Please take just 11 minutes out of your day to check out Eléonore Pourriat’s powerful short, ‘Oppressed Majority’ (‘Majorité Opprimée’). An inspired gender role reversal tale, it depicts the sexism, abuse and sexual violence women experience on a daily basis.
Please take just 11 minutes out of your day to check out Eléonore Pourriat’s powerful short, Oppressed Majority (Majorité Opprimée). An inspired gender role reversal tale, it depicts the sexism, abuse and sexual violence women experience on a daily basis. Released in 2010, Oppressed Majority only went global this year. It is destined to become one of the viral hits of 2014. Again, please take a look at this smart, insightful–and disturbing–short film. In French, with subtitles.
‘What Maisie Knew’ might have made a pretty good romcom to watch on an airplane or catch cable on a Sunday morning while you sort your junk mail or something. But it has aspirations of seriousness, despite building to a far-fetched frilly bow tie of a resolution (which, was, admittedly, tempting to my id that totally loves watching romcoms on airplanes and Sunday mornings). Ultimately, ‘What Maisie Knew’ wants to have its Tastykake and deliver a strongly-worded lecture about the dangers of high fructose corn syrup and trans fats too.
Julianne Moore, Onata Aprile, and Alexander Skarsgård in What Maisie Knew
What Maisie Knew might have made a pretty good romcom to watch on an airplane or catch on cable on a Sunday morning while you sort your junk mail or something. But it has aspirations of seriousness, despite building to a far-fetched, frilly bow tie of a resolution (which, was, admittedly, tempting to my id that totally loves watching romcoms on airplanes and Sunday mornings). Ultimately, What Maisie Knew wants to have its Tastykake and deliver a strongly-worded lecture about the dangers of high fructose corn syrup and trans fats,+ too.
The excessively ominous title is just meant to indicate that this movie is told from the perspective of its six-year-old protagonist, Maisie Beale (Onata Aprile). I was worried for the entire first act that someone was going to be murdered or assaulted because of the title and the generally bleak tone of the film. But it’s not about a child witnessing a violent crime; it’s about a child witnessing the fallout of a bitter custody battle between her parents, neither of whom are all that interested in parenting her.
Maisie and her warring biological parents
Her mother, Susanna, is a self-centered past-her-prime rockstar (played by Julianne Moore), who seemingly wants Maisie around mainly because she’s a source of unconditional love. Her father (Steve Coogan) is a smug art dealer who wants to “rescue” Maisie from her “unfit” mother, but he can’t be bothered to actually care for her because he’s constantly on the phone with important clients and jets off to Europe on the regular.
So Dad marries Maisie’s nanny, Margo (Joanna Vanderham), who is conveniently over-the-moon for him even though he’s decades older and looks like Steve Coogan. Susanna revenge-marries a seemingly dim, young bartender named Lincoln (Alexander Skarsgård), not only to stick it to her ex and Margo, but to help her chances in court with the custody decision. There are countless scenes where Maisie is dumped by one of her four caregivers to be with another, only to be left waiting on a bench for hours because no one is there. Lincoln and Margo are clearly the only people giving Maisie the attention and love she needs even as she’s bounced between her generally disinterested and frequently absent parents.
Maisie gets a lot of alone time
So there’s a solid hour of watching Maisie suffering mild neglect and repeated appearances of the caption “(muffled quarreling)” as we watch Maisie play with her toys while the grownups fight in the next room. Then Maisie’s father takes an extended trip to Europe at the same time Maisie’s mother goes on tour, and her step-parents Margo and Lincoln find themselves awkwardly sharing custody of the girl. And spoiler alert, they fall in love.
And maybe it’s because I was so desperate for a break from the gloomy proceedings or because Vanderham and Skarsgård actually have chemistry or because under Margo and Lincoln’s loving and attentive care, Maisie went from sullen to bubbly, but I bought into this shift toward a more pleasant narrative.
Maisie’s step-parents Lincoln and Margo flirting
After an hour of harsh realism, I couldn’t help but notice all the holes in this happy ending. Margo essentially kidnaps Maisie and takes her to her cousin’s conveniently unoccupied beach house (and context clues suggest it is roundabout Virginia not Far Rockaway or something). Lincoln presumably quits his job to follow. Who knows how they have money for food or where Maisie’s going to go to school? Susanna gives them her out-of-character and hardly legally binding blessing and rolls away in her tour bus. Maisie’s dad is in England for the foreseeable future and has firmly rejected the idea of taking Maisie with him, so I guess we’re meant to think he just doesn’t care where she ends up. Maisie’s free to literally sail off into the sunset with Margo and Lincoln.
The audience knows this can’t and won’t last. Aside from the practicalities and the likelihood that Maisie’s biological parents may eventually want to take back their child abandonment, there’s the nagging concern that Margo and Lincoln are conflating their shared love of Maisie for love of each other. We already watched their marriages to Maisie’s parents quickly fall apart. Who’s to say these two will last much longer just because they’re closer in age and both good parents?
An implausible happy ending with a new and fragile happy family
I’d still give What Maisie Knew my qualified recommendation. Its fairly original framing is actually quite successful, in large part because Onata Aprile is such a gifted child actress that I didn’t even think to remark upon her talent until just now; she’s so natural her work never even reads as a performance. The adult actors are all game as well, even though their characters aren’t always the most pleasant. And while I don’t think the shift into romcom territory worked, I’m guessing that without it, the movie might have been too much of a downer. It’s only about an hour and a half long, and it’s streaming on Netflix, so you might want to give What Maisie Knew a go.
Robin Hitchcock is an American writer living in Cape Town, South Africa.
To be honest, with ‘RoboCop (2014)’ I was expecting a fairly straightforward attempt to cash in on late 80s nostalgia with a shiny, lightweight, brand-recognition film. I expected that the oppressively satiric nature of the original would be lost or watered-down, and that character development would take a back seat to gunplay and explosions. And I was… sort of wrong. The most poignant scene came in the first few minutes of the movie and featured a convoy of military drones clearing a village in the Middle East. Through the cold eyes of an unfeeling news crew, we’re very quickly confronted with the question of what constitutes ethical use of drones when civilians are in the line of fire.
It would be reckless to examine RoboCop (2014) without first considering the original film. RoboCop (1987) is widely considered one the benchmark movies of the late 1980s and for good reason. While it superficially resembled its “light” action movie and sci-fi contemporaries, RoboCop (1987) was something special. The film had it all: heady themes, iconic imagery, and that essential 80s feel (i.e., FORD TAURUS EVERYWHERE). Most importantly, it was a Paul Verhoeven film.
Verhoeven is the Dutch director and filmmaker behind RoboCop (1987), Total Recall (1990), Basic Instinct (1992), and Starship Troopers (1997). He was born in 1938 in the Netherlands. In 1943, his family moved to The Hauge, the location of the Nazi headquarters in the Netherlands during WWII. His neighborhood was bombed repeatedly during the war; fascism, death, and destruction became a part of his childhood life. Consequently, it’s no surprise that Verhoeven’s creative hallmark is a combination of visceral violence and omnipresent socio-political satire.
The original (i.e., better) ED-209.
