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Shut Up and Sing: The Dixie Chicks Controversy Ten Years Later

Movie poster for Shut Up and Sing

This is a guest post by Kerri French.

This month marks ten years since Natalie Maines made her infamous statement during a packed Dixie Chicks gig at Shepherd’s Bush in London, acknowledging the recent events pointing to the United States’ imminent invasion of Iraq by saying “Just so you know, we’re on the good side with y’all. We do not want this war, this violence. And we’re ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas.” Two days later, the latter part of her statement was quoted in the British newspaper The Guardian and soon picked up by the Associated Press, grabbing headlines across the US. While the Dixie Chicks initially tried to downplay Maines’ comment in the hopes that the controversy would blow over, it quickly became evident that there was no turning back from the stand they had taken.

Targeted by the right-wing group Free Republic, their number one single quickly fell down the charts, album sales dropped, and radio stations refused to play their music. Faced with boycotts throughout their summer tour and the possibility of losing corporate sponsorships, Maines and sisters Martie Maguire and Emily Robison quickly realized that the issue could not be easily swept away and chose instead to embrace the controversy, framing it as a free speech issue that they would not back down from. They found themselves further faced with harassment, vandalism, and threats of violence, serving as an example to the rest of the country as to what can happen when you choose to express an unpopular opinion.

The Dixie Chicks messing around on stage

Throughout this time and for the three years following, filmmakers Barbara Kopple and Cecilia Peck documented the band’s reaction and response to the treatment they faced following their 2003 statement. Alternating between footage filmed immediately after the 2003 controversy and two years later as the Dixie Chicks were writing and recording Taking the Long Way, their 2006 album that served as a response to the backlash they experienced throughout their Top of the World tour, Shut Up and Sing highlights the ways in which the band was forced to reconsider not only how they presented themselves as artists but what kind of music they now wanted to create. Maines, Maguire, and Robison take on the task of writing an entire album of songs for the first time, using many of the songs as a way to reflect on and respond to the hostility, threats, and pressure that surrounded them several years prior. As Kopple and Peck show the band preparing to promote the new album, it becomes evident that the 2003 controversy has become a part of the band’s identity, even three years later when Maines’ actual words have been forgotten by most. Refusing to apologize for what they believe in became deeply embedded into who they were, unable to be separated from the discussions of how best to introduce the music industry and fans to the band’s move away from a more straightforward country sound that now incorporated rock and pop influences. Maines in particular seemed hesitant to introduce their new sound and songs too quickly, wanting to be more cautious than Maguire and Robison out of fear of the backlash the band could experience all over again. The documentary offers a very real glimpse into not only how three musicians balance their career with their beliefs, but also how they deal with the emotional aftermath of all that they are up against.

The Dixie Chicks on Entertainment Weekly
What is most impressive, however, is the way Kopple and Peck use the documentary to capture the bond and friendship among three women facing enormous pressure in an industry that refuses to reward women for being true to themselves. Despite countless questioning from the press over how Maguire and Robison feel regarding Maines’ statement, the band continues to think of themselves as a “we” and Maguire and Robison’s support of Maines is unwavering. Indeed, the band doesn’t back away from the controversy that the statement created, refusing to cater to a fan base and industry that showed them so much hostility. The film highlights the band’s anger in conversations filmed backstage during their 2003 tour, with each member arguing with longtime manager Simon Renshaw over what constitutes a radio ban, insisting that they have done nothing wrong and have no reason to show remorse or ask for a second chance. The connection between these three women appears to only grow stronger the more they embrace their newfound political roles as advocates for free speech. In one poignant moment, the documentary shows Maguire tearfully stating that Maines still blames herself for what happened, despite Maguire’s insistence that it was the best thing that could have happened to their careers. She continues, stating that she would give up her career if that is what Maines needs. Their 2006 studio album has, in fact, proven to be their last; despite brief reunions to play a handful of concerts together, the band has headed in different directions, with Robison and Maguire forming the duo Court Yard Hounds while Maines is set to release a solo album with a decidedly more rock focus in May.

The Dixie Chicks singing the National Anthem

Watching the documentary so many years later, it is hard not to wonder why these three women’s actions in particular so enraged the country. The Dixie Chicks were certainly not the most outspoken celebrities to speak out against the war, yet theirs is the controversy that will ultimately be remembered from that time. Was it more shocking that three country musicians could be politically and socially liberal? Admittedly, it probably came as no shock that Sean Penn and Tim Robbins were against the war, but even liberal Americans must have been surprised that it was the Dixie Chicks of all artists who managed to stir up such strong feelings about patriotism and the war.

Still, the question arises whether these three women were punished so harshly because they were country artists whose opinions went against the grain of a large percentage of their fan base or because they were women who dared to have an opinion. Would a male country artist expressing antiwar sentiment have been met with radio bans and death threats? The behavior of male country artists, after all, is often excused or even glorified with their “rebel” persona; it’s all well and good for male musicians to be loud and outspoken but when a woman dares express an opinion outside of what middle America believes, she not only puts her career at risk but exposes herself to harassment and discrimination from fellow musicians, the country music industry, and all of its fans.

Fans unite in support of The Dixie Chicks
And harassment and discrimination is the only way to fairly describe what happened to the Dixie Chicks in the wake of their 2003 statement against the President. Not only did Clear Channel Communications strike the group from country radio station playlists, the uproar from fans wanting all of their CDs bulldozed was nothing short of a modern day witch-hunt. Metal detectors were installed at their shows throughout the summer and a police escort was needed that July when the FBI revealed knowledge of a death threat against Maines in Dallas. Fellow country artist Toby Keith, branding Maines a “big mouth,” began using a doctored photo of Maines with Saddam Hussein as a backdrop at his concerts while singing “You’ll be sorry that you messed with the U. S. of A. / We’ll put a boot in your ass / It’s the American way”—an act that he was never reprimanded for, despite the use of Maines’ image serving as nothing but pure incitement of hatred and violence against a woman who dares hold her own political opinions. The irony, of course, is that it was the Dixie Chicks, not Toby Keith, who had to worry about their tour sponsorship deal falling through when Lipton sent in a PR consultant to discuss whether the company felt they could go forward with the relationship after the band’s “brand” had been tarnished.

The Dixie Chicks sweep the 2007 Grammy Awards
Ten years on, the very conservative demographic who demonized Maines for expressing her disapproval of President Bush and the war are now the ones saying far worse about President Obama. Maines’ statement seems absolutely uneventful in comparison, so much so that the country’s response to her words is near comical when viewed now. Still, the documentary serves as a reminder that the way these three women were treated was anything but comical; it is clear that under the right political circumstances, political groups and corporations can exert enormous pressure on those who choose to express an unpopular opinion. It is especially fitting, then, when the Dixie Chicks return to Shepherd’s Bush in London at the end of the documentary to promote their new album and Maines jokes that she would like to say something the audience hasn’t already heard before and then goes on to say, “Just so you know, we’re ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas.” This time around, the comment wasn’t met with protests and boycotts; the band was instead rewarded in early 2007 when they swept the Grammy Awards by winning all five categories for which they were nominated. In the end, the Dixie Chicks committed themselves to remaining true to who they were no matter the professional, financial, or personal cost—something an audience has rarely heard before, indeed.

 The Dixie Chicks perform “Not Ready to Make Nice” at the 2007 Grammy Awards Ceremony
Kerri French is a poet whose writing has been featured on Sirius Satellite Radio and published in Barrow Street, Mid-American Review, DIAGRAM, Sou’wester, Waccamaw, Barrelhouse, Best New Poets 2008, and The Southern Poetry Anthology, among others. A North Carolina native, she currently lives in Cambridge, England. 



