Four Couples and the Apocalypse: ‘It’s a Disaster’

After years of special-effects heavy, testosterone-infused, end-of-the-world dramas, your Roland Emmerichs and your Michael Bays, lately there’ve been a lot of apocalyptic comedies. Still though, not much has changed. These comedies take place on the larger scale, with big effects and big death tolls and more disconcerting, a lack of prominent or believable female characters. ‘This Is the End’ was a bro-fest, ‘The World’s End’s lone female was a love interest, and ‘Seeking a Friend for the End of the World’ delivered another Manic Pixie Dream Girl to the list.
‘It’s a Disaster’ is a quiet, low-budget comedy about four couples, friends gathered for a monthly brunch, who become trapped in a house together when they hear that a terrorist attack nearby has spread deadly nerve gas in the air and they will all soon experience excruciating deaths.

It’s A Disaster film poster
It’s a Disaster film poster

 

After years of special-effects heavy, testosterone-infused, end-of-the-world dramas, your Roland Emmerichs and your Michael Bays, lately there’ve been a lot of apocalyptic comedies. Still though, not much has changed. These comedies take place on the larger scale, with big effects and big death tolls and more disconcerting, a lack of prominent or believable female characters. This Is the End was a bro-fest, The World’s End ’s lone female was a love interest, and Seeking a Friend for the End of the World delivered another Manic Pixie Dream Girl to the list.

It’s a Disaster is a quiet, low-budget comedy about four couples, friends gathered for a monthly brunch, who become trapped in a house together when they hear that a terrorist attack nearby has spread deadly nerve gas in the air and they will all soon experience excruciating deaths. But the movie isn’t even really about the end of the world. It’s an extended character study wearing the clothes of an apocalypse story. It’s a story about commitment and friendship and love, and how they’re all tested when disaster strikes and all lines of communication are down.

 

The group are stunned to hear the news and display a range of conflicting emotions and reactions
The group is stunned to hear the news and displays a range of conflicting emotions and reactions

 

The spectacle of the disaster takes place off-screen, we hear snippets over the radio and from the few people from outside who interact with the people in the house. Instead, the movie examines human nature and the disaster is just a catalyst that opens up the characters and strips away all pretense of civility. It’s the cheapest end-of-the-world movie, but it’s probably the most realistic; the characters, as narcissistic and bourgeois as they are, having their private brunches and mourning over watching The Wire, resemble people we all know, at least in the broad strokes.

Of the eight main characters, the cast’s four women are interesting and dynamic. They aren’t love interests, but equal protagonists, who get to tell their own stories and suffer their own break-downs. Emma and Peter Mandrake (Erinn Hayes and Blaise Miller), control-freaks with a seemingly perfect marriage who hide their plans for a divorce, are hosting the brunch. Their guests include Buck and Lexi (Rachel Boston and Kevin M. Brennan), a pair of free spirits with an open marriage and Shane and Hedy (Jeff Grace and America Ferrera), a conspiracy theorist and high school chemistry teacher who’ve been engaged forever with no wedding in sight. Completing their friend group is Julia Stiles’s Tracey, a neurotic doctor who complains that she’s always dating guys who turn out to be crazy.

As it always is in movies with large groups of friends, the viewer is forced to suspend disbelief to buy that all these people are close friends. Though the characters are all stereotypical, the ways they behave and react to each other and the apocalypse ring true. These are close friends kept together by their rituals; the monthly brunches that everyone feels obligated to attend hang like a millstone around their necks, but no matter how much they dread brunch, none of them feels comfortable ending a tradition. Especially as it means admitting they’re no longer as close as they were. With the news of the disaster, along with the hidden resentments, lusts and rages that come to the foreground, so does the news that many of them don’t actually like each other. For instance, Peter tells Tracey that after his divorce, he doesn’t want her to contact him any more as he can’t see them being friends.

 

Tracey and Glen, a new couple on their third date arrive at the Mandrakes’ house for their monthly brunch
Tracey and Glen, a new couple on their third date, arrive at the Mandrakes’ house for their monthly brunch

 

Our initial vantage point on the group is that of an outsider. Tracey’s new boyfriend Glen (David Cross) is meeting her friends for the first time. In a foreboding twist, Tracey is more anxious about introducing Glen to her friends than he is about meeting them. This is only their third date and poor Glen is completely alienated by her friends and caught in the middle when the chaos begins. The awkwardness is made worse by the intense gender segregation of the gathering, where men convene in one room to watch sports, while the women gossip in another.

It’s easy to see It’s a Disaster as two different films, split by the characters’ awareness of the attack. If you started watching it without reading any synopses, you might not know it’s an apocalypse movie until the Mandrakes’ neighbor, Hal (writer-director Todd Berger) comes by wearing a Hazmat suit and informs them.

If you were going to judge the movie on just its first part, it’d be a cliche, just whining hipsters complaining about their relationships, but the film’s second half causes the viewer to look back and reassess, noticing how the characters try to hide their problems and pretend everything is fine.

 

Hal, a neighbor, who’s prepared for anything, arrives to inform the group about the disaster (and berates them for not inviting him)
Hal, a neighbor, who’s prepared for anything, arrives to inform the group about the disaster (and berates them for not inviting him)

 

There’s also the foreshadowing. They lose cellular signals, the cable and internet go out, and sirens recur in the background. Originally none of these things appear abnormal; the sirens seem like ordinary background noise, there could be issues with weather and then Emma and Peter fall into a tense fight, each believing the other didn’t pay the bills because of their divorce. All that comes before the reveal is imbued with a sense of impending doom as most viewers are aware going in of what the movie is about. Part of the fun of the movie is watching each small detail grow into a larger conflict which builds into convincing character development.

Though we begin the movie posed from Glen’s point of view, as the film progresses, it moves from Glen’s perspective to a more general, fly on the wall view of the action. Because the shift doesn’t happen exactly at the point of the reveal, viewers go seamlessly from outsiders entering a place we don’t understand and being forced to participate, to watching action we are not involved in.

Like the characters, there’s very little we know about the actual disaster. Insulted that he wasn’t invited to their brunch, Hal informs them that bombs have gone off downtown and they have to remain inside, before leaving them to their own devices. For a great deal of the film, the characters aren’t sure if the reports they’ve heard are real or how bad things are outside, so it isn’t until the very end that they start to think of concrete plans. The movie isn’t about how they’re going to survive the disaster (eventually they just decide they’re all going to die); instead, it’s about how they slowly learn to deal with each other and air their long-suppressed grievances.

For Emma and Peter, the disaster brings back them together, allowing them time to relax and listen to music in the car, reconnecting in a context far from their everyday problems. Lexi and Burt play around on an acoustic guitar, wear bedsheet togas and eventually realize they don’t have much that bonds them together; that in all their experimenting they were only trying to find something novel to share. Hedy, whose chemistry knowledge makes her hyperaware of what’s going to happen to them, stops caring about anything. She breaks up with Shane and then spends the day drinking and mixing chemicals to make ecstasy, feeling that  they can at least go out having fun. Later, when a suicide plot is considered, Hedy’s extensive knowledge of all the symptoms they will run through before they die, is what convinces them that it’s the best option.

 

The group meet in the living room for an impromptu sing-along that turns into an escape planning session
The group meet in the living room for an impromptu sing-along that turns into an escape planning session

 

Throughout the afternoon, the group had mentioned another couple who were supposed to attend the brunch, but who always show up late. Near the end of the movie, these friends arrive, clearly suffering from the effects of the toxin and everyone inside the house refuses to let them in. Tracey in particular, shuts them out, and even as they die on the porch and are eaten by crows, maintains that they deserved it for being late. Their inhibitions have been so loosened by the disaster that rules of order and civility have completely broken down. Things that were mere annoyances, like their friends’ habitual lateness take on outsized importance when the stakes are raised.

Meanwhile, Tracey and Glen bond fast and appear to have a real love connection, the conventional romantic comedy relationship set against a disaster. However, in the eleventh hour, Glen proves himself to be a religious fanatic and anti-Semite, when he serves everyone wine laced with rat poison. He believes they should all die together before the rapture begins and though the others don’t agree with his beliefs, they consider drinking the wine to spare themselves a painful death.

 

Glen, who is meeting the group for the first time, is an outsider, alienated by their relationship problems
Glen, who is meeting the group for the first time, is an outsider, alienated by their relationship problems

 

It’s an interesting, albeit abrupt, twist as Glen originally appeared to be the most logical one in the group. However, it does seem like a bit of a betrayal when the character whose perspective we were aligned with at the start turns out to be crazy and is suddenly shut out of the group as an outsider. Glen’s status as a “religious nut job” is the glue that binds the friends back together, allowing them to bond over laughing at him. It is also a form of redemption for Tracey as she explained earlier that her friends never believed her when she told their that her other boyfriends were crazy.

In the end, everyone has their own belief systems–among them science, superheroes, and the wisdom of crowds and they hesitate to drink the poisoned wine. They’re afraid of being wrong, of killing themselves a minute before help arrives. The film abruptly ends (recalling an earlier conversation between Tracey and Glen) with everyone poised to drink. Whether you believe they do or not depends on your opinion of each character and who they would be in real life.

The ending shows that no matter how much they try to change, the tightly wound taking a risk and dancing around in togas, the free spirits trying to think in concrete, logical terms, they’re all going to continue to be the same types of people until they die.

 

In the film’s final tension filled moments, the characters must decide whether or not to drink the poisoned wine and spare themselves a painful death
In the film’s final tension-filled moments, the characters must decide whether or not to drink the poisoned wine and spare themselves a painful death

 

Though I had many good things to say about the movie, there are also some criticisms that shouldn’t be ignored. It’s great that the movie focused equally on female and male characters, but as in most films, women’s characters are explored only insofar as they are as parts of couples. I have to wonder if screenwriters can conceive of a woman in a context outside of a romantic relationship. In addition, starting the film from a male character’s POV, even though he doesn’t end up playing a more significant role than anyone else, sets him up as a default protagonist.

