Women in Politics Week: Homeland’s Carrie Mathison

To quote The Awl’s headline from December 2, 2011, Claire Danes as Carrie Mathison is a woman on the verge of a nervous breakthrough. 
Carrie Mathison burst onto our television screens in October of 2011 as the central narrator to Showtime’s superbly riveting political thriller, Homeland. Based on Israel’s Prisoners of War and driven by the question what homecoming means to the lives of those formerly held captive, Homeland centers on Carrie Mathison, Nicholas Brody, and the cell of people who weave throughout their personal and political spheres. In “Homeland’s Roots,” a short extra via Showtime’s On Demand, series creator Gideon Raff says, “We had really interesting conversations about the differences between American and Israeli societies in terms of their approach to prisoners of war.” Series developer and producer Alex Gansa adds, “We had to find another avenue to tell the story and what we really found was this idea that Brody may have been turned in captivity.” 
Nicholas Brody, played by Damian Lewis, is a returned POW held for 8 years by Al-Qaeda. He comes under Carrie’s radar because she had, ten months prior, received a tip from the bomb maker of Abu Nazir (leader of Homeland’s fictitious terrorist cell) that an American POW had been turned. Carrie adamantly believes that Brody is the man in question and, with little to no assistance from colleagues, begins a tireless trek to bring him to justice and prevent any further acts of terror on American soil. 
Homeland is working with a hefty plotline and tropes often left undiscovered on our televisions. Hunting terrorists or any other version of the bad guy often makes it to our weeknight tubes, what separates Homeland is that not only are we dealing with a specific area of the political sphere (The CIA) with a woman in an important, central place of power, but also our main character is herself suffering: waging a constant battle against her bi-polar disorder and what it means to her as not only a woman but a successful career woman. Homeland writer, Meredith Stiehm, says on writing Carrie, “Carrie being bipolar does make her an unreliable narrator…I think it is interesting to ask the question through her character can you be really functional at the same time as having a serious illness?” 
The answer to this question is the ride that is Homeland. A post by “filmschooled” via Persephone Magazine succinctly summarizes the role of mental illness among women in films like Sucker Punch and The Ward: “These films showcase mental illness both as the affliction of the untrustworthy (see the plea of “I’m not crazy!”) and as a vulnerability, which in turn is framed as an attractive trait.” These are just two examples of the ways in which women in media have often been compartmentalized and sexualized because of mental illness. Watching Claire Danes so exquisitely portray vulnerability, strength, and intelligence is a mesmerizing feat. Carrie Mathison is a character refusing to be sidelined, refusing to be pitied or fall into any of the traps set by society and the men who surround her. We watch Carrie, and throughout season one, trust that she is on to something, while, at the same time, giving pause to the idea that she could, potentially, be wrong. However, we root for her and none of this undermines Carrie because her passion for her job and, eventually for Brody, are the real passions of a woman who, though vastly intelligent, poised, and skillful still has not figured out exactly how to get her shit together. 
We watch Carrie so sure of herself at the beginning of the series and, like the jazz music that accompanies the show’s opening credits and underscores Carrie’s ethos, we ride along the waves as her environment unravels reaching crescendo when she finds a sublime intimacy with Brody. This plotline, allowing both Damian Lewis and Claire Danes to come alive and show their full talents, worked and continues to drive the Homeland story because, as impractical as a union would seem at first, Carrie Mathison is a woman who can and does make her own choices. The plotlines that weave throughout Homeland meet at a crossroads that bridge Carrie’s personal and professional lives in a very dangerous, raw, and enigmatic triangle. In less deft hands than Ms. Danes’ Carrie’s flaws may be standoffish, peevish even, but the exceptional work she puts into bringing this dynamic woman full circle never falter. To the credit of the writers and producers of the show as well, dramatic irony is put into effect at all of the right moments, allowing us to know what Carrie does not: she is right. Even better, as I type this I am watching the most recent episode (12/25) and still find myself asking questions about what is fact and fiction. The one truth I know as a viewer of Homeland is that I trust Carrie and I am more than willing to go along for her ride, wherever it may take us. 
Claire Danes, in British GQ, was asked about her character. She responded, “She’s like my kinky superhero alter ego now. Because as disturbed and troubled as she is, she’s always fucking right. Which is so nice because I so rarely am.” 
It seems even Danes herself is not above the Carrie Mathison catharsis. Responding to writing Carrie for season two, Meredith Stiehm said, “…after we’ve seen her cut so low I take heart in seeing a character who is strong and has an important job and can maintain that as well as handling this illness that she has and after the first two episodes she is the old Carrie that we know.” Where Carrie is headed perhaps only the writers know, but I rest assured as a ready consumer of this Showtime delicacy that watching this character’s evolution will stay with me long after the series ends. As the opening credits relay, in response to Carrie’s mentor Saul’s stoic wisdom “everyone missed something that day” not everyone is Carrie Mathison. 

Women in Politics Week: Roundup of Feminist Celebs’ Political Videos

Screenshot of Amy Poehler in the Center for Reproductive Rights’ Draw the Line campaign


This post by Megan Kearns originally appeared at Bitch Flicks on November 5, 2012.

Many assume Hollywood is a liberal nirvana (or I guess a hellhole if you’re a Republican). But that’s not exactly true. Not only do films lack gender equality, they often purport sexist tropes. While many participate in fundraisers or ads for natural disasters or childhood illnesses or breast cancer, most celebrities remain silent when it comes to supposedly controversial human rights issues like abortion and contraception. But not this year! Because of the GOP’s rampant attacks on reproductive rights (gee thanks, GOP!), more celebs are adding their voices to the pro-choice symphony dissenting against these oppressive laws.
Now some people say, “Who the hell cares what celebs think??” Okay, sure. But I care. I care that people with money, visibility and power use their sway to speak out against injustice.
As I’m kind of obsessed with feminist celebs (aren’t we all??), I thought I would post a roundup celebrating some of the awesome videos featuring Hollywood celebs advocating for reproductive rights and women’s equality and speaking out against “legitimate rape” bullshit and discriminatory voter ID laws. So kudos to Amy Poehler, Meryl Streep, Kerry Washington, Tina Fey, Eva Langoria, Joss Whedon, Martha Plimpton, Lena Dunham, Sarah Silverman, Kevin Bacon, Kyra Sedgwick, Audra McDonald, Scarlett Johannson, Tea Leoni, Mary J. Blige, Julianne Moore, Kathy Griffin and Cher for taking an unapologetic stand and speaking up for our rights.

