Now whilst this seems like an odd collection of friendships, it is an important selection of lessons. It fosters the idea that girls working together will always be better than scheming men, and will always sort things out even if they do need help. Girls are fearless: willing to steal, blow up iron bars, fight back against creeps, and speak out. And most importantly, it’s OK to make mistakes. The girls also enjoy themselves doing it.
This guest post by Bethany Ainsworth-Coles appears as part of our theme week on Female Friendship.
SPOILERS AHEAD
St. Trinian’s is a British comedy legend. In the series of films, a rabble of girls are taught by a selection of oddities and petty criminals, brewing vodka, and doing what they do best. Of course what they do best is illegal, but that’s what these girls are meant to do. In 2007, the films were resurrected with St. Trinian’s, which like so much media directed toward girls, was panned by critics. However, what it is at its heart is girls banding together to save their school with their teachers and winning. It doesn’t matter how they dress, what group they belong to, or their age.
Now the school itself run by the fantastic Miss Camilla Fritton (played by Rupert Everett) and its group of misfit teaching staff includes the big drinker Matron (Celia Imrie) as Camilla’s best friend and confidante. Their friendship is lovely as it is framed not just as two old women best friends. They aren’t the standard old ladies of film past; they are hard drinking, pill-poppers who look after each other, such as turning up to support Camilla when her dog is killed.
Matron and Miss Fritton judging people
The friendships throughout the film defy the general limits that films put on girls’ cinema. The groups (e.g. the emos, posh tottiess, chavs, geeks, etc.) frequently band together. When word gets round that the school needs money, all the girls band together to save it by robbing the national gallery of “Girl with a Pearl Earring.” Isn’t that great? Girls banding together to perform a successful heist with cover, dynamite, and some seriously fantastic dancing is just one of the reasons this film deserves more love. The girls work together–every group from the feral first years to the hippie girl (Juno Temple), and even the school secretary joins in.
The girls working together
Whilst most of the groups already know and tolerate each other, Taylor (a chav as played by Kathryn Drysdale) and Andrea (an emo as played by Paloma Faith–yes that Paloma Faith) become friends through circumstance. Whilst they despise each other since they are from different social circles, when the geeks choose them as the two other girls to actually steal the picture, they slowly become friends. Yes, it’s that trope again, but this time it really works. Their relationship is integral–even though Andrea inadvertently strands the head girl on the other side with the picture–she and Taylor both celebrate when they win. Realistically, they don’t become best friends either but they grow a new tolerance for each other that is certainly an admirable thing to show in a film for girls.
Whilst they work outside their groups, the groups are shown as equally important. Unlike films that actively scathe group systems (e.g. Mean Girls), St. Trinian’s endorses it. This is especially seen with the posh totties’ Chelsea, Chloe, and Peaches (Tamsin Egerton, Antonia Bernath, and Amara Karan). At face value, they seem like spoiled rich girls; however, they are actually bright charming women who simply enjoy their lifestyles and how they look. They win the quiz through Chloe’s intelligence, not through looks. Also they are pretty strong women who take no prisoners, especially dealing with creepy men taking their trousers down in their dorm room. Of course, everyone knows the only way to deal with that is to chuck that nasty piece of work out of the window and into the fountain below.
Now another interesting friendship is between Camilla and the head girl, Kelly (Gemma Arterton). Camilla doesn’t treat her as someone lesser but treats her as an equal and gives her tasks that she knows will be good for Kelly. However when Kelly can’t finish the heist, instead of letting the girl take the fall, she gets out a grappling hook, zips over, and saves her. It’s not seen as a weakness of Kelly’s either; her needing help is a positive. She can rely on Camilla to save her just like she can rely on her school.
Now whilst this seems like an odd collection of friendships, it is an important selection of lessons. It fosters the idea that girls working together will always be better than scheming men, and will always sort things out even if they do need help. Girls are fearless: willing to steal, blow up iron bars, fight back against creeps, and speak out. And most importantly, it’s OK to make mistakes. The girls also enjoy themselves doing it. What’s better than spending an evening repainting their spiv’s car whilst nattering on to their mates? Nothing apart from convincing the general public your school is exceptional. Which it is in a way. The girls enjoy being themselves, modifying their uniforms to match their personalities, and embracing being girls. There are no uniform codes, no rules against makeup, they brew vodka in science, and aren’t frowned upon for that. They may not be the demure schoolgirls people expect, but they sure are the best.
Like all good films for girls, it suffered like all good films for women, and was panned by male critics who didn’t understand why girls could be so fantastic.
A tense moment for everyone
The soundtrack for St. Trinian’s even consists of mainly girls. It features everyone from the Noisettes, Lady Sovereign, and Girls Aloud does the theme song. This entire film celebrates female friendships and girls in general. Isn’t that fabulous? It is a film with genuine adventure, laughs that don’t depend on mocking the girls but laughing with them. In fact, all the men are pointless and ripe for being used for their cause. This cast of male characters includes Stephen Fry, the Bursar (Toby Jones), the spiv Flash Harry (Russell Brand), Fritton’s own brother (Everett Still), and Geoffrey Thwaites (Colin Firth), who is Camilla’s vague love interest–and antagonist–who is exposed at the end in more ways than one.
In St. Trinian’s, girls are the most important. Their friendships are valued above anything else because without them their scheming wouldn’t work and then they would be in normal schools… and who wants that?
Can women be friends? Or, most importantly, can two women who share the same man be friends? The depiction of genuinely loving and caring female friends has found its way onto many movies and TV shows, but when it comes to the idea of a more complex situation—the “frenemies”—it’s harder to find characters that do it justice. There is a shallow notion that when two women want the same man, they turn into hair-pulling, catfighting brats.
This guest post by Emanuela Betti appears as part of our theme week on Female Friendship.
Can women be friends? Or, most importantly, can two women who share the same man be friends? The depiction of genuinely loving and caring female friends has found its way onto many movies and TV shows, but when it comes to the idea of a more complex situation—the “frenemies”—it’s harder to find characters that do it justice. There is a shallow notion that when two women want the same man, they turn into hair-pulling, catfighting brats. Some movies, such as Mean Girls, present a world of two-faced friendships and passive-aggressive competitiveness, and although girls and women that act that way do exist, it’s refreshing to see a different take on the “frenemies” trope.
Female characters gain more depth when we realize that, despite their hatred for each other, they are still capable of maintaining a glimmer of respect for their enemy. In the past years, Scandal has been building up two of the most interesting frenemies on TV—Olivia Pope and Mellie Grant. Both women want the same man (President Grant), and both women have a different type of relationship with him—but Mr. President aside, throughout the show the two women develop a complex rapport with one another: one which undoubtedly has many instances of resentment and bitterness, but also a slowly developing sense of respect for the other person. It’s startling to watch Mellie’s resilient self-dignity—yet also vulnerability—when she asks Olivia to help with her husband’s campaign; there is also a sense of empathy on Olivia’s side when she discovers that Mellie was assaulted. If we really have to watch two women fight over the same man, it’s at least a relief when the two women are smart, self-reliant, and civilized beings.
The idea of complex female frenemies is not exactly new to cinema. Two superb foreign thrillers have managed to portray women who are sharing or have shared the same man, but they don’t succumb to the stereotype of the hair-pulling, backstabbing brats. Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Les Diaboliques (1955) and Kim Ki-young’s The Housemaid (1960) present a world in which women are not squealing for a man’s affection, but develop an interesting and emotionally complex alliance with the “other woman.”
