Bitch Flicks – Page 92 – The radical notion that women like good movies

You Never Want to Do Something Interesting: How ‘You’re Next’ Became One of the Most Empowering Horror Films for Women

This woman comes from a land where they eat Vegemite by choice. Of course she's tough. — This woman comes from a land where they eat Vegemite by choice. Of course she’s tough.

This guest post by BJ Colangelo previously appeared at her blog Day of the Woman and is cross-posted with permission.

It has been dissected time and time again on the way the horror genre has misrepresented women both on the screen and off, but whenever a film comes along and represents a female character as something different, we immediately bring praise to the filmmakers. While this practice is admittedly problematic, the only reason we stress the importance of these “strong female characters” is in large part due to the lack of positive female representation. The “weak” female character has proven to be a safe staple within the horror genre, and somewhat of a requirement in the slasher genre. Simply put, no one ever wants to do anything interesting. Witness Simon Barrett, Adam Wingard, Sharni Vinson, and the creation of You’re Next.

I wonder what George Orwell would say about this... — I wonder what George Orwell would say about this…

We’ve all seen the advertisements, a majority of us own those damn animal masks, and some of us horror geeks have giant boners for AJ Bowen and Barbara Crampton. You’re Next was the talk of the horror world, and the overall consensus is that the film kicks all sorts of ass. (It does, trust me.) People keep bringing up how You’re Next has taken the home-invasion sub-genre and spun it on its head. Most importantly, however, is the fact You’re Next may very well be one of the most empowering horror films for women, ever.

(NOTE: If you haven’t seen You’re Next, you need to 1. stop what you’re doing and see the film and 2. understand that this piece is an analysis and events of the film WILL be spoiled.)

Starting with the matriarch of the family, we have horror demi-goddess, Barbara Crampton as “Aubrey.” While this character on the surface seems to be following the trend of every other not-exactly-sober mother in a slasher film, Aubrey brings something that few other maternal horror figure has: heart. Aubrey is one of the most well-constructed mother characters because of her undeniable love for her family. Mothers in horror films are often seen as skeptical, heartless, drunk, or cruel. Aubrey is very protective of her family and showcases this throughout the entire film. She questions things when no one else will and despite the obvious dysfunction of her children, she dedicates herself to them just the same. What struck me as the most empowering, is the fact Aubrey actually mourns. Most horror movie mothers are seen as women flying off the handle with absolutely no control of their lives. They panic and make stupid decisions. Aubrey on the other hand realizes the situation at hand and mourns for her family. Her true dedication and love for her family is admirable, and unlike most of the mothers we see in horror films.

But bringing home a starving artist was my extent of rebellion!

Aimee, the golden daughter of the family (played by Amy Seimetz) is one of the more minor characters and is killed off early because of it. The daddy’s girl and “princess” of the children appears to do no wrong. She is immediately shown as the least liked of the siblings, but the most adored by the parents. Her death brings out the strongest reaction from the parental units, but the weakest reaction from the rest of the family. Her good-girl persona seems to be something she uses to her advantage (overly excited introductions to other people, extreme affection towards her father) but is also something she desperately wants to rid out of her life (meet my starving artist/filmmaker boyfriend wearing the douchiest scarf this side of a Bright Eyes concert played by Ti West, TAKE THAT DAD!). However, she represents an ideal that a lot of women strive to possess. How do we treat ideals, ladies and germs? WE KILL THEM OFF AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE. Ideals are boring, one-dimensional, and unrealistic.

I may look like Olivia Wilde in TRON, but I will bone you in ways Freud could never interpret. — I may look like Olivia Wilde in *TRON*, but I will bone you in ways Freud could never interpret.

Wendy Glenn as “Zee” makes for an incredibly interesting female villain. Most female villains are seen as nothing more than pure evil, while Zee represents the true complexity of the female mind. Although she is originally viewed as an unenthusiastic familial girlfriend being dragged against her will to a gathering with her dysfunctional potential in-laws, we quickly discover her character is actually quite unique. It’s important to note that throughout the entire first 3/4 of the film, Zee is acting. She is playing into the roles assigned to her and does them effortlessly. Once the big twist is revealed, Zee is no longer the doting girlfriend. She is 100 percent handling her instincts and her motives. At this point, her boyfriend, Felix, is no longer her motivator. She has done her best to comfort him in his time of need, but her demands are her demands. She tries to seduce Felix while laying next to the corpse of his dead mother, and when he declines she responds, “You never want to do anything interesting.” While it may be a bit exaggerated, Zee stomps on the idea that women are not sexually aggressive and the idea that women aren’t as sexually creative as our male counterparts. Hate to out my lady friends, but women are just as big of perverts as men. Showing this sexually progressive woman was refreshing to see (even if her kink was a little TOO far for my comfort zone). This progressive attitude is thanked by being the only female character not murdered by an animal, but instead by her fellow woman.

OH MY GOD! I WILLINGLY WORE A RUFFLED COLLAR TO A DINNER PARTY!

The snobbish WASPy lover of Joe Swanberg, Kelly, is played beautifully by Margaret Laney. Kelly is the woman everyone knows and plays nice with even though they can’t stand her. Entitled, selfish, judgmental, and a total prude, Kelly represents that rich girl who lives off of Mommy and Daddy’s money and therefore feels like she’s better than everyone else. She completely hits the panic button when disaster strikes and runs purely off of emotion, a very stereotypically “girly” reaction to chaos. She also serves as the two-sided opposite to Zee and Erin. Zee and Erin both want what Kelly and Aimee have (money and an established life of stability). This is represented physically by the fact that both Kelly and Aimee wear their hair up (a symbol of a dignified and “put together” lady) while Zee and Erin don their hair down. Although, Kelly is not perfect as she DOES show the most skin of any of the characters in the film, and does pop pills. How is this woman thanked for her attitude? The judgmental bitch is thrown like a stone in a glass house — through a glass window.

Don't let Step Up 3D fool you, she's a bonafide badass. — Don’t let *Step Up 3D* fool you, she’s a bonafide badass.

Most obviously, we were given the most bad-ass final girl this side of Nancy Thompson. Sharni Vinson’s “Erin” ushered in an entirely new form of female final girls. Unlike the virginal final girls that only survived because they fell into the trope of being pure and exactly what society wants women to be (sexually attainable without having sex), Erin was a strong-willed female character capable of defending herself using a combination of beauty, brains, and brawn. She remains cool and collected when necessary but not without the guts to completely bludgeon to death anyone that crosses her. With the booby trap preparation skills that would make Kevin McAllister proud, Erin understands that in this life, you’ve got to take care of yourself.

Erin is never once dressed scantily (not that there’s anything wrong with that) and she’s never over-sexualized. She’s merely your everyday woman living the way she chooses. She’s progressive in that she left a TA position (meaning, this is where her mentioned student loans are coming from as this would forfeit any scholarship) to be with the professor she had fallen in love with. Whether or not Barrett made this intentional, there’s also a remarkable feminist analysis of Erin’s strength.

*I’m about to put on a psychoanalytical/psychosexual hat, you’ve been warned.* Erin is a female fighting a bunch of male animals with incredibly phallic weapons. In the Animal Kingdom, the alpha male is always seen as a dominant and physically aggressive creature while the alpha female is important for breeding purposes. Erin completely changes the game. Her male animal attackers are shooting arrows at her (reminiscent of the way animals “mark their territory” and determine things to be off-limits to other animals) or trying to insert overly long phallic machetes (hurray for wiener imagery) into her body. 99.99 percent of the time, female horror victims express pains in sounds that resemble an orgasm. Erin expresses pain with barbaric wails or subdued sounds of pain; never once does she sound post-coital. This simple action shows that Erin is a woman that is not defined by the male sexuality, but secure in her own identity. *Takes off psychoanalytical/psychosexual hat.*

The “strong female lead” we were promised with the Evil Dead remake and didn’t get was hand delivered on a silver platter in the form of Sharni Vinson. Kudos, Barrett/Wingard. You hit one out of the park for women in horror.

YOU’RE NEXT PASSES THE BECHDEL TEST. HOLY MOTHER OF GOD.

BJ Colangelo is the woman behind the keyboard for Day of the Woman: A blog for the feminine side of fear and a contributing writer for Icons of Fright. She’s been published in books, magazines, numerous online publications, all while frantically applying for day jobs. She’s a recovering former child beauty queen and a die-hard horror fanatic. You can follow her on Twitter at @BJColangelo.

‘Laggies’ and the Perils of Success

Lynn Shelton’s best known films, the great ‘Humpday’ and the equally delightful ‘Your Sister’s Sister’ stood out in a similar way. Shelton devised and wrote scripts that became the basis for the actors’ improvisation (with the ‘”‘final draft’ put together in the editing room”)–and made films that seemed fresh and distinct from the usual Hollywood product. Each film had a surprisingly tight structure and was funny in ways that never occured to mainstream filmmakers. As I sat through Shelton’s latest movie, ‘Laggies,’ (which opens this Friday, Oct. 24) I couldn’t help feeling deflated. Shelton’s transformation into a mainstream director is a little like if Bergman had had second thoughts and ended up going on a diet and let Hollywood makeup artists make her unrecognizable.

Years ago, when Ingrid Bergman first went to work in Hollywood (after a successful career in Sweden), she was wary of how American movie studios had changed the appearance of other European actresses once they were under contract. The Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo who appeared in films stateside looked very different from the actresses of the same name who were in European films a few years before. Bergman opted to keep her own eyebrows and resisted pressure to lose weight. She also wore more natural makeup than was the rule for other actresses working in Hollywood at the time. Her toned-down but still radiant look, along with her talent, may be why Bergman’s presence in films connected with audiences: she stood out among the crowd of Max-Factored, Hollywood actresses with deep hollows under sharp cheekbones.

Lynn Shelton’s best known films, the great Humpday and the equally delightful Your Sister’s Sister stood out in a similar way. Shelton devised and wrote scripts that became the basis for the actors’ improvisation (with the ‘“‘final draft’ put together in the editing room”)–and made films that seemed fresh and distinct from the usual Hollywood product. Each film had a surprisingly tight structure and was funny in ways that never occurred to mainstream filmmakers. As I sat through Shelton’s latest movie, Laggies, I couldn’t help feeling deflated. Shelton’s transformation into a mainstream director is a little like if Bergman had had second thoughts and ended up going on a diet and letting Hollywood makeup artists make her unrecognizable.

Laggies has a traditional script (in every respect) by Andrea Seigel and names familiar from the multiplex in the lead roles: Keira Knightley as Megan, an underachieving 20-something, Chloë Grace Moretz as Annika, the high school student she befriends and Sam Rockwell as Annika’s single Dad, Craig, who works as a divorce lawyer.

At the very beginning of the film we see Megan after her own prom hanging out with her best high school girlfriends in terribly framed and shot “home video.” We can barely see their faces: a clever and effective solution to the movie quandary of showing characters over a decade younger than they appear in the rest of the film. Unlike most people, who move on from their high school friends during college or in other parts of young adulthood, Megan is still hanging out with the same clique and we see from the beginning that they have grown apart. During the small, private, bachelorette party for her friend Allison (Ellie Kemper, playing a snide variation of the same character she played in Bridesmaids) we see her friends snip at her for everything from her working for her father, holding a sign pointing to his business, to touching the chest of a huge, tacky, gold-painted statue at the Chinese restaurant where the party takes place. Perpetually irritated Allison asks, “Why would you tweak the nipples? That’s Buddha.” (actually it’s Budai the so-called “laughing Buddha,” but I don’t expect the characters to know the difference).

