center of the film. When actor Ken Jeong (The Hangover, Community) saw the short, he was so moved that he offered to help turn it into a feature, and that feature went on to win the Dramatic Special Jury Award for Collaborative Vision at Sundance.

The central character in Advantageous, Gwen Koh (Kim), is the spokesperson and head of The Center for Advanced Health and Living, a cosmetic surgery company that has developed a way for the aged and infirm to move their consciousness into a younger, healthier body. When the center decides that Koh is too old to continue as their spokesperson—just as her daughter is entering an elite and very expensive private school—she decides to undergo the body-changing procedure herself.

In reality, she has been manipulated into making this decision by the real head of the center, played by a (somewhat ironically) beautifully aging Jennifer Ehle. Though this happens in a future in which cosmetic surgery has become much more than a matter of lift and tuck, Koh’s struggle with whether and how to change her body for the sake of her daughter and her career, combined with the behind-the-scenes machinations of the corporation, casts a complicated light on the present struggles of women trying to succeed in both career and motherhood while facing the social pressure to stay young and be perfect.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnBT0izYi7A”]

Not coincidentally, Koh, in collaboration with the company, chooses not only a young body into which to transition, but also a more ethnically ambiguous one (Freya Adams). Phang said that she cast Adams “not just because she’s a great actor, but also because she was able to play someone with a universal look. So the audience has to explore what is it about her that makes them want her to be the look of their company.”

Koh isn’t eager to take the extreme step of cosmetic surgery, so before undergoing the transition she attempts to find work through an agency she has worked with in the past. She discovers, however, that the voice on the other end of the phone is not only not a genuine supporter of her work, but isn’t even human, leading to one of the most profound conversations in the film:

Gwen: Drake, are you human being?

Drake: That’s a funny question. How do you define a human being?

Gwen: Do you have blood running through your veins? Do you get thirsty?

Drake: That is a definition of a human being?

Gwen: I didn’t know.

Drake: That sounds more like a human being. Not to know.

To say that Advantageous is a meditation on the meaning of life sounds cliché, but I can find no more fitting phrase. Both the mother and daughter at the center of the film spend the film’s duration in the pursuit of fulfillment, improvement, and a seemingly ever-elusive kind of achievement, and the tempo of the film ensures that both the characters and audience have plenty of time to think about what fulfillment really means.

Phang considers herself an idealist, and it is true that in this film, to a certain extent, daughter and mother both secure the kind of success for themselves that this near-future world believes to be paramount. But, as with the kind of feminist art that intends to make its audience think, most of the questions about the actual meaning of human existence are left unanswered. The 12-year-old daughter, Jules (Samantha Kim), states twice—once to her original mother and once to her mother-in-a-new-body—“I don’t know why I’m alive.” Though her mother offers a few answers, and different ones each time, the meditative quality of the daughter’s question and her mother’s answers makes it hard to believe that either finds much comfort in them.

In fact, even the background moments of buildings being blown up by terrorists are greeted not with terror but with an attitude of resignation that such things cannot be helped, and the process of changing bodies is more like the passage of time during sleep than the usual explosive, special-effects ridden climaxes of most science fiction movies. The most gripping moments of the film are found in the reactions of Gwen’s family to the consequences of her choice, beautifully revealing that even in a world where technology has become advanced enough to change the nature of life, being human is still a matter of feeling intimacy, love, and loss, of wanting to understand something that is inevitably just out of our reach and, ultimately, of accepting that no matter how successful or rich you are and no matter how technologically advanced our culture is, being human is mostly a matter of not knowing.

Phang is already hard at work on her next two films: One is a science fiction romance adapted from a play by Dominic Mah called Look for Water. The other is a film about climate change based on the work of real-life scientist Inez Fung, which she hopes will inspire audiences to reengage with climate change issues before it’s too late. She was recently awarded a $40,000 Kenneth Rainin Foundation grant from the San Francisco Film Society to support herself while developing these projects, something Phang told the Ms. blog she wouldn’t be able to live without:

I am fortunate to live in a time when organizations understand that in order to have sustainable media careers, women need support of some sort. The SFFS has a visionary program called Filmmaker360 that aims to change the representation of women in genre films by supporting women creators, which is a big deal for me and a big deal for women.

Advantageous is currently streaming on Netflix.

This review is dedicated to Michele Kort, who taught me how to be journalist and how to live in the human state of not knowing.

Holly L. Derr is a feminist media critic who writes about theater, film, television, video games and comics. Follow her @hld6oddblend and on her tumblr, Feminist Fandom.

‘An Open Secret’ Many Don’t Want To Know

This time Berg focuses on sexual abuse of children in Hollywood, perpetrated specifically by managers and other adults in positions of authority over male child actors. The 13-year-old girl Polanski raped was an an aspiring model, who believed that he was going to put her photo in French ‘Vogue.’ The boys–now all grown men–interviewed in ‘Secret’ believed that their managers and other adults who abused them were key to their careers and would blackball them if they spoke up, so kept quiet.

Rape denialism is such a pervasive force that even those of us who consider ourselves informed feminists forget that Bill Cosby was the subject of rape charges (and paid settlements to victims) for many years before his actions had any effect on his career or reputation. Meanwhile, no actor in Hollywood seems to turn down an offer to be in the latest Woody Allen film, even though his daughter, Dylan Farrow has come forward as an adult to write that her father did indeed rape her when she was 7. Two decades ago, tabloids closely followed this police investigation until its conclusion, in which the State of Connecticut said they had probable cause but would not charge Allen. Acclaimed director Roman Polanski is a convicted rapist of a 13-year-old girl, whom he plied with alcohol and drugs beforehand. After he fled the US to avoid serving prison time he worked freely in Europe and even won an Academy Award, eventually spending a short time under “house arrest” in luxurious Swiss digs–but never extradited to the US to serve real prison time.

The last example is the one that is perhaps the most relevant to the new documentary, An Open Secret by Amy Berg, who was nominated for an Oscar for 2006’s Deliver Us From Evil about sexual abuse of children in the Catholic Church. This time Berg focuses on sexual abuse of children in Hollywood, perpetrated specifically by managers and other adults in positions of authority over male child actors. The 13-year-old girl Polanski raped was an an aspiring model, who believed that he was going to put her photo in French Vogue. The boys–now all grown men–interviewed in Secret believed that their managers and other adults who abused them were key to their careers and would blackball them if they spoke up, so kept quiet.

