Uncategorized – Page 180

Quote of the Day: bell hooks

In 1997, the Media Education Foundation produced an interview with bell hooks, a renowned author, feminist, and social activist, called, “BELL HOOKS: Cultural Criticism & Transformation.” hooks discusses a variety of pop culture topics, including rap and hip-hop, Madonna’s influence, Hollywood, and the often negative representations of race, class, and gender within them. You can watch the full interview in parts on YouTube, and you can read the entire transcript of the interview, but I want to quote from just two sections; the first deals with the feminist backlash in mass media:

One of the issues that no one wants to talk about is that finally, the most successful political movement in the United States over the last twenty years was really the feminist movement, and that there is a tremendous backlash to feminism that is being enacted on the stage of mass media. So that films like Leaving Las Vegas really are about ushering in a new, old version of the desirable woman that really is profoundly misogynous based and sexist. It’s no accident; we know that when women went into the factories in the World Wars because men were not here–that when those wars ended–mass media was used to get women out of the factory and back into the home. Well in a sense, mass media is being used in that very same way right now, to get women out of feminism and back into some patriarchal mode of thinking, and movies to me are the lead propaganda machine in this right now.

hooks said this in 1997. Almost fifteen years ago. So have movies gotten better or worse since then in contributing to the feminist backlash? When I try to come up with some truly great feminist-leaning films released (in Hollywood) in those fifteen years, it’s admittedly a struggle–and that doesn’t mean I’m saying they don’t exist. Yet when I think about sexism in Hollywood films, it takes about three seconds to recall a handful of misogyny-laden movies released only within the past several months. In fact, it’s virtually impossible not to find sexist films hitting the mainstream every opening weekend.

hooks continues her discussion of movies, referencing the filmmaker Spike Lee and critiquing representations of blackness in Hollywood:

A major magazine like Time or Newsweek just recently carried a story on Spike Lee as a failure. I mean, it just was amazing! How could you talk about Spike Lee as a failure? It was something like, Malcolm X was made for thirty-seven million, but it only made forty-some million. And I thought, well, how is that a failure? You not only paid for your movie, but you had some excess profit–though not a great deal, not what Hollywood would want. But that can become talked about in mass media as a failure, even though Woody Allen, who has made many films that do not make a lot of money, does not then get talked about as a failed filmmaker. And so that is in the interest of a certain structure of white supremacy and patriarchy, to put Spike Lee down at this point in his career, and to make it seem that somehow he could not deliver the goods, because part of that is about sanctioning white people to become the new makers of so-called black film.

As in, for example, a film like Waiting to Exhale, which is sold and marketed in ways that suggest this is a black film. I mean, people kept telling me, this is a film about black women, this is going to be for black people. In fact, this was a typical Hollywood shitty, uninteresting film–the script written by white people, all marketed as being a film by and about blackness, successfully. Nothing Spike Lee has done can match the financial return of this piece of shit. This is how blackness can be done successfully, and the problem lies not with the terms of what makes blackness successful in Hollywood or on the screen, but with Spike Lee as an individual. And that I think is tragic because so many black people are buying into that mode of thinking. That Spike Lee somehow represents a failure, when in fact, Spike Lee will continue to be the most successful black filmmaker in the United States, and he’s not by any means a failure.

Here’s a way in which, as Hollywood decides to occupy the territory of blackness, it becomes very useful to say, “We let black people have that territory, and they just didn’t know what to do with it. They made these strange films like Girl 6–it didn’t even have a plot. I mean, Crooklyn didn’t even have a plot.” Which of course is completely bogus, because the plot of Crooklyn was very obvious and very simple; it was about a family where the mother is dying in the family. But I can’t tell you how many white reviewers wrote that it didn’t have a plot. When what they should have said is that it didn’t have a plot that interested us. That White America is not interested in black mothers that are dying. So I think that is going to have deep ramifications for the future of representing blackness in Hollywood–because it is really almost a public announcement of the white takeover of that particular territory, the issue of representing blackness in Hollywood.

It’s interesting to look at how films represent blackness in Hollywood currently, and if it’s changed for the better or for the worse within the past fifteen years. Tyler Perry has certainly become one of the most prolific and successful–if not the most successful–black filmmakers in Hollywood, but there’s also much controversy surrounding his representations of race in film. Precious, Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire, garnered Oscar nominations and a Best Supporting Actress win for Mo’Nique, and Dreamgirls catapulted Jennifer Hudson’s career after she won her Best Supporting Actress Oscar. And within these past fifteen years, the Best Actress Oscar was awarded, for the first time ever, to a black woman, Halle Berry.

I don’t have the answers. I think it’s important in general to look at the kinds of roles Hollywood rewards women for playing; but it’s perhaps even more important to keep insisting that Hollywood filmmakers create better roles for women. Overall, I’d argue that we’re much more inundated with pop culture imagery everywhere now than we were fifteen years ago, with advancements in technology (and the increased and constant advertising that comes with it). So if the representations of race and gender in the media, and movies in particular, haven’t changed much–or have in fact gotten worse–and the pop culture and mass media machine is churning out this shit faster than it ever has in history, where does that leave us?

Guest Writer Wednesday: Your Review Is Scarier Than Scream 4

This guest post by Kevin Wolf is cross posted at Shakesville.

[Trigger warning for misogyny, eating disorders and body policing, ableist language.]

The masses were clamoring for another Scream sequel (people simply would not stop talking about it!) so Scream 4 was manufactured and hits theaters today. Hence, the posting of reviews across the internets, including this one from Michael O’Sullivan at The Washington Post, which opens:

“Scream 4” has issues.

If it were a person, and not a movie, it would be a 17-year-old bulimic girl, desperate for the attention of 17-year-old boys and alternately bingeing on cheesy slasher-flick cliches, and purging, by pointing out, over and over, just how gag-me-with-a spoon cheesy they are.

On the one hand, it is obsessed with itself, winking and pouting in front of the metaphorical mirror of self-referential scrutiny that the series — directed by Wes Craven and written by Kevin Williamson — is famous for. On the other, it suffers from a case of crushingly low self-esteem, reminding us at every turn just how lame it is. (In a sense, it won’t shut up about how fat it looks in these jeans.)

Mr. O’Sullivan is not a teen, bulimic or otherwise. But because this is a movie for and about teens, he evidently felt obliged to wedge something “teenagery” into his review. And because this movie has “issues,” he must represent our hypothetical teen as a “girl” who is bulimic, who is desperate for boys to notice her, and who is so “lame” and self-involved she won’t shut up about how fat [she] looks in these jeans!!

Now, I’m not the target audience for the movie, nor the target of O’Sullivan’s horrific clusterfuck of misogynist, fat-hating, exploitative, condescending bullshit, yet for some reason I’ve taken offense. Why? Because I hate the assumption made by this critic that it’s gonna be just fine with me that he represent this film and its audience in this carelessly stupid, thoughtless, and endlessly privileged way.

I’m going to suggest to O’Sullivan that he take another look at this review and compare that opening with a paragraph further along: “At the heart of the film is a joke: What’s happening on screen is just like a bad horror movie. Except that, by acknowledging its own badness, ‘Scream 4’ hopes to turn itself into a good horror movie. Or at least a hip, funny and self-aware one.” Notice, Mr. O’Sullivan, that you have here said essentially the same thing (the movie is agonizingly self-conscious and wants to be hip) without personifying the film as an offensive stereotype and thus demeaning teenage girls with disordered eating in the process. And it was so easy!

Please, Michael O’Sullivan: Stop trying to be hip and clever. For a start, you’re about as hip and clever as an Allstate commercial. And your lack of self-awareness and empathy is painful—one guesses especially so for the targets of your “humor.”

Fast Five Trailer

Hey, so Fast Five is coming out soon. With Vin Diesel and The Rock! Naturally, I thought we’d take a look at its potential awesomeness. See, it’s a movie about a bunch of guys and cars, so we can certainly count on testosterone-fueled action sequences and all sorts of My Dick Is Bigger Than Your Dick moments, including Hot Babes used as trophies and sex objects. Because nothing says Masculinity Manhood Penis Manliest Masculine Man’s Man Big Penis like walking around with partially-clothed women on your arm who don’t say much:

Okay, okay, I’m being unfair. As you can see from the trailer, there are only, like, 25 camera close-ups of women’s asses and bikini-clad bodies–which is very important to include in trailers, so we can know in advance what the movie’s about. But all that objectification of women is clearly balanced out by a shot of a woman jumping off a building and a shot of women sitting around a table. Oh yeah, and the clip of the scared and abused women in the underground dungeon who watch the money go up in flames.

So, going by the trailer alone, the film’s target audience appears to be young, heterosexual men. Or just heterosexual men regardless. Score! We honestly don’t get to see many films geared toward pleasing the heterosexual men in the audience, especially during summer blockbuster season. End sarcasm. Because the best thing, truly, about movies like this is the occasional flashes of 80s action movie homoeroticism. If by occasional I mean a nonstop orgy of Masculinity Manhood Penis Manliest Masculine Man’s Man Big Penis.

