The refreshing part about this dark story is the calm confidence and self-assurance of an unapologetic Native female protagonist who is unafraid to take risks and clearly provides leadership to her friends and family.
How much courage must one young Mi’g Maq girl possess in order to endure and survive her mother’s suicide, her father’s imprisonment, and her own quest for vengeance? Rhymes for Young Ghouls answers this question in satisfying ways through layered storytelling, poetic cinematography, dark humor, pain, and a touch of the supernatural. All of this AND it passes the Bechdel Test!
Although the cliché of alcohol and drug abuse on the reservation plays a central role in the plot, the film rises above the expectations that this cliché sets up in surprising ways, drawing the viewer in with dialogue, artistry, strong acting, a truly heinous bad guy in Popper, the violent and vindictive Indian agent played by Mark Antony Krupa, and a soundtrack that enhances both active and quiet moments. Plus, it introduces viewers to one potential negative experience of Indian residential schools, which is a subject not covered in most K-12 classrooms.
In Boarding School Blues: Revisiting American Indian Educational Experiences, Margaret Connell Szasz writes about power, position, and knowledge through these boarding schools in “Through a Wide-Angle Lens,” beginning with this statement: “Boarding schools go against the grain of human experience. By substituting an institutional setting for the traditional family, they intervene in the educational nurturing historically provided by home, kin group, and community . . . In Indian country, the subject of boarding schools always evokes an emotional response” (187-88). In Rhymes for Young Ghouls, this idea of interference and the breakdown of family, as well as a risky and brazen solution to this intervention is brought to life. Szasz continues, “The federal boarding schools, alongside the Residential Schools of Canada, left a decidedly mixed legacy, one that remains alive in Native communities across North America” (Boarding School Blues, 196). If you want a good idea about the horrific side of this legacy, Rhymes is the film to watch.
The film starts simply enough, with the following historical text in white on a black background, privileging the words and asking the viewer to consider this premise as the foundation of the story to come:
“The law in the Kingdom decreed that every child between the age of 5 and 16 who is physically able must attend Indian Residential School.
“Her Majesty’s attendants, to be called truant officers, will take into custody a child whom they believe to be absent from school using as much force as the circumstance requires.
“–Indian Act, by will of Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Canada”
The first image is a closeup of marijuana with blues music playing as the scene opens to reveal a woman and two men in a kitchen getting drunk and high on the Red Crow Indian Reservation in 1969. They are relaxed and counting up product to sell while getting drunk and then the couple, the parents of the film’s main character, Aila (Kawennahere Devery Jacobs), decide to drive away. Aila and her younger brother, Ty, are sitting and talking on the hood of the car when their parents stagger out of the house. Aila’s uncle, Burner, suggests that Aila, who is a little girl, be the one to drive. What happens next sets the rest of the film’s events in motion.
Kawennahere Devery Jacobs as Aila
The next scene shows Aila’s father being arrested as he shouts to her, “Don’t look, Aila! Don’t look!” Of course Aila looks and sees her mother’s body hanging from a porch rafter as her voiceover says, “The day I saw my mother dead, I aged by a thousand years.”
This instant maturity might be the reason Aila decides to take over the marijuana business in order to pay Popper a “truant tax” so that she and her friends can stay out of the Residential School that he controls.
Mark Antony Krupa as “Popper” in Rhymes for Young Ghouls
The refreshing part about this dark story is the calm confidence and self-assurance of an unapologetic Native female protagonist who is unafraid to take risks and clearly provides leadership to her friends and family. When her father returns from prison and finds her in charge instead of his brother, he says that they are supposed to take care of her, not the other way around. And he affirms this idea several times when he refers to Aila as a little girl. But the inexperienced and immature concept of a little girl is not the character that Jacobs portrays in Aila. In fact, this character is quite the opposite – worldwise, smart, practical, and sensitive. When it comes time to confront the domineering and violent Residential School truant officer, Popper, Aila and her friends execute a daring revenge plot that ends this sadistic man’s rein over the reservation community.
Winning such awards as Best Director at the American Indian Film Festival in 2014, Best Canadian Feature Film at the Vancouver International Film Festival in 2013, and Outstanding Actress in a Supporting Role (Roseanne Supernault) at the Red Nation Film Festival in 2014, Rhymes for Young Ghouls is a Native American film that challenges stereotypes of indigenous peoples while also telling a compelling story accessible to all. Originally released in May 2014, this film runs 88 minutes and can be streamed online via Amazon (free with Prime), or on Vudu (rental or purchase).
In the preface to Boarding School Blues, the editors warn against accepting any single interpretation of the Indian boarding school experience because there were a wide variety of experiences, both positive and negative. So I will similarly caution that this film does not represent ALL indigenous peoples’ experiences with the Indian boarding school or residential school systems, but it IS a good film to start the conversation about a subject that most people know nothing about. Incorporating such a film into a brief unit about the Indian boarding school experience would provide that dramatic and artistic touch that students enjoy, but a chapter from Boarding School Blues would also provide a balanced perspective.
Dr. Amanda Morris is an Associate Professor of Multiethnic Rhetorics at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania with a specialty in Indigenous Rhetorics.
The realm of sci-fi and fantasy offers many possibilities to challenge the status quo. It’s the ultimate platform to show diversity and portray a more nuanced characterization of people. Let’s hope that ‘Sleepy Hollow’ can pull of what it has planned and there will be no need to dust off the #AbbieMillsDeservesBetter hashtag.
Television as an mirror that reflects the cultural dynamic that’s present in our society. Ha. There are a few shows that get it right–see the socio-economic depiction in The Wire or the gender politics in Mr. Robot–but more often than not, television formats succumb to trite stereotypes and travel the well-trodden path of TV tropes. The recent change in the TV landscape, “The Golden Age of diversity and representation,” made it seem that there were more roles for actors of color. Yet, the numbers from the 2015 diversity report on Hollywood, Flipping the Script – from UCLA’s Ralph Bunche Center for African American Studies – are only marginally better than previous years.
Veteran showrunners Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci are known for their teamwork in sci-fi – see Fringe, Cowboys & Aliens,Star Trek: Into Darkness. They took a chance on a script by Phillip Iscove, who was toiling away as an assistant at UTA, and Iscove sold his pitch based on the “man out of time” element. They teamed up with director/executive producer Len Wisemen, mostly known from his work on the Underworld franchise, to create one of the more kooky TV formats: Sleepy Hollow (2013).
The conversation has shifted in recent years when it comes to the portrayal of Black women who have graced our screens. From the groundbreaking start with the working single mother Julia Baker on Julia, to the mid-1970s with the working-class housekeeper Florida Evans in Good Times, followed by educated womanhood in the form of Clair Huxtable in the 1980s with The Cosby Show, to the Black professionals such as Maxine Shaw in Living Single, independent women Pam and Gina in Martin, to Whitley in A Different World. Funnily enough, in the 1990s most channels featured shows with a diverse cast. However, once the ratings were high enough they would replace them with mostly white-orientated shows after the network got traction – see UPN, CW, WB, FOX.
Most would say that the reign of Shonda Rimes and her Shondaland production company paved the way for Black characters such as Miranda Bailey in Grey’s Anatomy, Olivia Pope in Scandal, Annalise Keating in How to Get Away with Murder. Other networks followed suit and there’s Mary Jane Paul on Being Mary Jane, Rainbow Johnson on Black-ish, and we can’t forget about Ms. Cookie Lyon on Empire. It’s refreshing to see a variety of Black women represented on the screen. Characters who’re not molded in the archetypes that are damaging society’s perception of Black women – think Strong Black Woman, Mammy, Jezebel, Video Vixen, and so on.
Not every (main) Black character gets the treatment they deserve and debunk archetypes. Characters such as Tara Thornton in True Blood, Bonnie Bennett in The Vampire Diaries, Lacey Porter in Twisted, Iris West in The Flash, and Abbie Mills in Sleepy Hollow, are coming together as captivating women who are used to promote diversity in the show and are slowly pushed aside when the fan base is secured and TPTB still think they have to cater to a certain demographic. Well, it seems that the bait and switch tactic never went out of style.
Abbie, Ichabod, and Frank
The premise of Sleepy Hollow sounds farfetched, but somehow it work(s)(ed). The show is loosely based on The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving. Ichabod Crane (Tom Mison) wakes up in our century and has to stop the Headless Horseman from starting the Apocalypse. He meets Lieutenant Abbie Mills (Nicole Beharie) and together they are the “Witnesses” who will stop the Apocalypse as is written in the Book of Revelation. The duo gets help from Abbie’s sister, Jenny Mills (Lyndie Greenwood), who has in-depth knowledge on the evil forces and artifacts. The stern Captain Frank Irving (Orlando Jones), Abbie’s boss, who reluctantly starts to believe in their cause; and finally the whispery Katrina Crane (Katia Winter), Ichabod’s wife, who “tries” to help the team whilst being stuck in ‘a world between life and death’ a.k.a purgatory, which is ruled by the main antagonist Moloch.