OpenSecretMichaelHarrah — Michael Harrah

About child sexual abuse, Hollywood stalwart and, until recently, the chair of The Young Performers Committee for SAG/AFTRA (the union all performers in major Hollywood commercials, television productions and films have to belong to) Michael Harrah (who managed child actors–some quite successful) says, “It wasn’t uncommon,” of his own time as a child actor. Harrah has also always had some of his underage clients live at his house and late in the film is confronted by one, now an adult, who says, “I hated when you had me sleep in your bed and tried to touch me,” which Harrah tellingly does not deny (though later when confronted in an interview says he doesn’t remember the incident and says he’s “not particularly” attracted to young boys). Another one-time child actor confronts his former manager Marty Weiss (now a convicted child rapist, but who served very little prison time) on tape about his abuse. Like Harrah, Weiss brushes off the severity of what he did, saying the conversation he and his client (identified as Evan H. in the film, but articles about the film and case use his full name: Evan Henzi) had before he first abused him let him know that Evan was “interested.” Evan shoots back, “I was not interested at 12.”

If you think, in spite of its important subject matter, the film I’ve described so far seems at least a little exploitative and lurid, you’d be right. And structurally this film is a mess. Maybe because I’ve seen carefully crafted documentaries recently like (T)ERROR and Out in the Night, which combine multiple viewpoints into compelling and easily comprehensible story lines, I was frustrated at the muddle An Open Secret makes of its overlapping stories. I understood only after reading articles to follow up that Henzi was the main impetus behind Weiss’s conviction and that another interviewee, Michael Egan, was close friends and “coworkers” with Mark Ryan (who was a young adult at the time) at the estate where underage boys who wanted to succeed in show business were preyed on by rich and powerful men (which again is not just a rumor or “allegation”: the adult who owned the mansion is now a convicted child rapist–though he too fled to Europe to avoid prison time).

Egan’s presence in the film complicates it and may be one reason for its disjointedness. Egan sued director Bryan Singer (The Usual Suspects, X-Men) for sexual abuse and apparently an earlier cut of the film included many more mentions of Singer’s name and presence at the mansion. Now we just hear a few random mentions and see some footage of Singer promoting the business the adults at the estate ran: an online video production company whose “shows,” shot at the estate, featured underage boys. The clips we see of the shows are so bad the well-known investors–not just Singer but Michael Huffington and others–were likely paying for access to the young actors (Huffington as well as Singer spent time visiting the estate) rather than making a prudent business investment.

Some people have referred to Egan, who has had legal troubles of his own, as “discredited” but I would urge those people to watch the excellent The Boys of St. Vincent (originally a miniseries, based on Catholic priests’ sexual abuse of children in Canada and their subsequent trials) to see that victims of sexual abuse are often very troubled adults who can easily cross into illegal activity themselves, including perpetuating the cycle of abuse–which is not the crime Egan is accused of, but does seem to be what Harrah is confessing in the phone call with a former client.

Secret uses clips from a “very special” episode of Diff’rent Strokes to intersperse with an interview of co-star Todd Bridges talking about his experience of abuse at the hands of adults in power when he was a child actor. The film could do with an infusion of other narrative clips about sexual abuse of children. When the film in voiceover described the process of grooming I thought back to Brian Cox’s character in the great L.I.E. and his interplay with his potential victim (who is the main character of the film) played by a young Paul Dano. What that film got right is something missing from Berg’s: that even if Dano’s character was gay (as he seemed to be) and willingly spent time with Cox’s character what Cox was trying to do with him was still wrong. None of the grown men in Secret out themselves as queer, which leaves the film open to perceptions of homophobia (which I don’t share) since Huffington and Singer (along with some other men alleged to consort with the young boys at the estate) are some of the most powerful out gay men in Southern California.

Although all the victims in this film are boys (now grown men), I was not surprised to see the advocates for them in this film are women; BizParentz’ Anne Henry, the prosecutor in the Weiss case and Berg herself–because most women are very familiar with the attempts to “discredit” survivors of child sexual abuse and other forms of rape. Still I would have liked to have seen at least one girl (now a grown woman) survivor, though maybe they were all afraid of the same notoriety that has followed the now grown woman Polanski raped. As with most of the survivors of sexual abuse Berg interviews she “left the business,” never to appear as herself (as opposed to a much talked about rape survivor) in a magazine, a film, or on TV ever again.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JpHUaMBARU” iv_load_policy=”3″]

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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

‘What Happened, Miss Simone?’: A High Priestess Speaks of Rebellion

Dispersed among the footage are archival glimpses into Nina’s journals, where we can read quick sketches of her own thoughts and feelings. And although the particular journal entries are chosen and shaped to fit the narrative Garbus is presenting, it only helps to give us a deeper understanding of the complexity of being a Black woman artist in racist America. Nothing has changed.

What Happpened, Miss Simone Netflix One Sheet — *What Happpened, Miss Simone* Netflix One Sheet

“How can you be an artist and not reflect the times?”

–Nina Simone

Director Liz Garbus could’ve stopped the documentary What Happened, Miss Simone? six minutes into its run time. Nina Simone steps onstage after a lengthy absence from show business. She takes a bow and then stops cold, stares at the audience for what seems like an eternity. Her eyes take in the scene but from my viewpoint, it looks like she is seeing beyond the crowd gathered before her. It’s like she can see the future, what’s coming up for Black people around the bend of time.

Her face is filled with long simmering rage, pain, insolent dark beauty, and unchecked defiance. Here stands an artist struggling to create timely, relevant, serious Black art in front of an overwhelmingly white audience outside of America. She remembers the feeling of isolation and hatred against her for being Black. Nose too big. Lips too full. Skin too dark. Daring to dream of becoming the first Black classical pianist. Denied entry into the Curtis Institute of Music after a short stint at Julliard. Then she sits down. Speaks a few words, and then starts her performance.

"I want to shake people up so bad that when they leave a nightclub where I'Ve performed, I just want them to be to pieces" — “I want to shake people up so bad that when they leave a nightclub where I’ve performed, I just want them to be to pieces”

This small moment, a few seconds really, told me all I needed to know. The documentary could’ve ended right there for me, the look on Simone’s face was that forceful and telling. I have seen that look before. In the eyes of my grandfather when I was little, in the eyes of aunts and uncles and older friends who have been through some shit in America. It’s the eyes of a weary soldier who knows the battle will be long and not finished soon enough.

What makes this documentary extraordinary is that we get to hear and see Nina Simone talk about her life herself. In her own words at the exact times she says them. This is not a typical documentary film where the artist is reflecting back, perhaps shading the truth a little because of time. Garbus uses film footage of Nina speaking, and we are allowed to be time travelers, visiting exact moments in Simone’s life as they are happening. Dispersed among the footage are archival glimpses into Nina’s journals, where we can read quick sketches of her own thoughts and feelings. And although the particular journal entries are chosen and shaped to fit the narrative Garbus is presenting, it only helps to give us a deeper understanding of the complexity of being a Black woman artist in racist America. Nothing has changed.

Nina Simone performing "Mississippi Goddam" in Selma during the historic March — Nina Simone performing “Mississippi Goddam” in Selma during the historic march.

