The radical notion that women like good movies
I had the wonderful opportunity to speak with Athena Film Festival co-founders Kathryn Kolbert, Constance Hess Williams Director, Athena Center for Leadership Studies at Barnard College, and Melissa Silverstein, Founder and Editor, Women and Hollywood. We discussed the upcoming festival, creating opportunities for female filmmakers, and the importance of seeing women leaders on-screen.
Check out all of the posts for Representations of Sex Workers Theme Week here.
Navigating male prostitution has always been tricky, but ‘Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo’ (Mike Mitchell, 1999) unburdens audiences from tackling any heavily philosophical explications through its potty humor, shallow characters, and offensive depictions of ailments such as Tourette Syndrome, Gigantism, Narcolepsy, and obesity. This same brand of mindless humor is found in ‘Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo’ (Mike Mitchell, 2005). However, despite what the movie lacks (and it’s certainly aware of itself as a raunchy, unconventional rom-com), its central themes are love and kindness, and what is perhaps less apparent is the seemingly rare ability to pause and see someone for who they truly are, as opposed to how they may be of service in terms of sex or money. This goofy film featuring Rob Schneider begs a feminist critique not only because the film lacks many multi-dimensional characters, but because it is a prostitution narrative encoded as a story depicting the pursuit of romantic love, rather than a cautionary tale about the dangers of the world’s oldest profession.
Like much of Lifshitz’ previous work, ‘Wild Side’ explores sexuality and emotional intimacy. Thankfully, Stéphanie’s gender identity or Mikhail and Djamel’s bisexuality are not the sole focus, but rather appropriately important facets of their characters.
Season Two Episode One of ‘Sherlock,’ “A Scandal in Belgravia,” is adapted from the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Holmes story “A Scandal in Bohemia.” The storyline focuses on Irene Adler, portrayed brilliantly by the arresting Lara Pulver, who has incriminating photographs of a member of nobility that Sherlock must retrieve.
Randy defines the male sex worker in ways that are diametrically opposed to more traditional depictions of female sex workers. He is not oppressed by his clients, controlled by a pimp, or violently threatened until the very end. Even then, such “threats” are delivered as a comedy of errors after a group of husbands discover their wives have been ordering a lot of pizza with “extra anchovies,” the code for Randy’s clandestine services. Thus, he enjoys a much more privileged kind of work as a casual summer gigolo than as a professional prostitute who is often trapped in such work for extended periods of time and trapped by dominating patriarchal forces.
The strength of ‘Osage’ is that it never once sentimentalizes women’s relationships with one another. It does not allow for trite Hollywood portrayals of women as somehow less violent, less complex, or less serious than men. ‘August: Osage County’ is an odd sort of respite for those of us who don’t relate to stories of quirky, privileged, white girls from Brooklyn. The women of ‘Osage’ would destroy ‘Girls’ Hannah Horvath with a word and look. For me, it’s a kind of comfort to see these steely women on screen.
It’s safe to say that you’d be hard-pressed to find a more disability-friendly show on television. That level of representation for disabled actors continues to be virtually nonexistent, not to mention fleshing them out as actual characters instead of forcing them to be background token minorities.
Bitch Flicks staff writers Amanda Rodriguez and Stephanie Rogers talk about the critically acclaimed Spike Jonze film ‘Her,’ sharing their thoughts while asking questions about its feminism and thematic choices.
Check out what we’ve been reading this week–and let us know what you’ve been reading/writing in the comments!
In the final episode of ‘Prime Suspect,’ the long-running British series, Jane Tennison (Helen Mirren), a hardworking, hard drinking detective who has sacrificed so much of her life for her job and made more than a few enemies, skips her own retirement party and walks out and into the rest of her life. In the other room, her colleagues are jovial, waiting for the stripper they hired, preparing balloons, and liberally dipping into the refreshments.
But Jane is uncertain.
‘Orphan Black’ is gritty sci-fi with layered mysteries, mistaken (and impersonated) identity, and lots of complicated female characters. The most intriguing part of the show is that many of those multifaceted female characters are played by the same woman, Tatiana Maslany. She portrays all the clones involved in a seemingly nefarious scientific experiment.
