Films by Women – Page 4

Nicolette Krebitz’s ‘Wild’ and the Importance of Living Without Fear

That film is ‘Wild,’ a modern-day fable unlike any of the Aesop-influenced tales you heard as a child. It tells the story of a seemingly ordinary woman whose life is forever changed after a chance encounter with a wolf. By turns intense and outlandish, deeply emotional and utterly outrageous, ‘Wild’ busts taboos left and right to show audiences how true happiness can be achieved if one sets societal expectations aside and embraces one’s true nature.

This guest post written by Lee Jutton appears as part of our theme week on Women Directors. | Spoilers ahead.

The way filmmaker Nicolette Krebitz tells it, it began with a dream — or rather, a nightmare. Night after night, she dreamed something was following her; what it was, she didn’t know, but it haunted her sleep over and over again. Eventually, someone advised her to try turning around within the dream so she could identity her mysterious stalker. When she did, she was surprised to discover that the creature so intent on tracking her was a wolf.

Shortly afterward, Krebitz heard that wolves were migrating into Germany, nearly a century after they had been hunted to extinction in that country. Prior to this, Krebitz had no particular affinity for wolves, but their return to Germany so soon after her dream seemed fortuitous. So, Krebitz traveled to the east, where wolves were crossing over the German border from Poland, to come face to face with these creatures during her waking hours. Intrigued by this encroachment of nature into civilization, the idea for a film began to formulate in her head.

That film is Wild, a modern-day fable unlike any of the Aesop-influenced tales you heard as a child. It tells the story of a seemingly ordinary woman whose life is forever changed after a chance encounter with a wolf. By turns intense and outlandish, deeply emotional and utterly outrageous, Wild busts taboos left and right to show audiences how true happiness can be achieved if one sets societal expectations aside and embraces one’s true nature. It’s a message of universal value, even as the story that Krebitz tells to get it across veers into the extreme.

When we first meet Ania (Lilith Stangenberg), she is floating aimlessly through life like a ghost, her existence barely even susceptible to those around her. Every day, she pulls her hair into a stringy ponytail, throws on her grubby white puffer coat, and catches a bus from her drab high-rise to the drab office where she works as an IT specialist. She’s a favorite of her boss, Boris (Georg Friedrich) because she never asks questions and brings him coffee when he asks for it; he does this by throwing things against the glass wall that separates his corner office from the cubicles, like an anxiety-ridden zoo animal. Ania’s only interest outside of work — and the only sign that something is stirring beneath her placid surface — is firing guns at the shooting range. She barely speaks, and once her younger sister moves out of the apartment they share, and her beloved grandfather falls into a coma, she doesn’t have much reason to interact with anyone. It’s life, but it’s not really living.

That all changes when, while trudging through the park on her way to work, Ania sees a wolf. The creature’s effect on Ania is immediately palpable; rooted to the spot, her previously impassive face grows wide-eyed, not with fear but with total fascination. Ania might struggle to connect with her fellow humans, but her connection with the wolf is startlingly primal. The moment is brief; the wolf disappears into the woods, and Ania goes to the office, as she would any other day. But the spark lit within her by the wolf’s appearance has begun to smolder, and while at first it only manifests in the form of a few seemingly harmless image searches on the Internet, it quickly grows out of control.

Ania’s obsession with seeing the wolf again spurs her to develop an elaborate scheme to capture it. Conveniently already an excellent shot from her many hours at the shooting range, and with easy access to tranquilizers, thanks to her grandfather’s hospitalization, Ania manages to stun the wolf and sneak it into her apartment. Watching Ania’s slight form struggle to drag the massive animal through the front doors of her building without anyone noticing is one of the more genuinely hilarious moments in a film that has plenty of awkward, cringe-inducing humor as well as many scenes that elicit a few involuntary chuckles out of sheer discomfort.

Once the wolf is sequestered in her sister’s old bedroom, Ania begins to disconnect from the human world. Clad in only a grungy tank top and underpants, her hair free to tumble loosely around her shoulders, Ania spends her days chattering away at the wolf and cooking him meals before collapsing into a heap on the floor to sleep at night. When low on money, she boldly ventures out into the night to scarf down food left behind on cafe tables even as the proprietors urge her to scram. When she manages to drag herself into the office, she merely throws on a giant coat to cover herself; she doesn’t bother with pants or with niceties. Meanwhile, the wolf tears apart her apartment as any trapped wild animal would, filling the small space with debris and a stench so potent that the neighbors begin to notice, even if Ania does not. It’s clear that the situation is untenable. It’s also clear that Ania would follow the wolf to the ends of the earth if required.

Little by little, Ania gives up human habits and grows increasingly feral. Her appetites grow and she doesn’t balk at satisfying them by any means necessary — including a couple moments of shocking sexual intimacy with the wolf. Yet even as the audience squirms with distaste at her actions, one cannot help but notice how alive Ania has become. One simultaneously disapproves of her choices and admires how little she cares about approval anyways. In this way, Ania becomes startlingly relatable. It’s human nature to have instincts and urges that we feel obligated to suppress in order to present a polite, respectable face to the rest of society. While some of this repression may be for the best — think about those times you may have wanted to lash out at a rude boss, or snatch something delicious off of another person’s plate in a restaurant — one cannot deny how much happier we all would be if we cared just a little bit less about other people’s opinions and expectations of us. Wild might use the extreme example of bestiality to drive that point home, but the film is clearly about so much more than breaking that particular taboo. It’s about the importance of living without fear.

Wild belongs to Stangenberg, a striking actress who somehow manages to simultaneously look like the girl next door and unlike any other girl you’ve ever seen. Her performance is the definition of fearless acting, both physically and emotionally; she takes a character that could easily veer into grotesque and makes her absolutely magnetic. When Boris, shocked at the sudden changes in Ania and desperate to regain the easily manipulated employee of the past, reminds her that things can still go back to the way they were before, she retorts, “I don’t want to go back to the way things were before.” The meek, mousy girl meeting her boss’ every demand is gone, replaced with a woman who is finally succumbs to her own needs and wants. Never is this more apparent than when Ania, after having sex with Boris on his desk, demands more satisfaction immediately after he finishes. Seeing that Boris is helpless to help her, she shrugs and decides to pleasure herself in front of him, without another thought about it. Once dominated by Boris and his demands, Ania is now beholden to no one but herself.

It’s easy to read feminist empowerment in Ania’s story, even if Krebitz denied that was her intent during the Q&A that followed the screening of Wild I attended at Kino!2017, the annual German film festival in New York. Indeed, when discussing Stangenberg’s revelatory performance, Krebitz noted that one of her favorite things about her leading lady was that she was a very “modern” actress in terms of her appearance, which is not very stereotypically feminine. This almost genderless quality, which grows more prominent throughout the film as Ania becomes more feral, was important to Krebitz, as the message of Wild is applicable to anyone, anywhere. Yet whether Krebitz intended to convey a particularly feminist message or not, the fact that her protagonist is a woman does give Wild additional layers that would be absent if Ania were a man — especially as she rebels against her male boss and his manipulation of her. Ania’s reckless behavior is all the more revolutionary when contrasted with all of the times women have been told to be quiet, to sit down, to behave like proper ladies. The film’s message may be universal, but it is all the more potent because its messenger is a woman.

Lee Jutton has directed short films starring a killer toaster, a killer Christmas tree, and a not-killer leopard. She previously reviewed new DVD and theatrical releases as a staff writer for Just Press Play and currently reviews television shows as a staff writer for TV Fanatic. You can follow her on Medium for more film reviews and on Twitter for an excessive amount of opinions on German soccer.

Andrea Arnold’s ‘American Honey’: A Young Woman Reclaims Her Life’s Trajectory

Andrea Arnold’s films largely focus on the female experience, predominantly that of young women transitioning into adulthood. … It is here then, that Arnold’s depiction of female desire and agency warrants praise. Star acts on her own wants and needs, and seeing Jake, acknowledges her longing. She consciously rejects the current trajectory of her life, and intentionally and purposefully seeks a new one.

This guest post written by Siobhan Denton appears as part of our theme week on Women Directors.

Andrea Arnold’s films largely focus on the female experience, predominantly that of young women transitioning into adulthood. These women often find this experience problematic, particularly when informed or defined through their relationship with the men around them. Fish Tank’s Mia establishes a formative, abusive relationship with the much older Conor, while Cathy Earnshaw, finding herself perpetually torn between both men and social status, is driven to physical illness in Wuthering Heights. While Mia is able to leave behind her experience with Conor, and her unsupportive family, she still finds her freedom through establishing a relationship with a man. While this male character is on equal terms with Mia, and their relationship thus appears to be far healthier, she still needs him in order to remove herself from her current environment.

American Honey’s Star (Sasha Lane) is, initially, similarly propelled into action through interaction with a male character. Jake (Shia LaBeouf), part of the magazine crew selling subscriptions managed by Krystal (Riley Keough), imparts a vision of a life filled with no responsibility. For Star, whose life currently consists of digging through dumpsters to find food with two young charges, Jake’s offer is difficult to turn down. Initially, she resists, feeling some level of responsibility towards her current life, despite its futility. Quickly though, she recognizes that these children, and indeed the domesticity that she is attempting to uphold despite the harassment she receives from the children’s father, is not her concern.

It is here then, that Arnold’s depiction of female desire and agency warrants praise. Star acts on her own wants and needs, and seeing Jake, acknowledges her longing. She consciously rejects the current trajectory of her life, and intentionally and purposefully seeks a new one.

Her meeting with Jake signals the life that Star seeks. First, she witnesses him travelling on the bus filled with the various adolescent members of the magazine crew. The pair lock eyes. Jake is surrounded by his fellow crew members, while Star holds the spoils of her latest dumpster search, young children beside her. Seeing the bus turn into a supermarket, Star implores the children to join her in visiting the store. Once inside, she watches Jake dance to Rihanna’s “We Found Love,” clambering up on the checkout counter to ensure that he’s caught Star’s attention. It is this version of Jake that Star finds entrancing; she seems to revel in his vicariousness and enjoys his physicality.

Take the scene in the parking lot, in which the pair almost face off as if battling one another. The camera constantly moves, weaving and bobbing around between the two as they edge towards and away from one another, not quite ready to trust each other’s intentions yet intrigued by what one another appear to represent. For Star, Jake represents a life lived without constraints, a life in which she has power and control over her own life. For Jake, Star seemingly represents an opportunity to indulge in his own desires.

Later, after spending more time with Jake, Star discovers that in fact, despite the image that he presents, he subscribes to the American Dream in the same way that everyone else does. He becomes disappointingly conventional, and in turn, loses his hold over her. Star has witnessed and lived the drudgery of domesticity and seeks an escape from it.

Jake tries to mold Star to his desires. He wants to have her, and to be with Krystal simultaneously without consequences. In training Star, he attempts to impart his money-making ways upon her, encouraging her to lie. She watches as he profusely insists to a potential customer of his desire to attend college and the subsequent need to sell subscriptions in order to do so. Jake expects Star to act in the same way, using any anecdote regardless of its validity in order to secure a sale. Notably, in training Star, he expects, and Krystal insists (when it is noted that Star is not yet making enough money) to secure sales through lies and blurred facts. This is the way in which Jake has found success, and to him, it is the only way. In teaching Star, Jake assumes the role of experienced, intellectual educator. He instructs Star in the ways in which he has previously found success, never offering Star the opportunity to prove her own worth in her own manner.

When Star, in an attempt to prove her worth, engages with a group of older men and agrees to travel back to their home, Jake immediately questions her actions. To Jake, Star’s actions demonstrate a need to be rescued. He arrives uninvited to the wealthy abode, aggressively insisting that Star join him in leaving. Star, left to her devices, has managed to secure an impressive sale and shows that away from Jake, she is more than capable of interacting with men and maintaining her own power dynamic. Jake struggles to accept this and chastises Star for her methods. It is after this pseudo-rescue that Jake and Star first consummate their burgeoning relationship. It is as if Jake feels the need to reassert his control and power over Star, unable to recognize that she is able to enact her own wants and needs and that she’s able to survive on her own terms.