The League of Gentlemen: Drag and Transmisogyny in British Comedy

Written by Max Thornton.
Do you remember Work It? If you’ve spent the last year and a bit trying to scrub all memory of it from your brain, I don’t blame you and I’m sorry for reminding you of those ten excruciating days in January 2012 when ABC was airing a sitcom “about” (to quote its Wikipedia entry) “two men who must dress as women in order to keep a job in a bad economy.”
ABC president Paul Lee justified this terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad show by saying: “I’m a Brit, it is in my contract that I have to do one cross-dressing show a year; I was brought up on Monty Python. What can I do?” His epic wrongosity on many levels notwithstanding, the man is right about one thing, and that is Britain’s bizarre, confusing obsession with drag. I am never quite sure if the cross-dressing that permeates British culture, from Python to Christmas panto, is a Rocky Horror-style celebration of diversity and queerness, or the basest form of “LOLOLOL A MAN IN A DRESS!!” transphobic humor. TV show The League of Gentlemen exactly straddles this line.
This is a local shop for local people. There’s nothing for you here.
The League of Gentlemen aired three short seasons and a Christmas special on the BBC between 1999 and 2002. I first encountered the show in late-night reruns and the 2005 feature film, which between them fueled an obsession strong enough for me to keep the theme music as my ringtone for a couple of years. It’s been a while, though, since I gave this show any thought (other than appreciating the creators’ nightmare-inducing follow-up project, Psychoville) – until last week, when I stumbled upon the happy knowledge that BBC Worldwide has made all of season one available on YouTube. LoG, though an influential powerhouse of modern comedy back in Blighty,is unfairly little-known outside of its country of origin, and I’ve had no luck hunting down seasons two or three (curse you, DVD box set that I for some reason left at my parents’ house!). However, the three hours that constitute season one provide quite enough fodder for reflection on their own.
The show centers on the strange, sinister, often very sad inhabitants of fictional Middle England town Royston Vasey. The unifying master plot of season one is the “New Road,” a highway being built to connect Royston Vasey with the wider world, and the range of responses from the locals; but really the focus is on the locals themselves, with their bizarre quirks and quiet desperation.
Nearly every character in Royston Vasey is played by the three performing members of the League (a fourth, Jeremy Dyson, stays off-camera): Steve Pemberton, Mark Gatiss, and Reece Shearsmith. Each adopts an impressive variety of personae, from creepy butcher to embittered vicar to obnoxious teen horror buffs to the iconic shopkeepers Tubbs and Edward. Almost all of the characters are grotesque (except for one or two of those played by Shearsmith, aka the good-looking one) – it’s not something that’s confined to the female characters for nasty transmisogynistic laughs, and frankly Shearsmith makes almost as attractive a woman as he does a man.
Reece Shearsmith: yep and also yep.
In a fascinating decision for a show whose entire female cast is played by men, one of the characters is a trans woman. Going into my rewatch, I was concerned about the handling of Royston Vasey’s local taxi driver Barbara (voiced by Pemberton): in 2013, the mainstream British media is still rifewith transmisogyny, and how much worse would it have been in a sitcom in 1999?
And at first it does seem like the only joke is going to be “HAHA A TRANS WOMAN, ISN’T THAT HILARIOUS??!!!” In Barbara’s first appearance, we see her cab’s exterior and hear a gruff voice speak. In the course of chatting with her passenger, she casually reveals that she buys dresses (laugh track!) and that she takes hormones and they have intimate effects (laugh track!). These early jokes are pretty grossly offensive: the camera pans over Barbara’s high heels, jewelry, and extremely hairy chest (for fuck’s sake), and we don’t even catch a glimpse of her face until the final episode of the season. Meanwhile Barbara cheerfully overshares details of her forthcoming bottom surgery to whoever happens to be in the cab. The cumulative effect is dehumanizing, othering, and pathologizing, reinforcing both the laziest transmisogynistic humor – she has a deep voice and a hairy chest (because trans women always just hang onto unwanted secondary sex characteristics), but she also wears dresses and heels! Hahahahahaha! – and the transphobic notion that trans people are somehow obscene, through being particularly inappropriate and overly obsessed with surgery and genitalia.
Lots of shots like this, but heaven forfend we see her face. We might think she was an actual human being.
But. If half the characters on your show are actually men in dresses, and if you’re making them funny by actually writing jokes for them, the hypocrisy and comedic paucity of relying on ugly “man in a dress” mockery of your trans character quickly become apparent. Although the transmisogyny never fully leaves (I suppose each week you want to catch new viewers up on the HIGH-larious conceit of a trans woman existing), the jokes definitely take on a kinder spirit as the season goes on. Witness this exchange, when Barbara tells snooty Mrs. Levinson about the “beast of Royston Vasey”:
Barbara: “They dug something up working on the new road.”
Mrs. Levinson: “Oh, Barbara, stop it. You’re giving me the willies!”
Barbara: “Well, you’re very welcome to mine – it’s coming off in a fortnight anyway.”
That’s a genuinely funny, non-hateful trans joke. What a shame the League didn’t write more like that.
On the upside, as much as Barbara’s propensity to graphic oversharing is played for transphobic laughs at her expense, the residents of Royston Vasey never seem that fazed by it. They are shown to be thoroughly accepting of Barbara, much more so than you might expect from a Middle England village on TV in 1999. When petty-minded Geoff, having been the butt of a homophobic joke he didn’t quite get, asks Barbara for clarification, he sighs, “I don’t know why I’m asking you – you’re a woman.” (Of course, that little moment of acceptance is promptly ruined by Barbara’s reply, “Not quite, Geoff. They’ve got to open me up first, along the base of the scrotum…”)
And the inevitable scene of awkward sexual encounter between Barbara and out-of-towner Ben is written with surprisingly little transphobia. I mean, it still relies on some pretty disgusting tropes of trans women’s supposed excessive sexual aggression and obsession with genital configuration, but Ben’s dialogue in the scene is remarkably free of trans panic. In fact, every line he speaks could be recontextualized without change to a scene with a cis woman to whom he wasn’t attracted.
These are minuscule successes, but then I have very, very low expectations for mainstream media depictions of trans women – especially in a comedy, especially in the last century (the last 14 years constitute a long time in the advance of trans rights). The thing is, The League of Gentlemen is at its core not a hateful show (unlike certain of its imitators). There’s a sketch portraying the relationship between a pampered rich woman and her maid, which skewers British class relations at the expense of the privileged. There’s a character whose specialty is finding people with disabilities and talking well-meaning but appallingly ignorant drivel at them until he’s dug himself deep into a chasm of offensiveness. There’s an acting troupe whose educational play on acceptance of gay people is a masterclass in cluelessly paternalistic fauxgressive claptrap. In general, LoG excels at zeroing in on Middle England’s most small-minded, unexamined fear and hatred of difference, particularly when it’s coated with a misguided and sanctimonious belief in one’s own tolerance. The case of Barbara is striking because it’s a rare failure to ridicule the right target.
But I sill love the show, and you should still watch it.

Max Thornton blogs at Gay Christian Geek, tumbles as trans substantial, and is slowly learning to twitter at @RainicornMax.

Foreign Film Week: Growing Up Queer: ‘Water Lilies’ (2007) and ‘Tomboy’ (2011)

Written by Max Thornton, this review previously appeared at Bitch Flicks on June 26, 2012.
Céline Sciamma’s films are ever so French. Light on dialogue, they tend to rely on lingering shots of longing glances and exquisite mise-en-scène to reveal character; loosely plotted, they leave the impression less of a story than of a series of vignettes, of tiny moments freighted with great import.

These techniques are uniquely suited to the onscreen portrayal of adolescence. It almost seems churlish to complain that Water Lilies and Tomboy lack full structural coherence, because that’s arguably intentional. Growing up, after all, is not a tightly-plotted three-act hero’s journey with clear turning points, tidy linear progression through the successive stages of personal development, and a satisfying ending. It’s a messy and confusing struggle to find a place in the world, littered with incidents that may or may not ultimately be significant (with no way to tell the difference), and most of the time the morals make no sense.

Sciamma instinctively understands this, and the little stories she tells of growing up queer are given vivid life through her two greatest strengths as a filmmaker: her ability to coax marvelously deep and naturalistic performances out of her young actors, and her eye for a strikingly memorable little scene that perfectly encapsulates a moment of overpowering adolescent emotion – the normally boisterous Anne clutching at a lamppost and weeping in Water Lilies, for example, or Tomboy‘s Laure curling up on the couch, thumb in mouth, suddenly overwhelmed by an earlier humiliation.

Both films are carried on the remarkably expressive faces of their lead actresses. There are no voice-over monologues or expository conversations, but both Water Lilies and Tomboy present the inner life of their protagonists with stunning depth and rawness.

Movie poster for Water Lilies
The protagonist of Water Lilies is Pauline Acquart’s Marie, a quiet fifteen-year-old with a crush on Floriane, star of the local synchronized swimming team. Marie’s best friend Anne, meanwhile, has her eye on Floriane’s boyfriend François. So far, so Gossip Girl, but there is nothing over-dramatic or sensationalistic about the way this love quadrilateral plays out. Although the film’s primary focus is on the blossoming friendship between Marie and Floriane, there is a clear thematic through-line of what it is to grow up female in the patriarchy. Marie, Anne, and Floriane all embody different ways of being young women, and especially young women coming into their sexuality.

Anne, though less conventionally feminine than the other girls, is confidently heterosexual and determined to sleep with the boy she finds attractive. Marie is so eager to spend time with Floriane that she agrees to help her sneak out to meet François, and her yearnings for the lithe bodies slipping through the water are beautifully conveyed through moments such as the shot of Marie shifting, flustered, as Floriane unselfconsciously changes into a swimsuit right in front of her. Floriane herself, despite the reputation she cultivates (perhaps recognizing that denial would be futile – once branded a “slut,” a teenage girl is hopelessly trapped in a no-win morass of contradictory social pressures), eventually confesses to Marie that she has never actually had sex, and in fact is afraid to do so.

“If you don’t want to do it, don’t.”

“I have to.”

“Where did you read that?”

“All over my face, apparently. If he finds out I’m not a real slut, it’s over.”

Floriane recounts several instances of sexual harassment from men; when Marie has no similar stories to share, Floriane tells her, “You’re lucky… very lucky.” And perhaps to some extent she is. Perhaps, as Anne and Marie float fully-clothed in the pool at the end of the movie, while Floriane dances alone for the boys she’s not certain she even wants to be with, they are considering their good fortune: they, at least, are strong enough to defy the patriarchal dictates around female sexual behavior, to name and claim their desires (or lack thereof), to make mistakes and learn from them without being defined by them. Growing up female in this world is hard, but they know they will make it.
Movie poster Tomboy
Tomboy tells a very different story of growing up queer. Zoé Héran turns in a truly remarkable performance as androgynous ten-year-old Laure, who, on moving to a new neighborhood, is asked by the friendly Lisa, “T’es nouveau?” – “Are you new?” – in a way that genders Laure male. In that moment, Laure becomes Mikael, a boy who spends a happy summer among his new friends and his puppy-love girlfriend Lisa. For the duration of the summer, Laure is confined to home and family (well-meaning dad, heavily pregnant mom, hyper-femme little sister Jeanne), and Mikael is the face presented to the world.

Any ten-year-old lives in the present, and Mikael meets each challenge as it arises – sneaking away deep into the woods when the other boys casually take a pee break; snipping a girl’s swimsuit into a boy’s, and constructing a Play-Doh packer to fill it; swearing Jeanne to secrecy when Lisa unwittingly tells her about Mikael – even as it becomes increasingly clear to the viewer that eventually Laure’s parents must find out about Mikael. As loving as they are, they still exert some gender-policing of their oldest child: Mom’s delight at hearing that Laure has made a female friend (“You’re always hanging out with the boys”) might have been tempered if she’d remembered that “copine” can also mean girlfriend!

The relationships between the various children are superbly observed, and constitute reason enough to see Tomboy in themselves. The energetic activities of childish horseplay that give Mikael such joy in himself and in his body – dancing enthusiastically with Lisa, playing soccer shirtless, wrestling in swimsuits on the dock – are balanced by the many lovely domestic scenes demonstrating the closeness of Laure’s relationship with Jeanne. This is honestly one of the most moving and genuine cinematic portrayals of a sibling relationship in years, and after her initial shock Jeanne takes to the idea of Mikael like a duck to water, boasting to another child about her awesome big brother, and telling her parents that her favorite of Laure’s new friends is Mikael.

The parents themselves, unfortunately, are much less accepting of Mikael. The film’s ending is ambiguous, allowing for multiple readings of the exact nature of Laure’s queerness; indeed, the film has been criticized as “an appropriation of trans narratives by a cis filmmaker toward her own purposes”; but to me the ending is terribly unhappy. With deep breaths and with profound conflict on Héran’s preternaturally expressive face, the character is forced to claim “Laure,” the name and gender assigned at birth and not the ones of choice. The cissupremacy has won this round.

