How Home Invasion Films Reinforce Gender Stereotypes and Portray Domestic Violence

A woman’s domain is her home – it’s an archaic idea, but it’s one still perpetuated in today’s horror films, especially the subgenre of home invasion horror. These films serve to scare us because they take place in the one setting we’re supposed to feel safe, and their horror is much more realistic than ghosts or monsters. But how does a home invasion affect men and women so differently?

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This is a guest post by Maria Ramos.

A woman’s domain is her home – it’s an archaic idea, but it’s one still perpetuated in today’s horror films, especially the subgenre of home invasion horror. These films serve to scare us because they take place in the one setting we’re supposed to feel safe, and their horror is much more realistic than ghosts or monsters. But how does a home invasion affect men and women so differently? In home invasion films, the female characters are often the ones trapped helplessly in their homes, making them the unlucky prisoners of their own supposed domain.

One of the most suspenseful films of all time, 1967’s Wait Until Dark, was one of the first home invasion films to hit the silver screen. It was also one of the first films to present a heroine who was absolutely helpless, even in her own home. Susy (Audrey Hepburn) is blind after a car accident, making her the perfect vulnerable target for a bunch of criminals trying to find a drug-stuffed doll that Susy’s husband may have. This film prisons Susy in her home to fend off these criminals, keeping her passive while her husband is removed from the drama. But the film’s portrayal of Susy is not negative – in fact, even though she’s vulnerable, Susy manages to outwit the criminals and show her strength when she needs it most.

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In 1997, the famously misanthropic director Michael Haneke made Funny Games, one of the more brutal, violent films in the home invasion genre. Two murderous young men entrap a mother, father, and son in their vacation home to torture and eventually murder them with their sadistic games. Anna is the last surviving victim, forced to watch the brutal slaughter of her husband and son before she herself is killed. Funny Games plays into sexist ideas of women in that it does now allow Anna any agency at the end – she is not allowed to fight for her life at all.

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Sometimes female characters are put into situations that limit their agency, but they end up outwitting the foes in their path to come out on top. This is the case in 2002’s Panic Room. The two main victims are a mother and daughter who are trying to make a life for themselves after a rough divorce. The film initially makes Meg (Jodie Foster) out to be a woman scorned, angry about her failed marriage and trying to win the trust of her daughter (Kristen Stewart), but once the burglars break through their security system and enter the home, she must fight to survive in the titular panic room. This enclosed space offers no communication to the outside, making it both a literal and metaphorical prison for Meg – she’s trapped, and the only way out is through violence.

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In other cases, home invasion films seem to want to keep women in roles lacking agency. In 2008’s The Strangers, a couple on the verge of a breakup must face an intense night battling a group of masked killers who keep finding their way into the house. James, the boyfriend, is the one who consistently takes action while Kristen, his girlfriend, is left screaming and hiding. He’s the one who shoots the gun and calls the shots, and when he can no longer help, Kristen is totally helpless. This is an example of a film that perpetuates the stereotype of the woman who cannot fend for herself.

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Luckily, the past few years have given us horror films with kick-ass heroines who can fend for themselves. In 2011, Sharni Vinson played a survivalist “final girl” in You’re Next who refused to let a group of masked killers assault her in her boyfriend’s country home. Even though the odds were against her, she used her wits and courage to get herself out of trouble, proving that home invasion films don’t always have to trap their heroines in an inescapable situation. However, it’s almost inevitable that the horror genre will continue to perpetuate stereotypes of women and place them in vulnerable roles and in inescapable situations of unnecessary violence. Let’s just hope we’ll see at least some films that go against this outdated trope.

 

Maria Ramos is a writer interested in comic books, cycling, and horror films. Her hobbies include cooking, doodling, and finding local shops around the city. She currently lives in Chicago with her two pet turtles, Franklin and Roy. You can follow her on Twitter @MariaRamos1889.

‘The Bad Seed’: Mother and Daughter, Autonomy Through Violence

In no way does this piece condone violence or 8-year-old serial killers. We all know that’s wrong and our mothers taught us better than that. But really, what’s the harm in a female character with autonomy and direction?

This is a guest post by Andrea Betanzos.

Once upon a time, I took a course in film school about horror films and learned that Leatherface’s chainsaw, Jason’s machete, and every other male killer’s choice of weapon were simply metaphors for their dicks.

When it slowly dawned on all of us (my classmates and I) that this was the central analysis our professor was looking for us to make, I’m sure our assignments must have been pretty interesting to read.

Horror and sci-fi seem to be the few genres where the actions of women stem from their own wills. In order to be the “final girl,” a woman must want to survive, must find it in herself to reject the role of caretaker, and find a way to fight. To be lethal, a woman must chase a singular idea, must view the road to her objectives as necessary and in no way compromise what’s hers.

In other words, there are less garage tools involved.

Before “Hit Girl” in 2010’s Kick-Ass and “Esther” in 2009’s Orphan, there was 8-year-old Rhoda Penmark, (the amazing Patty McCormack), the central character in Marvin Leroy’s classic The Bad Seed.

Let me clarify, we’re talking about the classier 1954 version of the film.

Not the 1985 one. Or the Lifetime one.

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The golden child

Adapted from the novel written by William March, The Bad Seed was made during the imposed Hays Code in Hollywood. Despite the limitations the Code placed on the story and what could actually be shown onscreen, the strength still lies in the ruthlessness of Rhoda’s sociopathic evil.

The only child of Christine (portrayed by Nancy Kelly) and Kenneth (William Hopper), Rhoda lives the idyllic childhood. Christine is a homemaker and the daughter of an esteemed crime writer, Richard Bravo. Col. Kenneth Penmark is an absent father who dotes on Rhoda and is on military leave for most of the film. The family lives in a picturesque suburb, renting an apartment from nosy landlord, Monica and an even nosier caretaker, Leroy.

With blonde pigtails, a perfect curtsy and charming smile, Rhoda is a pristine and well-behaved child. Her bedroom is always tidy, her chores are always done, and her speech is impeccable. However, beneath Rhoda’s immaculate exterior lies a boiling rage.

When Claude Daigle (Rhoda’s fellow classmate) beats her in a penmanship contest, and soon thereafter dies under suspicious circumstances, Rhoda’s true character is revealed. Her apathy towards his death is potent. The conviction with which she believes the award belongs to her is unsettling, considering that most children can barely decide what they want for Christmas. You rarely see this kind of devotion in adults, but at 8 years old, Rhoda not only possesses it, she owns it. Christine attempts to defend Rhoda unto everyone, as any mother would. Yet we watch her resolve crumble slowly, as she comes to the horrifying realization that her daughter is indeed, a murderer.

Almost every horror film does a fantastic job in blaming mom for birthing such fine human beings, (1980’s Friday the 13th, 1968’s Rosemary’s Baby), and this film is no different. Evil originates from a lineage of women. There is a legacy of murderesses, beginning with Bessie Denker, a notorious serial killer and Christine’s mother. Christine herself, who goes to great lengths to make Rhoda disappear. And last but not least, sweet Rhoda, who takes the reign and really puts everyone to shame with her prolific slew of murders.

Yes, the film is campy. Yes, it seems like Christine is always a few seconds from crying in every single scene. Yes, there’s so much overacting that it makes you eye-roll at the most inappropriate moments. But the relationship between Christine and Rhoda is fascinating, akin to Carrie and Margaret White in 1976’s Carrie. The constant push and pull. The way in which mother and daughter are both destructive and protective towards one another. The dualities of violence found within each Christine and Rhoda, how they intersect and compliment one another, give the film its complexity and nuance.

Rhoda and Christine illustrate two types of violence: one which is carried out maliciously, meant to harm those around her in the pursuit of her desires. The second is violence toward oneself, meant to protect the world, and transform her into martyr to erase a lineage that is destructive.  It could very well be said that Christine represents our “final girl,” who must protect herself to survive. Rhoda is the monster, the Jason and Leatherface without the garage tools.

For this film, these two types of violence are incapable of existing without the other. They feed and sustain one another. Rhoda is birthed by said lineage of evil and learns how to take control of her abilities to get what she wants. She is for better or worse, driven and unapologetic in fighting for what’s hers. In a terrible way (i.e. not recommended to anyone!), Rhoda finds autonomy through deciding what role each person plays in her life. If they’ve wronged her, they have no place in her life. Throughout the course of the film, she only learns how to be more decisive in what she wants in needs. Rhoda learns how to manipulate situations in her favor. Let’s be clear though: if we weren’t talking about murder, this would be otherwise be admirable!

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A feminist killer?

Christine’s arc is much more different, as she begins the story as fiercely protective of Rhoda. She is proud of her daughter’s perfection and proud to be her mother. Even when the first inklings of Rhoda’s behavior come to light, her maternal instinct to overrules reason. Regardless of how dangerous Rhoda is, Christine is still charmed by her daughter and in total disbelief that she could be capable of being evil. Yet when Christine actually witnesses one of Rhoda’s murders, she uses that same fervor to find strength and protect others from Rhoda. Yes, “final girls” must often reject the role of caretaker in order to protect themselves. In this case, it’s especially pronounced given that Christine must reject the role of mother. However, the real difference in this feminized violence is how Christine handles it. Rather than blame outward, she holds herself responsible for what she has created and tries to kill herself, but not without trying to kill Rhoda first.

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Not Flintstones vitamins

Rhoda’s conviction has to lead her toward destroying others and Christine’s toward destroying herself.

Although both depictions are incredibly diverse and rarely juxtaposed, part of the problem is that there is no “in between”. The film almost hints that women are too emotional to make a careful decision and when they do; it can become too calculating and may deviate to cruelty.  The extremes of each type of violence are just that, extremes. Yes, its unfortunate that each woman in The Bad Seed finds power and control through some pretty evil deeds. In no way does this piece condone violence or 8-year-old serial killers. We all know that’s wrong and our mothers taught us better than that. But really, what’s the harm in a female character with autonomy and direction?

