A Feminist Look at The Women of ‘Arrested Development’

Written by Lady T. 

The fourth season of Arrested Development is in production, and fans are blueing themselves in delight. Every time I turn around, entertainment news is buzzing with more information about the show’s upcoming revival. Right after we fans calm down over our initial excitement at seeing Jason Bateman’s tweet of the first set photos, we hear more good news from David Cross as he hints at a longer season than originally planned.

It’s a good time to be an Arrested Development fan. I pulled out my season 1 DVDs the other day and watched the first two discs, and suddenly felt inspired to write about a topic that I’ve put on the back burner for too long: the women of the Bluth-Funke clan.
Arrested Development has three main female characters, outnumbered 2 to 1 by the main male characters, but they each lend their unique comic touch to the show and help make the Bluth family the wonderfully dysfunctional family they are.
The first main female character is the matriarch of the Bluth family, Lucille Bluth, who is probably the worst human being on the program.
Lucille Bluth (Jessica Walter) and the wink that makes her son uncomfortable
Of all the dysfunctional, vain, shallow, spoiled members of the Bluth family, Lucille is the closest to being pure evil. Despite showing a glimpse of humanity here and there, she is ruthless, cruel, and enjoys playing favorites with her children. She constantly relies on Michael to get her out of any scrape the family gets into, mocks GOB and Lindsay and purposely reinforces their biggest insecurities, and clings to Buster to his own detriment. She’s a proud alcoholic and a racist – in fact, the only time she ever shows affection for her son GOB is when he makes a crack about “horny immigrants.” She’s mean and proud of it.
Classic line: “If that’s a veiled criticism of me, I won’t hear it, and I won’t respond to it.”
The feminist case for Lucille: I’ve seen too many family sitcoms where the mother and wife is portrayed as the most logical, sensitive, caring person, the glue holding the group together – endlessly patient except for the rare times when she’s not, the person who takes responsibility while the irresponsible man-children get to run around and have all the fun. Seeing Lucille reject that responsibility and use her influence for evil is so refreshing, and watching Jessica Walter tear into that role is a real treat. I rarely see an actress given the opportunity to enjoy playing an evil character to the extent that Walter does.
Lucille’s bad influence can be seen in her children, including her only daughter, Lindsay Funke.
Lindsay Funke (Portia de Rossi) in her infamous Slut shirt
Of the Bluth children, Lindsay is the clear third favorite of her mother’s, slightly preferable to GOB, but below Michael and far below Buster. Lucille’s constant negative comments about Lindsay’s weight and appearance have left her insecure and determined to be a better person than her mother, but she doesn’t always succeed. Even though Lindsay is more conscious about social issues than her parents are, she’s also the biggest hypocrite in the family next to Michael. She fights for causes that she doesn’t quite understand, protesting against leather while still eating meat, fighting against circumcision and annoying the Jewish Defense League, and refusing to be objectified for her looks while feeling insulted that prison inmates don’t sexually harass her.
Classic line: “You know, we’re not the only ones destroying trees. What about beavers? You call yourself an environmentalist, why don’t you go club a few beavers?”
The feminist case for Lindsay: Lindsay is probably the only character on the show that would think to call herself a feminist, though she’d probably get the definition wrong and contradict herself several times while standing up for feminist beliefs. When there are very few feminist characters on television to begin with, Lindsay’s clueless activism could be interpreted as problematic, but the show is clear that Lindsay’s hypocrisy and shallowness are the problem, not the feminist/environmentalist ideals themselves. The joke is on her, not on her beliefs. Lindsay is also frequently put in the role of criticizing Michael’s hypocrisy, showing that she has some intelligence even underneath the shallowness, making her a more well-rounded character.
Like her mother, Lindsay is often neglectful of her own daughter, Maeby Funke.

Maeby is confused, and not impressed.

Maeby has a complicated relationship with her mother. While Lindsay often seeks Lucille’s approval only to get smacked down and criticized, Maeby tries to get any kind of attention (mostly negative) from her mother only to be ignored. In fact, Maeby is often overlooked and ignored by most of the members of the Bluth-Funke family – except for her cousin George Michael, who’s in love with her. This neglect leaves Maeby free to do whatever she wants, whether it’s skipping school, breaking into offices to steal evidence for her grandfather, or bluffing her way into the position of movie executive while she’s still in high school.

Classic line: “Marry me!”
The feminist case for Maeby: She might be the most underappreciated character on the show (or she was, until all of the “Call Me Maeby” song parodies came out), but I’ve always enjoyed the way Maeby combines cleverness and ignorance. She has almost no math skills or understanding of numbers, thinking that six twenty-dollar bills add up to $200, but she’s a master at manipulation. For two seasons, she manages to convince an entire movie studio that she’s an adult, and when her real age is eventually exposed, she still manages to work that to her advantage, making a made-for-TV movie about her life and tricking her family members into signing release agreements. When watching her effortlessly trick the people around her, the audience gets the impression that the Bluth family would have solved their problems long ago if anyone had bothered to consult their youngest member.
The Bluth-Funke women make up some of the most entertaining, well-rounded characters on television. They provide just as much laughs as the male characters on Arrested Development and help to dispel the ridiculous claims that “women aren’t funny.” I can’t wait to see what’s next for Lucille, Lindsay, and Maeby in season four. I’m blueing myself in anticipation.