Though Tomboy is the better film, the two movies make excellent companion pieces. Between them they depict a range of queerness and explore a variety of strategies for growing up queer (and/or female) in a hostile world. And yet they offer no easy solutions, no cheap moralizing, no promise that it gets better. These films, and the characters they portray, simply are. And, in the end, isn’t that the one universal truth of queer people? There is no ur-narrative of queerness. There is no right or wrong way to be queer. We simply are.

———-
Max Thornton is a Bitch Flicks writer, blogs at Gay Christian Geek, tumbles as trans substantial, and is slowly learning to twitter at @RainicornMax.

Foreign Film Week: The Disturbing, Terrorizing Feminism of Dušan Makavejev’s ‘WR: Mysteries of the Organism’ and ‘Sweet Movie’



Written by Leigh Kolb

[Trigger warning: references to graphic content.]


Sometimes feminist films succeed by showing just how awful a world without feminism is. Dušan Makavejev’s WR: Mysteries of the Organism (1971) and Sweet Movie (1974) provide that kind of jarring commentary. 
Both of these films critique fascism, communism, capitalism and sexual repression. His films are part of the Yugoslav Black Wave film era, which featured films that employed “antitraditional form, polemical approaches, socio-critical concerns, oppositional ideology and, a fatalistic conclusion.”
WR and Sweet Movie are difficult for audiences to handle due to some graphic scenes and political commentaries. However, the fatalism of the films–the disturbing, unpleasant endings with an overall bleak outlook on modern society–is perhaps the most unsettling, and the most important aspect of the films. While we could talk at length about the politics of the films (indeed many have, better than I could), looking at the films through a feminist lens provides a deeper understanding of Makavejev’s messages about the tragedy of sexual repression (especially for women). 
The Criterion Current‘s essay on Sweet Movie provides a backdrop for both films:

“Makavejev began his career by earning a psychology degree at a leading Serbian university, studying at Yugoslavia’s national film school, and making numerous shorts and documentaries… he set to work on the 1971 genre bender WR: Mysteries of the Organism, which anticipated Sweet Movie with its collagelike meditation on maverick psychologist Wilhelm Reich and his theories of sexual liberation.
“By this time, Makavejev was a leader of the so-called Black Cinema film­makers, as they were dubbed by Yugoslav officials who didn’t like their negative view of official ideologies. The sexual politics of WR was more than those officials could take: the film was banned, and Makavejev fled the country, not working there again until 1988. He made Sweet Movie in Canada, the Netherlands, and France, with additional Swedish and West German funding. It is banned in various countries to this day.”

WR: Mysteries of the Organism is somewhat a documentary, somewhat a work of fiction. The documentary footage that provides the context for the film examines Wilhelm Reich, an anti-fascist  Freud-trained psychoanalyst whose work–which focused on anti-fascism, sexual liberation and orgasmic energy–was censored and burned by the US government and he was imprisoned. Other documentary segments include interviews with sex-positive feminist Betty Dodson, a look into Screw magazine and how dildos are created and ideas of femininity and masculinity from the perspective of Jackie Curtis, who cross-dresses and challenges ideas of gender.
The fictional story cut into this documentary footage focuses on Milena, a young Yugoslav woman who is a radical feminist and revolutionary, focusing mainly on the importance of sexual liberation (and the fact that communism would fail because free love was repressed). She lectures the crowd of frustrated workers below her apartment balcony:

Milena lectures workers about the failure of communism.
“… Our road to the future must be life-positive. Comrades! Between socialism and physical love there can be no conflict. Socialism must not exclude human pleasure from its program. The October Revolution was ruined when it rejected free love. Frustrate the young sexually and they’ll recklessly take to other illicit thrills: Pilfering, burglary and assorted crimes, knifings, alcoholism, political riots with flags flying, battling the police like prewar communists! What we need is free youth in a crime-free world! If we are to achieve this, we must allow free love!…
“No excitement can ever equal the elemental force of the orgasm… Sweet oblivion is the masses’ demand! Deprive them of free love, and they’ll seize everything else! That led to revolution. It led to fascism and doomsday. How Man Became a Giant. Deutschland uber alles!… Deprive youth of their right to the sweet electricity of sex and you rob them of their mental health!… Restore to every individual the right to love!”


Milena’s fight for free love and the perfect orgasm leads her to a Soviet ice skater, Vladimir. He represents complete allegiance to Soviet rule and Stalin-esque communism. He speaks highly of his travels to the West, highlighting to the audience America’s class divide and sexual repression. Milena seduces him, encouraging him to accept his own freedom and sexuality. He succumbs, but his repressed lust and orgasm prove so overwhelming for him that he murders her (beheading her with his ice skate). Her decapitated head narrates the rest of the story as coroners discuss the huge amount of semen that was in her vagina.

Milena sees fascism as a masculine force that represses freedom and sexuality.
Milena’s fate exemplifies the passionate pro-love speech she gave to the workers. Sexual repression leads to violence. To further prove this point, Makavejev shows a man (performer Tuli Kupferberg, member of The Fugs) dressed in military regalia walking around Manhattan with a toy M-16 gun, stroking it as if masturbating, to The Fugs’ “Kill for Peace.” This idea that violence and sexual repression are connected leads to men glorifying guns and killing, and women being punished.

“Kill for Peace” excerpt from WR: Mysteries of the Organism. 
Milena is not punished for her own sexuality, she’s punished because of the sexually repressive world she lives in. She would argue that the men suffer from this repression, clearly, and turn to violence when they don’t know what to do with the frustration.

In Sweet Movie, two women’s stories are featured. The only documentary footage Makavejev uses in this feature film are some shots of mass graves in the Katyn Forest massacre (where Stalin had authorized the killing of 4,000 Polish prisoners). For the censorship authorities in many countries, however, that’s not what made the film ban-worthy (the official “rejection” status explanation from the British Board of Film Classification doesn’t even mention it). Instead, the scenes at a commune that feature all manners of human excretory byproducts and one scene where Anna Planeta seduces young boys made the film censored and banned in many countries. The film was almost impossible to find until Criterion released the DVD in 2007. 
In an excellent excerpt from the book Terror and Joy: The Films of Dušan Makavejev, Lorraine Mortimer analyzes Sweet Movie in depth and makes some of those most uncomfortable scenes much more understandable and meaningful. The vulgarity of the commune scenes remind us of how terrorized and sickened we are by bodily functions (and they are politically subversive, in that the people are not doing what they are supposed to), and the seduction scene reminds us–or should–how much “seduction” young people, especially boys, are subject to every day. This scene is also reminiscent of Reich’s ideas about sexual expression, even in youth. Anna Planeta’s scenes are important in their deadly intersections of politics, supposed sweetness and death after love. The giant Karl Marx head on her boat, and her lover (from a failed revolution) are symbolic of Makavejev’s recurrent themes of the tragic failing of Soviet communism and the anti-human, fascist results of such authoritarian systems. 
In Roger Ebert’s 1975 review, he asserts: 
“Makavejev doesn’t exploit this material — Sweet Movie is anything but a sex film — but uses it to confront us in a very unsettling way. The unasked questions behind his film seem to be: Well, we’re all human, aren’t we? This is what we are and what we do. What do you think of these people? You go to the movies to be entertained by scenes of people killing each other, you watch wars on TV — do the basic bodily processes of these people offend you?”

Most obvious–and still timely–to Western audiences, capitalism, commercialization and sexual repression are criticized in this film, especially through the story of Miss World 1984 (Miss Canada).
The film opens with a bright and cheery game show, and Martha, an older woman (the chairman of the Chastity Belt Foundation), accompanied by men dressed as priests, is standing by and helping judge while a gynecologist checks the virginity of various contenders for the grand prize–marrying her son, milk tycoon Mr. Kapital (a.k.a. Mr. Dollars), who is a wealthy bachelor.

The gynecologist examines the female contestants’ virginity.

Martha explains that at the Chastity Belt Foundation:
“Through the guidance of our sensational method, your own body kills the animal. We advocate simple triumph of the will. It is painless and ever so rewarding. No wild dreams. No – no peculiar behavior. Solid health and purposeful direction! … If not controlled and kept at bay, wild impulses will turn everyone into beastly animals, chaotic natural beings.”

We know from WR that this is the opposite of what Reich believed and what Makavejev reveals in his films.
The scene is wildly sexist, but clearly satirizes the value that society places on female virginity. When Miss Canada crawls into the examination chair and parts her legs, a light shines from her vagina, and she is declared the most virgin, the winner. And thus she is sold to the highest bidder.
She is an object, not a subject, and what she can offer to a man as a “prize” has nothing to do with her own sexuality. As they travel to their honeymoon location and fly over Niagara Falls, Mr. Kapital talks about how he is going to buy up Niagara Falls:
“I’m gonna buy it from the Canadian Government. I will renovate it, redecorate it. Get rid of the water, turn off the falls. … I’m gonna install an electric, synthetic, laser moving image in livin’ color. In livin’ color, honey! Yeah. And we’re gonna have a huge quadraphonic sound system. Yeah!”

(Mortimer notes that “…years later, it would be comforting if this wild caricature of acquisition and ignorance were further from our own reality.”)

Miss World and Mr. Kapital.

Miss World is an acquisition to Mr. Kapital, nothing more. He preaches on purity, money, sex and waste (marriage and business seem interchangeable, all driven by deeply capitalistic and puritanical ideologies). Martha and her brigade of priests stand outside a glass plate window as the marriage is about to be consummated. Mr. Kapital disinfects himself, and rubs Miss World down with alcohol–there is nothing sexual or sensual about the scene; it’s sterile and lifeless. When he takes out his penis, it’s covered in gold, and he procedes to urinate on Miss World as she screams.

When Miss World attempts to get out of the marriage, her mother-in-law attempts to drown her and they send her away.  She speaks out and tries to have some independence, only to be punished harshly. She represents this world where girls are prized for their virginity and derided for the outcomes of this anti-woman socialization. (“This is my only property, it’s my diamond!” she exclaims of her virginity when the tycoon’s bodyguard attempts to sexually assault her.)

