In Theaters Now – Page 4

‘A Ballerina’s Tale’: Misty Copeland in Good Times and Bad

Misty Copeland, the focus of the new documentary, ‘A Ballerina’s Tale’ (which is directed by Nelson George and started its run in theaters this week) was recently promoted to principal dancer with the American Ballet Theater and with her viral Under Armour commercial (which had a nice body-diversity message)–as well as an autobiography and talk show appearances–might turn into a ballerina the general public knows and loves, the first in decades.

When I was growing up in the ’70s and early ’80s, opera, classical music and ballet were part of mainstream culture in a way they aren’t today. Although I had no interest in opera, I knew who sopranos Beverly Sills and Leontyne Price were, the former because she was a favorite on talk shows, the latter because she’d made a special appearance on The Odd Couple. Classical concerts aired regularly on PBS and NPR, often simultaneously so fans, like my father, could listen to the music on a stereo instead of through tinny, built-in TV speakers. Ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev was in movies and like other famous people of the era was photographed at the infamous disco, Studio 54. Mikhail Baryshnikov, besides having a burgeoning acting career also starred in more than one prime-time, network-TV dance special.

Although ballet centers many of its works on ballerinas (thanks in part to New York City Ballet founder and choreographer George Balanchine), women dancers in the ’70s were less well-known to the general public; one year Gelsey Kirkland (who became better known for her eating disorder and cocaine addiction) was in the spotlight, then Leslie Brown, who played a supporting role opposite Baryshnikov in the ballet film The Turning Point was. A few years later Natalia Makarova (who had been Baryshnikov’s dancing partner) won a Tony for playing a Russian ballerina in a Broadway revival of On Your Toes. We haven’t had a classical star whom most TV audiences could identify for a long time–and we haven’t had a ballerina they would recognize for even longer. Misty Copeland, the focus of the new documentary, A Ballerina’s Tale (which is directed by Nelson George and started its run in theaters this week) was recently promoted to principal dancer with the American Ballet Theater and with her viral Under Armour commercial (which had a nice body-diversity message)–as well as an autobiography and talk show appearances–might turn into a ballerina the general public knows and loves, the first in decades.

We meet Misty as she is still trying to become the first Black woman principal dancer in the American Ballet Theater (when the film was shot she was still a “soloist”). The film glosses over the disputes between her family and her then-mentors in the years before she came to New York, though we do see some early home video footage of her dancing in California with her voice-over telling us, “I first discovered ballet at 13.” She started considerably later than most ballerinas do, but her talent was obvious even then.

In the present day we see Copeland at the barre but also in street clothes walking around New York or the cities the company tours. Much like Serena Williams has changed what a women’s tennis champion is supposed to look like, Copeland is changing what a prima ballerina looks like. Her face and hair are similar to many other ballerinas, as well as her petite size and extremely low body-fat, but she also has highly defined muscles in her arms and shoulders and bulging, powerful thigh muscles visible through the leggings she wears outside the studio. Her body is also much curvier than what we think of as a “ballerina build.”

Management at ABT saw that Copeland was struggling early in her time in New York where she had no family (unlike most other ballet dancers, no one in her family had the resources to move to New York City with her) and no other Black dancers in the company to talk to. ABT board member Susan Fales-Hill who says of Missy, “She always stood out. She had what you can’t teach and you can’t learn. She had a fire,” was asked to mentor Copeland. Fales-Hill wisely introduced Misty to many who were the first Black women in prominent roles in their respective fields–which helped give Copeland a perspective of her position–and also gave her folks who could prepare her for being the “first” too. So many films about artists seem to focus on the white, male artist achieving alone, but this documentary shows what many of us know from real life, that artists need support systems in place–and women and people of color often have to build their own.

In one of the best scenes we see 80ish former ballerina Raven Wilkinson, a star in the Ballet Russe in the ’50s (eventually she went to Europe to dance because in the Jim Crow South she was barred from staying in hotels with the white dancers). She and Copeland hold hands across their bodies ballet-style and as Wilkinson hums the Swan Lake score they both go through the same head movements of the lead role, which each played decades apart.

At age 29, Copeland’s career seems to be taking off; she plays the lead in The Firebird and is prominently featured in the banners and posters for the performances, but she suffers an injury (stress fractures on her tibia) that requires surgery and a long recovery period. Here we really get a sense of what a dancer has to go through to get her body to do her bidding. Along with the usual stretching, massage and manipulation we see Missy endure difficult therapeutic exercises and a painful looking encounter with a chiropractor. She makes her first return to performance in a non-taxing, guest role. When she comes off stage, she tells the camera, “I’m glad that’s over.”

As Copeland and other dancers interviewed attest, ballet is a “crazy perfectionist” profession with pain, sweat and strain the norm in performances that are supposed to look effortless. George underscores the force and strength needed by letting us hear the insistent soft tap of Misty’s toe shoes hitting the floor when she dances in rehearsal, a sound usually drowned out by an orchestra.

A white director probably would have left out much of the talk of racism in ballet, but hearing it discussed openly as an obstacle to be overcome, is refreshing. Fales-Hill asks directly,”Where are the Black ballerinas?”

Victoria Rowell, an actress who had her start in ballet says she was simply never promoted in the New York City Ballet while her friends, white dancers at her level, were. She states that Balanchine (who was still in charge of NYCB at that time and had great influence over all of ballet) once said that a ballerina should have skin “like a freshly peeled apple,” which not only leaves out Rowell (and Copeland) but also slights the first ballerina Balanchine choreographed his version of The Firebird around: Maria Tallchief was Native American (and his third wife!)

This film could use more footage of Copeland dancing–and in the scenes where she is dancing (or rehearsing) the camera is either too close, so we don’t see her whole body or too far away, so we don’t see the emotion on her face. Logistics of filming dance are always challenging, but La Danse, Frederick Wiseman’s documentary about the Paris Opera Ballet, as well as Wim Wenders 3-D game-changer, Pina, are excellent blueprints. Although George probably didn’t have the budget those films had (Tale is Kickstarter-funded) I wish he had taken some pointers from them.

Still Copeland is a great subject and ballet, like opera and classical music has a rapidly-aging fanbase, a problem we see offset by the many young girls (including girls of color) seeking out Misty for autographs after her performances. Like Serena Williams has done for tennis, Copeland has drawn new fans to ballet from the Black community and beyond.

Copeland is now in her thirties, so her time as a principal dancer will probably last less than a decade. But she has such a warm, lovely screen presence, producers would be wise to put her in front of a camera even when she’s no longer on pointe. But by that time Hollywood will have to chip away at its long legacy of racism, the way we see the ballet world is just starting to do in theirs.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Y2h6fz2XzQ” iv_load_policy=”3″]

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

Dead Woman Walking: ‘Phoenix’ and the Resurrected Femme Fatale

This is a guest post by Amy Woolsey.

You can scarcely read a review of Phoenix, the latest movie by German director Christian Petzold, without encountering a reference to Vertigo. Like Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 classic, Phoenix deals with trauma, mistaken identity, and male authority. Stylistically, it leans more toward restraint than melodrama, but it still makes use of double imagery and lush colors (red in particular) to create a surreal atmosphere that drifts through each frame like cabaret music onto nighttime streets.

As in Vertigo, red suggests romance – and danger.

Both films also include a woman who comes back from the dead. In Vertigo, Kim Novak’s Madeleine Elster inflames the passion of Jimmy Stewart’s ex-detective Scottie Ferguson, only to apparently commit suicide halfway through the movie by jumping off a bell tower. Later, the grief-stricken Scottie runs into a woman named Judy Barton who reminds him of Madeleine, and he grows obsessed with molding her into his former lover’s likeness. It turns out that the two women are the same person: Judy had been impersonating Madeleine as part of an elaborate murder scheme. In Phoenix, Nina Hoss plays Nelly Lenz, a Holocaust survivor who gets surgery to reconstruct her mutilated face. When she reunites with her husband Johnny (Ronald Zehrfeld), he doesn’t recognize her, but noticing a resemblance, he convinces her to masquerade as his “dead” wife so they can collect and split her inheritance.

The similarity isn’t a coincidence. Petzold, along with late screenwriter Harun Farocki, deliberately designed Phoenix as “Vertigo in reverse,” as he explained in an interview with The Film Stage:

“We always thought about the male perspective. We always thought about a man who creates a woman, but we never thought about the perspective of a woman… It was Harun that said we had to change the perspective, so we started thinking about what the male subjectivity had done to Kim Novak, and the studio system — to the actor and to the character in Vertigo. Why all these stories are made by men, huh?”

Far from a cheap gimmick, the point-of-view switch in Phoenix sheds new light on Vertigo and film noir, demonstrating how the genre has evolved since its World War II-era heyday.

As a genre, noir is somewhat nebulous. The term did not enter popular usage until the 1970s, applied in retrospect to a set of films from the 1940s and ‘50s with similar aesthetic and thematic qualities. Some critics don’t consider it a genre at all, but rather a cycle or style. Still, there are a number of conventions commonly associated with noir, from dramatic lighting that emphasizes shadows to a gloomy, even nihilistic mood, not to mention archetypes such as the world-weary detective and, most notably, the femme fatale – in the words of Roger Ebert, a woman who’d “just as soon kill you as love you, and vice versa.”

