To put it bluntly, I hated ‘Enough Said.’ The theme was trite, the characters were insufferable with their selfish pretensions, and there was a whole lot of fat shaming going on. Frankly, I’m surprised that Julia Louis-Dreyfus has been getting such high praise for starring in this turd, and I’m disappointed that I can’t be more supportive of a film written and directed by a woman: Nicole Holofcener.
Enough Said Movie Poster
Though guest writer Heather Brown wrote a Bitch Flicks review of Enough Said, I felt compelled to weigh in because my opinion of the film was the exact opposite. To put it bluntly, I hated this movie. The theme was trite, the characters were insufferable with their selfish pretensions, and there was a whole lot of fat shaming going on. Frankly, I’m surprised that Julia Louis-Dreyfus has been getting such high praise for starring in this turd, and I’m disappointed that I can’t be more supportive of a film written and directed by a woman: Nicole Holofcener.
Director Nicole Holofcener with stars Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Catherine Keener.
Though I’d love to congratulate a female writer and director (especially one who employed kickass actresses like Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Catherine Keener, and Toni Collette), the storyline itself fell flat. Enough Said is about a massage therapist who ends up dating a man while giving massages to his ex-wife. Once she learns of the connection, she continues to probe the ex for information about her new beau despite the moral ambiguity of building a false friendship and essentially spying on her new boyfriend. Doesn’t that sound like a snore-fest sitcom episode of misadventure where you know the guilty party will be found out in the end and then realize the error of their ways? Well, that’s pretty much what happens. The themes admirably touch on the desire to make smarter relationship choices, to understand why relationships fail, and to avoid committing to the wrong person. In the end, though, the film claims that relationships, human compatibility, and chemistry are all a mystery…that over-thinking it doesn’t do us any favors. Talk about making a really simple point seem complex enough to warrant an entire movie. It’s also a very privileged upper-crusty perspective. Breaking out of destructive or abusive relationship cycles does require a good deal of introspection, honest analysis of choices, and recognition of personal patterns as well as a willingness and commitment to change. This movie basically pisses on the reality of the lives of people who aren’t wealthy (or at least financially comfortable), straight, white people. It pisses on the people who’ve faced major life struggles, crises, and trauma.
Vapid friends and friendships.
Speaking of which, the cast of characters is astoundingly shallow and self-involved with boring upper class bored-people pseudo-problems. Main character Eva’s best friend, Sarah, obsessively rearranges the furniture in her house and can’t bring herself to fire her (of course) Latin maid. Sarah’s husband, Will, has the least interesting or complicated case of middle child syndrome ever; he is simply obsessed with fairness.
Eva probes Marianne for dirt on her new boyfriend (and Marianne’s ex-husband) Albert.
Eva’s new friend, Marianne, reveals that her marriage failed because she was annoyed by her husband Albert’s (played by James Gandolfini) annoying little habits and his weight.
Is there such a thing as oblivious daughter replacement syndrome? Eva’s got it.
Eva herself comes off as sweet at first, but we learn she hates most of her massage clients, is selfishly and obliviously trying to replace her daughter, Ellen, who is going off to college with one of Ellen’s friends. Plus, she cultivates a faux-friendship with Marianne just to get dirt on Albert, which she then uses to humiliate him at a dinner party.
Eva gets drunk and humiliates Albert, the only nice person in the film.
Eva’s behavior at that dinner party sealed the deal for me. I wanted her to get everything that was coming to her. I wanted the incredibly sweet, gentle, intelligent Albert to realize he was dating a horrible person and ditch her ass. Eva’s callous treatment of Albert doesn’t end with her general mockery of his inability to whisper or her distaste for the way he eats guacamole. No, she fat shames him in front of her friends. Fat shaming is never okay, but this seems particularly cruel because Albert sheepishly admitted to her beforehand that he has a complicated relationship with his weight and wants to lose some. She picked a very sensitive point of insecurity for Albert and exploited it because she was insecure about their relationship and about how people would think of her for dating a fat person. How is that ever okay or forgivable? If Eva had been a male character and Albert was female, would people be so quick to excuse that fat shaming? I hope not. Not only that, but Eva is ignorant. She is oblivious to the struggles of people who navigate the world with bodies different from her own, bodies of which the world doesn’t approve. How is her fat shaming any better than if she’d mocked Albert had he been a person of color, trans*, or differently abled? It is not different. She is an inexcusable bigot.
Eva is appalled by the way Albert eats popcorn when they go see a movie.
What it boils down to is that the character problems in Enough Said are a function of class. They say more about how much money and comfort these people have than about the state of the human condition. Movies that advocate for hateful bigots like Enough Said‘s fat shamers, even the ones who learn their lesson in the end (can you say Shallow Hal?), appeal to people who have “isms” of their own. Seeing a lead character bully another character due to their marginalized status (whatever it may be) allows the audience to vicariously indulge in that behavior and to vicariously feel solidarity in the character’s eventual contrition. It doesn’t necessarily help the audience inhabit the Othered, marginalized character.
Albert and Eva kiss
Another important point that I’ve been dying to make for years is: Understated performances from people who’re typically in comedies…does not good acting make. I’m so tired of people “breaking out” of their comedy typecast to reap countless praise for roles that simply didn’t have them laughing or cracking jokes or…emoting. I’m thinking of Jennifer Aniston in The Good Girl, almost every Jim Carrey, Bill Murray, or Adam Sandler “serious movie” ever made. Acting like a normal human being isn’t range. Don’t get me wrong, I think Julia Louis-Dreyfus is a stellar actress, but I don’t think bourgie, fat-shaming, linoleum Enough Said showed that.
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Amanda Rodriguez is an environmental activist living in Asheville, North Carolina. She holds a BA from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio and an MFA in fiction writing from Queens University in Charlotte, NC. She writes all about food and drinking games on her blog Booze and Baking. Fun fact: while living in Kyoto, Japan, her house was attacked by monkeys.
‘White Material’ is about Maria Vial, a white Frenchwoman striving, in the face of mounting hostilities, to secure the coffee plantation she manages. French troops are assigned to evacuate their nationals but she refuses to leave the land she considers home. Superbly played by Isabelle Huppert, Maria is a profoundly complex character. Whether hanging on to the back of a bus heaving with humanity, or applying red lipstick as the world around her goes up in flames, her tenacity is shown to be incontestable and remarkable.
Claire Denis has made remarkable films about both French colonial Africa and the immigrant experience in post-colonial France. In White Material (2009), Denis returns to the continent, to an unnamed, post-colonial, Francophone country in the throes of civil war. Interestingly, the script was co-written with French author Marie NDiaye. Although of different race, background and generation, both the writer and director have a close connection with French-speaking Africa and an intimate understanding of otherness: Parisian-born Denis grew up in colonial Senegal and Cameroon while Franco-Senegalese NDiaye was born and raised in France.
A singular presence
White Material is about Maria Vial, a white Frenchwoman striving, in the face of mounting hostilities, to secure the coffee plantation she manages. French troops are assigned to evacuate their nationals but she refuses to leave the land she considers home. Superbly played by Isabelle Huppert, Maria is a profoundly complex character. Whether hanging on to the back of a bus heaving with humanity, or applying red lipstick as the world around her goes up in flames, her tenacity is shown to be incontestable and remarkable. Maria is, however, a deluded single-minded woman. Her flaws are rooted in both her privileged white European background and singular personality. She may feel an attachment to African soil- indeed, she feels she belongs to the country- but we know that her struggle to save “her” coffee plantation shows supreme self-interest. She shows concern for a worker’s sick child but disregards the fears of those fleeing her plantation. Equally revealing is her willingness to let her employees stay in unpardonable living quarters.
Claire Denis
Maria’s dismissal of the concerns of others, particularly those of her ex-husband, André (Christopher Lambert), and refusal to acknowledge the dangers encircling her adolescent son, Manuel (Nicolas Duvauchelle), may strike the viewer as unrealistic. This capacity for denial is improbable but may also mask a racist assumption: namely, the belief that her white skin will protect her. The viewer is encouraged to read Maria’s commitment as a white fantasy of belonging and possession. This post-colonial white woman may have had a romantic relationship with the local mayor, and may be contemptuous of other whites, but her mindset is considerably colonial. Note that Denis does not judge her central character in an obvious way. Her approach is to observe rather than condemn. It is up to the individual viewer to interpret Maria.
The film is primarily about the position of white people in Africa. The expression “white material” refers both to white people and their possessions. It is wittily employed by the local radio DJ who provides sharp political comment on the conflict: “As for the white material, the party’s over. No more cocktails on shaded verandahs while we sweat water and blood. They’re deserting. They’re right to run scared.” Although Maria’s extraordinary energy and audacity are constantly highlighted, Denis appears to underline that her very presence on African soil is incongruous. This is accentuated by the striking image of her pale-skinned, red-haired character standing, all by herself, on a dirt road in a pale pink dress. Maria is presented as an idiosyncratic anachronism. As it did for the European colonial male in the past, Africa, for Maria, represents opportunity and romantic self-realization. She asks the Boxer, a wounded rebel leader holding up on the land (Isaach de Bankolé), “How could I show courage in France? It would be absurd…I’d slack off, get too comfortable.” Interestingly, it is the Frenchmen of White Material who embody white European decline. Her ex-husband is in debt to the mayor, Cherif, her father-in-law (Michel Subor) aged and ailing, and her son slothful and unstable. Degraded by child soldiers, the latter self-destructs in disturbing ways.
Co-writer Marie NDiaye
It is to both the child soldiers of the land–“the fearless young rascals”–and Marie that Denis dedicates her film. The former are portrayed as children. We see them play with toys in Maria’s home and we also see their throats slashed by government forces as they bathe and sleep. Although Maria’s commitment to the soil is emphasized, the director’s sympathies rest with the orphaned child soldiers. Their tragic fate is portrayed in an unsettling, heart-breaking manner.
The representation of African political unrest in White Material is troubling, however. The country in question is never named and nor is the viewer given a background to the war. This universalizes the African conflict experience and, unhelpfully, portrays the continent’s wars as incomprehensible, colossal nightmares. The filmmaker’s impressionistic, elliptical approach is problematic too. Africa still needs to be demystified in the Western popular imagination. The continent’s diversity is extraordinary–as the writer and filmmaker undoubtedly know–and, as any thoughtful student of modern African history knows, its wars are invariably politically engineered and highly calculated and organized.
Child soldier
The narrative approach of White Material also serves to generalize the contemporary European expatriate white experience in post-colonial Africa. It may seem obvious but the global audience needs to be reminded that there are many different kinds of expatriates across the continent–of all races and socio-economic backgrounds–as well as white expatriates–and citizens–who are not colonial in their mentality. White Material is specifically about privileged white people who still farm African land in a post-colonial French-speaking country. Further, one may question whether a family so singular can represent the French post-colonial mindset. Manuel’s fate is, to be honest, quite bizarre. The apocalyptic resolution befits a classical tragedy but it is frankly absurd. If it is meant as a searing condemnation of the colonial mentality–and I hope and trust it is- the message is lost in all the strangeness.