She is now shipped off, just one of Mr. Kapital’s failed business ventures.

She’s damaged and broken–she attempts sex with a Latin pop star only to be confronted by nuns and stuck in “penis captivus.” She’s sent to the aforementioned Otto Muehl commune to “heal.”

Religious imagery surrounds Miss World when she attempts to have sex–another symbol of sexual oppression.

By the end of the film, she’s shown writhing around in a pool full of melted chocolate for a commercial.

The camera man directs her:

“Darling, this is going to be the highlight of your career. From now on, when people eat chocolate – I mean, the brand we advertise – they will not feel the same. I want them to feel as if they’re eating you!” 

Miss World, now just using her body to sell chocolate.

And here we are: the ultimate sexual objectification (she is naked, and attempting to seduce the camera) combined with commercialism–the indulgence of sweet chocolate (reminiscent of the toxic sugar on Anna Planeta’s boat) is confused with a kind of female sexuality that is supposed to be passive and proactive all at once, but certainly not for her. It’s supposed to be for the gold-encrusted penises, or the viewers, the consumers.

Miss World looks dead behind the eyes in this final scene. Her life was decided for her in a culture that prized her virginity and beauty above all else, and she couldn’t function when she attempts to be in another world.

She is punished, much like Milena is. However, Makavejev does not want us to think that they are at fault; instead, a society that represses and commodifies sexuality is the perpetrator of violence, masculine force and female suffering.

Makavejev’s films are representative of Black Wave sensibilities, especially in the critique of current society and the nihilism of the films’ endings. There are no clear answers here, just the reassertion that oppressive societies hurt everyone. In WR and Sweet Movie both, however, women are shown to suffer greatly at the hands of authoritarian, sexually repressive societies. 

At the end of WR and Sweet Movie, all of our main characters suffer. Milena dies; her killer is still repressed, and now a murderer; Reich dies in prison; Planeta is arrested, her victims lined up by the river; Miss World is broken and no longer has her “diamond,” so she has no self-worth. The characters have been created and persecuted by their societies. And we still haven’t seemed to move past the cult of masculinity and gun violence or puritanical views about sexuality.

However, if we are to find any bleak hope here, it’s this: at the end of WR, Milena’s head is speaking to the audience, as if her life isn’t really over. At the end of Sweet Movie, Planeta’s victims are resurrected and brought back to life. Maybe–just maybe–Makavejev is showing that it’s not too late to find life in repressive societies and giving us the answer to Sweet Movie‘s lyrical refrain, “Is there life on the earth?

Is there life after birth?” Makavejev would say yes, but only if we can break free from authoritarian  and repressive social ideals that have led to a cycle of repression, seduction and destruction.

—–

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

Foreign Film Week: Growing Up with ‘Les Demoiselles de Rochefort’

Les demoiselles de Rochefort (1967)

Guest post written by Lou Flandrin.

This masterpiece by Jacques Demy is definitely the most important movie of my childhood. Part of it is probably due to the hours I spent listening to the cheerful singing while going away on vacation with my family. Singing in the car is the best remedy to car sickness and boredom, and so the whole family would happily sing along these tunes about dreams, true love, and living life to the fullest.

While I love this movie because of the catchy lyrics, colourful clothes and the giddy state in which it turns me, I also appreciate its depiction of women’s lives and family bonds. I am grateful to have had these depictions to look up to when I was growing up, of sisters and friends who didn’t fight against each other, but worked together towards their dreams to have an artistic career and to find happiness.

The plot of the movie is quite simple: the main characters, Delphine and Solange, are twins who are tired of their provincial lives and decide to go to Paris to start their artistic career. As they plan their departure, the summer fair is settling in the beautiful city of Rochefort – which was painted in pastel colours for the movie – and fair workers, sailors and musicians will cross their path, webs of stories will get intertwined, resulting in a wonderful puzzle of emotions, songs, and choreographed happiness.

A Celebration of Love in All its States

While this movie is about soul mates finding each other, it is above all a celebration of love in general, love of life and of all the little things that makes the world so amazing. A perfect illustration of this is the song that the twins perform for the fair’s big show, “La Chanson d’un Jour d’été” which is all about loving life, and as they sing it: “loving the world in order to be happy.” This positive philosophy is a recurring leitmotif in the movie. Two fair workers – played by George Chakiris and Grover Dale – contribute to the theme by singing about the joys of travelling and living life to the fullest in every city they visit, “running from one happiness to the next.” With such a positive outlook, it’s no wonder this movie makes me want to smile and dance around like a maniac!

Being in love is obviously still a major theme, but it is presented as a complement to this love of life and freedom. Most of the characters are on a quest to find their true love in their own different ways. Yvonne, the twins’ mother, is longing for her lost love, whom she rejected years before because of his ridiculous last name. Andy, an American composer, is feeling incomplete after spending his whole life focusing on his musical career. Simon Dame, the dissed lover with a ridiculous name, is now back in Rochefort when he once was in love with Yvonne. Maxence, a young artist doing his military service in Rochefort, dreams about his feminine ideal, painting her portrait that looks eerily like Delphine.

Delphine (Catherine Deneuve) discovers Maxence’s painting

There is no distinction between a feminine or masculine depiction of love, as lovers’ voices share the same intensity, and their songs echo each other. Love “is the sole authority” and erases the discriminations of gender, social class or even moral virtue.

The twins have their own expectations about love. While it is no secret that they have had their share of lovers – as sung in their famous “Chanson des Jumelles,” they are now both looking for someone to share their lives with, and will take action towards this goal. At the beginning of the movie, Delphine dumps her phony and creepy boyfriend Lancien in an amazing break-up song, in which she reproaches him of treating her like “just another doll” and not understanding anything about her dreams. Lancien gets a few lines in the song as well, but he misses the point entirely. He mistakes his desire to own Delphine with love, and will try repeatedly to get her back, including with a poor attempt to convince her that she would need someone like him to look after her in Paris. But Delphine knows better than that, and replies that she never wants to see him again. Good riddance!

A Celebration of Friendship and Family Ties

What I like about this movie is that it’s not all about true love, as friends and family are shown as equally important parts of life. The two sisters live together in harmony, they confide in each other, share their joys and fears, and sing to each other about everything. Another interesting duo is that of the two girls who were supposed to sing and dance at the fair. After discussing it with each other, they decide to leave Etienne and Bill, the two fair workers, because they are tired of being exploited and want to live their own lives. Sure, they have their own superficial reasons (Bill doesn’t have blue eyes, sailors are better lovers…) but still, the message is out there, they want to free themselves and they do it together.

Guys are not excluded from this friendship pattern. Etienne and Bill have known each other for years, they travel together and share the same adventures and heartbreaks. They sing about their undying friendship, describing themselves as penniless knights with hearts of gold running from cities to cities. When the girls leave them for blue-eyed sailors, they echo their previous song about freedom, and leave the scene smiling at each other. Later on, when they very awkwardly ask the twins if they want to sleep with them and get rejected, they sing together about their bad luck with women.

True bros wear tight jeans and white boots, it is known. (George Chakiris and Grover Dale)

As for family ties, they are not limited to the sibling relationship between Delphine and Solange. Their mother Yvonne has raised three children on her own, sacrificing her life in order to help her family become well-read. She owns a café, and spends her days behind the counter. While she is at work all the time, in what she calls her “aquarium,” the café becomes the family home. The twins come and go to chat, Yvonne’s father spends his time in a corner constructing models, and Booboo, the youngest son, is always brought from the café to school and vice-versa.

A Celebration of Art

Art is what allows the characters to escape the mundanity of their daily lives, as when Maxence evades from the army barracks every night to paint in his studio. Art and love are pictured as complementary. While Andy is a successful composer, he feels a void, and realises that Solange might be the one who can fill it. They fall in love at first sight, and their idyll is written in F-sharp minor, just like Solange’s concerto that she accidentally drops on the ground when they meet, and that will further charm Andy.

Andy (Gene Kelly) singing about his love for Solange and her concerto

Art can be used negatively, for example in the case of Lancien, Delphine’s ex, who owns a gallery, and “creates” abstract paintings by shooting at balloons full of paint over white canvasses. Unlike the other characters, his art is depicted as destructive, and is echoed in his negative discourses on how he wants to own Delphine and control her life.

A Celebration of Freedom

What makes all the characters of this charming tale so unique is that they are all striving for freedom, and taking action to achieve their independence. Delphine doesn’t want to become Lancien’s doll and decides to leave to Paris to become famous on her own. While her reasons were questionable, Yvonne’s refusal to marry Simon can also be interpreted as a way to stay independent: she didn’t want to become Madame Dame, and chose to struggle on her own rather than becoming his wife.

Throughout the movie, the twins keep saying what comes to their mind, and doing what they want. When the fair workers come to the twins’ door to ask them to take part in their show, they imply that they need their help to go to Paris, which scandalises the sisters. They don’t want to be patronised and don’t want to be mere substitutes either, which is why they will participate to the show in their own way. Delphine buys revealing dresses that she thinks are beautiful, and Solange wonders: “Aren’t you afraid we might look slutty?” Delphine dismisses the comment, and they end up wearing those dresses on stage, showing everybody that they do not care about what people might think. Similarly, Solange couldn’t care less that her dress’ lining is showing, despite everybody insisting on reminding her. The twins’ indifference to other people’s judgement is also seen in their anthem, in which they proudly sing that they were born from an unknown father, and that they had lovers at a very young age.

Who doesn’t love characters who sing in the face of slut-shaming? (Catherine Deneuve and Françoise Dorléac)

Freedom is celebrated through the characters’ ability to travel the world to their fancy, like the fair workers who are happiest when they travel, or the sisters who decide to try their luck in Paris. Lack of freedom, for instance in Yvonne’s case, stuck in her “aquarium”, is depicted as the culmination of misery. She evades by dreaming of Pacific beaches, and will only be happy when she manages to get out of her café and find her former lover in front of Booboo’s school.

The musical has some darker notes, with the side story of a sadistic killer who killed a woman and cut her in little pieces because she refused his love for 40 years. Lancien’s obsession with Delphine echoes that of the killer, and we can only hope that he will not follow her to Paris to copycat the tragic event.