In essence, it’s a tried formula. There’s the overarching mythos of Sleepy Hollow, sprinkled with an ‘army of evil, Lt. Abbie Mills as the reluctant character who works hard and suppresses her own demons and deals with family concerns. Of course her partner is a snarky, knowledgeable yet flawed British hero who fully believes in the mythology. Nevertheless, the chemistry between Mison and Beharie is electric and lured fans in to join the duo on their (un)believable journey. Credit also goes to the multi-racial supporting cast with John Cho as police officer John Brooks, Nicholas Gonzalez as Detective Luke Morales who’s also Abbie’s ex-boyfriend, Jill Marie Jones and Amandla Stenberg as respectively Frank Irving’s ex-wife Cynthia and daughter Macey.
Season 1 was fun, period. It was accepting of all the cheesiness and ran with it in order to create solid (cult) television. Sure, the dialogue was clunky, there were small loose ends, the pacing was off, but it didn’t matter. The diverse cast really made it work. In October 2013, executive producer Heather Kadin even joked: “[..]because we have so much diversity in our cast and we’ve had the freedom to cast our villains and victims however we want, so we can kill as many white people as we want.” It now turned out that it was too good to be true.
Sleepy Hollow became the surprise freshman hit of the season. Fox quickly renewed the show after only two episodes aired and didn’t order the back nine episodes – usual concept for network shows – and kept the show at 13 episodes. Fox later upgraded the show to a total of 18 episodes for season 2. So, the showrunners had the time – there are 10 months between the first and second season – to focus on season 2 in order to make it bigger and better. Right. From the mediocre promotion for the second season, to the casting announcement of Matt Barr as Indiana Jones’ reject Nick Hawley who essentially plays the same role as Jenny Mills, to Alessandra Stanley’s inaccurate NYT article that unjustly called Beharie a sidekick. It was merely the alarm that showed us how season 2 would play out. The bait and switch was almost a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Solving crime with the Mills Sisters
Season 2 has aptly been named by some as “the screenwriters guide of how not to write a show.” One of the catalysts of the demise of season 2 is the fact that Kurtzman and Orci left to do other projects and instilled their faith on showrunner Mark Goffman. Sure, Goffman earned his stripes with series such as White Collar, but he couldn’t handle Sleepy Hollow.
It’s mindboggling that the Juilliard-trained Beharie, who proudly advocated for her character in an interview with Essence – and didn’t expect to portray a tough, cop character with her 5′ 1″ stature and African American background – was pushed aside in favor of “The Crane family drama.” Katrina Crane’s story arc was deplorable. She was touted as a powerful witch from the start. Instead she was only used as a plot device in the first season. They tried to flesh her character out in season 2 and failed. Ichabod Crane became a moping know-it-all (more than usual) who ignored Abbie’s advice to keep focused on their common goal. Fringe’s John Noble was wasted as Ichabod and Katrina’s son who turned out to be The Horseman of War and got his mother pregnant with an evil, demon baby – don’t ask. Not to mention that the Headless Horseman became a woobified character, “grew” a head, and turned out to be Katrina’s ex instead of a menacing villain. The Powers That Be (TPTB) molded Katrina into a damsel in distress that ate up the screen time that should have further explored the relationship between Abbie and Jenny, Abbie and Ichabod, basically everything surrounding Abbie Mills.
The other members of “Team Witness” didn’t fare better. Lyndie Greenwood was promoted to series regular, but was most of the time nowhere to be found in favor of Nick Hawley. Captain Frank Irving and his family’s storyline was cast aside, only to be shortly revived in the most ridiculous way. The show was at its best when Team Witness came together to fight evil and showed the underlying dynamic between the different characters. Add that with the casting of House of Cards actress Sakina Jaffrey as Sheriff Leena Reyes, who has an connection with Abbie’s past, but was severely underused throughout the show.
The diversity of the cast gave the wobbly storyline that extra spunk. Characters of color who seamlessly worked together and aren’t focused on anyone’s race and color – though the show doesn’t hide from commenting on race. Abbie and Jenny are normal, intelligent, layered characters with flaws who’ve showed their vulnerable side, thus debunking the archetype of “The Strong Black woman.” Most fans – and critics- were frustrated after eight episodes had aired of the second season. The diversity and representation went right out of the window with the start of season 2.
Social media further added fuel to the fire within the fandom. At the start of the first season, Orlando Jones quickly broke the fourth wall. He created his own Tumblr page and participated in fandom discussions. Jones actively created more promotion for the show than whatever the Sleepy Hollow PR department was/is trying to do.
Nicole Beharie’s Instagram Post
The unrest in the fandom sparked the #AbbieMillsDeservesBetter hashtag, where fans could vent their frustrations and asks the writers and staff of Sleepy Hollow why Beharie has been pushed to the background in a show in which she’s a lead character. Sleepy Hollow writer Raven Metzner came under fire on social media when he lashed out to the “haters” of the show. The show slightly redeemed itself with the last four episodes – even with the plot where Abbie was transported back to Ichabod’s time and was seen as a slave, they tiptoed the line with the racial insensitivity, but handled it well. Now, not only was Abbie shelved in the show, apparently Beharie was initially left out on the DVD commentary for season 2.
Sci-fi and fantasy writer Genevieve Valentine at io9 made some valid points when it comes to the trajectory of the show. In a series of Tweets she explains, “The unexpected success of season 1 relied heavily on tweaking tropes – not least of which was the trope of the white mythical heroes. [..] This show cannot be trusted with its own story, and that’s a sad place of no-faith to be coming from with the cast and potential it has.” So, the bait and switch from season 2 didn’t work out as planned. Fans and critics alike have voiced their opinions, but will the necessary changes be made?
The criticism didn’t go unnoticed. During the TCA press tour in January, Fox TV chairman and CEO Dana Walden mentioned that the show will be less serialized and have a slightly lighter tone in the future. Well, one of the first changes is a cross-over with the crime procedural show Bones (!). Soon after came the news that Orlando Jones involuntarily left the show. This is a blow for the promotion of Sleepy Hollow. Neither Mison nor Beharie are very active on social media whether it’s promoting the show or engaging with fans; however, Greenwood picked up the baton from Jones.
Furthermore, on August 2, the new showrunner Clifton Campbell (The Glades), told TV Guide that the Headless Horsemen won’t return this season. He said, “But we have a new framework and a new set of rules for the mythology.” Yeah, look how that previously turned out.
The storyline will jump one year ahead. This will give Ichabod the time to grieve over his wife and son, and maybe get a job to start paying the bills. Abbie will be more focused on her job now as an FBI agent. Still, the casting for season 3 went off with a rough start with the announcement of Nikki Reed (Twilight) as series regular Betsy Ross (the legendary seamstress apparently had a thing with Ichabod back in the day), and she will bring a “smart and sexy edge” to the show. Wayward Pines’ Shannyn Sossamon will play the mysterious woman Pandora who asks Ichabod and Abbie for help. It almost seems that TPTB didn’t get the memo. Fans and critics alike asked for more focus on Ichabod and Abbie and Team Witness. Luckily some recent additions seem promising. Lance Gross (Crisis) makes his debut as Abbie’s boss and we’ll see the return of fan-favorite Zach Appelman as Joe Corbin.
So, why stick with Sleepy Hollow? First off, Nicole Beharie is captivating as Lt. Abbie Mills and we need to see more diverse Black leading women on tv. After all, that’s true representation. Secondly, the nuanced relationship and charm between Tom Mison and Nicole Beharie. It’s a natural chemistry that seems so effortless. It would be a waste not to enjoy it while you can. Thirdly, the bait and switch tactic was disastrous for the show; TPTB are still trying to recover from that, it’s only onwards and upwards from here.
The realm of sci-fi and fantasy offers many possibilities to challenge the status quo. It’s the ultimate platform to show diversity and portray a more nuanced characterization of people. Let’s hope that Sleepy Hollow can pull of what it has planned and there will be no need to dust off the #AbbieMillsDeservesBetter hashtag.
Giselle Defares comments on film, fashion (law) and American pop culture. See her blog here.
Does Claire have to forgo her more gentle side to have some form of agency in the corporate world? Does she have to exhibit traditionally masculine traits in order to operate within a male dominated realm? Is she less of a woman because she’s not very interested in kids or having kids? There’s a dichotomy going on here that’s worth exploring.
This is a guest post by Ashley Barry.
Jurassic World‘s opening cinematic had me starry eyed and shivering with excitement. The familiar but epic score accompanied by grand, sweeping shots of Costa Rica transported me right back to my childhood. I’m surprised my face didn’t fracture because a smile was perpetually plastered on it during the entire length of the introductory cinematic. I was home and temporarily lost in the labyrinth of my own nostalgia.
The first installment of the series was released in 1993 and, for some unknown reason, my parents allowed me to watch it. I was five years old and an easily spooked kid (I was afraid of shower drains for crying out loud). With the exception of the infamous tyrannosaurus rex scene, during which I hid underneath a heavy blanket I couldn’t see through, I was blown away by the idea of a dinosaur park and I idolized Ellie Sattler. The franchise itself later evolved into a familial tradition, my dad toting home the newest installment from the rental store whenever I came down with some form of the plague.
