‘A Girl and A Gun’: A Look at Women and Firearms in America

A Girl and A Gun movie poster
Written by Amanda Rodriguez
Trigger Warning
Cathryne Czubek’s A Girl and A Gun is a powerful documentary that broadly surveys the incendiary topic of women and firearms in America. The film shows us the many sides of women and gun ownership, including safety and self-protection, competitive sport, family and culture, anti-violence and gun control activism, and women  who are the victims of gun violence as well as those suffering the consequences of having used a gun to kill another person. Not only that, but Czubek gives us an overview of women and guns throughout American history, including the commercialization and sexualization of the issue. Most importantly, though, this documentary tells the very real and very human stories of women.
First we’ve got writer and blogger Violet Blue who feels guns are empowering and sexy. Violet finds that being open about her status as a capable gun owner (a traditionally-coded masculine tool) shifts threatening online conversations to a more level field. This makes me wonder how many productive dialogues could be had on and off-line if so many women weren’t silenced by intimidation and bullying tactics due to a perceived helplessness that is exploited in order to win an argument (and reinforce patriarchal hegemony, of course). 
“You move through the world as a target when you are female.” – Blue Violet
Robin Natanel is a tai-chi instructor whose house was broken into by an unstable ex-boyfriend. We also meet Sarah McKinley, a widow and mother of an infant, who shot and killed a home invader. Though she abhors violence, Robin purchased a gun because she realized she was the only one who could keep her safe. Both of these women find that the police and the law could not protect them during an attack, even in her their own homes, supposedly the safest and most private of spaces.
“People ask me how I came to own a handgun. I tell them because I have felt the fear.” – Robin Natanel
On the other side of the issue is Stephanie Alexander, a victims’ rights activist, whose daughter, Aieshia Johnson was injured as an innocent bystander in a shooting. Aieshia is paraplegic as a result of the shooting, and the mother and daughter differ on their feelings towards guns. Stephanie sees firearms and violence as the cause of her daughter’s life and mobility being irrevocably altered. Aieshia, feels particularly vulnerable as a woman in a wheelchair and the survivor of a violent crime, so she carries a gun. We also meet Karen Copeland, an inmate, who is serving time because she killed her girlfriend. Karen weeps as she describes the terrible act that she believes would have been prevented had she not owned a gun. The consequences of guns along with their power to destroy are palpable in these three interviews. 
A Girl and A Gun also underscores the gun industry as well as Hollywood’s propensity for the commercialization, exploitation, and sexualization of women with guns. The gun companies goad and exploit women’s fears. 
Scotsdale Gun Club ad playing upon and, perhaps, exacerbating the female fear of attack in the public sphere.
These companies discovered in women an untapped market, so they whip up the fear frenzy while producing pink guns and designer concealed-carry handbags.
As a woman, this fear of the violation of your person is not unfounded, nor are the gun companies the only ones playing upon it. In fact, it’s hard not to see mainstream media as perpetuating that cycle of violence by dehumanizing and objectifying women at every turn.
I find this ad (for gang-rape) offensive, and it certainly triggers me.

However, Hollywood would have us believe that the now prevalent imagery of women with guns is empowering to women. Sometimes, of course, it may be. Strong female characters who step into the masculine-tagged realm of guns, violence, and action can be fun and inspiring (think Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor or Sigourney Weaver as Ellen Ripley). More often than not, though, these images are empty, showing us woman as sex and gun as dick.

Don’t tell me that’s not a phallus.

Though she focuses most on the women who own guns, Czubek doesn’t tell us what we should believe, nor does she give us an answer. Instead, she unfolds the complicated and very individual motivations of women with regards to their choices and firearms. Czubek shows us, too, that we have a history and culture that are at play in all of our decisions and rationalizations. In the end, Czubek allows women to tell their own stories, the stories of the ways in which they navigate a world fraught with impossible rules, threats, and expectations.    

Travel Films Week: The Roundup

If men didn’t rape, Louise wouldn’t have shot the rapist. If the system didn’t blame rape victims, they wouldn’t have gone on the run. If men didn’t rape, they could have driven through Texas. If the system didn’t blame rape victims, Louise wouldn’t have been so afraid. If women weren’t taught they deserve to be treated like shit, they wouldn’t have had to become fugitives in order to feel free. If there was a place for liberated, powerful women who live on their own terms in this world, they wouldn’t have had to create their own. If there was a place for liberated, powerful women who live on their own terms in this world, they wouldn’t have had to plummet into the Grand Canyon in order to feel free. 
I hate that the message — “What you thought you wanted is something you really had all along!” – is applied differently to Dorothy than it is to her friends. The Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Lion are told that they always had a brain, a heart, and courage, and the Wizard giving them their “gifts” is affirmation of their strengths. Dorothy, on the other hand, gets a lecture from Glinda and has to realize that “if I ever look for my heart’s desire again, I won’t look any further than my own backyard.” Her friends get to realize that they were always smart, emotional, and brave, while she has to learn a lesson about being grateful for what she already has.

From the moment our Sex and the City stars have decided to take this trip together, however, Abu Dhabi is viewed through a lens of Orientalism, demonstrating a Western patronization of the Middle East. Starting on the first day in the city, Abu Dhabi is framed derisively as the polar opposite of sexy and modern New York City. It’s also stereotypically portrayed as the world of Disney’s Jasmine and Aladdin, magic carpets, camels, and desert dunes—”but with cocktails,” Carrie adds. This borderline racist trope plays out vividly through the women’s vacation attire of patterned head wraps, flowing skirts, and breezy cropped pants. Take for example their over-the-top fashion statement as they explore the desert on camelback, only after they have dramatically walked across the sand directly toward the camera of course.
The movie makes interesting commentaries on gender. When Liz eats dinner with Felipe, he tells her how he stayed at home with his kids while his wife worked. Liz calls him “a good feminist husband.” In Italy, there’s a great scene where Liz and her friends celebrate an American Thanksgiving dinner to say goodbye. Her Italian tutor’s mother asks if she’s married. When she replies no, the mother declares that she doesn’t understand why a woman would go off and travel by herself. Her friend Sophie comes to her defense saying that no one would say that to her if she were a man and calls her brave for traveling alone. Another woman at the dinner comments on the difficulty of women’s choices.
I don’t think that Spring Breakers, despite its perpetually-bikini-clad bodies, is an addition to the list of ways these young female bodies have been exploited. Instead, Spring Breakers turns that sexualizing gaze back onto the audience members who may have been enticed to see the film based on the promise of nubile bodies. The opening scene — a montage of spring breakers partying hard set to dubstep — is full of drunk white kids, many of the girls flashing their breasts in true Girls Gone Wild fashion. On a small scale, this may have been titillating, but Korine returns to the theme of careless youth partying with a regularity and focus that not only de-sensitizes the flash of nudity, but eventually makes us grimace. This is a generation partaking in activities they’ll regret because they are bored and aimless. The nudity and partying have no meaning, no purpose, because life for these co-eds has no meaning, no purpose. Korine notes that the film “is more music-based than cinema-based. Music now is mostly loop and sample-based … ” — not even the music of this generation is original. We rely on copies of copies for entertainment. Nothing is real. And when nothing is real, nothing matters.
So what makes a man’s coming-of-age story a “feminist” travel film? The fact equal-opportunity is still so rare these days? No, (though on a side note: sadness and anger!). It’s because as Mercer’s trip progresses, the catalysts are fully-realized women who exist for more than just his gratification. His trip is prompted by his mother’s death. All his stops along the way involve women who reveal something about themselves and/or Mercer. Finally, Kate, from whom Mercer stole the car, tracks him down and finishes the road trip with him. In a moment near the end, Mercer asks Kate, “Want to go to Louisiana with me?” and she raises her eyebrows and notes, “It’s my car,” as if to sum up that though Mercer has been making his own way, it’s women who are enabling and teaching him. It’s women he has learned to be like or not-like, from his mom to his first crush to this girl he just met over the phone.
What all these movies have in common is that they take women who are having personal, relatable conflicts and show that a good adventure and a strange city can revive one’s outlook on life.

While it might not be difficult to find a good female action movie, or even a solidly entertaining “girl time flick,” these movies are unique in their pensive and thoughtful approach to the difficulties women face in life. They show that a little adventure and new surroundings can create a whole new perspective.

They’re certainly worth the watch.

The themes of socially defined and limiting masculinity throughout Easy Rider go hand in hand with the theme of an elusive America. In fact, the idea that this idyllic America can be found is as entrenched in our mythology as the idea that gender performance is set and rigid. Both are myths that are central to our being as a society, and both are myths that are incredibly destructive.

To her credit—and displaying the role she plays in the protection of her daughter—Sheryl looks at Olive and says, “I just want you to understand that it’s okay to be skinny and it’s okay to be fat, if that’s what you wanna be. Whatever you want, it’s okay.” While Olive is processing this, Richard asks Olive to consider whether beauty queens are “skinny or fat,” to which she quietly replies “They’re skinny, I guess.” And Sheryl shoots Richard a death-ray stare as the waitress comes over and serves Olive her “a la mode-ee” side dish.