Megan has a nice-guy, live-in boyfriend Anthony (Mark Webber), also a relic from high school, who proposes to her at Allison’s wedding reception. Megan’s reaction when she sees him start to get down on one knee is to gasp and say, “No, no, whoa! Get up!”

Megan first meets Annika outside a liquor store when the teen approaches her with a flimsy story about her and her obviously underage friends that culminates in the question: could Megan buy liquor for them? Megan says, “Someone did this for me when I was your age. It’s like a rite of passage.”

Annika says, “I had a good feeling about you.”

Megan cracks, “That makes one of us.”

That night, Megan hangs out with and gets very drunk with the teens and through a series of contrivances ends up staying at Annika’s home for a week–accompanying her to teen parties, the mall and taking part in a sleepover with Annika’s best friend Misty (Caitlyn Dever from last year’s Short Term 12). Shelton still has a great touch with actors and Knightley here reminds us that the movie in which she first received acclaim, Bend It Like Beckham, was a comedy. In Laggies, she’s at her best the times she gets to use her long skinny body for comic effect, as when she dons headphones to undulate along a busy road while she holds the sign pointing to her father’s business or folds herself against the ground into a turtle-like posture to feed Annika’s pet tortoise.

The film also has a refreshing lack of hysteria about the activities of contemporary, suburban teens. Moretz’s character is a teenager who seems more like the peers I had in high school than the stereotypes that populate most movies. Husky-voiced Annika is an unapologetic “partier” who regularly lies to her father about where she’s going and what she’s doing–and unlike similar girl characters in mainstream films we’re not cued to see her as a sociopath or an alcoholic.

The film also shows empathy for Sam Rockwell’s put-upon Dad. Rockwell has good chemistry with Knightley and a great touch with lines like the one he gets when he first sees Megan in Annika’s room, “Wow, high school students are looking rougher and rougher these days.” His Craig is a mixture of equal parts of love and exasperation he feels toward his daughter with some “embarrassing” Dad behavior thrown in. The film also refrains from completely vilifying Annika’s absentee mother, played briefly and poignantly by Gretchen Mol.

But the film’s central premise of Megan regressing to her high school days falls flat. Knightley’s Megan seems too sensible and grounded to be the kind of screwed-up (but sometimes fun) adult who hangs out with teenagers. And although Rockwell’s character briefly questions Megan’s intentions, no one else does, or comes to the conclusion that many of us would if we saw an adult spending lots of time with a high school student (including sleeping over): that the two are having sex or headed in that direction.

In this film queer people seem not to exist, a disappointment because Shelton is an out bisexual woman who created a complex and memorable title queer woman character (beautifully played by Rosemarie DeWitt) in Your Sister’s Sister and played a small, but memorable role as a queer woman herself in Humpday. Laggies, like the other mainstream American movies that assume everyone is heterosexual, is in danger of seeming outdated, especially compared to recent television shows like Please Like Me and How To Get Away With Murder, which nonchalantly depict every aspect of their queer characters’ lives–and feature them as leads.

The movie intermittently focuses on Megan’s lack of direction (she has dropped out of graduate school, where she was studying to be a therapist), but the ending, like that of a screwball comedy from the 1930s, seems to suggest her whole life is resolved by choosing the right man. This mainstream rom-com directed by Lynn Shelton is better and more nuanced than any other choice at the multiplex, but I still miss the wilder, funnier, earlier Shelton films shown at art houses–and the more complicated lives of the women–and men–at their centers.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xep7s36qZL0″]

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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

‘Sinister’: Or as I Like to Call It, “Don’t Move Your Family into a Murder House”

‘Sinister’ is a film in which the viewer is expected to root for a man whose personal dreams trump his entire family’s sense of safety in their own home – which is fucked up and frustrating and detracts from a film with some incredibly freaky moments.

Sinister-Ellison-and-Tracy — “What if I don’t tell my wife it’s a murder house? Then it’s cool, right?”

Written by Mychael Blinde.

Sinister is a film in which the viewer is expected to root for a man whose personal dreams trump his entire family’s sense of safety in their own home – which is fucked up and frustrating and detracts from a film with some incredibly freaky moments.

Sinister-Moving-Day-at-the-Murder-House — Moving day at the murder house!

Here’s the story in a nutshell: True crime writer Ellison Oswalt (Ethan Hawke) hasn’t published a hit in a decade, so he has the genius idea to move with his wife, son, and daughter into a house where the previous occupants were hanged from a tree in the backyard. What better way to reclaim his true crime fame and fortune? And the house was so cheap! Murder houses are the best!

Good thing they dressed Ellison like this so we know he’s a serious writer.

He finds a projector and a series of seriously intense and utterly horrifying snuff films in the attic and is like, SWEET! STATUS UPGRADE HERE I COME! Increasingly terrifying things begin to happen in the house and to its occupants, but so what if Ellison is subjecting his family to a living nightmare? After he publishes his book they’ll all be living the dream! HIS dream!

SPOILERS:

Perhaps you’ve seen the film in its entirety and are thinking, “But what about the ending?! Ellison is punished for his actions! Therefore the moral of the story is that it is wrong to force your family to move into a murder house and to lie to your wife about it and to stay there even when super ominous shit goes down repeatedly and your family hates it there – the film doesn’t endorse his behavior!”

To which I’ll reply: Sure, the film doesn’t endorse his behavior, but it does ask us to like Ellison Oswalt, to sympathize with his struggles, and to respect his decisions. Sure, he gets punished – along with his ENTIRE FAMILY who are ALL COMPLETELY INNOCENT – but the film doesn’t ask us to want him to be punished. We’re supposed to root for Ellison.

Sinister writer C. Robert Cargill and Sinister director and writer Scott Derrickson were both conscious of the character’s inherently unlikable nature when creating the film, and in interviews they explain that Ethan Hawke was cast specifically because of his charisma and likability:

Cargill:

“How we ended up with Ethan was that Scott and I knew we had written a relatively unlikable protagonist and needed an actor who could win the audience over with pure charisma. Not a lot of actors can do that. Ethan was at the top of a short list.”

Derrickson:

“After I wrote the script, I loved it and I was very excited about it. But then I kind of had a panic attack and I thought ‘this guy is so unlikable, he’s so flawed, is the audience going to turn on this character and just not like this movie because they don’t like Ellison Oswalt?’ I really racked my brain trying to think of an actor who the audience wouldn’t turn on and would find consistently interesting even though he was making bad decisions from the beginning. It really came down to Ethan. I thought Ethan was the right guy for the movie above anybody else.”

The film’s creators strive to justify Ellison’s stupid decisions in several different ways throughout the film. Here are all the reasons we are given as to why Ellison makes the incomprehensible decision to move his unwitting family into a murder house, and why he doesn’t move out immediately when things get weird, in roughly the order we’re given them:

– Ellison is all about justice; he is like the Superman of literary dudes.

Here’s Ellison calling the police after finding the snuff films. When they answer his call, he hangs up — he’s decided to go it alone.

When Ellison’s wife, Tracy (Juliet Rylance), expresses her frustration with the many ways his true crime research negatively impacts their children’s lives, he responds with:

“Bad things happen to good people and they still need to have their story told. They deserve that much.”

This is classic Manpain – Ellison is burdened with the emotional anguish and literary responsibility to make things right for people he’s never met and to whom he has no relation. Not only must he provide for his family, but he must bring about justice for these strangers, at any and all costs. Nobody’s paid the price like he has paid the price.

– Ellison’s dream in life is to be a famous writer.

“Dear Diary: So far life is super great in my new murder house!”

Later in the film, Tracy – again! – expresses her frustration with the many ways Ellison’s true crime research negatively impact their children’s lives, and he responds with:

Ellison: What else do you want from me?!

Tracy: How about a home where we feel safe, Ellison? How about a life that doesn’t involve our kids drawing and painting the sick details of some horrific tragedy? Or working out their deep-seated anxieties by doing bizarre shit in the middle of the night?…There are plenty of other ways you can provide for this family.

Ellison: Doing what? Teaching? Editing journalism textbooks?

Heaven forbid he support his family by writing college textbooks – that’s no path to fame and fortune. Much better for him to risk irreparably scarring his children’s psyches by raising them in a murder house!

– Tracy will leave him and take the children with her if this book “goes sour like the last two.”

Let’s take a moment to talk about Tracy. She is a woefully underwritten character whose only role in the film seems to be getting mad at Ellison for all the stupid things he does, and then forgiving him and supporting him some more, raising the kids and making him coffee – “Your father’s very particular about his coffee,” she tells their daughter Ashley (Clare Foley).

After (FINALLY!) discovering the truth about her new home’s grisly history (almost an hour and a half into a two hour movie!), Tracy calls Ellison out on his narcissistic, myopic bullshit:

Ellison: Don’t you understand that writing is what gives my life meaning? These [books] are my legacy!

Tracy: I have always supported you doing what you love, Ellison. But writing isn’t the meaning of your life. You and me, right here, this marriage, that’s the meaning of your life. And your legacy, that’s Ashley and Trevor. Your kids are your legacy.

It is incredibly satisfying to hear Tracy say all of the things I want to scream at Ellison, but she inevitably returns to her role as the dutiful, supportive wife, and the Oswalt family continues to stay in the house. This is a story about a man and his dreams and his nightmares and his goals and his fuckups, and she’s relegated to the sidelines, has absolutely no agency, no purpose except to support Ellison and take care of the kids. And she is literally the only adult female in the ENTIRE film.

Her threat to leave Ellison feels like the filmmakers feeding us another reason for Ellison to continue his “work,” despite his family’s growing sense of fear – another burden on his man-pained shoulders.

– He’s doesn’t believe in “any…um, you know…stuff.”

“Whatever it is, I’m sure I can fight it with a bat. I don’t believe in any of that…um, you know…stuff that you can’t fight with a bat.”

After Ellison is ripped through the floor of his attic – the power went out in the middle of the night and he heard weird thumping noises up there, so naturally he clamored on up to go spelunking – he meets the town’s Deputy.

Actual quote from the film: “I wouldn’t sleep one night in this place. Are you nuts? Four people were hung by their necks in the tree in your backyard.”

The deputy is never named; there’s a running joke that his name is (or might as well be) “Deputy So and So.” He plays the Fool to Ellison’s King Lear (another guy who makes a monumentally stupid decision in the beginning of his story that causes everyone in his family to die). Deputy So and So provides comic relief (and I found him to be pretty darn hilarious), but he also serves to shed light on Ellison’s position in this supernatural situation and to speak truth to Ellison’s power.

When Ellison finally freaks out enough about the house’s eerie happenings to seek guidance, he reaches out to the Deputy:

Ellison: Now, I don’t believe in any…um, you know…stuff.

Deputy: Stuff, you mean, the supernatural, the metaphysical, the paranormal, that type of stuff?

Ellison: Right.

Deputy: Right. Of course you don’t. You never would have moved into a crime scene if you did. But here we are, having this conversation.

Ellison is a guy who sincerely does not believe that there exist such things as ghosts, or demons, or evil pagan deities – and if he really didn’t believe in any of that stuff, then the attack of the evil house monster is totally not his fault, right?

Except it’s still a murder house! Even if there were no malevolent presence, his kids would still be taunted and traumatized in school, he still would have to lie to his wife – it would still be a violation of his family’s sense of security.