Women in Politics Week: The Depiction of Women in Films About Irish Politics

For as long as there have been film-makers, they’ve seemingly been attempting to depict the Irish struggle for independence. Apart from the fact that a country in the midst of political strife always makes interesting viewing (see also: Israel, Palestine, the rest of the Middle East and the plethora of films produced each year about life in communist East Berlin), this may be down to timing. 
The Easter Rising, when Ireland declared its intention of ending British rule over the country, took place in April 1916. The first commercial films, including DW Griffith’s seminal and hugely racist The Birth of a Nation (1914), were made in the same decade, meaning that the medium of film as a way to depict and interpret historical events through fictitious re-renderings of them, was created just in time to record the political strife that characterised Ireland in the twentieth century. 
Since it’s women in politics week here on Bitch Flicks, I thought I’d offer up a quick overview of how women are depicted in some of the more well-known films about Ireland’s political history. 
Wives and Girlfriends 
One of the most important films about the division of Northern Ireland from the Republic (the country more usually referred to as Ireland), is Michael Collins, directed by Neil Jordan, released 1996. 
In real life, Collins (played by Liam Neeson), was an Irish revolutionary leader who was crucial to the formation of the Irish Free State, which later became the Republic. He was assassinated in August 1922, while engaged to a woman called Kitty Kiernan, played on-screen by a particularly bland Julia Roberts. 
Julia Roberts as Kitty Kiernana
It’s almost a shame that Michael Collins is such an important film in terms of the depiction of “the Irish problem” on-screen because, by God, is Kitty a dull, poorly developed part. Not that I’d argue that the reduction of a potentially fascinating female role to that of an ornamental girlfriend is unusual. 
Another notable, but much more interesting IRA girlfriend is Marcella in the 1984 drama Cal. In a moment that we might attribute to extreme post-traumatic stress, the IRA man who killed her Protestant police officer husband pursues the young widow and begins an affair with her. On-screen, and probably because Helen Mirren who plays Marcella can render anything believable, the relationship appears more moving than fucked up. 
Much messier is Danny’s (Daniel Day-Lewis) torrid relationship with his former flame Maggie (Emily Watson who, like, Mirren, could make throwing away a cereal box seem moving if she put her mind to it). IRA code prevents Maggie, who married another IRA man while Danny was serving a prison sentence, from pursuing their relationship much as she’d like to. She’s likely to get attacked or worse if she does. 
While quite different, these films do give some insight into what it has meant to become involved with an IRA man at different points in the movement, and also how filmmakers have changed their approach to depicting the women that did. Kitty Kiernan deserved better, that’s all I’m saying. 
Lovers 
Warning: spoilers ahead. 
Neil Jordan’s 1992 film The Crying Game was a worldwide hit on release, and gives viewers one of the most interesting portraits of an IRA man and his lover. Forced to flee Northern Ireland after the botching the killing of a British soldier, Fergus (Stephen Rea) moves to London and gets involved with club singer Dil (Jaye Davidson), who’s keeping a secret. In her pants. 
Jaye Davidson as Dil
In 1992 Dil, who is revealed as being transgendered a short while into her love affair with Fergus, was one of the few unprejudiced depictions of a transgendered woman on-screen. Her sexuality, and indeed her penis, though revealed, are never made to be a punch line. In terms of mainstream film-making this was even more rare in the 90s than it is today. 
As well as marking a positive depiction of transgender on-screen, Dil’s status as a trans-person is important because it marks Fergus’ movement away from the militant Irish Catholicism that has coloured his life so far, including his relationship with his ex-girlfriend, Jude (Miranda Richardson). 
By literally and figuratively embracing Dil, Fergus is shown to be developing as a person in a way that it’s suggested the republican movement may need to. 
It’s interesting that both The Crying Game and Michael Collins were written and directed by the same dude. His fictional ladies, though also both involved with IRA men, are way more interesting to watch. 
Allies 
Ken Loach’s 2006 historical film The Wind That Shakes The Barley gives viewers the chance to see a part of the Irish republican movement that’s rarely depicted in cinema, the Cumann na mBan. 
CnamB was founded in 1914 as an all-female auxiliary to the recently formed Irish Volunteers, which aimed to secure liberty for Ireland with the mandate that they were willing to use force if need be. Though they rarely get a nod in the media, the group are still in existence and listed by the UK Terrorism Act still as a “Domestic Terrorist Group”. 
Set during the Irish War of Independence, the film gives us Sinead (Orla Fitzgerald), a member of the CnamB who refuses to be a victim. She remains politically and militantly active as Ireland suffers under the British occupation that is increasingly marked by vicious attacks by the notorious Black and Tans, and refuses to allow the men she’s allied with to fight the country’s battles without her. 
Orla Fitzgerald as Sinead
It’s this engagement that eventually mean the character of Sinead will come to symbolise the country’s determination and hard-won independence in the eyes of the viewer. 
Now, if Ken Loach would just turn his attention to immortalising a couple of real-life female revolutionaries, Maud Gonne and Countess Markiewicz, on-screen, all would be almost right in the world. The world of depictions of Irish women on-screen, anyway. 
Victims 
The 1970 drama Ryan’s Daughter is set in the fictitious Kerry village of Kirrary in 1916. Though the film is in fact a loose adaptation of Gustave Flaubert’s novel Madame Bovary, the depiction of events in a village and era so rife with anti-British sentiment are accurate enough to use here. 
Sarah Miles as Rosy Ryan
When she begins an affair with a British Army officer, spoiled beauty Rosy Ryan (played by Sarah Miles), becomes not only a victim of public shaming by local villagers who drag her into the street, strip and beat her, before cutting all her hair off, she also becomes a victim of her own father’s greed. 
Because although Rosy is engaging in adultery with a man who symbolises the British occupation of Ireland, she has not been informing him about the activities of local IRA men (watch the film and it’s clear she’s far too self-obsessed to take any notice of what anyone else is up to). It’s her father, Tom, who hears everything by virtue of being the local publican and sells the information to British soldiers at the local army base. 
A betrayal of his country, Tom’s collaboration is neatly juxtaposed on-screen with the villagers’ acts of violence against Rosy, whose sexual attraction to a British soldier is seen as every bit as treacherous as her supposedly having informed on them. 
She’s a victim then of the republican villagers who attack her, the men who purport to love her but refuse to protect her in the face of this violence, and – always dangerous for a woman on-screen – her libido. 
It’s one of the more depressing movies in the genre. 
Mothers 
Most mothers in political films about the state of Ireland, and particularly Northern Ireland, have tended to be either ardent supporters of a militant political organization who want their sons to get out there and do their bit, or more stereotypical mothers who worry. Inarguably, women raising children in the middle of a civil war zone have a lot more to worry about. 
Helen Mirren as Kathleen Quigly and Fionnula Flanagan as Annie Higgins
Some Mother’s Son (1996) is based on the true story of the 1981 Hunger Strikes in which republican prisoners starved (sometimes to death) in protest against the British presence in Northern Ireland, and gives viewers two mothers to consider. 
Kathleen Quigley (Helen Mirren) is mother to a man who has kept his IRA involvement secret from her. When he is arrested, she’s torn between her love and loyalty towards her son, and her disgust for the organization. When the Hunger Strikes begin, she is determined to do whatever is necessary to save her son. 
Annie Higgins (Fionnula Flanagan), meanwhile, is a hardline republican, who is able to completely support her own son’s actions, but is eventually forced to watch him die at the hands of the British Army. 
Neither woman is depicted as a saint, stereotype or, unusually, as a symbol for the struggles of Northern Ireland as a whole, which makes the film not only more realistic but also far more moving. 
Cruella de Ville 
I’ve already mentioned that I think Neil Jordan can write a pretty rocking fictional woman’s part. It’s possible that I’m misinterpreting Miranda Richardson’s role as country girl turned villainess Jude in The Crying Game. That’s her there, rocking Uma Thurman’s iconic hairstyle a full two years before Pulp Fiction hit the big screen. 
Miranda Richardson as Jude in The Crying Game
Like Orla in The Wind that Shook the Barley, Jude is an ally to the IRA men in the film. Her initial job, while still blonde and clad in double denim, is to lure Forest Whittaker’s British soldier Jody back to her place so the republicans can take him hostage. (This flirty technique was considered so immoral that the IRA swiftly banned members from using it.) 
It’s only later, after her safehouse is bombed by the British army, killing some of her cohorts and forcing her boyfriend Fergus to flee Ireland, that she’s given a make-over that most fairy tale villains might deem “a bit over the top.” 
From her jet black, bluntly cut bob to the razor sharp suits she adopts, there is no part of Jude’s later characterization – which will include threatening her ex, then shrieking the usually comforting Roman Catholic motto, “Keep the Faith!” as she leaves the room – that implies she’s anything less than evil. 
Among academics this depiction of a female IRA member as having no redeeming qualities at all is considered one of the most misogynistic to have appeared. 
Conclusion 
There are few genres that are depicting women in as complex and interesting a manner as we deserve to be. The political nature of the films I’ve described here does mean that that the parts being written usually depict a certain amount of emotional and social complexity that other genres can lack. 
There’s none I wouldn’t recommend to you, if you’re interested in the development of Irish politics and the people involved in it but what I would say is that in spite of feminism in Ireland developing more slowly than in other parts of the first world, women have never been sidelined from the revolution. 
We had women in the Cumann na mBan fighting alongside men when the country overthrew British rule in the 1920’s. Countess Markiewicz and Maud Gonne are arguably as important revolutionary figures as the men they campaigned alongside, but who are more usually referred to and depicted on film. 
And – though there are a plethora of films depicting the mothers, wives, girlfriends or lovers who have loved the men who’ve fought for Ireland – we’re still waiting for the films about the lives of these women to be made. 
Alisande Fitzsimons blogs regularly at xoJane UK. She can also be found tweeting about Ireland and movies at @AlisandeF

Women in Politics Week: ‘Homeland’s Carrie Mathison: A Pulsing Beat of Jazz and ‘Crazy Genius’

Carrie Mathison, a haunted yet brilliant CIA analyst
This post, by Leigh Kolb, first appeared at Bitch Flicks on October 10, 2012.

Warning: spoilers ahead!
I hate straight singing. I have to change a tune to my own way of doing it. That’s all I know.
— Billie Holiday

In the pilot episode of Homeland, Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes), hurries back to her Washington D.C. apartment after a night out, and the audience sees a photo of jazz musicians and pieces of artwork emblazoned with the word “Jazz.” Jazz–the nebulous, wholly American musical genre–is improvisation. It is individualism and collaboration. It is color-outside-the-lines, boundary-pushing rhythm. It is Carrie, a CIA analyst who must push and navigate her way around the patriarchal CIA and her brilliant and bipolar mind.
Carrie shows very early on that she doesn’t strictly play by the rules. In the opening scene of the pilot, she is driving around the streets of Baghdad, headscarf down, and talking on the phone with her superior back in D.C. When she gets stuck in traffic, she simply gets out of the car and starts walking, pulling up her headscarf. She doesn’t hesitate to improvise, and is constantly navigating to make inroads that seem impossible.
The Ken Burns Jazz documentary website states,
So while it is true that jazz is a demanding and competitive field for both men and women, it is also true that a woman who shows up for an audition or jam session with a tenor sax or trumpet in her gig bag is greeted with a special variety of raised eyebrows, curiosity and skepticism. Is she serious? Can she play? Time-worn questions about women and jazz buzz through the room before she blows a note.

Carrie’s personal and professional lives weave together–the professional trumps the personal, but her private battles threaten her career.
When Carrie is questioning the American POW Nicholas Brody (Damian Lewis) for the first time, she is calm and firm, yet her pressing questions make her supervisor question her, as Brody is clearly uncomfortable. The CIA has moved past its extreme “woman problem” of the 80s and 90s, but certainly it’s not immune to continued gender bias.
The audience knows that Saul (Mandy Patinkin) has been Carrie’s mentor, and he continues to be one throughout the series. This older man, who helps guide and protect a young female protagonist, is a popular trope (Ron Swanson, Jack Donaghy and Don Draper, to name a few). It makes sense to the audience that a young woman doesn’t break into the boys’ club alone, so oftentimes these male mentors serve as powerful gatekeepers to gendered worlds. Whether this trope is realistic or reductionist, or somewhere in between, is an important point of discussion (much like the fact that Carrie’s mother is an absent character and her father shares an intense connection with her as they share the same bipolar disorder–this recurrent “absent mother” trope for female protagonists is problematic to say the least). 
Saul serves as a mentor to Carrie. (Patinkin has been outspoken about issues of television and feminism.)
While the audience can assume that Carrie has seen and felt many “raised eyebrows, curiosity and skepticism” in her rise through the ranks, her creativity and improvisational talent give her power.
It’s ill-becoming for an old broad to sing about how bad she wants it. But occasionally we do.
— Lena Horne

In the aforementioned scene, when Carrie rushes home after a night out, she strips down to a slip and wipes her crotch with a damp washcloth while brushing her teeth. She hurriedly slips off a wedding ring as she leaves to go to work at CIA Headquarters.
Later, she goes to a jazz bar (after laboriously–not pleasurably–putting on black lace) and tells a man in a suit that she wears the ring to “weed out guys looking for a relationship.” After some obligatory flirting, she suggests they leave and go elsewhere.
When Carrie strikes up a sexual relationship with Brody later in the first season (after drunken, raw sex in her backseat), it’s always mildly unclear whether she’s doing so for professional gain. The relationship ebbs and flows in and out of her favor, and the audience realizes that Carrie enjoys sex and some level of human connection. Even when it looks and feels like a chore (as she puts on her black lace, for example), sex is something that Carrie needs. Period.
No strings, no clear ulterior motives, no obsession with marriage. Carrie’s sexual persona is as startling–and as normal–as the crotch-wipe after a night out.
The complexity of relationships and marriages is a central theme in many subplots (Brody’s wife, Jessica, believing her husband dead, has a serious relationship with his best friend; Saul’s wife struggles with his work schedule, although she is a highly successful professional herself). The relationships all reflect very realistic scenarios, and the women–supporting characters, even–are complex and whole.
Jazz is not just music, it’s a way of life, it’s a way of being, a way of thinking. . . . the new inventive phrases we make up to describe things — all that to me is jazz just as much as the music we play.
— Nina Simone

When Carrie gets up to leave the jazz bar with her catch of the night, she stops and notices Brody and his family on television. She observes the finger movements of the trumpeter, pianist and bassist, and connects them to the finger-tapping motions Brody is making on his televised press conferences. She leaves her date behind and rushes to Saul’s house, more convinced that Brody has been turned.
Carrie has a wall in her apartment dedicated to unraveling the al-Qaeda terror plot she believes Brody to be operating in. Her personal life and professional life have few boundaries (and her only clear pleasures–jazz music and sex–bleed into her career as well).
Her thought processes are very rarely black and white, as are her male colleague’s. She always seems to be trying to connect new and different dots, and looking at other pieces of stories. When Aileen Morgan and Raqim Faisel were being hunted as prime terrorist suspects, the male agents assumed Aileen was the “terrorist’s girlfriend.” It was Carrie who finally said, “Maybe she’s the one driving this…” And she was. The blonde white woman was the catalyst to their involvement with a terror plot, and Carrie had to point out the possibility that their assumptions (white woman tricked and trapped by a Middle Eastern extremist) were wrong.
A Guardian blog post connected the fact that a Thelonious Monk song was playing as a backdrop when Carrie drove to attend a meeting at the CIA Headquarters. The writer notes,
Monk was hospitalised at various points in his career due to an unspecified mental illness and there has been some debate about whether he could have had a schizophrenic or bipolar disorder. (In fact, jazz and schizophrenia have long been linked. It is argued that New Orleans cornetist Buddy Bolden, the ‘inventor of jazz’, improvised the music he played as his schizophrenia did not allow him to read music, evolving ragtime into a more free form of music in the process.) It is an association that positions Carrie, who takes anti-psychotics, as a ‘crazy genius’ like Monk.