What I enjoy about the documentary is that Nina is bold and Black with no filters, exactly as I imagined her to be. I started listening to her music with serious intent while in college after presenting a paper on protest music in a History for Teachers class. I wrote of folk singers, like Woody Guthrie, Joan Baez, Odetta, et al, moved into James Brown’s seminal “Say it Loud-I’m Black and I’m Proud” and “I Don’t Want Nobody to Give Me Nothing (Open Up the Door, I’ll Get It Myself)” and introduced my professor and classmates to Simone’s “Missississippi Goddam.” No one had heard of the song or her. I dug into music archives, listening, learning, trying to imagine being a singer of righteous indignation in a world that only wanted Diana Ross and the Supremes type pop music from Black women. I wondered what Nina Simone thought about her work going against the musical dictates of her time. In this documentary, Simone lays it out there for me. And it’s a heartbreaking motherfucker to watch. I had to pause several times in my viewing to catch my breath and process Simone’s words. A reporter interviews Simone late in her life and Nina laments that all she wanted to be was that cherished classical pianist, and tears swell up in her eyes. I had to stop and cry for her too.

The High Priestess adorning preparing for a show. — The High Priestess adorning hersel for a show.

What Happened, Miss Simone filled me with a lot of anger. I’m angry a lot these days I confess. Angry at the overt racism she lived through, angry at the depression and undiagnosed bipolar disorder she suffered through for so long, and angry at her husband/manager Andrew Stroud. Angry that American racial baggage is still with us as I write these words. The footage of Stroud talking about his life with Nina Simone is a goldmine to have, because we hear directly from the horse’s mouth his adverse reaction to her radicalization during the Civil Rights Movement. In one journal entry Simone wrote:

“I don’t mind going without food or sleep as long as I am doing something worthwhile to me such as this.”

As for her husband’s response to her involvement with the Civil Rights/Black Power Movement, she wrote:

“Andrew was noticeably cold and very removed from the whole affair.”

"Now I could sing to help my people, and that became the mainstay of my life.' Nina on the Civil Rights Movement. — “Now I could sing to help my people, and that became the mainstay of my life.” Nina on the Civil Rights Movement.

While Simone stands on stage shaping her music to reflect the times she lives in, hoping to inspire and encourage young people to recognize they were young, gifted, and Black, in a world that wanted to crush the life out of them, Stroud sits on film stating with disdain, “She wanted to align herself with the extreme terrorist militants who were influencing her.”

Here was a Black man who was calling young Black radicals fighting oppression terrorists. Black People. In America. Getting their asses bombed, beaten, and bloodied in the streets of a country they built. Are you out of your cotton-picking mind?

No wonder Nina Simone left Andrew Stroud.

It wasn’t enough that he was beating her, working her to death, and dominating her life. He was disrespecting the work that she found meaningful which was making music for her people. I found it condescending and – surprise- sexist, that he believed Simone had no agency of her own to think for herself. He really believed that others outside of her own thinking mind were influencing her decision to write and sing radical Black music, to take up the cause of the Black Panthers and to question the utility of non-violence in the face of violent white Americans. Theirs was a complicated, volatile relationship, and I could only feel deep sorrow for their daughter Lisa Simone Kelley who was caught in between them. Lisa discusses how she later suffered physical abuse at the hands of her own mother after her parents broke up. (Side note: One of my favorite performances of Simone’s “Four Women” includes Lisa Simone Kelly. Watch it here.)

Nina Simone's only child, Lisa Simone Kelly. — Nina Simone’s only child, singer Lisa Simone Kelly. She is also an executive producer of the documentary.

Simone explains that she was responsible for the livelihood of 19 people who worked for her. The pressure, stress, and physical/mental fatigue made her suicidal. What happens when your soul can’t do what it needs to do? When the thing that you love doing, slowly turns into the thing that you dread and eventually hate? It eats at you and often your mind turns on itself. Another journal entry during this crisis has Simone lamenting, “They don’t know that I’m dead and my ghost is holding on.”

The documentary showcases the highs and many lows, and it gives the viewer an opportunity to glimpse the genius Black woman that Simone was. Her music catalogue and this documentary are like a grimoire for those of us who need to reach into it to conjure up spells of protection and invocations of remembrance. I had to watch it four times to revel in her magic.

Nina free in Liberia — Simone in Liberia, Africa. The only time she felt free in her life according to Simone in the documentary.

Near the end of the documentary Nina reflects on how singing political songs hurt her career.

“There is no reason to sing those songs. Nothing is happening,” she says. She is so wrong. We need her songs now more than ever. We need that bold, bruising canon of radical Black music. We are calling on old Black Gods during this Black Lives Matter Movement (and the racist, terrorist attack on the Emanuel AME church in Charleston, South Carolina that ended nine lives, including that of a State Senator), and this High Priestess of Soul can show us the way.

I hear her influence in the recent works of D’Angelo (the Black Messiah album) and Kendrick Lamar (“Alright”) who are writing protest music for this generation. As writer/cultural critic Stanley Crouch says in the film, Nina Simone is the Patron Saint of the Rebellion. All praises due. The struggle continues. This documentary tells us that. Call upon her name. Nina. Simone.

Amen.

High Priestess of Soul and The Patron Saint of the Rebellion.

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Staff writer Lisa Bolekaja co-hosts Hilliard Guess’ Screenwriters Rant Room, and her latest speculative fiction short story “Three Voices” can be read in Uncanny Magazine. She divides her time between California and Italy. She can be found on Twitter @LisaBolekaja. Follow at your own risk.

‘Sex(ed)’: How America Learned About Sex

The footage could be overwhelming (Goodman analyzed 500 films), but she presents it all in a way that leaves the viewer satisfied but wanting more information–just like a good documentary should.

Written by Leigh Kolb.

“How did you learn about sex?”

This is a question that can launch us all into stories of our own formative years. I remember my mother–a former home economics teacher–showing me a diagram of the uterus, and factually answering the (many) questions I had, and looking through the textbooks my father–a biology teacher–had strewn around the house. I remember my public elementary school, when in fifth grade girls and boys were separated, and we were taught about periods and given deodorant and pads all wrapped in pastel and hope. A year later, we were separated again, and we girls watched graphic slideshows of STI-ravaged genitals and were given gold plastic purity rings.

Unlike fractions or sentence fragments, our experiences with “official” sex education vary drastically, ranging from helpful, to hilarious, to heartbreaking. Likewise, unlike learning to cook pasta or change a tire, our families’ roles in teaching us about sex are typically not accompanied by cookbooks or users’ manuals. Sex ed in America has historically been the wild west.

Most of us, in recalling our formal sex education, have memories of the film reels shown to us in our pre-pubescent and pubescent school rooms. The history of sex-education films in America is fascinating, and tells us more about ourselves than one might expect. Brenda Goodman‘s documentary, Sex(ed): The Movie shows us a treasure trove of clips from sex-ed films through American history. From early 20th century “hygiene films” and wartime moral panic films, to Disney cartoons and obscure 70s masturbation celebrations, Sex(ed) takes us on a history of not only how we have approached sex ed, but also how we have approached STIs, women, masturbation, menstruation, homosexuality, and relationships. Sex(ed) tells America’s story through archival film clips and in-depth interviews with experts and individuals who have been affected–for better or worse–by their sex education.

