Doing The Extraordinary in ‘Two Days, One Night’

Women in films are even less likely to engage in this kind of dispirited struggle. Instead an actress usually plays the wife, mother, or girlfriend whose job it is to be “strong” and rub the hero’s back while he battles against his own obstacles. She talks reassuringly to him whenever he doubts himself, the exact same way Sandra’s husband does with her here.

2Days1NightCover

This repost by Ren Jender appears as part of our theme week on the Academy Awards.

In one of the first scenes of Two Days, One Night, the newest release from the Belgian writer-directors Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, we see the main character Sandra (played by a dressed-down Marion Cotillard) receive some bad news on the phone. She says out loud to herself afterward, “Don’t cry.”

Sandra, we later find out, has been on sick leave from her job for the past few months because of clinical depression. The phone call is from her friend at work, Juliette (Catherine Salée), who tells her that the rest of the laborers at their place of employment (which seems to be a small manufacturer of solar panels) have voted to accept a €1,000 bonus (about $1,200), which the foreman has offered in exchange for their agreement to lay Sandra off (Western Europe: a fairytale land where a boss asks his workers for permission to lay off their colleague–and offers them money to do so). The overwhelming majority of the workers (all but two of the 16 of them) have voted against her.

Juliette tells Sandra the foreman has misled the others into thinking if they didn’t agree to get rid of Sandra one of them might be laid off instead. So as the plant’s big boss is leaving the parking lot in his sports car to start his weekend, Juliette and Sandra plead with him to hold another vote, with a secret ballot, first thing on Monday morning. He just wants to get out of there, so he agrees.

Two Days, One Night
Sandra (Marion Cotillard) and her husband (Fabrizio Rongione)

 

For the rest of the film Sandra, with the support of her husband (Fabrizio Rongione), and to a lesser extent, Juliette, tries to convince the others (after finding their home addresses and tracking them down) to let her stay. Of course voting against Sandra was easy when they didn’t have to face her and hear her say that she doesn’t want to be jobless and swear that she’s ready to go back to work (even as we in the audience, who have seen how frail she still is, wonder if she’s telling the truth).

One of her coworkers (part of the handful of Black and brown immigrants also more likely to be let go) is unexpectedly emotional; Sandra looks confused as he weeps about voting against her on Friday and thanks her for the chance to redeem himself. Others, including a woman Sandra had thought was her friend but refuses to see her, are surprisingly cold–or outright hostile. They want that €1,000 and don’t care if getting it means she will lose her job. Some make excuses and tell her they’re not the ones who set Sandra’s continued employment against their bonuses. She replies, quicker and more astutely than we expect, that the choice isn’t of her making either.

2Days1NightCoworker
A coworker begs Sandra for forgiveness

 

Cotillard, her hair in a straggly ponytail, wears skimpy, summer tank tops, but is so slouched and tense for most of the film, her body is like a backwards “S.” She comes across as both convincingly desperate and working-class (not something all red-carpet actresses are capable of). Like Violette, Two Days, One Night isn’t afraid to show its protagonist at her worst. Sandra, like Violette, hates the thought that the concessions the others are making for her are motivated by pity. She constantly wants to give up, taking to her bed in the middle of the day, even as her husband gently pushes her saying, “Why not try?” and “Don’t give in. You have to fight.”

This film, like Violette, challenges the lie that most films tell, especially those released in time for awards season, that after a few minor setbacks a protagonist will, with uplifting music on the soundtrack, stand up straight and face adversity head-on with courage and maximum photogeneity. But the people who do extraordinary things often do them after a lot of bone-crushing rejection. They feel like miserable failures. They cry. They consider quitting all the time. We all like to think we face the trouble that comes our way like Wonder Woman, but when events take a turn for the worse we’re more like Dr. Smith on the old TV show Lost In Space, crying in an increasingly hysterical voice, “Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.”

Women in films are even less likely to engage in this kind of dispirited struggle. Instead an actress usually plays the wife, mother, or girlfriend whose job it is to be “strong” and rub the hero’s back while he battles against his own obstacles. She talks reassuringly to him whenever he doubts himself, the exact same way Sandra’s husband does with her here.

Sandra’s quest is not just an indictment of capitalism but also touches on the responsibility we feel for our fellow human beings–how deep (or not) our empathy runs for the people we talk to and work alongside every day. Seeing Sandra’s surprise at who votes for her and who votes against her makes us wonder how well we know our own coworkers. We see her smile after one small triumph and in her next encounter we see her literally knocked down. We count with her as she accumulates four then five votes and when she talks to a man who just wants his money see her wisely clam up about which coworkers are voting for her. The long, frustrating, seemingly impossible task in front of Sandra could stand in for a number of others: writing a book, staying in a marriage–or making a movie.

And after we, along with Sandra, have nearly given up hope for her getting her job back, we see her become unexpectedly resilient–and the solution to her problem become more complex. Her late transformation reminds me of the redemption of another depressed character in a French-language film, Delphine in Eric Rohmer’s great Summer. Just as we hear the wonder in Delphine’s voice in the last line of that film, we hear a newfound strength and certainty in Sandra’s voice as she talks on the phone to her husband at the end. The two days and one night of the title have changed her, maybe forever.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06BNjqSsGqo” iv_load_policy=”3″]

 

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

A ‘Wild’ Woman Alone

The filmmakers (director Jean-Marc Vallée and screenwriter Nick Hornby) profess to be fans of Strayed’s work, but they were apparently so busy patting themselves on the back for not making this story of a woman alone into some kind of boy-meets-girl rom-com that they forgot to include everything else that makes the book distinctive.

ReeseWild

This repost by Ren Jender appears as part of our theme week on the Academy Awards.

The reviews of Wild, the new film based on the bestselling memoir by Cheryl Strayed, make me think most men shouldn’t be allowed to review films based on women’s memoirs. Because more than one male critic has likened Cheryl Strayed and her grief-stricken, hardscrabble book about making her way up the Pacific Crest Trail to Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert’s account of living a life of luxury in various spots around the globe and indulging in a little cultural appropriation along the way. I’m sure these same critics would never dream of arguing that Jack Kerouac, James Baldwin, and Michael Palin are basically the same person because they’re all men who also wrote about travel.

I went into the screening of Wild prepared to love it. I’m a big fan of Strayed, whose work I was first exposed to when she had an online advice column (which she started writing anonymously) “Dear Sugar,” in which she gave answers to readers’ questions that read more like selections from Best American Essays than “Dear Abby,” while still managing to offer solid guidance and empathy. The book that collected the columns, Tiny Beautiful Things,  like Wild, was a bestseller. Strayed has done a lot of good with the fame and money Wild and “Sugar” have brought her, including using her name to publicize and raise funds for VIDA, the group that lobbies for more women to be published (and their books to be reviewed) in literary publications. I also wanted to be able to champion the film because of the male critics who have dismissed it; one of whom (thankfully now retired) took time in his review to comment on the real-life Strayed’s body, a supreme irony when, elsewhere Strayed has described men who disparage women’s bodies as not “worth fucking.”

Films don’t have to necessarily be very much like the books they’re based on to be good, even when those books have received a lot of critical acclaim and have sold a lot of copies. But the film version of Wild often leaves out or glosses over precisely the things that make Strayed’s story–and writing–so striking. A comparison of the film’s scenes to those that make up the original essay Strayed expanded into Wild or any of her writing in Tiny Beautiful Things  (Strayed returns many times to her mother’s death and its aftermath, always detailing different, but still vivid memories), shows that Strayed’s version of events are not only more compelling on the page, but also leave us with more lasting visual images than the same or similar scenes in the film do.

The filmmakers (director Jean-Marc Vallée and screenwriter Nick Hornby) profess to be fans of Strayed’s work, but they were apparently so busy patting themselves on the back for not making  this story of a woman alone into some kind of boy-meets-girl rom-com that they forgot to include everything else that makes the book distinctive. The mother’s death (Strayed tells a therapist in the film, “My mother was the love of my life”), the hook-up sex, the family violence that Strayed (played by Reese Witherspoon, who also produced the film) thinks back on as she hikes up the West Coast could have been cut and pasted from any other film. The staging for these scenes isn’t incompetent, but generic enough to leave us unmoved.

Hornby and Vallée also omit that some of Strayed’s hook-ups were with women (which makes Vallée two for two in erasing the queerness of his main characters: his previous film, Dallas Buyers Club, made its protagonist a straight homophobe, when in real-life he was an out bisexual). They cut out the sexual abuse Strayed endured as a very young child from her father’s father–as if this abuse had a minimal effect on her or her life.

Wild-LauraDern
Laura Dern plays Strayed’s mother, Bobbi

 

Witherspoon is significantly older than Strayed was when the events of the book take place, but physically embodies the role in a believable way. Though Laura Dern, who plays Strayed’s mother (she’s excellent–in her brief scenes we can see why her loss would affect her daughter so deeply) is less than a decade older than Witherspoon, their scenes together work, though again, Strayed in her book and other writing depicts their relationship much more compellingly.

In Wild,  Witherspoon as Strayed can’t seem to summon the youthful energy that she had in movies like Freeway, when she was closer to the age she is supposed to be in Wild.  This story is definitely a 20-something’s–thinking a three-month hike in the wilderness alone, thousands of miles away from home, will turn one’s life around is the sort of half-assed hypothesis a 30-something would never come up with–though in Strayed’s case, the miracle was this “cure” for her broken life worked.

Witherspoon’s Strayed also doesn’t have the recklessness or the inevitable shame that follows that recklessness the Strayed of the book had. When, in the film, a fellow hiker tells her that she seems like someone who beats herself up a lot, the observation comes as a complete surprise to the audience.