For those who see the film, please report back to us. Because Vin Diesel. And The Rock. You know?

Quote of the Day: Monica Nolan

bitchfest. Edited by Lisa Jervis & Andi Zeisler

Motherhood is a theme we’ve visited before (Black Swan comes immediately to mind, as does the mother character in Rachel Getting Married), and anxieties about it abound in film and television. Mothers can’t seem to escape the same virgin/whore dichotomy structure that plagues all depictions of women in sexist media: either the woman is domestic, passive, nurturing, and selfless, or she’s a monster whose desires ultimately destruct the familial unit. (I’m currently watching the first season of the AMC show The Walking Dead, and waiting to see if the mother character falls into the latter cliche. I suspect she will; stay tuned for a probable Flick Off.)

Thinking about mothers led me to page through bitchfest: Ten Years of Cultural Criticism from the Pages of Bitch Magazine and revisit the essay “Mother Inferior: How Hollywood Keeps Single Moms in Their Place” by writer and filmmaker Monica Nolan, originally published in the Fall 2003 issue of Bitch. Here’s an excerpt that looks at single mothers in 1945’s Mildred Pierce and 1987’s Baby Boom.

In the 1940s and ’50s, when wartime taught women that they could be economically successful on their own, and as divorcees and widows became more common, Hollywood switched gears. Single moms, here transformed into the dreaded “career women,” were now messing up not their kids’ economic chances but their psyches. The most spectacular example was the 1945 classic Mildred Pierce, in which Mildred kicks out her deadbeat husband and builds a successful restaurant chain, only to have one daughter die and the other turn into an amoral murderess.

[…]

In Baby Boom, Diane Keaton’s J.C. is a high-powered Manhattan exec who suddenly inherits a baby. Initially, this looks like a radical twist on the Three Men and a Baby concept, as the film introduces the idea, in several comic sequences, that motherhood is no more instinctual for women than it is for men. But before the audience can grab another handful of popcorn, she’s quit her job and fled to a farmhouse in Vermont, a move that the plot reassures us is all for the best: J.C. has always dreamed of a house in the country. In this movie, children don’t entail real sacrifices, just changes that turn out to be redemptive. It’s the baby’s job to feminize Mom and, in the process, save her from the rat race.

[…]

A single mom and her kids are by definition a family without a father, and the female-headed household is destruction of the patriarchy at its most basic level. Needless to say, in Hollywood, showing its unproblematic success is still a huge taboo. Contemporary single-mom films are truly reflective of our culture: A massive amount of energy is expended in a desperate attempt to prove that single parenthood is not good enough, even as an ever-increasing number of women parent on their own. (It’s important to note that this anxiety manifests itself onscreen with an almost exclusive focus on white, middle-class single moms, despite the fact that more than one-third of American single moms are women of color. Though this is part and parcel of the overwhelming whiteness of Hollywood in general, it conveniently allows mainstream films to ignore the factors of class and race that are inextricably intertwined with single parenthood.

With the recent mini-series remake of Mildred Pierce in mind, I’d love to see an updated version of this article. (I also can’t help but think about The Kids Are All Right, which is not about a single mother but about lesbian mothers, and how it fits right into Nolan’s description of the “family without a father” in the final quoted paragraph above; here, lesbian “parenthood is not enough,” hence the disruption brought about by the sperm donor’s entrance into their lives, and the family is white and upper-middle class.)

What movies, in the past decade, have depicted mothers in a positive way, moving forward from one-note stereotypes and bucking the trend of “keeping single moms in their place?” With all the focus on the negative, I’d like to see some positive examples.

Ashley Judd Speaks Out About Rape Culture: The Roundup

Ashley Judd

Last week, all hell broke loose when an excerpt from Ashley Judd’s new memoir, All That Is Bitter & Sweet, hit the internet. This is the offending passage:

YouthAIDS created hip public service announcements for TV and radio using popular local and international celebrities and athletes and was participating in the MTV World AIDS Day ‘Staying Alive’ concerts. Along with other performers, YouthAIDS was supported by rap and hip-hop artists like Snoop Dogg and P. Diddy to spread the message … um, who? Those names were a red flag. As far as I’m concerned, most rap and hip-hop music—with its rape culture and insanely abusive lyrics and depictions of girls and women as ‘ho’s’—is the contemporary soundtrack of misogyny.

After a serious backlash in which prominent members of the Rap and Hip Hop community (including Questlove of The Roots and rapper Talib Kweli) criticized Judd’s comments, Judd reached out to her friend Russell Simmons and clarified her stance on Global Grind:

As a thoughtful friend put it, “fans stand behind their artists,” and rightfully so. Hip-hop and rap — which are distinct from one another, although kin — stand for a lot more than a beat and vibe. They represent more than I, an outsider, has the right to articulate. This tweet capture’s the essence of what you have taught me: “Rap is something you do….Hip-Hop is a CULTURE you live! Don’t let a few bad apples’ lyrical message speak for a whole culture!” My equivalent genres, as an Appalachian, an oppressed and ridiculed people, would be mountain music and bluegrass. Those genres tell the history, struggles, grief, soul, faith, and culture of my people. In imagining how I would feel if someone made negative generalizations about that music, I am deeply remorseful that anything I may have said in “All That Is Bitter & Sweet” would hurt adherents of genres that represent their culture. This book is an act of love and service. Insulting people of goodwill is the antithesis of its raison d’etre.

I have looked closely at the feedback I have received about those two paragraphs, and absolutely see your points, and I fully capitulate to your rightness, and again humbly offer my heartfelt amends for not having been able to see the fault in my writing, and not having anticipated it would be painful for so many. Crucial words are missing that could have made a giant difference. It should have read: “Some hip-hop, and some rap, is abusive. Some of it is part of the contemporary soundtrack misogyny (which, of course, is multi-sonic). Some of it promotes the rape culture so pervasive in our world…..” Also, I, ideally, would have anticipated that some folks would see only representations of those two paragraphs, and not be familiar with the whole book, my work, and my message. I should have been clear in them that I include hip-hop and rap as part of a much larger problem. (You can read her full statement here.)

I’ve had a difficult time figuring out how to write about this. I understand that people, especially people of color, will rightfully get pissed when they perceive a privileged white woman to have insulted Black culture. And as a privileged white woman, I don’t always feel comfortable engaging in race-related issues like this because, frankly, I’m afraid I’ll either make ignorant assumptions (because of my privilege) or not contextualize my points appropriately (because of my privilege). Ashley Judd has been criticized for doing both those things. In the aftermath, she’s gotten some seriously misogynistic vitriol thrown at her (just spend a few moments on Twitter, if you’re curious) and has even received death threats because of it.

But the truth is, when I first read Judd’s comments, I read them as a factual indictment. Rap and hip hop often contribute to rape culture because all of culture contributes to rape culture because we live in a fucking rape culture. Since that’s the only way I know how to articulate my feelings on this, which is arguably unintelligible and at the very least lacking any kind of analysis of rape culture (I did that here), I’m rounding up some articles that do a much better job than I can of examining race and gender as intersecting oppressions, and how Judd’s recent remarks fit into that discussion. [Major trigger warnings for discussions of rape, sexual assault, misogyny, and violence against women.]

Sound-Off: Ashley Judd Was Right about Hip Hop by Sophia A. Nelson, from Essence:

My people, my people, when will we face the music and save ourselves from ourselves?

Here we go again, yet another well-meaning White person who makes a common sense, very reasonable, factually based statement about something (in this case rap music) that we all know is TRUE and what do we do? We jump all over her and demand that she apologize for “offending us.” Really?

Seriously, what will it take for us to stop the madness? Who among us in his or her right mind can actually defend openly mysoginistic, hateful and demeaning lyrics geared toward Black women and Black culture? I am no C. Delores Tucker, but I find myself asking some hard questions lately relative to where we are as Black people when it comes to how we value our most precious commodity: Black women.

Ashley Judd and Hip-Hop Culture by Kevin Powell, from ThyBlackMan.com:

I am a hip-hop head for life, since my days dancing on streets and at clubs and writing graffiti on walls; to my days as a writer for Vibe magazine and curating the first exhibit on hip-hop history at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; to my current task of writing a biography, the next several years, on the life of Tupac Shakur. So I know there is a difference between hip-hop culture, which I represent, and the hip-hop industry, which is what Ashley Judd is referencing in her book.

And we’d be lying to ourselves, hip-hop heads or not, if we actually could say, with straight faces, that hip-hop culture has not been severely undermined, turned inside out, and made into an industry that promotes some of the most horrific images of women and men, that encourages oversexualization and materialism, that pushes anti-intellectualism and a brand of manhood that seems only to exist if one is engaging in the most destructive forms of violence and degrading of one’s self, and of others. That is not hip-hop. That is called a minstrel show, circa the 21st century. And if you really love something the way I love that some thing called hip-hop, then we would be honest about it and not go on ego trips attacking an Ashley Judd for having the courage to say what we should be saying ourselves.