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Sorry not sorry

See also at Bitch Flicks: The Terror of Little Girls: Social Anxiety About Women in Horrifying Girlhood

Andrea Betanzos likes dessert before dinner, strong coffee, feminism, and very good films.

 

 

The CW’s ‘Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’ and the Pathologizing of Female Desire

I would like to pretend that such crushes stopped once I graduated high school and graduated to full-blown, adult relationships complete with the objects of my affection affection-ing me back. That would, however, be a lie. This is all to say: unrequited female desire is not uncommon.

Let me rephrase: unrequited female desire is not uncommon in real life. It is, however, uncommon in popular culture.

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This is a guest post by Stephanie Brown.

In a few weeks, I’ll be meeting with a Mortified producer in the hopes of having the opportunity to read my diary on stage in front of a bunch of strangers, so I’ve spent many nights pouring through every diary I’ve kept since age 8. While I wish they contained high-minded meanderings, silly but insightful childhood reflections, or at least an angsty Jewel inspired poem or two, my writings from age 8 to age 31 largely center around one topic: boys.

Yes, some of these boys were boyfriends. Boys who I loved who loved me back. Boys I fought with. Boys who broke my heart. About these boys, I wrote to work through the complicated feelings I had relating to our complicated relationships, because they’re always complicated when you’re 19. But the vast majority of the boys who litter the pages of my diaries did not return any of the feelings that filled pages upon pages; they were unrequited crushes. These were the boys I pined over in the halls of junior high, whose houses I walked past every night in case they happened to walk out the door, whose discarded pens I saved in my locker, whose every glance and word I poured over with my friends like a detective searching for clues.

I would like to pretend that such crushes stopped once I graduated high school and graduated to full-blown, adult relationships complete with the objects of my affection affection-ing me back. That would, however, be a lie. This is all to say: unrequited female desire is not uncommon.

Let me rephrase: unrequited female desire is not uncommon in real life. It is, however, uncommon in popular culture.

Why do I bring this up? In addition to reading through my old diaries, the premiere of the CW’s new series Crazy Ex-Girlfriend has reminded about how rare representations of one-sided female desire are within our popular culture and how often those representations, when they do exist, tend to pathologize such feelings. This dearth of representations has given me complicated feelings about the CW’s new, oftentimes brilliant, series.

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The show, if you aren’t familiar, is an hour-long musical-dramedy created by and starring funny woman Rachel Bloom, who has written for Robot Chicken and who has created hilariously offbeat music videos like “Fuck Me, Ray Bradbury.” The pilot centers on the decision of New York-based, overachieving lawyer Rebecca Bunch (Bloom) to turn down a major promotion and instead move to West Covina, California to start her life anew. She makes this decision after running into Josh Chan (Vincent Rodriguez III), a summer camp boyfriend from her youth, who mentions that he is about to move back to West Covina. While the episode makes obvious that Rebecca is miserable in her current job and life situation and is subconsciously using her crush on Josh as an excuse to make a drastic change in her life, the series has so far focused more on Rebecca’s crush than it has on the other reasons she has for moving. Though, as the series progresses, we have started to get glimpses of her troubled family history and deeper insecurity issues.

The series has a lot going for it. The show’s tone is delightfully off-kilter, veering between dark comedy, upbeat musical numbers, and moments of introspection about friendship, success, gender roles, and family trauma. The jokes are clever and unexpected, the songs are catchy and subversive, and the characters are a lovable bunch of misfits played by a cast of extremely talented, relatively unknown actors. The series is largely written and produced by women, and the casting of Josh is a refreshing choice in a pop culture landscape in which Filipino actors are rarely chosen to play the hot leading man.

For the uninitiated, here is a song from the second episode that is emblematic of the silly, clever and subversive way the show plays with the societal expectations put on women:

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkfSDSfxE4o”]

The series is in many ways complex and nuanced and different, which is why its title and accompanying ad campaign have been frustrating. While the show’s intro theme song winks self-knowingly at the name of the series, (“That’s a sexist term!” Rebecca shouts at the chorus singing about her, “It’s more nuanced than that!”) someone still decided it would be beneficial to play into gender stereotypes that construct unrequited love as a pathology in women. This isn’t new, of course. We have texts like the “overly attached girlfriend” meme and Sandra Bullock’s Razzie winning performance in All About Steve that make fun of women who perform love incorrectly, and we have dark thrillers like Fatal Attraction in which women’s desire becomes deadly.

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While Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is a largely wonderful series and while the writers need more than three episodes to develop its characters, two things trouble me about how Rebecca’s feelings have been treated, aside from the title’s blasé pejorative use of the term “crazy.” The first is that Josh thus far does not seem to be Rebecca’s destined love interest. Television couples are often set up from the early stages of a series, and when the set-up is incited by a male character’s crush (ie, Jim and Pam from The Office, Ross and Rachel from Friends, Niles and Daphne on Frasier), the coupling seems inevitable.

However, from what we’ve seen so far, Josh is not Rebecca’s eventual love interest; his cute yet sarcastic bartender friend Greg (Santino Fontana) is. Josh and Rebecca don’t have much chemistry, but Rebecca and Greg do. They banter. They fight. They act toward each other how most eventual television pairs act. Halfway through the pilot episode, we are already cheering for Rebecca to forget about Josh and realize that Greg is the right guy for her. Rebecca is almost immediately set up as a love object, even in a show whose very premise centers on her feelings for someone else.

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Second, the show seems to want to explain Rebecca’s desire for Josh as a symptom of the actual mental health issues from which she seems to be suffering. Honest representations of mental illness are great. Honest representations of female desire are great. What I don’t find great are representations that link female desire to mental illness. The series needs to allow Rebecca to experience both, but without conflating the two.

While some critics are looking forward to she series pivoting off of its initial premise, and while I agree that the show needs to also explore Rebecca’s friendships and family and anxiety and success, I don’t want to give up on the idea that we can have funny, relatable representations of women having crushes. I longed for such storylines as a kid. The girls and women on television always seemed to be the ones being pined after. They never threw parties in hopes that their crush would show up or memorized someone’s class schedule in order to ‘accidentally’ bump into them every day. While I wish the writers on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend would modulate Rebecca’s character, I have related on some level to the feelings about which she often sings.

My hopes for Crazy Ex-Girlfriend moving forward are therefore twofold. I want the series to give Rebecca more to do than pine after Josh, but I don’t want the series or critics to pathologize Rebecca for pining after Josh. I don’t want audiences to write off the series because of some rigid definition of feminism that doesn’t allow for crushes, but I want the series to stop constructing Rebecca’s crush as borderline delusional.

In high school, my friends and I designed, printed, and laminated a 12-Step System for getting over our crushes. I still have the certificate I was awarded for successfully completing the program in the middle of the tenth grade. Even then, we characterized our own feelings as an addiction. I labeled myself “ boy crazy.” This language reinforces the idea that such feelings require treatment, however, wanting someone who doesn’t want you is not a mental illness. We need pop culture to stop telling us that it is.

 

Stephanie Brown is a television, comedy, and podcast enthusiast working on her doctorate in media studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. You can follow her on Twitter or Medium @stephbrown.

 

 

Mining the Feminist Messages of ‘Crimson Peak’

In fact, she genuinely began to feel “depressed” from playing Lucille. However, when she confided this in on-screen brother Tom Hiddleston, who has famously played characters such as Marvel villain Loki, he shared that “you only have fun when your character is having fun,” and, as Chastain explains, “Lucille hasn’t had a fun day in her life.” As the victim of intense patriarchal oppression, it’s no wonder.

(Contains SPOILERS for Crimson Peak.)

When filming Guillermo del Toro’s most recent film, Crimson Peak, Jessica Chastain felt surprised that playing the villain, Lucille Sharpe, wasn’t as “fun” as other actors describe playing villainous roles to be. In fact, she genuinely began to feel “depressed” from playing Lucille. However, when she confided this in on-screen brother Tom Hiddleston, who has famously played characters such as Marvel villain Loki, he shared that “you only have fun when your character is having fun,” and, as Chastain explains, “Lucille hasn’t had a fun day in her life.” As the victim of intense patriarchal oppression, it’s no wonder.

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As patriarchal values are all Lucille has known, those are the tools she uses to attempt to gain and maintain control over her own life and to protect her beloved younger brother, Thomas. By adopting patriarchal means of action, even while being miserable doing it, Lucille becomes a “formidable” antagonist to Mia Wasikowska’s protagonist Edith. This is despite Lucille being entirely (and sympathetically) driven in her actions by profound love and a deep-seated fear of being alone. Turning on other women, including Edith, leads to Lucille’s ultimate downfall, and at Edith’s hands, who was only trying to defend herself and others. As Lucille’s sad life portrays, oppression, such as that from patriarchy, cannot be combatted by becoming an oppressor oneself.

Like many of del Toro’s films, this film deals with knowing and learning about the past in order to move forward and not repeat past mistakes or crimes. Lucille experiences abuse, internalizes it, and then takes it out on other women. Edith, meanwhile, suffers minor abuse, is supported in her efforts to rise against it, and attempts to support other women herself. Though the men in the story make many mistakes in their attempts to be allies to Edith, some of their actions aide Edith when her strength and determination need a little boost. However, it is largely due to the help of other women, albeit none still living, that Edith is able to accomplish what she does, whether it is through the role model of “Frankenstein” author Mary Shelly, or the female ghosts that warn and aide her.

