Category: Uncategorized

The Ones We Forget: ‘Men At Lunch’

Written by Max Thornton.
“At the height of the Great Depression, eleven ironworkers sit side by side on a steel beam, eating lunch. Central Park stretches out behind them as they rest, boots dangling eight hundred feet over the sidewalk of Fiftieth Street. Just a bunch of regular guys. Just another working day.”

What makes a good photograph?

What is the essence of New York City?
What role do iconic images play in the public consciousness?
What stories can they tell?
These are some of the questions raised by Seán Ó Cualáin’s thoughtful documentary Men At Lunch, which investigates one of the most recognizable American photographs of the twentieth century. At an economical 67 minutes, the film is lean, but far from weightless: this single image is the center from which multiple lines of fascinating inquiry spiral outward. The movie explores each aspect of and in the photo – the metadata of the photograph’s origins, the context of 1930s New York City, the industry of skyscraper building, the economic and social situation of the time, the tragic contemporary resonances in a post-9/11 world, immigrant lives – but takes care to center the people at the heart of it, anonymous though they are.
The practicalities of the photo’s history are dispensed with fairly quickly. The probable identity of the photographer, the current whereabouts of the original negative, and the fact that it was a staged publicity still rather than a naturalistic shot are all mildly interesting, but it’s much more engaging to turn to the question of what the picture means to people in all walks of life.
Source
Ó Cualáin interviews historians who have investigated the photo, street vendors who sell prints of it to tourists, a sculptor who built a large model of it, present-day ironworkers who are inspired by it, and some of the far-flung individuals who are firmly convinced that among the eleven sit one or more of their own relatives. The kaleidoscope of meanings read into this one image could be seen as a microcosm of the United States as a whole, and indeed the world portrayed by the photo exemplifies the best and the worst faces of US society simultaneously.
Lunch atop a Skyscraper first appeared in the New York Herald Tribuneon October 2 1932, when unemployment was at an eye-watering 24%. Nor were the ironworkers, in paid employment far above the city streets, immune to the high cost of a capitalist society: apparently skyscraper developers of the time budgeted for one dead worker per ten floors of building. On the other hand, the picture is almost propaganda in its idealized portrayal of the American dream of the city as melting pot, the aspirational immigrants hard at work to build something lasting and to contribute something tangible to the diverse society of which they have voluntarily become a part.
If the film has a weakness, it would be its elision of the true complexities of the melting pot myth. An honest narrative of immigration to the United States really should make mention of this nation’s foundational genocide of native peoples, as well as the ongoing tensions of anti-immigrant prejudice and the marginalization of hybrid identities. 
Am I a man, or am I a muppet?
 Aside from this oversight, however, Ó Cualáin has put together a charming, thought-provoking film which finds remarkable depth and power in an over-familiar image, exploring wide-reaching ramifications but never losing sight of its titular men at lunch.
Most striking, perhaps, are the connections made by this photograph and the people it portrays. Contemporary workers see their own faces there. Others are absolutely convinced they see their relatives there, and clearly in some sense they do. The fact that these men are famous – iconic, reproduced, parodied the world over – and yet their identities are unknown exemplifies not only “the great American immigrant story” of a nation at once reverent and forgetful of its roots, but also their particular role as the architects of a skyline. As one interviewee puts it: “They put their lives and their bodies into the buildings, and how strange that they’re the ones we forget.”

Max Thornton blogs at Gay Christian Geek, tumbles as trans substantial, and is slowly learning to twitter at @RainicornMax.He lives near New York now. It’s awesome.

Why We Need More Women Filmmakers: A Review of ‘Legend of the Red Reaper’

Movie still from Legend of the Red Reaper

This is a guest post by Aphrodite Kocięda. 

When actress Tara Cardinal initially approached me and asked if I could write a review for her new film, Legend of the Red Reaper, I was a bit hesitant. I have never really been fond of films that are hyper-masculine and assume that they’re automatically progressive because they cast one woman as a lead in a “strong” position without changing the overall framework. In fact, many films replace their protagonist men with women who are doing the exact same hyper-masculine shit and assume they should automatically get brownie points for casting a vagina.

However, I was thoroughly surprised by Legend of the Red Reaper because Cardinal’s character, Aella, broke through stereotypical representations of women in action films. In fact, I found myself enamored with Aella and her ability to transform trite traits associated with strength into something progressive. She wasn’t afraid to be “feminine” and “masculine” simultaneously. Aella is not hypersexualized or deemed “incompetent” because she is a woman. She is a multi-dimensional, complex character who transcends the normative ideas of femininity and masculinity.
Tara Cardinal as Aella in Legend of the Red Reaper
Legend of the Red Reaper is a fantasy/action film that centers on the tensions between demons, humans, reapers, and witches. Reapers are half human and half demon and are protectors of humans. Cardinal’s character, Aella, plays a reaper who is destined to save the human race, and her journey is complicated by love, familial conflict, and identity issues. Cardinal is both the director and producer of the film which might explain why Aella’s character is so progressive. Additionally, Cardinal does all of her own stunt and sword work.

Aella doesn’t fit into any of the cliché tropes for women that are routinely reproduced in mainstream films. For example, Aella is in love with a man named Eris who is a human—someone who she could never be with because she is a reaper. A young townswoman named Indira attempts to gain the attention of Eris and wants to marry him. Aella, however, does not exact revenge upon Indira. In fact, at one point, Aella saves Indira’s life. Aella actually gives up Eris so that he can marry Indira. This was very different from the clichéd narratives centering on women’s relationships in other mainstream films where women fight and focus all of their energy on ruining each others’ lives. Aella respectfully steps out of the picture without any conflict.
Movie still from Legend of the Red Reaper
Aella’s battle scenes also transcend stereotypical representations. During one scene in particular, Aella fights off more than four men with her sword in one hand while holding a crying baby in the other. I have N-E-V-E-R seen this before. All too often, film writers and producers assume that in order to showcase women in masculine positions, they must strip women of any semblance of womanhood, which is problematic. Therefore, I thought it was a smart move on behalf of Cardinal to show this. Unlike other films that feature women in lead fighting roles, Aella was not sexualized, nor was she attempting to emulate a man.

For me, this is what art and film are supposed to be like. Oftentimes films can reproduce patriarchal values that make it that much more difficult for women to see a good film. Women are not granted the privilege of imagining themselves in roles that transcend patriarchy and white supremacy. All too often women are cast as one-dimensional background nameless beings, or topless random women who are mere accessories to a multidimensional man. Legend of the Red Reaper allowed me to escape my reality and provided me with a chance to finally imagine a narrative beyond the confines of my social reality. As bell hooks says, “…we do not need more art to give us shit. Art should and can be the place where we are given an alternative, a redemptive vision.”

Aph Kocięda is a graduate student at the University of South Florida in Communication. She also holds a B.A. in Women’s and Gender Studies. You can find Aph on Vegan Feminist Network. 

Father Worship and the ‘Bad Fans’ of ‘Breaking Bad’

Breaking Bad promo still.

Written by Leigh Kolb

Spoilers ahead (through “Ozymandias”)

“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone / Stand in the desert. … And on the pedestal these words appear: ‘My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings: / Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'”
In an analysis of the Sept. 15 episode of Breaking Bad (“Ozymandias”), Emily Nussbaum points out that she thinks Todd “looked very much like the prototypical Bad Fan of Breaking Bad: he arrived late in the story, and he saw Walt purely as a kick-ass genius, worthy of worship.” While his worship of Walt has been clear since Todd arrived on the scene, his continued worship of Walt is what makes him–and the “Bad Fans” he resembles–stand out. Ultimately, there is something fundamentally patriarchal about this kind of father worship, when we gravitate toward and are obsessed with the father figure.
After Sunday’s episode, critic Matt Zoller Seitz took to Twitter to observe
Todd and Bad Fans have that in common: they see Walt as a father figure, worthy of forgiveness and blind worship. He’s Walter White. He’s Heisenberg. He’s a bad-ass who really just has done everything for his (unappreciative!) family. 
Jesse, Todd and Walt.
Walt’s children–biological and surrogate–all represent the different types of Breaking Bad fans. 
Jesse: a lot of eye-rolling at the beginning, mistrusting yet comforted by Walt’s fatherly role, pulled in to Walt’s world fully, wracked with conflicting feelings, turns against Walt after he kills another father figure, Mike. Yet he is now, against his will, chained back into Walt’s world.  This fan didn’t ever really like Walt, but went through phases of loving him and wanting him to be the man she needed in her life. She is heartbroken, but is still stuck deep in the action. 