Quote of the Day: Clementine Ford Calls Out Hollywood’s Excusing Of Domestic Abuse

Trigger Warning: Domestic Abuse

Chris Brown scowling

We all know what Chris Brown did. His brutal beating of then-girlfriend Rihanna has made a permanent mark on his career. On Twitter, it’s easy to see how divisive the situation has gotten. Most people are disgusted with Brown, and often tweet taunts to him about his violent temper. His devoted fans, known as “Team Breezy,” blame Rihanna for starting the altercation, and even worse, claim that it would be worth enduring physical assault in order to be Brown’s girlfriend. Brown was unrepentant and still has an explosive temper. And yet he won Grammys, and was allowed to perform twice at this year’s ceremony. It’s obvious that, in Hollywood, domestic abuse isn’t that big a deal. Chris Brown’s career continued, and even flourished after the incident. And other domestic abusers continue to get work in Hollywood too. Mel Gibson. Michael Fassbender. Gary Oldman. Tommy Lee. Josh Brolin. I bet you didn’t even know some of these men are abusers, and these are just a few examples.
This leads to my quote of the day, which has been making the rounds on Tumblr this week. This is excerpted from Clementine Ford’s excellent article, Chris Brown isn’t the only one:

And then there’s Charlie Sheen. Sheen’s sordid history includes shooting Kelly Preston with a .22 calibre pistol, throwing chairs at his then wife Denise Richards, being sued by a UCLA student for allegedly hitting her in the head after she refused to have sex with him, allegedly strangling at least two of his former girlfriends and just generally being a god-awful d-ckmonger. Yet none of that mattered to Chuck Lorre and the other people making squillions of dollars from the long running Two and a Half Men, a televisual fart that didn’t just succeed in offending the tastes of thinking people everywhere but also legitimised Sheen as some kind of raffish japester. In the end, Sheen was fired not because he’s a disgusting human being with a gross history of violence against women but because he had a drug problem and was publicly rude to his boss.

Charlie Sheen’s meltdown didn’t ruin his career. It fueled it. “Winning” and “Tiger Blood” became memes, his solo shows sold out, his Twitter feed got millions of followers within days. And now he’ll be getting another sitcom, Anger Management, which is apparently already breaking ratings records. It begs the question – how much worse can a person get before Hollywood finally gives up on them? Why are we predicting the ruin of Kristen Stewart’s career for a cheating scandal, when Charlie Sheen gets new opportunities after repeatedly committing attempted murder?
Unfortunately, I think we all know the answer.

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.

Actor Elizabeth Banks Advocates for Planned Parenthood and Reproductive Rights

Check out Elizabeth Banks talking about reproductive rights in the video below. In this Obama for America PSA, she shares how Planned Parenthood was her healthcare provider after college when she couldn’t afford health insurance. Banks obtained birth control and says she doesn’t want to and shouldn’t have to discuss her “heavy flow” with her employer or anyone else other than her doctor. And she astutely asserts Planned Parenthood helps working class women obtain affordable healthcare.

While I wish she didn’t downplay abortion (abortion is healthcare, people), it’s fantastic to see a celebrity speaking out to support reproductive rights. Right fucking on, Elizabeth!

Summer Blockbusters Prove Women (Not Surprisingly) Enjoy Laughing and Gawking from Their Own Perspective

The Significance of Bridesmaids and Magic Mike in a Sea of Masculinity

Not this.


In Christopher Hitchens’s infamous essay, “Why Women Aren’t Funny,” he points to a Stanford study that rated men and women’s reactions to cartoons on a “funniness” scale. The study found many similarities between men and women’s responses, but also found some marked differences. The author of the original report said, “Women appeared to have less expectation of a reward, which in this case was the punch line of the cartoon… So when they got to the joke’s punch line, they were more pleased about it.”

When people–especially an entire group of people–have low expectations, and don’t expect “reward” from their entertainment, certainly this is the set-up of a self-fulfilling prophecy, leaving women pegged as unfunny, unable to get jokes, and generally un-stimulated by what the normal audience (men) is stimulated by. Hollywood has been working under that framework for too long, and women have learned to expect that men’s stories are the norm, and women’s stories are just for women.

However, two summer blockbusters–Bridesmaids in 2011 and Magic Mike in 2012–have proven that when women are rewarded, they are indeed pleased. 

While one can easily find wider representation in art house movie theaters, commercial, blockbuster films for the masses have long been entrenched in a sexist Hollywood boys’ club. While these commercial films had flaws, the audience support and huge profits should teach Hollywood a lesson about what women want.


Bridesmaids broke the mold of the R-rated comedy genre by being about women and from a woman’s point of view. While raunchy, raucous comedies about men and men’s stories have been dominating the big screen for years, a modern counterpart with a female protagonist was an anomaly until Bridesmaids. Judd Apatow, baron of bromance, asked Kristen Wiig for script ideas, and she and her writing partner Annie Mumolo created Bridesmaids, and Apatow produced it.

Bridesmaids featured a female protagonist and told a uniquely female story, while still attracting and entertaining male audiences.