It is only when Edith chooses to listen to the messages that these female ghosts have for her, whether through old wax recordings or their own spectral presences, that Edith learns what she needs to know in order to move forward in her own life. Through joined female effort and learning about what came before her, Edith and the audience can effectively move into the present and take the most effective action in efforts to support the lives of women. With the help of other women, the occasionally non-burdensome help of male allies (again, the men make a number of dangerous mistakes – usually by underestimating both Edith and Lucille), and a lot of her own effort, Edith succeeds in getting through danger, not unscathed, but alive. She then publishes the fruit of her labor, her novel, under her own name – quite something for a woman to do in 1901. (The date is not provided in the film, but was given by Tom Hiddleston in this interview.)

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Lucille is strongly compared to and contrasted against Edith throughout the film. Edith is an ambitious writer who defends her career choice and preferred suspenseful genres against patriarchal and condescending men and women alike. Edith marries the baronet Thomas Sharpe, who is “a dreamer” like her, in part because he is supportive of her writing. Edith continues to work on her novel after their marriage, just as Thomas continues to work on his mining invention (Yes, the “Sharpe Mines” – I see what you did there, del Toro). Lucille could have made a career as a marvelous composer and pianist, but lacked the supportive upbringing that Edith received, and rarely writes or plays (or, indeed, lives) except for her younger brother. At one point, Lucille throws Edith’s manuscript, page by page, into the fire, saying dismissively “You thought you were a writer….” Meanwhile Lucille never takes credit for the beautiful lullaby she seemingly wrote – for Thomas, naturally.

This reflects the internalization of her years of neglect and abuse, a childhood alternately locked away upstairs or physically beaten with a cane, forced to care at an early age for her abusive mother after her father “snapped [Lucille’s mother’s] leg under his boot,” and then sent to and locked away in a mental institution in continental Europe, away from her only comfort – her brother. So internalized is the abuse and pain, Lucille even thinks she is doing her female victims a favor by killing them, as shown in the scene in which Lucille feeds Edith (poisoned) porridge while speaking about her relationship with her mother.

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Throughout her life, Lucille protects Thomas both from oppression and from becoming much of an oppressor himself, keeping him from having to “get [his] hands dirty.” Thomas therefore comes out of a patriarchal past relatively less broken than Lucille, and is able to maintain a bit more of his humanity. It is this humanity, which Lucille made sure to help him preserve in himself, that leads him to experience guilt for what Lucille and he do – exploiting and poisoning vulnerable women for their wealth. It is this guilt that Edith, the protagonist, inadvertently exploits when she encourages him to not live “in the past.” Edith does not seek out to reform Thomas, unlike in so many “romances” that glorify toxic and abusive relationships – he himself makes the choice to help and defend Edith against Lucille. In fact, when Edith finds out what he has done, she understandably does not hesitate to attack him in self-defense. Heartbreakingly, it is revolutionary even today that Edith is not a Bella Swan or a Manic Pixie Dream Girl used by Thomas to feel better about himself. Edith is romantic with Thomas only when she is unaware of what he has done, and then defends herself from her would-be co-murderer.

Meanwhile, while Edith moves into the future after learning from the past, Lucille is “entrenched” in the “history” of the house and the family, and does not “progress.” Lucille grew up in Victorian England and continental Europe being abused by patriarchal society, patriarchal figures, and patriarchal values. Much of what she does is in keeping with these values, clinging to “the past” and the “shadows” as the Edwardian era begins. Patriarchal values are all she has known, and her actions in the film reflect that, whether she is playing the role patriarchy expects her as a woman to play, such as caretaker, or when she emulates patriarchal violence in order to sustain the way of life she and her brother share, such as when she brutally murders Edith’s father Carter Cushing (played by Jim Beaver).

Patriarchy makes many demands on women. It demands that women internalize sexism and abuse, then take out their anger and frustration on other women in horizontal/in-group violence. Lucille fulfills this requirement of patriarchy many times and in many ways, as did her mother before her – and against her. Patriarchy demands that women lack confidence in themselves, and predominantly define themselves by how they do or do not look. Lucille implies that she feels that she “lack[s] beauty” and youth, while women are still fighting against confidence-destroying beauty and age standards today. Patriarchy demands that women value men more than other women, and more than themselves. Lucille centers her brother, Thomas, and her family’s history above all else, and even seems to blame her mother more than her father for the family’s suffering and destruction. This is especially sad, since it was her father’s abuse of her mother that made her mother take out her anger at him in abusing her children. Patriarchy demands that women compete with each other for the little that is offered them, and so Lucille preys upon other women to uphold the life she has created for her brother and herself.

In some ways, Lucille opposes patriarchal ideas of women, but only as manifestations of her role as protector for Thomas. Del Toro describes Thomas as “a stunted man, an adolescent,” and Lucille fills the roles of both mother and wife to him. As depicted by Katherine Fusciardi on Bitch Flicks, violence by women is seen as justifiable by society if it is committed by a mother to protect her child. Lucille takes on the role of violent protector for Thomas, the masculinity of it being emphasized when she crossdresses in order gain access into a men’s club. There, she violently kills Edith’s father, who was “coarse and condescending” to her beloved younger brother. Her role as protector, her clothing, and her violence in that scene are all culturally seen as masculine. When she emulates patriarchy, it is in order for her and Thomas to maintain a place in it, thereby attempting to be free from patriarchal oppression themselves. However, as stated in Alize Emme’s review of Heathers, “the power” of patriarchy to oppress others “is not something to aspire to.” Instead, female friendship creating support systems are all important. In order to gain true power and freedom, patriarchy must be overthrown in a group effort lead by women, not emulated by the individual. Though Lucille gains much needed money by oppressing other women, it hardly relieves her misery from years of external and internal abuse.

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Not only does the story of Crimson Peak have many messages that can be mined (I would say the pun wasn’t intended, but that would be lying) for feminists, but del Toro’s casting choices reflect the feminism of his piece, with Jessica Chastain and Tom Hiddleston being open feminists. What is disappointing is that hardly any women were involved at all behind the camera, not even on the script, with the notable exception of Kate Hawley’s beautiful costume design. Del Toro then, unintentionally it seems, highlights his theme that men can make mistakes as allies, even when they have the best of intentions. Jessica Chastain is particularly vocal about the need for all women and all People of Color to be hired for work behind the camera, and for “all stories” to be told, not just that of “the few.” Hopefully del Toro and the other men onset learned these lessons while filming Crimson Peak, and they continue in learning how to be better allies.

 

Girls and Women in the Middle of Nowhere: ‘The Wonders’ and ‘Bare’

In some ways Wolfgang could be a stand-in for all the directors and other outsiders who naively idealize and misinterpret contemporary rural settings and the business of farming.

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In a scene early in Italian writer-director Alice Rohrwacher’s The Wonders the main character, an adolescent girl named Gelsomina (a radiant Maria Alexandra Lungu), her short-tempered beekeeping, farmer father (Sam Louwyck), her slightly younger sister Marinella (a charming Agnese Graziani) and her two youngest sisters, twins who delight in not doing what they’re told and making messes, are taking a break from the hard work of the farm to splash and scream in an impossibly crystalline body of water. Then a man, fully dressed in black pants and shirt makes his way through a shallow lagoon and tells them they must be quiet. “We’re shooting,” he says. When they follow him back to an idyllic small waterfall set against a backdrop of a rock cliff, we see “the shooting” isn’t the hunters we heard at the beginning of the film but a camera crew and a beautiful, white-wigged, costumed, famous TV host (Monica Bellucci) shooting a promo for a new reality TV series that will take place in the region and feature local, farming families competing against each other on camera for a large cash prize.

“Countryside Wonders will be here,” the host announces to the camera and even after the shoot is finished, Gelsomina who, as the oldest, is her father’s main helper in transporting the bees, collecting honey and even removing stingers from his neck, can’t stop staring at the host who gives her one of the jeweled clips from her wig. Gelso wants the family to be part of the competition, but her father, Wolfgang, whose Italian is clearly not his first language and seems to have some vaguely apocalyptic beliefs that have driven him into farming with his family in the countryside, says, “We don’t need that crap.”

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In some ways Wolfgang could be a stand-in for all the directors and other outsiders who naively idealize and misinterpret contemporary rural settings and the business of farming. Rohrwacher shows us not just the hard work and financial precariousness of the farm, that just one forgotten chore can potentially put into ruin, but also little slights, like when a customer at the farmers’ market asks if the price of the farm’s honey has gone up, in a tone that implies it’s not worth what the family is charging.

Wolfgang’s neighbor, who grew up in the area, is more philosophical about the reality show, “Maybe we will get some jobs or some tourists.” When he’s on the show, wearing the ridiculous costume the producers force all of the contestants into, he knows just what role he should play, complimenting the host, telling her he’s always wanted to be on her show, lamenting his status as a bachelor and getting the women in his family to sing a “traditional” song for the audience. Gelsomina’s stunt, in which she lets bees crawl out of her mouth while the troubled, 14-year-old boy who lives with the family whistles, is met with much less enthusiasm from both the host and the live audience.

The Wonders could also refer to the film’s gorgeous cinematography shot by Hélène Louvart, whether the scene includes that unnaturally glass-like lake, the crumbling farmhouse, the Tuscan countryside or the open, tender faces of the women and girls (including the girls’ mother, Angelica, played by the director’s sister, Alba Rohrwacher). The beekeeping scenes are surprisingly absorbing, as Gelsomina in her protective suit removes the swarming insects from the thick branch they coat into an open container or finds a pile of dead bees and in the bottom of another and declares them, “poisoned.” I have only a slight fear of bees, but I shuddered at some at these scenes, so anyone with a more serious phobia might want to look away. And anyone who has ever questioned the sanitary standards of small farms will want to look away from a number of scenes showing the gathering of honey in this family operation.