RoboCop (1987) was Verhoeven’s breakout film in the United States. In the near future, Detroit is about to implode due to financial mismanagement, corruption, and crime (sound familiar?). To stave off the collapse, the city government has made a deal with Omni Consumer Products (OCP) to essentially privatize the flailing police force in exchange for allowing the company to raze the slums and build a shiny corporate kingdom, Delta City, within the shell of Detroit. Towards that end, OCP has directed its robotics division to develop law enforcement droids (including the iconic ED-209). In order to test a cyborg design, OCP needs fresh meat, so they assign officers, including Alex Murphy (Peter Weller) and his partner Anne Lewis (Nancy Allen), to unusually dangerous beats in the hope that they’ll be killed. Murphy is brutally murdered in the line of duty, and his body is transferred to the “RoboCop” program. While he is initially successful at enforcing the law and reducing crime, RoboCop/Murphy soon begins to struggle with memories of his past life with his wife and child.
The original cut of the movie was so violent for the times that it received a X rating. The film was filled with satirical elements that addressed themes of media callousness, desensitization to violence, unchecked capitalism, authoritarianism, political hypocrisy, and gender equality. Some elements were subtle and some were not so subtle (e.g., my favorite, the Nukem board game). However, it’s also worth noting that a more primary theme was the question: What makes a man a man? Phallic imagery is strong. For example, the question itself is prompted in our minds by the conspicuous absence of a penis structure between RoboCop’s legs. Is a man still a man if he is mostly metal, and he no longer has a penis? The answer is yes, as long as he has a big-ass gun. In one scene, we see RoboCop shoot an attempted rapist in the junk, thereby using his penis-equivalent firearm to assert his masculinity by destroying the male genitals of his rival. In another, penultimate scene, Murphy uses his long, pointy “interface spike” to kill the main antagonist.
Nancy Allen as Anne Lewis.
While feminist author Susan Faludi (I know you’re not a flapper, please don’t send me letters) said that RoboCop (1987) was one of “an endless string of war and action movies [in which] women are reduced to mute and incidental characters or banished altogether,” one could argue that the Anne Lewis character was hardly inconsequential. Rene Denfeld, for example, referred to Anne Lewis as an example of a notabley “independent and smart” female character. I agree more with Denfeld’s assessment. While Allen’s character did sometimes stray into squadette cliches, she certainly could not be described as a faux action woman. The relatively equitable nature of her relationship with Murphy is a standout for the era.
The new (CGI, unfortunately) ED-209.
The reboot, directed by José Padilha, is not a line for line, scene for scene, reproduction. In the new story, OCP robots (“drones” is the term used in the film to keep things contemporary) are in widespread use overseas by the military. Pesky (and unusually effective) politicians have been successful in preventing the domestic use of drone technology. To exploit a legal loophole, OCP CEO Raymond Sellars (Michael Keaton) wants his scientist, Dr. Dennett Norton (Gary Oldman), to make a new, legal law enforcement cyborg. Detective Alex Murphy (Joel Kinnaman) is, conveniently, critically injured by a bomb planted under his car on the order of a local crime boss. Norton picks Murphy for the RoboCop program. Murphy rejects his new robotic life and asks to be euthanized, but Norton persuades him to carry on for his wife, Clara (Abbie Cornish), and their son.
To be honest, with RoboCop (2014), I was expecting a fairly straightforward attempt to cash in on late 80s nostalgia with a shiny, lightweight, brand-recognition film. I expected that the oppressively satiric nature of the original would be lost or watered-down and that character development would take a back seat to gunplay and explosions. And I was… sort of wrong. The most poignant scene came in the first few minutes of the movie and featured a convoy of military drones clearing a village in the Middle East. Through the cold eyes of an unfeeling news crew, we’re very quickly confronted with the question of what constitutes the ethical use of drones when civilians are in the line of fire.
In fact, the film is heavy (and by heavy, I mean Samuel L. Jackson heavy; dude was in like every other scene) on the satire from start to finish, but it just isn’t as well done as in the original. The movie feels a bit sanitized, rendered, and dour. Aside from the references to drones, corporate greed, and media callousness, where was the satire of rampant consumerism, of police fascism? The violence (and there is a lot of gunplay) is video-gamey and bloodless. In the original, Murphy is horrifically gunned down with shotguns; in the remake, he’s very neatly blown up by a car bomb. The city of Detroit is an afterthought; the movie might as well have been set in Richmond. Keaton was just weird as the CEO of OCP; he seemed to be constantly doing an impression of William Shatner doing an impression of Steve Jobs. It was off-putting. Oldman was fine, though the impact of his performance was somewhat limited by hammy dialogue.
Anne Cornish as Clara Murphy.
RoboCop (1987) was not a feminist movie. For example, neither it nor the 2014 version passed the Bechdel test. But Anne Lewis’ character in the original was, arguably, a well-received, distinctive feminist character. So why did the studio decide to go with a male cop for the remake (Michael K. Williams as Jack Lewis)? The only female cops we see are behind desks; all of the detectives are men. Marianne Jean-Baptise does stand out, briefly, as the Black Boss Lady Chief of Police Dean. While Kinniman is passable as Murphy, Cornish spends the entire movie going from room to room to either hold her son or cry a single tear.
RoboCop (2014) is certainly not the worst action movie to be released recently, and it is probably better than the 49 percent rating it currently has on Rotten Tomatoes. That being said, the best thing I can say about the movie is that it might prompt folks to watch the original.
Andé Morgan lives in Tucson, Arizona, where they write about culture, race, politics, and LGBTQ issues. Follow them @andemorgan.
The men get the most attention for their greed and corruption. However, if we look a bit closer, the films’ women are the ones who can be traced to plant bigger, fatter seeds of avarice. This wouldn’t bother me, as I’m always in favor of more complex female characters (even if they’re unsympathetic), but what strikes me is that we barely notice these scenes. The women become victims and damsels, when oftentimes the ideas were their own.
Is this some kind of 21st century version of the femme fatale? A woman who is coercive–not only sexually, but also financially–but who isn’t taken seriously as a power player? Is it just embedded in us to not notice women’s power or ignore their parts in the narrative?
Two of this year’s Oscars contenders–The Wolf of Wall Street and American Hustle–are based on true stories. These stories center around greed and corruption. The characters cheat and lie their way into and out of the American Dream.
The men get the most attention for their greed and corruption. However, if we look a bit closer, the films’ women are the ones who can be traced to plant bigger, fatter seeds of avarice. This wouldn’t bother me, as I’m always in favor of more complex female characters (even if they’re unsympathetic), but what strikes me is that we barely notice these scenes. The women become victims and damsels, when oftentimes the ideas were their own.
Is this some kind of 21st century version of the femme fatale? A woman who is coercive–not only sexually, but also financially–but who isn’t taken seriously as a power player? Is it just embedded in us to not notice women’s power or ignore their parts in the narrative?
In both The Wolf of Wall Street and American Hustle, women plant the ideas that become the stories themselves. We shouldn’t point at them and scream, “Jezebel!” or blame them entirely for the greed and corruption. Instead, I think it’s important that we recognize them as part of the story, and not as characters who need saving.
The Wolf of Wall Street‘s quiet, victimized femme fatales are harder to identify. In fact, when we watch The Wolf of Wall Street, the power and corruption of bloated, desperate masculinity screams at us from every frame–women are objectified, and men hold the power.