Todd: doting, dumb, reveres Walt. Ignores “dead kids.” See above, in re: the Bad Fan. This fan thinks everything that Walt does is for a good cause, or it’s someone else’s fault if bad things happen. This fan is almost definitely a terrible person. 

Walt, Jr. (who will probably go by Flynn forever now): shocked, desperately clinging to hope that everything will be fine, tries to blame Skyler, can’t believe that Walt could have committed those crimes–until Walt lashes out in front of him. Then Junior calls 911.  This fan thinks the best of Walt, even though she knows better. By the end of “Ozymandias,” however, she is done with Walt’s shit.  

Holly: clueless, confused, a pawn, terrified of Walt’s next move.  This fan needs someone to explain to her what happens after each episode. She feels emotionally manipulated.


Walt and his children, who we see suffer because of his actions.
These characters’ relationships with Walt highlight his devolution into something worse than Heisenberg. He lies, kills, plots against and kidnaps. He’s abusive. He’s consumed with his perceived power and greed. How we respond to him, though, is indicative of something larger in our society–a male-centric tendency to search for and cling to a father figure.
It’s not easy to hate a hero. The emotional response we have to characters tells us a great deal about ourselves, and I think for many of us, we watch Walt and want him to be someone he’s not, seeing glimmers of humanity in someone who is increasingly monstrous. Like Jesse, we know. We know how evil Walt is. But we can’t get away.
Jesse, held captive by Todd.
After “Ozymandias” aired (an episode which, by the way, is currently rated 10/10 by over 17,000 reviewers on IMDb), the Todds of the Internet scurried to Walt’s defense. Clearly, Walt is doing everything at this point to ensure that Skyler is seen as innocent, right? That phone call? 
When Walt calls Skyler, he rants at her, telling her she’s ungrateful, and always “whining and complaining,” “dragging” him “down.” He calls her a “stupid bitch” and hangs up on her. 
His entire monologue could have been lifted from the pages of reddit, or a Facebook page dedicated to hating Skyler White. (During the phone call, my husband smirked and said, “He’s basically saying everything that people say about Skyler–and he’s an abusive egomaniac,” pointing out the genius in such commentary.) 
Nussbaum says,

“But what was truly fascinating about that phone call was that if it was trolling the Bad Fan, it was also trolling me: the sort of feminist-minded sucker who took the speech at face value, for nearly an hour, until I suddenly realized, in a flash of clarity, that it was a fake-out for the police. (Skyler realized long before I did.)”

Zoller Seitz, however, thinks that Walt was acting on “impulse,” and that the phone call was “instinctive.” He asserts that Walt was “acting in tandem with Heisenberg” in this scene, doing something “chaotic and frightening, but ultimately good.” 
Walt, like Sisyphus (or a dung beetle), trying desperately to get somewhere. He’s almost pitiful again, like his underwear-clad beginnings. But he’s not.
There is clearly more at work here than Walt simply enacting a plan to exonerate Skyler or Walt just lashing out against his wife. Zoller Seitz’s multifaceted analysis of the scene is spot on, and doesn’t give Walt more credit than he deserves. (Zoller Seitz also used Twitter to take down the idea that Walt is some pure “badass genius antihero” who was just acting to protect Skyler.)
That reading–that Walt is some kind of benevolent dictator–inspires the #TeamWalt hashtag on Twitter. Walt’s motivations, intentions and actions are often unclear yet calculated. However, whenever we weigh his actions (that could keep his immediate family safe) against his words, we cannot be on #TeamWalt, hanging out with the fan-boy Todds. We can’t. 
At the beginning of “Ozymandias,” Walt orders the neo-Nazis to kill Jesse. Walt sees his life, doomed and destroyed. As they drag Jesse away, Walt growls, “Wait,” and says to him:

“I watched Jane die. I was there. And I watched her die. I watched her overdose and choke to death. I could have saved her. But I didn’t.” 

Our faces are pinched, our stomachs turn. We are horrified at Walt’s pride in this admission, and we remember that at that point in the series, we were probably still rooting for Walt. We are also disgusted with ourselves. The fact that we can see humanity in Walt isn’t wrong–that’s good writing. To stubbornly fixate on his heroism, though, is just being blind.
Breaking Bad: just like Twilight.

The look on Jesse’s face–broken and empty–reflects how we (should) feel. And just as his turmoil isn’t yet over, neither is ours. There are two more legs to the journey, two “legs of stone” to finish telling us the story of the fallen king and the decaying waste he’s left behind. If the season thus far has taught us to expect anything, it’s this: brilliant torture through perfect storytelling. We’re scared and in crisis over what to expect. We’re coming to terms with the fact that this father figure is not worthy of worship. The ride is almost over.

________________________________________________________

Leigh Kolb is a composition, literature and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri. She hopes that before she retires, “Breaking Bad as Literature” is standard college fare.

Father Worship and the ‘Bad Fans’ of ‘Breaking Bad’

Breaking Bad promo still.

Written by Leigh Kolb

“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone / Stand in the desert. … And on the pedestal these words appear: ‘My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings: / Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'”
In an analysis of the Sept. 15 episode of Breaking Bad (“Ozymandias”), Emily Nussbaum points out that she thinks Todd “looked very much like the prototypical Bad Fan of Breaking Bad: he arrived late in the story, and he saw Walt purely as a kick-ass genius, worthy of worship.” While his worship of Walt has been clear since Todd arrived on the scene, his continued worship of Walt is what makes him–and the “Bad Fans” he resembles–stand out. Ultimately, there is something fundamentally patriarchal about this kind of father worship, when we gravitate toward and are obsessed with the father figure.
After Sunday’s episode, critic Matt Zoller Seitz took to Twitter to observe
Todd and Bad Fans have that in common: they see Walt as a father figure, worthy of forgiveness and blind worship. He’s Walter White. He’s Heisenberg. He’s a bad-ass who really just has done everything for his (unappreciative!) family. 
Jesse, Todd and Walt.
Walt’s children–biological and surrogate–all represent the different types of Breaking Bad fans. 
Jesse: a lot of eye-rolling at the beginning, mistrusting yet comforted by Walt’s fatherly role, pulled in to Walt’s world fully, wracked with conflicting feelings, turns against Walt after he kills another father figure, Mike. Yet he is now, against his will, chained back into Walt’s world.  This fan didn’t ever really like Walt, but went through phases of loving him and wanting him to be the man she needed in her life. She is heartbroken, but is still stuck deep in the action. 

Todd: doting, dumb, reveres Walt. Ignores “dead kids.” See above, in re: the Bad Fan. This fan thinks everything that Walt does is for a good cause, or it’s someone else’s fault if bad things happen. This fan is almost definitely a terrible person. 

Walt, Jr. (who will probably go by Flynn forever now): shocked, desperately clinging to hope that everything will be fine, tries to blame Skyler, can’t believe that Walt could have committed those crimes–until Walt lashes out in front of him. Then Junior calls 911.  This fan thinks the best of Walt, even though she knows better. By the end of “Ozymandias,” however, she is done with Walt’s shit.  