Though this may be an attempt at satire, the characters refer multiple times to the destruction of multiple American cities as the end of the world. As they speak to a call centre worker overseas who is not experiencing anything out of the ordinary, it’s clear that only the US is affected and the characters’ occasionally self-centered view extends to their conception of the world.

It’s a Disaster is a unique twist on the disaster movie. The point of the movie isn’t the apocalypse, but the character’s relationships. Whether or not they’re going to survive isn’t the point either. It’s a disaster movie that isn’t a disaster epic, instead it’s a captivating and often hilarious comedy of manners.

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Elizabeth Kiy is a Canadian writer and freelance journalist living in Toronto, Ontario. She recently graduated from Carleton University where she majored in journalism and minored in film.

‘Wonder Women: Sex, Power and the Quest for Perfection’: Feminism, Perfection, and Connection

“…Do young women want to be feminists, or not?” It’s a complicated question, without an easy answer. Because young women, of course, don’t speak with a single voice or share a common attitude. Some are quick to embrace the term feminist. Others despise it. And many – sadly, for the mothers and grandmothers who opened doors for them – no longer really have a sense of what the word implies.

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Cross-posted with permission from Barnard College.

Dare to Use the F-Word is a new monthly podcast series created by and for young feminists. Street harassment, food activism, body image and slut-shaming are among the diverse issues discussed in the series, which is produced by Barnard College and the Barnard Center for Research on Women and aims to spotlight contemporary issues and activists. The podcast is available for download on iTunes, where you can also subscribe to the series.

In a recent episode, Barnard President Debora Spar, author of Wonder Women: Sex, Power, and the Quest for Perfection, talks with feminist media activist Jamia Wilson about how the drive for perfection affects young women today. Following the interview, President Spar shared her thoughts on the direction of feminism for the next generation.

Jamia Wilson, left, and Debora Spar

Here are Spar’s thoughts:

Since the release of Wonder Women several months ago, one of the questions that I’ve consistently been asked is “how is feminism different today? What do you hear on campus? Do young women want to be feminists, or not?” It’s a complicated question, without an easy answer.  Because young women, of course, don’t speak with a single voice or share a common attitude.  Some are quick to embrace the term feminist. Others despise it. And many – sadly, for the mothers and grandmothers who opened doors for them – no longer really have a sense of what the word implies.

My own view – shaped, I’m sure, by the particular environment of Barnard College, a staunch and early defender of feminism in all its many guises – is that most young women today are feminist in nature if not in name. What I mean is that they implicitly assume that the goals that feminism fought for are theirs to claim. They assume, for instance, that they will work, for pay, for at least long stretches of their lives. They assume that all jobs – be they in finance or law or public office or industry – are open to them, and that they will receive roughly the same salaries as their male co-workers. They assume that their bodies are theirs to enjoy, and treasure, and share as they wish. They presume that birth control is widely available; that relationships are theirs to make, break, and determine; and that the world is every bit as open to them as it for their brothers.  In other words, they think, without even thinking about it, that they have equal rights with men. Which was, after all, the central goal of feminism.

What they don’t do, necessarily, is credit the feminist movement for this state of affairs, or eagerly claim the label of feminist for themselves. This is perhaps unfortunate but also understandable. Because how many young people generally race to thank their ancestors for bequeathing the world they did? How many adolescents want to attach themselves to the same political causes as their parents or grandparents – especially when they feel as if those causes have already been fought for and won? Or as one older woman once expressed it to me: how many hard-core feminists of the 1960s defined themselves as suffragettes?

To be sure, there are many young women today who proudly wear the label of feminism and are expanding both advocacy and theory in fascinating ways: leading the global fight against sex trafficking, for example, speaking out against domestic violence, and pushing at the very definitions of sex and gender and identity. But there are others, too, the reluctant feminists, who carry the mantle even if not the name.

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Listen to Barnard College’s Dare to Use the F-Word podcast series to hear how young women are reshaping feminism. http://bit.ly/IDIgGg

‘Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted’: Examining Feminism in ‘The Mary Tyler Moore Show’

When the show started, things were very different than they were even a few years later — it was a time of very fast change in gender politics. When they were pitching the show, the one female executive who championed it was such an anomaly that they had no executive restroom for women.

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This is a guest post by Holly Rosen Fink.

One of the greatest shots ever in the opening of a show has to be of Mary Tyler Moore tossing her hat into the air with the theme song “You’re Gonna Make it After All” in the background. The visual and audio combination is very telling of a time when women were breaking out of their shells in the 1970s. The show was ground-breakingly feminist in many ways – the two male producers hired a group of mainly female writers and took the show’s plot in daring directions every chance they got. I sat down with Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, the author of Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted: And all the Brilliant Minds Who Made The Mary Tyler Moore Show a Classic to find out how they did it.

MTM+hat+toss 

How did  The Mary Tyler Moore Show‘s producers get the scripts so right during a time of upheaval for women in American history?

JKA: They hired women, for starters. It’s a real testament to gender diversity, because they ended up being able to get the input of the female writers they hired, even as they hired plenty of experienced men who could write a killer script. This also allowed fairly inexperienced women who hadn’t gotten a shot before to get the skills and resume lines they needed to move up in the business. It made a huge ripple-effect difference in the industry in ways we probably can’t even begin to measure. That said, feminists at the time didn’t love the show — as with many groundbreaking shows, it was under tons of scrutiny as the only show of its kind. They hated Mary’s weaker moments and her propensity to call her boss “Mr. Grant” while others called him “Lou.” In the end, I think these chinks in Mary’s feminism made her a stronger character and a better ambassador. But it took the perspective of history to see her that way.

 

The Mary Tyler Moore Show show went on in 1970. All these years later, it’s still inspiring and influencing writers and characters on TV. Why is that?

JKA: I think it’s a writers’ show, to a large extent. It’s so character-driven, rather than just joke-driven. Writers respond to that and want to make their own shows that way whenever they can.

 

Originally, Mary Tyler Moore was meant to be divorced but the network refused. She still ended up single and working, which was a revolutionary story line in the 1970s. What was it like talking to the show’s creators about this period of the show’s history? Were they open about their experiences?

JKA: I am such a sucker for those stories of disgusting, blatant early sexism, and the Mad Men-type stuff! When the show started, things were very different than they were even a few years later — it was a time of very fast change in gender politics. When they were pitching the show, the one female executive who championed it was such an anomaly that they had no executive restroom for women. When she was on that floor, she just left her shoes outside the bathroom to let them know she was in there. And yes, the network folks had no interest in Mary being divorced. As one of the executives, Mike Dann, told me, he thought a divorcee would be “kind of a loose woman.” The fact that a few seasons in they could have references to Mary taking birth control and staying out all night on a date is a sign of quite rapid progress.

But they took risks when they could, writing divorce in later for Lou and a gay brother for Phyllis and Rhoda as a New York City Jew. Eventually, Mary was staying out all night and going on the Pill. How did the writers push these modern ideas through?

JKA: They were partially sneaky and partially lucky. A few years in, divorce seemed more palatable, and giving it to Lou instead of Mary certainly made a difference. It didn’t sully their sweet heroine. That said, All in the Family had since come on the air, which blew open a lot of previously closed doors in terms of subject matter. With both All in the Family and Mary doing well, the network was much less likely to mess with them. Network executives are only skittish when something isn’t raking in tons of cash. The gay brother storyline wasn’t originally part of the script; it was added when the actor playing him happened to be gay. But it was still possibly the most blatantly edgy the show ever got. The all-nighter and the Pill were couched in very subtle references that certainly a younger viewer would miss completely. Mary simply mentions offhand that she won’t forget to take her pill, which could, after all, be any kind of pill. And we know she stayed out all night only because we see her leave her apartment at night in an evening gown and return the next morning in the same dress. We never find out what really happened during those hours.

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Most of the writers were women.  Were they active in the feminist movement?

JKA: They were. I don’t remember any saying they weren’t, and for most of them, it was just an obvious and standard part of life at the time. They went to regular meetings and some of them engaged in at least small forms of activism. I don’t think they had time to be major players in the movement because they were too busy working!

Why did you spend so much time focusing on their lives (which I loved, by the way)?

JKA: It seems like the only interesting way to tell the story, to me. For my tastes, I prefer stories about people rather than just a bunch of geeky trivia about a show. I wanted to write something that goes beyond a fan encyclopedia. There’s a place for that kind of book, for sure — and I used them in my research! I wanted the book to reflect the show, and I think if the writers of The Mary Tyler Moore Show had to write the story of their show, this is the way they’d do it — by focusing on the characters.

Ethel Winant was the only female executive at the show’s start.  There were so many men that she didn’t have her own toilet.  How did she know the show would be such a huge success?

JKA: She certainly had well-honed instincts, and the show is evidence of her impeccable casting skill. But I think she also responded to the material itself. It makes sense that she would see the value in a show about a career woman, given that she was such a pioneer, and my interviews with her son backed that up.

How did Mary Tyler Moore change the face of TV and women’s roles in the TV industry?

JKA: Like any success, it spawned many attempts at re-creation, which meant lots more shows about women. Some of them stuck, like Maude and even Mary’s spinoff, Rhoda. It also produced several female writers who could go onto other things, kind-of spreading the show’s influence that way. They went on to write for many shows, create some shows, produce, and work as TV executives. They also inspired that entire generation of women who’s currently kicking things up a level, producing in and starring in their own shows.

Was the network supportive of their efforts?