It’s difficult to outdo the original movie and, at times, Jurassic World seemed like it was trying to do just that. Though Jurassic World was filled with throwbacks, even going so far as to revisit the original park, I preferred the first film because it didn’t focus so much on gender politics. They were in a crisis situation and there was no time to argue or zone in on such things. Anybody could be a dinosaur’s dinner. Jurassic Park was the first of its kind and, for me at least, the character development was more organic and believable.
Ellie, an empowering character, was never required to forgo her femininity or empathy to be strong and capable. Though she adhered to the final girl trope during the scene in which she had to override the controls in the control room (the most inconveniently placed control room ever), she was an expert in her field and, whether she was working in the dirt or reaching into a colossal pile of triceratops dung, she was unafraid to literally dirty her hands. Though she was just as capable as her male counterparts and coworkers, she still rocked her neatly pinned hair and cut off shorts.
Ellie was never criticized for having a career or not being maternal enough, as if there’s some kind of scale in existence that makes such a determination. She was able to retain her femininity and empathy whereas Claire, in Jurassic World, switched from a hardened non-maternal figure to a maternal figure, a transition that felt forced. I truly believe Claire was assigned a negative and unforgiving reputation. Whether it was the digs at her femininity or her disinterest in having children of her own, it was an unfair reputation she didn’t deserve.
Claire Dearing, the parks operations manager, is a great example of a modern if not progressive woman in that she’s highly career-oriented and ambitious. I reveled in the fact that she’s a female identifying person who’s in a position of power in the corporate world, which is a typically male-dominated space. It’s great to see her acting as her own agent, but in selecting a career over a family, Claire is often distracted and, at times, disconnected from what’s really going on behind the scenes. She’s usually awkward around and sometimes indifferent toward her nephews, which the film presents as a flaw. Does Claire have to forgo her more gentle side to have some form of agency in the corporate world? Does she have to exhibit traditionally masculine traits in order to operate within a male dominated realm? Is she less of a woman because she’s not very interested in kids or having kids? There’s a dichotomy going on here that’s worth exploring.
Claire is either presented as cold and uptight, seeing the dinosaurs as investments rather than actual animals, or she’s warm and caring and inherently maternal. It’s problematic because the film reinforces the idea that all women are inherently maternal and to unlock a woman’s maternal instinct is as simple as triggering an on/off switch. At the beginning of the film narrative, Claire not only forgets how old her nephews are, but she leaves them in the care of her assistant due to her hectic schedule. Is it really a problem? Is it really her problem? Why are the other characters passing such harsh judgment on her? Are they exempt from judgment? Consider, for a moment, the reality of how busy Claire must be. Her career is obviously important to her but she’s also in an authoritative position, meaning she’s likely under a lot of stress. Why are her duties cast aside? Despite her success, the other characters often scrutinize her for not being maternal enough.
There’s a scene in which she has a heated discussion with her sister, Karen. When Karen stresses the importance of close familial ties, she’s operating under the assumption that Claire will have children someday. Claire’s response is short and to the point, but firm. Not all women want children and that should never be viewed as a shameful or selfish want. Motherhood does not make a woman. Though Claire corrects her sister, she’s still viewed as the quasi-villain of the film. She’s under constant scrutiny from other characters, characters that want to alter her in some way.
“When you have kids of your own—“
“’If,’ not ‘when.’”
There’s a shift at one point in the film when the hybrid dinosaur escapes its enclosure and becomes a real threat. Claire’s transition from cold business woman to maternal figure is more apparent at this point. I recall a moment where Claire looks at one of the security monitors and watches a mother comfort her child. This instance may or may not be the thing that triggers Claire’s inherent maternalness. However, the unlocking of Claire’s inherent maternalness aligns with the trope of the fierce or ferociously protective mother. When Claire presents as an active agent of the corporate world, she relies on her intelligence to carry her through. When her maternal side is unlocked, she goes from being an uptight business woman to a sexy action hero. It raises a few questions. Is her womanhood only a cause for celebration when she accepts her maternal side? Is she more of a woman now that she has taken on the protective role of the mother figure?
After luring the t-rex out of its enclosure, there’s a sexualized shot of Claire lying on her side. The shot itself is clearly intended for the male gaze. With her red hair all mussed and her arms bare, the audience is viewing and consuming a very different version of Claire. It’s a version that doesn’t quite line up with her original character. Does she want to revel in her sexuality? Does she even have time to do so? In becoming a more protective figure, she has become more traditionally feminine. Is she only able to loosen up when adopting a more protective role?
There has been a lot of backlash in regards to Claire’s outfit, especially her stiletto footwear. She’s receiving backlash from both the fictional people in her own world and real life movie-goers. It’s a hard and definitely unfair burden to bear. Visually, Claire is dressed in all white towards the start of the film, which might be a nod to John Hammond but it’s also the very picture of sterility. This image circles back to Claire not wanting children and could be read as a visual representation of her neutralized attitude towards them. When she commits to saving her nephews, she ties her shirt in a fashion that’s similar to Ellie’s shirt. Though my childhood self appreciates the throw back, especially because it’s a throw back to my idol, Owen ruined it for me because he made fun of her “impractical” outfit. Instead of being taken seriously, she became the punch line of a joke and it’s not the first instance in which she served as the punch line of a joke. Is that her only purpose? Is she there to be poked, prodded, and laughed at?
Lastly, there’s something to be said about her stiletto footwear. Too often we’re taught to view and interpret symbols of femininity as things that are weak, vain, and impractical. Personally, I would have rolled my ankles had I been running away from dinosaurs in those heels. Claire impressed me with how well she managed in those nude colored heels of hers. It might have been a painful experience, but she endured the pain to not only save her own skin but to save others as well. There’s a kind of strength in that and it’s a strength that needs to be acknowledged and celebrated.
Claire isn’t a bad character. She’s smart and strong, but she operates in a world that wants to change her and back her into a wall. Ellie was feminine and caring, but that was OK. Though Jurassic World had some great parts, I struggled with the film as a whole because everyone was trying to make a villain out of Claire and a hero out of Owen. Oddly enough, I felt as though the first installment was more progressive in its presentation of deeply developed male and female characters. It’s 2015. Shouldn’t we be moving in a forward direction?
Ashley Barry works at a publishing house in Boston and holds a master’s degree in children’s literature. Though her background is in the book business, she loves writing about all mediums. She’s also a contributing writer for a video game website called Not Your Mama’s Gamer. She can be reached at abarry4099@gmail.com.
The Joker hit Harley and leaned in and leered at her. She held up a protective hand in front of her and looked up at him with absolute terror. In that moment, The Joker was not the clown, was not the humorous villain poking fun at Batman’s stoicism. In that moment, The Joker was something else, something it hadn’t occurred to me that he, or anyone, could be.
Written by Jackson Adler.
[TRIGGER WARNING: physical, emotional, and psychological domestic abuse]
Though long a star of television and comics, Harley Quinn is finally making her big screen debut. The Suicide Squad (2016) trailer premiered at San Diego Comic Con, and as stated on Episode #41 of geek podcast Take Back The Knight, co-host Tiffany and many others (including myself) are “loving seeing Harley Quinn on the big screen.” On VariantComics, she is accurately described as “one of the most loved characters in all of comic books.” Naturally, every incarnation of Harley is a bit different, such as Mia Sara’s Harley in the 2002’s live action Birds of Prey TV show being much more serious and mellow than how Harley is usually depicted, though still powerfully engaging.
Nevertheless, most incarnations tend to share certain attributes. Harley Quinn is a villain/anti-heroine who is funny, bold, resourceful, clever, adaptable, intelligent (as she was formerly a psychiatrist), and outgoing. She is a marginalized character as a bisexual and mentally ill woman who has often worked in male-dominated fields, whether in psychiatry or villainy. She takes this in stride, making silly faces and bad puns, and has a great time in whatever way she can. She is also a survivor of domestic psychological, emotional, and physical abuse from her on-again-off-again boyfriend, The Joker. Though often tied to The Joker, she is a villain/anti-heroine in her own right, and has succeeded even in outwitting Batman at times.
To ensure the psychological well-being of the actors in Suicide Squad, including Margot Robbie who plays Harley, a therapist was on set. Certainly, the abusive relationship between Harley and Joker will be explored in Suicide Squad, as it should be. Domestic abuse and abusive relationships need to be explored in our culture, especially if the fictional characters are shown to be complex human beings. While The Joker may be the extreme in every way, Harley is a complex character with whom many sympathize and adore.
