A primary question about social fiction is whether the story remains relevant, or if the sociopolitical situation remains mired in the past. ‘Norma Rae’ does retain relevance, though she’d likely be working in Walmart today instead of a textile mill (as I watched, I wondered how many textile mills still operate in the U.S.). While the movie seems to be a window on a past time in working America, it’s still relevant—and progressive—on many levels.
This repost by Amber Leabappears as part of our theme week on Women and Work/Labor Issues.
Sally Field’s career, honestly, hasn’t meant much to me. Aside from recent Boniva commercials, Forrest Gump, and Steel Magnolias, I haven’t seen much of her work. She’s always struck me as a respectable actress, but not someone I seek out from a personal interest. Not being familiar with her early career, her so-called serious turn in Norma Rae was lost on me. What wasn’t lost, however, was an honest portrayal of a working woman, and a social issue that continues to dog women and men (though women, I suspect, suffer more from lack of unions) everywhere.
A primary question about social fiction is whether the story remains relevant, or if the sociopolitical situation remains mired in the past. Norma Rae does retain relevance, though she’d likely be working in Walmart today instead of a textile mill (as I watched, I wondered how many textile mills still operate in the U.S.). While the movie seems to be a window on a past time in working America, it’s still relevant—and progressive—on many levels.
The plot of Norma Rae is inspired by the real life experience of Crystal Lee (Jordan) Sutton, a woman who worked in a North Carolina mill to unionize its employees, spurred on by an out-of-town organizer, until being fired on a bogus charge of “insubordination.” Norma Rae (played by Field, who won the Best Actress Oscar for the role) lives with her parents in the beginning of the movie, and reunites with an old friend who she marries after a brief courtship. As Norma Rae becomes more involved with union activities, she experiences the usual relationship (romantic, familial, and work) strains, but doesn’t quit until the mill bosses force her out. It’s at this time she makes her famous stand; she refuses to leave, scrawls “UNION” on a piece of cardboard, stands on a table in the middle of a busy factory floor, and stoically remains–in an exhilarating climax to the film–until all her fellow employees shut down their machines and stand with her. She’s arrested and fired in the end, but finishes what she started and believed in.
It’s true that Field gives a standout performance, and the union-organizer Rueben (played by Ron Liebman) isn’t bad either. But what stands out for me in the film–and what makes this, in my opinion, a good piece of feminist muckraking–is the character’s relationship with men. We don’t learn too much about her relationship with other women, but what’s striking about her relationship with men is the lack of romanticism involved. Norma Rae has a couple of kids from a couple of different men–neither of whom are present in their lives–and when she marries Sonny, it’s for entirely pragmatic reasons. He proposes while on a date with both their children present, and makes his case to her that he’s a good man and that their lives might be easier if they lived them together. There’s no grand romance, and it’s refreshing to see marriage represented as the economic institution that it essentially is–particularly in the face of contemporary Hollywood, which just can’t seem to make a movie without a romantic sub-plot geared toward female viewers.
The other–and more prominent–relationship in the movie is between Norma Rae and Rueben. I admit that while watching the movie I waited for romance to blossom between these two characters, but felt great relief when it never happened. We see their relationship go from cautious skepticism to a fully fledged friendship, as Norma Rae becomes dedicated to the union cause. There are few representations of purely intellectual relationships (not to mention asexual friendships) between men and women that come to mind in movies, and though one could certainly argue that there is sexual antagonism underlying their interaction, it’s an emotion that stays below the surface, never consummated–all the way to their farewell handshake at the end of the movie.
Norma Rae isn’t a super mother, nor does she fit the description of a woman we’re typically supposed to look up to. She’s made mistakes in her life and she’ll probably make a few more. She’s not looking to move away from her roots and improve her life based on others’ terms; she doesn’t act out of selfish desire. In other words, she’s a rarity in film: a real woman.
Phoebe and Paige’s evolution through their working lives is particularly poignant to the millennial ‘Charmed’ audience; many people I know grew up watching the three (or is it four?) sisters flitting from job to job in their quest to find purpose and fulfillment. And we don’t even have daily demon attacks to contend with!
Charmed poster
This guest post by Scarlett Harris appears as part of our theme week on Women and Work/Labor Issues.
Despite all the midriff tops and high heels worn while fighting supernatural beings, and despite the damaged household items, buildings and cars which seem to miraculously be fixed by the next episode, if not before, Charmed is a lesson in work/life balance.
Throughout the eight seasons, which culminated in 2006, the Halliwell sisters struggle to balance demon fighting with romance, employment, study, and family.
The Charmed Ones spellcasting
Oldest sister Prue (Shannen Doherty) was killed off at the end of season three but not before she ditched her demon-dwelling auction house job at Buckland’s for freelance photography and bowed out of the dating game to focus on magic. As the head of a household whose mother died young, Prue was a maternal figure to her sisters, always concerned with putting family first, at the detriment to her love life and, ultimately, her actual life.
In “Which Prue Is It, Anyway?” from season one, Prue casts a spell to produce two carbon copies of herself, which carry out tasks such as dealing with her ex-boyfriend and cop on her case, Andy, while another one works on a spell with Piper and Phoebe, and yet another goes to Buckland’s to finish up some work. Talk about being a Superwoman!
Prue, Prue, and more Prue
Piper (played by Holly Marie Combs), who turns out to be the most level-headed and conventionally “normal” of the three sisters, gets fed up with being walked over in her season one job as manager of Quake restaurant and quits to open her own club, P3. She then gets seriously involved with whitelighter Leo, whom she marries in season three, and has two children with him, Wyatt and Chris. They then separate, Piper dates other people, they get back together again… Apart from the anguish of knowing their firstborn, Wyatt, grows up to be evil, Piper’s depiction as a frazzled “working mum” with a supernatural side really is the most realistic of the four Halliwell/Matthews sisters.
Piper becomes a mother
Which brings us to Phoebe (Alyssa Milano), the youngest of the original Charmed Ones until Paige comes along in season four. She enters the show as a free-spirit with a flawed perception of the future, or so we are led to believe by Prue, who’s had her issues with Phoebe in the past. In the first season alone she works as a hotel psychic, Prue’s assistant at Buckland’s and a real estate agent. After she casts a smart spell in “The Painted World” early on in season two, Phoebe decides to expand her knowledge for good and goes back to college. After graduating in season three (I wish I graduated college that quickly!), she goes on to write a successful advice column for The Bay Mirror newspaper, which fellow independent woman Elise edits.
We can’t forget Phoebe’s tumultuous personal life–her intense connection with Cole/Balthazar turn her into the queen of the underworld and the prospective mother of his demon spawn, she moves to China with millionaire boss Jason, becoming an aunty to Wyatt and Chris and, later, a mother to her own kids and taking a sabbatical from the newspaper because she’s feeling disconnected from her work. After Prue’s death, Phoebe takes on her longing for a less magical life which becomes somewhat of a reality for her in passing on the Charmed Ones’ knowledge to rookie witch Billie (a post-8 Simple Rules but pre-Big Bang Theory Kaley Cuoco) and the next generation of Halliwell witches.
Phoebe’s column becomes famous
Half-sister Paige Matthews, played by Rose McGowan, enters Piper and Phoebe’s life as a social worker at the beginning of season four. She is unreceptive to being magical at first, and spends most of the first season trying to maintain a “normal life,” with a job, a boyfriend, and a new family who happens to be supernatural. (She, like Prue, later leaves the paid workforce to focus on witch duties full-time.) Throughout her televised tenure as a Charmed One, Paige dabbles in temp work with a magical twist, becomes a whitelighter and the principal of magic school, then marries and has kids.
Paige joins the family
Phoebe and Paige’s evolution through their working lives is particularly poignant to the millennial Charmed audience; many people I know grew up watching the three (or is it four?) sisters flitting from job to job in their quest to find purpose and fulfillment. And we don’t even have daily demon attacks to contend with! The support of their family is key in allowing the Halliwell’s to shun traditional careers in favor of part-time- and self-employment and working from home, much like Gen Y is able to save for house deposits and overseas gap years while living with their long-suffering parents.
The family that brews together, stays together
After all, that is what Charmed is all about: family—sisters who just happen to be witches, and everything that goes along with both of those roles. While the manifestation of three fully groomed and immaculately dressed sister witches each morning in the Halliwell manor, who spend their days flitting about town vanquishing demons, protecting the innocent, working their day jobs, caring for their family, going on dates, maintaining a home, studying, managing their own businesses, etc., is extremely unrealistic, the sheer magnitude of what the Charmed Ones have to go through each day is somewhat of a metaphor for what working women—especially those with an extended family who all happen to live under the one roof—go through on a day-to-day basis. And sometimes, they manage to take it in stride, just as the Charmed Ones do.
Working-class female protagonists remain rare, however. More often than not, working-class women play supporting roles as mothers, wives or lovers. Their characters are invariably underwritten or stereotypical.
Grey’s Anatomy
This repost by Rachael Johnsonappears as part of our theme week on Women and Work/Labor Issues.
Noam Chomsky recently observed that America is engaged in “a long and continuing class war against working people and the poor.” I would add that American popular culture does not, for the most part, represent poor or working-class American citizens. US television shows and movies about less privileged people are exceptionally rare. This lack of representation is becoming increasingly indefensible in the face of acute–and expanding–economic inequality. It is also a vital feminist issue as women are still poorer than men in the United States. The US government itself released a report in March 2011–the “Women In America” report–showing that a wage and income gender gap between men and women still exists in the 21st century. Poverty rates for less advantaged women are higher because they are in low-paying occupations and because they are often the sole breadwinner in their family. There are stories behind the figures, of course, but they are seldom told on the screen. Clearly, it is time for filmmakers of all backgrounds to address this unjust and frankly absurd lack of representation. The issue should also, of course, be of interest and concern to both critics and consumers of American popular culture.