JKA: At first, the network was skeptical. But success is the best way to get the network off your back, and by the end of the first season, the show could mostly do whatever it wanted.

At the time Mary Tyler Moore was on, All in the Family and Maude were developed. Did they compete with these shows?

JKA: They didn’t really. They were all on the same network — CBS was it at the time. So they were able to enjoy each other as colleagues quite a bit and just admire each other’s work. The Mary Tyler Moore guys — Jim Brooks and Ed. Weinberger and Dave Davis — would actually watch All in the Family together and marvel at its greatness. They certainly wanted to keep up their own standards to stay in step with Norman Lear’s shows, but they couldn’t ever compete directly with them.

Did the actresses realize they were feminists at the time? Did any of them stay involved with the movement post 1970s?

Val Harper identified as a feminist, and continues to, while the others didn’t as much. Val was even interviewed by Gloria Steinem for a Ms. cover story during her Rhoda days!

Were the actors jealous of all the attention the actresses got?  They seemed like wonderful friends in the end.

JKA: They were, a little bit. They all mentioned it, in fact, but mostly in a good-natured way. They loved the women, but they felt like they were getting more attention, particularly from Jay Sandrich, the director, which is what really got to them. I told Jay that, and he said he never even realized it, but even now, his answer was a playful, “Tough luck.” Honestly, I was struck by how much the entire cast seemed to still love each other.

Is it true that Lou Grant became a feminist himself?

JKA: He did! He’s quite cantankerous and hard to pin down on this stuff, so even when I tried to ask him about it now, he was a little squirmy. But the fact is that feminism is among the many political causes Ed Asner has championed. He was involved with NOW and gave a radio address for them about men in feminism. He also made sure there were women working on Lou Grant and getting paid fairly.

Who are some feminist characters on TV today?

JKA: The feminist-or-not question is always such a hot one these days, but I adore The Mindy Project, which addresses issues like body image and women’s professional success without being too “issuey” about it. Same goes for Girls, where Lena Dunham’s constant nakedness alone is a huge statement.

 

Holly Rosen Fink is a writer and marketer living in Larchmont, NY. You can follow her on Twitter @hollychronicles.

 

‘Broad City’: Hilarious, Lazy Girls at the Party

‘Broad City,’ which first appeared as a web series in 2009, shows us two women who lack ambition in a way that is almost radical—if only because we rarely see women acting irresponsibly without being punished for it.

Let me first make it clear that the title of this post is intended as a celebration of two things: 1) Amy Poehler, who, in addition to being a brilliant comedy writer, performer, and founder of Smart Girls at the Party, is the executive producer of the new Comedy Central series Broad City and 2) That we finally have some representations of funny women on TV who get to be every bit as guiltlessly unmotivated as their male counterparts. The characters that Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer created and depict are silly, charming, and always have each other’s backs—no matter how absurd or ill-advised the scenario. On its face you might think that another show about best friends in their 20s living in Brooklyn and Queens will cover familiar territory, thanks to Girls.  You would be wrong. Most of the women in Lena Dunham’s world are not unlike some of our other (beloved!) women characters like Leslie Knope, Liz Lemon, and Mindy Lahiri in that they are wrestling with personal and professional issues that can often be traced to the anxiety inherited by women over whether they can  “have it all.” Sure, Hannah Horvath might be lazy at times, but she is nothing if not driven by ambition to establish herself as a writer. Broad City, which first appeared as a web series in 2009, shows us two women who lack ambition in a way that is almost radical—if only because we rarely see women acting irresponsibly without being punished for it.
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I say “punished” because Abbi and Ilana get away with a lot on Broad City, and we get to enjoy the thrills of their bad decisions and improbably mild consequences. In the first episode, we see Ilana sitting bored at her job, where she makes it clear to her boss that since the paychecks are delayed, she has no intention of staying to work.  However, she does have her sights set on one particular goal: to make enough money for a night out for her and Abbi to go to Lil’ Wayne show (she also plans to seduce him).  Her hope is to raise $200—for tickets, drinks, and weed—and she needs to convince her best friend to blow off her custodial job at a gym to help execute her plan. Abbi is the less reckless of the two (she tells Ilana that she’s might not be up for the show that because she’s “really excited about a cashew stir fry” she made for the week), but willingly capitulates to her best friend’s scheming (as she does throughout the series).

 

broad city store

 

Their first attempt to earn money takes the form of bucket drumming in Central Park, where their only fan is Ilana’s friend-with-benefit Lincoln, played by Hannibal Buress (one the best stand-up comics working today). When busking proves fruitless, Abbi and Ilana must resort to Plan B: cleaning creepy Fred Armisen’s apartment in their underwear while he luridly gazes upon them from behind drapes.  Did I mention that he’s also wearing footie pajamas? This scene is brilliant physical comedy, and refreshingly turns what could be humiliating into something aggressively funny. Without spoiling too much of the rest of the episode, let’s just say that Ilana and Abbi end up back where they started: video-chatting with each other as they nurse hangovers.

 

broad city cleaning

 

In addition to being great writers, Jacobson and Glazer are a delight to watch, (as is both the supporting cast and cameos performances Rachel Dratch and Janeane Garofalo).  Abbi and Ilana’s is a female friendship in which both women enable and affirm the other even as they make ridiculous choices—which is what friends are for.

 

Abortion Onscreen: Behind the Statistics

However, we did our analysis to counter the recurring popular narrative that abortion is totally absent from media representations. Abortion stories are there, and they’ve always been there. Now that we know that, and we’ve identified them, we can begin delving into more detailed analyses of these stories.

Abortion on Film and TV
Click on the infographic to view the full-size image. Designed by Jessica Harrington, Kate Giambrone, and Julianna Johnson.

 

This is a guest post by Gretchen Sisson. She is working on Abortion Onscreen, which involves research of depictions of abortion in film and television.

Whenever you set out to say something about abortion, you’re going to be faced with criticism; whenever you attempt to say something serious about popular culture, the rigor of your intellectual pursuit will likely be challenged. Despite that, we’ve been generally pleased with the response to the study. People seem interested in discussing what stories they’ve seen, and which they find most compelling. I thought that – for this audience of cinephiles – I might respond in more detail to some of the comments and questions that keep cropping up.

So, there are more examples of abortion on television and movies than there used to be. That does not seem that interesting.

True, it’s not. There are more movies being made, more television shows, more channels for distribution – unless the increase is in prevalence (it’s not), this isn’t inherently noteworthy. However, we did our analysis to counter the recurring popular narrative that abortion is totally absent from media representations. Abortion stories are there, and they’ve always been there. Now that we know that, and we’ve identified them, we can begin delving into more detailed analyses of these stories.

Movies and television are always more dramatic than real life. So why is this interesting?

 It’s true, lots of things are more dangerous on television and in movies. Cars and planes are more likely to crash; patients are more likely to slip into comas (and come out of them). There is more violence, more suspense, more drama overall – that’s what makes stories interesting.

However, it’s interesting that many medical procedures are less risky on television. CPR, for example, is consistently much more successful on television than in real life. Not only is it more effective at reviving people, it is also almost never shown to result in complications (such as broken ribs) that are fairly common in real life emergency situations. Yet, abortion is consistently shown to be more dangerous. (In this study, we specifically looked at the mortality rates of abortion on television; in future investigations we hope to look at other complications such as infertility and adverse mental health outcomes.)

It’s true that a dangerous abortion may be a more interesting story than a safe abortion. But why would a storyteller include an abortion, if their primary goal was to include medical complication? Why not have a character experience acute appendicitis? Or miscarriage with hemorrhage? Or any number of dramatic, possibly (but rarely) fatal conditions? The fact that abortion is often used in this way tells us something about why it’s included at all.

Furthermore, many of the deaths associated with abortion were not caused by the abortion itself. As you can see, many of the characters who got an abortion (or just considered getting one) later died as a result of accident or violence. This sort of karmic linking between characters associated with abortion and dramatic deaths is telling; it seems that abortion is used not as a way of creating drama in and of itself, but as a way of condemning characters.

Realistic abortion stories would be boring. Why would media makers want to include them?

This is the Chekhov’s gun principle. Why include an abortion if it’s not dramatic? But realistic abortion can be dramatic. It can involve drama if the character is conflicted and agonizing over her decision. It can involve drama even if she knows immediately that she wants an abortion, but must find a way to pay for it, or face protestors on her way to the clinic, or consider what the unplanned pregnancy means for the future of her relationships. Many movies and television shows have shown realistic abortions in compelling dramatic ways: Friday Night Lights, Parenthood, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, to name just a few. I don’t accept the premise that realistic abortions are inherently uninteresting. Furthermore, it seems that common, stigmatized experiences would provide ample opportunities for creative storytellers to say something new, interesting, dramatic – maybe even profound – without resorting to a bloody ending.

When, historically, are these abortion stories set? Shouldn’t some abortions be portrayed as dangerous?

This observation is exactly why we chose not to comment on the motivations of screenwriters and producers. For example, in Vera Drake, Revolutionary Road, and Dirty Dancing, illegal abortion is portrayed as dangerous. This could be a very progressive commentary on the importance of legal access to abortion. Conversely, the legal abortion story in Ides of March – which ends with the young woman committing suicide when she believes her abortion is going to be disclosed on the national stage – is, at its core, a message of stigma.

Furthermore, because our sample began in 1916 (when abortion was dangerous) and included the decades filmmakers had to follow the Hays Code (which said abortion stories could not have happy endings), we recognize that there are innumerable reasons and motivations for abortion to be portrayed as dangerous.