Troubled son
Razor-sharp remarks about European exploitation of black Africans ring true in White Material. The DJ mocks those “who rip us off and use our land to grow mediocre coffee that we’d never drink.” However, both the script and story lack clarity. What to make of Cherif’s remarks about Maria’s son, Manuel? He observes: “Extreme blondness brings bad luck. It cries out to be pillaged. Blue eyes are troublesome. This is his country. He was born here. But it doesn’t like him.” The remarks are striking but somewhat cryptic. They have political intent and resonance in the sense that they force Maria to confront her whiteness. She is reminded that her ancestors were not African. These somewhat obscure words also appear to indicate a belief that whiteness is somewhat demonized in the popular black African imagination. This is worrying as they arguably serve to reinforce Western associations of Africa with superstition. The character of the rebel leader, the Boxer, is, equally, opaque. Before finding refuge, The Boxer roams the scarred land on an abandoned horse like a kind of phantom. Suffering a stomach wound, he also appears to symbolize African stoicism. The portrait is, therefore, a somewhat mythic one.
Under pressure
White Material thankfully lacks the exoticism of Hollywood films about Africa. This is unsurprising, of course, considering the filmmaker’s background. Nor does it adopt a didactic approach. Although not without interesting ideas and striking images, it ultimately, though, does not provide great insight into African politics or conflict. Due perhaps to its obliqueness and opaqueness, White Material is neither sufficiently stirring nor powerful. It is an interesting rather than impressive work by the veteran director. What is unusual about White Material, however, is that it has a single-minded, risk-taking, ideologically dubious, deeply flawed complex female character at its center. What’s more, it elicits important discussions about white European femininity and entitlement.
Mark says he wants a girlfriend and that although he understands Rachel is a sex worker, he likes that Rachel makes him feel as though he has a girlfriend. That’s an important distinction that the trailer conveniently cut out. People with disabilities are not children who form childish emotional attachments from fantasies. We understand reality, but that doesn’t mean we don’t want to escape it from time to time like everyone else.
I was originally hesitant to give Scarlet Road a chance. As a general rule, I hate documentaries about sex and disability. Most of them are incredibly patronizing and spoonfeed the presumably able viewer flowery messages about compassion for the human experience that do little to actually help the audience understand disabled sexuality or the problematic consequences of assuming universal asexuality for people with disabilities. Plus, the trailer really overdoes it with the piano music, which is never a good sign.
That said, this was the first documentary on the subject that I genuinely enjoyed. At first, I was a little put off that Scarlet Road was subtitled “A Sex Worker’s Journey” because I felt that it was trying to pull focus away from the disability aspect of the film and emphasize the importance of able subjecthood. I was soon able to work past that when I realized that the film was tackling much more than disability alone. Director Catherine Scott chronicles the daily life of Rachel Wotton, an Australian sex worker who frequently works for the disabled, as she attempts to break down stigmas around sex work and disability. Rachel’s situation is especially unique because she lives in New South Wales, where sex work is decriminalized, and so she is able to advertise herself and others as any other business would.
Rachel could not have been a better spokesperson. She is fun, relaxed, and articulate. Rather than seizing the podium to “educate” the audience about the mechanics of sex with the disabled, she simply advocates for everyone’s right to sexual expression in a manner that’s casual and friendly, rather than appealing to sympathy and shaming able people for their social superiority complex. Rachel is the sort of person that you could imagine yourself sitting down having coffee with and when you’re dealing with allegedly taboo subjects, that sort of familiarity is vital. It’s easy to see why she excels in her profession. I never doubted that any of her passion wasn’t 100 percent genuine.
John enjoys a session with Rachel.
All of Rachel’s clients who were interviewed were disabled men. Some of them presented relatively familiar disability narratives. The first client, John, a man with multiple sclerosis, talked about nearly being driven to suicide by the degeneration resulting from his disorder. He says that working with Rachel “makes him feel like a real man again.” It’s also implied that his sessions with Rachel have even restored some of his functions or created some sort of new pathway for sexual response. Basically, masculinity is once again inextricably tied to regular sexual expression, but I won’t gripe too much because it isn’t framed in a way that compels us to pity him.
Rachel and Mark walk hand-in-hand as they go to lunch.
There’s also another guy Mark who has cerebral palsy (like me, holla!). Mark looks to be in his 30s and just chills with his parents. His parents are awesome and the three of them seem to love hanging out together. After so many stories of disability being a draining burden on everyone you love, it’s really refreshing to see a family that doesn’t bat an eye at the logistical complications. Mark’s mom gives him an allowance to pay for his sessions with Rachel. Mark’s mom is a cool lady. Mark says he wants a girlfriend and that although he understands Rachel is a sex worker, he likes that Rachel makes him feel as though he has a girlfriend. That’s an important distinction that the trailer conveniently cut out. People with disabilities are not children who form childish emotional attachments from fantasies. We understand reality, but that doesn’t mean we don’t want to escape it from time to time like everyone else. Mark and Rachel have lunch while Mark’s parents set up his bed, complete with flower petals and chocolate. Not only do they seem completely at ease, but they chuckle and chatter excitedly the whole time about how pleased they are for Mark. Can they adopt me? Mainly, this documentary convinced me that I need to move to Australia.
Displays of vaginal swabs taken from sex workers and non-sex workers.
I was surprised with the amount insight we were given into the sex work industry and the prejudice it faces. I was pleased that the scrutiny was taken off of disability for a while. Rachel helps run and facilitate an organization called Touching Base, which aims to educate sex workers on a variety of topics, including how to best assist disabled clients. She goes to a conference on sexology in Belgium. Even there, many participants express uneasiness or confusion about sex work. Really? I know it’s unfair to expect everyone to be an expert, but you would think that sex work would be a pretty big field in sexology. Rachel remarks on a poster that displays images of a vaginal swab of a sex worker versus that of a “normal” woman. She points out that images like these perpetuate the myth of sex workers as “vectors of disease.” The film makes it clear that people with disabilities face a lot of unfair hurdles and social judgment, but moments like these remind us that sex workers encounter similar biases. Both groups are routinely dehumanized to create an imagined sexual hierarchy of authenticity.
Rachel relaxes in bed with her boyfriend.
Nonetheless, Rachel thrives in her personal life. She has a boyfriend, Matt, who doesn’t seem to mind her choice in career at all. He’s just as laid-back as she is. When asked the obvious question of whether or not he gets jealous, Matt flatly shrugs it off. Interestingly, when asked about Rachel’s disabled clients, he says that he understands why it needs to happen because they don’t have opportunities. I held my breath at this point because it looked like he was teetering on emasculating the disabled men by insinuating that it wasn’t “real sex” to shore up his own masculinity, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t appear to perceive any of her clients, able-bodied or otherwise, as a threat to him or his relationship. He knows Rachel’s work is her work and understands the sexual economy in relation to the disabled as evening out (one aspect of) social inequality. You go, Matt. I just want to give everyone in the film high-fives.
Rachel on her graduation day.
Adding yet another element, Rachael graduates from university with a bachelor’s, having done her research in sex work. She wishes to pursue her PhD. I think that the unexpected fusion of these two areas reveals something very important about our cultural biases against sex workers and why we view them as unworthy of social respect. On one hand, academia is revered as taking quite a lot of skill to master. Supposedly, you have to be smart to earn a bachelor’s or PhD, and if you’re intelligent you must be someone worth talking to! On the other hand, sex workers are harshly stereotyped as often lazy criminals. Even when they’re marketed to be palatable to mainstream, like in Secret Diary of a Call Girl, escorts are portrayed decadent and opportunistic. In truth, there can be much more overlap between sex work and almost any other walk of life than most would care to admit.
Ultimately, the audience can recognize that there’s a great deal of intersectionality in the way that both sex workers and disabled people are policed and shamed about their sexual expression. Rachel reminds us that the two groups can work together to lessen collective stigma. Some of the issues that sex workers face directly impact the disabled community as well, such as the tendency to demonize or prosecute the client in areas where sex work is illegal. Rachel holds a banquet for Touching Base to celebrate the organization’s progress. Fun fact: she tells us that her current boyfriend, her three ex-boyfriends, her mother, plus several of her disabled clients and their families are there. No one even flinches. I love Australia. She talks at length about how much her disabled clients mean to her. After the preceding documentary, we can truly believe in her commitment to the cause.
The future of sex work and disability looks bright with Rachel Wotton at the helm.
Some clues for her motives are in the scenes between Abby and her spouse. They are affectionate and loving with each other, even when they’re alone, but the sex has gone out of their marriage. After a disastrous first encounter with an escort, we feel Abby’s ache of longing when a second “better” escort begins to touch her. Later we see Eleanor’s first client, a 23-year-old virgin, react to Eleanor’s touch in much the same way.
How many distinctive, acclaimed films about queer women can be released in American theaters at the same time? If we extrapolate from the actions of film distributors in the past few months, the answer is apparently: only one. Concussion was named one of the top 20 films of the year by Slate’sDana Stevens and was also named one of the top films of 2013 in Salon. Shortly after its premiere, at last year’s Sundance, The Weinstein Company acquired it for distribution. For most films that acquisition (and the later support from reviews in traditional media) would mean a national release, but the film had a very limited run in theaters this fall and never played a theater in my art-house-friendly city. The film is on Video On Demand, iTunes, and Google Play, but deserves much more attention than most films that never have a national theatrical run.
This film about a queer woman is, unlike Blue Is The Warmest Color, directed and written by a queer woman (Stacie Passon who is nominated for “Best First Feature” in the Independent Spirit Awards ), and in many aspects is the answer to those who dismissed Blue as a product of the male gaze. Instead of a teenage protagonist, the main character in Concussion, Abby (played by Robin Weigert: Andrew O’Hehir in Salonsummed up her performance as “OMFG”), is a 40-something, stay-at-home Mom, married to another woman and living in the suburbs.
When her son accidentally hits her in the face with a baseball, we see the confusion and blood in the family car ride to the hospital, as she moans to no one in particular, “I don’t want this. I don’t want this. I don’t want this.”
In the ER Abby says she is going back to work in the city (and that she really means it this time). Abby doesn’t need to work for money: her spouse, Kate, is a divorce attorney, kept busy by the dissatisfied wives in their social circle. We see the wives’ well-maintained bodies in slow motion, at the beginning of the film, in spin and yoga classes as David Bowie sings on the soundtrack, “Oh you pretty things…”
Passon knows this world well She lives in the town (Montclair) Abby does. She is married to a woman and has children, one of whom accidentally hit her in the face with a baseball. The parallels between her life and Abby’s may be why the character and setting seem so fully realized.
Abby for the most part blends in with her straight women friends but we see she’s different from them–and not just in her orientation. She reads books while she vacuums. When a friend is circulating a “new motherhood” survey for an article in a parenting magazine, Abby writes of dreams in which she sticks her then newborn son in the microwave–and other dreams in which she and her son are married. She writes, “My poor baby, I didn’t know whether to kill him, fuck him, or eat him.”
At times Abby’s queerness does separate her from the other women. When Abby mentions to her friend that one of the group of women they work out with is “cute,” the friend (played by Janel Maloney) reproaches Abby, “She’s not a lesbian!”
Abby and the contractor in the loft
Abby starts work with a contractor to refurbish a city loft. As they transform the apartment, she transforms too, first hiring women to have sex with her and then working out of the loft as a high-priced escort, “Eleanor,” whose clients are all women.
A woman character turning to sex work for reasons other than money is usually a male artist’s conceit, as in Luis Buñuel’s great Belle de Jour, which features stunning, beautifully dressed, doctor’s wife, Catherine Deneuve, working in a brothel while her handsome, attentive (but clueless) husband sees his patients.In women’s memoirs of sex work (like Michelle Tea’s Rent Girl) the money is the point of the work (as it is with most work).
