Horror Week 2011: The Descent

When I first heard of The Descent, around the time of its 2006 theatrical release, it was described to me as “a movie about a bunch of lesbians who go into a cave and there are monsters.”

As it turns out, the entire six-woman cast of characters is ostensibly straight, if their boy talk in the early character-establishing scenes is anything to go by. I suspect my friend saw an all-female cast in a horror movie and assumed there MUST be lesbianism going on, because what’s a horror movie without sex? Or, for a more sexist explanation, chicks doing something interesting together without male supervision reads lesbian.
[Warning: If you are a group of friends in a movie, and you take a picture like this, at least half of you will be killed.]
Regardless, The Descent IS a movie about a bunch of women who go into a cave and there are monsters. What makes it such a brilliant movie is that you can chop the last three words off that plot description and you still have the makings of a terrific scary movie. It’s almost a full hour before the monsters appear, but that doesn’t mean the horror can’t start before the opening titles. After establishing a group of adventuresome female friends, we’re subject to witness the gruesome auto accident that kills main character Sarah’s husband and child. One year later, the friends have reconvened in the Appalachian mountains in the United States for a caving expedition to help a grief-wracked Sarah get her groove back. Only Juno, the alpha dog in the group (who just happened to have been schtupping Sarah’s husband before he was killed) knows that they are actually venturing into an unexplored cave system. In Juno’s mind, this surprise is an even greater gift to Sarah, who will get the honor of naming the cave system, perhaps after her dead daughter. But after a tunnel collapse blocks off their return path, Juno’s surprise means the group has no map and no one on the surface knows where they are.
Being trapped in an unknown cave with limited resources and no hope of outside rescue is in itself a terrifying situation, and The Descent plays it for all it is worth. A seemingly bottomless chasm must be crossed with only half the cams needed. One caver’s hand is sliced open by a ropeline when she saves her friend from plummeting to her death. Another caver follows the illusion of daylight, falls down a hole, and suffers a compound fracture in her leg. I’m already watching about half of the scenes through a finger screen and demanding that we turn the lights back on.
And then, the monsters come. Humanoid creatures with waxy pale skin, unseeing bleached-out eyes, and a tendency to rip people’s throats out and then chomp on their guts. Because the creature design is so simple, The Descent can afford to show them to us without your typical monster-movie restraint. And because the creatures are blind, we’re forced to endure several close-quarters silent standoffs recalling the T-Rex vs. Jeep scene in Jurassic Park. Only this is an R-rated horror movie, so some of those encounters end in stomach-turning gore.
All of this adds up to a horror movie so over-the-top terrifying I can’t believe I was willing to watch it again to write this review. But the gender implications of The Descent are too rich for me to deny, even though the film is sadly bereft of lesbians.
According to the iron-clad authority of Wikipedia, The Descent was originally conceived with a mixed-gender cast, until director Neil Marshall’s business partner “realized that horror films almost never have all-female casts.” But the female cast of The Descent brings more than novelty. I also don’t ascribe to Marshall’s suggestion that the chief advantage of the all-female cast is more naked emotion in a terrifying situation [“The women discuss how they feel about the situation, which the soldiers in Dog Soldiers [Marshall’s previous horror film] would never have done.”] The women of The Descent actually approach their situation with what is, at least to my American eyes, quite the stiff upper lip.
[Sidebar: Wikipedia also notes that Marshall gave the women different accents “to enable the audience to tell the difference between the women,” which is maybe the most depressing thing I’ve ever read. Who needs to bother with characterization when you have ACCENTS?]
I’m not buying the story that the all-female cast was to grab attention (if that were the case, maybe they would have been lesbians) or to allow for deeper exploration of feelings.  I think the all-female cast of The Descent is designed to clue the audience into a particular subtextual layer to this horror story. Because what’s more terrifying than being trapped in a cave with monsters? Women. Women’s bodies.
While a cave setting evokes female reproductive organs almost inherently, the set design here takes this metaphor to extremes. The women descend into the cave through a slit-shaped gash in the earth, and then must crawl head-first through a narrow passageway into the greater cave system, where the true danger of the monsters await.
The monsters, depicted as the products of evolution motivated only by a primal drive for survival, are the perfect elaboration of this cave-as-womb horror metaphor. And as a cherry on top, they rip the guts out of these women.
Wait, the actual cherry on top is our heroine Sarah emerging Apocalypse Now-style from a pool of blood in the cave gallery that functions as the monsters’ killing fields, the signature image from the film.  And the cherry on top of that cherry is that Sarah fights the only female creature in the film while still wading in the pool of blood and kills her by stabbing her in the face with a phallic bone.
After this menstrual baptism, Sarah shifts from a wounded woman paralyzed by grief into terrifying killing machine, fighting off the creatures so gruesomely it seems almost dangerously inefficient (Eye gouging? Really? They can’t even see!) 
After all this, there’s still time for two more twists that rely on the gender of the cast for maximum effectiveness. [SPOILER ALERT, obviously.] First, we have Sarah in Creature Terminator Mode turn her rage against Juno, the only other human survivor, after discovering Juno’s affair with her late husband, by wounding her and leaving her to die at the hands of the creatures. It’s a moment that doesn’t sit quite right with me, in part because it is almost impossible to imagine a similar situation playing out between two male characters. 
Shortly after this betrayal, Sarah escapes from the caves and is able to return to their parked vehicle. As she takes a moment to collect herself, she sees a bloody Juno in the passenger’s seat. In the American theatrical release, the film ends here, but in the original edit and the DVD Director’s Cut there’s an additional minute of footage where we see that Sarah’s entire escape was a hallucination, and she is still in the cave, with no exit in sight. Sarah then hallucinates her daughter sitting with her in the cave with a lit birthday cake, and looks peaceful and accepting as the camera pulls out to reveal the enormity of the cave and the great number of creatures closing in. I prefer this ending, not only because I’m a sucker for bleak endings.  Throughout the film we’re given suggestions that Sarah’s grief is so great it has become a mental illness, including earlier depictions of hallucinations. And as much as I tire of cinema’s endless fascination with mentally ill women, in this case, it feels like a more honest character arc than the idea that fighting for survival and exacting cruel vengeance could snap her out of her grief haze. 
Whether it was done to cash in on these female tropes, to underscore the metaphors to the female anatomy, or just to grab our attention, the all-female cast undeniably serves in The Descent’s favor. And it sure is a nice treat for us horror-flick loving bitches.  
Robin Hitchcock previously reviewed Michael Clayton for Bitch Flicks. You can read more of her movie reviews at her blog HitchDied and plenty more feminist pop culture analysis at her other blog The Double R Diner.

Horror Week 2011: The Blair Witch Project

The Blair Witch Project (1999)

Viewers might hope that with its unconventional approach, shoestring budget, and status as the first blockbuster powered by Internet buzz, The Blair Witch Project could offer horror fans something they haven’t seen before, specifically in terms of how women are represented. At first, the flick looks promising because it centers on a female lead in a position of authority. While it’s arguable whether The Blair Witch Project’s through-the-viewfinder conceit is actually innovative (cinephiles like to point to the correlations between Blair Witch and Man Bites Dog and Cannibal Holocaust), it’s safe to say that—in 1999, at least—no films with this particular conceit had enjoyed such widespread popularity. The presence of this conceit might account for the film’s success, coming as it did in the watershed era of reality television. Its lo-fi, DYI qualities lend the film a realism that at that time felt new and potentially persuasive. While the ensuing years have brought us further variations on the motif—Cloverfield, Paranormal Activity, and Super 8, among others—it’s also become much easier to see how The Blair Witch Project, for all its putative realism, renders unduly harsh judgments on its female lead.

In case you haven’t seen it, the film is supposedly “found” footage, recovered long after the three filmmakers depicted in the footage disappeared in the Maryland woods. There is little metaphorical space between the framing device (specifically, a shakey title card explaining when the footage was found) and the film-within-a-film. The film-within-the-film is the movie, it is the whole story. We are invited to view the footage as the unvarnished artifacts, the evidence of all that remains of Heather Donahue’s film project. Yet, the footage is edited for pace, laughs, and content with scenes that alternate from video to Hi 8 repeatedly. Directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez attempt to cover their editorial tracks by purposefully leaving in moments showing equipment checks and goofing around. Ideally, this approach would sustain the realism while allowing the filmmakers to craft a watchable film. Problem is, the edits also clearly posit Heather as the one responsible for what happens to herself and her crew. Heather is not blameless, yet for all her blunders, she is no more responsible for the bad turn of events than either of her male cohorts. But the film itself, and possibly its two male directors, want to lay the lion’s share of the blame at her booted feet. Her treatment both in the film and by the film belies a grave discomfort with a woman in charge. (This same discomfort might explain why Heather is pictured without a mouth on the DVD packaging, seen at the top of the post.)
Ostensibly, actress Heather Donahue’s portrayal of student filmmaker Heather Donahue seems positive. She’s no scream queen, scampering topless into the underbrush with breasts a-bob. This character is a product of her time: a self-possessed, driven, and adventurous young woman of the Lilith-Fair generation. The film opens on her, videotaping her preparations for what she knows will be a challenging shoot. Audiences see volumes on local history and wilderness survival among her possessions, and we see her forthrightness when it comes to dealing with the two male members of the crew. She drinks with the guys, and even chokes down some scotch. In the wilderness she casually dismisses both the risk of sexual violence and the appearance of impropriety by joking about her having two men in her tent. In directing Josh and Mike, she is self-assured. Her stern directive to them before they begin filming in earnest is that she “wants to avoid being cheesy” in the documentary. Similarly, in the early scenes, she comes off way more professional than the male crew members.