Monster
Of course, it goes without saying that there are not nearly enough American movies with female protagonists and characters in general. Even less common, however, are features with less advantaged women. An arbitrary list of films with female protagonists and important characters covering the last decade might include Lost in Translation (2003), The Kids are Alright (2010), Black Swan (2010), Under The Tuscan Sun (2003), Up in The Air (2010), Julie and Julia (2009), Secretariat (2010), Eat Pray Love (2009), Bridesmaids (2011), Sex and The City 1 (2008) and 2 (2010), The Devil Wears Prada (2006), The Holiday (2006), Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008) Fair Game (2010), Young Adult (2011), Zero Dark Thirty (2012), Stoker (2013), Side Effects (2013) and Gravity (2013). Clearly, all these movies are about professional and/or privileged women.
The heroines of contemporary American television are, also, for the most part, professional, upper-middle or upper-class women. Over the past decade, there have been a fair number of US TV shows revolving around the lives and careers of doctors, surgeons, medical examiners and lawyers. Damages, Gray’s Anatomy,The Mindy Project, Body of Proof, Bones, Private Practice and The Good Wife are among them. Currently, there are also shows depicting the lives of women who work for, or have a history with the US government, such as Veep, Parks and Recreation, Homeland and Scandal. The heroines of 30 Rock and Nashville work in the entertainment industry. It was a similar scene, of course, in the late 90s and early part of the Millenium when shows like Sex and the City and Desperate Housewives enjoyed mass popularity.
My point is not to knock the shows and movies cited. Some are interesting, stylish and entertaining, and a number have compelling female protagonists. It is, also, of course, essential that we see female characters make their own way in professions traditionally monopolized by men. They reflect social change as well as inspire. It is equally essential that women of power are portrayed on the big and small screen with greater frequency as well as with a greater degree of complexity. American films and television programs should not, however, block out the lives of working-class and poor women. So many stories, struggles, journeys and adventures, remain unacknowledged and untold. It is a strange and troubling thought that contemporary American audiences are simply unaccustomed to seeing interesting, strong and resourceful working-class women. Whether ordinary or extraordinary, working-class women of all races and backgrounds, need greater representation.
Silkwood
I am, of course, aware that the term “working class” is rarely used in American public discourse. The term “middle class” is, in fact, used to refer to average Americans. The definition of “middle class” is, in fact, quite a fuzzy one but that does not stop US politicians from using it. For many non-Americans, this is a curious thing. Although the US definition of “middle class” is bound up with the meritocratic ideals of the American Dream, it ultimately represents a denial that class itself exists. To quote Chomsky again, it is a deeply political tactic used to mask social division and economic inequality: “We don’t use the term ‘working class’ here because it’s a taboo term. You’re supposed to say ‘middle class,’ because it helps diminish the understanding that there’s a class war going on.” This article specifically refers to the lack of representation of working-class and poor women on the screen. I am talking about the lives of waitresses, factory workers, maids, cleaners, cashiers, childcare workers, married home-makers and single mothers as well as those on the margins of society.
I am also fully aware of the eternally repeated claim that American audiences do not like TV shows or movies about poverty and working-class life because they find them just too damn depressing. Let’s take a look at that claim. Firstly, we have to ask ourselves who’s making it. To be blunt, it smacks of privilege and complacency. Who’s the American audience in question anyway? Advantaged viewers? And what about working-class audiences? Do they not want to see their lives represented on the screen? Surely American popular culture should not merely provide narcissistic identification for the comfortable and well-heeled. Behind the contention lies the implication, of course, that working-class life is invariably depressing. This is patronizing and, frankly, offensive. Although poverty should never be romanticized, both American television and cinema should recognize that humor, love, and culture are all part of life for less privileged people. The fact that I have to even make this ridiculously obvious point is an indication of the way millions of people been obscured from the national narrative of the United States. The powers that be–and their pundits–should also, in any case, not make assumptions about what movie or show will be a great critical or commercial success. Nor should they patronize contemporary American audiences about what they can or cannot handle. Many of the best-loved shows of the Golden Age of TV have featured unsanitized, hard-hitting scenes showing human life in all its ugliness and glory. Can’t poverty be processed by TV audiences? Will class always be unmentionable?
The Good Wife
We also have to ask if there is strong historical evidence to back up the claim. A quick study of American films and television shows over the last 40 years or so shows that working-class female characters have, from time to time, actually been celebrated in popular culture. Roseanne is, of course, the most famous small screen example. Featuring a fully realised working-class female protagonist, the hugely popular, award-winning sitcom ran from 1988 to 1997. Roseanne was, in fact, exceptional in that it gave the world a ground-breaking TV heroine as well as a funny and compassionate portrait of an ordinary, loving blue-collar American family. Memorably played by Roseanne Barr, the matriarch of the show had warmth and wit as well as great strength and character. She was that most uncommon of creatures on US television: a working-class feminist. I’m sure I’m not alone in saying that America and the world needs the wise-cracking words of characters like Roseanne more than ever. A cultural heroine is currently badly needed today to deflate the criminal excesses of corporate masculinity.
2 Broke Girls
In the 70s and 80s, there were even films about heroic female labor activists. Take Norma Rae (1979) and Silkwood (1983). Drawing on the real life experiences of advocate Crystal Lee Sutton, Norma Rae (1979) tells the tale of a North Carolina woman’s struggle to improve working conditions in her textile factory and unionize her co-workers. Silkwood (1983) chronicles worker and advocate Karen Silkwood’s quest to expose hazardous conditions at a nuclear plant in Oklahoma. Both films feature well-drawn, dynamic, complex female protagonists, vital, persuasive performances and compelling story lines. Meryl Streep is customarily exceptional as Karen Silkwood while Sally Field won a Best Actress Oscar for Norma Rae. The latter’s “UNION” sign is, in fact, the stuff of cinema history. Although these narratives center around the individual–in a classically American fashion–they are, nevertheless, about women who are fighting for others. There have been other female labor organizers in American history, of course. Why are filmmakers not interested in their extraordinary careers? Why can’t there be biopics about women like Dolores Huerta? And tell me this: Why is no one interested in the pioneering life of Lucy Parsons?
Wendy and Lucy
A few mainstream films have endeavored to expose brutal maltreatment of working-class women in American society. Based on a true story, The Accused (1988) is about the gang rape of Sarah Tobias (superbly played by Jodie Foster), a waitress who lives in a trailer home with her drug dealer boyfriend. Jonathan Kaplan’s drama is actually quite unusual for an American film in that it acknowledges the factor of class in the victimization of its female protagonist. For the “college boy” rapist in particular, Sarah is nothing more than “white trash.”
Have there been more historically recent exceptions to the bourgeois rule? Over the last decade or so, there have been a small number of films that have featured disadvantaged female protagonists. Patty Jenkins’ Monster (2003) is a striking example. Monster is based on the real-life story of Aileen Wuornos, a street prostitute and killer of seven men in Florida in the late 80s and early 90s. Unusually, sexuality, gender, and class intersect in the film. A sex worker in a relationship with a young lesbian woman, Wuornos defied the gender and sexual norms of her time and place. Money–the lack of it–is also seen to play a pivotal part in her fate. Jenkins paints Wuornos as an unstable, brutalized woman wounded by past abuses. Monster is a controversial film. Some argued that provided a too sympathetic interpretation of the convicted killer. Was Wuornos an unbalanced, victimized woman or simply a cold-blooded psychopath? What is clear is that Monster tries to contextualize violence. Not many American filmmakers dare to seriously address the social and psychological effects of poverty and abuse in their portraits of murderers. Channeling the fractured psyche of this most marginalized of women, Charlize Theron’s Oscar-winning incarnation as Wuornos is, simply, a tour de force. Why Monster was not nominated for Best Film or Best Director tells us a great deal about misogyny and classism inside the Academy.
Norma Rae
Clint Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby (2004) is another well-known film also about a less-advantaged woman. It is the story of Maggie Fitzgerald (played by Hillary Swank in another Oscar-winning role), a waitress who wants to be a boxer. While its portrait of the movingly dogged and committed Maggie is greatly sympathetic, that of her family–including her mother–is deeply offensive. They are characterized as “white trash” welfare parasites. Maggie is depicted as a very different, noble creature who must cut loose from her nasty roots and class. In Million Dollar Baby, we have, in fact, a well-drawn, sympathetic female character of modest origins as well as an ideologically loaded, hateful take on working-class men and women. Maggie is a working-class girl who has been emptied of all class-consciousness. Audiences and critics alike always need, therefore, to ask themselves how less-privileged women are being portrayed on the screen and how class is being represented. They should call out discriminatory portraits.
More recently, there have been movies about less-advantaged women but they remain uncommon. Debra Granik’s Winter’s Bone (2010) is a critically successful case in point. Set in a crime-scarred community in the rural Ozarks, Winter’s Bone is the story of Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence), a 17-year-old girl struggling to save her family home. Ree’s missing father, a local meth cooker, has put the family property up for his bail bond and she must find him or risk losing everything. Granik provides the viewer with a sympathetic portrait of a determined yet disadvantaged young woman at risk. Winter’s Bone never, however, drowns in sentiment. The scene where Ree surrenders her horse–she can no longer afford to keep it–is portrayed in poignant yet understated fashion. Winter’s Bone contains intimate scenes of quiet power. We watch Ree teach her younger siblings to prepare deer stew and to shoot and skin a squirrel. This is a world you rarely see in Hollywood movies. Winter’s Bone has its flaws, all the same. The skies are perpetually grey and there is an improbable lack of humor in the community portrayed. More importantly, while it depicts hardship and shines a light on rural social problems, Winter’s Bone cannot really be said to critique class or structural inequities. Its narrative is typically or mythically American. Granik’s heroine is engaged in a personal rather than collective struggle. In the end, Winter’s Bone is a tale of a tough, sympathetic individual fighting for her family’s financial security.
