Bitch Flicks – Page 86 – The radical notion that women like good movies

‘Zero Motivation’: A Female Slacker Comedy Set in the Israeli Army

Despite having familiar themes of disaffected youth in dead-end jobs, ‘Zero Motivation’ is one of those rare, uniquely positioned films that couldn’t have been made by anybody else. Writer and director Tayla Lavie draws on her own experience in the Israeli military to tell a dryly funny and sometimes shocking story about female conscripts who have neither the skill nor the will to serve in the army.

Written by Katherine Murray.

Despite having familiar themes of disaffected youth in dead-end jobs, Zero Motivation is one of those rare, uniquely positioned films that couldn’t have been made by anybody else. Writer and director Tayla Lavie draws on her own experience in the Israeli military to tell a dryly funny and sometimes shocking story about female conscripts who have neither the skill nor the will to serve in the army.

Israel is currently the only country (other than Eritrea, whose conscription practices may be considered a human rights abuse) where women over the age of 18 are required to serve in the military. Norway is making plans to include women in its mandatory service, but it hasn’t happened yet.

The characters of Zero Motivation are, then, 18-20-year-old female conscripts who’ve completed basic training and been assigned to a remote base where they work in “Human Resources” as secretaries. Daffi, who still wears jelly bracelets and writes letters to headquarters begging to be reassigned, has been given the job of office paper shredder. Her best friend, Zohar, sorts the mail.

The characters in this movie (for the most part) are just marking time until their two years are up – although their superiors allude to Israel’s conflict with its neighbours, and to soldiers who’ve been killed in action, we see that lower-level support staff are not particularly involved or invested in what’s happening. For them, this is more like Office Space or Clerks than Full Metal Jacket or The Thin Red Line.

That contrast, while not the focal point of the movie, adds another layer of interest to the already familiar situation of seeing disaffected youth in dead-end jobs. There are two scenes in particular where the secretaries’ commanding officer – also a woman – attends an important meeting about military strategy, and then leaves during the most interesting part of the discussion because she has to find out why the coffee isn’t ready.

There’s another scene where the same commanding officer is about to give a speech that she’s clearly worked hard on preparing and, during the only moment that her male superiors are paying attention to her, they’re all called away to an emergency. She never gets to say what she’d planned and, poignantly, she seems resigned to being unimportant.

It’s hard to say how much a role gender plays in the situation depicted in Zero Motivation, but I’ve had the experience of working in organizations where the departments perceived as least important somehow filled up with women, who were then ignored. I’ve also seen firsthand how support staff – who also tend to be women – are sometimes treated as a necessary evil rather than a vital part of the team.

The situation in Zero Motivation is unique to Israel in that the characters are conscripted for two years after turning eighteen, but, in more broad and general terms, it’s an experience that many young people and women have, around the world, of being pushed into jobs with low levels of responsibility, where they’re treated with low levels of respect.

Zero Motivation is primarily a comedy that’s based on watching Zohar rebel against any suggestion that she should try to do a good job in the army. As with any slacker comedy, we understand why she’s not interested in serving a system that tells her all she’s capable of is sorting mail (and then looks down on her for sorting it), and we cheer for her when she finds ways to get out of doing work.

The primary conflict – which starts simmering in the first of the movie’s three chapters, and explodes in chapter three – comes from the fact that Daffi, motivated by the desire to transfer to a better post in Tel-Aviv, sells out to the man by becoming an officer.

Suddenly, she and Zohar are at odds over whether they should take their dumb jobs seriously, and Daffi is placed in the same kill-joy position as the secretaries’ commanding officer. In order to advance her own career, she needs the group not to be total screw-ups, and she’s frustrated that there’s no way to convince them to try.

As the ringleader of the screw-ups, Zohar is resentful that Daffi chose to buy into the system at the expense of their friendship, and refuses to accept that she has any authority after she’s commissioned.

Together, they act out the age-old struggle between trying to fight the system, and trying to work within it. And, while it could be taking place in any Western workplace, the fact that it’s taking place in the army sends an extra message – that this is what you get when you fill the ranks with people who don’t want to be there and treat them like crap. You get the same thing as you get at the McDonalds counter.

The middle section of the movie, which takes place while Zohar’s left to fend for herself, and Daffi’s away at officer training, is the one that veers the farthest from the through line, but also includes the most direct discussion of gender.

The middle section is about Zohar trying to lose her virginity, on the advice of her Russian co-worker, Irena. The story takes a surprising (and surreal) turn, however, when Irena becomes possessed by the spirit of another girl who killed herself after a boy was mean to her. Spirit-possessed Irena follows Zohar around in a trance, ruining her date with a male paratrooper, and – in one of the movie’s darker turns – saving her from an attempted rape.

The spirit possession is never explained in non-supernatural terms, but it makes sense on a metaphorical level – that, after giving Zohar bad advice to hook up with any random dude she can find, Irena remembers what happened to the last girl who did that, and undoes her bad advice by protecting Zohar from getting hurt.

The entire middle sequence is more a coming-of-age story than a workplace comedy, and it serves the purpose of making Zohar more sympathetic due to showing us her vulnerability, while also driving home the point that these are teenagers, who are still figuring out things like sex and relationships. They did not magically become mature, worldly adults when someone put a rifle in their hands.

What’s interesting about Zero Motivation, from a foreigner’s perspective, is that military service is taken for granted as part of the same right of passage – something that follows secondary school, the way freshman year of college follows secondary school in the USA. The army is a place where young people go when they’re still trying to figure out who they are and what they want to do with their lives.

While that’s true of many young people in countries other than Israel, Israel’s unique conscription policies have created the backdrop for a story that has a singular point of view, and a voice that’s not often heard in cinema.

Zero Motivation is worth seeing on its merits as an entertaining comedy, but it’s also worth seeing as something that adds to the cultural conversation by contributing something we don’t usually hear.

Katherine Murray is a Toronto-based writer who yells about movies and TV on her blog.

Tropes vs. Princes: Sexism-in-Drag in Modern Disney Princess Films

While #Gamergate has not yet officially rebranded itself as #EpicStreisandEffect, the one heartwarming thing about a mob trying to silence their critics is how bad they are at it. The inflammatory atmosphere created by #Gamergate makes it difficult for balanced discussion of Sarkeesian’s critiques, but one interesting aspect that recently occurred to me is how neatly six of her tropes fit the portrayal of men in recent Disney Princess films (from 1989’s ‘The Little Mermaid’ onwards).

This is a guest post by Brigit McCone.

While #Gamergate has not yet officially rebranded itself as #EpicStreisandEffect, the one heartwarming thing about a mob trying to silence their critics is how bad they are at it. The inflammatory atmosphere created by #Gamergate makes it difficult for balanced discussion of Anita Sarkeesian’s critiques, but one interesting aspect that recently occurred to me is how neatly six of her tropes fit the portrayal of men in recent Disney Princess films (from 1989’s The Little Mermaid onwards).

Since the Disney Princess film is almost as male-dominated as video games (Frozen‘s Jennifer Lee was the first female director of a Disney feature), this appears less a genuine reversal than a clumsy “sexism-in-drag” aimed at empowering young girls. But it offers a golden opportunity for female viewers to interrogate our response: do these tropes empower us when reversed? Do we recognize them as sexist? Would they still be dehumanizing if applied equally to male and female characters?

THE DUDEZEL IN DISTRESS

“TROPES VS. WOMEN” SOURCE: The Damsel in Distress

The “dudezel in distress” is a plot device in which a male character is placed in a perilous situation, from which he cannot escape on his own, and must be rescued by a female character. Traditionally, the “dudezel in distress” is a family member or a love interest.

DISNEY DUDEZELS: Among family members, Maurice in Beauty and The Beast (which had a female screenwriter, incidentally) is a classic example of “Dudezel Dad.” His kidnapping forces Belle to risk her life to rescue him, while his pitiful attempt to rescue her is actively counterproductive – his near-death drives Belle to risk her safety again. Both the Beast and Gaston hold Belle hostage by the threat of locking up Maurice, who is consistently punished for attempts to assert agency or independence. Other female characters whose plot arcs are motivated by rescuing their fathers include Ariel of The Little Mermaid (father petrified as worm-creature) and Mulan (father’s peril motivates daughter to take up arms).

The “love interest” as “dudezel in distress” is yet more troubling: girls are taught through this trope that love is the inevitable result of gratitude, rather than the dudezel’s own choice. Take The Little Mermaid: not only does Ariel rescue Eric from drowning, Eric’s inability to love her is depicted as the direct result of his failure to recognize the girl who rescued him. Similarly, Pocahontas must save her love interest, John Smith; Mulan must repeatedly rescue her love interest Shang; Tiana must rescue gold-digging Naveen from his entrapment as a frog. Disney offers no examples of women rescuing men who choose not to become romantically involved with them; being rescued is shown to obligate the dudezel in every case. As such, this trope cannot be seen as empowerment, but as a harmful lesson for girls that also alienates male audiences.

MEN IN REFRIGERATORS

“TROPES VS. WOMEN” SOURCE: Women in Refrigerators

“Men in Refrigerators” refers to the trope of men suffering a loss of powers, brutal violation or an untimely, gruesome death, most often as a plot point for the female hero to seek revenge or further her heroic journey.