Carrie’s mental and emotional well-being, as is exposed in the first season, is held together by those non-aspirin pills she takes out of the aspirin bottle every morning. Her sister gives her anti-psychotics illegally, since she would not be able to be a CIA agent if they knew she had bipolar disorder. Her tenacity, her genius and her fragility (she sobs to her sister at one point, “I’ve been on my own for a while now…”) are in constant battle. She is, very often, on the edge.
Nick Brody and Carrie develop a complicated relationship, although her theories of his terrorist involvement were correct.
When she got (many) drinks with Brody before they first had sex, she told him,
“When I was a girl, my friends and I used to play chicken with the train on the tracks near our house and no one could ever beat me, not even the boys.”
One can see Carrie’s life as an endless game of chicken, whether it’s with trains, sex, surveillance without warrants or hiding a mood disorder. That constant challenge–not unlike a call-and-response jazz pattern that encourages louder and faster feedback–both energizes and limits Carrie throughout the series.
One day a whole damn song fell into place in my head.
— Billie Holiday

Carrie’s right. She knew Brody was turned, though no one would listen. Brody’s teenage daughter, Dana (in all of her teenage angst), with Carrie’s help, figured it out as well (and some argue it was Dana who really stopped Brody).
However, Brody stopped himself (his conscience and a malfunctioning bomb stopped him, rather, or even Dana’s phone call). He reigns in the public eye as the good guy, the rising politician, and the complexities of his terrorist motives (connected to drone strikes that killed a young boy) are difficult for the audience to make right and wrong out of. (This is, of course, what good storytelling does.)
Carrie, however, has been found out. A hospitalization left her without her medication, and she chooses to undergo electroconvulsive therapy (ECT, or shock treatment, which is becoming more popular in the US, mostly with female patients) to “heal” her mental disorder. The treatment makes her forget much of what she knew, and she can’t realize that she’s helped thwart another terrorist attack. Her intense guilt after “missing something” on 9/11 certainly drove her mania deeper, yet she is compelled to give up the part of herself that drives her forward with the ECT.
Just as the song is truly falling into place in her head, she loses it.
Not to discount the real and debilitating nature of Carrie’s bipolar disorder, one must also reflect upon women’s history in terms of mental illness and the diagnosis and treatment plans women were subjected to. Carrie enters into Season 2 a more domesticated woman (teaching English, gardening, attempting “domestic normalcy”). Treatment for women’s emotional disorders–or perceived disorders–in the late 1800s and early 1900s was often the “rest cure,” when women were isolated and kept away from mental and physical stimulation. This harmed more women than anything, and Carrie being kept from her challenging mental stimulation and work is not, most viewers would argue, good for her. This feminine fragility at the hands of a mental illness isn’t new, nor is the treatment. She’s consistently second-guessed and made to feel insecure, which leads her to doubt herself. However, Saul understands their need for her at this point in Season 2, and will hopefully continue to be her cheerleader and help her navigate the waters.
Carrie’s inner conflicts, starting from her girlhood, are repeated every episode in the show’s opening credits. Dissonant jazz trumpets play in the background, and scenes showing a little girl’s hands playing the piano and trumpet are cut with professionals’ playing. As the audience sees pictures of a young Carrie growing up–in a mask, in a maze, smiling for the camera–news footage from America’s recent history is spliced in (from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama, with sound bites from numerous domestic tragedies). Her sleeping eyes dart, and her panicked adult voice repeats her guilt and fear of “missing” something from ten years before. Even from this opening sequence, the audience is left tense and uncomfortable feeling and seeing Carrie’s thought patterns.
Improvising is much more difficult than reading sheet music. Jazz musicians must perform on a much different plane than classical musicians–the uncertainty, the complexity and the unexpectedness of what your fingers, or your band mate’s fingers, might do next is nothing short of terrifying. But in this game of “chicken,” the end result is a masterpiece.
Momentarily, Carrie has been relegated to the padded room of elevator music, soft and predictable.
Carrie chooses to undergo ECT, as she convinces herself in Season 1 that her suspicions about Brody are delusions.
Former CIA covert-operations officer Valerie Plame Wilson, who wrote “The Women of the CIA” nearly two years before Homeland first aired, says of Carrie Mathison:
Carrie does not suffer from the common female need-to-please trait and, in fact, insists she is usually right. She is impulsive in a job that rewards patience and lies to the few people who can tolerate her…You root for her because those very despicable qualities also make her extraordinarily good at her mission. Danes breathes life and realism into a character who, for once, goes against the clichés of what a female CIA officer is supposed to do and look like.

Carrie is back in action in Season 2, and Saul is listening.
Carrie, much like the female jazz musicians before her, does her best to break boundaries and succeed in the boys’ world. Perhaps she could, and hopefully she will, as long as she can both overcome her bipolar disorder while at the same time retaining the impulsive, creative, compulsive thinking that makes her brilliant.

Women in Politics Week: Women, War & Peace: The Roundup

The Women, War & Peace Documentary Series on PBS
This post by Megan Kearns originally appeared at Bitch Flicks on January 9, 2012.
Over the course of the past two months, Megan Kearns of The Opinioness of the World reviewed all five parts of the PBS series Women, War & Peace. We’ve rounded them up here, with excerpts from each review. Be sure to check them out if you missed any! (You can also watch the full episodes online here.)

While rape had been charged as a crime before, it usually falls under the umbrella of hate crimes. With this groundbreaking tribunal, for the first time rape was charged as “a crime against humanity.” The case wouldn’t prevent all rapes. But Kuo said that even though they couldn’t prosecute every rape, it was a significant statement to acknowledge what happens to women during war. The case “transformed the definition of wartime slavery,” laying the “foundation of trials involving violence against women in international courts.”

War leaves devastation in its wake. Yet historically, when we talk about war, we talk about it in terms of soldiers and casualties; too often from a male perspective, forgetting that it equally destroys women’s lives.

In the 2nd installment of the Women, War & Peace series, director Gini Reticker and producer Abigail E. Disney, and WWP series executive producers and co-creators, create a Tribeca Film Festival-winning documentary. Pray the Devil Back to Hell tells the powerful and uplifting story of the Liberian women, including activist and social worker Leymah Gbowee, who joined together and peacefully protested, helping end the civil war ravaging their country.

For almost 15 years, beginning on Christmas Eve in 1989, two civil wars plagued Liberia. Warlord and former president Charles Taylor resided at the center of both. He overthrew the regime during the first civil war and committed war crimes and human rights atrocities while president during the second civil war. Taylor recruited soldiers as young as 9-15 years old. With his private army, the dictator controlled the finances and terrorized the country.

Hasina Safi, one of the 3,000 members of the Afghan Women’s Network (AWN), a non-partisan NGO working to empower women, visits villages to monitor the programs she coordinates for illiterate women. Classes for women could not be held openly with the Taliban in power. Almost 90% of Afghan women cannot read or write. Through classes, many women are just learning Islam encourages women’s education.
But working women like Safi risk their lives. They receive death threats via horrific letters in the night, telling them they must stop working or else their children will be killed and their homes burned.

Over the course of the last two decades, at least 16 million acres of land have been violently taken from Colombians. In the last 8 years, over 2 million have been displaced. Colombia has the second largest number of internally displaced people in the world after Sudan. With no jobs and contaminated water, displacement traumatizes civilians and rips families apart. Under international law,internally displaced citizens don’t receive the same protections that refugees do. Their government is supposed to address their rights. But in this case, how are Colombians supposed to obtain justice when their own government condemns them?

Afro-Colombians make up one quarter of Colombia’s population. In May 2010, coinciding with Afro-Colombian Day, which commemorates the end of slavery in Colombia, Sarria’s eviction was set to commence. People took to the streets, barricading the road to halt the eviction.

‘War Redefined’ Challenges War as a Male Domain and Examines How Violent Conflict Impacts Women:

When we think of war, we often think of soldiers, tanks, weapons and battlefields. But most wars breach boundaries, affecting civilians, mostly women and children. Soldiers, guerillas and paramilitaries use tactics such as rape, fear, murder and pushing people off their land. We need to shift our paradigm of war and look at how it affects women’s lives.
War Redefined, the 5th and final installment in Women, War & Peace (WWP), is the capstone of the groundbreaking series featuring politicians, military personnel, scholars and activists discussing how women play a vital role in war and peace-keeping. Narrated by actor Geena Davis, a phenomenal women’s media activist, written and produced by Peter Bull, co-produced by Nina Chaudry, this powerful film threads stories told in the other parts of the series: Bosnian women surviving rape camps, Liberian women protesting for peace, Afghan women demanding their rights in negotiations and Afro-Colombian women contending with internal displacement. War Redefined, and the entire WWP series, challenges the assumption that war and peace belong to men’s domain.

Women in Politics Week: ‘The Lady’ Makes the Personal Political

The Lady (2012)
This post by Jarrah Hodge previously appeared at Bitch Flicks on May 2, 2012, and is cross-posted with permission from Gender Focus.
French Director Luc Besson’s new biopic The Lady is a moving portrait of the life of Burmese activist and political leader Aung San Suu Kyi. However, for a movie that clearly has a political goal (to raise awareness of the situation in Burma*), it focuses mainly on Suu Kyi’s family and personal life. As a result, while I enjoyed the movie overall it still left me feeling unsatisfied. 
The movie opens in 1947 with the assassination of General Aung San, Suu Kyi’s father, who had just negotiated Burma’s independence from Britain. While it’s a poignant scene and crucial historical event it’s really all we see of Suu Kyi’s early life. 
From there we go forward to meet the main characters in the movie’s romance, Suu Kyi (played by Michelle Yeoh) and her professor husband Dr. Michael Aris (David Thewlis). They and their two sons are living in Oxford when she receives the news that her mother has had a stroke. When she returns to Burma she witnesses the military-run government massacring protesting students in the streets. When she is then approached to lead a pro-democracy movement she decides to stay. 
From this point the film becomes a bit plodding, seeming a bit like a visual representation of an encyclopedia article. It moves through every interaction Syu Kii has with the military junta and their attempts to intimidate and imprison her and her followers, leading to her 15-year house arrest and years of separation from Aris and their children. While we also see Syu Kii touring the country and speaking to locals about democracy, for the most part her Burmese allies and followers in the film remain nameless and voiceless. 
Ultimately while the film brings the audience to tears more than once, it’s not over the plight of Burma or ordinary Burmese citizens, but over Suu Kyi and her husband’s drawn-out separation. 
That’s where I thought the focus did the subject an injustice. Interestingly, The Lady could be said to suffer from some of the same issues as The Iron Lady, which was also a movie about a woman politician that was criticized for being more concerned with sentimentality than political substance. 
In some ways, though, The Lady has less excuse for this. Thatcher is elderly and ailing now but Suu Kyi is still fighting a crucial fight. It’s clear from the rallying cry at the end of the movie that one of the film’s goals is to get Westerners more involved in aiding the continuing fight for true democracy in Burma (Aung San Suu Kyi will finally take the oath of office to sit in the parliament this year, though the current structure still ensures the military maintains majority control and human rights violations continue). However, this could have been further advanced by giving voices to the Burmese non-military characters other than Suu Kyi: the students being massacred in the streets, the villagers in rural areas, and the monks who joined the protest. 
As Yeoh’s Suu Kyi says in the film, she dislikes the cult of personality around her, and yet that’s what the movie reinforces by failing to broaden the depiction of the struggle. At the same time, it also in some ways diminishes her strength by tieing her identity so strongly to her family. At a couple points in the film people mention a lack of experience before coming to Burma, saying she was just an “Oxford housewife and mother of two”, not mentioning she also had a PhD, extensive academic honours, and had worked at the UN. 
Would I recommend the movie for someone who had only a cursory knowledge of the situation in Burma? Yes. But Do I think it featured a strong woman role model and did justice to Aung San Suu Kyi’s cause? Not as well as it could have.
*Note: In case you’re wondering why I’m using Burma instead of Myanmar, that’s because many pro-democracy groups and activists refuse to recognize the legitimacy of the name Myanmar, which was introduced by the military government. It’s also the name they used in the film.