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As beautiful and well-acted as the film is, I couldn’t help thinking once the credits rolled, “Is that it?” Although the film has opportunities for great emotional sweep it consistently avoids them by deliberately cutting away or downplaying action that would engage us more fully with these characters and their story. In some shots Lungu looks like she could have been painted by Modigliani and the film itself is more of a static portrait than an emotionally moving story. We spend a lot of time looking into Lungu’s face, but besides her desire to be on TV and get closer to the farmhand, we never really find out what she’s thinking.

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Stateside, another new film from a women-writer director that takes place far from the city is Natalia Leite’s Bare. Glee’s Dianna Agron and Paz de la Huerta (believably androgynous and a little grubby) are respectively, Sarah, a meek, young woman in small-town Nevada, working (and getting fired from) a series of menial jobs and Pepper a sexy, shoplifting drifter in a truck.

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Inside this film’s sometimes over-the-top melodrama it has some acutely observed moments, like when Sarah’s best friend disparages a woman they both know, then over a period of time, the two of them become best friends and Sarah is the one they whisper about. We see the aimless wandering of the group of slightly past-high-school kids who don’t have anything like college plans, drinking, driving and shouting in the wide Nevada deserts and canyons. Other films show scenes like these only as preludes to disaster: this one just lets its bored, restless characters blow off steam.

Agron and de la Huerta have great chemistry and unlike many similar films about young women together, Bare doesn’t shy from showing these two characters having sex and, at least on Sarah’s part, falling in love. The film also has a more realistic take on working in a strip club than we are used to seeing in films, though the way the film equates dancing naked for money as degradation, the same way it makes Sarah’s sexual awakening with Pepper coincide with her being able to really let loose onstage, is a little retro. Agron is a lot better than I expected her to be (Glee isn’t exactly renowned for its great dramatic performances) and the film is beautifully shot (by Tobias Datum) but, as is too often the case with both indie and Hollywood films, the script is nowhere near the level of the performances or cinematography–and a good script is what makes a good movie. Maybe someday both Hollywood and the indie world will learn this lesson.

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Ren Jender is a queer writer-performer/producer putting a film together. Her writing besides appearing every week on Bitch Flicks has appeared in The Toast, xoJane and the Feminist Wire. You can follow her on Twitter @renjender.

Call For Writers: Depictions of Trans Women

Representations of trans women still remain few and far between in film and on television. Representations of trans women performed by actual trans women are even more rare. (‘Orange is the New Black’ and ‘Sense8’ are the most recent, popular exceptions to that rule, and, interestingly, both are series productions created by Netflix.)

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Our theme week for November 2015 will be Depictions of Trans Women.

Representations of trans women still remain few and far between in film and on television. Representations of trans women performed by actual trans women are even more rare. (Orange is the New Black and Sense8 are the most recent, popular exceptions to that rule, and, interestingly, both are series productions created by Netflix.) Much like white actors dressing up in blackface or redface to interpret the experience of Black and Native characters, trans representation by non-trans actresses takes away the authenticity of the interpretation, no matter how sympathetic the storyline may be.

This is why we often see trans women as the punchline of a joke (Terror Firmer, Twin Peaks, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective) or the source of horror and revulsion (Sleepaway Camp, The Crying Game, The Silence of the Lambs). In more serious dramas, male actors have garnered critical praise for their depictions of trans women (Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor in The Crying Game and hotly contended Academy Award win for Best Supporting Actor in Dallas Buyers Club). This persistence in and even acclaim for insisting on interpreting the experience of trans women for trans women is a kind of violence and erasure in its own right.

Why aren’t trans women given the opportunity to represent themselves? Which interpretations of trans women have merit? What do these interpretations say about the experiences of trans women and trans identity? What do interpretations of trans women say about our society’s interplay with trans identity? Are representations of trans women getting better?

Feel free to use the examples below to inspire your writing on this subject, or choose your own source material.

We’d like to avoid as much overlap as possible for this theme, so get your proposals in early if you know which film you’d like to write about. We accept both original pieces and cross-posts, and we respond to queries within a week.

Most of our pieces are between 1,000 and 2,000 words, and include links and images. Please send your piece as a Microsoft Word document to btchflcks[at]gmail[dot]com, including links to all images, and include a 2- to 3-sentence bio.

If you have written for us before, please indicate that in your proposal, and if not, send a writing sample if possible.

Please be familiar with our publication and look over recent and popular posts to get an idea of Bitch Flicks’ style and purpose. We encourage writers to use our search function to see if your topic has been written about before, and link when appropriate (hyperlinks to sources are welcome, as well).

The final due date for these submissions is Friday, Nov. 20, by midnight.

Orange is the New Black

Hedwig and the Angry Inch

Sense8

Breakfast on Pluto

American Transgender

Red Without Blue

Dallas Buyers Club

Transparent

Creature

Star Trek: The Next Generation

Dog Day Afternoon

Wild Zero

The Bold and the Beautiful

Blunt Talk

The Badge

Dressed to Kill

Ace Ventura: Pet Detective

Bad Education

Ma vie en rose

Sleepaway Camp

Silence of the Lambs

Let the Right One In

Hit & Miss

The Crying Game

Terror Firmer

Veronica Mars

The World According to Garp

Twin Peaks

How to Get Away with Murder

Orlando

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia

Tales of the City

Ugly Betty

 

 

 

 

 

‘Sicario’: The Movie That Dares to Ask if the CIA Really Cares About Mexican Families

An unholy mash-up of ‘No Country for Old Men’ and ‘Silence of the Lambs,’ ‘Sicario’ defames the city of Juarez, the FBI, and the CIA without telling us anything we don’t already know.

Written by Katherine Murray.

An unholy mash-up of No Country for Old Men and Silence of the Lambs, Sicario defames the city of Juarez, the FBI, and the CIA without telling us anything we don’t already know.

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When I asked for Emily Blunt to be a detective, this is not what I had in mind. In Sicario, she plays FBI agent Kate Macer, a kidnapping specialist who gets pulled into a joint task force to investigate the operations of a Mexican drug cartel in America. From the moment she accepts the assignment, Kate is kept in the dark about most of her team’s objectives and shocked by the behaviour of the CIA agents she’s working with. Motivated by the hope that she can make a real difference and help to improve life for people both north and south of the border, she stays on, even as the situation looks more and more grim. Also on the task force is the mysterious Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro), who always has Kate’s back in a crisis, but refuses to answer questions about who he works for or what his role is. There are twists and turns as the story goes on, but the upshot is that Kate is disillusioned when All is Revealed.

Sicario is technically well-made, and I would never try to argue that it isn’t. It’s shot with both frankness and care, the score is deliciously creepy, and it manages to make a shoot-out in stopped traffic just as tense and exciting as a car chase. Emily Blunt and Benicio Del Toro are every bit as awesome as you’d want them to be, and Josh Brolin turns in a good performance as the task force leader, Matt Graver. That said, the story’s kind of annoying and, in order to explain why it’s annoying, I have to tell you how it ends. Which means I spoil all the twists and turns for you from this point on.

Here’s the deal: the CIA’s ultimate goal is to help the Columbians take over the drug trade in Mexico, with the understanding that they will stop the violence from spilling over to the US. Kate doesn’t find that out until the movie’s final act, when it’s too late for her to stop them. She also finds out that the CIA needs an FBI agent with them as a technicality, so that they have the legal authority to operate within US borders – meaning, the entire reason she was invited to join the task force was because she was motivated to get revenge on the drug cartel after they killed two of her guys, but ignorant about who the major players were and what standard operating procedure was in Narcotics. They purposely kept her in the dark because they want her to sign a piece of paper saying that she observed their operation and it was by the book.

Alejandro was once a prosecutor in Mexico, until a drug lord killed his whole family. Now he’s working for the Columbians and the CIA because they’ve given him the chance to assassinate the guy who murdered his wife and daughter. In the film’s final act, the CIA smuggles Alejandro back into Mexico and gives him intel to help him track, kidnap and murder various members of the cartel, including one man we’ve been set up to like – a Mexican police officer who’s moving drugs for the cartel, probably so that they don’t kill him. When Alejandro finally makes his way to the drug lord’s home, he murders the guy’s whole family in front of him, completing his revenge.

In the movie’s final scenes, Alejandro returns to the USA and confronts Kate, who’s refused to sign the paperwork after learning his true mission. He threatens to kill her and make it look like a suicide if she doesn’t sign, and, when she can see that he’s serious, she agrees. As Alejandro walks away, Kate points her gun at him but can’t make herself pull the trigger. The last thing we see is Mexican families watching their children play soccer while gunshots are fired in the distance.

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I will say something good about the plot of Sicario, and it’s this: the movie manages to have a lot of characters tell lies while still presenting the audience with a story that makes sense from everyone’s perspective. That’s not easy to do. It also takes advantage of our expectations to trick us in a fairly clever way – we’re so used to seeing characters get drafted into super special teams that they’re not qualified to be on that we don’t even question why Kate was chosen for the task force, even though we’re told several times that she doesn’t have the knowledge or experience to be there. There are definitely a lot of well-executed elements at play here – but there were still some things that bugged me as I was watching.

To start with, Kate Mercer is a worse version of Clarice Starling. The comparison with Silence of the Lambs is pretty hard to miss – Clarice was also a naive FBI agent, brought onto a special project because her lack of guile and lack of knowledge made her the perfect candidate. And she also developed a strange friendship with a murderer whom she later couldn’t bring herself to kill. The difference is that Clarice was the hero of Silence of the Lambs – the entire story is about how she overcomes her inexperience and finds the courage and determination to track down a serial killer, proving to herself that she’s become powerful enough to protect others. Kate just gets tricked by some people. Her main purpose in the story is to witness how great Alejandro is.