DISNEY FRIDGE-DUDES: The best example of violation in the Disney universe is that of Eric by the witch Ursula in The Little Mermaid. His mind and control over his emotions are utterly violated to motivate Ariel’s final confrontation with Ursula and completion of her heroic journey. The traumatic effects on Eric are never shown; Ariel’s response is centered. This rewrites the original story, where the prince chose the mermaid’s rival freely and she learned to accept his choice: surely a better model. Male characters suffering loss of powers to motivate female heroines include Ariel’s father, Triton, and Jasmine’s father, the Sultan, reduced to worm-creature and jester respectively. Male characters killed to facilitate the heroine’s journey include Tiana’s father, whose death motivates her desire for a restaurant, and thus the whole plot of The Princess and the Frog, and the Beast in Beauty and the Beast, whose traumatic murder allows Belle to realize her feelings for him. Once again, its use of ‘men in refrigerators’ reinforces a utilitarian attitude to male characters in Disney Princess films.

MANIC PIXIE DREAM DUDE

“TROPES VS. WOMEN” SOURCE: Manic Pixie Dream Girl

The Manic Pixie Dream Dude is a bubbly, shallow male character written in order to help the female character learn to loosen up and enjoy life. Typically, the Manic Pixie Dream Dude has no job or defined interests of his own.

DISNEY PIXIE DREAM-DUDES: Disney’s most obvious Manic Pixie Dream Dude is Prince Naveen of The Princess and the Frog. The heroine, Tiana, has clear career ambitions, loyalty and responsibilities which cause her life to lack joy. Manic Pixie Naveen, despite being a prince, has no independent career or goals and adjusts seamlessly to working in Tiana’s restaurant: he exists to facilitate her goals, while exuding fun, madcap spontaneity and irresponsible wildness to help the heroine embrace joy. Similarly, Rapunzel in Tangled has a clear sense of responsibility, moral values, a conflicted relationship with mother-figure Gothel and the goal of reuniting with her parents. Flynn is the perfect foil: he exists to be a fun and wild antidote to Gothel’s influence, but assimilates to Rapunzel’s lifestyle in the end by abandoning his personal goals (or rather, by being revealed as an orphan who lacks all ties and purpose, and who is explicitly told that his dream of wealth and empowerment “sucks”). He also exhibits a tendency to petty crime that TV Tropes identifies as typical of Manic Pixie Dream Girls. In both cases, the empowerment of the female character is portrayed as a wish fulfillment only realizable through disempowerment of the males.

STRAW CHAUVINIST

“TROPES VS. WOMEN” SOURCE: The Straw Feminist

The Straw Chauvinist is an exaggerated caricature of a chauvinist, filled with misrepresentations, oversimplifications and stereotypes.

DISNEY STRAW CHAUVINIST: Gaston, from Beauty and the Beast, is the clearest example of a Straw Chauvinist in Disney film. Acting as the sole representative of masculine sexual assertiveness and self-confidence within the film (unless you count the comedy-relief candlestick), Gaston implicitly associates these features with self-satisfied ignorance, kidnap, blackmail and the persecution of the mentally ill: “No-one plots like Gaston, takes cheap shots like Gaston, likes to persecute harmless crackpots like Gaston.” Everything from the masculine desire for physical enhancement through body-building and protein-ingestion (“I eat five dozen eggs, so I’m roughly the size of a barge”) to the stereotypical male habit of spitting (“I’m especially good at expectorating”) is, through Gaston, made to appear ridiculous, over-the-top and unnecessary. The purpose is to separate the male lead, Beast, from any association with chauvinism that might be provoked by the character’s being huge, hairy and creepily controlling towards women. This clearly parallels the Veronica Mars example that Sarkeesian cites as “straw feminism,” where the independent, intelligent Veronica is separated from any association with “those kind of feminists” through the use of exaggerated, straw feminist caricatures. Is this, then, one of “the most disgusting tropes ever forged in Mt. Doom” or a reasonable way to use the very ridiculousness of feminist caricatures to separate them from actual feminism? Certainly, the worrying aspect of Disney’s “straw chauvinist” trope is not that it “discredits” chauvinism, but that it normalizes the abusive behavior of Beast through his contrast with Gaston; the “straw chauvinist” shifts the emphasis to ridicule of a stereotyped image rather than identification of harmful behaviors.

VAMPERMAN

“TROPES VS. WOMEN” SOURCE: The Evil Demon Seductress TV Trope: The Vamp

The Vamperman, or “evil demon seducer,” is a sexualized man who lures women into his evil web, using his sexuality as a weapon.

DISNEY VAMPERMEN: Strangely for family fare, modern Disney films are full of this trope: Jafar, Scar, Hades, Claude Frollo. Portrayed as manipulative, conniving and controlling men, in each case they exert power over the female leads in a sexualized manner: Princess Jasmine must kiss Jafar to save Aladdin; Scar’s rape threat to Nala was cut from The Lion King film but retained in the stage show; Claude Frollo has an entire “Hellfire” aria about his sexual urges for Esmeralda; Hades literally owns the soul of Megara and uses this to stroke and cuddle her to her visible disgust. Not only do the characters use sex as weapon, they are inappropriately sexualized themselves: tall, aquiline, sardonic and acted by velvet-voiced charisma bombs like Jeremy Irons or James Woods. Dracula’s (the novel’s) description of its female vamps’ “deliberate voluptuousness that was both thrilling and repulsive” seems apt for Disney’s charismatic Vampermen. A streak of theatrical camp is often used to supposedly disarm the predator’s sexual threat, creating the Camper Vamperman variant. Vampermen allow female viewers to objectify the character’s “thrillingly repulsive voluptuousness,” while confirming what Sarkeesian might term “sexist, preconceived notions” that men are manipulative, deceitful, and sexually threatening.

MR. FANSERVICE

“TROPES VS. WOMEN” SOURCE: Women As Background Decoration TV Trope: Ms. Fanservice

Mr. Fanservice, or “men-as-background-decoration” is the practice of presenting hypersexualized men as ornamental decoration.

DECORATIVE DISNEY DUDES: While Ursula, the voluptuous and brazenly confident villain of The Little Mermaid has become a gay icon to the plus-sized lesbian community, who could claim that Triton’s torso is a realistic standard to offer aging males? The men of Disney are repeatedly presented as bizarrely pumped, fit and sexualized, wearing far less clothing than their female counterparts, all while the actual act of bodily self-improvement is ruthlessly mocked through figures like Gaston. How did these other dudes get their rock-hard abs? By unrealistic body image alone, apparently. Perhaps the most glaring example of “men as background decoration” is the character of “The Entire Chinese Army” in Mulan. Not only is “The Army” a background decoration in the sense of being utterly useless at repelling Hun invasions when compared with a single adolescent girl, but said girl’s invasive ogling of their nudity under false pretenses is trivialized as a subject of humor.

“The Entire Chinese Army” is only allowed to serve a purpose when dressed as women, intensifying the emasculation of male viewers.

However, the presentation of these male soldiers-in-drag as laughable highlights the overall problem with “sexism-in-drag”: it reinforces the inferiority of female gender roles while empowering women through their fictional reversal, and it affirms to male viewers that female empowerment can only be achieved by male emasculation. Male-dominated Disney Princess Film encourages a model of “Little Miss Chauvinism” that adds up to little more than a Ms. Male Character trope. Compare Jennifer Lee’s Frozen – not only does it prioritize unselfish love between women, ending the isolation of the Strong Woman, it affirms “everywoman” heroine Anna’s own empowerment as key to her abandonment of rescuer prince fantasies in favor of her unselfish, “everyman” counterpart. In other words, Frozen presents female empowerment as essential to enhanced appreciation of the male, rather than opposed to it.

However, the enduring popularity of other Disney Princess films does demonstrate that young girls are as susceptible to ideologies of empowerment-through-inequality, and to utilitarian attitudes toward men, as boys are toward women. Nor should the responsibility of female screenwriters be ignored in assessing “Little Miss Chauvinism” archetypes. Does Frozen, then, point the way toward a new paradigm, the integrated empowerment of both male and female? Must female empowerment otherwise be confined to a world of fictional escapism by its assumed incompatibility with male empowerment? Is it possible to merge the “pink” and “blue” aisles into a single, empowering cinema for children? As always, keep in mind that it’s entirely possible to be critical of some aspects of media, while finding other aspects valuable or enjoyable.

Brigit McCone adored The Little Mermaid growing up (but weirdly overidentified with Sebastian the reggae crab), writes and directs short films and radio dramas and is the author of The Erotic Adventures of Vivica under her cabaret pseudonym Voluptua von Temptitillatrix. Her hobbies include doodling and satirically endorsing dating sites.

Black Actresses Are the Best Thing About ‘Get On Up’

I read film reviews, so I wasn’t expecting great art out of ‘Get On Up,’ but I also wasn’t expecting a film that frequently had me asking myself why it had been made. I know all the good reasons for making a James Brown bio-pic. He was a musical genius (I don’t use that word lightly) whose innovations, for a less talented (or less business-savvy) artist, would have led to a nice little corner of the avant-garde. Instead, Brown and his band produced chart-making hits for 30 years (in itself an unprecedented accomplishment: his career lasted for 50 years) that lured people onto the dance floor who sat out every other song (and his work is sampled in many other artists’ hits as well). He also had a dramatic personal life: he was in prison both before he was famous and after the peak of his fame had passed, had many children by many different women (some of whom he married, some he did not) and, through the years, had a slew of domestic violence charges filed against him. They, of course, were not the reason he went to prison.