Jarrah Hodge is the founder of Gender Focus, a Canadian feminist blog. Jarrah also writes for Vancouver Observer and Huffington Post Canada and has been a guest blogger on “feminerd” culture for Bitch Magazine Blogs. Hailing from New Westminster, BC, she’s a fan of politics, crafts, boardgames, musical theatre, and brunch.

Indifferent To Suffering, Insensitive To Joy: ‘Network’s’ Dangerous Career Woman

Women In Politics Week: Indifferent To Suffering, Insensitive To Joy: ‘Network’s’ Dangerous Career Woman
By Myrna Waldron
Network DVD Art
For a while, I think people got the impression that I don’t like films if they’re not explicitly feminist. The reality is, most films are not feminist, but it doesn’t necessarily diminish their respective quality – Back to the Future, Casablanca and The Third Man are amongst my favourite films of all time, but I could not describe them as remotely feminist. Amongst that list of favourite films is the 1976 black comedy/satire Network, which is a scarily prescient skewering of the television industry. It won four Academy Awards, three for acting – Best Actress Faye Dunaway, Best Actor Peter Finch (which was awarded posthumously) and Best Supporting Actress Beatrice Straight. The fourth award was for its screenplay penned by Paddy Chayefsky.

The film’s “heroine,” Diana Christensen, played by Faye Dunaway, is very much a product of the 70s. She has directly benefitted from the second wave feminism movement, breaking the glass ceiling and becoming the sole female television executive at UBS, the fictional network depicted in this film. But…she is not a feminist character. Yes, she is strongly written, sexually confident, and an obvious success in her field, but she is also obsessive, emotionless, cynical and dangerous. In short, a ball-breaking career woman. She has achieved much based on the sheer power of her ambitions, but it is clear that her single-minded ambitions are meant to contrast negatively to the more idealistic and grounded outlooks of the male “heroes,” Howard Beale (Peter Finch) and Max Schumacher (William Holden).

Diana is the Vice President of UBS’s programming division, but eventually worms her way into taking Max Schumacher’s job, which was to be in charge of the news division. The news division gets lousy ratings and haemorrhages money, so they make the decision to fire their news anchor, Howard Beale. This instead causes Beale’s mind to snap, and he begins ranting about planning to commit suicide on air (which was based on a real-life event) and how he has “run out of bullshit.” The ratings spike, prompting the obsessive Diana to seize on the newscast and turn it into a combination variety show and talk show. The integrity of the news and the political system that it influences mean nothing to Diana – she is singularly obsessed with getting ratings and making money for UBS.

Diana Christensen
In her work to get better ratings for the network, she offers a deal to Laureen Hobbs, a leader of the Communist Party, to get video footage of a radical leftist terrorist group known as the Ecumenical Liberation Army (a parody of the terrorist group which kidnapped Patty Hearst). Both women are deeply cynical and sarcastic, and introduce themselves to each other as what they are stereotyped to be: “Hi, I’m Diana Christensen, a racist lackey of the imperialist ruling circles.” “I’m Laureen Hobbs, a bad-ass commie nigger.” (Hobbs is African-American) “Sounds like the basis of a firm friendship.” Diana does not care at all about the political ramifications of allowing the Communist Party an entire hour of weekly propaganda, or of glorifying the violent tactics of domestic terrorists. She even openly encourages Hobbs to put whatever content she likes in the show just so she can get the terrorists’ crime footage. Meanwhile, she has added several other kitschy segments to The Howard Beale Show, including a psychic who predicts the week’s news every Friday.

This same psychic tells Diana that she will be having an emotional affair with a craggy middle-aged gentleman. She interprets this man to be Max Schumacher, with whom she starts an affair. She knows that he has been married for 25 years and has children, and doesn’t care at all, she, in fact, was the one who initially approached him. Her cynicism and selfishness extend to her personal life as well. The affair abruptly ends when she steals Schumacher’s job and exploits the mentally ill Beale for ratings. They reconnect after an executive’s funeral – her attraction to Schumacher being the only thing besides television that she shows remote joy in (Schumacher is emotionally obsessed and infatuated with Diana). But even that joy is short lived, for she continually blathers about her job even while having sex.  To go along with how she has elbowed herself in to a social caste normally populated by men, she even describes herself as being sexually masculine: “I can’t tell you how many man have told me what a lousy lay I am. I apparently have a masculine temperament. I arouse quickly, consummate prematurely, and can’t wait to get my clothes back on and get out of that bedroom. I seem to be inept at everything except my work.”

Howard Beale’s Rant
Diana’s tenure as the producer of The Howard Beale show has significant political ramifications. Beale’s famous rant, in which he encourages his audience to scream, “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it any more!” fosters an atmosphere of discontent with the status quo and outrage that their individualism is insidiously being taken away from them. It becomes a catchphrase, and Beale begins making daily rants, and eventually even believes himself as a kind of political prophet with the unique ability to communicate via the television. The angrier the audience gets, the more the ratings increase, and the more Diana likes it. The show eventually becomes the #1 most watched program in America, and Diana unabashedly takes all the credit for its success.

UBS is owned by a media conglomerate called the CCA (Communications Company of America), and the corporate influence of the conglomerate gradually takes over how the network is run. Frank Hackett (Robert Duvall), Diana & Max’s direct supervisor, eventually becomes CEO after the original CEO dies of a heart condition. This marks the end of UBS’s journalistic credibility, for Hackett is a blatant corporate shill. Unfortunately for Beale, he makes an enemy of the CCA when he learns that the conglomerate is to be bought out by Saudi Arabians, and thus goes on a rant about how much of American property and commerce is owned by the Saudis. He demands that his audience send telegrams to the White House demanding that they put a stop to Saudi money taking over American culture. UBS is not a wealthy network, and absolutely depends on this merger to survive. The CEO of CCA, Arthur Jensen (Ned Beatty) demands to see Beale, and goes on a thunderous rant about how there is no such thing as nations or individuals – that money is the only thing that matters, the only reality in the modern world.

He scares Howard Beale into promoting his own viewpoints, which are directly opposite to the previous subjects of Beale’s rants. The ratings begin to fall because the audience resents being told that they are only cogs in a great moneymaking machine, not the worthy individuals Beale originally told them they were. Laureen Hobbs, by this point, has been sucked in too by the temptations of the corporate system, and becomes so obsessed with earning enough money to continue her show she has, instead of being a Communist, become a classical Capitalist. Furious at how Howard Beale’s flagging ratings are damaging her show, she rants to Diana that Beale should be fired. Diana has already been planning to end Beale’s show.

Diana celebrating The Howard Beale Show’s success
Meanwhile, Diana’s cynicism and lack of emotional depth have taken a toll on her relationship with Max Schumacher. She defines their relationship, yet again, in relation to television: “It’s time to reevaluate our relationship, Max. I don’t like the way this script of ours is turning out. It’s turning into a seedy little drama. Middle-aged man leaves wife and family for young heartless woman, goes to pot.” Instead, Max turns the tables on her. Noting that she, unlike him, has grown up only knowing the artificiality of television, he realizes that she is completely unable to form or articulate genuine emotion. That television has destroyed her, destroyed Laureen Hobbs, and will destroy him too if he continues to have a relationship with her. He tells her that she is “…Indifferent to suffering, insensitive to joy. All of life is reduced to the common rubble of banality.” The man who left his wife of 25 years is apparently morally above a young woman who, by his own admission, is not to blame for the artificiality of her emotions. Instead, Diana’s single-minded ambition damns her.

Losing Max seems to spark a final unforgivable act of cynicism – Diana completely disregards the right to human life and orders Howard Beale’s assassination. Since Beale is now espousing the moral and political beliefs of Mr. Jensen, Jensen wants the show to continue, but the UBS executives are unable to ignore or forgive Beale’s flagging ratings. Instead of risking the wrath of CCA by firing Beale or allowing him to retire, they hire the Ecumenical Liberation Army to shoot him to death onscreen. Money is the only reality. The cynical, emotionless career woman says, “I don’t see that we have any options. Let’s kill the son of a bitch.” They can then dredge up one last ratings spike out of Beale. The footage of Beale being shot to death is broadcast over and over, next to other newscasts and commercials – in the end, even the murder of a mentally ill man is as meaningless as everything else when it comes to television.

Diana Christensen is a tremendously complicated character. It is hard to hate her, but the audience is meant to be repelled by the sheer scope of her ambition and obsession. It is quite revealing that Laureen Hobbs, the other major female character in the story, becomes just as cynical and hypocritical as Diana and abandons everything else for the sake of the mighty rating. Is it true that the generations that have grown up only knowing a world with television have become emotionally stunted? Does Chayefsky think all ambitious career women are as single-minded and emotionally/sexually stunted as Diana, or is she just a mere satirical exaggeration? What is apparent is how eerily this movie predicted the future – a fourth major television network that abandons all pretence of delivering objective news, instead relying on stunt footage, pundits, propaganda, cheap ratings ploys and answers to a dangerously powerful media conglomerate? Sounds familiar. Diana is not remotely a feminist character, but her creation has definitely been influenced by the second wave feminist movement. One thing, however, is clear from Network’s script: Beware the ambitious career woman.