The director’s feminist aesthetics are apparent in the framing of these early flashbacks. As Mona emerges from the sea, the viewer sees that she is being watched by two young men. Varda’s shot of the naked Mona is succeeded by a shot of postcards of naked women for sale in a bar frequented by the same young men. Disturbingly, they talk of missed opportunities. Varda depicts the sexual objectification and exploitation of Mona in a quite unobtrusive, subtle fashion. Many of the male characters reveal their misogyny themselves in interviews. A garage owner who exploits Mona has the audacity to say female drifters are “always after men.”

Focusing on the existential angst of two white Americans in Japan without any well-defined Japanese characters is enough to turn off many race-conscious viewers to begin with, and Lost in Translation doubles down with some cringeworthy Japanese stereotypes. The film gets alarming mileage out of its Japanese characters pronouncing l’s and r’s similarly, which feels even more dated than the also strangely boundless fax-machine humor in this 2003 film. Charlotte at one point asks Bob why “they mix up l’s and r’s” and he suggests it is “for yuks,” but it isn’t actually funny.

In this essay, we ask how the genre of comedic travel-movies encodes gender-topics and how these are linked to the metaphor of a journey. Thereto we loosely compare the eponymic female protagonists of Woody Allen’s comedy Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008) and the dandy-male protagonists of the comedy The Darjeeling Limited (2007) directed by Wes Anderson. Both movies follow socially close connected White, heterosexual US-Americans, who go on a trip to another continent, where they are afflicted by emotional disputes. We also ask how the particular female or male main ensemble is constructed in dialogue to the projected otherness of the countries they are visiting.
Yes. It is always a joyful occasion to see African American romances onscreen (it’s incredibly rare to feature an all African American cast in this genre–unless it’s Tyler Perry related grrrrr!) and not have courtships be the overplayed “thin line between love and hate” stereotype, but Stella’s relationship with Winston wasn’t exactly great as it progressed to turbulent fights and public screaming matches. 
By the film’s cheesy end, I only wished for Delilah’s ghost to visit Stella and continue their friendship in a spiritual manner as Stella embarked on her personal quest. Perhaps even treating herself to more splendid travels and finding other pursuits called “fun” that don’t involve young men.
I could easily and happily blame Richard Linklater for making me believe in destiny, fate, kismet, or the idea of a soul mate. When Before Sunrise was released, I was twelve or thirteen. I remember getting it from the video store with my best friend when we had one of our regular sleepovers. I sat there, greasy-and-brace-faced, completely swindled by the words that tumbled out of Ethan Hawke’s crooked mouth. I wondered if any of the boys whose names I drew on my notebooks or the sides of my Converse One-Stars would ever feel the way about me that Ethan Hawke felt about Julie Delpy.

I think it’s necessary to detach from our obligations and get lost for a while, even if it hurts the ones we love. As human beings (let alone professional creatives), we forget that inspiration is the key element to everything that we do. In all honestly, forcing creativity is the crux of the problem. I recently picked up a book called Daily Rituals: How Artists Work to try to see how my heroes did it. The ultimate conclusion? Practice makes perfect, but you can’t rush it. Although Sylvia ditches her friends for a random stranger, she is choosing to embark on a journey of self-discovery, even if she did so unconsciously. And she has to hope that her friends can understand and love her all the same.

Hypocrisy is a common theme in this film, particularly in Mark’s case. I have found it difficult to sympathize with him, as he’s foul-tempered, selfish, irrational, a workaholic, overly ambitious, and, worst of all, ignores his wife and daughter. He claims he hates the idea of marriage and yet impulsively marries Joanna. He says he’ll never ignore a hitchhiker as long as he lives, and 10 years later, he breaks that promise. He has a one-night-stand while on a business trip alone, but writes a letter to Joanna full of lies about how much he misses her. Once he becomes successful, he claims that he has given Joanna everything that she ever wanted, but in truth, has just given to her everything that he wants. (He reminds me a bit of Homer Simpson gifting Marge a bowling ball with his name on it.)

Not Peggy Olson: Rape Culture in ‘Top of the Lake’

Jacqueline Joe as Tui and Elisabeth Moss as Robin Griffin in Top of the Lake
This guest post by Lauren C. Byrd previously appeared at her blog Love Her, Love Her Shoes and is cross-posted with permission.
You know there’s a Maori legend about this lake… that there’s a demon’s heart at the bottom of it; the beats makes the lake rise and fall every five minutes.

A young girl bikes away from her home, heading through beautiful scenery until she reaches the edge of a large lake. She wades in up to her shoulders. Cut to two shirtless men, muscled and tattooed. Immediately, the feminine: the girl; water is compared to the masculine: men, muscles, tattoos.
These gender-based opening images of the Sundance Channel series, Top of the Lake, set the scene and the ongoing conflict for the New Zealand-based show. Jane Campion, a director known for her feminist take on period dramas (The Piano, Bright Star), injects a feminist element into a police drama, a genre known for viewing women as victims. With Campion at the helm, the series does not shy away from uncomfortable issues, such as the frustrations of living in a patriarchal rape culture.
In the first episode, Tui (Jacqueline Joe), the 12-year-old girl who waded deep into the lake, is discovered to be pregnant. Robin Griffin (Elisabeth Moss) is called in by child services to participate in Tui’s case. Robin grew up in the small town of Laketop, New Zealand but fled the town at an early age and earned her stripes as a detective in a more metropolitan environment.
When Griffin arrives at the local police station to talk to Tui, a cadre of male officers stare at her dumbly while she gives them orders.
Later, Robin fields sexual innuendo and inappropriate questions from her superior, Sargent Detective Al Parker, but instead of objecting, she rolls with the punches, avoiding the questions or changing the subject back to the investigation. It’s a sad reality that she has no other option. She’s an outsider in the local police force, and even if she reported Sargent Detective Parker to someone higher up the food chain, it’s doubtful anything would happen other than word getting back to him. It’s pretty clear the Laketop police is an old boys’ club. Other than Robin, there’s only one female working there, Xena.
When Robin tries to brief the squad about Tui’s case, she is undermined by two of the men on the squad. When she pulls one out into the hall for talking out of turn, the others start to leave before the briefing is finished. Not only do they not respect Robin’s authority on the subject, they don’t care about Tui’s well being.
It’s clear there is a patriarchal order, not only at the police station, which is headed by Sargent Detective Al Parker (David Wenham), but also in the community of Laketop, where Tui’s dad, Matt Mitchum, and his sons, Mark and Luke, reign supreme. 
Top of the Lake‘s “Paradise”–a piece of land where a women’s commune lives
On a piece of land called Paradise, a half dozen women, led by GJ (Holly Hunter) a mother earth type with her long, wispy silver hair, sets up camp. The land is owned by Matt Mitchum, who doesn’t hide his temper from the women upon finding them there. “Who the hell are you?” he asks. Upon seeing GJ he asks, “Is she a she?” One of the women informs Matt she bought the property, but Matt isn’t used to taking no for an answer and throws a hissy fit. “Get out of here, you alpha ass,” another woman calls after him as he storms off the property.
Campion is known for symbolism in her films. Top of the Lake is no exception, starting with the women’s “commune” at Paradise. Paradise is a religious term for a higher place or the holiest place. Paradise also describes the world before it was tainted by evil. Laketop’s Paradise embodies the pastoral, its landscape being made up of large fields which look out over the water. Its leader, GJ, may look like a mother earth type, but her advice to the women is brutally honest. When Tui wanders onto the land, has lunch with the women, and shares her secret about the baby, GJ tells her she has a time bomb inside of her, and it’s going to go off. “Are you ready, kid?” GJ’s advice seems to be for these women to harden themselves emotionally, in a way making themselves more like men. 
Holly Hunter as GJ in Top of the Lake
Another form of symbolism, the lake, around and sometimes in which most of the action takes place, is a mysterious force of nature. The residents of the town often comment on how the water will kill or hurt them, and there’s the sense they don’t mean just the temperature. Maybe they believe it is possessed by the Maori legend (Maoris are the indigenous Polynesian people of New Zealand) of the demon’s heart in it, which Johnno tells Robin:
There’s a Maori legend about this lake that says there’s a demon’s heart at the bottom of it. It beats; it makes the lake rise and fall every five minutes. There was a warrior that rescued a maiden from a giant demon called tipua. And he set fire to the demon’s body while it slept and burnt everything but his heart. And the fat melting from the body formed a trough. And the snow from the mountains ran down to fill it, to form this lake.