Les Diaboliques is a French movie about a wife (Christina) and her husband’s mistress (Nicole) teaming up to murder the husband (Michel). Christina owns and runs a boarding school where Nicole teaches, and Michel exudes his authority as if he ran the place. The story begins as a simple murder story with two intriguing female protagonists, but halfway through it becomes a different movie—a creepy thriller in which the wife, Christina, is haunted by her dead husband’s ghost.
Despite the exciting twists and turns, it’s not so much the murder that drives the film, but rather the strange friendship between the two women. Christina is the typical mousy wife who allows her husband to beat and condescend to her; Nicole, on the other hand, is the typical femme-fatale bombshell, a hybrid between Betty Rizzo and Catherine Tramell from Basic Instinct (and I wasn’t surprised that the role was played by Sharon Stone in the 1996 American remake). The relationship between the women is rather intriguing, if not strange: Nicole was having an affair with Christina’s husband, but that is also what brings the two women together. Both get tired of the husband’s cocky and manipulative ways, so they decide to plan his murder.
During moments of calm, we watch Christina and Nicole discuss like old friends, complaining about him, and coolly remember how they hated each other—how a jealous Christina used to carry a knife around, and how Nicole might have wished for Christina’s death. There is a startling sense of dignity and respect for the other, which is often lacking when we’re faced with two women who competed for the affection of a man. Christina is often depicted as physically and emotionally weak, leading Nicole to affectionately treat her like a younger sister—even maternally, when for example she tells Christina not to bite her nails, in order not to give away her nervousness about the murder. Nicole is the only person that defends and consoles Christina when her husband degrades her in public, and during those moments we observe an unspoken yet mutual understanding between the two women who have been abused and mistreated by the same man.
Housemaid is a South Korean thriller about a young woman who is hired as a housemaid and ends up feuding with the woman of the household. To sum it up, The Housemaid is a long and twisted cautionary tale about the dangers of having an attractive and seductive young woman in the household, and how a casual affair can turn into a deadly game of manipulation. Events escalate dangerously and gruesomely, and even the innocent and sickly wife reveals an evil side. One of the interesting aspects of the story is the twisted relationship between the housemaid and the wife: the housemaid, despite her psychotic nature toward the husband and children, shows nothing but fear and submission in front of the wife. The wife strategically allows the other woman to remain in the household as a means to keep an eye on her and avoid a scandal.
The most twisted part is halfway though the movie, when both women “share” the husband. They’re not exactly friends, but it would be too easy to label them enemies; both women have an unspoken mutual understanding that the husband “belongs” to them, and they manipulate him to get at each other. Both women appear to know what limits the other woman can go to, and that kind of character relationship goes beyond the simple backstabbing teenagers in Mean Girls, or the comic strips in which Betty and Veronica are both tugging at Archie’s arms.
Emanuela Betti is a part-time writer, occasional astrologer, neurotic pessimist by day and ball-breaking feminist by night. She miraculously graduated with a BA in English and Creative Writing, and writes about music and movies on her blog.
But the focus on “getting everything” was a little hard to stomach from women living in huge condos in the heart of New York with an interior designer on their payroll. Somehow it felt like the message was getting a little lost in the middle of all the high-society hob-nobbing – there was nothing particularly universal about it, and any feminism that was being communicated was certainly of a rarefied kind that most of us wouldn’t be able to access.
This cross-post by Amanda Lyons previously appeared at her blog, Mrs. Meows Says, and appears as part of our theme week on Female Friendship.
In 1996, the year The First Wives Club was released, I was in my mid teens, and it felt like a good, hopeful time to be a young woman. Grunge and riot grrrl seemed to have ousted the need to conform to restrictive conventions of feminine fashion and behaviour. The music charts were full of talented and unique female artists. Movies and television were starting to show more complex, and sometimes even bad-ass, female characters. Looking back, I feel grateful to experience those difficult formative years in such a time.
It was definitely the right cultural climate for this film. I remember it was featured a lot in the media at the time – a story about a group of discarded first wives plotting revenge on their ungrateful ex-husbands definitely had a whiff of the zeitgeist about it. Indeed, so much so that the book was purchased by a movie studio before it was published as a novel. (The more hidebound publishing industry rejected the novel 26 times. I’m pretty sure I remember seeing the author, Olivia Goldsmith, on Oprah talking about this, saying that many of these publishers thought the male characters were portrayed “too negatively”.)
Though I thought this movie sounded like a positive cultural event, and quite possibly also a good wheeze, I missed it at the time. So when it happened to be playing on Foxtel on a recent cold Sunday night, I was more than happy to stay in the lounge with the gas heater all rugged up and warm and make up for my neglect.
What was I expecting? I guess a funny and entertaining revenge romp with a feminist punch? What did I get instead? Well, not that…
Probably the most entertaining thing about it was the long and delightful roll-call of actors I recognised from subsequent other things. Dan Hedaya! Victor Garber! Marcia Gay Harden! And of course the peerless Bronson Pinchot. Yay! That was good fun, and I was very glad they got to be part of something that would have given them a big boost at the time.
The next thing I noticed was the extremely overdone and intrusive score. Guys, I cannot believe this score was nominated for an Oscar. To me it felt like an obnoxious guest at a party who keeps grabbing your arm when you’re trying to talk to other people so he can tell you a really long and boring/offensive story that scares all other guests away from you. Hated it.
My second major hate: Diane Keaton, but I guess that’s probably more of a personal thing, although at least I know I’m not alone. I get why Woody Allen loved her so much – she’s totally the female version of him. Same schtick in every single role she plays: blinky, quirky, neurotic, and when she’s required to get emotional, shrieky. Also ineffably smug. Teeth-clenchingly annoying.
Next problem: the characters. Was this the fault of the script, the acting, or the direction? I would say an unholy collusion of all three. All the characters are shallow and unlikeable, including the women you are supposed to be rooting for. Nobody seems remotely like a real person – the husbands are drawn as dastardly cardboard villains, the first wives are shrieky caricatures, the second wives are completely one dimensional bimbos. The gags and one-liners are broad, awkward and the timing is just a little bit off every single time. The set pieces are cringey and the plot is just confusing. The revenge plots were a bit unclear and vague to me, as if the writers weren’t quite sure how to pull them off.
I think part of the frustration was that while the story was addressing a real and genuinely affecting issue – the culturally sanctioned discardability of women as they grow older – it opted to bury it inside a combination of broad slapstick and an extremely privileged, neo-liberal kind of feminism concerned solely with economic gain. I was somewhat in wonderment at the moneyed, ten-percenter world these women moved in. Of course separation, abandonment, betrayal, and heartbreak are a great leveller – all of us can suffer whatever our bank-balance. But the focus on “getting everything” was a little hard to stomach from women living in huge condos in the heart of New York with an interior designer on their payroll. Somehow it felt like the message was getting a little lost in the middle of all the high-society hob-nobbing – there was nothing particularly universal about it, and any feminism that was being communicated was certainly of a rarefied kind that most of us wouldn’t be able to access.
Perhaps key is the fact that the movie was written, directed and produced by men – or more specifically, men who shared the publishing world’s squeamishness about “man-bashing”. As producer Scott Rudin stated in The New York Times:
“When I took this on, I didn’t want a feminist manifesto, which it threatened to be,” he said. ”Initially, it made all the men terrible and was kind of anti-marriage. I didn’t want that. The film is really a satire. The amount of moaning and wailing is an object of satire. We’re not taking anything too seriously.”