However, some key moments in Jordan’s (Leonardo DiCaprio) professional life are influenced by women. When he loses his first job on Wall Street after Black Monday, his wife Teresa (Cristin Milioti) shows him an ad for a job at the Investors Center, where he goes to sell penny stocks quite successfully. When he starts taking people’s money in earnest, Teresa says, “Wouldn’t you feel better selling to rich people who could afford to lose money?” The rest is history.
Teresa
Then come the strippers and the marching band, and the scathing “Wolf of Wall Street” article in Forbes. There’s “no such thing as bad publicity,” Teresa says.
Pretty soon, Jordan is hooked on quaaludes. He points out that the history of quaaludes–how they were first prescribed to housewives, and then became recreational drugs (this Paris Review article notes that they were prescribed to “nervous housewives” and went on to be discovered by “curious teenagers” who raided their mothers’ medicine cabinets). Here we have a shift: all of a sudden, what was once a woman’s game was now co-opted, blown out of proportion, and reckless.
Soon, Jordan is with Naomi (Margot Robbie). He goes into her apartment and is beeped by Teresa (“Go home to your wife,” he says to himself). Naomi steps out naked, and they have sex instead.
She didn’t come, though. It’s pointed out that she doesn’t come, which is important–she’s seductive, but not satisfied. She’s sexy, but not sexual. (Or maybe Scorsese was trying to avoid an NC-17 rating, since doing blow out of a prostitute’s ass crack is R material, but female orgasms are just too scandalous.)
Naomi’s “power”
Teresa and Naomi both are suddenly victims, discarded and consumed by Jordan’s lifestyle. We feel sorry for them, and they seem to be powerless (except for Naomi’s use of withholding sex). Their motivations and their power are erased by misogyny (figuratively in the story, or literally through violence and rape). I suppose this is actually in keeping with history–a history that favors men, and typically erases women’s involvement.
However, in American Hustle, Sydney (Amy Adams) shares center stage. She is a formidable scammer. She fabricates a persona, adopts an accent, and partners with Irving (Christian Bale) as a scam artist. Her power is fairly clear, and her nomination for the Best Actress Academy Award reflects her spotlighted role.
When Sydney and Irving meet, they are both already con artists in their own right. Sydney points out to Irving “how easy it could be to take money from desperate people.” With her involvement, his business takes off. Irving was a small player before Sydney; she takes their business to the next level.
Sydney has control
Before long, though, Sydney is a damsel in distress–needing to be rescued by either Richie (Bradley Cooper) or Irving, and pitted against Irving’s wife, Rosalyn (Jennifer Lawrence). Her jealousy and cattiness take over, and she and Rosalyn seem at times to be liabilities because of their unbridled passion. All of a sudden, Sydney’s role as a powerful female force is whittled away. I want to be able to look at a female character and fully realize her power and potential, and recognize her role as an agent of change–even if that change is corrupt. It’s unfortunate to watch her weaken because of romantic relationships, and for her adversary to be the wife who almost tears everything down with her jealousy.
There’s a relatively happy ending for Irving and Sydney–they have legal jobs, and share custody of Irving’s adopted son, while Rosalyn has also found a new partnership. I don’t deny that Sydney is a strong character in her own right; however, a viewer could easily see her role as softened, muted somehow because of her jealousy.
Jealousy takes over
It’s simply too easy for viewers to file women away in the “victim” category, or to not take them seriously as power players. Don’t get me wrong–I don’t think the answer to this problem is to always force female characters into leading roles, especially if the story on screen revolves around a male character. But there must be a way to avoid victimizing women and dismissing their motivations and actions, overshadowing them by female tropes. The male supporting characters are able to be seen as complex–American Hustle‘s Richie, Carmine (Jeremy Renner), and Stoddard (Louis C.K.), and The Wolf of Wall Street‘s Donnie (Jonah Hill), Patrick (Kyle Chandler), and Max (Rob Reiner) are likable and despicable, sympathetic and sinister. It’s possible.
I also wouldn’t want viewers to blame the women fully for the men’s actions, seeing them as simply vamps or temptresses who lead men astray. There’s some kind of middle ground that needs to be explored–and that ground is seeing women as complex human beings.
The women in The Wolf of Wall Street and American Hustle have power in pivotal moments, but it seems too easy for the audience to disregard due to cultural expectations and ideas about women and story lines that have them fade–just enough–into stereotypes. When women have formidable power behind the scenes, it would be nice to see that fully realized on the screen. We need a culture shift to move away from the dangerous dichotomies that wedge women into Madonna or whore, damsel or temptress. It’s up to writers and audiences to make that a reality.
True confession: I love the emerging trope of strong, detached female leads in procedural crime shows. Temperance “Bones” Brennan, internationally acclaimed forensic anthropologist, from the TV show ‘Bones’ was a seminal figure in this movement, and Elise Wasserman, workaholic, brilliant police officer from ‘The Tunnel’ is a more recent iteration.
Bones and The Tunnel Posters
True confession: I love the emerging trope of strong, detached female leads in procedural crime shows. Temperance “Bones” Brennan, internationally acclaimed forensic anthropologist, from the TV show Boneswas a seminal figure in this movement, and Elise Wasserman, workaholic, brilliant police officer from The Tunnel is a more recent iteration. (The Tunnel is the French/British remake of the Danish/Swedish series The Bridge. The Bridge has also been remade for American audiences as a US/Mexico TV crime drama.)
Though Bones is a kind of cheesy show (and getting cheesier and boring-er all the time), I have long loved Emily Deschanel‘s characterization of the logical, methodical scientist who solves crimes alongside her more emotional, intuitive male FBI partner, Seeley Booth. When we first meet Brennan, she is not only the leading forensic anthropologist in her field, but she is a physically capable women who’s an expert in martial arts and good with a gun. She also has a pragmatic attitude towards relationships and sex, often comparing both to animal and tribal cultures throughout the world and throughout history to explain human tendencies. Love, Brennan explains, is a chemical process in the brain and not the romanticized notion in which her partner, Booth, believes.
Bones: She’s a badass in a labcoat
I also immediately liked the stone-faced Elise from The Tunnel with her calm rationale, her unwillingness to lie, and her dedication to solving homicides. Though difficult to work with, everyone respects Elise’s abilities as a detective (much like Brennan). Also like Brennan, Elise views sex as a practical necessity. She prefers to be alone, isn’t seeking companionship, and doesn’t become emotionally attached to her sex partners. She even tells her partner, Karl Roebuck (a more empathetic character for Stephen Dillane than his Stannis Baratheon of Game of Thrones fame), that her current lover wants her to change and that she doesn’t want to change.
Badass Elise and Karl at a crime scene
Though I love this strong, intensely logical female lead character trope, it also raises some questions for me. I like the idea of reversing traditional gender roles by making the female lead the analytical one and the male lead the emotional one, but I wonder if, in a way, this is an attempt at the masculinization of the shows’ female characters? These characters literally have their emotions and their ability to express their emotions almost completely removed. Why did the writers think it was necessary to remove the emotions of its female characters in order to make them logical? This isn’t Star Trek; Brennan and Elise aren’t Vulcans. This subtly promotes the idea that logic and emotions are mutually exclusive, even part of a binary opposition. In particular, this dichotomy suggests that a women who is in touch with her emotions cannot possibly be rational, too. As women are so often associated with emotion, is muting Brennan and Elise’s emotions an attempt to make them more masculinely rational?