A sex worker character whose clients are all women (when the vast majority of sex work clients are men) is also usually the creation of a straight male artist–and is usually a male character so the work avoids any explicit same-sex scenes.
Abby’s second encounter with an escort
Perhaps because Concussion turns that last trope on its head (or perhaps because New York is a big city that can cater to many kinds of tastes) we accept the conceit of a woman over 40 seeing women clients (for $800 a session) every day. The queer women we see in sexual situations in Concussion are not cut from the same Playboy-ready cloth as the two women in Blue: one client is fat, another is an obvious real-life survivor of breast cancer and some of her clients, like Eleanor herself, are nowhere near their 20s anymore.
Robin Weigert doesn’t have a Barbie Doll face or a porn model’s body, but does have a passing resemblance to the young Ellen Barkin. Weigert exudes the same confidence and sexiness–reminding us those two qualities are often one and the same.
Concussion has a scene similar to one in Blue in which a straight man interrogates a queer woman about her sexuality. But because Abby is in her 40s, the mocking tone she takes with him is completely different from what we hear from the 20-something main character in Blue, Adele.
The female gaze?
In Concussion are we seeing the female gaze? Well, we’re definitely seeing one woman’s gaze, that of Passon. The sex scenes in Concussion, unlike Blue, don’t seem like outtakes from an amateur porn video, but flow from the other nonsexual encounters in the film. (Concussion’s expert cinematographer is David Kruta.) We also don’t see full frontal nudity from any of the actresses, and although we see the bare breasts of some of Eleanor’s clients, we never see hers. Eleanor/ Abby is both a psychological and corporeal enigma to us.
Some clues for her motives are in the scenes between Abby and her spouse. They are affectionate and loving with each other, even when they’re alone, but the sex has gone out of their marriage. After a disastrous first encounter with an escort, we feel Abby’s ache of longing when a second “better” escort begins to touch her. Later we see Eleanor’s first client, a 23-year-old virgin, react to Eleanor’s touch in much the same way.
Abby and her spouse
In the city we see Abby in punk rock t-shirts (vintage Blondie and the now-defunct C.B.G.B) and boyshort underwear and in the suburbs we see her fitting in with her friends in yoga pants and an expensive down-filled jacket. At a suburban dinner party the guests talk about their days hanging out in pre-gentrified downtown New York clubs, Squeezebox and The Limelight, and we realize yes, many of the club kids of the 90s have become comfortable, suburban Moms and Dads.
The loft is decorated with posters for Louise Bourgeois and The Guerrilla Girls and has Diet For a New America on the bookshelf, distinct touches some of us in the audience recognize from our own living spaces. In the dialogue we hear echoes of conversations we too have had (or overheard) at parties: “I finally took the Myers-Briggs.” Writers of satire often seem to want their audience to hate the people, especially the women, they create (the Annette Bening character in American Beautyis just one example). Passon’s satire is much trickier–and kinder. She wants us to recognize these people. She wants us to recognize ourselves in them.
The film Passon says inspired Concussion is from the 1970s: Jeanne Dielman.., (and is also written and directed by a queer woman, Chantal Akerman).In Concussion, asin Dielman, we see the first signs of the housewife/sex-worker protagonist starting to unravel when she fails to stick to her usual daily routine: Abby misses picking up the kids after school for the first time in six years.Unlike Dielman, Passon’s film captures the monotony of domestic tasks, but doesn’t ask the audience to endure that boredom themselves.
Although Concussion was made before queer marriage became legal in New Jersey, the film brings up some interesting questions about the queer community’s quest for “equality.” What if we become just as disenchanted with being soccer Moms as straight women sometimes do? What then? At the end Abby throws herself into a home renovation project, the way so many of our married friends, straight and queer do, and we marvel at the mystery of other people’s marriages, not just in the film, but all around us.
Films like ‘Llewyn Davis’ make me particularly grateful for documentaries. Sini Anderson’s ‘The Punk Singer’ (disclaimer: I know Anderson slightly and produced one of her shows when she was with Sister Spit in the ’90s) is all about music and politics: feminism and women, while focusing on one person, Kathleen Hanna, formerly of the bands Bikini Kill, Le Tigre and current front-woman of The Julie Ruin.
Oscar Isaac as Llewyn Davis
Inside Llewyn Davismade many critics’ top ten lists this year, and a lot of people are rooting for the film this awards season. I’m not one of them. I see enough movies that one more about a white guy (Oscar Isaac, who plays the eponymous role, is Latino, but the script makes sure to establish the character is white) who is also an “asshole” as Carey Mulligan (unrecognizable in long, black, Beatnik hair and bangs: she plays fellow folksinger Jean) hisses throughout the film, should not faze me. The songs and their performances are as pretty and forgettable as the presence of Justin Timberlake, again foisted on an indifferent movie-going public, this time playing Jean’s husband and musical partner Jim. So why did this film piss me off so much?
Llewyn Davis and most of the folk performers he sees and interacts with are white guys (Mulligan is one of two women we see onstage. Davis heckles the second.) We see two people of color in the film: an African American man, who is asked to clean up shit in a nursing home (really) and an Asian American woman who is the butt of the joke at a dinner party. In most mainstream films we’ve become so inured to seeing the world through white-guy (asshole or not) eyes that we’ve mistaken their stories for the “true” and “real” stories of the time. But in 1961, when the film takes place, the rising superstar on the folk coffeehouse scene was a young Latina named Joan Baez, whose own fame gave a boost to the career of her-then boyfriend Bob Dylan (whose character has a cameo appearance toward the end of the film).
Baez wasn’t an anomaly. Martin Luther King called Odetta “the queen of American folk music” when she, along with Baez, played at The March On Washington in 1963. The following song is from a live album Odetta recorded in Carnegie Hall just before the time the events of the film take place.
In a year that has seen a breakthrough of African American directors making films about African Americans, some prominent Black writers have expressed discomfort with the stream of movies that show Black people being tortured and killed instead of just living their lives. Editing people of color out of a history, like that of Greenwich Village folk scene in the 1960s, in which they had a prominent role, but were neither tortured nor killed, does not help this problem.
I don’t expect strict historical accuracy from a period film, but I would like it to at least resemble the place and time it depicts– and in more than just its album covers, clothes and hazy, smoke-filled interiors. As the adage about musical theater goes, “the audience doesn’t go out humming the scenery.” The absence in the film of performers of color belies the history of folk music in New York City, where in the decades before the sixties, performers like Josh White and Lead Belly popularized the genre.
Those performers didn’t just introduce the songs to the public, they directly influenced the performers who came after them: Pete Seeger gave credit to Lead Belly for his guitar playing style, which he then taught on record to fledgling folkies. Dave Van Ronk, whose posthumously published autobiography provides the loose basis for the script also cited gospel and blues as his musical inspiration. That influence is apparent in Van Ronk’s songs, which are a world away from the whiter-than white, radio-ready music we hear in the film. Oscar Isaac, who was a musician before he was an actor (he sings and plays well and has a striking screen presence in spite of the script) has said in interviews that his own style is more blues-influenced but that the filmmakers (and the music producer of the film, T Bone Burnett, who previously worked with the Coen brothers on the hit soundtrack for O Brother, Where Art Thou) wanted the music to take a different direction.
Perhaps in part because of the African American influence even white folk performers from the coffeehouse scene were outspoken supporters of civil rights and other “progressive” (at the time) causes. The March On Washington featured not just Baez and Odetta, but Bob Dylan and Peter, Paul and Mary. The civil rights movement for many young people (including, most famously, Dylan and Baez) led to the antiwar movement, which then, for many women, led to the feminist movement. Perhaps the most infuriating thing about Inside Llewyn Davis ishow rabidly (and anachronistically) apolitical it is. Because Black people barely exist in its universe, no one concerns themselves with civil rights. Even though one of the folk performers is a soldier in uniform who hitchhikes from his base every weekend to perform in the coffeehouses (the character is based on singer-songwriter Tom Paxton), no one (except that character himself) is antiwar.
The song from the film most likely to stay with audience members (for better or worse) is “Please Mr. Kennedy” in which the singer pleads that he doesn’t want to go “to outer space”. The song it’s based on is a doo-wop record released in 1962 in which the singer asks that Kennedy not send him to Vietnam.
In its portrayal of the women on the folk scene, the film borders on science fiction. Jean tells Llewyn that she would like to have a baby with Jim and move to the suburbs when any number of women, (like Joyce Johnson and Hettie Jones) who were in Greenwich Village at the time have written in detail that they (and the other women they knew) went to Greenwich Village to escape conventional, suburban family life. Had the Coen brothers bothered to read any accounts from women who had abortions when the procedure was still against the law, they would, as Van Ronk’s ex-wife Terri Thal’s excellent counterpoint notes, not have portrayed abortion as a matter-of-fact sideline for a licensed OB-GYN with a nice, clean, airy office and waiting room. As if the film weren’t dismissive enough of women performers, the script also posits that Jean has to fuck a sleazy club owner to get a gig, which Thal calls bullshit and I call misogyny– since it presents as fact the oldest dismissal of any woman’s accomplishments: “She slept her way to the top.”
Films like Llewyn Davis make me particularly grateful for documentaries. Sini Anderson’s The Punk Singer (disclaimer: I know Anderson slightly and produced one of her shows when she was with Sister Spit in the ’90s) is all about music and politics: feminism and women, while focusing on one person, Kathleen Hanna, formerly of the bands Bikini Kill, Le Tigre and current front-woman of The Julie Ruin.
Kathleen Hanna
The film spotlights the neglected history of the Riot Grrrl movement through Hanna’s trajectory. We see through interviews and video of live performances, what Hanna’s music meant to her fans (the best of these interviews are with other musicians like Corin Tucker of Sleater-Kinney and Beastie Boy Adam Horovitz, Hanna’s husband, who gushes about her work in the way every artist wants her partner to) and to the culture. As someone who was not eighteen when Bikini Kill were on the scene I never saw them live, but the clips in the film are electrifying. Hanna is every bit the badass the fans remember, whether she is singing and dancing her way across the stage wearing a skimpy top and “Slut” written across her abdomen or when she commands rowdy young men in the audience (or as she calls them “fuckers”) to stand in the back so women can be safe in the front (or even sit on the stage to escape harm). At that time post-punk shows were an excellent place to get a head-injury: I remember the band L7 had to stop playing and the house lights in the club went up while we in the audience waited for an ambulance to come for someone who fell (or was hit) while crowd-surfing.
Hanna in the earliest days of Bikini Kill
Every movement likes to think of itself as completely original, and Riot Grrrl is no different, but I would have liked to see and hear more about Hanna’s feminist musical influences and antecedents. I was eighteen during the first wave of post-punk bands and remember well that many of them (and the original punk bands) included women: Siouxsie Sioux, Poly Styrene, Penelope Houston, Pauline Black, hell, even the Go-Go’s started as a punk band. And some of those artists were unequivocal feminists: Styrene said she would shave her head if one more journalist called her a “sex symbol” and then followed through. The post punk Au Pairs were singing about feminist issues a good decade before the Riot Grrrl scene.
Hanna wrote compellingly about Styrene when she died and what I missed most in the film was Hanna’s voice as a writer (rather than an interview subject). Hanna began as a spoken-word artist, so maybe she wouldn’t have been listening to most of the music I’ve listed, though she must have heard, and was perhaps influenced by that other spoken-word artist turned singer: Patti Smith.