Before the film was released, many were pushing going to see it on opening weekend as a “social responsibility,” as box-office activists knew that the numbers had to be there for studio executives to trust that a blockbuster from a woman’s point of view can work and be profitable. And it was. Bridesmaids went on to become Apatow’s highest-grossing film, and the top R-rated female comedy ever.

Within weeks, female comedy was said to have made a “comeback,” and there was already talk of a sequel. Certainly money talks, but audiences–men and women–genuinely found the film hilarious and engaging.

Kristen Wiig co-wrote the film.

Melissa Silverstein, in her piece “Why Bridesmaids Matters,” noted the high stakes of the film. In an interview after the film was a solid success, Silverstein said, when asked what the “promised land” might look like after Bridesmaids’ success, “We have been in the desert for so long that we don’t even know what the promised land looks like. Women have been so beaten down that they are happy with one success and are looking to build from there… If women could figure out how to band together and make more films a success, maybe the promised land will be in view sooner rather than later.”

Female audiences were desperate for this kind of a film. As the campaigns for opening-weekend attendance showed, the expectations weren’t even that high, but the fight for more female comedies lured audiences in. The fact that it was entertaining was a plus.

A little over a year later, (heterosexual) women flocked to their local theaters in droves to see what they hoped would be naked, grinding, gyrating men on the big screen. But wait–just as women aren’t supposed to be funny, they certainly aren’t supposed to flaunt sexual desire (and women aren’t visually stimulated, right?). Wrong again. Steven Soderbergh built it, and women came.

Magic Mike proved the female gaze is alive and well.


The marketing leading up to the film’s release didn’t always focus on drawing in women with butts and thrusts. Up until a few weeks before the release, the trailer was selling a familiar rom-com. Then came the international and red band trailers, which left the internet buzzing with anticipation for the film.

In its first weekend, the film made seven times its production budget, and women-dominated audiences crowded theaters. In what, anecdotally, is a perfect description of the audience, Dodai Stewart wrote at Jezebel that “they were positively giddy about seeing some naked dudes.”

The most common complaint by women about the film is that there was too much story. They wanted more stripping. What was that about what women want?

Many audience members were disappointed that there wasn’t more stripping.

Just as there was a collective outburst of laughter last summer, this summer brought audiences to a collective climax, proving to Hollywood that women aren’t just in the game to watch The Notebook or accompany their boyfriends to see Transformers. Women as audiences have agency and want women’s stories and men’s bodies just as much as men want men’s stories and women’s bodies. For too long, women have had to settle for what men want (or are presumed to want). 

In a recent conversation in The New York Times, critics A.O. Scott and Manohla Dargis bring up the success of the two films. Scott says to Dargis: 
“You note that Magic Mike owes much of its box office potency to its popularity with women. As you suggested in your review it’s a ‘woman’s picture’ in two potentially radical ways. It caters to the kind of visual pleasure — the delight in ogling beautiful bodies in motion — that film theorists have long associated with the male gaze. And it tells what would have been, in an earlier era, the story of a woman, a good-hearted, hard-working striver selling sex appeal, pursuing dreams and looking for true love in difficult circumstances. The stuff of classic melodrama but with a hard-bodied hero in place of the softhearted heroine… Last summer the power of the female audience — and also perhaps the renewed willingness of male moviegoers to seek out stories about women — was demonstrated by the success of Bridesmaids… But something feels different about this year, and it may just be that such movies feel less anomalous, less like out-riders in a male-dominated entertainment universe. The ground may have shifted a little.”

Dargis answers, “Only if there’s enough money… The successes are promising, but I am going to wait until the numbers improve before I celebrate.”

As Dargis notes, we must not celebrate too quickly. Are these films perfect specimens of feminist film? Of course not. Both are entirely heteronormative. Bridesmaids‘ gross-out scenes felt clunky and out of sync (Apatow “retooled” some of Wiig/Mumolo’s script in places), and it didn’t pass the Bechdel test with flying colors.  The first nudity the audience sees in Magic Mike are Olivia Munn’s breasts (this male blogger, giving straight men reasons to go see it, includes all of the female nudity and the fact that it’s told from a man’s perspective). Magic Mike is largely told from a male gaze (men created and filmed it); it’s simply that the female gaze pushed and forced itself into the room. It also relies on the tired story line that women just want to save or fix men.

But for now, the promised land looks a little closer. Perhaps the success of these films is a mirage in the desert, but we can hope that a new age of blockbuster films awaits us–one where women’s stories are told as simply stories, and women’s sexuality is celebrated. For too long, women have been cast aside as objects, as accessories. They are ready to be the subjects. If ticket sales mean anything, which we know they do, Hollywood should take note.

—

Leigh Kolb is an instructor at a community college in rural Missouri. She teaches composition, literature, and journalism courses. While working on her MFA in creative nonfiction writing, Leigh was the editor of a small-town newspaper. In her academic and professional life, she’s always gravitated toward the history and literature of the oppressed, and wants to see their stories properly inserted into our cultural dialogue. She believes that critically analyzing popular media is an important step in opening those conversations. Leigh lives on a small farm with her husband, dogs, cat and flock of chickens.