Even though most of Sicario is shown to us through Kate’s perspective, and she’s the character the audience is most invited to identify with, this is really Alejandro’s story – and it’s not so different from any other contemporary action movie. He’s a brooding, dark hero with a troubled past who’s become a hardened killer, and he looks really cool doing it. One of the most telling things is that the movie suddenly ditches Kate once it gets more exciting to watch Alejandro kill people. We follow him for quite a long time before returning to Kate, and even then, he “wins” that exchange in the same way he’s won every other exchange he’s involved in. He never messes anything up, he never wavers from his mission – he’s totally sure that he’s right about everything, and he always gets the upper hand, just like every other action hero ever.

The other knock against Kate as a character – besides that she’s only there to watch Alejandro be a dark, capable assassin – is that she’s ineffective in everything she does. She tries to take a moral stand against the CIA but Alejandro forces her to back out of it. She tries to get the task force to follow procedure, but Graver makes her feel stupid for doing it and she, again, backs off. The worst part is a sequence where she tries to hook up with a friend of a friend only to discover that that guy’s working for the Mexican cartel and only there to find out what she knows. The way she finds out is the stupidest part of the movie – I’ll spare you the details – but, once she finds out who he is, he overpowers her and she’s ultimately saved by Alejandro, who reveals that he was following her the whole time because they used her as bait to flush this guy out. Then, she thanks him for saving her life.

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The movie is also kinder to Alejandro when he does something evil than it is to members of the drug cartel. The film opens with a scene where Kate’s team accidentally discovers a house full of the cartel’s victims, and we get lingering shots of their corpses, all with plastic bags over their heads. When the task force goes to Juarez, we also get lingering shots of mutilated bodies hung up on an overpass, and dumped on the street by the cartel. But, when Alejandro kills Fausto Alarcón’s family, we don’t see the bullets enter their bodies. When he tortures an informant secretly transported across the border, all we see is a grate on the floor.

The movie acts like it’s a big surprise that the CIA doesn’t care about anyone outside America, but, no matter what your feelings are about that in real life, it’s obvious to anyone who’s seen a film before that that has to be where this is going. The more interesting question is how Alejandro feels about Mexico, after everything that’s happened to him, but the film doesn’t interrogate that very much.

It’s also interesting that the two focal characters in this movie are a woman and a Latino man, but the movie doesn’t make very much of that, either. There’s a weird dynamic where Kate keeps getting shut down every time she tries to assert herself, and where Graver tries to bully her into keeping quiet – and there are moments of that that feel realistic in an uncomfortably gendered way, though it isn’t explored very deeply. Just like it would have been nice to hear more about what Alejandro thinks of Mexico, it would have been nice to look at the awkward gender dynamic a little more closely, too.

The only character that really doesn’t land is Kate’s partner from the FBI, Reggie. Because race is so important to this story, it bears mentioning that Reggie’s black, and that, if Kate is bad at accomplishing things, he’s even worse than she is. Again, it’s interesting that the dynamic is one where a white man keeps information from Kate and behaves dismissively toward her, and then Kate keeps information from Reggie and behaves dismissively toward him, but I’m not sure it’s happening on purpose, or that it’s there to offer any kind of commentary. The actual result, though, is that Reggie exists to give Kate someone to explain things to or withhold things from. He doesn’t contribute anything else except advice that she doesn’t listen to. There’s even a scene where they go have beers and he spends the whole time talking about her, and trying to give her advice about her love life. Who is Reggie other than being Kate’s tag-along? We’ll never know.

Taken all together, Sicario is a pretty standard action movie wrapped in a thin layer of social commentary on the drug war and US-Mexico relations. Once you brush away a few contemplative shots and a few scenes where characters wring their hands over moral ambiguity, this is straight-forwardly a story about a hitman who is awesome at killing people – a beast that you admire from afar. The story is told from the perspective of a woman who knew him and, because she was ignorant about what was going on at the time, that makes his story more suspenseful.

Sicario is part of that awkward genre of action movie that wants us to enjoy watching someone indiscriminately kill people, but feels obligated to point out that it’s wrong to indiscriminately kill people – or, if it’s not wrong, it’s complicated – it’s a grey area – it’s a sad, hard truth of the world we live in – look at him shoot that guy through another guy!

I’m still waiting for a better Emily Blunt-led detective movie than this.

Katherine Murray is a Toronto-based writer who yells about movies and TV (both real and made up) on her blog.

‘Supergirl’ Episode 1.2, “Stronger Together”: Boozing with RBG and Saving Snakes

Overall, the show remains a fairly entertaining hour, with a refreshing take on femininity and power. In 2015, a superhero show with a likeable female lead and assorted other strong women characters and a little girl who loves her pet snake should not really be groundbreaking, but the sad fact is, it is, and while it has its flaws, I’m still grateful that it exists.

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Supergirl is a hit! Despite a lot of whining from male comic book geeks and MRA types about its SJW attitude, the show had great ratings for its premiere, and pretty decent reviews as well, overall.

This week, the DEO investigated a chemical robbery that turned out to be a feeding, as a Hellgrammite (Justice Leak), one of the aliens that Kara/Supergirl (Melissa Benoist) accidentally brought with her when she passed through the Phantom Zone. It turns out the Hellgrammite eats DDT like it’s going out of style (which it has), which annoys supervillain Astra (Laura Benanti), who wants her alien underlings to keep a low profile on Earth until her plan is in motion. Astra decides to use him as bait to lure her niece Kara to her doom. Kara has other plans.

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In fact, after causing an embarrassing oil spill while trying to keep a tanker from exploding, and getting her ass kicked by her sister Alex (Chyler Leigh) in a kryptonite-infused DEO fight room, Kara decides to take a step back and handle lower-level disasters like armed robberies and pets in trees (a little girl’s snake named Fluffy, to be precise). So when the Hellgrammite strikes, the DEO are the ones who go after him, and when Supergirl doesn’t show, he decides to bring Alex to Astra, hoping it will get the alien queen off his back.

Naturally, Kara steps up to rescue her sister. She’s shocked to run into her aunt, whom she assumed died on Krypton, because mom never told her that Aunt Astra was a baddie, and was sent to the Phantom Zone. Alex dispatches the Hellgrammite pretty easily, but things look dicier for Kara until DEO chief Hank Henshaw (David Harewood) shows up with a kryptonite knife and pokes Astra pretty good. Sure, Hank saves the day this time, but a glimpse of him at the end of the show reveals that he has scary red demon eyes. Or maybe they’re cyborg eyes? If you’re a fan of the comic book version of Superman, you might have an idea. In any case, it’s clear that Hank is not the gruff but lovable commander he appears to be.

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The second episode of CBS’s Supergirl had pretty much the same strengths and weaknesses as the first. It’s full of likeable, attractive characters, and even the less likeable characters at least seem to be, well, characters.

Cat Grant (Calista Flockhart) not only eats boozy breakfasts with Ruth Bader Ginsburg, she also has pretty solid ideas about how Supergirl might improve her public image, which she unwittingly reveals to Supergirl herself. She’s also a pretty terrible boss, treating Kara like a stooge, and threatening to fire James (not “Jimmy”) Olsen (Mehcad Brooks) if he doesn’t get her an exclusive interview with Supergirl. Flockhart has fun in the role, and for a superhero TV show, the character and our feelings toward her are fairly complex.

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Kara’s confrontation with Aunt Astra also has a surprising emotional element to it, thanks to the strength of the two actors. While she’s mostly evil incarnate, Astra seems to feel a genuine connection to Kara. She also claims that she’s trying to save the Earth, after having let Krypton be destroyed, and aside from the fact that her plan involves wiping out humanity, one suspects she may have a point, eventually.

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Kara’s pep talk to James, who despairs of ever being able to get out from under the shadow of superheroes, is fairly affecting, too. The writing is pretty standard stuff, but again, the actors are strong enough to put it across with some genuine emotion. And Supergirl’s inclusive approach to fighting for good has a less fascistic bent to it that that lone wolf Superman’s.

On the negative side, the show’s plotting is contrived. The Hellgrammite just happens to grab Alex, and he gets away with it far too easily. Hank is sharp enough to bring a kryptonite knife to face Astra, but for their attempted capture of the superpowered Hellgrammite, the DEO only brings standard handguns. The special effects are far too cartoony, probably partly due to budget limitations, and the action is mostly indifferently choreographed and shot. That heat vision battle between Supergirl and Astra was an embarrassment. The fight between Alex and Kara was an exception, in that at least it didn’t feature characters transforming into animated blobs to fly across the room at each other.

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Overall, the show remains a fairly entertaining hour, with a refreshing take on femininity and power. In 2015, a superhero show with a likeable female lead and assorted other strong women characters and a little girl who loves her pet snake should not really be groundbreaking, but the sad fact is, it is, and while it has its flaws, I’m still grateful that it exists.

Recommended Reading

Supergirl Premiere: The Enemy of My Enemy Is Super

 

’10 Days in a Madhouse’ Chronicles Nellie Bly’s Investigative Journalism

The story of Nellie Bly, a pioneering female journalist and investigative reporter, has been translated into a feature film. ’10 Days in a Madhouse’ (the screenplay is adapted from her book ‘Ten Days in a Mad-House,’ which was a collection of her news articles) debuts nationwide on Nov. 20.

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The story of Nellie Bly, a pioneering female journalist and investigative reporter, has been translated into a feature film. 10 Days in a Madhouse (the screenplay is adapted from her book Ten Days in a Mad-House, which was a collection of her news articles) debuts nationwide on Nov. 20.