Awards season is here, which means overrated films like Boyhood and Ida are starting to collect lauds. And even those of us in groups that give out very minor awards are starting to receive “for your consideration” screeners. I saw a fun trailer for Get On Up, the James Brown bio-pic, at the Roxbury International Film Festival in the summer and then didn’t hear much about it until last month when I received in the mail a heavy promotional packet from its distributor, with a large, glossy, brightly colored book of stills from the film filled with big-font blurbs from critics and, hilariously, no sign of a DVD–or info about accessing the film online–inside. I was trying to think what the studio’s motivation was, that someone in their marketing department thought I would flip through the film’s book of photos and think, “This looks fabulous,” and immediately vote for it as “Best Picture.” The studio, Universal, Fedexed the DVD to all of us later. Marketing for this film might have been better off with the strategy I had originally imagined.

I read film reviews, so I wasn’t expecting great art out of Get On Up, but I also wasn’t expecting a film that frequently had me asking myself why it had been made. I know all the good reasons for making a James Brown bio-pic. He was a musical genius (I don’t use that word lightly) whose innovations, for a less talented (or less business-savvy) artist, would have led to a nice little corner of the avant-garde. Instead, Brown and his band produced chart-making hits for 30 years (in itself an unprecedented accomplishment: his career lasted for 50 years) that lured people onto the dance floor who sat out every other song (and his work is sampled in many other artists’ hits as well). He also had a dramatic personal life; he was in prison both before he was famous and after the peak of his fame had passed, had many children by many different women (some of whom he married, some he did not) and, through the years, had a slew of domestic violence charges filed against him. They, of course, were not the reason he went to prison.

BosemanGetOnUp — Chadwick Boseman as James Brown

But why would anyone make a film of this terrible script (by British screenwriters Jez Butterworth and John-Henry Butterworth)? The previous film of director, Tate Taylor, The Help, gave him some experience with awful scripts about Black characters, but the main motivation for making the dull, sloppy, overlong Get On Up seems to be “We got the funding!” I’m not a fan of Taylor Hackford’s (award-winning) Ray, but at least that film, also about a musical icon and Black man who was, to put it mildly, not easy to get along with, had the bones of a better movie within it–a study of how a trusting and good-natured young person, after being repeatedly taken advantage of and discriminated against, becomes a suspicious asshole as he becomes older, even to those who mean him no harm. In Get On Up we see Brown, from the start in flashbacks from both 1988, when he was arrested after a high speed chase with the police, and in the 1960s when he toured Vietnam (the film jumps around in time for no discernible reason) as a crazed, dictatorial chatterbox. After the plane the band is in gets hit by mortar fire, Brown lectures a white army minder, “You want to go down in history as the man who killed the funk?”

The lead actor, Chadwick Boseman, doesn’t look like Brown (though as Brown ages, the incompetent makeup team try to make a resemblance out of rubber, leaving Boseman to try to act his way through the layers), but he does capture Brown’s distinctive voice and presence: smiling at first with joy and then a moment later letting paranoia and menace settle into his face. When Boseman, as Brown, dances on television during a performance before the Rolling Stones (in their first trip to America) I was reminded of an interview with Tina Turner in which she said that Mick Jagger didn’t dance when he sang with the Stones until after they’d toured with her. In archival footage, Jagger’s ’60s dance moves also seem to owe a lot to the early James Brown (who upstaged the Stones in their joint TV appearance), but Jagger is one of the film’s producers, so we don’t see the legacy of white performers “borrowing” from Black ones.

AunjanueGetOnUp — Bobby Byrd (Nelsan Ellis) and Vicki Anderson (Aunjanue Ellis)

Like Ray, the best thing about Get On Up are the Black actresses in it. Even though many of them are just called on to flirt and smile, we still see more of of them than we do in the litany of movies that pretend Black women don’t exist. Octavia Spencer has a nice couple of moments as “Aunt Honey” the no-nonsense woman who reluctantly takes in young James after his father abandons him. She tells James, “Your mama’s a no-account fool. Your daddy too. But you ain’t gonna be.” But the standout is Viola Davis, as the mother who walks out on both father and son, and lets us see, in a late scene with Boseman, the humiliation she feels under her good-time persona. Earlier we witness a very simplified, sped-up pattern of abuse between Brown’s parents. His father (Lennie James) strikes Davis and then immediately demands sex, which she also seems eager for. Brown plays out the same scenario with his second wife (played by Jill Scott). This distortion of what happens in abusive relationships makes the violence we see seem like a fetish, an insult to all survivors of domestic abuse.

Like Ray’s Kerry Washington before her, Davis has found a role on television in a Shonda-Rhimes-produced series that gives her the chance to show off the full range of her talent, and maybe sometime in the future we’ll see a series that does the same for Aunjanue Ellis, who, in Get On Up, looks great, in ’60s outfits and hairstyles and gives the world’s most piercing side-eye as Vicki Anderson, a backup singer in Brown’s band who later marries his best friend and band mate–he shared lead vocals with Brown and co-wrote the song “Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine”)–Bobby Byrd (Nelsan Ellis). But Taura Cherne, Jacinte Blankenship, and Cariella Smith also leave indelible impressions during their brief time on camera. Whenever producers weakly say they couldn’t find good Black actresses for roles that usually end up going to white women, I can’t help thinking of all the talented Black women going to waste in films like this one.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guOS6ev6hQ0″]

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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

Folk Mariology in ‘Jane the Virgin’

‘Jane the Virgin’ isn’t about the fetus, and it certainly isn’t about being a passive receptacle. The show’s real coup is its emphasis on the agency of a woman who is a victim of reproductive coercion. Jane is thrown into a reproductive situation which she wouldn’t have chosen, and the show takes her quandary seriously: how does she feel? What does she do next? How does this affect her career plans, her relationships with those around her, her self-conception?

Written by Max Thornton.

The Virgin Mary is a complicated figure in the feminist imagination. The classic feminist critique is that, as virgin and mother, she simultaneously embodies the two contradictory patriarchal idealizations of women. As the most prominent female figure in the mainstream Catholic tradition, Mary becomes the standard against which all women are measured; but, being unable to be simultaneously virgins and mothers, women are doomed to failure from the get-go.

There’s something to this critique, especially if you only consider the top-down decrees of an all-male church hierarchy, but it’s absolutely not the whole story. From early Christian converts, who were able to impute to Mary some of the characteristics of goddesses they had previously revered, to the transgressive folk Mariology of twentieth-century Latin America described by queer theologian Marcella Althaus-Reid, Christian history is rife with Marys who are considerably more nuanced and complex than a mere idealized virgin mother.

Remember the controversy around this New Zealand church billboard?

The CW’s new show Jane the Virgin is a folk Mariology for the twenty-first century, and in a lot of ways it’s a pretty great one. Perhaps the show was initially been pitched and greenlit on the basis of its absurd and contrived premise – a pregnant virgin! who is artificially inseminated by mistake! – but, just like with the Virgin Mary of Christian myth, you’d be missing out on a lot of fascinating nuance if you disdain it purely because it’s fantastical.

Like the Mary of Christian tradition, Jane is an idealized woman on paper: chaste, engaged to a good man, committed to her faith, and determined to live an upright life. At the urging of her devout abuela, Jane takes a childhood vow of chastity until marriage, but a mix-up at the gynecologist’s results in a virginal pregnancy. Jane may be a pregnant virgin who tries to adhere to traditional morality, but she is definitely not the Virgin Mary reborn. She has no intention of remaining a virgin in perpetuity like the sainted Mary of Catholicism, and she plans to relinquish the baby to its intended parents; her own conception to an unwed teen mother was far from immaculate; so far from sticking heroically by her, her fiancé proves to be kind of a douche. Sharp writing and superb acting from the delightful Gina Rodriguez combine to portray Jane much more sympathetically and realistically than some of the hyper-idealized images of a perfect, sinless Mary.

jane-the-virgin-poster-the-cw — In reality, Jesus’ mom definitely had darker skin, hair, and eyes than the whitebread lady up top.

In its haste to focus on the baby Jesus, Christianity has too often reduced Mary to a passive receptacle, an incubator who performs her reproductive function with the minimum of fuss, a reactive figure whose greatest display of agency is to accept the reproductive coercion of the supernatural. Jane the Virgin isn’t about the fetus, and it certainly isn’t about being a passive receptacle. The show’s real coup is its emphasis on the agency of a woman who is a victim of reproductive coercion. In a political climate of dramatic assaults on reproductive freedom, it’s not hard to see Jane’s accidental insemination as a general-audience-friendly version of the reproductive coercion that people with uteri face from a whole array of actants, including the anti-choice lobby, intimate partner violence, and economic instability. Jane is thrown into a reproductive situation which she wouldn’t have chosen, and the show takes her quandary seriously: how does she feel? What does she do next? How does this affect her career plans, her relationships with those around her, her self-conception?

I’d like to see Jane the Virgin take its interrogation of hierarchical Mariology further. I want to see a deconstruction of the whole meaningless concept of virginity (and perhaps the show is headed that way, with Jane gradually coming to acknowledge that her worth as a human being is not tied to her sexual activity or lack thereof). And I want to see a critical engagement with Abuela’s Catholicism, which, despite being both profoundly resonant theme and plot driver, remains fairly one-dimensional, being characterized primarily by exhortations to sexual purity and a vapid insistence that “God never gives us more than we can handle.”