ReeseDesertWild

I skipped Dallas Buyers Club, in spite of its many awards, because of its straight-washing–the buyers clubs that the film depicts were a movement of queer people with AIDS, not the work of one “straight” homophobe– as well as its transphobia and general cluelessness about the issues the film is supposed to address (the makeup team when accepting their Oscar referred to “AIDS victims” when the preferred term, coined by those who have the disease more than 30 years ago, is “people with AIDS“). But in spite of my wariness,  I didn’t expect Vallée to be the hack director he is here. Not just the flashback scenes but also the wilderness scenes in this film are nothing special–panoramas that should take our breath away look like faded, crappy postcards. Both Boyhood (a film I thought was otherwise vastly overrated) and Under The Skin (which I also had major qualms about) capture the beauty of nature (and in Skin the danger for a woman alone in it) on a level that Vallée seems incapable of–and those two films are in the “wild” for a relatively brief period of their runtimes.

I should probably add that Strayed herself has said that she is satisfied with the film and was allowed a lot of access to the film’s set; her daughter, Bobbi Strayed Lindstrom, even plays her as a young girl in flashback scenes. But Wild being better than most of the films in the multiplex doesn’t mean it’s nearly good enough. Maybe only when we have women writing the screenplays that adapt great books by women and women directing those films will we get the movies we deserve.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tn2-GSqPyl0″]

 

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

 

 

Does Hating ‘Foxcatcher’ Mean I Hate Men?

‘Foxcatcher’ is very serious meditation on men and masculinities, male relationships, and the white male experience of the class system in America. And I am so fucking bored with those subjects, even when they aren’t presented with a deliberately slow pace, sterile tone, and distracting amounts of face putty.

Channing Tatum and Steve Carell in 'Foxcatcher'
Channing Tatum and Steve Carell in Foxcatcher

 

This repost by Robin Hitchcock appears as part of our theme week on the Academy Awards. 

Have you heard of “misandry”? If you read un-moderated comments on feminist websites you probably have. Misandry is the theoretical inverse of misogyny, so a systematic prejudice against and hatred of men. In a world chock full of systematic prejudices and hatreds, this is maybe the ONE form of oppression that doesn’t exist. Misandry is the unicorn of the kyriarchy: it isn’t real, but people still won’t shut up about it.

Because misandry is bogus, I know I can’t be a misandrist. But I really, really didn’t like Foxcatcher, a widely acclaimed film, and in my efforts to articulate why, the best I’ve really got is, “Ugh, men.”

Channing Tatum and Mark Ruffalo in 'Foxcatcher'
Channing Tatum and Mark Ruffalo  having dudely emotions in Foxcatcher

 

Foxcatcher is very serious meditation on men and masculinities, male relationships, and the white male experience of the class system in America. And I am so fucking bored with those subjects, even when they aren’t presented with a deliberately slow pace, sterile tone, and distracting amounts of face putty.

And I KNOW that masculinity is a feminist issue, and that the narrative of male greatness that shapes the neuroses of Steve Carell’s John Du Pont and Channing Tatum’s Mark Schultz is a byproduct of the patriarchy. I also feel that as a feminist I should also have some interest in whatever this movie was trying to say about the psychosexual component to their relationship. (Have you ever noticed that a lot of wrestling holds look like sex positions? Because Foxcatcher would like to make sure you are aware of this. Really, absolutely, 100 percent clear. WRESTLING LOOKS LIKE BONING, YOU GUYS. DUDES BONING. IN A GAY WAY.)

Just to be clear: wrestling at times presents images that resemble those of two men having sexual intercourse.
Just to be clear: wrestling at times presents images that resemble those of two men having sexual intercourse.

 

But I’m just so boooooooored by it. I’m tired of movies that are all about dudes, and movies that act like their characters’ very dudehood is the most interesting possible thing about them. I wasn’t planning on commenting on the controversy regarding Foxcatcher‘s departures from the facts of its true crime story, but I do think it is worth noting that John Du Pont’s schizophrenia was not included in the film. Maybe they were just trying to avoid the hoary cliche of mental illness as a catalyst for murder? (So they went with the incredibly novel repressed homosexuality motive instead… hm.) Or was mental illness just not MANLY enough of a subject for Foxcatcher?

John Du Pont's paranoid schizophrenia gets edited out of the story but that NOSE is VITAL to who the man really and truly was.
John Du Pont’s paranoid schizophrenia gets edited out of the story, but that nose is VITAL to who the man really and truly was.

 

One of the first movies I reviewed for Bitch Flicks was Moneyball, also from Foxcatcher director Bennett Miller. It is another movie that is almost entirely about dudes. And at that time, I said:

Which is fine! There are stories, stories worth telling, that are just about men. (Likewise, there are stories worth telling that only involve women, but it’s hard to get Hollywood to bankroll those.) Telling a story about men in a men’s world isn’t inherently sexist.

Hmm, 2012 Robin sounds a lot mellower than 2015 Robin.

But I ALSO said in my Moneyball review that “I think it is fair to subject whatever scraps of portrayal of women we get in these male-dominated films to a slightly higher scrutiny.”

John Du Pont's mommy didn't hug him enough.
John Du Pont’s mommy didn’t hug him enough.

 

Well, this will be impossible with Foxcatcher, because it has exactly three female characters: 1) Vanessa Redgrave as Du Pont’s Ice Queen Mom (another example of the cutting-edge psychology Foxcatcher prefers to exploring the actual diagnosed condition Du Pont had), 2) Sienna Miller as Mom Jeans, and 3) The Maid.

Wait, I misspoke when I said there were three female characters (and not because one of Dave Schultz’s kids was a girl). There are three women (and one girl) in Foxcatcher. There are no female characters.

Which, like 2012 Robin said, is maybe OK. And maybe 2015 Robin IS a misandrist for finding Foxcatcher’s fascination with masculinity boring at best and annoying at worst. (No, I’m not. Misandry isn’t real.) But I need a movie by and about women STAT as a palette cleanser. Please offer suggestions in the comments!

 

Robin Hitchcock is an American writer living in Cape Town who does not actually hate men. In fact, she lives with a man, works with men, and even allows men to ride in the same elevator car as her.

 

 

‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’ and Wes Anderson Fatigue

And the worst of it is that awards recognition will probably just send Wes Anderson further up his own ass, if such a thing is even possible. I don’t think I’ll be rushing to see his subsequent films until I hear that he’s finally tried something different.

Ralph Fiennes in 'The Grand Budapest Hotel'
Ralph Fiennes in The Grand Budapest Hotel

Written by Robin Hitchcock as part of our theme week on the Academy Awards.

I used to love Wes Anderson’s style and now I hate it. Did I change? Did his movies change? Or have they not changed enough?

The Grand Budapest Hotel, Anderson’s eighth feature film, is his first to receive wide awards season attention. Although his screenplays have been nominated twice before (The Royal Tenenbaums and Moonrise Kingdom) and Fantastic Mr. Fox got a Best Animated Feature nod, The Grand Budapest Hotel is the first Wes Anderson film to amass a broad range of Academy Award nominations, including his first Best Picture and Best Director Oscar nods. And it won Best Comedy or Musical Film at the Golden Globes, beating out Oscar Best Picture front-runner Birdman.

So unless you are properly cynical about Hollywood awards, you’d probably guess there is something exceptional about The Grand Budapest Hotel compared to Wes Anderson’s other movies.  But there isn’t. There’s pretty much nothing in The Grand Budapest Hotel you haven’t seen before if you’ve seen a Wes Anderson movie.  It’s possible the Academy is so out of touch they’re just now noticing this young whippersnapper with a quirky vision and a fondness for Futura title cards.

How many perfectly symmetrical shots of a beautiful frown-faced women in an incredibly detailed set does this world really need?"
How many perfectly symmetrical shots of a beautiful frown-faced women in an incredibly detailed set does this world really need?

But if you’ve been watching Anderson’s movies all along, I don’t know how you could not be sick of his schtick at this point. How many perfectly symmetrical shots of a beautiful frown-faced women in an incredibly detailed set does this world really need? And Anderson has become ever more indulgent in his stylistic quirks over the years, with diminishing returns.

I remember how excited I was by the offbeat humor and buzzing energy of Bottle Rocket and Rushmore. I remember being delighted by the bizarre world-building in The Royal Tenenbaums. Was it because I watched those movies as a teenager? Or has Anderson’s vision just gone off like expired milk? (I wanted to re-watch The Royal Tenenbaums before writing this piece, but I couldn’t find my copy. I was relieved. I don’t want to lose my happy memories of that movie.)

The quirky details in Wes Anderson's movie, like this shot from 'The Royal Tenenbaums', used to delight me. Now I roll my eyes.
The oddball details in Wes Anderson’s movies, like this shot from The Royal Tenenbaums, used to delight me. Now I roll my eyes.

Maybe something that used to be there is now missing. Discussing Moonrise Kingdom, Molly McCaffery posited that Anderson’s first three films benefited much more than we realized from his collaboration with co-writer Owen Wilson: that the films “were as much about character development as they were about oddball behavior, unusual costumes, retro props, quirky sets, and elusive ingénues.” Whether or not Wilson was the source of it, those early movies certainly had a heart that has been lacking from Anderson’s later films.

Another issue is that Anderson’s slavish devotion to his form is without regard to its function.  His quirky style is perfectly suited to the story of an oddball family like the Tenenbaums, but what does it bring to the narrative of The Grand Budapest Hotel? Moonrise Kingdom actually worked better for me than the other latter-day (sans-Wilson as co-writer) Wes Anderson films, because the twee tone and retro details suited the inherent nostalgia of small town childhood adventure story. For an ambitiously sprawling story like The Grand Budapest Hotel, Anderson’s attention to detail felt almost confining to what could have been an epic and sweeping tale. Is this the only way Anderson knows how to make movies?

Anderson's style was better suited to 'Moonrise Kingdom' than 'The Grand Budapest Hotel'
Anderson’s style was better suited to Moonrise Kingdom than The Grand Budapest Hotel

It is strange that the Academy seems to be only noticing Wes Anderson now, 20 years into his shockingly repetitive career, when his style feels so played out and empty. Maybe the Russian Doll framing device structure of The Grand Budapest Hotel (perhaps its only innovation) really knocked everyone else’s socks off (I found it showy and pointless, like the rest of the movie). Maybe it is just a really, really, really weak year for movies.

