Search Results for: Breaking Bad

The Unfinished Legacy of Pam Grier

Grier’s legacy has lasted over four decades, but there’s something about her career that leaves me feeling unsettled, as if her filmography is indicative of larger (backward) social trends. She started out headlining action films–an amazing feat for a woman, much less a black woman in the early 1970s. A glance at a few of these films show feminist themes that are incredibly rare 40 years later. Her early films were groundbreaking, but nothing much was built after that ground was broken.

Eva Green’s Artemisia Disappoints in ‘300: Rise of an Empire’

Most disturbing is the message the film conveys (or fails to convey) about rape and war. Artemisia herself presides over the sacking of Athens, during which we see several Athenian women stripped, raped, and hacked to death with short blades. Does Artemisia see this as suitable retribution? Does the memory of her mother’s suffering cause her to feel any empathy for these women? We do not know, because she makes no comment. This was a huge missed opportunity.

Rape Culture on ‘Downton Abbey’

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

A Plea For More Roseannes and Norma Raes: Addressing The Lack of Working-Class Female Characters on American Screens

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.

‘My Mad Fat Diary’ and Finding Fat-Positive Feminism

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.

‘Someone Marry Barry’: I Just Liked It, OK?

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).

A Study of a Singular Woman: A Review of ‘White Material’

‘White Material’ is about Maria Vial, a white Frenchwoman striving, in the face of mounting hostilities, to secure the coffee plantation she manages. French troops are assigned to evacuate their nationals but she refuses to leave the land she considers home. Superbly played by Isabelle Huppert, Maria is a profoundly complex character. Whether hanging on to the back of a bus heaving with humanity, or applying red lipstick as the world around her goes up in flames, her tenacity is shown to be incontestable and remarkable.

‘The Client List’: Baby Steps Toward Empathy for Sex Workers but Ultimately a Tale of the Fallen Woman

When I reflect on the recent twitter conversation #notyourrescue project, I think of ‘The Client List’ as a seriously flawed baby step forward in the portrayal of sex workers in the media: the sex worker is the main character, she is portrayed as making a decision to do sex work in a situation of economic constraint, not abject victimhood. But I can only call it a baby step forward from a perspective of harm reduction.

‘True Romance’ or How Alabama Whitman Started the Fall of Damsels in Distress

On its surface, ‘True Romance’ comes off as yet another story about a guy who saves a girl from a horrible existence as a sex worker and he protects her forever and they live happily together forever and ever, the end. But, if you’ve ever seen it, you know that this is not the case. Alabama Whitman is a hero in her own right. She’s never apologetic about her sex life or her choices; they are what they are and she’s OK with it.

First Jane Tennison DCI: Revisiting ‘Prime Suspect’s Complex Lead

In the final episode of ‘Prime Suspect,’ the long-running British series, Jane Tennison (Helen Mirren), a hardworking, hard drinking detective who has sacrificed so much of her life for her job and made more than a few enemies, skips her own retirement party and walks out and into the rest of her life. In the other room, her colleagues are jovial, waiting for the stripper they hired, preparing balloons, and liberally dipping into the refreshments.
But Jane is uncertain.

A Plea For More Roseannes and Norma Raes: Addressing The Lack of Working-Class Female Characters on American Screens

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.

‘Brave’ and the Legacy of Female Prepubescent Power Fantasies

Basically, Brave isn’t really that brave of a film. It’s traipsing through a well-established trope that, though positive, is stagnant. Don’t get me wrong; I love all the prepubescent female power fantasy tales I’ve listed, and I’m grateful that they exist and that I could grow up with many of them. However, we can’t pretend that Brave is pushing any boundaries. It sends the message that little girls can be powerful as long as they remain little girls. The dearth of representations of postpubescent heroines who are not objectified, whose sexuality does not rule their interactions, and who are the heroes of their own stories is appalling.