I remember the first time I ever saw The Joker hit his girlfriend. It was on Batman: The Animated Series, for which Harley was first created by Paul Dini. I must have been around 5 years old. I don’t know which episode it was, as The Joker hurt Harley in a similar way in a number of them, but I remember my shock. The Joker hit Harley and leaned in and leered at her. She held up a protective hand in front of her and looked up at him with absolute terror. In that moment, The Joker was not the clown, was not the humorous villain poking fun at Batman’s stoicism. In that moment, The Joker was something else, something it hadn’t occurred to me that he, or anyone, could be. And he made Harley, who loved him with all her heart, who called him her “puddin,’” look at him like that. And he wanted her to look at him with that fear. In that moment, he did not want her love, but her absolute obedience. He wanted to terrorize her in order to make himself feel more powerful. He wanted his girlfriend, whom he made think he loved, to fear him and to feed his ego. Up until that moment, that first witnessing of this abuse, it had never occurred to me that a person could say or show that they loved someone in one moment, and then intentionally hurt them in another–that someone who said, showed, and even did love you could intentionally hurt you.
Terribly, the show and much other media featuring Harley victim-blame her, implying she’s too stupid and gullible, and putting all the onus on her to leave The Joker, while hardly offering her any resources to do so. However, the show did at least have the positive message that this sort of relationship is wrong. Domestic abuse needs to be addressed in our culture, and superhero/villain stories are just one way in which that can be done. Because I was introduced to the issue at such a young age, it had more time to sink in and settle in my mind and become real to me, something to be taken seriously. Romantic love had always been put on a pedestal around me – all the Disney movies celebrated it. It was “the happy ending” in so many stories. And yet, Harley Quinn was a remarkable character – clever, outgoing, funny, resourceful, silly, determined, and able to adapt to whatever situation was at hand.
Though in some incarnations, Harley’s relationship with The Joker is romanticized, similar to the abusive relationships in the Twilight Saga and Fifty Shades of Grey; many if not most of the ones I have come across contain the message that the abuse is wrong, not romantic. Besides, Harley, since her debut, has been so much more than just love-sick. And even if The Joker IS the love of her life, she has more to live for than love. Even in the victim-blaming Batman: The Animated Series, when she was out on her own, or teaming up with Poison Ivy, she shone. She was just as enjoyable, and even much more so, to watch when she wasn’t with The Joker. She didn’t NEED him in order to have a story worth telling. Yes, he was a part of her story, but her story was so much more than him.
Batman: The Animated Series and its spinoffs often showed Batman showing her sympathy, patience, and care. He understood that she was mentally ill, and was rarely rough with her. Though he still didn’t treat her perfectly, the hero of the series, through his behavior, still encouraged the audience who worshipped him to treat the traumatized and mentally ill, especially female survivors, with similar respect. Not that she should be reduced to victim-hood and seen as less complex, something that even Batman sometimes forgets (hence her ability to outwit him at times, due to his underestimation of her).
Suicide Squad will feature Harley’s origin and coming into her own, but hopefully there will be a sequel in which her character can more fully be explored independent of The Joker. Maybe her friendship/romance with Poison Ivy could also be explored in this possible sequel. Goodness knows that we need more Harley, even though she is White, skinny, blonde, and blue-eyed. On that note, goodness knows we need more characters like Harley – complex and female. And here’s hoping that Harley gets many more chances to shine.
While they disrupt a game, we see footage of the cheerleaders and female entertainers dancing and performing for male audiences. There were numerous charges filed against the Femen activists after Euro 2012. The scantily clad women that were in those spaces specifically for the male gaze, however, were welcomed.
As a young girl, Oksana Shachko became enraptured in her iconography classes and painted intricate portraits of religious figures. She even planned to join a convent at one point. In the documentary Je Suis FEMEN (I Am FEMEN), we see Oksana painting a Madonna and child, and we also see her painting what has become her life instead: bare breasts, masks, murals, and enormous protest signs. Oksana is one of the founding members of the Kiev, Ukraine-based protest group Femen.
While her vocations in life might appear contradictory (nun vs. topless activist), perhaps her calling has always been clear–to surround herself by women and effect change in heavily patriarchal spaces. Oksana is the “Je” (“I”) in the film–her story, as a dedicated artist and activist–dominates Swiss director Alain Margot’s film. I Am FEMEN refers not only to Oksana’s journey, but also a supportive and sympathetic point of view from behind the camera.
Oksana Shachko
I Am FEMEN is a lovely, powerful film. It delves into the complexity of the movement, showing protests against coddled rapists, mistreated zoo animals, Ukrainian politicians, international sporting events, and Vladimir Putin. The audience gets a sense of the humanity of the women in Femen; Margot showcases their parents, and often shows the women in the more mundane aspects of their lives/activist work–paintings signs, cooking dumplings, working on the website.
There were a few moments that the film seemed be shot with the male gaze in mind. This is problematically, ironically reflected in a POV review:
“Veteran Swiss director Alain Margot’s vastly entertaining film I Am Femen offers an entrée into the FEMEN movement through a profile of Ms. Shachko. Looking like a cross between Simone Simon in the original Cat People and Anna Karina in Une Femme est une femme, Oksana Shachko combines an aloof beauty with a lithe physique, marking her as a natural fighter who seems to relish her endless skirmishes with the police.”
Yet I Am FEMEN seems to fully understand the contradictory nature of the male gaze in relation to Femen’s activism. In a poignant part of the film, the women are protesting the Ukraine-hosted Euro 2012 football championship (not the sport itself, they point out, but what goes in to hosting these events–displacing students to set up brothels, etc.). This comes toward the end of the film, when we’ve seen the women beaten, imprisoned, and held captive, and Oksana is concerned her apartment–which was ransacked–has been bugged. While they disrupt a game, we see footage of the cheerleaders and female entertainers dancing and performing for male audiences. There were numerous charges filed against the Femen activists after Euro 2012. The scantily clad women that were in those spaces specifically for the male gaze, however, were welcomed.
At the end of the film, behind-the-scenes activist and leader Anna and a small group appear in Kiev in 2013. She has been beaten, and they say that Russian and Ukrainian secret services have kept them from protesting. Anna joins her sister in Switzerland, and three prominent activists, including Oksana, seek asylum in France to continue their organization and activist training.
Activist training
As well-shot, complex, and humanizing as I Am FEMEN is as a film, I couldn’t help but be uneasy. Because I’d seen and written aboutUkraine is Not a Brothel, I wondered how I Am FEMEN would differ, since the subjects and timelines were similar. Filmmaker Kitty Green embedded herself with Femen–living with them as she shot Ukraine is Not a Brothel–and she famously “outed” Victor Svyatski as an abusive mastermind behind the scenes of Femen, whom the women eventually broke away from. He is interviewed in her film, and tells Green that the women are “weak” and that “getting girls” was part of his motivation for galvanizing the group.
In I Am FEMEN, Oksana flippantly mentions the infamous Victor, saying that he simply “supports our work,” and is a “feminist man.” While Margot told the story in front of him, if an audience member was familiar with Ukraine is Not a Brothel, the fleeting mention of Victor leaves many questions unanswered. Certainly Green’s storytelling was from a different perspective, as she lived with the women and became much more than a director. Green also focused more on Inna Shevchenko‘s journey, and Margot focuses on Oksana.
There is much to appreciate in I Am FEMEN, and much to be inspired by. Feminists in general have conflicting views of Femen, but we cannot deny the power of turning the sexual object into the angry subject. The current aim of the movement–an international reach, dubbing themselves as a “sextremist” group– is fascinating. While there are complex, complicated problems that are inherent in any activist group, attempting to subvert the male gaze–which enjoys provocative dancers yet beats and arrests topless activists–is, essentially, a forceful weapon.
Inna recently penned an op/ed for The New Statesman. She says,
“With Femen’s topless protests, we succeeded in frightening many patriarchal institutions by taking away women’s naked bodies from the shining world of advertising, and taking them back to the political arena. Here, women’s bodies are no longer serving someone else’s demands or pleasing someone else, but are instead demanding their own rights. We revealed and highlighted the double standards of a world which easily accepts the use of female naked bodies in commercials, but roars in anger when topless women bare their political demands.”
It would be most compelling to watch the two Femen documentaries as a complementary pair. Ukraine is Not a Brothel and I Am FEMEN both beautifully delve into the past, present, and possible futures for a group that seeks to push and keep pushing. In an interview with VICE, Inna discusses the Victor revelations, and confidently asserts that they’ve moved on and now they’re independent. All of this–the literal and figurative nakedness of protest, the growth of a movement, the breaking free from the external and internal patriarchal structures–teaches us that in so many ways, the world thinks it owns women’s bodies. I Am FEMEN (and Ukraine is Not a Brothel) show the worth of this organization that’s out to change the world.
Ali was not, it seems, an uneasy, distant patriarchal figure. His masculinity was characterized by deep emotional expressiveness. Lewins’s employment of beautiful family photos, home movies and those engaging recordings serve to reinforce the impression.