Ultimately, though, the aggregate linking of abortion and risk creates an ongoing social myth about abortion as dangerous. We do not live in a world where people talk openly about their abortion experiences. We’ve all driven in cars, so when we see crashes or chases in movies, we can integrate that into our overall idea of what “driving” is, and the fictional narrative, while entertaining, plays a relatively small part in shaping that idea. However, we don’t all have abortion, or talk to people we know about their abortions (or even know that we know people who’ve had abortions), which makes the stories we see in the media all the more important cultural understanding of what abortion is.

What’s next?

We really want to use this study as a jumping off more for exploring more detailed questions about abortion stories in film and television: Who gets abortions? Why? What does abortion care actually look like in popular culture? You’re welcome to check out abortiononscreen.org to see more about where we hope to go in the future.

 

Recommended Reading: “Films and TV Portray Abortion As More Dangerous Than It Is” at Bitch Media

_________________________________
Gretchen Sisson is a sociologist at ANSIRH, a reproductive health research group at the University of California at San Francisco, whose work focuses on abortion, teen pregnancy and young parenthood, adoption, and infertility. You can find her on Twitter @gesisson.

‘Rescue Me’ and Being Treated Like Everyone Else

Consider this a late addition to the Women and Work Week, if you like. This plot line aired on ‘Rescue Me’ almost ten years ago, but it was so interesting and so frustrating that I haven’t forgotten it since.

Written by Katherine Murray.

Consider this a late addition to the Women and Work Week, if you like. This plot line aired on Rescue Me almost ten years ago, but it was so interesting and so frustrating that I haven’t forgotten it since.

laura
Diane Farr as Laura

 

Rescue Me  is an hour-long drama/comedy about a group of New York City firefighters that aired on FX from 2004 to 2011. I stopped watching after the third season (for scheduling reasons, rather than the content of the show) but, up until that point, it was a weird Libertarian blend of conservative and progressive ideas wrapped in a blanket of swearing.

The show stars and was created by Denis Leary, and you can hear his voice very clearly in the writing – which is to say that it’s sometimes very funny, but it’s also hostile toward anything it perceives as “political correctness.” Leary and Rescue Me are both invested in honouring the work that firefighters do (Leary has raised a great deal of money to support fire departments in real life), and the show is also invested in portraying a particular image of (predominantly white) working class masculinity. The straight men on this show call each other “fag,” use violence to solve their problems, and transmute any vulnerable emotion into an outward display of anger. The show is sympathetic to them without (usually) idealizing their behaviour.

The portrayal of women on Rescue Me is a lot less thoughtful, and usually falls under the heading of “bitches be crazy,” but there’s an absolutely fascinating story during the first two seasons where a female firefighter named Laura joins the team and the guys are really mean to her. It’s fascinating (and frustrating) in part because the show takes such an agnostic approach to the conflict – it doesn’t firmly side with either Laura or the guys who hate her guts. Instead, it acknowledges that she has good reasons for being upset, but takes the position that there’s nothing anyone can really do about it. It’s unfortunate, but she’s entered the masculine space of the firehouse, and she doesn’t fit in. Period.

The most important moment in this conflict comes early in season two, when Laura finally files a complaint because one of the senior firefighters, Lou, calls her a stupid twat while they’re responding to a call. I’m going to go into a painful level of detail describing that exchange to you now, because there are so many layers to what’s going on that it makes for one of the best and most nuanced portrayals of gender discrimination I’ve ever seen on television, and it gives us a good jumping off point to talk about what we mean when we say we want to be treated “like everyone else.”

That Time Lou Called Laura a Twat
The conflict between Lou and Laura begins in the episode “Balls” (for real; that’s what it’s called), when the crew responds to a call at a burning building. Lou goes into the basement of the building with Laura and a male firefighter named Garrity. They find someone passed out on the floor, and Lou tells Garrity to carry that person outside. Laura misunderstands that thinks that she’s supposed to help Garrity, so she stays behind while Lou goes into the basement alone, thinking that Laura’s behind him. He doesn’t realize what’s happened until he asks Laura for help and finds out that she’s not there. He’s understandably freaked out by this – being in the middle of a fire by himself – and, when he gets back outside, he finds Laura and reams her out for abandoning him. In the process of doing that, he yells that she obviously never learned to do her job, and calls her a stupid twat.

Laura approaches Lou later and tells him in a reasonable tone of voice that, while she understands that she made a mistake, the way he spoke to her wasn’t acceptable. Lou initially pretends that he doesn’t remember what he said, but then he calls her a stupid twat again, and condescendingly refuses to apologize, saying, “I don’t think so, honey.” Laura tells him not to call her “honey,” either, and says that she doesn’t want to make a big deal out of it, and will consider the issue closed if he just says he’s sorry. Lou refuses to say he’s sorry.

Laura makes a formal complaint against Lou, and what follows is two episodes in which the other guys try to convince her that she has no right to feel upset, before they all get sent to mandatory sensitivity training (which is a joke). The guys take the position that Laura’s choosing to work in a male-dominated field, and that this is how men talk to each other – like it or lump it. They don’t see any difference between what Lou said to her and the kind of trash talk they exchange on a daily basis, and they clearly think that she’s being too sensitive and asking for special treatment by making a big issue out of it.

Laura and Lou in the firehouse
Lou’s Not Sorry At All

 

The male characters remain completely oblivious to the context in which the comment was made. It’s different to tease someone or to use rough language in the spirit of camaraderie when your relationship is fundamentally based on respect. In Laura’s case, she’s well aware that the guys don’t want her there – the very first thing they do (at Lou’s suggestion, it bears mentioning) is freeze her out by refusing to speak to her when she arrives. She has to fight to get a private bathroom (so that she can shower separately) and, once she does, they take turns leaving the foulest things they can in her toilet. Laura tries various strategies to break the ice and make herself part of the group – ranging from an ill-advised decision to bring in baked goods to taking on assignments that no one else wants to do – but she’s frustrated to discover that they treat her with contempt no matter what. Within that context – the context of having been specifically rejected, excluded, and bullied because of her gender – having someone scream a gendered insult at her lands a little differently. It lands differently than the insult would land in the context of an otherwise respectful relationship, and it lands differently than a non-gendered insult, like “asshole,” would land.

The men also ignore the attitude with which the comment was made. In the episode “&#!&,” Franco, who’s Puerto Rican, tells Laura that it’s totally fine for the other guys to call him a “spic,” and therefore she shouldn’t be mad about specifically gendered insults. What we see in practice, though (in season two and, later, in season three), is that, while Franco seems okay with people saying “spic” in casual conversation,  he’s definitely not okay with it when Lou (again) uses that word in anger. In fact, Lou ends up apologizing when he does that, because he understands it wasn’t cool. If Lou were using derogatory terms to refer to women in casual conversation, it still wouldn’t be a great thing to do, but it would come across differently than when he uses those words deliberately as a weapon to hurt Laura.

The men on this show don’t display any awareness of those contextual differences, though, and they instead do an awful thing that men sometimes do in real life where they make themselves the arbiters of what’s offensive to women. These characters, with their limited imaginative powers, don’t feel like they would be offended if they were Laura, so she can’t be offended, either.

To the show’s credit, Laura’s reaction to these well-meaning lectures on How Guys Talk to Each Other and Why It’s Totally Not a Big Deal is to look angry, hurt, and frustrated at being ganged-up on again. She points out, at various moments, that she would be doing a disservice to the women who come after her if she just ignored this kind of thing, and that she didn’t create the problem by reporting it – Lou created the problem by saying something inappropriate in the first place. She never changes her mind about whether she’s right to be offended, but she comes to see that she’s not going to get the result she wants. It’s a lose-lose situation where nothing she says or does is going to make any difference.

Lou, in the meantime, never apologizes. After Laura files her complaint, he’s called into a meeting with his superiors where they tell him that, because it’s his word against Laura’s, he should just deny that he said anything and get the other guys to make her miserable enough to transfer out. That suggestion seems to sober him a little bit, and he chooses to go on record saying that he did call her a name, which leads to the sensitivity training. He talks to Laura again after and tells her that the (chauvinist) world inside the firehouse is the only thing in his life that’s stayed constant and that, if she forces that to change, he won’t even know who he is anymore. Laura says that she’ll accept that as an apology, even though Lou doesn’t want her to.

I’m not going to say that the show succeeds in dramatizing both sides of this particular argument because, while I feel sorry for Lou, I also think his “side” – the side where he wants his workplace to be a safe space for him to say whatever awful thing he wants without having to hear a complaint about it – is just wrong. That’s not how we share society with other people. What the show does do successfully, though, is portray the clash of worldviews taking place in the struggle for gender equality.

On the one hand, there’s the worldview that says, “All people have equal worth as human beings and are entitled to the same base level of respect,” and, on the other hand, there’s a worldview that says, “All people are arranged into a single hierarchy, and your position on the hierarchy is determined by how well you measure up to the standards of the dominant group.” That means that, depending on your worldview, “I want to be treated like everyone else” can either mean, “I want to be treated respectfully, as all people deserve to be treated,” or “I want to be measured against the same standard as everyone else, never mind if the standard is biased.”

The way that the men on this show reject Laura is more complicated than saying, “No girls allowed,” because the second worldview – the one they appear to subscribe to – allows that women can enter the dick-measuring contest; it just guarantees that they’ll lose.

The male characters in Rescue Me completely believe that they’re treating Laura “like everyone else” by being meaner to her than they are to men in the same position (we see this, for example, when male firefighters transfer into the house and are welcomed with open arms, or when a male firefighter makes a mistake on the job and is instantly forgiven). They’re treating her according to where they think she falls on the hierarchy and they’re annoyed by what they perceive as her demanding respect that’s unearned.