The Four Mothers of ‘Hanna’

                                                                 Saoirse Ronan as Hanna
This independent film came and went and while a few friends mentioned it, I didn’t seem to read too much about it, a shame because the film offers a lot for a feminist viewers (Bechdel win!) in it’s portrayal of female friendship, Hanna’s coming of age, a female action hero and an interesting Cate Blanchette as the villain. While the story revolves around a familiar plot of revenge and CIA subterfuge, the screenwriter, Seth Lochhead, always intended for the film to feature elements of fairy tales, specifically the darkness that is featured in any morality tale.
Hanna is certainly suited to a Grimm fairytale ambiance; Saoirse Ronan (Hanna) is cursed with special gifts and raised by her vengeance-fueled father in a faraway land. There is a wicked witch (Cate Blanchette) who cursed her with her special abilities and who must be destroyed, Hanna’s father (Eric Bana) must then push his daughter out into the world to fulfill her cursed destiny, during which time Hanna will ultimately grow up and discover the truth about her mother.
Specifically, it was the portrayal of parents, mothers especially, that I found really interesting in the film. There are three mothers portrayed, Hanna’s mother, Hanna’s grandmother, and the mother of Hanna’s friend (Olivia Williams), all of which are shown to be absent mothers to their daughters.
Motherhood is tricky in Hollywood; films about the subject usually involve a lot of tears and yelling and misunderstandings. It’s understandable, this confusion over the topic, since there is no definitive model of what a perfect mother would look like; however, there is usually one characteristic that we do all seem to seek in our perfect mother: her presence. I can name dozens of films that feature the absent mother: perhaps she is dead, or ill, or a drug addict, or even (gasp) the clichéd, power-hungry career woman.
In the case of Hanna, there are other forces that drive mothers and daughters apart; for Hanna’s mother, it’s her unwanted pregnancy and then later, her involvement in a top-secret government program (which is just a more complicated version of the guilty mother trying to give her kid a better life plot). Hanna’s mother ultimately fails in this task though; all her attempts to “make her baby special” (enter fairytale queen asking the witch for some special gifts for her kid) leads to Hanna’s cursed nature (abnormal abilities) and itinerant loneliness. Hanna is so lonely that she follows around a traveling family, amazed at their family life and obviously longing for the things she cannot understand.
Olivia Williams plays the ultimate bohemian mother; her fifteen year-old daughter is given leave to run around Europe on the back of a moped with a few boys she met at the pool. This sentence alone would probably give my mother a heart attack. Williams believes so wholly in the purity of independence that she allows her entitled daughter complete and total rein, even allowing her to engage in activities, which could be harmful. Yet Williams still considers herself to be a maternal protective figure in her choice to take in Hanna, believing her to need some parenting (of which she doesn’t seem to do much). In the end however, despite her daughters friendship with Hanna and her own desire to help her, William’s character closes off their family to Hanna, pushing her away yet again from another mother figure.
Hanna’s grandmother is a different kind of woman, solid and gentle, who longs to know where her granddaughter is and whether she is safe. She is so pure and innocent in her serene motherhood that she allows herself to be killed, rather than reveal any information about her granddaughter’s whereabouts. It’s a powerful scene of what I imagine we think of for ideal motherhood: self-sacrifice and love. 
                                                               Cate Blanchette as Marissa Weigler
Cate Blanchette, who plays the villain, in a way even struck me as a type of mother, which could be read in one of two ways. Either she’s no mother at all—the anti-mother if you will, the woman who is negative mother space in that she considers the progeny which she helped to create to be disposable tools. Or perhaps she is instead the great mother figure who tries so hard to control her children, to mold them into her image that she ultimately destroys them or must be destroyed.
Startlingly, in order for Hanna to thrive, all of her mothers must die, forcing her to experience extreme independence. After which she crosses over into her own womanhood, freed from the four women whose influence has controlled her life.
The intended morality of this dark fairy tale was not that mothers should be killed, however the intersection of independence, self-discovery and loneliness was pivotal for Hanna to grow up and discover her self.
This is only one facet of the film though; the film almost reads like a backpackers love song to Europe, exploring the little known and “off the track” places in much of Southern Europe. As a bonus, look for Tom Hollander (of the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy) as a brilliantly creepy, Eurotrash thugs, all whilst wearing absurdly small shorts.  