Goodman covers a great deal of ground in a concise documentary. She does an excellent job of presenting the clips and interviews with a humanity that is often lacking in the films themselves. The hilarity that ensues from some of the old films is balanced with the tragic weight of anti-gay rhetoric films of the 1960s and the rise of toxic abstinence-only education in the 1990s. The footage could be overwhelming (Goodman analyzed 500 films), but she presents it all in a way that leaves the viewer satisfied but wanting more information–just like a good documentary should.

Watching Sex(ed) is like watching America’s answer to “How did you learn about sex?” What we learn is that what we learn–or don’t learn–can have devastating consequences. We should watch and learn more so that we can more adequately teach future generations about their bodies, sexuality, and relationships. When we answer how we learned about sex, we are also answering how we learned to be human. And as a society, we need to demand better lessons and better answers.

Sex(ed) is available at First Run Features and Amazon.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vj1Vl4nWU3g”]

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Leigh Kolb is a composition, literature, and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri.

‘Seventeen Moments of Spring’: Stirlitz as Soviet, Female-authored Bond

Unlike Bond, who uses the dangers of his job as a pretext for casual flings with disposable women, Stirlitz holds himself longingly aloof from women to avoid endangering them. Unlike Bond, who is empowered by his “license to kill,” Stirlitz kills only once, and his victim is fully humanized. Finally, unlike Bond, Stirlitz’s cinematic image is the creation of a woman.

Viacheslav Tikhonov as Stirlitz, smoldering suppression and cigarettes

Written by Brigit McCone.

In August 1973, an estimated 80 million Soviet viewers were transfixed by the espionage drama of Seventeen Moments of Spring, emptying the streets during its broadcast. As a national hero, icy cool super-spy Stirlitz is rivaled only by James Bond. Like Bond, he originated in a series of novels, in his case by Yulian Semenov. However, where Bond’s spying represents a license to role-play, escaping everyday accountability, Stirlitz’s spying represents an emotionally draining and dehumanizing inauthenticity, reflecting everyday Soviet censorship culture. Unlike Bond, who sidesteps issues of inauthenticity on assignments by incompetently using his real name, Stirlitz’s “real” name (Maksim Maksimovich Isayev, which could be Jewish) is not even used by the show’s narration. Unlike Bond, who uses the dangers of his job as a pretext for casual flings with disposable women, Stirlitz holds himself longingly aloof from women to avoid endangering them. Unlike Bond, who is empowered by his “license to kill,” Stirlitz kills only once, and his victim is fully humanized. Finally, unlike Bond, Stirlitz’s cinematic image is the creation of a woman.

Official communist doctrines of gender equality meant that female directors like Tatyana Lukashevich and Tatiana Lioznova received more mainstream support than their Western counterparts. Seventeen Moments of Spring was a project of the Central Studio of Children and Youth Films, explaining the educational montages woven throughout, though Lioznova transcended her brief with a psychological depth that appealed to all ages (and genders). While Stirlitz could not be described as feminized, his emphasized sensitivity is a reaction against hypermasculine propagandist ideals, explaining his cult appeal.

Though women are marginalized in the show’s arena of Nazi high command, Lioznova never allows them to be forgotten. During an interrogation, the camera focuses on a female stenographer’s conflicted reaction. An educational montage pays tribute to the Red Army’s female soldiers, while another celebrates Edith Piaf and Paris, in defiance of Cold War oppositions. Pregnant, undercover radio operator Kate Rien, torn between duty and love, is celebrated for her “heroic emotions.” Her maternity raises the stakes, as in Lois Weber’s Suspense, but does not undermine her courage, resourcefulness, or political conviction. Though some feminists may be irritated by Lioznova’s use of Kate’s escalating maternity to define her heroism, she joins Fargo‘s Marge Gunderson as a rare screen depiction of a pregnant woman actively engaged in wider struggles. Stirlitz’s concern for supplying Kate with milk, his regular outings and chess games with the elderly and bereaved Frau Zaurich, and his care for a stray dog are incidental to the plot, but vital to his psychological health and heroic status. Lioznova suggests that a theoretical struggle on behalf of “the nation” is invalid without compassion for individuals, since “the nation is made up of people.”

In one of Lioznova’s trademark, lingering shots of wordless longing (see Three Poplars at Plyushchikha Street, a kind of Soviet Brief Encounter), Stirlitz’s Soviet superiors bring his wife to a Berlin bar, before he leaves for the Spanish Civil War. The two watch each other across the room, unable to risk contact. This flashback, which Lioznova insisted on over the objections of writer Semenov, is juxtaposed with the efforts of Gabi Nabel to become intimate with Stirlitz at the end of WWII. Initially assumed to be the sweetheart of one of Frau Zaurich’s dead sons, Gabi’s solidarity with Frau Zaurich is instead based on simple, Bechdel-friendly compassion, bonding after Gabi’s house was bombed. Gabi and Stirlitz share a lingering dance, but he gently rejects her, emphasizing the impossibility of intimacy in his position. Later, a sex-crazed female mathematician will drunkenly proposition Stirlitz, with a comical lack of success (though Stirlitz’s swearing “on [his] life” to return to her, while making his escape, is mistranslated as an out-of-character “may you drop dead”) before Stirlitz struggles to write home, unwilling to burden his estranged wife with declarations of love. Stirlitz’s desirability is embodied in this placing of women’s well-being before his own needs. Personal conflict dominates over political intrigue at the show’s poignant finale. Though Lioznova’s protagonist is masculine, his heroism is defined primarily through his empathetic relationship to the feminine, the elderly, and children.

Pastor Schlagg: "The nation is made up of people. So, you eliminate people in the name of the nation." — Pastor Schlagg: “The nation is made up of people. So, you eliminate people in the name of the nation.”

Stirlitz’s allies are a librarian who prefers humanist Greeks to imperial Romans, and a pacifist pastor. These characters can be read as protesting Soviet authoritarianism as much as Nazism. In the words of writer Semenov: “the secret of Stirlitz’s longevity is explained not only by his charm and intelligence, but by the fact that I chose for him to remain outside the system after 1921, and to serve (while remaining patriotic) not the system as it is, but the ideal of struggle against fascism.” When the show’s fictional Stalin says of Nazi high command: “the closest associates of the tyrant, being on the brink of downfall, will betray him to save their lives,” he subtly indicates the paranoia that fueled his own purges of close associates. Through her spy’s deep cover, Lioznova largely sidesteps communist propaganda to focus on the conflict between Stirlitz’s humanist sympathies and pressure to compromise himself in the interests of the (Nazi) state.