These are men who’ve worked hard to measure up to the masculine ideal – to earn respect that they don’t feel was afforded to them just for being people. They’re not suddenly going to change their minds and decide that that was all for nothing. Instead, they defend what they perceive as their territory, by telling Laura that she’s wrong for upsetting the balance.

It’s awful, and it’s frustrating both for Laura and for the audience, but it plays out in a very realistic way. It’s scene after scene of Laura by herself against everyone else in a battle that’s years away from being won. It’s painful, but it’s really good television.

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

‘Ukraine is Not a Brothel’: Intimate Storytelling and Complicated Feminism

Green’s intimate reporting and the incredible cinematography and editing that makes the film stand out accomplish the goal of respecting, questioning, and empowering these women activists. Green, in examining those fighting against the patriarchy, exposes and dismantles the patriarch who was running the show.

 

ukraine-is-not-a-brothel-il-poster-del-film-282951
Ukraine is Not a Brothel

Written by Leigh Kolb.

“Ninety nine percent of Ukrainian girls don’t even know what feminism is.”

This is the sentence that opens Ukraine is Not a Brothel, which premiered in the US last weekend at the True/False Film Fest in Columbia, Mo. The film chronicles Femen and uncovers the patriarch behind the movement.

[youtube_sc url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_AysixuBhQ”]

 

The aim of Femen–the topless feminist protest organization that began in Kiev four years ago–is to shock the masses and raise awareness for that 99 percent of girls who are growing up in a society that treats women as second-class citizens and to dismantle the fact that Ukraine is seen as a hub for prostitution and sex trafficking. Director Kitty Green (who makes her feature-length documentary debut with the film) was struck by the image of a Femen protestor holding a sign over her bare breasts that said, “Ukraine is Not a Brothel,” and Green embedded herself with the group for a year, serving as their videographer while collecting footage for the documentary.

 

ukraine-is-not-a-brothel-un-immagine-del-film-282961
In one of the opening shots, one of the Femen activists has her body painted.

 

Femen says that they fight against the patriarchy and against sexism in all forms. In a Q&A after the film, Femen leader Inna Shevchenko (who was featured prominently in the film and has since moved to France) said that the goal of Femen is “fighting patriarchy and its global weight.”

Inna noted that the way Femen uses their sexuality–by running and screaming while naked, and not by posing or trying to attract the male gaze–is a core part of the protest. “We are trying to provoke,” she said, but in a different context.

Everything about Femen sounds pretty great, and their goals and messages are a shocking but valuable chapter of feminist protest.

But it’s more complex than that.

 

It's not that simple.
It’s not that simple.

 

Just as the feminist movement as a whole has its issues, Femen isn’t all that it seems.

During the pre-fest Based on a True Story Conference in conjunction with the Missouri School of Journalism, Green explained to an audience that while she was living with and filming the women of Femen (she was arrested eight times and was abducted by the KGB with them, as well), she started to realize that the movement was actually run by a man who no one knew about. She said that he was abusive to the women, and she had to “shift ideas and expose him,” instead of simply filming the women. She had to secretly film him, and admitted only after she was almost ready to leave the country admit to the women that she was going to expose him.

“They needed to break away from him,” she said, and it was a difficult moment in their relationship, and in Femen. (In an announcement that got cheers from the opening-night crowd, Inna said that it’s been a year since they’ve had contact with Victor.) Green considered the women she lived with to be friends and family, and her “heart broke” when she would hear Victor yelling at them, and the next morning they were holding signs that said “This is the new feminism.”

The film does a beautiful job of dealing with the complexities and paradoxes of Femen–and really, all of feminism. Ukraine is Not a Brothel highlights the Ukrainian protestors–their lives, their struggles, and their goals–while also shining a light on feminism as a whole. Green’s intimate reporting and the incredible cinematography and editing that makes the film stand out accomplish the goal of respecting, questioning, and empowering these women activists. Green, in examining those fighting against the patriarchy, exposes and dismantles the patriarch who was running the show.

The documentary also quietly examines the difficulties that feminism has with other aspects of its modern identity. Worldwide, prominent feminists are often conventionally attractive (white) women. Third-wave feminism grapples with its relationship with sex work. Women are not widely exposed to or immersed in feminist theory. Women’s bodies are still sexualized, even when we try to use that sexuality in protest. Men still think they have the power, even in progressive movements. And oftentimes they do.

It’s all complicated. And Ukraine is Not a Brothel doesn’t offer solutions–except that the women need to be free from the patriarchal influences that are pushing and abusing them.

Green said, “Victor never thought I was capable of this. I was the young blonde girl who sounded like a child when I spoke Ukrainian. I was not taken seriously, and this gave me power.” She pointed out that women in journalism have a perceived weakness that can give them great power. “I want to keep making films about young women,” she said, hoping that this power can help her tell more stories.

If Ukraine is Not a Brothel is any indication, we can be excited and hopeful for the stories that Kitty Green has yet to discover and tell.

Inna pointed out that in all of the unrest and revolution in Ukraine right now, she gets messages from people there who tell her “You were first!” and credit Femen for being a galvanizing force in Ukrainian protest.

In the same way that Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer purposefully vacillates between humor and intense seriousness, between laughing young women and the same smiling faces screaming and being dragged away by police, Ukraine is Not a Brothel highlights the serious and violent struggle women are fighting against worldwide. These are specific, localized fights that have spread their influence around the world.

Women’s power–especially when they break free from patriarchal forces–is on display in this remarkable documentary. From Green’s intimate storytelling to the protesters’ screams, we are reminded that feminism in all its forms needs to be stripped down and critiqued while we respect and humanize the women putting up the fight and figure out ways to fight with them.

 

 Recommended Reading: Kitty Green on KGB kidnappings and Ukrainian violence, Kitty Green Exclusive Interview, White doesn’t always mean privileged: why Femen’s Ukrainian context matters, Femen’s Topless Sextremists Invade the US

 

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

 

 

 

 

Rape Culture on ‘Downton Abbey’

Continually insisting that rapists can only be unfathomably monstrous Others and virtual strangers who physically brutalize their victims serves to hide who the real rapists are: brothers, sons, fathers, husbands, friends, and colleagues. Anna’s bruises serve to delegitimize the experiences of survivors who don’t bear a physical mark of the absence of their consent. We need a wider representation of the range of survivor experiences when it comes to rape and sexual assault so that we can begin to dismantle rape culture and develop a system that is capable of identifying rapists and that values the stories of survivors.

"Downton Abbey" 2014
Downton Abbey 2014

 

Written by Amanda Rodriguez

Trigger Warning: Rape, Sexual Assault

Spoiler Alert

Building off my recent critique Rape Culture, Trigger Warnings, and Bates Motel, I have a bone to pick with Downton Abbey‘s infamous rape of its beloved character, the lady’s maid Anna Bates (Joanne Froggatt). I’m not alone in my sentiments that Downton Abbey handled the rape scene poorly. However, where most simply question the use of rape as a plot device, I think that showing rape is an important, underrepresented part of the human experience (particularly the female experience), but I question the value of the way in which the show depicted Anna’s rape as well as its aftermath. Not only that, but Anna’s rape was not the first on Downton Abbey (more on that later).

For context, Mr. Green temporarily enters the Downton household as the valet of Lord Gillingham, a guest of the estate. He and Anna immediately have an easy, flirtatious friendship of which Mr. Bates, her husband, is wary because he’s suspicious of the quality of Green’s character. While the household is occupied by an opera performance, Green corners Anna, beats her, and rapes her. Anna keeps it a secret for much of the season due to her fear of what her husband will do in retaliation, and she even lies about the circumstances of the incident once the rape comes to light, claiming it was an anonymous burglar.

Anna pleads with Mrs. Hughes to keep her rape a secret to protect her husband, Mr. Bates
Anna pleads with Mrs. Hughes to keep her rape a secret to protect her husband, Mr. Bates

 

Like my critique of Bates Motel, I feel strongly that Downton Abbey should have included an explicit trigger warning prior to the episode. Though Downton warned that there would be “violent” content, that’s not really illustrative enough to let rape and sexual assault survivors know what they’re in for. Even though friends had warned me that there was a rape in Season 4, I was taken off-guard by the scene. Like with Bates Motel, my PTSD was triggered, and I had to turn off the show. After a couple of weeks, I forced myself to finish the season because I’m a Downton fan, and I really hoped that the writers would develop the aftermath of Anna’s brutalization in an honest way that would add to the conversation about sexual assault and give a voice to the experience of survivors. That said, our culture needs to start showing a bit more sensitivity towards survivors by not casually re-traumatizing us or putting us in danger of being triggered. Even though I’m the most vocal protestor of spoilers, I still say, “Fuck the surprise of drama; give me the choice of whether or not I want to watch triggering media. Give me the choice of peace of mind.”   

Anna, bruised and beaten, after she was raped
Anna, bruised and beaten, after she was raped

 

Anna’s rape is excessively, unrealistically violent. Mr. Green cuts, bruises, and bloodies the face of a highly visible lady’s maid. How does he think she will explain away those bruises? The bruises act as a symbol to the viewer that Anna did not give consent; they are a testament to the truthfulness of her claims, a mark on her body that reflects the horrors that were done to her. Many women don’t have those kinds of marks, but their claims are no less truthful. Anti-rape campaigner Bidisha ShonarKoli Mamata says, “You can’t just insert a scene like this into a cosy drama. You have to treat rape sensitively, rather than use it as a plot device…Instead of focusing on the impact of the violence on Mrs Bates, it repeated basic rape myths, such as the idea rapists are always creepy guys. In fact, they are normal people and are often related to the victim.”