Elise hard at work, eschewing sleep and a social life for her job
Interestingly enough, over the many seasons of Bones, the writers are actually changing Brennan, making her more readily emotional, quicker to cry or acknowledge her love, her fear, her sadness. At the same time, they have systematically made her more “feminine” by having her suddenly wanting many of the trappings of the traditional female role that she once dismissed (having a baby, cohabitating, and getting married, in particular). Brennen also seems to have forgotten her martial arts skills, is in need of frequent rescues, and no longer uses her gun. Not only that, but they gave her an unexplained supernatural experience that defies her atheism and points to the existence of a higher power. All these things undermine her identity and have slowly rewritten her into less of that subversive, independent female powerhouse role.
Bones gets domesticated
Another thing that gives me pause is that both Brennan and Elise are…abrasive. To strangers, they can come off as rude, insensitive, and self-important. Both women are, though, strikingly beautiful. Emily Deschanel brings her stark blue eyes and sexy, husky voice to the characterization of Brennan.
Brennan is the perennial detached scientist, but she’s a looker.
Even though they try to make Clémence Poésy look disheveled as Elise and maybe they’re attempting to make her seem plain because she’s not obviously made-up, but she’s model gorgeous.
Messy hair and combat boots add to Elise’s allure in The Tunnel
This makes me question whether or not audiences would like these women and find their quirks so endearing if they weren’t so beautiful? Or, maybe, audiences might like them, but would studios trust audiences to like these unusual women if they weren’t knockout stunning…since pretty much all women on TV are required to meet a specific standard of beauty no matter what their personality may be?
Now, it’s my theory that both Brennan and Elise are most likely somewhere on the autism spectrum. Both women have trouble understanding the humor of others, reading the social or emotional cues of others, and observing social niceties.
A Joan of Arc joke is completely lost on Elise.
I love that their communities are accepting and inclusive, that these women lead productive, successful lives, and their capability is rarely questioned. But why aren’t we talking about it? Why aren’t these shows acknowledging the truth about who these women are, the challenges they face, and the multifaceted nature of their triumphs? By not talking about it, these shows not only deny the identity and experiences of these women but also those of autism spectrum viewers and their community members. Announcing that your lead character is part of an underrepresented, marginalized group is a hugely important step in de-stigmatizing and giving a voice to that group.
Let Brennan be the superheroine she was meant to be!
Despite my speculations on the institutional sexism and shortcomings of the creators of Brennan from Bones and Elise from The Tunnel, I dig these women. They’re both smart, ambitious, unique, highly moral, and compassionate women who are fantastic role models for their female audience members (in spite of the apparent taming of Brennan through marriage and child rearing). I wish the shows were doing a few things differently…more better-ly, but all in all, Brennan and Elise are great characters who I love to watch, which says to me that both shows are doing something very, very right.
——-
Amanda Rodriguez is an environmental activist living in Asheville, North Carolina. She holds a BA from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio and an MFA in fiction writing from Queens University in Charlotte, NC. She writes all about food and drinking games on her blog Booze and Baking. Fun fact: while living in Kyoto, Japan, her house was attacked by monkeys.
The background vocalists are mostly women of color often singing behind white, male leads and the film poses the question of why these white guys (whose voices are not as strong as the women featured) became stars and their backup singers did not. The answer turns out to be more complicated than we might have thought.
When I was in high school, The Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter” wasn’t new, but it didn’t have the baggage of being associated with Martin Scorcese films, Dexter, or The Simpsons. I remember wondering about the woman whose powerful vocals make up half the song. In those days duets between men and women were a staple on the radio with both artists’ names above the title. But no one ever mentioned this woman. Years later with the advent of the internet and Wikipedia I looked up her name, Merry Clayton, and was surprised I didn’t recognize it. When I had heard the song I was sure I was hearing someone who had gone on to record other hits.
In a way, I had been right. Among many other songs, Merry Clayton sang on Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama,” Joe Cocker’s “Feelin’ Alright,” and Ringo Starr’s “Oh My My,” but because she was a backup singer, her name was buried in the credits and never mentioned on the radio when stations played these songs over and over. So even though many of us have heard her voice throughout our lives and maybe have even bought the songs and albums she sang on, most of us do not know her name.
Merry Clayton
The Oscar-nominated documentary 20 Feet From Stardom(directed by Morgan Neville) attempts to right this injustice by focusing on Clayton and a number of other backup singers whose voices we know, but whose names we often do not: Judith Hill (though some may recognize her from The Voice), Claudia Lennear, Lisa Fischer, Táta Vega, The Waters, as well as former back-up singers whose names became well-known like Darlene Love, the 60s girl-group singer who is in The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and Luther Vandross, who went from singing background on and cowriting and arranging hit David Bowie songs to his own successful solo career.
The background vocalists are mostly women of color often singing behind white, male leads and the film poses the question of why these white guys (whose voices are not as strong as the women featured) became stars and their backup singers did not. The answer turns out to be more complicated than we might have thought.
Lisa Fischer
Anyone who has worked in the arts has seen enough examples to know talent is no guarantee of success– which some of the popular artists who have worked with the backup singers featured admit in the film. We see and hear solo performances from Clayton and Fischer and although they’re good (Fischer’s single won a Grammy), the songs they perform are not close to the caliber of “Gimme Shelter.” What makes a song (and its singer) a hit is tricky: sometimes the vocalists’ collaborators are the key (Mick Jagger with Keith Richards–or Bowie with Vandross), sometimes grooming from a powerful recording executive and producer does the trick (like Clive Davis for Whitney Houston) and sometimes artists become successful on the strength of their songwriting skills instead of their vocal prowess (Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits, and Bob Dylan among many, many others).
As Darlene Love mentions she and the other girl-group singers modified their sound according to the wishes of producers so, for example, in the background vocals for “The Monster Mash” they changed their style to “sound white.” A singer’s popularity often depends on a distinctive style. Even Aretha Franklin didn’t become the Aretha Franklin we know today until she was allowed to sing and play piano as she had when she had sung gospel. In previous, secular recordings she was backed by an orchestra including plenty of strings, in a effort to try to replicate the success of Sarah Vaughn. The backup singers’ flexibility and skill in creating generic vocals might have also been their downfall in achieving success on their own.
Claudia Lennear
Some backup singers have crossed over to great, popular success under their own names. but Sheryl Crowe and Emmylou Harris are white women, Luther Vandross was a Black man and Leon Russell was a white guy. The door doesn’t seem open to women of color. The film touches on some of what the women have had to deal with, acknowledging the racism in “Sweet Home Alabama,” which Clayton says her now-deceased husband convinced her to take part in, so her voice could be a retort to the song’s lyrics. The opening credits unroll to the sound of Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side” with its infamous chorus of, “And all the colored girls sing…” When the song was released “colored” wasn’t as strong a slur as it is today, but it also was not a word that most Black people were still using to refer to themselves. Progressive white people didn’t use it then either. The song “Brown Sugar” was rumored to be written about Lennear (who dated Mick Jagger around the time it was written) and its lyrics are also cringe-worthy.
