The radical notion that women like good movies
If only ‘Carol’ the much lauded movie from director Todd Haynes (adapted by Phyllis Nagy from Patricia Highsmith’s novel ‘The Price of Salt’) were as good as its trailer, a one minute ten second masterpiece of close-ups, pitch-perfect period detail and barely contained emotion.
Check out all of the 2016 Academy Award nominations with links to our reviews and articles providing feminist commentary!
The traditional family is marked as a hostile space of enforced hypocrisy.
The eye we see in the film’s opening credits belongs to Carol and encapsulates her relationship to the internal and external worlds. To outside observers, Carol’s large, doe-like eyes are a signifier of her feminine allure, but, as is made palpable to the viewer, they also house her intense fear and constitute a deceptive barrier against the malignant traumas that disturb her internal world.
Apparently, most Hollywood executives and casting directors live in a fictional land called Neverlearn.
Carving out their own unique niche in the filmmaking world was one way for women to resist mainstream pressures that were pushing them out of the directing craft. Lotte Reiniger can lay claim to being the greatest silhouette animator.
As an orphan of common origins, Drew Barrymore’s spunky protagonist, Danielle de Barbarac, is forced into a life of servitude to her father’s widow, the Baroness Rodmilla de Ghent, and the Baroness’s two natural daughters, Jacqueline and Marguerite. As Baroness Rodmilla, Anjelica Houston is equal parts breathtaking as she is fearsome, as cruel as she is oddly sympathetic.
Thus, theatre erases the histories of People of Color in Europe by claiming that they use “colorblind casting” instead of just “casting” when they cast a Person of Color in a role that, historically, could have been a person of color. Meanwhile, TV and film European period pieces erase that history by Whitewashing it, not casting and thereby not providing employment to, or visibility and representation of, actors who are People of Color at all.
Mabel Normand was once known as “The Queen of Comedy” and “The Female Chaplin.” Her name was featured in the title of her shorts as their star attraction, which she soon parlayed into creative control as director. Normand mentored Charlie Chaplin as well as Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, who went on to mentor Buster Keaton in his turn. Mabel is, therefore, a cornerstone in the development of the American slapstick auteur, but one whose role is regularly overlooked.
Few human beings are quite so stigmatized as bad mothers. Despite the fact that motherhood is demanded of women as an intrinsic part of the female experience, women who struggle with motherhood are seen and depicted as the worst kind of scum. No failure, it seems, is as great as that of a woman who is bad at being a mom…or, worse yet, who decides after having children that she no longer wants to be a mother.
Men are spoilt for choice; women are starved. Targeting women is like selling ice to a Bedouin, during a heatwave, in a particularly bad year for the ice harvest. Quality content for women has scarcity value.
So, in a world where people think you don’t have to cast Asians to play Asian parts, ‘Fresh Off the Boat’ gives hope that maybe Asian kids or mixed kids like me will actually see a sitcom and see themselves a little. And maybe if it’s a success, more shows and better casting will follow.
