Bitch Flicks – Page 19 – The radical notion that women like good movies

Sheila E.’s Agency as an Artist in ‘Krush Groove’ and Beyond

But Sheila E. represents a woman’s creative musical power in an early hip hop film dominated by male artists. … As we consider hip hop’s presence in U.S. films and documentaries spanning the globe, it is also reasonable to consider that Sheila E. has one of the biggest roles for a woman that was written in the spate of films that began portraying hip hop culture.

This guest post written by Tara Betts appears as part of our theme week on Ladies of the 1980s.

The film Krush Groove opens with rap group Run–D.M.C. (Joseph “Run” Simmons, Darryl “D.M.C.” McDaniels, and Jason “Jam Master Jay” Mizell) recording “King of Rock” in a makeshift studio for producers Rick Rubin (as Rick), Kurtis Blow (playing himself, as did most of the musicians in the film), and Blair Underwood (as Russell Walker), loosely based on Russell Simmons’ life. Two quiet girls listen in the studio, and the other group featured in the opening as the credits roll include The Fat Boys featuring the late Darren Robinson, also known as Human Beatbox. The Fat Boys (called The Disco Three here) portray high school students who dream of being famous rappers. Women and girls had minor roles or silent roles in the background. But one woman who received top billing and appeared on the posters in this 1985 film was none other than singer, drummer, and percussionist Sheila E., playing herself in the film. Shortly after drumming during Purple Rain with friend and collaborator Prince, the success of Sheila E.’s first single and album The Glamorous Life and the single “The Belle of St. Mark” helped her segue into her role in Krush Groove.

“The Love Bizarre” is heard before Run DMC even enters the tiny club called Disco Fever, where snippets of “King of Rock” are shot and The Disco Three dream of getting onstage. Sheila E.’s flyness come off with a singular style — asymmetrical short hair with bleached tips and gold coins dangling from her ears, her strings of pearls, a shimmery orange jacket with padded shoulders, and a black fingerless glove. She has a magnetic presence and controls the stage; she sings on her back and slides along the length of the stage, then pops back up to sing the chorus with a big-haired band member mouthing Prince’s voice on the chorus of “A Love Bizarre.” In the meantime, Russell (Blair Underwood) and Run are both watching Sheila. She ends the performance with plucking a chord or two and walks offstage to confront her manager about getting her better gigs. Sheila E. asserting herself here is one of several scenes where she speaks her mind and acts with agency on her own behalf. Of course, a snippet of the Force MDs’ song “Tender Love” foreshadows the romantic interest between Russell and Sheila E. But Sheila E. represents a woman’s creative musical power in an early hip hop film dominated by male artists.

Sheila E. practices what becomes the song “Holly Rock” later in the film. While Run and Darryl sit on the couch, Sheila stops playing to tell Run to rehearse and stop ordering shell toe Adidas. She is not one of the background vocalists on either side of Kurtis Blow when he raps “If I Ruled the World” at a scene in a club. When Sheila E. joins Blow and Run–D.M.C. onstage at The Beverly, their wardrobe takes cues from Prince’s Edwardian style suits, but the more significant element is how Sheila E. occupies the entire stage. She plays timbales, throws her drumsticks in the air and catches them, sings while prancing from one end of the stage to the other, and works the microphone while effortlessly singing and rapping.

When Run and Darryl leave Krush Groove Records, Russell looks to sign Sheila E. as part of his last ditch efforts to pay back a loan shark. Later, after Sheila and Russell fall for each other, Sheila slaps Run for cursing and bashing her for having sex with Russell. She insists on going to help Russell when the loan shark sends bodyguards to the Krush Groove office/college dorm room. Sheila E.’s reprimand convinces Run to help defend his brother. In the closing scene at Disco Fever, The Fat Boys, Run–D.M.C., Kurtis Blow, all line the stage and kick a verse. Sheila rhymes on par with any of her counterparts, and it becomes evident that her rapping becomes a recurring skill in later songs like Prince’s “Beautiful Night.”

Sheila E.’s prowess with words is only part of what makes her role distinct in this film. She stands out because she is a skillful musician who mastered various instruments and she is not necessarily a rapper in a film dominated by the then successful Run–D.M.C., a teenage LL Cool J, pop sensation New Edition, the Beastie Boys, two members of the R & B group Full Force playing bodyguards, and the future Uptown Records founder and eventual president and CEO of Motown Records Andre Harrell as half of the rap duo Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde.

Sheila E. grew up surrounded by significant musicians: her percussionist father Pete Escovedo; her uncle singer and songwriter Alejandro Escovedo, her uncle The Dragons frontman Mario Escovedo, her uncle Javier Escovedo, who founded the Zeros; her uncle percussionist Coke Escovedo, who performed in Santana and started his own band; and her godfather Tito Puente, a legend of mambo and Latin jazz percussion, associated with Fania Records and movies like The Mambo Kings and Calle 54. As a child surrounded by these influential musicians, it is not surprising that she honed her talents and eventually told Prince what she was making on tours with her father and other musicians, to which he replied, “Okay, I can’t afford you.”

After starring in Krush Groove, Sheila E. recorded and released Romance 1600. In 1987, Sheila E. recorded a self-titled album on Paisley Park Records that included the U.S. singles “Hold Me” and “Koo Koo.” The video for “Koo Koo” featured dancer Cat Glover and both women later appeared in the live concert movie Sign o’ the Times as members of the band.

As we consider hip hop’s presence in U.S. films and documentaries spanning the globe, it is also reasonable to consider that Sheila E. has one of the biggest roles for a woman that was written in the spate of films that began portraying hip hop culture. In addition to this, she starred in a musical vehicle outside of Prince’s poetic universe. Sheila E. was not in Purple Rain with singers/actresses Apollonia Kotero or Jill Jones, nor did she appear in Under the Cherry Moon (1986) where Kristin Scott-Thomas plays a wealthy romantic interest. Sheila did not require a hero like martial arts actor Taimak as Leroy Green opposite Laura Charles (portrayed by singer Vanity, Prince’s partner and collaborator) in The Last Dragon (1985) either.

Earlier hip hop films included the 1983 classic Wild Style with graffiti artist Lady Pink as Lee Quiñones’ love interest and Stan Lathan’s 1984 film Beat Street, which billed Rae Dawn Chong as its most well-known star. Chong’s character Tracy Carlson offers a television opportunity to DJ Kenny Kirkland, his breakdancing brother Lee, and the graffiti writer Ramon, but she is not necessarily the main character driving the plot of the film. Lucinda Dickey, a former Solid Gold dancer who was one of the main characters in Breakin’ (1984) and she reprises her role as Kelly/Special K in Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo (1984). But her role as a classically trained dancer who went to learn from Ozone (Adolfo “Shabba-Doo” Quiñones) and Turbo (Michael “Boogaloo Shrimp” Chambers), both stigmatized as “street dancers,” offers a subtle critique against classist snobbery while still excluding women of color, even after Jennifer Beal’s stunning audition scene in the 1983 Flashdance where none other than Rock Steady Crew’s Crazy Legs acted as Beals’ breakdancing stunt double (in addition to stunt doubles dancer Marine Jahan and gymnast Sharon Shapiro).

Although Sheila E.’s notoriety skyrocketed during the 1980s, she continued in the subsequent decades to open musical doors as a musician. She was a bandleader on “The Arsenio Hall Show” and Magic Johnson’s short-lived “The Magic Show.” She released four albums after the 1987 release Sheila E. This Afro-Latinx percussionist continues to tour, perform at festivals, and share billing with notable musicians in various genres. Krush Groove was one place that showcased her talents just outside Prince’s umbrella. In 2014, she published a memoir The Beat of My Own Drum. Lately, she has been speaking with Prince’s surviving band members and coordinating events. Sheila E. also appeared in the BET tribute to Prince, along with The Roots, Bilal, Erykah Badu, Jennifer Hudson, Stevie Wonder, and Janelle Monae. Sheila E. led the electric finale with dancer and choreographer Mayte Garcia (and Prince’s ex-wife) and Jerome Benton dancing with a full crew of dancers and musicians. Sheila E. continues to captivate, entertain, and inspire audiences.

Tara Betts is the author of two full-length poetry collections Break the Habit and Arc & Hue. She is also the author of the chapbooks 7 x 7: kwansabas (Backbone Press, 2015), the upcoming Never Been Lois Lane (dancing girl press, 2016), and the libretto THE GREATEST!: An Homage to Muhammad Ali (Argus House/Winged City Press, 2013). Tara’s writing has appeared in The Source, XXL, Black Radio Exclusive, Essence, NYLON, and the hip hop-inspired anthology The Break Beat Poets.

‘The Stepfather,’ Toppling Patriarchy, and Love of 80s Horror Ladies

Stephanie emerges as a poised, perspicacious, and resilient female lead. She is a wonderfully surprising alternative from most of the panoply of horror heroines who are tortured, fight, and scream their way through the terrifying films of the 80s. … Stephanie embodies what each of the archetypally male characters in the film fails to, and in doing so transcends the clutches of gender expectations in the film…

This guest post written by Eva Phillips appears as part of our theme week on Ladies of the 1980s. | Spoilers ahead.

Following the banal images of a brutal murder scene in a quaint, thoroughly 80s suburban living room that kick off the wildly underrated 1987 Josef Ruben film The Stepfather, there is a fantastic tracking shot that careens through a blissfully undisturbed, quintessential American upper-middle class neighborhood: we see the blooming, verdant trees, pristine yards, immaculately manicured homes — the whole shebang. The shot, which as a narration tool serves to show the titular stepfather Henry Morrison/Jerry Blake (unnerving and under-used Terry O’Quinn) exodus from one domicile — or, as the film later shows, one arena for him to futilely commandeer another single mother and her children — and move onto another, as he progresses from home-to-home, insidiously usurping them as he sees fit. But on a more subversive level, this opening tracking shot, which unintentionally parodies idyllic tracking or panoramic shots of 80s and 90s films that featured goofy but affable dad protagonists (think Uncle Buck or Father of the Bride or any film in which kids are shrunk) speaks to the film’s more profound subversive qualities. The shot indicates a sort of potential for undisturbed perfection, but it is a perfection that is violated and infested by the nefarious threat the stepfather symbolizes.

While many of the memorable and crucial aspects of The Stepfather are the flailing, if not furious, impotent attempts at O’Quinn’s menacing nomad in securing some draconian ideal family life, the true power of Stepfather lies with the groundbreaking dynamic between the two women who are preyed upon — Stephanie and Susan Maine (Jill Schoelen and Shelley Hack, respectively) — and the intuitive resilience of the daughter Stephanie in prevailing against her “new dad.” The introduction to Stephanie and Susan, mere moments after the grisly scene by Henry Morrison (who changes his name to Jerry Blake, real estate wizard, like any good homicidal villain would) is one of such unadulterated, unsullied bliss, that in my years of film watching it has yet to be rivaled by any moment of mother-daughter conviviality on screen. The two very jovially, un-eroticized and un-infantilized, play in a leaf pile, genuinely enjoying the frivolousness and love between them. What intrudes upon this mother-daughter euphoria, of course, is Susan’s mention of her new husband — aforementioned, newly reminted killer Jerry — who greets the glowing Susan and the less-than-enthused Stephanie with a puppy (which, mercifully defying the awful tropes 80s horror, LIVES TO THE END) and the hope that he’ll finally make a good impression on his surly stepdaughter.