Rudin, like so many others, accepted the fallacy conflating feminism with hating men rather than its simple belief that women and men “should have equal rights and opportunities.” That this conflation is so often promulgated is tiresome. It’s also tiresome that charges of “man-bashing”against films are so loud and strident when negative, and even harmful portrayals of women in film and television and everything are so commonplace we don’t even notice them most of the time. And the effect of this kind of distaste for anything remotely feminist in the stories we tell can cut the heart – and the ovaries -right out of them.
Feminism is not the only thing that’s diluted in the adaption of this story from book to movie – certainly the differences between the film and the book seem very revealing. For example, the complete excision of Annie’s (Diane Keaton) daughter’s Down Syndrome – she is turned into a lesbian, instead. (and the way she’s portrayed one sometimes wonders if the writers thought they were just swapping one disability for another??). This removes the onus for Brenda (Bette Midler) to become a lesbian herself, clearing the way for her to have a (SPOILER ALERT) reconciliation with her dastardly husband Morty, a strange and sudden reversal in the storyline of the film.
But one of the most interesting differences is how they choose to “avenge” their friend Cynthia, whose husband’s betrayal resulted in her suicide and provided the impetus for the first wives to reunite, rediscover their friendship and begin their club in the first place.
In the book, the women go after Cynthia’s husband and bring him down for insider trading, to his personal and financial ruin. But in the movie, the women decide that personal revenge is not noble enough – so instead they blackmail their ex-husbands into providing money to open a Crisis Centre for Women. This is a safe aspect of feminism; it’s hard to argue against helping the most vulnerable in society, and it’s easy in our culture to accept women in the role of victims – and indeed, the centre is named after their friend Cynthia Swann Griffin, the movie’s ultimate victim and sacrificial lamb.
The final scene – the opening party for the Crisis Centre – is intended to be the triumphal close to the movie, but instead it feels patronising and smug, the worst kind of charity. The party is ostentatious, opulent, and replete with the kind of economic excess that seems to cover the characters’ lifestyles like a thin film of oil. It is of course stuffed with the rich and fabulous, New York high society elite. There is a lot of back-slapping. Ivanka Trump appears, as well as Gloria Steinem, in a vague shout-out to “feminism.” There are no specifics discussed as to what kind of crises the centre will be helping women with, what kinds of women will be helped, or how. The husbands have been threatened with destruction but ultimately this female anger has been contained, and now the men are simply implored to open their pocketbooks. In the final scene the three women engage in a truly embarrassing song-and-dance routine, singing Lesley Gore’s “You Don’t Own Me” and dancing like your mum doing karaoke at your cousin’s 21st. The ultimate in Boomer smugness, and of course led by the inimitably irritating Diane Keaton.
“Once the women decide to act, they exude power and energy. Brenda asks Elise, ‘Did anyone ever tell you you’re beautiful when you’re angry?’ Elise replies, ‘No. Mostly they liked me passive. But those days are over, my friend. I’m changing.'”
This movie adaption is, quite frankly, a mess, and seems to replace female power and agency with money. I’m no book adaption purist – I accept that the two mediums are different, and changes have to be made in translation. But in this case, it doesn’t seem that the changes were especially serving the ends of telling a story and preserving a message, so much as containing it to make it more marketable. But unfortunately the end result is clunky, unloveable, and not even entertaining. Perhaps it met the zeitgeist in 1996, but I think that it should probably stay there.
Amanda Lyons is a writer from Middle Earth (AKA New Zealand). By day she writes on finance, by night whatever takes her fancy at http://mrsmeowssays.blogspot.co.nz/.
Regardless of how psychological or interpretive you want to get with Scarlett and Melanie’s friendship, it serves as an invaluable example for how women can accept, value, and interact with one another.
This guest post by Jennifer Hollie Bowles appears as part of our theme week on Female Friendship.
Gone With the Wind is one of my favorite movies of all time. Of course, it has its social ills, historical flaws, and damn if super-strong Scarlett doesn’t whine over men a lot, but I still love it. The dynamic relationships and subtleties of emotions and interactions captured on film is a classically beautiful adventure to behold. Yeah, so I dig the movie, and I’ve always been a fan of Scarlett, her southern spitfire, and her bold feminist acts.
I’ve seen the movie at least a dozen times. When I first watched it as an adolescent, I remember almost hating Melanie. She was so mealy mouthed and annoying. I was, however, not in tune with the more demure, mature, calm, centered, and otherwise introverted part of myself at the time. Flash forward five years, and I start to see Melanie in a different light. Flash forward a decade, and I love her as much as I do Scarlett.
Scarlett was often a bitch to Melanie, and even though Scarlett was a bitch to everyone unless she wanted something, she was an uber-bitch to Melanie on purpose—most of the time. Until Melanie needed her. Then she was the most helpful bitch in the world. Melanie, on the other hand, was the epitome of kindness and compassion to everyone—most of the time. Until Scarlett needed her. Then she was kindest you-can’t-say-no-to-me bitch in the world.
One of the most intriguing things about the extreme Scarlet-Melanie polarity is that their best and worst traits were ultimately highlighted through their friendship. Together, they show the manifested metaphors of fire and water. Scarlett maintained a world view of passion; Melanie maintained a world view of non-judgment. Every time that Melanie seemed weak and dispassionate, she rose to the occasion to exhibit passion with Scarlett, and every time that Scarlett seemed strong and judgmental, she rose to the occasion to exhibit compassion with Melanie.
Melanie’s character was filled with a rare sort of gratitude that most people utterly lack. She was able to read others and feel gratitude for their existence, no matter how different it was from her own (take her kindness toward the prostitute Belle as a prime example). She mentored everyone around her, and she was continuously counted upon to aid those in need. Melanie also had a very deep love for Scarlett right from the beginning. She revered (and perhaps envied in her own way) Scarlett’s hot-headedness, and she expressed her love for Scarlett throughout the film.
Scarlett, on the other hand, was filled with a rare sort of will power and drive that most people utterly lack. She would forge through any circumstance in order to not only survive, but thrive. She was counted upon to make things work when others failed. Scarlett had a very deep jealousy of Melanie, and she expressed criticism and indignation about Melanie countless times throughout the film. However, while the movie does not expose Scarlett’s unfolding realizations per se, we definitely discover Scarlett appreciating Melanie as the story progresses. Scarlett sees Melanie’s strength in an unforgettable scene where Scarlett kills a “Yankee” intruder. Melanie yells out the window and promptly makes up a lie about the gunshot so the others in the household won’t worry. Scarlett says, “What a cool eye you are, Melly.”
An amazing juxtaposition of their characters occurs later in the film. A couple of gossiping no-gooders find Scarlett and Ashley (Melanie’s husband) hugging. Oddly enough, it is the one scene in which Scarlett is not really being inappropriate with Ashley. Everyone in town knows about the hug, and everyone is bashing Scarlett for her shameful behavior. Rhett coerces Scarlett into wearing a gorgeous, sexy scarlet dress and drops her off all by herself at Melanie’s house for Ashley’s big social birthday party.
Both Rhett and Scarlett expect Melanie to publicly throw Scarlett out of her house for being inappropriate with her husband. Melanie does no such thing. She goes against the suggestions and wishes of everyone in the room and embraces Scarlett, doting on her with a plethora of kind, welcoming statements. She even asks Scarlett to help her receive guests, and then refers to Scarlett in the presence of Ashley as “our Scarlett.” Scarlett is obviously immensely grateful for Melanie’s character, friendship, understanding, and behavior in this scene, and Melanie is obviously driven by her own passionate motives to do what she wants, regardless of what others think—just as Scarlett would.