Movie Riffing: A White Man’s World

Last week, there was a RiffTrax live event all across the country. If you’re not familiar with RiffTrax, it’s what some of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 crew do now. If you’re not familiar with MST3K, well, you’re in for a (possibly life-changing) treat.
In all of its iterations – MST3K, the Film Crew, Cinematic Titanic, RiffTrax – the basic premise is the same: comedians watch movies and make fun of them. It’s a premise so simple, yet so relentlessly compelling, that it’s no wonder the eight main performers from MST3K are all still involved in the movie-riffing business, nearly 24 years after the show first premiered.
As well as releasing DVDs, video-on-demand downloads, and downloadable audio commentaries, both Cinematic Titanic and RiffTrax regularly perform live shows. In the case of last week’s event, the RiffTrax crew mocked MST3K stalwart (and current #4 movie in the IMDb Bottom 100) Manos: The Hands of Fate with all new jokes from a theater in Nashville, broadcasting the event to movie theaters nationally. It was a terrific good time – and if you missed it, never fear: it’s happening again in October, this time with a movie even dearer to my heart, the gloriously incompetent Birdemic: Shock and Terror– but, as devoted a fan as I am of these guys and their hilarious work, I am troubled by one thing:
They are almost all white dudes.
RiffTrax: funny white men.
Cinematic Titanic is composed of four white men and one white woman. RiffTrax comprises three white men and occasionally guest stars such as “Weird Al” Yankovic, Joel McHale, or Neil Patrick Harris.
Why is the movie-riffing business so white? Why is it so male? (Why is it so straight and cis?)
Of course, MST3K got its start in the late eighties in the Midwest, so that might explain why it was very white and mostly male. But it’s now 2012, and I live in the Bay Area. When I saw the RiffTrax live show at SF Sketchfest in January, the guest riffers were David Cross, Bruce McCulloch, Eugene Mirman, and Paul F. Tompkins. All very funny people whose work I enjoy enormously; all white men.
MST3K / Cinematic Titanic: mostly funny white men.
The broader problem, of course, is that the mainstream comedy world is still profoundly white-male-centric. Women and people of color are still tokenized on The Daily Show. Popular sitcoms like Two and Half Men and The Big Bang Theory are squarely focused on the white male experience, while shows that attempt diversity get it appallinglywrong. Even my beloved Community is a show created by and centering on a white man.
And who are the comedians who get their own basic-cable TV shows? Stephen Colbert. Russell Brand. Louis C.K. Daniel Tosh. W. Kamau Bell (which gives me some hope; are you watching Totally Biased? You should be!). The people who don’t get their own TV shows are Maria Bamford, Kristen Wiig, Margaret Cho (well, she once had a show, but let’s not talk about that).
OH MY GOD GIVE HER A SHOW ALREADY
 Of course, the success of 30 Rock and Parks and Recreation has spawned a number of sitcoms with female protagonists, but there still seems to be an entrenched cultural opposition to most feministcomedy. We feminists tend to put the weight of impossible expectations on any comedy that looks to be even the slightest bit feminist – remember how much of the discourse around Bridesmaids last year was centered on the notion that this movie provided proof positive now-and-forever-amen that women could be funny? Or the phenomenal outpouring of commentary this year on Girls? – and, with every passing internet-comedy twitstorm, it becomes clearer that we need to keep having this immensely frustrating conversation, assuring the wider world that comedy can indeed be both feminist and funny. The self-styled defenders of free speech, who seem to think that critique is the same as censorship, excuse the ugliest and most offensive jokes as fair game. Our best way of combating that is to keep proving that you can fight for justice andbe funny at the same time.
And I think movie riffing could be a very good way of doing this. It’s become a bit of a truism that riffing is at its best when it comes from a place of some genuine affection for the material being mocked, when it’s “funny and clever and occasionally a little more generous … not just too mean-spirited and sour.” MST3K and its successors are great because they’re made by people who love movies. The jokes express a sincere wish for the movie under scrutiny to be good.
In the same way, feminist pop-culture commentary isn’t just about slaying all fun so that we can all be miserable subjects of the fiefdom of Nofunnington. It’s a sincere cry for things to be better, a way of telling humankind: You can be better than this.
MST3K improved my critical analysis of film and TV. Feminist commentary improved my critical analysis of the kyriarchy, the myriad -isms woven throughout our culture. If there was a more overtly feminist-slanted, equally hilarious movie-riffing team, you can bet that I would be their biggest fan.

Guest Post: Can ‘Hope Springs’ Launch a New Era of Smart, Accessible Movies About Women?

Meryl Streep in Hope Springs

Guest post written by Molly McCaffrey originally published at I Will Not Diet. Cross-posted with permission.

If you watch the movie trailer for Hope Springs, you’ll see a lot of comical moments set against the backdrop of some lighthearted happy music…