Her initiative stands in stark contrast with the lackadaisical insouciance of Josh and immature foolishness of Mike. When Josh arrives at her apartment, she dubs him “Mr. Punctuality.” After the three record an interview with a local eccentric, Josh complains (rightly) that the focus was off and blames it on the camera’s having only metric designations. When Heather observes that the lens also has U.S. measurements in brown letters, Josh only mumbles that the white numbers are more obvious. Then Heather states that she thought he used this camera before, and Josh is forced to acknowledge that he’s only used it once before. This moment may seem incidental, but it suggests that Josh may be out of his depth (or at least as out of his depth as Heather). Compared to Mike Williams, though, Josh is an old hand at the movie-making game. It’s made clear at several points that this is Mike’s first filmmaking experience. Mike is shown to be easily rattled and prone to angry confrontations. In particular, his rage over the first time the three become lost is especially irksome because, despite acknowledging that he has no ability to understand a map, he claims that he doesn’t “fully trust” Heather to get them out of the woods. The two males are quick to blame Heather for their situation because they are ultimately uncomfortable with her leadership.

Despite Heather’s capability, the film allows the two male characters to use the cameras to subtly undercut her authority. Josh directs the camera at a clearly agitated Heather as she struggles to find a hidden spot to urinate. He says, “What’s that? Is that the Blair Witch? No, it’s Heather, taking a piss.” When she expresses displeasure at being filmed, he shouts “Just go already!” While it may seem that Heather takes the same sort of liberties with the camera herself, particularly when she films Mike shirtless and makes fun of his “sporadic” chest hair, it’s worth noting that he fires back at the taunting with “You should see my ass.” Heather doesn’t take him up on the offer. Yet later, when Mike himself is holding the camera, he centers it on Heather’s muddy backside and cries, “I see a dirty behind!” Even in the woods it seems that men are still afforded a degree of privacy denied to the female character. While Heather is shown bursting into tears at three or four points in the film, Mike bars her from taping Josh as he sobs under a tree, keeping her at a distance.

It’s not just her cohorts that denigrate Heather; it’s the film itself. The directors include several confrontations that show Josh blaming Heather for their plight, criticizing her enthusiasm and drive. At these points, the film becomes self-conscious in a way that suggests the “hands of the directors” at work, rather than the loose improvisational feel of other scenes. The repeated taunting by Josh shows that he feels she is largely responsible for their situation. At one point, he asks, “You gonna write us a happy ending, Heather?” as if she has scripted all this out. Also, when he screams, “OK, here’s your motivation. You’re lost, you’re angry in the woods, and no one is here to help you. There’s a witch and she keeps leaving shit outside your door. There’s no one here to help you! She left little trinkets, you took one of them, she ran after us. There’s no one here to help you! We walked for 15 hours today, we ended up in the same place! There’s no one here to help you, THAT’S your motivation! THAT’S YOUR MOTIVATION!” like he’s in a method-acting exercise. He places the blame on her and, in response, she bursts into tears.
But the film itself denigrates Heather because she accepts responsibility, almost agreeing with the taunts. The most famous scene in The Blair Witch Project is Heather’s tearful confession into the lens. The substance of this confession is that she is responsible for what’s happening to them, but it’s infuriating that Heather takes responsibility and does so at this point. The confession scene tries to make Heather an Ahab-like figure. On the one hand, her tendency to tape allows the narrative conceit of the film to operate. When events take a turn for the eerie and tense, Heather’s obsession with documenting the experience keeps the cameras rolling and allows us to see the ensuing tumult. On the other hand, it puts her energetic striving for a quality film on trial and coaxes from her a confession for a crime she doesn’t actually commit.
First of all, unless Heather herself is also somehow the Blair Witch, she is not responsible for what’s happened to them. If the witch has caused disruptions in the compass, or somehow made the woods alter its appearance, or through black magic made the woods grow, then this could hardly be the fault of the student filmmaker who stumbled into this situation. What’s more, if we believe that the Blair Witch is responsible (rather than sadistic locals), then what motivation does the witch have for tormenting and disappearing three college students? It seems significant that the nocturnal sounds begin in the dead of night after Josh accidentaly disturbs one of the rock piles while filming in the cemetery. This gaffe horrifies Heather, who gently replaces the rock and plants a kiss on it, saying “You can’t be too careful.” Heather also didn’t kick the map (possibly their only salvation) into the river; Mike did that. Heather’s foibles are no more or less destructive than those of her peers. She’s inexperienced and becomes subject to the hunger and fatigue of the situation. So do her male counterparts. She exhibits poor decision making (not telling Mike about Josh’s severed finger), but it’s no worse than Mike’s decision to kick the map into the creek because he was angry. Yet her confession doesn’t have the feel of a woman taking responsibility for something she shouldn’t. Instead, the scene seems like the despairing of someone who has irrevocably screwed herself. The film wants us to agree that it’s her fault, hers alone.
Alex DeBonis has a PhD in fiction writing and literature from the University of Cincinnati. He currently teaches fiction writing, literature, and journalism in rural West Tennessee. His work has appeared in WordRiot, FictionDaily, eclectic flash, Storyglossia, no touching, and is in the current issue of kill author. He lives with his wife and son in Paris, TN.


Horror Week 2011: Drag Me to Hell

This review, written by Stephanie Rogers, was originally published in June 2009.

Drag Me To Hell. Starring Alison Lohman, Justin Long, Lorna Raver, Dileep Rao, David Paymer, and Adriana Barraza. Written by Sam Raimi and Ivan Raimi. Directed by Sam Raimi.

The honest truth: I loved Drag Me To Hell. Even though I’m not familiar with Sam Raimi’s other cult classic horror films (the Evil Dead saga, etc), I understood, finally, why so many horror fans obsess over him—he’s hilarious. Some reviewers of Drag Me To Hell have rightly questioned Raimi’s depiction of the stereotypes in the film, particularly the gypsy character, an old, unnecessarily disgusting, false teeth-removing, evil woman who curses another woman because, you know, what would a gypsy character be without the famous gypsy curse? (The Angry Black Woman posts an analysis of it here).

But, I ask you, can a film that sacrifices a goat and a kitten really be taking itself so seriously?

Everything that exists in this movie is a stereotype: the skinny blonde who used to be fat and now refuses to eat carbs, the skinny blonde’s self-hatred and rejection of her farm-girl roots, the rich boyfriend who will undoubtedly help her escape it all, his rich and consequently vapid, overbearing parents who want their son to marry a nice upper-class girl, the patriarchal workplace where the skinny blonde gets sent for sandwiches by her male coworkers, the jerk who sells out a coworker in order to get promoted, the brown-skinned psychics who hold hands around a table and chant in an attempt to invoke The Evil Spirit, the gypsy, obviously, and not least importantly, the fucking goat sacrifice.

The point is: it’s hard to play the I-hated-this-movie-because-of-the-blah-blah-“insert offensive stereotype”-game, when the film unapologetically turns everyone into a caricature.

Drag Me To Hell is about a young woman, Christine (played by Alison Lohman), who makes a questionable decision in an effort to get promoted at the bank where she works. She refuses to give a third extension on a woman’s mortgage loan, and in doing so, the woman, Mrs. Sylvia Ganush (played by Lorna Raver), could potentially lose her home. The twist? Christine could’ve given her the extension. But she chose not to. Instead, Christine wanted to prove to her boss that she’s a tough, hard-nosed, business savvy go-getter, and therefore certainly more qualified than her ass-kissing male coworker (who she’s in the process of, ahem, training) to take over the assistant manager position.

Then, as luck would have it, all hell breaks loose.

For the next hour and a half, these women go all testosterone and maniacally kick each other’s asses. This isn’t an Obsessed-type ass-kicking, where Beyonce Knowles beats the crap out of Ali Larter over, gasp, a man! and where all that girl-on-girl action plays like late-night Cinemax porn for all the men in the house. (Read Sady Doyle’s excellent review of it here). No, this is strictly about two women, one old, gross, and dead, the other young, gorgeous, and alive, trying to settle a score. Christine wants to live, dammit! And Mrs. Ganush wants to teach Christine a lesson for betraying her in favor of corporate success!