That enough is enough of this madness, that it is no longer acceptable to say our culture is just reflecting what is going on in our communities. Art is not just to reflect what is happening. Art, at its best, is also about dialoguing about and correcting the ugliness in our communities. That will not happen if art is just as ugly as real life, if we are at a point where we cannot tell real life from the staged life.

For sure, Ms. Judd mentions this in her book when she talks about 50 Cent offstage, how professional and polite he was, then the moment he took the stage out came the hyper-masculinity, the bravado, the posturing, the manufactured character. Rather than curse out or disparage Ashley Judd, I think we should instead ask ourselves who we are, truly, in these times, and why so many of us continue to have our identities programmed and directed by record labels and radio and video channels under the illusion of keeping it 100 percent real? Real for whom, and at what cost to our communities?

Back in the 1990s, when I was writing for Vibe, I did an interview with the late C. Delores Tucker, an older Black woman who led a crusade against what she thought were indecent rap lyrics. I was so much younger emotionally and in terms of basic common sense, and did everything I could to make Ms. Tucker look like a buffoon in the printed interview. I really regret that because these women, the real leaders on our planet, are right. Why should it be acceptable to tolerate any culture, be it hip-hop, rock, jazz, reality television, video games, or certain kinds of Hollywood films, that create a space that says it is okay, normal, to denigrate women and girls with words and images?

Way to Teach Ashley Judd a Lesson! Now, How Are We Better for It? by Christelyn Karazin, from Madame Noire:

What we really need to do is examine why rappers are so invested in silencing someone who could have been an advocate for causes and interests of black women. Perhaps the answer lies in what one commenter said on a popular feminist website: “Black male celebrities almost ONLY get pissed about racism in public discourse if it threatens black *masculine* culture and are either totally silent or indifferent about the ways in which black women are effected by racism, sexism in general and sexism from the men within their own racial group. (re: Spike Lee and others who have come out in support of Chris Brown).” She has a point. When was the last time black men, en masse, mobilized because someone offended a black woman? And before you start Googling, let’s stick to this decade, please.

I’m fuming right now because with all of the attacks on Ms. Judd, we, black women, have lost an ally. And it’s not like we have so many to spare. Never mind that Judd has worked tirelessly for the betterment of all women around the world, and she expresses a genuine concern, I guess she’ll learn her lesson next time to dare defend black women, and this incident will teach anyone else who comes along that does not align with The Guardians of All Things Dark & Lovely in the future.

Why, oh why are we so quick to defend the very men who abuse and debase us? Why does Chris Brown have a stable of black women cheerleaders behind him after he pounded Rihanna’s face in? Why did Jay-Z, a drug dealer who shot his own brother at only 12-years-old, make his millions off the backs of black women and become a pinnacle of success? Why do we have spokespeople in the New Black Panthers rallying behind more than a dozen black boys who raped an 11-year-old child and join the pile-on in blaming her?

With That Said … by Ta-Nehisi Coates, from The Atlantic:

[in response to Questlove’s assertion via Twitter that “EVERY genre of music has elements of violence.”] I mean yeah it does. But as a hip-hop fan, and as a music fan, it’s really hard for me to believe that all musical forms are equally misogynistic. If we’re being honest, I think it’s worth noting that Kanye West’s “Gold Digger” isn’t just a song, it’s actually is an entry into a rather prolific sub-genre that that spans from “That Girl’s A Slut” to “I Ain’t The One” to the original “Gold-digger” to “Sophisticated Bitch” to “Black Vagina Finda” to “Treat Her Like A Prostitute” to “Davy Crockett” to “The Bitches” to “Dead Wrong” to “Wildflower” to “Hoe Happy Jackie” to “Truly Yours” to “Beautiful Skin” to “The Nappy Dugout” to “I’m Only Out For One Thing,” to “Let A Ho Be A Ho” to “Bitches Ain’t Shit” and so on…

Ashley Judd was right about hip hop … Kinda. by Rob Fields, from BoldAsLove.us:

Let’s get some things out of the way early. We know that this statement doesn’t apply to all hip hop. There are thoughtful, creative artists whose music is not based on denigrating women. Mos Def, Talib Kweli, J-Live, The Roots, Toki Wright, Shad, Pigeon John, P.O.S., and Blitz The Ambassador, are some that come immediately to mind. And there are plenty of women who represent hip hop, as both MCs and spoken word artists. Think Invincible, Jean Grae, Jessica Care Moore, Toni Blackman, Bless Roxwell, to name a few here.

So, what I think Ashley is guilty of is over-generalization. But the fact is that too much of hip hop does, in fact, denigrate women, be it through lyrics or videos. Recent examples such as Kanye’s Monster video or most of the work of recently celebrated teenagers Odd Future fall in this bucket. And Girl Talk samples what I think are some of the most vile examples of hip hop for his mashup albums.

What you end up with is work that creates an environment that devalues women. And it’s true: Rappers talk about women in the third person, as sexual objects or body parts, or women are seen gyrating half-naked in videos as a symbol of some dude’s material success. Call women bitches and hoes enough times over dope enough beats and an attitude gets normalized.

Hip hop is a global pop cultural phenomenon. It not only defines how a generation sees itself, but it also has become the shorthand for what’s cool around the world.

Rap’s Rape Culture: Ashley Judd Had a Point by James Braxton Peterson, from The Root:

When Jay-Z signed Jay Electronica to Roc Nation label, it seemed like a triumph of underground hip-hop culture — the talented Jay Electronica, along with Jay-Z’s formidable business and promotional acumen, could change the game for the better. Instead, the rapper has elected to use some troubling language in his live performances, polling his audiences to inquire if women “like being choked during sexual intercourse.” Many feminist bloggers and activists challenged Jay Electronica directly.

For the survivors of violent sexual assault and for those of us who understand that sexual assault against women is a critical problem for all of us, this sort of thing is simply unacceptable. Maybe I am sensitized to this because my daughter just turned 10. But I’m also aware that even though individuals must be responsible for their own acts, too many are susceptible to subtle (and unsubtle) cues — from pop culture and the public sphere — that subject women to male dominance, and reaffirm the sexism and misogyny that lead to sexual violence against women.

That we, myself included, are always ready to defend hip-hop is a good thing — I think. Hip-hop cannot be the scapegoat for every talking head who is looking for an easy way to dismiss and degrade youth culture or black music. But rap and the industry that has developed through its popularity must be held accountable for its contributions to the world — and that includes any role that the industry might play in the construction and cultivation of rape culture in society. If you don’t want to hear it from Ashley Judd, then maybe you can hear it from me.

From Liquor&Spice:

Can I, a Black woman, talk about rape culture from my point of view, please? YES there’s a shit ton of rap and hip hop and r&b that is violent and degrading to me. It’s usually the shit that WHITE PEOPLE BUY THE MOST AND PUT ON THE RADIO AND SING ALONG TO IN THE CLUB! You know how many white girls yell at the top of their lungs to, “and when he get on, he leave your ass for a white girl!” It usually occurs after they violate my space and my body telling me to “shake that ass” and petting my hair like I’m a goddam dog. Can I talk about THAT part of rape culture please?!?!? The rape culture fueled by white chicks thinking they can take my identity to fuel their jungle bunny fantasies? Who think it’s awesome to smack my ass or comment on my body out loud to their friends?

And those songs suck! It sucks that they’re popular! It sucks that it validates how white people WERE ALREADY TREATING ME LIKE PROPERTY. LIKE THEY BEEN DOING FOR CENTURIES BEFORE RAP WAS INVENTED.

And it’s SO AWESOME how nice, white ladies find the time to tell me most of rap and hip hop are violent and rapey while not giving a fuck when I tell them SO ARE YOU! So are your white people books and movies and news and college curriculums and professors MEN AND WOMEN. All of them degrade my Black womanhood EVERY GODDAM DAY!

On Ashley Judd and the Politics of Citation by moyazb, from The Crunk Feminist Collective:

Black women have been talking about (and back to) misogyny in hip-hop since it’s inception. Y’all remember Roxanne Shanté right?

It’s frustrating when all the work that black women have done to speak back to music that has particular, real world consequences in our lives is ommitted and unacknowledged. We’ve also done this talking back with an analysis of the systemic forces that make black men/rap music the scape goats for societal oppression of women. I know it’s a personal narrative, but can some hip-hop feminist foremothers get a shout out?

If we can all turn to the Ten Crunk Commandments for Re-Invigorating Hip Hop Feminist Studies, we’ll see that the first commandment reminds us to “know and cite” authors who have shaped the field of hip-hop feminism. This commandment doesn’t just apply to Judd but also to some of her defenders. If you are going to defend her position, can you cite the black women who have actually done work on the issue in scholarship, film, and action? The “she has a point” camp feels dismissive of decades of resistance and carefully crafted projects by hip-hop feminists and activists.

Leave your links!

Guest Writer Wednesday: Easy A: A Fauxminist Film

Emma Stone stars in Easy A

This is a cross post from The Funny Feminist.