Only children should have heroes and heroines, but if there is a hero worthy of worship it is Muhammad Ali. Ali was not only a supreme boxer; his extraordinary charisma granted him enormous celebrity outside the ring and he transcended his profession to become one of the most important cultural figures of the ’60s and ’70s. Ali was, and remains, a symbol of Black pride and consciousness in both the United States and abroad. Even today, young people from Cuba to Ghana are familiar with his name and achievements. Ali was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease in the early ’80s but it has not prevented him having an active public life. He became an advocate for those with the condition and devoted himself to humanitarian work. Ali is now a revered figure in the United States but this was not always the case. Many in the white establishment and mainstream media hated him. They saw Ali’s conversion to Islam as a threat and despised him for refusing to fight in the monstrosity that was the Vietnam War. The boxer was punished for refusing military service: his heavyweight title was taken away from him and he was banned from boxing for four years from 1967 to 1971. On the sorrowful day Ali leaves us, hypocrites who reviled him will, no doubt, express condolences and the mainstream media will try to depoliticize and deradicalize him like they did with Mandela.
With daughter Maryum
There have been numerous narrative and documentary films devoted to Muhammad Ali. The most well-known biopic of this century is probably Michael Mann’s Ali (2001) starring Will Smith in the title role. There have also been several excellent documentaries on the boxer. The recently released documentary, The Trials of Muhammad Ali (Bill Siegel, 2013) examines the political fight Ali had outside the ring when he refused to fight in Vietnam. Note that the television film Muhammad Ali’s Greatest Fight, also released in 2013, deals with the legal battle. Many documentaries have studied his legendary fights inside the ring. When We Were Kings (Leon Gast, 1996) examines Ali’s celebrated 1974 fight against George Foreman in the Central African nation then called Zaire (the present-day Democratic Republic of Congo) although it does so much more than anatomize the bout. It is a stirring portrait of an epoch-defining cultural and political event. Although it also examines the public, political Ali, Claire Lewins’s I Am Ali (2014) focuses on the boxer’s private self.
With Veronica
I Am Ali features interviews with people close to Ali, among them his former manager, Gene Kilroy, trainer, Angelo Dundee (who died in 2012), brother, Rahaman Ali and son, Muhammad Ali Jr. Crucially, the documentary gives voice to Ali’s ex-wife, Veronica Porsche, and daughters Hana and Maryum. There are not many profiles of male boxers that feature female public and/or private voices. Lewins has also greatly benefited from access to taped recordings of conversations Ali had with his children. Intended as childhood audio journals, they lend an incalculable poignancy to the film. I Am Ali is, in fact, extremely moving. Hearing the boxer singing Mamas and the Papas songs with 3-year-old Hana makes you cry. Commentary by his daughters indicate that Ali was a great father despite his hectic travelling schedule. Maryum and Hana describe a playful, loving personality. Ali was an inspirational man to his loved ones too. We hear him asking Maryum when she was little: “If everyone’s born for a purpose, what do think you were born for?” Ali was not, it seems, an uneasy, distant patriarchal figure. His masculinity was characterized by deep emotional expressiveness. Lewins’s employment of beautiful family photos, home movies and those engaging recordings serve to reinforce the impression.
With Veronica and Hana
As a husband, the younger Ali was, reportedly, more complicated. Although an intimate portrait of the man, the documentary does not examine his marital and romantic life in depth. Lewins, however, rightly allows a tearful Veronica to describe her “fairy tale days” with Ali and more painful ones: “He’s a really good-hearted person, very sensitive, and I guess I’m crying because of his situation now. You know, and I’ll always love him, I mean not like ‘in love’…we’ve always been friends. It became hard to live with him because, everyone knows, the whole world knows, he wasn’t faithful as a husband. There’s a story to that too, but I think but he’s an incredible human being. He has a beautiful heart…” Is I Am Ali hagiography? Perhaps. What is clear, though, is that Ali was, and is, much loved by people close to him.
Daughters Hana and Maryum
Clare Lewins not only incorporates private, female voices in her documentary; I Am Ali also features an interview with a boxing fan, Russ Routledge, from Newcastle in the North East of England who once stayed with Ali in his home in the States. In doing so, she exhibits both a feminist and populist consciousness in her portrait of the boxer. The British director, further, examines Ali’s warm relationship with the United Kingdom. Lewins tells the improbable tale of his visit to South Shields (also in the North East of England) where his marriage to Veronica was blessed in the local mosque. This is of personal interest to me as it is the town where I was born.
Brother Rahaman Ali
Although it focuses on the private Ali, the documentary also addresses the public and political aspects of the man. I Am Ali is graced with fantastic iconic shots of the boxer and remarkable archival footage of powerful old interviews and speeches. Ali spoke out against racial injustice and the documentary features a potent, witty speech on white supremacist indoctrination by the boxer. It examines his growing political awareness and chronicles his conversion to Islam as well as his refusal to fight in Vietnam. Ali’s refusal to fight, in my mind, remains the most courageous thing he has ever done in his courageous, wonderful life. I Am Ali features the boxer’s memorable statement about his decision: “Why should me and other so-called negroes go ten thousand miles away from home here in America to drop bombs and bullets on other innocent brown people who’s never bothered us and I will say directly no I will not go ten thousand miles to help kill innocent people.”
Clare Lewins with Maryum and Hana
I Am Ali is, perhaps, not the finest documentary about the legendary boxer. The fascinating and thrilling When We Were Kings remains a personal favourite. It is is, nevertheless, an insightful and tender exploration of both the public and private Ali. Giving voice to the man himself and those closest to him, it is a deeply emotional ode to both family love and noble ideals.
It’s hard to avoid the sense that this is a story about how the rich are in decline – how complacency has made them helpless and weak enough for the poor to pull them down. It’s hard to know if we’re supposed to think that John has the right idea by using Julie as a stepping stone to move toward his goals – if we’re supposed to think she deserves what she gets because she was stupid and drunk and coming onto him. The play seems to think so – Chastain and Ullmann seem to disagree – the movie itself seems to be a confused mixture of the two viewpoints.
Now on DVD, Liv Ullmann’s adaptation of Miss Julie is a complicated, if not always very uplifting, exploration of the intersection between class and gender. Despite the best efforts of everyone involved, there’s still a thin angry thread of hatred for women and poor people vibrating under the surface. Spoilers for a story that’s over a hundred years old.
I promise you, this is even more sexual in context
Miss Julie is a pretty straight-forward story about class differences at the turn of the nineteenth century. Based on the 1888 play of the same name, the movie follows Julie, the daughter of a wealthy Baron, as she tries to seduce her father’s Valet, John. It isn’t a romance story – Julie and John don’t love each other. In fact, they kind of hate each other, but they’re two people who happen to be in close proximity, and they’re bored. Because it’s based on a one-room play, most of the action consists of watching two people argue with each other long past the point when most of us would walk away, and the drama consists mostly of trying to figure out which of them is The Worst.
The film moves through roughly four stages, marked by unexpected changes in John’s behaviour.
In the first, and best, and most palpably uncomfortable stage. Julie sexually harasses John in a style I’d like to call 50 Shades of Awkward and Unpleasant. In Jessica Chastain’s portrayal, Julie pretends to be more confident than she is. She wants John to like her – she wants him to be infatuated with her – and, because he isn’t, she abuses her power over him by ordering him to behave as though he is. There’s a creepy and overtly sexual moment when she makes him start kissing her boots, but there are also much sadder and mundane requests. She makes him dance with her, bring her flowers, and offer her a glass of wine. And each time he grudgingly, angrily does any of these things, she smiles and thanks him as though it were his idea, trying hard to pretend that it was.
Even at this stage in the story, there’s a pitiable element to Julie’s power. It’s true that she can coerce John into doing whatever she wants him to do, but it’s also clear that she doesn’t know what she wants from him at all. John’s much more worldly, and, behind his clenched, contemptuous expression, we can tell that he sees her much more clearly than she sees herself. He’s annoyed mostly because she’s playing stupid, childish games with him – not because he feels threatened by her presence. There’s an uncomfortable vulnerability to Julie in these scenes, even on the first viewing, because we can see that she’s exposing all her weaknesses to John without knowing.
The strangest part of the movie is the one, glittering moment when they seem to get along
The second stage of the story comes when John – quite suddenly, almost like he’s gotten fed-up and reached a breaking point – confesses that he’s actually in love with Julie. He has, in fact been madly, passionately in love with her for years, and that’s why it torments him so much when she teases him this way. Julie is surprised by this, but pleased, and there’s a bit of the normal Heathcliff what-will-your-family-think we-can-never-be-together stuff before they both cross a line and have sex.
In the third stage, John starts to look like a douchebag. He lies to and manipulates the kitchen maid he’s dating, and turns on Julie as soon as he has enough power to do so. Because she’s a woman, and this is 1888, she can’t ever tell anyone she had sex with a servant. Julie’s also afraid she might get pregnant, and she’s shocked that John would lie to her and pretend to be the perfect (which, in her eyes, means subservient) boyfriend just to get her into bed. John’s happy he wrecked her life and crows over the fact that she’s now just as gross as him. With the class barrier gone, he now has more power because of his gender, and he slut-shames her for, like, an hour in the middle of the movie. As Julie starts to get more panicked about what she’s done and what’s going to happen to her when everyone finds out, John tries to convince her that the only way to salvage the situation is to steal her father’s money and run away with him, so that he can start the business he’s always dreamed of. After a lot of coaxing, Julie goes along with this plan, but John changes his mind again.