Jake constantly insists on rescuing Star, particularly from situations that are of her own intentional making. Star agrees to offer her services to an oil worker for a substantial amount of money. There is no real sense that Star feels manipulated or coerced into agreeing to this transaction, but Jake, upon discovering the situation, once again acts aggressively. First, he asserts his masculine power by attacking the oil worker, then by questioning Star’s behavior and displaying his displeasure at her actions. We later discover that Jake regularly sleeps with the girls that he helps to recruit to the magazine crew, but he appears to insist on Star’s fidelity while not displaying any such intention himself.

It is in this moment that Star recognizes that Jake’s conventional nature is prohibiting the life that she has sought for herself. The imbalance of power that has existed cannot be corrected, while Jake still insists on performative gender stereotypes. At the narrative’s close, Jake gifts Star with a turtle. Star, retreating from the group, sets the turtle free, symbolically coinciding with her decision to allow herself to follow her own desires, rather than monitor them to cater to Jake’s needs.

Siobhan Denton is a teacher and writer living in Wales, UK. She holds a BA in English and an MA in Film and Television Studies. She is especially interested in depictions of female desire and transitions from youth to adulthood. She tweets at @siobhan_denton and writes at The Blue and the Dim.

The Love That’s Really Real: ‘American Psycho’ as Romantic Comedy

Although primarily a horror film, ‘American Psycho’ has a satiric backbone that appropriates codes from the romantic comedy genre to expose the absurdities of our gender ideals. Director and co-writer Mary Harron’s lens skewers the qualities we find appealing in romantic comedies as terrifying.

This guest post written by Caroline Madden is an edited version of an article that originally appeared at Screenqueens. It is cross-posted with permission.

A 2006 YouTube video created a parody trailer envisioning American Psycho (2000) as romantic comedy. While the stark juxtapositions between the classic boy-meets-girl formula and a horrifying portrait of a serial murder are amusing, the sentiments between them are not so far-fetched. Although primarily a horror film, American Psycho has a satiric backbone that appropriates codes from the romantic comedy genre to expose the absurdities of our gender ideals. Director and co-writer Mary Harron’s lens skewers the qualities we find appealing in romantic comedies as terrifying.

Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale) is a concoction of the romantic comedy and drama archetype of “the bad boy.” He’s Julian Kaye (Richard Gere) in American Gigolo (1980) meets Fifty Shades of Grey’s (2014) Christian (Jamie Dornan). Near identical scenes portray their fetishistic consumption of high-class material goods. They inhabit modern-architecture utopias enveloped in glass windows and filled with famous artworks. They have closets full of immaculate designer suits that they softly glide their hands over as if they were ancient relics. These characters engage in sacred manscaping rituals and rigorous exercises to construct Herculean physiques. No strand of hair out of place, no wrinkles in sight. The hetero and bi female audience (and gay and bi male audience) ogles these perfect creatures who are made all the more enticing by their inscrutable personalities. Women are consistently told to fawn over this image of the handsome, cynical bachelor who can’t be tied down.

Christian Bale particularly modeled his performance off of the (former) rom-com icon Tom Cruise. Watching American Psycho, it becomes clear how well Bale infuses Cruise’s frenetic energy and high-watt smiles. The “Show me the money!”-esque freakout in the dry cleaners scene best exemplifies his influences. But beneath that charismatic veneer, Mary Harron said Bale observed an “intense friendliness with nothing behind the eyes,” which he extrapolated to account for Patrick Bateman’s alien disengagement from humanity. Furthermore, the iconic romantic Cruise character Jerry Maguire draws similar threads to Patrick. He is the “bad boy,” trading the stoicism of Christian (50 Shades of Grey) and Julian (American Gigolo) for a jackrabbit vivacity; he is the detached bachelor drowning in shallow ideals, easy flings, and over-commitment to his work.

The creator of the YouTube video, filmmaker Dan Riesser, stages Patrick as the aforementioned cynical bachelor figure in the American Psycho rom-com. We view a rapid-cut montage of all the women in his life: lovers, flings, and hook-ups. The video positions Chloë Sevigny’s character, the dowdy but doting secretary Jean, as the potential true love to change his Lothario ways. A close analysis of Patrick’s scenes with various women throughout the film reveals that these romantic comedy elements are no trick of the YouTube editor but rather clearly infused in director Harron’s construction.

Jean is the sweet, shy girl due for a makeover, a trope seen in countless romantic comedies, such as She’s All That (1999). Jean’s mousy image opposes Patrick’s cool, aloof, bad boy; he is the one that could encourage her to break out of her shell — in other words, the plot of Fifty Shades of Grey. Patrick encourages her to dress prettier, to wear skirts and heels instead of boxy pantsuits; Jean is shown dutifully following his request in the next scene. She shows clear interest in Patrick as she pitifully asks if he has something romantic planned for his dinner reservations.

Patrick eventually asks Jean out on a date and they meet at first at his apartment. We know the real undertones to Patrick’s intentions as he slyly fetches duct tape and a knife. There’s a head in the freezer next to the ice cream he offers. Patrick tries to make a joke about Ted Bundy but Jean doesn’t know who he is. Bale’s hilarious disappointed reaction is a reversion of Tom’s (Joseph Gordon Levitt) elation to find a girl who loves The Smiths in 500 Days of Summer (2009). If only Jean could love Ted Bundy as much as he did, maybe she could be the one. Patrick parrots the sweet-talk of romance films as he makes Jean feel special by asking questions about herself and telling her, “I just want to have a meaningful relationship with someone special.” Jean clearly is infatuated by this, unbeknownst that Patrick is holding a nail gun behind her head. He spares her after a message from his fiancée Evelyn (Reese Witherspoon) plays on the machine. He tells Jean that she should leave for he doesn’t know if he could control himself. Patrick is referring to his homicidal tendencies but Jean takes this as a sexual suggestion. She laments her penchant for unavailable men, she would not want to sleep with an engaged man. This exchange is a morbid doppelgänger of the double-entendres and miscommunications often found in the romantic comedy.

Romantic comedies often paint the “other woman,” who the male lead foolishly wastes his time and devotion on, as shrewd and vapid. The playboy bachelor may share some of those vapid qualities, but the female romantic lead can see the heart of gold waiting to be unearthed — rather, what Jean hopes to find in her quest to charm her indecipherable boss. Evelyn perfectly embodies the cliché of heartless fiancée in her ice-blue suits and obnoxious disregard for Patrick’s zen Walkman moments. She just doesn’t let him be himself! Patrick also wastes his time with a ridiculous fling, Courtney (Samantha Mathis), who drowns herself in pills.

Harron undercuts this satirical imagery of women with Patrick’s very real violence towards them. There is no Cinderella or Pygmalion story awaiting the sex workers at his home, no magic shopping trip to transform them into high society princesses. The serial killer is certainly not Richard Gere from Pretty Woman (1990). After a zealous threesome, Harron shows Patrick wielding a wire hanger and purveying various instruments of torture. Patrick Bateman may fit the playboy image, but he is not the handsome prince of our dreams.

Harron and co-writer Guinevere Turner employ a satiric focus on Patrick’s shallow, jaded, and interchangeable yuppie friends to critique self-aggrandizing collective masculinity. He and his three friends swap fetishistic knowledge of luxury brands and designer labels over cocktails like a gender-swapped version of Sex and the City (1999). Their subsequent discussion of a woman’s looks versus personalities is purported from classic rom-com ethos. They laugh and high-five each other after exclaiming in unison, “There are no girls with good personalities!” Craig McDermott (Josh Lucas) follows, “Listen, the only girls with good personalities who are smart or maybe funny or halfway intelligent or even talented — though God knows what the fuck that means — are ugly chicks because they have to make up for how fucking unattractive they are.” Although Harron mocks the male characters through this sardonic exchange, we cannot ignore that this comes from very real ideals avowed in the typical romantic comedy. It is eerily similar to an exchange from When Harry Met Sally (1989):

Jess: Yeah but you also said she has a good personality.
Harry: She has a good personality.
Harry: What?
Jess: When someone is not that attractive, they’re always described as having a good personality.
Harry: Look, if you would ask me, “What does she look like?” and I said, “She has a good personality.” That means she’s not attractive. But just because I happened to mention that she has a good personality, she could be either. She could be attractive with a good personality, or not attractive with a good personality.
Jess: So which one is she?
Harry: Attractive.
Jess: But not beautiful, right?

The group continues their disparaging remarks, David Van Patten (Bill Sage) says, “A good personality consists of a chick with a little, hard body who will satisfy all sexual demands without being too slutty about things and who will essentially keep her dumb fucking mouth shut.” We turn to the rom-com The Ugly Truth:

“You want a relationship; here’s how you get one: it’s called a Stairmaster. Get on it and get skinny and get some trashy lingerie while you’re at it because at the end of the day, all we’re interested in is looks. And no one falls in love with your personality at first sight. We fall in love with your tits and your ass. And we stick around because of what you’re willing to do with them. So you want to win a man over? You don’t need ten steps. You need one. And it’s called a blowjob.”

While the cynical bachelor of The Ugly Truth gets reformed, the toxic messages remain. This disturbing vision of gender relations categorizes women’s merit based purely on appearances and both shames and suppresses their independent sexual desire. Romantic comedies play on these ideals for laughs but they are inherently rooted in our societal subconscious. The men of American Psycho may be parodies, but we experience their dialogue and message on a tangible level throughout various films.

Ultimately, Mary Harron approaches the romantic comedy elements of American Psycho as Patrick Bateman approaches music. He waxes poetic about the underlying message of Huey Lewis’ “Hip to be Square” and Whitney Houston’s “The Greatest Love of All.” Seemingly saccharine self-love anthems or bopping pop grooves become a “universal message [that] crosses all boundaries and instills one with the hope that it’s not too late to better ourselves, to act kinder” and “not just about the pleasures of conformity and the importance of trends, it’s also a personal statement about the band itself.” On its surface, the romantic comedy is a confectionary salve for the mind. We crave the simple pleasures of these unrealistic fairy tales coupled with hearty laughs. Underneath, the genre often blankets the divisive and often sexist ideals of the “men are from Mars, women are from Venus” adage. Often the “bad boy” cliché of real life is an abusive and violent person, perhaps not on the level of Patrick Bateman but certainly sharing similar fearful and misogynist qualities. And a makeover should not be the defining quality that entices a man to fall for a woman. I wonder what Patrick Bateman would have to say about “Walking on Sunshine,” which he bops to in the hall. Perhaps the narrator is similar to the female figures in romantic comedies, waiting for her cynical bachelor by the mailbox and to be with her for more than a weekend. Romantic comedies teach us to look for “the love that’s really real” in all the wrong places.

See also at Bitch Flicks:

Mary Harron’s American Psycho: Rogue Feminism

Caroline Madden has an MA Cinema Studies from Savannah College of Art and Design. Other writing can be found on Screenqueens, Pop Matters, and her blog Cinematic Visions. Film and Bruce Springsteen are two of her most favorite things.

Call for Writers: Women Directors Week

Our theme week for April 2017 will be Women Directors. We’re looking for articles that analyze, critique, and celebrate women filmmakers and women-directed films.

The gender gap in the entertainment industry has risen to the level of popular consciousness, such that prominent public figures are frequently commenting on it and demanding change, but while awareness of the under-representation and misrepresentation of women in film and television has grown, is there much being done to combat it?

Women directors face myriad obstacles: despite there being an abundance of talented female directors struggling to produce work, many companies refuse to give them projects — only 3.4% of all film directors are female, only 7% of the 250 top-grossing movies in 2016 were directed by women, and women directed only 4% of the 1,000 top-grossing movies between 2007 and 2016. Women filmmakers are not paid as much as their male counterparts, they work with smaller budgets, “female directors make fewer films than male directors,” “age restricts opportunities for female directors,” and women-directed films “receive 63% less distribution” than films by male directors. There’s an expectation that their work be stereotypically female (i.e. chick flicks) and their work is rarely appreciated with the same level of acclaim (only 4 women have ever been nominated for a Best Director Academy Award). Of the 1,114 directors who directed the 1,000 top-grossing films from 2007 to 2016, only 35 were women and of those, only 7 directors were women of color: 3 Black women, 3 Asian or Asian American women, and one Latina woman.