It appears that star power is on the rise for the funny, luminous Emma Stone. She first caught my attention as the snarky cool girl who was way too good for Jonah Hill’s character in Superbad(and not because she was hot and he was fat, but because she was sarcastic and witty and he was whiny and entitled). She continued to charm me all the way through Zombieland, which was no easy feat when she was the prickliest of the four main characters. Finally, someone decided to give her a starring role in a movie called Easy A. I saw the trailer for this and was immediately intrigued.

I thought, “Ooh, feminist issues! A comedic look at sexual hypocrisy in society, especially high schools! A cast with funny actors! Count me in!”

I saw it in the theater. I laughed. I sympathized with Emma Stone’s character Olive, found myself crushing on the character played by Penn Badgley even though he failed to even make a blip on my radar on the one episode of Gossip Girl I watched, and thoroughly enjoyed every scene with Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson as Olive’s quirky, hippie parents. I went home with a smile on my face.

The smile soon turned into a straight line, which eventually became a scowl, as the more I thought about the movie, the more it annoyed me. I think it’s much less feminist than it seems, and for that matter, not as funny as I thought it was when I first saw it. (Warning: Spoilers ahead).

Why the Movie Fails on a Feminist Level

1) Olive is awesome. All other women are bitches.

How would I describe Emma Stone’s character, Olive Penderghast? First of all, she has the coolest name for a character in a teen movie since Anne Hathaway’s Mia Thermopolis in The Princess Diaries. She’s also independent, feisty, compassionate, and refuses to let other people define who she is. When the school labels her as a slut, she decides to take her reputation into her own hands. Note that it’s already inherently problematic that she’s embracing the “slut” label as a form of rebellion – it’s kind of a stupid rebellion, in my opinion – but her motive behind that rebellion is still laudable. And of course she Learns and Grows from the experience and finally tells the world that her sex life is nobody’s goddamn business but her own. That is a fairly satisfying conclusion, even if getting there was a bit of a struggle.

But let’s take a look at the other female characters.

We’ve got Rhiannon, the hypocritical best friend of Olive played by Aly Michalka. At first, she eagerly devours Olive’s account of her made-up sex life, but then turns on her and joins the rest of the school in slut-shaming her. She’s a pretty crappy best friend, and of course, she’s motivated by jealousy.

We’ve got Marianne, played by Amanda Bynes, the holier-than-thou religious girl who begins the campaign to slut-shame Olive. In addition to being judgmental, she’s also a cheap, less funny ripoff of Mandy Moore’s character from Saved!

We’ve got all of Marianne’s friends, who join in on the slut-shaming campaign.

We’ve got Mrs. Griffith, played by Lisa Kudrow, who turns out to not only be an incompetent guidance counselor, but cheating on her husband with a student. Of course, her husband is the best teacher in the school, making her crimes even worse.

In other words, Olive is a great character because she’s not like the other girls – implying that most “other” girls are bitchy, catty, jealous, conniving, and mean.

I can’t praise a movie for its feminism if ONE female character is strong and the others are horrible.

2) The boys get a free pass for their douchey behavior.

We’ve talked about why the girls are bitches. But what about the boys? Are they portrayed as being jerks for taking advantage of Olive, for participating in a system that allows her to be shamed while they reap the benefits of her fallen reputation?

No. No, they are not. We’re supposed to think that the boys are wrong, certainly, but we’re also to feel sorry for them. Brandon asks Olive to fake-fuck him at a party so he can pretend to be straight and stop getting bullied. Never mind that he’s indirectly asking her to put her reputation on the line, so she can get bullied in a different way. We’re supposed to feel sympathy for the poor, bullied gay kid, not angry with him for being a hypocrite.

I also feel that we’re supposed to make the same kind of excuses for the other boys who ask Olive for permission to say they had sex with her. It’s wrong of them to do it, but they’re shy nerds who aren’t good with girls, so all they want is to build their reputations so that girls will like them. Wow, what a feminist message – guys use a girl’s fallen reputation to build up their own “street cred” so they can trick other girls into actually having sex with them! And the girl participates in this deceit of other girls! But that’s okay, because other girls are shallow! I think I have to take back what I said about Olive being awesome.

There’s also Cam Gigandet’s character, a 22-year-old high school student named Micah, who is dating Marianne. He is supposedly religious and chaste, but he turns out to be cheating on Marianne with Mrs. Griffith! And he tells everyone that he got syphilis from Olive! DUN DUN DUNNN! Is he condemned for this? No. Why? Because the poor guy was under pressure to lie after – wait for it – his mother beat him over the head and threatened to beat him more if he didn’t tell her who he slept with! His mother browbeats him, and his lover denies him. Older women = bitches, amirite, guys?

On a less serious note, there’s Thomas Haden Church’s character, Mr. Griffith. By Olive’s account, he is the best teacher in the school. Yet, when one of Marianne’s minions calls Olive a tramp in the middle of the class, and Olive responds by calling her a twat, he sends Olive to the principal’s office! This was all contrived so we could get a very awkward, unfunny scene in the principal’s office as he ranted about private schools vs. public schools (um…what?) but any teacher worth hir salt would have sent both Olive AND Nina to the principal’s office – or, at the very least, publicly condemned Nina for attacking Olive out of nowhere. Come on. That’s Classroom Management 101.

The only male character who the movie acknowledges to be a jerk is the guy who tries to pay Olive for actual sex. The screenplay and tone of the direction clearly condemn him. But he is the only one. The rest of the men (excluding Olive’s supportive, quirky dad) are either being used by evil bitches, or using women because they can’t help it.

3) Sex is still bad, especially for girls.

I appreciate that this teen movie is acknowledging slut-shaming and why it’s wrong. I really do. But I feel like it chickens out, by the very fact that Olive is still a virgin by the end of the movie. I think the movie is implying that slut-shaming Olive was bad because she never actually had sex. Would the screenwriters have written a movie with the same message about a sexually active young woman?

I doubt it, because of the scene where Olive confides in her mother. I didn’t mention Patricia Clarkson’s character under my first point because she’s not a bitch. She’s a quirky, supportive, loving mother. That’s great! But she admits to Olive that, when she was in high school, she had sex with a bunch of people (“mostly guys,” HAHA LESBIAN EXPERIMENTATION LOL!). But don’t worry, viewers! She didn’t have sex because sex is fun and enjoyable. She did it because she had low self-esteem.

Of course she did. That’s the only reason why teenage girls ever have sex, or why adult women ever have sex outside of monogamous relationships. Low self-esteem.

Pffft.

At the end of the movie, Olive spells out the message, that it’s nobody’s business what people do with their private lives. That’s admirable, and true. But the message means very little when the journey getting there is so icky and filled with double standards – the same double standards that the movie is supposedly criticizing, but tacitly embracing.

Why the Movie Fails on a Humorous Level: “Remember that funny line when…um…that person said that one thing?”

I have a great memory for dialogue. It’s a family trait that I share with my younger brothers. I can recite entire episodes of The Simpsons and Buffy the Vampire Slayer (and will do so upon request, though I’ve begun charging by the word. Speak to my agent and we’ll talk rates). I can recite movies after seeing them once. But the movie has to make an impression on me before I can do that. I have to really like the movie. The dialogue has to be memorable.

When I left Easy A, I tried to recall particular lines of dialogue that struck me as funny. I drew a blank. I had to go onto imdb.com to look it up. I never have to go to imdb.com to find funny dialogue. Reading through the “memorable quotes” page, there was only one line that really made me laugh. It was Mr. Griffith to Olive: “I don’t know what your generation’s fascination is with documenting your every thought… but I can assure you, they’re not all diamonds.”

That was very funny, and I like anything that mocks Facebook and Twitter (even though I use both).

But any other moments that made me laugh, I chalk up to the strength of the actors. The scene where Olive’s parents try to find out the “T” word that their daughter used in class would’ve been insufferable and awful in the hands of lesser actors than Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson. The movie has a strong cast that can handle any dialogue you throw at them. I only wish they had better material to work with.

In Conclusion?

I didn’t talk about how the movie misses the point of The Scarlet Letter, because I hated The Scarlet Letter – I admire Hawthorne’s politics, but hate his prose, and when I was forced to read this book in my sophomore year in high school, I actually wrote in my annotations: “Does the scarlet A symbolize shame? Because I didn’t get it the FIRST HUNDRED TIMES YOU MENTIONED IT!” Misappropriating and misunderstanding literary themes seems like a very high school thing to do, so it oddly works for the film.

However, I’m afraid I can’t give Easy A the letter grade it wants. On a humorous level, it gets a C for “Cast is Awesome Despite Mediocre Dialogue.” On a feminist level, it gets an F for “Fauxminist,” with a note home to the parent: “Shows good effort, but fails to grasps key concepts.”

Lady T writes about feminism, comedy, media, and literature at the blog The Funny Feminist. Her essay “My Mom, the Reader” has also been featured at SMITH Magazine. A graduate of Hofstra University, she teaches English to eighth graders and writes fiction about vampires, superhero girlfriends, and feisty princesses.