Paint Life in Pastel Tones

Haters will diss the cheesy dialogue, the ridiculous plots devices used to make characters miss or meet each other, and the overly cheerful singing. People might also argue that this movie is offering a false depiction of life, in which true love can always be found if one sings about with enough passion, and roams prettily the streets of France while dancing in colourful clothing.

But this very naivety is what makes Les Demoiselles de Rochefort so brilliant. Everything in the movie makes it clear that it is only a wonderful tale, far from reality. If you look at it that way, and decide to immerse yourself in Demy’s pastel singing city, you will end up happier and confident that while real life doesn’t have the same splendour, the ideals it promotes are very real.

Lou Flandrin is a French graduate in languages and international politics. Currently living in Chengdu (China), she is a volunteer translator and author at Global Voices Online, and sometimes tweets about Sichuanese food, robots, and other stuff.

Foreign Film Week: Remembering, Forgetting and Breaking Through in the Female Narrative of ‘Hiroshima mon amour’



Written by Leigh Kolb


Hiroshima mon amour debuted in 1959, 14 years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed. Alain Resnais’ first feature film explores memory, forgetting and tragedy on an individual and worldwide scale, largely through the lens of Elle (“Her”), played by Emmanuelle Riva.

While Resnais had signed on to do a documentary about the atomic bomb, he concluded that it should be fictional and “that the impact of Hiroshima would be refracted through the viewpoint of a foreign woman,” according to critic Kent Jones. Resnais wanted Marguerite Duras, a French writer and later film director, to write the screenplay. 
Duras’ command of literature, dialogue and feminist sensibilities resonate in the film (Duras was nominated for an Academy Award for the screenplay). Hiroshima mon amour, which grounds itself in the brief affair of a French woman and a Japanese man (Lui, “Him,” played by Eiji Okada) in Hiroshima, is as much about the growth and healing of an individual in a partnership as it is about nations healing after the second World War. 
Marguerite Duras wrote the screenplay, a stream-of-consciousness conversation with a focus on the feminine.

This juxtaposition of the feminine (love, emotion, peace) and the masculine (war, possession, destruction) shows that neither exists in a vacuum. 

The first section of the film shows Elle and Lui’s naked bodies intertwined, and their dialogue–dominated by her thoughts–is accompanied by increasingly awful footage of the aftermath of the bomb. She talks about how she visited the museum in Hiroshima: “… the reconstructions, for lack of anything else… the explanations, for lack of anything else.” She looked at the photographs and the scorched metal. She says, “What else can a tourist do but weep? I’ve always wept over Hiroshima’s fate.” As she “remembers,” Lui interjects that she remembers nothing, that she knows nothing and that there was nothing for her to weep over.

Elle was a young woman in occupied France (Nevers) when she learned the bomb dropped. Lui was fighting in the war, and his family was in Hiroshima. As the narrative unfolds and Elle comes to terms with her past, her youth and madness that she had in Nevers was due to her intense love with a German soldier–the enemy–who was killed right before they were set to leave together.

Lui’s story doesn’t seem as important as hers. We know he’s married (they both are), and that he’s a successful architect and involved in politics. His role in the film is that of a lover, of course, a pursuer and a listener. 

Elle, fighting Lui’s claims that she doesn’t know anything about Hiroshima, stresses that she does know. She says she knew that women risked giving birth to “monsters,” men risked becoming sterile, huge amounts of food had to be thrown away and that the “principle of inequality” kept advancing–between races and classes. He tells her she knows nothing, but we hear her concern with the traditionally feminine, even feminist, cultural and human ramifications of this new warfare. 

Her memory and knowledge, from a French perspective, also symbolizes the difficulties that others have in attempting to remember and to understand tragedies on foreign soil. 

When this introductory collage of words and images ends, the couple’s faces are shown, laughing in bed. They are individuals now, not just ideas. 

He asks, “What did Hiroshima mean to you in France?” 

She answers, “The end of war. I mean, completely.” She couldn’t believe they did it and that they succeeded. 

“The whole world rejoiced, and you rejoiced with it,” he says. 

Elle and Lui share passion and memory.

Their conversations, although heavy, are rooted in a desire and growing love for one another. The beginning conversation sounds uncomfortable since Lui is denying Elle’s memory and understanding, but they weave themselves together and her memories become lucid as the story unfolds. And Lui listens and falls deeper in love with her.

This prevailing theme of memory and understanding, and the limitations of both, are a product of a unique film production–Japanese and French companies and crews produced it, and the producers demanded that one star be French and the other Japanese. Even the production of the film highlights this partnership and what can be possible when cultures partner. Resnais and Duras, the creative team, show the great power of giving creative license to both the masculine and feminine.  
Elle is in Hiroshima acting in a film about “peace,” and when Lui finds her on set, they are filming actors protesting with signs about nuclear testing and photos from after Hiroshima. Much like the setting of Hiroshima itself, these scenes provide a backdrop to the individual love affair of a couple while reminding the audience of worldwide pain and tragedy.
Elle describes her memory of her past in Nevers (after Lui asks her about it). When she first asks why he asked about Nevers, Lui says he understands that she “was young, and didn’t belong to anyone in particular. I somehow understand that you began to be who you are today.”

She fell in love with a German soldier, and he was killed. She stayed by his cold body while the cathedral bells celebrated the liberation of Nevers (again, showing the complex perspectives of victory for some and tragedy for others). Her family is shunned since she was a “disgrace,” and her head is shaved. When she screams, she’s locked in the cellar until she becomes “reasonable,” and her mother sends her to Paris.

When she arrives in Paris, Hiroshima is “in all the papers.” She says, “Fourteen years have passed–I still remember the pain a little bit, but one day  I will no longer remember it. At all. Nothing.”

Lui asks if her husband knows this story, and she says no. “So I’m the only one?” he asks, and she replied that he is. He is elated, and embraces her. His possession of her memories signifies a deepening of their relationship and a new found trust. That, or he’s simply happy to have something of hers that only he possesses.
In an internal dialogue after leaving Lui (who begs her to stay), Elle speaks to her German lover, and says that she’s found another impossible love, and that she’s told her story. She is terrified of forgetting him.
Elle splashes water on her face and she is reborn after telling the story of her “youth” and “madness” in love.
When she and Lui walk the streets together and her thoughts dominate the narrative, scenery from France and Japan flash back and forth, confusing time and place. Elle says, “I meet you. I remember you. This city was tailor-made for love. You fit my body like a glove. Who are you? You’re destroying me. I was hungry. Hungry for infidelity, for adultery, for lies and for death. I always have been. I had no doubt you’d cross my path one day…”
She is attracted to and comforted by Lui, but her journey is much more introspective. He continuously chases after her, but she knows that “staying is more impossible than leaving.”
Her climactic thought is “Silly little girl who died of love in Nevers–I relinquish you into oblivion.”
She doesn’t really, though, nor should she.
They visit a cafe late at night (Casablanca, a clear nod to another film of “impossible love”), and the sun  begins to rise overhead. Lui follows Elle back to her hotel room. She cries, “I’ll forget you! I’m forgetting you already!” This is a threat and a mournful realization all at once. She says, slowly, “Hiroshima,” and he covers her mouth. “Hiroshima,” she repeats. “That’s your name.
“Yes, that’s my name,” he says. “And your name is Nevers. Nevers in France.”
The sweeping narrative begins with discussion of place, of warfare and mass casualties narrows in on a couple, and a woman’s struggle with remembering, forgetting and mourning her past. At the end, they are again representative of their places in the world, and a complex, difficult history.
Hiroshima mon amour, as a cornerstone film in the French New Wave movement of the late 1950s and 1960s, offers us no answers or prescriptions for life. Instead, we are left aching–both for the “impossible” romance and the pain and emptiness of modern war.
The beginning of the film inundates us with images from after the bomb. As we drift farther into the narrative and farther away from those horrifying images, we forget what we saw. We forget the horrors. Hiroshima mon amour forces us to reflect on the power of memory, and more so, the power of forgetting.
Throughout the film, the relationship between the masculine and the feminine, remembering and forgetting and dealing with war from different perspectives tugs and pulls at Elle and Lui and at the audience. At the end, the impossible is made penetrable by accepting and absorbing these complex relationships all at once.

—–

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

5 Reasons You Should Be Watching "The Lizzie Bennet Diaries"

Written by Lady T.   

Are you watching The Lizzie Bennet Diaries? You should really watch The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. This modern adaptation of Pride and Prejudice is charming, funny, moving, and a total trip down the rabbit hole once you devote just a few minutes of your time watching the first episode. Here is said first episode:

Isn’t it great?

“Of course it’s great!” you say, “but I have very little time on my hands and I cannot devote my precious hours to such a complex project!”

Oh, but you can. Here are five reasons you should be watching The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. 

Agency for Women
The women in Pride and Prejudice don’t have many goals in life. They want to make comfortable marriages, and that’s it. This isn’t a criticism of Jane Austen – making a good marriage was literally a matter of life and death for women in Regency England – but a benefit of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries’ modern setting is the wider options available to Jane, Lizzie, and Charlotte. Jane pursues a career in fashion, Lizzie and Charlotte in communications, and Gigi Darcy in…whatever technological position she has at Pemberley Digital. (Don’t ask me for details; I’m so not the tech expert.) Even Charlotte’s subplot with Ricky “Mr.” Collins is related to work, not romance. Watching these smart and dynamic women pursue their goals and dreams is bound to put a smile on any feminist’s face.

Charlotte Lu, Lizzie Bennet, Lydia Bennet, and Jane Bennet

 

Jane Austen in-jokes
Any Jane Austen fan will be delighted at the constant in-jokes and references made in Lizzie’s video diaries. One great example: In one of the Q&A videos, Lydia shows Lizzie her fake I.D. with the name “Mary Crawford” – a treat for any fans of Mansfield Park. In another episode, Lizzie mentions how much she likes empire-waisted fashion. In yet another, we finally get a glimpse of Kitty Bennet: a cat that followed Lydia home from school and does everything Lydia wants. (Poor Kitty. She’s the Milhouse of Pride and Prejudice.) These meta references are sprinkled liberally in Lizzie’s videos, Lydia’s videos, and the occasional Twitter conversation between the different characters. Jane Austen geeks will find these references highly agreeable, and not vexing in the slightest. 