The film includes a video of a feminist community meeting Bikini Kill holds when they move from Olympia, Washington to Washington D.C. and we see the only two Black women (besides a gratuitous inclusion of a Rebecca Walker Third Wave feminism clip) in the film, which reminds us that the problems white feminists have in making room for Black women and intersectionality have been with us for a while now.
I was a fan of the band Hanna formed after Bikini Kill broke up, Le Tigre, and Hanna’s description of their songs as music they would make if “everything were great” rings true. I saw them live very early on, when Sadie Benning was still part of the trio, before JD Samson joined: the film never mentions Benning, even though she was a founding member. Hanna had a long intro to one of the songs that instead of being the embarrassing ramble I expected was a sweet story about the neighbors who made her feel safe during her troubled childhood. Perhaps Hanna’s between-song patter is how she keeps in touch with her spoken-word roots.
I also wish the film addressed Le Tigre’s participation in The Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, which many in the queer community and beyond have boycotted for years because the Fest excludes trans women. The band members’ silence on the issue isn’t consistent with their message of inclusion.
After years of chronic illness Hanna has started another band The Julie Ruin (whom we see perform in the last scene of the film). They just released a new record, and even though it’s front-woman is now 45, their songs are some of the best things I’ve heard on college radio. Viva The Punk Singer !
On Aug. 21, 2010, 14-year-old Laura Dekker sailed out of Den Osse, Netherlands for a two-year circumnavigation of the world, alone. By the time she finished her journey, on Jan. 21, 2012, at the age of only 16, Dekker would be the youngest person to ever sail solo around the world. Documentary ‘Maidentrip’ chronicles Laura’s voyage. It’s an emotional coming-of-age story, set as a love letter to the ocean and the transformative experience of encountering a larger world.
On Aug. 21, 2010, 14-year-old Laura Dekker sailed out of Den Osse, Netherlands for a two-year circumnavigation of the world, alone. By the time she finished her journey, on Jan. 21, 2012, at the age of only 16, Dekker would be the youngest person to ever sail solo around the world.
Following her journey was documentary filmmaker, Jillian Schlesinger; from film shot while meeting with Dekker at various points in the trip, and sea-voyage scenes filmed by Dekker’s hand-held camera, Schlesinger has produced an emotional coming-of-age story, set as a love letter to the ocean and the transformative experience of encountering a larger world.
Since there were two Bitch Flicks’ staff vying for the opportunity to review Maidentrip, which premieres Friday, Jan. 17, in New York City, writers Rachel Redfern and Megan Kearns teamed up to produce a special conversation-based review, sharing their reactions to the award-winning documentary.
Rachel: Well first of all, this movie was fantastic! It really hit me on a personal level, since I just returned for two years living abroad in South Korea, and I remember what it was like to really push myself outside of my comfort zone. Watching the changes that Laura goes through and her feelings of loneliness and wonder, it made me relive a lot of my own experiences. But after watching the film, I wanted to go on an adventure again, to leave and challenge myself. Which to me means that it’s a powerful and dynamic film, when it can force audiences to identify with the protagonist, evaluate their own emotions, and then motivate them.
Megan: Yes, yes, a thousand times yes!! I completely agree with you. I thought Maidentrip was fantastic too. The film really struck a chord with me on multiple levels. I thought it was incredible to be able to view her journey through her perspective, to see the world through her eyes. It’s rare for a film to show us a woman or girl’s perspective throughout. I was also impressed by her determination and resolve.
Megan: Laura wasn’t doing this for fame or notoriety or money, but that she had a dream as a child that she was determined to fulfill. That she wanted to go after something so passionately. I’ve always wanted to travel the world, but due to finances or school or work, I’ve never been able to travel as much I yearn to. So it was wonderful for her to seize the moment and just do it. I also loved that she didn’t like school because she didn’t like people telling her what to do!
Rachel: Yes, I was blown away by her maturity and how grounded she was, she’s obviously an incredibly mature and independent young woman
Megan: Yes! We need to see more independent young woman like Laura on-screen. It’s so fascinating how she was far more interested in exploring, meeting new people, trying new things, seeing new places.And how comfortable she was with herself and with being alone, yet when she met people, she had these deep connections.
Rachel: That speaks a lot to her personality I think, to be so comfortable disembarking from her boat at the age of 14 and wandering around a country by herself.
Megan: She rejected the narrative of what she’s “supposed to do.” And I love that. It was intriguing to see her journey. It was a moving love letter to travel and to sailing.
Rachel: I absolutely agree. In fact, I thought that the film did a beautiful job of showing the wonder and beauty of sailing, as well as the great community around sailing. The film also did a great job of showing how skilled Laura is as a sailor and her obvious love of sailing. I loved that Laura confesses that only Guppy, her boat, feels like home, but it could also be taken as a criticism of her home life and relationship with her parents
Megan: I also thought it was interesting when she says that true freedom is to not have attachments. It seems like Laura became increasingly comfortable on her own away from people. She seemed to crave solitude.
Rachel: I was really struck by Laura’s development, as she came into herself and became a more private person–obviously not wanting to deal with other people, and loving the moments when she was just alone on her boat. That was one thing I loved about the film was that it was able to really show Laura’s changes; it’s fantastic to be able to see someone grow up in a two hour film.
Megan: Yes, me too! That typically only happens in the arc of a TV series. Not a two-hour movie. AND we typically only see coming-of-age stories with men/boys. Not women/girls.
Rachel: Yes, I found it refreshing! I was really stunned that Schlesinger was able to show so much or Laura’s self-assurance and confidence as the trip progresses. I just felt that it painted a whole and complete picture of an individual really coming of age. And, maybe a weird side note, but I love that we see Laura physically change (her face, she grows up, and dyes her hair).
Megan: That’s a fantastic point! I couldn’t believe that so much was shown, revealed…yet it felt so expansive and not rushed at all. The film really breathed. Although sometimes, with my short attention span, I wanted things to hurry up. But I was so glad that they didn’t. The film really unfolded beautifully. I really felt that I want on this emotional and physical journey with Laura. It’s as if her journey at sea was a physical manifestation of her moving through the liminal stages of childhood/adolescence and into adulthood.
Laura Dekker on the deck of “Guppy”
Rachel: What did you feel that you gained the most from the film?
Megan: I’m glad you asked! I think I’d have to say the most I gained was to stop wasting time or making excuses and go after what you want. To pursue your dreams, whatever they may be. To not give a shit about people’s opinions. To chart your own course. Sometimes we as adults get bogged down in our day-to-day duties and responsibilities. We forget what matters most to us. We put our dreams on the back burner.
What did you gain most from the film?
Rachel: Something similar to you I think; I gained a desire to travel/go abroad again. I guess that it reaffirmed my belief in the power of experiences to change us in really profound ways and the need to be proactive in our lives and really push and challenge ourselves. And challenging yourself can be so difficult, that it seems daunting and overwhelming sometimes. For instance, in the film, when speaking about a difficult time in her journey, her first few weeks alone on the first big ocean crossing, Laura said, “I just couldn’t get any food down, I just feel really strange.” I kept thinking about my own experiences living abroad, and how it can be so expanding, but also terrifying. But then, only a few minutes later, we see her crying as a group of dolphins play alongside her boat and she confesses to the camera how much they mean to her, as company, and as a reminder of the beauty of the world.
Rachel: Laura’s story is an intense one, and has garnered a lot of media attention. It’s great that they are recognizing the accomplishment of this incredible young woman. And in conjunction with that, it was interesting when Laura talked about the two other young woman who tried to do the “Not Stop Around The World” records: Jessica from Australia and Abby from America. Did you notice all three were women? I was curious, if there were also a lot of young men trying to do the same thing?
Megan: Yes, I DID notice that too!
Rachel: I think that it’s telling that there are brave young women so willing, and so focused on their goals, that they’re out there doing these kinds of things.
Megan: Perhaps there’s this notion of getting out there because society so often dictates to women what they can and can’t do. It’s a form of rebellion. A revolutionary act. Maybe even on a subconscious level?
Rachel: Interesting idea. What did you think of the cinematography of the movie? Especially since half of the film was hand-held footage from Laura herself?
Megan: I thought it was stunning, breathtaking. I really felt the majesty and beauty of nature. And I liked that the majority of the footage was shot by Laura. Sure, some of it was choppy. But I thought that added to its charm. It’s a little rough around the edges. But then the camera pans on this exquisite sunset. Seeing the waves crash against the boat in the storm, the dolphins swimming beside the boat. It made me feel like I was right there alongside her. Also, I thought the score was haunting and beautiful, punctuating the story perfectly.
Rachel: Yes, it made me feel more involved in the film, the traveling and the sailing with the camera rocking around; probably just one more reason that the movie was so powerful. I also thought it was a tribute to Jillian as a filmmaker that she was able to effectively use different elements of storytelling to accentuate Laura’s youth, and the fact that she is searching for herself, her place in the world, and her independence. Yet, all of this is couched within the framework of Laura’s love of sailing. I love how this film was able to speak to both of us on such a personal level, and really connected with us in our past experiences.
Laura Dekker and her home, “Guppy”
Megan: But now you’ve got me thinking… Documentary films are so tricky. Because I’m thinking of the film, framing it as a story, despite it being a true one. Documentaries always have a bias, a perspective that the filmmaker wants you to see. They’re manipulative. Not necessarily in a bad way, but they’re trying to make you see/feel something specific.
Rachel: I think that’s a great point. What perspective/bias do you think Jillian was trying to portray?
Megan: Hmmm…I think she was trying to convey a coming-of-age story. That here’s this incredibly brave, independent, mature, thoughtful young women. Setting out to achieve her dream but also discovering more about herself along the way. There’s this aura of anything is possible.
Rachel: I love that the film brought up Laura’s very conflicted relationship with the press, touching on the fact that the Dutch government tried to stop Laura’s journey, and even have her removed from her father’s custody, especially since Laura never wanted that kind of notoriety for her trip.
Megan: YES. But it’s so interesting that she has a film made about her, yet she values her privacy and doesn’t like journalists with their prying questions.
Rachel: I would be very interested to know how Julian (the director) was able to convince Laura and her father to participate in the project. As a little aside though…I did some research yesterday and found a few articles stating that Laura Dekker is not happy with the film and isn’t supporting it anymore. Which is a very interesting continuation of Laura’s distrust of the media.
Megan: Oh wow.
Rachel: But apparently Schlesinger (the director) has been fantastic about Laura’s refusal to support the film
“Jillian Schlesinger, to her credit, doesn’t seem to be taking Laura’s disapproval too personally. ‘We prefer to respect Laura’s privacy and to let her speak for herself on the matter as much or as little as she’d like to at this time.'”
Rachel: I suppose it would be hard for me to watch a story of my own life journey from kid into adult….To see my mistakes, even if it did end up in a positive place?
Megan: While of course Jillian edited the film and scored it, it’s still a majority of Laura’s footage which I think makes it different than most other documentaries. Perhaps this is naive, but I feel like it makes it a “purer” story. Truer to the source.
Rachel: Especially since it’s all Laura, there are no outside influences going on there.
Megan: You raise a great point about how hard it must be for Laura to watch this, to see her triumphs but also her mistakes, her pain and her growth. What do you think about the film’s commentary on the passage of time?
Rachel: Oh, great question! Because it does cover a full two years in only two hours, I think that it can sometimes be easy to forget just how long two years is, and they end up shortening six weeks at sea into five minutes of footage. Perhaps, whether intentional or not, the film really underscores memory of time, only choosing the parts we consider the most important or significant to remember, when in reality, there might be more to the story. Things that could have been important to someone else, but that we don’t always remember or see or hear about. What do you think that the film is saying about time?