Nevertheless, his disbelief is trotted out as yet another reason why a viewer should be accepting of his decisions to move to the murder house, stay in the murder house, and watch all the murder footage making faces like this:

It’s not Ethan Hawke’s fault that Ellison is so stupid; the fault lies the premise of the film.

So what’s truly driving Ellison? His sense of justice? His literary aspirations? His love for his wife? His manly skepticism about all things supernatural?

He’s doin’ it for the fame!

Here are two quotes from two separate interviews with the director, Derrickson:

“[H]e stays in the house because he has an even deeper fear of losing his status. It’s really a film about a guy who is trying to recover his lost fame and glory. And his fear of not recovering that riches and fame is the driving fear in the movie.”

“He’s staying because as much as he’s afraid of what’s on those films, as much as he’s afraid of the weird things that are starting to happen, he’s much more afraid of not regaining his status as a great true crime writer.’

There you have it, folks. The filmmakers want us to like a guy who’s more afraid of losing his status than losing his entire family’s sense of safety in their own home.

Ellison accomplishes very little during his time “researching.” He watches snuff films, writes obvious questions on sticky notes, drinks, watches snuff films, drinks, watches old interviews from when he was briefly famous, drinks, and then watches snuff films again.

Ellison doesn’t solve the mystery; Deputy So and So figures it out. And when we finally reach that pivotal moment, when the family’s inescapable doom is revealed, the crucial information that the Deputy has uncovered seems like it should have been discovered way earlier in the investigation.

In a Sinister review titled Mr. Boogie, meet scarier Mr. Google, film critic Peter Howell writes:

“It’s a given that people do dumb things in horror movies, such as failing to switch on the lights when they enter a dark room. Ellison does all these things and more. A certain indulgence is required, but Sinister writer/director Scott Derrickson and co-writer C. Robert Cargill expect too much.

“Dumb becomes lazy way too often…Why doesn’t Ellison flip when he discovers a scorpion and a poisonous snake in his attic? Why does he need glasses, but takes them off to peer into the darkness?

“Most important of all, why doesn’t Ellison just use Google to research the links between the killings at his house and similar ones across the U.S.?”

Being forced to watch Sinister’s selfish, ineffective, narcissistic protagonist run around being an idiot for two hours ruins the few aspects of this film I do find to be well executed (pun intended): the found footage and the night terror sequences.

The found footage films are shot on actual 8 mm, and both the music and the visuals are utterly horrifying. I won’t post any pictures of them here — the images are that disturbing. The night terror scene – in which the son, Trevor (Michael Hall D’Addario), unfurls out of a cardboard box screaming – is another astoundingly terrifying moment:

Also, I am fascinated by films that implicate the viewer in a character’s crime: Ellison isn’t supposed to watch the found footage, so by extension neither is the viewer, and yet here I am watching him and watching it, complicit in his sin. How does our willful consumption of this hideously gruesome material impact our lives?

But these great moments are invariably spoiled by Ellison’s obnoxious Manpain.

And now presenting the graphic violence in the context of its impact on Ellison!

We see the most gruesome of the snuff films’ content reflected in his glasses, or blurred behind him while he turns to booze to ease his pain. We see the images projected onto his body:

Ellison’s body becomes the locus of the murder footage.

The message becomes

HEY MEN: Everything is about you! Even other people’s murders are about you! GO AND LIVE YOUR DREAM! Lie to your wife if you need to! Traumatize your children! Only you can instill justice in this screwed up world! Only you can make things right! Only your status matters! YOU ARE THE DECIDER!

The family doesn’t leave the house until Ellison is directly confronted by the supernatural being in a face-to-face, unequivocally malevolent encounter. When Ellison tells Tracy that they have to pack up and leave immediately, she hesitates for the briefest moment, and he has the audacity to scream at her: “GO!!!” Nevermind that she never wanted to move into this house in the first place – or that even before she knew it was a murder house she wanted to leave! — now that HE feels frightened, it’s time to get out immediately.

The unfortunate consequence of prioritizing the likability of this mind-numbingly stupid male protagonist: the one woman in the entire film is relegated to the sidelines, serving no purpose but to yell and be yelled at, to make coffee and get murdered.

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Mychael Blinde writes about representations of gender in popular culture at Vagina Dentwata.

High School Hospital: ‘Red Band Society’

‘Red Band Society’ presents the high-school dynamic explored in a sick-lit microcosm. It’s largely fluff and nonsense, but it’s quite entertaining nonsense on the whole – not least because Octavia Spencer is a treasure and is marvelous as the superheroic Nurse Jackson.

Written by Max Thornton.

A TV dramedy about teens who live in a hospital is perhaps the logical next stage in a culture where The Fault In Our Stars was such a phenomenon. In fact, I would guess that someone pitched it as “Breakfast Club meets TFIOS.” Red Band Society presents the high-school dynamic explored in a sick-lit microcosm. It’s largely fluff and nonsense, but it’s quite entertaining nonsense on the whole – not least because Octavia Spencer is a treasure and is marvelous as the superheroic Nurse Jackson, while it’s an absolute joy to see My So-Called Life‘s Wilson Cruz back on TV.

Because of my interest in disability theory, I was interested to see how the high-school dynamic might play out in a hospital context, but to be honest the show isn’t doing as much with it as it could. Not least this is because of the show’s metaphysics, which it lays out there both in the premise – it’s narrated by a comatose boy who can see and hear everything that goes on around the hospital, and interact with the other patients when they are under for surgery (though not when they’re asleep, for some reason) – and in an explicit statement of mind-body dualism made by one character to another: “Your body isn’t you. Your soul is you.”

I’m so involved in body-affirming scholarship, including disability and crip theory, that it kind of shocks me when I hear such forthright statements of dualism in pop culture. Rejecting mind-body dualism wasn’t just an abstract philosophical decision for me; it dramatically changed my life. While I know (oh God, how I know) that telling yourself, “I am not my body, I am just in it” can be a life-saving consolation in times of extreme bodily distress, I don’t think it’s ultimately a tenable way to understand your existence in the world. In many ways, this is what crip theory (and its intertwined conversation partner, queer theory) is about: refusing to accept mind-body dualism and its passive reinforcement of a normative narrative about what constitutes a healthy, whole, socially acceptable body.

My point is that, despite its setting, thus far Red Band Society hasn’t shown much interest in engaging with disability tropes beyond letting its characters take time out from being ~brave and inspirational~ to be snarky, bratty, illegal-substance-pursuing teens. Which, to be fair, is a great step up from classic media portrayals of disabled people as either inhumanly angelic or miserably bitter: at least these characters are the center of their own drama, not vehicles for the edification of able-bodied people.

There are six members of the titular society:

Seen here in no way invoking The Breakfast Club. — Seen here *in no way* invoking *The Breakfast Club*.

Charlie, our comatose narrator, offers commentary primarily in the form of zingers. He has a Tragic Backstory of which every single beat has been wholly predictable, although the latest episode ended on a Charlie-related moment that was ridiculous even for this show, so who knows what’s ahead.

Leo is a recovering cancer patient whose leg had to be amputated. At least once per episode, one of the characters will remind us that pre-cancer Leo was a stereotypical jock who wouldn’t have given these people the time of day, and look how he’s grown through adversity! Soccer was Leo’s jam, and because Nurse Jackson is not bound by the laws, rules, and circumstances governing us mere mortals, she happens to know an amputee athlete who agrees to train Leo. However, Leo ultimately decides against the training, because he doesn’t want to be known as an amputee athlete. Honestly, this smacks of the writers not wanting to deal with actual amputee athletics training: wouldn’t he at least try one training session before giving up on his lifelong passion and imagined future?

Dash is Leo’s BFF. It took until the most recent episode, the fifth, before Dash finally got some characterization of his own, beyond how he relates to the other characters. Dash is also Black. JUST SAYING. When he’s not trying to seduce the young nurse, smoking weed with the ward’s resident hippiechondriac, or getting jealous over Leo (which causes all the other characters to tease him about being in love with Leo, because boys can’t have close friendships without it being gay, and everyone knows homosexuality is hilarious), Dash is a graffiti artist extraordinaire. Also his lungs don’t work right or something, but who knows, it never seems to impede his life in any way.

Emma is my favorite. She’s bookish and smart, and she tries to do what she thinks is right by people, but she has a streak of fire in her which can sometimes lead to poor decisions. She’s in hospital for anorexia, and stays in a ward with cancer patients and people needing transplants, because… reasons, I guess? Whatever its logic, this juxtaposition does make for interesting possibilities in exploring the stigmatization of mental illnesses and psychological disorders, which can occur even among communities of the sick and the disabled: Leo yells at her that she doesn’t need to be in hospital, she’s only there by her own choice.

Kara is my other favorite, the bitchy cheerleader who is completely self-aware of her role as gratuitously mean hot girl. On the whole, she revels in taking the other characters down a peg or two, though it has been hinted more than once that massive self-esteem issues underlie her unpleasantness. She has an almost symptom-free heart condition, but isn’t on the donor list because of her pill-popping. Also she has awful power lesbians for moms, because, as Charlie says in a line that is certainly a verbatim quote from the writer who suggested it, “What? Dads fall for a nanny all the time. Why not moms?”

Jordi is the new kid. (Kara is technically a new kid as well, but she can’t be the Everyman character because she’s a girl, and not just a girl but a mean girl.) He’s boring and annoying, and I feel like he and his abandonment issues walked straight off The Fosters and into this show. It’s cool that the Everyman is Latino, but I am super done talking about Jordi and his annoying hair and dumb personality.

There are some adult characters other than Octavia Spencer, too: a Dr. Sexy type who is even more annoying than Jordi (but thankfully gets less screentime); a ditzy nurse; assorted parents floating in and out – but none of them are all that interesting.

It’s not clear yet whether Red Band Society will last out the TV season. I hope it does, because, for all its faults, this show can be very charming, and I think there’s potential for something new and exciting beneath the cheese.

Also, somebody thought this ad was a good idea. It was rightly pulled after complaints.

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Max Thornton blogs at Gay Christian Geek, tumbles as trans substantial, and tweets at @RainicornMax.

The Trauma of ‘Private Violence’

It is absolutely clear that throughout ‘Private Violence,’ Hill allowed Gruelle to take her into a world that she felt compelled to share with the public. That trust, that “wide-eyed curiosity” (as Gruelle said of Hill’s directing technique), created a documentary that not only pays homage to the strength and tragedy of women whose lives are torn apart by male partner violence, but also serves as a wake-up call that the system–law enforcement, news media, medical professionals, local and federal court systems–are not serving victims the way they should. ‘Private Violence’ is a public testament to the horror of domestic assault.

Written by Leigh Kolb.

Gloria Steinem said,

“The most dangerous place for a woman statistically speaking is not in the street. It’s in her own home. She’s most likely to be attacked by a man with whom she lives. It’s the trauma of it we’re just beginning to realize.”

This “private,” not public, violence, is the subject of the documentary Private Violence, which premiers Oct. 21 on HBO. (Steinem is an executive producer of the film.) Cynthia Hill directs the documentary, which focuses in on Kit Gruelle, an advocate and survivor, and Deanna Walters, a survivor who is navigating the court system. Other women’s stories are woven throughout, but the individual stories of these women offer a stunning, jarring inside look on what goes on behind closed doors and how “Why didn’t she just leave?” is not a question we should ever ask.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jf_zvbMwhHo&list=UUbKo3HsaBOPhdRpgzqtRnqA”]

“It’s not your job to fix broken men.”