Jane with her mom and abuela, a "strong Latina matriarchy." — Jane with her mom and abuela, a “strong Latina matriarchy.”

There are plenty of other reasons to love Jane the Virgin. Nearly every character is Latin@ and there are a lot of well-rounded female characters (including queer Latina women). Arguably the central relationship is that of Jane and her mother Xiomara, which is complicated and wonderful. The show has a jocular self-awareness of its frequent silliness without being mean-spirited about the telenovelas from which it derives, especially in the glorious character of fictitious telenovela superstar Rogelio de la Vega. It also has the best use of a TV voiceover since Arrested Development.

Only seven episodes have aired so far, with the eighth due to air next Monday. In those seven hours, Jane the Virgin has proved itself to be one of the best new shows on TV. Long may it continue.

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Max Thornton blogs at Gay Christian Geek, tumbles as trans substantial, and tweets at @RainicornMax. He’s never happier than when he can combine talking about pop culture, theology, and feminism.

Break the Cycle: Cultural Appropriation, Racism, and Kim Kardashian’s ‘Paper’ Magazine Cover

Jokes like these dehumanize Kardashian and all women with large buttocks. This is wrong, and the fact that Kim Kardashian lives in the public eye does not make it right.

Written by Andé Morgan.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last two weeks, you’ve probably seen Kim Kardashian’s butt.

Specifically, you’ve seen her PAPER Magazine cover shot. While this picture did not in fact break the Internet, it has prompted numerous think pieces, blog posts, and comment threads. Some have derided Kardashian for behavior that, in their ancient and wrong opinion, is unbecoming of a mother. Others have accused Kardashian of cultural appropriation. Still others have focused on photographer Jean-Paul Goude’s obvious (and admitted) fetishization of black women’s bodies as evidenced by a strikingly similar — and more overtly racist — series taken several years earlier.

Cultural appropriation — in this case the profitable co-opting by non-Black folks of features and styles typically associated with black women — is a thing, and it’s not new. Even before Kardashian’s cover, this year alone has seen appropriation called on Miley Cyrus’ VMA performance, Katy Perry’s big-butted mummies, Meghan Trainor’s “All About That Bass,” and J.Lo and Iggy Azeala’s “Booty.” Here are some quotes from pieces you should read:

Taylor P. wrote about cultural appropriation and fashion for XOVain:

“I understand the argument that they are only trying to admire and honor our culture. But here’s the reality: when the dominant culture picks up pieces of our world, we [black women] get fetishized or, even worse, erased in the process.”

Tressie McMillan Cottom wrote about Cyrus’s VMA performance for Slate:

“That is how black round female bodies become inferior. That is the inferiority Cyrus is ostensibly rooting against in ‘We Can’t Stop’ when she encourages ‘homegirls with big butts’ to reject the ‘haters’ because ‘somebody loves [them].’ Just who is that somebody is left unanswered, but I suspect it isn’t the white male audience for whom Cyrus performs her faux bisexual performance. That is choreographed for the white male gaze against a backdrop of dark, fat black female bodies and slightly more normative café au lait slim bodies because the juxtaposition of her sexuality with theirs is meant to highlight Cyrus’ supremacy, not challenge it. Consider it the racialized pop culture version of a bride insisting that all of her bridesmaids be hideously clothed on her wedding day.”

Nikki Gloudman wrote about Meghan Trainor’s “All About The Bass” at Ravishly:

“The problem with our pop cultural fixation on female body parts isn’t which body part is being focused on—it’s the fixation itself. These songs, which aim to celebrate the female form, still reduce women to the sum of their physical parts—and in doing so, propagate that damning social more of female competition…[the song] for its part, has already faced backlash from skinny girls who feel the tune disses them. Are they to feel inferior because they do wear a size two and don’t have the ‘boom boom that all the boys chase?'”

Blue Telusma, for The Grio, wrote about the connection between Kardashian and the exploitation of Sarah Baartman in the nineteenth century:

“All of a sudden, my correlation between these images and Saartjie’s treatment as a sideshow animal don’t seem so far-fetched, do they? The parallels are so literal and un-nuanced you’d have to willfully ignore what’s right in front of your face. This idea that ‘black equals erotic’ is fetishism in its purest form; it mocks ‘otherness’ while pretending to celebrate it and defines human beings by their genitals instead of seeing them as whole people.”

Wow! Nobody's ever don't THAT before! — Wow! Nobody’s ever done THAT before!

Joyce Wadler, writing for The New York Times style blog last week, took the opportunity to expel droll jokes that are only tongue-in-cheek in the most unfunny sense of the word. For example, Wadler writes:

“Then there’s the issue of copycats. I have no interest in having a behind like Kim’s — like I said, I live in a little New York apartment. But there may be impressionable women out there who right now are marching into the surgeon’s office and saying, ‘Gimme that’ — women with whom I am going to have to share a subway seat one day.”

Wadler is part of the same body-shaming fashion journalism industrial complex that spawned September’s “seminal” Vogue article, “The Dawn of the Butt” by Patricia Garcia. That piece effortlessly reduced millennia of cultural evolution to an Internet Age fad: “Perhaps we have Jennifer Lopez to thank (or blame?) for sparking the booty movement.”

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It's funny because Kim Kardashian's body is funny? — It’s funny because Kim Kardashian’s body is funny?

In Essence, Elizabeth Wellington writes:

“What’s difficult to digest is this ‘praise’ of all things black – from cornrows and large booties to acrylic nails, door-knocker earrings, and tribal fabrics – only becomes ‘chic,’ ‘trendy,’ and ‘epic’ when worn by white women. When these same cultural markers are on black women, they are ‘ghetto,’ ‘urban,’ and ‘ratchet’ – meaning, unpretty.”

As you’ve read above, there are important discussions occurring about appropriation and the questionable underpinnings of Kardashian’s PAPER Magazine cover. But what strikes me most is the more subtly racist backlash often delivered in the form of jokes by white comedians and commentators.

Wadler’s piece is relatively mild, and more exemplary of the lazy, mean-spirited humor often aimed at the Kardashian sisters. A better example of the subtle, casual racism inherent in these jocular responses comes from the Nov. 15 episode of the beloved NPR weekend quiz show, Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me! In it, host Peter Sagal makes several jokes alluding to the supposed grossness and abnormality of Kardashian’s body; in one he goes so far as to refer to her as a “greased pig.” (As an aside, Sagal also told a flat man-in-a-dress so-called joke about guest Ron Perlman. But transmisogyny on Wait Wait is another post…)

Such jokes describe women as less than, e.g., as non-human animals, inanimate objects, or anatomical abnormalities. Consequently, they dehumanize Kardashian and all women of color (and really, all women) with large buttocks. This is wrong, and the fact that Kim Kardashian lives in the public eye does not make it right.

Also on Bitch Flicks: Rosmary’s Baby: Who Possesses the Pregnant Woman’s Body? by Sarah Smyth

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

Call For Writers: Reality TV

However, the truth and realness of reality TV is, and always has been, a myth. A basic concept of psychology is that the act of observing a thing changes that thing. How could a camera crew with all their equipment following people around not affect what those people do and say? How could knowing that millions will be watching and listening not affect their actions?

Our theme week for December 2014 will be Reality TV.

Though films like The Running Man explored the concept of reality television before the genre actually took off, most US audiences identify the 1992 MTV show The Real World as the defining reality show that popularized the genre. Audiences were hungry for representations of real people, unscripted, unproduced, and raw. The idea of watching these real people go about their real lives, experiencing real emotions in real situations was, and continues to be, fascinating to audiences.

However, the truth and realness of reality TV is, and always has been, a myth. A basic concept of psychology is that the act of observing a thing changes that thing. How could a camera crew with all their equipment following people around not affect what those people do and say? How could knowing that millions will be watching and listening not affect their actions? Not only that, but most reality shows often create a non-real (often absurd) premise, such as making strangers live together or having them compete for love or money in increasingly elaborate ways. As time goes by, audiences expect less and less of the realism supposedly inherent in reality TV, much the same as professional wrestling fans accept the performance component of their sport. All the while, many reality series continue for over a decade, a constant, reliable source of income for show producers.

There are many films that question or parody the notion of reality TV. Both The Running Man and The Hunger Games series critique the bloodthirsty, drama-hungry gladiatorial reality TV physical challenge sub-genre that we see in shows like Survivor or Naked and Afraid. The show Burning Love satirizes the absurdity of shows like The Bachelor and The Bachelorette, which require group competition for a single mate. The Truman Show calls into question reality itself, exploring the idea that unbeknownst to the subject, their life could be a scripted, carefully executed reality show.

Some questions to consider for your submission: Is there value to reality TV? What kind of gender roles are advocated? What kind of notions on race, sexuality, and class are advanced? Who is represented as the subject? Who lacks adequate representation as a subject? What does the progression of the genre look like, i.e. will we be televising executions in the future or will everyone have a camera to film and share their own reality? Why has reality TV sustained such a long history of success and audience engagement? Is it possible for reality TV to be more realistic?

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

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

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

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

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

The final due date for these submissions is Friday, Dec. 19 by midnight.