What is most sensational about this cult classic (which, if it hasn’t officially been elevated to this status, I’m empowering myself to do so) is how, in the wake of the disquietingly erratic invasion of Jerry and his hauntingly traditional family values — the family must get along, the family must eat together, the family must not mind if the new stepfather has a completely savage break in the basement during a cookout — Stephanie emerges as a poised, perspicacious, and resilient female lead. She is a wonderfully surprising alternative from most of the panoply of horror heroines who are tortured, fight, and scream their way through the terrifying films of the 80s. Stephanie’s sexuality originates and exists organically (except when the rapidly unhinging Jerry accuses her crush of “raping” her when they kiss on the front step) and the film never once fetishizes her sexual development, or lack thereof, in the tradition of much of 80s horror cinema — built on a preexisting set of standards for horror women.

More importantly and gratifyingly, Stephanie’s fortitude and cleverness, and her determination to restore the blissful perfection between mother and daughter displayed at the beginning of the film, is in the face of the absolutely bumbling antics or brutal tendencies of the men around her. The men completely fail or are violently disconnected from reality: whether it is the well-intentioned but mainly hapless chisel-faced brother of Jerry’s slain first wife, always 10 minutes too late in trying to sniff Jerry out; the perpetually denying, stagnating police officers; or the earnest therapist who is brutally murdered by Jerry in his foolish attempt to confirm Stephanie’s feelings of unease about Jerry. Stephanie embodies what each of the archetypally male characters in the film fails to, and in doing so transcends the clutches of gender expectations in the film and in a genre that is so often besotted by explicit or implicit gendered presumptions.

Stephanie’s formidability and indefatigable stamina, despite being thwarted by Jerry at many turns throughout the film, is also a sub-textual nod to a profound reversion of a patriarchal predominance, one which looms over the film and certainly taints many films in the 80s horror tradition. The brand of paternal instincts and familial preservation that Jerry is so ruthlessly fixated on is a hollow, ghastly farce. He is joltingly compulsive, and when the family unit does not function as he wants it to (which is to say, in defiance of picturesque happiness and groveling at the shrine of Jerry-Or-Whoever-He-Is), he must resort to abhorrent violence to embody the dismay over the shambolic domestic unit “failing.” Selling real estate and life insurance in his various assumed identities, every orchestrated move Jerry makes is a testament to the meretriciousness of the type of “home” for which Jerry strives. And so, in tandem with this vicious, empty patriarchal presence, is the true domestic perfection that Stephanie stands for — one established and centering around matriarchal and even Edenic love; one based on respect and value and ass-kicking bulwarks of women. Restoring this order is not only the be-all-end-all for Stephanie, it symbolizes the natural order of things and the film, critically, supports this perspective. The culminating, relentless fight scene is cleverly staged like so many chaotic 80s horror slaying scenes: Susan is abruptly and unflinchingly assaulted by Jerry upon realizing his farce and unearthing his true identity. As she stumbles helplessly into the basement, the chiseled brother of Jerry’s former victim swoops in, only to be maniacally stabbed by Jerry. It is only Stephanie who can effectively enter the domestic sphere and overcome her despotic stepfather, ending not only his reign of terror but reclaiming the domestic sphere for herself and her mother.

For a film that gets too frequently billed as a B-Movie, or disregarded or lost in the canon of slasher-centric 80s horror, The Stepfather is outstanding for the distinct feminine strength and unity it lionizes. Moreover, the film is a brilliant experiment in subverting expectations. Despite the title’s implications, the film is not some nauseatingly machismo feature of masculine power and reconstruction in which a destabilized family unit (weakened, of course, by the lack of a “father”) is consumed by the diabolical machinations of a traditionalist murderer. Rather, the film is one of the feminine-centric family unit prevailing, and the love between a mother and daughter being the prized, organic form of love that champions the aberration of the male intrusion and the male buffoonery that ensconces it. The haunting poster for the film shows Jerry pensively staring at a fogged over mirror, the words “Who Am I Here” traced on the glass. It is not so much indicative of Jerry’s delusional mania, but indicates the emptiness and futility of the forced patriarchal order on a domestic sphere. Importantly, too, Stephanie does not function as some Carol Clover-esque horror heroine — her body and her actions exist outside of an eroticized or fetishized realm, and she is not operating within some sort of phallic terror-dome, but, rather, transcends it. And, sure, the movie has some wonky moments: laughably oblivious characters, awkwardly 80s-tastic quips, and perhaps one of the most heinous scores of any 80s horror film (think a synth-focused Def Leppard instrumental cover band with no sense of dramatic irony). But it should be valorized for its uniquely feminist message that is never pandering, unequivocally unique, and woefully difficult to replicate (case in point: the miserably dude-centric 2009 remake). The Stepfather’s sly championing of female strength and domestic reclamation is no more evident than the masterful final scene: Susan and Stephanie, shaken but stalwart, reassess their home in the backyard, as Stephanie takes an ax the birdhouse Jerry erected in the backyard, therein violently and resolutely toppling the specious emblem of his false domesticity, his pseudo-colonization, and literally dismantling the patriarchal presence. Get it, girl.

See also at Bitch Flicks: Patriarchy in Crisis: Power and Gender in ‘The Stepfather’

Eva Phillips is constantly surprised at how remarkably Southern she in fact is as she adjusts to social and climate life in The Steel City. Additionally, Eva thoroughly enjoys completing her Master’s Degree in English, though really wishes that more of her grades could be based on how well she researches Making a Murderer conspiracy theories whilst pile-driving salt-and-vinegar chips. You can follow her on Instagram at @menzingers2.

How ‘Big Business’ Made Big Business Thanks to Two Women Big in the Business

Yet what sets this 80s flick apart from most films of that era is the fact that the four protagonists are all women AND completely independent. … Ultimately, it is Midler and Tomlin who save the film from being just another forgotten comedy of the 1980s. The two stars bring a certain gravitas to the screen — a perfect combination of comedic timing and contagious chemistry…

This guest post written by Kyle Sanders appears as part of our theme week on Ladies of the 1980s.

When you combine the talents of Bette Midler and Lily Tomlin, you wind up with three Academy Award nominations, four Grammy awards, three Tony awards, and ten Emmy awards — not too shabby for two women in show business. Both have shined so brightly in their respective fields, that it was only a matter of time before the two starred together in a film, which ultimately became 1988’s Big Business. Loosely based on Mark Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper and William Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors, the film stars Midler and Tomlin as two sets of twins mismatched at birth, who eventually reunite over the fate of a small town. The film was a modest box office success at the time, but decades later, their comedic chemistry still remains intact, and stands as a testament to successful female-driven comedies.

Big Business begins with the coincidental timing of two births: one from a wealthy couple traveling through Jupiter Hollow (an Appalachian town in West Virginia) and the other from a family of impoverished locals. Both women give birth to identical twin girls. In a hilarious mishap, both sets of twins get mixed up thanks to the confused nurse. Nearly forty years later, wealthy “twins” Sadie (Midler) and Rose (Tomlin) Shelton are co-chairwomen of Moremax — the successor to their father’s business located in New York City — and ultimately want to sell Hollowmade, a furniture factory located in the very town where they were born. Naturally, there is some resistance from Jupiter Hollow’s townsfolk, led by the factory’s forewoman, Rose Ratliff (Tomlin, again), who plans to travel to New York and protest with her “twin sister” Sadie (Midler, again) to “raise some heck” and “kick some snooty New York ass.” As luck would have it, both sets of twins end up staying at the Plaza Hotel, causing much comical confusion and physical hijinks amongst the women’s suitors and hotel employees. It’s not until the end of the film that all four women become acquainted, recognizing their familial bond and end up saving the rural town from being completely strip mined.

This film came out in the summer of 1988, so of course, there are some choice fashionable references of the era — shoulder pads, stark white Reebok sneakers, polka dots — but also gnarly pop cultural references of the 80s as well. Sadie Ratliff is mesmerized by an episode of Dynasty, a Times Square marquee features Disorderlies and Monster Squad (both films from 1987), and a totally bogus movie ending features Steve Winwood’s “Higher Love” playing over the credits (hey, it was the 80s!). Yet what sets this 80s flick apart from most films of that era is the fact that the four protagonists are all women AND completely independent.

Sure, it’s clear that Midler’s Sadie Shelton had once married and had a child, but has chosen business over family, maintaining heavy control over her father’s corporation instead of devoting attention on her out of control son (played by a young Seth Green). Although Tomlin’s Rose Ratliff has a boyfriend who expects her to cheer him on at his miniature golf tournament (tubular!), she chooses to save her town’s way of life over standing at her man’s side. These women are ambitious and too focused on their professional futures to be restrained by traditional standards. The film makes it clear that these women are forces to be reckoned with.

Let us not forget the other sisters either. Rose Shelton may not be as hard edged or ruthless as her sister Sadie, but she too remains independent. She feels out of place in the corporate world, struggling to maintain even a flimsy shoulder pad slipping down her sleeve (a metaphorical rejection of the big business lifestyle, perhaps?). She’d rather exchange it all for a simpler existence involving “a goat and some ducks.” Meanwhile, Sadie Ratliff feels stuck in the sticks and dreams of a totally glamorous, upscale lifestyle. As she reenacts a scene from Dynasty (involving bitchin’ iconic businesswoman Alexis Carrington, no less), it’s clear how much she’s yearned for a dazzling position in power, of which her rural upbringing has very few resources to offer.

These diverse options provide a radically different perspective of living compared to the mothers that birthed them in the 1940s: Mrs. Shelton’s pregnancy was more of a negotiation in exchange for an extended wardrobe and jewelry, while Mrs. Ratliff’s pregnancy seems to be business as usual, commenting on what’s changed in the delivery room since “the last time” she was there. In a way, the film specifically opens during that time to suggest how women have evolved in the “modern era” of the late 80s.

And who better to portray the modern woman? The four varied, fully dimensional characters in Big Business could only be compellingly and hilariously portrayed by Midler and Tomlin. Between Midler’s big-eyed glares and Tomlin’s dizzying hysterics, both actresses’ comedic physicality provide specific mannerisms to each version of Sadie and Rose that when all four do share the same screen (thanks to some bogusly dated 80s special effects), it’s easy to distinguish these characters.