…including Meryl Streep’s character telling her kids that she and her husband—played by Tommy Lee Jones—got each other a new cable subscription to celebrate their 31st wedding anniversary.
…Streep smiling happily when Jones joins her on the plane to go to “intensive couples therapy.”
…Jones cracking wise about the experience: saying things like “I hope you’re happy” when he boards the plane and “that makes one of us” when their therapist—played with both understated gravity and empathy by Steve Carrell—says he’s happy the two of them are there.
…Streep asking a bookstore clerk for a book called Sex Tips for a Straight Woman by a Gay Man. (A book, by the way, I would like to have.)
…Streep sitting on a toilet eating a banana while reading the aforementioned book (rather than using said banana for its intended purpose).
…Streep laughing bashfully when salty bartender Elizabeth Shue gets a bar full of locals to admit they’re not having sex either. (Shue’s only appearance in the film, I must sadly note.)
…Streep and Jones laughing together over their therapist’s formal way of talking about sex.
…Streep shaking her head in a lighthearted manner at Jones while Jones dances in front of her.
And while all this is happening, the screen reads:
From the director of THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA … comes a comedy about love…and the things we’ll do to get it.
Finally, the trailer closes with Streep and Jones running into the neighbor with whom Jones admitted in therapy he’d like to have a threesome. The woman has just adopted her third Corgie, and the trailer ends with her saying,”Three’s the limit!”
It all feels very light, funny, silly, and—this is important—optimistic, even hopeful, an idea of course reinforced by the title, Hope Springs.
But this trailer is completely misleading because Hope Springs is not a comedy—unless you’re talking about the tradtional Shakesperian definition of a comedy, which assumes that on the way to finding happiness the characters suffer through some incredible tragic experiences.
No, the majority of this movie is more dark than light, more pessimistic than hopeful. In fact, sometimes it’s so dark that it’s hard to watch. (Not The Hurt Locker hard to watch, but still hard to watch.)
This is because Hope Springs is a movie about two people who are desperately unhappy—in marriage and in life. And it is their unhappiness that dominates most of the movie. They certainly spend more time feeling alienated or alone than they do being happy—whether they are together or apart.
And that makes me happy.
It makes me happy because it is so rare that we see a mainstream movie showing average Americans who are desperately unhappy, a condition that sadly affects more of us than it should given how relatively easy most of our lives are.
In most mainstream movies, we are shown something wholly different from these two miserable people … not their polar opposite, but still people who are mostly happy but have a tiny sliver of unhappiness in their life, a sliver which is usually located in their romantic life. As the movie progresses, these mostly happy people, of course, find romance and then all is well in the world.
In other words, most mainstream movies about couples are not at all realistic and not really all that interesting.
But Hope Springs, thankfully, isn’t that simple-minded.
At the beginning of the film, the unbelievably talented Streep and Jones are shown wallowing in the mud puddle of routine and mediocrity. Their lives are horribly mundane—they wake every day at the same time, they eat the same meals and watch the same TV shows, and, most importantly, they spend their time not interacting in the same frustrated fashion.
And some of the clips that look cute and comical in the preview—like when they mention their new cable subscription to their kids at their anniversary dinner—are much darker inside the actual movie, where it seems that absolutely nothing is able to even temporarily lift their suffocating misery. Even on their anniversary, they can’t even look each other in the eye, much less speak to each other, a scene that reads as more tragic than funny when you see it in context.
These tragic occurences continue throughout the movie. From the moment when Streep is packing her suitcase for couples therapy, crying as she thinks about the fact that Jones has said he doesn’t want to join her, to the two different scenes when they each run out of therapy on different occasions after becoming completely overwhelmed by the problems they face as a couple. *SPOILER ALERT* To the brutal scene when they finally try to have sex but ultimately fail, leaving Streep to wonder out loud if Jones is no longer attracted to her because she’s overweight and old. It’s obvious to the viewer that this is not the case, but watching Streep wimper about the baby weight she never lost after her husband stops banging her mid-coitus is utterly heartbreaking. *END OF SPOILER*
These are the kinds of moments that dominate the film, clearly demonstrating that these people are miserable in a way that is not at all happy or light or silly.
But rather is very real.
And the things they talk about in therapy are real too—why they no longer have sex, why they don’t sleep in the same bed, why they play out the same ignore-each-other script every day of their lives, why they never do anything for each other anymore, why their gifts are for the house and not each other, and even more hard-to-talk-about issues like what they fantasize about and whether or not they still masturbate.
The latter discussion made me wish—for a split second—that I wasn’t sitting between my husband and my mother while watching this scene unfold, but ultimately I was so thrilled the film didn’t flinch from the emotional honesty of these uncomfortable moments that I was able to get past the awkwardness of the situation.
I had invited my mother to see the movie with us because I’d had the wrong impression—from the misleading trailer—that it was going to be a well done but cliched and light-hearted rom-com.
But as I said, Hope Springs is far from light entertainment. It’s a movie that makes you think.
It makes you think about what it means to have a healthy relationship and about how you can lose that even with someone you love. It makes you think about how important sex and romance are to a successful relationship. It makes you think about the problems with falling into stereotypical gender roles. And, most importantly, it makes you think about how happiness is more important than being in the wrong relationship.
In that way, Hope Springs feels more like Sex and the City for seniors than a rehash of some of Streep’s other rom-coms—like It’s Complicated and Mamma Mia!—both of which were fun and had some thoughtful interludes, but were still, in the end, just light entertainment.
The woman who wrote the screenplay for Hope Springs—Vanessa Taylor—is new to film but has written for critically-praised television shows such as Game of Thones and Alias, making me wonder if maybe, just maybe, Hope Springs is a sign Hollywood is finally willing to let more serious writers take on comedy, something we’ve seen with only a handful of other screenwriters such as Alexander Payne and Diablo Cody. And if this were to happen even more, it makes me wonder if we could move away from the predominantly vacuous junk that has passed as comedy about women for the past decade—the so-called rom-com—so that we can finally return to our more Shakespearian roots.
At the very least, this movie gives me that hope.

Molly McCaffrey is the author of the short story collection How to Survive Graduate School & Other Disasters, the co-editor of Commutability: Stories about the Journey from Here to There, and the founder of I Will Not Diet, a blog devoted to healthy living and body acceptance. She teaches English and creative writing classes and advises writing majors at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

Reminder: Buffy Theme Week Deadline — Friday at Midnight!

Cast of Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Hi everyone,
This is just a quick reminder to let you know the deadline for receiving pieces for our Buffy theme week is this Friday. Check out our Call for Writers, and see below for guidelines:

–We like most of our pieces to be 1,000 – 2,000 words, preferably with some images and links.

 
–Please send your piece in the text of an email, including links to all images, no later than Friday, August 24th.
 