Megan: I agree with you. Also, I thought it was interesting that Laura says, “After 30 days [at sea], time doesn’t exist any more. It was the best feeling…I made peace with it. I was just there, with nature.” That was really powerful. To slow down. To not obsess over the past or worry about the future, but to really live in the moment.
Megan: I know we already talked about the media. But I thought it was interesting and awful to see all the headlines and descriptions of Laura in the media before her voyage. That she was “crazy” and “unstable.” I wonder, would they have said the same thing about a boy her age?
Rachel: The horrific things people were saying about her! Do you remember that one person said, “I hope she sinks” And I just thought, “Really? I mean, really? You thought that was OK to say? Wishing for someone else’s death?!” I was shocked. Hmmm, I’m not sure that they would have, I think they would have been more willing to let him go ahead with the trip.
Megan: Yes, I remember her saying that! That’s disgusting. Why would you wish for someone’s death?! And the media would never say that about a boy. They might say reckless or impetuous or something like that. But not “crazy” or “unstable.”
Rachel: That is one thing I’ve noticed, as a traveler and a woman, People are ALWAYS telling me, “But do you feel safe?” “Don’t you think it would be better to travel with a group?” I think people definitely have this perception that women maybe shouldn’t be traveling alone, because it’s too dangerous, and because of this, many women stop themselves. And while yes, we can’t ignore that it can be more dangerous as a woman, I think it’s unfortunate that so many women stop themselves from opportunities, or are stopped by others, because of fear.
I love that Maidentrip is about a girl taking control of her life and doing what she needs to do.
Rachel: But all that said, would I allow my 14-year-daughter do what Laura did? Probably not. And I think it is a valid point, and one that is underscored by Laura’s own admissions, she didn’t have the best relationship with her parents, making her an incredibly self-assured and independent young woman
Though, I wonder, while I don’t think many 14-year-olds would be ready to leave their parents and go off into the world, history is full of people stepping up at that age and doing incredible things.
Megan: You raise a fantastic point. I wouldn’t let my daughter (if I had one) go on a trip alone at that age. Especially sailing, when there’s so much that can go wrong. But then I think, you can’t live your life in fear. I’m torn. But yes, her loving yet strained relationship with her parents had to have played a role.
Rachel: I think people are far more capable than we give them credit for and Maidentrip is definitely a testament to the human ability to adjust itself to its environment.
One thing, the sea is always thought of as a woman (as is mother nature), perhaps it’s significant that a girl who had a very sad relationship with her mother, would have this typically female symbol (the ocean) guiding her into womanhood.
Megan: YES! And boats are named after women. That definitely makes the film even more powerful on a symbolic gender level.
Rachel: Yes! It becomes an incredibly female film, centered in the female experience.
Megan: Yes, it illustrates Laura’s perseverance, determination and resolve. What a survivor. I also love when Laura says, “There were all these people who looked at me like it was impossible that I had come in with this weather. And then as I finally started to warm up again and to think straight, I realized that wow, that’s actually pretty badass.” Such a powerful declaration — her realization of her own power and agency. She’s not shy or humble or timid about it. She embraces it.
Rachel: It was definitely a moment of self-realization, for her to be able to see that in herself. How powerful for us, and the audience, especially when you think that “sailor” stories always seem to be male ones, (pirates, etc…).
Megan: You’re SO right! Almost all sailor stories — and survival stories in general — are told from a male perspective. Like All is Lost, Castaway, and Captain Phillips.
Rachel: Or Life of Pi and Liam Neesen’s The Grey.
Megan: That’s one of the reasons why I love Gravity. It’s important to see women survivors and explorers too.
Rachel: Yes! And I just thought, “I want more women to have that kind of experience!!!”
Megan: YES! Exactly!! I felt that too.
Rachel: Maybe that’s the true power/message of the film? Hopefully that it could make women (and men) realize that inner ability.
Megan: Laura will never stop searching, never stop being herself. I want every woman to recognize and embrace her inner strength and power.
Rachel Redfern is a Staff Writer at Bitch Flicks. She is a traveler and teacher who spent the last few years living in Asia. Now back in her native California, she focuses on writing about media, culture, and feminism. She writes for Policy Mic and tweets at @RachelRedfern2.
Too many times, films singularly depict abortions as religious immoral decisions or heavy emotional burdens, but such a topic does not always have to be heavy hitting and controversial.
In the saccharine land of rom coms, plots can be trite, characters undefined and sappy sweet endings all too predictable for most movie-goers. And the worst part is that rom coms are usually geared toward women. No one wants to watch the same movies with the same formulas. If you’re like me, you’ve been looking for something different, endearing, and more in touch with reality.
That’s where Obvious Child (2014), by writer and director Gillian Robespierre, comes in. Unlike rom coms centered around getting the boy or choosing love, Obvious Child is about what a woman chooses for herself–in this case, an abortion. It follows Brooklyn comedian Donna Stern (Jenny Slate), who “gets dumped, fired, and pregnant just in time for the worst/best Valentine’s Day of her life.” The best part about the film’s description is that it focuses on the nature of Donna’s choice and how after everything, she ends up all right.
With the help of Robespierre’s friends and coworkers, Anna Bean and Karen Maine, they wrote and produced a short film version in 2009. Robespierre said, “We were frustrated by the limited representations of young women’s experience with pregnancy, let alone growing up. We were waiting to see a more honest film, or at least, a story that was closer to many of the stories we knew.” Too many times, films singularly depict abortions as religious immoral decisions or heavy emotional burdens, but such a topic does not always have to be heavy hitting and controversial.
What I loved about the idea to this film (and why I chose to donate to it) is how imperative it is to see women’s issues addressed in different ways–with humor and wit. I also loved the women power behind this film, something we seldom see. Kathryn Bigelow is not the only female director tackling hard issues in interesting ways.
The film has been accepted to the upcoming Sundance Film Festival, but it still needs financial support to be complete (donations support final touches and distribution). It is currently seeking funding on Kickstarter. $10 gets you an online screening of the original short film. It’s a few thousand dollars short and just has 11 days to go! Sometimes, women have to go to extra lengths to support their sisters and get better pop culture representation. Ladies, give the gift that will give back to yourself! The best part is that you can do this from the comfort of your own home. In a time when abortion rights and access become increasingly limited in the United States, sometimes it’s movies like Obvious Child that can entertain us, but also send an important message that when it comes to abortion, whatever we choose, we’ll be all right.
Read Bitch Flicks’ review of the original short film here.
_____________________________________ Katrina Majkut is the founder and writer of the website TheFeministBride.com. As a “wedding anthropologist,” she examines how weddings and relationships are influenced by history, pop culture and the media. Her goal is to bring to light the inherent gender inequality issues that couples may not even be aware of within wedding traditions and the wedding “industry,” and to start dialogue around solutions that empower women to take positive action toward equality in their relationships and marriages.
What is clear is that Campion is interested in the strategies women use to survive in patriarchy. But she is not only interested in the fate of women. She is also interested in how girl-children negotiate their way in a male-dominated world. It is through Ada’s daughter as well as Ada herself that Campion explores the feminine condition in the 19th century. Her rich, multi-layered characterization of Flora is, in fact, one of the most remarkable features of The Piano. She is as interesting and compelling as the adult characters and, arguably, the most convincing. The little girl also has huge symbolic and dramatic importance. This is, of course, unusual in cinema. There are relatively few films where a girl plays such a significant, pivotal role.
The Piano (1993)
Written by Rachael Johnson as part of our theme week on Child and Teenage Girl Protagonists.
It has been 20 years since its release, but The Piano has lost none of its unsettling power. An intense, provocative tale of an “imported” Scottish bride in 19th century colonial New Zealand, Jane Campion’s finest film still stimulates debate about the nature of female identity and sexuality in patriarchy. Both written and directed by the New Zealand filmmaker, The Piano won the Palme d’Or at the 1993 Cannes film festival and picked up three Academy awards at the 1994 ceremony. Holly Hunter won the Best Actress Oscar for her memorable performance as the bride, Ada McGrath, and Jane Campion was awarded Best Original Screenplay. There was another award that The Piano took home that night–that of Best Supporting Actress. Anna Paquin won the prize for her role as Ada’s young daughter, Flora McGrath. The award was seen as unexpected by many pundits. Paquin plays a child of 9 or 10 and she was only 11 when she won the Oscar. It should not, however, have been that surprising to anyone who had seen the film. Flora is a richly complex as well as hugely important character in the story. As for Paquin’s performance, it is, simply, exceptional. Roger Ebert rightly called it “one of the most extraordinary examples of a child’s acting in movie history.”
Let’s first take a closer look at the story and central characters of this original Victorian tale. From the very start, its heroine is portrayed as a remarkable, enigmatic soul. Ada McGrath is a mute widow whose identity is clearly bound up with her beloved piano. The most important person in her life is her spirited, headstrong daughter. Mother and child are exceptionally close. They are given no back-story. Their past remains a mystery. Although Flora expresses interest in learning about her father, she does not, it seems, even know his name. Neither does the audience. At the very beginning of The Piano, we see Ada married off by her father to Alistair Stuart (Sam Neil), a colonial frontiersman in New Zealand. It is manifest from the moment she arrives on the expansive shores of that beautiful land that Ada will never accept Stuart as her husband. When he refuses to transport her piano to his home, she protests spiritedly (Flora interprets Ada’s sign language) and continues to express her discontent. It is also obvious that Stuart, a staid Victorian gentleman with a severely limited imagination, will never understand Ada. Flora, for her part, declares that she will not accept him as her father.
Mother and child
Another man enters Ada’s life, a neighbor and overseer called George Baines (Harvey Keitel). Illiterate, earthy and sexual, he is characterized as the very opposite of the conservative, repressed Stuart. Baines offers Stuart an exchange: some of his land for the piano. He says that he wants to learn to play the instrument. Stuart’s wife is to teach him. Baines is, however, only interested in Ada. Their association is initially exploitative: Ada is coerced into giving Baines sexual favors in exchange for earning back the piano. Their relationship changes dramatically when they fall in love. Motivated by a belief that her mother is committing a wrong as well as, no doubt, by a fear that she is no longer the most important person in her life, Flora effectively exposes their affair and gives Stuart (whom she now calls “Papa”) proof of Ada’s enduring love for Baines. What follows changes all of their lives.
The Piano is a film of arresting visual beauty. It is, however, a rose with thorns. Strange, unsettling, powerful and problematic, it can be interpreted in a variety of ways. It does invite feminist readings. Its heroine is a sensual, romantic rebel who does not conform to culturally sanctioned norms of feminine behavior. As much as men try and control her, it is clear that her body and soul can never really be owned. It also acknowledges sexual coercion and patriarchal violence as an historical reality for women. The Piano, can also, however, be interpreted as dangerously regressive in its understanding and representation of female sexuality. At the end of the day, there’s no getting around the fact that Ada falls in love with a man who has exploited her. Baines himself is transformed into a romantic hero. Then again, we may ask if Campion is perhaps trying to underscore that Ada’s psycho-sexual state is the lot of female identity and sexuality in patriarchy? Her portrait of Ada is, ultimately, extremely complex. She portrays her heroine as a victim, sexual subject, self-directed woman, and survivor.