As different as each woman is, they all share one thing in common: respect amongst their peers. The Shelton sisters are president and senior vice president of Moremax, surrounded by men who await their professional decisions. While Rose is the “wispy” sister, Sadie holds court at Moremax. Sadie’s grand introduction (in a setup that clearly inspired Miranda Priestly’s entrance in The Devil Wears Prada) has her entire staff racing around the office to prepare for her appearance, and within seconds upon arriving she’s already ripping into her employees, be it with their choice of attire or failure of completing tasks. Her cold composure and piercing stare are intimidating; she is never intimidated or buckles to corporate pressure. It’s surprising then that not once throughout the entire film is she ever referred to as the proverbial “bitch.” Sadie is one bodacious businesswoman, and no man ever undermines her decisions.

The Ratliff sisters also are shown a great amount of respect. The entire community calls upon them to save their town from getting strip mined, which is surprising considering how rural culture is often depicted as placing women either in the kitchen or in the nursery — like their mother 40 years prior. Once Rose and Sadie Ratliff arrive in New York, completely out of their comfort zone, they quickly adapt to their surroundings. Through a string of cheesy 80s montages, Rose infiltrates the ins and outs of the Plaza Hotel, spreading word of Moremax’s devious intentions with Jupiter Hollow through various disguises (“Guten morgan!”), while Sadie explores the city, learning how to (aggressively) hail a taxi cab. The Ratliff women might be from a small town but they are not small minded.

For a film centered on strong-willed women, the weakest part of the plot comes from their interactions with men. Sadie Shelton’s ex-husband is judgmental of his wife’s monetary bribes to their spoiled son, yet instantly falls back in love with her once (unbeknownst to him) Sadie Ratliff does some quick-thinking discipline inside the toy store FAO Schwarz (??). Rose Shelton’s spineless boyfriend won’t propose marriage because he’s scared of her sister, but Rose Ratliff rebuffs his advances later on and somehow inspires him to buy a ring (??). I don’t buy it. As palpable as Sadie Shelton’s sexual power plays with Fabio Alberici (the man who plans to buy out Jupiter Hollow from Moremax) are, the deal ultimately falls through, and seems to have no consequences on their romantic chemistry. The only relationship that seems to have enough substance to continue on occurs between Rose Shelton and Roone, Rose Ratliff’s boyfriend. He sets out to New York in a quest to rescue Rose Ratliff, but instead ends up saving Rose Shelton from a life she’d rather not live. He senses the insufferableness of her situation, which in turn helps her discover her true nature, allowing her to focus and feel comfortable about herself for the first time in her life. Sure, it plays out like a grody Damsel in Distress scenario, but it ultimately makes Rose a fully realized individual by the end of the film, and it’s because of her solid plea to the stockholders to not sell out Jupiter Hollow that eventually saves the day.

Ultimately, it is Midler and Tomlin who save the film from being just another forgotten comedy of the 1980s. The two stars bring a certain gravitas to the screen — a perfect combination of comedic timing and contagious chemistry in scenes that might otherwise fall flat in the hands of other capable actresses. The material provided from the script (co-written by Dori Pierson, who unfortunately never penned another screenplay after this one), isn’t entirely fresh, yet Midler’s and Tomlin’s performances keep the comedy from going stale.

These women are no strangers to the medium, as Midler got her start gaining a following in a gay bathhouse, thanks to her vibrant showmanship and bawdy humor. Tomlin, on the other hand, is considered a female pioneer of standup, who in the 1960s presented cerebral character sketches instead of self-deprecating jokes about marriage and motherhood. Both women proved their star power throughout the 1980s, in previous female-driven comedies such as 9 to 5 (1980) and Outrageous Fortune (1987). Thanks to them, Big Business earned a solid box office return, ranking in the top 30 highest-grossing films of 1988. Their solid comedic teamwork — much like the combined efforts of all four Shelton and Ratliff sisters — saves the film from being a run-of-the-mill, haphazard case of switched identities, into a film that shows how the ladies of the 1980s are able to run businesses and conserve communities at the same time — even if it means kicking some snooty New York ass!

Kyle Sanders lives in Chicago, where he studies improv at iO whenever he can afford it. He has previously written for Bitch Flicks, as well as NewsCastic: Chicago and GIGA: Geek Magazine.

‘Pretty in Pink’: The Only Team to Be on Is Team Andie

I fixated on the Team Duckie vs. Team Blane aspect of the film so much that I entirely missed the point. I was so Team Duckie that I blamed Andie for not choosing him. …I realized I had fallen into a trap that society has conditioned us to fall into: the dreaded sexist “friend zone.”

This guest post written by Isabella Garcia appears as part of our theme week on Ladies of the 1980s.

I first saw Pretty in Pink in middle school. Seated next to my mother, who was working through her list of favorite 80s films to show me, I fell in love with it almost immediately. I saw in Andie (Molly Ringwald) what I wanted for myself. She was confident and outspoken in the ways I wasn’t; she didn’t care what people thought about her clothing and she rocked it. I wanted to be her so badly that I scoured swap meets for “vintage” clothing (and am still on the lookout for some of Duckie’s scuffed, white duck shoes). My closet consisted of blazers with large shoulder pads, lacy shirts, flower earrings, and one t-shirt that has a picture of Duckie (Jon Cryer) and reads, “I would have picked Duckie.” Oh yes, I was one of those.

I was Team Duckie through and through. I couldn’t even hide my disdain when my mom told me that her and her friends were Team Blane. Not only did I try to channel Andie in my everyday style, I also longed for a Duckie: a best friend who was hopelessly devoted to me, who would pine for me while listening to The Smiths’ “Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want,” who would only want what’s best for me. And in the end, I would open my eyes and realize what I had been missing out on all along. When Andie saw Duckie at the prom and asked to admire him, in the same way he asks to do that with her, I would’ve chosen him right then and there. Blane who? I would’ve righted what I thought was Andie’s wrong when she chose Blane. I fixated on the Team Duckie vs. Team Blane aspect of the film so much that I entirely missed the point. I was so Team Duckie that I blamed Andie for not choosing him. I thought she was foolish for not loving him romantically. How could she be so clueless?!

It wasn’t until I grew up some more, graduated high school, and went through several re-watches that I realized I had fallen into a trap that society has conditioned us to fall into: the dreaded sexist “friend zone.” The general definition is when one of two friends seeks to turn their friendship with the other person into a romantic and/or sexual relationship, but the other person doesn’t want to. That person just wants to remain friends. And so, the first person is “stuck” in a friendship when they really want it to be a romantic relationship. The “friend zone” comes with very common side-effects that usually disparage women. If a man, in this case Duckie, falls in love with his friend, it’s up to her to return the favor and love him back. If she doesn’t or, heaven forbid, she likes someone else, she’s seen as being in the wrong and at fault. I, unfortunately, had this mentality as a young girl, which a lot of people still have: if your best friend likes you, you owe it to them to choose them over the person you actually have a crush on. It’s harmful for girls to grow up with this outlook because it further discourages them to act on their actual feelings. It makes girls scared of being accused of leading their friend on so they feel they have to reciprocate. Women and girls don’t owe anyone a relationship.

On one of my re-watches after I graduated high school, I noticed that my reaction to Andie not loving Duckie the way he loved her paralleled Steff’s (James Spader) reaction after he asked her out towards the beginning of the film. When he starts to notice the animosity Andie holds for him, he retaliates in anger. Not only is he leaning against her car door, forbidding her from escaping, but he begins to put her down. He doesn’t see what makes her so special from all the other girls that won’t go out with him, he calls her a “bitch,” and tells her to go to a doctor to get that condition checked out. Sure, I didn’t do all these things, but I definitely thought that Andie was wrong to not get with Duckie. I wanted her to open her eyes and just see him there. Steff and I shared the same disbelief when she didn’t show interest. If Duckie loved her so much then she should love him too, right?

It was wild to me that Andie didn’t like Duckie back, but after recently re-watching the film I don’t know why I ever blamed her. She stuck true to what she wanted. She didn’t feel guilted into pursuing a romantic relationship that she didn’t want with Duckie. She acted the way she did with him because they’re friends and that’s it. The way that Andie platonically acts with Duckie can be — which I did — misconstrued to be romantic. They’re touchy, they talk “20 times” a day, they care about the other’s feelings. All of these are friendly behaviors; Andie didn’t lead him on in any way.

If you still like Duckie and Andie together and you’re now feeling bad about it, don’t. There’s nothing inherently wrong with liking the idea of Duckie and Andie together. They are cute. He really cares about her and she for him. But what is wrong is to belittle Andie and her emotions and blame her for not loving him. You can’t help the happiness you feel when Duckie shows up at the prom for Andie. You can’t help but feel a sense of hope when they run to each other, hug, and reconcile by walking into prom together. But what you can help is how you react to her not “choosing” him.

Andie’s father, Jack (Harry Dean Stanton), puts it perfectly when Duckie first tells him that he loves her: “You can love Andie, but that doesn’t mean she’s going to love you back. I mean, it doesn’t mean that she won’t, but what I’m trying to say is you can’t make it happen, you know? It either will or it won’t. It’s all in the heart.” Andie stayed true to her heart. Although she could’ve gotten with Duckie, she defied expectations and didn’t. She didn’t waver. She was strong. Now that I watch it, I can see the appeal of both Blane and Duckie, but I can’t choose a side anymore. The only team I’m on is Team Andie.

Isabella Garcia is a California-based aspiring TV writer who can be found crying over movies, books, and TV on her Twitter @isabellagrca, PopInsomniacs and It’s Just About Write.

Revisiting ‘Desert Hearts’ and Its Lesbian Romance

This guest re-post written by Angela Beauchamp appears as part of our theme week on Ladies of the 1980s.

We all hold dear particular films that made an indelible impression on us. Somehow they connected to us as a viewer on an emotional or even a spiritual level; we identified with the story or characters in unusual ways; or we appreciated the craftsmanship so much that we could recite lines or remember the sequence of shots and all of the details in a scene. That ability to touch individuals while also reaching very large groups of viewers is part of what makes film such a powerful medium.

Desert Hearts is one such film for me. In the fall of 1986, still a kid of 22 who had just moved to the city from Podunk, Indiana, I went to the theater in a Boston suburb. There I remember looking around at the audience. I had a hard time believing that I was watching a lesbian romance film in a public place. I don’t think I breathed during the love scene. For the first time in my life, in a mainstream movie theater, I watched a film that gave me a model for what love could be. It made me want to fall in love, to find my own Cay or Vivian, and hop on the train to start a life together.

For heterosexual women, movies and television series show them every day what a loving relationship is and what the expectations are to grow up, fall in love, and find a handsome prince (however flawed that may be). For lesbians prior to Donna Deitch‘s Desert Hearts, nothing of the kind existed on-screen. We relied on romance novels from mail order houses like Naiad Press and feminist bookstores if we were lucky enough to live in a large college town or progressive city. Desert Hearts had a limited distribution (i.e. it was not shown in Podunk, Indiana), but it did find an unheard of large audience on screens across the country and abroad.