Roseanne
There are other filmmakers who are interested in the lives of struggling and dispossessed women. Kelly Reichardt’s Wendy and Lucy (2008) is a deeply humane story about a young woman’s search for work in the American North West. It is a simple tale that provides the viewer with a little understanding of what life is like for a girl (Michelle Williams) who sleeps in a car, with only her beloved dog for company. Its sensitive observations and empathetic insights, in fact, make Wendy and Lucy quite invaluable. Released the same year, Courtney Hunt’s excellent crime drama Frozen River is about a store clerk who becomes a people smuggler. Its central character (terrifically played by Melissa Leo) is a strong woman who has chosen to take a criminal path to support her sons and save her home.
Working-class female protagonists remain rare, however. More often than not, working-class women play supporting roles as mothers, wives or lovers. Their characters are invariably underwritten or stereotypical. A case in point is the character of Romina (Eva Mendes), a diner waitress and lover of the male protagonist in Derek Cianfrance’s tragic though self-indulgent sins-of-the-fathers epic, The Place Beyond the Pines (2013). The purpose of Romina, it seems, is to wear a pained expression and bear witness to reactionary patriarchal sentiment. Again, we need to respond to representations of working-class women critically.
While sexual abuse and domestic violence is a fact of life for women and girls across the socio-economic spectrum, it is, arguably, more common for working-class female characters to be portrayed as victims on the screen. I am not, of course, saying that filmmakers should not shine a light on the suffering of poorer victims of abuse. What I am suggesting is that the imbalance locks less privileged women and girls into the victim or martyr role in cultural representations. As powerful a depiction of abuse Precious (2009) is, it arguably perpetuates deeply offensive classist and racist stereotypes.
Winter’s Bone
Less privileged women are perhaps even more poorly represented on the small screen. Some may suggest that the question of money, or the lack of it, is being addressed in shows such as Girls and 2 Broke Girls. The former, of course, revolves around the personal struggles and adventures of a 20-something woman finding her way in New York. The comedy-drama, however, does not explore what it’s really like to be without money in a big city and its characters are not, of course, working-class girls with few options and no cushion. The comedy 2 Broke Girls does have a working-class protagonist. Yet while it is about women who have two jobs, and while its humor is, in part, directed at privilege, it cannot be accused of being a great satirical comedy about economic inequities. It is, in fact, both classist and racist in its humor. Are there, in fact, any contemporary US comedies that truly target economic inequality? Are there any US dramas that express anger at class divisions? What is, unfortunately, apparent is that the current Golden Age of American television does not have authentic working-class heroines.
Clearly, there needs to be a much greater representation of working-class and poor women in US popular culture. How can the lives of millions of American citizens be reflected so rarely on the screen? There should also be socially aware portraits of such women. Filmmakers should respond to the outrage of millions and confront economic inequality. They should, also, not be frightened of being political. Economic inequalities should not remain unanalyzed and unchallenged. Hardship should not be hidden but movies and TV shows that represent working-class life should capture both its joys and struggles. Working-class women need not be portrayed as angels or martyrs. Vivid, complex characters are needed. Filmmakers need to remind themselves that there have been great working-class heroines in American film and television. More stories are needed about less privileged women who work to change the lives of themselves and others. Writers and directors should portray the lives of politically active working-class women as well as the careers of great social activists. They are the stuff of great drama. The huge popularity of Roseanne illustrates that Americans have been more than willing to embrace shows about working-class life. Roseanne also showed that the lives of working-class women can be depicted with both heart and humor. Imagine, if you will, a satirical sitcom set in a Walmart-like store. If braver choices were made, and if braver filmmakers were given greater attention, a working-class feminist consciousness would be given a voice in American popular culture.
The monogamous, heteronormative, patriarchal narrative is strongly entrenched in our culture. Women, in particular, are taught to seek out one person, their “soulmate.” We’re told that only that one person will make us happy and whole, and that only that person should fuck us (after we’re married, of course) for ever and ever. This is the Romantic Myth, and it kills.
The recently released dramatic fantasy, Winter’s Tale (based on the 1983 novel of the same name by Mark Helprin), was adapted for the screen and directed by Avika Goldsman. It features Colin Farrell and Jessica Brown Findlay as star-crossed (haha) lovers, and Goldsman-regulars Russell Crowe and Will Smith as the heavies.
Farrell is Peter Lake, an orphan thief who lives in the rafters above New York’s Grand Central Station circa 1916. While escaping crime boss Pearly Soames (played here by an over-inflated Russell Crowe) on a magical, metaphysical, metaphorical white horse, Lake comes across an Upper West Side mansion that’s just too juicy to pass up. Inside, he surprises the lone occupant, Beverly Penn (Findlay), an heiress to the Penn newspaper fortune and victim of tuberculosis (they call it “fever” because this is a period piece, dammit!). Beverly, by the way, plays the piano very enthusiastically, can see that “everything is connected by light,” and stoically comments, “You never think you’re as old as you’re ever going to be.” Because so many loving, lasting relationships begin with home invasion, Beverly asks Peter to stay for tea. We learn that she was born in England, which conveniently explains why she has such an awful English accent when all of her kin speak ‘Murican.
Stranger with a gun? Serve ’em some tea!
Tea time with the armed robber goes well because love-at-first-sight, so Beverly invites Peter to join her upstate at the family castle. We then get some other rom-com standards: never-been-kissed, what-are-your-intentions-with-my-daughter?, ruffian-in-a-tuxedo, last-dance, and magic-mechanic.
Meanwhile, Pearly goes to visit Will Smith, who is currently being stored in a dark room under a bridge (really, a good place for him). Mr. Smith is Lucifer, of course, and Pearly (superpower: glowering) is one of his demons (or a human who became a demon, or a human-demon hybrid, who knows?). Pearly wants to kill Beverly because of love and miracles, or something. Unfortunately, the devil is a stickler for the rules, and since the northlands are out of Pearly’s jurisdiction, no dice. Being a demon, Pearly goes behind the Devil’s back (lack-of-omniscience slam!) and calls in a favor from an angel (Pearly really has more depth than I’m giving him credit for; he enjoys finger painting with blood, and really wants a pair of shiny angel wings, aww).
Pearly deploys the Standard Female Incapacitation Attack.
So Beverly is poisoned (by light, naturally) from afar by Pearly, and expires after some now-or-never sex (kind of a lot of O face for a PG-13 movie. MPAA, won’t you please think of the children?). Peter tries to save her with his miracle, True-Love’s-Kiss, but to no avail. Apparently, Beverly had all the magic, because Peter gets bridged by Pearly and goes on to spend the next 100 years (Bev’s miracle) making street art and growing a beard.
Colin Farrell as Jared Leto as Peter Lake.
With a little help from a ~***magical negro***~, Peter regains the memories he lost when Russell Crowe Brooklyn accent-ed at him. He then uses his holy lips to save the life of the Abby (Ripley Sobo), the Littlest Cancer Patient. After he defeats Pearly in the Final Battle, he rides off into the sunset to be reunited with Beverly (now a flaming ball of gas).
From the snark, you can probably tell that this movie was a big glob of romantic fantasy cliches and pseudo-spiritual ridiculousness propelled by Mammon and held together by Warner Bros.’ hubris. Unfortunate, but sadly, not unexpected. However, I do take issue with the film’s central conceit. As we are told over and over – by children, demons, and Findlay’s narration – each one of us has a miracle, and we can only give it to our One True Love.
Clean-shaven, white horse, evening wear.
The monogamous, heteronormative, patriarchal narrative is strongly entrenched in our culture. Women, in particular, are taught to seek out one person, their “soulmate.” We’re told that only that one person will make us happy and whole, and that only that person should fuck us (after we’re married, of course) for ever and ever. This is the Romantic Myth, and it kills. It fails to recognize the reality that people fall in and out of love, or that people are fully capable of loving more than one person, sequentially or concurrently. By reinforcing this destructive myth, movies like Winter’s Tale perpetuate slut-shaming, self-hatred, and discrimination against divorcees and polyamorous people.
Strong female characters? None. Yes, the film passes the Bechdel Test, if you count discussions about starlight and cooking. But please, don’t waste your time, and please, please don’t take your child to see it.
Andé Morgan lives in Tucson, Arizona, where they write about culture, race, politics, and LGBTQ issues. Follow them @andemorgan.
At 22, recent Syracuse grad Amy Anderson is sure she is already a great poet, like her hero, Sylvia Plath, the voice of her generation even. She’s going to be discovered any day now and everyone will realize, as an ‘artiste’ she shouldn’t need to worry about getting a job or paying rent or paying car insurance. She is sure the creation of her art should transcend all responsibility.
When success doesn’t immediately find her, she complains ad nauseam, that she did everything right: getting good grades, staying true to her art and refusing to get distracted by trivial things like parties and guys, so she deserves it more than anyone else. She doesn’t just want to be a successful famous poet (her father jokes that she will one day win a Pulitzer) but to be a wunderkind, a success before 23.
Adult World film poster
At 22, recent Syracuse grad Amy Anderson is sure she is already a great poet, like her hero, Sylvia Plath–the voice of her generation even. She’s going to be discovered any day now and everyone will realize, as an “artiste” she shouldn’t need to worry about getting a job or paying rent or paying car insurance. She is sure the creation of her art should transcend all responsibility.