Despite all these obstacles and hardships, women continue to make amazing work with a wide range of genres and topics: romantic, thought-provoking, innovative, hilarious, or even terrifying. In 2009, Kathryn Bigelow broke barriers with The Hurt Locker, a film about soldiers and war, when she took home Academy Awards for both Best Picture and Best Director. She was the first woman ever to receive an Oscar for Best Director. In 2014, Ava DuVernay’s depiction of the civil rights movement in Selma won an Academy Award for Best Song and garnered a Best Picture nomination. But DuVernay didn’t receive an Oscar nomination for Best Director, an unfortunate snub as she would have been the first Black woman to ever receive a nomination for Best Director. However, the Oscars are overwhelmingly white and male-dominated and are increasingly being disregarded as an antiquated, patriarchal, elitist group who should no longer be regarded as the gatekeepers of important cinema.

Thankfully, many people such as April Reign, the creator of #OscarsSoWhite, and Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs are challenging the Oscars’ lack of diversity and inclusivity. The EEOC has been investigating the hiring practices of Hollywood studios and television networks for gender discrimination against women directors. Also, women are increasingly working in the independent film scene. Despite the somewhat encouraging rise of women directors, white women tend to dominate the field, receiving accolades and projects with far greater frequency than women of color directors, which is a microcosm reflective of the stratification of the feminist movement itself.

The examples below are the names of women directors alongside an example of one of their most acclaimed works. Feel free to use those examples to inspire your writing on this subject, or choose your own source material.

We’d like to avoid as much overlap as possible for this theme, so get your proposals in early if you know which film you’d like to write about. We accept both original pieces and cross-posts, and we respond to queries within a week.

Most of our pieces are between 1,000 and 2,000 words, and include links and images. Please send your piece as a Microsoft Word document to btchflcks[at]gmail[dot]com, including links to all images, and include a 2- to 3-sentence bio. If you have written for us before, please indicate that in your proposal, and if not, send a writing sample if possible.

Please be familiar with our publication and look over recent and popular posts to get an idea of Bitch Flicks’ style and purpose. We encourage writers to use our search function to see if your topic has been written about before, and link when appropriate (hyperlinks to sources are welcome, as well).

The final due date for these submissions is Friday, April 21, 2017 by midnight Eastern Time.

Women Directors:

Ava DuVernay (Selma)

Mira Nair (Queen of Katwe)

Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker)

Julie Dash (Daughters of the Dust)

Jane Campion (The Piano)

Haifaa al-Mansour (Wadjda)

Amma Asante (Belle)

Lana Wachowski and Lilly Wachowski (The Matrix)

Anna Rose Holmer (The Fits)

Kelly Reichardt (Certain Women)

Deepa Mehta (Fire)

Catherine Hardwicke (Thirteen)

Sofia Coppola (Lost in Translation)

Tina Mabry (Queen Sugar)

Ana Lily Amirpour (A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night)

Jennifer Phang (Advantageous)

Dorothy Arzner (Dance, Girl, Dance)

Aurora Guerrero (Mosquita y Mari)

Mary Harron (American Psycho)

Nicole Holofcener (Friends with Money)

Kasi Lemmons (Eve’s Bayou)

Agnès Varda (Cleo from 5 to 7)

Desiree Akhavan (Appropriate Behavior)

Meera Menon (Equity)

Allison Anders (Gas Food Lodging)

Karyn Kusama (The Invitation)

Melina Matsoukas (Insecure)

Victoria Mahoney (Yelling to the Sky)

Věra Chytilová (Daisies)

Kelly Fremon Craig (The Edge of Seventeen)

Angelina Jolie (By the Sea)

Gillian Armstrong (My Brilliant Career)

Nora Ephron (Sleepless in Seattle)

Gina Prince-Bythewood (Beyond the Lights)

Penny Marshall (Big)

Maryam Keshavarz (Circumstance)

Lisa Cholodenko (The Kids Are All Right)

Patricia Riggen (The 33)

Euzhan Palcy (A Dry White Season)

Susanne Bier (The Night Manager)

Chantal Akerman (Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles)

Alice Wu (Saving Face)

Tanya Hamilton (Night Catches Us)

Dee Rees (Pariah)

Jennifer Kent (The Babadook)

Randa Haines (Children of a Lesser God)

Lexi Alexander (Punisher: War Zone)

Angela Robinson (D.E.B.S.)

Nancy Meyers (Something’s Gotta Give)

Georgina Garcia Riedel (How the Garcia Girls Spent Their Summer)

Ida Lupino (Outrage)

Jennifer Yuh Nelson (Kung Fu Panda 3)

Lynn Shelton (Your Sister’s Sister)

Maya Angelou (Down in the Delta)

Céline Sciamma (Girlhood)

Barbra Streisand (The Prince of Tides)

Jodie Foster (Orange Is the New Black)

Cheryl Dunye (The Watermelon Woman)

Does ‘Pitch Perfect’s Fat Amy Deserve to Be a Fat Positivity Mascot?

It’s great to see a character whose fatness is a part of her identity without being a point of dehumanization, but the films try to make Fat Amy likable at the expense of other characters, positioning her as acceptably quirky, in contrast to the women of color, who are portrayed in a more two-dimensional manner, or Stacie, who is unacceptable due to her promiscuity. Ultimately, the underlying current of stereotype-based humor puts the film’s fat positivity in a dubious light…

This guest post written by Tessa Racked appears as part of our theme week on Unpopular Opinions. An earlier version of this essay appears on Consistent Panda Bear Shape. | Spoilers ahead for Pitch Perfect and Pitch Perfect 2.

I’ve been writing about film from an intersectional feminist perspective for a little over two years now; most of that writing is unpacking how fat characters function in film on my blog, Consistent Panda Bear Shape. Multiple patterns have been emerging from that work; there are three trends in particular that make it difficult for me to write from an intersectional and/or optimistic perspective. I don’t think, reader, that you will find them too surprising:

Fat characters existing to receive the audience’s contempt, disgust, and/or pity. Mad Max: Fury Road is a great example, where the fat characters are autocrat Immortan Joe and his villainous ally, the People Eater, and the Milk Mothers, who exist as a grotesque example of how Immortan Joe objectifies and exploits the populace under his control.
Likable fat characters having some workaround where they aren’t “actually” fat, so when the character finds confidence or asserts themselves, it can be a feel-good moment without leading the audience to question established standards of acceptable bodies on a broad social scale. Two common workarounds are embodied by Olive in Little Miss Sunshine. While her story revolves around her transgression of physical beauty standards, these standards only apply to the strict, hyperfeminine pageant world; outside that context, her body is within the range of social acceptability. Additionally, actor Abigail Breslin wore a fat suit for the role, further disconnecting Olive’s story from the lived experiences of fat people.
Fat protagonists who are “actually” fat being men, usually of the straight, white variety. Of the 62 films featuring fat characters that I’ve written articles about thus far: 41 of the predominant fat characters were male, 35 of those male characters were white, and only 3 of them were identified as queer within the text of the film. Of the 2 non-human fat characters referred to male in their respective screenplays, both were voiced by white men. (The films I write about haven’t been curated in an objective manner, so take this anecdata with a grain of salt.)

The movies that I watch utilize at least one of these patterns time and time again, if they include fat characters at all. Considering this, when I do see a film featuring a decently-written character in a plot-significant role who is played by a fat actor and isn’t a straight white dude, I start having hopes for a bold new cinematic vision wherein fat people aren’t treated like garbage. Pitch Perfect is a perfect example of the kind of film that will stoke the flames of my high expectations, featuring Rebel Wilson as Fat Amy. When it was making its way into theaters, I remember seeing this exchange all over Tumblr:

This exchange says everything about why I and many others were excited: a female character, played by someone who looks like she gets relegated to the same measly section of clothing stores that I do, being funny and unapologetic about how she gets treated based on her size. (And on a more personal note, Fat Amy is also the cover girl for an AV Club article about humanized portrayals of fat characters that was an inspiration for Consistent Panda Bear Shape.) However, I didn’t actually get around to watching Pitch Perfect until it and its sequel, Pitch Perfect 2, were already out on DVD. I’ve seen a lot of positive press around Fat Amy, but for me, the viewing experience of the two films back-to-back was overall a four-hour anti-climax to my hopes for a new approach to fat representation in a mainstream comedy.

It isn’t all bad. There are some significantly refreshing aspects to how Fat Amy is represented, especially in the original movie. Where a fat body is often employed as visual shorthand for incompetence, she proves her ability as a singer in her introductory scene, impressing Aubrey (Anna Camp) and Chloe (Brittany Snow) with her voice despite their focus on finding women with “bikini-ready bodies” to audition for the Barden Bellas a capella choir. She is also the most self-assured of the Bellas by far. Her sense of humor is often outlandish but her deadpan delivery suggests that she gets more out of confusing the other characters than entertaining them. The majority of comments characterizing Fat Amy as fat are self-referential but, surprisingly, not self-deprecating. She casually remarks at her surprise that her “sexy fat ass” was chosen to be part of the Bellas. Fatness is part of how she sees herself, and isn’t a source of shame or something that needs to be sanitized; rather, it’s a part of her identity that she modifies appropriately to her mood and context. It felt oddly empowering as a fat viewer to hear her angrily threaten to “finish [someone] like a cheesecake.” Another detail that resonated with me was her fearlessness at calling attention to her body. She sprawls and flails. She has a habit of nonchalantly slapping a rhythm on her belly — a woman having fun with her fat! imagine! — or cupping her breasts during a performance. She inhabits her body and her personal space without apologizing or minimizing.

Beyond how Fat Amy is portrayed as an individual, Pitch Perfect also has progressive aspects to how Fat Amy functions as part of the Bellas. As opposed to what one might expect from a fat character in an ensemble cast, Pitch Perfect doesn’t put Fat Amy in a position where she drags the group down. There is a requisite joke about her avoiding physical activity (while the other singers jog, Aubrey finds Fat Amy lying down, or as she calls it, “horizontal running”), but her sloth seems less sinful in contrast to Aubrey’s drill sergeant seriousness about their shared extracurricular activity. Instead, both films focus on Beca (Anna Kendrick) as the problematic member of the group due to her lack of commitment. As a group, the Bellas have to deal with a change in their image from normatively attractive young women to one that includes singers who don’t meet stereotypical sorority girl standards. They are the classic rag-tag underdogs in a story focuses on competition. “I wanted the hot Bellas,” complains a frat brother who books the group to perform at a mixer, when shutting them down mid-song, “not this barnyard explosion.” Even the senior Bellas, thin and preppy Aubrey and Chloe, have bodies that defy expectations of femininity. It’s common to see fat female characters in comedies as a focal point of gross or bizarre body humor, but Pitch Perfect takes a more democratic approach. Aubrey struggles with stress-induced projectile vomiting, and soprano Chloe gains the ability to sing deep bass notes after a surgery to remove nodes on her vocal cords.

Although Fat Amy isn’t presented as more grotesque or cartoonish than the other characters, Pitch Perfect doesn’t extend the favor to other Bellas who aren’t straight and white, as Fat Amy is. The most glaring contrast is Cynthia Rose (Ester Dean), a Black butch lesbian (with an incredible set of pipes) who is also larger-bodied than the average young woman seen in a mainstream comedy. We first meet her at auditions, where she is immediately misgendered. She doesn’t come out as gay to her chorus mates until towards the end of the movie, although we get “hints” to her sexuality via shots of her leering at or groping other women, or other characters making snide comments about her sexual orientation and/or gender presentation. The audition sequence where we meet Cynthia Rose also introduces Lilly (Hana Mae Lee), who embodies the stereotype of the quiet Asian girl through a running gag where she says disturbing things in a soft voice that none of the other characters are able to hear.

Although all of the characters are part of the same underdog team, mining tired caricatures for humor reifies divides in the group via racism and homophobia. And while Fat Amy transgresses stereotypes about fat women, she is straight and white, which within the world of the film, puts her in an uncriticizable position to make snarky comments about Cynthia Rose’s sexuality and other uncomfortable remarks at the expense of marginalized groups (e.g. a clunky improv moment referring to her hairstyle as an “Orthodox Jew ponytail”).