Statistics surrounding domestic violence in the US are stunning, even to those who are immersed in following women’s issues in the news–perhaps because the news media too often keeps these stories of assault, stalking, and murder in the private sphere. During the University of Missouri – Columbia’s Journalism School and True/False Film Festival collaboration, Based on a True Story: The Intersection of Documentary Film and Journalism last February, Hill and Gruelle participated in a panel discussion entitled “Telling Stories About Trauma.” Gruelle pointed out that in one of the cases she was advocating for, the local news refused to air graphic photos of a victim, but later that night, “the channel ran TV dramas about violence against women for profit–we can deal with the fantasy.”

The reality is this:

• One in four women (22.3 percent) has been the victim of severe physical violence by an intimate partner

• One in six women (15.2 percent) has been stalked during her lifetime

• Thirty percent of female homicide victims are murdered by their intimate partners

Private Violence does not, as some social-issue documentaries do, continuously slam us in the face with these statistics. Instead, the film takes us inside, takes us behind closed doors, to come face-to-face with victims, families, and advocates. The news media may not show us photos of brutalized women, but Private Violence does. We hear–and see–Walters, as she tries to escape and get some kind of justice (and how difficult it is). In an incredible opening, Candy tries to escape from William (who didn’t even care if they used the scene). The intimate, heartbreaking look into these women’s lives turns a mirror onto a society that has historically been far too complacent about violence against women.

During the aforementioned panel discussion, Hill said that she was approached by Gruelle, who wanted to work on a project about the history of domestic violence advocacy work. “Her intention wasn’t to be the subject of the film,” Hill said. “I wanted to turn my camera in her direction… she already had access and intimacy. A historical film became a cinema verité film.” Hill’s decision to turn the camera on Gruelle was brilliant. Gruelle is a passionate advocate who works hard and speaks loudly about domestic violence in our culture. Hill invited her to speak up during the panel discussion, and Gruelle pointed out that “It’s never just about the abusers. It’s about patriarchal systems that are quick to blame her.”

The crux of Gruelle’s message to audiences, to not ask “Why doesn’t she just leave?” is amplified by focusing on these individuals’ stories. It was difficult to hear that when the film was shown at the True/False Film Festival, Candy had gone back to William. Seeing faces somehow makes that knee-jerk reaction of “Just leave!” creep up, even if we know better. “Leaving an abuser isn’t an event,” Gruelle said. “It’s a process.” The process isn’t incredibly fulfilling to watch in Private Violence, nor should it be. The system fails women far too often, and Private Violence shows that in painful detail.

Before the film screened at True/False (to an overflowing, sold-out crowd), Hill told the audience that the ultimate goal is “to make women and children safe in their own homes.” Because we know that as it stands, they are not.

It is absolutely clear that throughout Private Violence, Hill allowed Gruelle to take her into a world that she felt compelled to share with the public. That trust, that “wide-eyed curiosity” (as Gruelle said of Hill’s directing technique), created a documentary that not only pays homage to the strength and tragedy of women whose lives are torn apart by male partner violence, but also serves as a wake-up call that the system–law enforcement, news media, medical professionals, local and federal court systems–are not serving victims the way they should. Private Violence is a public testament to the horror of domestic assault.

During the Q&A after the screening, Walters appeared on stage with Hill and Gruelle. She said that her participation in the film–and how she laid herself bare–is “my way of helping people.” Gruelle pleaded with the crowd to “go back to your communities and pop the hood,” ensuring that victims got the justice they deserved (but first we must keep their stories out of the shadows).

Gruelle, left, and Watson. — Kit Gruelle, left, and Deanna Walters.

Hill’s direction is remarkable in its effortlessness; she knows to follow, to absorb, to tell the story. When she was asked during the panel discussion about her decision to include upsetting audio in the film, she said, “Well, this is what happens. People need to know what happens.”

Private Violence shows what does–and doesn’t–happen behind closed doors and within a system we’re taught to trust. May audiences be moved to lift the veil in their own communities, to listen to women’s stories, and to effect change in a patriarchal system that is far too brutal to its female citizens.

Private Violence airs on HBO at 9 p.m. Eastern on Oct. 20. In 2015, Private Violence will be available for educational distribution through Women Make Movies.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJxFP43nNik&list=UUbKo3HsaBOPhdRpgzqtRnqA”]

Recommended reading: Interview with Private Violence Director Cynthia Hill, by Danielle Lurie at Filmmaker Magazine; A Brief History of Sexual Violence Activism in the U.S., by Caroline Heldman and Baillee Brown at Ms. blog; Till Death Do Us Part, by Doug Pardue, Glenn Smith, Jennifer Berry Hawes, and Natalie Caula Hauff at The Post and Courier; Prosecutors Claim South Carolina’s Stand Your Ground Law Doesn’t Apply to Domestic Violence Survivors at Ms. blog; Why You Need to Watch this HBO Film on Domestic Abuse, by Hilary White at Pop Sugar; Sundance Film Review: Private Violence, by Dennis Harvey at Variety

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

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!

One Feminist Critic’s Battle With Gaming’s Darker Side at NPR

The tyranny of maternity on TV by Mary McNamara at Los Angeles Times

Lena Dunham Adapting YA Novel ‘Catherine, Called Birdy’ Into Movie by Julia Zdrojewski at BUST

Wonder Woman’s Kinky Feminist Roots by Katha Pollitt at The Atlantic

Elizabeth Peña paved the way for Latinas in Hollywood at PRI’s The World

Frances McDormand is much more than the role in Fargo that made her famous at PRI

How Gail Simone changed the way we think about female superheroes by Alex Abad-Santos at VOX

How One Casting Director Made Television More Diverse by Jennifer Keishin Armstrong at Fast Company

Director Justin Simien on Dear White People and Black Stories in Hollywood by Jesse David Fox at Vulture

“Pride” is a Joyful Film About the Need for Unlikely Allies by Sarah Mirk at Bitch Media

Jane Campion’s ‘Top of the Lake’ to Return for Season 2 by Inkoo Kang at Women and Hollywood

5 Things to Know About Jane the Virgin by Nolan Feeney at TIME

London Film Festival Review: ‘Honeytrap’ – Engaging Story of a Young Woman Who Lets Yearning for Acceptance Spiral Out of Control by Wendy Okoi-Obuli at Shadow and Act

Working with Laverne Cox, Standing in Solidarity with Trans Women of Color by Mitch Kellaway at The Advocate

Everything We Know About ‘XX,’ The All-Female Horror Anthology You’ve Been Waiting For by Kate Erbland at Film School Rejects

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

‘Fight Club’ As a Classic Romantic Comedy and Closeting Drama

What happened to the romcom? Apparently, men started to enjoy them. Should we feel flattered by this male appreciation of a genre created in its modern form by women like Jane Austen? Or insulted that male appreciation of the romcom can only occur by refusing to appreciate it as romcom? “You show me your sensitive side, then you turn into a total asshole.” Is that a pretty accurate description of the attraction and sneering rejection of the male audience for romcom?

This is a guest post by Brigit McCone.

Although it opens boldly with the statement “all of this: the guns, the bombs, the revolution… has got something to do with a girl named Marla Singer,” the romance plot of David Fincher’s cult masterpiece Fight Club (1999) is rarely treated as central. Partly, this reflects our cultural bias that the love interest of a male film (particularly one chock-full of testosterone) is incidental, where the love interest of a female film must be integral. Yet, perhaps, the most gleefully subversive statement of this gleefully subversive film is that it ultimately adds up to “Zen Buddhist Romantic Comedy. FOR MEN!” It is in this light that I would like to analyze Fight Club: as a classic romantic comedy structured by the template of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, and a drama of closeted sexuality on the template of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. Restoring the female and gay male origins of the film’s themes may raise interesting questions about the ways we interpret such similar subject matter so differently, depending on the speaker.

“This is cancer, right?”: The Meet-Cute

The meet-cute of Pride and Prejudice occurs at its first ball. Elizabeth Bennet, a character established by a series of laughing jokes and superior judgements at the expense of society around her, is dismissed in a single sentence by the superior and judgmental Mr. Darcy: “She is tolerable, I suppose, but not handsome enough to tempt me.” The friction is established: it is the characters’ unbearable similarity that creates the irresistible irritation between them, sustained through tense debate and a famous dance as they struggle to resist each other. For Elizabeth, Darcy is that little scratch in the roof of her mouth that would heal, if only she could stop tonguing it. This was Austen’s great romcom innovation: where previous romance plots treat external problems as the only obstacles to true love, Austen’s protagonists are separated by their own flaws and lack of self-knowledge. Unlike Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, in Pride and Prejudice there can be no question of one character’s submission, as they are the image of each other and their challenge is rather to submit to greater awareness of themselves. It is not surprising that a woman writer would develop the theme of similarity between male and female as the basis of attraction, where the male had a greater vested interest in asserting the charm of female weakness and subordination as the foundation of successful love. Fight Club, however, follows the feminine Austen mould. Our painfully unaware protagonist meets Marla memorably at a testicular cancer support group. The smoking woman’s unfitness to be there is as flamingly obvious as Darcy’s overbearing ego, while our hero’s secret, fraudulent testicular completeness is as carefully concealed as Elizabeth Bennet’s superiority complex. The narrator may even perceive himself to be faking while actually suffering from the same crippling emasculation as the group. Either way, it is the similarity between these two that drives their mutual irritation and banter for the first section of the film.

“I am Jack’s Raging Bile Duct”: Protagonist Rejects Love Interest

The first turn in the relationship comes when Marla reveals vulnerability by phoning the protagonist during a suicide attempt. He apparently rejects her, only to find the charismatic Tyler Durden has answered the call and bedded the girl. Feeling like “Jack’s Raging Bile Duct” gives our first hinted admission of the hero’s desire for Marla, but this period is marked by his sustained emotional and sexual rejection of her, based on his misunderstanding that she desires Durden, when Durden is in fact (SPOILER) an imaginary character created by our hero’s psychosis. Romantic misunderstanding caused by mental illness puts Fight Club in the tradition of Benny & Joon, As Good As It Gets, or even the spectrum of obsessive compulsive and neurotic behaviors displayed by the typical Meg Ryan protagonist. In other words, Fight Club’s use of dissociative identity disorder as romcom obstacle is an extreme example of a canonical romcom trend; it is personality flaw as romantic rival and allows Norton to spend the film’s middle section beating himself up for failing to be Brad Pitt. The effect is to shift the romantic relationship from a mutual friction towards the pursuit of a resistant, misunderstanding protagonist by an emotionally vulnerable love interest. Or, in other words, the same effect Austen generates by the misunderstandings that climax in Darcy’s proposal and rejection.

“You’re the worst thing that ever happened to me”: Love Interest Rejects Protagonist

The second turn comes when Norton’s character realizes the source of the misunderstanding and his true feelings for Marla. By then, however, his cumulative mistakes make the relationship unsalvageable and Marla takes a bus out of his life. This may be compared with Darcy’s abandonment of Elizabeth following her sister’s elopement, as the moment at which “all hope is gone” and the heroine fully realizes her romantic desire only as the love interest seemingly leaves forever. For Elizabeth, this acceptance of Darcy as love object parallels her own acceptance of herself as flawed and arrogant, just as Norton’s character is only able to care for Marla through the recognition and acceptance of his flaws, crippling dissociative identity disorder among them.