Similarly, Mikhail Romm’s 1948 The Russian Question focuses on the conflict between censorship culture and individual conscience, in the dilemma of (American) journalist Harry Hill, who strives to tell the (positive) truth about the Soviet Union, when threatened with unemployment and persecution by his (American) superiors. Mikhail Kalatozov’s 1950 Conspiracy of the Doomed was the first Soviet film to acknowledge the widespread famines that followed collectivization, blaming the (American) government for causing them, as well as condemning the (American) secret service’s maneuverings to undermine the sovereignty of the USSR’s neighbors. In 1969, after Soviet invasion had crushed Alexander Dubcek’s attempt to establish democratic “socialism with a human face” in Czechoslovakia, Moscow’s Taganka theatre staged Protect Your Faces, climaxing in Vladimir Vysotsky performing his individualist anthem “Wolf Hunt,” protesting (American) violence against the democratic leader (John F. Kennedy), while actors with mirrors showed audiences their own faces. The play was a sensation, and banned after three performances. In the sometimes patronizing Stalinism and Soviet Cinema, this phenomenon is defined as “social Freudianism,” an entire society’s projection of its suppressed self-image onto its enemies. Far from unconscious, however, “social Freudianism” exploits anti-capitalist and anti-fascist propaganda as permissible outlets for criticism, within a culture of “dancing with the censor” whose audience was adept at decoding subversive subtext.

Oleg Tabakov as Walther Schellenberg: horrifyingly likable Nazi

This subtlety becomes immediately apparent when considering Seventeen Moments of Spring as anti-Nazi propaganda. Nazis feature in Western propaganda (a.k.a. pop culture) as evil caricatures and disposable cannon-fodder, but the Nazis of Seventeen Moments of Spring are intensely humanized and frequently sympathetic. As one of the film’s soulful Nazis puts it: “it’s easy to advise other people to be honest. But everyone personally tries to turn his dishonesty into honesty. To justify himself and his actions, so to speak.” Stirlitz’s Nazi counterpart, the mischievously machiavellian Walther Schellenberg, is introduced intimidatingly by his official report: “a true Aryan, of Nordic character, brave and firm… merciless towards the Reich’s enemies. An excellent family man… no discrediting liaisons.” When slavic, married Isayev (Stirlitz), is likewise defined as “a true Aryan, of Nordic character, self-possessed… Merciless towards the Reich’s enemies… Unmarried. No known discrediting liaisons,” we realize this information is unreliable. Gradually, as each of the film’s Nazis receives the banal description “a true Aryan, of Nordic character… merciless towards the Reich’s enemies,” it devolves into a deadpan joke at the expense of hollow official rhetoric. After the show’s broadcast, actor Oleg Tabakov received a letter from the real SS Commander Schellenberg’s niece, thanking him for bringing “Uncle Walther” to life with an apparently authentic performance.

Hitler’s henchmen are profiled in Stirlitz’s “information for pondering” with descriptions of their wives and families, followed by examples of their rhetoric dehumanizing enemies – Goering: “kill, kill and kill. Don’t think of the consequences,” Goebbels: “you should be cruel and merciless when it comes to those we’re fighting against,” Himmler: “we should be honest, decent and loyal only towards the representatives of our race.” Lioznova highlights Goering’s justification of an inhuman death camp as “what the nation wants,” implicitly contrasted with Pastor Schlagg’s definition of the nation as a collection of individuals. Schellenberg and Stirlitz will both reveal themselves shockingly desensitized, maintaining grim, gallows humor for the sake of their sanity. They muse together about their “true” personalities, discarded and stored for future use, like “coats in the wardrobe.” As Stirlitz catches himself thinking of Germany as “our country,” Seventeen Moments of Spring questions whether it is ever possible to play a role without becoming it. For Russian Jew Lioznova, who lost her family in the war, identifying with Germans and insistently humanizing Nazis is the ultimate rejection of their dehumanizing ideology, echoing Hannah Arendt’s philosophies.

The opening and closing images of the series are of Stirlitz, staring up at a formation of cranes. An iconic wartime song by Mark Bernes, “The Cranes Are Flying,” portrayed cranes as reincarnations of soldiers killed in battle. The Cranes Are Flying is also the title of the 1957 Palme d’Or winning masterpiece by Mikhail Kalatozov (I Am Cuba, Conspiracy of the Doomed), which explodes the romanticized mystique of anthems such as “Wait For Me” in its unflinching portrait of the brutal realities of wartime, centering the female experience of abandonment. Through his meditations on flying cranes, Stirlitz thus indicates his consciousness of the burden of his country’s sacrifices. Churchill, as Seventeen Moments of Spring reminds us, once telegramed that “future generations will recognize their debt to the Red Army as unconditionally as we… who were the witnesses of those great victories,” but it is now rarely emphasized in Western histories that 75 percent of Nazi casualties were inflicted on the Eastern front, along with an estimated 20 million Soviet deaths.

While triumphalist American images of WWII reflect their successful foreign war, the Soviet experience was national trauma, barely concealed by its rebranding as “Great Patriotic War.” Scars are markers of villainy in the creepily eugenic Bond franchise, but Lioznova lingers on scarred bystanders and the rubble of bombardment as testament to war’s destruction. The “always careful” Stirlitz’s iconic masculinity lies not in swaggering machismo, but in his willingness to admit the futility and insignificance of his role, his personal courage in the face of totalitarianism, and his compassion for suffering. Compare Vladimir Vysotsky, as the leading postwar icon of Soviet masculinity, in his open acknowledgement of the trauma of Stalinist purges, and of WWII’s devastation:

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOJ49PGMW_8″]

From the ticking clock of 24 to Bond’s grittier, morally conflicted reboots, the influence of Seventeen Moments of Spring can be seen throughout pop culture, but its emotional depth is unrivaled. By making audiences fear for the fate of every informer, and sympathize with the sacrificed humanity of every oppressor, Tatiana Lioznova arguably created the most profound spy story ever filmed. Depicting a complex world, where integrity is a compromise between loyalty and necessity, and how we behave defines who we become, Seventeen Moments of Spring is James Bond for grown-ups.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZTCoDMlL2k”]

Brigit McCone studied for a year in Moscow State University, writes and directs short films and radio dramas and is the author of The Erotic Adventures of Vivica (as Voluptua von Temptitillatrix). Her hobbies include doodling and rampant Russophilia.

‘The Loneliest Planet’ and the Fracturing of Masculinity

This guest post by Cal Cleary appears as part of our theme week on Masculinity.

It’s a frequently stated truism that the patriarchy hurts men the same way it hurts women. The system of rigid gender expectations can be punishing for anyone who doesn’t conform to its strictures. Those punishments aren’t just external; failure to live up a made-up masculine ideal can cause considerable internal anguish. Few films have dealt with the transformative strength of that failure as powerfully as The Loneliest Planet. Written and directed by Julia Loktev, loosely adapting Tom Bissell’s short story “Expensive Trips Nowhere,” the film is, in part, a powerful meditation on the way a single moment can clash with a man’s internalized expectations to destroy his sense of self.