On the shores of New Zealand
What is clear is that Campion is interested in the strategies women use to survive in patriarchy. But she is not only interested in the fate of women. She is also interested in how girl-children negotiate their way in a male-dominated world. It is through Ada’s daughter as well as Ada herself that Campion explores the feminine condition in the 19th century. Her rich, multi-layered characterization of Flora is, in fact, one of the most remarkable features of The Piano. She is as interesting and compelling as the adult characters and, arguably, the most convincing. The little girl also has huge symbolic and dramatic importance. This is, of course, unusual in cinema. There are relatively few films where a girl plays such a significant, pivotal role.
Flora McGrath is an extremely smart, perceptive, imaginative and articulate child. She likes to get involved, to meddle even, and loves to tell stories. ‘”My real father was a German composer,” she tells fascinated colonial women at one point. Perhaps because she has been fatherless, Flora has not been shackled by patriarchal norms of femininity. She is lively and headstrong, the very antithesis of the archetypal meek Victorian girl-child. As Ada is, also, not an authoritarian mother, her childhood has been blessed by a great deal of love and freedom. In an early scene in The Piano, we see her tearing through her grandfather’s home on roller-skates.
Mirroring each other
Flora is also not afraid of speaking to adults, even paternal figures. She shares her mother’s innate, autonomous spirit and rightly perceives that her new father is a threat to their special bond. Amusingly, the closeness of the bond is even recognized by the dull Stuart. He is always tentative when he approaches Ada and her child. At the beginning of the story, Flora tells her mother that she does not want another father. She declares, “I’m not going to call him Papa. I’m not going to call him anything. I’m not even going to look at him.” Although she wants to hear stories about her own father, Flora is conceived, at least at first, as an anti-patriarchal child. The love between Ada and Flora embodies a utopian, gynocentric ideal and, as Flora is aligned with Ada, she too represents the feminine state.
From the very start of the film, Ada and Flora are shot together. Campion’s camera recurrently emphasizes their similarities–their brown eyes, extreme pallor, and sober style and color of dress–and makes them mirrors of each other. We see them tilt their head in the same way and when someone unfamiliar crosses their path, they alternate in standing behind each other. Mother and child are in the same portrait, and the same story.
The personification of freedom
Flora serves a concrete as well as symbolic role in the story. She is, literally, Ada’s voice. Although she may sometimes fancifully embroider her mother’s unvoiced words, she interprets her signing for others. If the piano is Ada’s non-verbal means of expression, Flora is her only human instrument of communication. The child also represents Ada’s freedom and female freedom in general. This is beautifully illustrated in a scene where we see Ada joyfully play the piano on the white sands while Flora dances with supreme self-confidence for her mother.
Flora is, however, not only her mother’s helper and beloved child. She is also her adversary. It is Flora who effectively reveals her mother’s transgressions to Stuart. “I know why Mr. Baines can’t play the piano,” she tells her stepfather. Although her view was limited and she did not, of course, fully understand what she saw, she was once a witness to the adults’ curious activity. She does, however, sense that her mother and Baines were doing something her stepfather would not like. Stuart soon learns the truth and attempts to rape Ada when he discovers her making her way to Baines’ home.
Flora
Flora is not an evil little girl. She loves her mother but simply does not understand the consequences of her words. Her betrayal should not, in fact, shock the viewer. Flora most likely feels like she has been betrayed. “I want to be in the photograph,” she says with a scowl when her mother’s wedding portrait is being taken. She fears that she will no longer be in her mother’s photographs. When Baines and Ada are together in the cabin, Flora plays alone outside. Hurt and angry, she fears that she has been replaced in her mother’s affections. Perhaps she even harbors feelings of hate towards her. That is why she starts calling Stuart “papa.” The fatherless child begins to side with convention and patriarchy. Interestingly, we hear Flora judge her mother like a fanatical Puritan. She calls her mother’s observation that people talk rubbish “unholy.” At one point, she screams that her mother is “going to hell.” When Stuart boards up their house to prevent Ada from visiting Baines, Flora gives him helpful directions. She betrays her mother a second–and last–time. Charged with giving a romantic message to Baines, she decides instead to give it directly to Stuart. Flora will, however, be traumatized by her stepfather’s brutal, life-changing punishment of her mother and will soon return to the fold. She becomes, once again, the loyal, ardent voice of Ada. Her mother’s lover, Baines, will be her new father.
Campion’s portrait of Flora is as fascinating and complicated as her portrait of Ada. Flora is a strong-willed, non-conformist girl-child allied with her mother in a land of male strangers. The close bond she shares with her is unique. Flora is Ada’s very likeness, as well as instrument and expression of freedom. Yet she reproduces the lines of preachers to condemn her mother and chooses–at least, for a time–to accept her austere stepfather’s ways. Flora’s disloyalty issues from feelings of abandonment and insecurity but it is also indicative of the insidious ideological power of patriarchy. Campion shows how girl-children may reproduce its values.
Holly Hunter, Jane Campion, and Anna Paquin at the Oscars
Campion’s take on childhood itself is unsentimental and truthful. Flora is a charming, expressive child but she is not Hollywood cute. Paquin’s performance is hugely charismatic. She perfectly captures her character’s individualistic, insubordinate ways. She also, however, embodies girlhood. Flora may be intelligent and imaginative but she is also a child. While she may have spent a great deal of time in the company of adults, witnessing adult anxieties and brutality, she does not yet fully understand the adult world. Like most children, she is self-centered and like most, she wants to monopolize her mother’s love and attention. Children can also, of course, be cruel as well as affectionate–almost in the same breath, on occasion. Flora is no exception. In one scene, we see the little girl torment then comfort a dog outside Baines’ cabin. With her mother, she can be both sweet and censorious in a darkly comic way. When Stuart locks Ada in the house upon discovering her affair, Flora says to her mother, “You shouldn’t have gone up there, shouldn’t you? I don’t like it, and nor does Papa.” Almost immediately, she makes the pleasant suggestion, “We can play cards, if you like.” She scolds as well as mothers Ada, in the same way she scolds and mothers her dolly and the dog. In the final scenes of The Piano, we see Flora busily attend to her mother’s needs.
Campion not only makes Flora a real child; she is also drawn as an emotionally complex human being with her own needs and wants. Thanks to her inspired, multi-layered characterization and Paquin’s natural, fully realised performance, Flora is consistently credible and authentic. Campion’s portrait of Flora is also a political one. The writer-director is interested in her place in the world. Through Flora, she explores the distinctive nature of the mother-daughter relationship as well as the hold of fathers. Flora is an intelligent, resilient child. Like her mother, she is portrayed as a survivor and sovereign spirit. We last see her cart-wheeling in the garden of her new home. Ultimately, her fate is fascinating one to contemplate.
Ten questions between filmmaker Morgan Faust and 13-year-old actress Rachel Resheff.
Morgan: The truth is when I was growing up in the 1980s, the child actresses were often given pretty syrupy roles (with the exception of Journey of Natty Gann and Labyrinth). It was the boys who got to have the cool movies–Goonies, Stand by Me, even The NeverEnding Story and E.T., which did have girls, but the boys were the heroes. That is why I write the movies I do–adventures films for girls–because that’s what I wanted to do when I was a kid, go on adventures, be the hero. I still do want that. I mean, who doesn’t?
Hermione Granger
This guest post by Morgan Faust appears as part of our theme week on Child and Teenage Girl Protagonists.
In 2010, Morgan Faust, (a 35-year-old female award-winning filmmaker) directed Rachel Resheff (a 13-year-old actress recently seen on Orange is the New Black) in a short film.
They have been friends ever since.
Recently, they asked each other each five questions about young women in the movies.
Here are their answers.
Morgan: Who is your favorite teen girl character and why?
Rachel: One of my favorite teen girl characters is probably Hermione Granger from the Harry Potter movies. She never failed to hold her own in these huge films, and it was so cool to watch Emma Watson grow more and more as an actress and as a character.
Rachel: When you are writing roles for teens, do you consider the current obsessions with social media and the current “hot topics”?
Morgan: Definitely. A recent script I wrote is about a young girl who is on a hunt for her missing sister. Social media plays a huge part. As screwed up as it can be, social media gives young people a huge amount of power through community that they never had before. Since I write about young women, that is especially exciting since I think it is one of the many ways in which we are seeing barriers being torn down through technology. But I am also 35, so as you know from working with me, I spend a lot of time talking with young women to make sure my characters sound like real teenagers, not weird 35-year-old people trying to sound like kids, especially when I am talking about “hot topics”….
Emily Fields from Pretty Little Liars
Morgan: Which movie character is most like you?
Rachel: I think I am a lot like Emily from Pretty Little Liars (my favorite show). Emily is smart and driven. In the show, she faces many obstacles that can get in the way of her passion for swimming. I can relate to Emily because as I pursue my passion for acting, there are many obstacles that can get in my way and people who can try to put me down. Also, Emily, like me, finds time to still have fun and she stays close to the people who are always there for her.
Rachel: Do you ever write about experiences from your childhood?
Morgan: There is no other young woman I know better than the one still alive and kicking in my head. I often have to remind myself in situations that it is in fact I who is the grown-up. So, yeah, a lot of my personal stories end up in my writing. I grew up a tomboy, playing in the mud and jumping car batteries, and a lot of my characters end up that way. Since I write adventure and fantasy, usually my characters’ experiences are elevated beyond my own, but the feelings and the reactions are the same. I want to fill the screens with self-reliant young women who use their brains to solve problems and learn how to make good decisions, so when I write young women characters, I am often mixing “what I did do” with “what I wished I had done” (I think it’s only fair that my characters get to be cooler than me!).
Morgan: What do you think of the Disney Princesses?
Rachel: I think that the Disney Princesses made my childhood complete and I will forever be grateful for the impact they made on my life… seriously. But, I also feel that they can give little girls a false sense that every girl needs to be a princess with a Prince Charming. So much has changed with the idea of acceptance, and that’s why I think that the Disney Princesses are becoming a little bit different. They are not really the girls who get put into comas and need princes to come and wake them up anymore. Usually now, Disney Princesses are the ones doing the rescuing, which I think is symbolic of a lot of things that young girls should learn. Not that I have lived that long and I am that old, but I definitely have strong opinions about these sort of things.
The Princess and the Frog
Rachel: What is your opinion on the child starlets who have ended up in some trouble as young adults?
Morgan: As a woman old enough to be a mom, but without kids, I find myself torn on this issue. As the mom I will one day be, I see these young women expressing themselves often in incredibly sexualized ways and think, they have a responsibility as professional famous people to consider the impact they have on their fans. The unmarried, mom-less me can fully connect to the undeniable pressure they are under, the very real mental toll their lives have taken on them and their desire to just break free! All I can do as an artist is continue to try and create worthy, interesting and cool (which even using that word, I feel I am putting into question my ability to do so) young women on the screen that kids and teens (and grown-ups that like to watch teen movies…) connect with. Stories serve as more than just entertainment, they serve to help us invent our own codes of morality and integrity. I am not looking to make Little House on the Prairie-type characters devoid of darkness and flaws, but I do hope to put a lot more girls and women on the screen that don’t think their looks are the only important thing about them.
Morgan: What do you think of Miley Cyrus?