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

Women in Politics Week: “I Don’t Take Orders from You:” Female Military Authority as Represented by Admiral Helena Cain in Battlestar Galactica

First off, the TV series Battlestar Galactica just plain rules. It’s exciting, dramatic, beautifully shot, has a racially diverse cast, and places many women in positions of power. Let’s take a minute to consider the fact that the benevolent commander of the military protecting the human race from extinction is portrayed by a Mexican American (Commander William Adama/Edward James Olmos), and the President of the Colonies is a woman (Laura Roslin). Bravo! My favorite aspect of the show, though, is the way it tackles complex ethical dilemmas. Issues of race (the Cylons as stand-ins for racial Others), women’s issues (rape, abortion, breast cancer), philosophical/scientific issues (religious extremism, mysticism, whether or not some species “deserve to survive,” what makes one “human,” evolution), and post-colonial issues (the Cylons as stand-ins for an oppressed race that genocidally revolts against its oppressors).
One of the complex ethical dilemmas the show took on was the implied question, “What would’ve happened to the surviving human race if they hadn’t decided to find Earth? What if they’d chosen a path of vengeance instead?” This idea is explored in the Season 2 episodes “Pegasus” and the two-part “Resurrection Ship” as well as in the feature-length film Battlestar Galactica: Razor. These episodes and companion film follow the path of the Battlestar Pegasus and its actions following the Cylon attack that obliterates the Colonies. Though the “what if” question is ostensibly the premise of this arc, in reality, they become a scathing, anti-feminist critique of women with military authority.
Meet Admiral Helena Cain, commanding officer of the Pegasus.
It’s important to note that in the original series, Commander Cain was portrayed by a man whom Adama outranked and had a tendency to be insubordinate. In the reboot, Admiral Cain is a lesbian who outranks Adama and is a very strict interpreter of military law. Therefore, we must view the changes made to the character as deliberate.
Throughout the Pegasus arc, we learn that, when the chips are down, Cain develops a propensity for brutality. After the Cylon attack, Cain gives a speech to her crew with the poignant line, “War is our imperative, so we will fight.” She sees revenge-based guerrilla warfare against the Cylons as the only path for the surviving members of humanity, and she will brook no insubordination, no questioning of her authority, and no hints of mutiny. In one of the most shocking acts in the entire series, Cain disarms her good friend and XO, Jurgen Belzen, before shooting him for refusing to follow an order, which ends up costing the lives of a significant portion of the crew. 
Not only that, but the Pegasus encounters a civilian fleet that Cain orders her soldiers strip of any useful resources. This includes their FTL drives, which allow them to travel at faster than light speed, as well as any potentially valuable passengers who can be drafted to work aboard the Pegasus. When it’s all said and done, Cain leaves 15 civilian ships helpless and adrift in space after killing 10 family members who resisted her passenger transport order. Where Adama is a commander who values each and every human life, frequently risking the lives of the many to save a scant handful of his people, Cain takes a hard-line approach, valuing her mission of Cylon destruction over individual human losses. In a way, she is a caricature of military masculinity, overcompensating for being a woman by allowing no compassion to enter her decision-making. Her sense of authority is so tyrannically absolute that she becomes inhuman, ruthless, and the villain of the arc.
The most striking display of Cain’s brutality is the way she deals with Gina Inviere, her lover who is exposed as a Cylon (model 6). The Cain/Inviere relationship is the only lesbian romance shown or developed in the entire series (despite the fact that some of us believe Starbuck would’ve been a lot happier had she come out of the closet). I’d even go so far as to say that portraying Cain as a lesbian is yet another example of her hyper-masculinization. She’s trying so hard to shun her femininity and embody masculinity that she even likes to sleep with women, which is an exceedingly problematic depiction of lesbianism. 
When Inviere’s status as a Cylon spy is discovered, Cain gives yet another of the series most chilling commands, “Interrogate our Cylon prisoner. Find out everything it knows, and since it’s so adept at mimicking human feeling, I’m assuming that its software is vulnerable to them as well, so pain, degradation, fear, shame. I want you to really test its limits. Be as creative as you feel the need to be.” Inviere is cruelly and mercilessly beaten, starved, and forced to lay in her own waste and filth, but worst of all, she is raped repeatedly. In an act that encourages the excessive, brute side of masculinity, Cain has allowed her crewmembers to line up and take turns gang raping Inviere. Even the crewmembers of Galactica who despise Cylons are appalled to learn this.
Cain’s treatment of Inviere is not that of a commander dealing with an enemy soldier and spy. Cain is punishing Inviere for betrayal as only an ex-lover and scorned woman can.
Certainly, Cain has a legitimate hatred of the Cylons, and her pursuit and harassment of them was initiated before she learned of Inviere’s betrayal. However, Cain’s death scene poignantly recontextualizes her actions and motivations. Baltar allows Inviere to escape custody, giving her a gun. Of course, she sneaks into Cain’s quarters to take revenge on her tormentor. The exchange between the women is revealing, as Inviere holds a gun to the defenseless but still defiant Cain.
When Inviere tells Cain, “You’re not my type,” the camera flashes to Cain briefly before we hear the shot that kills her, and the look on her face is one of terrible anguish. This moment of pain and weakness makes the viewer question whether all her choices after learning of Inviere’s betrayal are those of an overly emotional woman whose heart has been broken, causing her to behave recklessly. She is, in effect, lashing out at the Cylons because one of their agents preyed upon her frailty as a woman in love, and the brutality with which she executes these attacks strives to bury that weakness. This reading, along with the reading of Cain as overcompensating for her femaleness by being excessively masculine in her military command, form a paradox. The show asserts that lesbian military officers are simultaneously too masculine and too feminine. 
The show presents Roslin’s form of authority as more in-line with feminine capabilities. Roslin, as President of the Colonies, is a very maternal role. She is trying to ensure all of her people/her children survive. After the Cylon attack, it is her words of reason that turn Adama from the path of vengeance toward the search for Earth. Though she is dying of breast cancer (a very female-targeted disease), she sacrifices every last bit of comfort to save the human race, martyring herself. She often defers to Adama’s military command, and she very rarely resorts to violence as she finds it morally repugnant. As a fellow woman, though, Roslin recognizes the grave threat Cain poses to the fleet and for the continuation of the human race. Roslin reacts like a cornered mother, insisting that Cain’s assassination is the only solution. These two examples of female authority cannot co-exist. The series asserts that Roslin’s brand of power is strong and righteous while Cain should be put down like a rabid, dangerous animal that can’t be controlled.
The legacy of Cain is another theme upon which the show meditates. In Razor, Admiral Cain’s mentorship of Kendra Shaw is a foil for Bill Adama and Starbuck’s mentor relationship. Cain exclusively mentors young, attractive women (first Shaw then Starbuck), subtly positioning her as something of a sexual predator. Shaw and Starbuck are both their commanding officers’ favorites; they’re both fiercely loyal, both of them are frequently insubordinate and, naturally, dislike each other. When both commanders are given similar raw material with endless potential in these young officers, what happens? Cain turns Shaw into a cold civilian murderer and drug addict whose loyalty resembles that of a dog rather than that of an intelligent, independent woman. On the other hand, Adama’s firm, but understanding, hand shapes Starbuck into an amazing pilot, brilliant tactician, and a leader whose persistence leads her people to Earth. Shaw is only allowed redemption with her selfless death under the command of Bill and Apollo Adama. 
Cain’s “razor” philosophy insists that in order to survive, we must put aside our human delicacies and fragility in place of strength and decisiveness: “Sometimes we have to do things that we never thought we were capable of…setting aside your fear, setting aside your hesitation and even your revulsion, every natural inhibition that, during battle, can mean the difference between life and death. When you can become this [shows knife blade] for as long as you have to be, then you’re a razor. This war is forcing us all to become razors because if we don’t, we don’t survive, and then we don’t have the luxury of becoming simply human again.” This is very much a PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) survivor coping mechanism. Survival becomes the only goal, and emotions, weakness, and empathy become liabilities. Adama, on the other hand, insists on a full life with honor, dignity, companionship, and compassion. These distinctly human traits, he believes, set his people apart from the Cylons, and survival doesn’t mean anything without the preservation of these qualities. Though some lip service is paid to the notions that Cain’s command decisions and her philosophy weren’t technically wrong and that the fleet was safer with her in charge, the show paints (and majority of viewers see) her as one of the most evil characters ever represented on Battlestar Galactica.
Perhaps the most damning foil used to compare Cain’s command to that of Adama is their treatment of their Cylon prisoners. When Inviere is exposed as a Cylon in CIC, she kills people, but when she turns her gun to Cain, Inviere hesitates and clearly does not want to kill her lover, though it is her duty as a soldier. Eventually, though, she kills Cain, and because the horrors inflicted on her are so unimaginable, Inviere wishes to permanently die outside the range of a resurrection ship. Cain’s unspeakable torture of Inviere has confirmed every fear, every bigotry, and every hatred Cylons have for humans. Yes, Adama’s relations with Cylons are, at times, rocky, but the Sharon/Athena model on-board Galactica during the Pegasus arc is treated humanely, her half-human/half-Cylon child is brought to term, her expertise and wisdom consulted, and her information is valued until she is no longer a prisoner, but a crewmember. This collaboration, this peace, this commingling and hybridization of the human and Cylon races is the true key to survival. If Cain continued her command of the fleet, that fleet, along with the entire human race, would have perished.
Though Cain is a charismatic figure who viewers love to hate, I’m troubled by how thoroughly irredeemable her character is. She embodies every fear and stereotype popularly held about women in power, i.e. that they’ll try to be men, that they’ll be too weak and womanish to make rational decisions, that those decisions will come from a place of heightened emotions, and that, ultimately, they’ll harm those they were charged with safeguarding. The sparseness of queer character representations on the series is also troubling, and to have the lesbian admiral be such a “butch stone cold bitch” makes me question the series’ true progressiveness with regards to women in power, especially queer women in power. The series succeeds on many levels, and I applaud them for tackling complex moral issues. I also applaud them for depicting the highest ranking military officer alive as a strong lesbian. How much richness and complexity, though, would have been added to Cain’s story if she’d been portrayed with more compassion, her choices less black and white, her struggles and reactions more defensible? How much more interesting would the Pegasus arc have been if Adama and Roslin still chose to assassinate Cain despite her representation as a flawed woman trying to do what was best? Hell, what if Cain had lived, and the Adama/Roslin regime had been toppled? What if Cain and Adama truly had to work together in a long-term, meaningful way? In the words of Bill Adama, “I’d like to sell tickets to that dance.” 
Amanda Rodriguez is an environmental activist living in Asheville, North Carolina. She holds a BA from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio and an MFA in fiction writing from Queens University in Charlotte, NC. She writes all about food and drinking games on her blog Booze and Baking. Fun fact: while living in Kyoto, Japan, her house was attacked by monkeys.