Barbara Stanwyck epitomizes the femme fatale as Phyllis Dietrichson in Double Indemnity.

Vertigo was released at the tail end of the classic noir period, but Madeleine Elster still displays the characteristics of a quintessential femme fatale. Slender, white, and platinum-blond, she has a statuesque, if patently artificial beauty, her face blank in a way that conveys mystery rather than vacuity – a discomfiting amalgam of sensuality and reserve. Yet even as she emanates danger, an air of tragedy surrounds her. Madeleine is doomed from the moment she appears onscreen; we’d already heard Gavin, her husband, speculate that she’s being possessed by the ghost of her suicidal great-grandmother, causing her to act “like someone I don’t know.” She may be an agent of death, but she’s also captive of it, perpetually haunted by the specter of her mortality. At one point, she tells Scottie that she feels “as though I’m walking down a long corridor that once was mirrored… and when I come to the end of the corridor, there’s nothing but darkness. And I know when I walk into the darkness that I’ll die.”

The femme fatale, then, embodies noir’s obsession with death – not only its inevitability but also its allure. Unlike the male hero, who strives to defy fate at every turn, the femme fatale is acutely aware of her vulnerability. As scholar Elisabeth Bronfen posits, she “accepts her death as the logical consequence of her insistence on a radical pursuit of personal freedom,” embracing ruin rather than wallowing in denial. It isn’t passivity so much as cynicism; as a woman in a patriarchal society, she’s familiar with the limits of autonomy and has no illusions of grandeur or righteousness. Judy describes her reunion with Scottie as “the moment I dreaded and hoped for,” suggesting she expected and possibly wanted to be found (she did stay in San Francisco and keep several items of clothing she’d worn as Madeleine). She accepts the immorality of her actions and the futility of avoiding retribution.

In theory, Madeleine’s “suicide” should humble Scottie, a reminder of his own vulnerability. But being a noir hero, he shuns enlightenment and clings to the very American, very masculine belief that individuals have absolute mastery over their destinies and the world around them. His efforts to manage Judy stem from not only male hubris, but also an obsessive need to regain a sense of control and repel knowledge of life’s impermanence. Instead of directly confronting his guilt and failure, he deflects blame onto Judy, convinced that by vanquishing her, he can attain redemption and subdue his inner turmoil. While driving back to the bell tower where Madeleine died, Scottie declares, “There is one final thing I have to do and then I’ll be free of the past.” Novak’s dubious expression articulates what her character has no doubt learned: you can’t escape the past.

A more prevalent interpretation of the femme fatale reads her as a male fantasy, a screen onto which spectators can project their erotic desires. Although the narrative often penalizes the hero for succumbing to lust, it implicitly encourages the audience to participate in his temptation, establishing his point-of-view as dominant and rarely developing the woman beyond her surface. As Laura Mulvey’s oft-cited male gaze theory goes, men look, while women are looked at. Is it any wonder that the most memorable image from Vertigo is a shot of Madeleine sitting in front of a painted portrait, her back to the camera? She’s anonymous, part of the surrounding artwork. In this case, the femme fatale doesn’t personify fate but transcends it, her temporary demise and subsequent resurrection reinforcing her abstract nature – her fluid identity, otherworldly glamour, and general elusiveness. She’s not mortal because she’s not real. If that sounds contradictory to the “femme fatale as the essence of mortality” theory, it’s because the femme fatale is a fundamentally contradictory figure: elegant yet violent, volatile yet cunning, egocentric yet self-destructive, catering to female empowerment yet also male pleasure.

Hitchcock frames Madeleine herself as a work of art.

At Vulture, Angelica Jade Bastién lamented that noir has shriveled into an empty shell of its former self, tending to appropriate the genre’s most superficial aspects (the violence, the hardboiled dialogue) while neglecting its underlying meaning (the commentary on power, sexuality, deviance, and the American Dream). As a result, the femme fatale has lost much of her potency. Her influence is visible in the demented predators of psychosexual thrillers like Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct and the ravishing, albeit ultimately harmless sirens of neo-noirs like L.A. Confidential and Drive, but these characters lack their predecessors’ complexity and subversive edge. Along with David Fincher and Gillian Flynn’s twisted romance Gone Girl and Alex Garland’s sleek science-fiction parable Ex Machina, Phoenix takes strides toward salvaging the modern femme fatale, playing with perspective in order to deconstruct gender dynamics and genre tropes.

By situating her at the center of the story, Phoenix grants Nelly an agency Madeleine was denied, turning her into a fully realized individual with her own arc and interior life instead of a mere manifestation of the male hero’s subconscious. Behavior that could come across as illogical and contrived makes sense because Petzold exhibits genuine interest in understanding Nelly and what drives her. Without compromising subtlety, he peels back the layers of his heroine’s enigmatic façade, hinting at her willful nostalgia (she implores the surgeon operating on her face to make her look how she used to) and simultaneous, conflicting urge to find the truth about her husband. Hitchcock, meanwhile, never bothered to devise an explanation for why Madeleine/Judy goes along with Gavin’s plan to murder his wife; she just does what the plot requires of her.

It’s clear right away that Nelly is not a conventional femme fatale. She first appears huddled in the passenger seat of a car, her face covered with bandages and shadows – a stark juxtaposition from Madeleine’s introduction in Vertigo, with Scottie furtively eyeing her emerald-clad figure as Bernard Hermann’s score swells. There’s no attempt to hide Nelly’s fragility; as she wanders through the desolate streets of postwar Berlin, she seems to fade into the background, a ghost haunting ruins. Here, the false death illustrates the effects of trauma, the feeling of having witnessed the end of the world and no longer belonging in the present. Johnny’s manipulation isn’t just inconvenient for Nelly; it’s oppressive, a refusal to acknowledge her personhood. When the bandages come off and she undergoes her transformation, Nelly starts to occupy more of the screen, but that initial sense of alienation and repressed anxiety lingers, etched in Hoss’s searching gaze and tentative walk.

Especially telling is the scene where Nelly enters Johnny’s basement, looking like her old self for the first time. The camera establishes a close-up of her shoes before gliding upward, revealing her body in fragments as she descends the stairs. It’s a familiar technique, used to elicit awe at a female character’s appearance in movies as varied as the Bette Davis romance Now, Voyager and the James Bond-esque spy romp Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol. In Phoenix, however, the sequence unfolds with an unease that defuses the sensationalism and, as a result, undercuts its effectiveness as a tool of the male gaze. Gone is the mystique that shrouded the femme fatales of classical noir; we’re too conscious of Nelly’s suffering to romanticize her. That’s not to say she is depicted as weak: even at her most ostensibly docile, when Johnny dictates her appearance and movements, Nelly is in command of the narrative. She obtains power not through violence or seduction but knowledge, her willingness to exploit the discrepancy between her real identity and Johnny’s perception of her.

A silent power struggle

Noir is traditionally regarded as the realm of men, with its unsentimental look at crime and corruption. Yet, at its best, the genre has always been as much a portrait of femininity as of masculinity, showing how women navigate and resist the social, moral, and sexual standards imposed on them. After all, one of the reasons for its enduring popularity is its fascination with outsiders, the people lurking in the margins and dark corners of society. Phoenix succeeds where so many have fallen short because it recognizes the value of women’s experiences, presenting a heroine who exists for her sake, not the hero’s, who is neither vilified nor fetishized. At last, the femme fatale manages to transcend the male imagination and become human – free.

Amy Woolsey is a writer living in northern Virginia. Since graduating from George Mason University in May, she has started interning at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. She spends her free time consuming, discussing, and generally obsessing over pop culture. You can follow her on Twitter and Tumblr, and she keeps a personal blog that is updated irregularly. In addition to freelancing at The Week, she wrote about The Bling Ring for Bitch Flicks’ “Unlikable Women” theme week.

Recommended Reading

The Modern Femme Fatale in Nicolas Wending Refn’s Neo-Noir Drive

No Place for a Woman: The Family in Film Noir

Vertigo by Jim Emerson

Hoss Is Boss: The Enigma of Christian Petzold’s Muse by Scott Tobias

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Interview with Lyric R. Cabral

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Equals’ Is an Interesting If Not Especially New Portrait of Mental Illness

Drake Doremus’ dystopian science fiction movie, ‘Equals,’ presents a pretty good metaphor for mental illness – just not a very challenging one.

Written by Katherine Murray.

Drake Doremus’ dystopian science fiction movie, Equals, presents a pretty good metaphor for mental illness – just not a very challenging one.

Equals, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival this year before coming to TIFF, is set in a future society where people have been genetically engineered not to have emotions. It’s strongly implied that this is the basis for the false utopia the characters live in, where they all wear the same clothes, and live in modular apartments, solving puzzles in the evenings, like so many rational Vulcans. It’s an interesting idea – I, for one, would have liked to hear the characters explain what the purpose of human life was, and why they bothered showing up for jobs, if they didn’t feel any way about anything – but the movie isn’t interested in how this civilization works. Instead, it’s just set up as vaguely bad and communist, in a way that borrows from Nineteen Eighty-Four and other works that came before it, without exhibiting the same interest in social critique.

Instead, the focus of Equals is on personal, idiosyncratic experiences of not fitting in, or being labelled deviant, ill, and outcast because you don’t feel the right way.

