The radical notion that women like good movies
If these women aren’t seeing any positive images of themselves on screen, how are they able to construct an identity of truth? Even though they can rely on their community for positivity, if it’s not reinforced through media representation then it renders that support useless.
Umbridge works as Undersecretary to Minister of Magic Cornelius Fudge. Through her position in the patriarchal wizarding government, Umbridge enables job discrimination, segregation, incarceration and harsh sentencing, and physical violence and genocide against marginalized people. She not only politically supports these efforts, but personally enacts violence against marginalized people and their allies, including children.
In a nice contrast to many children’s films and books, the character at the start who goes against the mob is a girl, Lord Portley-Rind’s daughter, Winnie (voiced by Elle Fanning in a mid-Atlantic accent passing as British). Although Winnie, in her pink ruffled dress and blonde ringlets might look like other storybook heroines, her fits over never being believed or taken seriously by adults and her morbid fascination with the boxtrolls make her more like Daria than Alice in Wonderland. When she asks another character if boxtrolls ate his parents, she adds, “Did they let you, I mean, make you, watch?”
Let’s face it, ‘Boyhood’ is a gimmick movie. Richard Linklater sporadically filmed it over a 12-year period so we could see the child actors in it actually grow up. If you loved Michael Apted’s ‘Up’ series but wanted more fiction and less wait, ‘Boyhood’ is for you. But if you just love coming-of-age dramas, I’m not sure I can recommend this one.
However, in honor of some possible greatness, let us consider some more films that could also be equally amazing, or as roundly terrible. Enjoy.
Fortunately for everyone, the show deliberately plays with archetype. She’s introduced as a singular image we all know, and over the course of the episode is shown to be sexy, amoral, vulnerable (Or is she? This is that kind of show; who knows!?), and an effective, if unorthodox, mentor. She’s a three-dimensional character that happens to fit the description.
Instead of hating and seeing each other as competition, the women form a bond, increasing their woman-power. Kate decides that she wants to make Mark pay for his unfaithfulness saying, “I want him to have to start over,” but she’s afraid she doesn’t have the killer instincts to do it. Her new friends step in, telling her that she does and that if they work together, they can get their revenge.
While watching ‘The Maze Runner,’ I couldn’t help thinking, wouldn’t this story have been so much more rich and interesting if it had been told from Minho’s or Teresa’s perspective? Why not feature a girl or a boy of color as the protagonist?
Let’s face it, ‘Boyhood’ is a gimmick movie. Richard Linklater sporadically filmed it over a twelve-year period so we could see the child actors in it actually grow-up. If you loved Michael Apted’s ‘Up’ series but wanted more fiction and less wait, Boyhood is for you. But if you just love coming-of-age dramas, I’m not sure I can recommend this one.
In the 90s and early 2000s we seemed on the cusp of a sea change in which a white male teenager wasn’t the default character audiences were supposed to identify with. While films about grown women had stars like Whitney Houston (in ‘The Bodyguard’) Angela Bassett (Oscar-nominated for ‘What’s Love Got To Do With It’) and a pre “J. Lo” Jennifer Lopez (in ‘Selena’), films about teenaged girls of color popped up too. Leslie Harris’s ‘Just Another Girl on the IRT’ was released in the early 90s. In 2000 writer-director Jim McKay’s gorgeous, melancholy ‘Our Song,’ about the friendship of three teenaged girls of color (which starred Kerry Washington–in her film debut) opened in theaters.
I’m hopeful that ‘Divergent,’ as the first installment of the series, is setting Tris up to be a memorable heroine in her own right in the following films. I’m hoping that ‘Divergent’ is the story of the forging of our heroine, the exploration of her talents, abilities, and heart and that the second and third films will show her learning from her experiences, becoming a leader, and inspiring others.
Our contempt for Miranda Priestly is due, in large part, to the way the film contextualizes her decisions, not just her personality. In making her into a shrill caricature of a woman executive whose single-minded focus on her career ruins her personal life, the film, like so many others, shortchanges the potential of a character like Miranda.