When success doesn’t immediately find her, she complains ad nauseam that she did everything right: getting good grades, staying true to her art, and refusing to get distracted by trivial things like parties and guys, so she deserves it more than anyone else. She doesn’t just want to be a successful famous poet (her father jokes that she will one day win a Pulitzer) but to be a wunderkind, a success before 23.
Of course, where Amy really lives and dreams all her grandiose dreams, a bubble of middle class ennui, stacked accomplishment and precociousness, is far from the real world and it’s the real world she finds herself inadvertently tumbling into as she struggles to keep her head above water post-graduation.
Adult World, named after the mom-and-pop adult video store where Amy (Emma Roberts) finds herself underemployed, follows Amy as she stalks her “favorite living poet” Rat Billings (John Cusack), a morose, misanthropic literary superstar, and attempts to force him into being her mentor. Directed by Scott Coffey and written by Andy Cochran, the film treads similar territory to recent disappointed-artist-post-graduation stories like Tiny Furniture and Frances Ha, but delves further into the realm of character study, pulling no punches in its portrayal of a self-absorbed character’s slow, belabored entry into adulthood.
With her hero, Sylvia Plath, looking over her shoulder, Amy contemplates suicide
Amy is a corollary to the kind of self-absorbed man-child character on which entire film genres are built. As a character she’s fairly unique, to the best of my knowledge, her only real kin is the similarly entitled and egotistical Hannah Horvath of Girls, and it’s both refreshing to watch her and depressing to be able to relate.
Similarly to how Hannah’s parents cutting her off provided the impetus for Girls, Amy’s father’s admission that he has serious financial worries and cannot continue to bankroll her lifestyle kickstarts her journey. Poetry, like other arts, is a vocation easily available only to the very wealthy and Adult World positions Amy at the difficult intersection of middle class reality and leisure class values. Unemployed and living in her parents’ house at the film’s start, Amy has $90,000 in student loans, frequently spends thousands on submission fees for poetry contests, and compares riding the bus to going through a war zone. She cancels her car insurance (with a poem), sure that paying submission fees is important in the grand scheme of things.
With her wall of blue ribbons, Amy is clearly not used to failure
Throughout the film it becomes clear Amy expects that being a successful poet will allow her to opt out of all the parts of life she considers tedious and believes anything she has to do in the meantime, such as working at Adult World, is worthy of contempt. She embarrasses and runs off customers by criticizing their sexual interests and in one incidence where she is zoned out, allows a man to steal several things and run off. Her belief that she will be famous one day soon is so pervasive that she believes they are lucky to be graced with her presence and that at the end of the day, she doesn’t really need the job anyway.
Early in the film, Amy visits her college friend, Candace, who is participating in an Occupy protest, but declines either joining in or paying any attention to their message. Though presented as an anarchist and activist, Candace, like Amy, has a supreme sense of entitlement, announcing that the only house in Amy’s price range is a shithole and with a hint of glee, that her parents would be horrified if she lived there. Amy’s response, saying to the landlord, “We’re bohemians,” suggests an attempt at romanticizing poverty.
Both girls are sheltered to a level that is cringe-inducing, something that is shown most clearly through the character of Rubia, a transvestite Amy meets at Adult World, the most exotic figure sheltered Amy can imagine. When she first encounters her in the bathroom, Amy gawks and runs out to tell the other people in the shop, like she just saw a unicorn. Later, Candace complains that as they are not children, but not yet adults, they are an oppressed minority and the camera cuts to Rubia, a real member of an oppressed minority, rolling her eyes (her default mode with Amy).
Amy’s difficult relationship with Rat Billings keeps her from being a cartoon character or drawing the audience’s hatred
As Amy’s reluctant mentor, Rat Billings is jaded and sarcastic, constantly putting her down. Under the belief that he will promote her to the right people and praise her brilliance, she works as his unpaid assistant, cleaning his house, curating his papers and assisting him in his lectures. Though Amy believes this is perfectly normal because “he doesn’t believe in money,” it’s clear to the audience that he’s taking advantage of her.
In her interactions with Rat, a sympathetic dimension of Amy’s character emerges.
She’s a young ambitious woman whose idol turns out to be a jerk but she can’t see it, who believes he has to be impressed just like all her teachers were, who believes him when he sarcastically calls her is muse. It’s incredibly refreshing to have a female character who isn’t a shrinking violet, who stalks her idol to get him to look at her art and without shame or the back stepping that most women are raised to do (“I think it’s pretty good” or “People have told me I’m good”) speaks without a qualifier, insisting “I’m good.” When Candace tells her she is getting published in Anarchist Quarterly, the first time she’s ever submitted writing anywhere, Amy goes off into her room, closes the door and screams.
Throughout the film, Amy’s lack of sexual experience is glaringly apparent. In the first scene, she develops feelings for a boy in her poetry class because he compliments her poems and when she discovers he had friends hiding in the closet filming their make-out session, he knows her well enough to try to use art as an excuse. When she first enters Adult World after seeing the Help Wanted sign, unaware of what the store is, she is scared and embarrassed. Recoiling from a vibrator as if she expects it to attack her, she runs back to her car and sits there for several minutes, shivering as if trying to get the filth off of her.
Job hunter Amy runs from Adult World just as she runs from adult responsibility
Amy uses feminism as an excuse for her discomfort and within the narrative; her views that the videos are sexist and models are being objectified are connected to insecurity over being a virgin, rather than true conviction. She is uncomfortable with people who are secure in their sexuality, looking down on Le Passion magazine’s cover model because her breasts are biggest than Amy’s head, and compensates by placing herself above them, superior as an artist. Holding this view is convenient for Amy as it allows her to dismiss a suggestion by her coworker, Alex (Evan Peters), that she write erotica based on her sexual experiences for the magazine, saying it is a bad idea because she feel anything sexualized is anathema to art not because she doesn’t have any experiences.
To this end, Amy assumes a serious mentorship involves a sexual relationship and one night, Rubia gives her a makeover so she can go seduce Rat. Dressed “like a prostitute,” Amy’s idea of seduction involves, speaking in 40s movie dialogue and tossing her head like cat, preening, while Rat sits watching her like a zoo animal. Here she becomes truly pathetic in his and the film’s eyes, admitting her virginity to him and describing sex in laughable poetry metaphors, a budding delicate flower and a grand voyage, in a stark contrast to the seedy sexuality sold in the store where she works.
Rat does not take her seriously when she insists she is a woman not a child. It’s difficult to watch her throw herself at him, a grown man moaning over his second-hand embarrassment for her and alternately patronizing and laughing at her.
In the film’s most disturbing scene, Amy begs Rat to “deflower her”
At this stage in her life, Amy is young enough that her life is still marked by what she hasn’t done. Even as a poet who idolizes Sylvia Plath, Amy does not understand depression, putting it on as a theatrical costume meant to inspire poems, before quickly shedding it to eat a grilled cheese sandwich brought to her by her mother. As such, she constantly measures herself against artists she admires, antagonizing that Rat became famous so much younger than she is now, and in the darkly comic opening scene, sticks her head in the oven and then wonders if this is suicidal plagiarism. Immediately after announcing that she doesn’t do drugs, she does pot because Rubia suggests it is something a poet would do.
Having not had any real pain in her life, nor love or anything exciting or dangerous, it is unclear what Amy has to write about. She is shocked when Rat tells her he made up his poems about heroin when he didn’t use it, feeling that one should only write about what they know. Rat’s admission ultimately leads her to try her hand at writing erotica, a place where her speculative purple prose makes her a mild success.
It’s uncomfortable how the movie surrounds clueless Amy with three men–Rat, Alex and her father–who always know better than her and constantly call her out on her naiveté. Viewers are clearly meant to see Amy as a satirical character and not take her seriously, sharing Rat’s view of her as a silly little girl following him around. When they are trading off quotes and he ends off without attribution, “You’re dumb but you’re not stupid,” she stands there silently for a beat, mulling it over, trying to find something flattering in it. It’s unclear whether we meant to laugh at her submissiveness or feel pity for her as she is being taken advantage of?
Still a child in many ways, Amy throws a temper tantrum after learning of Rat’s deception
She is overjoyed when he accepts her poem into an anthology mostly out of pity, not realizing that he never said he liked it or thought it was good, just that it was uniquely her. The pinnacle of Rat’s cruelty occurs when he reveals that the anthology he published her in is of “hilariously awful” poetry meant for reading on the toilet. Amy’s response, a temper tantrum wherein she breaks his things and screams about how special she is, proves only that she is even less mature than he thought.
Alex, Amy’s love interest, also gets a moment to criticize her work, yelling at her for thinking she’s better than the store, a place where good people work hard to support themselves.
Visiting Alex’s house, she learns he is a talented painter, but unlike her, is also an adult. He works a day job and makes the most of it, he never brags about being an artist, and he doesn’t see fame as his ultimate goal. He sees the purity of art, in making things for yourself, not to share with other people, something Amy realizes, shocked, that she has never experienced.
It’s a little unsettling for the film’s female lead to be contrasted with a man, a love interest, who is presented as superior to her in every way. Amy’s entire identity, as a talented artist, though it was probably inaccurate, is taken from her by these men in her life and she is utterly shattered by them.
Alex and Amy take a quiet moment while working at Adult World to feed their mutual attraction
However, regardless of who delivered these lessons, they were ones Amy needed to be a complete person and an adult. Rat turns out to be the kind of mentor she needed, as he makes her a better writer and gives her a harsh, but necessary wake-up call. She isn’t a bad poet, but she isn’t a good one either, to be anything she needs to go out into the world and experience it.
Alex, though unsettling as both her new role model and first sexual partner, teaches her to be responsible and accept the life she is living now as real life, not just something she’s doing to kill time while waiting to become famous.