The implications for Scarlett’s ridiculous pining over Ashley and her friendship with Melanie is a complicated one. On the one hand, it seems as though Scarlett is driven by something she can’t put her finger on when it comes to her obsession with Ashley, and Melanie just happens to be his wife. Yet, if we observe closely, we find that Scarlett is as drawn to Melanie as she is Ashley, and near the end of the film, we see Scarlett identifying the highest ideals of a lost way of life with both of them. She loves and yearns for them both along with her love and yearning for lost southern culture because it is in her nature to want what is difficult, and in this case, impossible to attain.
If we get really psychological, we find that Melanie and Ashley are both representations of everything Scarlett is not. It is easier, however, for Scarlett to outwardly—project and individuate—through Ashley, the shadow male/animus archetype of her psyche, rather than the far too close anima/shadow female archetype of her psyche.
Regardless of how psychological or interpretive you want to get with Scarlett and Melanie’s friendship, it serves as an invaluable example for how women can accept, value, and interact with one another. For example, if a woman dresses more provocatively than you, perhaps, as Melanie stated, she is just more “high-spirited,” and she can’t help that the men just “naturally flock to her.” If a woman needs help during childbirth, nothing else matters but helping her, just as Scarlett helped her “Melly.”
It’s suggested all along that Melanie understood Scarlett, and Scarlett understood Melanie. It’s as if Melanie knew all about Scarlett’s pining for Ashley and the underlying reasons why she felt that way, and Scarlett knew all about Melanie’s knowing acceptance. On her deathbed, Melanie asks to see Scarlett, who is the last person she communicates with before she dies. Scarlett receives Melanie’s last words with respect, holding on to their guiding significance and meanings with deeply rooted trust. The entire dynamic of their relationship just makes sense at that point: their bond was unbreakable.
Jennifer Hollie Bowles is a widely published multi-genre writer, including satire, poetry, op-eds, erotica, horoscope columns, fiction, eco living blogs, how-tos, and beyond. She lives in the Greater Boston area with her amazing husband and their blissed-out pit bull. She enjoys cooking from scratch, teaching creative writing workshops, and providing unique services via www.holisticnook.com.
But what if I spent my time, instead, helping another female filmmaker make her movie involving female friendship? Wouldn’t that be just as meaningful? And could it perhaps be making an even bigger statement—promoting the “cause,” so to speak?
Producer Liz Franke, Writer/Director Augustine Frizzell and Casting Director Tisha Blood having fun during the casting session of Never Goin’ Back.
This guest post by Liz Cardenas Franke appears as part of our theme week on Female Friendship.
The desire to have more female-driven films is such a hot topic in the entertainment industry right now. And it should be. There is definitely a need for more fully developed, complex female characters in cinema and for stories that are told from a female point of view.
But let’s take it a step further. What I believe is truly lacking are stories that specifically center on female friendships. It seems to me most female-oriented movies often just look at sexual relationships from a female perspective. (OK, sometimes they also show what it’s like to be a mother or juggle family and a career.)
But if you asked someone off the street to name a movie about two female friends, a real movie, not some over-the-top, unrealistic comedy, you would most likely hear Thelma & Louise. Maybe Beaches. And that’s probably it. Sure, there are others. But you have to really think about it for a minute. The same is not true for the male counterpart of this question. Most people would have no problem rattling off a list of pictures that concentrate on male friendship. That’s because there are a ton! There’s even a subgenre for them: the male “buddy” movie.
Liz Franke directing Augustine Frizzell, who had a lead role in the Hungry Bear film, Finding Glory, which is in post-production.
So, as a female filmmaker myself, what could I do to make a difference? Of course, I could go ahead and make one. I do, after all, write and produce films, alongside my husband, and many of them have strong female lead characters. For example, in our family feature, Summer’s Shadow, the protagonist is a bright and independent 12-year-old girl who rescues a sweet, stray dog and will stop at nothing to save him. And it’s her determination that ultimately impacts those around her, both children and adults. And I just directed (for the first time!) a short film, titled Treading Water, which I also wrote, and it is about a woman in her 30s who tries to come to grips with her new reality of caring for her elderly father in her childhood home.
But what if I spent my time, instead, helping another female filmmaker make her movie involving female friendship? Wouldn’t that be just as meaningful? And could it perhaps be making an even bigger statement—promoting the “cause,” so to speak?
Well, that is what I’ve done. I am currently a producer on the feature film of a fellow female filmmaker (say that three times fast!) who also happens to be a dear friend of mine. Her name is Augustine Frizzell, and she is the writer/director of Never Goin’ Back. Her movie centers on the friendship between two 16-year-old girls who come from lower socio-economic backgrounds (also grossly underrepresented in cinema) and their misadventures as they try to win back their jobs at the local Pancake House in order to make rent. They have absentee parents and are high school dropouts living on their own, except for an older brother and his friends. So, ultimately, they only have each other. And they go through the ups and downs of life together.
Producers and friends Augustine Frizzell, Liz Franke and Kelly Snowden watching the monitor on Franke’s short film, Treading Water.
This is a personal story for Augustine. It is based on her own experiences. So by working as a producer on her feature, I am helping her tell her own story. And I believe if we really want to see more narratives about true female friendships on screen, then we must actually experience them in real life, as well.
Augustine and I have worked on each other’s projects in the past— I was an executive producer on her short film, she was a producer and acted in mine. However, due to the magnitude of this project (a full-length feature with an ultra low budget and a three-week shoot), it has taken our relationship to the next level. And through it all, it’s been such a positive experience.
Being filmmakers in a male-dominated industry (who also happen to be married to male directors), we can relate to each other. We can also be vulnerable and let down our guards in front of each other. And that is what has been so special and has, quite honestly, blown me away. We do not let ego get in the way. There is no jealousy. No backstabbing. No ulterior motives. We truly support and encourage each other and want each other to be successful, and you hardly ever see that in movies or on TV.
I have to be honest. I have never really had that before in this business. Of course, my husband is always extremely supportive and encouraging, as is hers. But it has been so rewarding to make a real girlfriend in this business, and someone who is pursuing the same thing as I am. It makes me feel like anything is possible. By helping each other, I think we will make a difference. One movie at a time.
Liz Franke and Augustine Frizzell, who both happen to be actresses as well as writers and directors, filming a scene.
And it doesn’t end there. We have so many women working on this project, many of whom are donating some or all of their time or services. Kelly Snowden, my fellow female producer on this project, (there is one male producer—we don’t discriminate after all) has worked tirelessly from the beginning to help our director obtain her vision. And from the Casting Director to our Costumer Designer to our Production Coordinator —they are all women. All of them work regularly in the industry and have still found time to help on this project. This support system of women we’re creating is truly amazing. I was always taught to lead by example, as opposed to simply talking about wanting change. That’s what we’re doing. And it feels really good.
Liz Cardenas Franke is an actress, writer and producer. She and her husband have made seven feature films through their production company, Hungry Bear, including the successful “Adventures of Bailey” series. A member of Women in Film and SAG-AFTRA, Liz was a former reporter for The Dallas Morning News and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, as well as the Vice President of International Sales for Engine 15 Media Group. She is a graduate of Texas Christian University with a B.S. in Broadcast Journalism.
Even you’re not in school, September feels like a time for beginnings. It’s when you met the people who would become your close friends, bought new school shoes, and settled into a new year. With that in mind, I decided to look at a selection of coming of age films loosely based around school and learning. As an extra bonus, all five films come from female writer-directors.
Even you’re not in school, September feels like a time for beginnings. It’s when you met the people who would become your close friends, bought new school shoes, and settled into a new year.
It’s also when you were a bundle of nerves. Will my classes be too hard? Will I wear the right thing? Will anyone want to hang out with me?