“Kitty” Bennet with Lydia and Cousin Mary

 

Ethnic diversity for the win!
The Lizzie Bennet Diaries isn’t just about white people. A fair amount of supporting characters – Charlotte and Maria Lu, Bing and Caroline Lee, and Fitz William – are people of color. Charlotte and Maria even had their own side story in the brief “Maria of the Lu” series sponsored by Collins & Collins. None of their characters are included as “token minorities,” either; they all have distinct personalities and are entertaining in different ways. Much like the world did not spin off of its axis when the creators of Elementary cast an Asian woman as Dr. Watson, the planets stayed in alignment when The Lizzie Bennet Diaries made Colonel Fitzwilliam gay and black.

Fitz William plays along with Lizzie

 

Lydia is Totes Adorbz
Lizzie’s irrepressible little sister, Lydia Bennet, is just as bubbly and energetic as ever, constantly interrupting Lizzie’s video diaries to make her own announcements to the viewers (and to call her sister a nerd). She’s bouncy, full of life, and seemingly shallow but also filled with love for her family, and her subplot with George Wickham takes an interesting turn. I don’t want to spoil too many details for new viewers, but let’s just say that modern-day Lydia Bennet is not the Kardashian-esque fame seeker I expected her to  be. There’s a lot of warmth in this version of Lydia. I would not have minded if The Lizzie Bennet Diaries had kept their version of Lydia closer to the one of the original text, where the character is irredeemably selfish and impulsively trusting (thus serving as a nice parallel to Elizabeth’s judgment), but I’m very pleased with this more sympathetic Lydia. Mary Kate Wiles is fantastic as poor, loud, naive Lydia.

  

It’s Almost Over!
Episode 100 of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries will air on March 28th – and it’s the last episode ever! You only have a few weeks to catch up! Do it! NOW! 



William Darcy and Lizzie can’t believe there are only a few episodes left! 
Here is a link for you to catch up on the whole series via every platform, from YouTube to Tumblr to Twitter: The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. You’re welcome.

———-

Lady T is an aspiring writer and comedian with two novels, a play, and a collection of comedy sketches in progress. She hopes to one day be published and finish one of her projects (not in that order). You can find more of her writing at The Funny Feminist, where she picks apart entertainment and reviews movies she hasn’t seen.

Gigli and the Male Fantasy of the Lesbian Turned Straight

Written by Amanda Rodriguez
Gigli, the abomination masquerading as a film, is generally regarded as a pretty dang terrible movie. Plot? Action? Character development? Pathos? Entertainment? Nah, Gigli does away with those archaic devices and goes straight for the…boredom, offensiveness, unlikeable characters, and bad, bad, badness. How Christopher Walken and Al Pacino were coerced into cameos must’ve involved black magic or scandalous photo documentation. We won’t even get into the fact that two supposedly trained “contractors” (contractors for what exactly? poorly delivered dialogue?) are hired to watch Brian, a hostage who is differently abled, apparently suffering from “brain damage,” and Larry Gigli (Ben Slimeball-Face Affleck) constantly ridicules, yells at, and name-calls Brian due to his condition. Instead let’s focus on the hallowed converted-lesbian trope that Hollywood loves so well.
Celebrate by NOT watching this atrocity.
Yes, Hollywood loves to take lesbian characters, introduce them to men who are just so irresistible that aforementioned lesbian sees the penis…er…light, and changes her lesbionic ways. A few examples of this are Chasing Amy (starring Ben Affleck yet again, what a shocker) and the inexplicably critically acclaimed The Kids Are All Right, Puccini for Beginners, and Prey for Rock & Roll starring Gina Gershon of Bound fame. We get into some murky territory with many of these films because sexuality is fluid, and I am certainly not in the business of defining anyone’s sexuality for them. However, Gigli is a cut-and-dry case of the hetero disbelief that sex and, in particular, female sexuality can exist without the involvement of a penis.
Only he isn’t a “sissy gangster’; he’s a fuck-up with very few legitimate feelings in need of expression.
Jennifer Lopez’s Ricki is a sexay lesbian “contractor” on a job with the devoid-of-redeeming-qualities Larry Gigli. They mostly hang out in his dumb apartment (budget constraints perhaps) and share his bed at night. Ricki consistently baits Gigli with her unattainable sexuality, leaving him in a frenzy of sexual frustration. With much eloquence, he says:
“I got this fucking beautiful-sexy-gorgeous-hearthrob-o-rama-fucking-smart-amazing-bombshell-17-on a fucking 10 scale-girl sleeping in a bed right next to me and you know what? She’s a stone cold dyke. A fucking untouchable, unhave-able, unattainable brick wall fucking dyke-a-saurus rexi. So it’s sad.” 

Can you believe her panties didn’t catch on fire at those Cyrano words of wooing? I guess we’re supposed be like, “Yeah, buddy, that’s rough…it sucks when a woman wants to not give her vagina to you.” Not only that, but Gigli attempts to seduce Ricki by flexing and showing off his bad tattoos after yelling at her that he’s the bull in their relationship and she’s the cow. A real charmer, eh?

A long sexay yoga scene replete with a monologue about the vagina.
We also meet Ricki’s insecure, paranoid, stalker girlfriend, Robin, who proceeds to slit her wrists for effect when Ricki breaks up with her. After a trip to the emergency room, maybe the uncouth Gigli is looking a little more appealing? It’s hard to see this over-the-top interaction as anything other than hyperbolic stereotyping implying that lesbian relationships are nothing but drama.

Inevitably (why it is inevitable I don’t know), Ricki and Gigli do the nasty, and boy is it nasty. It’s hard to imagine they dated in real life because their sex scene is awkward at best and more accurately described as “just plain gross.”

I never, ever want to see Ben Affleck mounting anyone ever, ever again.

Ricki initiates the foreplay and asks Gigli to perform cunnilingus on her by saying, “It’s turkey time. Gobble, gobble.” More alluring words were never spoken on the silver screen. He hems and haws and never actually gives her what she asks for, which is the film’s way of subverting female desire and reasserting the supremacy of not only male desire but of the penis-vagina interface as the only true form of sexual fulfillment.

What Gigli is trying to say as a film eludes me. However, what the film is actually saying is blatantly obvious. Ben Affleck is so unlikeable that the movie only serves to show that lesbians will be turned straight by being in the company of any man, no matter what a piece of shit he may be. This is conservative heteronormative dogma (Dogma – yet another Ben Affleck flick). Luckily, Gigli is universally thought to suck, and hopefully some measure of that perceived suckitude has to do with the inane, unrealistic, chemistry-free romance between a hot lesbian and the King of the Jackasses. 
——

‘Gigli’ and the Male Fantasy of the Lesbian Turned Straight

Written by Amanda Rodriguez
Gigli, the abomination masquerading as a film, is generally regarded as a pretty dang terrible movie. Plot? Action? Character development? Pathos? Entertainment? Nah, Gigli does away with those archaic devices and goes straight for the…boredom, offensiveness, unlikeable characters, and bad, bad, badness. How Christopher Walken and Al Pacino were coerced into cameos must’ve involved black magic or scandalous photo documentation. We won’t even get into the fact that two supposedly trained “contractors” (contractors for what exactly? poorly delivered dialogue?) are hired to watch Brian, a hostage who is differently abled, apparently suffering from “brain damage,” and Larry Gigli (Ben Slimeball-Face Affleck) constantly ridicules, yells at, and name-calls Brian due to his condition. Instead let’s focus on the hallowed converted-lesbian trope that Hollywood loves so well.
Celebrate by NOT watching this atrocity.
Yes, Hollywood loves to take lesbian characters, introduce them to men who are just so irresistible that aforementioned lesbian sees the penis…er…light, and changes her lesbionic ways. A few examples of this are Chasing Amy (starring Ben Affleck yet again, what a shocker) and the inexplicably critically acclaimed The Kids Are All Right, Puccini for Beginners, and Prey for Rock & Roll starring Gina Gershon of Bound fame. We get into some murky territory with many of these films because sexuality is fluid, and I am certainly not in the business of defining anyone’s sexuality for them. However, Gigli is a cut-and-dry case of the hetero disbelief that sex and, in particular, female sexuality can exist without the involvement of a penis.
Only he isn’t a “sissy gangster’; he’s a fuck-up with very few legitimate feelings in need of expression.

Jennifer Lopez’s Ricki is a sexay lesbian “contractor” on a job with the devoid-of-redeeming-qualities Larry Gigli. They mostly hang out in his dumb apartment (budget constraints perhaps) and share his bed at night. Ricki consistently baits Gigli with her unattainable sexuality, leaving him in a frenzy of sexual frustration. With much eloquence, he says:

“I got this fucking beautiful-sexy-gorgeous-hearthrob-o-rama-fucking-smart-amazing-bombshell-17-on a fucking 10 scale-girl sleeping in a bed right next to me and you know what? She’s a stone cold dyke. A fucking untouchable, unhave-able, unattainable brick wall fucking dyke-a-saurus rexi. So it’s sad.”

Can you believe her panties didn’t catch on fire at those Cyrano words of wooing? I guess we’re supposed be like, “Yeah, buddy, that’s rough…it sucks when a woman wants to not give her vagina to you.” Not only that, but Gigli attempts to seduce Ricki by flexing and showing off his bad tattoos after yelling at her that he’s the bull in their relationship and she’s the cow. A real charmer, eh?

A long sexay yoga scene replete with a monologue about the vagina.

We also meet Ricki’s insecure, paranoid, stalker girlfriend, Robin, who proceeds to slit her wrists for effect when Ricki breaks up with her. After a trip to the emergency room, maybe the uncouth Gigli is looking a little more appealing? It’s hard to see this over-the-top interaction as anything other than hyperbolic stereotyping implying that lesbian relationships are nothing but drama.Inevitably (why it is inevitable I don’t know), Ricki and Gigli do the nasty, and boy is it nasty. It’s hard to imagine they dated in real life because their sex scene is awkward at best and more accurately described as “just plain gross.”

I never, ever want to see Ben Affleck mounting anyone ever, ever again.

Ricki initiates the foreplay and asks Gigli to perform cunnilingus on her by saying, “It’s turkey time. Gobble, gobble.” More alluring words were never spoken on the silver screen. He hems and haws and never actually gives her what she asks for, which is the film’s way of subverting female desire and reasserting the supremacy of not only male desire but of the penis-vagina interface as the only true form of sexual fulfillment.