The “fat positive” aspects of Fat Amy’s depiction aren’t just positioned against other characters who don’t share her privileged social identities. Stacie’s (Alexis Knapp) function in the group as the humorously promiscuous Bella complicates the praise Pitch Perfect gets for showing Fat Amy’s active sex life. Stacie’s sexuality is coded as excessive, a joke that becomes the majority of her screen time, whether Aubrey is trying to get her to tone down her dance moves or she’s referring to her vagina as a “hunter.” However, we never see Stacie involved with anyone. Fat Amy, on the other hand, is shown in the company of two hunks on her spring break and also makes comments about her own sexual prowess. So why is the line drawn between Stacie and Fat Amy, where one’s sexuality is the butt of jokes and the other’s is an empowering aspect of her character? When we see Bumper (Adam Devine) flirting with Fat Amy and getting shot down or hear Fat Amy talk about how she joined the Bellas because she needed to step back from her busy love life, we see her defying the expectations that we have for fat girls in movies, the assumption that nobody will want to have sex with her or that she won’t have the confidence to approach someone. Stacie, however, is thin and normatively attractive. The audience expects that she has no shortage of willing sexual partners and doesn’t restrain herself in the way she is expected to; thus, she is deserving of ridicule. The inconsistency between how the two characters’ sex lives are valued demeans Stacie and condescends to Fat Amy.

As Pitch Perfect 2 is helmed by a female director and writer with some skin in the game (Elizabeth Banks, who is in a supporting role in both films, and Kay Cannon, who wrote the original), one might hope that the sequel would amend the issues in the original, perhaps by giving more screen time to find some depth in characters like Cynthia Rose and Lilly. Unfortunately, the franchise loses more feminist cred by doubling down on the cheap stereotypes. Cynthia Rose is still a source for jokes about lesbians creeping on straight women, Lilly is still the quiet Asian girl, and now Flo (Chrissie Fit) has joined the Bellas, a Latina woman whose every comment is about how harsh and dangerous her life was in her unspecified Latin American home country.

Even the progressive aspects of Fat Amy’s depiction in Pitch Perfect largely erode in the sequel. The opening sequence is perhaps the most telling, where Fat Amy experiences a costume malfunction during a performance at President Obama’s birthday gala and accidentally exposes her vulva to the TV cameras and the concert audience. Typical to a comedy film, the audience reacts with disgust and terror, some even running away. Although unintentional, her body is deemed excessive and the resulting outcry nearly destroys the Bellas.

A similar scene of disgust comes later in the film, where a romantic moment between Fat Amy and Bumper (Adam Devine) causes his friends to run away in order to avoid looking at the couple. (While Bumper isn’t as outside the normative range of bodies seen on-camera, he is larger-bodied than the other Treblemakers.) The plotline of their relationship doesn’t meet the standards of a romantic partner that Fat Amy sets in the first film, where she brushes off his advances (though she raises the eyebrows of the other Bellas by having his number in her phone). In Pitch Perfect 2, she and Bumper are hooking up. He asks her to date him officially with a romantic dinner; she initially turns him down, saying that she’s a “free range pony who can’t be tamed,” but eventually realizes that she’s in love with him (for no discernible reason) and wins him back with a rendition of Pat Benatar’s “We Belong.” The main conflict of Pitch Perfect is the competition between the Bellas and the Treblemakers, which sets up Fat Amy and Bumper as well-balanced adversaries, both confident and ambitious. Fat Amy disdains Bumper’s advances and flirts with aforementioned hunks; Bumper quits school for an opportunity to work for John Mayer. However, in the second film, former antagonist Bumper has been humbled, now working as a college security guard and desperately trying to hang on to his past glory days as a college a capella big shot. It is at this point that he becomes a suitable partner for Fat Amy.

In Pitch Perfect, the Bellas achieve a competitive edge by using Beca’s mash-up arrangements instead of more traditional medley formats in their performances. This works as an apt allegory for Pitch Perfect as feminist films: there are some welcome updates, but ultimately it’s the same song. It’s great to see a character whose fatness is a part of her identity without being a point of dehumanization, but the films try to make Fat Amy likable at the expense of other characters, positioning her as acceptably quirky, in contrast to the women of color, who are portrayed in a more two-dimensional manner, or Stacie, who is unacceptable due to her promiscuity. Ultimately, the underlying current of stereotype-based humor puts the film’s fat positivity in a dubious light, compounded by the erosion of Fat Amy’s status as kickass fat girl, as well as any thematic content about female friendship.

See also at Bitch Flicks:

Pitch Perfect and Third Wave Feminism

Tessa Racked can be heard as a guest contributor to film podcasts including Directors Club and Tracks of the Damned, on the Now Playing Network. They are good at modern dance, olden dance, mermaid dancing, and peppering the Internet with cleverness. You can follow them on Twitter @tessa_racked.

Unpopular Opinions in Film: A Critical Re-Examination of ‘Twilight’

My intent is not to claim that ‘Twilight’ is a perfect movie, but rather, I want to argue that it has more virtues than it is given credit for, and to point out that its dismissal is frequently based on pervasive sexist attitudes. I am not speaking for the other films in the series — all directed by men — but rather, the first film, which was written and directed by women (Melissa Rosenberg and Catherine Hardwicke, respectively), based on a novel written by a woman. There are many valid reasons why one may not enjoy ‘Twilight,’ but it is important to recognize that it is unfair and sexist to dismiss the film and its fans based on the fact that it is a romance told from a female perspective.

This guest post written by Angela Morrison appears as part of our theme week on Unpopular Opinions.

“He looks at you like… you’re something to eat,” says Mike Newton (Michael Welch) to his friend Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart), regarding her sparkly new beau, Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson). Mike’s comment serves as humorous dramatic irony, while also making it clear that Bella is desired by most of the men she comes in contact with. Mike’s simile is painfully, literally correct – Edward wants to drink Bella’s blood, and she knows it. Well, the foundation of any good relationship is honesty, right?

Catherine Hardwicke’s Twilight (2008), based on Stephenie Meyer’s wildly popular novel of the same name, deals with teenage romance, vampirism, female agency, and desire. In her brilliant article on Twilight fans, Tanya Erzen outlines exactly who likes the series and how they show their devotion. She writes: “There have certainly been fan crazes before, but what differentiates the Twilight phenomenon is that its fan base consists almost entirely of girls and women.” The specifics of these girls and women – race, class, sexual orientation, religion – is not clear, but one thing is for sure: overwhelming numbers of women are vocal about their passion for the tales of Bella and Edward.

There is an insidious trend in our North American society wherein anything beloved by women – specifically young women – is automatically dismissed. Twilight is frequently looked down upon by both film critics and casual moviegoers, including people who have not seen the film or read the books. Erzen smartly observes that “denigrating these female fans as rabid, obsessed, and hysterical is a favorite pastime for many media outlets.”

My intent is not to claim that Twilight is a perfect movie, but rather, I want to argue that it has more virtues than it is given credit for, and to point out that its dismissal is frequently based on pervasive sexist attitudes. I am not speaking for the other films in the series – all directed by men – but rather, the first film, which was written and directed by women (Melissa Rosenberg and Catherine Hardwicke, respectively), based on a novel written by a woman. There are many valid reasons why one may not enjoy Twilight, but it is important to recognize that it is unfair and sexist to dismiss the film and its fans based on the fact that it is a romance told from a female perspective.

I am personally not a fan of the Twilight books, as I do not connect with Meyers’ writing style. She has many good ideas, but they often do not come across clearly in her writing. Where the book fails, Hardwicke and Rosenberg are successful. Some of the cheesy lines make it into the movie (“You’re like my own personal brand of heroin…”), but it is so well-made that this is easily forgiven. Hardwicke has a strong authorial voice and presence, often focusing her films on young female protagonists experiencing strange and sometimes painful events. Both Twilight and Thirteen (2003) feature washed-out cinematography shot by Elliot Davis, and deal with teenage female protagonists living with a single parent. The similarities between the images and themes in these films represent a through-line across Hardwicke’s filmography. Twilight‘s icy grey-blue and deep green images beautifully portray the damp, rainy, sometimes mysterious setting of Forks, Washington.

Writers, such as Dr. Natalie Wilson, argue that Twilight upholds traditional gender roles, and romanticizes unhealthy behavior in romantic relationships. Twilight sends the message that a woman’s only purpose in life is to love and be loved by the man of her dreams. Bella loves Edward obsessively – towards the end of the first film, she stutters profusely when Edward suggests she spend some time with her mother, and says, “We can’t be apart” Edward is frequently cold and distant, and constantly tells her they shouldn’t be together – while at the same time, proclaiming his everlasting devotion to her. These mixed signals are confusing and painful for Bella, but readers/viewers interpret their relationship as transcendently romantic. Bella is willing to give up her life and her soul to become a vampire, so she can be with Edward forever. This all-encompassing, obsessive relationship is clearly unhealthy, and borders on being emotionally abusive. While I argue that Twilight has merits, it is also important for me to reiterate feminist critiques of its outdated gender roles and dangerous romanticization of heterosexual and heteronormative monogamy as the only option for women.

Bella is frequently dismissed as weak and passive, but she is more interesting and complex than meets the eye. Brigit McCone at Bitch Flicks points out that Hardwicke’s camera privileges Bella’s point of view – the female gaze. Here, Edward is the spectacle to be looked at – he is an alluring, seductive vampire, and Bella spends a lot of time considering her desire for him. Edward takes off his shirt and reveals to Bella that his skin glitters in the sunlight, and she breathlessly tells him, “You’re beautiful.” The camera is with Bella in almost every scene, and the audience experiences things as Bella does. There are simply not many movies where female experiences are centered, especially not big-budget films like Twilight.

The film also features many female characters who support one another, such as Bella’s friends Jessica (Anna Kendrick) and Angela (Christian Serratos). Bella assures Angela she is a “strong, confident woman,” and urges her to subvert gender roles and ask Eric (Justin Chon) to the prom, instead of waiting for him to ask her. Edward’s sister Alice (Ashley Greene) immediately takes a liking to Bella, letting her know that she has seen the future, and they are going to be great friends. Bella also risks her life out of love and loyalty in order to try and save her mother from the violent vampire James (Cam Gigandet). Twilight not only centers individual female experience, but female friendship and support.

I previously outlined some of the ways in which Bella and Edward’s relationship is unhealthy, but what is particularly striking to me is how they get together in the first place. Bella is enchanted by Edward and his golden amber eyes in biology class, and does her best to strike up a friendship with him – she remains pleasant and engaged, even when he is incredibly rude to her. She slowly realizes that there is something different about him – something magical, possibly dangerous — and through her own research, pieces together that he is a vampire. She is active, not passive — she is the one that pursues him most of the time. Bella finds herself faced with creatures out of a horror movie, and instead of running away in fear, she bravely embraces and accepts them (particularly Edward). Edward can read everyone’s mind except Bella’s – this gives one the sense that she has hidden depth, and constantly leaves us questioning why she is not vulnerable to Edward’s probing vampire powers. Bella is open-minded, easily willing to accept that there is more to the world than meets the eye. She follows her heart, and does not shy away from her desires: she wants to be with Edward, so she pursues him. She doesn’t let Edward’s icy glares stop her from being friends with Jacob (Taylor Lautner), and conversely, she doesn’t let Jacob and his father convince her to stay away from Edward. She is played with vulnerability, wit, and quiet passion by the incredibly talented Kristen Stewart, an actress frequently criticized for not conforming to traditional ideas of femininity.

One of my favorite things about Meyers’ story is its core concept: a family of vampires living in the lush, chilly Pacific Northwest, where one of the vampires falls in love with a human. It is a romantic and interesting, if not particularly unique, take on the literary (and cinematic) vampire tradition. Catherine Hardwicke’s film is the strongest entry in the cinematic series, largely because of the way she privileges the female gaze and point of view. The film is visually beautiful — one can almost feel the cold, damp air of Forks – and it can be seen as part of a larger whole: Catherine Hardwicke’s cohesive filmography. The film is perfectly cast, and features strong performances from many women and people of color (Eric, Tyler, Angela, Jacob, Laurent, and Billy, to name a few). The film was wildly successful at the box office, despite being criticized and dismissed by people who do not take female-centric projects seriously.

Surely, there are ideological problems with Twilight, but it is worth taking a closer look at. There are complexities and subtleties within the film and its performances that are not visible on the surface. Erzen said it best when she noted that critics should “…begin taking the complicated practices and pleasures of female fans seriously.”

See also at Bitch Flicks:

Tanya Erzen’s ‘Fanpire’ Blog Tour: Fans of The Twilight Saga

YouTube Break: The Twilight Saga: An Interview with Dr. Natalie Wilson

Movie Review: The Twilight Saga: New Moon

Shishihokodan: Ice Prince/Wolf Rivalry as Female Madonna/Whore

Violence Against Indigenous Women: Fun, Sexy, and No Big Deal on the Big Screen

Angela Morrison is a queer Canadian cinephile and feminist, and she is Team Jacob. She has written for Bitch Flicks before and writes about film on her blog.