“My eyes are open”: Sacrificing the Ego

Jane Austen had a dilemma. Her mirroring love interests, Darcy and Elizabeth, each needed to sacrifice their egos to be together. Darcy had achieved this by proposing to Elizabeth. Yet, the restraints placed on female behavior in the 19th century, which reduced woman to passive love object in most plots, prohibited Austen’s heroine the romantic agency required to sweep her man off his feet. So, she cheated. Introducing the figure of Lady Catherine DeBourgh as a test of pride, Austen required Elizabeth to resist denying her feelings for Darcy in the face of intense provocation. In effect, Lady Catherine allows Elizabeth to propose by proxy while suffering public humiliation. This public humiliation/proposal would become the clichéd heart of “the airport dash” in romcom lore. Fight Club offers an original spin. Our hero shoots himself in the face, a public disfigurement as well as painful sacrifice, to destroy the alter-ego who is a visible embodiment of the most toxic aspects of his pride. In that state of bloody vulnerability, Marla finds herself unable to reject him and the two hold hands as the phallic towers crumble before them.

“I”m free in all the ways that you are not”: The Closeting Drama

Apart from the central romance, there are two major concerns in Fight Club: philosophical debate between Norton’s hero and Tyler Durden, and the depiction of Durden’s dangerously seductive, corrupting influence on the wider world. The Picture of Dorian Gray opens with lengthy philosophical debate between Basil Hallward, the vulnerable, sincere artist and lover, and Henry Wotton, the cynical, corrupting wit and charmer. Their friendship seems odd, as Hallward disapproves of Wotton and Wotton scorns Hallward. In Fight Club, the relationship between the hero and his Durden is made clear: Tyler, with the face of “millionaire, movie god” Brad Pitt, is free in all the ways the hero is not, yet trapped by the hero’s imagination. Wilde explained the strangely static relationship between Hallward and Wotton in a similar way: “Basil Hallward is what I think I am; Lord Henry what the world thinks me.” In other words, Lord Henry is Hallward’s Durden: a romantically impervious, socially masterful alter-ego who effortlessly dominates and corrupts society, while Hallward is Wilde’s most open portrait of homosexual romantic vulnerability. The main thrust of The Picture of Dorian Gray is a war between alter-egos Wotton and Hallward for the soul of the vulnerable Dorian Gray. The main thrust of Fight Club is a war between alter-egos Tyler Durden and Jack’s Inflamed Sense of Rejection for the soul and body of the vulnerable Marla Singer.

Although this comparison illuminates Fight Club as closeting drama, in this case the closeting of male insecurity and romantic vulnerability, the contrasts say as much as the parallels. In The Picture of Dorian Gray, Hallward, whose feelings for Dorian are presented as noble, romantic and capable of saving him, is viewed by Dorian with pity and contempt for expressing a “friendship so coloured by romance,” then savagely stabbed to death, his social isolation affirmed by the fact that nobody notices his absence – the reels have changed but the film carries on with Wotton in the driving seat. The book shows the total corruption of Hallward’s loving image of Dorian (the portrait itself) and the triumph of the cynical values of Wotton at the expense of both the vulnerable, true self, and of the love interest. Where love dare not speak its name, the mask must devour the face. Fight Club takes its modern, heterosexual manhood on a journey from emasculating self-loathing and testicular cancer to violent nihilism and rebellion but, ultimately, reveals the source of their grievance to be a figment of their own imagination. The painful split between inadequate hero and super-cool alter-ego is shown to be farcically self-imposed when Marla dismisses the godlike Durden as “Mr. Jackass.” Where Dorian chooses Wotton, Marla Singer has chosen Jack’s Raging Bile Duct all along. The romantic reconciliation which concludes Fight Club was literally impossible for Wilde’s novel, already savaged by censors, which neatly illustrates the contrast between the self-imposed crisis of modern masculinity and the socially imposed crisis of gay identity in the past. It is Wotton and Hallward’s “Dorian Gray Club” that one does not talk about, and Fight Club that is free in all the ways Dorian Gray is not.

“I can’t get married, I’m a 30-year-old boy”: Recognizing Male Romantic Comedy

Male romantic comedy has always been a major part of the genre: consider Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night, Billy Wilder’s The Apartment, Hal Ashby’s Harold and Maude, or Woody Allen’s Annie Hall.These works generally enjoyed greater critical esteem than that accorded to female romcom directors such as Elaine May, Nora Ephron, Amy Heckerling, Darnell Martin, Sharon Maguire, Gurinder Chadha, or Nancy Meyers. Now, critical successes As Good As It Gets and Fight Club join a golden age of male romantic comedy: There’s Something About Mary, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Shallow Hal, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up, (500) Days of Summer, Hitch, Zack and Miri Make a Porno, Wedding Crashers, Silver Linings Playbook, I Love You Phillip Morris, and Don Jon to name a few. And yet, in recent times, we have seen articles such as Tatiana Siegel’s 2013 piece for the Hollywood Reporter lamenting the “death” of the romantic comedy. What happened to the romcom? Apparently, men started to enjoy them. Should we feel flattered by this male appreciation of a genre created in its modern form by women like Jane Austen? Or insulted that male appreciation of the romcom can only occur by refusing to appreciate it as romcom? “You show me your sensitive side, then you turn into a total asshole.” Is that a pretty accurate description of the attraction and sneering rejection of the male audience for romcom?

Recognizing male romantic comedy as classic romcom is not only vital for a fuller appreciation of male romantic vulnerability, but also of female romantic comedy and gay male social comedy as more than “mere” romance and frivolity. As much as Fight Club, The Picture of Dorian Gray is a blistering critique of a decadent society that rewards toxic masculinity at the expense of true intimacy. As much as Fight Club, Pride and Prejudice is a psychological journey and a protagonist’s confrontation with and reconciliation with their own self. And, as much as any female romcom, Fight Club is a romance. And a damn funny one.

Brigit McCone has a degree in Russian and Drama, 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 irritating Fight Club fanboys.

The Coolest of Them All: An Ode to Marlene Dietrich

What modern cinema audiences should be interested in is his or her place in Hollywood history, and socio-cultural significance. Dietrich is a radical, and progressive cultural figure in terms of her sexual and gender identity. On and off screen. Her off-screen identity was also subversively androgynous and was often signified by her masculine attire.

Written by Rachael Johnson.

Marlene Dietrich (1901-1992) was one of the most captivating, ground-breaking movie stars of the 20^th century. There were more talented Hollywood contemporaries, but perhaps none of them had that heady combination of characteristics that made up her extraordinary screen persona: supernatural beauty fused with transgressive, gender-subversive sexual magnetism. Dietrich challenged traditional definitions of femininity, and bourgeois notions of respectability in her own life too. Biographical accounts reveal that the German-born star had numerous affairs with both men and women. But Dietrich was not solely an uninhibited sexual non-conformist. She was also a woman of considerable political courage. A committed anti-Fascist, the actress denounced Hitler’s Germany, and worked actively, and unstintingly, against the Nazi regime. (She became a US citizen in 1939.) Dietrich was a fearless, resilient woman who entertained throughout most of her life. She became a cabaret singer in her fifties, and toured the world into her seventies, soldiering on despite injury, illness and addiction. Was Dietrich a feminist movie star? Yes, and no. Although it seems that she was ultimately imprisoned by heterosexist Hollywood ideals of feminine beauty (she was a recluse in her later years), she should, nevertheless, be appreciated as an iconic figure of female sexual independence, individuality, and strength.

As Amy Jolly in Morocco — As Amy Jolly in *Morocco*

Hollywood marketed Dietrich, from the start, as an expressly seductive, “exotic” European star. Time and again, she portrayed scandalous lovers, and glamorous femme fatales. Dietrich did not embody the modern, professional American woman on screen. She never played a lawyer or reporter like Katherine Hepburn. Many of her films are about the pleasures, and dangers of romantic and physical love. They deal with obsession, sacrifice, and betrayal. Dietrich’s heroines are, also, of course, invariably ultra-glamorous. The star first caught Hollywood’s attention in The Blue Angel (1930), a German production directed by the Austrian-American filmmaker, Josef von Sternberg. In The Blue Angel, Dietrich plays cabaret singer, and femme fatale, Lola Lola. The Blue Angel secured her a contract with Paramount and she made six other films with von Sternberg: Morocco (1930), Dishonored (1931), Shanghai Express (1932), Blonde Venus (1932), The Scarlet Empress (1934), and The Devil is A Woman (1935).

As Shanghai Lilly in Shanghai Express — As Shanghai Lilly in *Shanghai Express*

The glamorous, dreamy Dietrich look is at its most iconic in von Sternberg’s atmospheric, stylish films. In The Blue Angel, Dietrich is plumper, and more voluptuous, but in Morocco, she becomes slender and more angular. She would remain so. Von Sternberg, with whom the actress was romantically involved, has been described as a Svengali-like character. A maestro of light and shadow, influenced by German expressionism, the director is credited with sculpting the face of Dietrich on the screen, and shaping her mystique. The nature of Dietrich’s role in their personal, professional partnership will always be subject to debate but it was, ultimately, a creative union. It is also important to note that Dietrich gained knowledge during this period that would be employed throughout her career. It is said that she greatly understood lighting and was an inventive make-up artist.

Dietrich was not a traditional Hollywood star although she looked like a perfect example of constructed feminine beauty. Her beauty, in fact, transcends conventional glamour in its unearthliness. It’s also remarkable, and considerably subversive, that she frequently played economically independent women living, and working, outside the domestic space, and prescribed bounds of sexual propriety. In von Sternberg’s films, Dietrich plays cabaret entertainers (The Blue Angel, Morocco, and Blonde Venus), a courtesan (Shanghai Express), a prostitute-spy (Dishonored), an adulterous queen (The Scarlett Empress), as well as a predatory “vamp” (The Devil is a Woman). She also plays a saloon singer in the George Marshall-directed Western Destry Rides Again (1939), and a Baroness brothel owner in her final film, Just A Gigolo (David Hemmings, 1978). But the most unique aspect of Dietrich’s screen persona is her sexual presence. The modern viewer is, perhaps, most intrigued by her androgynous aspect and sexually subversive behavior.

As Catherine the Great in The Scarlet Empress — As Catherine the Great in *The Scarlet Empress*

In Morocco, Dietrich provides one of the most radical sexually charged moments in Hollywood history when her cabaret singer character, Amy Jolly, sings “Give Me The Man Who Does Things” in French. She appears on stage elegantly dressed in a tux, and top hat, with a cigarette between her lips. Stopping at a table after the performance, she downs a glass of champagne, takes a flower from the hair of a female customer, and kisses her directly on the mouth. She then throws the flower to a male admirer (Gary Cooper as a French legionnaire). It’s a deeply seductive display of bisexuality, and Dietrich’s performance is fluidly, and perfectly, executed.

Dietrich was also the star of a scene that can be only be described as both sexually “out there,” and racist, in terms of its setting and images. I refer to the “Hot Voodoo” number in Blonde Venus where Dietrich’s character, once again a seductive cabaret entertainer, wanders around in a gorilla costume, slowly emerges from the suit, dons a blonde Afro wig, and starts to sing imperiously and suggestively, with hands on hips, in front of accompanying “native girls.” It’s a both bizarre and unsettling number.

As Lola Lola in The Blue Angel — As Lola Lola in *The Blue Angel*

Von Sternberg’s films are set, for the most part, in “exotic,” worlds such as 1920s China (Shanghai Express) and imperial Russia (The Scarlett Empress), and his depiction of non-American places is simultaneously ultra-stylized, and offensive. The audience is, also, at times encouraged to associate Dietrich’s heroines with “otherness.” The end of Morocco is quite interesting in that it shows a European woman rejecting domesticity, stasis, and marriage for love, and a nomadic existence. In pursuit of her great love, Amy Jolly eventually heads off into the desert and joins the North African women who shadow the legionnaires.