Holly: clueless, confused, a pawn, terrified of Walt’s next move.  This fan needs someone to explain to her what happens after each episode. She feels emotionally manipulated.


Walt and his children, who we see suffer because of his actions.
These characters’ relationships with Walt highlight his devolution into something worse than Heisenberg. He lies, kills, plots against and kidnaps. He’s abusive. He’s consumed with his perceived power and greed. How we respond to him, though, is indicative of something larger in our society–a male-centric tendency to search for and cling to a father figure.
It’s not easy to hate a hero. The emotional response we have to characters tells us a great deal about ourselves, and I think for many of us, we watch Walt and want him to be someone he’s not, seeing glimmers of humanity in someone who is increasingly monstrous. Like Jesse, we know. We know how evil Walt is. But we can’t get away.
Jesse, held captive by Todd.
After “Ozymandias” aired (an episode which, by the way, is currently rated 10/10 by over 17,000 reviewers on IMDb), the Todds of the Internet scurried to Walt’s defense. Clearly, Walt is doing everything at this point to ensure that Skyler is seen as innocent, right? That phone call? 
When Walt calls Skyler, he rants at her, telling her she’s ungrateful, and always “whining and complaining,” “dragging” him “down.” He calls her a “stupid bitch” and hangs up on her. 
His entire monologue could have been lifted from the pages of reddit, or a Facebook page dedicated to hating Skyler White. (During the phone call, my husband smirked and said, “He’s basically saying everything that people say about Skyler–and he’s an abusive egomaniac,” pointing out the genius in such commentary.) 
Nussbaum says,

“But what was truly fascinating about that phone call was that if it was trolling the Bad Fan, it was also trolling me: the sort of feminist-minded sucker who took the speech at face value, for nearly an hour, until I suddenly realized, in a flash of clarity, that it was a fake-out for the police. (Skyler realized long before I did.)”

Zoller Seitz, however, thinks that Walt was acting on “impulse,” and that the phone call was “instinctive.” He asserts that Walt was “acting in tandem with Heisenberg” in this scene, doing something “chaotic and frightening, but ultimately good.” 
Walt, like Sisyphus (or a dung beetle), trying desperately to get somewhere. He’s almost pitiful again, like his underwear-clad beginnings. But he’s not.
There is clearly more at work here than Walt simply enacting a plan to exonerate Skyler or Walt just lashing out against his wife. Zoller Seitz’s multifaceted analysis of the scene is spot on, and doesn’t give Walt more credit than he deserves. (Zoller Seitz also used Twitter to take down the idea that Walt is some pure “badass genius antihero” who was just acting to protect Skyler.)
That reading–that Walt is some kind of benevolent dictator–inspires the #TeamWalt hashtag on Twitter. Walt’s motivations, intentions and actions are often unclear yet calculated. However, whenever we weigh his actions (that could keep his immediate family safe) against his words, we cannot be on #TeamWalt, hanging out with the fan-boy Todds. We can’t. 
At the beginning of “Ozymandias,” Walt orders the neo-Nazis to kill Jesse. Walt sees his life, doomed and destroyed. As they drag Jesse away, Walt growls, “Wait,” and says to him:

“I watched Jane die. I was there. And I watched her die. I watched her overdose and choke to death. I could have saved her. But I didn’t.” 

Our faces are pinched, our stomachs turn. We are horrified at Walt’s pride in this admission, and we remember that at that point in the series, we were probably still rooting for Walt. We are also disgusted with ourselves. The fact that we can see humanity in Walt isn’t wrong–that’s good writing. To stubbornly fixate on his heroism, though, is just being blind.
Breaking Bad: just like Twilight.

The look on Jesse’s face–broken and empty–reflects how we (should) feel. And just as his turmoil isn’t yet over, neither is ours. There are two more legs to the journey, two “legs of stone” to finish telling us the story of the fallen king and the decaying waste he’s left behind. If the season thus far has taught us to expect anything, it’s this: brilliant torture through perfect storytelling. We’re scared and in crisis over what to expect. We’re coming to terms with the fact that this father figure is not worthy of worship. The ride is almost over.

________________________________________________________

Leigh Kolb is a composition, literature and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri. She hopes that before she retires, “Breaking Bad as Literature” is standard college fare.

Girl Meets Girl, The Movie: On the Color-Drenched Postcards from Paradise in Al Benoit’s ‘Warpaint’

Movie still from Warpaint
This is a guest post by Jaye Johnson previously appeared at Gay Agenda and is cross-posted with permission.
“All that I know is I’m breathing.” —from an untitled song on the Warpaint soundtrack
Carey and Audrey, the two totes adorbs heroines in Al Benoit’s coming-of-age girl-girl drama Warpaint fall delightfully in line with the 20-something-year-old indie filmmaker’s aesthetic, in that there is (seemingly) no aesthetic—that’s how seamless this fully Kickstarter-funded production is.
In her own words, here’s a nice little backgrounder from the director.
Warpaint, a short film, tells the story of Carey and Audrey, two seventeen-year-old girls who fall in love over a summer at their parents’ lake houses. Warpaint was a passion project, inspired by a someone very close to me. We made it on a very minimal budget and a tight 4-day shooting schedule. We had just enough budget to rent out the C300, which was extremely lovely. I hope you enjoy our little film.

As you fall in love with Benoit’s narrative and her characters, you feel like you’re flipping through picture postcards of private, sweet memories. You recall similar memories of your own.
Movie still from Warpaint
Many kids are self-aware and snarky, sarcastic and so on, but Audrey and Carey only lightly touch upon such nuanced, grownup humor. It’s evident they’re still kids when they argue about one of them almost saying a “bad word,” or say curse words such as “bull poop.” They’re still figuring things out, and that element is one of the many enchanting elements in Warpaint.
There’s no prurience here, only innocence. Even though the characters’ dialogue can be snarky and naughty at times, the vibe is entirely about young women acting their age … both girls are only 17. Nobody’s trying to be precocious here, and as their relationship evolves, romance hits them both as a pleasant yet natural surprise, as they’re both still at that nebulous age where holding hands may or may not be read as having lesbian tendencies. Their relationship is given time to breathe, and they’re able to figure out their own footing, no matter how uncertain the steps are.
Movie still from Warpaint
Benoit’s directorial work brings to mind the lyricism of filmmaker Ang Lee, in that the soundtrack does a lot of the talking for the characters, and the landscape, environment, and scenery evoke much of the mood. No talky dialogue is needed. This filmmakers knows the craft enough to leverage all its pieces and tell a story well. The soundtrack selections are light and playful, at times wistful, glittery, summery, sweeping, and reflective.

There’s much laughter … there are many long takes of one girl or another gazing directly at the camera (and into your soul). Much of the sadness and complexity of their love for each other happens off camera and is only vaguely referred to in the conversations we get to hear. Their time is limited, and they’re going to make the most of it, as joyfully as possible, paying little or no mind to any restraints, parental pressures, or closets to speak of.

Movie still from Warpaint
Too, these young women aren’t punished for loving each other or for having lesbian tendencies (that all too common go-to film trope is hopefully so easy and so over), and what the girls go through together is realistic and authentic. Nothing’s easily solved or resolved, but we, along with the characters, see their time together as something to be savored, no matter how bittersweet.

We clock time with the characters as they frolic, muse, sail (yes, child–sailing!), play make believe, run, skip, jump … just all of it. Benoit isn’t afraid to let these young girls go there … stories don’t always have to be about kids who are 17 going on 35. And haven’t you had a gorgeous memory or two memories like that? Y’know, playful, happy?

Sweet?

Click here to visit writer-director Al Benoit’s homepage. To watch Warpaint, click here.  