The action kicks off when the main character, Silas (played by Nicholas Hoult), develops a rare condition known as SOS. His genetic programming fails and his emotions switch back on, leading him to have a panic attack in his apartment. Trusting the system, he turns himself over to the medical authorities and learns that the prognosis isn’t good. There is no cure for SOS and, while medication can slow the condition’s progression, sufferers eventually become so unstable that they have to be quarantined inside an ominous facility known as the DEN. Living conditions in the DEN are so deplorable that most patients kill themselves within days of arriving and, in fact, they’re encouraged to do so, because the horror of living with emotions is more terrible than death.

Silas, bummed out by this diagnosis but trying not to be, lest he get sent to the DEN, begins to suspect that one of his coworkers, Nia (Kristen Stewart, in one of her best performances yet) is also suffering from SOS, but trying to hide it. The two strike up a friendship that turns into a romance as they bask in the relief of having someone else to talk to about what they’re feeling.

Unfortunately, physical contact of any kind is strictly prohibited in this randomly (and somewhat senselessly) dystopian society – for reasons that, again, I would have been interested to hear about – and, as soon as their fingertips brush, Silas and Nia are on the path to being discovered, with predictably tragic results.

Equals has amazing sound design and a handful of beautiful shots, but it’s not winning any points for originality. The setting is sketched out in pretty vague terms, and the plot doesn’t offer many surprises. If you’re feeling churlish, you can spend all 101 minutes asking why questions that don’t have any answers. Equals isn’t really interested in its own setting except in so far as it establishes the concept “People living here are suspicious of feelings.” And the reason it wants to establish that concept is because the story is really a metaphor for mental illness, designed to tell us that we are too quick to medicate and suppress people whose feelings aren’t normal.

The story in Equals is structured to cover as many contemporary attitudes toward mental illness as possible, and to explore the way that different characters relate to SOS. Nia, distrustful of the system and scared of ending up in the DEN, never tells anyone what’s she’s experiencing and deals with it herself. It takes all her energy, every day, just to act normal; to not let anyone see that she’s different. On the other hand, Silas trust the system and ends up a with a medical record that follows him wherever he goes, counting down the time until he winds up in an institution. Arguably, things are easier for him because he can take medication to suppress his feelings, but he goes back and forth about whether it’s worth it to do that.

Part way through the movie, he joins a support group for other people who have SOS, where each person has a different opinion about how to see the condition and how to live with it. Over the course of the film he goes on a journey where he starts out waiting for a cure and later comes to believe that SOS is a natural part of who he is, and that the real problem is the way everyone else is reacting.

The questions that Silas struggles with are really important and really integral to the lives of people with long-term mental health conditions – especially ones that affect personality development and aren’t going to go away. Is this me or a disease? What does it mean that I’m different from everyone else – am I worse, am I better, am I equally good this way? If someone could cure me tomorrow, would I want to take the cure? Who would I be, if I did?

The metaphor works really, really well. What’s more disappointing is that the movie doesn’t seem to have an interesting perspective on the answers to those questions. Instead of challenging us, it takes the easy way out by setting up a situation where Silas and Nia are clearly correct in their beliefs while everyone else is just… well, crazy. It’s much more like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest than Benny & Joon – Doremus and scriptwriter Nathan Parker make it easy for us to sympathize with Silas and Nia to the point that a lot of the complexities are lost. Of course it’s better to live in a world where people feel something rather than nothing. Of course people should be able to talk about their feelings with each other. Of course it’s good to fall in love with someone. There are never any negative sides to SOS except that The Man is against you.

This Right Side, Wrong Side, Fight-The-Power-For-Your-Right-to-Be-In-Love stuff not only makes the story less challenging – it also makes it less interesting. The story never swerves away from predictable plot developments and, like a train conductor calling out the stops before you arrive, Equals mechanically foreshadows each and every one, suggests the most obvious possible outcome, and then delivers that outcome on schedule. I’d make a joke about Chekov’s cure for SOS and the convenient six-hour lag time before it goes active, but then I’d be telling you how the movie ends just as blatantly as the director does.

Look – there are things to like about Equals. Kristen Stewart’s good in it, the editing is very well thought-out and emotionally evocative, the sound is really good, and, hey – the metaphor is really good, too. But I wish that the metaphor were in service of a message I haven’t heard before.

Katherine Murray is a Toronto-based writer who yells about movies and TV on her blog.

‘Stonewall’ Under Fire

The director missed an important opportunity to bring visibility to a highly marginalized and forgotten about group of people with ‘Stonewall,’ but instead he made a film that was more easily digestible for a mainstream audience. It comes as no surprise then that members of the queer community have had such strong negative reactions to the film.

This is a guest post by Danika Kimball.

Throughout his career in Hollywood, Roland Emmerich has built a career on destroying the world with mutant lizards, global disasters, and aliens. Many critics who have seen his latest film Stonewall, have come to the conclusion that he has created “yet another disaster movie” by masking a violent protest led by radical queer women as a coming of age story for an attractive white male. Some reviewers have gone so far as to say, “There are not enough bricks in the world to throw at Roland Emmerich’s appalling Stonewall.”

The film has been under fire since the release of its trailer in early August, with hundreds of thousands of members of the queer community boycotting its release. Rightfully so, given the erasure of trans womyn of color, butch lesbians, drag queens, homeless queer people, sex workers, gay, bi, and pansexual people who actually put in the grunt work during the riots.

Image Courtesy of USC

Emmerich’s erasure of the Black transgender women who incited the riots is a disappointment in and of itself, but when you analyze the statistics for LGBTQ representation in film, the numbers are even more bleak. Professors at the University of California’s Annenberg School of Communication analyzed 100 of the most popular films in 2014 and found that out of 4,610 speaking characters, only 19 total were either gay, lesbian, or bisexual. There were zero transgender characters.

The director missed an important opportunity to bring visibility to a highly marginalized and forgotten about group of people with Stonewall, but instead he made a film that was more easily digestible for a mainstream audience. It comes as no surprise then that members of the queer community have had such strong negative reactions to the film.

Emmerich has responded to the harsh criticism in one of two ways. In an interview with BuzzFeed, he claimed that putting the character Danny at the forefront of the drama was a conscious choice to appeal to both gay and straight people. Later on he remarked that he put a white gay male in the film because he himself is white and gay.

Other times, the director has responded to criticism with a well-intentioned “Kum bah Yah” sentiment, trying to tug at the heartstrings with a “we are all in this together” speech.

Roland Emmerich responds to Stonewall backlash

Though his comments are certainly well intentioned, Emmerich exemplifies an attitude that many cisgender white gay males share: the idea that all queer people share the same oppressions. But it’s harmful to assume that there is a blanket of oppression over the entire LGBTQ community. In focusing on how all queer people suffer from the same oppressions, Emmerich ignores the ways in which race, class, ability, and gender identity intersect to create different levels of oppression.

Emmerich’s experience as a cis white man is very different than the trans women of color who should have been represented in the film. This fact makes the erasure of the Black trans leaders who were at the core of the Stonewall riots all the more problematic, and impossible to stomach.

Reactions to Emmerich’s Facebook post

Another thing I found interesting about Emmerich’s sentiments on Facebook is his emphasis on LGBT homeless youth. The only seemingly positive headlines surrounding the film seem to be because of Emmerich’s activism in this arena. In an interview with Entertainment Tonight, Emmerich expresses that one of the driving forces in the film centered on the story of homeless gay youths who fought bravely in the Stonewall riots. While homelessness in the LGBTQ community is a problem that needs to be addressed, it’s troublesome that it’s being filtered through the lens of someone who believes all queer people are going through the same struggles.

In the year 2012, the homeless population was at a staggering 633,782 people throughout the United States. Mental health issues, addiction, physical health issues, and domestic violence were among the main reasons contributing to this number, according to research conducted by Professor Kelly A Schwend of Bradley University’s Department of Nursing.

LGBTQ individuals represent a significant portion of that number. According to the Williams Institute, 40 percent of homeless youth identify as LGBT, 43 percent of clients served by drop-in centers are LGBT, and 30 percent of outreach clients identify as LGBT. These individuals experience a higher percentage of violence, abuse, and exploitation compared to their heterosexual peers. Transgender people are particularly at risk due to a lack of cultural acceptance, and are often turned away from shelters, making them susceptible to even more abuse and violence.

Other studies suggest that Black people represented nearly 40 percent of the U.S. homeless demographic, a startling number when you also consider that according to the U.S. census, Black people make up only 13.2 percent of the U.S. population as a whole.

All of this information paints the picture that Black trans women are in all likelihood the most susceptible to experience violence and homelessness at some point in their life. Black trans women were also the most active in instigating the riots in the first place, so tell me again why these women are underrepresented in the film itself?

From his actions in erasing these women from his film, a historically dramatized narrative, it becomes hard to argue that he is concerned about anyone who isn’t a cisgender white gay male. Again, this isn’t to say that Emmerich wasn’t well intentioned in pointing out the problem, but reinforces the idea that he might not be considering intersectional points of identity when doing so.

Emmerich expressed to Vulture that he believed the film represented the diversity of the Stonewall clientele (around 70 percent Black/Latin@) “very well,” but if the trailer and reviews are any indicator we’ll be seeing more what we see in all of Hollywood: a white man in the foreground, and the people of color behind him. I mean, the still from the climax of the movie speaks for itself.