It is a conventional romance, which is one of the reasons that it is so successful. As Jackie Stacey points out, “it uses the iconography of romance films: train stations, sunsets and sunrises, close-up shots, rain-drenched kisses, lakeside confessions, ‘I’ve never felt this way before’ orgasms.” It is those Hollywood conventions that conjure shared memories of hundreds of heterosexual romances. Thus the filmmaker uses what are sometimes clichés as shortcuts to elicit particular emotions and reactions from the audience. Although the world of 1959 would certainly have been more challenging for these two lovers in the real world, the cinematic world Deitch created signals that there is an all-important happy ending coming up: a romantic Hollywood ending.

Deitch’s use of music also contributes to the romance convention. The country songs of Patsy Cline, Jim Reeves and Johnny Cash are very emotionally evocative. In particular, they evoke a feeling of wanting that comes from knowing the themes and voices that accompany these artists’ work. The soundtrack, which took up a large portion of the film’s budget, makes brilliant use of the audience’s previous knowledge. We know how we should feel before the scene plays itself out.

Placing the film’s setting in Reno also taps into our shared impressions of the West from movies and popular culture. It is a place in which one can start a new life and throw caution to the wind. The chances for romance certainly would not have felt so hopeful without the wide open spaces and bright, beautiful colors of the Nevada desert. Cay’s cowboy boots and western clothes make her the equivalent of the cowboy who sweeps the newcomer to town off of her feet. It’s the wild westerner who charms the shy school marm, just like we’ve seen a million times in the movies.

Others (like Mandy Merck) discuss Desert Hearts as conventional, criticizing it for not being challenging enough, not tackling issues of lesbian identity, for example. For me, that criticism totally misses the point. Deitch intentionally did not make an issues kind of film. She took a Hollywood formula and tilted it on its ear, creating a lesbian love story that audiences still crave today.

Angela Beauchamp is a cinema lover, film scholar, and most recently, a zombie mashup junkie. She is preparing to teach a course on Post-Apocalyptic Cinema in the fall.

The Vietnam War Through a Teen Girl’s Eyes in ‘In Country’

This guest post written by Caroline Madden appears as part of our theme week on Ladies of the 1980s. | Spoilers ahead.

Norman Jewison’s 1989 film In Country is based on Bobbie Ann Mason’s young adult novel by the same name. The story revolves around eighteen-year-old Samantha Hughes (Emily Lloyd), a.k.a. Sam, during the summer after high school graduation in Hopewell, Kentucky. Sam struggles to understand her Vietnam veteran uncle as she tries to learn more about her father, who died in the Vietnam War before she was born. Sam’s Uncle Emmett (Bruce Willis) wrestles with the symptoms of his PTSD, but refuses to tell Sam about his triggers or experiences. She barely knows anything about her father; her mother only knew and was with him for a few months before he was sent off to war and now she rarely discusses him. Sam spends the summer trying to solve the mysteries of the Vietnam experience and the patriarchal figures in her life.

Sam is an underrated, if not widely unknown 1980s heroine. She serves as a symbol for America’s 1980s attempt to reconcile with its most controversial war. The 1980s experienced a boom in Vietnam War films, as the temporal distance from the war allowed filmmakers to fully deconstruct the experience. Rarely is the locus of these films a woman. Sam’s character manages to break through the barriers of a primarily masculine film genre. In Country uniquely explores both the female and child experience of the Vietnam War and its aftermath. This is a departure from the wide variety of films depicting the male veteran’s assimilation into post-Vietnam life, such as Born on the Fourth of July (1989) or First Blood (1982).

The exclusion of the female is central to both real life and cinematic Vietnam War narratives. As laid out in Susan Jeffords’ seminal gender study of Vietnam, The Remasculinization of America: Gender and the Vietnam War, she discusses this idea of male bonding, or male collectivity. Men’s fellowship is predicated upon the segregation of the woman — they must bond together to reclaim their lost masculinity from the war. “Why don’t any of the vets I know get along with women?” Sam asks Emmett’s friend Tom. Sam hears the same mantra from various veteran characters throughout the film, “You ain’t never going to understand it. You don’t want to,” Emmett says. “Well, you weren’t there. So you can’t understand it,” says Tom. To the veterans of In Country, Sam will never share in their communal brotherhood of war and thus they must always exclude her. Sam frequently witnesses the impairment in the veteran’s post-war masculinity that keeps them from connecting and actively disengaging from women in primarily romantic and even friendly ways, such as her uncle’s rejection of Sam’s set-up with a local nurse and Tom’s inability to sexually perform.

Women in Vietnam War films are often pushed away from men who refuse to discuss the war. However, many of these characters remain passive and do not pressure them to divulge information. In Country portrays a woman as an active investigator that truly longs to understand the men’s minds. Sam constantly engages with her uncle and his friends about the war, but any of her sincere questioning about their wounds or memories are met with sarcastic jokes or proclamations that she would not understand. Just as Emmett and his friends dismiss Samantha, her father, Dwayne, also excludes her from the dead. Her friend Dawn finds a box of his letters, photographs and war memorabilia. The text of the letters revolves around soldier camaraderie, emphasizing the bonds of brotherhood. Dwayne excludes his female reader by insisting, “Don’t ask me to tell you how it is here. You don’t want to know.” This feminine segregation, a key component of most Vietnam narratives, is mobilized by all the men in In Country.

These letters begin to change Sam’s idea of her father, who was once a phantom figure in her life, now becomes idealized and heroic. Since Sam is not able to see the ramifications of Vietnam in her father’s post-war life, she can only picture him as a romantic war hero with a good heart. She pins his photograph onto her mirror and speaks to it, “You missed everything. You missed Watergate, E.T., the Bruce Springsteen concert. You were just a country boy and you never knew me.” By defining him as a ‘country boy,’ she envisions him as the embodiment of wholesome heartland America, a beacon of innocence who was harshly victimized after being thrown unwittingly into the dangers of Vietnam. The image of her father becomes as revered as that of a pop star — akin to the Bruce Springsteen posters that loom over her — an unattainable figure which exists as a pure, steadfast body of goodness that is constantly present but ultimately unreachable.

Sam mourns that her father has not only missed her entire life, but that her father never got to see what life has been like for Americans in 1980s post-Vietnam. She prioritizes Watergate, which changed American political culture forever, and iconic 1980s pop culture. Sam particularly engages with the rock icon Bruce Springsteen, whose career skyrocketed in 1984. Although his presence is more prevalent in the novel, the film still positions Springsteen as important to Sam. It is necessary to consider In Country’s engagement with the text of Springsteen’s hit song “Born in The U.S.A.,” which no doubt speaks to Sam’s observations of the Vietnam veteran’s predicament. The song discusses veterans’ disillusionment and disappointment upon returning to America after fighting its unpopular war, which Sam sees daily living with Emmett. Part of the song’s lyrics reflect his state of being, “You end up like a dog that’s been beat too much/Till you spend half your life just covering up.” Emmett has been both literally and metaphorically covering up. He fears the outside world, confining himself to the home, remaining unemployed, and refusing to work at the tire plant. He is plastered to the couch playing Pac-Man or spends his time digging a hideaway hole under the house. To Sam, Emmett is a living embodiment of Springsteen’s struggling small-town and blue-collar protagonist.

Another song off the iconic 1980s album is used non-diegetically in the film, “I’m On Fire.” The lyrics play as Sam jogs throughout the town. The lyrics, “Hey, little girl is your daddy home?/Did he go away and leave you all alone?” is an on-the-nose reference to Sam’s absent father. The amalgam of the song’s sexual nature and reference to a patriarchal figure reflects Sam’s complex sexual relationship with the significantly older Vietnam veteran Tom, who she attempts to sleep with after a dance. Tom is both an agent of her growing sexuality, as she develops into a young woman, and a platform for Sam to mediate her lost childhood role of father’s daughter, for Tom can be seen as more of a father figure than a potential boyfriend. Her connection and relationship to him can be read as a strange way for her to reconnect with her father. Sam is torn, particularly in this relation to Tom, between seeing herself as the little girl within the family she never got to have and growing up as a young woman.

In addition to understanding the Vietnam experience, In Country depicts a young woman at a crossroads in her life that many can relate to. All throughout the film, characters ask Sam if she is going to marry her boyfriend Lonnie. Her mother married her father and got pregnant at a young age, and now that Sam is freshly graduated from high school, many expect her to follow in those footsteps. Sam repeatedly tells her interrogators she has “other things on her mind.” It never occurs to them that she could have other ideas for her future, such as college or a career. Sam’s conflicts of these feminine roles are embodied in the character of Dawn, her friend that deals with an unplanned pregnancy. Dawn serves as a reflection of Sam’s alternate path, to marry Lonnie and start a family, and of the past, her mother’s young marriage and pregnancy.

Interactions with Dawn also trigger Sam’s unrest about her familial relationships. In one scene, Dawn pierces her ears and asks if her mother will be upset. Sam insists that her mother is “provincial and misguided” and brags that Emmett lets her do anything she wants to do, including let her boyfriend sleep over. Dawn responds that her father would never let her do that. Dawn’s insistence at having a protective father rubs salt in Sam’s wound about her own father’s absence. Sam does not truly celebrate her absent and misguided parental figures, (as her mother lives with her stepfather and half-sister in the city) they have left her unmoored and bereft. There are no parental figures that care enough to stop and discipline Sam from having sleepovers with her boyfriend. Sam is torn between attending college in the fall and marrying her boyfriend — two seemingly disparate feminine ideals. But overall, she is conflicted because she has never been able to see herself as a daughter within a nuclear family.

Sam’s volleying between the female roles of daughter and independent young woman and her struggle to relate to the Vietnam veterans in her life are resolved within the finale. Throughout the film, Sam had been constructing an idealized picture of her father as a perfect war hero. She obtains his war diaries from her grandparents, and their candor causes her to confront the reality of his wartime experiences and his ultimate humanity. The diaries describe his unremorseful killings of the Vietnamese enemy. Up until now, the letters she has read have only been of fraternizing with his war buddies or fantasizing about home. It never occurred to Sam that her father had to kill, the equation of murder and war was far from her mind as she envisioned her heroic father fighting for his country. Sam spent the majority of the film trying to determine why the Vietnam veterans she knows are so troubled, what happened over there to cause their problems. But when the truth of Vietnam is exposed to her through her father’s experience, she recoils, frightened and upset. It tarnishes her sainted image of the innocent ‘country boy.’ As Sam reveals this to Emmett, he finally unloads the memories that he has been keeping inside, the wounds in which he spent the film “covering up.” The uncovering of these wounds allows Sam to recognize just how Vietnam’s turmoil affected those she loves, unraveling the romantic notions of her father while allowing her to fully support her troubled uncle. Through this confession, the Vietnam veteran’s feminine exclusion, regulated through silence and hostility, is finally closed off.

In the final scene, Sam and Emmett travel to the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial. Sam leaves a portrait of herself at her father’s spot on the wall. At the end of one of his letters, Dwayne said he wanted to see a picture of his child. This gesture allows her closure in the lack of connection she felt to him. Now, Dwayne is able to “see” the picture of his child, fulfilling his wish and thereby “acknowledging” her as his daughter. This allows Sam to fully heal and move on. We learn that she decides to attend college in the fall, pursuing her passion for higher education instead of others’ wishes for her to become a young housewife.