I vacillated between these two women throughout the movie, hating one and loving the other. After all, Christine merely made a decision to advance her career, a decision that a man in her position wouldn’t have had to face (because he wouldn’t have been expected to prove his lack of “weakness”). If her male coworker had given the mortgage extension, I doubt it would’ve necessarily been seen as a weak move. And even though Christine made a convincing argument to her boss for why the bank could help the woman (demonstrating her business awareness in the process), her boss still desired to see Christine lay the smack-down on Grandma Ganush. I sympathized with her predicament on one hand, and on the other, I found her extremely unlikable and ultimately “weak” for denying the loan. (Check out the review at Feministing for another take on this.)

Mrs. Ganush, though, isn’t your usual villain. She’s a poor grandmother, who fears losing her home. She literally gets down on her knees and begs Christine for the extension. Sure, she hacks snot into a hankie and gratuitously removes her teeth here and there, but hey, she’s a grandma, what’s not to love? Other than, you know, evil.

I love that this movie is about two women who are both arguably unlikeable to the point where you hope they either both win or both die. (The last time I remember feeling that way while watching a movie was probably during some male-driven cop/gangster drama. Donnie Brasco? American Gangster? Goodfellas? Do women even exist in those movies?) Everyone else is a sidekick, including the doe-eyed boyfriend (played by Justin Long), who basically plays the stand-by-your-(wo)man character usually reserved for women in every other movie ever made in the history of movies, give or take, like, three.

But at the same time, one could certainly argue that Christine’s unwillingness to help Mrs. Ganush, which results in Christine spending the next three days of her life desperately trying not to be dragged to hell, plays as a lesson to women: you can’t get ahead, regardless, so just stop trying. (Dana Stevens provides an analysis on Slate regarding this double-edged-sword dilemma that Christina finds herself in.)

Some have also argued that Drag Me To Hell exists in the same vein as the Saw films: it’s nothing but torture porn and obviously antifeminist. Yes, it’s gory, with lots of nasty stuff going in and out of mouths (Freud?), but the villain gets her share, and Christine hardly compares to the traditional heroine of lesser gore-fests: for one, she’s strong, much stronger than the horror-girls who can’t seem to walk without falling down in their miniskirts, and for the most part, she makes life-or-death decisions on her own, growing stronger and more adept as she faces the consequences of those decisions.

Perhaps most importantly, Christine isn’t captured by some sociopathic male serial killer and helplessly tortured in a middle-of-nowhere shed for five days. She trades blows with her attacker, and at one point, in pursuit of Mrs. Ganush, she even states that she’s about to go, “Get some.” (Ha.)

I personally read the film as an attempt to uphold the qualities our society traditionally categorizes as “feminine” characteristics: compassion, understanding, consideration, etc. I’m not suggesting that men don’t also exhibit these qualities, but when they do, they’re often considered weak and unmanly, especially when portrayed on-screen, which is demonstrated quite effectively when Christine confronts her male coworker about his attempts to sabotage her career; he bursts into tears in a deliberately pathetic played-for-laughs diner scene.

But it’s only when Christine rejects these qualities in herself (the sympathetic emotions she initially feels toward Mrs. Ganush), and consciously coaxes herself into adopting hard-nosed, traditionally “masculine” characteristics (which her male boss rewards her for), that she’s ultimately punished—and by another woman, no less. The question remains, though, is she punished for being a domineering corporate bitch, or is she punished for rejecting her initial response to help out? Regardless of the answer, the film makes a direct commentary on the can’t-win plight of women in the workplace, and, newsflash: it still ain’t pretty.

Watch the trailer here.

Horror Week 2011: Hellraiser

Hellraiser (1987)
(This review spoils the WHOLE movie!)

When people talk about classic horror movies, they’re almost always referring to the eighties which contained Nightmare on Elm Street, The Thing, and Child’s Play to name a few. Hellraiser, released in 1987, is no exception. While the movie lacks a lot of the high-tech special effects we’ve grown used to in contemporary cinema, the make-up in Hellraiser is impressively chilling. Although I’d seen the film several times prior (including all its sequels), I still found myself cringing and gagging as Frank emerged from the floorboards as little more than a slimy substance with bones.

As a horror film, Hellrasier is top-notch, as you find yourself wondering what’s going to happen next, worrying endlessly about the characters and freaking out all at once. So, it was definitely interesting to watch the film again but with a new perspective versus simply for pleasure.
When I first set out to write this review, I had been hoping to fixate mostly on Kirsty (played by Ashley Laurence) since she stuck out most in my mind. But having re-watched the film, I realized that Kirsty’s step-mother Julia (played by Clare Higgins) was actually more of a main character than Kirsty was.
Hellraiser introduces us to the Cotton family as Larry, the father, (played by Andrew Robinson) investigates the abandoned home of his brother Frank (played by Sean Chapman). We aren’t given much background information except that they’re probably in New York, since Brooklyn didn’t work out for various, unknown reasons.
As they’re wandering through the house, Julia finds herself in Frank’s old room which has little more than a mattress and some personal effects. She’s flipping through his pictures, which feature him with numerous (and faceless) women in various positions pertaining to S&M. When she eventually finds a clear photograph of him, she steals it. This is the first thing we see in regards to her obsession, and past affair, with Frank.
It seems that Julia prefers the days gone by, as we see in the next scene where she’s completely removed from those around her. There’s a dinner party featuring friends of the family and Kirsty, and Julia seems bored beyond belief. She excuses herself from the table, giving each person a kiss before she leaves except for her husband Larry.
Their lack of sexual chemistry in the film is blatant. They rarely touch each other, hug or kiss one another. There’s an aloofness to their marriage and it’s possible that it’s been years since the two have had sex. In a scene during a storm, Julia attempts to seduce Larry to keep him from investigating a noise from upstairs (Frank).
As they end to their bedroom, and Larry is kissing all over her, Frank emerges from closet with a knife, as if to kill his brother. As Julia is screaming, “No! I couldn’t bear it!” Larry is kissing away as Frank draws closer, who eventually leans over the railing to slice open a dead rat.
While Julia, distraught and frightened, is crying over this, Larry demands to know what her problem is, saying that he doesn’t understand her, before leaving the room.
But Julia’s troubled relationships with men don’t end there. Once Julia has agreed to help Frank (“Like love, only real.” – Frank) she has to pick men up so that Frank can eat them.
Her first victim is a balding, British man at the bar who is less than great. Her nervousness is palatable as they stand in the hall, and Guy A acts overly aggressive. When Julia seems hesitant to kiss him, he demands:

“What’s the matter? It’s what you brought me here for, isn’t it?”
“I suppose so, yes.”
“So what’s your problem? Let’s get on with it.”  And as Julia’s reluctance seems to grow, he growls, “You aren’t going to change your fucking mind, are ya?”  

Naturally, I wasn’t feeling a whole lot of sympathy for him when Frank ate him. And like most newbie serial killers, Julia simply becomes more confident over time. The next guy she brings is somewhat cocky, like the first one, and asks if they’re not going to be disturbed because “he likes to be careful”. This hints that he’s done this sort of thing before, but he doesn’t stand much chance.
This second murder is the most important because right after she kills him, she’s casually wiping the blood from her fingers, whereas before she nearly has a psychotic break. And in the very next scene we see Julia sitting with a glass of wine, in a white blouse, with an intense look on her face. As the camera slowly dollies in, a smirk creeps onto her face – she’s enjoying this.
In her final murder we have this nerdy guy with gigantic glasses. Julia has reached the height of confidence as she leads him upstairs casually. The soon to be victim tells her, “I get lonely sometimes.” Unlike the other two, he has almost no confidence and we all see watch as he pleads with his life, desperate not to die – whereas the other men died fairly quickly.
These interactions are insanely important because the confidence of the men is in contrast with Julia’s confidence. As Julia becomes more secure in herself, her victims became increasingly insecure, and fearful – almost mimicking her earlier state of mind.
The climax of the streak comes when she casually feeds Larry to Frank, doing little more than show him upstairs. I was curious as to know she attempted to use sex to lure him away, but not to bring him to Frank. I suppose one could argue that she has sex with people she doesn’t really know, or people who don’t care about her. This is equally interesting because Julia technically eventually has sex with Larry, but only once Frank has taken his skin for himself.
In the end, Frank accidentally stabs Julia in an attempt to kill Kirsty, but instead of mourning her death, he simply sucks the life out of her. Despite all his sweet nothings, promising her that he’ll always love her and that they’re meant to be together, in the end, he cared so little for her.
Julia is an interesting character because unlike Kirsty – who experienced a mutual loving relationship between both her father and Steven (her love interest) – Julia had no such thing. Instead, Julia experienced rejection from Frank, her main obsession/love interest and killed off all the men who showed any interest in her (Larry and her victims). 

Tatiana Christian is a blogger at Parisian Feline, who writes about sexuality, gender and basically her thoughts on social justice and life. She previously contributed a review of Slumdog Millionaire to Bitch Flicks.