Mick Jagger and Lisa Fischer in the 90s
The women are often in the position of being not just ear candy, but eye candy as well. We see a younger, slender Lisa Fischer in spandex eventually replacing Merry Clayton when the Rolling Stones tour and play “Gimme Shelter”–though Mick Jagger and Keith Richards have become visibly older and more fossil-like in the intervening years. Fischer is now 55, and toured with the Stones in 2013 (as she has in each of their tours for the last 24 years), but the precariousness of these gigs for women as they age makes Lennear’s long-ago decision to quit the business and teach Spanish to kids instead seem like a sensible one.
Now that the music industry is collapsing onto itself, the women who are still singing backup complain “my phone has not rung,” and struggle to make a living. So I’m puzzled why so much of the audience and critics see this film as a “feel-good” experience. At the end I couldn’t help thinking what the future would hold for these women: if this film is the last vestige of an era, the way a stuffed passenger pigeon in a museum is all that remains of the flocks that used to cover the sky.
Ren Jender is a queer writer-performer/producer putting a film together. Her writing has appeared in The Toast,xoJane and the Feminist Wire. You can follow her on Twitter @renjender.
HBO’s newest miniseries ‘True Detective,’ starring Matthew McConaughey (Rusty) and Woody Harrelson (Marty), has already spawned a substantial cult following, receiving universal acclaim, and it’s only just reached the halfway point at episode number four.
If you’re not watching it, you should be. ‘True Detective’ is being hailed as the “rise of the miniseries” (following on the heels of the mini-series sweep at the 2014 Golden Globes), a continuation of the TV excellence that has, and will continue to drastically reshape our visual storytelling experience (that’s a big claim, but one to bet on in the coming years).
HBO’s newest miniseries True Detective, starring Matthew McConaughey (Rusty) and Woody Harrelson (Marty), has already spawned a substantial cult following, receiving universal acclaim, and it’s only just reached the halfway point at episode number four.
If you’re not watching it, you should be. True Detective is being hailed as the “rise of the miniseries” (following on the heels of the mini-series sweep at the 2014 Golden Globes), a continuation of the TV excellence that has, and will continue to drastically reshape our visual storytelling experience (that’s a big claim, but one to bet on in the coming years).
At the forefront of the True Detective conversation is its subversion of the overdone police procedural (finally) and its meshing of gritty realism and drug-fueled surrealism, creating narrative that is both poignant and disturbing. Its scenes blend sharp, cynical dialogue with the ever-changing landscape of rural Louisiana.
Rusty (Matthew McCaunghey) and Marty (Woody Harrelson) spinning out of control.
The cinematography is fantastic; episode four, “Who Goes There” features a visceral, though down to earth, six-minute, one shot, gun fight (meaning one take through several houses, a few backyards, and one chain link fence). The scene overwhelms when contrasted with the highly edited, over-wrought action scenes we are spoon-fed at every Hollywood blockbuster and police drama. In fact, the scene orchestrated by Cary Fukunaga is so impressive, many are calling it the best scene of the TV season.
The soundtrack is throbbing, underplaying the simple actions of a police investigation and turning it into an event of greater significance: This is isn’t just a race to stop a serial killer, it’s a metaphor for the battle of good and evil, punctuated by Nic Pizzolatto’s intricate character studies of Rusty in his obsessive nihilism and Marty’s downward spiral.
Yet, for a show that is steeped within the masculinity of a 1996 rural Louisiana police station, and the personal crises of its two male leads, how are the women of True Detective faring? Its women are murdered and raped, wives and prostitutes, stenographers and secretaries. In short, the gritty brush with which Pizzolatto has painted Rusty and Marty has been used on the female cast as well.
However, some of True Detective’s women are all the more compelling because of their flawed station in life, and not just because it’s sadly accurate. In 1991, less than 9 percent of the US police force was female, so the fact that these women operate within in a different capacity doesn’t make the show any less forceful.
In fact, the ways that these women, varied, and often pitiful, demonstrate an adaptability and survival for their incredibly hostile environment, takes a prominent role in the mini series; since TrueDetective shows so much of Louisiana during their search, it similarly shows much of its women (especially within the confines of poverty).
One of True Detectives many prostitutes.
As the show progresses, one character in particular shines (if you want to call it that) in his interactions with women: Marty. The easy possession that “family man” Marty exerts over the women in his life, beginning to show a penchant for violence in his need to continue that dominion towards his wife Maggie (Michelle Monaghan) and girlfriend Lisa (Alexandra Daddario), is the key factor in showing Marty’s breakdown.
Yet, for all of the effort to steep his characters in realism, some would argue that True Detective still relies on sexist cliché to communicate it’s character failings; Sean Collins of Rolling Stone points out:
“But the idea of a mistress not understanding that’s all she’s supposed to be good for, besides being sexist points back to the show’s reliance on stock characters.”
And Collins might have a point there; so far, the show has featured a lot of women as victims. Though in episode two, “Seeing Things,” the dame of a whorehouse (a sort-of victim) offers an either brilliant, or crazy, provocative reason for prostitution.
Dame: “What do you know about where that girl’s been? Where she come from?…It’s a woman’s body ain’t it? A woman’s choice”
Marty: “She doesn’t look like a woman to me. At that age she’s not equipped to make those choices, but what do you care as long as you get your money?”
Dame: “Girls walk this earth all the time screwing for free, why is it you add business to the mix and boys like you can’t stand the thought. I’ll tell you why, its cause suddenly you don’t own it the way you thought you did.”
Which is an interesting foreshadowing to Marty’s violence when he later discovers that the woman he is having an affair with is also seeing someone else. The line itself, “you don’t own it the way you thought you did,” is particularly meaningful when aimed at the wandering possessiveness of Marty; however, outside of the episode, it enters the heated discussion on female sexuality, shame, and the commercialization of the female body.
Beth (Lily Simmons) as an underage prostitute.
This comes around to the tagline for the show, “Heart of Darkness,” an obvious play on words from Joseph Conrad’s classic novella about the African jungle, Heart of Darkness, (fitting since Pizzolatto spent several years teaching literature and writing in academia). For True Detective, the audience is left wondering, is the “Heart of Darkness” the Louisiana landscape? A metaphor for the state of humanity? Or a more literal casting of the two heros’ state of being?
Effective, especially considering that HBO’s website pops up as “Touch the Darkness” (and “Darkness Becomes You”), inviting the audience to experience the demons without, and the demons within.
Nuns are the BEST. What’s so interesting about them is that they operate simultaneously within and against a hierarchy. Anyone who cares about social justice can relate to the frustrations of trying to change institutions from the inside, often wishing you could opt out, but never being able to. Recently I saw two documentaries about awesome nuns being awesome feminist warriors in very different circumstances.
I’m Episcopalian, which I like to tell people means I get the best parts of Catholicism and Protestantism – though it would probably be just as true to say we get the worst of both worlds. We do technically have nuns, but they don’t seem to be completely awesome the way Catholic nuns are.
Nuns are the BEST. What’s so interesting about them is that they operate simultaneously within and against a hierarchy. Anyone who cares about social justice can relate to the frustrations of trying to change institutions from the inside, often wishing you could opt out, but never being able to. Recently I saw two documentaries about awesome nuns being awesome feminist warriors in very different circumstances: Sewing Hope is about Sister Rosemary’s work to help women and girls in Uganda, while Radical Grace tells the story of three US nuns who fight for social justice.