Anderson's 2006 American Express ad poking fun at himself now feels like it could be a legit documentary.
Anderson’s 2006 American Express ad poking fun at himself now feels like it could be a legit documentary

And the worst of it is that awards recognition will probably just send Wes Anderson further up his own ass, if such a thing is even possible. I don’t think I’ll be rushing to see his subsequent films until I hear that he’s finally tried something different.

Robin Hitchcock is an American writer living in Cape Town who can’t decide if she should stay up all night to watch the Oscars this year.

‘Gone Girl’: How to Create the Perfect Female Villain

Kudos to the 20th Century Fox exec who decided to market ‘Gone Girl’ (2014) as a great date movie. This is not a date movie. This is a horror story about the sensationalized pitfalls of a doomed marriage.

This repost by Alize Emme appears as part of our theme week on the Academy Awards.

SPOILER ALERT.

Kudos to the 20th Century Fox exec who decided to market Gone Girl (2014) as a great date movie. This is not a date movie. This is a horror story about the sensationalized pitfalls of a doomed marriage.

As good horror stories go, this one has the perfect villain: Amy Elliott Dunne.

Calculating. Manipulative. Patient. Sinister. Genius. Female.

Dunne (Rosamund Pike) is perhaps one of the greatest female fictional villains portrayed on screen, with bonus points for doing something her male counterparts rarely ever achieve: getting away with it. Dunne, with the help of a highly colored narrative penned by Gillian Flynn, manipulates a vibrant cast of stereotypes as she weaves the perfect crime web and literally gets away with murder.

After feeling like her husband, Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck), has taken her “pride, dignity, hope, and money,” Dunne sets out with fierce discipline and a detective’s eye for detail to frame her unsuspecting husband for her own murder. She befriends “a local idiot,” tells tall tales about fear and the threat of violence, authors a journal’s worth of history–some true, some false, simulates a pregnancy, lights “a fire in July,” and sets the perfect crime scene. She transforms herself into someone “people will truly mourn.”

The premise of Gone Girl works because it plays off our preconceived notions about loss and tragedy. The Pretty Murdered Wife. We as an audience know this story: she’s missing, feared dead, might be pregnant. The narrative needs no back-story, but we do get a glimpse.

Nick Dunne. He is done. Gone. Finished. We know this about Nick the moment we meet him just by his name as he’s standing in the middle of the street next to garbage bins. He is something to be taken out and disposed of with the trash; he is never getting his life back, and Flynn wants us to be aware. The Nick Dunne we are introduced to is a schlubby, beer drinking, ice cream eating, 5 o’clock shadow kind of guy with a dissatisfied marriage and a concubine on the side.

The Smug Accused Husband
The Smug Accused Husband

 

When Dunne goes missing and morphs into the Pretty Murdered Wife stereotype, Nick Dunne’s general disposition puts him right into the Smug Accused Husband category. He’s too charming; he’s too arrogant; he’s too suspicious. He’s a man with secrets. “He’s being a good guy, so everyone can see him being a good guy,” Officer Gilpin (Patrick Fugit) observes. He’s a man whose marriage has taught him how to fake it, who happens to be surrounded by women. There’s lead detective Rhonda Boney (Kim Dickens) who gives him a fair run. A fictionalized Nancy Grace clone, Ellen Abbott, (Missi Pyle) who pulls him apart every night on her nationally syndicated television show, and his twin sister Margo (Carrie Coon) who’s been with him since before they “were even born” and offers a stable voice of reason.

“I am so sick of being picked apart by women,” Nick Dunne says. And he’s right, that’s exactly what’s happening now that he’s been labeled the Smug Accused Husband. This stereotype exists because there are men who do kill their pregnant wives and then go on TV and lie about it, and society remembers them. The case of Laci Peterson was one of the first things that came to my mind. And Affleck is clear to note that Scott Peterson was one of the models for his character. Even the “Missing” photo of Dunne is reminiscent of Laci’s with the bright smile, dangling earrings, and glossy lipstick. Gone Girl is a story that already lives on the edge of our thoughts.

As a couple, Nick and Amy have been pretending from the start. They have a perfect meet-cute, perfect dates, perfect celebratory rituals; they even buy the same sheets. He plays “hot, doting husband,” to her “sweet, loving spouse.” None of it is real; “I forged the man of my dreams,” Dunne says. And in doing so, she herself became the Cool Girl. Another stereotype of how women manipulate themselves to land a man.

Eating cold pizza, drinking beer, remaining “a size 2.” Dunne tailored herself to fit Nick’s taste. But “Nick got lazy.” Not holding up his end of the bargain was never the deal. When she sees that Nick’s sweet romantic gestures were not improvisations made up for her, but rather a well-rehearsed ruse easily tailored to the girl in front of him, Dunne makes a decision. She realizes her husband is no longer the man she married and decides to teach him a lesson he will never forget. “No fucking way,” she says, “He doesn’t get to win. Grown-ups suffer consequences.” She takes charge. She doesn’t let herself be walked on by this man. “Why should I die?” She asks, “I’m not the asshole.”

It’s an easy, cop-out that barely scratches the surface of accurate to diagnose Dunne as a psychopath. To say she’s an overly emotional, crazy woman who can’t handle daily life and descends into a PMS-filled rage, is falling pry to gender stereotypes. Dunne exhibits a perfectly cool demeanor, her emotions are consistently even, she is meticulous and complex. The layers of this character are masterful; she is the opposite of what every gender stereotype says women should be like. She is simply a great villain. “Show me that Darling Nicky smile,” Dunne coos like the Wicked Witch of the West as she stares at a video of her husband on a computer. She’s fascinated by her own work.

Amy Elliott Dunne, the perfect villain
Amy Elliott Dunne, the perfect villain

 

Pike’s performance is mesmerizing; she delivers Dunne’s words in this breathless manner like she’s seductively blowing out a candle. Pike makes us believe from the very beginning that Dunne is both sane and capable of deception. But seeing a female character portrayed so strongly on screen earns Dunne the unfortunate label of “controlling bitch.”

If Dunne were a man, none of these character and sanity accusations would hold true. Male characters that go on rampant murder sprees in movies are never labeled as psychopaths, when clearly they display the same behavior. Dunne is not a psychopath. Crazy people cannot mastermind murders and crimes and not get caught. Even her past acts of “insanity” should be taken with a grain of salt. The ex-boyfriend who calls Dunne a “mind fucker of the first degree,” still keeps a picture of her in his wallet. This woman has allegedly ruined his life, yet he’s still holding her image so close? This calls his authenticity into question while giving Dunne credibility.

Dunne is fiercely intelligent. She has plotted the perfect crime. And while she doesn’t succeed with her original plan, she still sets her husband up for decades of suffering with her pregnancy. For all the betrayed wives out there, Dunne is a hero with the perfect revenge. Her crime is personal, not random, which gets her sanity questioned. Flynn doesn’t touch the subject of Dunne’s mental state. She leaves that up to the audience. David Fincher also helms this story in a nonjudgmental way. He is respectful of Dunne and all the female characters. Dunne is never put on display as a woman, though several male characters make mention of her impressive physical attributes. The supporting female characters, which are all various stereotypes, are never blasted for it; they’re handled with care.

Detective Boney, for example, is the coffee drinking, slick talking lead on Dunne’s missing persons case. She’s an interesting foil to the other female characters that assume Nick Dunne is guilty from the start. Boney gives him the benefit of the doubt, refusing to arrest him because some “blonde dunce” on TV says so. Instead it’s her male partner, Officer Gilpin, who immediately makes up his mind when finding blood splatter in The Dunne’s kitchen that he is guilty.

Through Boney, we are offered the idea that not all women jump to conclusions and hate men. But as the story progresses, we discover that Boney didn’t properly handle her case. “We stained the rug,” she says “with a national spotlight” on her. Had Nick Dunne been left in Boney’s “deeply incompetent hands,” he would be on death row, Dunne conveniently points out. Therefore, Boney’s word is useless in bringing Dunne to justice. Men botch investigations all the time, but for Boney to do so, it’s suggesting a woman can’t properly handle the responsibly of performing a traditionally male job.

Noelle Hawthorne (Casey Wilson) is the wonderfully entertaining suburban mom down the street with triplets and another baby on the way. We know this woman. Everyone has that one inquisitive neighbor that if something were to happen, she would be the first one knocking on the squad car window trying to help the cops. There’s a sense of comedy to this hyperbolic character and her triple-decker stroller, but she is never mocked. We take her seriously. It’s a real feat.

Nick Dunne’s twin, Margo, is a cool girl who’s not the Cool Girl. She drinks bourbon with her brother at ten in the morning, she covers his back with Dunne’s mother, she knows the truth but that doesn’t change her opinion of him. She always speaks the truth with her perfectly snarky comments. “You look like hammered shit,” she tells Nick. He likes her. We like her. She is perhaps the one female character that deviates from a hardened stereotype and could exist in the real world.

Somewhat of a mysterious supporting character, Greta (Lola Kirke) acts as a catalyst for Dunne. She’s complex and calculating just like Dunne; she sees an opportunity, and she seizes it. “Did he put you up to this?” Dunne asks as Greta and her male accomplice rob her blind, “I put him up to it,” she replies. She’s a survivalist and essentially forces Dunne to abort her plan and switch to survival mode herself. Yes, Dunne then murders a man and fakes a sexual assault, but in the world of a villain, she’s just adapting to survive. And as someone who is “skilled in the art of vengeance,” Dunne doesn’t just survive; she thrives.

Dunne, as Nick asks: What are you thinking?
Dunne, as Nick asks: What are you thinking?

 

Seeing a female character like Dunne on screen is fantastic–a word she would deem “a little flippant,” but there has yet to be a female villain quite like her. Fincher draws us into this world, Dunne’s world, where everything is this perfect shade of monochrome with tungsten lighting, where the camera moves in slow and methodical push-ins and pull-outs just as calculating as Dunne is, where things change with such swiftness–a kiss to a tongue swab, just like real life. And as we return to real life, we have to wonder: What will Amy Elliott Dunne do next? We’re left with the image of her head, just where we started, much like a few scenes earlier; we are left with Nick Dunne standing before trash cans, just like we started. So much has happened, but what do we really know? And more important, what will we learn next?