What is important about In Country is that it depicts a 1980s female protagonist with agency who carves out a path for herself, makes choices amidst the confusion and pressures of dominant ideologies and complex relationships. Sam Hughes is neither iconic nor well-remembered, but she should be. In Country depicts perhaps the most delicate time in a woman’s life: the transition from girl to young woman. Furthermore, it places the feminine experience within the canon of the Vietnam veteran film, a genre in which male narratives are overwhelmingly present and female characters are often reduced to largely invisible or supporting characters.

Caroline Madden has a BFA in Acting from Shenandoah Conservatory and is currently an MA Cinema Studies student at Savannah College of Art and Design. Other writing can be found on Screenqueens, Pop Matters, and her blog Cinematic Visions. Film and Bruce Springsteen are two of her most favorite things.

‘Fast Times at Ridgemont High’: The Confidence and Wisdom of Linda Barrett

Phoebe Cates brings life to the energetic, worldly, confident-yet-vulnerable Linda. Her character is the heart and soul of the movie, as she gives Stacy (Jennifer Jason Leigh) advice on sex, relationships, and navigating her way through high school. … The film never takes a judgmental attitude towards these young women, their sexual activities, and their frank discussions of sex.

This guest post written by Angela Morrison appears as part of our theme week on Ladies of the 1980s.

The only thing people seem to remember about Amy Heckerling’s 1982 film, Fast Times at Ridgemont High is Phoebe Cates emerging from a swimming pool in her red bikini, removing her top as she tells Brad (Judge Reinhold) how cute she always thought he was, The Cars’ “Moving in Stereo” playing on the soundtrack. First of all, this is ridiculous because the entire movie is memorable, and there are much better scenes than Brad’s masturbation fantasy. Secondly, it is completely unfair to reduce Phoebe Cates’ character to a mere sex object, existing only for male viewers’ pleasure.

Phoebe Cates brings life to the energetic, worldly, confident-yet-vulnerable Linda. Her character is the heart and soul of the movie, as she gives Stacy (Jennifer Jason Leigh) advice on sex, relationships, and navigating her way through high school. Linda is a few years older than Stacy, so she takes on the role of mentor, passing on her knowledge about the world to her younger friend. She is also Stacy’s number one supporter when her heart gets broken by both Ron Johnson (D.W. Brown) and Mike Damone (Robert Romanus).

One of the most striking things about this film is the casual way that Linda and Stacy discuss sex. Linda often expresses surprise at 14-year-old Stacy’s sexual inexperience, and she quickly reassures Stacy that “it’s just sex.” Linda’s attitude toward sex – which she passes on to Stacy – is that it needn’t be a big deal, but rather, should be seen as a fun and pleasurable activity for young women such as themselves. Part of the fun for Linda is deciding who she wants to have sex with – she assures Stacy that if she was not in a relationship with an older boy named Doug, she would go after Ron Johnson herself. She urges Stacy to make her own decisions, letting her know that she has the power to decide who she wants to have sex with, and when. The film never takes a judgmental attitude towards these young women, their sexual activities, and their frank discussions of sex.

Stacy takes Linda’s advice and has sex (for the first time ever!) with Ron Johnson. For some people, having sex for the first time is a big deal, an important event in their lives. However, Linda lets Stacy know that it is okay for it to not be a big deal, for it to just be a pleasurable part of going on a date – it does not mean she has to get married, and she does need to be in love with her sexual partner. Having sex with Ron Johnson is a positive experience for Stacy, although she ends up feeling rejected when he does not call her for another date. Linda is right by Stacy’s side as always, supporting her and telling her that she can do better than a 26-year-old stereo salesman. Linda lets Stacy know she is loved and supported, and that she need not worry about Ron Johnson disappearing from her life. This film portrays women supporting women, and the power of female friendship.

Most 1980s teen movies feature female characters who are insecure for any number of reasons – films such as Pretty in Pink and The Breakfast Club portray characters who are unsure of themselves and the world they are growing up in. While these films are realistic in their portrayals of the pain that comes with being a teenage girl, Fast Times at Ridgemont High gives us a character such as Linda, who exudes confidence in everything she does. She gives Stacy expert advice on how to give a blowjob, she lounges by the swimming pool and tells Stacy she and Doug always climax simultaneously, and she moves through the school hallways and her job at Perry’s Pizza as though she always knows what she is doing. When Damone does not show up to drive Stacy to the abortion clinic, Linda does not hesitate to call him out publicly, and humiliate him by telling the school he is – and has – a “little prick.”

Of course, Linda is a more complex character than simply being “confident.” She has a vulnerable side, which is evident at many points during the film. Stacy points out discrepancies between Linda’s claims about Doug – that he lasts 30-40 minutes in bed, rather than 20-30, as she previously said. After she tells Stacy that she and Doug always climax at the same time, she follows up with “I think…” And at the end of the movie, when Doug does not show up to her graduation, she is seen crying in the bathroom, reading an angry letter to Doug out loud. She confesses that she wrote two versions of the letter, one in which she calls Doug an “asshole.” Stacy assures Linda that the first version is more “mature” – Stacy knows that Linda only wants to portray herself as mature and self-assured, and she is there for her friend in her time of need, as Linda was for her. Just like everyone else, there are times when Linda is also unsure of herself – but she does not let that stop her from dancing elatedly at the prom, and going on to have a relationship with her abnormal psych professor in college, as the epilogue informs us.

Fast Times at Ridgemont High remains one of the most honest, smart, and funny teen comedies of the 1980s. The frank portrayal of female sexuality sets this film apart from many of the other “classics” of the teen movie genre. The film ends with Stacy deciding that she’d rather have romance than sex – she decides that anyone can have sex, but she wants to find someone she can connect with on every level. Linda of course has one final gem of wisdom to impart on Stacy: “You want romance? In Ridgemont? We can’t even get cable TV here, Stacy, and you want romance!”

If only we all had a Linda to guide us through our lives.

Angela Morrison is a recent graduate of the University of Toronto Cinema Studies program. She loves classical Hollywood, French cinema, John Waters, and feminist film theory. She hopes to one day be a Cinema Studies professor, one who will not teach movies made solely by boring straight white males. She writes about cinema on her blog Les Demoiselles du Cinema.

‘The Golden Girls’: The Legacy of a Lifetime of Wisdom and Laughter

In 1985, television audiences were reminded that women of a certain age are just as vibrant, sexual, and as full of life as women half their age. They may also share a few life lessons along the way. The TV series ‘The Golden Girls’ — which aired for seven seasons — reminded audiences of all ages that life does not end at fifty for women.

This guest post written by Adina Bernstein appears as part of our theme week on Ladies of the 1980s.

Picture it: Brooklyn, 1991. My sister and I, aged 10 and 7 are spending a Saturday night at our widowed grandmother’s apartment. Her favorite show is The Golden Girls.

My grandmother was not a young woman at that point. The youngest daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants, my grandmother had been through quite a lot, starting with the death of her parents when she was a teenager. Marrying my late grandfather (who passed away the year before) in the late 1940s, she raised two sons (my father and uncle). My grandmother watched her sons grow up, get married, enter the working world, and become successful adults. She and my grandfather had a hand in raising her grandchildren (my sister and I). Through that lifetime of experience, my grandmother was and still is a beacon to our entire family.

Once upon a time, older women were revered for the experience, knowledge, and wisdom that take a lifetime to accumulate. Those days, unfortunately, belong in the distant past. Once she reaches a certain age, a woman is more likely to be discarded for a “newer model,” thought to be senile, or viewed only through the lens of her role as a wife, mother, and grandmother. Who she is as a woman, what she has accomplished in life, and the lessons she can teach to those younger than her is often deemed meaningless in society.

In 1985, television audiences were reminded that women of a certain age are just as vibrant, sexual, and as full of life as women half their age. They may also share a few life lessons along the way. The TV series The Golden Girls — which aired for seven seasons — reminded audiences of all ages that life does not end at fifty for women.

Blanche Devereaux (Rue McLanahan) was the Southern belle rarely without a date. Rose Nylund (Betty White) was the innocent Midwesterner who never quite got the joke. Dorothy Zbornak (Bea Arthur) was originally from New York who always quipped the smartass one-liners. Sophia Petrillo (Estelle Getty) was Dorothy’s mother originally from Sicily who escaped the nursing home and whose age allowed her to be as far from politically correct as she wanted to be.

With television (and the media in general), then and now, most older women are not seen as vivacious, independent, capable human beings who can still contribute to the world. They are expected to quietly retire (if they did work outside of the home), take care of their spouse, children, and grandchildren. Their work is done. It’s time to sit in the rocking chair, knit a blanket or sweater, and watch as the next generation steps up to the plate.

They say that sixty is the new forty, that means that forty is the new twenty. People also say that age is just a number. I prefer the latter. Blanche, Dorothy, Rose, and Sophia were just as dynamic, sexual, and spirited as women on-screen who are half their age. In fact, their age made them even more appealing.

The Golden Girls touched on many subjects over the course of seven years: friendship, dating, menopause, being a parent to grown children who may make decisions not approved of, LGBTQ rights, the relationships between family, etc.

Looking back I can see the crack that The Golden Girls put in the glass ceiling. It was a small crack, but an important one. The lesson was clear: just because a woman is over fifty does not mean she is unimportant. What she brings to the table is priceless; there is no dollar sign on life experiences or wisdom. There is nothing more attractive than a person who combines life experiences, intelligence, and confidence to be who they are. Perhaps that is what made The Golden Girls appealing to all audiences and perhaps why there was a string of boyfriends and potential boyfriends that passed through the house.

When I watch The Golden Girls in reruns, I notice several things. I see my childhood and my late grandmothers, who were of the same generation as the characters. I remember the wisdom and experience my grandmothers had, that only someone who lives for fifty plus years can possess. I see four women who not only get along, but are able to maintain a very strong friendship despite their differences. I see four independent and self-reliant women with full social lives and romantic lives. I see four women who are funny, real, and full of life. I see the reminder that when life hands you lemons, you make lemonade.

In Jane Austen’s classic novel, Sense and Sensibility, Marianne Dashwood, says, “A woman of seven and twenty… can never hope to feel or inspire affection again.” Granted, this statement is coming from a girl of sixteen, but the sentiment reflects an overall cultural value about women and aging. Women, especially women of a certain age, are supposed to eventually step aside. The Golden Girls did not step aside, nor did they quietly accept the limitations that women their age are supposed to accept. Their declaration was loud and clear: older women can do anything that a woman of thirty can do. In fact, they may be able to do more, not only because of a lifetime of experiences, but because they are free of the responsibilities that come along with a career (although 3 of the women still had careers) and raising a family.

After my grandfather died, my sister and I spend many Saturday evenings with my grandmother. Looking back on those memories, I wouldn’t change them for the world. I also would not change the lessons about age and taking life by the balls that The Golden Girls taught their millions of fans.