Bly–played by newcomer Caroline Barry–was just 23 in 1887 when she landed a job at the New York World and immediately set out to go undercover at a notoriously abusive women’s insane asylum at Blackwell’s Island mental hospital in New York. Instead of working with hospital personnel or insiders to gain access, she decided to convince the authorities that she was insane, and she was admitted into the wing as a patient, not a reporter. In a series of articles for the New York World, she exposed abuse, mistreatment, injustices, and corruption.

Director Timothy Hines cites his mother as his inspiration, saying that one of her heroes was Nellie Bly, and he thought her story needed to be told, as her story tackles both oppression against women and the strength and success of a woman who stood up to the system.

The film opens Nov. 11 in New York City and Nov. 20 nationwide.

Read more about Nellie Bly:

Nellie Bly’s Lessons in Writing What You Want To by Alice Gregory at The New Yorker

Ten Days in a Madhouse: The Woman Who Got Herself Committed by Bill DeMain at Mental Floss

What Girls Are Good For: 20-Year-Old Nellie Bly’s 1885 Response to a Patronizing Chauvinist by Maria Popova at Brainpickings

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Vintage Viewing: Elizaveta Svilova, Mastering Montage

Born Elizaveta Schnitt in 1900, she became an editing assistant for Pathe in Moscow at the age of just 14. By 1918, she was editing feature films at Goskino, the Soviet state cinema, and from 1922 to 1924 she was their chief editor. Thrilled by Vertov’s dynamic early documentary reels with the agit-propaganda trains, she would be his most vigorous champion toward mainstream support and feature documentaries. In 1922 she joined the Kinoglaz group, serving as chief editor and later assistant director on Vertov’s films.

Part of Vintage Viewing, exploring the work of female filmmaking pioneers.

Elizaveta Svilova

Who gets the credit for a collaborative art-form? When the makers are a husband and wife team, the answer seems to be the husband. We are only now beginning to give credit to Marcia Lucas for her major creative input into the original Star Wars, as both Oscar-winning editor and source of feedback and ideas. A similar fate has met Elizaveta Svilova. Though Sergei Eisenstein is the best-known theorist of film montage, the most striking Soviet documentaries of the 1920s to use kinetic and dialectic montages were made by Kinoglaz (Cinema-Eye), who issued their manifesto in the name of a ‘Council of Three’ – futurist poet and agit-prop director Dziga Vertov, Vertov’s brother and cinematographer Mikhail Kaufman, and Vertov’s wife and editor, Elizaveta Svilova. In June 1923’s LEF magazine, the Council of Three, published “Kinoks: A Revolution” which was a call to arms for cinema verite that could record real life “caught unawares,” while lambasting the falsity and backwardness of fiction film. This manifesto is usually studied by students of Vertov’s art, but what of the woman who was one third of the Council of Three? Who was Elizaveta Svilova?

Born Elizaveta Schnitt in 1900, she became an editing assistant for Pathe in Moscow at the age of just 14. By 1918, she was editing feature films at Goskino, the Soviet state cinema, and from 1922 to 1924 she was their chief editor. Thrilled by Vertov’s dynamic early documentary reels with the agit-propaganda trains, she would be his most vigorous champion toward mainstream support and feature documentaries. In 1922 she joined the Kinoglaz group, serving as chief editor and later assistant director on Vertov’s films.

Dziga Vertov and Elizaveta Svilova were married in 1924, the year they produced the film Kino Eye: Life Caught Unawares. In 1927, Dziga Vertov fell out of favor of the regime and was fired from Sovkino studio (the Soviet cinema studio), with his avant garde and Futurist ideas clashing with the new style of Socialist Realism and the demands of Soviet propaganda. VUFKU, the All-Ukrainian Photo-Film Directorate, which was staffed at the time by administrators sympathetic to Ukrainian Futurism, hired Vertov and Man With A Movie Camera was the sensational result, screened in Germany, France, England, and the United States, and regarded as the most formally experimental film of the silent era. It was followed by an experimental “Symphony of Noises” in Vertov and Svilova’s first sound film, 1930’s Enthusiasm: Symphony of the Donbass. After releasing Three Songs About Lenin in 1934, Vertov was awarded the Order of the Red Star for his most popular film. Though physically unscathed by the Stalinist purges, Vertov’s health began to fail in the 1930s and he and Svilova struggled to find new patronage from the state-monopolized studio system. Since 1938, virtually all Vertov’s many script ideas went unproduced. He had fallen from favour.

During World War II, Vertov’s Jewish family was destroyed by the Nazis and he suffered a nervous breakdown. It would be Svilova who would edit the first film about Auschwitz in 1945. Svilova’s own skills as an editor and filmmaker saw her strike out to direct feature documentaries, including combat documentaries of the Second World War, showing a keen eye for sweeping crowd scenes and the rhythm of military action, taming the avant-garde aesthetics of Kino-Eye into something more palatable to mainstream Soviet audiences. In 1946, she was awarded a Stalin Prize for her work co-directing The Fall Of Berlin, while another film, The Atrocities of the Fascists (Zverstva Fashistov) supplied visual evidence of death camps to the Nuremberg Trials. Vertov died of stomach cancer in 1954, and Svilova retired from the industry to faithfully catalogue his manuscripts, overseeing the publication of many of his theoretical writings and cementing the recovery of his reputation. She passed on herself in 1975, and was buried in Moscow’s Novodevichy Cemetery.

 

 

Man With A Movie Camera – 1929

 

One of the most influential silent films ever made, Man With A Movie Camera passes in a blizzard of dynamic montage, illustrating an impressionist portrait of a day’s life in the USSR. By a trick of superimposition, the cinematographer Mikhail Kaufman sets up his camera on top of a giant camera. Clouds race over the streets in speeded time. An empty cinema awaits, the chairs magically springing open for the crowds that stream in as the film is loaded. Light ignites and the frozen orchestra springs to life. A girl sleeps, representing the sleeping city, in a film that offers us Everyman’s little used colleague, Everywoman, as an equal representative of the human race. Shots of homeless children sleeping rough suggest why this film was not universally admired by the authorities as Soviet propaganda.

From storefront dummies to machines, the city is frozen. Only the cinematographer’s car is in motion. Pigeons fly backwards, in a film that revels in the power of editing to alter, flip and juxtapose, with the camera editing a suggested collision between man and train, suggestively framing it as the sleeping woman’s nightmare. Tramps awaken and react playfully or defensively to being filmed. Rather than manipulating with invisible editing, the film systematically draws attention to the cinematic gaze’s power to manipulate. The attractive woman’s morning wash is mapped onto the washing of streets and windows, while her eyes opening is intercut with shutters snapping open, disarming voyeurism. Later, the voyeuristic impulse itself is explored as a man’s ogling eyeball is superimposed onto the camera lens when giving a close-up of a napping woman’s legs on a park bench. Women and their labour are often the focus of the film, from seamstresses to older women working as street vendors. We see the woman’s eye creating the film as frozen shots of rolls of film capturing women young and old become sped up, reviewed and spliced by Elizaveta Svilova herself, filmed at work at her editing desk. With the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media highlighting the fact that only 17 percent of cinematic crowds are women, Person With A Movie Camera portrays a refreshingly gender-balanced world simply by allowing women of all ages to take up half the space on screen, while highlighting the gender balance of the film’s own authorship through Svilova’s visible role as editor. Women give birth, marry, divorce, mourn, play sport and work long hours, and their dramas are the film’s, as much as that of male laborers. The film is fascinated by mechanics and industry, but not to the exclusion of humanity. Women are half the audience onscreen at the film’s end, watching and commenting on the action.

 

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Enthusiasm: Symphony on the Donbass – 1930

 

Everywoman returns in earphones as the onscreen listener to Vertov’s symphony of noises, which applies collage and dialectic principles of montage to the accumulation of noises, in one of the first feature documentaries of the era of sound. The majestic tolling of a church bell becomes the bourgeois sound of a cuckoo clock, undermining the majesty and intimidating power of the church. The camera staggers with drinkers outside, intercut with the prayers of the faithful to associate both as opiates of the masses, before Soviets swarm the church, demolish its towers and carry away its icons as part of the “struggle against religion.” A female sculptor moulds a bust of Lenin, icon of the liberated “Soviet New Woman.” Model tractors and tools illustrate the first Five Year Plan of collectivization, industrialization and increased production (at least theoretically). The models meld into the real factories of the Donbass mines. Industrial sounds replace the orchestra, including discordant squeals and whistles. Vertov defended his use of discordant “noise” as a feature of proletarian cinema opposed to bourgeois ideas of music: “We really are domestic, and for us these sounds are ‘noise’—but for the worker in the Donbass every sound has a specific meaning; for him there are no ‘noises.'” Made before the cruelest years of collectivization, Vertov’s film is a hymn to the industrial laborers of the first Five Year Plan and to the optimism of early Stalinism. Speakers lays out the need for mass mobilization. A triumphal march plays as the workers exit the mines to cheering, low angle shots amplifying their heroism. In its experimental loopings of industrial noise, Vertov and Svilova’s film anticipates the musique concrete movement, setting up elaborate call and responses between chugging heavy machinery and squealing whistles, before the machines and laborers themselves are made to play the soundtrack’s triumphal march with their synchronized hammering. Women singing in the fields and threshing grain are given equally triumphalist framing, before a workers’ brass band plays the film out.

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 Brigit McCone writes and directs short films and radio dramas. Her hobbies include doodling and learning new things.

‘Room’ for Being More Than “Ma”

Because the kidnapped-but-survived ending is the happier one, even though a real-life victim has suffered through an ordeal, we want her to answer our questions. How did you survive? Why didn’t you escape before? What are you going to do now? The new film ‘Room’ directed by Lenny Abrahamson and starring Brie Larson as the abducted woman we know in the first part of the film only as “Ma” attempts to give us some possible answers.