All in all, Stonewall was a film with great potential, but this fictionalized version of the story changed the narrative from one that was about violent, radical resistance, to a watered down coming of age story for a young cisgender white man. Once again, a gay white male becomes the face of a movement, and historical narratives of the rest of the queer community are erased.

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

‘The Tribe’: Navigating the Beauty and Horror of Silent Children

The film moves through arcs of pity, empathy, and then downright horror. Violence is abrupt and can come from anyone. I was blessed to watch the film with an audience that was one third deaf, and the experience of witnessing visceral scenes with the sounds of hands pounding, slapping, moving around me with frantic finger blurs of American Sign Language made the viewing electric.

“The silent pictures were the purest form of cinema; the only thing they lacked was the sound of people talking and noises. In many of the films now being made, there is very little cinema. They are mostly what I call ‘photographs of people talking.’ When we tell a story in cinema, we should resort to dialogue only when it’s impossible to do otherwise.”

Alfred Hitchcock in Hitchcock, by François Truffaut

Writer/Director Miroslav Slaboshpitsky said in an interview that he was inspired to write his film The Tribe because he attended a school that was near a school for the deaf when he was younger. (Incidentally, Slaboshpitsky filmed The Tribe at his old school.) There were fights from time to time between students from his school and the deaf students. He carried these memories for many years, finally unleashing them in a film that has gathered both praise, and in some places, ridicule for being a gimmick film, a one-trick pony only being celebrated because it is a story told completely in Ukrainian Sign Language.

There are no subtitles, no voice-overs, no music or sound design. The only sounds we hear are natural noises around the actors–à la dogme films— when they move within rooms slamming doors, are in cars, are outside walking in snow, or the excited vocal inflections emitted from an agitated signer who often uses sharp finger pokes and hand slaps to catch the attention of people not looking them in the eye. Viewing the film is pretty close to Hitchcock’s idea of “pure cinema.” Viewers don’t even know the names of the characters because our eyes have to do all the work, and we are basically resorted to assigning actors descriptive traits for names like New Kid, Kingpin, Boss Man, Blonde homegirl, and Brunette homegirl to track folks. (After viewing the film, I had to go online and check to see if the actors were even assigned names.)

Not since the silent films during the pre-sound era assigned to me during college have I experienced a film where I had to work at understanding and interpreting human interactions with visuals only. The fascinating part of Slaboshpitsky intentionally making viewers work at comprehension is that my interpretation of the film might be completely different from someone else.

Sergey (Grigoriy Fsenko) is a deaf high school student who tries to fit into his new boarding school and becomes ensnared in a criminal enterprise ran by a gang of older male students and a woodshop teacher. They are into everything. Petty theft, burglary, prostitution, bullying, and assaults on other students. These kids are the poster children for Thug Life Ukraine.

For the first ten minutes of the film, we are forced to orient ourselves. What may appear to be a slow and tedious start is really narrative time designed to acclimate and settle hearing viewers into leaning on visual cues full throttle. We become Sergey trying to figure out the place and its pecking order. Sergey is given instant sympathy because he has no idea what he is getting himself into. He can barely find a room and a bed to occupy before he’s pushed around and forced to sleep in the hallway on his first night. Eventually Sergey is jumped into the “gang” and the film branches out to the other characters. We are witness to the evening prostitution where two teen-aged girls, who are part of the crew, are driven off campus to truck stops by the woodshop teacher and a student handler/pimp. The girls have quick hook-ups inside the trucks, the teen handler/pimp collects the money, and at the end of the night, the woodshop teacher drives them all back to school.

There are only two main female characters in The Tribe, a blonde and a brunette who are dorm roommates and apparently best friends. It would be easy for me to write that they are just objects used throughout the film. They are. But all the underlings in the gang are objects. All bodies are commodities used for profit, from the elementary-aged boys sent out to sell cheap souvenirs on the trains and streets (while also lifting a wallet and a purse or two), to the crews that roam the streets at night to roll over some unlucky citizen walking home at night with groceries.

Unfortunately for this film, the female presence is only used for sexual exploitation. The females are not calling any shots and aren’t bossing any underlings around. They are there to pleasure men. Perhaps it would be different if there were some teen-aged boys also being prostituted along with the girls when they were dropped off at the truck stop. Or at least more girls participating on the stroll and other girls involved in different parts of the criminal enterprise other than prostitution. At least there would be a balance and a sense of “it is what it is.” (I’m not advocating that seeing more girls pimped in the film makes it better in that world, but it might give a semblance of business is business and the female characters were there to make money and have agency for themselves too.) This shouldn’t deter people from seeing the film, it’s just my observation that sometimes screenwriters stick women in scripts for titillation purposes and not as fully realized characters integral to the plot.

There is a lot of sex in the film that isn’t romanticized. People fuck. And not for love. This leads to one of my favorite scenes in the movie. Anya (Yana Novikova) completes a night of sex work and Sergey (her new handler/pimp) walks her back to their dorm. As handler payment (a reward given to the guys who escort the two girls at night to the trucks), Anya hikes up her skirt inside a cold dirty room, bends over and offers her backside to Sergey to do what he will. It’s very clinical, no foreplay, just stick your penis here boy and be done. Sergey flips the encounter on Anya and makes a pallet on the floor and mounts her missionary style so he can see her face. He tries to kiss her, but she protests and turns her head. Eventually they switch positions again, and while sexually spooning her, he manipulates her clitoris and Anya appears aroused and surprised that a male would take time to pleasure her during the act. We watch everything in real time (and full nudity), and when they climax, Anya kisses him. It’s a lovely scene because the sex moves from a passionless unfeeling payment fuck for Anya, (although Sergey is clearly in love with her) into a tender moment where we witness the first sign of emotional connection between anyone in the film. It’s a plot point that eventually spirals the film toward a cringe-worthy abortion sequence and then onto its horrific conclusion.

The sex added a layer to Sergey’s character that I wasn’t expecting. The audience assumes from his earlier awkwardness that he was just a virginal follower, clumsy with girls, and knowing nothing. But watching their sex scene I was struck at how insistent he was at touching Anya in a particular way, moving her into positions not with awkward fumblings, but with an experienced need to please her. It was the first clue Sergey wasn’t what he seemed. Later in the film we find out that we were wrong about him from the start.

The conclusion of The Tribe reminded me of Gaspar Noé’s Irreversible. It is brutal and heart-wrenching in its abrupt closure. The film stays with you. I spent a few days trying to process what it meant to me as a viewer. Was my interpretation of the events correct? Did my eyes deceive me? What social clues did I miss because I don’t know Sign Language? The Tribe was pretty close to pure cinema. It has a seventies realism that I miss in movies today, and the actors look like regular people, not Hollywood augmented look-alikes. The cast is made up of deaf untrained actors who do a hell of a job bringing this world to life. It’s not a film for everyone, but I hope people will step out of their comfort zone to watch it. It will haunt you.

Staff Writer Lisa Bolekaja can be heard co-hosting Hilliard Guess’ Screenwriters Rant Room (the latest episode featuring Empire TV series writer Carlito Machete). Her most recent Sci Fi short story is in Uncanny Magazine, and she can be found on Twitter lurking in the tags #SaturdayNightSciFi and #FridayNightHorror @LisaBolekaja

‘Grandma’–and Lily Tomlin–in a Minor Key

Paul Weitz, who is about my age and is probably still best known as the director of ‘American Pie,’ grew up with Tomlin too, which may be why he centered his latest film, ‘Grandma’ (for which he also wrote the script) around her. 76-year-old women are not often the leads in mainstream American movies, especially not current ones, so I suppose I should be grateful, but I kept wishing this vehicle (and I don’t mean the antique car Tomlin’s character drives in the film) were a better one.

Lily Tomlin was the first woman on television who ever made me laugh. She appeared on Laugh-In as Ernestine, the telephone operator with the ’40s hairstyle and quick temper who snorted at her own jokes, back when the US had telephone operators–and only one phone company. Tomlin was also Edith Ann, a little girl about my age in an oversized rocking chair who ended every monologue by lisping, “And that’s the truth,” and blowing a raspberry.

I didn’t see Nashville when it first came out though my parents did, and afterward my father played its soundtrack incessantly. When I saw the film as an adult I didn’t really care for most of it–except the scenes with Tomlin’s not-at-all-comic (but Oscar-nominated) role, the married, gospel singer, a mother of two, young, deaf children, who has an affair with the young up-and-coming singer/songwriter (Keith Carradine). He has sex with many women but only has eyes for her. When he invites her to a club to watch him perform, she shows up but has obviously never been to a nightclub before. She is struck motionless when Carradine’s character sings a love song he’s penned (many of the actors in the film wrote their own songs, including Carradine, who won a “Best Original Song” Oscar for this one) looking straight at her. The camera doesn’t look away from her either.

Paul Weitz, who is about my age and is probably still best known as the director of American Pie, grew up with Tomlin too, which may be why he centered his latest film, Grandma (for which he also wrote the script) around her. 76-year-old women are not often the leads in mainstream American movies, especially not current ones, so I suppose I should be grateful, but I kept wishing this vehicle (and I don’t mean the antique car Tomlin’s character drives in the film) were a better one.