Jaye Johnson is a social media & content manager (plus: VA and writer, ‘natch). If you’re looking to connect with an LGBTQ-inclusive editorial assistant and/or manager for content curation (a.k.a. White Hat editorial SEO, social shares), PR help, “content massage,” admin assistance and overall good vibes, she welcomes you to get in touch.

‘Despicable Me 2’: One of These Things Is Not Like the Other

Despicable Me 2 poster

This is a guest post by Margaret Evans.

I really enjoyed the first Despicable Me movie. The characters were all a lot of fun, the bond between Gru and his adopted daughters was believable, and the world that the movie built was interesting. When the sequel came out, I saw it in the cinema, and it was just as good as the first, if not better. However, one scene in the movie troubled me.

 

At one point, the main character, Gru, is set up on a date with a woman, and the date doesn’t go well. When Shannon (his date) threatens to reveal his wig, he is “saved” when Lucy (one of the female leads) tranquilises her. Gru and Lucy drop Shannon off at her house, and slapstick humour ensues on the way.

 

So, why does the slapstick humour aimed at Shannon bother me when I have no problem with either slapstick humour as a concept or even the slapstick humour inflicted upon Gru, his minions, or later the main antagonist? I believe that the answer to this question can be found by taking a look at how the characters react when they are the focus of slapstick.
Lucy spies on Gru during his date with Shannon
In the case of Gru, the best example of slapstick is when he gets hit by Lucy’s lipstick taser. His response is to start frantically moving; he even does a little bit of the dance from Saturday Night Fever. He is very animated and clearly in pain.

 

Shannon’s experience, on the other hand, is very different from Gru’s. The major difference between the two is that Gru is conscious …  whereas Shannon is out for the count the whole time. Because of this, the humour doesn’t come from her reaction to the injuries that she is experiencing–but from her lack of reaction.

 

When Gru and Lucy take Shannon home, they don’t put her in the car or call for a taxi; they put her on the roof of the car, the same way you would put your luggage on the back of the car. When they arrive at Shannon’s house, she is unceremoniously thrown off of the car, and the other characters laugh about it. Now, imagine this scene again and–instead of Shannon–picture any inanimate object that you think fits. If you play this scene again in your mind with the changes, it will still make sense and be funny for the same reason.
Lucy and Gru
That is what troubled me about the scene with Shannon. In the case of Gru being tasered, the joke was his reaction and his pain, but in Shannon’s case, it was how she showed the exact same “reaction” that an inanimate object would (because she was unconscious). In Gru’s case, the humour has a humanising effect, but in Shannon’s case, the humour very literally objectifies her.

 

Now, it has been suggested to me that the reason Gru and Shannon are treated differently in this regard is that we are meant to sympathise with Gru because he is the good guy, and we are rooting for him, whereas we are meant to take delight in Shannon’s pain because she is cruel and obnoxious.

 

To counter this argument, I would like to take a look at the main villain. Near the end of the movie, the villain is defeated, in part by Gru using the same lipstick taser that Lucy used on him. The villain reacts in the same way that Gru did, and we can very clearly see the pain that he is experiencing because of the electricity. Yet, the humour still comes from his defeat rather than our feeling sorry for him. The movie does not use the character’s villainy as some sort of excuse to treat him as anything less than human.
Shannon from Despicable Me 2
Therefore, the fact that we are meant to strongly dislike Sharon and be rooting against her can’t be pinned down as the reason that her experience is so noticeably different from Gru’s. Neither can it be used as justification for the problematic elements.

 

The slapstick involving the other characters throughout the movie only serves to show that if the writers really wanted to pull some humour at the expense of Shannon, they could have easily done so without the need to reduce her character to the level of a piece of luggage.
The scene with Shannon is, for me, the sole off-putting scene in the movie. It is a scene in which being an irritating person and a bad date is used to justify knocking someone out–and in which a character gets treated the same way someone would treat an object that they felt didn’t need to be particularly handled with care. We, the audience, are meant to laugh along with Gru and Lucy, to view this all as an evening of comedic antics rather than what it actually is, complete disregard for her as a human being.
Gru, Lucy, and Shannon’s unconscious body
This scene didn’t ruin my enjoyment of the movie, but the rest of the movie doesn’t give this scene a free pass. Personally, I thought it was a real shame to see the direction that the movie temporarily took considering how good the movies had been up to that point at humanising its characters, (especially Gru, who played an archetype traditionally demonised in the first movie). I just wish that the people behind this movie could have put the same thought into writing the character of Shannon, however personally irritating they intended her to be.

 

Margaret Evans is a blogger from Godalming, a small town in south England. She contributes to the website www.paranerds.com. When she isn’t writing she volunteers as a receptionist for the local Citizen’s Advice Bureau and works as an admin for a local building firm.

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

 


Women’s Films and Social Change by Maggie Hennefeld at Highbrow Magazine
Toronto: ’12 Years a Slave’ Wins Audience Award by Etan Vlessing at The Hollywood Reporter
Double Consciousness in Lee Daniels’ The Butler by Jonathan Harrison at Sociological Images
Is There Any Satisfying Way to End a Modern Drama? by Matt Zoller Seitz at Vulture

My Life as a Warrior Princess by Jennifer Sky at The New York Times

Danai Gurira talks Mother of George by Wilson Morales at blackfilm.com

My Summer With Agent Scully by Sarah Mirk at Bitch Media

Salon Pictures Announces Slate of Women Directed Films by Kate Wilson at Women and Hollywood

The Feminist Power of Female Ghosts by Andi Zeisler at Bitch Media
Do We Really Need a Feminist Press? by Leora Tanenbaum at The Huffington Post
 
What have you been reading/writing this week? Tell us in the comments!
 
 

An Audience on the Edge: ‘Sons of Anarchy,’ Morality and Masculinity

Sons of Anarchy
 
 
Written by Leigh Kolb

In 15th and early 16th century Europe, morality plays existed to entertain audiences, but also to teach them lessons. Classic morality plays used allegory to impart lessons about what it means to be good, and what it means to be evil. Typically, virtue always prevailed over vice.
Shakespeare no doubt was exposed to such plays in his early life, and reflections of this genre can be seen (in more complex forms) in some of his plays, including Hamlet. Showrunner Kurt Sutter has said Hamlet inspired Sons of Anarchy, which began its sixth season on Tuesday, Sept. 10.
At a recent press conference, Sutter acknowledged the shocking ending of the season premier, which follows a young boy who takes a KG-9 machine gun into a school and opens fire (the audience hears the shots and screams from inside the building).  Sutter said,

“It is truly the catalyst for the third act of our morality play. It sets everything in motion for this season that will ultimately lead to the end that then will bring us into the final season and what I see as the ultimate comeuppance of everything in terms of the series.”