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Trigger Warning: Rape, Sexual Assault

The American public’s morbid fascination with women and girls held captive by their rapists, in some cases for years, stems in part from the many missing girls, presumed dead, we’ve all read and heard about. Because the kidnapped-but-survived ending is the happier one, even though a real-life victim has suffered through an ordeal, we want her to answer our questions. How did you survive? Why didn’t you escape before? What are you going to do now? The new film Room directed by Lenny Abrahamson and starring Brie Larson as the abducted woman we know in the first part of the film only as “Ma” attempts to give us some possible answers.

Ma lives with her five-year-old son, Jack (Jacob Tremblay) in the place they call “room,” a converted garden shed with a bed, table, tub, sink, skylight, kitchenette and heat and electricity. They are kept there by the man who abducted Ma seven years before, when she was 17. We see Jack and Ma’s daily routine, waking up in the same bed, Jack saying, “Good morning,” to the pieces of furniture, doing exercises together, having meals, watching an old TV and splashing each other in the bath at night. Then Ma puts Jack to bed in a closet (called “wardrobe” even though they are presumably in the US: the out author of the original book who also wrote the screenplay, Emma Donoghue, is originally from Ireland and the production is an Irish/Canadian one) so when their captor punches the security code to open the door and rape her in the bed, as he does every night, Jack won’t see.

Ma has tried to make their lives seem almost normal to Jack, with homemade toy boats floating in the top of the toilet tank and bedtime storybooks. But we see signs of how constricted their lives are: the tops of the knives Ma uses to make dinner are blunted and because she can’t see a dentist or doctor she loses a tooth and has an old wrist injury that pains her. Jack’s hair is so long that we at first mistake him for a little girl–apparently their captor will not let Ma keep scissors in the room. At one point the kidnapper, angry at Ma, cuts off the electricity and heat on a frigid day, which they spend in layers and scarves, eating peanut butter sandwiches. Sometimes during a “normal” day they scream at the skylight. After which Ma says, “I guess they still can’t hear us.”

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Ma fluctuates between depression, some days not wanting to get out of bed, and desperation, as she brainstorms ways that she and Jack can escape. She is always stretched three ways: trying to keep Jack safe and somewhat sheltered from what she’s going through (which means appeasing her captor but also telling Jack when they’re alone, “He’s not our friend”), trying to be a good parent and thinking about how to get the both of them out of “room.”

First she needs her son to understand why they need to leave. She tells him, “Do you remember how Alice wasn’t always in Wonderland? I wasn’t always in Room. I’m like Alice.” With his reluctant help, she devises one plan that fails then, worried that their now unemployed captor will no longer be able to feed them, she comes up with a much darker–and scarier–scheme in which Jack must pretend to be dead and escape while the captor goes to bury him in a secluded spot. Anyone who watches horror movies (or even the trailers for horror movies) will be filled with dread during the moments when first the kidnapper, then Jack seem to be wavering from Ma’s plan, but in spite of the glitches, both Jack and Ma are eventually freed.

Instead of being locked in room, Ma (we find out her name is Joy) and Jack, have an implausibly brief stay in a hospital room, one high above the ground, in a corner with floor-to-ceiling windows and a panoramic cityscape view (like the rest of the film, beautifully shot by cinematographer Danny Cohen) which makes Jack’s question, “Are we on another planet,” seem perfectly reasonable. But after the scenes in the hospital, part two of the film is a lot less compelling, not just because we no longer have a nemesis for the two main characters, but because the imagination and craft that went into the first part of the film seems to desert the screenwriter. Joy and Ma hole up with her mother (Joan Allen) and Leo (Tom McCamus) the man she lives with after her divorce from Joy’s father, in their suburban house. The media stalking Joy outside the door make leaving impossible.

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But Joy seems to have very little life of her own outside of being “Ma”: a deficit that cannot be attributed only to the character’s untreated trauma. While Joy looks at an old yearbook photos of her friends, no one from her old life (besides her parents and Leo, who was a friend of the family before he moved in with her mother) seems to have any contact with her, even as her story is gaining national attention. As Joy sits on the floor of her childhood bedroom we see an electric guitar in the background which could easily be exchanged for a Bible or a buzz saw without changing anything we know about Joy–because, except for a brief outburst at her own mother, we never get to know her beyond her role as Ma. She never seems interested in going back to school or doing anything with her life other than caring for Jack. The movie doesn’t seem to care either.

I was able to suspend my disbelief, at least momentarily, in the first part of the film. I still wondered, for example, if the kidnapper raped Joy every night and she did not have any type of birth control why she had only one child. But the screenplay neglects most of a kidnapping’s aftermath, so in the second part I questioned most of what was onscreen. We see Joy and Jack watching a TV report on their case, but we don’t see how Joy would have to shield Jack from hearing all the gory details of her imprisonment, over and over, in the media. The script ignores that her face would be one that many people recognized, and with that recognition she would carry a stigma of being best known as a rape survivor, and her son recognized as the product of that rape, a facet explored only in a brief and unsatisfactory scene with Joy’s father (William H. Macy). Worst of all, Joy and her ordeal would become fodder for the internet with everyone commenting and even joking (remember Joan Rivers saying of the women Ariel Castro held captive in his home that they should have been grateful for the free rent?) on the terrible circumstances she had survived. I thought of how Elizabeth Smart, a real-life, long-term abductee, has turned the notoriety foisted on her around, by becoming a spokeperson on the issues her case highlighted. I despaired that her fictional counterpart was a lot less interesting than she turned out to be.

Brie Larson gives a very strong performance as Joy and actually looks like a woman held captive (and later, one still suffering the after-effects) as opposed to the prettied-up version another film would present to us. But I couldn’t help comparing this performance to the one she gave in Short Term 12, another role of an unglamorous trauma survivor, but one in which, in spite of its disappointing baby-makes-everything-okay ending, the audience was allowed to see the character as more than just a sometimes very troubled mother-figure (which she also played in her job as a counselor to at-risk teens). Jacob Tremblay is also very good as her son, though maybe because of An Open Secret or maybe just because so many talented child actors in the past have become adults without many prospects, I worry about what will happen to this excellent, young actor, more than I worried what would become of his character or of his mother’s, a bad sign for any film.

I realize I’m in the minority, that a lot of audience members and critics (especially women) love this film, but sometimes a “strong woman” at the center of a film, even one played by a talented actress, isn’t enough. We need our women protagonists, even the ones written by women, to be more than just “Ma.”

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Ren Jender is a queer writer-performer/producer putting a film together. Her writing besides appearing every week on Bitch Flicks has appeared in The Toast, xoJane and the Feminist Wire. You can follow her on Twitter @renjender.

Violent Women: The Roundup

Check out all of the posts from our Violent Women Theme Week here.

The Violent Vagina: The Real Horror Behind the Teeth by Belle Artiquez

It’s a conundrum, one that Dawn faces head (or vagina) on.  She is forced to confront these opposing views, and her body reacts the only way it knows how, it bites the penis of society, it castrates the men that want to turn her into something she doesn’t want to be: a sexual young woman.

Salt: A Refreshing Genderless Lens by Cameron Airen

Violent films with a female at their center tend to be viewed differently than violent films with a male lead. When a woman is in this role, it’s controversial. When a man is in the same type of role, it’s a part of who he is as a human being. We’ve become numb to the violence that men engage in onscreen. As a result, we don’t criticize it like we do when a woman is engaging in it.

Shieldmaidens: The Power and Pleasure of Women’s Violence on Vikings by Lisa Bolekaja

In Reel Knockouts: Violent Women in the Movies, Neal King and Martha McCaughey assert that “cultural standards still equate womanhood with kindness and nonviolence, manhood with strength and aggression.” Under the Victorian cult of true womanhood, womanly virtue was supposed to encompass piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity. Thank goodness writer/producer Michael Hirst ignored those virtues by creating two dynamic women warriors with his historical drama Vikings.

Emotional Violence, Kink, and The Duke of Burgundy by Rushaa Louise Hamid

In much of feminist literature from the past, kink is seen an act driven by patriarchy, with submissive women reproducing their oppressions in the bedroom and capitulating to gendered norms of women as silent and subservient. Even nowadays as the tide gradually changes, there is still a large amount of ire reserved for those who practice BDSM.

Violence and Morality in The 100 by Esther Nassaris

This act of mercy killing is the first of many moments when Clarke is forced to be violent for the good of others. It not only prompts an important change within herself – she loses her idealistic ways – but it prompts a change in the group dynamics. After this moment, Clarke begins to pull away from the co-leadership she and Bellamy had operated in and moves toward becoming the sole leader of the delinquents.

The Rising “Tough” Women in AMC’s The Walking Dead Season Five by Brooke Bennett

This season seems to present a large change in representational issues by including complex characters of color that we actually know something about and care for, presenting the couple of Aaron and Eric from the Alexandria community and self-pronounced lesbian Tara, and doing away with the innate equation of vagina equals do the laundry while the men go kill all the zombies.

Nine Pretty Great Lesbian Vampire Movies by Sara Century

Almost unfailingly exploitative in its portrayal of queer women, this specific sub-genre of film stands alone in a few ways, not the least of which being that the vampires, while murderous and ultimately doomed, are powerful, lonely women, often living their lives outside of society’s rules.

The Real Mother Russia: Modernising Murder and Betrayal in The Americans by Dan Jordan

The ideological battle between the FBI and KGB is thus a gendered one, as the national characters of Uncle Sam and Mother Russia are pitted against each other on a more even world stage.