Although the legend surrounding the lake features a typical “damsel in distress” tale of a male rescuing a maiden, water is often considered a feminine element. If considered in this way, the patriarchal society of Laketop is surrounded by the feminine: the lake.
Campion may not shy away from a dark look at how patriarchal violence seeps into every corner of life, but the series also offers up hope and possibilities of resistance. As the series unfolds, Robin’s own rape at the age of 15 and subsequent pregnancy is divulged. Although she and Tui’s stories are different, both of them are strong women. Not only is Robin fighting for a resolution to Tui’s case, but she stands up against a group of sexist men in a bar who makes several jokes at her and Tui’s expense. “Are you a feminist?” they ask. “A lesbian? Nobody likes a feminist, except a lesbian.”
Yet another comment in the bar involves victim blaming as the butt of the joke. “Hey, what does it mean if a girl goes around town in tiny shorts? It means she’s hot.”
“Or a slut!” his friend cries out. Robin throws a dart into the shoulder of one of the men. In a later bar scene, one of her former rapists starts flirting with her without realizing who she is. Robin breaks a bottle and stabs him. “Do you remember me now?” she cries.
Upon running away from home, Tui embodies a familiar lone male figure, a cowboy, as she rides into Paradise on her horse, a gun slung over her shoulder. When she disappears from Paradise, Robin fears she has been kidnapped and murdered by whomever assaulted her, but Tui makes a home for herself in the bush and survives on her wits. 
Robin in Top of the Lake
Even among a patriarchal society, there are allies. In Top of the Lake‘s case, it’s men who choose not to be “alpha asses” like Matt Mitchum. Johnno, Robin’s high school sweetheart and Tui’s half-brother, still harbors guilt about the night Robin was attacked. He feels he failed by not standing up for her: “I should have helped you, but I didn’t. I was a coward.” Johnno later attacks one of Robin’s rapists, telling him to leave town. “She was 15!”
Johnno and Robin’s past is marred by painful events, but as Robin continues to work on Tui’s case, they begin to grow close again, and among all the sexual violence, Campion uses the pair to portray the pleasure of a consensual relationship.
Similarly, Tui has a male ally in her life. Her relationship with Jamie is in no way sexual, there are parallels between their relationship and Johnno and Robin’s. Jamie also feels guilt for what happened to Tui, and he literally beats himself up about it in a scene where he slams his head against the doors in his house, only stopping when his mother pulls him away. Jamie brings supplies to Tui while she’s hiding in the bush and plans to help her during the labor.
The series does not wrap up things in a tidy little bow. It may not offer solutions for eradicating sexual assault, but it does more than many previous television series and films: it exposes the truths of a rape culture and violent patriarchal society and how those who live in them choose to survive.
Lauren C. Byrd is a former post-production minion but prefers to spend her days analyzing television and film, rather than working in it. She studied film and television at Syracuse University and writes a blog, Love Her, Love Her Shoes, about under-appreciated women in film, television, and theater. She is currently writing a weekly series about feminism on this season of Mad Men. 

 

The Titillating Nature of Sex: Controversy in ‘Blue is the Warmest Color’

Written by Rachel Redfern

Film poster for Blue is the Warmest Color

Abdellatif Kechiche’s Blue is the Warmest Color is the first film with a lesbian protagonist to win the prestigious Palm D’or Award at the Cannes Film Festival. The French drama is based on Julie Maroh’s graphic novel and centers on the life of Adele, a fifteen year-old girl who becomes involved with another young woman. Remarkably, the film is three hours long, which doubles in length the normal hour and half for a romantic comedy in the US, a fact that must develop an enormously powerful love story.

The movie received high praise from critics, and both lead actresses, Adèle Exarchopoulos and Léa Seydoux, were given the Palme as a special prize due to their outstanding performances. Similarly, the film comes at a particularly important moment since France passed a bill allowing gay marriage only a few weeks ago, a bill that has been at the center of huge debates and massive rioting.

However, praise for the movie has been tempered by the controversy of its two graphic sex scenes that have a length on par with the film. While no one has clocked it yet, many have said that the scenes were at least ten minutes in length. This criticism has also been echoed by the writer of the graphic novel, Julie Maroh. 

Abdellatif Kechiche, Adèle Exarchopoulos and Léa Seydoux at the Cannes Film Festival

It’s no secret that Maroh was disappointed in the two sex scenes, essentially calling them pornographic. It’s important to note that she wasn’t mad about the inclusion of sex scenes, but rather specifically called out the director on the lack of realism in the aforementioned scenes. In fact, as is the intention of pornography, she felt that the two scenes served no other purpose than to essentially live out a male director’s fantasies.

According to a statement written by Maroh in regard to fact that the audience was giggling during the scenes, 

“The heteronormative laughed because they don’t understand it and find the scene ridiculous. The gay and queer people laughed because it’s not convincing, and found it ridiculous. And among the only people we didn’t hear giggling were the potential guys too busy feasting their eyes on an incarnation of their fantasies on screen.”

It’s not hard to sense Maroh’s pain here and with good reason since her reasons for writing Blue is the Warmest Color was to, “catch the attention of those who had no clue, who had the wrong picture based on false ideas.” Considering that Maroh intended to offer a more realistic portrayal of lesbian relationships and that instead she felt her goal had been reduced to the very unrealistic portrayal of lesbian pornographic sex, it’s easy to see why she would be upset.

This leads to some interesting questions about the nature of sex, specifically sex between women, in film. For instance, if the director had been female would the outcome have been different? Maroh believes that Kechiche was utilizing a very popular male gaze in the filming of those scenes; perhaps if the director had been a woman the scenes would have been different? However, if we follow that logic it would seem then that lesbian sex in art can only be created by other women? 

Adèle Exarchopoulos and Léa Seydoux in Blue is the Warmest Color

Women sleeping with women constitutes a massive portion of the pornographic film industry; there’s been an almost mythic build-up around the erotic nature of two women having sex. In that case, is there anyway to have non-pornographic lesbian sex scenes? Or is it meant only for the male gaze? (I say male gaze here only because it seems more suitable. While many women would also find it erotic, Maroh felt that it was catering to a very male sexual fantasy.)

Also, it should be noted that not every critic agrees that the scenes were pornographic. Richard Porton on The Daily Beast asks a fair question: “Should men—or for that matter women—aroused by these scenes be moralistically dissed as the arthouse equivalents of the raincoat brigade?” The film is a coming of age story, specifically a story of sexual awakening for a young girl. Sex, is by it’s nature erotic; any movie or novel that attempts to really portray the intensity of vibrant sexuality has to be, well…sexy.

Consider one of my favorite movies, Turn Me On Dammit, which portrays the heterosexual sexual awakening of a young girl but also features a scene where the main character fantasizes about one of her female friends. It’s showing a fantasy; therefore, it is titillating—although a bit silly. Perhaps it was the layer of humor then that kept those scenes from the same controversy and scrutiny as Blue is the Warmest Color? (Well, that and the fact that the scene is only about forty seconds long as opposed to a full ten minutes.)

What about heterosexual sex scenes? Is it possible to have non-pornographic heterosexual sex scenes? I would argue yes, Rules of Attraction, Melancholia, and hundreds of other films have done it. But has it been done with two women having sex? I have to say it’s hard for me to think of any.

However, should we not consider that as we continue to espouse the ideals of a more open and tolerant society—one in which sexuality in many forms is considered appropriate—that we will not agree with the portrayal of every sex scene? Could it also be argued that the director was merely displaying sex in a way that he found beautiful and fascinating?

To be fair, Maroh did differentiate between her perception of the film as a writer, where she understood the sex scenes to be another part of Kechiche’s vision, and her perception as a lesbian in which she felt it was inappropriate. But isn’t that the beauty and purpose of art? To showcase life from a variety of perspectives?

What do you think? Are there lesbian sex scenes that are not pornographic?

I’m sorry to only focus on the most tabloidy feature of an obviously powerful movie, but as it hasn’t been released yet, I’m afraid that I can comment little on the rest of the movie. Also, as stories about homosexuality become more and more a part of film, the hypersexualization of lesbian sex is something that needs to be addressed. Also, perhaps my own judgment of the scenes will be different after actually viewing them. 

There is no trailer yet for Blue is the Warmest Color, but two film clips have been released. Go here and here if you’d like to view them.

Rachel Redfern has an MA in English literature, where she conducted research on modern American literature and film and its intersection; however, she spends most of her time watching HBO shows, traveling, and blogging and reading about feminism.

Call for Writers: Wedding Movies Week

Weddings and wedding movies are big business. Most little girls (or so the media tells us) dream of their wedding day. What dress they will wear, the bridesmaids, the music, the food, the cake and the groom. Oftentimes it’s an extension of the princess fantasy. Movies and TV shows (The Bachelor/Bachelorette, Say Yes to the Dress, Four Weddings) reinforce the importance, not of marriage, but of weddings.

Wedding movies range from serious and dramatic to romantic comedy to screwball zany. Yet they overwhelmingly tell tales of white, upper-class, heteronormative characters. Although some wedding films do transgress stereotypes and gender boundaries. But wedding movies, along with the entire rom-com genre, are often categorized as “girl stuff,” aka not as important as other films simply because they feature female protagonists and deal with themes of love, marriage and relationships.

Whether you love them or they frustrate the hell out of you, we want to explore wedding films. How are women depicted? What do they say about femininity and masculinity? What about themes of gender, race, class and sexuality?

Here are some suggestions to get you started, but please feel free to propose your own!

Monsoon Wedding
The Princess Bride
My Best Friend’s Wedding
Jumping the Broom
Mamma Mia
The Wedding Banquet
Imagine Me & You
My Big Fat Greek Wedding
Four Weddings and a Funeral 
The Five-Year Engagement
The Philadelphia Story
Coming to America
Melancholia 
Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part I
The Big Wedding
In & Out
The Wedding Singer
The Proposal
Margot at the Wedding 
Shrek
The Best Man
27 Dresses
Betsy’s Wedding
Bride Wars
Our Family Wedding
The Wedding Planner
Bride and Prejudice
The Wedding Date
Father of the Bride
Here are some basic guidelines for guest writers:

–Pieces should be between 700 and 2,000 words.
–Include images (with captions) and links in your piece, along with a title for your article.
–Send your piece in the text of an email, attaching all images, no later than Friday, June 21st.
–Include a 2-3 sentence bio for placement at the end of your piece.