‘Certain Women’: Four Women United by Emotional and Under-Recognized Work

‘Certain Women’ belongs to the four women at its core: Laura Dern’s fragile, exhausted stoicism, Michelle William’s neutrality laced with sharp edges, Lily Gladstone’s quietly powerful grasp of the feeling of new love, and Kristen Stewart’s almost-sweet awkwardness, are what make Certain Women worth the trip.

This guest post is written by Deborah Krieger. | Spoilers ahead.

Perhaps 6:30 in the morning is not the best time to take in a film that begins with such a long, gentle shot of a train in the misty Montana morning, but that early hour is when the Vienna Film Festival chose to show it, on the final day of its screening schedule. In a way, Certain Women is an extension of said shot — picturesque, poetic, more than a little “blue,” so to speak — but once the action, as subtle and understated as it is, begins, it’s hard to not get invested in what might be accurately called Emotional Labor: The Movie.

Certain Women, directed by Kelly Reichardt and adapted from Maile Meloy’s short story collection Both Ways Is the Way I Want It, tells the stories of four women (Laura Dern, Michelle Williams, Lily Gladstone, and Kristen Stewart) in three loosely connected vignettes. While the women come largely from different backgrounds and have different jobs and relationships to their patch of Montana, their stories are united by the emotional and under-recognized work they perform for the others in their communities; hence my (joking) alternate title for this film.

What makes this film memorable is the juxtaposition of tension and understatement, of rising action undercut by mundanity. I kept waiting for something to “happen” — that is, for something to go the way of many feature films and turn bombastic and dramatic for its own sake, regardless of how well such a tendency fits within the style of this particular movie.

In the first segment of the film, Laura Dern’s character (also named Laura), is a lawyer whose client Fuller (Jared Harris), injured in a work-related accident and disgruntled with the useless settlement he received, breaks into his former workplace and takes a security guard hostage with a shotgun. Laura gets the call in the middle of the night, and is sent into the building by the police, with a bulletproof vest hidden under a stylish, simple coat, to coax Fuller into surrendering himself without any violence. As this particular scene unfolded, it must have been all of the conventional dramas and action movies I watched signaling to me that someone was going to die — or at the very least, get shot — but Certain Women, wisely, is not that kind of film. The emphasis in Laura’s story begins and ends with the work, both in the legal and quasi-therapeutic sense, that she must repeatedly do to help Fuller, even though he has no hope of suing the company whose neglect ruined his life.

Likewise, in the segment centering on Michelle Williams’ character, Williams plays Gina, who with her husband Ryan (James Le Gros) and daughter Guthrie (Sara Rodier) is looking to build a new home in the Montana countryside. Yet Gina finds that she must be the one to do the dirty work in this business of moving her family into this new life and getting this house constructed: her husband is all too happy to let Gina be “the bad guy,” as she puts it, where Guthrie is concerned; similarly, Ryan is also happy to let Gina do the work of acquiring building materials for their house from an older gentleman (René Auberjonois) in the area, even though said older man insists on talking to Ryan instead of dealing with her directly. In both scenarios, it is clear that Ryan (whom we meet by dint of his having an affair with Laura in the previous segment) is satisfied letting Gina take charge and do the necessary dirty work while he skims the surface — but is it because Gina wants to take charge, or because she feels she must in order to get things done? Like the segment about Laura, I kept waiting for some kind of climax, of some kind of apotheosis where Gina would finally let loose and dare to show a little emotion in the face of her husband’s passivity and her daughter’s petulance, but once again, Certain Women sticks to what is ultimately more realistic — with buried passive-aggression replacing a more fictional-seeming outburst, which is to its credit.

The final segment, which stars Lily Gladstone as Jamie, a ranch hand and a queer Native American woman, and Kristen Stewart, a freshly-minted lawyer named Beth, deals with this idea of labor in more subdued and ultimately more heart-wrenching ways. We meet Jamie moving through the slog of her routine handling horses on a snow-strewn farm; when she accidentally walks into a community college class on education law taught by Beth, Jamie instantly develops what is perhaps the most accurate depiction of a one-sided crush I have ever seen on film. As Jamie invites Beth to dinner after class several times and is content to just smile at her and talk with her sparingly, basking in the warmth of these new feelings, Beth — and the audience — grow increasingly more uncomfortable on both of their behalf. After an almost adorable sequence in which Jamie takes Beth to an after-class dinner on one of the ranch’s horses, Beth stops coming to teach the class — but is it because the class required an eight-hour round-trip and wasn’t even Beth’s real job? Or because Jamie’s obvious but unspoken affection made Beth uneasy? Or both?

Following Jamie’s discovery of Beth’s absence, she drives the four hours to Beth’s town to try and find her — a move that comes off as both sadly creepy and totally understandable. When you develop feelings for someone, you tend to magnify the smaller gestures and minimize the larger ones: a simple dinner at a diner becomes incredibly significant in the narrative of your “love story,” while the inadvisable move of tracking down someone you don’t really know, uninvited, in a town four hours away, seems like less of a bigger deal than it actually is. The scene in which Jamie finally finds Beth, who is unable to return Jamie’s affections, was so recognizable in its use of awkward, potent pauses and shades of things left unsaid that I wanted to sink through the floor with secondhand embarrassment. Yet the theme of labor still holds, as both Jamie and Beth curtail their actions and thoughts — Jamie hoping to not scare Beth, and Beth wanting to let Jamie down as carefully and painlessly as possible. It’s also notable, and refreshing, that this film doesn’t make a big deal out of Jamie’s same-sex crush on Beth — it’s treated with the same gentleness and empathy that a heterosexual romance with all the same trappings would have been given.

The cinematography, by Christopher Blauvelt, is pure loveliness, making rural Montana both desolate and alluring, and the four central performances are all fantastic. In a story about women, the male characters do fall short, especially, sadly, with Fuller’s narrative. Jared Harris is unfortunately miscast in this salt-of-the-earth American blue-collar role, as his accent (Harris hails from London) is all over the place, and is just not as convincing as Laura Dern, especially in the scenes where they play opposite one another. Similarly, James Le Gros does not manage to convey what would make two vastly different women find Ryan so appealing — but perhaps that is intentional.

Certain Women belongs to the four women at its core: Laura Dern’s fragile, exhausted stoicism, Michelle William’s neutrality laced with sharp edges, Lily Gladstone’s quietly powerful grasp of the feeling of new love, and Kristen Stewart’s almost-sweet awkwardness, are what make Certain Women worth the trip.

See also at Bitch Flicks:

The Women of the New York Film Festival 2016

Deborah Krieger is a senior at Swarthmore College, studying art history, film and media studies, and German. She has written for Hyperallergic, Hooligan Magazine, the Northwestern Art Review, The Stake, and Title Magazine. She also runs her own art blog, I On the Arts, and curates her life in pictures @Debonthearts on Instagram.

Trespassed Lands, Transgressed Bodies: Horror, Rage, Rape, and Vengeance Within Indigenous Cinema

By forcing the subconscious fears of audiences to the surface, horror cinema evokes reactions psychologically and physically — that is its power. This power can serve and support uncensored Indigenous expression by allowing Indigenous filmmakers the opportunity to unleash dark, unsanitized allegorical representations of the abhorrent, repugnant, violent abomination that is colonization.

This guest post by Ariel Smith originally appeared at Bitch Flicks and is reposted here as part of our theme week on Indigenous Women.

Mi’gmaq filmmaker Jeff Barnaby employs aesthetic strategies and themes from horror cinema in order to push back against stereotypical representations of Indigenous peoples and critique contemporary neo-colonial systems. Barnaby has been known to recall conventions from both body horror and dystopian science fiction in order to present dark, disturbing narratives in which Mi’gmaq characters navigate through gruesome representations of abjection and assimilation. In his first feature film, Rhymes for Young Ghouls (2013), we see Barnaby drawing from another sub-genre of horror cinema, that of the rape revenge film.

Revenge tropes in the hands of Jeff Barnaby are used to not only tell the story of the female lead’s experiences of violation, but also to articulate a visceral, rage-filled revenge fantasy on behalf of a violated peoples.

Rhymes for Young Ghouls is set against the backdrop of Canada’s Indian Residential School System.

For those who don’t know, from 1884 to 1948, it was compulsory for Indigenous children under 16 years of age living in what is now known as Canada to attend colonial government-funded, church-run day and boarding schools. Children were forcibly removed from their families by Indian agents, and families were threatened with fines or prison if they failed to send their children. Children as young as 5 could be kept away from their parents for months or years at a time, were prohibited from speaking their language, and were issued severe corporal punishment for any expression of non-Christian cultural, social or spiritual practice. The Indian Residential School System’s express and specific, methodical intention was to “Kill the Indian in the child“ and resulted in cultural genocide that Indigenous nations are only now beginning to heal from. Many children experienced heinous sexual, physical, and psychological abuse, as well as being subjected to publicly documented sterilization efforts and starvation experiments. The last residential school closed in Canada in 1996 and this colonial system has resulted in multiple, consecutive generations with both stolen childhoods and parenthoods. Even Indigenous children who did not attend residential school are affected by inter-generational trauma, as their parents and/or grandparents most likely attended.

Rhymes for Young Ghouls takes place on a Mi’gma reserve in the late 1970s. The lead protagonist, 15-year-old Alia, makes her living dealing pot. One of her most pressing expenses is paying off the corrupt and evil Indian agent, Popper, in order for herself, and other kids from her community to not be taken away to the residential school, where they will undoubtedly be physically and sexually abused. Alia winds up being double crossed and taken against her will to the school, but she soon breaks out and on Halloween night, together with a posse of other kids from the rez, enacts violent, bloody, revenge against the school’s abusive staff.

For me, the violence and graphic nature found in Barnaby’s work is fitting and appropriate due to the themes he engages. Barnaby’s films trigger visceral responses by exposing the audience to poetic and raw depictions of colonial violence against Indigenous bodies. As Indigenous people, we understand genocide and trauma; we understand horror, we live it. Barnaby’s films frame a space where non-Indigenous people must look at the screen and feel repulsed, afraid, and unsafe by facing the terrifying and grotesquely violent truth and reality that is colonial nation building.

The sub-genre of rape revenge is often categorized under an umbrella of exploitation cinema, famous for its use of shock value and extreme scenarios. However, Indigenous filmmakers’ contributions to the rape revenge canon do not require exaggeration. We do not need to think up imagined incidents of vicious macabre torture. The Marquis de Sade has nothing on Canada’s residential schools. The horror, the terror — it’s all around us, it is the foundation that the colonial states are built upon. We walk in it every day, and prove our resilience through continued survival.

Another example of rape revenge themes within Indigenous cinema can be found in Niitsítapi/Sami filmmaker Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers‘ short film, A Red Girl’s Reasoning.

Tailfeathers presents us with a narrative in which an Indigenous woman, who is raped, is failed by the justice system and becomes a vigilante, seeking and delivering violent revenge against her own and other women’s rapists.

As with Barnaby’s work, it is impossible for A Red Girl’s Reasoning to be read outside of a larger overarching social context, which in this case it is the ongoing epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous woman and girls. There are over 800 cases of missing and murdered woman and girls in Canada which have been documented so far. Amnesty International Canada states:

“According to Statistics Canada the national homicide rate for Indigenous women is at least seven times higher than for non-Indigenous women… There are also a greatly disproportionate number of Indigenous women and girls among long-term missing persons cases. In Saskatchewan, Indigenous women make up only 6 per cent of the population of the province, but 60 per cent of its missing women are Indigenous.”

Media coverage and police support is often far less for missing or murdered Indigenous women than in the case of a white woman. Rape and sexual assault have been used as a tool of colonial conquest since contact and the epidemic of stolen sisters is a reflection of how Indigenous women continue to be devalued and dehumanized by white settler society.

The vengeance scenarios portrayed in both Rhymes for Young Ghouls and A Red Girl’s Reasoning resonate deeply with Indigenous audiences as they tap into our collective pain and anger. These films serve to disrupt the dominant visual culture, which excludes Indigenous perspectives and representation and has all but erased Indigenous peoples from the imagination of settler consciousness. Indigenous filmmakers provide visual allegory for what feminist and author bell hooks has called the “killing rage,” which is described as, “The fierce anger of black people stung by repeated instances of everyday racism… and the finding in that rage a healing source of love and strength, and a catalyst for productive change.”