Women in Politics Week: “I Don’t Take Orders from You”: Female Military Authority as Represented by Admiral Helena Cain in Battlestar Galactica

First off, the TV series Battlestar Galactica just plain rules. It’s exciting, dramatic, beautifully shot, has a racially diverse cast, and places many women in positions of power. Let’s take a minute to consider the fact that the benevolent commander of the military protecting the human race from extinction is portrayed by a Mexican American (Commander William Adama/Edward James Olmos), and the President of the Colonies is a woman (Laura Roslin). Bravo! My favorite aspect of the show, though, is the way it tackles complex ethical dilemmas. Issues of race (the Cylons as stand-ins for racial Others), women’s issues (rape, abortion, breast cancer), philosophical/scientific issues (religious extremism, mysticism, whether or not some species “deserve to survive,” what makes one “human,” evolution), and post-colonial issues (the Cylons as stand-ins for an oppressed race that genocidally revolts against its oppressors).
One of the complex ethical dilemmas the show took on was the implied question, “What would’ve happened to the surviving human race if they hadn’t decided to find Earth? What if they’d chosen a path of vengeance instead?” This idea is explored in the Season 2 episodes “Pegasus” and the two-part “Resurrection Ship” as well as in the feature-length film Battlestar Galactica: Razor. These episodes and companion film follow the path of the Battlestar Pegasus and its actions following the Cylon attack that obliterates the Colonies. Though the “what if” question is ostensibly the premise of this arc, in reality, they become a scathing, anti-feminist critique of women with military authority.
Meet Admiral Helena Cain, commanding officer of the Pegasus.
It’s important to note that in the original series, Commander Cain was portrayed by a man whom Adama outranked and had a tendency to be insubordinate. In the reboot, Admiral Cain is a lesbian who outranks Adama and is a very strict interpreter of military law. Therefore, we must view the changes made to the character as deliberate.
Throughout the Pegasus arc, we learn that, when the chips are down, Cain develops a propensity for brutality. After the Cylon attack, Cain gives a speech to her crew with the poignant line, “War is our imperative, so we will fight.” She sees revenge-based guerrilla warfare against the Cylons as the only path for the surviving members of humanity, and she will brook no insubordination, no questioning of her authority, and no hints of mutiny. In one of the most shocking acts in the entire series, Cain disarms her good friend and XO, Jurgen Belzen, before shooting him for refusing to follow an order, which ends up costing the lives of a significant portion of the crew. 
Not only that, but the Pegasus encounters a civilian fleet that Cain orders her soldiers strip of any useful resources. This includes their FTL drives, which allow them to travel at faster than light speed, as well as any potentially valuable passengers who can be drafted to work aboard the Pegasus. When it’s all said and done, Cain leaves 15 civilian ships helpless and adrift in space after killing 10 family members who resisted her passenger transport order. Where Adama is a commander who values each and every human life, frequently risking the lives of the many to save a scant handful of his people, Cain takes a hard-line approach, valuing her mission of Cylon destruction over individual human losses. In a way, she is a caricature of military masculinity, overcompensating for being a woman by allowing no compassion to enter her decision-making. Her sense of authority is so tyrannically absolute that she becomes inhuman, ruthless, and the villain of the arc.
The most striking display of Cain’s brutality is the way she deals with Gina Inviere, her lover who is exposed as a Cylon (model 6). The Cain/Inviere relationship is the only lesbian romance shown or developed in the entire series (despite the fact that some of us believe Starbuck would’ve been a lot happier had she come out of the closet). I’d even go so far as to say that portraying Cain as a lesbian is yet another example of her hyper-masculinization. She’s trying so hard to shun her femininity and embody masculinity that she even likes to sleep with women, which is an exceedingly problematic depiction of lesbianism. 
When Inviere’s status as a Cylon spy is discovered, Cain gives yet another of the series most chilling commands, “Interrogate our Cylon prisoner. Find out everything it knows, and since it’s so adept at mimicking human feeling, I’m assuming that its software is vulnerable to them as well, so pain, degradation, fear, shame. I want you to really test its limits. Be as creative as you feel the need to be.” Inviere is cruelly and mercilessly beaten, starved, and forced to lay in her own waste and filth, but worst of all, she is raped repeatedly. In an act that encourages the excessive, brute side of masculinity, Cain has allowed her crewmembers to line up and take turns gang raping Inviere. Even the crewmembers of Galactica who despise Cylons are appalled to learn this.
Cain’s treatment of Inviere is not that of a commander dealing with an enemy soldier and spy. Cain is punishing Inviere for betrayal as only an ex-lover and scorned woman can.
Certainly, Cain has a legitimate hatred of the Cylons, and her pursuit and harassment of them was initiated before she learned of Inviere’s betrayal. However, Cain’s death scene poignantly recontextualizes her actions and motivations. Baltar allows Inviere to escape custody, giving her a gun. Of course, she sneaks into Cain’s quarters to take revenge on her tormentor. The exchange between the women is revealing, as Inviere holds a gun to the defenseless but still defiant Cain.
When Inviere tells Cain, “You’re not my type,” the camera flashes to Cain briefly before we hear the shot that kills her, and the look on her face is one of terrible anguish. This moment of pain and weakness makes the viewer question whether all her choices after learning of Inviere’s betrayal are those of an overly emotional woman whose heart has been broken, causing her to behave recklessly. She is, in effect, lashing out at the Cylons because one of their agents preyed upon her frailty as a woman in love, and the brutality with which she executes these attacks strives to bury that weakness. This reading, along with the reading of Cain as overcompensating for her femaleness by being excessively masculine in her military command, form a paradox. The show asserts that lesbian military officers are simultaneously too masculine and too feminine. 
The show presents Roslin’s form of authority as more in-line with feminine capabilities. Roslin, as President of the Colonies, is a very maternal role. She is trying to ensure all of her people/her children survive. After the Cylon attack, it is her words of reason that turn Adama from the path of vengeance toward the search for Earth. Though she is dying of breast cancer (a very female-targeted disease), she sacrifices every last bit of comfort to save the human race, martyring herself. She often defers to Adama’s military command, and she very rarely resorts to violence as she finds it morally repugnant. As a fellow woman, though, Roslin recognizes the grave threat Cain poses to the fleet and for the continuation of the human race. Roslin reacts like a cornered mother, insisting that Cain’s assassination is the only solution. These two examples of female authority cannot co-exist. The series asserts that Roslin’s brand of power is strong and righteous while Cain should be put down like a rabid, dangerous animal that can’t be controlled.
The legacy of Cain is another theme upon which the show meditates. In Razor, Admiral Cain’s mentorship of Kendra Shaw is a foil for Bill Adama and Starbuck’s mentor relationship. Cain exclusively mentors young, attractive women (first Shaw then Starbuck), subtly positioning her as something of a sexual predator. Shaw and Starbuck are both their commanding officers’ favorites; they’re both fiercely loyal, both of them are frequently insubordinate and, naturally, dislike each other. When both commanders are given similar raw material with endless potential in these young officers, what happens? Cain turns Shaw into a cold civilian murderer and drug addict whose loyalty resembles that of a dog rather than that of an intelligent, independent woman. On the other hand, Adama’s firm, but understanding, hand shapes Starbuck into an amazing pilot, brilliant tactician, and a leader whose persistence leads her people to Earth. Shaw is only allowed redemption with her selfless death under the command of Bill and Apollo Adama. 
Cain’s “razor” philosophy insists that in order to survive, we must put aside our human delicacies and fragility in place of strength and decisiveness: “Sometimes we have to do things that we never thought we were capable of…setting aside your fear, setting aside your hesitation and even your revulsion, every natural inhibition that, during battle, can mean the difference between life and death. When you can become this [shows knife blade] for as long as you have to be, then you’re a razor. This war is forcing us all to become razors because if we don’t, we don’t survive, and then we don’t have the luxury of becoming simply human again.” This is very much a PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) survivor coping mechanism. Survival becomes the only goal, and emotions, weakness, and empathy become liabilities. Adama, on the other hand, insists on a full life with honor, dignity, companionship, and compassion. These distinctly human traits, he believes, set his people apart from the Cylons, and survival doesn’t mean anything without the preservation of these qualities. Though some lip service is paid to the notions that Cain’s command decisions and her philosophy weren’t technically wrong and that the fleet was safer with her in charge, the show paints (and majority of viewers see) her as one of the most evil characters ever represented on Battlestar Galactica.
Perhaps the most damning foil used to compare Cain’s command to that of Adama is their treatment of their Cylon prisoners. When Inviere is exposed as a Cylon in CIC, she kills people, but when she turns her gun to Cain, Inviere hesitates and clearly does not want to kill her lover, though it is her duty as a soldier. Eventually, though, she kills Cain, and because the horrors inflicted on her are so unimaginable, Inviere wishes to permanently die outside the range of a resurrection ship. Cain’s unspeakable torture of Inviere has confirmed every fear, every bigotry, and every hatred Cylons have for humans. Yes, Adama’s relations with Cylons are, at times, rocky, but the Sharon/Athena model on-board Galactica during the Pegasus arc is treated humanely, her half-human/half-Cylon child is brought to term, her expertise and wisdom consulted, and her information is valued until she is no longer a prisoner, but a crewmember. This collaboration, this peace, this commingling and hybridization of the human and Cylon races is the true key to survival. If Cain continued her command of the fleet, that fleet, along with the entire human race, would have perished.
Though Cain is a charismatic figure who viewers love to hate, I’m troubled by how thoroughly irredeemable her character is. She embodies every fear and stereotype popularly held about women in power, i.e. that they’ll try to be men, that they’ll be too weak and womanish to make rational decisions, that those decisions will come from a place of heightened emotions, and that, ultimately, they’ll harm those they were charged with safeguarding. The sparseness of queer character representations on the series is also troubling, and to have the lesbian admiral be such a “butch stone cold bitch” makes me question the series’ true progressiveness with regards to women in power, especially queer women in power. The series succeeds on many levels, and I applaud them for tackling complex moral issues. I also applaud them for depicting the highest ranking military officer alive as a strong lesbian. How much richness and complexity, though, would have been added to Cain’s story if she’d been portrayed with more compassion, her choices less black and white, her struggles and reactions more defensible? How much more interesting would the Pegasus arc have been if Adama and Roslin still chose to assassinate Cain despite her representation as a flawed woman trying to do what was best? Hell, what if Cain had lived, and the Adama/Roslin regime had been toppled? What if Cain and Adama truly had to work together in a long-term, meaningful way? In the words of Bill Adama, “I’d like to sell tickets to that dance.” 
Amanda Rodriguez is an environmental activist living in Asheville, North Carolina. She holds a BA from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio and an MFA in fiction writing from Queens University in Charlotte, NC. She writes all about food and drinking games on her blog Booze and Baking. Fun fact: while living in Kyoto, Japan, her house was attacked by monkeys.

Women in Politics Week: With a Complex Black Female Protagonist Created by a Black Female Showrunner, I’m Rooting for ‘Scandal’

This post by Megan Kearns previously appeared at Bitch Flicks on April 17, 2012.

Kerry Washington as Olivia Pope in Scandal

I love Grey’s Anatomy. Is it melodramatic? Absolutely. But its dramatic storylines, sharp dialogue and diverse cast have hooked me from the very first episode. So when I discovered writer, producer, showrunner Shonda Rhimes created Scandal, a political thriller TV series revolving around a woman of color, I knew I had to watch.