The West does not have a very good image of Uganda. Hands up if you remember Kony 2012 and the associated controversy, not least of which was the issue of white saviorism. White people sure do love to swoop in and rescue brown people from themselves, completely eliding the history (and present) of western colonialism that is often the root of many of the problems in the Two-Thirds World. The cool thing about Sister Rosemary is that she is not a white savior. She’s a local Ugandan who runs a school for women and girls who were forced to be soldiers in Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army. Many of these women were also sex-slaves, and bear the burden of social stigma on top of single parenthood and personal trauma.
Saint Monica’s, the school run by Sister Rosemary, trains the women in tailoring and baking, providing them with skills that are in demand both in the local hospitality industry and for the international sale of goods. The school not only helps them work toward economic independence, but it also provides a holistic, person-centered environment for healing.
What’s really extraordinary about Sister Rosemary’s work is that she’s not just providing skills from a brute economic bottom line – she’s helping trauma survivors recover. Early in the film, Sister Rosemary speaks about the importance of listening, and this is immediately followed by several women telling their own stories of horror and brutality. Sister Rosemary explains that her method is not to welcome girls by saying she knows what they have been through, but to provide a supportive environment. This includes both emotional support and very practical things like childcare.
Sister Rosemary is working within her context and making a difference from the ground up using the resources available to her and to women in her culture. The US context is very different, and so concomitantly are the methods and tactics of Sisters Simone, Jean, and Chris.
Being censured by the Vatican for “radical feminism” (no, not that kind of radical feminism) didn’t stop the sisters from fighting the injustices of their own society. As Nuns on the Bus, they traveled around assorted US cities and petitioned a number of politicians, campaigning for healthcare reform and now immigration reform.
The sisters are tackling issues both of wider society (poverty, the prison-industrial complex) and specific to the Catholic Church (women’s ordination). They are undeterred by the backlash they face, which ranges from the disapproval of the Church hierarchy to on-the-ground accusations of being “worse than pedophile priests” (yes, one protestor really says that).
The sisters are grounded in their commitment to the social gospel, which sees Jesus’ message as being primarily one of radical justice for the people on the margins of society. At the same time, the nuns are committed to thoughtful interrogation of their own faith, and to challenging the institution – which, as they say, is “always going to be ten years too late, if not a hundred” when it comes to social issues.
In some ways these nuns are an embarrassment to the hierarchy. They make the institutional Church look like a reactionary dinosaur; and yet it’s clear that they are working from a place of love. The Church is something they want to be better, and they’re taking matters into their own hands.
Vatican-approved picture of nun being badass
The filmmakers want us to see these stories and be moved by them to get involved. Whether it’s donating to Sister Rosemary and her women, or helping to get the final cut of Radical Grace finished so the story can get out there, they are hoping to motivate us to action. As Rebecca Parrish, director of Radical Grace, notes, there is potential for alliance between secular feminism and progressive religious movements, and we must overcome the divisions of ideology if we want to make the world a better place.
You can learn more about Sewing Hope here, or donate to the Radical Grace kickstarter here.
Characters with physical or developmental disabilities are rarely given prominent roles on television ensembles, much less well-developed characters. ‘Glee’ and ‘American Horror Story,’ TV shows created by Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk, both feature important characters with Down Syndrome and have received much praise for it. However, the mere existence of these characters is not enough to suggest they are well portrayed and in each character there are several questionable areas that warrant discussion.
Characters with physical or developmental disabilities are rarely given prominent roles on television ensembles, much less well-developed characters. Glee and American Horror Story, TV shows created by Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk, both feature important characters with Down Syndrome and have received much praise for it. Glee’s Becky Jackson and AHS’s Adelaide Langdon and Nan are all portrayed as flawed women and are allowed their own inner lives, desires, and triumphs.
However, the mere existence of these characters is not enough to suggest they are well portrayed and in each character there are several questionable areas that warrant discussion. Though one must take this criticism with a grain of salt, as Glee is a surreal over-the-top comedy where everyone is made fun of to a degree (though has been consistently problematic in its portrayal of women, the disabled, bisexuality and transwomen, among others) while American Horror Story is literally a horror show, where nearly everyone suffers and dies and indulges in many horror movie cliches–among them the child-like prophet and the martyr.
Becky
Becky Jackson (Lauren Potter) was introduced in Glee’s first season to as a means to character development for the show’s previously one-dimensional villain, Sue Sylvester. She was a shy, young girl with Down Syndrome, a social outcast who just wanted to be a cheerleader.
As a Cheerio, Becky is among the most popular girls in school
When Sue put her through a rigorous audition process, viewers and Glee Club leader Will Schuester assumed this was yet another of Sue’s cruelties. Obviously Sue was just torturing this girl for her own amusement with no hope of her actually making the squad, but this assumption was proved wrong when the show revealed that she reminds Sue of her sister Jean, who also has Downs.
Sue tells Will she is treating Becky just like everyone else because that’s what she wants and from then on Becky is a Cheerio, Sue’s constant sidekick and assistant and frequently recurring character.
Becky also continues to aid in the development of Sue’s character, as she becomes her voice of reason, being the the only one who can criticize Sue’ behaviour and talk to her on her level without fear of retaliation. For example, when Becky learns that Sue’s baby will likely have Downs, she is able to tell Sue that she needs to work on her patience to be a good parent. Becky functions as Sue’s heart and when Sue is shattered by her sister’s death, she expresses her grief by casting aside the only other thing that made her human, and kicks Becky off the Cheerios. Their bond is restored when Sue welcomes Becky back to the squad and promotes her to captain, after realizing how much it helps her to have Becky in her life.
Becky and Sue have a strong relationship that gives Sue humanity and Becky, a role model
However, for Becky, her relationship with Sue results in the loss of her own personhood. In a relatively short length of time, Becky gives up any other interests or ambitions she had and becomes a miniature version of her hero, Sue (even dressing her for Halloween). For most of the show, Becky is Sue’s mouthpiece, echoing her criticisms and opinions and making snarky and frequently offensive comments in the same manner that Sue is known for. She even shares Sue’s grossly inflated sense of self worth and importance (Helen Mirren is her inner voice) and heckles and sabotages other students when given the opportunity.
For brief period, it was fun that Becky could be as mean and snarky as almost all the other characters, but as the show dragged this on to become Becky’s defining characteristic, it become patronizing and unfunny. Becky is not portrayed as an otherwise ordinary teenage girl with interests in sex and blue humour but as low comedy, like a child swearing. The joke wasn’t what she was saying but that she was saying these kind of things at all.
Becky is disturbingly infantilized as Baby Jesus in the school’s nativity scene
In addition, Becky is constantly prepositioning other characters and making crude sexual comments about them. She lusts over the Glee Club’s Men of McKinley calendar and claims ownership of one-time date, Artie Abrams when she sees him kissing his girlfriend, calling him her future husband. However, none of her attractions are treated as valid. When she pays for a kiss at a kissing booth run by quarterback Finn Hudson, he kisses her on the cheek; when she and Artie bond over their disabilities on their date, he breaks up with her after she asks him to “do it” with her (in an alternate reality where Artie never went out with her, Becky became “the school slut”); and when she seems to find happiness with Jason, who also has Down Syndrome, she claims the relationship couldn’t work because he liked hot dogs and she liked pizza. By hypersexualizing a character who is treated as humourous for having a sexual desire and never considered as a viable romantic option, she is also desexualized and infantilized, treated like a child who doesn’t understand that (from the narrative’s perspective) the conventionally attractive characters aren’t interested in sleeping with her and she’ll never be prom queen.