Though it was men that taught her these crucial lessons about herself, the film succeeds by presenting the ultimate proof of Amy’s growth as self directed. She doesn’t become an adult by losing her virginity, getting a job, or by getting published, but by reading her shit poem and being able to laugh at it, already so much more grown up that she wonders how she could have ever been so naive. In the last shot, she is an adult reading words she wrote so recently as a child.
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.
But this to me is the part we should pay attention to. When we don’t get to be headstrong, sexy scientists with daddy issues, we’re locked away. Because evidently we’re worth a lot, which while flattering, also insinuates that we are prizes that can be traded, bought, or stolen. In any film of the above mentioned genres, it’s safe to assume that at some point, the concerned wife, sexy girlfriend, or charming daughter will be kidnapped. When the body is used as a bargaining chip, the images that flood our minds are women tied to chairs, kidnappers holding phones to our crying faces, and makeshifts rag gags in our mouths.
As much as I would love to have Liam Neeson running around after me all day, I’d rather it not be because I had been abducted and stuck tied to a chair. But this seems to be one of the only ways that we get to see women on screen in today’s high stakes thrillers. In my last post, I talked about the use of rape in storytelling and its commonplace usage as a catalyst in stories. Today, I wanted to shed some light on the use of kidnapping the female body for the purpose of narrative drive.
Women have limited opportunities on screen; we all know this to be true and there are a number of reasons that this is the case. But looking beyond that fact, I think it’s important to examine the effects of these images. I don’t deny that I love fast-cutting action films. But when thinking back to a significant number of action, thriller, and psychological films, it’s challenging to think of some that don’t include the taking of a female body.
Take Blake Lively in Savages, or Penelope Cruz in The Counselor, or Maggie Gyllenhaal in The Dark Knight, or Kristen Rudrud in Fargo, or Maggie Grace in Taken.
Penelope Cruz being stalked in The Counselor
Each of these films and many, many more, use the kidnapping of a female character, of the female body, to raise the stakes. It appears we’re worth something valuable to the story. But as pieces, not players.
Blake Lively in Savages
What’s concerning with these roles is that they perpetuate the quiet and commonplace commodification of a woman’s body, and it’s become the main function of our characters on the screen. This technique of taking someone hostage has been employed in well done ways before. Looking back to The Searchers, Natalie Woods’ abduction by the Comanches still plays on classic weaker female characters, while actually bringing about the space in the film for in depth character reveals and an odyssey that exposes many people over the course of 120 minutes. In films like The Dark Knight, it feels excusable to play on classic comic book themes of revenge, taking a female character hostage, and having some heroic and uniquely strong man come to save her. It’s a model Disney employs in many of its cartoons as well.
But this to me is the part we should pay attention to. When we don’t get to be headstrong, sexy scientists with daddy issues, we’re locked away. Because evidently we’re worth a lot, which while flattering, also insinuates that we are prizes that can be traded, bought, or stolen. In any film of the above mentioned genres, it’s safe to assume that at some point, the concerned wife, sexy girlfriend, or charming daughter will be kidnapped. When the body is used as a bargaining chip, the images that flood our minds are women tied to chairs, kidnappers holding phones to our crying faces, and makeshifts rag gags in our mouths. It seems strange that Jason Bourne and Ethan Hunt can work their way out of any god-given scenario but women, even the smart ones we encounter in films, can’t seem to stay out of trouble.
The problem is that this storytelling device has been overdone and like violence, is now often used as a lazy attempt to raise the stakes and create tension. Everyone who loves anyone knows that losing that person would drive them mad. But does it always have to be the woman?
David Foster Wallace, in his heartbreaking series of shorts in Oblivion, describes all human beings as being comprised of an infinite number of eternities. It’s one of my favorite ways to understand people now. And so I ask, if that’s the case, if we’re all made up of an infinite matrix of capable emotions and therefore reactions, why has film, an art that encompasses so many senses, boiled itself down to simplistic storytelling where the best way to ignite anger or the want of revenge in someone is to “take” his woman?
Kim (Maggie Grace) hiding from her abductors in Taken
Let’s take a look at a few more contemporary films to illustrate this point, starting with Taken, and of course its sequels. Round one of Taken dishes up a nice storyline of a young American woman who travels abroad with her best friend, makes one ill-advised move and spends the rest of the film being sold into sex slavery. Meanwhile, her father, who thank god is Liam Neeson and has a very special set of skills (that he’s allowed to have, as male protagonists are), comes to save her. In Taken 2, shock me, shock me, Liam’s wife gets kidnapped. In both films, it’s the stolen woman’s body that gets things moving and that allows this stretch of space on screen for our hero.
Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) and his special skills in Taken
In Prisoners, a powerful film with incredible performances, who is it that goes missing? Who is made voiceless? Who is rendered a token of something? While in a film like this it is integral to the reveal of character and mystery, again we should ask – why at the cost of a young woman? Hugh Jackman’s character Keller Dover embarks on a manhunt when his daughter is kidnapped with her friend. Because why not? How many models have we seen where it’s not a female? Man on Fire uses the same technique- a young woman, a young child, taken for sinister reasons because by simply holding on to her, our usual antagonists can cash out and manipulate their adversary, who we’re in turn cheering on to “recapture” the victim.
There are, of course, comedic twists like Fargo, which also happens to be a film I absolutely love. But again here, we have a female role whose purpose, while hilariously treated at times, is to be stolen, missing, and the tool in the story that the plot revolves around.
Enjoying the day’s work (Steve Buscemi, Peter Stormare, and Kristen Rudrud) in Fargo
My purpose in highlighting these tropes is that we must pay attention to the trade of the female body. If any characters in the film have a qualm, it is often settled by “taking” the other person’s loved one, and this is more often than not, a woman in their life. Our roles, as reflected back at us on screen, have limited dialogue because there is usually a rag in our faces keeping us from speaking.
We’re fed images of a woman who is made to disappear at some point in the film, left without a voice and made entirely helpless until the male protagonist comes along. This is plot device that is designed to distract from the fact that not enough story has actually been developed.
Remove the woman from this equation. You have character A wanting to get something from character B. There could be any number of mysterious ways to do this. Manipulation, lies, fights, theft, threats, coaxing. There are a thousand ways around the central and overused plot device of the female body. Personally, I think we’ve stop noticing. We’ve stopped paying attention to the fact that we are treated a commodities on screen. Not a far cry from the use of rape as a narrative catalyst, what does constantly kidnapping a woman say about what we are? We have become the stakes.
We have complacently accepted that a crime against a woman is rarely a crime against her. Rather, it’s an indirect attack against her husband, boyfriend, or father. It is a violation of the male character when the female is traded in some illicit way. Even intelligent, scientific, and clearly downplayed but sexy scientist characters somehow still find their way into these traps. We identify these crimes against women as crimes against someone else. This removes us from the responsibility of a committing a heinous crime against a female figure and makes her simply a piece in the malefaction rather than the recipient of the aggression–which she is.
This rids us of human qualities. It rids women of screen time, of dialogue, of control. It once again quietly pushes us from roles as real people in film and in life, to props for narrative mobility. In using women in this way, we visually inform ourselves over and over and over again that our only option is to wait for someone stronger to come. . We’re the thing that they need to get back.
Liam Neeson, come running for me. Anytime you want. But I’d rather it be for love than because I didn’t have enough pepper spray on me to avoid a really shitty day.
*Side note worth mentioning – in trying to find images for this article, it was surprisingly hard to find pictures of the women in their hostage situation. It’s almost like it never happened. Or you find porn.
Mara Gasbarro Tasker
Mara Gasbarro Tasker is a filmmaker based in Los Angeles. She’s currently working as an Associate Producer at Vice Media and has co-created the Chattanooga Film Festival, launching later this spring. She holds a BFA in Film Production from the University of Colorado at Boulder. She is directing a grindhouse short in April and is still mourning the end of Breaking Bad.
Wendy has fantasies of setting up Lenny in bucolic quarters in the mountains of Vermont where he can live with independence and comfort. But given the level of Lenny’s dementia and their lack of resources, Wendy has to let go of those dreams and settle for the facility Jon selects, which is far more modest, in Buffalo, with costs covered by Medicare. Another director might have tried to seize the dramatic content of such a conflict, as there’s no downplaying the seriousness of what it means to provide comfort and care to the beloved elderly one’s family. Jenkins, however, brings the funny rather than the dour. When Wendy and Jon take Lenny to a high-end facility for an interview to see if his mental acuity meets their criteria for admission, Wendy attempts to coach her father into giving the correct answers to such questions as “What city are you in right now?” That Lenny doesn’t know is sad, but Wendy’s earnestness to help him cheat is, somehow, delightfully absurd. Jon gets annoyed at his sister, but recognizes the difficulty she’s having with the situation and gently lets her be.
I’ve loved Tamara Jenkins since the first time I saw her film The Slums of Beverly Hills, the 1998 coming-of-age story that put Natasha Lyonne on the map. In addition to being a great movie with top-notch performances by Lyonne, Alan Arkin, and Marisa Tomei, Jenkins shows off her talents as a writer/director willing to show the unsightly, awkward, deeply sad and at once hilarious parts of growing up on the economic margins. The funny moments are made even more so because you don’t seem them coming. As unlikely as you’d be to find a comedic film set in Los Angeles that explores what it means to be a lower-middle-class teenage girl, it would be even more of a rarity to encounter one that delves into what it means to be lower-middle-class adult siblings coping with an estranged parent’s descent into old age and dementia. But that’s just what Jenkins gave us in her 2007 follow-up, The Savages.