Mr. Green dragging Anna by the hair
Mr. Green dragging Anna by the hair

 

Continually insisting that rapists can only be unfathomably monstrous Others and virtual strangers who physically brutalize their victims serves to hide who the real rapists are: brothers, sons, fathers, husbands, friends, and colleagues. Anna’s bruises serve to delegitimize the experiences of survivors who don’t bear a physical mark of the absence of their consent. We need a wider representation of the range of survivor experiences when it comes to rape and sexual assault so that we can begin to dismantle rape culture and develop a system that is capable of identifying rapists and that values the stories of survivors.

The writers selected Anna to be raped because her character is beyond reproach, and no one would doubt the authenticity of her claims. The Telegraph describes Anna as “a model of respectability, stoicism and goodness.” There still exists the niggling subtext that she was “asking for it” because of her flirtatious relationship with Mr. Green despite Mr. Bates’ spider senses tingling about how Green was a bad dude.

Anna gives Mr. Green a defiant kiss in front of Mr. Bates
Anna gives Mr. Green a defiant kiss in front of Mr. Bates

 

Though Downton Abbey punishes Anna for being flirtatious and for not listening to the wisdom of her husband’s judgement, the show wanted to depict an uncomplicated rape where Green was an outsider and villain while Anna was without a doubt the victim of a heinous crime. Now that, my friends, is lazy storytelling. If Downton Abbey wanted to be true to its time (and our time, for that matter), it would’ve created a scenario in which the the victim was generally not believed and in which the perpetrator was someone she knew and would have to encounter on a regular basis. In the Express article, “Brutal truth behind that shocking Downton rape scene,” Dr. Pamela Cox observes: “A maid who complained of rape displayed knowledge of things she was not supposed to know about and was liable to be thought partly to blame.” It would’ve been better storytelling that reflected more realism if another servant or one of the house’s lords had attacked Anna. Though Green comes back a few times, this is a device solely to torment Anna and ramp up the drama rather than give a realistic depiction of a woman being forced to interact with her rapist on a regular basis, which happened all too often back then and continues to happen all too often now.

Mr. Bates comforts his wife after learning that she was raped
Mr. Bates comforts his wife after learning that she was raped

 

Season 4 of Downton Abbey actually has a couple of character interactions that could have more realistically ended in sexual assault. The relationship between Mrs. Braithwaite and Branson could have been fruitful territory for exploration of themes of rape, victim blaming, and the sheer unlikelihood of false accusations of rape. Branson’s new lord-like status makes it harder for a servant to say “no” to him without facing repercussions. What if Braithwaite changed her mind about her scheming, and a drunken Branson took advantage of her? I thought he behaved disgustingly after the incident, without a sense of his own responsibility in the affair, and he is only “redeemed” because Braithwaite was manipulating him all along. What if she hadn’t been, though? In the end, the fact that she’s a social climber doesn’t make a difference when it comes to consent, but perhaps Downton could have shined a light on its audience’s internalized prejudices and victim-blaming propensities with a nuance-rich storyline.

Braithwaite and Branson
Braithwaite and Branson

 

Another relationship that nearly ends in rape is that of Jimmy and Ivy. He tries to force himself on her at the end of a date, claiming that she owes him for how well he’s treated her and for the things that he’s bought for her. Having Jimmy be a rapist and a relatively well-liked part of the household, whom Ivy would be forced to interact with daily would be a more compelling, realistic scenario than that of Anna’s rape.

Jimmy & Ivy's romance sours when he tries to rape her
Jimmy and Ivy’s romance sours when he tries to rape her

 

The aftermath of Anna’s rape was full of painful truth in the way in which the violation haunts her. In an agonizing, heartbreaking scene, Anna says to Mr. Bates, “I’m spoiled for you, and I can never be unspoiled.” I was, however, disappointed by Bates’ obsession with his own revenge as if Anna is his property and he must exact justice. In fact, the aftermath of the rape is almost entirely about Mr. Bates. Anna seeks to protect him from the knowledge for fear of what he will do. Once he finds out, Bates ignores her wishes and kills Green, ostensibly to avenge his wife’s “honor”, but doesn’t it matter that Anna explicitly asked him to leave it alone? The rape happened to her; she should be the one who decides how she wants to deal with it. Only Season 5 will tell, but it seems like Anna’s distress completely dissipates with Green’s death, which is a ridiculous simplification of the arduous road to recovery from PTSD that Anna must face. If Season 5 does not continue to chart Anna’s struggles with PTSD, Downton will have failed to bring to light an important and timeless point about the psychology of human beings, in particular survivors of traumatic events.

Anna and Bates trying to forget about her rape for an evening
Anna and Bates trying to forget about her rape for an evening

 

Now, earlier I mentioned another rape, and it’s probably been killing you trying to figure out what I’m talking about, which is a problem in and of itself. Mary Crawley’s (Michelle Dockery) “illicit affair” with Mr. Pamuk was also a rape, but it slides under the radar because she’s not violently attacked and she takes responsibility, as many victims do, for what has happened to her. Mary actively and repeatedly denies consent to the man who forces a kiss on her and later steals into her bedroom determined to get what he wants regardless of her protestations.

[youtube_sc url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91PhbrNJDKc”]

 

The rape of Lady Mary is actually a type of rape that I think mainstream media should show more often: a rape in which there is no hitting or screaming, the victim says “no,” and because of her initial attraction to him, feels as if she’s led him on or that it is somehow her fault. Points for Downton then? Um, no. Though Mary is the victim of sexual assault, the show itself doesn’t read her as such. Though the audience is led to recognize the inequality women face and the cruelty inherent in a woman’s single indiscretion perhaps ruining her future and good name, Downton Abbey does not focus on the fact that a man broke into her room and didn’t listen to her when she repeatedly said, “no.” Also, what a missed opportunity to show Mary and Anna share survivor stories and comfort, forming their own healing community together.

Mary is horrified when Mr. Pamuk comes into her room
Mary is horrified when Mr. Pamuk comes into her room

 

Downton Abbey and its writers are guilty of a gross negligence that is all too common. If someone says “no” to sex, then it is rape. Period. There is no nuance when it comes to consent. This is what Hollywood has such a hard time with and why they insist on only showing shockingly violent rapes that virtual strangers perpetrate. Why? Because if we acknowledge that rape occurs within many contexts needing only the criteria that the victim say “no”, how many men would then be rapists? How many women and others would then be survivors of sexual assault or rape? How many people would we have to now believe when they claim they were raped? A shocking number. A staggeringly, shocking number. In the US alone, 1 in 5 women will be raped. Three percent of men will be raped. An estimated 1.3 million women will be raped each year, and 97 percent of rapists will never see the inside of a jail cell. Pretending there’s not a problem doesn’t make the problem go away. Instead, it becomes more ubiquitous and insidious until it’s a pandemic. I don’t want to live in a world where rape is the norm and survivors are liars who were asking for it, and I mean, really, do you? We’ve got a long battle ahead of us, but each of us can start by acknowledging that rape culture exists, accepting that survivors are never asking for it, and believing that survivors are telling the truth.

 

Read also A Gilded Cage: A Feminist Critique of the Downton Abbey Christmas Special

 

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.

‘Looking’: When a Straight Woman is the “Gay Best Friend”

The HBO series ‘Looking,’ which focuses on the lives of gay men (co-created by the gay writer-director Andrew Haigh who made the art-house film ‘Weekend’; two of the main cast members, including the lead, are also out gay men) occupies a ground somewhere in between, in which women do exist, though only in supporting roles–but those roles are cast and, written with an acuity that transcends their brief time onscreen.

DorisDomCouchLooking

Warning: This review contains spoilers for the first seven episodes of the first season of HBO’s Looking.

No matter how much is written about the series Girls, “wives and girlfriends” could be the de facto description of most speaking roles for women on television and in film. Because women are the plus-ones in the script we’re not surprised that their parts, when compared with the male characters have fewer lines, less complexity and less variability–in age, race, body type and conventional attractiveness. The uncomfortable truth is: the only reason women are in these many of these shows and films (besides for decoration, to act as a kind of talking furniture) is to communicate that even though the male characters seem to spend most of their time and emotional energy interacting with each other– and the audience can’t help noticing the homoerotic tension between them–they’re not queer.

So what happens to women’s roles when the main male characters are queer? In some cases, like the excellent recent release Stranger By The Lake, women aren’t in the picture at all–not surprising, since the film takes place in a cruising ground. But the absence of women also reflects the strata of gay men whose social circle is made up almost entirely of other gay men, even outside of sexual situations. In the case of the execrable American version of Queer As Folk the token woman couple were written alternately as villains or annoyances: their erratic behavior providing the flimsiest of excuses to propel the storylines of the male characters.

The HBO series Looking, which focuses on the lives of gay men (co-created by the gay writer-director Andrew Haigh who made the art-house film Weekend; two of the main cast members, including the lead, are also out gay men) occupies a ground somewhere in between, in which women do exist, though only in supporting roles–but those roles are cast and written with an acuity that transcends their brief time onscreen.

DorisDomParkLooking
Dom and Doris

The most prominent example is Doris (Lauren Weedman) who is the best friend, roommate and long ago ex-lover of one of the series main characters, Dom (out gay actor Murray Bartlett). Unlike other fictional f*g hags, Doris isn’t secretly still in love with Dom (as the Meryl Streep character was with the Ed Harris character in The Hours) nor is she a woman so desperately unhappy with her own life that she can’t stop meddling in and monopolizing Dom’s. She has a challenging career as a pediatric nurse, and although she is much less glamorous than most of the other women on television, we see her making out with Dom’s male coworker during Dom’s birthday party (though just once on TV or in a movie I’d like to see the relatively common occurence of a f*g hag going with her friends to the gay bar, picking up a woman there and going on to forge a queer identity of her own). Instead Doris plays the role usually given to “The Gay Best Friend” in a romantic comedy. She has all the best lines and an acid delivery but is also a loyal friend and the voice of reason.