What Gigli is trying to say as a film eludes me. However, what the film is actually saying is blatantly obvious. Ben Affleck is so unlikeable that the movie only serves to show that lesbians will be turned straight by being in the company of any man, no matter what a piece of shit he may be. This is conservative heteronormative dogma (Dogma – yet another Ben Affleck flick). Luckily, Gigli is universally thought to suck, and hopefully some measure of that perceived suckitude has to do with the inane, unrealistic, chemistry-free romance between a hot lesbian and the King of the Jackasses.
Bitch Flicks writer and editor Amanda Rodriguez is an environmental activist living in Asheville, North Carolina. She holds a BA from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio and an MFA in fiction writing from Queens University in Charlotte, NC. She writes all about food and drinking games on her blog Booze and Baking. Fun fact: while living in Kyoto, Japan, her house was attacked by monkeys.

Roundup of Feminist Film Festivals

UN Women Through Women’s Eyes International Film Festival | April, 6-7 2013 | Sarasota, Florida, United States
The 14th annual presentation of Through Women’s Eyes will feature independent documentaries, narratives, and short films by directors that increase awareness of the lives of women throughout the world.
Mostra Internacional de Films de Dones de Barcelona (The International Women’s Film Festival of Barcelona) | June, 7-17 2013 | Barcelona, Spain
The International Women’s Film Festival of Barcelona, began in June 1993, has as its objective the promotion of cinema directed by women, making women’s audiovisual culture visible, showing films by women film-makers from all over the world, thus proving the importance of women’s contribution to the development in audiovisual creation.

Shashat Women’s Film Festival in Palestine: “I am a woman from Palestine” | September 17-December 6, 2012 | Ramallah, Palestine
10 films, 10 women filmmakers from the West Bank & Gaza Strip; 106 screenings\discussions in 14 cities & 4 refugee camps; in collaboration with 21 organizations & 8 universities and 6 satellite TV programmes.

Elles Tournent/Dames Draaien Festival | September, 20-23, 2012 | Brussels, Belgium
Elles Tournent/Dames Draaien is a four day festival that exhibits independent films directed by women from around the globe. The festival’s goal is to emphasizes visionary works that challenge the traditional notions of visual storytelling and provide innovative perspectives on a vast array of topics.

Films, Femmes, Mediterranée| September 25, 2012 – 3 Oct 2012 | Marseilles, France

Muestra Internacional de Mujeres en el Cine y la Television| September 25-30, 2012 | Mexico

Rocky Mountain Women’s Film Festival | 2 Nov 2012 – 4 Nov 2012 | Colorado Springs, CO, United States

International Women’s Film Festival Israel | 5 Nov 2012 – 11 Nov 2012 | Rehovot, Israel

Filmfestival FrauenWelten 22 Nov 2012 – 28 Nov 2012 Tübingen, Germany

Laboratorio Immagine Donna 30 Nov 2012 – 5 Dec 2012 Florence, Italy

International Women’s Film Festival KIN 3 Dec 2012 – 8 Dec 2012 Yerevan, Armenia

Women Make Waves Film Festival 9 Dec 2012 – 10 Dec 2012 Taipei City, Taiwan

Athena Film Festival 7 Feb 2013 – 10 Feb 2013 New York, NY, United States FrauenFilmTage 28 Feb 2013 – 8 Mar 2013 Vienna, Austria International Film Festival Assen 2 Mar 2013 – 3 Mar 2013 Assen, Netherlands Women+Film Voices Film Festival 3 Mar 2013 – 10 Mar 2013 Denver, CO, United States Portland Oregon Women’s Film Festival 7 Mar 2013 – 10 Mar 2013 Portland, Oregon, United States The Fusion Film Festival 7 Mar 2013 – 9 Mar 2013 New York, NY, United States International Film Festival of Creteil 22 Mar 2013 – 31 Mar 2013 Creteil, France Festival Internacional de Cine de Mujeres de Santiago, Chile 26 Mar 2013 – 31 Mar 2013 Santiago, Chile Bird’s Eye View Film Festival 28 Mar 2013 – 28 Apr 2013 England, London Dortmund | Cologne International Women’s Film Festival 9 Apr 2013 – 14 Apr 2013 Dortmund, Cologne, Germany Bluestocking Film Series 1 May 2013 – 27 Oct 2013 Portland, Maine, United States Flying Broom International Women’s Film Festival 9 May 2013 – 16 May 2013 Ankara, Turkey Entre Cineastas Arab – Iberoamerican Women Festival of Cairo 15 May 2013 – 19 May 2013 Cairo, Egypt International Women’s Film Festival in Seoul 24 May 2013 – 30 May 2013 Seoul, South Korea Queer Women of Color Film Festival 14 Jun 2013 – 16 Jun 2013 San Francisco, California, United States Femina – International Women´s Film Festival 1 Jul 2013 – 7 Jul 2013 Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Citizen Jane Film Festival 4 Oct 2013 – 6 Oct 2013 Columbia, MO, United States

Etheria Film Festival | 2013 | Somerville, Massachusetts
Celebrating female genre filmmakers with the very best new science fiction and fantasy films by women.

Viscera Film Festival | 2013 | Los Angeles, California
Celebrating female genre filmmakers with the very best new horror films by women.

Women of Color in Film and TV: The Roundup

Kerry Washington

“Mammy, Sapphire, or Jezebel, Olivia Pope Is Not: A Review of Scandal“ by Atima Omara-Alwala

Many writers and film critics have written about the three usual archetypes that black women have fit into in popular culture representation. And it is through this prism Scandal is viewed. The Jezebel, who is very sexually promiscuous; the Mammy, who is the tireless devoted mother like figure regardless of all the wrong you did; and the Sapphire, a head-whipping, finger-snapping, anger-filled black woman. These stereotypes permeate all aspects of the American black women experience. 
I love Community, Parks and Recreation, and Archer. They are my three favorite shows on the air at the moment. Coincidentally, each of them has an African-American woman among the main ensemble, and it makes for an illuminating comparison to look at the respective treatment of Shirley Bennett, Donna Meagle, and Lana Kane.
Sumpter, Ejogo, and Sparks

“Sparkle: Same Song, Fine Tuned” by Candice Frederick

In Sparkle, we have three very different sisters, Tammy aka “Sister” (Carmen Ejogo), Sparkle (Jordin Sparks), and Dolores aka “D” (Tika Sumpter), who each have a dream. D wants to go to medical school. Sister, the oldest sibling, wants to get the hell out of their strict mom’s (Whitney Houston) house, once and for all. And Sparkle, the youngest and most timid of the three, wants a chance–a chance to become a famous singer and songwriter. With encouragement from her dashing admirer, Stix (Derek Luke), Sparkle enlists her two older sisters in their own singing group so that they can each finally see their dreams come true.

Zoe Kravitz

“A Girl Struggles to Survive Her Chaotic Homelife in Yelling to the Sky“ by Megan Kearns

Yelling to the Sky opens with a jarring scene. Sweetness is getting bullied and beaten up in the street by her classmates. Latonya (Gabourey Sidibe) taunts her for the lightness of her skin and her biracial heritage – briefly raising complex issues of race and colorism. But she’s rescued by her older sister Ola (Antonique Smith in a scene-stealing powerhouse performance) who we see, as the camera eventually pans out, is very pregnant. This juxtaposition of a brawling pregnant woman, a fiercely protective sister, makes an interesting commentary on our expectations of gender.

Mindy Kaling

“Thoughts on The Mindy Project and Other Screen Depictions of Indian Women” by Martyna Przybysz

A majority of feminist statements made in the show have nothing to do with race. Similar to Hannah from Girls, she is a full-figured lady, unobnoxiously proud of it (she wears dresses that accentuate her figure but rarely reveals her cleavage), and very much aware of it. She refers to herself in a belittling manner on a number of occasions, such as in episode one when she answers her phone on a date saying, “Do you know how difficult it is for a chubby 31-year-old woman to go on a legit date with a guy who majored in economics at Duke?” So, there is a healthy dose of self-awareness. Or is there?
 Black Women in Hollywood Awards
The awards luncheon, held two days before the Academy Awards, celebrates the success of black women writers, producers, actresses and other Hollywood power-brokers. Actress Tracee Ellis Ross says, “It’s a beautiful afternoon where we’re celebrating each other and giving praise to women that don’t always get praised.” 
This event by, for and all about black women in Hollywood serves as a celebration of the successes these women have had and as inspiration to the women who will come after them.
Kim Wayans & Adepero Oduye
“Pariah“ by Janyce Denise Glasper
Now this is the kind of African American role that the Academy is deadest against honoring. A woman who doesn’t allow herself to repressed by negativity and has the strength to move forward to better opportunities with talent driving her. To the conservative viewer- it’s crucial. Not only is this young African American woman smart and gifted, she happens to be gay. 
Definitely robbed of an Oscar nod, here’s hoping that Oduye nabs another pivotal role that garners attention from the snubbing Hollywood elite.
Shonda Rhimes’ Scandal
In “Sweet Baby,” Act One ends with a murder suspect walking into the office with blood literally on his hands. Act Two sees that murder investigation and raises us a POTUS (President of the United States) embroiled in a sex scandal. In Act Three, Olivia’s conservative-soldier client, the alleged murderer, gets arrested because he refuses to be “outted.” By the end of Act Four, Olivia “handles” the POTUS’s sex scandal by destroying the life of the President’s accuser/mistress who then tries to kill herself. The middle of Act Five is where we learn the biggest scandal of them all: that Olivia and the President were having an affair. By the end of the show, the stakes are raised sky high when Olivia, feeling betrayed by her married ex-lover, takes the President’s mistress on as a client. 
Viola Davis & Octavia Spencer
If Kathryn Stockett’s novel The Help was an angel food cake study of racism and segregation in the ’60s South, the new movie adaptation is even fluffier. Like a dollop of whip cream skimmed off a multi-layered cake, the film only grazes the surface of the intersecting oppressions of race, class, gender and geohistory.
…
I maintain the novel is a good read. But its shortcomings – its nostalgia, its failure to really grapple with structural inequality, its privileging of the white narrator’s voice and its reliance on stock characters – are heightened rather than diminished in the film.
Michelle Rodriguez
Michelle Rodriguez, famous for her roles in Girlfight, The Fast and the Furious series, and TV series Lost, is a cinematic conundrum. Much like most Latina actresses, Rodriguez is typecast. Unlike those Latina actresses who are typecast as extremely feminine and sensual, Rodriguez is typecast as the smoldering, independent bad girl who doesn’t take shit from men. In her roles, Rodriguez embodies many traditionally coded masculine traits (she’s strong, aggressive, mechanically inclined, independent, physical, etc). Despite this perceived masculinity, she is not depicted as a lesbian, and her butch attributes are actually designed to accentuate her sexual appeal. Certainly, several actresses have played this same kind of role before (though, with them, there’s often skin-tight leather or vinyl in the mix), but Rodriguez consistently plays this same role over and over again. 
Pam Grier on the cover of Ms.
I first saw Grier in Jackie Brown, and couldn’t understand why she wasn’t featured prominently in more films (and then I quickly remembered African American female protagonists are few and far between). It wasn’t always this way, though.
Grier’s legacy has lasted over four decades, but there’s something about her career that leaves me feeling unsettled, as if her filmography is indicative of larger (backward) social trends. She started out headlining action films–an amazing feat for a woman, much less a black woman in the early 1970s. A glance at a few of these films show incredibly feminist themes that are incredibly rare 40 years later. Her early films were groundbreaking, but nothing much was built after that ground was broken.
Kerry Washington in Scandal