If you’re looking to catch up on any Philip Seymour Hoffman films since we lost him earlier this month then that’s reason enough to watch this film—but only one of many. Here’s another: Hoffman plays opposite Laura Linney, who’s always amazing to watch. The two are Jon and Wendy, brother and sister who must wearily confront the necessity of managing the last days of their father’s life. From the first scene we are faced with the reality of the ugliness that is mental and physical decline: we see their father, Lenny, played by Philip Bosco, being castigated by a home health aide, Eduardo, for not flushing the toilet. We then watch as Lenny walks to the bathroom, and then an uncomfortable amount of time passes until Eduardo goes to check on him, only to find that Lenny’s written the word “Prick” on the wall with his feces. From this point forward it is clear that Jenkins is going to put us front and center with the unrelenting intimacy created when family must deal with each other’s shit.
Shortly after the fecal incident we meet Wendy, a woman in her later 30s sitting in a drab office in Manhattan at what can only be a temp job. Like any aspiring artist stuck at a desk, she is surreptitiously pirating postage, photocopying, and miscellaneous office goodies to service her application process to win grant funding; Wendy’s a playwright shopping around a semi-autobiographical work about her childhood called Wake Me When It’s Over. A combination of her life’s accoutrements tells us she’s not where she wants to be: the temp job, Raisin Bran for dinner, a married man whose dog accompanies him to her apartment when he can steal away for a tryst. We very quickly learn that Wendy is not well-practiced at being honest with herself—or those closest to her. She knows the art of telling people the half-truth if it will earn her some sympathy and/or avoid being scrutinized. Wendy gets a call from Arizona to find that her father, Lenny, is “writing with his shit!” (as she exclaims on the phone to Jon), and her overly righteous response tells us even more about her: she wants to rise to the occasion and save the day by caring for her father who never cared for her.
Jon is far more pragmatic and less willing to give too much compassionate ground to a parent whose absence meant he had to step up and doing a lot of the emotional heavy-lifting for his younger sister. Like Wendy, Jon studies theater, but from an academic side as a professor in Buffalo, New York—a contrast that Jenkins beautifully maps onto their personalities, but with a light touch. Wendy and Jon are far from types, and their sibling dynamic is one marked by distant respect for each other without the pretense of fully understanding the other’s choices. They are not entirely free of judgment and resentment, but they demonstrate ease and kindness toward one another far more often than ire. At the core of their tense moments is the central issue they must reckon with: their father has dementia and they must put him in a nursing home and watch him die.
Wendy has fantasies of setting up Lenny in bucolic quarters in the mountains of Vermont where he can live with independence and comfort. But given the level of Lenny’s dementia and their lack of resources, Wendy has to let go of those dreams and settle for the facility Jon selects, which is far more modest, in Buffalo, with costs covered by Medicare. Another director might have tried to seize the dramatic content of such a conflict, as there’s no downplaying the seriousness of what it means to provide comfort and care to the beloved elderly one’s family. Jenkins, however, brings the funny rather than the dour. When Wendy and Jon take Lenny to a high-end facility for an interview to see if his mental acuity meets their criteria for admission, Wendy attempts to coach her father into giving the correct answers to such questions as “What city are you in right now?” That Lenny doesn’t know is sad, but Wendy’s earnestness to help him cheat is, somehow, delightfully absurd. Jon gets annoyed at his sister, but recognizes the difficulty she’s having with the situation and gently lets her be.
When the inevitable does happen, and Wendy and Jon are free of the obligation that brought them together in a shared purpose, they quietly return to their lives. As is often the case in real life, there is no redemption in their father’s death. Jenkins does give us a kind of postscript wherein Wendy and Jon are still themselves, still trying to do the work that defines them, but they are somehow lighter after having endured Lenny’s illness and death. For one thing, they both make progress moving ahead in ways they were previously stalled (I know that’s vague but I don’t want to spoil too much). Most importantly, though, they have arrived as siblings who want to stay connected even without the anchor of obligation; rather than need each other to fit an idea of family, they just want each other to be happy.
The best shows are the ones that are silly enough to make us laugh, but deep enough to make us think. ‘My Mad Fat Diary’ strikes this balance perfectly in ways that are both clever and heartbreaking. The series chronicles the life of Rae Earl (Sharon Rooney), a snarky yet painfully insecure overweight teen, as relayed in her diary after a brief stay in a mental hospital following a suicide attempt. She begins the slow process of adjusting to life back in the outside world, forming new friendships and battling old demons. As an added bonus, the show could be classified as the fetal equivalent of a period piece, taking place in the mid-90s.
The best shows are the ones that are silly enough to make us laugh, but deep enough to make us think. My Mad Fat Diary strikes this balance perfectly in ways that are both clever and heartbreaking. The series chronicles the life of Rae Earl (Sharon Rooney), a snarky yet painfully insecure overweight teen, as relayed in her diary after a brief stay in a mental hospital following a suicide attempt. She begins the slow process of adjusting to life back in the outside world, forming new friendships and battling old demons. As an added bonus, the show could be classified as the fetal equivalent of a period piece, taking place in the mid-90s. Expect a kickass soundtrack and lots of denim-on-denim. I can’t believe the decade of my childhood is now far enough away to be considered fair game for a period piece. Anyway, no matter how old you were, My Mad Fat Diary will make you giddy with nostalgia.
Sharon RooneyRooney as Rae
It’s unfortunately rare to see a show with a fat female protagonist, let alone a teen show. I find Sharon Rooney fascinating because she encapsulates all the contradictions in the media’s perception of plus-sized women. Many interviewers express surprise at how strikingly she contrasts to Rae–whereas Rae is a quintessential wallflower, shy and sulking in oversized T-shirts and baggy jeans, Rooney often wears dresses and substantial amounts of makeup. She has all the self-assurance that Rae longs for. Now approaching her mid-20s, Rooney has spoken candidly about being passed over for roles when she was younger, including the glamour-obsessed Skins franchise (which, although incorporating a few characters who weren’t stick-thin, curiously failed to feature any plus-sized characters in the main cast, despite two full cast changes and seven seasons). It’s telling and ironic that an actress as confident as Rooney got her big break playing a character whose raison d’être is a self-loathing fixation on her weight.
Rae frequently doodles about sex.
Featuring an ensemble cast–bizarrely ranging in age from 17 to pushing 30, but all supposed to be portraying 16- to 17-year-olds–the crux of the show centers around Rae struggling to overcome self-consciousness to achieve an normal social life. Rae is also unabashedly sex-crazed and makes no secret of her about her lustful fantasies in the pages of her diary. You’re compelled to laugh at Rae’s antics not because the notion of fat women’s desire in itself is humorous, but because her libido is so expansive and imaginative. Rae is even shown exploring masturbation (and enjoying it!), marking all of three times that I’ve seen female masturbation portrayed onscreen. Predictably for the teen genre, she equates normalcy to hitting various romantic and sexual milestones. She winds up giving herself her first orgasm. For all of her self-deprecation, Rae views sexual expression as well within her grasp (no pun intended), at least in the abstract.
Chloe is basically “the hot chick.”
Rae’s childhood best friend Chloe (Jodie Comer) simultaneously embodies everything that Rae wishes she was with everything she knows she shouldn’t want to be. The audience is repeatedly beaten over the head with how thin, pretty, and popular Chloe is. Chloe’s perfect physique is the inspiration for many a gloomy monologue from Rae, with the latter taking every opportunity to lament her inadequacy by comparison. Chloe reinforces Rae’s inferiority complex through subtle backhanded compliments and putdowns, firmly cementing her status as more of a frenemy than a friend. She’s actually quite a recognizable character in that I think we’ve all tried to maintain some childhood friendships that were drifting apart, only to realize that you’ve become two totally different people. Unfortunately, the show has a tendency to pigeonhole Chloe as the bitch and intertwine that with slutiness to indicate a lack of self-respect and moral depravity. She has a clandestine affair with the sleazy married gym coach (of course) and appears to be making her rounds among the boys of the gang. We’re supposed to pity her desperation, but also feel entirely unsympathetic towards her for bringing it on herself. Since Chloe serves to highlight Rae’s naivete and innocence, her characterization falls a bit flat. On one hand, Rae and Chloe illustrate that self-esteem and body image issues exist all across the size spectrum. Chloe may have the advantage of thin privilege, but her insecurities still lead her to squander the resulting opportunities.
However, it makes me uncomfortable that we are still encouraged to demonize Chloe. Why? Because she’s promiscuous? Rae is just as sexual as she is, “experience” be damned. Because she’s two-faced? Rae spends most of the first season lying to almost everyone about almost everything. Because she’s mean to Rae? Rae frequently insults and slut-shames Chloe in her diary, especially when Chloe unknowingly begins to pursue Rae’s crush. All I’m saying is that it smacks too much of the obnoxious “I’m not like other girls” Manic Pixie exceptionalism mentality. Rae and Chloe aren’t as different as Rae would like us to think. The narrative shouldn’t be using Rae as a vehicle to tell the audience what bad femininity supposedly looks like. Much like Chloe, she doesn’t need to put other people down to validate her own perspective. She’s a worthy protagonist in her own right. The whole idea of the plain Jane underdog is completely pointless if it merely flips the social hierarchy.
(Significant series 2 spoilers ahead)
Rae and Finn grow closer throughout the first season.
Despite some bumps in the road, Rae integrates with the gang and even starts a budding romance with softhearted bad boy Finn (Nico Mirallegro, my future husband, packing enough eyebrow game to kill a man). The opening scene of the second season cuts straight to the point and shows Finn fingering Rae. A sex scene between two teenagers focused exclusively on female pleasure, imagine that. Rae continues to grapple with poor self-image, exacerbated by the start of school. Her nagging anxieties force her to confront her biggest fear – how Finn, a traditionally attractive boy, could ever want to be with someone as allegedly undesirable as her. It’s definitely hard to watch her go through all the same triggering things over and over, but I guess that’s true to life when you’re dealing with lifelong psychological scars. She seems to be teetering on sabotaging her own happiness. After all the trials and tribulations of last year, it’s depressing to think of her stability as a flash in the pan. A mysterious new boy looks to be shaping up as a new love interest, because apparently a love triangle is mandatory to signify a female character’s ascension into Everygirl Protagonist territory. Barf. Romantic angst is the last thing Rae needs. Body insecurities and fear of vulnerability also prevent Rae from going all the way with Finn. On that note, I can’t think of a show that objectifies male characters as much as My Mad Fat Diary objectifies Finn. We don’t usually see the adolescent girl gaze and it’s really refreshingly weird.