Dietrich made her most celebrated, and extraordinary films with von Sternberg but there were at least a couple of other good, and remarkable films. A riotous energy and charisma are evident in Destry Rides Again where she plays a sassy saloon singer called Frenchy. She also puts in a fascinating, idiosyncratic performance in Orson Welles’s astonishing, and greatly stylized Touch of Evil (1958) as an outlandish cigar-smoking madam, and fortune-teller. She radiates personality, and insolence in the role. Dietrich moved away from the movies, and remade herself as a cabaret singer in the 50s. She worked with Burt Bacharach, and toured extensively for decades, before retiring in her 70s. The entertainer was the ultimate show business survivor.

In A Touch of Evil — In *A Touch of Evil*

Dietrich also had an interesting, unconventional private life. She did the conventional thing early on in her career by marrying a fellow German, director Rudolf Sieber, and bearing a child (a daughter named Maria) but soon took a radically different track. Although she remained married to her husband until his death in 1976 (as well as good friends), she separated from him, and reportedly had many affairs with both men and women. Which brings us briefly to the intimate Dietrich.

Characterizations of public personalities by the people who know them are often contradictory, and human beings are, of course, different people to different people. Biographical accounts attest that Dietrich was both deeply flawed as a mother, and hugely sympathetic as a friend. No doubt Dietrich’s bed-hopping must have caused pain to some of her lovers too. The function of film criticism, particularly star studies, is, however, not to marvel at, or judge a star’s number of partners. Leave that to biographers and the Daily Mail. What modern cinema audiences should be interested in is his or her place in Hollywood history, and socio-cultural significance. Dietrich is a radical, and progressive cultural figure in terms of her sexual and gender identity. On and off screen. Her off-screen identity was also subversively androgynous and was often signified by her masculine attire. There is, in fact, no overstating Dietrich’s modernity as fashion and erotic icon. Both the star’s bisexuality and sexually independent lifestyle, challenged patriarchy and she helped change the way 20^th century women looked and behaved. In light of this, it is all the more baffling and maddening that the star slammed feminism in her later years. Her views are expressed in Maximilian Schell’s 1984 documentary, Marlene, which features interviews with an unseen Dietrich eager to preserve her glamorous persona. Nevertheless, the star’s spirit of sexual autonomy and freedom remains extraordinary, a spirit which, no doubt, had its roots in the sexually liberated Germany of the 1920s. During this creative, volatile period, Dietrich had been a chorus-girl and theatre actress who also took boxing lessons. A product of the Weimar Republic, Dietrich was, indeed, the living antithesis of the puritanical, patriarchal Nazi regime.

Dietrich exhibited backbone and a principled, political consciousness during World War II. She not only condemned her own homeland’s nefarious government but also vigorously campaigned against it. The star raised war bonds, recorded music for the OSS (Office of Strategic Services), and toured with the USO (United Service Organizations). She even entertained troops near the front. Both Hitler and propaganda minister, Goebbels, tried to get woo her back to Germany but she refused to be a Third Reich star. The Nazis responded by defaming her, and banning her movies. Dietrich was recognized by both the US and France for her war work. She was awarded with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1945 and the French Legion of Honor. The star regarded this work as “the only important work I’ve ever done.” It is perhaps worth noting that both her father and step-father had been military men. There were German citizens who considered Dietrich a traitor– she received hate mail, and was once even spat at when she returned to her native land during post-war visits–but her anti-Nazi stance was also appreciated at home, and in 2002, the city of Berlin made her an honorary citizen.

The global screen star was a modern cosmopolitan woman who had friends, and lovers of many nationalities and backgrounds. She was a buddy of Asian-American actress Anna May Wong, and reportedly had affairs with legendary French singer, Edith Piaf, Cuban-American writer, Mercedes de Acosta, French actor, Jean Gabin, German writer Erich Maria Remarque, as well as American stars John Wayne, Gary Cooper, and James Stewart. It is also said that she had a romantic relationship with Greta Garbo. Dietrich moved to Paris in her later years, after touring the world as a cabaret artist. She died in the French capital in 1992 at the age of 90.

Dietrich has endured as a cultural icon because she was, simply, way ahead of her time. Her chic, sexually ambiguous screen, and star personae have remained hugely influential in popular culture. Madonna, who somewhat resembles the actress, has, famously, paid homage to her style in her performances, most memorably perhaps in her 1993 Girlie Tour. But Dietrich’s name is not only immortalized in “Vogue”; she haunts Suzanne Vega’s very different track “Marlene on the Wall” too. Interestingly, Indiewire reported earlier this year that Megan Ellison is planning a TV show about Dietrich and Greta Garbo. It sounds like an exciting project but we can only hope the filmmakers will fully appreciate Dietrich’s sexual, and gender non-conformity, cosmopolitan lifestyle and anti-Fascist spirit. The star deserves no less. She was, after all, the coolest of them all.

Seed & Spark: ‘Actress’ and the Messiness of the Moving Image

In the film I follow Brandy’s unfolding drama as-it-happened, hanging the film on her trained actor expressions and captivating ability to theatrically display fragility, anger, and force of will. The film is a documentary in the sincerest way; Brandy’s performance is the truth I was observing. ‘Actress’ is about the roles we play and how we get trapped in them; the role the viewer sees Brandy wrestle with most vigorously might be the role of documentary subject.

This is a guest post by Robert Greene and Brandy Burre.

From Director Robert Greene:

How does a man make a movie about a woman who is going through a crisis in her life that he, despite being the same age (with the same ambitions, the same number of children that are the same age in the same town), will never have to deal with because he’s a man? That’s what I’ve tried to do with my new nonfiction film Actress, which stars my neighbor and friend Brandy Burre as she tries to balance motherhood and artistic dreams in the face of a suddenly tumultuous domestic situation. The answer in this case: you wind up the toy and hold on tight.

Brandy got pregnant when she was filming her final appearances on HBO’s legendary show The Wire, in which she played political consultant/vixen Theresa D’Agostino. Her life didn’t immediately settle (at one point she was doing a theater run far away from Tim, the baby’s father), but she eventually moved to Beacon, New York to raise a growing family. I moved next door to her a few weeks after she came to Beacon. Five years later we began filming what would become the movie. Its original title was Mother As Actress.

In the film I follow Brandy’s unfolding drama as-it-happened, hanging the film on her trained actor expressions and captivating ability to theatrically display fragility, anger, and force of will. The film is a documentary in the sincerest way; Brandy’s performance is the truth I was observing. Actress is about the roles we play and how we get trapped in them; the role the viewer sees Brandy wrestle with most vigorously might be the role of documentary subject.

The project started from the formal question, “What happens when you film an actor in an observational documentary?” before the story took us in unexpected places. I also know that women, especially mothers in their later 30s, are harshly under-represented in movies. In general, too, I begin from the point of view that documentaries are inherently exploitative, that a power exchange is created when one person films another, not to mention when a man films a woman. This may be especially true when that man is exploring genres such as melodrama, which have traditionally been called “women’s films.”

The best way to short circuit the potential calamity of this exchange is to foreground the exploitation, to make it part of what the viewer is watching while they follow the story. The way a man can make a documentary about a woman in this situation, then, is to dive deep into the contradictions of the nonfiction form and display the mess onscreen. Documentaries are made of the tension between order and chaos, between directing and living. Letting these tensions show (and allowing space for the viewer to think about these tensions, including questions of gender and exploitation) cedes some of the power of the image to the person in front of the camera.

That person in this case is Brandy, a complex, theatrical, mercurial force of nature. It was not always easy to “cede power” of my film to this magnificent creature, and I wasn’t about to do it just because she was a woman. She was hesitantly stepping forward, too, though I wouldn’t have been able to tell; by the time she said yes I had already become somewhat obsessed with the possibilities of filming her and how my ideas would mingle with what I could never have predicted. What happened, of course, was that Brandy’s force, her power, her fragility, her ability to make every scene crackle was the film I wanted to make. Soon my ideas were dwarfed by this bright star and it was now our film, though it obviously never could have remained just mine.

This film was very hard to make, but ultimately I think we’ve arrived at something productive and meaningful. I think Brandy agrees, but let’s see what she thinks in her own words.

From Subject/Star Brandy Burre:

Indeed being the subject of a documentary, actor or no, is a dicey proposition. When Robert first introduced the idea that he “follow my journey of getting back into acting,” I declined. The problem as I saw it: I’ve never had the desire to trudge into the business of acting as it formally exists. End of story.

The fact that Robert couldn’t, in many ways, understand my views as a woman and mother further distanced me from the idea. The assumption I inferred in Robert’s scheme was that I had lost my way as an actor and was in need of finding it, that my life without acting was lacking in some way and needed to be rectified, as if my career had been on a clear path, I had been derailed by having children, and I simply needed to hop back on the train and resume my efforts where I had left off.

Clearly he didn’t understand my rogue path to landing the role on The Wire. Nor did he understand the extent of my other work as a theater artist and musician. How could he know I had made definitive choices, defying the one size fits all rigmarole allotted to aspiring artists in America (those without lineage or trust funds, that is)? I had no desire to prop up a false perception of a typical actor’s life, or worse, come across as a failure or desperate in some way.

But then there is Robert, a persistent hornet of a person. Taking a different approach with me, he threw down the gauntlet: we just start filming. We turn on the camera and see where it leads, even if that destination is nowhere. We film for the sake of filming, make art for art’s sake, he the filmmaker and I, the muse to his musings. Hmm… Now this got my mind a-churning.

How could I say no to this exercise? What is it to play the role of one’s self? What actions define me as an individual, and what are the boundaries of my existence that I’m forced to question when confronted with a camera lens as witness?

I was sufficiently stung by Robert’s passion and commitment to the potential of this project. If he accepted me with all my contradiction and parody, force and feebleness, without need for outcome, who was I to deny him? From this moment on, Robert found in me his willing cohort, conspirator, and collaborator. And once I commit to a project, I invest my entire soul to it.

I am endlessly proud of Actress and the bravery it took to make this film. The bravery to be as truthful and raw as I knew how to be. Robert met me as a fellow artist without definition of gender, and this was his greatest gift to me and to women in general. The fact that Actress might be considered a “woman’s film” is because my story was truthfully told within the context of itself, not with a male-dominated agenda. And in case it needs clarifying, the context of me is ALL woman.

Actress is currently building an audience and raising funds for music rights on Seed&Spark.com.

Brandy Burre is an American actress best known for her portrayal of Theresa D’Agostino on the HBO Series The Wire. Currently, she is the subject of Actress, the critically acclaimed documentary from Robert Greene. Other recent credits include Alex Ross Perry’s Listen Up Philip and Phil Pinto’s “Diplo Revolution” music video. Also a musician and mother of two, Brandy has performed many great roles on professional stages across the country. She has an MFA in Acting from Ohio University.

Robert Greene is a filmmaker and writer. He was named one of the 10 Filmmakers to Watch in 2014 by The Independent and received the 2014 Vanguard Artist Award from the San Francisco DocFest. Robert’s films include Actress (2014), Fake It So Real (2012) and Kati With An I (2010). He has edited over a dozen films, including Alex Ross Perry’s Listen Up Philip and Amanda Rose Wilder’s Approaching the Elephant. Robert writes for Sight & Sound and other outlets.