The Loneliest Planet is, essentially, a movie with three characters. Nica (Hani Furstenberg) and Alex (Gael García Bernal) are engaged, a pair of active world-travelers who can tackle any challenge together. Before their wedding, they visit the country of Georgia, where they hire a guide, Dato (renowned Georgian mountaineer Bidzina Gujabidze), to take them on a long hike through the nation’s incredibly scenic countryside. Along the way, they meet a group of heavily armed men who are suspicious of the trio, questioning them briefly. Then, they walk back, exploring more of Georgia’s gorgeous natural landscapes.

That really is it for plot. But the key twist in the film’s halfway point is what gives the film its power, and there’s no real way to discuss what the movie is saying about masculinity without first talking about the twist. So, for the spoiler averse – and this is the rare twist best experienced without knowing quite what to expect – I suggest taking a break and checking the movie out now. For those who’ve seen it, or who don’t mind a bit of foreknowledge, however, read on…

The key moment, the scene that gives the film its shape, happens at the halfway point, when the trio meets the armed men. Neither Alex nor Nica share a language with him, so they aren’t sure what the confrontation is about. Despite the presence of guns, Loktev shoots the scene in a fairly low-key manner, highlighting not the tension but the lack of control for the two tourists. It is this lack of control that makes Alex so uncomfortable. He tries to insert himself in a conflict that Dato appears to be handling well, demanding to know what’s going on – only to find a large rifle leveled at his face. Alex’s immediate response is to push Nica in front of the barrel and hide behind her – but only for a second. After that gut reaction, he reasserts himself, pushing Nica back behind him and aggressively posturing for her, recklessly pressing his forehead to the rifle’s barrel.

It turns out to be a false alarm. Dato talks the armed men down, and then he accompanies Nica and Alex as they walk back home. At no point do any of the characters discuss what just happened. Alex grows immediately taciturn, and Nica is clearly uncomfortable. Something very fundamental about their relationship has changed, and Julia Loktev does an amazing job at showing how differently Alex and Nica see that event without ever coming out and saying it.

Throughout the first half of the film, most characters outside the small group instinctively defer to Alex, a role he happily relegates to his equally competent partner. A group of locals approached as they seek out a guide ask Alex if Nica is his wife – she answers. They ask Alex if Nica can carry a heavy-enough load to be an effective hiker – she answers. Early in the film, during a perilous river-crossing, Dato has concerns that Nica can make the trip safely, but Alex lets Nica go first, and has no doubts that she’ll be able to handle herself. Alex is comfortable not taking the lead, despite what everyone else expects, and Loktev constantly reinforces that through the staging and the shot composition, as well as frequent interludes that highlight the physicality they have in common, the confidence they have in their own bodies working precisely how they want.

Alex is, in many ways, the ideal of the modern man: Handsome, athletic, intelligent, well-traveled, well-off financially but still environmentally sensitive, and with a romantic partner he treats as an equal. Because of this, he has no trouble shrugging off the gendered stereotypes expected of his relationship in the first half of the film. But as soon as he is given reason to doubt his own traditionally defined masculinity, it all falls apart. Suddenly, he thinks Nica needs help lifting her own pack, needs help steadying herself while she takes off a shoe – help he himself refuses to accept from her later, when he twists his ankle and tries to shrug it off. It isn’t the external expectations that get to him, the fear of judgment from other people, but his own concern that he isn’t man enough. The specifics of how masculinity presents may have changed from the days of Ernest Hemingway’s “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber,” a story with thematic and structural ties to Loktev’s film, but the way some men react when they begin to question their own masculinity has not.

Nica, of course, is shaken up just as much as Alex by the event with the gunman, but the way Loktev and her performers portray the aftermath, their violations seem very different. As portrayed by Furstenberg, Nica seems to feel betrayed by Alex’s action, but she is clearly willing to forgive him as she processes what happened. She begins to open up again. Alex, on the other hand, seems to feel unmanned. Both characters are profoundly shaken up by the incident, but Nica fears for her life, no longer certain if she can trust her partner, while Alex fears that he looks weak. Which is, I guess, a purely visual way of expressing Margaret Atwood’s classic sentiment: “Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.”

The Loneliest Planet is a difficult movie in a lot of ways, telling almost its entire movie nonverbally. Indeed, the characters’ feelings and relationships are mostly defined by their staging and the camera’s movement, which can make the long, dialogue-free stretches feel slow. Until you start to notice the way the landscapes change to counter the emotional state of the characters, or the way walking order during the hike can define relationships. Until you realize that the film is very much about language, and that the things Alex and Nica can’t bring themselves to say are far more important than any words they may use to paper over the issue.

The Loneliest Planet ends in uncertainty. Alex and Nica are back together, but the casual intimacy of the film’s earliest moments is gone, perhaps forever. Even at the end, Alex is more withdrawn. He has learned something very dark about himself, and it’s something he still can’t quite process. You can be a sensitive multi-lingual world-travelling guy who looks like Gael García Bernal, but can you still consider yourself a man, he seems to wonder, if you’re a coward?

Cal Cleary spends most of his time judging others, writing film and comic reviews for GeekRex and novel reviews for Luxury Reading. When he’s not writing online, he’s librarianing in rural Ohio, and he definitely hasn’t figured out that librarianing is not a real word. Follow him on Twitter (@comicalibrarian) for links to more of his work.

Bigelow’s Boys: Martial Masculinity in ‘The Hurt Locker’

The movie also, however, offers ideological and anthropological readings of masculinity which are, arguably, a little more complicated.

Bigelow appears to have a deep interest in, and respect for, martial masculinity.

Poster for The Hurt Locker — Poster for *The Hurt Locker*

Written by Rachael Johnson as part of our theme week on Masculinity.

A well-crafted tale about a U.S. bomb deactivation unit in Iraq, The Hurt Locker (2009) marks a continuation of Kathryn Bigelow’s interest in martial masculinity as well as an evolution of her directorial style. The 2010 Academy Award winner’s documentary look and feel effectively immerses the viewer in the hazardous lives of its warrior protagonists. Hand-held cameras, multiple cameras, zooms, and close-ups serve to create a charged atmosphere as they generate a marked intimacy and terrifying immediacy.