Director Spotlight: Jane Campion

Filmmaker Jane Campion

Jane Campion is one of only four women ever nominated for a Best Director Academy Award (other nominees have been Kathryn Bigelow, Sofia Coppola, and Lina Wertmüller). In addition, Campion won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for The Piano–a film for which she also won two Australian Film Institute (AFI) Awards, the Golden Palm award at the Cannes Film Festival, an Independent Spirit Award, and a Writer’s Guild of America (WGA) Award, among others. Her latest film is 2009’s Bright Star. She has directed numerous films, shorts, and TV movies, and served as a writer and producer.

An exerpt from Campion’s bio, from IMDb:

Jane Campion was born in Wellington, New Zealand, and now lives in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Having graduated with a BA in Anthropology from Victoria University of Wellington in 1975, and a BA, with a painting major, at Sydney College of the Arts in 1979, she began filmmaking in the early 1980s, attending the Australian School of Film and Television. Her first short film, Peel (1982) won the Palme D’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1986.

Here are a selection of her films and critical responses to each.

Sweetie(1989)

Campion’s first feature-length film, Sweetie, is often lauded as a feminist classic, though Campion herself denies a feminist perspective on the film. Here is a brief plot summary, also from IMDb:

Explores sisters, in their twenties, their parents, and family dysfunctions. Kay is gangly and slightly askew, consulting a fortune teller and then falling in love with a man because of a mole on his face and a lock of hair; then, falling out of love when he plants a tree in their yard. Sweetie is plump, imperious, self-centered, and seriously mentally ill. The parents see none of the illness, seeing only their cute child. Kay mainly feels exasperation at her sister’s impositions. Slowly, the film exposes how the roots of Sweetie’s illness have choked Kay’s own development. Can she be released?

Though the above summary alludes to “the roots of Sweetie’s illness,” this–and many reviews–ignore that the root of the her illness and Kay’s stunted sexuality is their father’s sexual abuse of the mentally-challenged Sweetie since her childhood (and continuing in adulthood). The theme is addressed subtly, and smartly, and the constant presence of a vague yet dark past imbues the film with a sense of tension and foreboding. (Also, the women’s body types aren’t nearly as important as the summary oddly makes it seem.)

From Roger Ebert:

The first time I saw it, at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival, I didn’t know what to make of it. I doubted if I “liked” it and yet it was certainly a work of talent. There was something there. I didn’t feel much from it, though; the experience seemed primarily cerebral. Then six months later I saw “Sweetie” a second time, and suddenly there it all was, laid out in blood and passion on the screen, the emotional turmoil of a family’s life.

Watch the trailer:

The Piano (1993)

The Piano is likely Campion’s most famous, and certainly most lauded film to date. Both female lead and supporting actors won Oscars (you can watch their speeches here, including one from the adorable 11-year-old Anna Paquin). The IMDb plot summary doesn’t really do the film justice, but here it is:

A mute woman along with her young daughter, and her prized piano, are sent to 1850s New Zealand for an arranged marriage to a wealthy landowner, and she’s soon lusted after by a local worker on the plantation.

Many reviewers, including Alan Stone, writing for the Boston Review, were quick to point out that The Piano is more than just “a feminist tract,” trying to gloss over the fact that it is, actually, a fantastic feminist fable–and that fact alone might make it worth your viewing time. Reviewer Vincent Canby was a little less interested in distancing the film–and himself–from feminism when he wrote:

Like “Sweetie,” Ms. Campion’s marvelous first feature, “The Piano” is never predictable, though it is seamless. It’s the work of a major writer and director. The film has the enchanted manner of a fairy tale. Even the setting suggests a fairy tale: the New Zealand bush, with its lush and rain-soaked vegetation, is as strange as the forest in which Flora says her mother was struck dumb.

Trips through this primeval forest are full of peril. When Ada goes off to her first assignation with Baines, she appears to be as innocent as Red Riding Hood. Yet this Red Riding Hood falls head over heels in love with the wolf, who turns out to be not a sheep in wolf’s clothing, but a recklessly romantic prince with dirty fingernails.

Watch the trailer:

The Portrait of a Lady (1996)

With an official “rotten” rating from Rotten Tomatoes, this adaptation of Henry James’ novel of the same name (first published in 1881) may or may not have been the best follow up to a multi-Oscar winner. However, Campion’s acclaim allowed her a budget for this star-studded period literary adaptation. Frankly, I like this kind of movie–and even this version’s more experimental elements. It’s smart and has a feminist question at its heart. If you’re not familiar with the book, here’s a very brief plot synopsis:

Isabel Archer, an American heiress and free thinker, travels to Europe to find herself.

Janet Malin writes:

Instead of faithfully reiterating James’s novel, Ms. Campion chooses to reimagine it as a Freudian fever dream. Fantasies intrude; prison bars or doorways or mirrors offer tacit commentary; the story’s well-bred heroine abruptly sniffs her boot or tries to hide an undergarment hanging on a door. With startling intuitiveness, Ms. Campion traces the tension between polite, guarded characters and blunt visual symbols of their inner turmoil.

Watch the trailer:

In the Cut (2003)

Receiving worse reviews than Portrait, 2003’s In the Cut stars Meg Ryan playing against “America’s Sweetheart” type. Was this the reason for the harsh reviews–people unable to accept Ryan in a grittier role? I can’t say for sure, having not seen the movie, but it looks dark and creepy. The synopsis:

Following the gruesome murder of a young woman in her neighborhood, a self-determined woman living in New York City–as if to test the limits of her own safety–propels herself into an impossibly risky sexual liaison. Soon she grows increasingly wary about the motives of every man with whom she has contact–and about her own.

Ann Hornaday, writing for The Washington Post, says

These tricky sexual dynamics clearly interest Campion more than the thriller elements of “In the Cut,” in which Frannie has a tendency to walk into dark basements and get into strange men’s cars at a rate clearly disproportionate to her intelligence. The red herrings are trotted out almost by rote, with no finesse or subtlety, as are frequent outbursts of gratuitous gore. By the movie’s ludicrous conclusion, viewers will have abandoned all hope of getting the mature thriller they might have paid to see.

But if “In the Cut” fails as a thriller, it’s not such a write-off as a psychosexual portrait of a certain kind of single Manhattan woman at the turn of the new century. With its restless, jittery camera, the movie captures the jangly paranoia of a city that is often equally tantalizing and threatening; Frannie responds in kind, with her own contradictory sexual persona, which at certain times is defiantly autonomous and at others almost timidly girlish. A “Looking for Mr. Goodbar” for the post-9/11 age (the remnants of that tragedy form one of the movie’s many visual leitmotifs), “In the Cut” focuses on the darker face of the classic New York romance.

Watch the trailer:

Bright Star (2009)

Campion returned to critical acclaim with Bright Star, the story of poet John Keats’ first love and subject of his poem “Bright Star,” Fanny Brawne. The film is based on their 3-year romance.

Dana Stevens, writing for Slate, says of Bright Star

Keats proves as tough to demythologize as Marilyn Monroe: He died so young, his life was so tragic, and the small body of work he left behind is so incomparable, that any depiction of his short life is bound to be tinged with idealization.

That’s why Campion was smart to make her film less about Keats than about Fanny Brawne, the fashionable, flirtatious young woman who captivated him in the spring of 1818 and lived next door to him in Hampstead for the last two years of his life. Fanny, as played by the up-and-coming Australian actress Abbie Cornish, is a curious heroine.

Salon‘s Stephanie Zacharek says

Poetry gets a bad rap almost everywhere: In school, where many of us read it because we have to; in life, where most of us don’t read it at all; and in the movies, where it’s often quoted by the most pompous character or, worse yet, in a self-serious voice-over. Even people who like poetry well enough often fail to revisit poems they once connected with as young students.

If you’re in that last group, Jane Campion’s “Bright Star” just may be the film to reconnect you. And if you’re not, the film works on its own as an unfussy, passionate and gently erotic love story that never tips into sentimentality.

Watch the trailer:

Quote of the Day: Susan Faludi

Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women, the 15th Anniversary Edition, by Susan Faludi

Below is an excerpt from Susan Faludi’s famous Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women. It comes from her chapter, “Fatal and Fetal Visions: The Backlash in the Movies.”

Hollywood joined the backlash a few years later than the media; movie production has a longer lead time. Consequently, the film industry had a chance to absorb the “trends” the ’80s media flashed at independent women–and reflect them back at American moviegoers at twice their size. “I’m thirty-six years old!” Alex Forrest, the homicidal single career woman of Fatal Attraction moans. “It may be my last chance to have a child!” As Darlene Chan, a 20th Century Fox vice president, puts it: “Fatal Attraction is the psychotic manifestation of the Newsweek marriage study.”

The escalating economic stakes in Hollywood in the ’80s would make studio executives even more inclined to tailor their message to fit the trends. Rising financial insecurity, fueled by a string of corporate takeovers and the double threat of the cable-television and home-VCR invasions, fostered Hollywood’s conformism and timidity. Just like the media’s managers, moviemakers were relying more heavily on market research consultants, focus groups, and pop psychologists to determine content, guide production, and dictate the final cut. In such an environment, portrayals of strong or complex women that went against the media-trend grain were few and far between.