One of Weitz’s best ideas is to make Tomlin’s character queer, since none of us knew as children in the ’70s that the woman who wrote much of Tomlin’s most famous work, Jane Wagner, was also her romantic partner. The two legally married a couple of years ago, the final unambiguous, public “coming out” of many in that generation (and those who are a little older). Although Tomlin has maintained in interviews that she was always open about her sexuality and the media simply didn’t report it, the history some of us remember is a little more complicated. In the ’90s writer Armistead Maupin (Tales of the City) objected to Tomlin narrating The Celluloid Closet (which he wrote) a ’90s history of queers in film because he felt having a semi-closeted narrator was antithetical to the film’s message.

In the film Elle Reid (Tomlin) is a lesbian poet whose heyday was in the ’70s: she’s now an underemployed academic whose talent and reputation is enough to attract a much younger girlfriend, Olivia (Judy Greer). Greer has a warm presence and hilariously wears the anti-fashion sometimes donned by queer women of a certain age (batik pants!), but we see no chemistry between these two characters who are supposed to be hot and heavy lovers, so their breakup in the first scene is a blessing. When Elle’s only granddaughter Sage (Julia Garner) comes to her and confesses, “I’m pregnant,” Elle is too broke to give Sage the money she needs for an abortion. So the two set off in Elle’s old car (which actually belonged to her late partner, Vi) to try to track down the money for the procedure. Another nice touch is that this film doesn’t make a big deal about abortion; Sage is a high school student who seems to have self-esteem issues and her boyfriend (Nat Wolff) isn’t exactly great father material (Elle asks him, “Why didn’t you use a condom, or for humanity’s sake get a vasectomy”), so this choice makes the most sense for Sage, the way it does for many women and girls in real life. I’ve loved Garner in other films, but here she doesn’t demonstrate much of a flair for comedy, especially in reaction shots–or maybe she doesn’t seem skilled in comparison to a master like Tomlin.

The problem is the script isn’t very funny and when it’s serious, it’s not very acutely observed. Everything this film knows about women’s studies and lesbian poets could have been cribbed from a Wikipedia page (though Weitz knows some queer women writers, and is familiar enough with the work of Eileen Myles to quote it at the very beginning of the film). Some straight men can make very good films about queer women–Show Me Love and Blue Is the Warmest Color (with some reservations) are two of my favorites. But Grandma doesn’t really go much under the surface; Elle misses Vi (who was Black–directors, when we ask for more characters of color onscreen, we don’t mean dead ones whom we see only in still photos and drawings), and had good sex with Olivia and that’s… about it. When we see Elle trying to raise money by selling her first editions of famous feminist books, one by a notorious homophobe, Betty Friedan, and another by transphobe Germaine Greer–even though we find out Elle’s friendly enough with one trans woman (Laverne Cox, majestic as always) to have lent her money–Elle doesn’t let on that she might have any objections to these authors or that she knows anyone who does (and with plenty of transphobes among some self-described feminists, especially older ones, today, this detail would be a relevant one).

Although we see artifacts of ’70s Southern California (a dream catcher and wind chimes in Elle’s home), we don’t get a sense of Elle as a person who lived in that time and subculture the way a film that was actually shot in the ’70s, the underrated, under-seen detective story The Late Show, gives us; Tomlin’s character in that film wrote affirmations on her mirror. An interesting film could be made about a character like Elle’s transition from ’60s free spirit to 2010s misanthrope (which Sage confuses with “philanthropy”), perhaps with a script by Wagner (if she’s not retired) since she did such a good job writing the transformation of feminist women and not-so-feminist men from the ’70s to the ’80s in Tomlin’s ’80s hit, one-woman, stage show The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe.

As in Tangerine the straight writer-director tips his hand by making a straight white-guy supporting role the most complex and best thought-out character in the film–Sam Elliott’s, Karl, an old flame of Elle’s (who explains this relationship to Sage as, “I knew I liked women. I just didn’t like myself”)–completely avoids cliché, the only character to do so. Elle’s daughter and Sage’s mom is a cold workaholic, the type of woman we’ve see in movies before, over and over. Elle is the dirty-talking, no-filter, “surprisingly” antagonistic stereotype many older women are called on to play these days, which stretches back to Dorothy on The Golden Girls and beyond: nearly 50 years ago, when Tomlin’s Laugh-in co-star Ruth Buzzi played her most famous character, an older woman who hits men with her handbag, it was already a tired trope. When people talk about how in this supposed “golden age” of TV that premium television is “just like” film, Grandma is the type of predictable, middle-of-the-road, haphazardly written movie that they mean. My advice is to watch other films and see if they change your mind.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XspFo3jiVR8″ iv_load_policy=”3″]

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

A Tinge of Melancholy Saves ‘Sleeping with Other People’

For the rest of the film, which covers a period of years, we follow the relationship of these two characters who are “not a couple but…act like one.” They don’t kiss or have sex but don’t deny they want to either.

Sleeping with Other People, the new film from writer-director Leslye Headland (Bachelorette) has elements that make me hate most other rom-coms. Though set in New York City, every character with more than a few lines is a white, straight person and the script had enough gender-stereotyping to make me want to bite someone. But near the start we see Jake (Jason Sudeikis), the lovable Lothario star of way too many other movies, try to explain away his latest infidelity to his girlfriend as they argue in the middle of a busy New York street. As he seems to bullshit his way back into her heart–and bed–she suddenly pushes him, hard, into the path of an oncoming cab. He escapes with only minor injuries, but he does get hit, and we in the audience feel the impact: this film is trying to be different from the rest.

The most interesting conceit of the film is that both main characters realize they’re too damaged to be together. Alison Brie as Lainey cannot stop hooking up with her gynecologist fuck-buddy (Adam Scott) who went to college with both Sudeikis’s and Brie’s characters (it’s supposed to be 13 years later and, uh, some of the actors seem a little mature to be in their early 30s) whether or not the two are in “monogamous” relationships with other people or not. After Jake and Lainey have dinner together and confess their failings, Lainey says, “We gotta just be friends.” and they discuss a “safe word” they can use to dispel sexual tension between them. They decide on “dick in a mousetrap” (“mousetrap” for short).

For the rest of the film, which covers a couple of years, we follow the relationship of these two characters who are “not a couple but…act like one.” They don’t kiss or have sex but don’t deny they want to either. When they’re in a store talking as they browse one of the clerks tells them what “cool” married people they are and Jake and Lainey play along. When, in a crisis, Lainey rushes to Jake’s place they lie in the same bed, fully clothed and she asks, “Are we in love?” He doesn’t say no.

Sudeikis’s character is one of those annoying guys in movies who doesn’t have to worry about money (he and his business partner have developed software together that is bought out by another company for millions). He brings a nice self-awareness (including a touch of self-loathing) as a man who compulsively picks up women and can never stay faithful to any of them (the concept of polyamory seems not to have occurred to anyone in the film).

Brie has the better written part in Lainey. Instead of, like Jake, having sex with strangers she takes some time off from dating, and in a great rarity for any onscreen character, especially a woman, begins a process of permanent change. She gets into medical school. She stops answering the gynecologist’s calls. When someone asks her why, she says, “Because I’m not an asshole,” leaving unsaid the words “any more.” When Jake asks her why she continued the relationship with the gynecologist for so long, she tells him, “I thought he’d choose me,” and the melancholy and weariness in her voice comes closer to real-life romantic disappointment than most rom-coms ever tread. Her last scenes with the gynecologist seem to imply he feels a sadness too, demonstrating what most adults learn: getting to choose what you want (or don’t) and not getting to can be equally dissatisfying.

Sudeikis and Brie have great chemistry together and the film is quite funny especially when Jake’s business partner (Jason Mantzoukas) and his wife (Andrea Savage) are in a scene. The wife, Naomi, tells Jake and Lainey, “Don’t have kids,” then says to the adorable preschool daughter she’s carrying on her hip, “No offense.” The other supporting roles (except for Natasha Lyonne’s throwaway appearance as Lainey’s queer friend) are also written and cast with exceptional care, especially Amanda Peet (who really shines here) as Jake’s knockout boss, whom he’s always asking out even after she tells him she doesn’t date her employees.

The film is not without parts I would complain about in a film by a man and am dumbfounded to see in one directed and written by a woman. Lainey spends time in lingerie for seemingly no good reason except to show off Brie’s lovely body (the film purports to be a sex comedy but never shows any real nudity). In another scene Jake uses an empty glass bottle to shows Lainey how to touch her own clit. For maximum offensiveness he imitates Public Enemy while he does so.

But even these scenes can’t ruin the emotional resonance of Jake and Lainey’s relationship which we see makes each a better, more whole person able to move on and have a romantic relationship with someone else. As a bonus we see the two characters attend a child’s birthday party high on ecstasy (molly) and the script has them act like real-life people who’ve taken the drug. When the entertainment for the party is a no-show, Lainey tells a worried parent, “Re-laaaaax,” and leads the kids in a dance to David Bowie’s “Modern Love.” Even if this method isn’t how adults usually get through these occasions, the film suggests maybe it should be.

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

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‘The Black Panthers’ From a Very Male Viewpoint

At the very end postscripts for each person who made up part of the Panther leadership appeared–but none of the women are mentioned, an inexcusable omission since the film itself has plenty of interviews with women who were Black Panthers (though all of them could use more screen time).