 

Alize Emme is a writer and filmmaker living in Los Angeles. She holds a B.A. in Film & Television from NYU and tweets at @alizeemme.

‘American Sniper’: We Can Kill It for You Wholesale

This cowboy motif is no accident, as it connects this film to the old John Ford Westerns and the nostalgia some folks feel about John Wayne flicks and the mythology of good white cowboys fighting off savage Indians who were keeping good white settlers from utilizing this “wilderness” that would become the U.S.A. Dehumanizing non-whites is the foundation for creating this nation. It’s the glue that holds apple pies and hot dogs together.

American Sniper poster. Starring Bradley Cooper.
American Sniper poster. Starring Bradley Cooper.

 

This repost by Lisa Bolekaja appears as part of our theme week on the Academy Awards.

On Sept. 11, 2001, I was on the West Coast, living in the mountains of Southern Cali and preparing to go to work. A co-worker came running into our office screaming that the Twin Towers had fallen. Mind you, we were on West Coast time, and by the time I saw the attacks on television, the networks were on replay mode and editing footage deemed too gruesome for viewers.

Gathered around the one tiny TV in another office, my co-workers and I stared in disbelief, and the one thing I said out loud was something I remembered Malcolm X saying about chickens coming home to roost. “This is payback for something folks,” I said to them. While my co-workers were the flag-waving Patriotic types, I was already shaping this assault on American soil as retaliation for the untold dirt our military and government had done for years to countries who didn’t uphold our global agenda. This caused some ruffled feathers between me and some of my colleagues. It was a surreal moment. Our Pearl Harbor for the new millennia.

Looking back at the Sept. 11 attacks, it shouldn’t surprise me why American Sniper was such a big hit with the patriotic ‘muricah crowd.  It is the military chicken soup of the soul cinema experience. It is propaganda of the highest order for viewers who need the Matrix blue pill to live with the lie of America’s War on Terror.

Men are war.
Men are war.

 

What makes American Sniper a disappointing viewing experience is not the ahistorical nature of the film, but quite frankly its generic storytelling. It’s downright boring. I may not agree with the politics of a film in order to enjoy it, but  dammit, I have to be engaged with the content and its characters. The only time American Sniper really held my total interest was the appearance of a villainous character named Mustafa (played by Sammy Sheik), another sniper from Syria who we learn was a medal winning sharpshooter in the Olympics. He is for all intents and purposes Chris Kyle’s Arab counterpart. Sammy Sheik is riveting to watch in the brief moments we see him, although he never speaks. (Sidenote: every Arab character is a bad guy in this movie. There are no grays or complexity at all. Men, women, and children are all portrayed as evil, conniving, and dangerous. The idea that they could be defending their country from the cowboy antics of American soldiers is never even hinted at.)

Sammy Sheik as "Mustafa" and the only compelling character to hold my interest.
Sammy Sheik as “Mustafa” and the only compelling character to hold my interest.

 

Bradley Cooper’s portrayal of Chris Kyle as a good ole boy going off to defend American citizens from the new Boogie-Men-of-the-Moment is pretty cut and dry. Usually Cooper is quite engaging to watch with his big baby blues and mega-watt smile. But here he’s not captivating at all, despite his eagerness to be serious and Oscar-worthy. His Kyle comes off as a big dumb reactionary bloke trying to find his manhood through “masculine” pursuits like bronco busting in rodeos and later a trumped up war (lest we forget, the excuse for bludgeoning Iraq was because U.S. intel claimed there was proof of W.M.D.’s—Weapons of Mass Destruction. There were no W.M.D.’s, and the 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, but I digress). This cowboy motif is no accident, as it connects this film to the old John Ford Westerns and the nostalgia some folks feel about John Wayne flicks and the mythology of good white cowboys fighting off savage Indians who were keeping good white settlers from utilizing this “wilderness” that would become the U.S.A. Dehumanizing non-whites is the foundation for creating this nation. It’s the glue that holds apple pies and hot dogs together.

The original "Savages" that Cowboys fought. Actually Native people defending their land and liberty.
The original “Savages” that Cowboys fought. Actually Native people defending their land and liberty.

 

The new Wild West of the east. Actually American weapons of mass destruction.
The new Wild West of the east. Actually American weapons of mass destruction.

 

Clint Eastwood, a veteran of old school cowboy flicks and the poster boy for conservative old boy politics, paints American Sniper as another addition to that long line of wild west nostalgia in contemporary war cinema. Unfortunately the script tells us nothing new or insightful about the American psyche in relation to war today. As it stands, the simplistic plot of American Sniper tells us what we already know. Men are war, and American men thrive on it under the guise of Democracy and helping other countries liberate themselves from tyranny–by ironically (maybe intentionally) becoming the new tyranny in places we are supposed to be helping. Every generation, America creates new evil henchmen: Native Americans on the frontier, The Yellow Peril, Red Scare Russians, Black people and Civil Rights, Communist Cuba, and renegade North Korea. Since the 90s and our first trumped-up invasion of Iraq, the Arab world is the new thing that goes bump in the night. Our penchant for war only teaches us that xenophobia and colonialism never went away. We just dress them up with new language like insurgents and failing diplomacy.

Kyle’s indoctrination into war comes when he sees the bombing of the U.S. embassy in Kenya on television, and he only feels bad when he learns some Americans were killed. When the Twin Towers drop, he is gung ho to go to war. Not to protect people, but really, just to have something to do. Before the war, Kyle appears aimless, searching for a purpose. War gives him purpose. He gets married because that seems to be what he is supposed to do. He goes through life following a script pre-written for him. There are obligatory flashback scenes to show his stern father and the simplistic philosophy he was raised to believe in. That there is evil in the world at all times. That there are three types of people in the world: Wolves, sheep, and sheepdogs. And of course, a real man uses a gun and beats the crap out of people. Kyle internalizes these ideals, and carries them with him throughout the rest of his life.

New marriage, but already thinking of battle. Chris and Taya get married. (Bradley Cooper and Sienna Miller)
New marriage, but already thinking of battle. Chris and Taya get married. (Bradley Cooper and Sienna Miller)

 

The introduction of his wife, Taya (Sienna Miller), adds no meat to the story. She is regulated to being the good wife, the baby maker, the nagging spouse crying on the phone with an infant swinging off her breasts. (Let me say that the fake animatronic baby was creepy as hell and so distracting.) Although it probably wasn’t intended in the writing, you get the impression that Kyle preferred to be away from home not because he wanted to be a war hero, but because being a husband/father was a real drag for him.

Kill shot. Marc (Luke Grimes) and Chris Kyle (Bradley Cooper)
Kill shot. Marc (Luke Grimes) and Chris Kyle (Bradley Cooper)

 

We are taken through Kyle’s four tour of duties, and each tour builds Kyle up as the sniper with the most kills. There are two scenes, one in the very beginning of the movie, and one later on, where Kyle is faced with the task of killing a child or not. These scenes are meant to show a moral dilemma, but they rang false to me because if someone is the deadliest sniper in American military history, they didn’t get that high body count by worrying about shooting children. There are no children in the Arab world according to this story. Just little insurgents ready to make war.

The "bad guys" in the sniper crosshairs. In America they would be considered Patriots for fighting back.
The “bad guys” in the sniper crosshairs. In America they would be considered Patriots for fighting back.

 

In the theater that I watched the film, a rotund older white gentleman (probably retired military by his crew cut) was actually rooting for Kyle to shoot a child. Because all the Arabs in the movie were considered “savages,” I have no doubt that Kyle never questioned or worried about assassinating children. They weren’t Americans, and therefore not human. (In real life, Chris Kyle bragged about shooting 30 Black people right after Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. He bragged about killing fellow American citizens who I’m sure he didn’t view as human. His Katrina shootings were said to be a lie he made up, but his lies spoke volumes about his character. So his fictional quandary regarding Arab children rang false to me because we are never shown a man who questions anything ever. He’s just an unthinking workhorse used by the military.)

The concept of showing a man who just goes along with the war machine could be enhanced dramatically by having side characters who offer a different viewpoint. Unfortunately, we never spend too much time with side characters.  The one character who does begin to question the meaning of this war, Marc ( Luke Grimes—who needs to be in more movies), barely registers a blip on Kyle’s radar of understanding. The plot drags on for over two hours until there’s a stand-off between Kyle and Mustafa. By then, when he’s about to get his ass handed to him by death, Kyle calls his wife and says he finally wants to come home. Not because war has changed his consciousness or philosophy, but because he’s losing a skirmish that he created by not following orders. He went rogue, it backfired, and now he wants out. That was the realest moment in the entire film. Not heroic, just honest human self-preservation.

Snipers in Ferguson, Missouri, their crosshairs on American citizens .
Snipers in Ferguson, Missouri, their crosshairs on American citizens.

 

This is U.S. terrorism. Snipers against Americans.
This is U.S. terrorism. Snipers against Americans.

 

Watching an audience root for snipers to kill humans defending their right to exist on their own land reminded me of images of American snipers here in the states pointing guns at Black American citizens  and their supporters protesting murders by cops in the United States. This same audience that cheered the heroics of Bradley Cooper as Chris Kyle probably cheered the actions of police forces on American streets aiming gun sights on folks with extra melanin. Cognitive dissonance is entrenched in the Patriotic American psyche. It allows Americans to rally around American Sniper, turning it into a blockbuster, while ignoring the home grown terrorism white Americans perpetuated against Black Americans that was depicted in the film Selma. I saw Americans of all colors streaming in to view Selma. American Sniper was vanilla heavy. Not a big surprise to me. Because, history.

Director Clint Eastwood claims he made an anti-war film. He didn't.
Director Clint Eastwood claims he made an anti-war film. He didn’t.

 

Clint Eastwood made spurious claims that American Sniper is an anti-war film. This disingenuous claim falls flat given the simplistic story-line, and the films ending dripping with flag waving from real-life  footage of Kyle’s funeral. Had Eastwood really wanted to impress upon an audience the agonies of war, then he would be better off showing actual wounded veterans recovering from the various body traumas they come home with. A lot of flag-waving might become less vigorous when we see war up close and personal. Americans don’t know war. Not really. We watch it on TV like video games. We don’t sleep, eat, go to work, or go to school worrying about unmanned drones and bombs falling out of the sky from some hopped up dudebro with a military computer joystick thousands of miles away.

Unlike the rest of the world, Americans are spared from these continuous horrors and daily PTSD. We are coddled like babies, and this coddling has made us immature children in regards to war. So we deserve a movie like American Sniper. The only message it gives us (like it did Chris Kyle in real life), is that the war you perpetuate abroad will come back to haunt you in another form. Chickens coming home to roost indeed.

No one likes seeing the bodies coming home in movies or in real life.
No one likes seeing the bodies coming home in movies or in real life.

 

 

The Alchemy of ‘Still Alice’

What works beyond a shadow of a doubt is Moore herself. For a long time now, she has demonstrated an uncanny range and power without ever subjecting us to a shred of vanity. Here, she outdoes herself, channeling Alice’s physical, mental, and emotional devolution with an alchemy that is as thrilling as it is harrowing. Her luminous features slacken, her cadences falter, her life force fades. Scenes with Stewart are especially heartbreaking.

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This repost by Lisa Rosman appears as part of our theme week on the Academy Awards.

Without Julianne Moore, Still Alice might not be much of a film. This is not to say the adaptation of Lisa Genova’s 2007 novel about a 50-year-old woman stricken with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease is otherwise mediocre, although it is so unobtrusively constructed that its virtues may be overlooked. But because it focuses on the perspective of a person with Alzheimer’s rather than on the perspective of her caregivers, a uniquely gifted actor is required in the titular role. Who but Moore, with her radiant fusion of fortitude and empathy, could soldier us through a narrative whose unhappy ending is as inevitable as that of the Titanic?

alice

Initially, Alice Howland seems like she has it all. A celebrated Columbia University linguistics professor, she is happily married to fellow academic John (an unusually muted Alec Baldwin), and the couple enjoys their three grown children as well as their well-appointed Long Island beach house and NYC brownstone. If she is a tad thorny when things don’t go her way – her youngest daughter, Lydia (Kristen Stewart), an aspiring actor, bears the brunt of her mother’s tenacity – it’s nothing extraordinary in a modern Type A woman. But when Alice can no longer write off her memory loss and growing confusion as mere middle-aged malaise (read: menopause side effects), her worst fears are outstripped: She is diagnosed with a rare strain of Alzheimer’s that is inherited and can be transmitted. “I wish I had cancer,” she weeps, and although some might take umbrage with her disease comparison-shopping, we understand what she means. Especially in her line of work, she does not know who she will be without her formidable brain.

Still-Alice-10

Although this film is unwaveringly linear, we are quickly discombobulated. The film’s progression mirrors Alice’s decline so that time itself seems to dissolve, like all the rituals and goals to which she clings with a devastating inefficacy. Daily runs become impossible; soon she can no longer remember regular appointments without the aid of her smartphone. Sooner still she forgets the layout of her own house. One afternoon, she soils herself before she can find the bathroom. Every time Alice finds a way to manage a new set of limitations, the ground beneath her feet crumbles again, and we live right inside her growing panic and sorrow. As her ability to perceive her surroundings deteriorates, even the film’s clean lines grow fuzzy.

Because of Alice’s high intelligence, her Alzheimer’s has likely gone undiagnosed longer than it would have had she possessed fewer compensatory resources (ways to remember what she did not remember). The irony is she and her family possess very few “compensatory resources” once her now-rapid degeneration becomes evident; as cerebral people, they are especially ill-equipped to navigate her ever-increasing mental challenges. John, in particular, proves disappointing. “You are the smartest woman I know,” he tells her early on, and when their shared value of independence proves no longer possible, we learn that objectifying a woman for her brain is as problematic as objectifying her for her beauty. Marriage on any contingency plan is precarious.

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It can be argued that Still Alice is too Lifetime-for-TV neat, that its secondary characters are too two-dimensional. While I’d never claim this film was avant-garde, I admire directors and screenwriters Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland’s resistance to “fake stakes,” the peaks and valleys that normally shape a film narrative. Instead, the hurdles that Alice clears – an instance in which she successfully collects herself after dropping her notes during a speech, an aborted suicide attempt – only pave the way for our growing acceptance that there is no way to subvert her ultimate obstacle. Similarly, it makes sense that Alice’s family and friends don’t feel quite real; long before she actually forgets their names, her ability to distinguish personality nuance has been compromised. We’re there with her. Of course, this doesn’t excuse everything: a linguistics professor who loses her words is admittedly a smack on the nose, as is the discovery of Alice’s genetic disorder just as her eldest daughter (Kate Bosworth) is attempting to get pregnant.

Still-Alice--Kristen-Stewart-and-Julianne-Moore_article_story_large

What works beyond a shadow of a doubt is Moore herself. For a long time now, she has demonstrated an uncanny range and power without ever subjecting us to a shred of vanity. Here, she outdoes herself, channeling Alice’s physical, mental, and emotional devolution with an alchemy that is as thrilling as it is harrowing. Her luminous features slacken, her cadences falter, her life force fades. Scenes with Stewart are especially heartbreaking. The younger actor is finally returning to form after all that mucking about with vampires, and the careful attentiveness she displays as Alice’s daughter is key to the one hope that this film offers us: By definition, true love never changes form.

 

A former labor organizer, Lisa Rosman has reviewed film for such outlets as Time Out New York, Salon, Us Magazine, Flavorwire, LA Weekly, RogerEbert.com, and CBS News. She appears weekly on the NY1 film review show Talking Pictures and writes on film, feminism, and eavesdropping for SignsandSirens.com. Most notably, she once served as an assistant for Elmo on Sesame Street.

 

 

‘Gone Girl’: Scathing Gender Commentary While Reinforcing Rape and Domestic Violence Myths

I wish I could say that ‘Gone Girl’ is a subversive feminist film exposing myriad gender biases and generating a much-needed dialogue on rape and domestic violence. Yet it reinforces dangerous myths rather than shattering them.

Gone Girl

This repost by Megan Kearns appears as part of our theme week on the Academy Awards.

WARNING: LOTS OF SPOILERS AHEAD! | TRIGGER WARNING: DISCUSSION OF RAPE AND INTIMATE PARTNER VIOLENCE

Is Gone Girl a misandry fest, a subversive feminist masterpiece, or a misogynistic mess? All of the above?

I loved Gone Girl. It intrigued me with its labyrinthine plot, complex characters and noir motif. It simultaneously enthralled and enraged me. There is so much to unpack regarding gender. While a whodunit mystery revolving around the disappearance of Amy Dunne (Rosamund Pike), and whether or not her husband Nick (Ben Affleck) is the culprit, the crux of the film is the dissolution and destructive unraveling of a marriage. It begs the question: Do you ever really know the person you marry?

Deftly written by Gillian Flynn (who wrote the novel as well) and expertly directed by David Fincher, it’s an uncomfortable film that boldly examines the underbelly of love and marriage and how the media shapes perception. Told from the perspectives of both Amy (often through her diary) and Nick, Gone Girl cracks wide open and shines a spotlight on the often gendered expectations within a heteronormative marriage. Society pressures women to be flawless, never wavering in an aura of perfection. Gone Girl takes a sledge hammer to that.

In an outstanding and riveting performance by Rosamund Pike, Amy is a fascinating character. She’s brilliant, pragmatic and narcissistic. We watch her shift effortlessly from a devoted and then fearful wife to a calculating and fearlessly manipulative villain. A ruthless, Machiavellian anti-hero, Amy morphs into whatever persona she needs to don to obtain her objective. She wears personalities like a cloak, shrouding her true nature and intentions. Filled with rage, she discards the role of the docile wife. She’s not going to live on her husband’s or any man’s terms. She refuses to fulfill society’s expectations.

Amy uses her femininity to achieve her diabolical goals. She uses her sexuality, wielding it as a weapon. They are tools in her arsenal to ensnare and punish men. But just as she readily adopts stereotypical feminine traits when she needs them, she also utilizes stereotypical masculine traits of anger and violence. Her gender informs her actions and the way she perceives the world. However, Amy despises gender norms and doesn’t want to be constrained by them. She doesn’t want to be a satellite to a man. She wants to do whatever she pleases, regardless of the consequences.

We don’t get to see women as anti-heroes or villains nearly enough. As it is, we suffer a dearth of female protagonists in film. While an abundance of female anti-heroes in film reigned during the 1930s, we suffer a lack of female anti-heroes in film today. We do see more female anti-heroes on television: Patty Hewes (Damages), Olivia Pope (Scandal), Gemma Teller Morrow (Sons of Anarchy), Skyler White (Breaking Bad), Carrie Mathison (Homeland), Elizabeth Jennings (The Americans) and Claire Underwood (House of Cards). But we still see far more men in anti-hero roles on television.

Now, I don’t believe that female protagonists need to be “likable.” There’s a compelling argument by Roxane Gay as to why they shouldn’t be likable. Conventionally unlikable women don’t give a shit about what others think of them. And neither does Amy. That’s what makes Gone Girl somewhat refreshing. Here we see an unapologetically ruthless woman.

I have to applaud Amy’s rage and defiance. Although I’m horrified by her disturbing, sociopathic and misogynist tactics. This is why I relish Amy’s notorious “Cool Girl” speech. “The cool girl. The cool girl is hot. Cool girl doesn’t get angry. … And she presents her mouth for fucking.” This is a scathing commentary on how men see women as objects, as vessels, as accessories, not as entities unto themselves. I couldn’t help but say, “FUCK YEAH,” while Amy recited it. Her speech succinctly encapsulates the Male Gaze and hetero men’s expectations of women, while shattering the illusion that women are never angry and that women merely orbit men, suffocating their own needs and desires. Amy’s speech illustrates that society tells women to contort themselves to seek men’s approval.