In the final and shortest stage of the movie, the sun starts to rise and John sobers up and realizes that he’s been too ambitious for his own good. He doesn’t want to take the risk of running away with Julie anymore – he wants to stay in the comfortable little life he’s made for himself as the Baron’s servant. This is, after all, The Way of the World. Julie’s still in a state of total crisis, though, and he needs to stop anyone from finding out about what happened with her, so that he doesn’t lose his job. So, he convinces her to kill herself, and that’s the end.
“The alternation of ascent and descent constitutes one of life’s main charms,” say Strindberg.
Miss Julie is really obviously interested in the intersection of class and gender – like, obvious to the point that Julie and John do a little bit of dream interpretation, discussing how they’re always climbing or falling in their sleep – but, because the author’s take on the situation is kind of horrible, it’s hard to tell where the movie comes down. If you don’t want to read Strindberg’s entire introduction to the play (which I am told is even more misogynist in its original version), suffice to say that John’s a special kind of Poor because he wants to be refined, but he’s still dirty and ignorant on the inside, and Julie is a man-hating half-woman who’s destroying the fabric of society because she doesn’t know her place.
It’s also not surprising that Chastain had a tough time with the idea that Julie kills herself because John tells her to. I have a tough time with that, too, and I’m not sure I buy her explanation that it’s ultimately empowering because Julie was suicidal all along and wanted John to help her self-destruct.
Director Liv Ullmann seems to want us to understand Julie not as a horrible deviant, but as a victim of her circumstance, reacting in an understandable way. The film opens with a sequence in which we watch a young Julie wander bored and alone through her father’s mansion, and implies that her interest in John is born from the same lack of playmates, coloured by a strange naiveté that comes from leading a sheltered life. (Chastain is also much older than Julie, making her awkwardness and innocence seem like a psychological outcome rather than the product of youth).
At the same time, it’s hard to avoid the sense that this is a story about how the rich are in decline – how complacency has made them helpless and weak enough for the poor to pull them down. It’s hard to know if we’re supposed to think that John has the right idea by using Julie as a stepping stone to move toward his goals – if we’re supposed to think she deserves what she gets because she was stupid and drunk and coming onto him. The play seems to think so – Chastain and Ullmann seem to disagree – the movie itself seems to be a confused mixture of the two viewpoints. This version of Miss Julie isn’t so much a reaction against or dialogue with the original as it is a faithful performance that tries to sneak in a more empathetic worldview around the sides. It’s very interesting, but I’m not sure it completely succeeds.
Aside from the movie’s weird politics, Chastain and Colin Farrell are both very interesting to watch, but it’s a long haul. I wasn’t kidding when I said it’s mostly two hours of people fighting in the kitchen. That’s something that doesn’t work as well without the visceral immediacy of a stage.
All in all, I’m not sorry I watched this, but I enjoyed the first leg of the story, which seemed to be uncomfortable on purpose, more than I enjoyed the last legs of the story, which seemed like the playwright’s ghost was giving us the finger.
Katherine Murray is a Toronto-based writer who yells about movies and TV (both real and made up) on her blog.
‘Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation’ is kicking it at the box office and getting great reviews. And I can confirm that it is fantastic. If you like action movies or spy thrillers at all, you should see it. You’ll love it. But after you see it, I would like to spoil your fun by unfurling my feminist criticism by looking back at the previous entries in the nearly 20-years-running Mission Impossible franchise to see how women have fared overall. The news isn’t great.
Rebecca Ferguson and Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation
Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation is kicking it at the box office and getting great reviews. And I can confirm that it is fantastic. If you like action movies or spy thrillers at all, you should see it. You’ll love it. But after you see it, I would like to spoil your fun by unfurling my feminist criticism.
Rogue Nation has a great central female character in Rebecca Ferguson’s Ilsa Faust. The Daily Beast calls Ferguson “The Second Coming of Lauren Bacall” and, astonishingly, that passes the smell test. Ilsa is the kind of gal who can run at breakneck speed in heels but is also practical enough to take them off before jumping off a roof: the perfect spy movie fantasy of a woman. And Ferguson plays her with enough mystique we spend the whole movie never quite sure which side of the Bond Girl Axis (good girl who is actually bad vs. bad girl who is actually good) she’ll land on. Ilsa is so captivating that I didn’t even notice until I got home that she was the only named female character in the movie. The only other woman with any dialogue, “Shop Girl,” is killed off within a minute or so. Rogue Nation is the perfect example of a movie that fails the Bechdel Test BADLY, while patting itself on the back for presenting a “strong female character.”
I decided to look back at the previous entries in the nearly 20-years-running Mission Impossible franchise to see how women have fared overall. The news isn’t great.
Emmanuelle Béart in Mission Impossible
Mission Impossible (1996)
Number of named female characters: 4
Named female characters who survive the film: 1 (not main female character)
Women of color: 0
Bond Girl Axis: Good girl is actually bad.
Love Interest for Tom Cruise: Yes
Bechdel Test: Fail (second prong)
Thandie Newton in Mission Impossible II
Mission Impossible II (2000)
Number of named female characters: 1 (seriously, just one)
Named female characters who survive the film: 1
Women of color: 1 (main female character, obviously)
Bond Girl Axis: Bad girl is actually good.
Love Interest for Tom Cruise: Yes
Bechdel Test: Fail (first prong)
Maggie Q in Mission Impossible III
Mission Impossible III (2006)
Number of named female characters: 3
Named female characters who survive the film: 2
Women of color: 1
Bond Girl Axis: Not applicable. All women are what they seem (all three good).
Love Interest for Tom Cruise: Yes
Bechdel Test: Fail (third prong)
Paula Patton in Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol
Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol (2011)
Number of named female characters: 3 (one a cameo, without dialogue)
Named female characters who survive the film: 2
Women of color: 1 (main female character)
Bond Girl Axis: Not applicable. All women are what they seem (two good, one bad).
Love Interest for Tom Cruise: Only in cameo
Bechdel Test: Near-pass (do grunts during a fight count as a conversation?)
Rebecca Ferguson as Ilsa Faust in Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation
Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation (2015)
Number of named female characters: 1
Named female characters who survive the film: 1 (2 unnamed characters die)
Women of color: 0
Bond Girl Axis: [Spoiler] Morally ambiguous girl is actually good.
Love Interest for Tom Cruise: No
Bechdel Test: Fail (first prong)
Some obvious themes emerge: There are shockingly few women in the Mission Impossible movies, they generally don’t interact, and a lot of them die.
Keri Russell is killed off in the first act of Mission Impossible III
What is worse is that even when female characters survive to the credits, they generally don’t appear in the following sequels (with no explanation of where they’ve gone). Thandie Newton’s Nyah, the only woman in Mission Impossible II, ends the film as the ally and lover of Cruise’s Ethan Hunt. She’s never spoken of again. Maggie Q’s Zhen in Mission Impossible III and Paula Patton’s Jane in Ghost Protocol were both women of color working alongside Ethan; they’re not secretly evil, they don’t die, they aren’t his love interest (maybe Nyah disappeared because it was a bad breakup?). But when the next movie comes around, they’re not on his team anymore. Sure, we never see the character Jonathan Rhys Meyers plays in Mission Impossible III again, either, but he is one of countless white dudes in the franchise. As you can see above, women in the franchise are so countable that a two-year-old would be like, “I got this.”
Michele Monaghan as Julia in Mission Impossible III, at gunpoint.
The only woman who appears in more than one Mission Impossible movie is Michelle Monaghan’s Julia, who marries Ethan in Mission Impossible: III and promptly becomes a damsel in distress. Bad Guy Philip Seymour Hoffman’s first words to Ethan are, “Do you have a wife or a girlfriend? Because if you do, I’m going to find her and I’m going to hurt her.” So even though Mission Impossible: III arguably does the best by women, it leans heavily on the trope of women in refrigerators (Ethan is also tormented by failing to save his protégé Lindsey Farris, played by Keri Russell). At the start of Ghost Protocol we’re led to believe Julia was killed off-screen between movies, but she is revealed to be secretly alive in the final scene. Not alive enough to have any dialogue, though. Which means surviving to make a silent cameo is the best any woman in five Mission Impossible movies has done.
Which doesn’t make me optimistic for Rebecca Ferguson’s future with the franchise. Even if she does show up in the next Mission Impossible movie (they are planning a sixth), it will be frustrating that a white woman is the first to manage that. Or maybe Jane and Zhen will team up with Ilsa and Nyah in the next movie to save Ethan from mortal peril? There’s still time to write that movie, Hollywood.
In her ethnographic films, Hurston, by contrast, strikingly resists fictions of objectivity and pointedly draws attention to herself as observer. A woman and a dancing child smile directly into her lens in extreme close-up, with shy pride or beaming pleasure at her clearly encouraging attention. Instead of merely observing their games, we join the circle of clapping children and they interact with the camera as it pans over their faces.