At the beginning of The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, the new documentary from Black filmmaker Stanley Nelson, the first interviewee, Ericka Huggins, brings up the hackneyed tale of the blind men and the elephant to describe participation in The Black Panther Party (the largest political organization that made up the Black Power movement of the ’60s): those at different levels and in different cities had different understandings of the organization and widely different experiences. After I saw the film at The Independent Film Festival of Boston, I couldn’t help thinking that the metaphor was a pre-emptory excuse for what many would find lacking in the film. At the very end postscripts for each person who made up part of the Panther leadership appeared–but none of the women are mentioned, an inexcusable omission since the film itself has plenty of interviews with women who were Black Panthers (though all of them could use more screen time). Some of the film’s most incisive moments came from Kathleen Cleaver, a well-known decision-maker and spokesperson for the group in the ’60s, and Elaine Brown, who explains that the era’s radicalism reached down to the most unlikely places: “I was a cocktail waitress in a white strip club two years before I joined The Black Panther Party…The rage was in the streets. It was everywhere.” Brown went on to head the organization for a few years in the ’70s; she, alongside cofounder Bobby Seale, was one of the first people who ran for public office on its platform (she has since denounced the film). The film touches on the sexism in the organization (the way ’60s “radicals” treated women in their ranks–in every group–was a big part of the original impetus for the women’s movement), but cannot seem to make the connection to the treatment of the women we see interviewed in the present day.

What a shame because the film is packed with history hardly anyone teaches, presented in a lively way with music from the era that isn’t the usual overplayed ’60s hits (including some catchy propaganda songs produced by the Panthers themselves) along with tons of great vintage footage of the Panthers at times juxtaposed with present-day color interviews with the people we’ve just seen in ’60s black and white (in the Panther uniform of a beret, leather jacket–and a rifle). The film quickly sets the context of the violence of the ’60s against Black people (including assassination of civil rights leaders) with founders Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale organizing a sort of armed guard for their local community (at first specifically to prevent police violence toward Black people–for which we still haven’t implemented a solution) in Oakland, California. We jump into this action without much back story: we don’t see or hear much of the Party’s Ten Point Program (all of which is relevant today: decent housing, education and health care, full employment and a living wage, prison abolition plus an end to police brutality), but we do see Panthers with guns in the state capitol building in Sacramento.

The archival clips are a double-edged sword. White news organizations and talk shows of the time presented The Panthers either as a threat or as “radical chic,” so the film, though compiled in the present day by a Black male director, can’t help taking on some of the same, non-nuanced tone, even as it features many different present-day narrators explaining the action for us. Co-founder Huey P. Newton comes off mostly as paranoid, frustrated and violent. He was all of those things, but he was also a brilliant strategist (one interviewee calls him, “a visionary”) who saw that Black people who were engaged in “survival” mode (including those who made their living with criminal activity) could be recruited to put their energy collectively into radical activism: this epiphany was a big part of why the Panthers caught on so quickly in cities all across the United States–and its framework spread beyond its borders: inspiring, among other groups, the Irish Republican Army. After the heyday of the Panthers, Newton wrote his Ph.D. thesis (he graduated high school functionally illiterate but later taught himself to read) on the forces (most egged on by the FBI) that broke up The Black Panther Party, but the film seems intent on making him just a cardboard, drug-addled villain, mad with power.

The film even sells notorious misogynist and purveyor of violence against women, Eldridge Cleaver, short. Although those interviewed point out that Cleaver’s literary pedigree (the book he had written in prison, Soul on Ice, had received fawning reviews in the New York Times and other prestigious publications: its misogyny was not unusual for widely praised books of the time, even “radical” ones) helped direct white people’s attention to the party, the film doesn’t bother to excerpt this still highly quotable book even though the ideas it laid out were at least partly responsible for attracting a child of the Black privileged class, like Kathleen Cleaver (formerly Kathleen Neal), away from her position in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to The Party and to Cleaver himself. Instead we hear from a former leader of The Young Lords (a Puerto Rican Nationalist group) say, “Eldridge had this incredible ability to encapsulate a thought that stabbed right into the heart of the enemy. Now, was he insane? Fuck, yeah.” We hear of his irresponsibility in getting other Panther members killed, but we get no clue of why people would want to follow him in the first place.

In fact the film, for the most part, neglects the emotional engagement members needed to have with the ideals and community around them to make the sacrifices they did (most members were continually harassed by police who also harassed their families). We see heart-warming footage of Panthers serving free breakfast to children (which is where the Federal government got the idea) and hear from one of those now adult children on what the program meant to her, but we hear (again briefly) from Ericka Huggins about joining the Panthers with her husband John without noting that he was assassinated by a rival Black Power faction (these tensions, were, as always, exacerbated by the FBI) when he was just 23.

We do see emotionally affecting footage of Fred Hampton the Chicago Black Panther leader who was building alliances with poor whites and Latino groups before he was assassinated by the FBI (his bodyguard was an informant: the FBI is still “gathering information” on “terrorist” suspects in this highly error-laden method). He tells a crowd, “We can’t fight racism with racism. We fight racism with solidarity.” The mother of his now adult son (she was in the late stages of pregnancy when Hampton was killed) tells of being in the same bed when he was shot (he was 21: an echo of the young Black people killed by police in the US more recently).

We even hear from some of the police officers who helped take down the party. Like the police who brutalized civil rights protestors interviewed in Eyes on the Prize they have no regrets and have faced no consequences for their actions. And like many police officers today they have a remarkable lack of self-reflection: one describes seeing “the cutest, little Black girl” and is completely flummoxed when after he says hello, she retorts, “Fuck you, pig,” though he knew very well what the police had been doing to the community. We see footage of “stop and frisk” used on Panthers (and other Black people who aren’t in the party). Some of today’s militarization of the police started as a reaction to The Panthers: the first SWAT teams were set up in California to respond to the “threat” The Black Panther Party posed. The head of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover encapsulates the philosophy we see in action when he states, “”Justice is incidental to law and order.”

The film is well worth seeing, but in some respects reminded me of a presidential campaign commercial: I’ve never felt so compelled to read up on the incidents and people depicted in a documentary to feel better informed. Although Bobby Seale is still alive, he was not interviewed for the film (but it has plenty of vintage footage of him in interviews and otherwise) and Angela Davis (also still alive) who was one of the most famous defendants in a Panther trial (she was acquitted of supplying guns to Panthers who committed serious crimes with them) is completely absent even in archival footage. And for the record, Kathleen Cleaver is now a law professor at Emory University and is active in anti-racism work. Elaine Brown was the campaign manager who helped elect Oakland’s first Black mayor and now works for radical prison reform.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BeAsxK7PRa0″ iv_load_policy=”3″]

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On Racism, Erasure, and ‘Pan’

Apparently, most Hollywood executives and casting directors live in a fictional land called Neverlearn.

This is a guest post by Danika Kimball.

Hollywood has a history of recreating the same stories over and over again. I mean, in recent years audiences have seen remakes of Carrie, Cinderella, and about 18 Spiderman films (18 too many, in my opinion). So it came as no surprise when Warner Brothers announced that they would be making a new version of Peter Pan, entitled Pan. Even less surprising is their casting choice, where they have once again whitewashed a Native American character, hiring Rooney Mara to play the part of Tiger Lily. Apparently, most Hollywood executives and casting directors live in a fictional land called Neverlearn.

Raise your hand if you’re sick of it.

Director Joe Wright reportedly intended the film to be “very international and multi-racial,” but if the characters we’ve seen in this adaptation of Pan are indicative, he very well means “whiter than bleached snow.” Really, if he wanted the film to stand out from the rest of the Peter Pan films, he might have made it a point to create a non-racist one, as it would be the first of its kind to do so. I mean let’s not forget the disgusting racism present in the beloved 1953 Disney classic.

But fear not!

The studio apparently did an exhaustive search in finding the right girl to play the role of Tiger Lily, auditioning both Lupita Nyong’o and Adele Exarchopoulos before choosing Mara for the part. Though both of these actresses are phenomenally talented, name-checking starlets born in Kenya and France respectively hardly counts as an “exhaustive search,” especially when you cast a conventionally attractive white woman in the role at the end of the day.

Though certainly not the first film to completely screw up its casting choices (ahem—Stonewall, Aloha, Breakfast at Tiffany’s), Native whitewashing is particularly problematic. Fashion editors, photographers, and designers frequently appropriate Native culture, sport red face, and hypersexualize women. Though women are sexualized overall in entertainment mediums, the objectification of Native women presents a whole new set of problems. While one in four women is the victim of sexual abuse on average, that number more than doubles for Native women.

Furthermore, when was the last time you saw a film featuring Native Americans that didn’t use a harmful stereotype like “the violent savage,” “magical Native American,” or one who is drunk in a casino? Why are sports teams still using Native American caricatures as their mascots, despite overwhelming public dissent? How is Columbus Day still a thing? Why do we call celebrities our spirit animals?

To the naysayers that argue that Warner Brothers couldn’t find a good Native actress to fulfill the role, please allow me to call bullshit.