When Dom wants to contact an abusive ex-boyfriend (who was, at one time, also a meth addict but has since become a successful realtor) Doris warns him off doing so, but when Dom sees the guy anyway, tells him she understands why.

Doris asks, “Did you at least ask him for your money back?”

“No,” Dom answers.

Doris then asks “Why not,” and her tone has no anger in it, just a sad compassion that seems to illustrate a long history between the two friends.

In the most recent episode (Episode 7, the penultimate of this season, but the series has just been renewed for a second season, with Weedman becoming a cast regular) we finally got to meet the mother of the main character Patrick Murray (Jonathan Groff). His mother has been something of a bogeyman since the first episode when Dom advised Patrick to stop dating only the men he thought his mother would approve of. Patrick, who designs video games, then pursued and eventually became boyfriends with Richie (Raúl Castillo) a Mexican American barber. With Richie and Patrick’s relationship, Looking is able to touch on some class and race schisms that exist in the gay men’s community–but also beyond–that other series and movies rarely show.

Richie and Patrick spend an idyllic day together
Richie and Patrick spend an idyllic day together

Patrick isn’t a racist exactly (his best friend is  Latino–and also a main character–wanna-be artist, Agustín, played by Frankie J. Alvarez), but, except for most of one idyllic all-day date that takes up the whole of Episode 5 (directed by Haigh, it echoes the structure, if not quite the emotional sweep of Weekend) he can’t seem to stop himself from saying racially and culturally insensitive things to Richie, which nearly prevented he and Richie from getting together in the first place. Patrick’s awkwardness with Richie is a result of his moving in mostly white, affluent (or at least artist-class) circles and shows a reality rarely seen on TV or in movies: that white people, even the ones who say they aren’t racist, often have no idea how to be in interracial relationships–and aren’t very good at learning from their mistakes. The show also captures tensions within the Latino community, when college educated, Miami-raised Cuban American Agustín accuses Patrick of “slumming” with working class, Mexican American Richie.

In Episode 7, Richie was supposed to finally meet Patrick’s mother (Julia Duffy from Newhart) at his sister’s wedding, but after a morning full of disasters: spilled coffee on a dress shirt, a parking ticket, Patrick’s mother’s misplaced phone (which the hotel won’t give to Richie because, he says, “I guess I don’t look like a ‘Murray'”) Richie and Patrick argue, and Richie says he thinks it’s too soon to meet Patrick’s family. So Patrick goes to the wedding alone.

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Patrick and Richie

Making the excuses familiar to those of us who have fought with our partners right before or during major social events (“food poisoning” Patrick says), Patrick meets up with his mother, a persnickety and perpetually dissatisfied woman (she complains about the state of the grass on the grounds of the wedding site) who calls Richie “Richard” and “friend” instead of “boyfriend.”

At the end of the festivities (scenes of cake pops, bad dancing to the B-52s and the groom removing the bride’s garter will elicit groans of recognition among any queer who has felt alienated at a straight wedding) Patrick tells his mother, “You’re the real reason Richie isn’t here,” blaming the argument he had with Richie (ostensibly because Richie suggested Patrick smoke a joint in the car to relax before the wedding) on his mother’s lofty expectations.

But Patrick’s mother herself is munching on a pot-laced Rice Krispie treat (Patrick’s family is from Colorado, where marijuana is legal) and tells Patrick, “I don’t think you can blame me for Richie. If he’s not here, that’s on you, sweetie.” She also tells him that marijuana has helped her since she went off Lexapro, which Patrick had no idea she was taking.”If you asked me how I was doing every now and then,” she counters, “you’d know.” And with just a few lines  (and an expert reading from Duffy) Looking turns an “evil” and “unreasonable” mother character into a sympathetic person with wants and needs of her own. And echoes the experience of so many of us as we strive to become people different from who our mothers see us as. Our mothers change too and become different people from the ones we wanted so badly to distance ourselves from.

With Blue Is The Warmest Color, Concussion, and Stranger By The Lake, this past year has been a great one for queer characters’ stories on the big screen–and Looking has now brought that same depth and quality to the small screen. I can’t wait for Season 2.

[youtube_sc url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_G5Ud5A0NHg&list=UUVTQuK2CaWaTgSsoNkn5AiQ&feature=c4-overview”]

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Ren Jender is a queer writer-performer/producer putting a film together. Her writing has appeared in The Toast, xoJane and the Feminist Wire. You can follow her on Twitter @renjender.

 

Five Films (and TV shows) Where Women All Want To Be Witches

Since paganism revolves around the ideas of female and male deities, with special emphasis placed upon the role of women’s bodies and their natural connection to the earth, its accessible and inspiring.

In the end, most of these films and shows end up being a tangled dichotomy of supernatural darkness and violence, contrasted with very standard aspects of career and love; also, usually a lot of “girl talk” about boys and shoes.

Therefore, it begs the question, do women ask for these shows? Or are they merely consuming what media executives think they want?

Written by Rachel Redfern

A poor example of witches from Famke Janssen in Hansel and gretel
A poor example of witches from Famke Janssen in Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters

With the recent season finale of The Witches of East End, the start-up of The Vampire Diaries, and then a whole slew of 90s rerun watching, the realization came: the occult is overwhelming the province of women. TV shows and films about the supernatural are always marketed to women—it’s one genre in fact where female characters have the lead and outnumber their male counterparts.

For some reason women seem indelibly drawn to representations of the cult, but within the context of wicca and paganism. Either that or they have been marketed as the exclusive province of women. Why is that?

Since paganism revolves around the ideas of female and male deities, with special emphasis placed upon the role of women’s bodies and their natural connection to the earth, its accessible and inspiring.

In the end, most of these films and shows end up being a tangled dichotomy of supernatural darkness and violence, contrasted with very standard aspects of career and love; also, usually a lot of “girl talk” about boys and shoes.

Therefore, it begs the question, do women ask for these shows? Or are they merely consuming what media executives think they want?

Probably both. And that’s not to put down such shows because in reality there’s been some beautiful acting and surprising plotlines and characters: the harried, independent woman, saving the world from evil while also trying to pay her bills and get a decent haircut is apparently an image that resonates deeply for female viewers.

But more than that, these shows of the supernatural aren’t action dramas of heroism, but rather, a discovery and exploration of female growth and power outside of physical strength.

[youtube_sc url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgncLPRLd2E”]

Bewitched (1964-72)

Beautiful Elizabeth Montgomery was a trickster domestic goddess. She was elegant and all-knowing while always in some crazy family shenanigans, but not the ditzy shenanigans of I Dream of Jeannie (which no one is knocking). Bewitched occupied the number two spot in American television and ran for a total of eight season, but its popularity never really died and its been a staple of middle-American reruns ever since. And its longevity is deserved, within Bewitched we find a mysterious and powerful woman, otherworldly even, accessing a magic her adorable, albeit frazzled husband can’t even begin to understand. Within all of that, Montgomery struggled to mold into her suburban housewife role, making her infinitely relatable as well as fascinating.

[youtube_sc url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnA77dF47TI”]

The Witches of Eastwick (1987)

In The Witches of Eastwick, John Updike’s novel of the same name isn’t perhaps done justice with the offbeat, camp of the 80s in this film, despite the efforts of Jack Nicholson, Cher, Susan Sarandon, and Michelle Pfeiffer.

These witches are not sisters, but what they do have is a far more naughty, realistic sort of paganism than the other (slightly goody-goody) witches used. Here, the witches are powerful, but also bitter, petty, lonely, silly, smart, independent, sexy, and seduce-able. Unfortunately, in the film version, the delightfully real woman aren’t aware of their supernatural powers until they basically start sleeping with the devil and have a sexual awakening and a threesome (Hollywood really decided to play around with the original plot).

Either way though, there’s fierceness and female connection, again the standard themes for female self-discovery (albeit couched within desire and lust).

[youtube_sc url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ihb6FLSh64″]

Practical Magic (1998)

The Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman remake of the classic Alice Hoffman novel, Practical Magic, repeated again the overwhelming wiccan theme of sisters, although this time there are three sets of sisters, rather than just two: the wise and ancient aunts, the bickering, bitter adults, and the bickering, hopeful youth. These women are grounded in their very normal, strained, familial relationships and in trying to repair it, but in this version they are also outcasts seeking acceptance from the town’s women.

There’s also a strain of dark violence running through the film, and it is this, a sort of communal fear, and a desire for safety and control, even for power, that brings all of the town’s women together as a supernatural shelter for a battered woman.

[youtube_sc url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_zd2cAcOJg”]

Charmed (1998 – 2006)

Charmed followed the “everyday woman with extraordinary life” formula with great success for an entire eight-season run: three sisters battled the forces evil and transitioned from young 20-somethings to successful 30-somethings. Each sister had her bout with her own dark side and an obligatory date with a demon, but hidden within a pretty fun, entertaining, often silly show, was the story of three women growing up and transitioning into confident, generous women who actually did have it all: career, family, money, good sex and great hair, and magical powers.

Perhaps most notable, aside from the early seasons special effects, was that Charmed really did manage to portray the growing pains of adulthood for women in the 21st century, dealing with job-hunting, career changes, dating, infertility, divorce, marriage, death, all bound together through the ties of family: grandmother, daughter, sisters, motherhood.

[youtube_sc url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjsWC61GnMM”]

Witches of East End (2013 -)

Witches of East End is less of an East Coast Charmed (Charmed took place in San Francisco and had a distinct West-coast vibe) and seems more like a Practical Magic TV show. It features two sets of sisters, the older played by the incomparable Julia Ormond and Madchen Amick, and the younger by Jenna Dewan Tatum and Rachel Boston. The sisters are forever cursed to die young and be constantly reborn to their powerful mother (Ormond) and witness the antics of fun-loving wild, cat transforming aunt (Amick). The show’s plot settles on the witchy powers of the women and the events of their past lives and the men who wander in and out of them; but Witches of East End finds its center in the up-and down relationships of the two sisters, especially Joanna (Ormond) and Wendy (Amick), whose interactions are fantastic.