The backlash shaped much of Hollywood’s portrayal of women in the ’80s. In typical themes, women were set against women; women’s anger at their social circumstances was depoliticized and displayed as personal depression instead; and women’s lives were framed as morality tales in which the “good mother” wins and the independent woman gets punished. And Hollywood restated and reinforced the backlash thesis: American women were unhappy because they were too free; their liberation had denied them marriage and motherhood.

The movie industry was also in a position to drive these lessons home more forcefully than the media. Filmmakers weren’t limited by the requirements of journalism. They could mold their fictional women as they pleased; they could make them obey. While editorial writers could only exhort “shrill” and “strident” independent women to keep quiet, the movie industry could actually muzzle its celluloid bad girls. And it was a public silencing ritual in which the audience might take part; in the anonymity of the dark theater, male moviegoers could slip into a dream state where it was permissible to express deep-seated resentments and fears about women.

The pop culture backlash against women might’ve begun in the ’80s, but it’s certainly seen a resurgence as of late. Only this time, people kinda don’t think it’s a big deal, or, they don’t read it as sexist. Susan J. Douglas calls it “enlightened sexism,” and she argues that:

Enlightened sexism is a response, deliberate or not, to the perceived threat of a new gender regime. It insists that women have made plenty of progress because of feminism–indeed, full equality has allegedly been achieved–so now it’s okay, even amusing, to resurrect sexist stereotypes of girls and women. After all these images (think Pussycat Dolls, The Bachelor, Are You Hot?, the hour-and-a-half catfight in Bride Wars) can’t possibly undermine women’s equality at this late date, right? More to the point, enlightened sexism sells the line that it is precisely through women’s calculated deployment of their faces, bodies, attire, and sexuality that they gain and enjoy true power–power that is fun, that men will not resent, and indeed will embrace.

Take the recent release of Sucker Punch and last year’s The Social Network. Both films have gotten flack for their sexist and offensive portrayals of women. And in these films, male moviegoers don’t necessarily need to, as Faludi argues, “express deep-seated resentments and fears about women,” because the women display sexuality in such a way that it’s fun! And powerful! Representing a kind of power that, as Douglas argues, “men will not resent, and indeed will embrace.” So where does that leave us now? Hollywood certainly continues to make the kinds of films Faludi discusses; in fact, it’s hard to think of a recent woman-centered film where women aren’t at some point set against other women. But in addition to the “good mother,” now we’ve got the “MILF.” In addition to the “independent career woman,” now we’ve got characters like Elle Woods in Legally Blonde (independent and brilliant and gorgeous and HasItAll).

Worse, if Hollywood joins the backlash “a few years later than the media” (which Faludi points out about ’80s cinema), what in the fuck kinds of movies do we have to look forward to in, say, 2015? I’m betting on, Abortion Is, Like, So Five Years Ago, written and directed by Hollywood. And, When Rape Was Illegal: a Documentary, sarcastically narrated by the signers of the Free Polanski Petition. Thoughts?

Guest Writer Wednesday: Sucker Punch

Sucker punched by “Sucker Punch”– Girls and guns don’t equal female empowerment

This is a cross-post from What Tami Said.

This really is the best movie ever cuz its like hollywood finally said to me Fuk yeah you my man are all we care about heres some awesome shit for you to get off on and everyone else can just go fuk themselves and you get to watch. Read more…

I just “liked” Flick Filosopher Maryann Johanson on Facebook solely on the basis of her Sucker Punch review, written in what oddly sounds like the voice of the guy who sat behind me yesterday afternoon when I went to see the movie. Based on the predominately male and middle-aged audience in the theater, I am likely the only woman who fell for the previews and thought Sucker Punch might be some video game or graphic novel-based film about ass-kicking chicks who slay dragons and other cool shit. Well, actually, that stuff does happen, but it’s surrounded by too many other porny, fetishy, gender- and race-biased tropes to be any sort of empowerment tale. The characters were too cartoonish to be relatable. And the fight scenes and CGI weren’t exciting enough to allow me to forget the analysis and enjoy the fun. Sucker Punch comes off like a slightly twisted adolescent’s wet dream–if said wet dream had the benefit of a cool score and awesome computer-generated graphics.

Set some time in the late 50s/early 60s, Sucker Punch tells the story of 20-year-old Baby Doll (Emily Browning), who accidentally kills her little sister, while attempting to save the girl from being sexually assaulted by their stepfather. The act earns Baby Doll, whose mother dies in the film’s first frames, commitment to a Goreyesque Vermont mental facility, and, after her stepfather pays off a weasly orderly, a date with a lobotomist (Jon Hamm, who seriously must be saying “yes” to every acting job now), due at the hospital in five days. As Dr. Don Draper stands poised above a bound Baby Doll, wielding the long, sharp orbitoclast he will pound into her frontal lobe, Baby Doll (and the audience) escapes into the fantasy that is the rest of the movie, including a second world, where Baby Doll and her fellow inmates are enslaved at a “dance club,” where they are forced to offer sexual favors to keep the moneyed, male clients happy.

Let me concede that the dirty, gothic look of Sucker Punch was arresting. The soundtrack, with an ominous cover of the Eurythimics’ “Sweet Dreams,” was fantastic. I’ve already downloaded it. It’ll be great accompaniment when I haul my butt off the couch and start my spring running regimen. Also, I’m gonna need to explore more of actor Oscar Isaac’s oeuvre. The fight sequences in Sucker Punch were pleasingly flashy and loud with lots of leaping and flashing steel and steampunkery, but ultimately they were made hollow by repetition and uninspired choreography. We’re more than a decade on since The Matrix debuted. You gotta give me more than slow motion shots of a character leaping past bullets and dragon fire.

Since Sucker Punch couldn’t entertain me with its sound and fury, I couldn’t help but notice the larger problem in the movie: A disturbing and regressive treatment of women masquerading as “girl power.”

**Spoilers Ahead**Spoilers Ahead**Spoilers Ahead**Spoilers Ahead**Spoilers Ahead**

We can start with the infantilization of the lead character, Baby Doll, a 20-year-old rendered as woman child–tiny but big-headed, with large eyes and white blonde, pig-tailed hair, perpetually dressed in schoolgirl drag. She is mute and trembling through much of the first half of the film. The result is that Sucker Punch plays on “jail bait” fantasies using the cover that its heroine is truly an adult woman.

So too does the film leverage implied threats to women to titillate–particularly sexual threat. From the earliest scenes, when Baby Doll’s hulking stepfather eyes her lasciviously and tries to push his way into her bedroom, Sucker Punch highlights the protagonist’s sexual vulnerability–not to make a point about violence toward women, but to render her more fragile and endangered, and by extension, to underscore her femininity and desirability.

And it must be said here that the key to Baby Doll’s persona and her place in the film is her whiteness. Sucker Punch genuflects to the traditional views of womanhood that have historically been assigned exclusively to white women (to the detriment of ALL women). It is not a mistake that, of the gang of female characters, Baby Doll is the blondest and most alabaster of skin. She is the most innocent. It is she that is reserved for the most special of the fantasy club’s clients, the High Roller. It is her dancing that is so arousing that it hypnotizes the men who witness it. It is Baby Doll that the swarthy pimp/orderly (depending on the fantasy world) must have and who he intends to take by force. (A nasty nod to the white women in danger of rampaging dark men stereotype.) Conversely, it is the women of color in the film–Amber (Jamie Chung) and Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens)–who are drawn as the flattest of the flat characters, with no back stories or desires, but to serve Baby Doll. And it is those women whose lives are unwillingly sacrificed (literally) so that one pretty, blonde, white woman can live the life she deserves.

The most obvious sign that Sucker Punch is no female empowerment film–not even a Kill Bill (which I really liked and to which Sucker Punch plays homage)–is the plot itself. The idea that a young woman, who has recently lost her mother and sister; who is imprisoned for fighting against domestic violence; who may have endured rape at the hands of her stepfather or just narrowly escaped it; who is about to endure a forced medical procedure would, for relief from her trauma, retreat into a fantasy world where she is a sexual slave who must dance provocatively for strange men…absurd.

Sucker Punch is no female fantasy. Sucker Punch isn’t about women at all, despite the female leads. Josh Larsen of Larsen on Film describes exactly what Sucker Punch is:

…it’s the fantasy of a 14-year-old boy steeped in kung fu, “Call of Duty” and online porn. Read more…

And this is why I should start reading film reviews before I see films not after.

Tami Winfrey Harris writes about race, feminism, politics and pop culture at the blog What Tami Said. Her work has also appeared online at The Guardian’s Comment is Free, Ms. Magazine blog, Newsweek, Change.org, Huffington Post and Racialicious. She is a graduate of the Iowa State University Greenlee School of Journalism. She spends her spare time researching her family history and cultivating a righteous ‘fro.

The Flick Off: Bored to Death

The first season of HBO’s Bored to Death had me–you guessed it–bored to death.