I still feel that way in September, and I don’t think it’s an accident; I still have a lot to learn about life–we all do.
With that in mind, I decided to look at a selection of coming of age films loosely based around school and learning. As an extra bonus, all five films come from female writer-directors.
The D.A.R. support each other in their career ambitions.
It’s 1963 and headstrong Odette “Odie” Sinclair (perennial 90s coming of age star Gaby Hoffman) is being sent to Miss Godard’s Preparatory School, an all-girl boarding school, against her will. Her parents have discovered she plans to have sex with her boyfriend and believe the all-girl environment will keep her safe from boys. It’s this tension between ambitious girls and their growing attraction to men that sets the films conflict in motion.
At Miss Godard’s, Odie joins the D.A.R. (Daughters of the American Ravioli), a group of girls (including Kirsten Dunst) with the shared belief that they can be more than wives and mothers. When they discover plans for the school to go co-ed, the D.A.R. girls are torn. They like boys and want them about, but at the same time are concerned that the pressure to look good and appear feminine would detract from their learning. In addition, they believe the teachers will concentrate on teaching the boys as their education is seen as more important. First, they try to sabotage the plans and make the boys at a near-by school appear as sex-crazed drunks, then they take over the school and hold a strike.
Writer/director Sarah Kenochan based the film loosely on her own school experiences in that period and it definitely feels true to life. In addition to being immensely quotable (“Up Your Ziggy With a Wa-Wa Brush!”), it’s packed with memorable, off-beat characters and great 60s fashion. Though it’s set in the 60s, the central conflict of girls fighting for the quality of their education and their ability to be successful career women is something we can all relate to.
Lesson: Though many think otherwise, feminism doesn’t mean hating men. You can have crushes and romances without giving up your self and your ambitions. It may have been harder to learn these lessons in the 60s, especially as they didn’t always appear true, but unfortunately women are still fighting for recognition of these basic truths.
In 1963, the Canadian province of Quebec was having a crisis of identity (and many feel it still is). Much of the population felt they needed to their own country rather than a part of Canada. This identity crisis is mirrored in teenage Hanna (Karine Vanasse). Her life is marked by in-betweens: she is not a child or an adult, she is not technically Catholic or Jewish (as her mother is Catholic and her father is Jewish), and as she begins to experiment, she finds she is neither straight nor gay.
She attempts to create an identity for herself by imitating her favourite film star, French New Wave star Anna Karina in the Godard film, Vivre Sa Vie. In one scene, the film cuts between shots of her and Anna Karina doing the same dance. This imitation gets her into trouble when she experiments with prostitution, which she sees as romantic because of Karina’s role in the Godard film, and is raped. After her attack, she finds her own voice by picking up a video camera and creating her own images.
The film feels earnest, identifying its main characters as a clearly working class family, several of whom are struggling with depression and highlighting the appreciation of movies and music so crucial to teenage dreams.
Lesson: You are never going to fit into an image. Your glamourous stars may have tragic pasts, you may have uncool conflicts and interests. Our favourite characters and stars even have fictional, streamlined images meant to tell us the stories we want to hear. They’re never as awkward or as painful as real life.
Harper meets Connie at her sister’s wedding, where she is an overlooked bridesmaid
Harper Sloane (Sarah Polley, now an acclaimed writer-director herself) is Harvard bound and not happy about it. She’s an overlooked younger sister from a buttoned-up, patrician family concerned with status and wealth. Though she plans to attend law school in the fall, she secretly feels uncomfortable about the decision though she’s never thought about what other kind of life there could be for her.
Enter Connie Fitzpatrick (Stephen Rea), a 40-something bohemian photographer, and the only person who sees her secret discomfort. They become lovers and Connie invites her to move in with him, his latest in a long line of muses all of which he calls, “Guinevere.” As a Guinevere, she has to learn some kind of art (Connie’s practices are often referred to as a school she will eventually graduate from), and Harper decides to take up photography. She follows him as an apprentice, not out of her passion for it, but because she enjoys seeing what he does. When she begins to enjoy it and gains confidence, however he is weary about even letting her take a single picture.
Guinevere is set apart from other films with similar stories of romance between young girls and older men, by the constant assertion that Harper is 19 and the relationship is between two adults, though they are often posed as teacher and student. Great care is also taken to show the reality of the relationship, as Harper ends up having to work to support him as his alcoholism and bohemian principles won’t let him. He is not a “sugar daddy” that takes her every care away.
Despite this, it’s unclear what the film’s stance on Connie is, as it makes his program look quite attractive. It helps Harper come out of her shell and establish a fulfilling career. When she returns to him years after their break-up, she is very affectionate toward him and sees it as her responsibility to take care of him as he dies.
Lesson: There’s a fine line between discovering your passion and coming into your own. Be sure you’re really discovering who you are, not who others, your family, your friends, even your mentors and lovers, want you to be.
Bethany graduates valedictorian in a class of one and sees the graduation ceremony as a prolonged humiliation
To Bethany Pruitt (Ashley Rickards), pink is the colour of oppression. All her life she’s been homeschooled and forcibly sheltered by her impossibly, even cartoonishly cruel mother June (Anna Gunn). June forbids her to go out with people her own age, has as never let her have a job and steals the money she has saved to go to college. Later on, when Bethany escapes, June even tricks her into coming home by telling her her grandmother is dying. As a budding fashion designer, Bethany’s predicament comes to her clearest in the wardrobe full of baby pink clothes her mother has bought for her.
So begins Bethany’s trip to independence. She packs up whatever clothes are salvageable, moves in with her father and his boyfriend and gets a job at a cool clothing shop where she falls in with a bad crowd and finds herself manipulated by a co-worker. But Bethany doesn’t stay down for long, she works hard and enjoys some success designing clothes for a small store. It’s refreshing how the fact that it is very hard to make it in the fashion world is never on Bethany’s mind, she’s just trying to break into its periphery.
The portrayal of Bethany’s mother, June, is the most contentious aspect of the film. She appears to be a terrible mother and possible sociopath through most of the film; however, it’s possible to interpret this view of her as Bethany’s point of view. In the last act, June’s humanity is carefully revealed and she becomes a sympathetic character.
Lesson: Even the worst monsters have their human moments. You don’t have to forgive the cruelty but you can try to understand it.
Vanessa and her FUBAR friends plan their strategy for Snowstream Survivor
Dear Lemon Lima is a charming story about outcasts fighting back, not with force but with friendship. It follows 13-year-old Vanessa (Savanah Wiltfong), a half Eskimo (note: Vanessa and the other characters refer to her as Eskimo, though this is not usually seen as a politically correct term) girl attending an Alaskan prep school on an ethnic scholarship. Vanessa is uncomfortable with the Eskimo cultural identity because her mother is Caucasian and she does not have a relationship with her father and his culture. It represents otherness to her, so she clings to her whiteness, claiming “I’m from Fairbanks!” as proof of normalcy.
To complicate matters, she has recently been dumped by her boyfriend, Phillip, whom she believes is her true love. They had a very close relationship, where she called him “Strawberry” and he called her “Onion.” The fact that Vanessa sees herself an a onion, sour and not easy to like, is interesting. She yearns to fit in and be popular, choosing to use the ordinary backpack from her ex’s parents over the cool sealskin bag from her grandmother. In school, she finds herself clumped into the FUBAR (military slang meaning fucked up beyond all recognition) group. The other outsiders who aren’t worried about their status and feel they have reclaimed the word FUBAR, are ready to befriend her, but Vanessa brushes them off.