Approaching and calling attention to the full depth of monstrosity that is colonial transgression is what makes Indigenous cinema, in general, such a powerful tool of resistance and resurgence. Indigenous cinema is bigger than the individual movies we make. Regardless of content or form, Native filmmakers have not yet been afforded the luxury to create work that is not automatically placed under a socio-political lens. As Indigenous peoples living in post-colonial/neo-colonial times, our presence — our very existence — is in itself a political statement, and our artistic expression is in itself a beautiful declaration of sovereignty, and self-determination.

See also at Bitch Flicks:

Courage and Consequences in Rhymes for Young Ghouls

Ariel Smith (Nêhiyaw/Jewish) is a filmmaker, video artist, writer and cultural worker currently based on unceded Algonquin territory, also known as Ottawa, Ontario. She has shown at festivals and galleries internationally including: Images (Toronto), Mix Experimental Film Festival (NYC), Urban Shaman (Winnipeg), MAI (Montreal), Gallery Sans Nom (Moncton), and Cold Creation Gallery (Barcelona, Spain). Her film Saviour Complex (2008) was nominated for Best Experimental at the 2008 Winnipeg Aboriginal Film Festival. Ariel’s video Swallow (2002) was the winner of the Cynthia Licker Sage Award at the 2004 imagineNative Film Festival, and Jury Third prize at the 2003 Media City Festival of Experimental Film and Video. Ariel’s writing and has been published by The Ottawa Art Gallery, The Ottawa International Animation Festival, imagineNative Festival of Indigenous Film and Media Art, and Kimiwan Magazine.

Ariel also works in Indigenous media arts advocacy and administration and is currently the director of National Indigenous Media Arts Coalition (NIMAC).

‘Older Than America’: Cultural Genocide and Reparations

One female-helmed film that directly addresses the horrific psychological, cultural, and spiritual legacy of Native boarding schools on Indigenous families in the United States is ‘Older Than America,’ a 2008 release, directed and produced by and starring Georgina Lightning, from a script by Lightning and Christine Kunewa Walker. … Rain’s journey is part of the collective story of her community and her tribe…

This guest post by Laura Shamas originally appeared at Bitch Flicks and is reposted here as part of our theme week on Indigenous Women. | Spoilers ahead.

In July 2015, Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission released a major report entitled “Honoring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future” about the cultural genocide against Aboriginal children, due to abuse in Canadian residential boarding schools run by churches and funded by the state. The report is based on testimony from over 6,000 survivors; there are 94 proposals for reparation recommended. The Canadian Broadcasting System notes that the odds of dying in a native residential school in Canada (“1 in 25”) were higher than dying as a Canadian serving in World War II (“1 in 26”).

One female-helmed film that directly addresses the horrific psychological, cultural, and spiritual legacy of native boarding schools on Indigenous families in the United States is Older Than America, a 2008 release, directed and produced by and starring Georgina Lightning, from a script by Lightning and Christine Kunewa Walker. Lightning is a Canadian First Nations filmmaker, and a Maskwacis Cree, registered with the Samson Cree Nation. As the film begins, a graphic informs us: “This story is inspired by actual events.”

Tracing the devastating intergenerational effects of cultural and physical genocide, as part of colonialism, in a film about Native people is difficult and daunting, but Lightning’s approach is original and compelling, aided by a strong ensemble cast that features Native actors. The film begins on the Fond Du Lac reservation in northern Minnesota, as schoolteacher Rain O’Rourke (Lightning), awakes in the middle of the night from an ominous dream about a young man in a Sun Dance ceremony. Rain lives with her longtime boyfriend, reservation Police Officer Johnny Goodfeather (Adam Beach). She mentions to Johnny that they need to secure the door latch; it’s clear that “something” is getting in.

The film’s storyline is bifurcated, propelled by time; the plot of the present is jarringly interrupted by traumatic, haunting memories of the past, depicted in grey flashbacks. And the present is also connected to the future, as few are able to take action until the truth about the past is acknowledged. Ghosts also populate the present, filmed in color.

We follow Rain, the film’s protagonist, as she comes to terms with her past through visions and dreams, and her future, too, when she learns the disturbing truth about what happened to her mother and uncle at the nearby Catholic native residential school. Rain’s journey is part of the collective story of her community and her tribe; until the facts about what happened to Native students locked in a school cellar in the 1950s are revealed and the children properly mourned, Rain and the future of her tribe are in jeopardy. Children are “the hope” of any culture. When entire generations of youth are traumatized or killed by the church and state, what is the remedy? Older Than America looks for answers to this key question.

As Rain works in her job as a schoolteacher on the rez, she begins to have upsetting flashback episodes. An adult male spirit (Dan Harrison), the same one who was in her initial Sun Dance dream, appears more often, as her guide.

The importance and condemnation of the Catholic church, in regards to what happened to the community, is explored early in the film. Rain’s guardian, Auntie “Apple” (Tantoo Cardinal), consults in confession with Father Bartoli (Stephen Yoakam). We learn that Apple feels guilty for helping to commit Rain’s mother Irene (Rose Berens) to the Penrose Psychiatric Hospital. Father Bartoli says that Irene is delusional and must remain there for her own good.

Luke (Bradley Cooper), a geologist from Minneapolis, embodies the “non-Native” perspective in the film; as an outsider, Luke functions as a device to help a non-Native audience understand what’s happening on the reservation, since he can ask a lot of questions. He arrives to investigate a strange earthquake near a cemetery on the old residential boarding school property on the outskirts of town — now closed and condemned. Luke connects with policeman Goodfeather, whose father Pete is the tribe’s medicine man (Dennis Banks). Luke has his own vision in his car when he suddenly sees a former college roommate with a gun to his head. A significant line of dialogue in the film is said by Pete to Luke: “Some stories never make the history books.”

Luke has a theory about “plate collisions” that he’s exploring through his research in the region — a concept with metaphorical resonance throughout the rest of the film, applicable to the tension between: Native and white cultures; physical and spiritual worlds; Christianity and traditional Native beliefs.

It turns out that a wealthy developer is working with the current mayor of the town to turn the boarding school property into a deluxe resort. Luke continues his research at the Historical Society of Penrose County, where he eventually uncovers another earthquake story related to the school from the 1950s, involving Native students who died in a cellar.

The haunting ghosts of these dead Native students populate the film, and there’s a key line of dialogue that emphasizes “ghosts coming out of the closet.” Atrocities depicted in the film include a child being forced to swallow soap because she spoke in her native language, and Native children called “base savages” and then beaten.

The old school site affects Luke, as he goes back later to investigate the quake. He descends into a haunted cellar, where he finds a weathered sign inscribed with General Richard H. Pratt’s famous motto: “Kill the Indian – Save the Man.” Pratt is the founder of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School; it’s considered the prototype for all Native residential schools in the United States, and based on a military model.

Luke asks Johnny, “Do you believe in spirits?” It’s revealed that Luke once had a Native American college roommate who killed himself, after the roommate’s father killed himself. Here, the theme of intergenerational Native suicide, due to the fracturing of families, is noted by a non-Native character.

Throughout the film, Lightning explores what happens when the trauma of genocide is disbelieved or forcibly silenced. We learn that it is Father Bartoli, aided by a complicit Auntie Apple, who is responsible for Rain’s mother Irene receiving electric shock treatments, for revealing what happened at the Catholic native residential school. Irene was silenced through the shock treatments and sedation, and Rain realizes how wrong this is: “You want to talk about crazy…”

Medicine man Pete educates outsider Luke on how cultural genocide works on families and identity, starting with taking children right from their mothers’ arms: “They tried to beat the Indian right out of us.” And: “There are two ways to conquer a nation: kill ‘em or take away everything that defines who they are.” A mysterious murder near the school grounds in the present day is hushed up, related to what happened at the native school years ago and Christianity.

One poignant part in the third act illustrates why Rain didn’t marry earlier in her life: out of fear, because she thought there was something wrong with her and her fractured family. But she comes to understand that it was due to the unreported abuse from the boarding school – as Rain, too, was separated from her mother by Father Bartoli and Apple when Irene tried to out the abuse. Rain finally confronts Apple, whose name means in Native culture “red on the outside, white on the inside.” Eventually, Rain frees Irene, and ensures that the children who had been killed at the native school in the 1950s are given a proper burial.

One of the important themes of this film is how to heal from a century of cultural and physical genocide — a topic entirely relevant to what’s happening in the world right now. Writer-director-actor Lightning provides several answers: truth, ceremony, and honoring the old ways – “things that are older than America.” In a sweat lodge ceremony, Rain learns that the adult male spirit who has guided her journey was her uncle, Walter Many Lightnings, who was punished at the school (Dan Harrison). In the sweat lodge, Rain is told, “Our dreams and our spirits cannot be taken.” Rain also learns the power of forgiveness: “The truths of the past… Forgive these people for what they don’t understand.”

Near the end of the film, rez radio announcer Richard Two Rivers (Wes Studi) observes, “Everything we Indians do is in a circle.” As Rain finally welcomes her mother Irene home, everyone gathers for a ceremony. Apple and Irene hug, a start on the road to forgiveness. But a card at the film’s end reminds us of grim facts: Native Americans were forced to enroll in boarding schools are recently as 1975, and Amnesty International reports that the death rate of the Native population is six times higher than any other ethnic group.

Older Than America traces the collective intergenerational trauma that cannot heal until the truth of it comes to consciousness, in a country, a community, a tribe, and in a family. The bond between mother and daughter is the main connection that galvanizes the reckoning of truth in Older Than America. Rain and Irene are united at the end, and we see the ghosts of the native school children and Uncle Walter fade away into the woods.

This film has been categorized as horror and sold under the title American Evil in the U.K. for its 2012 DVD release, probably because of its use of supernatural ghost characters. The atrocities that have been committed at Native residential schools in the U.S. are horrific. The U.S. should follow Canada’s example and begin serious discussions about reparation in America for abuse at Native residential schools. It is long overdue.

Laura Shamas, Ph.D., is a writer and mythologist. She is a member of the Chickasaw Nation. In 2014, she was part of “The Undisciplined Research Project” at the Autry Museum in Los Angeles and wrote about researching native boarding schools: “Memories That Haunt and Reaffirm.” Website: laurashamas.com.

The Unvoiced Indigenous Feminism of ‘Frida’

Frida Kahlo’s sense of kyriarchy, in which the tension between Indigenous culture and European imperialism is a core aspect of her multi-faceted narratives of oppression and resistance, is simplified in Julie Taymor’s film ‘Frida’ towards a more Euro-American feminism, focused on Kahlo’s struggle for artistic recognition and romantic fulfillment as a woman, to the exclusion of her ethnic struggle.

Written by Brigit McCone as part of our theme week on Indigenous Women.

The Tzotzil Mayan activist Comandanta Ramona has become an iconic figure in the struggle for Indigenous women’s rights, as an officer of Mexico’s Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), which was one-third comprised of women, and as a drafter of the Revolutionary Women’s Law which set out an uncompromisingly feminist agenda for self-determination, equality, and reproductive rights on behalf of the Indigenous women of Chiapas. Comandanta Ramona was also a founder of the National Indigenous Congress of Mexico, and led an EZLN delegation to the First National Congress of Indigenous Women in Oaxaca. In San Cristóbal, dolls of Comandanta Ramona are sold, while posters of her are a shorthand for revolutionary Indigenous feminism, comparable to the use of Che Guevara as the shorthand for wider revolution.

The iconic image of Ramona seems, from a Euro-American perspective, unusual: the combination of a revolutionary’s balaclava with a long, floral, traditional dress. In Euro-American culture, the floral dress tends to be viewed as a symbol of traditional femininity, alluding to female submission and domestic dependence. To find a long, floral dress combined with a militant image like a balaclava, representing a feminist ideology like the Revolutionary Women’s Law, may seem contradictory from other cultural perspectives. It declares that Indigenous feminism is an evolution and reclamation of Indigenous culture, not a revolution against it. Ramona’s floral dress expresses the traditions of a specific Mayan culture whose women had their extensive agency undermined by Spanish colonization. The costume is political; it is the visual shorthand and physical embodiment of Ramona’s Indigenous feminism.