Viewers were shocked at the scene, and a conservative parents group is calling for Congress to reconsider cable programming distribution methods because of, in part, this episode.
In an article at The Daily Beast, Jason Lynch (who has screened the first three episodes) asserts that the show has gone too far, and that this storyline is “damaging to the series and its characters.”
What is clear at the end of the first episode is that SAMCRO has some connection to the gun and to the child shooter. The child is the son of a woman who is dating Nero’s cousin, and we can assume that the gun used in the shooting came from the Sons, who run guns and produce pornography.
While this episode is horrifyingly violent and disturbing, it’s also this: brilliant.
If we think about Sutter’s influences–Hamlet and his reference to Sons of Anarchy being a “morality play”–something needs to happen this season. That something that needs to happen is that we need to start despising the club, and maybe even Jax (unless he is “reformed” into virtue, as the protagonist of a true morality play would be).
The child shooter–the juxtaposition of virtue (religion, order) and vice (guns, violence), and a case study in toxic masculinity.
At this point (in the action of this first episode), the men of SAMCRO are still operating in some sphere of justice and morality. This is highlighted in the opening women-in-refrigerators plot point when the men avenge the beating and rape of Lyla, who had gotten a job shooting porn that turned out to be violent torture porn.
These disgusting scenes highlight the relative “morality” of the Sons–they run porn and prostitution businesses, but there’s a line that can’t be crossed (women being tortured, raped, beaten or killed). This has been apparent from the beginning of the series. Even when the men were running drugs and guns, their treatment of women reinforced the idea that we are still supposed to be rooting for them.
And the women, of course, (thankfully) aren’t painted as innocent victims needing rescuing. The “Mothers” of Anarchy are forces to be reckoned with, too.
In prison, Tara refuses to see Jax and devolves into violence.
In Hamlet, we know Hamlet has turned when he starts treating Ophelia like shit. How a character treats women is often a litmus test for whether or not we are supposed to support that character. In 2013, the morality play is twisted and turned (the antihero is king, after all), but some archetypes still remain.
Something awful needed to happen on Sons of Anarchy–something so awful that we can’t reconcile our sympathy and support for the characters. While Lynch is disgusted with the turn, I think it’s perfect. Forcing us to turn against our heroes (who we should struggle to see as heroes, in reality) is powerful storytelling.
As this child wields a semi-automatic weapon and goes into his all-boys Catholic school and opens fire, Gemma is gifting Nero’s son with a toy gun (she had one of Nero’s prostitutes wrap it for her). Gemma’s gesture, which is a clear indoctrination of what masculinity means–guns, violence and sex–is made even more meaningful by the boy across town who, amidst violent and disturbing drawings he’s done and the self-harm cut marks on his arm, has gotten access to a man’s gun by his proximity to SAMCRO. What’s the difference between the play gun and the real gun? What’s the difference between fetish porn and torture porn? There are differences, but Sons of Anarchy is asking us to think harder about how different they really are.
Meanwhile, Jax is cheating on Tara and having sex with the madame of a brothel (Sutter notes that Jax is really looking for nurturing and maternal love). Another display of what we consider to be masculinity is cut between scenes of violence. Tara, in prison, is beating a woman for stealing her blanket.
Jax seeks “comfort” from Colette.
All of this is set to Leonard Cohen’s “Come Healing,” a gravelly spiritual that conjures images of Christ and redemption.
Lynch says that Sutter “crossed a line” when he had SAMCRO react in “a callous way” with “no remorse” in the next few episodes.
However, that’s exactly how the club should react. We need to reach a point where we are not rooting for and sympathizing with these men–this is the ugly, unhappy truth of loving a show with an antihero who keeps falling instead of being redeemed.
SAMCRO has always had its own code of justice and morality and we, as viewers, have more often than not sympathized with the men. However, if they see that they are complicit in the mass murder of children, and they do not respond properly–we must rethink our sympathy. We are going to turn against them, as we should.
At the beginning of the episode, Jax is reading aloud a letter he’s writing to his sons. “Examine yourselves as men,” he says, filling the page with cliches.
That’s what’s happening now. What it means to be a man–the overwhelming masculinity of sex and violence–is coming to a head. If Jax falls, which he appears to be doing, so does his brand of masculinity. Hopefully his sons will get that message.
Sutter’s “sons” are examining themselves as men as the series begins its descent. In ancient morality plays, virtue would win, and the sinner would typically be redeemed. In Hamlet, everyone dies in a pile of revenge and tragedy. It remains to be seen how Sutter will ultimately unwind this modern “morality play,” but we will know if we are supposed to stop caring about the Sons. There will be consequences–just as there should be.
We need to examine ourselves as viewers, and recognize when enough is enough–and when we reach that breaking point, we are pushed to the edge and forced to reconcile our obsession with vice and toxic masculinity. The ride into the last act of Sons of Anarchy isn’t going to be an easy one–if it was, then Sutter wouldn’t have gone far enough.
Like the Sons and their old ladies, the audience is going to have a difficult ride in the last act.
________________________________________________________
Leigh Kolb is a composition, literature and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri. She wrote a chapter about the feminine sphere and ethics of care in Sons of Anarchy and Philosophy: Brains Before Bullets.

The Feminism and Anti-Racism of ‘Boardwalk Empire’ (And the Critics Who Don’t Get It)

Boardwalk Empire



Written by Leigh Kolb


Spoilers ahead

Boardwalk Empire returned for its fourth season on Sunday, Sept. 8. This season is poised to continue important representation of struggles involving gender and race in the award-winning show, which is aesthetically gorgeous and well-written.

The few, but incredibly important, female characters on Boardwalk Empire are fascinating. I wrote last year about the remarkable story lines in season 3 that focused on birth control and reproductive rights. Boardwalk Empire has always kept a keen eye on women’s issues–from suffrage to health care.

Season 4 is set up to be more of the same–long-form debauchery and violence with moments of poignant sub-plots featuring the female characters. Gillian is slipping deeper into a heroin addiction, and is selling herself instead of selling her house. Cora escapes a violent bedroom scene (which we will revisit in a moment). A young actress attempts to take Billie’s place in Nucky’s life for her own gain, but he rejects her. Richard has traveled to reunite with his twin sister, Emma, on her farm.

As often is the case in these seemingly masculine dramas, women are essential to the plot, even if they often aren’t the focus of most reviewers, or even the bulk of the action. Nucky is king, Al Capone is pulling strings, and Chalky is set to be a power player.

Drink, talk, shoot, repeat.

But those moments that the women of Boardwalk Empire are on screen are among the best of each episode. Their parts are small. Their scenes are brief. But each is meaningful and powerful. The women characters are complex–evil, moral, conflicted, good mothers, bad mothers, addicts and everything in between. They are three-dimensional. This is a good thing.

The female-centric subplots in Boardwalk Empire are treasures buried in a pile of empty whiskey bottles. Most reviewers, however, focus on the men. Hollywood Life only mentions the male characters (except for the mention of Nucky getting smarter about women). The Huffington Post mentions Gillian briefly and Cora (but not by her name). Rolling Stone does do a better job of fully describing and summarizing the episode.

The fact that critics often ignore or reduce women characters isn’t surprising, although it’s always frustrating. What’s horrifying, however, are a few critics’ responses to the aforementioned violent sex scene.

Just like Boardwalk Empire has woven in subplots of women’s struggles, it has also presented the endemic racial tension in Nucky’s world in a way that makes viewers uncomfortable (especially since our culture is still so steeped in racism). Not everyone seems to get this, though.

From left, Dickey, Cora, Dunn and Chalky.

At Chalky’s new club, he sits watching the new talent with his right-hand man, Dunn, and a white talent agent, Dickey, and his girlfriend, Cora. Cora sketches an erotic drawing of her and Dunn, and asks him to come upstairs. The two start having sex, and Dickey makes himself known in the room as he draws a gun against Dunn. Dunn scrambles to put on his pants, and Cora immediately says he had forced her. This is all a game, though, for Dickey and Cora. Dickey forces Dunn to resume having sex with Cora, and all the while Dickey is throwing racial epithets, heavily peppering his slurs with the N-word and claims about how black men behave.

Dickey starts masturbating. “It’s all just some fun,” Cora says with a smile.

Then Dickey says, “There’s no changing you people.” With this, Dunn breaks a bottle over Dickey’s head and proceeds to stab him repeatedly and viciously. We are surprisingly comfortable with this outcome of the scene, because Dunn’s humiliation and objectification is so visceral, as is the racism. This scene is indicative of not only the racism and degradation of black Americans at the time (echoed by Nucky’s almost-mistress who says the Onyx Girls are “deliciously primitive”), but also the demand that they perform as objects for whites’ entertainment and sexual purposes, without agency. The power that Dickey wields over Dunn–his whiteness, his gun, his hand down his pants–is nauseating and historically accurate. This scene is about racism. This scene is about power, humiliation and resistance when one is caught up against a wall of disgusting degradation.

However, the aforementioned reviewers had a different reading of this scene.