Email us at btchflcks(at)gmail(dot)com if you’d like to contribute a review. We accept original pieces or cross-posts. 

We look forward to reading your submissions!

Travel Films Week: Marriage Is A Bumpy Road: ‘Two For The Road’s Difficult Journey

Movie poster for Two for the Road

Written by Myrna Waldron.


Two For The Road’s nonlinear narrative follows the courtship and marriage of Mark (Albert Finney) and Joanna Wallace (Audrey Hepburn) over a period of 12 years. In the present day, the Wallaces are preparing to go to a party celebrating a house that workaholic architect Mark has designed. As they pass by a church holding a wedding, they look inside the car and find the bride and groom looking utterly miserable. Joanna comments, “They don’t look very happy.” Mark replies, “Why should they? They just got married.”
The Wallaces’ marriage is fractured and close to the breaking point. They think back to the various road trip vacations they’ve taken together, and reflect on just where things went wrong, and why. The Joanna of 10 years ago is a conservatively dressed young woman who is a member of a travelling choir. Mark is travelling on his own to do research on European architecture. They are brought together by chance–Joanna’s entire troupe has come down with chicken pox, and Mark was hoping to fool around with one of the more flirtatious members of Joanna’s choir (a one-scene wonder played by Jacqueline Bisset).
Each of their road trips across time serves as a metaphor for the state of their relationship. As they start out as young hitchhikers, there is a feeling of freedom interwoven throughout. Mark talks about how he dislikes marriage because he sees it as a “contract.” He correctly deduces that Joanna is a virgin, and stops just short of bragging about all the casual sex he’s had. It’s important to note that Joanna had never had a lover before she met Mark. She’s completely devoted to him, and he takes her for granted. She impulsively decides to stay hitchhiking with Mark because she believes she’s in love with him–their entire courtship is a string of impulsive decisions. At the end of their week together, after they spend hours frolicking on the beach, Joanna runs off sobbing because she believes that she’ll be nothing but a beautiful memory to him. Mark then proposes to her in a desperate attempt to get her to stay with him. This impulsivity is one reason why, later on, we are meant to wonder whether they should have married in the first place.

Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney in Two for the Road

There is certainly a great deal of agency enveloped in Joanna’s character. Mark might be the dominant one, but she is clearly not going to let him dictate her life or their marriage. It was she who decided to enter into a relationship with Mark and she who decided that she wasn’t going to let Mark turn the memory of her into a meaningless fling. Mark claims to dislike the idea of marriage, but Joanna means enough to him that he will give up his expected bachelorhood for her. Joanna is the glue holding their marriage together, which is metaphorically represented through the running joke where Joanna always locates Mark’s missing passport. As Mark says, she is indispensable.
The next road trip the Wallaces take, chronologically, is with the family of Mark’s former girlfriend Cathy (Eleanor Bron, whom Beatles fans may recognize from Help!). The Wallaces have been married almost 2 years at this point. Cathy has married Howard Maxwell-Manchester (William Daniels), a stogy, neurotic dictator of a man who uses “Communists” as an insult, and makes ridiculously illogical decisions all in the name of sticking to his own predetermined rules. They have a daughter, Ruthie, and they have adopted a childrearing philosophy of “Leaving things to [her] own decision.” This results in a child who is spoiled, bratty, destructive, and nasty. Mark and Joanna’s miserable road trip with the Maxwell-Manchesters illustrates the kind of marriage neither of them wants to have. Mark asks Joanna, “Do you still want to have a child?” Joanna answers, “I still want a child. I just don’t want THAT child.” Howie speaks condescendingly to everyone and has influenced Cathy’s thinking to the point where she mindlessly echoes his philosophies. Instead of disciplining their child when she is obnoxious, they tell off Joanna for being hostile and resentful towards Ruthie. Howie even makes a sexist jab at Joanna and assumes she dislikes Ruthie because she represents the child she wants to have.

Still from Two for the Road

During this road trip, the only thing keeping the Wallaces sane is each other. The crowded car, overly rigid schedule, and horrible parenting metaphorically represent the resentment that the Wallaces have for the Maxwell-Manchesters, and how the Maxwell-Manchesters keep judging the state of their marriage. The Maxwell-Manchesters pry into personal details, dictate how the Wallaces are expected to “behave,” and treat Joanna like a baby factory (and a mere extension of her husband) instead of as a woman. There is particular dramatic irony when the Wallaces have finally had enough (as Ruthie has repeated nasty things that Cathy has said about Joanna behind her back), and Howie accuses Mark of trying to dominate Joanna’s thinking and acting. It is particularly hypocritical for Howie to make this accusation, as he couldn’t be more conservative and dominating if he tried, and Mark is actually doing what Joanna wanted all along, which was to be on their own away from the Maxwell-Manchesters.
Hypocrisy is a common theme in this film, particularly in Mark’s case. I have found it difficult to sympathize with him, as he’s foul-tempered, selfish, irrational, a workaholic, overly ambitious, and, worst of all, ignores his wife and daughter. He claims he hates the idea of marriage and yet impulsively marries Joanna. He says he’ll never ignore a hitchhiker as long as he lives, and 10 years later, he breaks that promise. He has a one-night-stand while on a business trip alone, but writes a letter to Joanna full of lies about how much he misses her. Once he becomes successful, he claims that he has given Joanna everything that she ever wanted, but in truth, has just given to her everything that he wants. (He reminds me a bit of Homer Simpson gifting Marge a bowling ball with his name on it.)

Still from Two for the Road

It seems that the more disastrous the road trip is, the closer it brings Joanna and Mark together. The next time they vacation, Mark has bought himself an MG TD that turns out to be a clunker. The car repeatedly breaks down, and Joanna fixes it. The car is an obvious metaphor for how their marriage turns out. On this trip, Joanna tells Mark that she is pregnant. Once again his hypocrisy comes out, because although in the past he expressed that he did not want children, he is ecstatic at her announcement. Their car eventually catches on fire, and in the process of disposing of it, they meet Maurice Dalbret (Claude Dauphin), a wealthy but demanding man who hires Mark for his architectural talents. Maurice is the fire that threatens to burn their marriage down.
Maurice’s entrance into their lives serves as a turning point on their marriage road, because he monopolizes Mark’s attention to a ridiculous degree. Mark is thrilled to be successful and living the high life, but all Joanna wants is attention from her husband. Money and success go to Mark’s head, and he becomes such a workaholic that he pushes Joanna away. The screenplay was written by a man (Frederic Raphael) but the sympathy of the story clearly lies with Joanna. She has been repeatedly wronged by Mark, so when she makes her own regrettable decisions, they are significantly more sympathetic. This is also notable since infidelity situations in pop culture inevitably end up blaming the woman in the relationship, whether she was the one who did the cheating or not. In each case, it is Mark’s fault–his fault for thinking of sex as meaningless, and his fault for ignoring his wife and child through his endless ambition.
The story makes a very important commentary on marriage. Fighting is inevitable, as are periods of silence. The Wallaces repeatedly comment on how married people can sit at a fancy dinner table and have nothing to say to each other. But honesty, faithfulness, agreement on important matters (such as children), communication and attention are critical to keeping that marriage a success. Joanna and Mark especially repeatedly fail at this, and it stretches their marriage to a near-breaking point. They constantly question each other about why they are still together.

Still from Two for the Road

Mark eventually drives Joanna into the arms of Maurice’s wife’s brother David (Georges Descrieres). Despite his own infidelity, Mark is deeply wounded and humiliated by Joanna’s affair, even though it lasted only one day. Joanna was so desperate for someone to talk to her and understand her that she leapt at the first opportunity. She herself has broken a promise that she would love and be faithful to Mark forever, but because Mark neglected her so profoundly, he is to blame for her affair. Can their marriage survive their mutual infidelities? SHOULD it survive?
The film respects its audience enough not to definitively give an answer. The Wallaces survive the multiple bumps in the road and keep on driving. Both of them need to change for their marriage to work, and fortunately, change is implied metaphorically through their final road trip. Instead of once again driving through France and stopping at the same spots repeatedly, Mark instead drives to Rome to start working for a new client. Instead of staying and enduring Maurice’s demands, he quietly rejects him and explicitly chooses Joanna. No longer being under the thumb of Maurice can only make things better, since it was his entering into their lives that changed the course of their marriage.
In the final moment of the film, the Wallaces share one last exchange. Once again, Joanna has found Mark’s passport for him. In response, he says, “Bitch.” She replies, “Bastard.” Those final words struck me so heavily. Do they mean those insults? Are they being playful? Do they need to snipe and be sarcastic at each other in order to survive? I want to believe that those final words were affectionate, but I found myself feeling ambivalent as to whether this marriage was worth saving.
Admittedly, I have not yet gotten married myself, but I felt as if I was a participant in this marriage as I watched the film. Comparing the heady early days of their courtship to the infidelities and fights of the modern day feels almost as painful as if I’d suffered through the memories myself. Joanna deserves a husband who is wholly devoted to her. Mark is talented enough that he shouldn’t be held back. I can see that there is love there between them, and that they genuinely don’t want to break up. But there is still resentment, selfishness, and infidelity.
Can they work through these problems? Only the road ahead will tell us.