If that is true of the iconic image of Comandanta Ramona, it is equally true of the even more iconic image of another famous wearer of Indigenous clothing: Frida Kahlo.

Granddaughter of the Indigenous Purépecha photographer Antonio Calderón Sandoval, daughter of a mother who befriended and aided Zapatista rebels, Frida Kahlo joined with her husband Diego Rivera in the Mexicanismo movement, which sought to reintegrate Indigenous culture and pre-Columbian heritage into the national identity of Mexico. Kahlo, probably the most significant female representative of Mexicanismo, focused on embodying the philosophy through her wearing of Indigenous clothing, particularly Tehuana dress, and its celebration in her painting. This was not merely an aesthetic choice or desire to be “exotic”: writers such as Brasseur de Bourbourg, and the Mexican educator José Vasconcelos had declared Tehuantepec to be a matriarchal society, and Frida’s choice of dress thus serves as a visual shorthand for her support of the matriarchal values that the Tehuana were famed for. Although Tehuantepec is no longer considered a true matriarchy, as its women were traditionally excluded from political power, Tehuana women did achieve a large degree of economic independence as market-traders, and were celebrated for their outspoken and sexually liberated manner. At the start of the 20th century, the Tehuana Juana Cata Romero became a revered power broker, entrepreneur, landowner, and a sexually liberated woman known for her affair with the Mexican president Porfirio Diaz, all while promoting traditional Tehuana costume.

With such precedents, Frida Kahlo’s decision to wear Tehuana dress makes a political statement of Indigenous feminism: the embodiment of female emancipation as a natural evolution of reclaimed Indigenous culture, rather than as a colonial import. It is a gesture stripped of its vital meaning if removed from the context of Tehuana (Zapotec) culture, reduced to flowery exoticism when interpreted from a Euro-American viewpoint.

For that reason, it is unfortunate that the most famous and Oscar-nominated cinematic account of Frida’s life, 2002’s Frida by the Euro-American director Julie Taymor, revels in the colorful Tehuana costumes of Salma Hayek’s Frida without providing a single line of dialogue to address their significance or the matriarchal values that they represent.

Kahlo’s Mexico was a culture of assumed hierarchies: the superiority of the European over the Indigenous, of the rich over the poor, of the masculine over the feminine. In her specific choice of peasant garb from a matriarchal Indigenous culture, Kahlo wordlessly resists each of these hierarchies simultaneously. She is, as Andre Breton described her, “a ribbon around a bomb” against a complicated, interconnected kyriarchy of oppressions.

Kahlo’s sense of kyriarchy permeates her work. “Two Nudes in the Forest” is a queer-positive work that visualizes nature as a space of lesbian eroticism, but it is equally and simultaneously a representation of solidarity between Indigenous people and cultures and European people and cultures. In “Portrait of Lucha Maria, a Girl from Tehuacan,” an Indigenous Tehuacan girl, whose very name means “struggle” in Spanish, clutches a military plane as her toy, suggesting she must be raised in preparation for battle rather than domesticated with dolls. By her military plane’s juxtaposition with her traditional costume, Kahlo’s “Lucha Maria” resembles the iconic image of Comandanta Ramona. In “My Dress Hangs There,” a chaotic collage of the decadence of Euro-American civilization is dominated by Kahlo’s Tehuana dress, hanging as a flag of mute resistance. In her most famous work, “The Two Fridas,” Kahlo celebrates the strength and wholeness of her Tehuana self, in contrast to an alternate self in colonial dress who is bleeding and has her heart torn open, associating European values with romantic weakness and dependence. The image of the empowered Tehuana, either as a disembodied dress or as an aspect of Kahlo’s dual self, continued to evolve throughout her art.

Kahlo’s sense of kyriarchy, in which the tension between Indigenous culture and European imperialism is a core aspect of her multi-faceted narratives of oppression and resistance, is simplified in Taymor’s film towards a more Euro-American feminism, focused on Kahlo’s struggle for artistic recognition and romantic fulfillment as a woman, to the exclusion of her ethnic struggle. Frida’s communism is acknowledged, but not her admiration for Stalin’s cultural nationalism, which formed the subject of several of her paintings. The political beliefs of Kahlo, and of Mexican communists generally, are left largely unexplored by Taymor’s film, or reduced to a naive admiration for the imported ideals of foreign revolutionaries such as Leon Trotsky (Geoffrey Rush).

Another major Indigenous aspect of Kahlo’s work is its integration of Aztec and Mayan cosmology into artistic landscapes defined by the mythic Aztec struggle between light and dark, and peopled by a pantheon of pre-Columbian gods and heroes. Here again, feminism plays a key role in the emphasis that Kahlo lays on the pre-Columbian female divinities, in contrast to the wholly masculine trinity of the Christian worldview. The snake-headed Aztec goddess of birth and death, Coatlicue, sits atop the pantheon of heroes and deities in “Moses,” while in “The Love Embrace of the Universe, the Earth (Mexico), Myself, Diego, and Señor Xolotl” the motherhood and fertility goddess Cihuacoatl cradles Kahlo, mirroring Kahlo’s own maternal pose like a universal alter-ego.

Indigenous mythology serves as a source of strength and inspiration to Kahlo, through which she envisions a distinct feminine life-force within a complementary parity of male and female energies. This aspect of Kahlo’s art is entirely absent from Taymor’s film, though it does depict a visit by Kahlo and Trotsky to pre-Columbian pyramids. For a filmmaker with Taymor’s brilliant visual sense and gift for surreal sequences, this is surely a missed opportunity. What might Taymor not have achieved with a vision of a scarred earth transforming into the heaving bosom of Cihuacoatl, or a moon that shelters a sacrificial Mayan hare, or a writhing and devouring goddess of skulls and snakes who embodies the fearful ordeal of birthing life from death? There is no doubt that Taymor’s film is vivid and captivating, but could it not have been more so, if it had delved deeper into the brutally beautiful mytho-poetry of Kahlo’s painted world and the richness of the Indigenous heritage that informs it?

Paul LeDuc’s 1983 film Frida Naturaleza Viva, starring Ofelia Medina, is slow in pace and bleak in tone, more a collage of impressions and immaculately posed images than a coherent account of the artist’s life or work. Nevertheless, it does place Kahlo and Rivera at gatherings of Indigenous Mexicans, commemorating Emiliano Zapata through folk song and celebration, and thereby representing the political roots and ideological leanings of the artists themselves.

Julie Taymor’s 2002 work is a far more satisfying film, dramatizing a coherent account of Kahlo’s life, and a vibrant portrait of her will to succeed as a bisexual woman with a disability. Frida is saturated in Mexican music and the beauty of Mexican culture, and filled with visual references to Kahlo’s art that are a treat for fans to spot. It fails, however, to provide any context for Kahlo’s political convictions as a Mexican cultural nationalist, her identification with folk art, or her profound interest in pre-Columbian culture. Surely, the purpose of an artist’s biopic is to explore the beliefs and experiences which have shaped their work, to give voice to what was silent on the canvas? Kahlo’s images live in Taymor’s film, but the animating beliefs and Indigenous feminism behind them remain unspoken. In the opening sequence, Kahlo with a mobility disability is carried to her final exhibition in her bed and she’s accompanied by her sister Cristina and an Indigenous peasant woman, who smiles at Kahlo in affection but whose relationship with her will never be explored, and who will never even utter a line of dialogue. Her voicelessness seems to sadly typify the film’s continual use of the Indigenous as silenced accessory.

On one of the film’s posters, Kahlo’s painting “The Two Fridas” is restaged with dual Salma Hayeks clasping hands, one in a male suit and one in a Tehuana costume. The duality is now between her masculine and feminine selves, a tension of gender identity and sexuality, rather than the original painting’s tension between European and Indigenous models of womanhood, that is a distinctly Mexican cultural tension. The alteration appears to reflect the film’s wider purpose of universalizing Kahlo’s story of love and physical suffering. Are Mexican struggles to decolonize really so threatening or so difficult for international audiences to relate to? By reinforcing the impression that a “universal” and relatable story of a woman’s struggle must be a story in which specifically Indigenous concerns are silenced, Frida perhaps unwittingly contributes to the marginalization of Indigenous feminism, depriving it of a potent international icon. While an excellent film in many aspects, it could have been much more. It remains to us as viewers to put back the meanings that are left unsaid.

See also at Bitch Flicks:

Biopic and Documentary Week: Frida

Brigit McCone has a passion for all things Frida Kahlo and Salma Hayek. She writes and directs short films and radio dramas. Her hobbies include doodling and memorizing lists of underrated female artists. Brigit McCone is an extremely boring dinner party guest.

Abortion in America: Dawn Porter’s ‘Trapped’

The perspectives many of us are unfamiliar with are the brave abortion providers, lawyers, and clinic workers who fight every single day to try and give (and protect) medical care to the people who need abortions, and the people most often impacted by lack of abortion access: women of color and poor women. This is the narrative that Dawn Porter provides as the backbone to ‘Trapped,’ and it’s astonishing.

This guest post is written by Becky Kukla.

After watching Trapped, I felt incredibly lucky. I felt incredibly lucky that I live in the U.K., a country in which abortion is free, legal, and unrestricted. If I need to have an abortion, I can make an appointment at my local doctor’s surgery or go to a walk-in clinic and (by law) I have to be provided with the procedure within two weeks of my initial appointment. I do not have to undergo an ultrasound. My doctor is not legally obligated to give me any literature on how “unsafe” the abortion procedure is. I almost certainly will not have to walk past hordes of religious protesters outside of the clinic.

It bothers me a lot that I would consider this to be lucky. This should be the norm. Though I thought I understood the struggle between right-wing governors and politicians in states like Texas, Alabama, and Mississippi, watching Trapped made me realize I knew very little at all. It also made me realize just how much I take for granted in my own country — and how the things I take for granted should be the standard for women across the globe.

There is no shortage of documentaries about the constant fight to restrict abortion laws in the U.S., nor is there a lack of reporting around the subject. After Tiller, No Woman No Cry, 12th and Delaware, are just a few documentaries that have been produced on the subject in the last few years. Abortion is a hot topic issue, dividing political parties and voters alike. Every politician is expected to have an opinion on it; so indeed, are the electorate. There are only two sides of the coin in the issue of abortion: pro-choice or pro-life (or more accurately anti-choice). At least, that’s what the media would have us believe. Trapped not only explores the battle between the left and the right — reproductive justice and anti-abortion — but it gives another perspective on the fight. It speaks directly to, and platforms, those who work in the abortion clinics. It tells their stories — from doctors and nurses to clinic owners and administrative staff — the people who are affected daily by the constantly changing laws surrounding abortion.

This is a perspective I had never really given much thought to.

Many of us are familiar with the narrative of abortion clinics being closed down, and consequently people being physically unable to get an abortion, due to the distance needed to travel to the closest clinic, the inability to take time off work for repeat appointments, the expensive costs (which rise due to the further along a person is in their pregnancy), etc. The perspectives many of us are unfamiliar with are the brave abortion providers, lawyers, and clinic workers who fight every single day to try and give (and protect) medical care to the people who need abortions, and the people most often impacted by lack of abortion access: women of color and poor women. This is the narrative that Dawn Porter provides as the backbone to Trapped, and it’s astonishing.

By weaving these different stories together, Porter gives us an image of abortion legislation that we may previously not have seen. Restricting a person’s right to have an abortion by closing the nearest clinic, or insisting on four appointments before the procedure can occur are vicious attacks on all people who need abortions: women, trans men, genderqueer, and non-binary individuals. These are calculated moves designed not just to ensure that women have no power or choice regarding their own bodies and lives, but also to ensure that women explicitly know that they have no power or choice. Abortion restrictions (laws such as HB2) are quite simply modern misogyny in action, masquerading as “medical legislation.”

We meet several abortion providers and clinic workers, including Doctor Dalton Johnson, who has moved to the south to use his skills where they are needed most. He owns the (now) only abortion clinic in Northern Alabama, and works daily to provide treatment to people across the state. He talks at length about the various hoops he and his staff have to jump through every week to ensure that they comply with the barrage of legislation continually being passed, all with the goal of closing clinics.

Marva Sadler, director of clinical services at Whole Women’s Health, discusses the unreasonable requirements for clinics and how they impede abortion access: “Because of these laws, many clinics have a two to three week waiting list for a procedure where time is of the essence.”