From Hollywood Life:

“…Chalky finds out that being the boss requires a lot of cleanup. Like when after his sidekick Dunn Purnsley (Erik LaRay Harvey), in the most awkwardly violent scene of the episode, murders a booking agent after the guy catches him sleeping with his wife — and then forces Dunn to continue while he watches. Boardwalk Empire, ladies and gentlemen!”

Certainly a brief show recap isn’t always the place for heavy cultural analysis, but to brush off the scene with such flippant commentary? Privilege, ladies and gentlemen! 
Not to be topped, the Huffington Post saw Dunn’s actions as self-defense:

“So Dunn did what he had to do, smashing the guy’s head with a liquor bottle to get himself out of danger. And then he went the extra murderous mile, repeatedly stabbing the guy in the throat with the broken bottle, because it’s Boardwalk Empire.”

Are you kidding me? Dunn murdering Dickey had nothing to do with him being in danger. It had everything to do with him being degraded and humiliated.

Rolling Stone acknowledges Dunn’s true motivations, but still misses the mark:

“He may have moved up the ranks from jail antagonist to kitchen worker to Chalky’s right-hand man, but Dunn doesn’t know shit about doing business, especially with white folks in 1924. I can’t blame him for pounding a broken bottle into Dickey’s face repeatedly – not only was he forced to have sex with Cora at gunpoint, but Dickey degraded him even further with regular use of the n-word and vicious taunts like, ‘There’s no changing you people.’ Except Chalky knows that you can’t go around killing Cotton Club employees (Cora manages to escape) just for ’15 minutes’ worth of jelly.'” 

Yes, perhaps Chalky knows how to do business with white folks, but his “jelly” comment is inaccurate–that’s not what Dunn killed for. Except for killing Dickey (which even this reviewer acknowledges a motivation for), Dunn didn’t really do anything wrong.

And perhaps most egregious, buried in an approximately 2.5-million-word recap from New Jersey:

“‘It’s all just some fun,’ the wife assures. Not to Purnsley who, after they begin the humiliating deed, blasts a whiskey bottle clear across Dickie’s face. It’s doesn’t just stop there, however, the beating continues until the booking agent is dead and his wife, in horror, escapes through the window, naked. Purnsley stands there a bloody mess.”

There are some pretty pertinent details missing here. In this review, Dunn seems to be painted as a savage villain, lashing out for no clear reason. That’s not what happens.

Reviewers saw Dunn acting in self-defense (which further reduces his perceived power), not understanding how to do business with white people (blaming his sexuality and ignorance), or lashing out in savage violence without clear motivation.

Reviewers ignore the implications of racism.

Reviewers sideline female characters.

Reviewers do this because too frequently, the lens they are looking through is of the white male experience. This is privilege.

Even when the artifact itself deals with gender and race in a way designed to challenge viewers, reviewers often overlook it. I was uncomfortable, horrified and excited during the premier of Boardwalk Empire this season. I continue to see complex female characters and pointed commentary on racism.

Sally, Margaret and Gillian.

I’m disappointed, then (and even horrified), when critics ignore these aspects, or get them terribly wrong. Their recaps and analyses help shape the conversations surrounding these shows, and if they just focus on those smoke-filled rooms and the power brokers, without fully paying attention to the other characters, they are insulting women, people of color and those who work so hard to write about and represent them.

However, if we can look past the critics, there is much to be excited for in season 4. Still to come this season, Patricia Arquette will play a speakeasy owner and Jeffrey Wright will play a Harlem gangster who is seeped in the politics of the Harlem Renaissance. These moments that have made Boardwalk Empire exceptional–the moments of clear gender and racial historical context and commentary–are poised to take center stage in season 4. Hopefully we can all look through the clouds of white male smoke to see what lies ahead.

Valentin and Maitland

________________________________________________________

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

Millenials These Days

Masthead for Chicana From Chicago, Christine Davila’s blog

 
This is a guest post by Christine Davila.

If you hear someone utter, “Kids These Days,” it’s usually in a disapproving tone toward the younger generations’ fresh attitude or their breaking with tradition (or their tendency to speed while driving). When I think about Kids These Days, though, it is in sheer awe. I am so impressed by their confidence and transcultural expression with which they carve out their bold self-individuality. I don’t remember ever being that loud and proud in my teens. I, like most, just wanted to fit in. But the Millennial generation has spoken: Assimilation is out; non-conformity is in.

As a first generation Mexican-American I’m naturally drawn to bi-cultural narratives because they relate to my own culture dash – American clash. Speaking Spanish at home, making tortillas with abuelita, and my parents’ late night dance and Tequila parties, blasting Sonora Santanera or the passionate cries of Vicente Fernandez, all formed a very specific childhood. There is something really powerful about seeing a reflection of your roots in a contemporary context in the biggest form of entertainment: the movies. You may have read the numbers; there are 55 million+ Latinos in the country, making us the fastest growing and youngest demographic. Brands clumsily chase after this market and miserably try to coin terms to define us like New Generation Latino, Young Latino Americans, Hispanic Millennials. The term Latino attempts to encompass far too many diverse ethnic and social cultures that it is a useless denomination, a limited view failing to recognize the fluidity of our social zeitgeist in the 21st century.
It is critical to adapt with the changing times and engage the new generations of our immigrant nation. It’s time to reframe our notions and classifications on race and identity. Más American is my humble attempt of doing away with outdated and ill-defined terminology like Hispanic or Latino. It is meant to convey the real, inclusive and radical reflection of society’s eclectic fabric found in fiercely independent filmmaker voices. More aptly, it speaks to the transcultural identity and non-conformist spirit of today’s characters and narratives. It’s not necessarily confined to speak about people of “color.” It is about all kinds of shifting identities, from conventional, traditional and sociocultural norms to a more progressive evolution. It is about gender – equality, reversal of roles, gender variant. Filmmakers are out there telling these unique perspectives through independent film. These stories are out there. I can attest to that with some authority because of the volume of screening I do for film festivals year round. Films from underrepresented communities usually have an outsider/insider perspective, which in turn provokes highly original and compelling narratives by its very nature. This emerging class of individualism is what embodies American spirit.
Más American also speaks to the influence Latinos have on non-Latinos. You don’t have to have the blood in order to appreciate or acquire a sensibility of the Latino experience. Many non-Latino filmmakers have made extraordinary films capturing the US Latino experience. It’s only natural considering the countless generations who originate from before the Hidalgo treaty was signed. We are your neighbors, friends, colleagues, lovers, wives, husbands, in-laws, in each of the 50 states. Indeed, a long time ago my mom and I learned to stop talking trash when out in public about non-Latinos in proximity realizing that many people understand some Spanish.
Más American
And so it is with much pleasure, and gratitude toward the filmmakers, the Más American conversation on Seed&Spark is rolling out. These films purely conceive of characters and a world more reflective and authentic of our reality. Perhaps the freshness comes from a subconscious in which they derive and embody a defiant individuality, outside of any identity politics. Más American hopefully is a starting point for a more forward and richer conversation toward genuine, original and underrepresented narratives. I hope to add more titles to the mix in this Conversation, championing filmmakers who get America’s evolving sense of cultural self-identity and who are on the pulse of the rapidly shifting zeitgeist.

In THE CRUMBLES, written and directed by Akira Boch, the acting talent naturally inhabit LA’s Echo Park hipster artist scene in such a sincere and rocking way. The lead happens to be a Latina and her co-lead happens to be Asian. Their color is so not the center of the tragicomic slice-of-life. Yet it does make them who they are: badass rock ‘n roll girlfriends who resist quitting on their dream of hitting it big with their band.

In THE NEVER DAUNTED, writer/director Edgar Muñiz explores the toll and cross a man must bear who can’t conceive, in such a profound, heartbreaking and uniquely creative way. The film explores a modern masculinity more open to vulnerability, clashing with the Western stoic cowboy machismo image imposed on men from boyhood.