There have been two particularly problematic plot lines featuring Becky in Glee’s recent seasons, both which could be essays in their own right. In season four’s much-maligned Shooting Star, Becky brings a gun to school because she fears the world outside the safe bubble of McKinley High, suggesting individuals with Down Syndrome are unstable and dangerous. In season five episode, Movin’ Out, frequent misogynist Artie decides to “save” Becky and helps her find a college with programs for people with developmental disabilities, something she hadn’t considered previously. While this recent story has a positive message about Becky’s future and her abilities, the fact that another character, one who she stalked after he rejected her, imbues it with the same patronizing dynamic found in much of the plot lines featuring Becky.
Adelaide
The first episode of American Horror Story: Murder House opens in 1978 with Adelaide Langdon, a young girl with Downs ominously warning two boys they will die if they go into the titular house. In the next scene, her warning comes true.
As an adult over 30 years later, Adelaide (Jamie Brewer) continues to given warnings, frightening the Harmon family who have just moved into the house, next door to where she lives with her mother Constance (Jessica Lange). Though she is well meaning and friendly, her warnings are constantly misconstrued as threats due to her creepy habit of starring unblinking and appearing out of nowhere in the Harmon house.
Addy’s mother Constance is relentlessly cruel to her
Being a character on a horror television show, Addy’s Down Syndrome is used to frame her as an uncanny figure, an other in the style of Tod Browning’s Freaks. In horror or gothic media, the uncanny is something that is familiar, yet strange at the same time, producing an unsettling and comfortable feeling, such as identical twins, mutes or people with developmental disabilities. Seemingly, Addy is able to enter the house whenever she desires, no matter what barriers are in her way, suggesting a magical, otherworldly aspect of her character. Her Down Syndrome alone is meant to produce discomfort in the viewer, manipulating them into wondering if she is evil or will, even unthinkingly, harm the family, for no other reason than that she is so othered.
Raised to believe she is an ugly monster who should keep out of sight, Addy wants nothing more than to be “a pretty girl” and mourns that she doesn’t look like the women in her fashion magazines. Her mother frequently insults her, calling her a burden and a ‘mongoloid’ and reinforcing over and over that Addy’s dream will never happen. Cruelly, Constance punishes her by locking her in the “Bad Girl Room,” a closet full of mirrors, further reinforcing Addy’s monstrous self-image.
As punishment, Addy is terrorized in a closet full of mirrors, where she is forced to see her face
Addy’s story ends sadly on Halloween when she is hit by a car and killed. Here, the show’s treatment of Addy continues to be problematic as it tries to have it both ways, portraying her as both something to fear and as an object of pity, a tragedy for viewers to mourn. When Addy dies she is wearing “a pretty girl” Halloween mask and just minutes before, she was ecstatically happy to finally be the person she’d always wanted, even if it was only in a small, temporary way. Like Sue, Addy is also used to humanize a bigoted character, as Constance, who caused most of the problems in Addy’s life puts makeup on Addy’s corpse and cries while telling her she’s “beautiful.” This suggests that Addy’s purpose in the narrative was chiefly to facilitate Constance’s character development, rather than a storyline or a life of her own.
Dressed as a “pretty girl” Addy is hit by a car and killed on Halloween
Nan
Unlike Adelaide, whose story is presented as a tragedy centered around her Down Syndrome, Nan’s condition is never mentioned but subtly informs how she is treated by the narrative and the other characters. A young clairvoyant on American Horror Story: Coven, Nan (Jamie Brewer) is in most ways, portrayed as a normal girl. She admires the hot neighbor with her classmates, joins in on their catty comments and using her powers for cruel, teenage girl teasing (trying to make Madison put her cigarette in her vagina) in a way that doesn’t seem like the joke is that she is saying these things at all.
Nan is however, constantly dismissed even within the group that tacitly includes her (problematically, Queenie who is Black is treated as the real outsider). She is never considered a serious contender in the season long competition to see who is the most powerful witch of her generation, the Supreme, called ugly by Queen Bee Madison and the discovery that the neighbor, Luke is interested in her is treated as unbelievable by other characters.
Nan and Madison (Emma Roberts) compete for the affections of their neighbor Luke
However, sad as it may be, this is probably be an honest portrayal of how such a character would be treated in such an environment full of bitchery and backstabbing over any character flaw or deficit in appearance. Unlike Queenie, whose difference and feelings about her exclusion from the coven’s majority of white witches are explored in detail, Nan’s feelings are glossed over. She is different, but her difference is never examined, so it becomes an elephant in the room.
Like Adelaide, Nan insists she is not a virgin when it is assumed by other characters. She says she has sex all the time and men find her hot, however because the show never gives any background on who Nan was before she came to the school (as is given for all other characters), it is not clear whether this is true. The storyline of her romance with Luke is never able to progress to a romantic or sexual relationship as he is quickly murdered by his mother so he will not reveal her secrets.
Nan is portrayed as the moral center of the school/coven as her power, allows her to see into the hearts of the people around her. She mediates in fights and threatens to tell the police about the baby Marie Laveau had kidnapped earlier. However, Nan has a dark side which is briefly explored when she uses her powers to kill Luke’s mother, by compelling her to drink bleach, as revenge for her murder of Luke.
After her murder, Nan’s spirit looks down at her body and decides to leave the coven
She is ultimately murdered by matriarchs Marie and Fiona Goode, functioning bringing them closer together. Her death is used as the sacrifice of an innocent soul, but it is suggested that Nan had some choice in the matter and decides to leave the coven to destroy each other so she can be at peace. The one bad thing she does, the neighbor’s murder is excused because it was deserved and as she is accepted as an innocent, a soul too pure for this world. In this manner, Nan comes close to the stereotype of the saintly disabled person, and is portrayed as a martyr, the lone character over the season who is never resurrected.
Ultimately, though are three characters discussed here have problematic and debatable qualities, both in their personalities and in the way they are framed by their respective narratives, they offer unique portrayals of women with Down Syndrome. If nothing else, they are all prominent characters who are treated as people rather than public service announcements in major television shows. Hopefully they are seen as steps in the right direction.
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.
What I like about this film is that not only did we come up with a full female driven story, but every woman in this film is a bad ass. No meek characters here. Every single one of them has a strong point of view and sense of self. Those are two things I think we need to focus on in this male dominated industry. As characters, and as women on sets, we can’t be afraid to take charge, voice our opinions and be ourselves.
Elena directing The Catch
This is a guest post by Elena Weinberg.
Being a female filmmaker isn’t hard, but it is definitely interesting. Maybe that statement isn’t true for everyone; maybe I just surround myself with good people. Either way, making films has been great for me as a person, but especially as a woman.