The Real World

The Bachelor

American Ninja

The Bachelorette

Millionaire Matchmaker

The Osbournes

Top Chef

Rock of Love

Jersey Shore

Flavor of Love

Intervention

Drunk Histories

Survivor

Naked and Afraid

Wife Swap

The Apprentice

The Truman Show

Running Man

Ru Paul’s Drag Race

The Nanny

Gamer

Keeping Up with the Kardashians

The Hunger Games

Here Comes Honey Boo Boo

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

Duck Dynasty

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part I

Burning Love

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!

Spike Lee Demands That ‘We Stop This Madness’ at Passionate ‘Do the Right Thing’ Reading by Greg Cwik at Indiewire

It’s Official: Michelle MacLaren Will Direct Wonder Woman by Melissa Silverstein at Women and Hollywood

Vampires, Skateboards and Autonomy: A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night by Abeni Moreno at Ms. blog

Sapna Samant & ‘Kimbap’ at Wellywood Woman

Interview with Filmmaker Laura Poitras About Her Powerful Documentary “Citizenfour” by Monica Castillo at Bitch Media

ADIFF Review: Director Deon Taylor Explores Real Life Racial Horror in ‘Supremacy’ by Nijla Mumin at Shadow and Act

Ridley Scott Blames Lack of Diversity in Exodus on Needing Money by Susana Polo at The Mary Sue

50 Groundbreaking Female Film Artists We’re Thankful For by Alison Nastasi at Flavorwire

‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ teaser promises more multicultural galaxy by Adam Howard at MSNBC

11 Essential Native American Films You Can Watch Online Right Now at Indian Country Today Media Network
What have you been reading/writing this week? Tell us in the comments!

The Terror of Little Girls: The Roundup

Check out all of the posts for our The Terror of Little Girls Theme Week here.

Fucking with Fate: Sexuality, Loss, and Irreversibility in The Returned by Tina Giannoulis

The first episode opens on a 15-year-old girl, the eponymous “Camille” (Yara Pilartz), as she finds herself alone at dusk in the mountains above her town. She starts her journey back home, disoriented and a little confused but otherwise intact, despite having died in a school bus trip four years prior.

Little Girls in Horror Films: Setting the Stage for Female Double Standards by BJ Colangelo

Little girls are often what we associate with innocence. Girls are said to be born out of “sugar, spice, and everything nice,” which attaches a stigma to women from birth that is unrealistic. Society is conditioned to believe this ridiculous myth, which changes the way we value little girls over little boys.

The Terror of Little Girls: Social Anxiety About Women in Horrifying Girlhood by Leigh Kolb

Horror films hold a mirror up to these ideals, distorting the images and terrifying viewers in the process. The terror that society feels while looking at these little girls echoes the terror it feels when confronted with changing gender norms and female power.

Alarming Innocence: The Terror of Little Girls in The Crucible by Laura Shamas

Miller’s examination of the Salem Witch Trials, held in the Province of Massachusetts Bay from 1692-3, depicts the internal, secretive drive of a New England witch hunt, and how paranoia quickly escalates to devastate a marriage, a family, neighbors, and eventually, to cripple an entire community. The actions of little girls set it all in motion.

The Beth Thomas Story: How a TV Film and Documentary Captured a Child Enraged by Kim Hoffman

Tim and Julie didn’t know about the sexual abuse Beth had been subjected to as early as 19 months old by her father. They didn’t know she was suffering from Reactive Attachment Disorder, a condition that surfaces from past trauma and neglect into oceans of disturbing, detached, unresponsive, and apathetic behavior. They couldn’t possibly know that a young girl could be filled with so much—that much rage.

“The Demon” in Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Ren Jender

Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, a BBC production from 25 years ago, adapted by author Jeanette Winterson and based on her own autobiographical novel, is one of the few films in theaters or on TV which contains both a coming-out story and another parallel, equally compelling story. Seven-year-old, red-haired “Jess” (played as a young child by Emily Aston and as a teen by Charlotte Coleman) grows up in a small town in Lancashire, in the north of England, with her strict Pentecostal adoptive parents; her father, always in the background, is silent and her mother (Geraldine McEwan), front and center, quotes the Bible and denouncing the “heathens” all around her.

Self-Made Orphan: Why We Cringe When Karen Cooper Snacks on Her Dad by Julia Patt

The crumbling cement in this relationship is the injured little girl lying on the table downstairs. Her parents are united only on the question of her safety. Unsurprisingly, Karen has no voice or agency of her own. The adults perceive her as entirely helpless— “Maybe it’s shock,” her mother says of her condition. “She can’t possibly take all the racket…”

Vampire Girls: Claudia and Eli by Kathryn Diaz

In the great monster mash team of terrifying children, the vampire girl is varsity captain. On the one hand, they are dolls forever: trapped in their prepubescent bodies for hundreds to thousands of years without a single curl losing its bounce. On the other hand, with hundreds of years of life come hundreds of years of experience, knowledge, even maturity.

Satan in a Frilly Dress by Gloria Endres de Oliveira

However, this form of social shaming does not seem to prevent some of his young disciples from subverting their supposed childlike innocence: when the town is suddenly riddled by mysterious and violent crimes, it is suggested that the children have something to do with it, their leader being Klara, a 13-year-old angel-faced blonde and the pastor’s eldest daughter.

The Volatility of Motherhood in David Cronenberg’s The Brood by Eli Levy

For Cronenberg, Candy represents the symbolic order and influence of the father, precisely what Nola wishes to eradicate. Candy is supposed to come “home to mommy” and have no fatherly influence. The characters in the film are defined by rigid gender constructs, or alternatively, through their attempts at living up to them.

“But I Do!”: Releasing Repressed Rage in The Ring by Rebecca Willoughby

These abstract symbols not only frighten, but link events in the real world to Samara’s cursed tape: this particular creature recalls the “spiders, snails, and puppy-dog tails” that little girls are decidedly not supposed to be made of. When Rachel engages this videotape, notably created by the patriarchal forces that might be seen to repress Samara, she sees Samara in a sparse hospital room in fast motion, staring at the clock as its hands whirl around and around.

Wednesday Addams, Smasher of the Patriarchy by Deborah Pless

She’s not nice, she’s not fragile, she’s not kind or sweet or even vaguely pleasant. She’s mean and angry and cynical and disaffected and sarcastic and snide and everything I wanted to be as a child. She’s also an intersectional feminist. And a little girl. She’s the best.

Femme Fatale in a Training Bra: Orphan‘s Esther and The Questionable Motives of Lolita Haze by Elizabeth Kiy

Movies where young girls are victimized are generally our idea of real world horrors, movies that are too sickening to sit through, but as much as they unsettle us, we expect them. We see these stories in the news every day. What is made truly terrifying and shocking in our culture is the advanced young girl already aware of her powers, and what she can get with them–a girl who knows how to move, how to dress, and how to manipulate.

Femme Fatale in a Training Bra: ‘Orphan’s Esther and The Questionable Motives of Lolita Haze

This post by Elizabeth Kiy appears as part of our theme week on The Terror of Little Girls.

The unnerving poster for Orphan — The unnerving poster for *Orphan*

It is very rare for a child to be a horror movie villain outside of a supernatural context. While we can turn off the movie, comforted that the children in Village of the Damned or the devil in The Omen’s Damien are fictional, we can’t entirely dismiss a child who simply goes bad, even if the narrative is as far-fetched as demonic possession and werewolves.

It frightens us because we know that an ordinary child going bad is somehow our fault, either as individuals or as a society. We have failed to intervene and save them before they were irredeemable.

In this light, Vladimir Nabokov’s novel Lolita continues to captivate literary discussions due to its unreliable narrator. Humbert Humbert defends himself, saying 12-year-old Dolores Haze seduced and manipulated him. He excuses his sexual relationship with her based on the fact that she had already lost her virginity and therefore he was not corrupting her; she was already to be considered somehow adult. Though most scholars view Humbert’s explanations as lies told to diminish his culpability, it is our tendency as readers to believe our narrator and identify with him (a major reason why the book is so disquieting).

Dominique Swain is a grubby, bratty Lolita

When the 1997 remake of Lolita appeared in theaters, amid protests of its sexual depiction of a child, this reading of the character as the seducer and the party deserving of blame was used as a defense. Likewise, in 1959, novelist Robertson Davies famously described the story as “not the corruption of an innocent child by a cunning adult, but the exploitation of a weak adult by a corrupt child.” Despite the fact that “a corrupt child” is still a child who cannot consent to sexual activity, this view is mirrored in many real life court cases, where the abuse of young girls is excused because “she looked old for her age,” “she was already sexually active,” or that most horrifying of excuses, that paints a girl in a training bra as a whore in waiting: “she seduced me, she knew what she was doing.” If our culture finds the sexual desire of an adult woman to be monstrous and abhorrent, what are we to think of a child, this horror movie bogeyman-figure who seeks to ruin the lives of successful men, whose cries of victimization fall on deaf ears?

It’s a popular misogynistic narrative: the teenage femme fatale turns into a horrific stalker figure, bent on possessing a poor well-meaning man, usually a father figure or teacher. We’ve seen it time and time again in films like Poison Ivy, Devil in the Flesh, and The Crush, all with actresses of safely legal age for viewer lust and obvious attractiveness, and gratuitous shots of their bodies. There’s no question we’re meant to identify with the man and see him as an innocent victim, unsure why this monster-girl has seized upon him, as Joey Buttafuoco attempted to portray himself in the trial of Amy Fisher, the teenage mistress who shot his wife and was thereafter known as the Long Island Lolita.