Part ofVintage Viewing, exploring the work of female filmmaking pioneers.
Zora Neale Hurston: Frame-Changer
“Mama exhorted her children at every opportunity to ‘jump at the sun.’ We might not land on the sun, but at least we would get off the ground. ” – Zora Neale Hurston
The seven principles of Kwanzaa (Nguzo Saba), designed to foster community empowerment in the face of racial stigma, include Kujichagulia, the right to “define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves and speak for ourselves.” Though we often debate choice of imagery on Bitch Flicks, it is impossible to create an image that represents another group’s equality, because their right to define their own image is fundamental to that equality. Caribbean-American comedian Bert Williams became the first Black artist to write, produce, direct and star in a film, with 1916’sA Natural Born Gambler, having already broken boundaries as writer-star of In Dahomey (1902), the first Black musical on Broadway. Williams’ performances exploited the blackface conventions of his age to be acceptable to a wider audience, while illuminating them with humanity and subversive subtext, as he continually fought for greater creative control. At the climax of A Natural Born Gambler, his character plays an imaginary poker game in prison. By losing, even in his own fantasy, Williams makes virtuoso mime into poignant commentary on internalized stigma, also the theme of his hit song, “Nobody,” from the 1906 musical Abyssinia. The same year, Williams’Fish cast himself, then in his 40s, as a young boy who escapes his chores to catch fish and is punished for his entrepreneurship. In a society where even Black children were often viewed as prematurely adult, Williams’ demand that audiences recognize the child in the man was challenging, and audiences reacted unfavorably. Neither of Williams’ surviving films feature significant roles for women.
Bert Williams masked biting commentary under comic delivery
In 1920, Oscar Micheaux wrote and directed Within Our Gates, the oldest surviving feature film by a Black director. The film argues for education and against the unquestioned domination of the church, while breaking many taboos, including depicting a lynching and the attempted rape of a Black woman by a white man. However, its heroines remain stilted and rigidly defined by Madonna/Whore framing. Micheaux’s 1925 film,Body and Soul, features a powerful performance by Mercedes Gilbert as a rape victim, opposite a menacing debut by Paul Robeson. Yet, the heroine must demonstrate her virtue by dying of shame, harnessing the martyrdom of the female body to score Micheaux’ points about oppressive religious hypocrisy. 1910’s White Fawn’s Devotion by James Young Deer (the Nanticoke director of 34 Westerns, whose role in shaping the genre is rarely acknowledged), uses the martyred suicide of White Fawn to prove to her Euro-American husband that she is attached to homeland and kin, once more scoring its racial points through female martyrdom (even if the heroine recovers for a happy end).
Once tipped for an Oscar, Louise Beavers remained typecast as “Maid”
“As long as the plays are being written and produced by whites for whites, there will be the same chance for criticism. The only remedy is for such plays as would meet popular favor to be produced by us.”– Louise Beavers
Mabel Normand‘s star vehicle, Mickey, featured sympathetic scenes of bonding between Mickey and her foster mother, played by Cheyenne comedienne Minnie Devereaux, while Mae West’s films showed extensive, sympathetic banter with maids played by Louise Beavers (whose performance in Imitation of Life was acclaimed as Oscar-worthy, without promoting Beavers from supporting roles) and Soo Yong (cast as aunt to a yellowface protagonist in The Good Earth). Though these displays of interracial female solidarity by Normand and West would be considered progressive for their time, they limit women of color to supporting roles, reinforcing their heroines’ white supremacy. The fact that white female filmmakers tended to reinforce white supremacy with their representations, while male directors of other races utilized disempowering sexist tropes, surely illustrates why they cannot collectively represent women of color.
As Deborah Riley Draper points out in her Bitch Flicks post, “#EarlyCinemaSoBlack,” many Black women were striving to bring their perspectives to the screen at this time. Tressie Souders became probably the first Black woman to write and direct a film withA Woman’s Errorin 1922, but her film is now lost. However, considering how Chinese-American writer-director Marion Wong’s 1916 feature,The Curse of the Quon Gwon: When the Far East Mingles With The West, turned up unexpectedly in a basement in 2005, Souders’ film might yet be similarly rediscovered. Wong showcased traditional Chinese ceremonies to satisfy Western curiosity about the exotic Orient, but she also explored Chinese-American cultural tensions with the nuance of an insider. The Curse of the Quon Gwon uses superimpositions and dissolves in a short fantasy sequence to represent the heroine’s own imagination, predating similar effects by Germaine Dulac. It’s worth remembering that Dulac made a series of conventional films before developing the impressionist and surrealist styles that she is celebrated for, while The Curse of Quon Gwon was Marion Wong’s only film (denied financing, distribution or promotion, despite her striving to secure them). With the same support as Dulac, how far could Wong have developed, described by the Oakland Tribune as “energy personified”?
Where they did not face the stigma of a racial minority, women of color found more filmmaking success. In India, Fatma Begum directed the first of eight fantasy epics in 1926. The following decade, Sakane Tazuko became the first female director in Japan, while Elena Sánchez Valenzuela directed a feature documentary in her native Mexico, acclaimed by journalists for “hundreds of the most beautiful, evocative scenes” but now lost. Esther Eng began writing and directing in Hong Kong in 1937 (documentary clip). Still, the ethnographic films of Zora Neale Hurston remain a rarity: vintage footage directed by a woman of color, available online. Better known as the playwright of 1925’s prize-winning Color Struck, as a leading light of the Harlem Renaissance, and as the author of novels including Their Eyes Were Watching God (see Bitch Flicks‘ review of Darnell Martin’s adaptation), Hurston also studied anthropology under Dr. Franz Boaz, who dedicated his life to challenging assumptions of Western cultural superiority. Believed to be part of Hurston’s wider research into African-American folklore, these ethnographic films were made in the Southern United States between 1928 and 1929. The footage is scored in the embedded video with Hurston’s own performance of folk songs that she collected. At first glance, her films seem like simple anthropological records. However, they are equally revealing when read as explorations of our ways of seeing, framing and interpreting others.
Logging (1928) – Children’s Games (1928) – Baptism (1929)
“She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulder. So much of life in its meshes!” – Zora Neale Hurston
The Palestinian-American founder of postcolonialism, Edward Said’s Orientalism explored how the psychological needs of the observer shape their observations, as much as the nature of the thing observed. Criticizing the constant framing of “things Oriental in class, court, prison or manual for scrutiny, study, judgment, discipline or governing,” Said noted that imperial observers tended to interpret the Orient through “synchronic essentialism,” as something fixed and unchanging. Essentialist interpretations deny responsibility: if something is unchanging, it is impossible for oppression to impact it. If women are essentially and eternally nags, you aren’t responsible for your wife’s annoyance. If colonized people are hotheaded savages, they need no reason for rebellion. If dispossessed peoples are permanently lazy, it isn’t a symptom of their demoralizing dispossession. Oppressors become invisible to themselves through their interpretative framework.
Fictions of objective and invisible observers (oppressors?) are the traditional framing of anthropology. A “native” may be scowling because the photographer is intrusive, but their image will be frozen as an “objective” record of the “hostile native”, with viewers instinctively imagining themselves in the photographer’s place. Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North charmed audiences with its warm intimacy, popularizing the art of the documentary feature. But by claiming objectivity and obscuring his sexual relationship with his subjects, however, Flaherty distorted their shared banter and flirtation into essentialized features of the “happy-go-lucky Eskimo” and his “smiling one” wife, fueling a popular image of Inuit naivete and availability.
In her ethnographic films, Hurston, by contrast, strikingly resists fictions of objectivity and pointedly draws attention to herself as observer. A woman and a dancing child smile directly into her lens in extreme close-up, with shy pride or beaming pleasure at her clearly encouraging attention. Instead of merely observing their games, we join the circle of clapping children and they interact with the camera as it pans over their faces. Hurston’s camera is dynamic, tracking up a logging railway and lingering on tapping feet. We instinctively warm to her subjects, as we share Hurston’s sense of belonging through her camera’s gaze. She contrasts the work of an elderly lumberjack with the machinery of professional logging, showing a world of changing realities, and lingers on sawmill workers’ leisure rather than fetishizing their labor, casually noticing a woman among them. Is their mechanized modernity an improvement on the old man’s axe?