Horror Week 2011: The Sexiness of Slaughter: The Sexualization of Women in Slasher Films

The whores in horror are the signature flesh of the slasher flick.  Women in this genre have long been given the cold shoulder: cold in as much as they are often lacking for clothing.  Often a female character’s dearth of apparel becomes prominent at the pivotal point of slaughter: in cinema, women dress down to be killed. Filmmakers pair scopophilia with the gratuitous gore of killing–leaving viewers to male gaze their way into a media conundrum: When did sexual arousal and brutality towards women pair to become the penultimate money shot?
Doctors Barry Sapolsky and Fred Molitor, in their article “Sex and Violence in Slasher Films” write “Unlike the original horror films, slasher films use graphic violence and sexual titillation to attract audiences.”  This formula has proven to be successful at the box office and keeps these films churning out at a remarkable rate.  The desire to be the next scream siren crossed media paths in the form of the short-lived Vh1 reality show Scream Queens. This reality TV gem promised that:
Over the course of the series’ eight one-hour episodes, those skilled and sexy enough to command the screen survive. Those who don’t will “get the axe” until only one strong, seductive and stellar actress remains, earning the break-out role in “Saw VI” and the title of Scream Queen.

The season 1 winner, Tanedra Howard, won the chance to show audiences just how seductive and stellar she could look while being tortured. 

Cue the Maxim spread.
In a heavily media saturated world, audiences have become overall harder to shock and please.  Sapolsky and Molitor write:
As years passed, young audiences required that gruesome images become more intense and explicit for them to become scared…In 1978, a movie called Halloween not only sold more tickets than any other horror film, it broke all previous box-office records for any type of film made by an independent production company. Hollywood immediately tried to tap into the success of Halloween. Films such as Friday the 13th, Don’t Go In the House, Prom Night, Terror Train, He Knows You’re Alone, and Don’t Answer the Phone were all released in 1980.  These movies, which are some of the first slasher films, were extremely successful. However, with their increasing popularity came strong criticism. Slasher films were condemned for frequently portraying vicious attacks against mostly females and for mixing sex scenes with violent acts.

A prime example of this type of gore porn occurs in Jason Goes to Hell.  In one of many kill scenes, a man and two topless women are shown camping, though frolicking in the woods may be the more appropriate scene description.  While the man and one of the women return to their tent to get it on, lonely naked girl #1 goes and gets herself killed.  Cut to the tent couple where, naturally, they begin having sex.  There is a brief bit about whether or not to use a condom, ending in the decision that this time they can get freaky sans protection.  This, itself, is foreshadowing the fate of these fornicators.  Nudity abounds as Deborah straddles her man, moaning with pleasure and close to orgasm, when, bam, she is sliced from breast to collar bone.    This sneak slaughter attack first arouses and excites with the feel of cheesy porn and then ends with the kill you know is bound to come: a woman cut almost cleanly in half.  What a bummer to the audience’s boner.

Maxim Magazine, known for its portrayal of scantily clad women, picked the following clip as its number one horror movie kill.

This popular kill from Jason X involves scientist Andrea getting her face dunked in liquid nitrogen.  While struggling with Jason, Andrea’s shit (half of what could be a sexy scientist Halloween costume) rides up revealing to the audience the bottom of her full breasts.  While this small glimpse does not equate itself to the arousal of an all-out sex scene, it is intentional.  From costuming to blocking, every aspect of the character’s femininity in this scene was meticulously plotted.  The fact that filmmakers, audiences, and Maxim find a kill scene more enticing if the woman is sexy and almost shirtless speaks to the fact that modern horror films sexualize slaughter.

The Scream franchise, produced by Wes Craven, poked fun at the overarching tropes common in horror films–particularly the fact that women who have sex will die.  Don Summer’s book Horror Movie Freak writes explicitly on the rules of survival in a horror movie.  Making the cut at number 1 is: Don’t have sex.  Sex = death.  This is especially true for women.  Women’s sexuality is often exploited in horror with the knowledge that the bad girl will more than likely die.  It is a throwback to the most popular book ever published, The Bible.  
Within this trope lies a distinctive problem: the pairing of violence and sexuality in a fetishistic binary.  Sapolsky and Molitor write:
Social scientists have expressed concern over the negative effects that slasher films may have on audiences. In particular, exposure to scenes that mix sex and violence is believed to dull males’ emotional reactions to filmed violence, and males are less disturbed by images of extreme violence aimed at women (Linz, Donnerstein & Adams, 1989). These effects on male viewers are said to derive from “classical conditioning”. 

Sapolsky and Molitor rebuff this idea, believing that the pairing of sex and violence does not occur often enough for classical condition to occur.  However, they further state:

The concern over potential negative effects of exposure to slasher films remains. Possibly, depictions of violence directed at women as well as the substantial amount of screen time in which women are shown in terror may reduce male viewers’ anxiety. Lowered anxiety reduces males’ responses to subsequently-viewed violence, including violence directed at women. Accordingly, the desensitizing effects of slasher films may result from a form of “extinction” and not from classical conditioning.”  

It appears that no matter how you slice it, this pairing, on unconscious level, does not leave viewers unaffected.

Slasher films thrive on their gratuitous gore.  Adding sex is a natural way to titillate the audience and bring in viewers hoping to catch a glimpse of their favorite actress’s nipple.  A question that must be asked of this pairing is what comes next?  When it is no longer enough to simply have naked women and gory kills in our films, how will filmmakers reinvent the horror genre?  One thing I know for sure, whenever I’m on a date that is leading to sex, I’m going to be little black dressed to kill.
Cali Loria is a thug and the mother of a King. She tweets as @realcaliloria.  