Myrna Waldron is a feminist writer/blogger with a particular emphasis on all things nerdy. She lives in Toronto and has studied English and Film at York University. Myrna has a particular interest in the animation medium, having written extensively on American, Canadian and Japanese animation. She also has a passion for Sci-Fi & Fantasy literature, pop culture literature such as cartoons/comics, and the gaming subculture. She maintains a personal collection of blog posts, rants, essays and musings at The Soapboxing Geek, and tweets with reckless pottymouthed abandon at @SoapboxingGeek.

Travel Films Week: Finding a Brave ‘New World’

Still from There Is a New World Somewhere
This is a guest post by Li Lu.
It’s quite serendipitous that May is “Feminist Travel Films” month here on Bitch Flicks. My film, There Is a New World Somewhere (TIANWS), is exactly that. We are crowdfunding on Seed&Spark, a platform exclusive to truly independent films and filmmakers. We are midway through our campaign, and my team and I couldn’t be happier with how it’s going thus far.

Our film is centered around Sylvia, a troubled young woman. Sylvia struck out from her small town roots in Texas to try her luck in New York City. Why New York? Well, I think E. B. White said it best:

Many of [NYC’s] settlers are probably here to merely escape, not face, reality. But whatever it means, it is a rather rare gift, and I believe it has a positive effect on the creative capacities of New Yorkers – for creation is in part merely the business of forgoing the great and small distractions.” –from E. B. White’s Here Is New York

Still from There Is a New World Somewhere
Her “creation” comes in the form of painting. Sylvia strives to achieve success as an artist, but after years of rejection, the honeymoon is over. Now, the city is oppressive rather than inspiring. When an old friend invites Sylvia back to Texas for her wedding, Sylvia jumps at a chance to escape her diminishing self to find the confidence she’s left behind. But on the night before the wedding, she meets Esteban, an electrifying drifter. He dares her to join him on a roadtrip he plans to take through the Deep South. On the morning of the wedding, the two strangers speed off toward New Orleans, leaving the wedding party behind.

Sounds like a dreamy escape, doesn’t it? Travel, for most, is the highest form of escapism. Vacations take you away from the monotony of the daily grind and are the only allotted times when we are allowed to shut that phone off 100%.

This kind of “escapism” is tied to a kind of forgetting or relaxation, but what happens when the act of letting go becomes a euphemism (or “excuse” instead of euphemism) for burying deeper problems at bay? Sylvia, our heroine, takes escapism to the absolute extreme – she literally runs away into the unknown to avoid facing her own shortcomings. It’s an intimate portrayal of a young woman at the sobering, pivotal moment when she must choose to continue to try or to retreat completely. I’m sure everyone has had that moment when you ask yourself: At what point do my dreams begin to hurt me?

Still from There Is a New World Somewhere
Esteban isn’t a perfect man either. He’s a failed musician and has refused to let music become a source for third party pain. He drifts from one place to the next, and seems to kindle a true lust for life. Sylvia admires him and attaches herself to him in hopes of emulating his free spirit. The two find each other at different points in their lives, but they are both just as lost.

This is where the road comes in. Roadtrips are amazing. They give the explorer the freedom to experience and connect with different people and places along the way. There is no itinerary other than the time you allow yourself to become lost within it.

So is this kind of escapism “bad”? Is it selfish? Why does this term connote a negative, judgmental tone?

Ultimately, no. I think it’s necessary to detach from our obligations and get lost for a while, even if it hurts the ones we love. As human beings (let alone professional creatives), we forget that inspiration is the key element to everything that we do. In all honestly, forcing creativity is the crux of the problem. I recently picked up a book called Daily Rituals: How Artists Work to try to see how my heroes did it. The ultimate conclusion? Practice makes perfect, but you can’t rush it. Although Sylvia ditches her friends for a random stranger, she is choosing to embark on a journey of self-discovery, even if she did so unconsciously. And she has to hope that her friends can understand and love her all the same.

Still from There Is a New World Somewhere
What makes this a feminist film? As a female filmmaker, I want to tell this story because it is so intensely intimate to Sylvia’s point of view. I relish the intimacy of films such as Oslo August, 31 or Lust, Caution, and I want to make a film that doesn’t shy away from hard or complex issues. The love scenes will be scenes, not flashes of toned muscles and fluttering eyelashes. Yes, you can call it a coming of age film, but please don’t expect quirky shrugs or one-liners. This is a film about the fight, and all the beauty and ugliness it can contain. I’m not shying away from the hard stuff. I’m not making a self-important film either. I think anyone who has tried to express anything creative can relate to Sylvia’s fears and can take away something meaningful from the film. As Wim Wenders said, “I want to make personal films, not private films.”

All in all, the story of TIANWS and its journey to getting made has clearly been an introspective one. Putting this process out there for all to see is scary as shit. But when I feel this vulnerable, it usually means I’m doing something right.

Here’s to going for it.

To all the roads ahead,

Li

Li Lu was born in Suzhou, China & raised all around the US. She is an alumna of USC’s School of Cinema-TV. Her narrative work has played international festivals and screening series. Her music videos have aired on MTV, Nickelodeon, and YouTube, with some surpassing 1 million views. She loves Siberian huskies.

Travel Films Week: The One-Night Stand That Wasn’t: ‘Before Sunrise’ and ‘Before Sunset’s Jesse and Celine

Before Sunset movie poster
This is a guest review by Carleen Tibbetts.
I could easily and happily blame Richard Linklater for making me believe in destiny, fate, kismet, or the idea of a soul mate. When Before Sunrise was released, I was twelve or thirteen. I remember getting it from the video store with my best friend when we had one of our regular sleepovers. I sat there, greasy-and-brace-faced, completely swindled by the words that tumbled out of Ethan Hawke’s crooked mouth. I wondered if any of the boys whose names I drew on my notebooks or the sides of my Converse One-Stars would ever feel the way about me that Ethan Hawke felt about Julie Delpy.
Before Sunrise follows two seemingly idealistic twenty-somethings who meet by chance while abroad. They impulsively decide to spend a day and night together wandering the streets of Vienna and end up falling hard and fast for each other. The film opens on a train with a middle-aged couple quarreling in German. Celine (Julie Delpy), fed up with their arguing, moves seats across from Jesse (Ethan Hawke), and they soon become distracted by each other. Celine tells him that as couples grow older, they lose the ability to hear one another, which is ironic because the movie is nearly non-stop dialogue between Jesse and Celine.
There’s no denying the physical and intellectual chemistry between them. Not wanting the experience to end, Jesse convinces Celine to join him in Vienna by telling her she’ll look back on her life as an older, married woman and regret not taking a chance on him. She agrees. They tell the first people they meet that they’re on their honeymoon, and the further we get into the film and the more they reveal themselves layer by layer to each other, the more believable this becomes. They seem so oddly at ease with each other, it seems so effortless, so meant to be . . . the first time I watched it, I wondered whether they were going to spontaneously get married. Now, given my own experiences with missed connections, what-if’s, and horrendous timing, the romantic in me wants to yell, “Do you think it can get any better than this? What are you waiting for; start your forever now!”
In one adorable scene, Jesse and Celine pretend to call their close friends and describe the experience of meeting each other to them:

Not everything is coming up roses, though. For all the charming scenes involving carnival kisses at sunset, gypsy fortune tellers telling them they are stardust, and street poets composing impromptu verse for them, Celine and Jesse exhibit a fair amount of bitterness and cynicism. It becomes harder to tell who is more jaded. Jesse thinks love is a selfish escape for those who don’t know how to be or can’t be alone. Celine believes everything that we as humans do in life is a way to be loved more, yet she is the one wants to be rational and adult about everything. She’s the one who keeps trying to put the brakes on this thing to keep it from going anywhere. She thinks it’s foolish for them to think they’re going to see each other again and doesn’t want to ruin the magic of the night by allowing it to blossom into a relationship she believes would fizzle and disappoint. She’s totally downplaying her level of emotional investment. Perhaps it’s a defense mechanism in which Celine overcompensates and protects herself from possible heartache by appearing as detached as possible. They agree not to project any delusions of a future together, get their goodbyes out of the way so it will be less painful to part in the morning, and toast their “one and only night together.”
Celine reveals she decided to sleep with Jesse when she got off the train with him, but that it would probably be too painful for her, and she doesn’t want to just be some one-night stand. She says she can’t help it, “maybe it’s a female thing.” In another wildly romantic outpouring, Jesse tells Celine if he had the choice of not seeing her again, or marrying her on the spot, he’d marry her, because “People have gotten married for a lot less.” Whether or not we’re willing to admit it to ourselves, as women, some part of us, no matter how small, wants to hear these things and feel this special to someone. Regardless of Jesse’s sincerity, Celine gives in to his gushing sentimentality. They grope and kiss, and the next thing we see is the bluing sky that signifies their time together coming to a close. 