‘The Good Wife’: Being Bad

The premise of ‘The Good Wife’ brilliantly sets up and challenges particular gender roles and expectations. Julianna Margulies plays the lead character, Alicia Florrick. Given Margulies’ age – she was 43 when the show began – and popular culture’s continual privileging of youth, particularly with reference to women, this is an achievement in itself. Alicia’s married to Peter Florrick (Chris Noth, who’s no stranger to playing “bad boy” partners after his role of Mr Big on ‘Sex and the City’), who has just been jailed following a string of political and sexual scandals. The pilot sees Alicia dutifully standing by her husband, remaining silent as he apologises for his indiscretions, before the show cuts to several months later as Alicia returns to work as a defence attorney following 13 years as a stay-at-home mom.

Written by Sarah Smyth.

The Good Wife centralizes the conventionally marginalized wife figure — *The Good Wife* centralizes the conventionally marginalized wife figure

Warning: Contains MAJOR spoilers!

Like many other fans of the hugely popular political and legal drama, The Good Wife, a few months ago, I sat down to watch the latest episode, “Dramatics, Your Honor,” only to be rudely awakened from the state of pure escapism which the show pleasantly induces. Although often clever, complex, and compelling, the show is also a somewhat ridiculous yet highly entertaining romp, with a taste for outlandish storylines and theatrical, scheming characters. In other words, I do not watch the show to get a reflection of or even a reflection on Real Life. Real Life sucks, and The Good Wife allows me, and others I assume, to escape life’s often mundane, tedious, and sometimes downright brutal existence. However, in this episode, Will Gardener (Josh Charles), one of the main characters who also serves as the love interest to the leading character, Alicia Florrick, dies. Taking this extremely personally – how could the writers do this to me? – I took to Twitter to find answers. Here, I came across this letter written by the creators and executive producers of the show. In it, they wrote a rather jarring sentence: “The Good Wife, at its heart, is the ‘Education of Alicia Florrick.’” As I reflected on this statement, I began to wonder to what extent Alicia Florrick needed to learn something and, more worryingly, to what extent this need to learn is highly gendered.

The premise of The Good Wife brilliantly sets up and challenges particular gender roles and expectations. Julianna Margulies plays the lead character, Alicia Florrick. Given Margulies’ age – she was 43 when the show began – and popular culture’s continual privileging of youth, particularly with reference to women, this is an achievement in itself. Alicia’s married to Peter Florrick (Chris Noth, who’s no stranger to playing “bad boy” partners after his role of Mr Big on Sex and the City), who has just been jailed following a string of political and sexual scandals. The pilot sees Alicia dutifully standing by her husband, remaining silent as he apologises for his indiscretions, before the show cuts to several months later as Alicia returns to work as a defence attorney following 13 years as a stay-at-home mom. Through this premise, The Good Wife centralises the conventionally side-lined figure of the wife by giving her a voice and an identity beyond this primary label of “the good wife.” Alicia not only embodies a complex and multifaceted identity as a lawyer, but also as a mother, sister, daughter, friend, and lover. The show also complicates the label of “the good wife” itself. For every character who praises Alicia for standing by her husband, another lambasts her for sticking with him, claiming she fails both herself and women everywhere. The show makes apparent that a woman’s “choice” – for how much autonomy did Alicia really have in this situation? – is intensely scrutinised and criticised. The show then follows Alicia’s struggle with the complexities and obstacles of her identity as she attempts to navigate marriage, motherhood, and the workplace, as well as her increasing sexual attraction for Will, her boss and one of the named partners at the firm where she works.

Alicia navigates the many aspects of her identity including mother, wife and lawyer — Alicia navigates the many aspects of her identity including mother, wife, and lawyer

With a set-up that continually explores and challenges the traditional idea of what is meant for a woman to be “good,” I was puzzled by the idea that Alicia needs an education. As television enters a golden age with shows particularly examining the moral complexities of their lead characters, I wondered whether the need to educate rather than explore Alicia’s character is specifically gendered. As Bitch Flicks examined last year, women are critically neglected from this exploration in two ways. Firstly, women’s contribution is neglected from the critical consensus and canonisation of the television revolution. The title alone from Brett Martin’s book, Difficult Men: Behind the Scenes of a Creative Revolution: From The Sopranos and The Wire to Mad Men and Breaking Bad, makes clear the absence of female-driven television shows within the consideration of this revolution. In The New Yorker, Emily Nassbaum criticises the degradation of “female” and “feminine” culture within the canonisation of television, and proclaims Carrie Bradshaw from Sex and the City as “the unacknowledged first female anti-hero on television.”

This, then, leads me onto my second point. The privilege of exploring a morally ambiguous character is primarily afforded to white, cis-gender, heterosexual, able-bodied men. Female characters, as well as other oppressed groups, in contrast, are refused this privilege. Not only are there fewer critically acclaimed female-driven shows than male-driven shows, and even fewer with Black or queer-identifying leading women. But when there are shows which attempt to explore complex female characters, they face a much harsher moral and critical assessment. For example, whereas the greed, selfishness and pure pigheadedness of Tony Soprano from The Soprano’s and Walter White in Breaking Bad are continually held up as an exploration of character, earning them a cult status within popular culture, Hannah Horvath from Girls is positively reviled (see here, here and here). Although Hannah’s characteristics are less extreme that Tony and Walter’s, she also shares a tendency to be narcissistic, self-absorbed and, at times, unlikeable. Whereas male characters are entitled to be bad, female characters, it seem, must always be good.

Male television characters can be bad... — Male television characters can be bad…

...whereas a female character must always be good — …whereas a female character must always be good

Ensuring women remain “good” ensures they also remain passive, docile, and unthreatening. As Carol Dyhouse demonstrates in her book, Girl Trouble: Panic and Progress in the History of Young Women, the lives of young women in comparison to the lives of young men has been plagued with social anxiety and moral panic from the nineteenth century. However, the more I thought about Alicia’s education in The Good Wife, the more I realised that her education is not about being good; it’s about being bad.

Near the end of season one, Alicia makes her first difficult and morally ambiguous decision. As the recession hits, the partners at her law firm, Lockhart & Gardener, must decide which first year associate to lay off, Alicia or Cary Agos (Matt Czuchry). In order to save her job, Alicia pulls in a favour with her husband’s campaign manager, Eli Gold (Alan Cumming), asking him to switch legal representation to her firm, enabling her to bring in top lucrative clients. Not only does Alicia unfairly exploit her advantages, advantages to which Cary simply cannot live up, in order to ensure she secures her positions at the firm. She also uses Peter for her own career prospects, much in the same way that he uses her – Eli continually makes it apparent that Peter’s resurrected career as the States Attorney and, later, as the Governor of Illinois depends on Alicia’s support. Her education in complicating, if not rejecting, her “good” label comes to a head at the end of season four when she accepts Cary’s invitation to start their own firm, pinching Lockhart & Gardner’s top clients along the way.

After Will discovers Alicia’s plans at the beginning of season five, he tells her, “You’re awful, and you don’t even know how awful you are.” As Alicia’s complicated love interest in the show – although at times they engage in brief sexual encounters, Alicia is not “bad” enough to involve herself in a full-blown illicit affair, even if her relationship with Peter is strained at best – Will’s words are highly charged. Nevertheless, there’s some truth to them. Alicia’s come a long way from the relatively meek and unsure character of the pilot. As Joshua Rothman claims, “Everyone, including Alicia, thinks that she’s a victim—but, in fact, she’s a predator, all the more dangerous for being stealthy.” With season six currently airing, the show remains committed to this education. As Alicia considers running for States Attorney, the definition of “good” and “bad” become redefined. The latest episode, “Oppo Research” demonstrates the way in which, within the landscape of politics, what’s defined as “good” and “bad” becomes, simultaneously, much more black and white, and much more tenuous – it all depends on outward appearance and surface. As (politically defined) unpleasant aspects of Alicia’s life are made apparent – although, interestingly, they relate to Alicia’s family members rather than Alicia herself – the show reveals that even good girls have skeletons in their closets.

Cary Agos begins as From colleague to rival to partner, Cary Agos motivates Alicia to be bad — Cary Agos goes from colleague to rival to partner, Cary Agos motivates Alicia to be bad

Without wanting to be prescriptive or wishing the integrity of Alicia’s character away, a significant part of me wants Alicia to fuck up. And I mean, really fuck up. I think this is why I became so invested in the relationship between Will and Alicia, and why I was so saddened by the death of Will. I wanted Alicia to ditch her “Saint Alicia” label and embrace being bad. But the success of female-led shows is not in swapping one side of a dichotomy for another. It’s about embracing a nuanced portrayal of women in television and wider popular culture. The Good Wife succeeds in presenting a character who, despite her best efforts, remains flawed. In this way, Alicia Florrick can finally shed “the good” label for good.

Sarah Smyth is a staff writer at Bitch Flicks who recently finished a Master’s Degree in Critical Theory with an emphasis on gender and film at the University of Sussex, UK. Her dissertation examined the abject male body in cinema, particularly focusing on the spatiality of the anus (yes, really). She’s based now in London, UK and you can follow her on Twitter at @sarahsmyth91.

All You Need is White People: Whitewashing in ‘Edge of Tomorrow’

Learning that ‘Edge of Tomorrow’ is based on a Japanese work with a Japanese hero with the action set in East Asia really changed my feelings about the resulting film. I actually really enjoyed the movie despite its derivativeness and lapses in sense-making, well-chronicled by my colleague Andé Morgan here. But now it leaves a sour taste in my mouth. Because I’m fine with liking an unoriginal and illogical sci-fi movie, but I’m not so cool with liking an unoriginal, illogical, and racist sci-fi movie.

Because turning Keiji Kiriya into William Cage, casting Tom Cruise, moving the action to Western Europe, and casting white people in 98% of the speaking roles are all racist acts perpetuating bullshit white supremacy in Hollywood.

Tom Cruise is White Dude in 'Edge of Tomorrow' — Tom Cruise is A White Dude in ‘Edge of Tomorrow’

I watched Edge of Tomorrow without knowing it was an adaptation. It seems like a movie without source material, because the plot depends on you not thinking too critically about any of the details. (How does this time loop work? Why does it also involve psychic visions? Why are these alien invaders called “mimics” when the only thing they mimic is the Sentinels from The Matrix?)

Edge of Tomorrow is in fact based on Hiroshi Sakurazaka’s novel All You Need Is Kill, which was also adapted into a manga of the same name by Ryōsuke Takeuchi and Takeshi Obata. Edge of Tomorrow is SWIMMING in source material.

Cover of Hiroshi Sakurazaka's novel 'All You Need Is Kill' — Cover of Hiroshi Sakurazaka’s novel *All You Need Is Kill.*

I have read neither the novel nor the manga, but learning that Edge of Tomorrow is based on a Japanese work with a Japanese hero with the action set in East Asia really changed my feelings about the resulting film. I actually really enjoyed the movie despite its derivativeness and lapses in sense-making, well-chronicled by my colleague Andé Morgan here. But now it leaves a sour taste in my mouth. Because I’m fine with liking an unoriginal and illogical sci-fi movie, but I’m not so cool with liking an unoriginal, illogical, and racist sci-fi movie.

Because turning Keiji Kiriya into William Cage, casting Tom Cruise, moving the action to Western Europe, and casting white people in 98 percent of the speaking roles are all racist acts perpetuating bullshit white supremacy in Hollywood.