Rachel: I actually don’t have a problem with all of Miley Cyrus’s recent actions. I looked up to her when I was younger because she was a very positive role model to young girls. Now, in her new phase, she is trying to send a different message by saying that everyone should just be totally comfortable in their own skin and no one should care what anyone else thinks. I completely support her new views but sometimes, like in her VMAs performance or her appearance where she smoked a joint at the EMAs, she goes a little bit overboard. But, the idea of doing what makes her feel happy and comfortable is fine as long as she’s not doing something that can get her in jail or under psychiatric evaluation. Sometimes it seems that with child actors/ actresses who grow up in the public eye, they don’t want to be perceived the way they were when they were kids as sweet and innocent, so they can take it to extremes. I try to keep myself balanced as a child actress, and when I grow up, I will try my best to not let myself go crazy. Personally, “Nobody’s Perfect” by Hannah Montana (Miley Cyrus) will always be my jam no matter what.
Miley Cyrus, not Hannah Montana
Rachel: As a director, what do you look for in teens/young women, when you are casting?
Morgan: Personality, intellect, heart, a good work ethic, and connection. We’re going to be doing a lot of hanging out, so we better get along. They have to be right for the role, but if I connect with someone, I am willing to take a leap of faith that together we can grow the character to be a blend between the person I imagined, and the person they are.
Morgan: Do you think teenage girls are presented as too sexy or pretty normal in the way they dress and behave as compared to you and your friends?
Rachel: I don’t really feel that teens are presented as too sexy or anything like that. Typically, the teens in movies or TV shows usually dress and act similar to how my friends and I act at school or just in general. However, I find a lot of times that writers have the teens use a lot of text-talk and over-exaggerate the current obsession with social media. Sometimes the writing can become unrealistic or unnatural. I often recognize as the actress in the scene when something sounds like it is something a kid in my school could say or if it isn’t.
Jennifer Grey in Dirty Dancing
Rachel: Which child actresses from when you were a kid have influenced you as a writer/director and why?
Morgan: OK, she’s not exactly a kid, but definitely Jennifer Grey. Her role in Dirty Dancing was this smart, goofy, fearless, normal looking girl that just felt so real on the screen, and who succeeded through hard work and following her heart. It was sweet. I think about her a lot. She was just the perfect actor for the perfect role.
The truth is when I was growing up in the 1980s, the child actresses were often given pretty syrupy roles (with the exception of Journey of Natty Gann and Labyrinth). It was the boys who got to have the cool movies–Goonies, Stand by Me, even The NeverEnding Story and E.T., which did have girls, but the boys were the heroes. That is why I write the movies I do–adventures films for girls–because that’s what I wanted to do when I was a kid, go on adventures, be the hero. I still do want that. I mean, who doesn’t? It’s exciting to see more Hunger Games (well, at least the idea of Hunger Games, I’d prefer a more active protagonist who makes a decision every once in a while instead of just having a series of gut reactions, but that is a different interview…) and Divergent. Let’s keep ‘em coming on every budget level!
Morgan Faust started working in film as an intern for the Squigglevision classic Dr. Katz and never looked back. A graduate of Columbia University’s MFA program, she now works as half of BroSis, a brother/sister writing and directing team with brother Max Isaacson in Los Angeles, where they are finishing up their first feature script (a female-helmed actioner), and ramping up to direct a pair of films in 2014. Her short film Tick Tock Time Emporium won numerous film festivals and is distributed in the US, India, Greenland, Denmark, the Faroe Islands and is available online at Seed & Spark. Her other credits include Gimme the Loot (Editor), 3 Backyards (Editor) and Mutual Appreciation (Producer).
Rachel Resheff, age 13, began working at age 8 when she appeared in the indie film, 3 Backyards, where she first met Morgan Faust. Since then, Rachel has appeared in four Broadway productions, numerous Off-Broadway plays, films, and television (most recently in Orange is the New Black as Young Alex).
I’m really inspired these days by filmmaker, entrepreneur, community builder Ava DuVernay – inspired about film and about life. IndieWire named her one of their 40 top Industry Influencers and they definitely got it right when they put her in their “Shapeshifter” category. She IS indeed a shapeshifter. She’s not only transforming herself, but she’s calling into being a highly fluid, passionately creative era in filmmaking. She’s inviting us all to shift our perceptions and change our world. She’s calling on us to step out of a sense of desperation and lack, look around, notice what we have available to us, and begin to create.
Ava DuVernay
This is a guest post by Barbara Ann O’Leary.
I’m really inspired these days by filmmaker, entrepreneur, community builder Ava DuVernay – inspired about film and about life. IndieWire named her one of their 40 top Industry Influencers and they definitely got it right when they put her in their “Shapeshifter” category. She is indeed a shapeshifter. She’s not only transforming herself, but she’s calling into being a highly fluid, passionately creative era in filmmaking. She’s inviting us all to shift our perceptions and change our world. She’s calling on us to step out of a sense of desperation and lack, look around, notice what we have available to us, and begin to create.
In a recent interview during her visit to Indiana University Cinema, Ava shared about her approach to actively engaging with what she has access to in the moment: “I HAVE an idea. I HAVE the passion. I HAVE friends. I HAVE this little bit of money. I HAVE this location. I HAVE access to this camera. OK, I can make something with those things I have instead of focusing on all the things I did not have. All the things I wanted. My needs start to change. And my posture became much more active. And I was moving forward as opposed to standing still.”
This is a radical act of power. Saying YES to what is available in this moment. We have what we need right now. Begin!
She expanded on these themes during her incisive Film Independent Forum Keynote speech in October. Have you taken time to really watch and listen to what she shared there? I hope you’ll let her insights sink into your consciousness and start to inform how you move through your life. Here it is. Go ahead and soak it up. I’ll wait.
[youtube_sc url=”http://youtu.be/-pFoBks5ly0″]
What sparked you? Something she shared that resonated strongly with me was what she wants to say to people when they’re feeling and acting desperate: “Knock it off. It doesn’t work. It’s never going to work for you, that feeling of, ‘I need help. I need all these things to proceed.’ And when I got that, a revolution happened for me and that’s when things started to change.”
She went on to stress: “I didn’t stop being desperate because things started to go my way, I changed my mind and things started to go my way.”
It thrills me to hear a filmmaker stand on such a public stage and make the clear, bold statement that perceptual shifts change our lives. It reminded me of something Alberto Villoldo shared in his book Shaman, Healer, Sage: “Shamans are people of the percept. When they want to change the world, they engage in perceptual shifts that change their relationship to life. They envision the possible, and the outer world changes.”
Filmmakers are people of the percept too. They change the way we see the world. Ava’s calling on us to shapeshift our awareness to create new experiences for ourselves. She’s a bold example of how perceptual shifts lead to transformation. Let’s change the way we see ourselves as creators and watch our experiences truly shift. I’m ready for a revolution in consciousness about creativity and authenticity.
But I also know that this is a process that benefits from concrete practice as we move from old ways of seeing ourselves and the world around us. Even though I work extensively with perception and consciousness, I still find myself in need of reminders to wake up to this moment and what’s arising right now. As I sat down to write this blog post this morning, I caught myself thinking, “Oh, no! I don’t have enough time.” When I noticed the thought, I got a good laugh out of it. I took a breath and assured myself that I HAVE what I need. I HAVE this little bit of time. I HAVE these things to share. I HAVE the opportunity to share them with this community of film makers and film lovers. I HAVE the passion to share what arises from the depth of my being. I HAVE what I need at this time.
And so do we all. Join me in shifting perceptions and opening up to our creative potential. I can’t WAIT to see what we all bring forth.
Addendum: Just as I was completing this I felt drawn to look at Facebook. I found this link to a brand new blog post by my friend Jenn Will about the nature of grasping: Aparigraha (Non-possessiveness, Non-grasping). It relates to what I’ve been writing about here, so I’m passing it along. It’s a sign that what we need arrives when we need it. Enjoy.
Barbara Ann O’Leary
Barbara Ann O’Leary, Indiana University Cinema’s Outreach Specialist, loves to help people engage authentically. Recent projects include: Every Everything: The Music, Life & Times of Grant Hart (Executive Producer), Indy Film Festival (Screening Committee), Indiana Filmmakers Network Made in Bloomington Film Series (Programmer), Bloomington Screenwriting Community (Founder/Facilitator). A Film Explorer/Blogger, Barbara shares her adventures in film and reports on her initiative A Yearlong Film Viewing Balancing Act at O’Leary’s Reel Life: http://olearysreellife.tumblr.com/. She’s available to work one to one with people who would like support in making the perceptual shifts that will align them more deeply with their authentic creative core.
…the beauty of riot grrrl lies in the fact that we do get to remake our girlhoods, inserting anger and rioting where before there was quiet sadness and loneliness. It’s easy to flip back and forth between Bikini Kill and The Julie Ruin (and everything in between) and be catapulted back to a moment or into a moment. This idea that we can rewrite our histories and revise our futures by pressing “play” is woven throughout The Punk Singer. Creating ourselves in our rooms, and then stepping outside of our rooms and talking to one another and listening to one another is essential.
The Punk Singer, the Sini Anderson-directed Kathleen Hanna documentary released Nov. 30, is ostensibly about Hanna–the iconic feminist and punk artist, and iconic feminist punk artist. It is also, however, about the power of women collaborating. From Kathy Acker’s advice to Tobi Vail and Kathi Wilcox’s encouragement to Johanna Fateman’s zines and friendship, Hanna’s career trajectory from feminist punk singer to feminist pop singer to her current project, The Julie Ruin (a perfect combination of feminist punk and pop), has been shaped by female creative power and collaboration.
Hanna stresses the importance of not only girls’ individual power and creativity, but also the need for us to talk–and sing–to one another and to truly listen and believe. This is something that feminism consistently struggles with.
A sexist USA Today article by a female reporter about Bikini Kill and riot grrrl from the early 1990s was featured as a turning point in Hannah’s career. Hanna and her bandmates began a press blackout after the USA Today article and other mainstream press outlets framed the band and the movement around the performers’ bodies and clothes and focused in on their sexuality/sexual pasts.
How disappointing, then, that an NPR article about the new documentary and her project’s new album (The Julie Ruin’s Run Fast), leads with her “bra and panties” past, sexual abuse, and her looks (“She’s striking, with her jet-black hair, oval Modigliani face, pale Liz Taylor eyes…”). Even a Bitch Media reviewer says, while analyzing how riot grrrl was exclusive to white women, that Hanna’s beauty is “the elephant in the room” in the film (“She is one drop-dead-gorgeous-looking woman, both as a teenager and now as an adult. I would argue that it was her physical attractiveness helped her music get mainstream attention”).
Most interviews and reviews have steered clear of focusing on Hanna’s physicality and sexuality, thankfully, but it’s still disheartening and distracting to see any publication bringing up her looks as a source of commentary (and both are by female journalists). Indeed, the media blackout that Bikini Kill led in the 1990s isn’t needed now–Hanna brings up the changed media landscape in multiple interviews–and Hanna has been granting a great number of interviews in recent months as a lead-up to The Punk Singer and Run Fast.
We are lucky to be hearing Hanna’s voice as much as we are. She was diagnosed with late-stage Lyme disease in 2010 after suffering without a diagnosis for six years. The Punk Singer spends a great deal of time chronicling her illness–how it ended her musical career after Le Tigre (she says that she made the excuse that she was done with her music because she had nothing left to say instead of facing that she might not be able to do what she loved so much anymore).
The Punk Singer is a powerful showcase of the last three decades of not only Hanna’s life, but also the relationships and collaborations that shaped a generation of third-wave feminists and beyond. Footage from live performances and interviews, and personal films/photos are interwoven with interviews from Hanna’s contemporaries, bandmates, and journalists to tell a story about a feminist icon and a movement that would shape the future of music and feminism. Lynn Breedlove, Ann Powers, Corin Tucker, Kim Gordon, Joan Jett, and Adam Horovitz (her husband), among others, add powerful reflections to the history of the riot grrrl movement and Hanna’s professional and personal life.