Honestly, the last thing we really need is another show about white male hipsterism. Set in Brooklyn? Check. Protagonist is a whiny artist type? Check. Whiny artist-type best friend? Check. Kooky outsider friend? Check. Bromance-style hijinks? Check. One-dimensional women? Check. Women who inhibit the protagonist and his best friend? Check. Money not an issue? Check. You get the picture, right?

Don’t get me wrong: Ted Danson is very funny in this show, even if he is just playing a less-evil Arthur Frobisher (from the fantastic Damages), replacing coke-fueled corporate crime with pot-fueled magazine-editor slickness and humor. That’s about the only compliment I can give this snooze-fest.

The premise of Bored to Death is a bit weak, yet has potential: With nothing else to do besides write his second novel, character Jonathan Ames (named by real-life writer Jonathan Ames, played by Jason Schwartzman) offers himself for hire on Craigslist as an unlicensed investigator. Jonathan only drinks white wine now since his girlfriend henpecked him about drinking, he’s really sensitive, and, come on, he’s a lovable hipster. FEEL SORRY FOR HIM! The fact that his cases are small and insignificant (the case of the stolen skateboard, finding a woman whose workplace and stage name are already known) isn’t the problem; the problem is that they mean nothing. Jonathan is such a boring person that he investigates other people’s problems to mine them for story ideas, since, you know, he’s blocked and his second book is due. At least I think that’s why he’s doing it. Also, it’s a semi-interesting way to procrastinate (it could be a hilarious way to procrastinate, but the show rarely, if ever, reaches those heights). Another HBO show, which shares the premise of an unlicensed detective investigating often small crimes, The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, has purpose and smarts. This unlicensed detective show is all about the ego of Jonathan Ames.

Here’s the real reason for the flick off: the women are awful. They aren’t bad people—we’re not dealing with the galling misogyny of Hollywood blockbusters here—but they’re so lazily written that I can’t believe HBO, usually so keen on characters, greenlit this show. Bored isn’t interested in who its female characters really are, as its main characters aren’t interested in anything but their own egos. Ray (Galifianakis) complains about his girlfriend’s obsession with their lack of intimacy, and she regularly suggests ridiculous solutions, including Ray getting a colonic, Ray going to therapy, and Ray giving her timed massages—yet she still gives him “an allowance” so he has money for essentials like weed. Jonathan’s ex-girlfriend, whom he is still obsessed with, seems to exist only to walk her little white dog while wearing gorgeous lady-hipster outfits and torture him with her beauty of lack of love for him. Guest stints from very funny actresses—including Parker Posey, Kristin Wiig, Jenny Slate, and Bebe Neuwirth as Jonathan’s editor–are utterly wasted. (As is Zach Galifianakis, actually.) These women aren’t there to be funny, or, you know, be people; they appear mostly as male fantasies (smart, beautiful women who would have anything to do with Jonathan and Ray) and nightmares (underage, duplicitous, blackmailing, domineering, hysterical, criminal, etc.)

Every time an interesting concept comes up, the show detours so as to not actually have to deal with said interesting concept. A character doing this would be fine and fitting; the show doing it tells me that the writer (ahem, Ames) is too close to the characters and show. For example, Ray agrees to donate his sperm to a lesbian couple, only to learn that the couple gave him fake names and sold his sperm to twenty-one other couples. This is a funny set up (if you can get past the evil lesbian trope)! So, Jonathan and Ray totally investigate the case, figure out who these women are, and run into all sorts of funny trouble on the way, RIGHT? Um, no. They happen upon a list of women who bought the sperm, and visit these women to see if any are pregnant. One is. Ray is happy? What? Huh? End of episode. What? Yeah, that’s about it.

You might wonder why I even watched the show, knowing it centered on privileged white male characters who think they are funnier and more interesting than they actually are. Good question. I guess I retain hope that such a show might be well written and funny. That maybe such a show could be a humorous examination of characters like these, instead of a blindly sympathetic ego trip. I’m open to giving a lot of things a chance, when maybe I should just skip them. I don’t want to be cynical, though, and HBO has a way of surprising us with its programming. (Take The Sopranos as an example: this show is an indictment of the American upper-middle class, disguised as a show about a mafia family. Granted, it has its own problems, but I never expected to like it as much as I did.)

Bored to Death is ready to begin its third season. Since it is still on the air, I hope it has improved from the first season I watched on DVD. I can’t say I’m optimistic, but since I don’t have premium cable, you might know better than me. So, what did you think of season one? Have you watched subsequent seasons/episodes? What do you think?

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

Pixar’s Cars and Ableist Language from Womanist Musings:

We do not live in Orwell’s 1984, and there are plenty of words that we can use to insult someone without being ableist. Is it really so hard to call someone a jackass instead of moron? There is a cost to the continual usage of these words in a negative fashion, and it is paid by the disabled community, whereas; choosing to stop using ableist words in one’s speech causes no harm at all. Do we really need to know why something is offensive? Isn’t it enough that someone has said these words hurt, would you please stop using them, without twisting like a pretzel to tell them all the reasons why they are wrong to be offended?

Sucker Punch (review): Fuk Yeah from Flick Filosopher:

Theres this totally hot little blonde babe who is suppose to be all underage and shit even though the actress who plays her Emily Browning is like 23 or whatever. And shes about to get raped by her ugly ass fat fuk of a stepfather this is PG13 and WTF is that all about I want to sucker puch Snyder for not doing this right and hard R so we dont get to see that but thats def whats gonna happen till Baby Doll tries to shoot his ass. Oh and hes gonna try to rape her little sister too and we dont get to see that either but at least you can think about it. Yeah her name is fukkin Baby Doll thats what they call her in the asylm for the mentally insane her stepfather throws her in as opposed to the physically insane which is what all these chicks in the asylum are anyway insanely hot LOL. No fat chicks and no ugly chicks in hottie hospital!

Teaching Boys Feminism from Gender Across Borders:

With every example of women, girls, queer folks, and people of color facing discrimination, marginalization, and violence, boys awaken. White male boys begin to realize the male privilege they have enjoyed in a culture that valorizes powerful white men while boys of color gain language to describe their painful experiences of racism and classism. And each year, without fail, regardless of racial identity or socioeconomic class, the boys—both straight and gay—express their fear of being called a “fag.”

Feminist Portrait Project Blog Carnival! from Bitch Magazine:

In 1971, Ms. Magazine wrote of “the click! of recognition, that parenthesis of truth around a little thing that completes the puzzle of reality in women’s minds—the moment that brings a gleam to our eyes and means the revolution has begun.” Forty years later, for better or worse, those clicks are still going off. Only today, the trigger is sometimes feminism itself.

Older women unhappy over their portrayal in films, survey shows from The Guardian:

Older women want to see more of their sexual desire depicted in film, a survey has suggested, while black and gay people would like to see less of a focus on theirs.

Sixty-one percent of women between the ages of 50 and 75 questioned for a UK Film Council survey of 4,315 people said women of their age were portrayed on the big screen as not having sexual needs or desires. Half said they were comfortable with older women being seen as attractive to younger men. Seven in 10 also felt that their group was generally under-represented in films and that younger women were glamorised.

James Franco Being Assaulted By Nude Women (NSFW) from BuzzFeed:

A still from the upcoming short film that James Franco is making with Harmony Korine, which apparently has something to do with naked women wearing bandana masks. The film is called “Rebel” and who the hell even knows.

‘Sucker Punch’ and the Decline of Strong Woman Action Heroines from The Atlantic:

By my count, there are at least ﬁve attempted rapes in Sucker Punch. When its female characters aren’t fending off rapists, theyʼre being lobotomized, stabbed, imprisoned, sold, shot in the head, forced to strip, or blown up on trains in outer space. Sucker Punch has been pitched as a girl-power epic, but it feels like watching a little boy tear the heads off his sister’s Barbies. After dressing them up in their sexiest outﬁts and making them ﬁght GI Joe, of course.

Sexism is so yesterday from StampOutSexism.org:

When you’re watching TV and you see an ad like Hoover’s “Floormate Challenge,” does your blood boil? Mine does. Why? Because Hoover–in its infinite, sexist wisdom–thinks it’s okay to “ask ordinary women” to clean their floors using their favorite method, and then re-do the floor using the Hoover product. Um…WOMEN? Why did they only ask women to do this? Why didn’t they ask PEOPLE to clean their floors? Men and women. Because Hoover–at least during my multi-decade long lifetime–has yet to advertise in a non-sexist manner.

Tina Fey’s Tough Girl Feminism from Slate:

Part of what makes Fey’s good jokes into insightful commentaries is the way they draw on and expose an argument’s emotional or psychological underpinnings. In response to men who claim that women are not funny, as Christopher Hitchens notoriously argued in Vanity Fair, Fey writes, “My hat goes off to them. It is an impressively arrogant move to conclude that because you don’t like something, it is empirically not good. I don’t like Chinese food, but I don’t write articles trying to prove it doesn’t exist.” Her buoyant, manic humor is sometimes the best way to expose and pin down the sheer absurdity of our current sexual politics. She has, for instance, a riff on frequently asked questions about 30 Rock: “Q: Has Tracy Morgan ever French kissed an NBC executive? A: Yes, but only at an official NBC event, and only against her will.”