In December of 2012, my partner, Duncan Coe, entered into a screen writing contest. He has been a playwright for years and thought “Why the hell not? I’ll try my hand at the screen too.” The catch was that if he made the top 20, they wanted to see films he had written, produced or directed. So, it looked like we needed to make a film, just in case. But in Texas we have this phrase: “Go Big, or Go Home.” So, instead of just making one little short film in case he got in, we decided to go on a 12 month long journey. See, I got my degree in acting, and he got his in acting and writing. Neither of us knew anything about the behind the camera stuff. But hey, we live in the digital age, we could learn, right? So, we did. We decided to make one short film a month for the year of 2013. Each month we would focus on something different that we hadn’t learned yet. The first month, we did a music video for a friend’s band so that we didn’t have to worry about sound. The next month, we focused on specific shot techniques. March and April focused on voiceovers and live sound. By August, we were getting creative and even tried our hand at stop-motion. He didn’t make the top 20 of the contest, be we had grown into something much bigger than that. We had formed a production company, TurtleDove Films, out of sheer will and determination. We finished the twelve months and not only came out alive, but even have 2 film festivals under our belts and one award. What an accomplishment, right?
Still of actress Kimberly Gates, who plays Jamie in The Catch
That’s all great on paper, but let’s dig a little deeper. What was this experience like for me, as a woman? It was pretty crazy good. Duncan and I fell into our roles early on: he wrote and did cinematography and I directed and business managed. As the female in our duo, I got to be in charge. Now, that has nothing to do with the fact that I AM a woman (I’m just naturally better at taking charge and more organized than he is) but it definitely feels good to be a female in that position. I found myself looking for ways to empower myself and other women on my sets. In November, I decided to challenge Duncan on the writing end. I pointed out that we hadn’t had a full female cast yet, and that most of our female characters hadn’t been particularly strong. He’s a “write what you know” kind of guy, so he blamed that on being a dude and not really understanding women. I called bullshit and told him he just needed practice. So, “The Catch” was born. (Watch it free to play, here: https://vimeo.com/80720328).
What I like about this film is that not only did we come up with a full female driven story, but every woman in this film is a bad ass. No meek characters here. Every single one of them has a strong point of view and sense of self. Those are two things I think we need to focus on in this male dominated industry. As characters, and as women on sets, we can’t be afraid to take charge, voice our opinions and be ourselves. Maybe I’m just lucky, but when I’m directing on set, it feels really really good. People listen to me and value my opinions. Since TurtleDove’s inception, I’ve grown exponentially as a director: after just one three hour directing class in college, I had no idea if I was going to be able to do it. Spoiler alert: I did it. And I now identify as a director. But guess what else that has done for me? It’s made me a better actress. On top of that, it’s made me a stronger person. It’s even made me a better audience member.
I’ve discovered that I’m capable of anything I set my mind to. TurtleDove is now a licensed LLC and we are crowdfunding through Seed & Spark to raise start-up funds for our in-home studio. Before last year, I never dreamed of being a business owner. But, I stood up, owned my woman-hood and said “yes, I can.” So, whether you’re a female director, producer, actress or film buff, I encourage you to keep your strength in mind. Being a female in film is anything but boring. But if it was boring, what would be the point?
Elena Weinberg
Elena Weinberg is an actress, director and producer. She graduated from Saint Edward’s University in Austin, Texas with a BA in Theatre Arts. She co-owns TurtleDove Films, LLC in Austin, Texas. TurtleDove Films is currently running a 60 day campaign on Seed&Spark to fund start-up costs for the production company (www.seedandspark.com/studio/turtledove-films) In addition to filmmaking, she is active in the local theatre community, a yogi, a cat lady and an avid San Antonio Spurs fan. The way to her heart is with wine, cheese and pickles.
I’m not quick to apply the word “intimate” followed by “portrait” to anything outside of the Lifetime series by the same name, but this description accurately characterizes Rodrigo H. Vila’s documentary ‘Mercedes Sosa: The Voice of Latin America.’ The film is a retrospective of the Argentinian alto whose career spanned 60 years and encompassed the tumult of 20th century political and cultural shifts in Latin America.
I’m not quick to apply the word “intimate” followed by “portrait” to anything outside of the Lifetime series by the same name, but this description accurately characterizes Rodrigo H. Vila’s documentary Mercedes Sosa: The Voice of Latin America. The film is a retrospective of the Argentinian alto whose career spanned 60 years and encompassed the tumult of 20th century political and cultural shifts in Latin America.
Sosa was born in the northwestern Argentine province of Tucumán, where she and siblings went to bed hungry more often than not. At the age of 15 she won a singing competition organized by a local radio station and was given a contract to perform for two months, much to the chagrin of her parents, who at the time did not think highly of folk music. She started her career in Tucumán and performed under the name Gladys Osorio. In 1957, she married Manuel Óscar Matus and together with Armando Tejada Gomez and Jose Segovia, they created the manifesto of the “Nuevo Cancionero”: a people’s movement anchored in traditional Argentinian folk music and poetry. Sosa began performing and recording music under her given name, and soon drew much attention for her powerful voice and fervent commitment to championing the rights of the poor and oppressed in Latin America. As she says in one of the many interviews incorporated in the film, “The life of people in America is a suffering people. They are a very poor people. They don’t deserve this poverty. We’ve been robbed of so much, really.” In the early 1970s, she recorded concept albums that celebrated the art and music of Latin American poets and composers, like the Chilean poet and folk musician Violeta Parra. Parra’s “Gracias a la Vida” would become one of Sosa’s signature songs. Even translated into English and flat on the page, the lyrics are beautiful, and in Sosa’s voice truly transcendent:
Thanks to life, which has given me so much. It gave me two stars, which when I open them, Perfectly distinguish black from white And in the tall sky its starry backdrop, And within the multitudes the one that I love.
By 1975 Sosa herself would be robbed of the freedom to perform in her home province, and many other sites in Argentina, due to increasing presence of a military dictatorship, which would install Jorge Rafael Videla in 1976. Targeted as a communist, she started receiving death threats and was forced to leave Argentina after being arrested on stage in 1979. In an interview reflecting on this Sosa says, “Kicking me out was a big mistake because they let loose on the world a famous artist. And in Europe the press was already against them.” In 1982 she returned from exile in Europe to sing in Argentina, and gave a series of performances at the Opera Theatre in Buenos Aires, where she invited many fellow musicians to join her. The recordings from these performances have since become well known, especially Sosa’s version of “Solo le Pido a Dios,” written by León Gieco (who also joins her in performing the song in the film). This song in particular has an anthemic quality, and it didn’t surprise me to learn it’s been covered by artists as wide ranging as Bruce Springsteen and Shakira. Until her death in 2009 at age 74, Sosa would go on to tour extensively and even collaborate with artists like Renee Perez.
While the expansive collection of still photographs and concert and interview footage comprising the main source material of the film make Mercedes Sosa: The Voice of Latin America a rich and inspiring viewing experience, there’s a subtler element that adds a sweet, if melancholic depth: that Sosa’s adult son Fabián Matus is our principal guide through his mother’s life. In his conversations with friends and family who have known his mother longer than he’s been alive, Matus quietly seeks the truth of his mother’s motivations and emotional life. We feel as though we’re seated at the dining room table as he hears from one his mother’s closest friends that his father mistreated and abandoned his mother. Though we don’t know what Matus knew before this scene (or what he went on to find out later, if anything), there is gravitas in these pauses, in the way the subjects take time to think of exactly what they want to tell Matus about the woman they knew as Mercedes Sosa, their friend and sister. Beyond being just a fascinating and well-constructed portrait of a great artist, Vila’s film is a love letter conceived of by her son and generously shared with audiences who, like myself, have the great delight of coming to her art in the afterlife that is her musical legacy.