Horror Week 2011: The Silence of the Lambs

The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

This post by Jeff Vorndam is republished with permission.
The horror movie genre has historically exalted the objectification of women. In slasher movies, teen exploitation flicks, and even seemingly innocuous thrillers, women are cast for the purposes of screaming and disrobing. The antithesis within the horror/thriller genre is the 1991 Academy Award winning film The Silence of the Lambs. Although not thought of as a “women’s movie,” a feminist undercurrent is present in the film through its protagonist, a strong female character who contradicts previous genre stereotypes. Her scenes impart an objection to the objectification of women and depict the difficulty of working in a male-dominated institution. Furthermore, her character’s success in the movie is her own doing; there are no male rescuers or helpers.
Jodie Foster plays Special Agent Clarice Starling, the protagonist of The Silence of the Lambs. Starling is an autonomous woman; her mother died at childbirth, and her father was killed in the line of duty when she was ten. She is intelligent (graduated magna cum laude), skilled at her work, and intrepid. Significantly, the film opens with a shot of Starling running alone in the woods, completing an obstacle course in the type of dark sodden forest where one might expect to find a naked dead body. The viewer’s attention is immediately drawn to Starling, and we already sense that she will be in danger. It is the movie’s triumph that it sets our expectation to see her as a doomed victim, and then subverts it by establishing her as a multi-dimensional person in the following scenes.
Roger Ebert wrote about The Silence of the Lambs, “Never before in a movie have I been made more aware of the subtle sexual pressures placed upon women by men.” Ebert refers to the numerous scenes which, taken collectively, give viewers the uncomfortable knowledge that Starling is constantly subjected to stares, condescension, and harassment. By depicting Starling as an object rather than a person in certain scenes, the audience is transposed with her, and feels her apprehension. The first such scene occurs after she is pulled off the obstacle course to meet her superior. There is no dialogue, just a simple shot of Starling, standing 5 feet 2 inches tall in a blue jogging suit, dwarfed and surrounded in an elevator full of burly men over a foot taller than her. Starling stands out even further as an object because her blue sweat suit contrasts with the loud red outfits that each of the men are wearing. It is a situation that any of us would be nervous in, but Starling shows little trepidation. She copes well with the uneasy feeling of the men looming over her. The movie’s self-conscious attempt to display Starling as an object works, though. As an audience, we do feel trepidation.
The same concept applies to a scene in which Starling is holding a punching bag and must withstand the blows of her larger co-workers. The camera’s vantage point is that of the large man delivering the blows. The angle is shot downward so that Starling appears smaller and more vulnerable. Quickly, the viewer sees her as an object–as her male co-workers do as well. It is uncomfortable to watch Starling get hit, and we realize she is objectified this way all the time.
Starling must unfortunately endure many such difficulties because she works in the male-dominated institution of the FBI. As an attractive woman, Starling receives lascivious looks from nearly every male in the movie. When she and her roommate go jogging in one scene, a group of men jogging the other way turn around to ogle the women’s behinds. Earlier, when Starling is looking for Agent Crawford’s (her boss) office, the men gaze at her as if she were an exotic delicacy. Hannibal Lecter’s psychiatrist Dr. Chilton tries to pick her up initially, “Are you familiar with the Baltimore area? I could show you around.” When she explains she has a job to do, Chilton becomes angry, “Crawford sent you here for your looks–as bait.” Lecter surmises that Crawford fantasizes about Starling and that is why she was selected for the assignment. Even the bespectacled etymologist asks her out. In fact, it is only Lecter who is more interested in getting in her head than her pants.
Starling does not simply accept the oppression of her job. Upon arriving at a small town where one of the murder victims has washed up, Starling and Crawford are waiting in a room full of local deputies to see the dead body. The deputies are all staring at Starling, wondering why a woman is with the FBI. Crawford announces it’s time to inspect the body, but adds that Starling may want to stay outside because it’s something that a lady shouldn’t see. Afterwards, in the car on the ride home, Crawford says he didn’t want to offend the local authorities. Starling excoriates him for not setting a better example. By reprimanding her superior officer (while still only a trainee), Starling exhibits her strong personality and stands up for herself. Not only does she rebuff her sexist colleagues though, she is victorious over them.
In most thriller or horror movies (Terminator 2, for example), even if the hero of the story is female, she frequently still requires assistance from males to succeed. In The Silence of the Lambs, Starling succeeds on her own, despite various male interlopers. She cracks the vital points of the case, locates and defeats the killer–with no help save from Lecter. It is arguable what type of “help” Lecter gives her. In exchange for clues to the murderer’s identity, Starling provides Lecter with personal information. Lecter only cooperates with Starling because she is the only person who has treated him with any respect. In fact, as Lecter learns more about Starling’s tragic personal history, he becomes even more impressed with her. In their first meeting he calls her a “rube–one generation up from white trash.” Starling admits that he is perceptive and responds, “…but can you turn that high-powered perception of yours inward on yourself, Dr. Lecter?” At this point, Lecter realizes that he is not dealing with just another suit who’s out to use him–Starling is trying to communicate with him on a personal level. Lecter now sees Starling as a person, and is ironically the only male who does. This is emphasized overtly when Starling finishes talking to Lecter. As she exits the prison, an inmate named Miggs two cells down from Lecter throws his semen at her. Earlier, as Starling makes her way to Lecter’s cell, Miggs screams, “I can smell your cunt!” By framing Starling’s first visit to Lecter with two grotesque symbols of male objectification of women, Lecter stands out further as an asexual mentor.
Critics still point out, however, that without Lecter’s cryptic clues Starling could not have solved the case. Moreover, Lecter uses Starling’s investigation to get himself out of jail. Most damning to the notion that Starling is wholly responsible for her success is the charge that Lecter was sexually attracted to her, and aided her out of lust. These claims are spurious. Recall that Lecter appears to be asexual, especially in comparison with Miggs and Dr. Chilton. Symbolically, Lecter is neither male nor female. He is death incarnate. Director Jonathan Demme always photographs Lecter with a harsh white light on his forehead, the rest of his body ensconsed in shadows. The effect is to give Lecter the appearance of a ghoul. In the only camera shot in which Starling and Lecter are shown together, Lecter’s wraithlike apparition grins like a skeleton next to Starling’s determined composure. When their fingers touch seductively at their last meeting, it is not a sexual advance on Lecter’s part, but the film’s chilling reminder that death’s icy grip is stalking Starling. The movie would not be as frightening without Lector’s embodiment of death.
The victim is the daughter of a female Senator, and, because she fights back against the killer, she is portrayed as strong and independent. In an earlier scene, the victim’s mother makes an announcement on television in which she keeps repeating her daughter’s name–Catherine. After watching the plea, Starling comments that it is good that the Senator kept repeating her daughter’s name, “If he sees her as a person and not an object, it will be harder to tear her up.” Unfortunately, as we see in the next scene, Buffalo Bill refers to Catherine as “it” at all times, even when talking to her: “It places the lotion on its skin.” His goal is to make a woman-suit out of women–the ultimate in objectification.
In the end, Starling purges herself of her inner demons and is victorious. The story vindicates Starling and punishes those who have wronged her. Shortly after Starling’s first visit with Lecter, Miggs chokes on his own tongue and dies. Starling shoots and kills Buffalo Bill. At the end of the film, after Lecter has escaped, he calls Starling to congratulate her. He implies that he is going to eat the sexist Dr. Chilton, “I’m having an old friend for dinner.” Because the “bad sexist” people meet grisly deaths, and Starling is rewarded, The Silence of the Lambs takes a clear stand on the evils of sexism in its denouement.
Jeff Vorndam is a film buff living in the Bay Area. In the past he has reviewed movies for AboutFilm and Cinemarati, but he just watches for fun now. His favorite horror movies include Rosemary’s Baby, Kwaidan, and Martin.




Horror Week 2011: Sleepaway Camp

Sleepaway Camp (1983)
On the surface, Sleepaway Camp isn’t much different than your average 1980s slasher movie. The comparisons to Friday the 13th can’t be ignored – Sleepaway’s Camp Arawak, much like Friday’s Camp Crystal Lake, is populated by horny teens looking for some summer lovin’, and is the site of a series of gruesome and mysterious murders that threaten to shut down the camp for the whole summer. But unlike Friday the 13th and other slasher films, the twist in Sleepaway Camp isn’t the identity of the murderer, and the final girl isn’t exactly who you’d expect.
(Everything that follows contains significant spoilers. Read at your discretion.)
The protagonist of Sleepaway Camp is Angela, the lone survivor of a boating accident that killed her father and her brother, Peter. Years after the accident, her aunt Martha, with whom she now lives, sends her to Camp Arawak with her cousin Ricky. Angela is painfully shy and refuses to go near the water, which leads to the other campers tormenting her incessantly. Ricky’s quick to defend her, but the bullying is relentless. One by one, Angela’s tormenters are murdered in increasingly grotesque ways (the most disturbing involves a curling iron brutally entering a woman’s vagina).
So come the end of the film, when it’s revealed that Angela is the murderer, there’s no particular shock – after all, why wouldn’t she want to seek revenge on her tormentors? But the fact that Angela is the murderer isn’t the point, because when we find out she’s the murderer we see her naked, and it is revealed that she has a penis. We quickly learn through flashbacks that it was, in fact, Peter who survived the boat accident, and Aunt Martha decided to raise him as a girl. The ending is profoundly disturbing, not because Peter is a murderer or because he is a cross-dresser (because his female presentation is against his will, it isn’t accurate to call him transgender), but because he has been abused so deeply by his aunt and his peers that he can’t find a way to cope.
Unlike most slasher movies I’ve seen, I wasn’t horrified by Sleepaway Camp’s body count. Rather, I was horrified by the abuses that catalyze the murders. Peter survived the trauma of watching his father and sister die, only to be emotionally and physically abused by his aunt and forced to live as a woman. At camp, he’s terrified of the water, as it reminds him of the tragic loss of his family, and he’s unable to shower or change his clothes around his female bunkmates, as they might learn his secret. But rather than being understanding and supportive, the other campers harass Peter by forcibly throwing him into the water, verbally taunting him and ruining his chance to be romantically involved with someone who might truly care for him. Not to mention, at the start of camp, he is nearly molested by the lecherous head cook. Peter may be a murderer, but he is hardly villainous – the rest of the characters are the real villains, for allowing the bullying to transpire. 
The problem, of course, is that the abuse of Peter isn’t the part that’s supposed to horrify us. The twist ending is set up to shock and disgust the audience, which is deeply transphobic. Tera at Sweet Perdition describes the problem with ending as follows:

But Angela’s not deceiving everybody because she’s a trans* person. She’s deceiving everybody because she’s a (fictional) trans* person created by cissexual filmmakers. As Drakyn points out, the trans* person who’s “fooling” us on purpose is a myth we cissexuals invented. Why? Because we are so focused on our own narrow experience of gender that we can’t imagine anything outside it. We take it for granted that everyone’s gender matches the sex they were born with. With this assumption in place, the only logical reason to change one’s gender is to lie to somebody.

The shock of Sleepaway Camp’s ending relies on the cissexist assumption that one’s biological sex and gender presentation must always match. A person with a mismatched sex and gender presentation is someone to be distrusted and feared. Though the audience has identified with Peter throughout the movie, we are meant to turn on him and fear him at the end, as he’s not only a murderer – he’s a deceiver as well. But, as Tera points out, the only deception is the one in the minds of cisgender viewers who assume that Peter’s sex and gender must align in a specific, proper way. Were this not the point that the filmmakers wanted to make, they would have revealed the twist slightly earlier in the film, allowing time for the viewer to digest the information and realize that Peter is still a human being. (This kind of twist is done effectively in The Crying Game, specifically because the twist is revealed midway through the film, and the audience watches characters cope and come to terms with the reveal in an honest, sensitive way. Such sensitivity is not displayed in Sleepaway Camp.)
And yet, despite its cissexism, Sleepaway Camp has some progressive moments. Most notably, the depiction of Angela and Peter’s parents, a gay male couple, is positive. In the opening scene, the parents appear loving and committed, and there’s even a flashback scene depicting the men engaging in romantic sexual relations. Considering how divisive gay parenting is in the 21st century, the fact that a mainstream film made nearly thirty years ago portrays gay parenting positively (if briefly) is certainly worthy of praise. 
Sleepaway Camp is incredibly problematic, but beyond the surface-layer clichés and the shock value of the ending, it’s a fascinating and truly horrifying film. Particularly watching the film today, in an era where bullying is forcing young people to make terrifyingly destructive decisions, the abuses against Peter ring uncomfortably true. Peter encounters cruelty at every turn, emotionally scarring him until he can think of no other way to cope besides murder. Unlike horror movies in which teenagers are murdered as punishment for sexual activity, Sleepaway Camp murders teenagers for the torment they inflict on others. There’s a certain sweet justice in that sort of conclusion, but at the same time, it makes you wish the situations that bring on the murders hadn’t needed to happen at all.
Carrie Nelson has previously written about Precious, Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire, The Social Network and Mad Men for Bitch Flicks. She is a Founder and Editor of Gender Across Borders and works as a grant writer for an LGBT nonprofit organization in NYC. She thanks her husband, a horror aficionado, for teaching her that not all horror movies are regressive in their gender politics (even if Sleepaway Camp happens to be).