The term riot grrrl itself had its origins in collaboration–Jen Smith (of Bratmobile and The Quails) talked about the need for a girl riot, and Bikini Kill’s Tobi Vail wrote about angry grrrls. The two terms combined to name a movement of in-your-face feminist punk music that fought against patriarchy and sexual assault with the motto “girls to the front” defining the ideology and the concert space–which was/is often a masculine, hostile space for women.
Breedlove–who provided some of the most poignant sound bites in the film–says that riot grrrl was about “girls going back to their girlhood… reclaiming their girlhood,” and pledging to “relive” their girlhood with power. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons that so many of us can plug in a Bikini Kill album at 20, 30, 40 and beyond, and feel catapulted back into a poster-filled bedroom, imagining ourselves as girls with power and strength, and revising our histories inside and outside of our girlhood rooms.
The goal of riot grrrl, Hanna and others in the DC-based movement said, was that women anywhere could take it and “run with it”–making it mean what it needed to mean for them. This one-flexible-size-fits-all goal of feminist activism is often difficult to actually manage, but for a moment in the 90s, there was a worthy effort. The repeated importance of fanzines highlights the importance of both collaboration and women’s authentic voices (even ones with “Valley Girl” accents).
The effort of the waves of feminism are highlighted in the documentary in a brief foray into history. While short and somewhat superficial (which is appropriate for the scope of the film), it was interesting and important that the coverage of first- and second-wave feminism noted that women “turned race consciousness on themselves” during the abolitionist movement of the first wave and the civil rights movement of the second wave. Savvy viewers will take that and understand what that means to the historical context of Western feminism (a meaning that is complex and problematic).
Collaboration hasn’t been a strong point for feminists throughout history. The air of critique surrounding Hanna’s beauty and privilege combined with the relative whiteness of riot grrrl both serve to create divisions and otherness within our own ranks. The job of this documentary isn’t to serve as an investigative piece into the beautiful whiteness of feminism–it’s to tell the story of one woman and her personal, professional, and political past and present.
When Bikini Kill broke up in 1997, Hanna recorded the album Julie Ruin under an assumed name (to “escape” what had happened to her in prior years–the bad, sexist press, the threats, the physical attacks).
Hanna says that in Bikini Kill, she was singing to the “elusive asshole” male. With Julie Ruin, she wanted to “start singing directly to other women.” She recorded the entire album in her bedroom, which she points out was purposeful and meaningful. She says that girls’ bedrooms are spaces of “creativity” and great power–but these rooms are set apart from one another; girls have this creativity and personhood in separated, “cut out” spaces. She wanted her album to feel like it was from a girl in her bedroom to girls in their bedrooms, and she succeeded.
She went on to form bands and perform with Le Tigre and The Julie Ruin, constantly revising and evolving the concept of feminist art and performance.
Throughout the documentary, Virginia Woolf’s words kept ringing in my ears–that women need “a room of one’s own” to create and be independent. For too long, women who have had the undeniable privilege of having rooms of their own have been doing so behind closed doors, apart from one another, as Hanna talks about in regard to Julie Ruin and how girls have these safe, powerful spaces that are set apart from one another.
And as Breedlove points out, the beauty of riot grrrl lies in the fact that we do get to remake our girlhoods, inserting anger and rioting where before there was quiet sadness and loneliness. It’s easy to flip back and forth between Bikini Kill and The Julie Ruin (and everything in between) and be catapulted back to a moment or into a moment. This idea that we can rewrite our histories and revise our futures by pressing “play” is woven throughout The Punk Singer. Creating ourselves in our rooms, and then stepping outside of our rooms and talking to one another and listening to one another is essential.
Continuous moving–rioting, dancing, singing, shouting, collaborating–is how we will survive and thrive, just as Hanna has. Her contributions to feminism and feminist culture (and great music) are undeniable, and The Punk Singer does a beautiful job of inviting us into her room, and making it our own.
The Punk Singer is available on Video on Demand and in select theaters.
There is one thing that Arnow has in common with James – she really fucking hates the mainstream. Throughout the film, she references not wanting to conform to societal norms and complains that everyone’s disapproval stems from a collective brainwashing scheme to make her like everybody else. She echoed a similar contempt for coming-of-age narratives in the Q&A, saying that she didn’t find it realistic to have a protagonist grow up and have their lives together by learning a clichéd life lesson in the end. I totally agree with that. I think coming-of-age stories are incredibly boring and send the wrong message about what adulthood and maturity is supposed to be. However, there is a fine line between subverting pre-established scripts and just meandering aimlessly with zero narrative.
Many people don’t like to watch documentaries. We crave rational narratives and a steadily progressing plot with climax and resolution. Traditional cinema also sets highly unrealistic expectations of romance for the audience, to the point where it’s become almost mandatory for characters to suspend all reality in favor of a whirlwind love story. Filmmaker Joanna Arnow consciously undercuts these desires and takes great care to deny us a comfortable, comprehensible narrative. The problem is she doesn’t do much else. i hate myself chronicles Arnow’s relationship with “racially charged poet-provocateur” James Kepple (her description, not mine). The purpose of the documentary is allegedly for Arnow to determine for herself and her friends whether or not James is boyfriend material.
James being himself. Get used to this asshole because we’ll be seeing far too much of him.
i hate myself feels as vapid and self-absorbed as an episode of Girls adapted into a college screenplay. Arnow is clearly sipping a bit too much of the Lena Dunham koolaid. Namely, we get to watch an entitled white girl from Brooklyn create her own problems and passively refuse to seize any agency because her “struggle” (which is deliberately never outside of her control) is artistic. James essentially exists to make anyone with an invested interest in equality want to light themselves on fire. He is unapologetically misogynistic and racist to an astronomical degree. He’s a caricature of every 4chan and Reddit troll, right down to the fedora. To top it all off, he has a drinking problem and spends the vast majority of his time on camera drunk or indignant or both.
James drunkenly sings after the woman on his left tells him off for using the N-word.
Making matters worse, Arnow just doesn’t seem to care about anything other than making the film. Her dynamic with James initially appears to be your run-of-the-mill plain Jane selling herself short because of low self-esteem and longing for the wild side of life. By the end, you have no sympathy for her and she winds up looking almost as smarmy as James. According to the live Q&A after the screening, it was Arnow’s intention to highlight that she wasn’t a victim and was complicit in some of the problematic aspects of their relationship. She totters after James with her camera as he frequents the Harlem poetry slam scene, dropping the N-word every 90 seconds and adamantly insisting to every person of color within hearing distance that his knowledge of racial politics is superior to theirs. She does nothing to intervene, forcing us to sit through scene after scene of his delusional, inflammatory diatribes and doubtlessly stroking his ego. There is a difference between having flaws and allowing your partner to shit all over a minority in their own community repeatedly to make yourself seem profound. It’s shock value, but at the expense of whom? Arnow would like to have you believe that she nobly sacrificed her own integrity at the stake of gritty realism, but what about all those people who just wanted to hear some goddamn poetry and were instead assaulted by two white kids with a superiority complex?
Spectators of the poetry slam are fed up with James being a racist dickhead.
The premise of the film is paperthin to start with and deteriorates even further as it becomes increasingly clear that Arnow is simply using the documentary as an elaborate way to thumb her nose at anyone she believes couldn’t possibly understand the complexity of her precious psyche…so conveniently pretty much anyone but her. Her family and friends reiterate numerous times that they think James is a terrible person and she should not be dating him. Some of her friends go as far as calling her out on using the relationship as purposeful self-sabotage to satisfy her need for drama and attention. I think we all have friends like Arnow who are exhausting to be around because they’re compulsively addicted to making every platonic and romantic relationship one big protracted ego wank. Arnow’s fixation on validating her own self-importance goes as far as bullying her parents into watching her sex scene with James during the screening of the final product. It was never about James. It’s about proving that she’s important enough both to associate with someone as exciting as him and to anger her loved ones by pissing away her potential and self-respect by association with this douche.
At one point, James’ emotional abuse reduces Arnow to tears.
There is one thing that Arnow has in common with James – she really fucking hates the mainstream. Throughout the film, she references not wanting to conform to societal norms and complains that everyone’s disapproval stems from a collective brainwashing scheme to make her like everybody else. She echoed a similar contempt for coming-of-age narratives in the Q&A, saying that she didn’t find it realistic to have a protagonist grow up and have their lives together by learning a clichéd life lesson in the end. I totally agree with that. I think coming-of-age stories are incredibly boring and send the wrong message about what adulthood and maturity is supposed to be. However, there is a fine line between subverting pre-established scripts and just meandering aimlessly with zero narrative. Although it may seem unfair that I’m dumping most of the blame on Arnow, she herself acknowledges that most people will find James revolting. Since she seems to have deliberately featured him to get a rise out of the audience, I’m not going to waste any more of my time by exhaustively enumerating the ways that he is the world’s biggest piece of shit because frankly I don’t want to give either of them the satisfaction. The most troubling thing to me is that Arnow thinks her story in itself is a philosophical commentary on the human experience that others can learn from when really it’s pure self-indulgence. Any possible sympathetic resonance that viewers who have also found themselves in unhealthy relationships might feel completely evaporates under the weight of her stubborn apathy.
An unlikely voice of wisdom comes from Arnow’s editor and apparent nudism enthusiast Max Karson, who does not put on a single piece of clothing for any of his scenes. I’m assuming that this was another quirky indie decision for lols, but I do admire his don’t-give-a-fuck attitude. I just wish everyone and everything in this movie would stop trying so hard to be offkilter. Anyway, Max spends most of his screen time picking on Arnow and criticizing her personal life choices with very little sugarcoating. You almost wonder why they’re friends. Tellingly, whenever he tries to weasel a definitive opinion on her life or relationship out of her that would admit even the tiniest shred of culpability, she becomes as inarticulate as a bashful kindergartner. At one point he observes, “I think you’re so ashamed of yourself that you manipulate other people into saying what you want to say because you can’t take responsibility for anything.” Way to hit the nail on the head, buddy. Needless to say, Max is the character that I identify most with.
Every time James and Arnow get it on, a feminist’s life expectancy is shortened by 10 years.
In the end, Arnow actually shows the finished product to James. To give you an idea of just how shapeless this film is, when he asks her why she included the sex scene, she giggles and says “because it’s porn!” Like many things in her work, I call bullshit here. You’re the director. You know you consciously chose everything for a reason. Her childish disavowal of any coherent explanation for anything redefines grating. I know her aim is to be defiantly immature, but taken to this ludicrous extreme, it dilutes the impact of the film significantly. To James’ credit, he is disgusted to find out that she forced her parents to watch the sex scene and calls her a sadist. You know if James says you have issues, you’re fucked. They start having sex for no reason and stagger off camera before it finally cuts to black.
The title of the film really speaks to all its issues. The lowercase and the emoticon evoke teen angst and suggest a digital form of communication, alluding to the disconnect that many young people feel between themselves and society and reality. The film’s fatal flaw is not that Arnow failed to grow and progress, but rather that she wasn’t even a primary player in her own story and actively worked to dismantle accountability for any of her life choices by unfairly shifting blame onto people who were trying to support her. You can’t pretend other people are puppeteering your life when you’re the one behind the camera.
Arnow may hate herself, but I really just don’t care.
title card.