What is normal, anyway?
Ultimately, fat-positive shows remain evasive. My Mad Fat Diary certainly has its pros and cons. Rae is indeed a smart, likeable plus-sized protagonist. Still, the message persists that self-acceptance for fat people (and fat women in particular) is only accessible by way of obligatory despair, self-hatred, and the need for constant outside validation. Hands down, Rae’s biggest obstacle is not the the prejudice of others, but her own internalized toxic mentality. It’s almost as if Rae has to admit society has broken her umpteen times before finally settling in to a niche of lukewarm tolerance. Give her some degree of agency, for fuck’s sake. The perpetual broken bird routine is wearing thin. Why can’t she just be allowed to like who she is? Rae appears to be challenging herself with that same question.
My Mad Fat Diary is a fun step in the right direction, but it still has a long way to go.
The general premise of ‘Someone Marry Barry’ is that every group of friends has a “Barry, “or someone who is wildly inappropriate and generally fails at life. Barry’s friends decide the best approach to mitigating Barry’s awfulness is to find him a girlfriend, because I guess he’ll be “tamed” by having regular sex with the same vagina and/or having someone to wash his boxers for him? Their plan backfires when Barry gets into a relationship with Melanie (Lucy Punch), who is just as inappropriate and obnoxious as he is (also even more funny, from the viewer’s perspective).
I am sometimes exhausted by being a “film critic,” if you’ll allow me to be so bold as to claim that title for myself. My dad used to say, “It’s hard to be Robin” when I’d get worked up into a lather over what seemed to him like minor infractions. And those little frustrations have a tendency to mount until you’re mad as hell and not gonna yadda yadda. Feminist burnout is real.
Someone Marry Barry film poster
So sometimes I just want to turn off my critical brain, set aside my gender lens, and enjoy a comedy if it makes me laugh despite whatever failings it might have, either as a work of cinema or as an artifact of gender in culture. And that’s what I did with Someone Marry Barry.
I watched Someone Marry Barry on a break from my 2014 Oscars Death Race (™ Sarah D. Bunting) which has been a particular challenge this year not only because of the bleakness of this year’s crop (and its inclusion of The Wolf of Wall Street, which I hate hate hated) but because of my limited access to recent releases in South Africa. Someone Marry Barry is one of those movies that is “in theaters” (allegedly) at the same time it’s released to on demand video services. So maybe I’m extra on it’s side because of the populism of it’s release structure? Or maybe I just needed to laugh at a romantic comedy.
Lucy Punch and Tyler Labine making Someone Marry Barry look much sweeter than it is
The general premise of Someone Marry Barry is that every group of friends has a “Barry,” or someone who is wildly inappropriate and generally fails at life. Barry (Tyler Labine, whose career path has gone from “Burnout Teen” to “Loser Manchild,” which he can hopefully ride out until he’s of sufficient vintage to play “Dirty Old Man”) ruins funerals, gets his friends fired by inappropriate talking about the boss’s daughter, and is a bad influence on their children.
Barry (Tyler Labine)
Barry’s friends decide the best approach to mitigating Barry’s awfulness is to find him a girlfriend, because I guess he’ll be “tamed” by having regular sex with the same vagina and/or having someone to wash his boxers for him? Their plan backfires when Barry gets into a relationship with Melanie (Lucy Punch), who is just as inappropriate and obnoxious as he is (also even more funny, from the viewer’s perspective).
Barry’s scheming bros (Thomas Middleditch, Damon Wayans, Jr., and Hayes MacArthur)
And man, if I had my feminist Wheaties this morning maybe I could explain how this is a subversive rejection of the Apatow-ian trope of “boys will be boys, good thing there’s all these shrews around to crack the whip.” Or maybe reject it because being given a LadyChild alongside the ManChildren doesn’t really resolve the issues inherent to that archetype. And is also not particularly groundbreaking (see Bad Teacher, in which Lucy Punch had a supporting role, or anything else Lucy Punch has been in, really).
I could also take Someone Marry Barry to task because the other women in the movie are… actually I have no idea what the other women in the movie do other than have shiny hair. One of them is really bitchy and her doormat boyfriend is inspired by missing Barry to leave her… I think?
Barry and Melanie’s inappropriate love.
What I do know: Someone Marry Barry made me laugh A LOT. As much smack as I’ll talk about Tyler Labine and Lucy Punch always playing the same characters, this really is perfect casting and it pays off. Lucy Punch in particular is at the top of her game. While the movie has pretty weak story structure and character arcs and all those other things we should fairly expect from actually good movies, it has a lot of hilarious dialogue delivered with gusto. Even the shiny-haired bitch, playing the most tired of roles, cracked me up several times (I will be stealing her whiny expectant delivery of “Juice. I need juice.” for all my future demands of my partner).
So I’m just gonna give my critical side a break and give Someone Marry Barry my stamp of approval.
Clueless’s Travis Birkenstock expresses my feelings for me
(THAT SAID: Why on earth is this movie not called Somebody Marry Barry? Why waste this perfect opportunity for delightful assonance when there is literally no difference in meaning between someone and somebody? Is there are short film from 1917 called Somebody Marry Barry? There’d better be a suitable explanation for this. Ugh, it IS hard to be Robin.)
Robin Hitchcock is an American writer living Cape Town, South Africa.
So far, this is Kristen Bell’s season to shine as the hard-hearted Jeannie Van Der Hooven on Showtime’s ‘House of Lies.’
So far, this is Kristen Bell’s season to shine as the hard-hearted Jeannie Van Der Hooven on Showtime’s House of Lies.
Whether we’re talking about the characters on Girls or (confusingly) the adorable lead on The Mindy Project, it seems like being “unlikable,” at least when we’re talking about women, has come to mean “having a personality that not everyone likes.” Far from being the sociopaths that carried Breaking Bad and Dexter, “unlikable” female characters are often women who basically mean well, but come off as being disagreeable, self-centered, or rude.
That’s unfortunate, and it raises a whole slew of questions about the way we watch television – like, “Why are we, as viewers, less prepared to love a woman who says ugly things than a man who cuts people up with a chainsaw?” – but it also distracts from the really unlikable women on TV – the ones who don’t really mean well, who hurt other people on purpose – and the challenges of telling a story about them.
House of Lies, which is now midway through a surprisingly strong third season, has lately devoted a lot of time to the really unlikable woman in the form of Jeannie Van Der Hooven (Kristen Bell), a calculating, manipulative business management consultant who’s not only willing, but happy to destroy whoever she has to as part of her climb to the top.
House of Lies has always traded in unlikable characters – in fact, one of the problems with the first season was that there was no one to cheer for. The heroes are a team of management consultants who bullshit their clients (equally unlikable representatives of corporate America) into paying them outrageous sums of money for absolutely nothing. They sometimes crush the companies they work with, order massive layoffs, and knowingly promote products and services that are dangerous, fraudulent, or exploitative. Advertising for the third season has tried harder to frame the show as a contest between evil and evil, where we cheer for Jeannie and her one-time boss, Marty (Don Cheadle), because they’re smart and the people they’re screwing over are often equally bad. Since the start of season two, the show has worked to clarify that it isn’t a big ode to capitalism and that it’s aware of its characters’ failings.
That’s been a successful strategy overall, but things really clicked this season when Jeannie, who was never that soft to begin with, hardened up into a white-collar sociopath. It’s a move that takes all of Kristen Bell’s unflappable, charismatic charm, and transforms it into the calculated veneer of a cold-hearted snake, and it’s the most thrilling thing I’ve ever witnessed on this show.
Having split off from Marty at the end of season two, Jeannie begins season three on a high. She’s been given a big promotion at the management firm and heads her own team of consultants. She’s got the boss in her pocket, and one of the first things we see her do is steal a major account from one of her peers.
In what’s probably a nice bit of foreshadowing, Marty has a trippy dream right around the same time in which Jeannie, who’s come to kill him, is so consumed with getting revenge, and so certain of her impending triumph, that she doesn’t see danger sneak up from behind.
The next thing we know, Jeannie walks into work to discover that the firm has re-hired an old enemy of hers, a misogynist jerk called The Rainmaker. Jeannie got him fired in the first season by confessing that she slept with him to further her career (the confession itself was a calculated attempt to save her own job), and now he’s replacing pocket boss, and starting a boys club for boys with the guy she stole an account from.
The writers help us to cheer for Jeannie by reframing The Rainmaker’s actions as sexual harassment (something that wasn’t made clear in the first season) and by showing us that, regardless of what might do, she’s always going to be on the outs as a woman. They used a similar strategy with Marty in season two, highlighting the racism he faced as a Black man, and, in both cases, it’s an effective way of bringing us around to the characters’ sides. Although they’re both very greedy, conniving people, they’re also at an unfair disadvantage. It doesn’t erase our disapproval of their methods, but it helps us to celebrate their wins.