Director Spotlight: Deepa Mehta

Deepa Mehta

Indian-born and Canadian-based writer and director Deepa Mehta has gained international acclaim and numerous awards and nominations for her films. She is probably most famous for her Elements Trilogy, which includes the films Water, Earth, and Fire. Her latest project is an adaptation of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, which she is directing and adapting with the author.
I’m currently working my way through the trilogy, with plans to write a piece about the films in the not-too-distant future. Her work tends to deal with the experience of Indian women, both in their home country and as immigrants. If you’re not familiar with Mehta’s work, I strongly recommend checking her out. Here is a selection of her feature-length films.

Heaven on Earth (2008)
Heaven on Earth is Mehta’s most recent film. It won awards from the Chicago International Film Festival and the Dubai International Film Festival, along with several other nominations, including two from the Director’s Guild of Canada. I haven’t yet seen it, but here is the description from the film’s official website:
When Chand (played by Bollywood superstar Preity Zinta) arrives in Brampton, Ontario to meet her new husband, she leaves behind a loving family and supportive community. Now, in a new country, she finds herself living in a modest suburban home with seven other people and two part-time tenants. Inside the home, she is at the mercy of her husband’s temper, and her mother-in-law’s controlling behaviour.

After a magic root fails to transform her husband into a kind and loving man, Chand takes refuge in a familiar Indian folk tale featuring a King Cobra.

Watch the trailer:

Water (2005)
Although the final film in her Elements Trilogy, Water was the first one I saw. In addition to being a beautiful film, I learned something about Indian culture in the time of the rise of Mahatma Ghandi, and a practice that segregates widows from society that continues even today. There was a good bit of controversy in the making of the film, which took Mehta some seven years to complete–due, in part, to moving the filming to a different country and recasting its leads (be sure to check out the Director’s Statement for more on the story). Water was nominated for a Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award, won numerous other awards, and garnered even more nominations. Here’s the description from IMDb:
In 1938, Gandhi’s party is making inroads in women’s rights. Chuyia, a child already married but living with her parents, becomes a widow. By tradition, she is unceremoniously left at a bare and impoverished widows’ ashram, beside the Ganges during monsoon season. The ashram’s leader pimps out Kalyani, a young and beautiful widow, for household funds. Narayan, a follower of Gandhi, falls in love with her. Can she break with tradition and religious teaching to marry him? The ashram’s moral center is Shakuntala, deeply religious but conflicted about her fate. Can she protect Kalyani or Chuyia? Amid all this water, is rebirth possible or does tradition drown all?

Watch the trailer:

Bollywood/Hollywood (2002)
Somewhat lighter fare, Bollywood/Hollywood is a comedy of marriage, tradition, and identity. Here is the description, again from IMDb, as I couldn’t find an official film site for this one. (If anyone knows of the site, please leave it in the comments and I’ll update the post!)
After Rahul’s white pop-star fiancée dies in a bizarre levitation accident his mother insists he find another girl as soon as possible, preferably a Hindi one. As she backs this up by postponing his sister’s wedding until he does so, he feels forced to act, the more so as he knows his sister is pregnant. But it’s a pretty tall order for an Indian living in Ontario, so when he meets striking escort Sunita who can ‘be whatever you want me to be’ he hatches a scheme to pass her off as his new betrothed. Things get complicated when his family start to take to her and he realises his own feelings are becoming rather stronger than that.

Watch the trailer:

Earth (1998)

Earth is the second film in Mehta’s Elements Trilogy. The film seems to have won only a single award, and is based on Bapsi Sidhwa’s novel, Cracking India. Released in India as 1947: Earth, the film chronicles the division of India and Pakistan. From a plot summary on IMDb:

This story revolves around a few families of diverse religious backgrounds, namely, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, and Parsi, located in Lahore, British India. While the Parsi family, a known minority in present day India, are prosperous, the rest of the families are shown as struggling to make a livelihood. Things change for the worse during 1947, the time the British decide to grant independence to India, and that’s when law and order break down, and chaos, anarchy, and destruction take over, resulting in millions of deaths, and millions more rendered homeless and destitute. In this particular instance, Shanta is a Hindu maid with the Sethna (Parsi) family, who is in love with Hassan, a Muslim, while Dil Navaz loves Shanta, and wants her to be his wife, she prefers Hassan over him. This decision will have disastrous effects on everyone concerned, including the ones involved in smuggling Hindus across the border into India.

Watch the trailer:

Fire (1996)
Fire, the first film in the Elements Trilogy, is the one set in most recent times. It won numerous awards, including Audience Choice at various film festivals. The film was banned in Pakistan, and later in India for “religious insensitivity” and the depiction of a lesbian relationship. 
Here is a brief description from Amazon (but for a more in-depth take read Burning Love from the Bright Lights Film Journal):
Fire is the first film to confront lesbianism in a culture adamantly denying such a love could ever exist. Shabana Azmi shines as Radha Kapur in this taboo-breaking portrayal of contemporary India and the hidden desires that threaten to defy traditional expectations. In a barren, arranged marriage to an amateur swami who seeks enlightenment through celibacy. Radha’s life takes an irresistible turn when her beautiful young sister-in-law seeks to free herself from the confines of her own loveless marriage and into the supple embrace of Radha.

Watch the trailer:

Mehta’s films not mentioned here include Sam & Me, Camilla, The Republic of Love, and more.

You can read previous Director Spotlights on Allison Anders, Kathryn Bigelow, Jane Campion, Sofia Coppola, Tanya Hamilton, Nicole Holofcener, and Agnes Varda, and a Quote of the Day on Dorothy Arzner.

In ‘Women, War & Peace’s ‘I Came to Testify’ Brave Bosnian Women Speak Out About Surviving Rape as a Weapon of War

 

This is a guest post from Megan Kearns. It originally appeared at The Opinioness of the World.

 

When we discuss war and security, we don’t often explore its ramifications on women. Rape and sexual assault are common threats women face globally. But of all the artillery and tactics soldiers use, we rarely think of rape as a weapon of war. And yet too often, it is.

 

On Tuesday night, I watched I Came to Testify, the first in the 5-part documentary series, Women, War and Peace, on PBS showcasing women’s role in war and its impact on women. Produced and written by Pamela Hogan, one of the series’ executive producers, I Came to Testify highlights the courageous women who testified about the rape camps during the Bosnian genocide.

 

The powerful film examines women’s horrific experiences in the town of Foca in Bosnia (formerly Yugoslavia), a site of one of the rape camps. Before the Bosnian War, journalist Refic Hodzic said that brotherhood and unity was the “ideology” in Yugoslavia; “no one cared who was Croat, who was Serb, who was Muslim.” But overnight, things changed. Many Serbs pulled their children out of school and fled town. The Bosnian Muslims were eventually dehumanized by Serbian soldiers, pitting neighbor against neighbor.

 

In Foca, soldiers rounded up the Bosnian men, women and children. Men “were beaten, starved and executed in concentration camps” while the women “were locked in hotels, schools, private homes & makeshift prisons around the city.” After they were gathered, the rapes began. Soldiers threatened women; to cut off their breasts, slit their throats and kill their daughters. Hundreds of women and girls were held captive in rape camps.

 

Established by the United Nations Security Council in 1993, the Yugoslav War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands was the first tribunal established in Europe since Nuremberg and the first ever convened during a war. 16 women agreed to travel to The Hague to share their nightmarish ordeal. As narrator Matt Damon (who wanted to be a part of the documentary because of his 4 daughters) said:

“Their testimonies would embody the experience of hundreds of women held captive in Foca.”

One of the witnesses, called Witness 99 to protect her anonymity, recounted how on the day they were rounded up, she was raped in front of her in-laws and then they were murdered in front of her. Witness 99 escaped to a refugee camp where the horror of rape continued. Another witness said she “cried and pleaded” for the soldiers to let her go “but they just laughed.” Another witness testified that one of the soldiers told another, “You have to learn how to rape Muslim women like we are doing.” The women said fear “paralyzed” them.