Emily Blunt as Rita Vrataski, the most interesting character.

Sure, there are no Japanese actors as big as Tom Cruise. There are few actors, period, who are as big as Tom Cruise. That didn’t stop Edge of Tomorrow from pretty much tanking at the box office, though. And they could cast their precious white Name Actor as the female lead Rita Vrataski, who is a white American in the book and a white Brit (Emily Blunt) in the film. She’s a more interesting character anyway, and the film would probably benefit from re-centering on her. And maybe a sci-fi movie headlined by a woman and a Japanese man would have gotten more notice from audiences who dismissed Tom Cruise in Edge of Tomorrow as generic enough to wait for home video?

And why change the setting to Europe? What makes that more interesting or dramatic a setting, other than racism? I was reminded of this summer’s Godzilla, which used “increasing whiteness of populations at risk” as its form of raising the dramatic stakes as the monsters trekked across the Pacific Ocean.

Wait... why are we in Europe? — Oh man, that is pretty racist.

I need Hollywood to figure out that white people’s lives are not intrinsically more valuable. And that white movies stars are often not as valuable as they’re supposed to be. “Bankability” is not a justification for whitewashing. I’d like to think the weak performance of Edge of Tomorrow might clue Hollywood in on this. Especially because Edge of Tomorrow was saved from being a total bomb by the foreign grosses from the very countries deemed not interesting enough to be the setting of the adaptation (although, notably, there was tepid reception in Japan).

In Edge of Tomorrow, every time Tom Cruise’s character dies he learns from his mistakes. But when a movie like it dies at the box office, Hollywood just shrugs and says “it probably needed more white people.”

Robin Hitchcock is an American writer living in Cape Town.

The “Blurred Lines” of Body Horror and Rape Culture

The idea of “coulda, shoulda, woulda, didn’t” in regard to the source of most body horror films is very reminiscent of the way we as a society deal with victims/survivors of rape. Why is it that people immediately feel bad for MacReady and the boys when they’re attacked by The Thing without ever telling them they were “asking for it” by playing with a stray animal, but at the same time we’re still seeing news reporters and politicians try and discredit rape victims and assume it was the victim’s fault? Body horror is very closely related to rape culture because it puts a mask on the violence of rape by putting it in the context of an “other worldly invasion” and makes it permissible to revel in the other person’s destruction.

Still from John Carpenter's The Thing — Still from John Carpenter’s *The Thing*

This guest post by BJ Colangelo previously appeared at her blog Day of the Woman and is cross-posted with permission.

Body horror is undoubtedly one of the most complex horror movie subgenres. Rooted in the innate fear of meeting our demise, body horror films have played a prominent role in the expansion of practical effects and social commentary within the horror genre. Body horror can also be called “biological horror,” “organic horror,” or “venereal horror,” classified as a work of horror fiction where the horror is predominately extracted from the graphic destruction or degeneration of the body. The subgenre includes disease, decay, parasitism, mutilation, mutation, anatomically incorrect limb placement, unnatural movements, and fantastical expansion. The fear of the unknown is one thing, but when that fear lives inside of you, there’s no escaping or hiding from one’s own mortality.

Poster for 1958's The Fly — Poster for 1958’s *The Fly*

1958’s The Fly is arguably the film that pushed body horror into the threshold of the horror pantheon, and the films have only gotten more unsettling and graphic with its successors. Advertising with a slogan of “100 pounds to the first person who can prove it can’t happen!” The Fly took away the fear of “other” and instead rooted horror in the realm of possibility. What separates body horror from the other subgenres is perhaps theirrefutable future of destruction. Afraid of sharks in the sea? Don’t swim. Afraid of Jason Voorhees? Don’t have anything to do with Crystal Lake. Afraid of ghosts in the house? Call a priest or move. Afraid of the monster growing within you? Pray that medical science can assist you, or enjoy feeling yourself crumble to pieces. In body horror, there are no “rules” for survival. Body horror forces us into the world of the unknown, and there would appear to be no way out. In fact, most people will look to other unknowns to help with their own unknown. Religion, theoretical science, voodoo, ancient texts, astrology, and many others have all been cited as resources for those struggling with some sort of internal ailment.

Rick Baker's phenomenal make-up work for The Incredible Melting Man — Rick Baker’s phenomenal make-up work for *The Incredible Melting Man*

Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of body horror is that the line between victim and hero is very much often blurred. Those suffering are literally the ones to blame for their predicament. Sure, Dr. Brundle in The Fly should have double checked his Telepods before experimenting upon himself and perhaps the kids from Cabin Fever should have been a little more careful about how they dealt with the infected drifter, but do they deserve the horror inflicted upon their bodies for not being overly cautious? The idea of “coulda, shoulda, woulda, didn’t” in regard to the source of most body horror films is very reminiscent of the way we as a society deal with victims/survivors of rape. Why is it that people immediately feel bad for MacReady and the boys when they’re attacked by The Thing without ever telling them they were “asking for it” by playing with a stray animal, but at the same time we’re still seeing news reporters and politicians try and discredit rape victims and assume it was the victim’s fault? Body horror is very closely related to rape culture because it puts a mask on the violence of rape by putting it in the context of an “other worldly invasion” and makes it permissible to revel in the other person’s destruction. If we see a person raped in a film, we immediately feel a sense of sympathy, but when we see someone invaded by an alien pod or even a tree, we are filled with extreme delight. The over-exaggerated and graphic nature of body horror presents a safe distance for the audience to feel a great sense of schadenfreude.

Ripley 7 in Alien: Resurrection looking a lot like Brother Fred in Monster Man — Ripley 7 in *Alien: Resurrection* looking a lot like Brother Fred in *Monster Man*

Body horror is a parallel to rape toys with those “infected” with the taboo subject of sometimes enjoying their transformation and again being demonized for it. Rosemary in Rosemary’s Baby was actually as excited as she was naive, Ripley enjoyed using her conjoined alien DNA to her advantage in the Alien franchise, and Ginger Fitzgerald in Ginger Snaps greatly enjoyed “snapping” into a werewolf. When this happens, our sense of compassion is toyed with and often muddled within the story. How could anyone possibly be okay after enduring something like this? How could they get better? Wouldn’t it be more comfortable for everyone if they just died? — and that’s what’s really screwed up. We champion survivors, but they always seem to have that smell of tainted goods from then on. In the end the “thing” that took over the body is what becomes the defining characteristic of the victim almost to the point of overshadowing the victim. What do you remember about Dawn in Teeth other than the fact she has vagina dentata? Do you care about the demised futures of the people sewn up in The Human Centipede, or are you forever remembering them as the people forced to go ass-to-mouth for eternity? We remember all of the infected folks in Night of the Creeps, but what about their dates? Do you know any of their names? No, because they’re not important. The victim is what is important. Throw that parallel on every rape revenge movie and the picture becomes a little clearer. This isn’t trying to say rape victims “liked” it or anything like that but rather that there are plenty of rape victims who don’t allow the situation to completely destroy and ruin them. Like Ginger embracing her werewolf transformation and making it her own, there are plenty of survivors of rape who live their lives like something other than a character on Law & Order: SVU.

I’m surprised this shot from Slither doesn’t have a BRAZZERS logo on it

Body horror also offers the most thinly veiled solution to the “invader(s)” — kill them. We kill The BrundleFly, we torch The Thing, we squash the Slither slugs, and we kill the “host” of The Brood. This, by proxy, is what also justifies all rape revenge movies. Based cinematically, rape should be a capital crime. The other undiscussed side to body horror is once something is “birthed,” the person that served as the “host” is crazy or unstable if they want to keep it alive and in their care. Madeline is seen as insane for wanting to continue to feed human blood to her baby in Grace when logical people would assume she should just destroy her. Even after knowing the truth about the child, Rosemary smiles and rocks her baby. These actions are seen as shocking and terrifying, but if a rape victim with the ability to become with child wants to rid themself* of their rape-caused pregnancy…they’re monsters. (*Day of the Woman accepts that not all people with the ability to have children are women or identify as women and are continuing to become more open and educated with identification pronouns.) What degree of ownership and responsibility is attached to Body Horror? Audiences often spend the film screaming KILL IT! KILL IT! and find people like Blair in The Thing crazy for wanting to keep the parasite alive. We as humans like to think of ourselves as the most valuable creatures in the universe, but to The Thing, we’re nothing more than a host. In the same regard, human children see “Mother” as nothing more than a host and a means of survival. That’s why most babies cling to their mother more than their fathers. It’s not a matter of preference, it’s a survival tactic. If someone implanted you with a demon baby, you’d be screaming for it to go, but if someone implants you with a rape-caused baby, you’re a demon if you don’t want to raise it. With few exceptions, there aren’t many body horror movies where society has tried to coexist with the issue.

My junior year prom date, or Three Fingers in Wrong Turn 2 — My junior year prom date, or Three Fingers in *Wrong Turn 2*

So what about victims/survivors of body horror that continue to walk amongst us? The most general way to examine these individuals is to look at mutants. Mutant horror films are just whitewashed body horror. These individuals cannot control the way that they are but because they live unconventionally and are seen as “damaged,” they are treated as lesser thans. Not exactly horror, but think about the X-Men. We’ve got people that can’t help what has happened to them and are fighting for the right to coexist with the general public. Play that card on rape victims, and their endless fight for better laws and after treatment, and it becomes clearer that we treat rape victims less like humans and more like mutants. These are people to feel sorry for and to try and “fix.” These are people who are inspiring simply for existing, or terrifying for being proud of it.

A still of Bob Costas at the Sochi Olympics...I mean Najarra Townsend in Contracted — A still of Bob Costas at the Sochi Olympics…I mean Najarra Townsend in *Contracted*

(IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THE FILM DO NOT READ AHEAD) What happens when we have a film that deals with both body horror and rape culture? Eric England’s Contracted shows a film about quite possibly the most terrifying disease a person can contract from sexual contact. We only assume at the end of the film she became a zombie, but what if it was something more? What if that wasn’t even her final form? At the moment of her transformation, she’s finally taking control of her life in all aspects–from her mom, her lover, her friend, but because she’s now a deteriorating mess, we’re meant to see that change as a bad thing. Much like rooting for the last man on earth in I Am Legend even though he’s the parasite to the new world, who are we to say that Samantha in Contracted isn’t now exactly who she’s meant to be? Sounds a bit like that Justin Bieber, “everything happens for a reason” quote in regards to rape, doesn’t it?

The Act of Killing was Oscar snubbed, but I promise there are reasons to live, Bio-Cop! — *The Act of Killing* was Oscar snubbed, but I promise there are reasons to live, *Bio-Cop*!

Rape culture is a complex thing to understand, and it will always be interpreted differently by other people. However, I firmly believe that whether infected by an other worldly creature, contracting a disease, becoming the product of an accident, or simply being born with it, body horror is an exaggerated reflection of rape culture in Western civilizations. While we may not have to worry about being implanted with pod people, we do have to worry about becoming a victim of rape. The only difference is that unlike a Pod Person or an Alien chestburster, we can’t teach these creatures to “not chestburst”; but we do have the ability to teach people not to rape.

BJ Colangelo is the woman behind the keyboard for Day of the Woman: A blog for the feminine side of fear and a contributing writer for Icons of Fright. She’s been published in books, magazines, numerous online publications, all while frantically applying for day jobs. She’s a recovering former child beauty queen and a die-hard horror fanatic. You can follow her on Twitter at @BJColangelo.