With only a few hours to process The Rainmaker’s threatening return, Jeannie completely changes her strategy, screws over Marty, steals a major client from the firm, and uses it as leverage to get equity in Marty’s private consulting company. As a parting “fuck you” to the firm, she convinces one of her subordinates – the naïve, gentle-hearted Benita, who sees Jeannie as a mentor – to torch her own career by reporting details the firm’s shady dealings to the press. To underscore what a cynical, self-serving move this is, Jeannie gives what initially appears to be a sincere speech about how she admires Benita’s principles – how they remind her of the girl she used to be – that gradually starts to turn sour as we realize she’s setting Benita up.
We can practically hear the music from Game of Thrones start to play as Jeannie climbs into the elevator, so ruthless is her victory. The following episode finds her reunited with Marty, at Kaan and Associates, where she wastes no time in alienating one of her new subordinates, Caitlin. When a client makes inappropriate sexual comments to Caitlin during a meeting, Jeannie appears to stand up for her, only to reveal, later, when Caitlin tries to thank her, that her only motive was to align herself with the client’s more decorous business partner. This is followed by an impatient, condescending lecture about how much Caitlin sucks at her job, to which she can only say “wow.”
What’s interesting about the scene – other than the fact that it passes the Bechdel Test with flying colours – is that the show allows Jeannie to be correct in the substance of what she’s saying at the same time as being bankrupt of any human warmth or compassion. It’s not an “awkward moment” kind of unlikeableness, where maybe she meant to say something nice but was hampered by some minor personality flaws – she’s being harsh on purpose. And, in back to back episodes, we see this come out specifically in situations where we might normally expect her to nurture, encourage, or support other women who look up to her. It’s a dynamic we don’t often see on TV (especially not from this side), and it’s fascinating to watch.
Jeannie finishes the episode off by going home early, and making sure that Marty sees that she’s going home early, in order to remind him that he’s not in charge. Marty, who’s been trying to make peace with Jeannie, and sees her as being somewhat of a friend, explains in a fairly heartfelt way (while still trying to re-establish control) that he worked very hard all his life to have something that was his, and that she should appreciate what it means that he gave her half of it. Jeannie rejects him and says, “You didn’t give me anything. I took it.”
The moment she says it, we know that it’s true. Everything she’s done makes sense from a practical point of view, but there’s a meanness, and an anger underneath. This is a woman who knew she was taking half of his dream and did it, in part, just to hurt him.
Jeannie’s story line this season isn’t just interesting because of the way it characterizes women, but because it represents House of Lies becoming what I think it wants to be — evil versus evil; the smart and the mean outfoxing each other; what Marty and Jeannie have made themselves into, to take things from people they hate.
I’m loving this season more than I thought I could love House of Lies, and it’s all down to one of the worst people I’ve ever seen. A woman I would never want to be in the same room with, who’s vindictive, and greedy, and mean, at the heart of a story about power and people who scrape themselves raw just to get it.
I’m excited to see how this ends.
Katherine Murray is a Toronto-based writer who yells about TV and movies on her blog.
This reveals one of the key weaknesses of incorporating token women in action movies. Token women are not real characters, they exist to tick boxes so that filmmakers can point to these characters and say “See we aren’t sexist, we had a woman and she even punched a dude in the face!” However because these aren’t real characters they end up being almost exclusively objects for the male gaze and to be fair, for Dahl this was not nearly as bad as it can sometimes be. She has a functional uniform not much different from her male colleagues and she is only subject to a couple of minutes of gratuitous nudity.
Action movies are perhaps the worst and most consistent offenders when it comes to failing the Bechdel Test, a depressingly bare minimum for assessing the female presence in a given film or TV offering. Riddickis no exception; like the other movies in the franchise, it is very much a one man against the world sort of scenario. Previous Riddick movies Pitch Black and The Chronicles of Riddickhave at least managed to have interesting women characters. Pitch Black even managed to pass the Bechdel Test. Sadly Riddick does not even come close as it falls back into the old action movie trap of only having one named female character in a sea of men.
In Riddick, Vin Diesel once again takes on the titular role. It takes place shortly after the end of The Chronicles of Riddick where Riddick was made the Lord Marshal of the Necromongers after having dealt to the previous one due to the Necromonger law of “You keep what you kill.” Over the course of the previous movie, The Chronicles of Riddick, we find out that Riddick is perhaps the sole surviving member of a race called the Furyians and he becomes captivated with the idea of discovering more about the history and demise of his people. Riddick opens with him convincing a Necromonger general to give him the location of his home planet Furya, so that he can go have a nosey. Unsurprisingly he is tricked and ends up on an extremely inhospitable planet all alone struggling to survive. He soon has an urgent need to get off planet when he realises the rain poses a very real threat and so activates a beacon on an abandoned bounty hunter ship that alerts nearby mercenaries to his location. They appear speedily as there is a massive bounty on his head and it is worth double if he is brought in dead.
As I watched the first 30 minutes, I was all like, “Huh. They aren’t going to have even a token woman in this movie, interesting.” This would have been sad as the franchise has had some interesting women characters, historically. Then they revealed that one of the mercenary ships had a female prisoner on board. She was cut loose because if they captured Riddick the ship would be overweight. I think she probably had under a minute of screen time that ended with her being shot for sport by the captain of the ship. I suppose it was meant to underscore just how big of a douche the mercenary captain, Santanna, was. However the killing of women on screen to emphasise the evilness of male characters has become so routine that the scene was more mundane than horrifying, we knew she was going to die the moment she was set free. Her death also serves as motivation for Riddick, the unnamed woman was both brown and a prisoner, two things Riddick can identify with I guess. After she is shot we see Riddick looking grim and presumably deciding to kill all of these mercenaries for being heartless assholes toward pretty ladies.
Clearly by this point it wasn’t looking great for women in this movie. As the second batch of mercenaries arrive we are soon treated to the fact that one of them is Katee Sackhoff, most renowned for playing the tomboyish pilot and complicated woman, Starbuck on Battlestar Galactica. She plays second in command of the second, less vile mercenary ship. Immediately on arrival she is hit on by Santanna in an unsurprisingly crude manner. Her response is to punch him in the face and then tell him that “I don’t fuck guys.” The statement seemed a little out of place and reads as though he is out of line for hitting on her because she is a lesbian, not because it is rude and annoying in a professional context. But OK, I can happily roll with an openly gay heroine on a mainstream action movie even if it is introduced kind of weirdly. Sadly this is as about as good as the character gets. Throughout the rest of the movie she constantly has to use her fists on Santanna, something that actually makes her look ineffectual as a leader, rather than presenting her as an ass-kicking woman as was no doubt intended. Movies seem to have fallen into convenient shorthand where a woman who is able to exact violence on a man is a good female character because she is not a passive victim. This is not the case, a woman can still kick butt (and in this case it is a pretty nominal amount of butt kicking) and still be a terrible female character.
This is reinforced when Dahl is subject to gratuitous shower scene where we see one of her nipples and Riddick leering in from the window; he is trying to steal her toiletry kit, not harm her, but the threat is there. The implication is that he could do anything to her at this point and she would be powerless to stop it. The whole scene serves to underline how vulnerable she is as a woman despite her ability to repeatedly punch Santanna in the face.
This reveals one of the key weaknesses of incorporating token women in action movies. Token women are not real characters, they exist to tick boxes so that filmmakers can point to these characters and say “See we aren’t sexist, we had a woman and she even punched a dude in the face!” However because these aren’t real characters they end up being almost exclusively objects for the male gaze and to be fair, for Dahl this was not nearly as bad as it can sometimes be. She has a functional uniform not much different from her male colleagues and she is only subject to a couple of minutes of gratuitous nudity.
It does get worse though. When Riddick is captured by the mercenaries, he makes a few predictions, the first is that Santanna will not live for more than five seconds after he is free and the second is that he will end up “balls deep” in Dahl but only after she asks him “real pretty like.” This is pretty gross, but not really surprising in an action movie that revolves around a single hyper-masculine protagonist. What transforms it from pretty gross to slimy homophobic misogynist bullshit is later, when Riddick is stranded on a rock surrounded by many creatures who want to kill him, he is rescued by Dahl from a transporter in a safety harness. He grabs her ass and she says to him, “I have something to ask you, real pretty like…” At the end of the movie Riddick says, “Tell Dahl to keep ‘er warm for me.” This is basically embracing with open arms the myth that every lesbian just hasn’t met the right man. This myth is not only demeaning of a woman’s sexuality, but it is dangerous, it is at least partially responsible for the fact that the incidence of rape for lesbians by men is higher than for women generally. I’m sure people could argue that they are simply joking, but I don’t think that flies in the context that Riddick says to her while making a series of predictions that all come true with grave consequences.
It is hard for me not to wonder, is a token woman in an action movie worse than no woman at all? At least then we would not have to deal with the casual objectification and reinforcement of dangerous myths. Of course that isn’t really the answer–women shouldn’t have to choose between shitty representation and no representation at all. A token woman in an action movie is never a real character; she exists as a box ticking exercise, a device by which we can learn things about male characters and to provide fodder for the male gaze. Obviously not every character in every movie can be fully realised but more often than not these two dimensional parts are the province of women and/or people of colour. Riddick was no exception to this except perhaps in that Vin Diesel is not really read as white. I hope that the next movie will return to the roots of the franchise and provide us with female characters of substance and complexity.
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Gaayathri is a writer currently located in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, although this is set to change soon. She is the child of diaspora two times over and is passionate about all forms of social justice. She likes to travel and prefers television to movies; however, she feels a strange compulsion to watch all movies that have fish-eating people in them, no matter how terrible they are. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Political Studies from the University of Auckland and she has spent her formative years working at various types of feminist organisations from the community to the regional in both New Zealand and around Asia. Her work has been featured around the feminist blogosphere including Flyover Feminism, Feministe, and Leftstream as well as in United Nations and NGO publications. You can find more of her work at her blog A Human Storyand tweet her @A_Gaayathri.