Celine and Jesse in Before Sunrise
Jesse and Celine scrap the idea that never seeing each other again is the way to play this. They plan to meet in exactly six months at the train station to see if they can pick up with the same intensity with which they left off. The film closes with ghostly daytime shots of all the places that were bustling when they’d visited the night before, with each of them in transit, lost in reflection, looking six months into the future.
Jesse and Celine’s story doesn’t end here or sixth months from that night. Flash forward nine years to 2004’s Before Sunset (which I saw in the theater as a twenty-one year old, and it continued to delude me). Jesse is now a married writer in Paris on the final stop of a book tour promoting his novel about the night he spent with Celine. His readers demand to know whether the characters meet in six months as they’d promised, and as Jesse answers that “time is a lie,” he glances out the window and sees Celine looking in on his reading. Jesse wants to catch up, but, again, there is limited time as he’s got to get to the airport in a matter of hours.
They begin walking the streets of Paris and address the burning question: just what the hell happened at that train station six months later? Celine asks Jesse if he showed, and at first he brushes it off, claiming he didn’t. Yet when she tells him her grandmother’s death prevented her from going, he admits he was there, looking everywhere for her. If only Craigslist’s missed connections was around in the mid-90’s! They discover they lost yet another chance to rekindle their relationship when Celine tells Jesse she lived in New York for several years, minutes away from him. 

Julie Delpy as Celine and Ethan Hawke as Jesse
Everything boils down to timing and circumstance. Jesse and Celine are both off the market. Jesse is stagnating in a passionless, joyless marriage he endures for the sake of his son. He confesses that he could not stop thinking about Celine leading up to the wedding, and that he thought he actually saw her in New York on the day he got married blocks away, as it turns out, from where she lived. Celine’s boyfriend is conveniently away the majority of the time, which works in her favor because she can’t easily move on or fully replace someone.
It’s clear that neither Jesse nor Celine have moved on and that those mere hours together ruined them for their subsequent lovers. Earlier, Jesse admitted that he wrote the book as a confirmation that he was able to love someone that deeply, that his connection with Celine was honest and real, and that he also wrote it in the hopes that she’d read it and they’d be able to find each other again. He admits he’s haunted by dreams of her rushing past him on a train in an endless loop, or her lying in bed pregnant next to him, and twists the knife a little deeper by telling Celine she will make a great mother someday.
Angered to the point of tears, Celine tells Jesse, “You come to Paris all romantic and married—fuck you!” His book allowed painful memories to rush to the surface, memories she’d worked hard to suppress. She used up her idealism and romanticism that one night, and it robbed her of the ability to open herself up that way again. The let down after their six-month no-show left her cold, numb, and unwilling to put effort into her subsequent relationships. He insists before he leaves that she play him one song she’s written, which she does, a song expressly about their night together:

Perhaps it’s that immediacy that comes with age Jesse and Celine discussed earlier, and the realization that they lost what could have been many happy years together that lead them to give it another shot. The film closes with Celine impersonating Nina Simone, saying, “Baby, you are gonna miss that plane,” Jesse admitting, “I know,” and the slow fade as he watches her dance, knowing he’s home already:

Fortunately (or, maybe unfortunately), the third installment, Before Midnight, is already in theaters and picks up another nine years later with Jesse and Celine married with children of their own:

Carleen Tibbetts lives in Oakland. Her poems and reviews have appeared in various journals including Word Riot, kill author, Monkeybicycle, Metazen, Coconut, H_NGM_N, Horse Less Press, and other sites. 

Travel Films Week: ‘How Stella Got Her Groove Back’


How Stella Got Her Groove Back film poster.

How Stella Got Her Groove Back is based on Terry McMillan’s bestselling novel of the same name and stars two wonderful actresses as best friends–Academy Award nominated Angela Bassett playing strong, determined Stella and Academy Award winning Whoopi Goldberg as hilarious, sassy Delilah. Actor Taye Diggs is Winston, Stella’s Jamaican “groove.”
Hard-working, single mother Stella is devoted to work and parenthood, but just four minutes into the film, her two sisters claim to know what’s best for her.
“You need a husband and your son needs a father,” blasts Angela, Stella’s married and pregnant sister.
“Had him, got rid of him, so glad I did,” Stella retorts.
While family is obsessed with this absurd logic that men are the Holy Grail to women, it’s fun spirited Delilah that demands Stella and she take a nice little getaway to scenic Jamaica together–Stella’s own original idea.

Delilah (Whoopi Goldberg) and Stella (Angela Bassett) checking out the Jamaican view.

“You haven’t been anywhere since I was a natural blonde!” Delilah screams over the phone. One cannot help but applaud Goldberg’s humorous quips of persuasion, especially seeing as she and Bassett have great chemistry as female comrades. It’s an addictive pleasure to see African American women engaged in these quintessential friendships onscreen and no grand schemes of bitterness, jealousy, and hatred so typically written.
Amongst beautiful, luscious, tropical settings where the twosome have their adventure, Stella meets the much younger Winston and the two engage in a steamy affair.
But during all the drama, Delilah is undergoing a private health crisis and Stella learns of it very late.
Delilah and Stella’s hospital scenes are terms of bittersweet endearment and still make eyes water, for this sisterhood bond is perhaps remarkably closer than the biological glue between Stella and her two siblings. When Stella lays beside Delilah in the white bed and they sing in raspy voices laced with sorrow, both of their hearts are visibly breaking onscreen. Cancer has torn them asunder, ripped the cords of one of the film’s most genuine core relationships and has ultimately broken Stella.
She lost her best friend.
Winston (Taye Diggs) is supposedly Stella’s (Angela Bassett) “groove.”

The ending came with a typical Hollywood bow–tied much too neatly.
“Not every woman needs a man in her life,” Stella had pretty much uttered in the film’s beginning.
But finality proved her to be incorrect.
She clung and frequently apologized to Winston–a childish man that felt threatened by her success and leeched onto her strength. Their vast age difference proved to be a demolition factor; always leaving when times were too rough, insipid, weak-minded Winston was everything opposite of Stella’s majestic character.
It was better suited that Winston return to Jamaica alone while Stella focused on goals for her bright future as an independent and savvy businesswoman. Director’s camera focused on their awkward looks and wet eyes in that last, crushing love scene reeking of desperate closure and unspoken understanding–a solid presentation that the “groove” dwindled.
For Stella to be at the airport and saying “yes” to Winston’s marriage proposal seemed an unbelievable notion.

Stella (Angela Bassett) should have kept Winston as a vacation fling.

Winston should have stayed primarily a Jamaican rendezvous.
Yes. It is always a joyful occasion to see African American romances onscreen (it’s incredibly rare to feature an all African American cast in this genre–unless it’s Tyler Perry related grrrrr!) and not have courtships be the overplayed “thin line between love and hate” stereotype, but Stella’s relationship with Winston wasn’t exactly great as it progressed to turbulent fights and public screaming matches. 
By the film’s cheesy end, I only wished for Delilah’s ghost to visit Stella and continue their friendship in a spiritual manner as Stella embarked on her personal quest. Perhaps even treating herself to more splendid travels and finding other pursuits called “fun” that don’t involve young men.
Winston isn’t worth being the pot of gold at the end of Stella’s rainbow, much less her “groove.”

Travel Films Week: Dialogic Explorations on ‘The Darjeeling Limited’ and ‘Vicky Cristina Barcelona’

This is a guest review by Steffen Loick and Ingrid Bettwieser.
At a hasty glance, movies often tell stories about traveling to talk about the processes of longing. Longing for far about places, for something new, for something unachieved. As it seems, what is inscribed in the narrative of traveling in the end is the need for change. The individual voyages the phantasms of the far, far away, to negotiate her- or himself’s identity. Traveling can be regarded ultimately as a coming of age journey, which holds many gendered and racialized subtexts of becoming.

In this essay, we ask how the genre of comedic travel-movies encodes gender-topics and how these are linked to the metaphor of a journey. Thereto we loosely compare the eponymic female protagonists of Woody Allen’s comedy Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008) and the dandy-male protagonists of the comedy The Darjeeling Limited (2007) directed by Wes Anderson. Both movies follow socially close connected White, heterosexual US-Americans, who go on a trip to another continent, where they are afflicted by emotional disputes. We also ask how the particular female or male main ensemble is constructed in dialogue to the projected otherness of the countries they are visiting. 

Vicky in the cab
“A passing thing, now it’s over”: Gender, Identity, and Travel in Vicky Christina Barcelona

“Vicky and Cristina decided to spend their summer in Barcelona,” the male voice of the narrator in the opening sequence of Vicky Christina Barcelona declares. His introduction locates the following events in the “exotic” scenery of Spain and marks the seen protagonists by name, as they leave an airport with their luggage and get a cab. More importantly, the opening sentence determines the whole plot immensely: both protagonists are traveling.

The narrator’s voice will escort the complete storyline from the distance, commenting on it slightly mockingly and directing my impressions of the movie’s protagonists. This starts already on the cab ride to Barcelona, which serves as exposition: the White US-Americans Vicky and Cristina have known each other since college and are best friends. Using their affection for culture, the narrative structure of the movie defines and criticizes them as stereotypical. They are educated women, who want to travel beyond the touristic mainstream and are only divided by their different perspectives on love. Vicky represents the type of severe and inhibited female intellectual, who seems to be feminist but actually isn’t. She lives in a committed relationship with her White, autarchic fiancé. She “had no tolerance for pain and no lust for combat; she was grounded and realistic,” illustrates the narrator. Vicky goes on the journey because she’s doing a “Masters in Catalan identity.” Her research interests generate from her early worship of Gaudi’s architecture. She looks at Barcelona correspondingly with an ethnological, nearly colonial gaze; after all, she does research on a cultural group she is not herself a part of, whose language she barely speaks and who she reduces to touristy significant cultural markers. In contrast, Cristina “had yet broken up with another boyfriend and longed for a change in scenery,” the narrator explains. Cristina represents the sensual but deeply insecure artist, who hates her own art. Suffering is accepted by her as “an inedible component of deep passion.” Apart from this, she knows only what she doesn’t want: she strictly refuses Vicky’s life and love design.