 

In Foca, half the residents, 20,000 Muslims were just gone. All 14 mosques were destroyed. Evidence in Foca showed that a campaign could be built to prove that a systematic, organized campaign of rape had been “used as an instrument of terror.” While the UN estimated 20,000 women raped in Bosnia, others say it was more like 50,000.

 

Peggy Kuo served as a trial attorney with the tribunal. She declared that “rape has always been an undercurrent of war.” When talking about war, the term “rape and pillage” frequently arises. But we don’t really think about what the words mean. Kuo said the soldiers raped the women, objectifying them and attempting “to strip them of their identity.” Journalist Hodzic explained:

“Rape was used not only for the immediate impact on women but for the long-term destruction on the soul of the community.”

Witness 99 asserted:

“Rape is the worst form of humiliation for any woman. But that was the goal: to kill a woman’s dignity.”

The women heroically faced their fears to share their stories. They were astutely deemed heroes by those interviewed in the film. As Kuo articulated:

“…The people who came and testified were able to maintain their dignity and they didn’t let the perpetrators take their humanity away from them. So yes in one sense they were victims. But in another sense, they were the strong ones. They survived.”

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. Kuo explained:

“Looking at pictures of Nuremberg, it’s mostly men…women aren’t given a place at the table, even as a witness…”

And that still holds true today. We need to reframe security issues from a gendered lens.

 

Genocide frighteningly still occurs; people systematically killed because of their ethnicity, religion or the color of their skin. As tragically seen in Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, soldiers utilize rape as a weapon of war again and again. Rape and sexual assault occur beyond conflicts and don’t only threaten women as men face rape in wartime too. It’s an epidemic we must combat.

 

Bravery bolstered the 16 Bosnian women to come forward, speaking out against the unspeakable atrocities they survived. As Witness 99 so eloquently said:

“War criminals wouldn’t be known & there would be no justice if witnesses didn’t testify…I was glad to be able to say what happened to me and to say who had done this to me & my people. I felt like I had fulfilled my duty. I came to look him in the face. I came to testify.”

We live in a rape culture that continually silences women’s narratives. The survivors’ horrific experiences shock and haunt. If we ever hope to change things and obtain justice and peace, I Came to Testify reminds us that women’s voices must be heard.

 

Watch the full episode of I Came to Testify online or on PBS.

 

Megan Kearns is a blogger, freelance writer and activist. She blogs at The Opinioness of the World, a feminist vegan site. Her work has also appeared at Arts & Opinion, Fem2pt0, Italianieuropei, Open Letters Monthly, and A Safe World for Women. She earned her B.A. in Anthropology and Sociology and a Graduate Certificate in Women and Politics and Public Policy. Megan lives in Boston with more books than she will probably ever read in her lifetime.

Megan contributed reviews of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, Something Borrowed, !Women Art Revolution, The Kids Are All Right (for our 2011 Best Picture Nominee Review Series), The Reader (for our 2009 Best Picture Nominee Review Series), Game of Thrones and The Killing (for our Emmy Week 2011), as well as a piece for Mad Men Week called, “Is Mad Men the Most Feminist Show on TV?” She was the first writer featured as a Monthly Guest Contributor.

Quote of the Day: Andi Zeisler

Andi Zeisler, Co-Founder of Bitch Magazine
In The B-Word? You Betcha., published in the Washington Post in 2007, Andi Zeisler, co-founder of Bitch Magazine, discussed the choice of title for the magazine and the cultural significance of the word “bitch.” The piece was published during the 2008 Democratic primary, when the term was routinely applied to candidate Hillary Clinton, as a term of derision and as a compliment (Tina Fey’s Saturday Night Live Weekend Update segment comes to mind, in which she declared “bitch is the new black” and “bitches get things done”). Still, the word remains controversial, and one that many people choose not to embrace. With respect to those people, we do embrace the term.

Here’s Zeisler on the word “bitch:”

People want to know whether it is still a bad word. They want to know whether I support its use in public discourse. Or they already think it’s a bad word and want to discuss whether its use has implications for free speech or sexual harassment or political campaigns.

[…]

So here goes: Bitch is a word we use culturally to describe any woman who is strong, angry, uncompromising and, often, uninterested in pleasing men. We use the term for a woman on the street who doesn’t respond to men’s catcalls or smile when they say, “Cheer up, baby, it can’t be that bad.” We use it for the woman who has a better job than a man and doesn’t apologize for it. We use it for the woman who doesn’t back down from a confrontation.

So let’s not be disingenuous. Is it a bad word? Of course it is. As a culture, we’ve done everything possible to make sure of that, starting with a constantly perpetuated mindset that deems powerful women to be scary, angry and, of course, unfeminine — and sees uncompromising speech by women as anathema to a tidy, well-run world.

Occupy Wall Street and Feminism and Misogyny (Oh My?)

 

I’ve been 100% on board with Occupy Wall Street since it began almost a month ago. I wrote about my experience protesting with them on October 5, and—leading up to the Times Square Occupation—I almost had goose bumps. I was ready to take the square. And then, it happened—I browsed Facebook. In my defense, I went to the Facebook community page for Occupy Wall Street to find out exactly when and where I should meet my fellow protesters, but instead, I found a YouTube video posted by the page administrator that more than seven hundred people had shared and on which hundreds of people had commented. I had to watch it. I wish I wouldn’t have. The “comedian” ranted with so much repressed disdain for women that it couldn’t help but leak out, turning his tirade from something intended to critique Wall Street and the Banks into an opportunity to degrade women directly; when he ranted about the true Economy Tankers, or the mainstream media, or those who don’t support the movement, he conveniently addressed them as an abstract and general “you.” I created a transcript of the entire video just to make sure I wasn’t going all woman and not understanding comedy and getting unnecessarily pissed about little things that don’t matter. Let’s see! Video and transcript below, with bullshit in bold:

The New York Times, the highly respected New York Times, did a great article yesterday about Occupy Wall Street. The entire report revolved around how Occupy Wall Street is a big pain in the ass to the area’s public bathrooms. Now there’s two things you need to know about the last sentence I just said. A: I’m not kidding. B: The double entendre was unintended. There will be several more of those in the following three minutes, and all of them are unintended except for seven. The New York Times, which is a so-called liberal media outlet, is more concerned about the harm done to the public restrooms than they are with the harm done to the American people by corporations and Wall Street titans who make Charlie Sheen’s moral compass look like that of Harriet Tubman. As billionaires continue to shit all over this country like it’s a bathroom near Occupy Wall Street, the media is more worried about the bathrooms near Occupy Wall Street? Are you fucking serious? Get your head out of your ass, and maybe you’ll be able to better see your priorities. This world is a shit storm of greed that desperately needs mopping up. We’re talking about people’s homes, people’s lives, people’s dreams, and the media wants to make it about the discomfort of millionaires who live around Liberty Square? The article said mothers have trouble getting strollers around police barricades. God forbid the revolution should get in the way of your evening stroll with pookie wookie. This may not be a revolution in the traditional sense, but this is a revolution of thought. Americans are tired of greed over good, profitable pollution over people, war for wealth over the welfare of average workers. This is a thought revolution, and the revolution will not be sanitized. It will be criticized, ridiculed, intentionally misconstrued, and misunderstood. But it’ll push through. Shit all over it all you want, but the floodgates are open now. The revolution will not be tidy. The revolution will not fit with your Pilates schedule. The revolution will not be quiet after 10 pm, and it will not fit easily into a mainstream media- defined paradigm. The revolution will affect your bottom line. The revolution will affect you whether you ignore it or not. The revolution will not be dissuaded by barricades or pepper spray, driving rain, police raids, or ankle sprains. It’s like the postal service on steroids; pepper spraying us is like throwing water on gremlins—the more you do it, the more of us show up. The revolution will be annoying to the top 1% and those who aren’t open minded enough to understand it. The revolution does not care if you satirize it; you still won’t be able to jeopardize it. The revolution will not wait until after your hair appointment, your dinner party, tummy tuck, or titty tilt. The revolution does not care about your lack of intellectual curiosity. The revolution will not be televised, but it will be digitized and available on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and anywhere real ideas are told. The revolution will not be hijacked by your old, tired, rejected political beliefs. The revolution will make politicians squirm, bankers bitch, elites moan, and those with Stockholm Syndrome scream, “Hit me, punk criminal assholes. Shut up and do what our captors told you. There’s a sitcom on about a chubby guy who hates his wife, and we’re supposed to watch it. Now fall in line.” The revolution will not be monetized, commercialized, circumcised, or anesthetized. Good god, don’t you get it? Greed is no longer good, and it’s not god. The thought revolution is here to stay whether you give two shits about it or not. The revolution would, however, like to apologize for shitting all over your apathy. Now pick a side.