2002’s Whale Rider cast an unknown actress, Keisha Castle-Hughes, who went on to receive a well-deserved Oscar nomination. Similarly, Quevenzhane’ Wallis was cast as an unknown talent in 2012’s Beasts of the Southern Wild. That year she became the youngest actress to receive a Best Actress nomination at the Academy Awards.

Laverne Cox and Peter Dinklage are both testaments to the fact that casting great actors in roles that they authentically embody pays off in the long run. How inappropriate (not to mention ridiculously offensive) would it have been for HBO to continue the practice of “shrinking an actor” in order to depict the role of Tyrion Lannister? Consider the backlash that both Jared Leto, Eddie Redmayne, and most recently Elle Fanning have received for being cast as trans characters, rather than trans actors who could authentically play those parts.

Why on earth is Warner Brothers so hesitant to adopt a more progressive and culturally sensitive casting choice? What more do Hollywood executives need? Casting marginalized actors is not an impossible task, and their hesitation to embrace diversity on screen has real-life consequences.

The film Miss Representation touches on this idea. Adopting the mantra of Marie Wilson, director of The White House Project–“You can’t be what you can’t see”–the film argues that media representation is important. Without visible role models to look to, young people, especially girls and people of color, will be dissuaded from joining certain fields. Minority groups continue to be underrepresented in STEM, politics, leadership, and law enforcement, fields that are currently oversaturated with white men.

This opinion is shared by those who it most severely affects. A recent graduate from Arizona State University, Edilh Gallardo, shared her experiences in pursuing an education with her alma mater, emphasizing that pursuing higher education as a minority can be difficult because “a lot of our children don’t realize the opportunity is there.”

Her sentiments are part of the reason why representation in television film matters so much. If the only representations you see of your race or gender on TV are terrorists, criminals, and savages, rather than doctors, lawyers, or leaders, it might be difficult for you to imagine yourself in those positions later on in life.

There has been a long standing Hollywood cliche that states, the only color Hollywood executives see is green. This excuses the industry from their role in helping maintain white supremacist patriarchy because they are allowed to say, “We’re just giving the people what they want.” It’s clear in films like Peter Pan, Tonto, and Aloha that Hollywood has no qualms with telling the stories of women or minorities. They have no problem with disenfranchised characters, but it has become apparent in recent casting choices that Hollywood is not ready for disenfranchised actors. This kind of transgression is irresponsible at best, and damaging to our cultural fabric at worst. So for the sake of actors, films, and the future of the industry, I hope eventually someone will start listening.

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

‘Straight Outta Compton’: N.W.A. as Messenger, Myth, and Erasure

And I don’t buy the excuse that Gray gives by calling these women story criticisms “side stories.” He showed Snoop Dogg in the film twice, and even had Tupac Shakur ( A.k.a. 2Pac) in a scene. Wouldn’t they be considered side stories too? Also, the movie is already long, so adding three minutes just to give us a glimpse of Yo-Yo with Cube, or a kick ass scene with The Lady of Rage in the sound booth rapping “Afro Puffs” with Snoop couldn’t hurt the narrative flow or length. It would take so little to show the world that women were there and are a part of N.W.A.’s legacy.

Straight Outta Compton poster featuring actors and original members of N.W.A. — *Straight Outta Compton* poster featuring actors and original members of N.W.A.

“To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all of the time” – James Baldwin

“To be a woman who loves hip hop at times is to be in love with your abuser. Because the music was and is that. And yet the culture is ours.” – Ava DuVernay after viewing Straight Outta Compton

To love hip hop as a woman, and as a Black woman in particular, is to wage a continuous battle of cognitive dissonance. One can love the beats and artistry of music production, head bob with the best of them while marveling at the creative lexicon spit over a mic, while also cringing at the ubiquitous violence, sexism, misogyny, and mysogynoir. This has always been the burden of women who love rap. And yet we still listen and participate in all its incarnations as a culture. It has redefined music, dance, art, and fashion.

I remember my middle sister bringing home her first N.W.A. album by Ruthless Records. I was already knee deep into East Coast rap, and was initially put off by the antagonism towards women. When the Straight Outta Compton album dropped, I heard it on full blast everywhere when visiting relatives in Los Angeles. I was a fan of Ice Cube’s vocal confidence and that indignant anger he carried in all his rhymes. When he went solo, I used to laugh and marvel at his storytelling skills on his albums. They were at times hyperbolic performative masculinity comedies to me. Street poetry as hardcore storytelling.

Top: Ice Cube, Director F. Gary Gray and Dr. Dre. Below: O'Shea Jackson Jr., Jason Mitchell, and Corey Hawkins. — Top: Ice Cube, Director F. Gary Gray and Dr. Dre.
Below: O’Shea Jackson Jr., Jason Mitchell, and Corey Hawkins.

I was young, but smart enough to know that flinging terms like “bitches” and “hoes” was a reflection of male rappers’ insecurities with women, and the learned behavior of patriarchy. Rappers were no more, sexist, violent, or homophobic than America as a whole. But it was annoying to watch teen boys take on the negative mannerisms and posturing of their new rap Gods. Gangster rap blew up, and the only issues I had with the growth of that subgenre of rap is that it dominated everything. Instead of hearing a variety of rap styles and unique tall tales on wax and cassette, everybody wanted to be “hard” and a thug. Rap became boring. I had to leave for a minute to enjoy Fishbone, Living Colour, and the new music coming from the Black British R&B scene.

I remember the N.W.A. split, the bitter rivalry, the first time I heard Ice Cube’s “No Vaseline,” the shock of the Dee Barnes‘ assault (and others like Michel’le Toussaint) and how I could never be comfortable with Dr. Dre ever again, even though his beats were always banging with his work on Death Row Records. I remember the shock of Eazy-E’s death from Aids. Heck, I was blasting “Fuck Tha Police” when the Rodney King verdict became the L.A. Uprising. Truth be told, I still blast it now with the current policing problems we face today. Shit ain’t changed. There was just so much rich drama and bad blood surrounding the rise and demise of N.W.A, I was not surprised that a Hollywood studio decided to tell their story with Straight Outta Compton. The movie is a myth-making bromance steeped in the erasure (and hierarchal colorism—the casting call was racist colorism at its worst) of Black women in the rap game. It also highlights the historic and systemic law enforcement aggressions Black people still face.

It’s also one of the best music biopics you’ll see in awhile.

I went to see it three times. Once at the first showing it opened on Friday with only five people in the audience. (It was early in the morning.) My second viewing was with my family and friends in a predominately Black and Mexican audience. The third time was in a rich white neighborhood where I was the only Black person in the audience. Don’t let Hollywood fool you. A culturally diverse audience with women representing many of the viewers went to see this film. I predicted on its second day that it would make at least $60 million dollars opening weekend. It did. It’s an origin story, a coming-of-age tale, a historic snapshot, and a rare glimpse into Black male friendships on the come up.

Let’s be real: Ice Cube, Dr. Dre (and Eazy-E’s widow Tomica Woods-Wright) are executive producers, so there is bound to be a watering down of controversial or less than flattering portrayals of their legacy. With that said, Straight Outta Compton’s greatest strength (besides a slamming soundtrack) lies in the casting of its key players. It really helps that they are all relatively unknowns, and the two standout s in particular are Jason Mitchell (Eazy-E), and Ice Cube’s spitting image, and real-life son, O’Shea Jackson Jr. (Ice Cube). These two are the nucleus of the film, and quite honestly, I’m not sure if the film would’ve been as good to me if Jackson hadn’t been cast to play his own father. It’s such a meta film viewing experience to see Jackson’s version of Ice Cube telling a record executive that he’s about to have a baby (which was himself at that time). Jackson brings a low-key urgency to Cube’s persona within the movie version of the group’s dynamic. It is a wonderful contrast to Jason Mitchell’s vulnerable and playful depiction of Eazy-E.

O'Shea Jackson Jr. playing his father, Ice Cube. So meta. — O’Shea Jackson Jr. playing his father, Ice Cube.

The synergy of all the actors pop, and you find yourself rooting for their success. It’s typical rags to riches lore, and the plot hums along despite the two and a half hour length. In real life they may have been considered the World’s Most Dangerous Group, but in the soft focus light of film, there is no complexity or hard edges. Eazy-E was a drug dealer, but he’s the nicest drug dealer you’ll ever meet. He’ll act hard when he’s jammed up, probably compensating for his small frame, but that’s about it. Cube is the family man, fighting to earn his fair share of profits. Dre (Corey Hawkins) just wants to make music and hates having to choose between homeboys when the inevitable group break-up happens. The cops may be external antagonists in the film, constantly reminding us that Black men need to be kept down just for being Black and breathing, but it’s the in-fighting over money that is the root antagonist. Many a group has broken up over big egos and non-paydays.

DJ Yella (Neil Brown Jr.) and the obligatory booty shots.

Women in the film, not surprisingly, play small tertiary rolls as doting mothers, comforting wives/girlfriends, and of course playthings to be used and disposed of immediately. There’s the obligatory pool parties with plenty of low angle male gaze booty shots, the after parties in hotels and tour buses with groupies who are tossed aside, and locked out of rooms naked. It is what it is. A film made by men who want to see T and A and think it’s funny to use women as punchlines. Typical. A drawback of the film is the erasure of women artists who were part of the success of Ruthless Records and Death Row Records. Women like the rap group J.J. Fad (who performed at my highschool back in the day), whose album Ruthless Records released first, to great success, which solidified the company as a legitimate business in the eyes of the music industry. Their album paved the way for the Straight Outta Compton album to come through blazing. These ladies opened the door, but there is no mention of them. Nor is Yo-Yo who rapped with Ice Cube with his Lench Mob Crew, or The Lady of Rage (one of the best lyricists to represent the Death Row crew).