–Include a 2-3 sentence bio for placement at the end of your piece.

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

Submit away!
 
 
 

Why "It Was Just the Times" Doesn’t Cut It When Challenging Sexism in Older Films

Here’s something I have run up against repeatedly when challenging sexism in older films and media (for the sake of the argument I will just discuss sexism, but this applies to all shapes and sizes of bigotry): 
“It was just the times…” 
To be clear about this “the times” theory: in various old movies, blatant sexism percolate and penetrate. But, when these bigotries are pointed out by a riled-up feminist, many distance themselves from the debate entirely. They don’t argue that there isn’t sexism, but that it is irrelevant because the time period in which the film was produced was sexist and ergo all media resulting from it is exempt from criticism on the basis that it could only be un-sexist if it was “ahead of its time.” As in: it is unfair to call out bigotries in an “old” movie because those bigotries were so ingrained in the culture that no media could escape the influence. 
Firstly, this presumes that sexism exists in the mythical “back then.” It suggests sexism was a problem in “the times” when women were expected to stay home, weren’t considered for the same jobs as men and/or couldn’t vote. Sexism existed when people still thought ridiculing people based on their gender was funny. Or it was when women weren’t paid fairly for their work. It existed before abortion was legal – when politicians still thought they had more of a say over what a woman did with her body than a woman did. Those nasty generalizations and gender-based misbehaviors belong to our grandparents or parents or older siblings: not us. But, if you noticed: Women still don’t get paid as much as men. Our right to bodily autonomy is regularly challenged by politicians who presume to know what’s best for a person’s uterus. People are still singled out and/or demeaned for their gender. This is a feminist blog, so I don’t feel the need to go into detail. But, here’s a list of sexisms that still flourish today: slut-shaming, fat-shaming, cat calls, assault, sexualization, objectification, old boys’ club disassociation (aka employment discrimination), lack of media representation, gendered interpretations, overall debasement, pink&blue aisles and more and more and more.

Sexism isn’t something that is over. And if we look at contemporary media, we see it there as well. Disney movies didn’t stop featuring childish and passive female characters after Roe v. Wade. Romantic comedies didn’t stop perpetuating the notion that women need to be saved from themselves by a man. Women haven’t stopped being portrayed as sexual conquests in action flicks. 

Which ties me into the next point: old film isn’t irrelevant. Some fatalistic viewers may postulate that the media has already been created. Neither the movie nor the culture from which it was created from can be changed at this point, so criticizing sexism is futile. 
But, we can’t appreciate contemporary media without understanding what built up to it. Also, viewers don’t stop watching old films after they’ve circulated a certain number of decades. Media lasts, and continues to be a part of the cultural conscience. In many ways, older films can be more relevant than newer ones. 
Newer movies are timelier. They play a part in the 24-hour-cycle that automatically elevates import. But, that doesn’t mean they ultimately have more influence than older film, they just have more exposure. Stanley Kubrick’s presentation of women – especially in Clockwork Orange – might be worth noting a bit more than Michael Bay’s presentation – say in Transformers. Both exploit women, but Kubrick’s portrayal comes from a respected and canonized director. Michael Bay’s portrayal comes from a director whose notoriety comes from explosion size. 
Another crucial point: critique is not necessarily antagonistic. If anything it’s an expanding of the existing material. Media – like other cultural artifacts – is relative to the culture observing it. Historical context should orient it, but it should not dictate our appreciation of it. And, challenging sexism within it does not devalue it. Instead it can actually make it more worthwhile to talk about. Instead of passively viewing film, we should be active in our consideration. 
Calling out sexism gives us a fuller picture of our history. To better understand ourselves, our culture and the film; we need to analyze and point out the flaws. This is why I enjoy focusing on older films: the movies that have been with us a while, and have influenced contemporary directors. I think they are more pertinent the longer they last. Looking back will always give us a chance to reevaluate how culture in “the times” affects culture in these times. 
—
Erin Fenner grew up in small-town Idaho where she took solace in cult cinema. Her burgeoning feminist ideals didn’t dampen her approach to viewing even the most obviously gender-norm-dependent films, but created another angle of intrigue. She went to the University of Idaho where she grabbed a Journalism degree. There she was a student blogger, radio show producer and self-described feminist activist. Now she lives in Portland, Oregon, and works remotely for the reproductive rights organization Trust Women where she writes about the state of pro-choice-politics for their blog. She also says she is a poet, but refuses to publish, perform or share lest someone offer “constructive” critiques.

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

Stephanie‘s Picks:
Important Nina Simone News by Melissa McEwan via Shakesville
On Marvel, Mandarin, and Marginalization by Marissa Lee via Racebending.com
Jennifer Aniston’s Adventures in Medialand by Hadley Freeman via The Guardian
Megan‘s Picks:
Disney Heroines Take a More Pro-Active Role by LaGina Phillips via Hello Giggles 
How Can Women Gain Influence in Hollywood? by Melissa Silverstein, Martha Coolidge, Martha Lauzen, Brenda Chapman, Gina Prince-Bythewood, Ted Hope, Cathy Schulman and Susan Cartsonis via The New York Times
How Helen Gurley Brown Became a “Militant Feminist” at 65 by Debbie Stoller via Bust Magazine Blog
‘It Was Rape’: A Film We Need to Talk About by Intern Christina via Bust Magazine Blog
The Influence of ‘Parks and Recreation’ by Alyssa Rosenberg via Think Progress 

What have you been reading this week? Tell us in the comments!