Kerry Washington (a feminist in real life…huzzah!) plays Olivia Pope, an assertive attorney who’s a “crisis management expert,” inspired by former George H.W. Bush administration press aide Judy Smith (who also happens to be a producer of the show). Olivia runs a small organization of lawyers who fix scandals and clean up messes like murder charges and infidelity. With a subtle and nuanced performance, Washington is definitely the best part of the series.
What’s so interesting (and fucking sad) is that Scandal is the only prime-time TV show on right now centering around an African American woman. And it’s the first network show with a black female lead in 30 years (that is horrifying). I’ve often heard Washington is a fantastic actor and she was great in the heartbreaking For Colored Girls. Here she commands the screen with confidence and poise. Olivia is an intelligent, successful and empowered woman. Others look up to her, revere her and even fear her shrewd insights and relentlessness to finish a job. She’s demanding, requiring her staff to pull all-nighters and enforcing rules like no crying in the office and not answering “I don’t know” to a question she asks. Powerful politicians turn to her for advice. She negotiates deals on her terms. While new employee Quinn (Katie Lowes) idolizes her, Olivia is far from a paragon of perfection. She’s vulnerable with a messy and complicated love life. She’s flawed, not always likeable (although I personally love her!) and uses Machiavellian tactics to complete a job. But this mélange makes her all the more interesting.
Washington was recently on The Melissa Harris-Perry Show (one of my absolute favorite feminist icons EVER!!!). She talked about inclusivity and how she and Harris-Perry, as two women of color on TV, are “expanding the idea of who ‘We the People’ is.” She also discussed playing a complex female character on-screen:
“…When I read this script, I was so blown away by this woman who in one area of her life, in her professional life, she’s brilliant and sophisticated and in power. And then in her personal life she’s vulnerable and torn and confused. And I thought this is an incredible challenge for any actor. But we also don’t get to do that often — as women in this business, as people of color in this business — to have all of that complexity to explore.”
And she’s right. We too often don’t see complex women, especially women of color, on-screen.
I loved the political intrigue and the focus on a single, accomplished, career-driven woman. And of course how could I not be delighted that Henry Ian Cusick (aka dreamy Desmond from LOST) has found a new series. I was thrilled that the show opens from Quinn’s perspective, taking a job with Olivia because of her reverence for her stellar reputation. I also loved that within the first 7 minutes, a character derided a potential client because he was an anti-choice, anti-gay Republican. While many people assume the media suffers from a liberal bias, too few shows actually discuss abortion or LGBTQ issues. 
While most of it is good, some of the dialogue felt a bit staged or forced. I cringed when Olivia body polices and chastises new employee Quinn for displaying too much cleavage and when Abby (Darby Stanchfield), one of Olivia’s employees, gleefully calls a female murder victim a whore…and drops the whore word a few more times in the next episode too. While there are several female characters (none of whom are really fleshed out yet beyond Olivia), most of the time they’re interacting with men. Although Olivia does have conversations with a young woman who claims is having an affair with the president (Olivia’s former boss) and with the wife of a Supreme Court nominee. No strong female friendships emerge yet. But we’re only 2 episodes into the series. Female friendships comprise the cores of Rhimes’ other shows, Grey’s Anatomy and Private Practice. So I’m hopeful that we’ll see more female interaction as the series progresses.
Much like its complicated protagonist, the series isn’t perfect yet. But it’s got potential. I’m rooting for it because we can never have too many sharp political dramas. And we can never have too many female leads, especially with women of color. 
Scandal is a big deal. Not only do we have a woman of color protagonist, we have a series written and created by a woman of color. With Grey’s Anatomy, Private Practice and Scandal, Rhimes belongs “in an elite group of TV show runners who have multiple series on the air at the same time.” In each of Rhimes’ television shows, she puts women at the forefront. While she has held open casting calls for all ethnicities and has African American, Latina, Asian American and white women in her shows, she’s never had a series revolve around a woman of color. Until now.
In an Essence interview, Kerry Washington said she felt “lucky” to be a woman of color in Hollywood right now:
“I think it’s a really special time to be a woman of color in this business. The landscape of who has the power is changing. We are in more influential positions and are able to have a say in the stories that are told. I feel very lucky to be in the business now…”
But The Grio’s Veronica Miller asserts that it’s hard to have faith in “Hollywood’s relationship with black actresses:”
“It will be easier when black actresses become more visible in roles across the spectrum, (think fantasy hits like Harry Potter, or romantic dramas like The Notebook) and not just ones that call for an African-American female.”
Racialicious’ Kendra James points out the pressure TV shows like Scandalwith black leads face:
“It’s risky for a network that depends on millions of viewers for advertising revenue to cast a lead that the majority of viewers (read: white people) may not relate to. While a show like Pan Am (fondly known as Carefree White Girls Explore the Third World) can fail to take off without consequence, it feels, at times, as if the fate of every black actor and actress on television rides on the success or failure of one show each season.”
Here at Bitch Flicks, we talk a lot about the need for more women in film and TV, in front of and behind the camera. Women comprise only 15% of TV writers and 41%-43% of TV roles are female. But we also desperately need more women of color. 
In a time when Trayvon Martin was shot for being a young black man wearing a hoodie…when racist Hunger Games fans can’t empathize with a black character in the film adaptation…when accomplished and ridiculously talented black female actors like Viola Davis have a hard time finding roles…when black female actors must play either maids or drug addicts or sassy best friends…when female actors of color get sidelined from the cover of Vanity Fair — our society tells people of color over and over and over again implicitly and explicitly that their bodies and their lives don’t matter.
It’s time to change that. It’s time for our media to stop revolving around white men’s stories and reflect the diversity of our world.

Women in Politics Week: Meryl Streep and Michelle Williams

Of the Best Actress nominations at the Oscars this year, two stand apart from the rest. Not because of the skill of the actresses, but because they depict real-life figures. Through these portrayals much can be learned about the ways women are represented on screen: The Iron Lady starring Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher, and My Week with Marilyn with Michelle Williams playing Marilyn Monroe.
Characterisations in fiction can always be dismissed with a flippant “it’s only a story,” remark. However, both of these depictions come with the burden of hours of footage and innumerable documentary evidence to inform our perception of how “believable” and accurate the portrayals are. We can directly compare scenes from these films with original footage, and clearly see how both actresses must have studied relentlessly for their roles. Nevertheless, while the intention may have been to throw light onto the motivations and private psyches of these icons, the films have in fact revealed how far there is to go before female characters on screen are reflective of what women are really like.
Margaret Thatcher became the first (and so far, only) female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.  One of the most controversial politicians of the twentieth century, she was loathed by much of the country when she was eventually ousted from her position by her own party. She is now 86 years old and suffers from Alzheimer’s.
Marilyn Monroe remains the greatest female film icon 50 years since her death at the age of 36. During her career she walked out on her contract with the most powerful studio in Hollywood to form her own production company in a bid to be taken seriously as an actress in an unprecedented move that foreshadowed the downfall of the studio system.
Meryl Streep and Margaret Thatcher
In The Iron Lady we are introduced to Baroness Thatcher as she is today – frail, widowed and in the grip of dementia. For the first 20 minutes of the film, her vulnerable position is made clear as she holds conversations with her long-deceased husband, and her care-worn daughter attempts to help her with simple daily tasks. The ravages of her devastating illness present a character so feeble and subjugated that it is impossible to feel anything but pity for the predicament she is in. From this starting point of total empathy, we are then invited to look back over her life in a series of flashbacks.
The ferocity of the woman’s ambition is tempered with reminders of her weakened state, as the film intersperses present day scenes of awkward dinner parties and domestic banality, between expositional recreations of famous public moments. Most fascinatingly, once the role of Thatcher has been assumed by Meryl Streep, her husband Denis, played with almost farcical humour by Jim Broadbent, is always shown at the age he was when he died; it is her memory of her dead husband that appears. His presence serves both as a reminder that it is the memories of an infirm woman we are seeing, and to emphasise her dependency on him (symbolically when she is being interviewed outside Downing St after having won the Election, Denis is shown in the background, standing on the doorstep of Number 10). 
Most troublingly however, is that so little time is spent showing the woman’s character. The well-known facts are retold economically – grocer’s daughter decides she will enter politics, bucking class and gender stereotypes, etc. Yet even her decision to run for Leader of the Opposition is a decision she is coerced and then fashioned into (by senior male colleagues). The time spent with her in private spaces is entirely set during the present time when she is deeply unwell, and is so heartrendingly sentimental that it lacks any insight into the complex sides of her personality.
At times during her tenure, Margaret Thatcher was despised by many, and revered by others, and it is the reasons for this that hold most interest. Yet even some of the most crucial and controversial points in her career (miners’ strikes, poll tax riots) are glossed over in montage footage. Her regrets and conflicts of conscience are briefly alluded to in confused nightmares during the present day, with no depiction of their effect on her at the time they were occurring. What is truly fascinating about a woman such as Margaret Thatcher, or any controversial political figure, is what the motivations were behind the controversies: how did she handle being so despised; what was her logic behind the audacious policies she initiated; what were those decisions were based on; how did the consequences of her decisions make her feel? The answers to these questions may not endear her to an audience, but they are vital to developing an understanding of her, and to giving a rounded portrait of the woman dubbed “The Iron Lady.” Central characters do not need to be likeable after all, but they should be believable.
Meryl Streep’s astonishing performance recreates with expertise Thatcher’s most famous public moments, her mannerisms, and speech. However, this interpretation does not deepen our understanding of the woman who led the UK into war with the Falklands, and remains the country’s longest serving Prime Minister to date.
By choosing to focus on the elderly Thatcher, The Iron Lady sanitises her by using domesticity. Her strength is simplified into stubbornness and her forthright opinions and brutally impersonal policies are diluted by the bantering affection she shares with her dead husband. The writer Abi Morgan has stated how it is the loss of power that she was most interested to depict, but as a viewer, it seems an opportunity has been missed.  Time and again women are depicted in ill health, tackling menial domestic chores, mourning loved ones, and being powerless. Margaret Thatcher was a truly fearless and defiant female character, uncompromisingly ambitious and divisive. It is an insight into the challenging aspects of her personality that this film had the potential to show. However, it seems there is no film language to portray these facets of a female character.  Strength, intelligence, charisma are denoted in relation to male counterparts, and it is only through the prism of her relationships with men that Thatcher is depicted – most obviously through her connection to her dead husband.
Michelle Williams as Marilyn Monroe
My Week with Marilyn, based on the bestselling book of the same name, recounts the experiences of “gofer” Colin Clark (the book’s author) during the filming of The Prince and The Showgirl. There is much to suggest that Colin Clark and Marilyn Monroe never even spoke, let alone ended up sharing a bed, and it is widely believed the book is entirely fictional, written along with many others to cash-in on Monroe’s legacy. However, regardless of the veracity of the book, it is interesting to look at the way the filmmakers have chosen to portray Monroe.
There is much anticipation built up in the opening scenes as excitement increases with the prospect of Marilyn Monroe arriving in England. She was the biggest movie star in the world at this time, and The Prince and The Showgirl was the first film to be made by her production company that she set up in defiance of the type-casting she received in Hollywood. As a naïve and star-struck young man, Colin is desperate to be involved with the production, and manages to secure a junior position as a gofer on the film.
The hoopla surrounding her arrival is depicted with startling accuracy when compared with the original footage, and Michelle Williams delivers a trademark “Monroe-ism” with flirtatious delight when asked if it is true that she sleeps in nothing but Chanel No 5: “As I am in England let’s say that I sleep in nothing but Yardley’s Lavender” she declares. It may be that a casual viewer would not notice that the portrayal of Marilyn Monroe is undermined from this very first sequence: however, the question is posed to her by Toby Jones, playing Arthur Jacobs, Monroe’s publicity man. The implication is that, far from coming up with her witticism spontaneously, she has been fed a line. Throughout her career, many who worked with Monroe remarked on her natural intelligence, comedic timing and incisive wit, and yet this cynical scene immediately suggests that is not the case.
As Colin finds himself indispensable to Marilyn Monroe during the course of the film’s shoot (cue to suspend disbelief) the pair take off around some of the UK’s beautiful countryside and historic sites. In the library of Windsor Castle, a wide-eyed Marilyn gasps, “Gee, I wish I could read this many books!” Such astonishingly naïve a line, it literally draws snorts of amusement at the woman’s ignorance, and is followed by, “Isn’t he the guy who painted the lady with the funny smile?” when presented with a Da Vinci etching. Yet Marilyn Monroe’s study of literature throughout her lifetime – she took up night-school classes at the beginning of her career instead of attending Hollywood parties – as well as her passion for renaissance art, are well documented in biographies. So the decision to disregard these facts, and to choose instead to exaggerate the “dumb blonde” image is no accident. No mention is even made of the fact that on this film she was a Producer, and therefore Laurence Olivier’s boss: this and their conflicting approaches to acting were reasons why their relationship on set was so fractured.
Marilyn Monroe
Although devastatingly insecure about her talent and notoriously late on set Marilyn Monroe was no victim – especially at this point in her career. Known to moments of rage, and fiercely passionate about her craft, the depiction of her as a weeping child-woman too frail to articulate her emotions is to undermine the complexity of an actress who has continued to captivate audiences five decades after her passing. That she would find solace in the arms of any young man that found himself captivated by her, is to assume not only her complete disregard for the new husband for whom she converted to Judaism to wed, but serves to perpetuate myths about her sexual promiscuity.
When looking at the characterisations of Marilyn Monroe and Margaret Thatcher in My Week with Marilyn and The Iron Lady it is crucial to remember that the way they have been portrayed is not by accident. Nor are these the only ways in which they could have been depicted, and neither should they be considered exact or entirely true. These characterisations have been constructed and depict women stripped of their complexity, strength, intelligence, wit, and dynamism: the very things that made them so successful and iconic. This inevitably raises questions about why.
Consistently the call comes for more interesting and diverse female characters in film, yet too often that means showing women who have been victimised and exploited. Even when historic figures have demonstrated extraordinary courage, making remarkable achievements in their lives, they are diminished when characterised on film. It is not because stories of amazing women do not exist, but the perspective their tales are told from. Perceptions of women as reactive and submissive stereotypes will remain in place when even the most extraordinary females are reduced to clichés, and it is up to producers, directors and writers to be fearless enough to show women as active participants in their own lives to ensure this is changed.  