Dr. Willie Parker flies from Chicago to Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi to provide abortions; he’s one of only two doctors who perform abortions in Mississippi. He said that he travels because “nobody else would go.” Dr. Parker talks about the danger that abortion providers continually face: “People have been killed doing this work.”

June Ayers, owner of a clinic in Montgomery, Alabama, provides a little (much needed) comedy within the film. Ayers introduces us to the religious preachers who protest her clinic relentlessly, and her tactic of switching the sprinklers on if she feels “the grass is getting a bit too dry out there.” In a film with such a devastating subject, Ayers and her staff provide us with humanity and humor — and remind us all that these are the people at the heart of this legal battleground.

It would have been very easy to focus the documentary solely on the horror stories from the people who live in these states and have little to no access to reproductive health clinics. Their stories are emotive and relatable, and an easy way to make a shocking documentary. Instead of focusing solely on right wing Republicans and repeating well-known narratives, Porter incorporates messages of hope into Trapped. She includes Senator Wendy Davis’ 11-hour filibuster to try and prevent the passage of SB5, an oppressive “omnibus anti-abortion access bill.” Sadly, she succeeded in only delaying it by a few days but nevertheless, Porter champions Davis’ valiant actions and for a few moments, we can feel hopeful for the future.

Ayers, Dalton, Parker, and the other clinic workers, as well as lawyers like Nancy Northup (President and CEO of The Center for Reproductive Rights) are a part of this hopeful narrative that Porter subtly constructs. Of course there is often little to be optimistic about, as we see very clearly, but everyone pushes onward. There is a small glimmer of light in knowing that there are people out there fighting this legislation and advocating for reproductive rights. As Ayers says, “The function of the bill is not to regulate us. It is to regulate us out of business. It is a trap.” That’s why these abortion restrictions are called TRAP (Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers) laws; they are not created with the intent of making abortion safer (as it is already a safe, routine medical procedure), but to eradicate abortion altogether. The attitudes of the (mostly) male (mostly) Republicans are entrenched in misogyny under the guise of religious scripture. It’s disturbing and scary to listen to them talk about who has the right to a woman’s body (hint: it’s never the woman herself). Porter takes great care to ensure that Trapped doesn’t just show fear-mongering and hate, but reminds us that there are people out there fighting for basic human rights.

Though a difficult subject, Porter’s documentary is strangely uplifting. We have a long way to go, but it’s clear from watching Trapped, that we’ve also come a very, very long way.

Becky Kukla lives in London, works in documentary production/distribution to pay the bills and writes things about feminism, film, and TV online in her spare time. You can find more of her work at her blog femphile or on Twitter @kuklamoo.

10 Women-Directed Films for Halloween

Are spine-chilling films always in demand because they help us dialogue with and about death? … In the past year, I’ve been focused on seeing films directed by women because I participated in the “52 Films by Women” initiative.

This guest post written by Laura Shamas originally appeared at Venus in Orange. It is cross-posted with permission.

I’m not a horror film fan per se, but I’ve seen some scary, eerie stuff through the years, and Halloween is always a good time to view them. Are spine-chilling films always in demand because they help us dialogue with and about death? C.G. Jung once wrote: “Death is the hardest thing from the outside and as long as we are outside of it. But once inside you taste of such a completeness and peace and fulfillment that you don’t want to return.”

In the past year, I’ve been focused on seeing films directed by women because I participated in the “52 Films by Women” initiative. The 10 films detailed below (for adults, not kids!) have strong psychological components, too. I’ve divided them into well-known Halloween-ish folklore categories: monsters, strange illness, haunted house (ghosts), killer, losing one’s head (lost), witches, and vampires.

MONSTER

1. The Babadook (2014)
Written and directed by Jennifer Kent

This film is about a lonely widow, her young son, and their journey through grief. A mysterious book suddenly appears in their home, and launches a trajectory of events related to a home-invading monster. What a fascinating portrayal of aspects of motherhood in this film. The tone and cinematography are original; the key performances are strong. The conclusion is truly inventive, and, for me, unexpected. I can’t wait to see Kent’s next film. (Note: female protagonist. Available through streaming services, like Amazon and Netflix).

STRANGE ILLNESS

2. The Fits (2015)
Written and directed by Anna Rose Holmer

This film took my breath away. It centers on the extraordinary performance of Royalty Hightower as Toni, an eleven-year-old tomboy who hangs out with her older brother in the gym. When an all-girl dance troupe rehearses in the same community center, Toni becomes fascinated by the aspiring performers, and joins them. Then a strange sort of “illness” descends on the girls. As I watched the film, Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible came to mind; I’ve examined the film version of it before. I don’t want to give anything away, but the ending of The Fits was revelatory and mesmerizing. It involves a different sort of fear of the unknown and a transformation, but with tremendous female resonance. I eagerly await more of Holmer’s work as well. (Female protagonist, available on streaming platforms.)

HAUNTED HOUSE (GHOSTS)

3. A Cry from Within (2014)
Written by Deborah Twiss, co-directed by Twiss and Zach Miller

This is a ghost story with a particular feminine twist. Twiss stars as a married mother with two young kids. The film examines what happens when a city family moves into a drafty old mansion in a small town. This is a familiar set-up, and some tropes from the “haunted house” genre are used here predictably. Yet, as the film gradually turns towards its true theme, it held my interest: a spirited quest to heal a gruesome family history. Perhaps some of it is melodramatic, but I appreciated the different sort of twist in the third act; it concludes with a strong depiction of the “shadow” side of motherhood and ensuing generational repercussions. (Female protagonist, available on streaming platforms.)

4. The Invitation (2015)
Directed by Karyn Kusama

The film is about Will (Logan Marshall-Green), a grief-stricken man haunted by a past tragedy that occurred in his former house in the Hollywood Hills. As it begins, Will and his girlfriend hit a coyote in the rain on the way to a dinner party, hosted by his ex-wife and her new husband — a foreshadowing of what’s to come. At first it seems as if it’s going to be like The Big Chill: a gathering of old friends reminiscing, catching up, talking about what’s new. But then Will’s ex-wife and her new husband show a movie clip before dinner that sets the eerie tone of what’s to come. Let’s just say that if you’re invited to a dinner party in the Hills, this film will make you reconsider showing up. The house becomes a character of sorts, and old memories emerge like ghosts in flashbacks as terror reigns. (Male protagonist, available on streaming platforms.)

5. The Silent House (2011)
Co-directed by Chris Kentis and Laura Lau, written by Lau

This 2011 film, an American version of a 2010 Uruguayan film titled La Casa Muda, is another “Haunted House” type of film with a twist at the end. Based on a “true story” from its Uruguayan origins, the movie is seemingly filmed in a single continuous shot, which gives it a lot of tension. The Silent House follows Elizabeth Olson as Sarah, a young woman who, along with her father and uncle, are moving out of a dark old family home near a shore, and encounter strange noises, specters, old photos that no one should see, and more. Of course, the power is not on. When Sarah’s father is knocked out on a staircase, Sarah knows there’s someone else in the house. The revenge component in the film’s conclusion will resonate with many. (Female protagonist, available to stream on Amazon.)

KILLER

6. The Hitch-Hiker (1953)
Directed by Ida Lupino, written by Lupino, Robert L. Joseph, and Collier Young

As part of this initiative, I’ve tried to catch up on many of Lupino’s films. The Hitch-Hiker is considered the first mainstream film noir feature to be directed by a woman. It varies from standard film noir fare because of its desert locales (as opposed to urban settings). A tale of two American men who are ambushed by a terrifying killer in Mexico, and their attempts to escape danger, the film’s original tagline was: “When was the last time you invited death into your car?” (Male protagonists. You can watch it for free on YouTube here. A version with higher resolution also streams on Amazon.)

LOSING ONE’S HEAD (or LOST)

7. The Headless Woman (La mujer sin cabeza) (2008)
Written and directed by Lucrecia Martel

Made in Argentina, it’s perfectly titled. The film’s ominous psychological atmosphere produces a slow burn sort of scare and a dawning realization as you watch it; it’s not a conventional horror “scream” viewing experience. A strange auto accident on a deserted country road is at the center of a mystery; the protagonist is the driver Veronica or “Vero” to her friends (Maria Onetto), a middle-aged married dentist. We wonder: who or what has been hit? Is the victim okay? As the movie continues, we come to understand the true identity of the Headless Woman. (Female protagonist, available on streaming platforms, including Hulu.)

WITCHES

8. The Countess (2009)
Written and directed by Julie Delpy

Starring Julie Delpy, the film is a bloody biographical account of Hungarian Countess Erzsébet Báthory, who lived from 1560 to 1614. The film depicts the Countess’ fascination with death; even as a young girl, Báthory declared: “…I would have to raise an army to conquer death.” Thematically, this period piece examines the possibility that unrequited love could lead to madness, and that an obsession with youthful appearance could launch serial killings, as the Countess searches for virginal blood as a magical skin elixir. Because of the focus on bloodletting and torture in her story, Báthory became connected to vampirism through legend. But witches figure prominently in the film in several ways: Erzsébet’s estate is successfully run by a witch named Anna Darvulia (played by Anamaria Marinca), who’s also one of the Countess’ lovers; the Countess is cursed by a witch in a key roadside scene that changes her life: “Soon you will look like me”; and later, when she is on trial, Báthory is notably not tried for witchcraft, although she might have been. The ending brings information that forces a reconsideration of all we’ve just seen. (Female protagonist, available to stream on Amazon).

VAMPIRES

9. Near Dark (1987)
Directed by Kathryn Bigelow, co-written by Bigelow and Eric Red

I’ve long wanted to catch up on Bigelow’s earlier films, and have watched two so far as part of this initiative. But no Halloween film list is complete without a vampire movie, let alone a vampire Western like this one.

A lesson you learn quickly in Near Dark: never pick up hitchhikers at night in Kansas, Oklahoma or Texas. The movie is campy, bloody and violent; it debuted in October 1987, a part of the 1980’s vampire movie trend. The story revolves around Caleb (Adrian Pasdar), a young cowboy in a small mid-western town who inadvertently becomes part of a car-stealing gang of southern vampires. The frequent tasting of death in the film, and its repeated reverence for nighttime, reminded me again of Jung’s quote about death: “But once inside you taste of such a completeness and peace and fulfillment that you don’t want to return.” The ending of this one also pleasantly surprised me. (Male protagonist, available on DVD.)

10. A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night (2014)
Written and directed by Ana Lily Amirpour

This is a highly stylized, fascinating film. It’s a unique Persian-language film that follows a mysterious vampire figure named The Girl (Sheila Vand) who haunts the rough streets of “Bad City” at night in a chador, and encounters a young gardener named Arash (Arash Mirandi). Arash’s father is a heroin addict and his mother is dead; Arash is under threat from a tough character who keys his car as the film starts, and after that initial sequence, Arash befriends a beautiful stray cat who becomes part of the action. Amirpour’s film is so atmospheric, beautifully shot in black and white. The plot is untraditional; the ending was also unexpected. Some of the images are unforgettable, and the acting is strong. (Male and female lead characters, available via streaming.)

These ten “scary” films richly explore a range of psychological and social issues: grief; the arrival of puberty; abuse and repressed memories; the aging brain; unrequited love and growing old; justice; and becoming an adult. Most have plot surprises at the end, which makes the viewing all the more worthwhile.

See also at Bitch Flicks:

Why The Babadook Is the Feminist Horror Film of the Year
The Babadook: Jennifer Kent on Her Savage Domestic Fairy Tale
Patterns in Poor Parenting: The Babadook and Mommy
“The More You Deny Me, the Stronger I’ll Get”: The Babadook, Mothers, and Mental Illness
The Babadook and the Horrors of Motherhood
The Fits: A Coming-of-Age Story about Belonging and Identity
Male Mask, Female Voice: The Noir of Ida Lupino
9 Pretty Great Lesbian Vampire Movies
Kathyrn Bigelow’s Near Dark: Busting Stereotypes and Drawing Blood
A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night and Scares Us
Feminist Fangs: The Activist Symbolism of Violent Vampire Women

Laura Shamas is a writer, myth lover, and a film consultant. For more of her writing on the topic of female trios: We Three: The Mythology of Shakespeare’s Weird Sisters. Her website is LauraShamas.com.