It’s this that originally makes Vanessa difficult to identify with. In addition, Philip is so ridiculously terrible its hard to believe she still wants him. Then again, she’s a teenage girl blinded by love and sure popularity is the only important goal in life, so she’s probably more like most of us than we’d care to remember. Eventually she realizes she’s too good for Philip and becomes the leader and advocate of the FUBARs so it’s clear she realizes her mistakes.
An interesting facet of the film is its examination of cultural appropriation. Each year, the school holds a competition called the Snowstorm Survivor championship where the school’s all-white student body (Vanessa is the sole native student) compete in events inspired by native games. These activities include a cringe inducing scene where white students dress up in eskimo costumes and do elaborate cultural dances. In addition, Vanessa realizes her scholarship was sponsored by a known racist who instituted the program as a PR move. By the end of the film she connects to her Eskimo heritage by forming a Snowstorm Survivor team that values the principles of the World Eskimo Olympics, a games intended to bring people together rather than tear them apart through competition.
Lesson: Cheer for everyone, have fun and don’t worry about pointless competition and popularity contests. You’ll regret the friends and the fun you didn’t have.
Elizabeth Kiy is a Canadian writer and freelance journalist living in Toronto, Ontario. is a Canadian writer and freelance journalist living in Toronto, Ontario.
While watching ‘The Maze Runner,’ I couldn’t help thinking, wouldn’t this story have been so much more rich and interesting if it had been told from Minho’s or Teresa’s perspective? Why not feature a girl or a boy of color as the protagonist?
Like most Hollywood films, The Maze Runner — the latest young adult (YA) novel set in a dystopian future adapted for the screen — revolves around a white male protagonist. While mildly entertaining, rather than exploring new ideas and themes, it suffers from gender and racial tropes.
Echoing themes in Lord of the Flies (boys in the wild creating their own society) and The Hunger Games (dystopian setting, a treacherous obstacle course and adults manipulating children for a supposedly greater good), The Maze Runner follows Thomas, whose memories have been erased, as he’s transported into a community of boys living in a forest, called the Glade, in the middle of a fluctuating maze.
It’s a decent film. Nothing special, nothing great. Just fine. I couldn’t care less who lived or who died because all of the characters possess gossamer personalities. The beginning opens with disorientation dropping you right into the story. But beyond that, it didn’t really contain much suspense. Plus I was able to predict pretty much the entire plot about 20 minutes in. Despite a few similarities, The Maze Runner lacks the stellar acting, character development, gravitas and social commentary that helped catapult The Hunger Games to blockbuster success.
The racial diversity of the boys in the Glade pleasantly surprised me. Not only do we see multiple boys of color (who talk! who matter as characters!), it was fantastic to see boys of color in leadership positions: Albie, the group’s leader and the very first boy ever sent up, and Minho, the Keeper of the Runners. Now, I want to applaud this film for its diversity. However, the film (and the book too) can’t resist centering a white male protagonist who is considered “special” and “different” because he’s curious about things and asks questions. Of course, Thomas can figure out everything better and faster than everyone else, even the people who have been in the Glade for years. Sure, you could argue that perhaps that has to do with his repressed memories resurfacing. But I think the real reason is that heaven forbid we have a hero who isn’t white or male, aside from a few notable exceptions (Katniss in The Hunger Games, Tris in Divergent).
Even though there are white boys in the Glade, The Maze Runner feels akin to a White Savior narrative. Now, the White Savior trope is typically reserved for movies about Black people and slavery or Indigenous people, who need to be “saved” or “civilized” by a lone white hero. Yet it still parallels the trope as the boys in the Glade need the new white guy to teach them about the maze and to attempt an escape. Minho has been mapping out the maze for three years, no small feat since the maze changes every night. Yet it’s Thomas, not Minho, who figures out how to kill a Griever and the code to use at the end of the maze. It’s Thomas who motivates the others to try to escape when the others have become complacent.
Thankfully, Thomas doesn’t play a role in “establishing order and peace,” which Albie says they have achieved after the “dark days” of panic and fear. Author James Dashner was inspired by Lord of the Flies to write a series about boys depicting how “instead of killing each other and being animalistic, they would form a brotherhood and do whatever it took to protect each other.” The boys do all work cooperatively together. But Thomas is the only one who breaks the rules and enters the maze as it’s closing to try to save Albie and Minho. While Thomas doesn’t civilize the boys, he does demonstrate a sense of bravery and morality the others seem to ignore or repress. The film’s message seems to be that we should question things, not passively accept them, which Thomas’s presence in the Glade embodies.
So where are all the girls? The movie never explains that. And no one seems to ask that question. The boys are shocked to see a girl, Teresa, come up the elevator the day after Thomas arrives. She is the only girl to ever arrive in the Glade. Aside from an extremely brief performance by Patricia Clarkson, Teresa is the only female character we ever see.
One nice change from most YA movies is the lack of a predictable love triangle or the emergence of a love story. With the presence of one girl, the film could have easily fallen into that trap. Love stories aren’t in and of themselves bad. In fact, I love them. It annoys me how often media denigrates love stories, typically because women and girls are the primary intended audiences. No, I’m glad no love story exists because it usually reduces a female character’s role to nothing more than an object of desire for the dudes in the film. It also typically reifies heteronormative relationships, also queer diversity would have been great to see here.
Teresa is the epitome of the Smurfette Principle. She is the only girl amongst 50 or so boys. Lacking true agency and personality, Teresa’s sole purpose in the film appears to be to potentially create confusion and chaos amongst the boys and to inspire Thomas. Sure, we see her acting feisty as she throws items off of a tower and tosses a torch at a Griever. But ultimately, her role only matters in how it relates to and impacts the male characters. Yes, Teresa tells Thomas that maybe there’s a reason they’re both different. And she encourages him that they should escape. But that’s about it. If I had any hopes for Teresa’s growth in the subsequent films in the trilogy (four books if you count the prequel), this article on the sexism in the books dashed that.
Ummmmmm, pardon me? No, no, no. Just. No. That’s an extremely problematic statement. So because there have been a few female-centric film franchises based on YA novels it’s “refreshing” for the main character to be male? Uh oh, lady movies have been doing well at the box office. Gasp! BRING BACK THE BOY MOVIES.
It matters that girls (and all genders) see diverse representations (gender, race, sexuality, age, body size, people with disabilities, etc.) on-screen. It matters that girls see themselves reflected in media.
While watching The Maze Runner, I couldn’t help thinking, wouldn’t this story have been so much more rich and interesting if it had been told from Minho’s or Teresa’s perspective? Why not feature a girl or a boy of color as the protagonist? Even though it’s framed as a male-centric story, it still could have contained complex, nuanced fully developed female characters. It could have made an intriguing commentary on constricting, stereotypical gender roles or the toxicity of hyper masculinity. It could have explored how gender and race impact social structures and people’s experiences. Maybe I expect too much from my movies.
Despite its racial diversity, instead of forging a new trail, The Maze Runner follows a fairly formulaic and familiar story filled with tired tropes.
Let’s face it, ‘Boyhood’ is a gimmick movie. Richard Linklater sporadically filmed it over a twelve-year period so we could see the child actors in it actually grow-up. If you loved Michael Apted’s ‘Up’ series but wanted more fiction and less wait, Boyhood is for you. But if you just love coming-of-age dramas, I’m not sure I can recommend this one.
Ellar Coltrane as Mason at the beginning of Boyhood
Let’s face it, Boyhood is a gimmick movie. Richard Linklater sporadically filmed it over a 12-year period so we could see the child actors in it actually grow up. If you loved Michael Apted’s Up series but wanted more fiction and less wait, Boyhood is for you. But if you just love coming-of-age dramas, I’m not sure I can recommend this one.