Sue Lyon plays a glamourous conventionally attractive Lolita — Sue Lyon plays a glamourous, conventionally attractive Lolita

But this viewer-identification is only safe as long as we the audience feel comfortable lusting after the girl at its center. Stanley Kubrick’s 1962 version of Lolita upped the girl’s age from innocent 12 to an ambiguous early teens and eradicated glimpses from the book of Dolores’s gross childishness–the gum she was always chewing, her sticky fingers and snotty nose–that would disgust the audience and make Humbert clearly abhorrent. In addition, while still underage, actress Sue Lyon is of a more mature and glamourous physical type than the book’s Lolita, which makes viewers more comfortable with her sexualization. Dominique Swain in the remake, is the clumsy, sticky child that does (and should) turn us off and makes Humbert, not Lolita, the clear monster of the story.

The Colemans are charmed by sweet Esther

When it was released in 2009, Orphan was painted as a simple evil child movie, The Good Son with pigtails and a controversial anti-adoption stance. For awhile the narrative is conventional; Esther (Isabelle Fuhrman) is a charismatic girl who can control and manipulate weaker children, like her new sister, Max, and adults. She attacks the girl who bullies her, kills a nun who promises to look into her back story and puts her adoptive brother in intensive care.

But the use of Esther as an advanced child, not only causally murderous but strangely sexual, adds a new dimension to this tale, marrying the evil child with the sexual stalker. Esther flirts with her adoptive father and attempts to kiss him and shocks her adoptive mother by stating matter-of-factly that she knows babies are made by men and women “fucking.”

There’s enough maternal and familial angst in the film to initially distract from Esther. The Colemans, a wealthy Connecticut family, decide to adopt a child to fill the void left after a miscarriage. Kate (Vera Farmiga) in particular feels the loss. Her husband and children are already wary of her because of her depression and alcoholism and refuse to believe her suspicions that something is very wrong with the angelic little girl they’ve brought into their home.

Through the film’s multiple acts, our view of Esther dramatically changes. Initially she is a perfect model child bullied for being sensitive and desperately in need of love, then she is a sociopathic child who hurts others without remorse, and finally, she is a crazy seducer, refusing to accept that she is not a sexy mature-bodied woman. In the film’s final act, we learn she is really a 33-year-old escaped mental patient with a pituitary disorder who has been posing as a child to be adopted by families and seduce the fathers.

Esther is made grotesque when she is revealed to be a 33-year old woman — Esther is made grotesque when she is revealed to be a 33-year-old woman

However, we see her strange sexual behavior before we learn that she is an adult woman, and it is clearly used to make us uncomfortable. As stated above, our culture’s fear of an overly sexualized child is rooted in our sense of guilt. We assume a child with this behaviour must be damaged in some way, must have fallen through the cracks of social services. Even if a child like Esther is a villain, we are obligated to feel sorry for her and speculate on the abuse she must have experienced. Orphan introduces Esther as a lonely, distanced child who has a difficult time relating to other people and children her age. It’s a narrative we’re already familiar with about children shuffled though orphanages and foster care, because in many cases it is a real life horror story.

Esther attempts to seduce her adoptive father

As such, we would ordinarily be wary of punishing Esther for her actions or question the degree of blame she deserves. A adult or teenage murderer must be killed or incarcerated to be disarmed, but what can we do with a little girl?

When The Bad Seed came out in 1956, The Hays Code put filmmakers in a difficult situation. Evil Rhoda (Patty McCormack) was not allowed to triumph, as she did in the source novel and play, as the code did not allow crime to pay, so the ending was rewritten to with Rhoda dying after being struck by lightening. Still, ending a film with the death of a child and using it as a cause for celebration would not sit well with audiences. A slapstick coda was pasted on, where Nancy Kelly, who played Rhoda’s mother, delivers a spanking to McCormack, intended to stress that it was only a movie and all meant in good fun.

In Orphan, the solution is to reveal she is not actually a little girl, and thus, can be punished harshly. We don’t need to worry about her parents or her upbringing or possible rehabilitation. We don’t need to feel sorry for her. She is officially a monster, a freak, so we can hit her with a shovel or throw her across the room and breathe satisfied. The reveal of her actual face, beneath the make-up and freed from her false teeth is horrifying in itself, as she suddenly looks like an adult woman. With this reveal, she becomes a legitimate monster, an adult face on a child’s tiny body, wrinkled and malformed, crawling around and fighting like an animal.

Esther views herself as trapped inside the body of a child and unable to live the life of a grown woman with a family and a lover. Because of her appearance, any attempt of hers to be a sexual being is automatically perverted.

Her jealousy of Kate, who has everything she is denied, contributes to the uniquely antagonistic relationship between them. Because Kate is able to see through Esther’s act, she is marked as her rival early on, even while Kate still sees Esther as her child. When Esther says “fuck,” she poses it as a challenge to Kate. If Esther is a child, there is nothing Kate can really do to her and not seem like the criminal. In most cases, being a child means you’re the one to be believed.

By the film’s end, as it devolves into a classic chase/fight scene, Esther and Kate become equals and Esther is validated as a romantic rival. These final scenes mirror chase/fight scenes between adult romantic rivals, like Fatal Attraction and Single White Female. It is very rare that an “evil kid” movie ends with the mother fighting the child, in these films the mother is usually killed earlier, as in The Omen.

In the end, movies like Orphan and stories like Lolita challenge our morality and our idea of what a child can be found guilty of. Orphan’s final twist allows us some relief from this uncertainty. If Esther’s not a child, if Lolita is aged up and filled out, we’re not allowed to be uncomfortable, even if it doesn’t change the meat of the story.

_________________________________________________________________________

Elizabeth Kiy is a Canadian writer and journalist living in Toronto, Ontario.

Wednesday Addams, Smasher of the Patriarchy

Wednesday Addams, as played by Christina Ricci in Addams Family Values — Wednesday Addams, as played by Christina Ricci in *Addams Family Values*

This cross-post by Deborah Pless previously appeared at her blog, Kiss My Wonder Woman, and appears as part of our theme week on The Terror of Little Girls. Cross-posted with permission.

What does it mean to be a little girl? There’s so much cultural baggage associated with female childhood. On the one hand, little girls are pure and innocent and needing of protection. They’re the emotional backdrop of a thousand action movies – the father must get home and save his darling little girl. On the other hand, little girls are threatening. They’re creepy. They’re the demons of a thousand horror movies – the family unit must save itself from the imprecations of a terrifying little girl who wants to destroy them.

And then there’s Wednesday Addams. She’s another thing entirely.

Wednesday Addams was the hero of my childhood. She was little girl who looked sort of like me, who was pasty and awkward, but who took no crap from anyone. Who defended her right to self-determination with a vengeance if needed. Who spoke up for those who weren’t given a voice. Who set fire to her enemies. I’m not saying it was healthy or tame, but she was my favorite character as a child. In a lot of ways, she still is.

Wednesday and her nemesis Amanda (Mercedes McNab)

The Addams Family movies of the early 90s (The Addams Family and Addams Family Values) were the kind of movies that never really made sense logically, but somehow worked all the same. They were loose on plot and big on tone, with outlandish storylines pretty much just there so that the actual Addams family had something to react to.

The movies were like extended improv sessions, where we stuck the Addams family members in weird situations and got to watch how they reacted. See Gomez and Morticia go to parent teacher meetings! Watch Wednesday and Pugsley at summer camp! What’s an Addams family wedding like? A birthday party?

The point of the movies was never the plot, but rather the experience of the characters in contrast to the world around them, and as long as you remember that, the movies hold up very well. They’re still fun and weird and kooky and occasionally deeply disturbing. They’re still deeply ridiculous. And Wednesday is still really, really threatening.

That’s right, threatening. Part of why I loved these movies so much as a kid was because Wednesday, far from being a delicate flower, or even playing second fiddle to her brother, is arguably the most dangerous character in the whole story. She has a sense of apathy and morbid misery mixed in with a violent streak and superhuman strength. She’s very threatening. Especially to everyone she views as, well, a threat.

Wednesday’s first impression of summer camp

Now, admittedly, most of this is coming from Addams Family Values. While I really do enjoy The Addams Family, it’s not until the second movie that Wednesday’s character really crystallizes, and there’s a good reason for that. Simply put, in the second movie, she’s at precisely the right age to perfectly subvert our expectations of girlhood.

In Family Values, Wednesday is directly prepubescent–a tween, if that were ever an appropriate word to apply to her. She’s just on the cusp of developing hormonal urges, secondary sexual characteristics, and a more formed idea about who she herself will be as an adult. But, she is still a child, so she still occupies that cultural space of supposed innocence and vulnerability. She’s at once both a potentially developed teen, and a fragile child.

The movie addresses this dissonance early on. When Wednesday and Pugsley are dropped off at summer camp – as part of a duplicitous plot to get them out of the way – one of the other moms comes up to Morticia and asks after Wednesday. Morticia responds, “Oh, Wednesday’s at that very special age a girl has just one thing on her mind.”

“Boys?” asks the excited upper-class white woman.

“Homicide.”