Gabriella Apicella is a feminist writer and tutor living in London, England. She has a degree in Film and Media from Birkbeck College, University of London, is on the board of Script Development organisation Euroscript, and in 2010 co-founded the UnderWire Festival that aims to recognise the raw filmmaking talent of women. Her writing features women in the central roles, and she has been commissioned to write short films, experimental theatre and prose for independent directors and artists. 

Women in Politics Week: ‘Election’: Female Power and the Failure of Desperate Masculinity

“I just think people are made uncomfortable by ambitious women.”

– Tom Perrotta, author of Election, the book that inspired the film

The 1999 film Election features Tracy Flick (Reese Witherspoon), a power-hungry young woman who will stop at nothing to get what she wants and Jim McAllister (Matthew Broderick), an emasculated male high school teacher who loses everything trying to keep Flick out of power.
She wins. He loses. But he doesn’t realize it.
Election–which was nominated for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe and won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Film–is a film that has been immortalized for its depiction of Tracy Flick, a high school junior who, after building a flourishing “career” in academics and extra-curricular activities, is running for Student Government President of George Washington Carver High School.
Tracy Flick (Reese Witherspoon) running for Student Government President
At the beginning of the film, Flick and McAllister are narrating their own stories with pride. She is well-aware of her accomplishments, and he believes his position as a history and civics teacher is fulfilling and that he serves as an inspiration to his students. He thinks his is a position of power.
Jim McAllister (Matthew Broderick), Teacher of the Year
As their stories intertwine, McAllister pauses to let this audience in on some information about Flick.
“Her pussy gets so wet you can’t believe it.” McAllister flashes back to his best friend, Dave Novotny, sharing this detail about Flick. Novotny, who was a math teacher at the high school, had been having an affair with Flick (who at the time was a sophomore).  
Almost immediately, Flick begins telling her side of the story. “Our relationship was built on mutual respect and admiration,” she says in her confident, chipper and stern voice. He talked to her like she was an adult, and she reciprocated. She points out that she didn’t have a father growing up, and “you might assume I was psychologically looking for a father figure, but I wasn’t.” She goes on to say that he was strong and made her feel protected, which clearly shows that perhaps her self-analysis wasn’t fully realized.
That said, she is the one who ends the relationship. Novotny sends her a homemade love-letter booklet, and she and her mother turn it in to the principal. (He’d “gotten mushy” and acted like a baby, she later tells McAllister.)
“We’re in love,” pleads Novotny, sobbing to the principal. He is fired, his wife kicks him out and he’s forced to move home and live with his parents. Typically, this type of story line ends with the young woman feeling victimized and being ostracized at school; however, Flick’s involvement with him is kept secret, and she never acts like a victim.
These plots sound problematic, obviously, but it’s important to note that in this dark comedy, none of the characters is wholly likable or sympathetic.
These themes of threatened masculinity that permeate the film are not, as it might seem, criticisms of feminism. Instead, the emasculation of McAllister (and Novotny) is portrayed as their own failing, which makes them incapable of fully functioning and succeeding. Their desperate plight for masculinity and power–at work and in the bedroom–ultimately undoes them.
Flick knows the answers, although McAllister doesn’t want to hear them
Flick and McAllister’s stories continue, as the tension between their narratives grows. “Now that I have more life experience,” Flick says, “the more I feel sorry for McAllister.” He’s in the “same little room, in the same stupid clothes… and year after year after his students go to big colleges, big cities… make loads of money. He’s got to be jealous.”
“Like my mom says,” adds Flick, “the weak are always trying to sabotage the strong.”
She then mentions that she’s an only child of a single mother, and that her mom is really devoted to her and wants her to do all the things she couldn’t. She constantly writes to famous women to ask how they got where they are, and for advice for her daughter.
(While this sounds perfectly lovely and like an exception to the constant portrayal of strong women/female protagonists with absent mothers, Flick’s mother is imperfect, and is obviously pushing her daughter into the life she wishes she had had.)
McAllister becomes more and more obsessed with keeping Flick away from the presidency (he’s the advisor who she’d most closely work with) as he sees her thirst and push for the leadership position. While one may be tempted to think his obsession is tied to some kind of revenge for Novotny’s life being ruined, that doesn’t appear to be the case. McAllister asserts that Novotny was in the wrong. Instead, McAllister’s disdain for Flick is rooted in something deeper, something irrational.
Her power–sexual, academic and political–is threatening to him.
He begins a downward spiral of trying to take her down. He recruits a popular young man to run against Flick. In his personal life, he and his wife are having trouble conceiving (most reviews note that he is unable to impregnate his wife, which is an interesting conclusion, considering his infertility is never deemed the culprit, but this assumption is part of the emasculation), and he becomes enamored with Novotny’s ex wife, Linda (McAllister only seems to be stereotypically masculine in her home–mowing the lawn, doing household projects, fixing the drain, etc.). They have sex once, and instead of meeting him at a hotel after work like they plan, she tells Diane McAllister (her friend and his wife) that they’d had sex. He’s kicked out of the house, and continues down the spiral, waiting all night in his car at Linda’s house, where he urinates in the yard (sadly attempting to mark his territory?) the next morning. His right eye, which had been stung by a bee, is swollen shut and he’s an absolute mess. 
McAllister falls apart
His desperate grabs for power–sexually, politically and masculinity–are failures.
McAllister’s small beat-up car, his failed sexual exploits (even watching porn he is inactive and submissive), his dual attempts at control of and utter intimidation by Flick and his desire for affirmation are all indicative of some kind of masculine failure. His discomfort with female power sends his desperate need for control and some kind of stereotypical masculinity that is out of his reach and outdated.  
Other symbols that point to McAllister’s failure are his swollen eye (which can be symbolic of the antichrist in Christian and Islamic scripture), his choice of Pepsi (after Flick points out that Coca-Cola is always the no. 1 cola brand), his continued association with garbage from the beginning of the film to the end and his tiny basement apartment where he ends up after trying–and failing–to rig the election in Paul’s favor.
McAllister doesn’t see himself as a failure, though. His upbeat narration at the end of the film (after he has been fired from his teaching job and goes to New York City, where he’s working as a docent at the American Museum of Natural History) shows that he didn’t quite accept or understand the gravity of his actions. 
As the film cuts to his narration at the end, the image is a neanderthal penis, which pans out to a display at the museum where he works. When he’s introducing his new girlfriend, they are looking at a mirror image of two nude neanderthal figures. This image is indicative of his primal urges of masculinity that have served him so poorly and are so out of date.
Flick wins at the end. While the audience sees her disappointment at Georgetown University (she is still lonely, and has a hard time finding others like her), she’s successful. McAllister sees her in Washington D.C. getting in a limo with a Nebraska senator. While he seems to assume she’s sleeping her way to the top (even though her affair with Novotny didn’t help or hurt her), she appears to be in a professional capacity and secure in her career. She looks fulfilled.
So while we don’t have warm feelings about Flick (her tirades and poster-ripping aren’t character strengths, but they’re realistic), her dedicated hard work–lonely and alienating as it might be–takes her where she wants to be. Her mother and the years of letters of advice from powerful women helped pave her way.
When McAllister sees her, he thinks about her “getting up early to pursue her stupid dreams–I feel sorry for her.” His anger rises, and he thinks, “Who the fuck does she think she is?” before throwing his fast food drink at the limo.
She’s Tracy Flick, that’s who the fuck she thinks she is. And she won.
In a 2009 interview with Tom Perrotta (the author of Election, which was the basis for the screenplay) about the “evolution” of Tracy Flick, he says:
“What I was responding to with Tracy was new: a generation of hard-charging women, the daughters of first-generation feminists and unapologetic achievers. This was the late 80s and early 90s, and they were different than the girls I had grown up with, more willing to compete. The only other cultural reference points for women like that then were movie stars and entertainers. People like Madonna. Who was it going to be in politics? Golda? Indira? Thatcher? By default, there are few female political touchstones.” 
The 2012 election ushered in a record number of women in both the Senate and House of Representatives. There is movement, but the McAllister-like “traditional America” (as pundits mourning the loss of white male America call it) is holding strong. The House GOP recently released its list of committee chairs, all of whom are white men. 
This desperate masculinity can still keep pushing, and like McAllister, sadly try to mark its territory, but the Tracy Flicks will win. 
The very last scene of the film is McAllister giving a museum tour to a group of small schoolchildren. He asks a question, and the only hand raised is a young girl–she shoots her arm up in the air with pride and confidence, and he’s caught off guard, wanting anyone else to answer (just like he does with Flick at the beginning of the film). He may try to keep denying strong females and trying to reduce their power, but as Flick proved, that just won’t work.
Face of determination
Meanwhile, Flick “hardly ever thought about Mr. McAllister… it’s almost like he never existed in the first place.”
While Tracy Flick perhaps isn’t the best role model for young women (see: Leslie Knope), she is not the villain. McAllister, instead, in his desperate grab for control over these powerful young women, is. He just can’t see that through his privilege.

—

Leigh Kolb is a composition, literature and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri.