‘Pelo Malo’ (‘Bad Hair’): Coding Blackness and Genderqueer Identity

White and non-Black people can have a “bad hair day.” But only Black folks get labeled with bad hair for life, no matter how it is groomed. Especially Black women. Go to any retail store that sells hair products and the ethnic section (read:Black) has more hair creams, gels, mousse, sprays, relaxers, grease, puddings, pomades, hair butter, oils, lotions, to fry, dye and lay that bushy crown to the side. I won’t even get into the hot combs, wigs, weaves, lacefronts, extensions, and clip-ons used to hide a Black woman’s natural hair state. It’s one thing when little Black girls are indoctrinated early to hate their hair, but what about little Black boys who may also be genderqueer? How is this hair struggle tolerated by a homophobic mother struggling to keep her head above water?

Pelo Malo movie poster.
Pelo Malo movie poster.

There is nothing more purifying to the human psyche than when another human being sees you for who you really are and accepts you just as you are. And there’s nothing more soul-crushing than when they don’t. This is at the heart of  writer/director Mariana Rondón’s Pelo Malo as it follows the journey of a young Venezuelan boy named Junior (Samuel Lange Zambrano).

Junior is a 9-year-old boy living with his single mother, Marta (Samantha Castillo), and infant brother in a Caracas housing development that looks like an overpopulated urban nightmare. I will call the child Black despite differing racial categories between North America and South America. Every coded Black person on the planet knows who the term “Bad Hair” was created for—persons of African descent with that extra curl in their DNA. Most descendants of enslaved Africans shipped to different parts of the “New World” are a mixture of African, Indigenous (Native), and European heritage. Hair textures will fall anywhere from straight, wavy, to extra thick and tightly curled. Or a mixture of all three.

White and non-Black people can have a “bad hair day.” But only Black folks get labeled with bad hair for life, no matter how it is groomed. Especially Black women. Go to any retail store that sells hair products and the ethnic section (read:Black)  has more hair creams, gels, mousse, sprays, relaxers, grease, puddings, pomades, hair butter, oils, lotions, to fry, dye and lay that bushy crown to the side. I won’t even get into the hot combs, wigs, weaves, lacefronts, extensions, and clip-ons used to hide a Black woman’s natural hair state. It’s one thing when little Black girls are indoctrinated early to hate their hair, but what about little Black boys who may also be genderqueer? How is this hair struggle tolerated by a homophobic mother struggling to keep her head above water?

Most Black boys don’t have hair issues because they are typically shorn of their locks at an early age. I’ve often witnessed Black mothers and fathers letting their son’s hair grow freely while it is still soft baby hair, but the moment it kinks up a little too tight, they cut it off. As long as boys and men keep the scalp lined up right by the barber, and don’t let it get too overgrown and unkempt, the struggle is minimal. Some Black men (and boys) get “texturizers” (basically light relaxers for men), or sport a wave cap overnight to create spiral waves around their scalp. Back in the day it was the Jheri curl or the California curl, where often dark-skinned men suffered chemical treatments like women to get that glossy-curly look that some lighter-skinned men naturally had. Ironically, to me at least, Junior has the silky dream hair that some Black boys and girls in my part of the world would pray for. The boy is naturally beautiful; however, in his mind he knows that the ultimate beauty is straight, European-looking hair.  Famous singers who he likes are his role models. They have straight hair. All his little heart desires in the movie is to take a yearbook picture for the new school year with straight hair. Dassit.

Junior tries to figure out his place in his marginalized world.
Junior tries to figure out his place in his marginalized world.

 

The one friend Junior has in the whole world, La Nina (María Emilia Sulbarán)
The one friend Junior has in the whole world, La Nina (María Emilia Sulbarán)

 

The antagonism stems from his mother Marta, who sees Junior’s fixation with his hair as a huge problem. Not only does her son fuss over his hair and appearance, but he is also effeminate. This is the most painful part of watching Pelo Malo. Marta is a beautiful woman, but her face takes on such ugliness every time she looks at Junior. This child loves his mother to death, spends a lot of time just staring at her, as if trying to figure out the laws of feminine allure. One day Junior sits on a couch watching TV with Marta. He looks over and gazes at her face with such adoration and deep love, but then she snaps on him, “Stop staring at me like that!” From her tone we know he does this often. And we get to witness this longing gaze many times. Marta spends most of her screen time projecting onto Junior her fears of having a gay son. She does some pretty damaging things to try and fix him too throughout the film.

Junior (Samuel Lange Zambrano) is fixated on his mother Marta (Samantha Castillo)
Junior (Samuel Lange Zambrano) is fixated on his mother Marta (Samantha Castillo)

 

Junior doesn’t break dance like the neighborhood kids, he does a trance-like inner groove with his eyes closed and she is disturbed by it. When she catches him doing this same dance on a city bus, she snatches him up, and Junior doesn’t understand why she is angry. It is literally painful to watch. She piles on the psychological and verbal child abuse. The more that Junior tries to get Marta to love him, she pushes him away. If Venus was a boy, she would be Junior. This fact frightens Marta.

Junior and Marta don't see eye to eye.
Junior and Marta don’t see eye to eye.

 

Of course, part of Marta’s behavior is rooted in the harsh marginalized environment they live in that punishes perceived deviance. Her son’s burgeoning homosexuality is just one more problem she will have to deal with on top of being poor, single, begging for her underpaid job back, and raising two children, one of which is still nursing from her breasts. Every time she looks at her son, she sees the discrimination, danger, and ridicule they will both have to face against the outside world. But instead of being compassionate, she is angry and perturbed by his mere presence. Her face conveys so much deep-seated hatred for the boy, that at first I thought she was salty with the child because maybe he looked like his father and there was a bad break-up. However, later in the story we find out that she loved the boy’s Black father. Marta’s face softens just talking about him, so the audience has to search for other clues as to her lack of affection towards Junior. She’s constantly pushing/pulling him places, screaming at him outside their bathroom door whenever he locks himself in there to fix his hair in some kind of way that flattens it.

Marta is loving and affectionate with her white-skinned, straight-haired infant son. There is a tender moment where she is topless and bathing the little one. Junior watches (always watching), a sad yearning in his expression. I wondered. Did she ever hold him like that? Kiss him that way? Maybe when his father was alive?

 

Marta bonding with her lighter-skinned, straight-haired little one.
Marta bonding with her lighter-skinned, straight-haired little one.

 

At one point Marta lies on her bed exhausted from her job search, weary from being turned down for security work, something she is trained for. Junior crawls in next to her and tries to comfort her, and she shoves him away. I began to wonder if it was a combination of his non-conforming sexuality and his Blackness that she despised. There are plenty of non-Black women/men who find Black partners and have children, and yet still harbor racial prejudice. There are even Black-with-Black partners that harbor colorism issues regarding light and dark skin tones.

I admit the colorism/affection issue triggered me in this film. I also come from a single parent household where I am the oldest and darkest child, and the sibling I grew up with is fair-skinned, hazel-eyed, and bone-straight dishwater blonde. My mother was auburn-haired and light-skinned, and although she never had issues with my skin-tone, I was young enough to notice how other people (Black, White, Mexican, Asian, etc) reacted when the two of us went places with our mother. My sister was fawned over (her skin, her eyes, her hair), while I was referred to as the reader. Black children (and non-Black children) learn subconsciously (even before they begin to speak) that whiteness and proximity to whiteness is EVERYTHING, and the opposite is viewed as negative.  

Throughout  Pelo Malo there were uncomfortable re-rememberings of myself looking at myself in the mirror when I was Junior’s age, slathering Vaseline or Blue Magic Hair Grease on my hair, trying to slick all that stuff DOWN. Tame it. Control it. Essentially hide all that made me stand out as the really Black one in the family. So I was all in my feels watching Junior struggle to get that elusive straight hair. It’s not a comfortable experience to watch a film that basically shows you your childhood and how painful it was. I realized I had built up a lot of buffers around my own hair/skin color trauma.

Grandma Carmen (Nelly Ramos) teaches Junior to sing and dance.
Grandma Carmen (Nelly Ramos) teaches Junior to dance and get loose.

 

Junior’s only saving grace is his Black paternal Grandmother Carmen (Nelly Ramos). The moment I see Carmen’s teeny-weeny ‘fro, I know this is a woman who embraces her natural beauty. She doesn’t sport a wig, or straighten her locks. She plays music and likes to dance. She even straightens Junior’s hair when he asks just so he can see what it would look like, but she admonishes him to wet it back up before his mother comes to get him. She spots right off what is evident about her grandson. He is not a hard boy. He is concerned with his appearance. He wants to be a singer. He wants straight hair for his yearbook picture. Grandma Carmen obliges by making him a suit that looks like something the singer Prince would wear. This time spent with Carmen is a respite for Junior, but unfortunately the need for Marta’s love and acceptance is so strong, Junior convinces himself that Grandma Carmen is trying to turn him into a girl. The frilly suit he found so delightful stitched from his grandmother’s hand becomes a suit of shame.

 

Grandma Carmen straightens half of Junior's hair so he can see his desire.
Grandma Carmen straightens half of Junior’s hair so he can see his desire.

 

Grandma Carmen (Nelly Ramos) shows Junior how to sing like a rock star.
Grandma Carmen (Nelly Ramos) shows Junior how to sing like the star he wants to be.

 

In the end, Marta tells Junior he can only stay with her if he cuts off all his curly ringlets. The hair has become a symbol of Black queerness for Marta. It must be vanquished. It’s a devastating blow, and the last shot we have of Junior is a gut-wrencher. He is in his school uniform wearing close-cropped hair. Unsmiling. It is the yearbook photo. But not the one he wanted.

Pelo Malo ends with no issues resolved, and no hints that life will change or be better for Junior. However, there is one ray of hope in the end credits. We get to see what Junior looks like wearing his grandmother’s Prince-like suit. His hair is blow-dried straight and he dances to his grandmother’s favorite song. He looks glorious. And free.

I left the theater thinking, “How many Juniors, male/female/gay/gender-neutral/genderfluid/transgender/non-binary are out there in the world?”

I know there are millions. And we must be vigilant in holding safe spaces for those children to grow, discover, and define themselves on their own terms. Children like Leelah Alcorn, who recently took her own life because she couldn’t be the person she needed to be. That is the lesson of Pelo Malo.

If nothing else, people should see this little gem just to gaze at the beautiful face of actor Samuel Lange Zambrano. The weight of this movie is carried on his thin little shoulders, and he handles it like a pro. He is perfection.

 

 

The riveting Samantha Castillo(Marta) and the perfection that is Samuel Lange Zambrano (Junior)
The riveting Samantha Castillo (Marta) and the perfection that is Samuel Lange Zambrano (Junior)

 

_______________________________

Lisa Bolekaja is a graduate of the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer’s Workshop and a former Film Independent Fellow. She co-hosts a screenwriting podcast called “Hilliard Guess’ Screenwriters Rant Room” and her work has appeared in “Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History” (Crossed Genres Publishing), “The WisCon Chronicles: Volume 8″  (Aqueduct Press), and the SF/F anthology, “How to Live on Other Planets: A Handbook for Aspiring Aliens” (Upper Rubber Boot Books). Her latest SF story “Three Voices” will be forthcoming in Uncanny Magazine.

Male Mask, Female Voice: The Noir of Ida Lupino

Lupino then struck out from the studio system to direct three noirs of her own: ‘Outrage,’ ‘The Hitch-Hiker,’ and ‘The Bigamist,’ the only classic noirs made by a female auteur. Each uses a different strategy to challenge the empathy gap between spectators and female characters, and to subvert the femme-fatale trope.

Ida Lupino

 

This is a guest post by Brigit McCone.

The IMDb page of Woody Allen’s Match Point (2005) offers the following summary: “at a turning point in his life, a former tennis pro falls for a femme-fatale type.” The plot of Match Point: Jonathan Rhys Meyers’ former tennis pro aggressively pursues Scarlett Johansson’s sexually confident actress, begins an affair that only she expresses guilt over (though she is single, breaking up with her fiancé after her first hook-up with Meyers, while he remains engaged), then he plans and executes the cold-blooded murder of Johansson to cover his adultery. In other words, Meyers plays a classic, manipulative “psycho killer bitch” in all but gender.

The fact that Johansson’s character is nevertheless judged as a “femme-fatale type” and Meyers’ character excused as being “at a turning point in his life,” points to the real underpinnings of the femme-fatale: the assumption that female sex appeal is responsible for male violence. Her manipulative behavior may confirm the femme-fatale’s evil, but her responsibility for male violence is the core of her role, rooted in a victim-blaming lack of empathy for women. If that remains true even in 2005, it was certainly true of the ’40s and ’50s heyday of film noir.

Few people understood the logic of the femme-fatale better than Ida Lupino. Her looks, confidence and intelligence saw her typecast as a seductive “vamp” from the age of 14. Lupino became one of the iconic femme-fatales of the 1940s, breaking out as crazed villainess of They Drive By Night, followed by genre classics High Sierra, The Hard Way, and Road House. Lupino then struck out from the studio system to direct three noirs of her own: Outrage, The Hitch-Hiker, and The Bigamist, the only classic noirs made by a female auteur. Each uses a different strategy to challenge the empathy gap between spectators and female characters, and to subvert the femme-fatale trope.

Rape Culture As Ultimate Noir: Outrage

The first cinematic examination of what feminists now call “‘rape culture,” 1950’s Outrage introduces Ann Walton (Mala Powers), a character whose wholesomeness is emphasized from the film’s start. She is liked by co-workers and says of her fiancé, “I found the right one,” showcasing her mental monogamy. In a tense, expressionist sequence of shadowy yards and deserted streets, Ann is stalked by a sexual predator and caught when she swoons; it is her traditional femininity that makes her vulnerable, not transgression. Ann is constantly watched: chatting to her fiancé, she is smirked at by an old lady; when talking with a co-worker, the clenching hands of her future attacker are visible in the foreground, making the audience uncomfortably aware that we share his gaze. We, too, will be asked to watch and judge Ann throughout the film.

This surveillance of chivalry offers Ann no protection. As her future attacker insistently flirts with her, to her visible discomfort, bystanders are blank-faced and avoid eye contact. As a vulnerable woman alone at night, taxis refuse to stop for her. As her attacker closes in to rape her, the camera pulls back to a neighbor firmly shutting his window. After the rape, we are shown the averted eyes of former friends and the everyday intrusions of men, who casually grab her flinching shoulder or invade her space, an entitlement to the female body that is weaponized by Ann’s trauma. When Ann is finally triggered into striking a blow, she does not get revenge against her rapist, but attacks a random stranger who is stroking her hair and pestering her for a kiss. This sends a clear message that such pushy violations of a woman’s boundaries collectively create a triggering environment that normalizes rape. The conventions of noir, which condition the audience to accept that society is hostile and unjustly disbelieving the protagonist, are used by Lupino to shape the audience’s interpretation of rape culture.

Ann finally finds redemption through the friendship and support of Rev. Bruce Ferguson. It is visiting him alone at his house at night, and driving with him into the countryside unchaperoned, that allows him to counsel her. The fact that she is healed by ignoring society’s proprieties, and victimized when swooning in conventional feminine panic, demonstrates the irrelevance of woman’s transgressions to man’s actions. Rev. Bruce’s authority as man and as cleric is invoked to justify Ann. In the film’s climactic trial of Ann for attacking the harassing flirt, the authority of the legal system is used to hold male sexual aggression responsible for female violence, neatly reversing the “femme-fatale” formula. Rev. Bruce’s mansplaining authority presents his blistering condemnation of chivalry’s failures as an act of chivalry itself: his courtroom speech establishes rape as an epidemic social problem, “a shameful blot on our towns and cities,” excuses Ann’s actions (Rhys Meyers’ tennis coach might have been “at a turning point in his life” when he gunned down Johansson’s “femme-fatale type,” but Ann had “been suffering in her mind a long time” when she clobbered a flirt with a wrench), and indicts society for the assault – “it’s our fault, all of us” – appealing to the judge “as a man.” Of course, Rev. Bruce is not speaking “as a man” at all, but “as Ida Lupino.” Society’s dismissing of woman’s testimony as “hysterical” required Lupino to dress female perspective in a male mask for it to be heard.

Outrage is fascinating as a direct appeal from the suppressed female voice. It exposes the hypocritical underbelly of traditional chivalry, and its human cost, but it is not a fully satisfying drama. The very victim-blaming that Lupino condemns, forces her heroine into one-note wholesomeness to dodge femme-fatality. Ann often irritates viewers with her “damsel-in-distress” manner, but this only highlights how inhuman a woman had to be, to be chivalry’s “justified” victim. At the same time, the need for Rev. Bruce to project authority makes his character smug to the point of creepiness. In her next film, The Hitch-Hiker, Lupino would banish women from the screen entirely and reveal herself capable of sharp psychological subtlety.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCRemHI0usY”]

Why Didn’t They Just Leave Him? The Hitch-Hiker

1953’s The Hitch-Hiker opens with a bold declaration: “what you will see in the next seventy minutes could have happened to you.” We hear a woman’s scream and gunshots. A lady’s purse falls to the floor at the attacker’s feet. This opening scene establishes the villain as a killer of women, but his victim is not shown. To give her any character would be to expose that character to scrutiny. Why was she traveling alone? Why would she pick up a hitch-hiker? Why didn’t she just leave him? To convince the audience that it “could have happened to them,” the faceless woman must be replaced by all-American Roy and Gilbert, on their manly hunting trip. A man can be everyman; a woman represents only herself. Roy and Gilbert, then, must walk in the shoes of the female victim; we will experience her terror through their male masks. The film is a master class in suspense and claustrophobia, making maximal use of both cramped car and empty Mexican desert. The hitch-hiker has one eye permanently opened, so the captives can’t tell whether he is asleep or watching, piling on the paranoia as the pair squirm under his peering panopticon, until they internalize his surveillance. Roy and Gilbert are as minutely scrutinized by the hitch-hiker as Outrage‘s Ann is by society.

One of the film’s harsher comments on IMDb complains that “the two captive men are presented with innumerable opportunities to outsmart or overpower their captor, but fail to do so out of apparent cowardice or stupidity,” which actually points to the film’s central strength. Under crushing pressure, the group evolves the psychological dynamic of an abusive family. The captives’ loyalty to each other becomes an exploitable weakness that prevents them from fleeing. Roy and Gilbert gradually grow complicit in the hitch-hiker’s schemes, as they adapt to his demands and learn to anticipate and appease his rages. They miss opportunities to appeal for outside help, as they are blackmailed into silence. The Hitch-Hiker is one of the rare films that realistically captures the psychology of intimidation, letting the audience witness the group’s toxic dynamic develop over time. The intimate violence of emotional abuse emerges as an ideal subject for noir. George Cukor’s Gaslight is a strong example, but Lupino’s choice of protagonists, all-American hunting buddies, explores the dynamics of abuse as universal human psychology rather than female vulnerability. In her next film, The Bigamist, she would exploit the audience’s higher tolerance for flawed and complex male protagonists, to promote empathy for complex women.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIeFKTbg3Aw”]

Woman Humanizes Man Humanizes Woman: The Bigamist

On the surface, 1953’s The Bigamist presents a classic narrative of infidelity: Harry is driven, by the neglect of his careerist wife Eve, into an affair with a brassy, smart-mouthed broad, Phyllis. But Lupino’s film humanizes the stereotypes into sympathetic individuals. In the process, she demonstrates that the ideology of male unfaithfulness depends on the dehumanizing of women to make them disposable; it must be justified either by condemning the wife as cold, castrating harpy, or by dismissing the mistress as calculating femme-fatale. The climactic trial of the bigamist becomes a trial of society, just like that of Lupino’s Outrage. In the authoritative voice of the male judge, the film spells out the irony that it is no crime to commit adultery, but a crime to recognize and protect both women by marriage.

Like its hero, the film refuses to demonize either woman or to imply that they deserve to be abandoned. Joan Fontaine’s Eve is a workaholic, but she is also loving and supportive. Ida Lupino’s Phyllis reveals layers of loneliness and fragility under her brash, defensive surface. She is not trying to trap Harry, giving him the opportunity to leave even after she falls pregnant. Refreshingly, the women do not turn on each other when the bigamy is revealed, but turn their looks of hurt onto Harry at his trial. The script was written by Collier Young, Lupino’s ex-husband and professional collaborator, who was married to Fontaine at the time of shooting. Lupino’s collaboration with Fontaine, and her sympathetic portrayal of Fontaine’s Eve, is thus an act of solidarity that puts its money where its mouth is, radically rejecting cat-fight logic between women who have shared a man.

Ida Lupino exploits the audience’s willingness to identify with a male protagonist, to encourage them to see both women from the hero’s sympathetic viewpoint. Lupino herself takes the role of a woman pregnant from unmarried sex, then uses the hero’s voiceover to empathize with her character and avoid moral judgment; yet another male mask for the defense of female worth. Defying double standards, Harry takes full responsibility for his choice to sleep with Phyllis, marrying her to support their child. He is flawed, against the standard of a fully committed husband, but noble when compared with the casual exploitation of women tolerated by Lupino’s society. The result is a morally complex and ambiguous portrait of polyamory, which affirms that no human is disposable and that no “femme-fatale” is without her humanity.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eUmFS7ww5s”]

Ida Lupino’s career as director is an intriguing example of an actress seizing power to rebut the misogynist traditions of her own genre. In the process, she reveals noir’s natural potential to explore female psychology and experience. When her company, “The Filmmakers,” folded, she went on to be a prolific director in television, then directed 1966’s The Trouble With Angels, a sympathetic portrait of a Catholic convent school. As the only female director working in ’50s Hollywood, and as a striking artist in her own right, Ida Lupino deserves a fresh look.

 

Brigit McCone over-identifies with Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard. She writes short films, radio dramas and “The Erotic Adventures of Vivica” (as Voluptua von Temptitillatrix). Her hobbies include doodling and making bad puns out of the corner of her mouth.

‘The Imitation Game’ and ‘Citizenfour’: Secrets Then and Now

Sometimes I wish the mainstream film industry would stop making movies about queers. The rare times that a queer person is allowed to be the main character in one of its movies, as in this one, he (almost always a “he”), like the rare main character of color is usually unrealistically isolated from the community he comes from, a trope fostered from before Stonewall to the ’90s to now: we are oh-so-tragic and oh-so-alone.

ImitationGameCover

A stereotype in popular media about very smart people is that they must have some great deficiency in other areas of their lives–as if someone with extraordinary intelligence being able to make friends and get laid would be unfair to the rest of us. The only reason I can surmise for the positive reviews The Imitation Game, a highly fictionalized new film about gay, World War II codebreaker Alan Turing is that it confirms all the “normal” audience’s worst suspicions about “genius” and queer life, without offering any meaningful insight into either.

Sometimes I wish the mainstream film industry would stop making movies about queers. The rare times that a queer person is allowed to be the main character in one of its movies, as in this one, he (almost always a “he”), like the rare main character of color is usually unrealistically isolated from the community he comes from, a trope fostered from before Stonewall to the ’90s to now: we are oh-so-tragic and oh-so-alone. Because he has no peers to rely on, the main gay guy invariably confides in the straight guy (particularly ridiculous in The Imitation Game’s 1940s setting) just like in movies set in the Civil Rights-era South, Black people have all their deepest conversations–and bonds–with white people. When a film shows the rare group of people of color relying on each other, as in Selma, awards snub it and prominent white guys denounce it. When a film like the underrated Pride shows a group of queers working together, the blurb on the back of the DVD makes sure it doesn’t offend any “Christian values” by mentioning something as crass as LGBT identity.

“Homosexuals”–as they were known then–could be arrested during the time the film takes place (as Turing was after the war, one of the few parts of the film that isn’t doctored) and imprisoned both in England and elsewhere, but that didn’t stop them from existing or having sex with each other–and straight people knew them even if they didn’t acknowledge that they did. World War II was a vehicle for many queers from the US (and probably those in the UK too) to find each other, no longer isolated in their small hometowns. But even before the war, academia (where Turing came from) was, notoriously, also a refuge for gay men. The arts were another. Accounts from those who knew him say that Turing was quite open about his sexuality (instead of the anguished confessions we see here): and then, as now, straight people (and I’m presuming most of the people interviewed were straight) were always the last to know. Also unchanged in the intervening years: the rules for men in power or ones with powerful friends were different: actor John Gielgud was arrested in the same time period as Turing was for having sex with another man, but faced neither imprisonment nor the forced hormone treatment Turing accepted instead of a prison sentence.

Joan Clarke (Keira Knightley) and the guys
Joan Clarke (Keira Knightley) and the guys

All the most interesting twists of the story are the ones the film avoids. As part of the huge wartime operation at Bletchley Park Turing had helped win the war against the Nazis (in fact his team’s decryption might have been the deciding factor) but he couldn’t tell anyone about it–nor could anyone else. Some powerful people did write letters of support for him during his trial, but they couldn’t say precisely why they were writing them. If his work during the war hadn’t been secret the charges against him probably would never have come to trial–or been made in the first place.

Instead, what passes for drama in this film are pedestrian scenes that are the invention of screenwriter Graham Moore. Even though there’s no historical evidence of any such incident we get more than one sequence in which Turing’s supervisors attempt to destroy his work. “You will never understand the importance of what I’m creating here,” Benedict Cumberbatch, as Turing, cries in the first film performance I’ve seen that is best encapsulated by the phrase “the gnashing of teeth.”

These scenes might be a reflection of the vanity of its hack filmmakers (writer Moore along with director Morten Tyldum). “I’m afraid these men would only slow me down,” the film’s Turing says about the team of other codebreakers. Not only does this film leave out all the other people (including some Polish cryptologists who made a valuable prototype) who helped Turing get to the point where he could successfully design and run Bombe (not “Christopher”: the name Turing gives his codebreaking computer in the film– after his first love!) but in the film he’s also perpetually misunderstood and under-appreciated by others the same way white, male writer and director “auteurs” seem to often feel they and their own work are, even as they dismiss (and underpay) the many other people who make their films possible and enjoyable. Maybe this parallel is the reason for the spate of “great man” films and the awards they always seem to collect this time of year.

The lone woman with a decent-sized part in the film is Joan Clarke (played by Keira Knightley) Turing’s fellow cryptanalyst who becomes his friend and, for a time, is engaged to him. Unlike the ridiculous scene in the film when Turing breaks up with her, the real-life Clarke was reportedly “unfazed” when she found out her fiancé was queer, because in those days (as the film touches very briefly on) marriage was the only way for most young women to get away from the control of their parents.

And even though a big deal is made of Joan Clarke being one of the only woman cryptanalysts, like “Rosie The Riveter” stateside, 80 percent of Bletchley Park’s employees were women. The codebreakers were popularly known as “Dilly’s girls” after the (male) head of the operation, none of which is reflected in Game. Thanks for erasing the historical contributions of women again, mainstream film industry!

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Another film about genius and secrets making the rounds of top ten lists and awards is Laura Poitras’s Citizenfour, the documentary about Edward Snowden, who acted as a whistleblower by releasing evidence of the US’s widespread and unconstitutional spying on its own citizens.

You’d never know from the many news accounts about Snowden that Poitras was the first person he made real contact with when he decided to go public. Poitras reads his first message aloud on the soundtrack, “Laura, at this stage I can offer nothing more than my word. I am a senior government employee in the intelligence community. I hope that you understand that contacting you is extremely high-risk.”

CitizenfourMain

The film makes clear, hilariously, that when Snowden first tried to get in touch with Glenn Greenwald, who is usually given the credit for bringing Snowden’s story to the rest of the world, Greenwald couldn’t learn to use the encryption Snowden (who knew how volatile this information was) insisted on, so Snowden moved on to Poitras (who was well-versed in encryption after the government had seized footage from her previous documentaries, including one about the Iraq war). After a time Snowden suggesting that she bring in Greenwald–when presumably she could instruct him what he needed to do to get his encryption skills up to snuff.

Citizenfour, I had to keep reminding myself, shows us history in the making. We meet Snowden before his first media interview. We see him in the hotel room in Hong Kong where he was first holed up when the story broke. I had to keep telling myself what I was seeing was important because most of it is otherwise pretty dull.

Laura Poitras
Filmmaker Laura Poitras

We never find out much about Snowden beyond what we’ve seen in other media. He is a man who is preternaturally sure and calm about what he’s done, perhaps because, as an autodidact (he has a GED) at the top of a highly skilled field, he was able to think for himself on the implications of the work he was being asked to do.

We do see the travails of another whistleblower who went through more traditional channels and is still suffering blowback for it, to show us why Snowden released the info to the media directly. And we see Snowden upset at how the girlfriend he lived with and left behind in Hawaii is treated by the government in his absence. But as a friend remarked as we left the theater, “Watching Edward Snowden stare at his laptop isn’t very exciting.”

Although Snowden was sure he would be tried and imprisoned for his actions, saying in one of his preliminary messages to Poitras, “In the end if you publish the source material I will likely be immediately implicated,” he eventually saw that he could, with help, escape and chose to do so. But the scenes that should build up tension and our empathy for him (even those of us who admire his actions and sympathize with his plight) fall flat.

An exception is when we see Snowden’s face on video blown up to epic proportions in a main Hong Kong Square, just after his first big media interview, and then cut back to Snowden still in his hotel room, trying to change his appearance so he won’t be recognized (and abducted) on his way to the airport. Otherwise we don’t feel like we are in Snowden’s shoes in this film, even as we spend much of our time looking and listening to him. At the end we see Snowden has reunited with his girlfriend in Russia (where he has been trapped since the US government cancelled his passport–just before he could catch the second leg of his escape flight). We see them through a window, preparing dinner together, from a distance, an apt metaphor for how well we have come to know Snowden in this film ostensibly about him.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiGwAvd5mvM” iv_load_policy=”3″]

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

Broken Relationships and Broken Systems in ‘Benched’

It’s quite possible that systemic inequality was never meant to be more than a backdrop, but, regardless of the creators’ intent, the events that took place in the US over the months in which ‘Benched’ aired its first season have brought the inadequacies of our legal system to the fore. In the light of Ferguson, it’s now impossible to watch the show without seeing an indictment of a very broken system.

Written by Max Thornton.

I started watching USA’s new comedy Benched solely because of the cast. The ensemble features The Office‘s Oscar Nuñez, Better Off Ted‘s Jay Harrington, and the wonderful Maria Bamford. (There are also delightful cameos from Community‘s Yvette Nicole Brown and from Albert Tsai, a.k.a. Bert from the late lamented Trophy Wife, one of whose stars, Michaela Watkins, is co-creator of Benched.) Somewhere in the course of its 12-episode first season, I realized that Benched was a little different from the average workplace comedy.

The protagonist is Nina Whitley (Eliza Coupe from Happy Endings, which I promise I’ll watch one day), a high-powered corporate lawyer who has a career-ending meltdown and finds herself transferred to the chaotic, overworked, underfunded offices of public defenders. As one of the show’s taglines puts it, “If you can’t afford an attorney, these guys will be provided for you.”

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I know, I know, it sounds scintillating. But it’s really much more fun and more interesting than it sounds.

A lot of the fun comes from the dynamics of the cast. Jay Harrington plays a sharper-edged, ruder character here than he did in Better Off Ted, and he’s clearly having great fun with it as he spars and snipes with Nina. Oscar Nuñez brings the same sort of restrained, seething energy that he brought to The Office (though I’ll admit that seeing him play straight requires a cognitive adjustment I still haven’t fully made). Maria Bamford spends most of her screentime doing her usual blackly comic schtick in the way that only she can, as a woman clinging desperately and tragicomically to her last shreds of mental wellness. Jolene Purdy steals every scene she’s in as sarcastic young intern Micah, a hard-working but no less biting iteration of April Ludgate.

The thing that makes Benched interesting, though, is its setting. I’m accustomed to thinking of lawyers, both on TV and, if I’m honest, off it, as they are portrayed on shows like The Good Wife: members of private firms who are accustomed to dealing in millions, suing each other over legal arcana, and taking on high-profile cases involving high-paying clients. Benched, however, makes law the arena for the scrappy, precarious workplace like failing Dunder Mifflin or little Pawnee.

No one has time for your rich-white-lady crap, Nina.
No one has time for your rich-white-lady crap, Nina.

A sharp contrast is set up between the public defender’s office and the fancy firm for which Nina used to work, and the one for which her tedious ex-boyfriend Trent still works. The P.D.s work in a cramped open-plan office space and they never have enough basic stationery supplies. Their work is a constant struggle just to keep afloat. No priceless vases for the public defenders.

What’s most striking to me about this show is the actual court scenes. There are no thrilling cross-examinations, stirring speeches, or serial-killer convictions in this courtroom. Instead, court is a relentless mill of poverty and structural inequality. The defendants whom Nina and her coworkers represent are the kinds of people who aren’t usually on TV: really poor people. They are homeless, they are single parents, they are disproportionately Black, and they are doing what they can to stay alive. They are often guilty of what they’re accused of, but these are minor infractions usually committed for lack of alternatives, and the reason they’re in the courtroom is because the system targets people like them.

Structural injustice, it must be admitted, is not the main point of the show. It’s primarily a workplace comedy and a relationship comedy, and it mines a lot of both plot and gags from pitting Nina and Trent against each other (they’re opponents in court AND in love! How wacky!). It might be that the centering of Nina and Trent is a bait-and-switch in the style of Orange is the New Black-–a pretty white lady protagonist as Trojan horse for telling other people’s stories. It’s also, of course, quite possible that systemic inequality was never meant to be more than a backdrop, but regardless of the creators’ intent, the events that took place in the US over the months in which Benched aired its first season have brought the inadequacies of our legal system to the fore. In the light of Ferguson, it’s now impossible to watch the show without seeing an indictment of a very broken system.

It’s not yet clear if Benched will be renewed, but I hope it will be, and I hope it will get bolder, because it could be something very very special.

That's not a penis, it's a gavel!
That’s not a penis, it’s a gavel!

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Max Thornton blogs at Gay Christian Geek, tumbles as trans substantial, and tweets at @RainicornMax. He watches way too much TV. It’s honestly kind of a problem.

‘How to Get Away With Murder’ Is Everything “That” ‘New York Times’ Review Said It Is

Fortunately for everyone, the show deliberately plays with archetype. She’s introduced as a singular image we all know, and over the course of the episode is shown to be sexy, amoral, vulnerable (Or is she? This is that kind of show; who knows!?), and an effective, if unorthodox, mentor. She’s a three-dimensional character that happens to fit the description.

This cross-post by Solomon Wong previously appeared at Be Young & Shut Up.

Like everyone else on the Internet, I heard about the New York Times review of the first episode of How to Get Away With Murder, wherein the author used the phrase “Angry Black woman” to describe Viola Davis’ character in the show. Shonda Rhimes, show-runner of Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal, probably didn’t need anyone’s help getting her new project tons of viewers, but the furor certainly got me to check it out. Here’s the short version: I love it. It’s a really fun program, and there’s a good stable of characters that, despite their archetypal presentations, break out and distinguish themselves. Which brings me back to the Times review. While the actual phrasing leaves a lot to be desired, it’s kind of just that—bad phrasing.

“Oh wow, she wrote Crossroads!” – Me, researching Shonda Rhimes
“Oh wow, she wrote Crossroads!” – Me, researching Shonda Rhimes

 

Viola Davis’ attorney/professor character Annalise Keating introduces herself to her new class as pretty much the professor from hell. She’s Professor Snape, if you’re one of the students that isn’t a little snot like Harry Potter. There’s a chance to learn a lot, but you’re going to work really, really hard and she isn’t going to coddle you or be nice (at all) when you screw up.

“I don’t know what terrible things you’ve done in your life up to this point, but clearly your karma’s out of balance to get assigned to my class….”

Speaking of Harry Potter, the protagonist of the show is played by the former actor of Dean Thomas!
Speaking of Harry Potter, the protagonist of the show is played by the former actor of Dean Thomas!

If this show were badly written, if all Keating did was be incredibly stern and severe to her students, it would have gotten tons of criticism from the same people criticizing the Times writer, saying that the character is an “Angry Black woman” and nothing more. That’s just the impression you get when she walks in and gives her first-day-of-class spiel. Fortunately for everyone, the show deliberately plays with archetype. She’s introduced as a singular image we all know, and over the course of the episode is shown to be sexy, amoral, vulnerable (Or is she? This is that kind of show; who knows!?), and an effective, if unorthodox, mentor. She’s a three-dimensional character that happens to fit the description.

Which is what the Times review was attempting to say. Black women are in a restricted cultural space, and representations of them are rather pigeonholed. Showing anger, period, is a risk, because it opens up the very real possibility of people labeling and dismissing the character as one of three types they’ve already assigned to black women. So to see the show’s writers rise to the occasion and go with a cold, borderline evil Black female lead is really quite heartening.

This doesn’t change the review’s incredibly bad opening line:

“When Shonda Rhimes writes her autobiography, it should be called “How to Get Away With Being an Angry Black Woman.””

Wow. Much inadvisable. Phrased in a less eye-jabbing way, it encapsulates what makes How to Get Away With Murder special. This show’s headlining character freely admits to defending guilty clients, and as her students see as they assist with her case, has no qualms about illegal or immoral methods of securing the not-guilty verdict. She sets murderers free because that’s how she’s chosen to make money.

**SPOILER ALERT** This guy gives a network-friendly rimjob to secure case-winning information
**SPOILER ALERT** This guy gives a network-friendly rimjob to secure case-winning information

 

There’s a pretty rich tradition of this kind of character; it’s basically all we’ve gotten in the past decade or so of award-winning cable dramas. But like Broad City, How to Get Away With Murder is an entry into an established genre by a group (or two) generally shut out. By circumstance, by the genre’s conventions, or by the fear of falling into a stereotype, Black women don’t play the anti-hero role. Now we’ve got one, and she’s attached to a rip-roarin’-fun show.

I still haven’t gotten to the rest of the characters I like, but how much more do I need to say? Trashy legal drama with sexy law students behaving badly! At the end of the day, I just want everyone to watch this show so we can geek out about it.  As for 11-year TV crit veteran Alessandra Stanley, go back…to…writing…school?

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Solomon Wong is a writer and a graduate of UC Santa Cruz. He is the co-editor of Be Young and Shut Up, author of the cyberpunk serial novel Stargazer. He likes cooking, fishkeeping, and biking around Oakland.

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

Check out what we’ve been reading this week–and let us know what you’ve been reading/writing in the comments!

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The Many Truths of “Selma” by Zillah Eisenstein at Ms. blog

The Melissa Harris-Perry Syllabus 1.11.15 at msnbc

The ‘Selma’ “Controversy” Isn’t About History; It’s About Oscars by Jason Bailey at Flavorwire

The real American Sniper was a hate-filled killer. Why are simplistic patriots treating him as a hero? by Lindy West at The Guardian

Scarlett Johansson is the Wrong Choice for “Ghost in the Shell” by Bayan Atari at Bitch Media

Geena Davis Is Launching A Film Festival That Celebrates Women And Diversity by Ada Guzman at BUST

To get nominated for an Oscar, it’s still best to be a mediocre movie about a white guy by Todd VanDerWerff at Vox

Of Femmes, Films and Fatales by Regan Reid at Paste Magazine

Let 2015 Be the Year the Female Fuckup Goes Mainstream by Sarah Seltzer at Flavorwire

Rose McGowan Champions the Need for More Female Voices at NYFCC Gala by Nigel M Smith at IndieWire

Being a “Difficult” Woman on TV and the Refreshing Brilliance of ‘The Comeback’ by Harry Waksberg at Splitsider

Allison Williams Says Tracy Flick Was the Inspiration for Marnie on Girls by Nate Jones at Vulture

Gender in Comedy by Boring Old Raphael on Tumblr

The 2015 Athena Film Festival Trailer Is Here! by Inkoo Kang at Women and Hollywood

 

What have you been reading/writing this week? Tell us in the comments!

‘Selma’ Is Now

In so many ways, this film reflects the current moment, while also highlighting how things have and have not changed since the King family and their allies risked their lives to secure rights for all. Scenes in the film will jolt you into the present: watching Jimmie Lee Jackson’s mother grieve in 1965 for the son she will never see again made me immediately think of the family of Tamir Rice, the young black boy who was murdered by police officers this year for toting a toy gun in Ohio. ‘Selma’ is now.

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This guest post by Nijla Mu’min previously appeared at Bitch Media and is cross-posted with permission.

Historical dramas often stick to a tried-and-true formula: Important figures face struggles, then they triumph, becoming the great people we know today. We can usually count on a scene from their conflicted childhood, scenes showing their romantic troubles, any issues with drugs or alcohol, and how they persevered through it all to deliver whatever divine message or artistic gift they possessed.

Ava DuVernay’s new Martin Luther King Jr. biopic, Selma, avoids this formula—much to its benefit. It is one of the most effective, well-crafted historical biopics that I’ve ever seen because it goes off the traditional narrative about the Civil Rights Movement, giving us a moment in history that feels immediately familiar to the moment we are currently living in.

Selma captures the tireless efforts of Martin Luther King Jr. and a group of black activists attempting to secure equal voting rights for black people. These efforts led to the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson. The film takes its name from the series of marches that King and his followers embarked on at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. One of those marches was infamously known as “Bloody Sunday,” after police and deputized locals descended on the protesters with nightsticks and tear gas.  DuVernay and Director of Photography Bradford Young capture that march in all its terror in a scene where young and elderly marchers are clubbed and chased by angry police on horses. Selma certainly doesn’t cast the history of the Civil Rights Movement in feel-good soft focus.

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In a recent interview I conducted with DuVernay, she discussed the way she approached the humanity of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., including his suspected infidelity. She was most interested in how this information affected his wife, Coretta Scott King, and how Martin Luther King would respond in the moment when questioned by Coretta. This emphasis on the intimacy in their relationship, rather than the scandal that the FBI sought to publicize, is something that informs the core of the film.

DuVernay is not interested in showing us montages of the unfaithful hero, his mistress, and the scorned wife, as was done in Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom. She is interested in the complex spaces of love and pain between two people. Coretta Scott King, played with an uncanny resemblance by Carmen Ejogo, takes on a central role in this film, not only as a wife and mother, but as a key player in the movement as she faces daily death threats made against her and her family. The attention and specificity paid to her character and her relationship to King is another gift that DuVernay brings to this film.

Further, there are so many ways this film could’ve become an extension of the Hallmark image that we see of Martin Luther King Jr., one that replays the same “I Have a Dream Speech” and tells us that nonviolence is the only way. While those elements are important, they are often overemphasized at the expense of the other work he did.

That is where Selma fills in the blanks. In this film, we get to know a methodical, intelligent, human Martin Luther King Jr; a man who just wanted to sit down at the end of the day and smoke a cigarette, or call Mahalia Jackson in the middle of the night to hear her sing a soothing gospel song. In the film, he invokes nonviolence but also cleverly provokes outward hatred in his opponents, helping people around the world witness this physical racism in the media. His tactics were risky, his negotiations with the likes of LBJ were grueling, and he was often put in positions of extreme discomfort, along with the many people he worked with.

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This is not a film about a man and his followers, but about how a man’s work is informed by the respect he has for the people he works with—and even those he doesn’t. It reflects the movement by emphasizing distinct traits in each of the civil rights leaders it documents, from the youthful resistance of Jimmie Lee Jackson (played powerfully by Keith Stanfield), to the gentle persistence of Malcolm X (Nigel Thatch), who appeals to Coretta Scott King in a beautifully rendered scene. That scene and others completely reverse the rhetoric we’ve been fed about who these people were. The warring ideals between Malcolm and Martin aren’t the focus of this narrative, but rather how Malcolm X may have actually intentionally pushed many black people to follow Martin Luther King Jr., helping to strengthen the movement after all. Again, DuVernay utilized Coretta Scott King in a way that shows her role in the movement beyond being a supportive wife. She serves as a sort of peacemaker here.

In so many ways, this film reflects the current moment, while also highlighting how things have and have not changed since the King family and their allies risked their lives to secure rights for all. Scenes in the film will jolt you into the present: watching Jimmie Lee Jackson’s mother grieve in 1965 for the son she will never see again made me immediately think of the family of Tamir Rice, the young black boy who was murdered by police officers this year for toting a toy gun in Ohio. Selma is now. It lets us into the interior spaces of pain, progress, and movement that no formulaic historical drama could ever capture.

Selma opened Christmas Day in Los Angeles, New York City, Washington, DC, and Atlanta. It opens nationwide Jan. 9.

Related Reading: “The Butler, My Grandmother, and the Politics of Subversion.“ 

Nijla Mu’min is a writer and filmmaker. She writes and direct movies about black mermaids, black lesbians, black girls in-between worlds, and boys too.

 

‘Selma’ Backlash: Is It a Gender Issue?

So what can women do about these smear campaigns directed at films by women? Go see films directed by women, support these filmmakers any way you can, whether it’s by filling theaters or participating in social media campaigns. We may not be able to change Academy voters’ minds, but we can continue drawing attention to gender disparities and focus on the positive changes.

This guest post by Lauren Byrd previously appeared at her blog and is cross-posted with permission.

Oscar nominations haven’t been announced yet, but there’s already a campaign to dethrone an Oscar hopeful. Selma, directed by Ava DuVernay, is a solid choice for film critics (100 percent on Rotten Tomatoes), but in the weeks following its release, the film has come up against criticism for its portrayal of President Lyndon B. Johnson.

During a time when the holiday season detracts from awards season, historians and former members of the Johnson administration voiced their concerns with the film.

Three days before the film’s release, Mark K. Updegrove, the director of the Lyndon B. Johnson Library and Museum in Austin, Texas, wrote a piece in Politico, titled, “What Selma Gets Wrong”:

In the film, President Johnson resists King’s pressure to sign a voting rights bill, which—according to the movie’s take—is getting in the way of dozens of other Great Society legislative priorities. Indeed, Selma’s obstructionist LBJ is devoid of any palpable conviction on voting rights. Vainglorious and power hungry, he unleashes his zealous pit bull, FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover, on King, who is determined to march in protest from Selma to Montgomery despite LBJ’s warning that it will be “open season” on the protesters. This characterization of the 36th president flies in the face of history. In truth, the partnership between LBJ and MLK on civil rights is one of the most productive and consequential in American history.

Updegrove makes his argument about what is and isn’t right about this portrayal, but what the articles about the “Selma controversy” in The New York Times, The Wrap, and other media sites haven’t mentioned is that Updegrove also states that much of the film is correct and an accurate portrayal of the events of that time.
A former aide to Johnson Joseph A. Califano, Jr., wrote a similar piece in The Washington Post and on New Year’s Eve, The New York Times highlighted the charges of inaccuracy against the film in a piece by Jennifer Schuessler, which quoted several LBJ focused authors and historians.
Ava DuVernay on set of Selma
Ava DuVernay on set of Selma
DuVernay isn’t standing silently in the face of the recent criticism. In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, she said, “I wasn’t interested in making a white-savior movie; I was interested in making a movie centered on the people of Selma.”
It’s hard not to compare the sudden firestorm of controversy surrounding a potential Oscar hopeful to the controversy in the 2013 Oscar season that befell Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty.The debate about that particular film was based on its portrayal of torture and whether the film showed enhanced interrogation techniques producing intelligence that led to Osama bin Laden. Many journalists who had covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as national security, thought the film glorified torture, while film critics classified the film as an accurate depiction of the dark decisions made by the U.S. government during the murkiness of the post-9/11 decade.
It’s even more difficult not to note that both these films are directed by women. While questions about accuracy were also brought up about Lincoln during the 2013 awards season, which was directed by a man Steven Spielberg, the backlash against Zero Dark Thirty drowned out any questions around Spielberg’s film. As a result, Bigelow did not receive a Best Director nomination while Spielberg did. The inaccuracies in Argo, of which there were many, were not as widely discussed, and both Ben Affleck and the film went on to win Oscars.
Selma
Selma
This year, another film directed by a man, Bennett Miller’s Foxcatcher, has recently undergone criticism from Mark Schultz, one of the brothers whom the film is based on. But FlavorWire has already written a piece defending the film against Schultz’s remarks.
Compared to Foxcatcher, which has been in theaters since November, the controversy around Selma has received more media play and it’s possible the charges of inaccuracies from historians will affect how future audiences view the film. (It opens nationwide on Friday.)

These smear campaigns against films helmed by women are yet another sign of the disparity of the treatment of men and women in the film industry. So are these smear campaigns a gender issue or simply a coincidence?

As someone who knows enough about the industry to know that the Academy Awards are certainly not based on merit or artistry, but rather on money and publicity, it was still hard to believe smear campaigns were a reality until the 2013 Oscar race when Zero Dark Thirty‘s awards season chances quickly diminish.

Kathryn Bigelow moderating a Q&A with Ava DuVernay after a screening of Selma
Kathryn Bigelow moderating a Q&A with Ava DuVernay after a screening of Selma

 

So what can women do about these smear campaigns directed at films by women? Go see films directed by women, support these filmmakers any way you can, whether it’s by filling theaters or participating in social media campaigns. We may not be able to change Academy voters’ minds, but we can continue drawing attention to gender disparities and focus on the positive changes. Michelle MacLaren directing Wonder Woman, for instance.

While it’s unclear what effect the controversy will have on Selma and DuVernay’s Oscar chances, let’s hope that in the future, audiences and Academy voters learn how to think for themselves rather than be carried away by the most recent awards season smear campaign. Man or woman.

 

Lauren Byrd has a master’s degree from Syracuse University’s Newhouse School. She’s worked in television and recently worked as part of the education team at Brave New Films. 

 

Seed & Spark: Writing Women

So, where does that leave us? There are the dismal numbers, all laid out, Hollywood’s claims that it can’t take risks, that women are a financial liability (though they buy the majority of movie tickets), or that the few female execs that climb to the top can’t or won’t pull other women up with them. But on the micro-level, this is about individual decisions each woman makes when she allows a story she wrote to be usurped as it transfers to the screen, or takes a part, no matter how fantastic, that is written and directed by a man.

Five-Fingered Lucy, from seedandspark.com, © Jack Lawrence Mayer
Five-Fingered Lucy, from seedandspark.com, © Jack Lawrence Mayer

 

This is a guest post by Martine Moore. 

This month, I’ll shoot a short film called Five-Fingered Lucy, in which I play the lead. It’s a dark, girl-meets-patriarchy story about a young shoplifter, written and directed by Jack Lawrence Mayer. The script tackles sexuality, abuse, and solitude. Jack is a long time friend and collaborator, and yet, my decision to be in his film is a conscience call. He is telling a story about male culture from a female point of view. Should I let Jack tell my story for me, or broadly speaking, should women let men tell our stories for us?

This is a question that can be asked at every level of the industry. Let’s take a look at the big awards circuit films this year, as presented by the Golden Globes list of nominees for 2015. Of the Best Picture nominees, only one centers on a woman’s experience, and that’s The Theory of Everything, which, arguably, is a story popularized by the famous male figure it depicts. The film is based on Jane Hawking’s memoir of her marriage to Stephen Hawking. The screenplay is written by a man, Anthony McCarten, and directed by a man, James Marsh.

The Best Actress category is a better place to search for films with female driven content, and here the pattern holds: Cake, Still Alice (an adaptation of Lisa Genova’s novel), Wild (an adaptation of Cheryl Strayed’s memoir) and Big Eyes are all written or adapted and directed by men. Annie has a single woman on the writing staff, Aline Brosh McKenna, but is otherwise written and directed by men. The notable exception is Gone Girl, directed by David Fincher but adapted by Gillian Flynn from her own best-selling novel.*

Cheryl Strayed, from her website, cherylstrayed.com, photo by Jobi Kabana
Cheryl Strayed, from her website, cherylstrayed.com, photo by Jobi Kabana

 

Much has been made of Gone Girl’s feminist or anti-feminist content and its psychopathic anti-heroine, Amy Dunne. I’m not sure this movie qualifies as female-driven content, as half of the narrative is a male POV, but I saw the movie and will say this: I don’t think it’s up to Flynn, simply by virtue of being a female writer, to create characters that advance the feminist cause, though her reliance on stereotypes that seem to re-reinforce misogynistic views—namely that women lie about rape—is unfortunate. Still, these stereotypes have more to do with Flynn’s capacities as a writer and her chosen genre than they do with her stance on feminism. I side with Zoë Heller, who wrote in the New York Review of Books that both the novel and film are too plainly pieces of pop entertainment to be taken as serious examinations of gender.

Yet, Flynn carried her story into this second, male-dominated medium on her own, which is no small feat. How come the female authors of best-selling books like Genova and Strayed didn’t adapt their own work for the screen?

Strayed, in an interview with Indiewire, is asked the question, and responds, “Well I wasn’t offered the job! And I think I agree why. Reese and Bruna both felt that with a memoir the writer isn’t the best person to make that adaptation because he or she is too close to the material and to that life.” Apparently the best person for the job is Nick Hornby, a popular male British writer who has written numerous novels and screenplays. He received Strayed’s blessing before adapting Wild.

Can men tell authentic stories from the female perspective? For any artist, the world should be his or her fictional oyster. Men can write women, and women can write men; imagination and empathy do not have a gender. Male filmmakers who are captivated by women’s stories and want to tell them can be allies. Actresses are still lucky to get a role in which they are fully developed (and fully clothed), with nuance and an inner life, and many words to speak. Still, the overwhelming likelihood is that those words will be written by a man, and spoken under the direction of another, despite the source material.

Women’s media center logo, from their website, womensmediacenter.com
Women’s Media Center logo, from their website, womensmediacenter.com

 

It’s not enough to simply say to women, “Make your own work.” They are attempting to do so. Look at enrollment numbers in film schools, as one indication. Women make up 46 percent of USC’s School of Cinematic Studies, according to their admissions site. On the indie film circuit, women’s participation is greater as well, making up 26.4 percent of writers at Sundance in 2013, and 50 percent of its narrative directors. But when women hit the larger market and the culture at large, these numbers slide drastically. Women either can’t get hired or secure funding. The Center for the Study of Women in Television & Film at San Diego State has found that women’s participation behind the camera is at 16 percent for the top 250 domestically made films in 2013, down one point from 1998. The Center’s Director, Dr. Martha Lauzen, is quoted as saying “there is no evidence to suggest that women’s employment has improved in key behind-the-scenes roles over the last 16 years,” debunking anyone’s notion of gradual but linear progress.

So, where does that leave us? There are the dismal numbers, all laid out, Hollywood’s claims that it can’t take risks, that women are a financial liability (though they buy the majority of movie tickets), or that the few female execs that climb to the top can’t or won’t pull other women up with them. But on the micro-level, this is about individual decisions each woman makes when she allows a story she wrote to be usurped as it transfers to the screen, or takes a part, no matter how fantastic, that is written and directed by a man. It’s a decision that comes with internal conflict. We’ve come a ways in acknowledging that women’s stories on screen hold universal, non-gendered appeal. We need to take the next step in giving women more opportunity to tell them themselves.

*While this is a separate though related discussion, I would be remiss not to point out that all these stories, with the exception of a re-imagined Annie, are about white women.

 

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Martine Moore is an actress and writer living in Los Angeles. She is a co-creator of the web series Ingenue and will appear in the upcoming shorts Dry and Five-Fingered Lucy and the feature, Americana. martineaverymoore.com

 

 

The Superficial Yet Satisfying Feminism of ‘Agent Carter’

It’s not just seeing a badass chick beat the wide ties off of sexist dudes with a stapler that makes ‘Agent Carter’ so gratifying (although that’s a big part of it). I’ve been lucky enough to live my adult life in a post-‘Xena’ and ‘Buffy’ world where I can count on a fairly steady stream of ladies who can kick butt in my media. I think the heart of what makes ‘Agent Carter’ feel like a feminist triumph is that we are watching a would-be love interest as the hero of her own story

Promo image for 'Agent Carter'
Promo image for ‘Agent Carter’

Let me be perfectly clear: I loved the premiere of Marvel’s Agent Carter. I was already a huge fan of the character from the Captain America movies and her Marvel One-Shot short film, and these first two episodes of her new TV series lived up to my high expectations.

The best word I can think of to describe the show is satisfying. Watching it feels like slipping into a warm bubble bath or necking an ice-cold beer. Or doing both at the same time.  And you have a pizza.

Agent Carter at work.
Agent Carter at work.

 

It’s New York, 1946, and Hayley Atwell’s Peggy Carter is an agent with the Strategic Scientific Reserve. Despite her clout during the war, she’s now the sole female agent in her office and is treated as a secretary. Enter Howard Stark with a secret mission for her to clear his name while saving the world from his stolen weaponry, and Agent Carter has a lot of spying and fighting to do on top of her usual daily sassing of her sexist co-workers. She puts chauvinist jerks in their place, she kicks guys in the face, and she looks great (and I mean great) doing it: “weaponized femininity” is laid on so thick here she actually knocks a guy out with her “Sweet Dreams” spy lipstick.

I might leave my husband for this gold dress.
I might leave my husband for this gold dress.

 

But it’s not just seeing a badass chick beat the wide ties off of sexist dudes with a stapler that makes Agent Carter so gratifying (although that’s a big part of it). I’ve been lucky enough to live my adult life in a post-Xena and Buffy world where I can count on a fairly steady stream of ladies who can kick butt in my media.

But I think the heart of what makes Agent Carter feel like a feminist triumph is that we are watching a would-be love interest as the hero of her own story. As tumblr user mcpricekissed put it:

it would be so cool to have a superhero movie or a show where the story starts with a hero kicking ass but then he dies and his so called love interest takes over and finishes off his job oh wait that’s literally happening with agent carter

Peggy mourns Steve Rogers the way male action heroes morn their tragically dead wives/girlfriends/daughters. Captain America himself is this woman’s tragic backstory. Re-positioning Peggy as the central character this way is not only satisfying from a feminist perspective, it also helps overcome the also-ran status of a TV tie-in to a billion dollar film franchise.

Peggy after Captain America's "death" in 'The First Avenger'
Peggy after Captain America’s “death” in The First Avenger

 

Unfortunately, the show still felt the need to kill off a supporting female character in the pilot to add to Peggy’s guilt pile, either because we know Cap isn’t really dead, or because there is some obscure Writers Guild bylaw where the blood of a female character must be spilt in the first episode of any action series to appease the cruel and vicious gods of television.

And here’s where I get to the rub with Agent Carter. While the first word I use to describe it is satisfying, the second is indulgent.  This is feel-good feminism knocking down cartoonishly chauvinist straw men from the Bad Old Days, so we can pat ourselves on the back for how far we’ve come, and not worry about the complicated problems of the present. But just because something feminist is set in the 1940s doesn’t mean it has to embody old-fashioned feminism, with its total disregard for all the other systems of oppression that intersect with the patriarchy.

Peggy's sexist co-workers
Agent Carter‘s simple representation of the patriarchy: chauvinist co-workers

 

But just as several clever feminist commentators worried it would be, Agent Carter‘s feminism is fairly one-dimensional. There are little glimmers of commentary on class and disability, but both as they specifically relate to the post-war era. Where the show really fails is race, with its all-white cast and absurd under/mis-use of its only person of color with a speaking role in these two episodes, Andre Royo’s Harlem night club owner who is a) in cahoots with the bad guys and b) ends up dead.

To quote another tumblr user, duvallon:

love it when a show set in the late ’40s/early ’50s RELENTLESSLY addresses misogyny against white women but ignores race while using people of color as expendable villains

it’s just great

There are six more episodes of Agent Carter, and hopefully we’ll see improved representation and more thoughtful, truer feminism as the season progresses. If not, then I, as a white feminist who tries not to be a White Feminist, will face the arduous task of forcing myself to not unconditionally love Agent Carter.

Robin Hitchcock is an American writer living in Cape Town who is now shopping for a red hat.

“Smurfette Syndrome”: The Incredible True Story of How Women Created Modern Comedy Without Being Funny

Far more than a common trend in cartoons and superhero teams, the Smurfette Principle is an ingrained interpretative framework that limits female achievement to a model for male imitation, rather than an argument for female inclusion. In comedy, “Smurfette Syndrome” is a bias that asks whether individual women are “as funny as men,” rather than assessing women’s collective contribution as creators of comedy genres.

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This is a guest post by Brigit McCone.

Professional female comedians are still asked in interview after interview whether women are funny. The usual response is a defensive list of funny women. But proof of funny women is no proof that women are funny, thanks to the dreaded Smurfette Principle. The “Smurfette Principle” dictates that women who succeed in male fields must be interpreted as a) unique and isolated, and b) a variation on a male original. Far more than a common trend in cartoons and superhero teams, the Smurfette Principle is an ingrained interpretative framework that limits female achievement to a model for male imitation, rather than an argument for female inclusion. In comedy, “Smurfette Syndrome” is a bias that asks whether individual women are “as funny as men,” rather than assessing women’s collective contribution as creators of comedy genres. Such as…

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGj5CnPJ3QA”]

Alice Guy’s irresistible piano syncs uncannily with Ray Charles

The Comic Novel

Murasaki Shikibu not only wrote the world’s first novel in the 11th century with The Tale of Genji, she included hefty doses of humor amidst all the karmic heartbreak. Whether revealing the bulbous nose of the mysterious Safflower Princess behind the silk screen, or working out the interpersonal dramas of a womanizer’s harem, Lady Murasaki wielded realism to puncture cliché. Murasaki Shikibu, along with Sei Shonagon (“the most natural wit in the history of Japanese literature”) and fiery, erotic poetess Ono no Komachi, became literary pioneers by accident: they were adopted as models for Japanese literature because their male contemporaries wrote in stilted Chinese to show intellectual superiority. As men switched to Japanese, women writers were squeezed out, leaving only their early classics.

On film and TV: Kozaburo Yoshimura’s 1951 adaptation of The Tale of Genji is a recognized classic. Peter Greenaway’s film inspired by Shonagon’s The Pillow Book reinvents it as a modern tale of a Japanese woman and an older Japanese man sexually servicing Ewan McGregor. A memorable riff on Shikibu’s “Princess Safflower” gag is featured in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

Christian Comedy

Drama was strongly condemned by the Fathers of the early Christian church as immoral, in works like Tertullian’s De Spectaculis. It was a 10th century nun, Hrotsvit of Gandersheim, who revived the tradition of playwriting by arguing that it could have a moral function. Hrotsvit became the first recognized playwright of medieval Europe, adapting the popular sex comedies of the ancient Roman Terence into an entirely new genre: virgin martyr sex comedy. Chuckle as Dulcitius attempts to ravish the virgins, but ends up humping a sooty pot instead! Giggle as soldiers attempt to strip the virgins, but discover their robes are stuck on! Then feel sorta bad when the virgins get burned alive and shot with arrows anyway. Martyrdom replaced marriage as the culmination of a female empowerment fantasy that began with immunity to rape. The subtle relationship between hermit and prostitute in Hrotsvit’s Paphnutius inspired novelist Anatole France and Oscar Wilde, while Hrotsvit’s Callimachus is identified as one of the sources for Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Hrotsvit, however, gained acceptance by self-Smurfette: presenting her wit as an exceptional, divine gift contrasted with usual female witlessness.

On film and TV: Thais, a sexed-up rewrite of Paphnutius by Anatole France, was adapted into a faithful American silent film, and loosely inspired the only surviving Italian futurist film. Jane the Virgin is arguably a modern virgin martyr sex comedy.

Cabaret

In the 17th century, blacksmith’s daughter and shrine maiden Izumo no Okuni created kabuki as a mixture of cross-dressing sketches, sexual innuendo, musical performance, and titillating sensuality. It moved into the teahouses of the red-light district, allowing patrons to sit and drink while watching the show; that is, kabuki originally met the definition of cabaret. For empowering sex workers with social visibility and subversive self-expression, the Japanese authorities banned women from the stage to be replaced by all-male kabuki. Japan’s all-female Takarazuka revue, and witty writer-performers like Mae West and Gypsy Rose Lee in the Western cabaret/vaudeville tradition, carry on the legacy. Straight male comics often struggle to cross over into the diva humor of cabaret, yet it is female comic capability that is judged according to the masculine norms of stand-up.

On film and TV: Mae West defied ageism to become a Hollywood sex symbol in her late 30s, reportedly rescuing Paramount Studios from bankruptcy with She Done Him Wrong. The decadent culture of Weimar cabaret is depicted in the contemporary The Blue Angel, which introduced Marlene Dietrich, and the later musical Cabaret.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJS670okmZc”]

Mae West’s anarchic comedy of sex

Romantic Comedy

I seem to regularly rant on Bitch Flicks about Jane Austen’s role in defining romcom, so I’ll be brief: the meet-cute, the bickering couple who mirror each other, the misunderstandings, public humiliation and sacrificed ego – this is the template of Pride and Prejudice. Though her achievement is trivialized by treating “romcom” as a gendered slur, Austen’s formula is actually fundamental to the male romance of films like Fight Club, as well as classic comedies like Some Like It Hot.

On film and TV: There have been numerous screen adaptations of Pride and Prejudice, as well as updates such as Bridget Jones’ Diary, Bride and Prejudice and The Lizzie Bennet Diaries.

Parody Film

“If the future development of motion pictures had been foreseen at this time, I should never have obtained his consent. My youth, my inexperience, my sex, all conspired against me” is how Alice Guy Blaché described being given her start in directing by Gaumont because no one else saw the potential of film: Alice Guy invented the close-up, she hand-painted color film in 1897, experimented with synchronized sound in 1906 and made over 1,000 films, owning her own studio (Solax). She made action films with swashbuckling female leads and boat explosions, but makes this list for creating the first parody films. Although the first comedy film is the Lumiere brothers’ The Sprinkler Sprinkled, about a sprinkler… who gets sprinkled (it predates the “don’t name it after the punchline” technique), it was Alice Guy who parodied the special effects films of George Melies with 1898 cross-dressing farce At the Hypnotist’s and the earnest scientific documentaries of her male peers with 1900 botched-surgery farce Surgery at the Turn of the Century. She brought in slapstick domestic strife with 1902’s An Untimely Intrusion and explored sexual harassment through comic role reversal in The Consequences of Feminism. Mabel Normand was an early slapstick star who directed her own films. Studio boss Mack Sennett (Keystone) is on record saying that Charlie Chaplin “learned [to direct] from Mabel Normand.” Neither Normand nor Alice Guy is regularly celebrated among cinema’s comic pioneers.

On film and TV: Though many of Guy’s films are now lost, many more can be viewed free online.

Stand-up Comedy

It’s difficult to say when the comic monologues of vaudeville transitioned into recognizably modern stand-up, but probably while Moms Mabley was headlining at the Apollo. To understand her contribution, witness the comics who acknowledge her influence: Flip Wilson, Richard Pryor, Joan Rivers, Eddie Murphy, Whoopi Goldberg, Chris Rock. Mabley exploited the freedom of old ladies to speak their mind, to confront taboos like alcoholism, poverty, racism, infidelity and sexual double standards, defining the comedian’s role as “truth teller” with a persona modeled on her grandmother, a former slave. Growing up Black and gay in 19th century North Carolina, Moms was bulletproof to hecklers before she ever hit a stage. Stand-up and fringe theater offer creative freedom to the minority perspective of queer comediennes of color, from the wild parodies of the Native American Spiderwoman Theater to figures like Wanda Sykes and Margaret Cho today. Mabley is sometimes called the “first female stand-up,” but still isn’t widely acknowledged for pioneering the modern art of stand-up itself, despite Bill Cosby admitting that “she opened that door for a different kind of solo” (Cosby should know; he was quite the groundbreaking comic before moving on to beloved sitcoms and sex crime allegations).

On film and TV: A young Moms has a brief cameo opposite Paul Robeson in The Emperor Jones, rocking a tuxedo in 1933, before starring in 1948’s Boarding House Blues and 1974’s Amazing Grace. Whoopi Goldberg made a documentary about Mabley. You can find Mabley’s later comedy routines, for the Smother Brothers Comedy Hour and the Ed Sullivan Show, on YouTube.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLg1QzdAdLo”]

When Moms jokes about being forced into marriage, it’s because she was

Improv Sketch Comedy

The comic improv created in the post-war University of Chicago shifted the culture of comedy from stand-ups telling jokes to actors performing satirical sketches. This new style was introduced to the world by comedy duo “Nichols & May,” where Elaine May’s role in creating the skits was equal to Mike Nichols’. The sharpness of their satire and the danger from their live improvs brought improv skits mainstream, like a new art of comedy jazz. You might say that without Elaine May and Mike Nichols, there would be no Steve Martin, no Lily Tomlin, no Martin Short, no Saturday Night Live. In fact, Vanity Fair did say that.

On film and TV: Many classic “Nichols & May” sketches are available on YouTube. Elaine May brought geeky charm and Jewish humor to the romcom by writing, directing and starring in 1971’s A New Leaf, six years before Woody Allen’s Annie Hall. She was Oscar-nominated for writing Heaven Can Wait and Primary Colors, wrote The Birdcage and was an uncredited writer on Tootsie, but never got another chance to direct after Ishtar flopped (despite the film’s bad reputation being exaggerated).

Sitcoms

The first sitcom on network television, 1947’s Mary Kay and Johnny depicted Johnny and Mary Kay Stearns’ marriage, of which Variety said “much of the show’s charm is traceable directly to the femme half of the team.” The couple that defined the sitcom’s template was Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. Ball and Arnaz created “more tropes than anything on television before or since”--they filmed the episodes in front of a live audience using multiple cameras, a unique format at the time, making the first reruns possible and keeping I Love Lucy in syndication worldwide. Ball and Arnaz’s Desilu studios also produced Star Trek. After breaking up with Arnaz, Lucille proved she could do it solo with The Lucy Show. Jennifer Saunders’ Absolutely Fabulous, Roseanne Barr’s Roseanne (which launched Joss Whedon and Judd Apatow) and Tina Fey’s 30 Rock followed in Lucille Ball’s sitcomical footsteps.

On film and TV: I Love Lucy has many episodes and classic scenes available on YouTube.

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

Lucille Ball defining the tropes of TV humor

Supernatural Action Romantic Comedy (SARCom)

A supernaturally strong girl hangs out with her sarcastic, quipping gang – including bitchy golddigger and sweet, motherly one – while carrying on a feud/flirtation with her supernaturally strong, shapeshifting love interest, being pined over by a more impulsive, supernaturally strong shapeshifter, and fighting off demons-of-the-week and sexual harassers. If you guessed Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer you’d be right, but if you guessed Rumiko Takahashi’s Ranma 1/2 you’d be a decade earlier. Today’s explosion of sarcastic, bickering romcoms with supernatural martial arts was fresh when Takahashi developed it with 1987’s Ranma 1/2, and her later Inuyasha. Takahashi’s immense success at blending male and female genres, creating entertainment that offers integrated empowerment to both sexes, has been Smurfetted in Japan, segregating female mangakas into a female genre (shoujo).

On film and TV: both Ranma 1/2 and Inuyasha have been adapted into anime.

So that is the incredible true story of how women created the culture of modern comedy without being funny. “The Smurfette Principle” is still used to isolate female achievement, from cartoons to comedy clubs. We can only laugh.

 

Brigit McCone is grateful to the anarchic Rose Lawless and Emma Pearson’s Crash Test Cabaret for assisting at the comical birth of her cabaret alter-ego Voluptua von Temptitillatrix. Her hobbies include doodling and she will be linking to this article if anyone ever asks that bloody question about funny women again.

‘Regarding Susan Sontag’: An Intimate but Incomplete Portrait of an Icon

Directed by Nancy Kates, the HBO documentary ‘Regarding Susan Sontag’ (2014) chronicles the intellectual icon’s private and public life. Sontag came of age in conservative post-war America but did not conform to its rigid sexual and gender norms. She was told by her step-father that too much reading meant no husband. She ignored him, of course, and went on to study at Berkeley and the University of Chicago.

Regarding Susan Sontag
Regarding Susan Sontag

 

Written by Rachael Johnson.

Susan Sontag (1933-2004) was a writer, political activist and filmmaker as well as an immensely influential critic. She wrote and spoke about almost everything. Her interests included high and popular culture, photography, politics, and illness. Her essays “Against Interpretation” (1966) and “Notes on Camp” (1964), are rightly recognized as pioneering works of cultural criticism. Although Sontag was a better cultural critic than novelist, her works of fiction demonstrated a certain creative ambition. She was also politically active. In the 60s, she campaigned against the Vietnam War and in the 90s, she directed Waiting for Godot during the Siege of Sarajevo. Sontag challenged and provoked. Her piece in the New Yorker characterizing 9/11 as “an attack on the world’s self-proclaimed superpower” was hugely controversial.

Poster for the HBO premiere
Poster for the HBO premiere

 

Directed by Nancy Kates, the HBO documentary Regarding Susan Sontag (2014) chronicles the intellectual icon’s private and public life. Sontag came of age in conservative post-war America but did not conform to its rigid sexual and gender norms. She was told by her step-father that too much reading meant no husband. She ignored him, of course, and went on to study at Berkeley and the University of Chicago. Strangely enough, she married the sociologist Philip Rieff at 17, and had a child at 19. Although the marriage lasted eight years, her life soon took another turn when she left the States to study in Paris. Sontag was bisexual, and had affairs with men and women throughout her life, although she did not come out in her younger years. The documentary also covers her activism–her trips to North Vietnam and Sarajevo as well as  involvement with PEN American center.

Featuring commentary by former lovers, friends and family, Regarding Susan Sontag offers a very personal portrait of its subject. Acknowledging both her strengths and flaws, the documentary cannot be accused of hagiography. Armed with arresting looks and a penetrating intelligence, Sontag was a glamorous cultural icon. She was, however, sometimes knocked as self-absorbed and self-important. Some interviewees testify that she was not always an easy person to be around. A friend and former lover confides, “She was never able to know what goes on inside another person.” Still, Sontag loved life, and the accounts of the suffering she endured during her illness–she had two bouts of cancer–move the viewer.

Susan Sontag
Susan Sontag

 

The documentary does not, however, engage with Sontag’s ideas sufficiently, and more time could also have been spent on her politics. The first part of the film, in particular, focuses too much on her private life. This is, of course, quite typical of British and American profiles of cultural and political figures. You also don’t get the sense of just how provocative Sontag often was for an American public intellectual. At the beginning of the documentary, we see a clip of the writer on television defending the essay she wrote after 9/11, but we don’t return to the debate. Sontag also delivered another polemic when she stated that “the white race is the cancer of human history.” Kates touches on this but there is no discussion about the piece.

The documentary also does not examine her film on the Israel-Palestine conflict, Promised Lands (1974). Time constraints factor in here as well, of course. The documentary simply needs to be bigger, and longer. Nevertheless, we should be thankful for Regarding Susan Sontag. God knows there aren’t that many documentaries about public intellectuals out there–male or female. It’s certainly not dull. Sontag led a colorful, ground-breaking life, and her contemporaries offer interesting observations regarding the private woman. While not being a particularly erudite contribution to our understanding of the intellectual icon, Kates acknowledges her subject’s individualistic spirit.