See also at Bitch Flicks: How ‘The Golden Girls’ Shaped My Feminism

Adina Bernstein is a Brooklyn born freelance writer and blogger at Writergurlny. You can find her on Twitter @Writergurlny and Instagram.

Women Musicians in the 80s Used Music Videos to Expand Notions of Womanhood

Women in music broadened visual representations of gender as their cacophony of voices inoculated the population to women of all ages, races, and socioeconomic backgrounds. … The ladies of 80s music video brought forth new visual representations of women including: experiences in the workforce, issues of class, messages of power, and unique expressions of love and sex.

This guest post written by Gwen Hofmann appears as part of our theme week on Ladies of the 1980s.

Like any self-respecting child of the eighties, I watched the recent CNN series about the decade. In the episode aptly titled “Video Killed the Radio Star,” former MTV VJ Downtown Julie Brown put the decade into perspective by likening it to looking through a kaleidoscope. Similarly, musician Questlove articulated his take on the decade’s music as being more influential than the 1960s because it incorporated additional voices. Assessments such as these are a great starting point for a discussion of the significance of musical ladies of the 1980s.

Any discussion of ladies of the 80s is incomplete without the inclusion of women in music. Bitch Flicks is devoted primarily to visual media and focuses on viewing films and television through a feminist lens. However, on August 1, 1981 MTV brought music into the format of visual media when it aired its first music video. While most people recall the first video on MTV, few remember that the second video was one of the pioneering leading ladies of the eighties: Pat Benatar with “You Better Run.” With this inauguration, women in music broadened visual representations of gender as their cacophony of voices inoculated the population to women of all ages, races, and socioeconomic backgrounds. Most intriguing about this “kaleidoscopic” decade is the way women in 80s music videos displayed these distinct portraits of womanhood. (Of course, this is not to say that there are not troublesome representations of women in 1980s music videos. This was in fact the decade of decadence which included things like the unforgettable Tawny Kitaen cartwheeling over cars, “Hot For Teacher,” and “Girls, Girls, Girls.”)

The ladies of 80s music videos brought forth new visual representations of women including: experiences in the workforce, issues of class, messages of power, and unique expressions of love and sex. In the infancy of MTV video, female artists created a complex pattern of images that underscored lyrics of power and individuality. Women were able to be quirky, androgynous, and assertive in defining their image. Strong women artists are nothing new; the decades are speckled with them especially over the 1960s and 70s. Building on the legacy of women such as Janis Joplin, Loretta Lynn, and Aretha Franklin, the new 80s format forced female artists to supplement lyrics with images.

Women visually asserted power in music videos. Some key examples of this phenomenon are observable in the videos of Joan Jett, Cyndi Lauper, and Pat Benatar. In 1981, Joan Jett released the video for her single “Bad Reputation,” which serves as an interesting starting point since women throughout history have long been held captive by threats to their reputation. Joan Jett throws years of repressive history out the window with this song and subsequent video. Jett commands viewers’ attention as she sings: “I don’t give a damn ’bout my reputation. You’re living in the past, it’s a new generation. A girl can do what she wants to do and that’s what I’m gonna do.” She visually supplements this with images of her dressed in a black leather jacket giving the middle finger to the people who told her to dress a certain way or who wouldn’t sign her to their record label. The song is strong enough on its own, but the video adds the story of how Joan Jett was discouraged by traditional venues such as major record labels — so she created her own.

This pattern of words being supplemented with images continues with songs such as “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” and “Love is a Battlefield.” Annie Lennox and Aretha Franklin’s 1985 hit “Sisters Are Doin’ it for Themselves” does this via a screen which functions as a third person on stage alongside these intoxicating women. Annie Lennox’s androgyny and the regal beauty of Ms. Franklin are noted as they sing: “Now this is a song to celebrate the conscious liberation of the female state! … The ‘inferior sex’ got a new exterior. We got doctors, lawyers, politicians too.” The screen aside these women adds images to their words by displaying the ways women used to be portrayed followed by images of women in power. On a smaller scale Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” tells us,“Some boys take a beautiful girl and hide her away from the rest of the world. I want to be the one to walk in the sun,” as Lon Chaney steals a woman and runs off with her with the 1923 Hunchback of Notre Dame playing in the background. Also in this video, Cyndi Lauper thwarts representations of patriarchal authority, something that Pat Benatar did in her video “Love is a Battlefield” from the same year.

Cyndi Lauper and Pat Benatar rebel against the symbols of male repression. Both videos feature the father, who not only stands for authority but also is symbolic of the most rudimentary forms of patriarchal repression. As Captain Lou Albano wags his finger in her face, Cyndi turns it around and places her father in a submissive position as she giggles and walks off. Pat Benatar continues this by running away from her repressive father and navigating the male dominated streets of the urban jungle. Her video brings light to the seedy sex clubs indicative of early 80’s Times Square, NYC. Women are fondled and ogled as blank expressions crossed their faces, only ended by mobilizing the women and rebelling against the male “boss” and other oppressors. Without the visual storytelling of the video, these songs would tell a very different tale.

Women in 1980s videos offered a motley crew of visual representations. Annie Lennox and Tracy Chapman’s androgyny, Cyndi Lauper and Jane Child’s uniqueness, and Tina Turner and Jodi Watley’s sensuality brightened the rainbow of women. Most of these women broadened definitions of beauty by showing that women didn’t “have to take our clothes off to have a good time.” On a more three-dimensional level, these videos added the faces of working women. Between the 1970s and 1980s the percentage of women entering the workforce surged and women such as Dolly Parton, Donna Summer, and Chrissie Hynde gave visual representation to the working woman and the struggles of getting by amid a massive recession.

If Dolly Parton’s 1980 song “9 to 5” seems the most obvious pick for discussing working women, I believe Donna Summer best represents the double burden of women’s work in “She Works Hard for the Money.” While the title says a lot, the efficacy is erased without the video. The lyrics address a hard working woman who makes an honest living but the video takes it a step further. In doing so, the idea is driven home that this woman must work multiple jobs to make ends meet and her double shift continues when she gets home. This suggests several things, such as women possibly having to work multiple jobs to make the same money as a man as well as the idea that women’s work is twofold and does not end inside her home. Conversely, the simplicity of Tracy Chapman’s video for “Fast Car” serves to reinforce the lyrics of her intoxicating, compelling words. Sitting against a black and blue background wearing a black turtleneck, the viewer is systematically directed to the movement generated by the words falling out of her mouth and to the emotion on her face. Her quiet strength speaks volumes about the story of a woman taking on the challenges of her socioeconomic status.

Finally, key women musicians of the 80s defined their characterizations of love, relationships, and sexuality. Tina Turner was nearly 45 years old when she dominated in the 1984 song “What’s Love Got to do With It.” Her stunning beauty and sensuality commanded the streets of her video as she compelled the actions of the men and women around her. It appeared as if the men wanted to be with her and the women wanted to be her. Through this video, Tina challenged ageist ideas about women’s sensuality while touting that emotions are secondary to physicality. On a spectrum ranging from Janet Jackson’s 1986 ballad “Let’s Wait Awhile” to Samantha Fox’s racier song “Touch Me,” women dictated the terms of their relationships. Ms. Jackson emphasized the rituals of courtship and togetherness in her video while Samantha Fox stressed more primitive drives. Within these videos, the women portray images of what is important to them in their relationships. Minus the Janet Jackson video which depicts a woman dictating a slower pace, the others support a positive portrayal of pro-sex feminist ideas. While these women offered a variety of images representing love and sexuality, Suzanne Vega does even more important work by putting a face on the more nefarious side of relationships.

In the video for her song, “Luka,” Suzanne Vega is shot in simple fashion as a diminutive character who shrinks as she tells her story of domestic violence. Vega wrote the song from the perspective of a child being abused. The truth of hiding child abuse and domestic violence is represented by the video being shot in black and white, allowing Luka to blend in to the background hoping to go unnoticed so that no one asks questions. The secrets, shame, and guilt that lead people to hide their torment are assumed in the way Luka tries to be a part of the scenery. The work of “Luka” is important so that people can have a face to relate to while bringing light to a vital women’s issue (women are often the survivors of domestic violence) not easily solved. Discussion is the first defense against isolation, for with it comes visibility and belonging.

I never loved the categorization of waves of feminism because of their reductive implications, but many people tend to understand the history of women this way. That being said, the ladies of the 80s in music videos represented the ideas best understood in the second wave of feminism such as sexuality, family, and the workplace. They dressed how they wanted, rebelled against authority, laid down the rules, and they were loved by many of us for showing a broader representation of what it means to be a woman in the 80s. They used their own images and the stories of the women in their videos to show that much had been accomplished but there was still work to be done. While we can give the finger to “the man” we still gotta work hard(er) for the money.

Gwen Hofmann is currently a PhD student in the History Department at Lehigh University. She is working on her dissertation involving representations of the cruel child in popular culture. She is the co-creator of the website www.HorrorHomeroom.com and is a devoted fangirl of all things 80s.

‘Crossing Delancey’: Isabelle Needs a New Perspective on Life and Love

This romantic comedy has always been more of a cult classic. But it was unusual in its female writer and director, along with its distinctly Jewish cultural setting, its generational custom-clash regarding matchmaking, and its conflicted independent protagonist, Isabelle, who could be read as a late 1980s precursor to ‘Sex and the City’s protagonist Carrie Bradshaw.

This guest post written by Susan Cosby Ronnenberg appears as part of our theme week on Ladies of the 1980s. | Spoilers ahead.

Crossing Delancey (1988) is a romantic comedy featuring Amy Irving, directed by Joan Micklin Silver and written by Susan Sandler, based on her original play of the same title. The tagline was, “A funny movie about getting serious.” This rom-com has always been more of a cult classic. But it was unusual in its female writer and director, along with its distinctly Jewish cultural setting, its generational custom-clash regarding matchmaking, and its conflicted independent protagonist, Isabelle, who could be read as a late 1980s precursor to Sex and the City’s protagonist Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker). An independent, straight single woman with a successful career, Isabelle has professional and romantic options, ambitions, and flawed preconceptions about the incompatibility of those options and ambitions as she tries to decide between an internationally acclaimed poet or a neighborhood. Yes, you read that correctly: poet or pickleman.

Isabelle “Izzy” Grossman (Amy Irving) is irritating and relatable at the same time. She’s an ambitious and successful publisher in Manhattan, where, as she insists to her grandmother, she organizes “the most prestigious reading series in New York City.” She sees herself as modern, forward-looking, cultured, and sophisticated. But she’s also self-centered, snobbish, dismissive, and deceitful. While she possesses many fine attributes, she’s flawed; I like both of those aspects of her that make her fully human. At 33, with one of her peers becoming a new mother, Izzy looks around at her life, wondering about advancing her personal life as she has her professional one. This is a common theme among 1980s romantic comedies, such as Baby Boom (1987) with Diane Keaton and Working Girl (1988) with Melanie Griffith. One of her romantic prospects, a novelist, quotes Confucius to her at dinner one night, “Ripe plums are falling. Now there are only three. May a fine lover come for me”, adding reassuringly, “Lots of ripe plums left on your tree, Izzy.” He seems to recognize her distraction over the passage of time and still being single, which has become an issue with her grandmother.