GABI – director Zoé Salicrup Junco’s impressive NYU thesis film – centers around its titular business-smart, sexy and confident 30-something woman living an independent and successful life, whose main conflict is the reminder that, in her hometown, her success represents a failure within the context of the marriage, kids and housewife model. 
Seed&Spark logo
In all of these stories, new definitions of traditional norms are celebrated, and scripts are being flipped. I’m thrilled that with Seed&Spark the public at large can discover these rebellious voices.
I want to thank the filmmakers for sharing their inspiring non-conformist narratives on Seed&Spark and for, whether they know it or not, breaking type.

Christine Davila is film festival programmer, festival strategist, script consultant and blogger (chicanafromchicago.com). As a first generation Mexican-American from Chicago, she loves multi-cultural stories and has the privilege of screening hundreds of US Latino and Spanish language films throughout the year as a freelance programmer for film festivals like Sundance, Morelia, Los Angeles Film Festival, San Antonio’s CineFestival, among others. In her blog, Chicana From Chicago, she focuses on the diaspora of American cinema made by people with roots/origin/descendant in Mexico, Central & South America, Cuba, Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. You can follow Christine @IndieFindsLA.

‘Wentworth’ Makes ‘Orange is the New Black’ Look Like a Middle School Melodrama

Wentworth poster

Written by Amanda Rodriguez
Wentworth is an Australian women’s prison drama that is much grittier, darker, more brutal and realistic than Netflix’s Orange is the New Black could ever hope to be. This bleak realism also makes Wentworth‘s well-developed characters and situations much more compelling than its fluffier American counterpart. Don’t get me wrong; I really enjoyed Orange is the New Black. The stories of incarcerated women are always important because they are a particularly marginalized and silenced group. However, the over-the-top, zany approach to characterization that OITNB utilizes for comedic effect renders the characters less substantive overall. Consider the lesbian-obsessed prison worker Caputo who has a mail order Russian bride or the insane abortion doctor murderer and ex-meth addict Pennsatucky Doggett who believes she has a calling from Jesus or the flame-haired Russian mobster cook Red played by my beloved Captain Kathryn Janeway (er, I mean Kate Mulgrew). Very colorful. Very little depth.

Pennsatucky is one craaaaaaaazy lady.

Though OITNB and Wentworth deal with similar themes, Wentworth (based on an Aussie soap opera from the 70’s and 80’s called Prisoner) takes a no-holds-barred approach to subjects like officer sexual exploitation of prisoners, turf wars and hierarchy, sexuality, the inmate code of silence, gang beatings, gang rapes, prison riots, and the brutality of the crimes that landed these women behind bars. Because the Australian prison system is different from ours, my first glimpse of Wentworth Correctional Centre left me comparing the prison to middle school with its catty girls and basic rights stripped from the inmates, much like the ones that are stripped from children, i.e. rules govern when they use the restroom, showers, bed times, how they spend their free time, classes are mandatory, and they are allowed no privacy save that which they sneak. The finale of the first episode (“No Place Like Home”) concludes, however, in a chaotic riot with a body count, leaving a major character dead. I rapidly revised my initial reading, realizing that the women of Wentworth play for keeps in a way that those of OITNB do not.

The show evokes a primal sense of self-preservation amidst the complete absence of the basic human need for safety. It is unflinchingly honest in its representations of women who’ve committed terrible acts, lived complicated lives, and must continue their struggle for survival in the place that’s supposed to give them structure and rehabilitate them but in actuality further hardens and traumatizes them.
The racial diversity of Wentworth‘s cast leaves a bit to be desired. One of the primary prison guards, Will Jackson, is played by Robbie Magasiva, a Samoan New Zealander.

Mr. Jackson escorts our heroine, Bea Smith.
Aboriginal Shareena Clanton portrays the integral matriarchal role of prisoner Doreen Anderson.

Doreen Threatens to cut Bea in order to keep the child she protects on their unit (that’s right, Aussies have kids in prison).

Lastly, there’s Frankie Doyle’s steady girlfriend, Kim Chang, played by Korean Ra Chapman.

Kim walks with her lover Frankie.

To be fair, I don’t know enough about the racial/ethnic composition of Australia to know what would constitute a balanced representation. In addition, though, there isn’t as much lesbianism as one might expect from the show either, though the lesbianism depicted is as graphic as the rest of the series. Though there are more lesbian characters in OITNB, I often wondered why their relationships were so censored on Netflix that can call its own shots…was it an effort to not exploit lesbian sexuality as so many shows typically do or was it to not “turn off” viewers?
On Wentworth, Frankie Doyle is the only major LGBTQ character along with her minor character girlfriend, Kim. We also find that the “Governor” Erica Davidson harbors a secret attraction to Frankie.

Governor Erica Davidson steals a covert look at Frankie.

Erica Davidson is one of the more interesting characters represented in the show. Erica becomes Governor through semi-devious means, but she continues to claim that the welfare and rehabilitation of the female prisoners are her number one priorities. The show constantly pits her genuine empathy for the women against her career ambition. Her sexuality is gratifyingly complex. We are given background on her relationship with her (male) fiance who is very vanilla when it comes to sex. Erica fantasizes about a fetish club she once visited as part of her pre-Wentworth lawyer work. When she asks her fiance to pull her hair during sex, he loses his shit. They don’t have a conversation about it, like, say a couple might if the man requested anal sex or a ménage à trois; instead he issues an ultimatum. They almost end a five plus year relationship because her request makes him feel inadequate. He asserts that she may have picked the “wrong guy.” He stifles her sexual curiosity completely. The repression of her sexual fantasies exacerbates Erica’s desire to step outside the bounds of sexual propriety as is evinced by her lesbian attraction to an inmate, a woman who constantly challenges her authority. The complex sexual power dynamic at work between Erica and Frankie feeds into Erica’s fantasies. The psychological context given for Erica’s sexuality gives her much more depth than, say, Piper Chapman from OITNB, whose sexuality is the cause for much debate but is given little room for its inherent fluidity.

Erica fantasizes about sex with Frankie within the prison walls.

Lastly, we’ve got Wentworth‘s heroine Bea Smith. Wentworth is a sort of prologue intended to give the backstory for the woman Bea later becomes in the series Prisoner (which many Aussie fans have already watched). In many ways, Bea and Piper aren’t so very different. They’re both women out of their element, gentle by nature. Neither woman wants to rock the boat, but both are possessed of a streak of moral righteousness that alternately gets them in trouble and gains them respect. Both undergo major transitions before the end of their first seasons, the prison setting actually accentuating their buried inner violence and pushing them to acts of vicious aggression.

Bea Smith from Prisoner on the left, and Bea Smith from Wentworth on the right.

Bea’s pre-prison life, however, is not as ideal as Piper’s perfect upper middle class New York existence. Bea is a hairdresser whose husband brutally beats and rapes her on a regular basis. Bea is imprisoned for attempting to kill him when she finally snaps and decides to fight back. Piper’s crime is an isolated incidence of non-violent drug trafficking that she did simply as a youthful thrill and to help out Alex, her then girlfriend. Though she, like Piper, is bewildered by prison culture when she is first incarcerated, Bea is no stranger to darkness. Though Bea and Piper both undergo major personality shifts by the end of their first seasons, Bea’s prior life, her family, and her meek disposition are truly and permanently eradicated by her stay in prison (and she hasn’t even had a hearing, nevermind trial and sentencing, as the first season closes).