Opening scene: Cristina in the cab
Both are utterly successful as stereotypical tourists of culture: she dives into the “artistic treasuries” of Barcelona and meets in person the highly-educated painter, Juan Antonio, the Spanish seducer per se. Through his local knowledge, they can experience art and culture as distinguished insiders, and even Vicky is almost enchanted by him. A short, romantic and for her unusually passionate night is the reason for Vicky to fundamentally doubt her life concept. Even the spontaneous marriage with her suddenly appearing fiancé doesn’t seem to be able to stop the crumpling of her self-perception.

Her hostess, the older US-American Judy, accelerates this further. Judy feels trapped in her long-term marriage with a boring and rich man. An escape appears none but surrogated in the person of Vicky, who she sees as a younger emblem of herself. Meanwhile the exact opposite happens to Cristina, who is now in an ongoing sexual relationship with Juan Antonio. She begins to live with him and realizes that he is on highly explosive terms with his ex-wife, the Spaniard María Elena. In joining a polyamorous relationship with both, Cristina seems to live her own ideal: she lives the Avant-garde in Europe; she is the lover of physically desirable artists; she lives beyond the heteronormative, dichotomizing standard, which Vicky symbolizes. This is mainly established through the emotionally unstable but nevertheless strong character of María Elena. She is not only intimidating and choleric, but rather represents the type of the highly hypnotic muse. Thanks to her, Cristina gets self-confident about art; she begins to photograph while Juan Antonio and María Elena paint.

Final scene from Vicky Cristina Barcelona
In the end everything stays as it was before. The journey, the summer in Barcelona, is for both women only an intermezzo. Vicky and Cristina are standing on moving stairs in the last sequence, which literally bring them back down. Vicky goes back to her husband, to her frame made of “seriousness and stability” and Cristina–who couldn’t dare commit to Juan and María–is still searching. None of them found a new self. None of them seems happy. The essence of the plot is brilliantly stated by Vicky’s character, “It was a passing thing; now it’s over.”

In conclusion, one must point out that Vicky Cristina Barcelona generates its immense comedic potential from mocking its stereotypical unemancipated female main characters. The end of the film especially shows the intellegence of the story: nothing changes for Vicky and Cristina. They do not find a spiritual solution; everything stays the same.

Prelude scene from The Darjeeling Limited
“I want us to make this trip a spiritual journey where each of us seek the unknown”: Clash of masculinities and postcolonial forgiving in The Darjeeling Limited

Our next movie starts off with an emblematic taxi ride again. This time, in a prelude to the main plot, an American business man is turbulented through hectic traffic and ongoing day-to-day routines of an unknown Indian mountain town. Bollywood-style music is hammering as a ruthless and emotionally unaffected taxi driver speeds to the local train station and leaves the American to clutch the front seat. Through the steering wheel we can see the driver’s small picture relics, signs of religious appreciation. Having arrived at the station, the American hastens straight to the ticket counter without a word to the obviously insulted driver and past a waiting line of locals. In this scene, central subjects of the movie are encoded: The hegemonic White western masculinity which is contrasted by the suspicious subaltern male, who for most of the time is captured in local customs and therefore cannot speak (be understood) as well as the mystified female postcolonial cultural landscape.
Villagers demonstrating their gratefulness
In the course of the movie, we follow the family dynamics of three US-American upper-class brothers who take a train ride, a “spiritual journey,” through the Darjeeling district in eastern India. We learn that there is a deceased father, whose luggage they symbolically carry with them, and more importantly, as things unfold, a mother who has left “her boys” in order to work as a nun in an Indian convent. Every time the subject of the mother turns up, the three collectively consume pain killers to “get high.” In short, resulting from being brought up with this incompletion, the brothers are incapable of living up to the proper standards of functional adult masculinity: The eldest holds scars from a recent suicide attempt; the second fled his pregnant wife and the responsibilities of fatherhood; and the youngest is unable to get over his ex-girlfriend. On this so-called “spiritual journey,” the “spiritual” can be paralelled with the missing mother-figure and, more generally, with the “mystic” and “unknown” femininity that is being ascibed to the postcolonial country. Only through the journey can the brothers attain their proper heterosexual masculinities.
Peter Whitman entering the train through the lower class compartments, passing the “silent” but watching subaltern
As the train sets off and as we are getting more involved with the brotherly conflicts, the only other female character with a name (and at the same time the only local with a personality) is introdced. Rita, the train stewardess, soon catches the attention of Jack Whitman who then brashly has sex with her in the bathroom. Symbolically speaking, the Indian postcolonial cultural space is being re-appropriated by this act.

Througout the journey, the three brothers are contrasted by the “other” Indian male who is not complicit or unruly and does not understand the realms of western hegemonic masculinity. Therefore, he appears suspicious and has neither personality nor name. There is the overly business-like, stiff chief stewart (whose sanctions are ignored), the shoeshine boy (who steals the expensive shoe), “laughing” boys (“assholes”), crooked salesmen (who don’t really know what they are selling), and finally cricket players (who play cricket with a tennis ball).

Scene from The Darjeeling Limited
With these competing (but depicted as inferiour) modes of masculinity, the “spiritual journey” for the attainment of functional manliness can only be completed by a heroic act. The brothers accidentally observe how three local boys tip over into a river as they’re fishing, and they are instantly carried away by the stream. Each brother bravely jumps in after a boy to find that they could only save two. Peter couldn’t bring back “his” boy alive.

After scenes of relatives mourning in the nearby village, the brothers are invited to attend the boy’s funeral by the grieving father. With this symbolic act of acknowledgement by a local subaltern male, the Westeners can reconcile with their male identities.

Rita marks Jack “spiritually”
Despite the rescue of two local boys, Peter blames himself for the loss of the third. Only the news of the birth of a baby boy can make amends for this and unite the brothers in male bonding so that they are finally ready to encounter their mother.

At the peak of a Himalayan mountain (and the movie) the three brothers meet their surprised mother in a convent and confront her with several questions concerning her disappearance and the abandonment of her sons: “Why didn’t you come to dad’s funeral?” … “What are you doing here?” … and “What about us?”

Rita looking for Jack
Factually she explains: “I didn’t want to. I live here.” And, pointing at a statue of Mother Mary, she withdraws herself from the patriarchal demands of motherhood: “You are talking to her. You are talking to someone else. You are not talking to me. I don’t know the answers to these questions. I don’t see myself this way.”

Regardless of this final demonstration of female agency, one of the overall implications of the movie is the damage done by the cancellation of motherly liability–which is also a predominant subject in Western educational discourses. Being set in the postcolonial imaginary, the “lost” here is re-appropriated by masculinist bonding and the subordination of the subaltern “other.”

Steffen Loick is doing research about the relationship between gender identity and body optimation at Ludwig-Maximilian University, Munich Germany, and Ingrid Bettwieser studies history and literature at Freie Universität, Berlin Germany.

Travel Films Week: Othering and Alienation in ‘Lost in Translation’