Izzy has three men in her life: Nick (John Bedford Lloyd), an old boyfriend/friend with benefits, now married, but who crashes at her place on a regular basis when he and his wife fight; Anton Maes (Jeroen Krabbe), a NYC-based Dutch critically acclaimed novelist, also married but separated, famous, creative, cosmopolitan, and intellectual; and Sam Posner (Peter Riegert), who lives and works on the Lower East Side near her grandmother’s home, the owner and operator of his father’s pickle shop on Delancey Street. Sam and Izzy meet through the pressure of her grandmother, “Bubbie” Kantor (Reizl Bozyk), and Mrs. Mandlebaum (Sylvia Miles), a traditional professional Jewish matchmaker.

To Izzy, to cross Delancey is to return to the past, “100 years” and “a million miles away” from her own life, to her grandmother’s world. She does so often and willingly, providing company and care for her beloved grandmother. But she has no interest in a man who has chosen to remain in that neighborhood, doing the same food sales work that his father did, and, she assumes, contracting a matchmaker to find a bride. It clearly seems archaic and a little desperate to her.

The setting takes place half in Manhattan — in Izzy’s apartment, her place of employment, and out socializing with friends — and half on the Lower East Side — in Bubbie’s vibrant and diverse neighborhood, historically a predominantly Jewish community. It’s clear that, in trying to leave the old world and its ways behind as she makes her way in the new, modern world, Izzy has made some arrogant and faulty assumptions that will require Bubbie’s willingness to interfere.

Passing the Bechdel test, Crossing Delancey features conversations between Isabelle and Bubbie about Bubbie’s health, the neighborhood, Izzy’s dreams and what they might mean, and Izzy’s parents. Izzy actively seeks to support her friend Rickie’s new role as a single parent with a sometimes supportive boyfriend. She also supports her publishing colleague Chinchilla Monk’s new public access show on the local performance art scene, which features a feminist performer.

Izzy attends a bris for the baby of a high school friend of hers, where the film shows us a group of four women in their thirties sustaining a friendship from their teenage years. Two are single, one is married, and one is a new mother with a boyfriend. One of the women refers to the bris as, “Our first baby!” We see the women friends together in varying pairs throughout the film. This group resembles Sex & the City’s foursome of Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte, and Miranda, minus the multi-thousand dollar stylish and sexy wardrobe. Marilyn, in particular, reminds me of Elaine Benes from Seinfeld, which debuted a year after this film came out.

The film’s costuming is refreshing given the frequent sexualization of women in film through wardrobe today in most mainstream movies. The late 1980s is the era of the three-quarter or tea-length casual dress, with both dresses and shirts buttoned to the top, but without appearing constricting. Izzy’s clothes are appropriate for her varied activities: jogging, working at the bookstore, spending time with her grandmother, going on a date. What struck me most was that she looked nice and comfortable and her shoes were practical; she was dressed as many women in real life dress. There were no extra tight outfits, short-short skirts, stiletto heels, or plunging cleavage — at her place of employment or anywhere else. She was obviously meant to be doing things, not just to be the object of the Male Gaze: on display but not functional.

Crossing Delancey and Sex and the City share parallels as both Izzy and Carrie Bradshaw are thirty-something straight white women with successful careers and a support network of female friends. Both long for romance, question the idea of meeting someone who meets their requirements for a boyfriend, much less a husband, and both make selfish and deceitful decisions.

Izzy decides she doesn’t have chemistry with Sam but she likes him, so she attempts to set him up with her high school friend Marilyn, who recently complained that on a given first date she has “forty-five minutes to make this guy think I’m great, when I’d rather be home in my pajamas watching baseball.” But Izzy doesn’t tell Sam that she’s setting him up. Instead, she offers an apology for some of the things she said to him earlier and invites him to have dinner. She plans with Marilyn to “run into her” at the end of dinner, then leave her with Sam. Only the more Izzy talks to Sam, the more she likes him, and the longer she delays the introduction until Marilyn calls her on it and introduces herself. Sam feels used, but blames Izzy, not Marilyn, demanding “What’s there to be sorry about? She’s funny, direct, honest,” with the clear implication that Izzy is lacking in the latter two areas in particular. Afterward, Izzy pines after Sam with her other friends and her grandmother, until Bubbie brings Sam back into contact with Izzy.

Despite things finally seeming to click with Sam, Izzy allows Anton to persuade her to stay late after work to read part of his new novel. He flatters her and, knowing she has a date with Sam, encourages her to make him wait. Foolishly, she does, despite having spent time and money purchasing a new dress for the date and being eager to see Sam. Izzy realizes belatedly her error, in thinking that the mysterious and suave Anton wants a romantic and professional relationship with her when he’s looking for a part-time assistant and a convenient casual sex partner. Astonishingly, Sam has waited for her. He’s a man with the patience of a saint, but he’s not a doormat. In some ways this is a gender-reversed romantic comedy. It’s Izzy who races frantically across town, having come to the belated conclusion that she has been grossly overlooking, underestimating, and underappreciating who Sam is and what he has to offer.

The film presents us with three vivid visual images of groups of women in the city: at the senior center the women’s defense workshop that Bubbie participates in as Izzy watches in amusement; the after-work crowd in the deli/grocery, which includes Izzy, selecting dinner for one to-go from the salad bar; and the long line of pregnant women who file past Izzy and Sam in the entrance to her apartment building. These seem to suggest possible futures for Izzy: older, alone, and in need of self-defense; a solo continuation of her life as it is, focused mostly on work, eating deli take-out at the end of a long day; or preparing to become a mother when paired with Sam.

To choose one is to leave one unknown. Izzy doesn’t want to choose wrongly, or perhaps Izzy simply doesn’t want to choose at all. She’s mistaken in her arrogant and condescending assumptions about Sam, though, when she believes him to be not well read, inarticulate, and not cultured. When she mentions feeling ambivalent and then offers a definition, he interrupts to say that he knows what the word means. He adds, angrily, “You think my world is so small, so provincial? You think it defines me?” His defense of himself moves her as much as learning that he was interested in her because he had seen her around the neighborhood with her grandmother long before Mrs. Mandlebaum showed up with a picture of her (given by Bubbie) to peddle to him. He’s not trapped in the past as Izzy believed.

Although Sam suggests that Izzy needs a new perspective (i.e. a new hat), the Harry Shipman story doesn’t make that point clearly. In the story, Shipman’s new hat allowed the girl he had his heart set on to see his eyes for the first time. She couldn’t see his face for his original hat. But it isn’t Izzy who needs a new hat to be viewed differently. Instead, she needs a more realistic view of him, rather than her preconceived and uncompromising one as she’s frustratingly obtuse when it comes to Sam. She’s selfish in her decisions to keep juggling all three of men and she’s ultimately dismissive of her friend Marilyn after setting her up with Sam.

In some ways this is a film about narrative, including the stories we tell ourselves. We’re given multiple smaller narratives within the main narrative. The excerpt from his novel that Anton reads to the bookstore audience; Sam tells Izzy the Harry Shipman-hat story; Mrs. Mandlebaum peddles other peoples’ stories, poet Pauline Swift’s only referenced story of her, the four men, and a cabbage; Sam’s story of how Izzy came to his attention; the story of Sam’s father, who did a Milton Berle impression in drag, recalled by Nick to Sam and Izzy; and Bubbie’s story of meeting her husband, which she tells Sam. Izzy’s description of Anton’s fiction also describes her story in this film: “Deceptive accessibility. Reads like pulp fiction, but then you hear music.” Some lines are so lyrical they sound like poetry. Some are poetry. And they don’t all belong to the novelist.

The film ends refreshingly only with the promise of a continued dating relationship between Izzy and Sam, no grand declarations, promises, sex, or vows. Sam’s question to himself, to her, “How do I talk to Isabelle?” is an invitation, an openness to collaborate, to teach one another how to better communicate. Although Bubbie seems assured that a wedding will be taking place for them in the future, neither of them takes it that far. They like each other, they’ve admitted that, kissed, and agreed to see one another again. And for this charming romantic comedy, that’s more than enough.

Susan Cosby Ronnenberg is a transplanted Southerner in the upper Midwest, where she has been an English professor for 16 years, specializing in the English Renaissance and Early Modern Women Writers. Currently working on a book through McFarland on Shakespeare and the HBO western series Deadwood. Email: sgcosronn@gmail.com Twitter: @Ouachita9 Blog: Caustic Ginger.

Reagan’s America: Waiting to Die in ‘Testament’s Radiation Zone

‘Testament’ is primarily about women’s suffering, yet this very acknowledgement of women’s powerlessness in a world that patriarchal governments have just blown up is feminist at its core. … This 1983 film created by women gave the audience such a grim picture of the near future, without the excitement of special effects or the hope brought by overcoming obstacles, that it was a call to action, a message to avoid this outcome at all costs.

This guest post written by Angela Beauchamp appears as part of our theme week on Ladies of the 1980s. | Spoilers ahead.

Zombies, plagues, nuclear destruction — nightmares of a catastrophic future are all the rage in recent cinema. Most often, we see bleak, desolate landscapes in which a masculine or androgynous action hero emerges to save the day, aka Mad Max or successor Furiosa. However, in the shadow of President Ronald Reagan’s aggressive anti-Soviet rhetoric and a doubling of the Pentagon budget in the early 1980s, a different kind of post-nuclear story emerged on television in the U.S. and the UK. The fictionalized present, rather than futuristic science fiction, introduced a cinematic living hell, not spectacular or heroic, nor hopeful for humanity’s future. On November 20, 1983, The Day After portrayed the realistic aftermath of nuclear war to an ABC audience of over half of the U.S. adult population. BBC’s Threads (1984), an even more brutal portrayal of life after the bombs, went on to sweep the BAFTA awards.

PBS American Playhouse produced Testament (1983), the third in this nuclear disaster triad, so impressive that Paramount picked up the film for theatrical release before it screened on television. A domestic drama about a northern California family dealing with the effects of radiation sickness and one death after another, Testament garnered a Best Actress Oscar nomination for lead Jane Alexander. In his 2002 book Atomic Bomb Cinema, Jerome Shapiro disparagingly designates this woman’s story as a “postnuclear feminist weepie” — the kind of language that calls feminists to take a closer look. Carol Amen published the original short story in Ms., and Lynne Littman directed the film, already with four Emmys and an Academy Award for documentary under her belt.