Wentworth cast

I think I’m asking too much from Orange is the New Black. In fact, I know I am. It’s a mainstream show that focuses on the marginalized stories of women in prison, many of them LGBTQ. Shouldn’t that be enough subversion to keep me happy? Walking into the show, I’d already watched a couple of seasons of the British women in prison drama Bad Girls, and then after seeing Wentworth, I knew that I wanted more from the trope of women and prison than Orange is the New Black could provide. I didn’t want these important, often untold stories turned into humorous fluff in order to make them palatable to an audience. I didn’t want the complexity of the lives and struggles of these women to be minimized in order to keep them within their pre-determined stereotype boxes for the sake of simplicity and a huge, mainstream audience. I’ll keep watching OITNB, but I’ll keep turning to Wentworth for stories about ostracized women with fascinating psychology, depth of character, and complexity of emotion and motivation. 

There’s a New "Final Girl" in the House—and She’s a Beast: A Review of ‘You’re Next’

Movie poster for You’re Next

Written and Lovingly Spoiled by Stephanie Rogers.

Crispian: Where’s Felix?
Erin: I put a blender on his head and killed him.

You’re Next is sick, and I mean sick like “disgusting” and sick like “badass” because somewhere in my 34-year-old brain, I’m also 12.
It’s no secret if you’ve been reading my posts over the past 6 years that I love horror films and, more than anything, I adore the Final Girl in horror films. I want to be the Final Girl, tripping my way through the woods with a shard of glass sticking out of my leg while the audience roots for me to kill the bad guy. The Final Girl, in fact, might be my favorite iteration of the Strong Female Character in that the writers allow her to show weakness—which makes her desperate acts of murder to save herself even more appealing; she gets to be both the freaked out damsel in distress and the hero of the story.
Erin, the Final Girl, wielding an ax
From a feminist perspective, the Final Girl’s combination of strength and weakness accompanied by the (often male) audience’s ability to identify with her plight, further emphasize her importance. The horror film genre in general affords men an opportunity to identify with a female protagonist, and that rarely occurs in other genres. Go horror.
In Carol J. Clover’s book, Men, Women and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film, she argues—to quote Wikipedia—“that in these films, the viewer begins sharing the perspective of the killer but experiences a shift in identification to the Final Girl partway through the film.” And in You’re Next, I couldn’t help but smile when Erin bashed in the head of a masked bad guy with a meat tenderizer while the audience cheered. (I smiled because the audience clapped for a female lead, not because I’m a sociopath.)
The quintessential animal masks
The film starts off like an average, run-of-the-mill horror film. The first woman character appears during what looks like pretty unfulfilling sex. My first thought? She’s about to die. Because women characters in horror films always get the death punishment for having sex—which is, I’ll admit, a problematic element of the genre. (A tiny part of me wondered if she might survive given that it wasn’t a steamy sex scene as much as a gross dude getting off while she lightweight grimaced.) Alas, she succumbs to the trope; then the words “You’re Next” appear in blood on the wall before the shitty bedfellow bites it … and so begins the latest incarnation of the Home Invasion journey. 
Get ready for your sex punishment

It may take place in a mansion, but the kitchen and the basement are where shit gets real. The weapons include kitchen knives, blenders, meat tenderizers, and a slew of screwdrivers, as well as a machete (duh) and for some reason a fucking crossbow like it’s The Hunger Games. I liked that the terrorized family members needed to defend themselves with household appliances rather than a random gun they’d hidden for a rainy day. (I almost never buy it when victims pull out their stowed away guns, and those films lean a little too close to a dangerous message: Buy a gun to protect your home, America; otherwise you’ll die at the hands of lunatics, and it’ll be all your fault. The NRA told you so!)
Thank you, You’re Next, for avoiding that convention and making me look at blenders and meat tenderizers in entirely new ways. 
Dude, you are SO next
The film follows a very rich, white, nuclear family whose matriarch (Barbara Crampton) and patriarch (Rob Moran) invite their children (and the significant others of their children) over for a nice, functional (ha) 35th Wedding Anniversary celebration and to see the brand new mansion they purchased. This brand new mansion happens to sit in the middle of nowhere with very limited cell phone service. Oops! And it also becomes clear almost immediately that the three brothers borderline despise one another, and the lone sister Aimee (Amy Seimetz), a total Daddy’s Girl, has been pretty much pampered her whole life. Of course the matriarch, Aubrey, hears a loud-ass noise that shakes the chandelier before the kids arrive, and the husband does that whole, “You’re a crazy bitch, but I’ll check it out anyway just to humor you” thing that always cracks me up in horror films. The message? Listen to women, dumbasses, because they know what’s up. 
Little Sister and Daddy’s Girl, Aimee, freaks out when everyone starts dying
Aubrey, portrayed as a hysterical mess who can’t stop crying, gets a pass from me. I found her response to the creepy loud noises and then the subsequent deaths of her children via crossbow (and a slow-motion sprint that ended with a clotheslining to the jugular) the most normal response of the whole bunch. These take-charge mofos who mindlessly cover their dead family members with a sheet and move on need some serious psychoanalysis. 
One of the masked men looks down on Erin after she jumped through a fucking window on purpose
The father, Paul, the former Man of the House, completely loses his shit at one point, going into a catatonic sob-state that made me chuckle in delight. The witty, suck-up, kind of dick oldest bro Drake (Joe Swanberg) makes incessant condescending comments to the middle brother, Crispian (A.J. Bowen), about his inability to do anything with his life; and Felix (Nicholas Tucci), the youngest, sits back with his girlfriend, rolls his eyes, and observes the dysfunction.

Just your typical dudbro family emasculation sesh.

It took me approximately ten minutes into the movie to realize this home invasion violence was all about money. Specifically white people with money. And the punishment of white people with money, a la The Purge. Can I just say kudos to Hollywood for taking a step back from the Mancession narrative for five seconds? Before the audience can identify with these rich white people and feel bad for their plight, we’re already laughing at them. They’re ridiculous. And the only seemingly respectable person of the lot is a darker-skinned young Australian woman named Erin (Sharni Vinson) who grew up in a Survivalist Camp and has a crapload of student loan debt.
Sorry, murderers. Your crossbow suddenly don’t mean shit. 
Erin (Sharni Vinson) looking a little worn out
Erin rocks. Erin is possibly my favorite Final Girl ever. That’s right; I’m putting her right up there with Ellen Ripley in Alien and Laurie Strode in Halloween. This Final Girl, while more advantaged than her predecessors with her Survivalist Camp superhero skills, also doesn’t get boxed into what has become a Final Girl trope: a young virgin, or a woman who’s never shown having sex, who’s rarely sexualized, who often appears as the “androgynous nerd” stereotype—Jena Malone in The Ruins is a good example of this—and who plays a straight-laced nondrinker or drug user (Erin insists they stop for alcohol). Erin is the new and improved Final Girl 2.0; the home invaders may run around in creepy Fox, Lamb, and Tiger masks, but Erin is the most animalistic of the bunch.
And that brings me to the women in the film. 
Zee, Felix’s girlfriend, tries some sick shit in this scene
I didn’t like that Felix’s girlfriend Zee (Wendy Glenn), the mostly non-speaking goth chick, turned out to be a villain. Why couldn’t the sweet, blond sister, Aimee, be a villain? Change it up, Hollywood! But I did like, for what it’s worth, that a woman got to be a villain—a somewhat likeable villain in the end—and that the filmmakers gave the audience an opportunity to identify with both a woman protagonist and a woman antagonist … who, for once, weren’t fighting over a fucking dude.
All in all, I very much enjoyed every dude’s “um wait whut” reaction to Erin’s skillz with a meat tenderizer. I liked that many deaths at the hands of Erin took place in a kitchen, a space where women were—and occasionally still are—forced to serve and clean up after men and children. You’re Next makes Erin queen of the domestic space but in a way that gives her power over her captors. The entire film could, in fact, be read as a cautionary tale for keeping women locked up in the domestic sphere or otherwise. Erin may not have served them in the conventional sense, but they definitely got served. 

 “Lookin’ for the Magic” by Dwight Twilley Band: the theme song from You’re Next