Faith Ringgold: “Picasso’s Studio”
“She had an inside and an outside now and suddenly she knew how not to mix them.” – Zora Neale Hurston
Of most interest for questions of self-representation, Hurston briefly portrays woman’s life in the community. Opening with the woman framed against her home environment, a wooden cabin, in the pose of a typical anthropological subject, Hurston’s woman then holds our gaze purposefully and walks up close. Hurston instructs her to smile, turn and present her profiles; she is reframed as a model, or an actress on a casting call. Compare Faith Ringgold‘s “Picasso’s Studio”: her nude heroine models against a backdrop of African “primitivism” that has been reframed by Picasso as “modernism,” while Ringgold playfully reframes Picasso himself in the African-American, feminine “folk art” of quilting, challenging the gendered and racialized ways art is interpreted and (de)valued, just as Zora Neale Hurston challenges the devaluing subtext of the anthropological frame through glamor modeling. As Hurston cuts to her woman sitting with another woman on the porch, laughing in each other’s company, this is surely the silent film equivalent of a Bechdel pass. Bouncing to a wide angle on the cabin environment, the next shot reframes the woman again, draping her over her porch railing in the “Venus reclining” pose. Hurston’s use of this classical pose recalls the 19th century African-American/Ojibwa sculptor Edmonia Lewis‘ use of Classical Grecian styles to visually code her African and Indigenous subjects as noble. From this static pose, Hurston cuts to the woman’s feet tapping as she rocks, adding musical sensibility. Hurston has thus reframed her subject five times: 1) as a product of her environment, 2) as a glamorous beauty, 3) within a community of female friendship, 4) as an iconic goddess and 5) as an appreciator of music. In total silence, in under a minute and with a mediocre camera, Hurston achieves a multi-faceted portrait. Imagine what she could have done with a budget and a distributor.
The world’s first animated feature film, 1926’s The Adventures of Prince Achmed, was a celebration of Middle-Eastern folklore, animated by Lotte Reiniger. Reiniger’s concept, for creating feature-length animations based on classic folklore, would become box office gold for Walt Disney, winning him a special Oscar for innovation, while he also patented a design for a multi-plane camera almost identical to Reiniger’s. Despite his debt to Lotte Reiniger, Disney would exclude women from creative work in his company. Next month’s Vintage Viewing: Lotte Reiniger, Animating Innovator. Stay tuned!
The concept of the female gaze emerged in response to that of the male gaze, wherein the female viewer, and often the female creator, are the focus for a piece of media. However, finding instances of film or television that are truly representative of the female gaze is tricky. Just because something is about women doesn’t mean it is for women or even a realistic portrayal of how women see themselves.
Our theme week for August 2015 will be The Female Gaze.
Feminist critic Laura Mulvey coined the term “male gaze,” which asserts that most of film and television are created for a male viewer. This art for the male viewer is also typically created by a man as well, and the depictions of women within this art are then a masculine interpretation of what women are. This often relegates women to the status of passive, sexual objects.
The concept of the female gaze emerged in response to that of the male gaze, wherein the female viewer, and often the female creator, are the focus for a piece of media. However, finding instances of film or television that are truly representative of the female gaze is tricky. Just because something is about women doesn’t mean it is for women (Kill Bill or Sucker Punch) or even a realistic portrayal of how women see themselves. Often, despite a female creator or even female audience, pieces of work fall victim to the male gaze because it is so entrenched in our culture (The L Word, The Hours, Blue is the Warmest Color, or The Kids Are All Right).
For example, Orange is the New Black is based on source material by a woman, directed by a woman, and depicts predominantly women. The first season does a surprisingly good job of illustrating the inner lives and interactions of women from the female gaze. However, in the second season, gratuitous nudity and sex are shown with disturbing frequency, which exploits the characters and shifts more into a voyeuristic male gaze that objectifies women. Like so many others, OitNB goes from portraying women as sexual beings to turning them into sexual objects.
Are there strong examples of the female gaze emerging? Which films or TV shows are successful representations of the female gaze? What makes them successful where so many others have failed? What examples render women as sexual beings without turning them into sexual objects? How can popular culture avoid reverting to representations of the male gaze?
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, August 21 by midnight.
Sarah meets Reese (Jai Courtney) knowing that she will need to have sex with this man, regardless of how she feels, to save the human race. It’s an awkward problem that’s dealt with in Schwarzenegger one-liners about mating and a weak attempt at a narrative theme of free will versus destiny.
How do you solve a problem like dystopian science fiction? It’s been around for about as long as the film industry and yet, politics and society still won’t stop producing warning signs for the decay of humanity, providing directors, writers, and “artists” with almost inexhaustible opportunities for critiquing the current state of the world community, or showing what the present state of things might turn into if not handled consciously and carefully.
While the men are shopping, Francine is left alone to fend off a zombie with no means of self-defence. As she attempts to escape onto the roof, the others return to save her from the zombie and bring her back inside. She is dismayed to realize that they intend to stay there indefinitely. While the men enthusiastically describe the mall as a “kingdom” and a “goldmine,” Francine describes it as a “prison.”
Though this happens in a future in which cosmetic surgery has become much more than a matter of lift and tuck, Koh’s struggle with whether and how to change her body for the sake of her daughter and her career, combined with the behind-the-scenes machinations of the corporation, casts a complicated light on the present struggles of women trying to succeed in both career and motherhood while facing the social pressure to stay young and be perfect.
R and Julie have opted out of the capitalist conveyor belt that turns humans into braindead zombies and or war-mongering huddled masses. While it could also be read as a fundamental laziness to even stand up for themselves, the two succeed by not fighting.
And just as the film articulates these contrasting attitudes and dilemmas with regard to controlling powers and zero sum attitudes, so too does it address these issues within themes of gender, sexuality and authority.
And, although The Citadel is ruled by powerful men with disabilities, we understand it to be a fundamentally ableist society. Immortan Joe is questing for a “perfect” son and has clearly chosen The Wives for their beautiful, unblemished, able bodies in an attempt to breed one. We understand that this is a patriarchy in its most extreme form where women have no personhood at all.
Though we get a sense of District Thirteen’s manipulations in the novel, Katniss savvily negotiates with them, resists their orders, and remains distrustful of their motivations, in contrast to her comparatively slight unease in the film. While these changes leave most of the major plot elements intact, they undermine our sense of Katniss as an intelligent political actor who is connected to and moved by the revolution itself, rather than just her personal stake in the events.
But, at the end of the day—at the end of a lot of days—I’m tired of watching these shows and seeing women as props and symbols used to push the hero along his way. I’m tired of watching these shows and seeing the massive chasms between what they present, what they claim to represent, and what their fans insist they represent.
It certainly isn’t a feminist world she lives in, but she does her level best to undermine her husband in an enclosed space. As Noah himself veers away from his family tradition of life-supporting environmental husbandry, Naameh continues to practice what he (used to) preach, preserving her daughter-in-law, the animals, and the land once they find it again.
I can’t keep count of the number of times the fact that women menstruate has been used as a reason to render us incapable of doing something. However, the fact women can have children (while cis-men cannot) is arguably our greatest power in a time of crisis.
In rejecting Lexi, Anne perpetuates the false solidarity and universal acceptance Butler points out in the above passage. Anne sees Lexi as failing to perform the necessary gender of her body. Lexi is the very symbol of a failed body, the failed universal woman Anne has expected of her daughter.
I mean, she doesn’t wrap her arms around some guy’s waist to hold on for the ride of her life or even jump onto a Vespa or something weak. Nope, she’s a zombie-fightin’ shoulder-padded biker who escapes danger on her own and looks just as feathery-haired good when she gets to her destination as when she put down her attacker in the alley (although this was the early 80s while CFCs were being phased out, so big hair treated with a half-bottle of AquaNet always had some hold).
What helps ‘Evangelion’ continue to grow its popularity is not the focus on religious or sci-fi elements, but its commitment to showcasing the fragility of humanity through its flawed and destructive characters tasked with saving the world and themselves. And how does the franchise show this? By literally placing the future of what’s left of the world in the hand of dysfunctional and emotionally fragile children.
Maria essentially makes Freder the chosen one—she inspires him to go underground and gives him his purpose when he awakens to the dystopian system in which he lives. Without her, the story does not proceed and the system continues unopposed.
As she has an older brother, her birth was unauthorized and when she was discovered she was sent directly to the SkyBox. And so on. While some of the crimes are legitimate, many are the result of children growing up in a totalitarian state. So clearly it’s going to be better here on the ground, right?
Dystopia, in its futuristic escapism and its contemporary relevance, is an ideal genre for the young adult demographic. By pushing the boundaries of disturbing content and reflecting on youthful idealism, dystopian narratives trust the YA consumer to be both literary in their consumption of the book or film, but also socially and morally insightful in their view of the imagined world they hold.
In these moments, and in those unspoken moments when she savors placing long sweet kisses on Jules’s cheek, we see Gwen’s resistance. “Know your value,” Gwen tells Jules. It’s not found in good grades, not in getting into the best school, not in a newer and “better” body, but in sensory and emotional human pleasures.
When speaking over the phone, Sharon’s enthusiasm for this pioneering adaptation of a Caribbean Canadian sci-fi novel emanates as though this was a fresh and newly discovered idea. In fact, Sharon has been working on creating this film for the past 15 years (while also establishing herself as a published playwright, writer, actor and award winning director) and although the journey has been long, she strongly believes that now is the perfect time to transition this well-nurtured idea into tangible reality.
By creating her own worlds where she is a force to be reckoned with, Babydoll reclaims that very thing that was taken away from her by her stepfather and the hospital: her humanity.