Monster: A Telling of the Real Life Consequences for Violent Women by Danika Kimball

Throughout her life, Wuornos experienced horrific instances of gendered abuse, which eventually lead to a violent outlash at her unfair circumstances. Monster vividly documents the life of a woman whose experiences under a dominant patriarchal culture racked with abuse, poverty, and desperation led to a life of crime, imprisonment, and eventually death.

Stoker–Family Secrets, Frozen Bodies, and Female Orgasms by Julie Mills

Her uncle’s imposing presence has awakened in her at the same time a lust for bloodshed and an intense sexual desire, and she promptly begins to experiment and seek out means with which to satisfy both.

Sons of Anarchy: Female Violence, Feminist Care by Leigh Kolb

At the end of season 6, Gemma violently clashes the spheres of power. She’s in the kitchen. She’s using an iron, and a carving fork. Using tools of the feminine sphere, she brutally murders Tara, because she fears that Tara is about to take control and dismantle the club—the life, the style of mothering and living—that she brought home with her so many years ago.

What’s in a Name: Anxiety About Violent Women in Monster, Teeth, and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Colleen Clemens

The first college course I ever developed focuses on women and violence.  Stemming from my interest in women who enact violence on and off the page, I wanted to ask students to think about our perceptions of women as “naturally” peaceful.

Hard Candy: The Razor Blade Hidden in an Apple-Cheeked Confection by Emma Kat Richardson

Hogtying and drugging Jeff is only the tip of Hayley’s sadistic iceberg: over the course of the next several hours, she subjects him to a series of tortures more at home in Guantanamo Bay than a sleepy suburban neighborhood, including spraying his screaming mouth with chemicals, temporarily suffocating him with cellophane, and attacking him with a taser in the shower.

High Tension: Rethinking Female Sexuality and Subjectivity Through Violence by Laura Minor

Rather than pander to the male gaze, Aja decides to reject these scopophilic pleasures in favour of championing female subjectivity, but he also chooses to reject heteronormativity by having the lesbian desires of Marie drive the plot of the film. Interestingly, it is these desires and subjective experiences that both initiate the use of violence and intensify the representation of violence throughout.

“It is not fitting for her to be so manly and terrifying”: Catharsis and Female Chaos in Pasolini’s Medea by Brigit McCone

Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1969 film Medea was created in the aftermath of Italian fascism, another masculine cult of personal self-sacrifice in the interests of the state. Utilizing the operatic charisma of the legendary Maria Callas in a non-singing role, he harnesses the pitiless woman as an agent of chaos, rebelling against the dictates of the masculine state that urges her husband to discard her, in favor of a politically advantageous match.

Domestic Terrorism: Feminized Violence in Misery by Tessa Racked

Annie is a human being, dangerous not because of an evil supernatural force, but rather a severe and untreated mental illness. Although Annie is not given an official diagnosis in the film or the novel, an interview with a forensic psychologist on the special edition DVD characterizes her as displaying symptoms of several different conditions, including borderline personality disorder (BPD).

Girlhood: Observed But Not Seen by Ren Jender

Girlhood starts on a peak note: a slow-motion scene of what looks like Black men playing American tackle football on a field at night, wearing helmets, shoulder pads and mouth guards, so we don’t realize–until we notice the players’ breasts under their uniforms–that they are all girls.

Patty Jenkins’ Monster: Shouldering the Double Burden of Masculinity and Femininity by Katherine Parker-Hay

In this narrative we see masculinity float free from any ties to the male body, femininity float free from any easy connection to frailness – we see them meet in the one body of this working class woman to excruciating effect.

Feminist Fangs: The Activist Symbolism of Violent Vampire Women by Melissa-Kelly Franklin

The acts of violence by the female protagonists are terrifying, swift, and socially subversive. They target misogynistic representatives of the patriarchal society that oppresses and silences women, taking them out one by one.

Slashing Gender Assumptions: The Female Killer, Unmasked by Kate Blair

To a certain extent, the reveal of woman as killer in both films comes across as a “gotcha” moment. After an hour or so of being scared out of your wits, it’s both surprising and puzzling to see a woman emerge as the killer. In the real world, most documented violent crimes are committed by men, but in a film, where anything can happen, there’s no reason to make this assumption.

“Did I Step on Your Moment?” The Seductive and Psychological Violence of Female Superheroes by Mary Iannone

This style of fighting codes our female superheroes as half menacing and half attractive – we are meant to be afraid of them, but also enticed by them. Their violence is inextricably linked to their sexuality.

Nobody Puts Susan Cooper in the Basement: Melissa McCarthy and Skillful, Competent Violence in Film by Laura Power

As McCarthy tousles with her own nemesis in the kitchen fight, Feig uses slow motion to let us savor the violence and bird’s eye shots to let us see the controlled swings of Cooper’s arms and legs as she fights. The violence is not slapstick. The violence is not played for laughs. The violence is just flat-out cinematically terrific.

“She Called Them Anti-Seed”: How the Women of Mad Max: Fury Road Divorce Violence from Strength by Cate Young

In Mad Max: Fury Road the “strong female characters” are notable specifically for their aversion to violence. The film portrays its women as emotionally strong people who engage in violence only in self-defense, and only against the system that oppresses them.

Sugar, Spice, and Things Not Nice: Violent Girlhood in Violet & Daisy by Caroline Madden

The character of Daisy personifies the film’s juxtaposition of violence and girlhood. Daisy loves cute animals and doesn’t understand Violet’s dirty jokes. The twist is even that she has not really killed anyone, thus remaining innocent of all crimes. The opening scene displays the most daring oppositional iconography — the young girls dress as nuns, the ultimate image of pure goodness, while having a shoot ‘em up with a gang.

Children: The Great Qualifier of Female Violence by Katherine Fusciardi

True, the rape revenge trope has been put at bay, but there is still a gender issue behind the remaining motivation. It focuses around the assumption of maternity being the all-encompassing passion. Until female characters can be violent for reasons that have nothing to do with their womanhood, there still isn’t complete equality in media.

How Spring Breakers Ungenders the Erotic and Transformative Power of Violence by Emma Houxbois

The girls, driven by desperation to escape their mundane lives to take part in Spring Break, scheme a robbery of the local chicken shack to raise the necessary funds to get there. To psyche themselves up for the crime, they exhort each other to pretend it’s a video game, to detach themselves and dehumanize their victims in a hurried pep talk to the same end as the grueling boot camp scenes sequences in Full Metal Jacket.

Mad Max: Fury Road: Violence Helps Our Heroines Have a Lovely Day by Sophie Hall

Furiosa, stabbed and wounded yet still persistent, takes down the main villain Immortan Joe. “Remember me?” Furiosa growls just before ripping his breathing apparatus–and half of his face–clean off. That quip may seem like your average cool one-liner, but for me it is so much more than that. It’s Furiosa, our female protagonist, who takes out the bad guy. Not Max. Not Nux, or any other male character. Her.

Puberty and the Creation of a Monster: Ginger Snaps by Kelly Piercy

Ginger, despite morphing into a werewolf, becomes our protagonist killer in a very human way, and the complexity of her journey is a cinematic rarity. A large part of its appeal is the addictive excitement-and-relief cocktail that comes with seeing your experiences reflected on screen–to see menstruation from a menstruating perspective. Who wouldn’t see want to see the violence of their PMS daydreams being played out?

When Violence Is Excusable: Regina Mills and the Twisted Morality of Once Upon a Time by Emma Thomas

In the past, Regina’s path to control is lined with dark magic. Dark magic is fueled by her anger, and the two intersect endlessly until it is hard to tell whether Regina is controlling the anger, or the anger is controlling her. What is definitive is that the more her power grows the more violent she becomes. With the only person who offered her a loving future dead, there is no one to rein her in.

Timorous Killers: The Breach of Shyness in Polanski’s Repulsion by Johanna Mackin

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.

Death of the (Male) Author: Feminist Violence in Lynne Ramsay’s Morvern Callar by Sarah Smyth

How significant it is, then, that Ramsay changes the ending from the novel where Morvern discovers she’s pregnant to instead give her a narrative of hopeful escape and adventure. Through the economic, cultural and narrative capitals gained from the violence enacted on the male author both inside and outside of the text, the female protagonist is offered a radical feminist alternative. Rather than by trapped by her class position, socio-economic position, job possibilities or pregnancy, Morvern is, instead, offered freedom, autonomy, and authority.

TV and Classic Literature: Is The 100 like Lord of the Flies? by Rowan Ellis

On the contrary, Octavia moves away from the explicit sexuality of her role in the pilot, and although her initial training is linked to Lincoln, she gravitates toward a warrior’s life to gain the respect of Indra. Although some critics have seen this as a drastic change in her characterisation, looking back at her first scene in the pilot, where she is held back by Bellamy while trying to attack the others for repeating rumours about her, it feels more like a development.

The Killer in/and the Girl: Alexandre Aja’s High Tension by Rebecca Willoughby

In High Tension, we have le tueur—the Killer—in place of the Monster, who in Shelley’s novel can be read as Victor Frankenstein’s doppelganger, that most famous of psychological devices used to illustrate the violence with which the repressed returns, doing all of the things the typical, well-socialized individual could never dream of doing. But where Victor utilizes the Monster to reject society’s expectations of him (including a traditional, heterosexual union with his adopted sister, Elizabeth), High Tension’s Marie creates le tueur because her desires do not fit within the normative world of the film.

From Ginger Snaps to Jennifer’s Body: The Contamination of Violent Women by Julia Patt

Thematically, Jennifer’s Body mirrors Ginger Snaps in many respects: the disruption of suburban or small town life, the intersection between female sexuality and violence, the close relationship between two teen girls at the films’ centers, and—perhaps most strikingly—the contagious nature of violence in women.