Shapiro disregards Testament because it is primarily about women’s suffering, yet this very acknowledgement of women’s powerlessness in a world that patriarchal governments have just blown up is feminist at its core. Acts like carefully sewing a shroud for her teenage daughter’s body displays the female protagonist’s courage. Perhaps it is just that no one had ever seen a post-apocalyptic movie before (or few since) without male protagonists or protagonists who take violent action to survive. Not many of us are a Furiosa at heart, but Testament is about an ordinary woman whose struggles might empower an ordinary viewer in the United States to take steps to join the nuclear freeze movement working to prevent a nuclear war. Children, seniors, women, and ethnic minorities are the survivors we see after white male authority figures disappear; the very people whose lives are usually subordinated are those who carry on.

It is hard to recreate the nuclear anxiety of this era now after the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War in 1990, but Ronald Reagan and his administration actually spoke of limited nuclear attacks as a legitimate military tactic in the early 1980s. Anti-nuclear activism and marches on Washington were at their peak, and as a nineteen-year-old, I remember having a nightmare about waking up to a nuclear winter. When I actually awoke and looked at the florescent bulbs above the bed in my dorm room, I was unsure about the literal state of the world. The threat was real, and unlike our current cultural obsession with zombies (which likely serve as a reflection of fears of terrorism, pandemic, and the like), complete nuclear annihilation was a nightmare with time to prevent it from actually happening.

In Testament, Carol (Alexander) is a 1980s mom whose life revolves around her household, with three children and a husband (William Devane) who is, frankly, a jerk who rarely listens to either wife or kids. Later it becomes evident that he is a symbol for those in power who don’t listen to constituents. Carol’s small, northern California town is very white and middle-class, but Carol and her 13-year-old son Brad (Ross Harris) are differentiated by their friendship with Mike (Mako), a Japanese-American man who owns the nearby gas station. His son Hiroshi (Gerry Murillo) has Down’s syndrome and is an obvious metaphor for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. On one normal day when the kids are fighting over the television set and they are waiting for dad to return home from a business trip to San Francisco, the unthinkable happens. Flashes of intense light, the bombing of American cities, cut off a broadcast alert about a nuclear attack.

There are no mushroom clouds, no other immediate horrors, just the loss of electricity and a man who never comes home from his trip. Carols writes in her journal, “I’m so afraid. Everything looks the same.” They notice a strange dust on the next morning’s breakfast plates, the neighbor’s newborn quickly dies (a very young Kevin Costner has a bit part as the baby’s father), and then rationing food and batteries becomes a concern. Soon radiation sickness becomes apparent, as youngest child Scottie (Lukas Haas) succumbs after spending the night hemorrhaging in his mother’s arms, and since the graveyard is full, the family buries him in the backyard, wrapped with a child’s colorful bedding. Next, teenage daughter Mary Liz (Roxana Zal) passes away. This we know after watching Carol stitch the body into a crisp, white sheet.

The orphaned neighbor boy, the Asian gas station owner, the older man who runs the short wave radio, the elderly European piano teacher … everyone is dying. We know that Carol, Brad, and the ultimate innocent, Hiroshi, will die in the end, but they don’t give up. As director Littman said many years later, “I identify with the mother in the story, except especially as portrayed by Jane. She was much braver than I could ever be.” The story is about an everyday homemaker who spends her last days burying her children as she goes hungry and loses her hair, yet this woman is an inspiration. She doesn’t fold even after seriously contemplating suicide; she doesn’t lie about the future; she faces this end of life, end of her family, with an emotional honesty that is not the melodrama of the soap opera or a Lifetime movie. We don’t all have children and might live very different lives, but this 1983 film created by women gave the audience such a grim picture of the near future, without the excitement of special effects or the hope brought by overcoming obstacles, that it was a call to action, a message to avoid this outcome at all costs.

The initial story came to writer Carol Amen in a dream. In the DVD extra “Testament at 20,” Jane Alexander talks about her own nightmare of going on a camping trip and not being able to get home because of radiation. She felt the film was a catharsis for that nightmare, a working out of those fears, and soon after filming, she became a spokesperson for Physicians for Social Responsibility, an important activist group at the time. An adult Lukas Haas reads a letter that he dictated as a five-year-old to President Reagan, asking him “not to do the bombs.” He talks about fearing that every airplane overhead might be the one dropping a nuclear weapon.

Watching the film today calls back those fears, and although a homemaker as the protagonist may seem a bit old-fashioned, it is the long takes, slow pace, and muted colors that really call back to this period (a pleasure for those of us who enjoy “slow movies” and editing before shorter attention spans). Jane Alexander had already received an Emmy nomination for her portrayal of Eleanor Roosevelt, went on to win two Emmys, and became the director of the National Endowment for the Arts during its particularly embattled period in the mid-1990s. Testament was about facing the unthinkable in 1983 and being called to do something about it. Although replaced by other serious maladies, today we can count our lucky stars that those nightmares of full-scale nuclear war have largely gone away.

Angela Beauchamp is a cinema lover, film scholar, and most recently, a zombie mashup junkie. She is preparing to teach a course on Post-Apocalyptic Cinema in the fall.

‘Jem and the Holograms’: Diversity and Female Empowerment

What I didn’t remember, and was pleasantly surprised by, was all of the diversity present in the show and the incredibly positive female role models that it presented to its young viewers. … It offered a positive statement on cultural acceptance and feminine strength at a time when children’s programming was lacking in both areas (and often still is today).

This guest post written by Horrorella appears as part of our theme week on Ladies of the 1980s.

Jem and the Holograms was a pivotal part of my childhood. I watched it religiously. I couldn’t get enough of Jem and her rock star cohorts. The music, the characters, the stories – I ate it up like the candy-colored mountain of awesome that it was. I had a chance to revisit the series as an adult when I received the complete series box set as a birthday gift (note – it is SO gloriously pink). I poured some Cap’n Crunch cereal and sat down to revisit this show that had brought me so much joy in true Saturday Morning Cartoon fashion.

Reconnecting with this series was an incredibly fun experience, albeit a surprising one. I remembered Jem and her friends getting into scrapes, playing concerts, and trying to outwit the Misfits’ dastardly plans. I remembered the foster girls that found a home and a family at Starlight House and who were overseen by the band members. I remembered the conflict that Jem/Jerrica dealt with in keeping her true identity a secret from the world, and the resulting friction that created with her boyfriend Rio. I even remembered some of the songs.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkQE5wuBFeY”]

What I didn’t remember, and was pleasantly surprised by, was all of the diversity present in the show and the incredibly positive female role models that it presented to its young viewers. Though often criticized as being little more than a vehicle to promote the Hasbro line of dolls that had inspired the series, the show was actually so much more. It offered a positive statement on cultural acceptance and feminine strength at a time when children’s programming was lacking in both areas (and often still is today).

The Holograms celebrated an ethnically and culturally diverse group of characters who came from a variety of different backgrounds. Though Jerrica and Kimber were biological sisters, band members Aja (an Asian woman) and Shana (a Black woman) were adopted by the Benton family as children. Later, as the band expanded, a Latina drummer called Raya was added to the mix. This theme went on to include the foster girls populating Starlight House. Ba Nee, for example, a little girl involved in several major plot threads throughout the series, had been born to a Vietnamese woman and an American soldier before immigrating to the United States. The series took the time to showcase these cultural and ethnic differences, highlighting different traditions and backgrounds while also bringing the characters together as a united family.

Series creator Christy Marx stated in an interview with Off Hollywood that ethnic diversity was important to her when developing the characters. She wanted to be sure that all girls watching the show had someone to identify with, and made that a core goal as she began to develop the expanded cast. This was definitely a rarity among 1980s animated programming, and is something that made Jem and the Holograms stand out among its contemporaries.

Juxtaposed with our heroes, we have The Misfits – the nemesis band of the Holograms who are constantly trying to derail any project our heroes might be working on in order to stay on top. They are comprised fully of white women, and the leader, Pizzazz, comes from a particularly privileged background. Raised in an affluent lifestyle, spoiled, constantly angry, and dedicated to nothing more than getting her way by any means necessary, Pizzazz is the embodiment of entitlement. She will do anything within her power to stay on top.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7r6-Ie0un84″]

In many ways, The Misfits represent the privileged status quo. They came to stardom before the Holograms, and are determined not to give up their spot on top. They refuse to make way or share that space with anyone else. They demand a level of treatment they feel is in keeping with their status as rockstars, and care little for anyone besides themselves (Stormer is often the exception to this rule, as she proves early on to have a heart, yet is easily bullied and influenced by her bandmates). The Misfits are simply another example of the people in power remaining in power, while everyone else has to struggle to get by.

Conversely, the Holograms can be seen to embody a more ideal future; something to strive for. Inclusive, and aiming not for fame and fortune, but for acceptance, integrity, and the greater good. Their songs have meaning and a positive message, often focusing on teamwork, fair play and the like. They lead by example, and offer a blueprint for what we could be, rather than what we often are.

The feminism and the female empowerment in the series is also incredibly meaningful and noteworthy. Jerrica/Jem is an icon, both within the story and for the show’s legions of young fans. Not for her fame or for being the rockstar with the cool clothes and the pink hair (though, admittedly, the pink hair was pretty rad), but for being a successful, confident and capable woman. She was a different kind of role model for a little girl growing up in the 1980s. We tend to focus on the fashion and the music present in the show, but more importantly, Jem gave us a powerful and successful female character to look up to. In her, we found a character who was in charge of her own destiny. An intelligent, savvy business woman who maintained not only a record company, but a nonprofit that housed, cared for, and provided a supportive home for foster children. In Jerrica, we see a balance of a woman who is able to achieve professional, financial, and artistic success, while also contributing positively and meaningfully to the world around her.

Marx says:

“The thing I like about Jem and Jerrica is that she’s kick ass in how she cares about this entire household full of foster girls, or she’s kick ass because she has this musical career, or she’s a music executive. She’s someone who is strong and independent and directs her own life.”

Marx also notes that though the series, its fashion, and its technology are all very 80s, the stories still speak to us even today. They have a timelessness to them that allows them to carry on. And as much as last year’s film revival was a raging disaster, the silver lining is that the values and power of the property have found a new embodiment reaching a new generation in the form of the IDW’s comic series. The books take the characters, stories, and concepts that made the original series so important and meaningful and bring them forward into the modern era, with continued racial diversity, varied body types, and sexual orientations; a swath of powerful, well-developed female characters and new adventures.

Jem and the Holograms impacted its fan base in a way that few series of the time (or since) were able to. Through building a cast and a series of stories that reflected the people watching it, it connected with its audience in an entirely new way. It provided the viewers with a positive female role model who was strong and powerful in ways not typically seen on television, and certainly not in children’s programming. Jem and the Holograms influenced a generation, and the lessons we learned from that show and its stories were taken with us into adulthood. Hopefully, its new incarnation will continue to do the same for new legions of fans.

See also at Bitch Flicks: Was ‘Jem and the Holograms’ a Good Show for Little Girls?

Horrorella has written about film for Ain’t it Cool News, the Women in Horror Annual and on her blog at horrorella.com. She geeks out incessantly over movies, television, comics and kitties. You can gab with her on Twitter @horrorellablog.