As much as I cheer for the astute and searing commentary in the “Cool Girl” speech, Amy also condemns women complicit in this charade. She despises how women fall into their prescribed roles, all for the enjoyment of men. When Amy recites this speech, she’s driving in a car, gazing at myriad women passing by. As David Haglund points out, director David Fincher chose the images, not of men but of women, to coincide with Amy’s words. So while the words condemn men, the corresponding images implicate women, making everyone culpable. It becomes a condemnation of women themselves, that they shouldn’t fall into the trap of pantomiming this performance.

Gone Girl 3

What could have potentially been a feminist manifesto mutates into something ripped out of a misogynist’s or Men’s Rights Activist (MRA)’s warped fantasy.

The biggest problem with Gone Girl lies in the tactics Amy utilizes to punish men — by faking intimate partner violence and rape. Amy ties her wrists with rope, squeezing and tightening them while turning her wrists and she hits her face with a hammer to simulate abuse. She repeatedly shoves a wine bottle up her vagina to simulate the bruising and tearing from rape. Amy falsely accuses men of rape, stalking and abuse, all for her own ends. Amy convincingly plays the role of an abuse survivor. It’s scary because this is the kind of bullshit people believe — that women lie and make shit up to wreak vengeance on men.

Author/screenwriter Gillian Flynn said that Amy “knows all the tropes” and she can “play any role that she wants.” But therein lies the problem. Abuse victims and survivors are not merely “tropes” or “roles.” Amy pretends she is being abused in order to frame Nick by writing in her diary that she fears for her life and worries that her husband might kill her. She says she feels “disposable,” something that could be “jettisoned.” Women murdered at the hands of abusive partners are typically treated as disposable in our society. People tell victims/survivors that they should have known better, they must have provoked their abuse. People question why victims/survivors stay with abusive partners. People put the onus on women to prevent rape. These are the myths that films, TV series and news media reinforce. It’s extremely problematic to equate Amy playing “the role” of an abused rape victim with actual women abused and raped.

As a domestic violence survivor, I find the turn the film takes extremely offensive. This is the narrative too many people already have embedded in their minds — that women exaggerate, fabricate and lie about abuse and rape in order to trick or trap men in their web of lies. This is one of the biggest, most pervasive and most dangerous myths about abuse. Here’s the reality. One in four women in the U.S. report intimate partner violence. One in three women worldwide will experience partner abuse. One in five women report being raped. Yet here is this film (and book) contrasting reality and reifying rape culture.

We also see victim-blaming underscored in the film from Amy’s neighbor Greta. When they first meet, Greta comments on the bruise on Amy’s face saying, “Well, we have the same taste in men.” Yet when the two women are watching a news program on Amy’s disappearance and how the leading cause of death for pregnant women is homicide (it is), Greta calls on-screen Amy (feigning ignorance that the real Amy is right next to her) a “spoiled,” “rich bitch.” She goes on to say, “While she doesn’t deserve it, there are consequences.” While this is a commentary on privilege and Greta has survived abuse too, this also amounts to victim-blaming 101.

But the victim-blaming doesn’t stop there. One of Amy’s exes talks to Nick and tells him how she falsely accused him of rape and had a restraining order placed on him. He tells Nick that when he saw her on the news missing, “I thought there’s Amy. She’s gone from being raped to being murdered.” Again this underscores the myth that women lie about rape and abuse. But the numbers are so low for reports of false rape and domestic violence that they are almost non-existent.

Victim-blaming myths permeate every facet of our society. Janay Rice’s abuse and the resulting #WhyIStayed conversation recently highlighted the myriad myths people believe about intimate partner violence, particularly when it comes to women of color. People feel they need “proof” to verify or corroborate a victim/survivor’s trauma. Society perpetually places the onus on women for their abuse rather than on where it belongs: with the abuser. As we’ve seen with Marissa Alexander, the legal system doesn’t reward but rather punishes domestic violence survivors. This happens again and again, over and over. Women are not believed. And it’s dangerous to keep feeding this narrative.

Rape is “an epidemic.” Violence against women is an epidemic. We live in a rape culture that inculcates the abuse and objectification of women and dismisses violence against women. Society makes every excuse for abusers while it unilaterally shames and blames victims and survivors of intimate partner violence, rape and sexual assault.

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Some might try to assuage Gone Girl’s misogyny by declaring Amy’s misandry or by underscoring that there are two female characters – Detective Rhonda Boney and Margo Dunne – who are onto Amy’s game. But it doesn’t. When you have a protagonist doing despicable things, the film/TV series often straddles a fine line between condemnation and glorification. However, there is a way for a film/TV series to delineate their message: by the comments and perspectives of ancillary characters. Breaking Bad illustrates this beautifully. Despite what many fanboys got wrong, we are NOT supposed to identify with power-hungry, abusive, rapist Walter White. We may be fascinated by Walter’s fierce intelligence. But we are supposed to identify with Jesse and Skyler, both of whom are the heart and conscience of the show. They are the ones telling us the audience, both overtly and covertly, that Walter’s actions are despicable and monstrous.

In Gone Girl, almost every character condemns and despises Amy. They loathe her for her manipulations and how she has framed Nick. But no character comments on how Amy’s actions reinforce rape culture. Not one. Rhonda could have easily mentioned the stats for women reporting rape or domestic abuse, how few rape and abuse cases are brought to trial and even fewer convicted because of victim-blaming biases. Nick’s sister Margo could have said how horrible Amy’s schemes are not only for her brother but the implications for other women too. But everyone in the film only focuses on how Amy’s actions impact Nick. Nick even says at one point in the film, “I’m so sick of being picked apart by women.” (Boo hoo, poor Nick. Isn’t that every misogynist’s anthem??) So when Nick slams Amy’s head into the wall and calls her a “cunt” towards the end of the film — despite his abusive actions and misogynist language — we the audience are supposed to sympathize with him because he just wants to be a good dad, because he’s the one victimized by this manipulative shrew.

I wish I could love this film without reservations. I wish I could say that Gone Girl is a subversive feminist film exposing myriad gender biases and generating a much-needed dialogue on rape and domestic violence. Yet it reinforces dangerous myths rather than shattering them. The embedded “Cool Girl” speech rails against the patriarchal notion that women serve as nothing more than accessories and sexual objects to men. But the film falters by playing into a victim-blaming narrative reinforcing rape culture.

We need more complex female protagonists. We need more female anti-heroes and villains. If only we could have one in a film that doesn’t simultaneously perpetuate the misogynist notion that women lie about rape and abuse.

 

Megan Kearns is Bitch Flicks’ Social Media Director, a freelance writer and a feminist vegan blogger. She’s a member of the Boston Online Film Critics Association (BOFCA). She tweets at @OpinionessWorld.

‘The Boxtrolls’: Better Than Its “Man in a Dress” Jokes

In a nice contrast to many children’s films and books, the character at the start who goes against the mob is a girl, Lord Portley-Rind’s daughter, Winnie (voiced by Elle Fanning in a mid-Atlantic accent passing as British). Although Winnie, in her pink ruffled dress and blonde ringlets might look like other storybook heroines, her fits over never being believed or taken seriously by adults and her morbid fascination with the boxtrolls make her more like Daria than Alice in Wonderland. When she asks another character if boxtrolls ate his parents, she adds, “Did they let you, I mean, make you, watch?”

The Boxtrolls

Written by Ren Jender as part of our theme week on the Academy Awards.

Critics are loath to say out loud that well-made (and even some not-so-well-made) films, like the rest of pop culture, influence us in every way–fashion, language, and politics. But the proof that critics understand the political power of film comes to light in indirect ways: critics aren’t giving much publicity to the racist but groundbreaking and, in its day, critically acclaimed film, The Birth of a Nation in this, the year that marks a full century since its premiere. And since a North Carolina man shot, execution style, his Muslim, charity-minded neighbors (and a rash of anti-Muslim actions have followed) the (mostly male) cadre of critics who previously were singing the praises of American Sniper, a film that depicts Muslims as perfectly appropriate, shoot ’em up targets, stopped doing so.

Deciding what to write about The Boxtrolls (directed by Graham Annable and Anthony Stacchi), a film I enjoyed on many levels but which contains some destructively retrograde messages–mixed in with its mostly progressive ones–was difficult. I should make clear that I’m not usually an eager consumer of entertainment designed for children. I don’t have kids of my own and although I liked the one Harry Potter book I’ve read I never felt the need to read the others. But The Boxtrolls is beautiful to look at (and comes from LAIKA, the same folks who gave us Coraline)–stop-motion animation set in a steam-punk version of 19th century England. With a great deal of economy (the clever script by Irena Brignull, Phil Dale, Adam Pava, and Anthony Stacchi is based on the book, Here Be Monsters! by Alan Snow) the film sets up the premise: boxtrolls, small monster-like creatures who get their name from the cardboard boxes they wear and draw themselves into, turtle-like, at the first sign of danger, scavenge the town streets at night for scraps and goods they can take to their underground lair. Archibald Snatcher (played, magnificently, by Ben Kingsley–it’s the best role he’s had since Sexy Beast; he should play villains more often!) is an opportunistic striver who seeks to elevate his station, first by demonizing the harmless boxtrolls and then capturing all of them, making the streets “safe” for the townspeople and collecting his reward from the town’s ruling elite, headed by Lord Portley-Rind (voiced by Jared Harris) who resembles the king in a deck of cards and has about as much depth.

In a nice contrast to many children’s films and books, the character at the start who goes against the mob is a girl, Lord Portley-Rind’s daughter, Winnie (voiced by Elle Fanning in a mid-Atlantic accent passing as British). Although Winnie, in her pink ruffled dress and blonde ringlets might look like other storybook heroines, her fits over never being believed or taken seriously by adults and her morbid fascination with the boxtrolls make her more like Daria than Alice in Wonderland. When she asks another character if boxtrolls ate his parents, she adds, “Did they let you, I mean, make you, watch?”

Winnie’s curiosity about the boxtrolls ends up with her encountering them in their own lair–and meeting Eggs, named after the box he wears, (and voiced by Isaac Hempstead Wright) a human boy adopted by the boxtrolls who doesn’t realize he’s not one of them, though he’s twice their height. After he disavows all the ways he is different from his adopted kin he can’t really argue when Winnie suggests, “Then let’s see you fit in your box.”