Because these women live hundreds of year together, their lives completely entwined, Witches of East End highlights the bonds of sisterhood beyond just blood relation.

There are other examples of the female witch story, a substantial portion of which are geared for younger audiences: Sabrina the Teenage Witch, The Craft, The Vampire Diaries, The Secret Circle, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Beautiful Creatures, Wizards of Waverly Place and a whole slew of Disney films (Hocus Pocus must be mentioned here). Overwhelming, the characters are female as are the audiences who watch them; many of these stories were first bestselling novels and series with incredibly active fan bases.

Through so many variations of the powerful female witch arising to power and self-realization, these shows are also showing generally relatable women struggling to balance intense power with their personal lives of love, family and career. It’s a theme that seems to echo the ongoing debate surrounding women; “Can we have it all?”

In these shows, she can, and more.

 

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Rachel is a traveler and teacher who spent the last few years living in Asia. Now back in her native California, she focuses on writing about media, culture, and feminism. While a big fan of campy 80s movies and eccentric sci-fi, she’s become a cable acolyte, spending most of her time watching HBO, AMC, and Showtime. For good stories about lions and bungee jumping, as well as rants about sexism and slow drivers, follow her on Twitter at @RachelRedfern2

Seed & Spark: How to Save Film (and TV)? Women.

In 2012-13, women accounted for 28 percent of creators, executive producers, producers, directors, writers, editors, and directors of photography working on prime-time programs airing on the broadcast networks. This represents an increase of two percentage points from 2011-12 and a recent historical high. On screen, females comprised 43 percent of all speaking characters. This figure is even with the historical high set in 2007-08.

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This is a guest post by Mel Jones.

Last month, the Center For The Study of Women in Television & Film released some dismal numbers:

Women comprised 16 percent of all directors, executive producers, producers, writers, cinematographers, and editors working on the top 250 (domestic) grossing films of 2013. This figure represents a decrease of two percentage points from 2012.

In 2013, women accounted for 6 percent of (U.S.) directors. If foreign films in the top 250 are included, this figure increases to 8 percent. In other roles, women comprised 10 percent of writers, 15 percent of executive producers, 25 percent of producers, 17 percent of editors, and 3 percent of cinematographers.

However, there is always a silver lining: television. Television is producing some of the most innovative and diverse programming out there with bold storytelling, stellar characterizations, and tons of platforms for the audience’s viewing pleasure.

I’m convinced that I’m not the only one who acknowledges that television programming is now superior to most mainstream film. I’ve not done any studies on the topic, but it seems that most water cooler conversation centers on what happened on television the night before, or their Netflix binge weekend.  Culturally we are moving toward gathering around the television to watch the season premiere of our favorite shows as an alternative to a night out at the cinema.  And hell, I’ll venture to say that it’s due to the influence of women in the television industry.  Of course it could be a crazy coincidence but I doubt it.

In 2012-13, women accounted for 28 percent of creators, executive producers, producers, directors, writers, editors, and directors of photography working on prime-time programs airing on the broadcast networks. This represents an increase of two percentage points from 2011-12 and a recent historical high. On screen, females comprised 43 percent of all speaking characters. This figure is even with the historical high set in 2007-08. However, many gender stereotypes remain. Female characters are younger than their male counterparts, and are less likely than males to be seen at work and actually working.

Last fall, The Week featured an excellent article that goes in depth about how women fare better in television (behind and in the scenes) than they do on film.

If you don’t believe that TV is giving film a run for its money, check out Netflix’s Orange Is The New Black.  Coincidentally, the fish-out-of-water show about a middle class white woman finding herself in a female prison was created by a woman. And the ratings are off the charts. This is a prime example of how stories by women about women can have a deep impact.

Orange is the New Black isn’t the only female-led show and we’d be here forever if we went through them all.  It, like all the others, is a shining examples that when woman are included in the creative process behind the scenes, the stories are richer and in my opinion, more sophisticated. They aren’t just told from one point of view. And although this all must be challenging for our male counterparts who haven’t been used to seeing us at the table, I’m sure they do not mind when the big bucks start rolling in.

Of course, film is still very valuable; as a filmmaker, it’s my livelihood. But it’s important to note, that if film is going to find its way back to the number one position in our collective consciousness, women are going to have to be major contributors behind the scenes. So until that happens, be on the look out for independent projects where women are at the helm. Scour your favorite crowd-funding sites like Seed&Spark for those projects that need your support. And in the meantime, when you need a quick fix, you know where to find it.

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Screen Shot 2014-03-03 at 3.16.57 PM

Mel Jones is a passionate independent content producer and storyteller.  She’s a Howard University and AFI Alumn as well as a Film Independent project involve fellow. Mel’s works have been shown on PBS, UK Channel 4, and the US festival circuit. She is the producer of the short film Charlotte, which is currently funding on Seed & Spark. Charlotte is a drama about those moments of childhood that never leave us.

 

 

Recipe for Success: The Surprisingly Charming ‘Hannibal’ Fandom

The ‘Hannibal’ fanbase has taken something potentially very twisted and grotesque, and reshaped it into something charming and cuddly, focused on love and flowers and puppies.

I don’t want my role on this website to be that of some gross White Knight, the dude constantly defending (largely female) fandom as if fans are incapable of standing up for their pretty little lady selves. But I do want to talk about fandom a lot, because the broader culture denigrates fandom in a way that is not, I think, unconnected to the (perceived) female dominance of fandom (*COUGH* MOFFAT *COUGH*), and I truly believe that fandom is a really important space for carving out counterreadings.

LOOK AT THEM. Look at girl!Supernatural and tell me it's not the best thing ever.
LOOK AT THEM. Look at girl!Supernatural and tell me it’s not the best thing ever. Source

I only started watching NBC’s Hannibal because of Bryan Fuller. Fuller created Wonderfalls and Pushing Daisies (and Dead Like Me, which I swear I will watch one day; please don’t let it ruin my credibility that I haven’t gotten to it yet), which are shows that seem tailor-made for me: they are charming and colorful and quirky and witty and delightsome, shows with a supernatural element and a slightly twisted edge and totally rad female characters. Much as I loved Silence of the Lambs when I was an angsty (and deeply closeted trans) teenager, I wasn’t at all sure how well the good Dr. Lecter would lend himself to the Fuller aesthetic, but it’s turned out quite interesting.

The aesthetic is definitely the most striking thing about the show. You’ll see it described in terms like sumptuous, operatic, Lynchian, bombastic. It’s a show that is deliberately dreamlike, blurring the distinction between fantasy and “reality” (where the reality is, of course, itself a fiction), exploring the beauty of horror in a febrile dream of refined grotesquery. It’s not, perhaps, traditionally “girly.”

Well, until the fans get their hands on it. Source
Well, until the fans get their hands on it. Source

The cast is also noticeably more male-dominated than Fuller’s previous shows. Even though IMDb’s cast listing suggests that Beverly Katz (Hettienne Park) and Alana Bloom (Caroline Dhavernas, or as she’ll always be to me, Jaye Tyler) are just as prominent as Hannibal and Will Graham, this is really not the case. Katz and Bloom are both pretty awesome, and the choice to genderflip the book’s Alan Bloom was a very good one, but they are definitely backgrounded in comparison to the main dudes.

I like the show fine, but to be perfectly honest I like the fandom more. The fandom is the thing that’s keeping me engaged. Fuller himself expresses it nicely in this Entertainment Tonight interview:

I was surprised at the demographic that the show was reaching. A significant portion was young, smart, well-read women; they really responded to this show and I typically relate to young, bright ladies [laughs]. It was nice to see how enthusiastic and passionate they were. And, also, happy in the face of the dark material. They found joy and hope in something that is arguably quite bleak. I found that really rewarding and as somebody who is a fan of many things myself, I appreciate and relate to being enthusiastic about a show you love. I think it’s wonderful.

Aw, he looks so much less murdery with flowers on his head! Source
Aw, he looks so much less murdery with flowers on his head! Source

One example of what Fuller’s talking about is the whole flower crown incident of 2013. Last year, for whatever reason (can you fathom the mysteries of memes?), the fandom started photoshopping flower crowns onto pictures of the Hannibal cast. The joke spilled over into real life at Comic-Con, where the show’s cast and crew wore actual flower crowns.

Then, of course, there is the inevitable shipping. Fans love their “Hannigram,” the proposed romantic pairing of Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham. Canonically, the relationship between Lecter and Graham is certainly intense and obsessive, but it’s fair to say that it’s not really sexual. Fuller’s reponse to the shippers is wonderful.

The correct response to, well, all of fandom.
The correct response to, well, all of fandom.

He’s gracious and respectful, recognizing that slash is an important creative outlet for a lot of people, and opening space for it to exist as a kind of paratextual AU with canon’s blessing. Bryan Fuller is the best at having fans.

The Hannibal fanbase has taken something potentially very twisted and grotesque, and reshaped it into something charming and cuddly, focused on love and flowers and puppies. That in itself is very Bryan Fuller, and it’s also something I find very delightful and redemptive. I think the (young, female) Hannibal fans are doing a really cool counterreading that’s extremely needed by our violence- and crime-obsessed culture. Long may it last.

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Max Thornton blogs at Gay Christian Geek, tumbles as trans substantial, and is slowly learning to twitter at @RainicornMax. You can donate to his surgery fundraiser here.