Written by Robin Hitchcock

Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson) and Bob (Bill Murray) in Lost in Translation
Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation is remembered mostly for the genuinely affecting romance between its leads Scarlett Johansson and Bill Murray, but it also offers a singular depiction of culture shock. Unfortunately, in representing the “strangeness” of Japan through the eyes of its American characters, Lost in Translation often veers into racist stereotypes and caricatures. When the film was up for several Academy Awards including Best Picture in 2004, the anti-racism group Asian Mediawatch advocated an Oscar shut-out for the film because it “dehumanises the Japanese people by portraying them as a collection of shallow stereotypes who are treated with disregard and disdain.” [Despite this protest, Lost in Translation did garner writer–director Sofia Coppola an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.]
Bob Harris (Bill Murray) stands tallest in a Japanese elevator
My viewing (as a white American) of Lost in Translation didn’t see disdain for Japan or Japanese people, but rather an aggressive othering, which of course is problematic in its own right. But emphasizing the differences between Tokyo and the American homeland of main characters Charlotte (Johansson) and Bob (Murray) is vital to the narrative of Lost in Translation: both characters are in crisis, unmoored in their daily lives, and the mundane discomfort of their foreign surroundings brings these deeper struggles to bear.
Charlotte looks out at Tokyo from her hotel room window
Focusing on the existential angst of two white Americans in Japan without any well-defined Japanese characters is enough to turn off many race-conscious viewers to begin with, and Lost in Translation doubles down with some cringeworthy Japanese stereotypes. The film gets alarming mileage out of its Japanese characters pronouncing l’s and r’s similarly, which feels even more dated than the also strangely boundless fax-machine humor in this 2003 film. Charlotte at one point asks Bob why “they mix up l’s and r’s” and he suggests it is “for yuks,” but it isn’t actually funny.
Take for example the biggest belly flop of a “comedic” scene in the film, in which an escort arrives at Bob’s hotel room; his host in Japan having gifted him with the “premium fantasy” package. She demands Bob “lip” her stockings. After a classic Bill Murray line reading of “Hey, ‘lip’ them, ‘lip’ them, what!?” the scene devolves as the escort one-sidedly plays out a rape fantasy. Too much of this scene rests on the “humor” of “lip” vs. “rip,” and the rest relies on judging sexism in Japanese business culture from a dubious moral high ground. It’s hard to watch.
Directions during a whiskey ad shoot are literally lost in translation
In contrast, the comedic highlights of the film are the shoots for the whiskey advertisement that brought Bob Harris to Tokyo. The humor in these scenes doesn’t come so much from mocking the Japanese characters as it does mining the disconnect between them and English-speaking Bob (alluding to the film’s title). The flashy director of the ad gives detailed, impassioned instructions in Japanese which are relayed to Bob in brief and inscrutable English directions (“Turn from the right, with intensity!” “Like an old friend, and into the camera.”)
Scarlet Johansson spends a lot of this movie looking out of windows.
Charlotte’s interactions with Japanese culture aren’t comedic, which is likely because Scarlett Johansson is not the established comedic actor that Bill Murray is. Instead, we get a lot of her gazing with wonder at beautiful scenery and meekly participating in ikebana. I think anyone who has ever been a tourist can relate to Charlotte’s wide-eyed stares out of cab windows, but her fascinated observation gets laid on a little thick and starts reeking of Orientalism. Early in the film she peers into a Buddhist temple and cries over the phone to a friend back home that it didn’t make her “feel anything.” That moment lends a lot of credence to those who would dismiss this film out of hand for its white-centricism. 
Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson) and Bob (Bill Murray) in Lost in Translation
But the true heart of Lost in Translation is the relationship between Charlotte and Bob, a sudden and profound connection between two lost souls that transcends its blurred line between friendship and romance. This connection is only credible because of these characters’ alienation in their surroundings, so the emphasis on Tokyo’s foreignness to them is important to the film. And from my limited and privileged perspective as a white American living abroad, the representation of culture shock as alternately funny, sad, and spiritually moving rings true. But Lost in Translation‘s othering of Japan too often crosses into racism and xenophobia, which makes it much less of a movie than it could be.
Bob and Charlotte say goodbye.
I would love to see a Before Sunset type follow-up to this film, to revisit Charlotte and Bob and see what might come of a second meeting between their characters, but also to give us a new take on the experience of being in an unfamiliar location. A more nuanced take reflecting the advancing maturity of the characters and of Sofia Coppola, crafting a better film that’s not only enjoyable with privileged blinders on.

Robin Hitchcock is an American writer living in Cape Town who usually wears pants when she stares out her window to gaze wistfully upon the city. 

Travel Films Week: "It Seems to Me That She Came From the Sea": A Review of Agnes Varda’s ‘Vagabond’

Agnès Varda directs Vagabond
This is a guest review by Rachael Johnson.
Vagabond is one of Agnès Varda’s finest films. First released in 1985, its title in French is Sans Toit Ni Loi–Without Roof or Law or Homeless and Lawless. It is the story of Mona, a young homeless woman roaming the landscape of a French wine-growing region in deepest winter. Lined with a feminist sensibility, Vagabond is both naturalistic and formally remarkable. Filmed in a realistic, pseudo-documentary style, it is structurally ambitious and bleakly poetic. Varda, interestingly, dedicates her film to Natalie Sarraute, one of the key writers of the Nouveau Roman (New Novel), the French literary movement that challenged post-war narrative conventions. Vagabond also features a compelling central performance by Sandrine Bonnaire. The actress, unsurprisingly, won a César (French Oscar) for her courageous turn as Mona. The film itself won the Golden Lion at the 1985 Venice Film Festival.
We begin at the end with the discovery of Mona’s corpse in a ditch. The young vagabond, it seems clear, froze to death. Through interviews with the people she met on the road as well as flashbacks, Vagabond explores the riddle of Mona. The young woman, it soon becomes apparent, is a complex, contradictory figure. Although spunky and independent, she can be curiously passive and sluggish. She does not care what others think of her but is defensive when challenged. She can also be as stubborn and sullen as a small child. Mona’s grit and sass are evident in the opening flashbacks when we see her flipping off a truck driver. There is, equally, a sensuality and earthiness to the young woman. We see her first–in long shot–emerging naked from the sea. The unseen interviewer (Varda herself) narrates in voice-over: “It seems to me that she came from the sea.” 
Sandrine Bonnaire as Mona Bergeron in Vagabond
The director’s feminist aesthetics are apparent in the framing of these early flashbacks. As Mona emerges from the sea, the viewer sees that she is being watched by two young men. Varda’s shot of the naked Mona is succeeded by a shot of postcards of naked women for sale in a bar frequented by the same young men. Disturbingly, they talk of missed opportunities. Varda depicts the sexual objectification and exploitation of Mona in a quite unobtrusive, subtle fashion. Many of the male characters reveal their misogyny themselves in interviews. A garage owner who exploits Mona has the audacity to say female drifters are “always after men.”
Many of the women Mona meets seem to understand and appreciate her more. A few even envy her mobility and freedom. A teenager longingly observes, “She was free; she goes where she likes.” Another much older woman admires her character: “She knows what she wants.” Amusingly, she tells her husband that she would have been better off if she had kicked him out at Mona’s age. The charged, poignant comments suggest deep female dissatisfaction with the domestic space.
Mona can be a subversive, liberating force. There is a wonderful scene where she gets drunk on brandy with a wealthy, old lady. The old woman revels in Mona’s anarchic spirit and the mischief of the moment. She knows her nephew wants her money and home and Mona helps her cut through the bullshit of bourgeois propriety and hypocrisy. Amusingly, the young vagabond has been squatting in an abandoned wing of the woman’s château with a young man she has picked up. Mona is also–at first at least–a romantic figure to the old woman’s nurse. A dreamy woman disappointed in love, she is fascinated by Mona’s relationship with the young man. The lovers eat from cans in candlelight, drink wine, smoke pot and listen to music. We see them–in a fine tracking shot–wander the grounds of the property wrapped in blankets. Mona does not, however, play the conventional romantic role for long. An autonomous, capricious spirit, she abandons young male lovers and companions when she feels the need or inclination. 
Mona drinks with a wealthy older woman
The young vagabond is a complicated, ambiguous character. She is prepared to play the dependent, happy to take, and willing to steal. She hooks up with a sweet Tunisian vine-cutter who provides shelter and promises to provide. When he is forced to choose his job and co-workers over her, she is bitterly wounded. She is offered a role and place to stay by a goat farmer but chooses to do very little. She expresses interest in growing potatoes but does not take up the man’s offer of help. She even steals from his wife. The goat farmer, a university graduate, is repelled by Mona’s aimlessness and lack of work ethic. Calling Mona “a dreamer,” he tells her of friends who have been destroyed and taken by life on the road. Mona, it is true, has no plan or ideology. She is not on a journey of spiritual or intellectual enlightenment. She does not want to remake her world. Mona, for her part, defiantly asks why a highly-educated man would herd goats for a living. The suggestion is that the farmer is himself somewhat of a dreamer and even guilty of middle-class self-indulgence. It is never fully clear what drove Mona to choose the road, but we learn that she hated her secretarial job and “jumped-up bosses.” She no longer wants to play the game. When a female agronomist she meets asks Mona why she dropped out, she answers: “Champagne on the road’s better.” Does she believe herself? The factor of class is alluded to but not underscored in Vagabond. Mona quietly observes, “There are so many big houses, so many rooms.” But we know little of her background and education.
The agronomist is intrigued and troubled by the young woman’s way of life. She offers Mona food, champagne, and temporary shelter in her car. The middle-aged woman plays a sisterly-maternal part and expresses deep concern about the dangers that may befall Mona when she finally parts ways with her. They are realised. Mona’s journey takes a tragic turn when she is raped in the woods. Varda, notably, pulls her camera away from the horror. Mona’s life gradually begins to unravel. Although she gains a new set of (delinquent) companions, she becomes increasingly unmoored and scarred by her state. We see her vomiting at a bus station, bombed out of her mind, and we see her, finally, break down and cry. The cold will soon take her. 
Sandrine Bonnaire in Vagabond
Vagabond is an unsentimental study of the road and Mona is not drawn as particularly sweet or predictably heroic. The film does not address gender politics in direct, didactic fashion. Varda’s feminist sensibility and aesthetics are, however, evident throughout. The veteran director never sexually objectifies her female protagonist, and her portrait of Mona is complex, humane, and provocative. The young woman is, in many ways, a truly transgressive figure. Her vagabond state represents an absolute rejection of the comforts, confines, and conventions of domesticity. Although young and attractive, Mona refuses cultural norms of feminine beauty. Mona’s filthiness is, pointedly, the subject of incessant comment throughout Vagabond. With these repeated references, Varda alludes to the deep-rooted misogynist cultural belief that an unclean woman is nothing less than a monstrous aberration. A male student of the agronomist declares, “She’s revolting, a wreck. Makes me sick…She scares me because she revolts me.”
Mona intrigues, unsettles, and repels the people she meets. Vulnerable, variable, tough, apathetic, hedonistic, wayward, and free, she cannot be pinned down and defined. If Vagabond sounds like too grim a journey, it is not. It is an absorbing, at once harsh and beautiful tale about an enigmatic girl who wandered in winter.

Rachael Johnson has contributed articles on film to CINEACTION, www.objectif-cinema.com, and www.jgcinema.com.