WinnieEggsBoxtrollsSmall
Winnie and Eggs

 

The two work together to try to stop the machinations of Snatcher (whose name, manner and appearance seem to be a tribute to the “child catcher” in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang) though as in most films, the boy takes on the main role in vanquishing the villain. In spite of how vivid the animators and Fanning make Winnie, this film does not even come close to passing the Bechdel test. One of the few women characters, Winnie’s mother, is played by the great Toni Collette but she barely gets a line in. And the boxtrolls must reproduce by cloning because we never see one who’s female.

But the huge problem at the center of The Boxtrolls are the scenes when the screenwriters, to show how propaganda can influence the actions of otherwise reasonable people, have Snatcher put on a corset and an evening dress and assume an alter-ego, a red-haired, French chanteuse who sexily sings about killing boxtrolls while she charms all the men in town (who don’t seem to see beyond the wig). I’ve written before about the history of murderous trans* women in film but I was particularly surprised to find this trope–along with the one in which a trans* woman hides her identity and the men who were attracted to her are chagrined once she is outed–in a film that aggressively courts a progressive audience.

Not only is The Boxtrolls full of messages about not dehumanizing those who are “different,” and that adoptive families are just as loving as other families, but it also has kind of an Occupy moment when its boy hero tell others, “Stand up for yourselves. Don’t be afraid anymore.” At the end of the film over the credits we hear “The Boxtrolls Song” an explicitly pro-queer-family anthem by Eric Idle (of Monty Python fame) that includes in its laundry list of different kinds of families those with two Moms or two Dads.

I was sad that this otherwise delightful, humorous (some of Kingley’s lines made me laugh like I haven’t since Obvious Child), anti-capitalist film nominated for a Best Animated Feature Oscar had to pollute itself with “man in a dress” jokes, especially considering that these jokes couldn’t be mere throwaways–stop-motion films take years of painstaking effort to create (which could also explain the “Occupy” theme). I wondered if anyone involved in the film knew that a generation ago, making fun of the rest of the queer community would have been considered acceptable children’s entertainment too.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2dFVnp5K0o” iv_load_policy=”3″]

 

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

Colleen Atwood’s Costumes in Disney’s ‘Into The Woods’

Atwood’s designs are stunning, but they also highlight the discussions of gender roles and racial relationships in America.

Written by Jackson Adler as part of our theme week on the Academy Awards.

Colleen Atwood is an Academy Award nominee for Best Costume Design for Disney’s Into The Woods. In order to represent the hodgepodge of characters, she based their costumes in differing time periods, ranging from Medieval European to 1930’s America. Each costume also has a bit of a modern flair, especially Cinderella and Cinderella’s Prince’s costumes. Atwood’s designs are stunning, but they also highlight the discussions of gender roles and racial relationships in America.

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

The stage play of Into The Woods has feminist moments, with all characters written to be complicated, not just the men and boys. An example of this, as Bitch Flicks’ Katherine Murray has previously covered, is the role of The Witch as multi-faceted. While the Disney film retains many of the feminist moments and aspects from the original stage play, it has made some changes to the story that undermine them. This is representative in some of the costumes. Rapunzel’s costume is wrapped in ribbon and fabric, symbolically showing how Rapunzel feels tied up and trapped by her mother, barely able to breathe freely. While in the Disney adaptation, we see Rapunzel’s unhealthy relationship with her mother, The Witch, we never see the original production’s outcome for Rapunzel. Rapunzel is metaphorically tied up and restricted, but we never see her metaphorically undone and unraveled. Riding off into the distance with her prince does not free Rapunzel in the stage play, as being locked in a tower all her life has, understandably, lasting consequences on her psyche. Rapunzel’s restrictive life with her mother is shown beautifully through her costume, but Disney’s cut of Rapunzel’s ending undermines how telling that costume is of her emotional and psychological well-being.

Colleen Attwood with her costumes for The Witch, Rapunzel, and Little Red.
Colleen Atwood with her costumes for The Witch, Rapunzel, and Little Red.

 

Rapunzel’s white and pink costume is contrasted beautifully by The Witch’s first costume (black) and her second costume (blue). The Witch’s costumes take up more space than Rapunzel’s, showing the freedom The Witch has to move in the outside world, contrasting with Rapunzel’s captivity. They are also masculinized, as the two princes have the same color scheme – Rapunzel’s Prince in black and Cinderella’s Prince in blue. In order to have influence and power, it is implied by these costumes that The Witch has taken on some masculine and patriarchal qualities. This is evident by her treatment and dress of Rapunzel, wanting to keep her daughter soft, sweet, and subservient. Atwood has praised Meryl Streep’s use of her costumes, creating a collaboration between actor and costume designer in telling the story. In her song “Stay With Me,” The Witch switches back and forth between patriarchal abuse and maternal love, with Streep physicalizing this by standing above Rapunzel and yelling at her, to sitting next to Rapunzel and embracing her. When The Witch regains her former beauty, her costume takes up more space and Streep stands taller, symbolically showing the confidence that The Witch has gained from her beauty. However, though she looks younger and more conventionally beautiful, she has unwittingly lost her magic powers and her ability to defeat Rapunzel’s Prince. Streep’s performance combined with her costumes show how The Witch attempts to form her own identity and destiny amidst conflicting messages of how to be a powerful and successful woman in a sexist and patriarchal world. That The Witch is punished by Disney’s ending of her story, symbolically being sucked into Hell, is problematic, as it seems to eternally condemn her for attempting to be a powerful woman.

Cinderella's Stepmother, with Lucinda and Florinda.
Cinderella’s Stepmother, with Lucinda and Florinda.

 

This is echoed in the color scheme for Cinderella’s Stepmother, and her stepsisters Florinda and Lucinda. The Stepmother and her daughters are in black and gold, while Cinderella wears gold when she attends the ball. This codes gold as representative of female glamour, while black is representative of women adopting patriarchal actions. Interestingly, Florinda and Lucinda are physically punished (their eyes are picked out by birds), but The Stepmother is not. Cinderella’s Father is cut from the Disney film, and it is in the stage play that we see that Cinderella’s Father is alcoholic and severely neglectful of his daughter. The storyline of Cinderella’s family can be interpreted in two different ways. Was Cinderella’s Father driven to drunken ineffectiveness by a cruel and greedy second wife? Or was it Cinderella’s Father’s drunken ineffectiveness that made The Stepmother take control of and be the head of the family because someone had to? We know that Cinderella’s Mother was incredibly kind, and that she died. Perhaps it was the death of his beloved wife that lead Cinderella’s Father to drink, and The Stepmother is merely trying to survive in a patriarchal world. What else would lead her to do something so drastic as to mutilate the feet of her daughters in an attempt to marry them off to a prince – someone with money who will financially take care of the family? Florinda and Lucinda are punished, perhaps, for not standing up to their mother and treating Cinderella kindly and as an equal, while The Stepmother isn’t blamed, since her cruelty was merely a misguided attempt to achieve security for herself and her family. Cinderella never wears black or blue, and she ends up rejecting her prince’s patriarchy. At the end of the story, Cinderella works closely with The Baker, someone who fits in with her color scheme of earth tones (though still wears a bit of blue), and who earlier learned that “it takes two” (meaning equality) to have a healthy relationship.

Cinderella and The Baker's Wife.
Cinderella and The Baker’s Wife.

 

The Baker’s Wife wears many different colors, with her main costume being mostly red, with a fair amount of blue, gold, and black. Atwood and Emily Blunt thought it important that The Baker’s Wife’s resourcefulness should be shown in her costume, and that it was made up of “whatever she could find.” The Baker’s Wife is a working class woman struggling to get by, who argues with her husband, who wants a child, and who also wants a fulfilling sex life. Her song “Moments in the Woods” debates the question of can women have it all? And should they? She has red for passion and sexual desire, blue and black for masculine traits that she adopts to get by, and gold because she would like a bit of glamour in her life. Disney arguably punishes her lust by making her a fallen woman via having her fall to her death from a cliff.

Red and blue are also the color scheme for Little Red Riding Hood, whose storyline with The Wolf is reminiscent of sexual assault. Little Red is more assertive than most of the other female characters, and her dress is blue and has puffed sleeves, and, in these ways, is similar to The Witch’s second costume. We never hear of Little Red’s male family members whether in the stage musical or the film adaptation. It is therefore implied that Little Red is raised solely by her mother (whom we never see) and her grandmother. With her black hair, blue dress, and cape of red, Little Red is an empowered and sexual woman in the making, guided by independent women. The Wolf is in black and blue, with a red boutonniere. When Little Red is hesitant about trusting The Wolf, he points her towards some (in the Disney film) blue and phallic looking flowers for her to gather – seemingly supporting her masculine independence. By taking Grandmother’s place in bed and wearing her clothes in order to attack Little Red, The Wolf is seemingly sensitive and more maternalistic – something he hopes will be attractive to Little Red. Though Little Red is wary, The Wolf deceives Little Red long enough to take her off guard and attack her, reminiscent of date rape.

Little Red and The Wolf
Little Red and The Wolf

 

While the color scheme of The Wolf’s costume works well in telling the story, the design itself is incredibly problematic. As I have written before, The Wolf’s costume is a zoot suit, which has a rich racial history in The United States. In the 1930’s and 40’s, the zoot suit was a symbol of power among young people of color, and it was criminalized by the white populace and media. The Wolf wearing a zoot suit and attacking a white girl in Into The Woods is reminiscent of a white actor in blackface attacking a white woman in the controversial and highly racist Birth of a Nation. That Depp, Atwood, and director Rob Marshall all thought it was a good idea for the costume to be a zoot suit is upsetting to say the least.

As especially evidenced by the zoot suit, Atwood’s costumes are not all period appropriate to Medieval Germany. Many of them are similar to the neo-Medieval styles of British television series Merlin and Robin Hood, and the American series Reign. Merlin and Robin Hood have ethnic diversity, and Reign is (mostly) feminist. Into The Woods’ modernity highlights how relevant its feminist moments from the stage play are to contemporary audiences. However, Into The Woods has very little ethnic diversity. Even in a more period-appropriate adaptation, Into The Woods could have characters who are people of color, as centuries of trade, colonization, and war had brought diversity to Medieval Europe. While there are PoC extras in the film, as both peasants and royalty, any character with a line or a lyric is White. By Atwood making the costumes in varying time periods, with both contemporary and fantastical elements, it highlights that this is a story and a world in which anything goes – from talking wolves, to giants, to magic beans. However, evidently for Disney, the casting of people of color was too much.