The child actors (Ellar Coltrane as central character Mason and the director’s daughter, Lorelai Linklater, as Mason’s sister, Samantha) are extremely natural and sufficiently likable. Patricia Arquette is fantastic as their mother, who faces a roller coaster of personal, professional, and economic ups and downs. And Ethan Hawke plays their intermittently available father as Ethan-Hawke-in-a-Richard-Linklater-movie, that is, opinionated and rambling and just-barely functioning as an adult human being, but I happen to like that character a lot.
Mason and Samantha’s mother (Patricia Arquette) reads them a Harry Potter book
As strong as their performances are, the problem is that Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke are recognizable movie stars, in stark contrast with the kids at the center of the film and the unknown Texan character actors in the supporting cast. This evaporates the faux-documentary feeling of Boyhood, and leaves in its place an overlong, meandering, plain-old movie.
What’s left is essentially the non-dinosaur, non-Sean Penn-on-limbo-beach parts of The Tree of Life, with fewer shots of light shining through trees, and nostalgia from the last decade instead of the 1950s. Six-year-old Mason rides his bike in endless loops around his block. Eight-year-old Mason plays Wii boxing. Twelve-year-old Mason finds out about internet porn. Fifteen-year-old Mason smokes weed and gets an earring. Seventeen-year-old Mason has sex with his girlfriend in his sister’s dorm room. Eighteen-year-old Mason wins a photography scholarship and does shrooms in the mountains and we can finally, FINALLY leave the theater. (Boyhood is two hours and 45 minutes long, with exactly zero explosions or giant robot fights. I do not have the patience for such things.)
Mason and his sister Samantha (Lorelai Linklater)
It is possible I lost interest because I never had a boyhood of my own. I kept wanted to see more of Samantha, because I could relate to her girlhood (my favorite scene in the movie was Samantha cringing through The Sex Talk with her dad at a bowling alley) and get my nostalgia kick. I was also more interested in Patricia Arquette’s mother character and her struggles because I could relate to them as an adult and as someone who plans to have children.
Sullen teenage Mason and his father (Ethan Hawke)
I may be placing too much importance on gender here, because there are loads of non-gendered experiences of childhood present in this movie. I played with dirt and found out my parents aren’t perfect and rejected authority figures and aggressively sulked, just like Mason. Maybe if Samantha and the mother hadn’t been there, just out of focus, I would have related more to his journey instead of yearning for more from the sidelined female characters.
And as I got bored with Boyhood, I got distracted by the logistics of its gimmick. The passage of time is largely expressed through changed hairstyles on the kids, and I wondered if that was mandated by the director (would Richard Linklater really make his daughter get a regrettable purple-red dye job? (ETA: he did not.) I morbidly wondered what kind of insurance they took out on the lives of the central actors and how they would have reacted to an untimely death. I tried to remember what year the songs on the soundtrack came out so I could figure out how much longer I had to wait to get out of there (I have never been so excited to hear that Gotye song. I turned to my viewing partner and whispered “only two years left!!”).
Eighteen-year-old Mason at the end of the film
Boyhood is a gimmick movie, but admittedly, the gimmick is pretty cool. If you don’t mind long runtimes and have a strong way to relate to this disjointed series of vignettes (having had a boyhood of your own, having a son around the age of the kids in the movie, growing up in Texas), you may well love Boyhood. I didn’t hate it. I just wanted to see more of the women in, it and have it be over an hour earlier. My own childhood felt shorter.
Robin Hitchcock is an American writer living in Cape Town who still plays with sticks in the dirt.
All art is political. That’s what they teach you in art school, and it’s what they teach you in criticism school. It’s apparently not what they teach you in internet troll school.
All art is political. That’s what they teach you in art school, and it’s what they teach you in criticism school. It’s apparently not what they teach you in Internet troll school. In a turn of events that is both terrifying and depressing, a feminist game critic was recently driven from her home by threats of violence after some men didn’t like a video she made. If you’ve been following the story, one of the ideas that keeps coming up is the notion that this critic was somehow imposing a political viewpoint on a space that was neutral before she arrived. She was, as the troll legends tell it, “ruining” something that was “pure entertainment” by “trying to make it political.”
Film has been treated as an art form, and been subject to the same critical analysis as art, for long enough now that it doesn’t gall people to see a review that focuses on more than the technical mechanics of how the thing was made. Even so, if you’re a critic who’s interested in gender, race, or sexuality, you still get blasted from time to time for “making things political” when they otherwise wouldn’t be.
With that in mind, may I present:
6 Types of Political Movies
Water
1. The Message Movie
The Message Movie explicitly takes a position on some political topic. Braveis about how women have the right to choose their own destinies. Born on the Fourth of Julyis an indictment of the Vietnam War. Quills at least thinks it’s about how freedom of expression is the most important good.
Message Movies don’t have to be blunt and simple – and I would argue that Brave and Born on the Fourth of July are fairly nuanced in their presentation – but the blunt, simple movies are the ones that are easiest to point to.
For example, Water, directed by Deepa Mehta, is a really nice-looking two hour lecture on how the Laws of Manu have led to women’s oppression in India. The two main story lines – about a young woman who’s forced into prostitution and then shamed into killing herself, and a child bride who becomes impoverished after the husband she’s only met once leaves her a widow – are shaped explicitly to drive this point home, and the movie ends with a third woman chasing after Gandhi’s train, begging him to help the untouchables.
Whether or not you agree with the film’s position on the issue – and I certainly don’t know enough about it to offer an opinion – Water is very straight-forward in its message and intent.It would be hard to walk away from it thinking that it wasn’t political, even if you didn’t know that Mehta’s films have sparked violent protest in India.
The Message Movie is the easiest kind of movie to discuss from a political point of view, because it frames the questions for you and draws attention to the issues it wants to debate.
Likelihood that you’ll get blasted for thinking the film is political: 1 percent – even if we don’t all agree with or about the film’s message, we all understand that it’s trying to tell us something. Most people think it’s fair play to discuss that.
Children of Men
2. The Implied Message Movie
The Implied Message Movie still offers a strong point of view on political issues, and still seems to be doing it deliberately – it’s just not as explicit as the Message Movie.
One of my favorite films ever, Children of Men, mashes together everything wrong in the world, from terrorism to racism to wrongful imprisonment to war, but never didactically spells out its message for viewers. At the same time, no one would leave the theater believing that director Alfonso Cuarón is agnostic about immigration policy or the human rights abuses at Abu Ghraib. The movie is full of disquieting, uncomfortable scenes and topical imagery that make the director’s position on real-life issues quite clear.
It’s the same way that no one would watch Brazil and walk away thinking, “I’m optimistic about the moral path our bureaucratic culture will be walking,” or feel like racial tension is not a pressing issue, based on watching Crash.
The Implied Message Movie has clearly dipped its oar in the river of politics, and has ideas it wants to share with us, even if they aren’t packaged and delivered quite as neatly as the message in the Message Movie.
Likelihood that you’ll get blasted for thinking the film is political: 30 percent – depending on how abstract the movie’s themes are, there’s a chance someone will tell you that you’re ruining it by making it about real life.
Zero Dark Thirty
3. The “I’m Just Telling You What Happened” Movie
The “I’m Just Telling You What Happened” Movie also has its oar in the river of politics, but it resists pushing off in any particular direction. Biographical movies, or movies based on a true story, are especially likely to land in this category, since the filmmakers may feel that they shouldn’t “impose” a viewpoint on events.