Damn me! It’s not like I wanted to be right about this guy being a total misogynist profusely praised by hundreds. (Okay, they didn’t say, “You hate women! Awesome!” but I’m inclined to believe that ignoring the hatred for and alienation of more than 50% of the population, especially among a group of people that claims to represent the needs of 99% of the population, doesn’t exactly bode well for the group’s collective message of inclusion. Remember, the Facebook page administrator for Occupy Wall Street posted this video.) Many women and people from minority groups have written important pieces about their hesitation to fully engage with the Occupy Wall Street movement. I guess up until I watched that YouTube video, as tiny a thing as it may be (it somehow got under my skin), I didn’t truly understand where they were coming from. I’ve mistakenly been abiding by that ol’ standby, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” which meant to me that, yeah, I’m pissed at Wall Street and the Banks; the protesters are pissed at Wall Street and the Banks; therefore, we’re in this together, regardless.

That idea of working toward a common goal, often at the expense of women, has been around forever. We encountered it with Voting Rights. We even encountered it with the identity politics surrounding the 2008 presidential election. The message is always something like, “Don’t worry, ladies; your time will come eventually! We’ll worry about your oppression later.” But while I agree with most of what that video transcript says, I can’t simply ignore the specific rage toward women. I’m a woman. That kind of rhetoric negatively impacts all women. I might not be a mother; I don’t take Pilates classes; I make hair appointments maybe once every eight months; and I haven’t had plastic surgery. But I’m still a woman—regardless of whether I’m as privileged as the women his rant carelessly mentions or whether I’m part of the 99%; I’m not immune. Suffice it to say, by the time Occupy Times Square rolled around, I forced myself down there. For the first time since the movement began, I felt apathetic, confused, and just … icky about it.

But then! After hanging out under a giant rainbow tarp with my fellow protesters in Times Square, and listening to the wonderful street musicians, and chanting, “This is a peaceful protest” when the cops started to get a little edgy, and clapping like crazy when a nice police officer tossed our beach ball back into the crowd, I left with a feeling of … hope? Again? Just like when I participated my first time? And it didn’t feel like that crap hope Obama tried to sell sold during his advertising presidential campaign. It felt … dare I say … real? What is wrong with me?

Like I said—I felt confused. But the thing I realized is I truly believe that most of the organizers and participants I’ve personally met are trying. We live in a patriarchy, which means that smaller groups organized by men and women often inevitably turn into mini-patriarchies. The difference with this movement (I hope) is that the protesters at least recognize the intersecting oppressions of gender, race, class, and sexuality and are trying to change the group dynamics; we’ve had fairly shitty models thus far (visited any matriarchies lately?). It may seem small to merely recognize something, but it’s a pretty big fucking step in the right direction. That isn’t to say that each individual who makes up the group’s members necessarily examines her or his relative privilege as much as she or he should, if at all; but I honestly believe the group wants to get there. The media certainly doesn’t help by painting Occupy Wall Street as a movement organized by a bunch of entitled, young, lazy, pot-smoking white boys who got bored playing video games in their parents’ basements. I can attest—it ain’t like that. Women abound!—a very diverse group of intelligent women whose visibility shouldn’t be minimized, let alone relegated to the sexist bullshit that is Hot Chicks of Occupy Wall Street. (UGH.)
Now, before I unveil my counter-Tumblr blog to showcase the Women Occupiers, I want to first discuss the main reasons this movement, even after my recent reservations, still works for me as a woman and a feminist.

Consciousness Raising: If that douchebag said anything important in the video, he said that Occupy Wall Street is a thought revolution. I agree. And the particular form of activism this movement employs comes directly from consciousness-raising groups formed by feminists in the 1960s. (That may explain why the mainstream media remains clueless about how to discuss it; it’s got that “woman stench” all over it.) Wikipedia briefly defines consciousness raising as “a group of people attempting to focus the attention of a wider group of people on some cause or condition.” The meetings helped women become more politically conscious while also illustrating that individual problems “reflected common conditions faced by all women.” Occupy Wall Street began as a small group of people camping out in Liberty Plaza and—as the direct result and success of their consciousness-raising tactics—the movement has literally gone global. Not only do people march in protest, but they also occupy public spaces for extended periods in smaller groups, often bringing in speakers and setting up scheduled talks that are open to the public (including their General Assemblies). The We Are the 99 Percent blog on Tumblr also represents a viral version of consciousness raising, where a diverse group of individuals impacted most by the Economy Tankers take to the blog and share their personal experiences in order to raise consciousness about the tangible consequences of the rising economic inequalities. It’s working. Go 1960s feminists!

General Assemblies: I have yet to attend a General Assembly, so here’s a quick explanation from the downloadable guide: “The General Assembly is a gathering of people committed to making decisions based upon a collective agreement or ‘consensus.’ There is no single leader or governing body of the General Assembly—everyone’s voice is equal. Anyone is free to propose an idea or express an opinion as part of the General Assembly.” And in their working draft of the Principles of Solidarity, two of the points of unity include: “recognizing individuals’ inherent privilege and the influence it has on all interactions;” and, “empowering one another against all forms of oppression.” I very much like this. As I stated earlier, the effort to examine privilege, even if it occasionally fails, still represents something important and fairly new as a mainstream ideal. (As Occupy Wall Street continues to gain momentum, I don’t see how it can continue to be described as “fringe.”) I have no doubt that this system works sometimes and implodes other times, and I’ve read accounts from women, specifically women of color, who’ve attended a General Assembly and felt that their voices weren’t heard or their views respected. I find those occurrences unacceptable and disheartening to say the least, but I don’t find them shocking either. I can only hope that the values defined in the group’s literature prevail as everyone struggles to examine her or his privilege. After all, that struggle is, in itself, a feminist act.

Economic Inequality: This issue represents my main reason for staying onboard with Occupy Wall Street. Their proposed list of demands from a few weeks ago (not to be confused with any “official list of demands”) includes raising the minimum wage to twenty dollars an hour, instituting a universal single payer healthcare system, free college education, a racial and gender equal rights amendment, and debt forgiveness. It’s no secret (I hope) that single mothers and women of color make up the majority of the poor in the United States. RH Reality Check ran an important piece in August of 2010 that broke down the unemployment rate for these two demographics. Basically, as of around this time last year, the unemployment rate for women who head families climbed to its highest rate in over 25 years. The unemployment rate exclusively for women of color without children jumped to its highest rate since 1986. Newman concludes her article as follows:
If we are not willing to invest in the very programs that will help pull some of our poorest Americans—single mother led households and women of color—out of the spiral, then we are not rebuilding the economy. We are only as strong as our most vulnerable, as the saying goes. To continue a national discussion on unemployment and the recession without acknowledging that our women and children are suffering the most, not because we aren’t able to implement programs and pass legislation like universal, affordable child care, paid sick days, increased food stamp benefits, fair pay standards and more but because we aren’t willing to do so, is something we must own up to and do something about if we are to rise above these hard times and come out stronger than we were when we headed into the recession.

Exactly. And I believe the Occupy Wall Street movement desires to motivate the people to do just that—to push for the necessary programs and legislation that will help the poorest members of our community, you know, not starve, and to challenge our ingrained notions of power—more importantly, who gets to have that power and therefore who gets to make the decisions. The movement makes clear, even though the media keeps pretending it’s an unfocused mess, that what unites the 99% is a collective lack of economic power, which, in an unregulated capitalist society, translates into no fucking power. When your government representatives make decisions about the welfare of the people based on how much money Wall Street pays them, then it’s likely that “the welfare of the people” quickly turns into “the welfare of the people who paid us the most money to look out for their welfare.” Ha. An article from Ms. called, “We Are the 99%, Too: Creating a Feminist Space Within Occupy Wall Street,” further examines this issue of power, privilege, and oppression:
When we think about the elite 1 percent in a position of economic and political power in America, we have to recognize that those elites are predominantly straight, white men. Their position of power is upheld by patriarchy, by white privilege, by heteronormativity. If we want to dismantle oppression in our society, we can only hope to do so by recognizing the ways in which these various systems of oppression intersect and support one another. That doesn’t mean we can’t focus on the economy as a nexus of inequality; clearly, the occupation of Wall Street speaks directly to fighting corporate power and economic privilege. But we cannot imagine creating a society rooted in equality without fighting for all forms of equality, and that includes embracing feminist values. 

I encourage everyone to read the article in full because this discussion is important. The disturbing videos on YouTube—one showing a police officer pepper spraying a group of women, and another showing a police officer picking up a woman and dragging her into Citibank—I’m sure only begin to scratch the surface of what women deal with while occupying. Women deserve to start the conversations about the impact of economic inequality, to participate in the conversations, to change the conversations, and to end the conversations—and they deserve to do those things while not facing police brutality, while not experiencing sexist attacks from a random YouTuber who thinks he’s a comedian, and while, for once, not being sexually objectified. All those things work in tandem to further take away power from women, and we need women in this fight. So, being only one person, but wanting to combat some aspect of this shit, I created Women Occupy, a no-frills Tumblr blog where anyone can upload photos and videos of women occupying, whether that occupation takes place on Wall Street or in Madrid (or wherever). This is also what giving a fuck looks like. Now go. Upload. The end.