The Hurt Locker not only represents a revival of Bigelow’s interest in men in the military but also exemplifies her abiding fascination with those who seek to shatter the limits of human experience by dancing with death. Risk-takers, typified by the surfers of Point Break (1991), populate Bigelow’s films. The work of bomb technicians constitutes, of course, an especially intimate form of engagement with death. For the protagonist of the Hurt Locker, a certain Sgt. William James, these potentially fatal encounters are to be embraced–even enjoyed. Played by Jeremy Renner, James is a risk-taking maverick more at home in a war-zone than in his family home. He is made of very different stuff from the other men in his unit. His comrades include Sgt J.T. Sandborn (Anthony Mackie) a sensible team-player dedicated to protecting the men around him, and Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty), an anxious young specialist. Employing an episodic narrative structure, The Hurt Locker depicts the every day, death-defying activities of the warrior technicians as well as their downtime pursuits.

Bigelow shooting The Hurt Locker — Bigelow shooting *The Hurt Locker*

The Hurt Locker is primarily a character study of a man at war but its setting is Iraq and the audience should never forget this. Bizarrely, the movie itself, scripted by Mark Boal who was embedded with U.S. troops in Iraq, seems to want the viewer to do so. Indeed, there is an apparent absence of ideological discourse about the conflict throughout the entire film. As I have said before, there is, however, no such thing as apolitical cinema. The Iraq war was an illegal war and it is nothing less than a monumental stain on the conscience of the US and UK. There is no mention in The Hurt Locker that the unit is occupying a country and there is no critique of the Iraq War.

The Hurt Locker does depict the impact on civilian lives war has–we see civilians converted into human bombs–but the film only focuses on the deeds of the enemy other. Unlike Nick Broomfield’s Battle for Haditha (2007) or Brian de Palma’s Redacted (2007), The Hurt Locker does not address and examine American atrocities. Instead, the American soldier is uniformly portrayed as skillful, resilient, charismatic, and compassionate. The Hurt Locker does not offer an Iraqi perspective on the conflict. The enemy remains a constant silent, staring threat.

What of the views of The Hurt Locker’s director? Bigelow has stated simply: “This is a film told from the specific point of view of the US soldiers” (David Jenkins interview, Time Out, London). She also asks the viewer to strip away his or her particular political perspective and focus on the particular experiences of her protagonists. The Hurt Locker, she says, offers a sensorial take on the Iraq war: “This conflict has been so politicized. I thought this would be a way for people to meet at the point where one man in a 100-pound bomb suit is walking toward a suspicious amount of wires in a rubble pile and trying to operate very quickly to avoid his coordinates being called in for a sniper attack” (“Kathryn Bigelow and the Making of The Hurt Locker” Glen Whipp, L.A. Times, Dec 23. 2009). I recognize that filmmaking is a physical experience for Bigelow but this is a quite maddening, insular statement. Who is the director addressing? Who’s the audience? The choice to just tell the story purely from the perspective of American soldiers is plainly political (as is the choice to not point out the war itself was illegal or mention American atrocities). But let’s move on and analyze The Hurt Locker as an American story about a trio of US soldiers. If the film is intended to represent the American experience, it is instructive from an ideological perspective; it’s interesting work analyzing how American cultural products reflect and construct their national identity.

If we accept The Hurt Locker as a primarily American story, we also need to ask if it is an authentic expression of that. The audience is, it’s true, given an acrid taste of the characters’ feelings of alienation as they experience the daily threat of death, an indication of what it is like to be a member of an occupying army. The Hurt Locker does not sugarcoat the feelings and attitudes of its characters. “I hate this place,” an exhausted Sandborn announces with brutal simplicity. His comment rings true: Iraq is a dusty, dirty hell-hole for these men. The problem remains though that we are asked to sympathize solely with Sanborn and his comrades. The Hurt Locker can, thus, easily be read as a work of American narcissism and neo-imperialism. The movie also, however, offers ideological and anthropological readings of masculinity which are, arguably, a little more complicated.

Bigelow appears to have a deep interest in, and respect for, martial masculinity. In both The Hurt Locker and K-19: The Widowmaker (2002), she exhibits a respect for men willing to sacrifice their lives for others. Both the Russian navy of K-19 and American soldiers of The Hurt Locker are seen as heroic. In countless interviews for The Hurt Locker, Bigelow expressed a conventional respect for US troops in Iraq as well as admiration for the skills of bomb disposal experts. Does The Hurt Locker propagate the masculinist, militarist belief that martial masculinity is the most heroic form of masculinity? The characterization of James suggests that the picture is, perhaps, more inconsistent or complex.

Finishing his tour of duty with Sanborn and Eldridge, James returns to a damp America, to an ordinary, beautiful wife (Evangeline Lilly, it must be said, in an unrewarding, supporting role) and happy baby son. But it is not enough and James soon returns to Iraq. His commitment to the military is absolute. He puts war before romantic, marital, and paternal love. “War’s dirty little secret is that some men enjoy it,” Bigelow has contended (Kathryn Bigelow Interviews, Martin Keough ed.). It’s an anthropological and philosophical assertion rather than a political one. Considering the fact that (mostly) human males have been at it for thousands of years, there may be some truth to it. The Hurt Locker also opens with a quote by Chris Hedges expanding on the same theme: “The rush of battle is often a potent and lethal addiction for war is a drug.” Choosing to cite the left-wing writer and journalist Chris Hedges is a curious thing in itself, of course, in light of the movie’s refusal to confront the neo-con adventure that was the Iraq War.

Interestingly, Sgt. James is not wounded or scarred by war. It is Sandborn and Eldridge who suffer psychological and physical pain. James is not psychotic. Nor does he have post-traumatic stress disorder. He is, equally, not portrayed as a psychopath. Indeed, he is shown to be compassionate. He is willing to risk his life for others and loves his infant son. Perhaps he still loves his wife. James, however, needs to be in a war zone. He doesn’t know why or how he does it and it rings true that he doesn’t know: James has no inner life. His excessiveness masks nothingness. He also does not grow or change. His masculinity is fundamentally characterized as solipsistic. Although goal-oriented, he is a sterile being. Are Bigelow and Boal effectively normalizing the need for physically brave, unfinished human beings in their portrait of James? Whatever the case, they have created a zombie, a man for whom war is a necessity and pleasure. The Hurt Locker could, therefore, be said to invite more interesting, exploratory interpretations of martial masculinity.

Bigelow empathetically depicts the close camaraderie of male soldiers. She also, however, foregrounds their masculinity–their black humor and sexual jesting made up of dick jokes and mock play fighting and fucking–and her highlighting of their ways indicates that she is also commenting on their masculinity. At one point, a tear-streaked Sanborn admits, “I want a little boy.” What to make of this statement? Although it’s uttered after a traumatic incident, it’s such a schmaltzy, macho thing to say that you wonder if the character’s desire for a boy-child is being mocked as an example of narcissistic masculinity.