The expectation for Wednesday in this movie, at least the expectation of those around her, is that she fit into either one or the other roles of idealized femininity. Either she can be a pure and adorable child, something Wednesday is not naturally inclined towards, or she can be a teenage temptress, something she similarly has little interest in. Throughout the film the camp counselors try to turn Wednesday into a normal child, punishing her with Disney movies and singalongs, while a secondary plot tempts her with the offer of romance, albeit romance with an asthmatic, morbid fellow outcast.

Pugsley (Jimmy Workman), Wednesday, and Joel (David Krumholtz)

It’s telling then that Wednesday eschews both of these options. She flirts with Joel (David Krumholtz), but is very ambiguous about whether or not she wants his attention. While at one point she does say a tearful goodbye to him, using endearments and kissing his cheek I think, later she seems utterly uninterested in his existence, and admits that if someone loved her as much as he implies he does, she would pity him and probably murder him.

So, not so much the icon of seductive femininity. But neither is she a convincing child, because Wednesday possesses a level of awareness about the world and frankly alarming superhuman strength that make it virtually impossible to view her as someone in need of protection. Because she isn’t someone in need of protection. She’s not just virtually unkillable, she’s also unconcerned with her own safety. She’s not afraid, and weirdly that’s much more terrifying.

Wednesday isn’t scared of what might happen to her, she’s only afraid of being forced to submit to cultural standards she doesn’t agree with. She’s perfectly willing to risk life and limb (hers and other people’s), but she’s terrified of Disney movies. I would say that if she fears anything, it’s becoming normal.

And that’s a powerful message. The idea that the biggest thing we have to fear is not abnormality but the loss of what makes us distinct. It’s especially poignant coming from Wednesday, because what makes her distinct is so, well, distinctive. As Joel says when Wednesday asks if he’ll ever forget her, “How could I? You’re too weird.”

But let’s bring all of this back around again: how is Wednesday Addams a smasher of the patriarchy? Because she uses this discomfort around her, the fact that adults and her peers have absolutely no way to categorize her and her place in society, to sabotage them. She uses her place as a “child” to speak truth to power, and as a “woman” to make them uncomfortable. I mean, the best example of this, and my favorite moment of the movie, is when Wednesday destroys the camp’s end of summer play.

Wednesday as Pocahontas in the camp play

The play is horrible, a mawkish retelling of the first Thanksgiving that somehow manages to be more offensive than usual. The main character is Sarah Miller, played by Wednesday’s blonde camper nemesis, Amanda, and Sarah Miller goes on long speeches about how superior Western culture is, before admitting Pocahontas, played by Wednesday, and her tribe – played by all of the other camp outcasts.

Wednesday plays along with the script for a few lines, and then takes it on a rapid detour:

“Wait, we can not break bread with you. You have taken the land which is rightfully ours. Years from now my people will be forced to live in mobile homes on reservations. Your people will wear cardigans and drink highballs. We will sell our bracelets by the road sides, and you will play golf. My people will have pain and degradation. Your people will have stick shifts. The gods of my tribe have spoken. They said do not trust the pilgrims. And especially do not trust Sarah Miller. For all these reasons I have decided to scalp you and burn your village to the ground.”

Which they then proceed to do.

Now, this speech is wonderful because it so directly confronts all of the assumptions made earlier in the play, and because it speaks up on behalf of those who are being misrepresented, even though they are not there to defend themselves.* But it’s also wonderful because it’s the kind of thing that only a child could say. Specifically a little girl. I mean, if a boy said that, can’t you imagine the camp directors just picking him up and dragging him off the stage? If a teenage girl were to say it, she would be ruining something for children. If an adult said it, well they wouldn’t be given the opportunity would they?

Wednesday is the only character in the film who can make that speech, and it’s all the more powerful for how it subverts their expectations of her. It’s also worth noting that this speech is followed by a strong reversal. Wednesday, Pugsley, Joel, and the other camp outcasts (who are notably children of color and differing abilities) overthrow the camp leadership, burn the campgrounds, and are actually seen roasting their camp directors on a spit.

The idea of course being that if you’re not afraid of anything, then you can accomplish pretty much whatever you set your mind to. Wednesday isn’t afraid of repercussions or bodily harm, and she has the assurance that her family will support her no matter what, so she’s emboldened to act out. She smashes the patriarchy, literally, and she can get away with it because she’s a little kid. No one’s expecting it. Arguably by this point in the movie they really should be, but they’re not.

I’m not saying Wednesday is perfect. She isn’t. She’s still a very privileged white girl from an unusual but still pretty standard background. She hails from a nuclear family and has never known want or hunger (except maybe voluntarily because she’s weird).

But that’s honestly OK. She’s a slightly problematic representation of intersectional feminism, but at least she is a representation of intersectional feminism. And, even better, she’s an unapologetically outspoken dissenter. She’s sure of who she is and what the world ought to be, and she’s perfectly comfortable telling everyone that–with a smirk and a sneer and a withering glance.

Hell yes, Wednesday Addams is smashing the patriarchy by not conforming to social expectations, being a creeptastic little girl, and inviting you to join her. Right on.

*Arguably one of the only big criticisms that can be made of this movie from a thematic standpoint is that this speech is given by Wednesday, an upper-class white girl, rather than an actual Native American, but it would be hard to change that in the narrative without drastically changing the story, and I think it’s worth having someone say it at least. Still, worth noting, the upper-class white privileged girl really doesn’t speak for everyone.

Deborah Pless runs Kiss My Wonder Woman and works as a freelance writer and editor in Western Washington when she’s not busy camping out at the movies or watching too much TV. You can follow her on Twitter and Tumblr just as long as you like feminist rants, an obsession with superheroes, and sandwiches.

“But I Do!”: Releasing Repressed Rage in ‘The Ring’

This guest post by Rebecca Willoughby appears as part of our theme week on The Terror of Little Girls.

If horror films with little girls at their centers express anxieties about puberty, female potential, or the morphing of charming young women into screeching harpies, then The Ring is probably one of the best examples. Its little girl, Samara Morgan, seems to be just plain inexplicably evil.

If recounted chronologically, her “real world” back story goes something like this: Samara was adopted by Richard and Anna Morgan when Anna failed (repeatedly) to conceive. I should note that I’m not talking about the sequels, which to me are clearly made not because we necessarily want to know more about the story and the characters, but because the first film enjoyed some financial success. Anyway, after the adoption, strange things begin to happen at the Morgan’s horse ranch, including the animals going crazy and drowning themselves. Anna begins seeing things, and believes the terrifying images are generated by Samara. The Morgans decide to seek psychiatric treatment for Anna and for Samara; at some point both are released, but Anna is still disturbed. Believing Samara to be the source of her visions, Anna suffocates her daughter and throws her into a well, then leaps off a cliff near their home.

But Samara isn’t dead, and spends seven days expiring at the bottom of said well. Afterward, well, even if she wasn’t evil before, she certainly has an axe to grind. Samara’s supernatural obsession becomes “showing” people terrible “things,” through her strange psychic ability, which gives her the power to create media—this special talent eventually takes the form of a cursed videotape that kills the viewer seven days after watching. Usually this process involves a very waterlogged and very scary-looking Samara crawling out of a leaky television set and looking at the victim with her very angry eye, whereupon that victim also suddenly becomes very scary-looking and waterlogged, but also totally dead.

When I saw the film on its release, I slept with the lights on for seven days. Yes, me: horror film aficionista, one who has seen some pretty intense stuff in the service of her dissertation research. Right. While at the time I was kind of obsessed with figuring out just why the film scared me so much, now I am kind of obsessed with one scene—hell, just a few shots—and one line of dialogue from the movie.

It’s probably not the scene that immediately springs to the mind of most folks who have seen the film. It’s not the last terrifying moments in Noah’s (Martin Henderson) life where a slimy Samara (Daveigh Chase) slithers out of a television screen and stalks him across his studio apartment to fulfill her awful curse. It’s not even the first of many interruptions of the linear narrative with shocking or weird images: where in the midst of Rachel’s (Naomi Watts) conversation with her bereaved sister Ruth (Lindsay Frost), we’re treated to a brief shot of poor Katie (Amber Tamlyn), the film’s first victim, crouched in a closet with a horrifying look on her dead face. It’s the scene when Rachel, previously rebuffed by Mr. Morgan in her search to discover who Anna Morgan and her daughter were, returns to his farm at night (brilliant move in a horror film) and stumbles upon a videotape of Samara Morgan’s psychotherapy.

We know that something significant is about to happen because—aside from the usual horror film suspense buildup—Rachel is surprised by a centipede as she rifles through a box of the Morgan’s belongings. She’s seen this centipede before in the fabled videotape that kills you, and throughout the film images from the tape seem to intrude little by little onto the real world. These abstract symbols not only frighten, but link events in the real world to Samara’s cursed tape: this particular creature recalls the “spiders, snails, and puppy-dog tails” that little girls are decidedly not supposed to be made of. When Rachel engages this videotape, notably created by the patriarchal forces that might be seen to repress Samara, she sees Samara in a sparse hospital room in fast motion, staring at the clock as its hands whirl around and around. An off-camera doctor indicates that they are in hour 14 of therapy–a therapy where Samara is wired with electrodes, plugged into a wall, and asked a variety of questions. The doctor makes several inquiries before she responds. But the most disturbing and important moment occurs when, just after Samara asserts that she loves her mommy, the Doc indicates that Samara is hurting her. When he says, “You don’t want to hurt anyone,” Samara responds: “But I do, and I’m sorry. It won’t stop.”