Missing from the story, the women of West Coast rap, Yo-Yo and The Lady of Rage.

Both the screenwriter Jonathan Herman and director F. Gary Gray have made comments regarding the lack of visibility and the importance of the women to the accurate portrayal of the group (F. Gary Gray’s remarks in this one was disappointing). In a recent Rolling Stone interview, Ice Cube said some things that made me question why he still holds onto an outdated binary of women and sexual agency.

As a screenwriter, I must concede that I understand that a movie can’t have everyone and everything in it. To get everything in would require this to become an HBO/Showtime mini-series (which would be dope as hell). The take on the group this time around is just focused on the group. Juggling several narrative/character strings is difficult, and Herman does a good job of helping us track the core group. Like I said, I get this. It keeps the script tight and the plot moving. But it lessens the power of the story in the end.

By tabling the real-life misogyny for a less complicated narrative that would force people to see the group as flawed humans like everyone else, we get a sanitized version that doesn’t interrupt the audience’s investment in their likeability. There is no complexity to them, and therefore no messiness. This lack of complexity in showing how patriarchal police brutality, American racism/sexism/classism create self-hate in Black men that is then projected onto Black women and their rap lyrics, keeps Straight Outta Compton from being a great film classic. And I don’t buy the excuse that Gray gives by calling these women story criticisms “side stories.” He showed Snoop Dogg in the film twice, and even had Tupac Shakur ( A.k.a. 2Pac) in a scene. Wouldn’t they be considered side stories too? Also, the movie is already long, so adding three minutes just to give us a glimpse of Yo-Yo with Cube, or a kick ass scene with The Lady of Rage in the sound booth rapping “Afro Puffs” with Snoop couldn’t hurt the narrative flow or length. It would take so little to show the world that women were there and are a part of N.W.A.’s legacy. Scenes with Dre’s future wife could’ve been cut to make room for women in the rap game. Those scenes added nothing to the story.

Ice Cube (O'Shea Jackson Jr.) facing everyday police harassment in Compton. — Ice Cube (O’Shea Jackson Jr.) facing everyday police harassment in Compton.

L.A. Uprising after the Rodney King verdict. The film shows the relevance of N.W.A.'s music and real life police aggression. — L.A. Uprising after the Rodney King verdict. The film shows the relevance of N.W.A.’s music and real life police aggression.

With the strength of its weekend haul, their viral marketing campaign, and great word of mouth, Straight Outta Compton should be in the top five successful films of 2015. I doubt if it will be nominated for any major awards because there are no slaves, maids, hookers or overly downtrodden Black people. (There may be director award nomination nods for Gray, maybe even screenwriting noms for Herman, but I don’t see them winning because of Hollywood’s notorious lack of diversity in the Academy and other big time film awards members.) This is a movie about young Black men with odds against them turning themselves into iconic rap legends. All because a young drug dealer took a chance on some friends who had talent, and invested in the possibility of being more than what they were, and more than what people thought them capable of. It’s a classic Horatio Alger story, with dynamic young actors bringing life to the fabled history of West Coast Rap. It does what it is supposed to do: entertain. Once again, I will live through my cognitive dissonance, lament not seeing my girls Yo-Yo and Rage, but admire the music, nostalgia and history Straight Outta Compton brings to the masses. It’s a film with heart and soul, not perfect or completely honest with itself, but so worth the viewing.

Straight Outta Women: NWA Biopic and Lack of Female Representation

Director and Compton native F. Gary Gray and the two rappers, who also serve as the film’s producers, made sure to include some of their best male comrades like Snoop Dogg and Tupac, but there are no signs of the women they helped bring into the music scene.

Clip from Murder She Wrote (YouTube) — Clip from “Murder She Wrote” (YouTube)

This guest post by Tamara Dunn previously appeared at Standard-Speaker. Cross-posted with permission.

Pioneer rap group NWA has its rise in the music business projected on the big screen in Straight Outta Compton. The young lives of Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, Eazy-E, MC Ren, and DJ Yella are illustrated with scenes from their upbringing on the unforgiving Compton, California, streets to NWA’s formation in the late 1980s. Any fan of “Rap City” on BET or “Yo! MTV Raps” was familiar with their music videos, depicting violent environments that reflected their rhymes and beats and the troubles of youths all over.

Aldis Hodge, from left, as MC Ren, Neil Brown, Jr. as DJ Yella, Jason Mitchell as Eazy-E, OShea Jackson, Jr. as Ice Cube and Corey Hawkins as Dr. Dre, in the film, ”Straight Outta Compton.” (Jaimie Trueblood/Universal Pictures via AP) — Aldis Hodge, from left, as MC Ren; Neil Brown, Jr. as DJ Yella; Jason Mitchell as Eazy-E; O’Shea Jackson, Jr. as Ice Cube; and Corey Hawkins as Dr. Dre, in the film *Straight Outta Compton*. (Jaimie Trueblood/Universal Pictures via AP)

Looking at the Straight Outta Compton cast members listed at Internet Movie Database, there’s a clear lack of women in the NWA biopic. There are relatives and some significant others who have small roles in the movie, but there are key people who are missing from the frame. As NWA was making their first records, Dr. Dre and Ice Cube produced solo female acts as part of the fledging empire. Director and Compton native F. Gary Gray and the two rappers, who also serve as the film’s producers, made sure to include some of their best male comrades like Snoop Dogg and Tupac, but there are no signs of the women they helped bring into the music scene.

Here are three influential women who didn’t make the cut:

Michel’le

The songstress with the deep singing voice but high-pitched speaking voice was previously engaged to Dr. Dre and married to controversial music mogul Suge Knight. Michel’le appears as a Jackie Kennedy type figure to Dr. Dre’s John F. Kennedy in the 1989 music video “Express Yourself.” She also made her own music, with her 1989 debut album Michel’le going double platinum with Eazy-E’s Ruthless Records. In a March 20 interview with The Breakfast Club, from New York’s Power 105.1, Michel’le described the abuse she endured during her six-year relationship with Dr. Dre. She currently appears on the reality show R&B Divas: Los Angeles on TV One.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHC-zIvtgt0″]

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u31FO_4d9TY”]

Yo-Yo

The Compton native broke out with anthems like “Can’t Play with My Yo-Yo” with producer and collaborator Ice Cube in 1990 and “Black Pearl” in 1992 long before Spice Girls were promoting girl power. Yo-Yo created songs and a new sound that contradicted hyper-masculine gangsta rap that NWA was making and released positive messages for women. Her rapping success led to acting roles in Boyz n the Hood and Menace II Society as well as television roles on Martin and The Jamie Foxx Show.

These days, Yo-Yo’s focus is on an organization promoting the performing arts and academics among young people called the Yo-Yo School of Hip Hop. According to IMDb, she also has two acting roles in the works.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZ-UEn11aDs”]

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10nZly0tTlU”]

Tairrie B

From Anaheim, California, Tairrie B is one of the first white female rappers in the 1980s and 1990s. Her music video for her 1990 single “Murder She Wrote” is a mix of Madonna’s “Vogue” laced with gangster cliches, but it shows that she can be just as tough as her producer Eazy-E. Tairrie has also accused Dr. Dre of physical abuse during the time she was recording her debut album Power of a Woman for newly formed Comptown Records. It was her only rap album with her labelmate. After Eazy-E’s death in 1995, Tairrie switched to alternative rock and metal, fronting various bands.

This year, Tairrie released her first rap album in 25 years titled Vintage Curses. With a deeper voice and years of forgiveness, she pays tribute to NWA and her former mentor. In a July 2 interview with the Daily Mail, Tairre shares no hard feelings and sees their impact on her music.

“Their music and lyrics had a significant impact on me, which has resonated for over two decades, much like it has with many people. They put gangster rap on the map and there is a reason NWA are considered a monument and the root of it all which makes their story hugely important.”

Her new album was released on the same day as Straight Outta Compton was released in theaters.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yG45At8jhd8″]

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epAVR82R6J4″]

The failure to include their stories should come as no surprise following a damaging casting call released last year for the film. The call was for women ages 18-30 who lived in the Los Angeles area during the time of shooting. However, the women were classified and ranked according to skin color, hair, and size. In a July 17, 2014 Gawker article, the release described “A Girls” the top of the list, as the “hottest of the hottest” models of any race with real hair and no weave. On the opposite end were the “D Girls,” African-American women who were “medium or dark skin tone” and were “poor, not in good shape.” The casting call, from Sande Alessi Casting, went viral, with Internet users sharing their unfavorable opinions on TMZ and The Huffington Post.

There’s plenty of room for women in hip hop to be well portrayed in movies. While it may not be happening with Straight Outta Compton, it’s time for their light to shine in Hollywood.

Tamara Dunn is a card-carrying cinephile and the resident film expert at the Standard-Speaker. Her favorite films are The Battle of Algiers and Traffic.