Colleen Atwood’s costumes both contribute to the story of Into The Woods and, indirectly and directly, point out Disney’s flaws in the telling of it. Her costumes beautifully support the theme of gender roles in the story, and if it wasn’t for putting Johnny Depp in a zoot suit, I might support the idea of her winning an Oscar for her work on the film. Either way, I hope Hollywood does a lot of self-reflecting in regard to how it does and does not address gender and race.

 

The Academy’s White Noise: Silencing the Lions

I said that I had hoped this year would be different. However, when the Academy announced its nominations, I was not surprised.

Black men and women, organized by character type, who have won Academy Awards. This is an updated infographic after Nyong'o's win last year. We won't get to add "Historical Civil Rights Icon" as a category in 2015. Click to enlarge.
Black men and women, organized by character type, who have won Academy Awards. This is an updated infographic after Nyong’o’s win last year. We won’t get to add “Historical Civil Rights Icon” as a category in 2015.   Click to enlarge.

 

Written by Leigh Kolb as part of our theme week on the Academy Awards.

Two years ago, after Django Unchained was largely snubbed at the Oscars (compared to the Golden Globes), I looked at the history of the Black actors/characters who were awarded by the Academy over the years. Last year, I revisited that history as 12 Years a Slave dominated the awards circuit.

It’s fairly clear what roles Hollywood is most comfortable with: for Black characters, passivity, tired stereotypes, and villainy get the highest awards. Complex, powerful Black characters–especially those who appear threatening to white supremacy in some way–typically get passed over.

I hoped this year would be different. This year, institutionalized, implicit American racism seeped out of the pores of American cities and psyches post-Ferguson. This year, Ava DuVernay directed Selma, 5o years after the Selma to Montgomery march that led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act. The film is brilliant in its own right–DuVernay’s direction and David Oyelowo’s portrayal of Martin Luther King Jr. are incredible. Certainly the power of the film within the historical context would make the Academy sit upright and give credit where credit is due.

Instead, we got more of the same. Selma was recognized widely in Golden Globe nominations–best picture, best director, best actor, best original song (John Legend and Common’s “Glory,” which took home the award). And then, as always, the Academy turned up its white nose. While it’s up for best picture and and original song, DuVernay and Oyelowo were passed over.

At Rolling Stone, Peter Travers said,

“Why am I calling this year’s Oscars, on February 22nd, the ‘Caucasian Consensus,’ when Selma is one of the eight nominees for Best Picture? Because that landmark film about Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1965 civil-rights march has only one other nomination, for Best Song. Not one person of color appears among the 20 nominees for acting. Apparently, the Academy thought it gave last year when it awarded 12 Years a Slave the gold. The message from white voters? Don’t get uppity.”

Not one person of color.

I said that I had hoped this year would be different. However, when the Academy announced its nominations, I was not surprised.

I had to drive over an hour to watch Selma on the big screen, because none of the theaters in the small towns around me screened it (and they still haven’t).

This happened 20 minutes from my home.

The Voting Rights Act was gutted in 2013.

Writers had to defend DuVernay’s portrayal of an imperfect L.B.J.

In an interview, late author Chinua Achebe quoted the following proverb: “Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.” This proverb perfectly, painfully illustrates Hollywood’s–and America’s–hegemonic forces at work.

The hunters write history. The hunters glorify themselves. The hunters’ history infiltrates itself into the very fabric of our cultural narrative, so we’re only comfortable with seeing the complexities of the hunters, and the simplicity of the lions.

Selma challenged that narrative. Oyelowo–who felt destined to play King–and DuVernay dared to glorified the lions.

And the hunters simply wouldn’t hear of it.

Oyelowo and DuVernay
Oyelowo and DuVernay

 

See also at Bitch Flicks: The Academy: Kind to White Men, Just Like History, Race and the Academy: Black Characters, Stories, and the Danger of Django, Captain Uhura Snub: The Politics of Ava DuVernay’s Oscar 

Leigh Kolb is a composition, literature, and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri. 

 

‘Big Hero 6’: Woman Up

The female team members are often shown as being more capable then the males, both as combatants and as scientists. Gogo Tomago , and Honey Lemon, are two bright, young scientists who exhibit strength of mind, body, and will. During a training montage, Gogo uses the phrase “woman up” to encourage one of her teammates to do better. This was a great, subversive line because it flowed naturally from the character and the context, rather than seeming like a forced injection of faux-feminism.

U.S. release poster.
U.S. release poster.
This repost by Andé Morgan appears as part of our theme week on the Academy Awards.
Big Hero 6 (2014) is a cinematic snack, lighter fare to counterbalance heavier offerings like Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar (2014), much in the same way that Wall-E (2008) contrasts with The Terminator (1984), or a pile of disgusting feces compares with Jack and Jill (2011). Still, the film does touch on universal themes that adults will appreciate: the trials of adolescence, grief, our wonder at science, and our fear of unrestrained technological development.
Other recent Disney animated films, like Planes: Fire and Rescue (2014), and Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good Very Bad Day (2014), were not, for good reason, box office or critical darlings. But Big Hero 6 is different — it’s an offspring of Disney’s 2009 union with Marvel. Like Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), Big Hero 6 draws on a little-known corner of the Marvel universe. Directors Don Hall and Chris Williams took the heart of that original comic and created a Happy-Meal-ready sequel factory. Thankfully, they left the spandex boob socks and impractical armor behind.
Yeah, this is OG Gogo Tomago…
Yeah, this is OG Gogo Tomago…
The story is set in the fictional city of  “San Fransokyo.” While the name is a bit clumsy, the visual fusion of Bay Area landmarks and American and Asian architecture is beautifully done. The influence of Japanese comics and science fiction is tastefully overprinted on all the animation, and it works. I wish I could say the same for the character design. While adequate, it suffers from the same Disney animation facial blandness found in Frozen (2013) and Wreck-It Ralph (2012).
This should be IRL.
This should be IRL.

 

If you’ve ever seen a Disney animated movie, particularly one of the more recent ones, then you already know the plot beats to Big Hero 6. This is too bad, because after establishing an interesting origin story, screenwriters Robert Baird, Daniel Gerson, and Jordan Roberts let the effort devolve into a decidedly unoriginal superheroes vs. villain story. Hiro Hamada (Ryan Potter) is a 14-year-old orphan (of course) and robotics prodigy, although the puffy robotic heart of the film is Baymax (Scott Adsit), who resembles (at least to this child of the 80s) a futuristic Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. Despite an appearance that may appear androgynous to Westerners, Hiro is definitely a male protagonist, and this is definitely not Frozen. However, gender plays little role in his actions or interactions, and this is where the film really shines.

After rescuing Hiro from certain doom, his brother, Tadashi (Daniel Henney), takes Hiro to the robotics lab at the local R1 university. There he meets Tadashi’s friends and fellow students (who will later become his wrecking crew) and the department head, Professor Callaghan (James Cromwell). Hiro is impressed by the tech, and very badly wants to join Tadashi in college. In order to gain entrance, he competes in a pro-level science fair. He wins, of course, but tragedy ensues and sets the stage for the rest of the movie.

The cast of characters is diverse. In a subtle and pleasantly subversive move, the only white male characters of note are the “villains.” The Black character, Wasabi (flatly voiced by Damon Wayans), did come off a little token-ish, but it’s hard to level that accusation considering the diversity of the entire cast. Also, I have to credit the writers for avoiding race or gender-based humor throughout. This film does not have exceptional voice acting, animation, or story, but it does stand out in one other major way: the relative parity between male and female characters. And I don’t just mean numerical parity, I mean parity in the intent and essence of the roles.
From left to right: Fred, Gogo, Baymax, Hiro, Honey Lemon, and Wasabi.
From left to right: Fred, Gogo, Baymax, Hiro, Honey Lemon, and Wasabi.
Several main characters, and an important ancillary character, are women. Aunt Cass (Maya Rudolph), is Hiro and Tadashi’s guardian. She’s a single mother, and not once does she complain about it. No references are made to some horrible tragedy involving her former husband; there are no jokes about her wanting a man. Rather, she’s shown as a happy, competent business owner and caretaker.
The female team members are often shown as being more capable then the males, both as combatants and as scientists. Gogo Tomago (Jamie Chung), and Honey Lemon (Génesis Rodríguez), are two bright, young scientists who exhibit strength of mind, body, and will. During a training montage, Gogo uses the phrase “woman up” to encourage one of her teammates to do better. This was a great, subversive line because it flowed naturally from the character and the context, rather than seeming like a forced injection of faux-feminism. Also of note, the villain’s daughter, Abigail (Katie Holmes), is depicted as a brave test pilot, and her fate is key to the film’s climax.
Big Hero 6 will most strongly appeal to older kids. The heavier questions may be lost on younger children, and some of the fight and chase scenes are a bit violent (bloodless, and no more so than similar films) and frenetic. Adults will (or at least should) appreciate the themes, the gender equity, and the racial diversity of the characters. Most importantly, the film excels at imparting a sense of wonder about science. By showing strong, capable female characters, this film will, I hope, encourage both girls and boys to develop an interest in science.
The film has a trim 102-minute running time, so a six-minute appetizer, Feast (2014), precedes it. The story is told from the visual perspective of a young Boston Terrier, and quickly jumps from a series of hungry-dog sight gags to a saccharine love-marriage-baby-carriage parable. Despite having the look of an experimental short, the animation and the story are deliberate, targeted, and all conventional Disney fluff.
Also on Bitch Flicks: Wreck-It Ralph is Flawed, But Still Pretty Feminist by Myrna Waldron

Andé Morgan lives in Tucson, Arizona, where they write about film, television, and current events. Follow them @andemorgan.