Clicks on a Keyboard: Dungeons, Dragons, and Trans-Feminism from The Border House:

Being a transgender woman means one has a ‘special’ relationship with gender and with womanhood in particular. For many of us, part of our self-discovery necessarily involves a dawning of pride and acceptance of one’s own gender. I grew up surrounded by media images and socialisation that told me femininity and womanhood were inferior, weaker, undesirable, and should be either avoided or pitied. As a young trans girl trying to find her place in the gendered sun this naturally screwed with my head in many deeply unpleasant ways and fed self-hate in a rather dramatic way. I came out as a feminist when I was 15 because my father’s abuse of my mother put the lie to the notion that sexism was a thing of the past; but that did not click away my own self-loathing and fears regarding acceptance of my gender.

Who Does She Think She Is? from the official film web site:

In a half-changed world, women often feel they need to choose: mothering or working? Your children’s well-being or your own? Who Does She Think She Is?, a documentary by Academy Award winning filmmaker Pamela Tanner Boll, features five fierce women who refuse to choose. Through their lives, we explore some of the most problematic intersections of our time: mothering and creativity, partnering and independence, economics and art. The film invites us to consider both ancient legacies of women worshipped as cultural muses and more modern times where most people can’t even name a handful of female artists.

Leave your links in the comments!

Guest Writer Wednesday: The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest


Enemy of the State: Heroine Lisbeth Salander Fights Back in The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest

This is a cross post from Opinioness of the World.

I am usually not a fan of trilogies; the third film often pales in comparison to the crescendo of emotion and suspense built in a series. And while the occasional exception exists (Return of the King), most (Godfather 3, Alien 3, Terminator 3) are substandard when you compare them to their phenomenal predecessors. Would The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, the third installment in one of the best-selling trilogies, suffer the same fate? Perhaps. But how could I resist the lure of Lisbeth Salander, arguably one of the most interesting, unique and feminist heroines that has ever graced the page or screen?

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest is the final film in the Millennium Trilogy, which also includes The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played with Fire. GWKTHN picks up right where the second film leaves off. Punk hacker and researcher Lisbeth Salander is in critical condition after surviving a gunshot wound to the head, shoulder and hip. In the same hospital two doors down, her mortal enemy, the sinister Zalachenko, also recovers from life-threatening wounds. While Salander fights for her life physically, she must also prepare for an emotional battle of wits as she must stand trial for crimes committed as well as prove her mental competency. Salander’s friend, journalist and magazine publisher Mikael Blomkvist, continues his unwavering support. He races to prove her innocence, uncovering a treacherous government conspiracy to silence Salander.

I’ve been engrossed by the movies and books written by the late Swedish author Stieg Larsson. So I couldn’t wait to see how the story ends. My mother used to always say that a sequel was only good if you could watch it without seeing the other movie(s) in the series. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest would be difficult to watch without seeing the first two or reading the books. This is truly a film belonging to fans of the trilogy. With a different director, Daniel Alfredson, at the helm, it doesn’t stand alone as well as the first or even the second film. The movie suffers from a choppy pace. But the action scenes, such as the shootout in Samir’s restaurant and a police raid, are choreographed effectively. It’s the powerful performances by Noomi Rapace as the tattooed sullen survivor and Michael Nyqvist as the obstinate and passionate Mikael Blomkvist that elevate the material.

Michael Nyqvist as Mikael Blomkvist; The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest film still; image via Music Box Films

Michael Nyqvist stars as Mikael Blomkvist

Not surprisingly, there are differences between the book and its movie adaptation. Annika Gianinni, Salander’s lawyer, is made to seem less competent. In the book, she kicks ass during the trial in her flawless cross-examination of Salander’s childhood psychiatrist, slimy Peter Teleborian, who claims she needs to be institutionalized. But in the movie, she portrays far less resolve. Also, it’s never mentioned that Gianinni specializes in domestic violence and sexual assault cases, which spurred Blomkvist, her brother, to ask her to represent Salander. To my delight, the film retains the strong female police officers Monica Figueroa and Sonja Modig. Thankfully, the film cuts some extraneous storylines like Blomkvist and Figueroa as lovers. The subplot involving Erika Berger, Blomkvist’s best friend and editor of their magazine Millennium, concerns her taking a job at another publication and receiving sexually explicit emails from a possible stalker. In the film, Berger never leaves Millennium and doesn’t support Blomkvist’s stubborn investigation when it jeopardizes the safety of the other journalists. She still receives threatening emails but the film removes the whole premise of sexual harassment in the workplace, slightly diminishing Larsson’s theme of misogyny, preferring to focus on the government corruption.

In the U.S., the first book entitled The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, altered from its original Swedish title Men Who Hate Women. The Swedish name conveys the theme of misogyny Larsson carries throughout the entire trilogy. The first book contends with sexual assault, rape and domestic violence. The second book confronts sexual trafficking. The third book shows sexual harassment in the workplace. The trilogy depicts all of the different manifestations of men’s hatred towards women. To me, that was one of the things I enjoyed most about Larsson’s books: his ability to seamlessly fuse social justice with compelling characters and an interesting plot. Removing it somehow neuters the book’s message. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet‘s Nest’s original title is The Air Castle that Blew Up, with “air castle” referring to a “pipe dream.” It’s interesting to note Larsson’s original titles because only in the second one does he reference “girl” and in that particular book, he’s referencing Salander as a child. In the U.S., while they infantilize her in the titles, sadly reducing her to a “girl” rather than a “woman,” publishers shrewdly put Lisbeth Salander front and center, for she is the primary reason to read the books and watch the films.

Salander endured rape, assault and institutionalization; her rights throughout the trilogy have been violated. Yet she refuses to be a victim. Salander steels herself, always ready to fight back. For her trial, she dons a “costume” of garish goth make-up, mohawk hair and ripped clothes in court. She wasn’t going to pretend to be something she wasn’t; she had nothing to hide. This speaks to Salander’s strategy, a point not fully conveyed in the film. While Blomkvist, lawyer Gianinni, and her friends Plague, Holger Palmgren, and Dragan Armansky come to Salander’s aid and rally around her, she is an equal participant in her defense. Asphyxia is the program she designs to infiltrate people’s computers, which hacker Plague uses to uncover information on a trial witness. But if you hadn’t seen the other films or read the book, you’d never know that Salander’s brilliant mind invented the program. The last scene of the movie ends differently from the book too, detracting from Lisbeth’s emotional growth in learning to allow people into her life.

Annika Hallin as Annika Giannini & Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth Salander; The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest film still; image via Music Box Films

Annika Gianini (played by Annika Hallin) with Lisbeth Salandar (Noomi Rapace)

Actor Noomi Rapace brings the kick-ass heroine to life, imbuing her with strength and complexity. Despite a bedridden Salander for half the film, a complaint some reviewers have expressed, Rapace captivates. Beyond her dedication to the role (she trained for 7 months in preparation), she has a knack for conveying a range of emotions with a tilt of her chin or a narrowing of her eyes. Yet she’s underutilized here. I kept craving more Lisbeth, more Rapace…for me the two have become inextricably intertwined. I can’t imagine anyone else in the role, particularly as Hollywood gears up for Lisbeth Salander mania as actor Rooney Mara will attempt to fill Rapace’s shoes in the U.S. version.

My fave blogger Melissa Silverstein at Women and Hollywood had the opportunity to chat with the indomitable Rapace (so jealous!). When Silverstein asked Rapace why she thinks women relate to Lisbeth Salander, Rapace replied

She does not complain and she doesn’t accept being a victim. Almost everybody has treated her so badly and has done horrible things to her but she doesn’t accept it and won’t become the victim they have tried to force her to be. She wants to live and will never give up. I find that so liberating. Her battle is for a better life and to be free and I think everybody experiences that at some point in their life. They say OK, I’m not going to take this anymore. This is the point of no return. I’m going to stand up and say no. I’m going to be true to myself and even if you don’t like me that’s fine. I don’t want to play the game of the charming nice sexy girl anymore, I’m me. I think everybody can relate to that.

It was interesting watching this film and juxtaposing it with For Colored Girls which I saw the same weekend. Both convey the pain men can inflict on women; both show women struggling to not just survive but thrive. What continues to fascinate me about Lisbeth Salander is her defiance to yield, living life on her own terms. She doesn’t wait for justice to come from the authorities; she’s a warrior wielding her own vindication. Salander continually challenges categorization, refusing to be defined by her looks, her sexuality or her gender. She defines herself; a powerful message that we as women and as a society don’t hear often enough. I’m going to miss Lisbeth Salander.

Megan Kearns is a blogger, freelance writer and activist. A feminist vegan, Megan blogs at The Opinioness of the World. She earned her B.A. in Anthropology and Sociology and a Graduate Certificate in Women and Politics and Public Policy. She lives in Boston. She has previously contributed reviews of The Kids Are All Right, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and The Girl Who Played with Fire to Bitch Flicks.