Weekly Feminist Film Question: What Are Your Favorite Women-Centered Films About Social Change?

‬Hey film lovers! It’s time for this week’s feminist film question. What are your favorite women-centered films about social change? Here’s what you said:

Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore
American Violet
Anne of Green Gables
Born in Flames
Calendar Girls
Chisholm ’72: Unbought and Unbossed
De Cierta Manera
Der Subjektive Faktor 
Educating Rita
Erin Brockovich
The First Wives Club 
G.I. Jane
Gone with the Wind
The Hunger Games
The Invisible War
Iron Jawed Angels
The Lady
League of Their Own
The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter
Little Women 
Made in Dagenham
Miss Representation
Nine to Five
Norma Rae
North Country
Persepolis
Pray the Devil Back to Hell
The Stoning of Soraya M.
Temple Grandin
Tiger Lily Road
To Kill a Mockingbird 
Vera Drake
Whale Rider
The Whistleblower

Did your fave social change films make the list? Tell us in the comments!
——
Each week we tweet a new question and then post your answers on our site each Friday! To participate, just follow us on Twitter at @BitchFlicks and use the Twitter hashtag ‪#feministfilm.

 

Friends With Kids: When Harry Co-Parented With Sally…

Still from Friends With Kids. [source]

I’ve been excited to see Friends With Kids since Megan Kearns first wrote about it for Bitch Flicks last March. What a cast! A female writer/director! A romcom with a genuinely new and interesting premise!

I finally got the chance to watch Friends With Kids on a long flight this week, and I tremendously enjoyed watching it, but still found myself wanting more.  As Megan expressed in her subsequent review of the film, Friends With Kids falls short of being a “feminist extravaganza” and ultimately isn’t too dissimilar from your standard romantic comedy.  I was constantly reminded of When Harry Met Sally… a film that Friends With Kids echoes not only thematically (testing the limits of men and women in platonic relationships) but also structurally (following its characters over the course of several years of their lives) and tonally (witty comedy striped with serious relationship pathos).

Writer/Director/Producer Jennifer Westfeldt also stars as Julie, whose life seems pretty great even though she’s been unlucky in love (one of the most refreshing things about this movie is how it portrays singledom as Not The End Of The World even for a woman who ultimately does want a committed relationship).  Her best friend is Jason (Adam Scott, as though that guy needed any more crush points), who favors brief dalliances with large-breasted women to actual relationships.  Julie and Jason function as an ersatz couple in their circle of paired-off friends (Maya Rudolph and Chris O’Dowd as the stable and happy partners Leslie and Alex, and Kristen Wiig and Jon Hamm as the more tumultuous pair Missy and Ben). After the rest of the gang starts having children, Jason and Jules surprise everyone by deciding to have a kid together.  They both want children and do not want to wait to find “their people” to do so, especially given the negative effects on romantic relationships they’ve seen having children can bring. As best friends, they have a lifelong love and commitment to each other making them suitable co-parents, without having to sacrifice passion or romance to the demands of child rearing.

My disappointment with Friends With Kids is that it doesn’t really explore the promise of that premise.  Jules and Jason’s child-rearing arrangement works seemingly effortlessly, and the film fails to really express why.  When the movie needs to inject some conflict, Friends With Kids retreats to the well-worn issue of whether a woman and a man can enjoy a truly platonic relationship.  Only when romantic drama is thrown into the mix does the pair struggle to divide their time with and responsibilities to their son, which seems to support the wisdom of Jason and Jules’ original arrangement, but in reality nullifies their alternative parenting scheme by suggesting that close male/female friendships are always a pretense ultimately giving way to romance.

Which means that in the end, Friends With Kids doesn’t have that much to say about alternative family structures, which is terribly disappointing.  Lip service is paid to gay couples raising children, and a few divorced straight couples with kids appear on the sidelines, but their struggles aren’t really explored.  So when our heroes end up as yet another “traditional” family by film’s end, it’s quite the let-down to my feminist hopes for the film.

That said, like with When Harry Met Sally…, my id was tickled to see these two characters find love with each other, even though I still long for a movie that explores a male-female friendship that is genuinely platonic.  Jason and Jules were so believable as best friends (I particularly got a kick out of their go-to conversation starter: making the other person choose between two hypothetical causes of death) and initially so believable as people not attracted to each other (their baby-making sex scene was so hilariously awkward I couldn’t help but laugh out loud even though I was watching it on a personal headset with earphones on a crowded airplane) that I was quite surprised when Friends With Kids took the old-fashioned turns it did.

Friends With Kids is still eminently watchable: smart, funny, and really phenomenally cast and acted (this is a movie where even Megan Fox is well-cast!).  Given that I like watching even bad romantic comedies, it feels unfair and greedy to emphasize my disappointment with what is a really, really good one, just for not being exactly the kind of movie I wanted it to be.

—

Robin Hitchcock is an American writer currently living in Cape Town, South Africa. She would choose death by shark over death by alligator.