It’s great to see a show that’s unabashedly female-centric and more concerned with telling stories than trying to be gimmicky (and which portrays performers with far more subtlety than Smash could ever manage). There are enough shows where women are nothing more than set dressing for it not to be an issue that all six leads in Bunheads are ladies.

But it is an issue that all six leads are white.

Quvenzhané Wallis
Last year I proudly blogged about Octavia Spencer’s Supporting Actress Oscar win for The Help. Happily, this is the year of milestones and giving major props to the women of color actresses on film in 2012. Making history as the youngest Best Actress Academy Award nominee, newcomer Quvenzhané Wallis has charmed audiences and critics as “Hushpuppy” in Beasts of the Southern Wild. At 14 years old, actress Amandla Stenberg is a seasoned veteran of television and film. Amandla broke the color barrier winning the role of “Rue” in The Hunger Games. Starring as the lovely “Broomhilda” in Django Unchained, Kerry Washington turned a milestone with the lead in the ABC hit show, Scandal, as the first African-American actress to star in a network drama series in 39 years.
Yvette Nicole Brown

 A Post About Community‘s Shirley? That’s Nice. by Lady T.

In short: Shirley has a lot of anger. What makes Shirley’s anger so refreshing is that her anger is not portrayed as a sign of her blackness, or her womanhood, but as the sign of a flawed, complex human being with legitimate pain. Sometimes her anger is towards a perceived slight that has nothing to do with her (assuming that her friends judge her for her Christianity when they don’t), and sometimes her anger is completely justified (getting fed up with Pierce’s harassment and racist comments). Sometimes she’s wrong, and sometimes she’s right – just like any other person.
Sita Sings the Blues

Conflicting Thoughts On Sita Sings The Blues by Myrna Waldron


I love that this is a successful indie film written, directed, edited and produced by a single woman, Nina Paley, and the film is about a woman of colour. You can really tell this was a labour of love for her, and it’s an incredible achievement that one animator was able to do a feature length film on her own. The film is also explicitly meant to be feminist – in a long summary of the film that she released to the press, she described Sita Sings the Blues as “a tale of truth, justice, and a woman’s cry for equal treatment.” I hope to see more films helmed by women, and not just independent ones. I know that women of colour have an even harder time getting recognized as filmmakers, and I would like to see this same story retold from someone who grew up in Hindu culture, as opposed to a westerner. 
Thandie Newton in Crash

Deeper Than Race: A Movie Review of Crash by Erin Parks

This shift in the film that occurs shows that we are all just skin, blood, and bones, that we may all be able to “just get along.” It is hope. We see the racist officer save the Black woman (Thandie Newton) he previously assaulted from an overturned vehicle about to explode and the shop owner who shoots a young girl but does not harm her because the gun is full of blanks. Even after we discover that what Det. Waters saw at the beginning of the crime scene was his brother fatally shot (Larenz Tate), that is not where the film ends. A group of Thai captives are released, and there is another car crash. 
Crash does not tell you how to think or feel. It presents characters who are blunt, who turn the other cheek, are both ignorant and educated, and all of the complicated things people are. Plainly we can see that much of the anger is triggered by fear.

The Good Wife

So, is there a racial bias on The Good Wife? by Melanie Wanga

The Good Wife doesn’t hide behind tricks or facilities: the same complexity applies to all the characters. We are even treated with character development of women and men of color, and the show doesn’t shy away from race issues. 
If the women are strongly written, women of color sadly don’t escape stereotypical representations: Latinas are ‘fiery,’ and most often than not Black women are depicted as ‘angry.’ 
In honor of Black History month, I’d like to focus on the portrayals and specifics of the four most important women of color on the show: Kalinda Sharma (Archie Panjabi), Dana Lodge (Monica Raymund), Geneva Pine (Renee Goldsberry) and Wendy Scott-Carr (Anika Noni Rose).
Eve’s Bayou
Eve’s Bayou, Kasi Lemmons’s 1997 debut as a screenwriter and director, should be seen by every movie lover, every filmmaker, every storyteller. It’s a nearly perfect narrative feat, but it only generated minor waves among film critics upon its release (although Roger Ebert did name it his Best Film of 1997), and failed to garner mainstream awards nominations (it did better at the Independent Spirit Awards and NAACP Image Awards). In the intervening sixteen years I would have expected it to build up a huge following and status as a cult classic, but it is, at best, remembered as “a contemporary classic in black cinema.“
Emayatzy Corinealdi

Ava DuVernay’s ‘Middle of Nowhere:’ A Complicated, Transformational and Feminist Love Story by Megan Kearns

I often talk about how I want to see more female-fronted films, created by female filmmakers, including women of color on-screen and behind the camera. I want complex, strong, intelligent, resilient, vulnerable, flawed women characters. I want more realistic depictions of love: tender, supportive yet complicated. I want my films to make a social statement if possible. In Ava Duvernay’s award-winning, poignant and evocative film Middle of Nowhere, she masterfully displays all of the above.
Middle of Nowhere is such a brilliant film – quiet yet intense – I worry my words won’t do it justice.

‘The Journey of Natty Gann’: Family-Friendly and Feminist-Friendly!

Written by Robin Hitchcock.


The Journey of Natty Gann

When I was a young girl, I was obsessed with the trailer for The Journey of Natty Gann (for which I will issue a spoiler warning, although I find it dubious that a Disney family film could be spoiled):

I remember popping in my VHS copy of The Sword in the Stone just to watch this trailer, sometimes three or four times in a row. It hit all my little girl id buttons: A tough kid (a tough GIRL!) on an epic adventure without the assistance of adults! Baby-faced John Cusack! A pet wolf! (I’m terribly afraid of dogs, so I’ve always weirdly loved characters who aren’t even afraid of wolves. See also, Julie of the Wolves, Young Robin’s favorite book). And yet, I never saw the actual movie before this week, through a combination of poor availability on home video and a nagging fear that the actual movie could never live up to my love for the trailer. 
But when I caught The Journey of Natty Gann on South African satellite this weekend, I knew the time had come to actually watch it. And the film managed to live up to my impossibly high expectations.  If you can’t stand live action Disney family films, there is nothing for you here, but Natty Gann is a fine example of the form. 
For those unable to watch the trailer above, here’s a rough outline of the plot:  In the middle of the Great Depression, twelve-year-old Natty Gann runs away from her neglectful reluctant caregiver (Lainie Kazan) in Chicago to find her father, who has gone out west for work. Everyone cynically tells Natty that her father abandoned her, but in truth he is a good man (despite being played by Ray Wise, who I suppose had not yet been saddled with the typecasting that has defined the last twenty years of his career) and is trying to save enough money to buy Natty a train ticket of her own to join him.  Natalie faces a series of adventures along the way, picks up a pet wolf, and meets another young kid on a journey of his own, Harry (John Cusack). 
John Cusack as Harry
Harry was one of the best surprises of the film for me. I’m pretty much powerless in the face of young John Cusack, but I still worried that his character might be too much of a mentor figure for Natty or merely part of a boring old romantic subplot. There are touches of both, but ultimately Harry comes across as Natty’s fellow adventurer. He thinks of himself as more street-wise (or rail-wise?) than Natty, but very quickly learns not to condescend to her. 
Natty Gann (Meredith Salenger) gets her Katniss on
And Meredith Salenger is absolutely terrific as Natty Gann. Even feminist-in-training Young Robin recognized some of the problems with the “tomboy” character archetype: that the way for a girl to be cool was for to not be “girly.” What’s remarkable about the character Natty Gann as written by Jeanne Rosenberg and played by Salenger is that her personality is just that–her personality, given even rougher edges by the hard circumstances of her life. Her toughness isn’t meant to make her any less of a “real girl.” Natty struggles to be accepted as equal to adults, rather than equal to the boys. When Harry tells her, “You’re a real woman of the world, kid” we know she’s earned the respect she seeks. 
The Journey of Natty Gann is a movie I’ll want my hypothetical children to see; to entertain them, teach them life lessons, and help begin their feminist indoctrination. And as an adult, I still found myself enjoying every minute of it. What more could you ask of a family film? [Perhaps the absence of an attempted rape scene, although said scene if fleeting, not exploitative, and ripe to become a Teachable Moment] 
And in the meantime, let’s find Meredith Salenger her career-redefining role. She’s talented, gorgeous, and clearly a sweetheart: she tweeted me after I praised Natty Gann on Twitter while I was watching it: [I’d love to go back and time and tell Young Robin about that, although explaining Twitter to a child in the late 1980s sounds even more difficult than inventing time travel.] 
Also based on Twitter, I see that Meredith Salenger is good friends with Parks & Rec‘s Retta, so I may have an idea how to go about reinvigorating her career: *cough* SPINOFF *cough*