A revelation! A young girl supposedly given up by her family, subsequently adopted, and then poked and prodded by medical science and creepy male psychologists admits to having feelings other than love, maternity, and joy? Amazing! So although as a society we might locate a lot of anxiety in the maturation of young girls, this film—at least for a moment—doesn’t repress the idea that young girls might have feelings other than the ones society tells them to have. What’s problematic, of course, is that the film sees this admission as evidence of Samara’s evil. While the film overall may not be very progressive in terms of its depiction of women, and young girls in particular, it does have this ONE MOMENT of openness, like a valve releasing some of the pressure of repression.

In addition to admitting that she wants to hurt people, Samara is plagued by the idea that her adopted father is going to leave her in the institution, that he doesn’t love her. Eventually, her mother kills her, ostensibly because her idealization of what it means to be a mother didn’t come true exactly as she envisioned it. Because her adopted daughter isn’t “sugar and spice and everything nice” all the time. The expectations that society doles out for young girls and for mothers is far from realistic. Is this disconnect the real horror?

I’d like to take a moment to point out that Aiden (David Dorfman), Rachel’s young son, is far from a normal kid. He’s able to channel that creepy-but-probably-our-hero vibe that was perhaps first perfected by Haley Joel Osment in The Sixth Sense just a few years before The Ring. Rachel is also probably not up for a Mom-of-the-Year Award; like Anna and Richard Morgan, she and Noah haven’t been the best parents in the world. Ruth Goldberg has written insightfully about the mirroring present in The Ring between Anna and Richard Morgan and Rachel and Noah with Aiden in Barry Keith Grant’s book on horror film, The Planks of Reason. It’s very clear that while Aiden is a model kid—picking out not only his clothes for Katie’s funeral, but Rachel’s as well, and being extraordinarily self-sufficient because Rachel is working all the time—Rachel and Noah are far from model parents. While she certainly doesn’t seem to share Anna Morgan’s homicidal ideas, Rachel’s life is not exactly constructed to be conducive to having a young child; she relies on Aiden’s capable nature to take up the slack. So really, part of the “terror” of little girls has to do with their mothers—the expectations that society heaps upon them for a “perfect” child, and that they must always, under all circumstances (including unrelenting evil) love their offspring. Certainly reality is far more complicated, and motherhood and childhood much more complex. If The Ring is expressing THAT anxiety, then the film’s success should be evidence that this is a conversation society needs to have.

On that note, one final word on sequels. I might have tipped my hand in the paragraphs above about my general feelings for them, but I do at the end of the day have a hard time believing that any film project is mounted for purely financial or business-oriented reasons. I have to think that there’s just too much work involved in an endeavor like filmmaking to justify it with solely materialistic motives. Therefore, if there are sequels to The Ring (which there are, but which I judge to be inferior in many ways to the style of the original—which was not even an “original,” but that’s another essay), then it’s because there’s some deeper driving force behind the need to express the anxieties at their center. So, I’ll tentatively say: onward to The Ring 3! Perhaps the most frightening things about this film in the end are its telling links to some of the more frightening aspects of our own society. If it takes sequels to work those issues out, bring them on.

Rebecca Willoughby holds a Ph.D. in English and Film Studies from Lehigh University. She writes most frequently on horror films and melodrama, and is a Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.

The Volatility of Motherhood in David Cronenberg’s ‘The Brood’

This guest post by Eli Lewy appears as part of our theme week on The Terror of Little Girls.

The association between women and reproductive activities is a common theme in horror films. Female genitals have been perceived as mysterious and uncanny by men during the course of Western history. In Canadian film director David Cronenberg’s 1979 film The Brood, Nola, a wife and mother, is in a psychiatric institution where she uses Dr. Raglan’s methods of psychoplasmics to manifest her emotional and psychological troubles physically. Nola has failed in her role as a nurturing mother to her daughter Candy, and being a loving stable wife to her husband Frank, a leading cause of her psychological fragmentation. Nola’s inner rage and pain causes her to form an external womb-like sac that gives birth to evil children with whom she shares a telepathic bond. Nola’s ability to give birth parthenogenetically[1] is what constructs her as “monstrous.” Her womb, one of the primary symbols of biological womanhood, is constructed as being a volatile space filled with danger.

In The Brood, Frank, Nola’s husband, attempts to act as the protector of his daughter Candy against the evil mother, Nola. For Cronenberg, Candy represents the symbolic order and influence of the father, precisely what Nola wishes to eradicate. Candy is supposed to come “home to mommy” and have no fatherly influence. The characters in the film are defined by rigid gender constructs, or alternatively, through their attempts at living up to them.

Frank, who has recently separated from Nola, is discriminated against in the judicial system even though his wife is far from capable of nurturing Candy. When Frank attempts to take steps against Nola and get full custody of his daughter, his lawyer plainly tells him that he has no legal rights to deny Nola of her mothering responsibilities as “the law believes in motherhood.” The filmmaker suggests that even unfit mothers are preferred over fathers. The criticism of the supposed female dominance over the realm of the family in the film is clear once the audiences realize what kind of a mother Nola really is. The horror occurs when the father is powerless, rendered irrelevant by a “monstrous” mother.

Nola is in desperate need of feeling loved and accepted by Frank, who in turn, is disgusted by her. The Brood broaches the idea of a hereditary female cycle of abuse and evil: Nola’s mother was emotionally and physically abusive toward her which, in turn, caused Nola to be abusive toward her young daughter Candy. The Brood complies with the ancient sexist notion that maternal desire is the source of monstrosity (Creed 46). Most of Dr. Raglan’s patients’ rage manifests itself in boils and lesions, unlike Nola, whose rage comes in the form of an external womb capable of birthing deformed beings. Not only is her body and mental state in shambles, she has incorporated the brood children into the mix who bring harm to others. This conveys a message that Cronenberg returns to frequently: females who dare to be aggressive and expressive destruct others. Nola’s rage is seen as something that the women in her family inherited, but there is no attempt at understanding why this has happened.

During Candy’s stay with her grandmother, she sees a picture of her mother as a child in the hospital. Nola looks a lot like Candy; in fact, she is played by the same young actress. This is the first instance in which Candy shows some sense of presence, interest, and involvement in the film as she is usually catatonic and detached. The traumatic events she has lived through are reflected in her blank stare. Candy is one of the main victims in the film; she witnesses her grandmother’s death, gets viciously beaten by the brood, and is constantly under threat.

Candy could easily be mistaken for one of the brood children with her straight blonde hair and the almost identical red parka. In fact, even her own father mistakes Candy for a brood for a fleeting second. The brood children know that she needs to come with them to the institute; they are the same in some way. However, once Nola commands her brood to attack Candy, their blood ties no longer matter and they intend on killing Candy.

Candy in peril after Nola orders the brood children to kill her

When Frank attempts to save the kidnapped Candy, he comes face to face with Nola for the first time in the film. A primal birthing scene ensues. She is sitting on a platform in a regal manner. Nola questions Frank’s love for her and confidently explains that “what’s been happening to me is too strange, too strange to share with anyone from my old life.” She then proceeds to raise her arms to reveal what lies underneath her white nightgown: her external womb. The whiteness of Nola’s robe is juxtaposed with the “monstrosity” that lies beneath. The camera switches between Nola’s confident, queen-like posing and Frank’s pure and utter disgust for what his eyes are seeing.

As though the sight of this hideous sac were not enough, Nola proceeds to bend over, bite the sac, and take out her bloodied brood fetus. However, the epitome of Nola’s “freakishness” is yet to come. Nola licks away the blood and amniotic fluid, irrevocably propelling Nola to an abject being completely comfortable with her animalistic maternal instincts, reproductive functions, and disfigurement. We see all this unfold though Frank’s eyes – we are him in this scene, disgusted and disbelieving. Nola changes from human to monster. She was unaware of the fact that the brood children are murderous, but once Frank tells her she does not change her demeanor and smiles maniacally, condoning her progeny’s actions. Rage and psychoplasmics have sucked the humanity out of her. Once Frank tells her the truth, which is that he is there to take their daughter away from her, Nola coldly says, “I’d kill Candice rather than let you take her away from me.” Frank then proceeds to leap and strangle his wife to death. He begs her to make the brood children stop what they are doing to Candy, but Nola is too far gone, her humanity has been stripped away. Nola’s plea to “kill me, kill me” is masochistic; she is letting Frank give into his urge to destroy the maternal (Beard 85). Frank is full of rage while killing Nola, which is the only effective thing he does throughout the picture. However, this does not prevent Candy from being exposed to the disease; he has not saved her. We then see the boil on her arm at the end of the film, implying that Candy will carry on the dubious honor of the clan’s “female legacy.”

Works Cited

Beard, William. The Artist as Monster: The Cinema of David Cronenberg. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 2006.

Creed, Barbara. The Monstrous Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis. London and New York: Routledge. 1993.

Eli Lewy is a third culture kid, burgeoning filmmaker, and Master’s student studying US Studies. She currently resides in Berlin. You can read her film review blog here: www.film-nut.tumblr.com and follow her on twitter at @scopophiliafilm

[1] Reproduction that occurs with the ovum only.