The Hurt Locker is a well-paced, visually and technically impressive film. Bigelow’s command of the camera is formidable. Its apolitical stance is, however, utterly fraudulent. I do believe Bigelow is genuinely more interested in anthropological interpretations of war and war as a sensory experience, but her experiential take on one of the defining historical events of our time is ultimately as ideologically charged as any other cultural product. Like many American war movies, it exhibits an insular, neo-imperialist world view. Its representation of martial masculinity is, perhaps, more ambiguous and ambivalent, and it invites more complex readings. The radical nothingness of the movie’s warrior protagonist’s inner core is revealed when his creators peel back his skin. The Hurt Locker, thus, offers an interesting, potentially subversive portrait of martial masculinity and masculinity per se with Sgt. William James.

“24/7” Music: ‘What Happened, Miss Simone?’ and ‘Eden’

Anyone could make a pretty good video montage of Nina Simone in popular culture: first that iconic Chanel commercial featuring Simone’s version of “My Baby Just Cares For Me,” then an early pre-Wallace-and-Gromit Aardman Studios short in which a sexy, clay-mation cat chanteuse sings the same song (in Simone’s voice), and finally Julie Delpy near the very end of Before Sunset imitating Simone’s stage patter (white people, please, let’s not mimic Black people ever) for Ethan Hawke. But what these clips lack is Simone’s face, when her dark skin, wide nose, and full lips differentiated her from other Black women who were popular stars in the mid-twentieth century, like Diahann Carroll and Lena Horne, and even the Black women we see in movies and TV today. A recent bio-pic of Simone, which never had a real release in theaters, featured lighter-skinned star Zoe Saldana wearing dark makeup and a fake nose to play one of the first Black woman entertainers who performed with her hair natural and long earrings that brushed her shoulders in African-inspired dresses and head wraps.

Liz Garbus’s new documentary, What Happened, Miss Simone? (which opens in New York this week and will be streaming on Netflix starting this Friday, June 26) has glorious closeups of Simone’s face throughout. The film commences with a clip of a live performance at the 1976 Montreux Jazz Festival when, after a long glare at the audience, she says, “We’ll start from the beginning.”

Simone grew up poor in the Jim Crow South, but because her mother was a preacher, played the piano from a young age. At a church concert a couple of white women recognized Simone’s talent and she began to train as a classical pianist with the town’s white instructor. Simone practiced seven or eight hours every day, so even as a child was isolated from her peers, both Black and white. Segregation kept her from fulfilling her early dream; although she was able to attend Julliard (thanks to fundraising efforts in her hometown) she failed her audition for The Curtis Institute in Philadelphia. She later learned she was turned down because she was Black (a side note: classical auditions are now conducted with the musician hidden from view, a change that has been key in helping modern orchestras get closer to gender parity).

Simone adopted the pseudonym we know her by (she was born Eunice Waymon) taking “Nina” from a boyfriend’s nickname for her and “Simone” from the French actress Simone Signoret to perform the “devil’s music” in bars to support herself and her family. She had never sung before but was told at her first job she had to. Incorporating virtuoso piano technique with the greatest jazz improvisers’ instincts (Simone says she would sometimes change key in the middle of a song–her longtime guitarist Al Schackman was one of the few musicians who could keep up with her) along with a beautiful, distinctive voice and a deep, emotional connection to whatever she sang, she soon became a star. She performed blues, pop, and jazz songs as well as show tunes, remaking each of them in her own style. As critic Stanley Crouch says during the film, no one would ever mistake her work for that of anyone else.

SimoneMakeup — Nina Simone prepares for a concert

She married a New York vice cop, Andrew Stroud, who became her manager (which rarely turns out well). He physically and sexually abused her and pushed her to perform and tour more, even as she, like a lot of musicians who while away much of their childhood practicing, began to question if she really wanted a music career.

The civil rights movement gave her renewed purpose: she cultivated friendships with other Black artists, like Langston Hughes (who co-wrote with her “Backlash Blues”) and Lorraine Hansberry (the godmother of Simone’s daughter, Lisa Simone Kelly, who is interviewed extensively in the film). Simone also performed for the marchers with Martin Luther King at Selma and wrote “Mississippi Goddam” in response to the killing of Medgar Edgers and the four little girls in Alabama. She was close to Malcolm X’s wife and children and lived a short distance from them in Mount Vernon, New York, where her daughter became an honorary member of their family.

Like many others from that era she became disillusioned in the wake of the assassinations of civil rights leaders, and when the revolution so many spoke of and believed in during the 1960s never came. Manifesting symptoms of the bipolar disorder doctors would eventually diagnose (her mental illness was probably exacerbated by the beatings) she abandoned her marriage–and, for a time, her daughter–and never lived in the United States again.

The film has many great performance clips of Simone (including a moment in Montreux where she goes from palpable anger to laughter as an audience member spontaneously shouts out to her). I wish the film included even more of Simone’s music. The interviews are all first-rate and thorough, even as the interviewees, like Stroud and Schackman, seem to have opposing viewpoints. Lisa Simone Kelly is remarkably even-tempered in her remembrances of her mother as a genius and a star, but also as the person who physically and emotionally abused her. She says, “People think that when she came out onstage she became Nina Simone. My mother was Nina Simone 24/7 and that’s where it became a problem.”

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

In theory I’m the ideal audience member to see Eden, Mia Hansen-Løve’s latest film, a fictionalized bio of her brother Sven Hansen-Løve (he co-wrote the script) about his days as a well-known DJ in Paris. Although I’ve never been to Paris, I spent enough time in US clubs in the 1990s that when I recognized a familiar song quietly humming in the background of an early scene, I started swaying in my seat in anticipation of hearing the song at full volume and becoming enveloped in a mass of lights and dancing bodies. But those few faint notes were all the film included; the characters end up walking away from the music in that scene, a metaphor for the film itself.

EdenCouple — A frustrated couple in a frustrating film

We all want to do the best we can for our families (well, most of us do) but Hansen-Løve seems to have zero affinity for the music, fashion, atmosphere, and dancing of the club scene in the ’90s and 2000s. Her idea of a great club scene is one in which the main character says of Daft Punk, “They’re killing it,” instead of letting us see, hear, and come to that conclusion ourselves. She should have steered her brother to a different director.

Additionally, the women in the life of the main character, who never gives us any reason to care about him, Paul (Félix de Givry) are, with one exception, nothing more than the interchangeable ciphers we’ve seen in every movie about straight, white, male protagonists. Each woman is ready to drop everything, either to accompany Paul on his US tour or clean up after him when he vomits. Greta Gerwig, in an English-speaking role, is the only one allowed ambitions of her own and she is on screen far too briefly.

Somewhere in this film of club scenes that are often tedious and indistinguishable from each other (Eden is 131 minutes long, but you’ll swear it lasts the same couple of decades the film covers) is the bare bones of a decent story: what it’s like to outlive the fashionability of one’s talents and tastes. After a disastrous gig, a drunk and drugged-out Paul is carried home from the club by his friends and as they pass an older woman on the staircase she says something about, “The youth of today.”

He retorts, “I’m 34!” That’s a pretty good line, but it’s the only one in this morass of a film.

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