Zero Dark Thirty, which is about the hunt for Osama Bin Laden, was controversial, in part, because it didn’t come right out and say that torture was wrong. The scenes depicting torture are filmed in a cold, emotionally detached way, often taking us outside the point of view of either the victims or the perpetrators. Rather than discussing whether what happened was right or wrong, Zero Dark Thirty seems more interested in exploring the motivations behind it, from a fairly non-judgmental standpoint.
Michael Moore has a pretty persuasive argument for why the film is actually an indictment of torture as an interrogation technique, but your opinion on the events of the film will mostly depend on your opinion of torture in real life.
12 Years a Slave, though it’s not likely to be mistaken for a pro-slavery movie, is also far more interested in exploring the social and psychological dynamics of slavery than in arguing for why it’s wrong. As compassionate human beings, of course we understand that what we’re seeing is wrong, but the movie is leaving us to do the ideological work on our own.
Whereas Zero Dark Thirty and 12 Years a Slave use politically charged issues as their primary content, straight-up biographical movies like Walk the Line and The Runaways – especially when the subjects or direct descendants of the subjects are alive – often try to take a non-judgmental attitude toward the characters, simply reporting what they did, without examining the larger context.
In either case, the “I’m Just Telling You What Happened” Movie leaves you on your own to decide how you feel about what happened and your feelings are probably based on information drawn from outside the film.
Likelihood that you’ll get blasted for thinking the film is political: 30 percent – depending on how central the issue you want to discuss is to the movie’s themes, you may be accused of reading something into it that isn’t there.
The Help
4. The “Let’s Find Something Pleasant to Agree About” Movie
The “Let’s Find Something Pleasant to Agree About” Movie tells a benign, feel-good story that reaffirms what its target audience already believes, while steadfastly ignoring anything else that might crop up.
The Help exists to congratulate me, as a white person, for being less racist than the movie’s most villainous character. It invites the audience to identify with white people who Aren’t Racist, and completely limits the scope of its discussion to the Jim Crow era, avoiding any opportunity to draw a parallel or connection between racism as it existed in the 1960s and racism as it exists today.
Similarly, Forrest Gump takes a long tour through twentieth-century American history, reassuring us at every turn, through the simple, home-spun wisdom of its hero, that life is miraculous, love is important, and we should always have faith and feel hope. As Amy Nicholson recently pointed out in LA Weekly, the movie avoids discussing any of the difficult, contentious issues Forrest encounters, from the Vietnam War, to the AIDS crisis, to women’s rights, to civil rights – struggles that defined the national history it’s asking us to feel good about.
The “Let’s Find Something Pleasant to Agree About” Movie doesn’t just leave us to make up our own minds – it actively steers us away from controversial topics by drawing our attention to the topics we’re most likely to agree about.
Likelihood that you’ll get blasted for thinking the film is political: 50 percent – this is the tipping point where we start to talk about and criticize what’s not in the movie, and people don’t like that as much.
Sex and the City 2
5. The Helpless Shrug and Hand Wave Movie
The Helpless Shrug and Hand Wave Movie is aware that it should probably say something about the issues that it’s raised, but it would rather just do that quickly so it can move on.
Sex and the City 2, for example, makes the bizarre, kind-of-orientalist decision to send its characters to Abu Dhabi for most of the film. Once there, they are, of course, confronted with the very complicated and difficult issue of women’s rights within the UAE, which they address by:
Treating it like it’s none of their business, so they can have fun riding camels
Trying to make a culturally sensitive statement about how it’s probably OK to wear a veil
Deciding that the women of Abu Dhabi probably have things under control, since they meet to wear make-up in secret
Behaving in culturally inappropriate ways and then acting surprised when people get angry about it
Spilling a bunch of condoms all over the street and then screaming at people
Sex and the City 2 is in no way equipped to discuss a topic as complex and politically volatile as women’s rights in the UAE, and it doesn’t really want to do that, either. Instead, it awkwardly fluctuates through a series of attitudes wishing, like so many wayward travelers, that someone else’s political conflict didn’t have to ruin its vacation.
Similarly, 22 Jump Street, which I wrote about earlier, is aware that it should say something about gender and sexuality, given that so many of its jokes are essentially gay jokes, underneath. The best it can manage is an inconsistent pastiche of ideas, in which its characters sometimes deliver humorously-timed lectures on tolerance and equality.
The Helpless Shrug and Hand Wave Movie acknowledges that there’s something we might want to discuss about its content, but quietly begs us to just let it go.
Likelihood that you’ll get blasted for thinking the film is political: 50 percent – depending on how graciously the film has requested that you not do this, and how entertaining it otherwise is, you might get told you’re a buzz-kill.
The Way Way Back
6. The Invisible Perspective Movie
The Invisible Perspective Movie realistically presents ideas and attitudes that are so normalized within our culture that we’ve forgotten that they form one particular perspective, rather than an objective view of reality.
In The Way Way Back, the film’s teenage protagonist forms an emotional bond with a surrogate father figure who helps him come of age as a man. The film, which is otherwise very thoughtful and enjoyable to watch, takes for granted that part of becoming a man involves learning to objectify women, and battling with other men to win a woman’s loyalty.
Someone watching the movie might say, “Well, that’s what boys learn to do,” and I’m sure that, for some boys, it is. But the fact that the movie doesn’t label or examine this as a political issue – the fact that it treats this as a completely unremarkable feature of gender – doesn’t mean the issue’s not there.
Edge of Tomorrow casually presents a female soldier as being competent and skilled – something that many critics did comment on, since it’s not what we usually see – and it also casually presents the fact that the male soldiers she serves with don’t like her and call her “Full-Metal Bitch” behind her back. Both of those things – the idea that a woman can be a competent soldier and the idea that that means nobody will like her – have political meanings, though you might notice only the first one – or neither – on the first pass.
Every movie that exists is made from a certain perspective, whether the movie calls attention to that perspective or not. And, since we live in a world full of constant political struggle, the perspective a movie is made with can necessarily be read as offering a political viewpoint.
That doesn’t make the movie good or bad – The Way Way Back doesn’t “lose” at politics because it didn’t spend a lot of time interrogating its perspective on gender – it just means that we frame our discussions about it differently. A movie that isn’t specifically trying to impart a political message is still a mirror to the culture that produced it and, by examining what we see in the mirror, we can learn new things about ourselves.
Critics add the most value when they talk about things that aren’t obvious, and help us to consider our assumptions from an alternate perspective. They do, indeed, “go looking for things” to talk about rather than taking films at face value, because that’s how you engage with art as something that’s culturally relevant.
Likelihood that you’ll get blasted for thinking the film is political: 99 percent – people hate it when things are culturally relevant.
Katherine Murray is a Toronto-based writer who yells about movies and TV on her blog.
On the subject of female comediennes, A.O. Scott, ‘New York Times’ movie critic, recently wrote, “The ‘can women be funny?’ pseudo-debate of a few years ago, ridiculous at the time, has been settled so decisively it’s as if it never happened…The real issue, in any case, was never the ability of women to get a laugh but rather their right to be as honest as men.” I love A.O. Scott and his writing is brilliant, and I agree with him—the “can women be funny?” argument is a weird pseudo-debate that managed to gain traction on the big world of the web.
On the subject of female comediennes, A.O. Scott, New York Times movie critic, recently wrote, “The ‘can women be funny?’ pseudo-debate of a few years ago, ridiculous at the time, has been settled so decisively it’s as if it never happened…The real issue, in any case, was never the ability of women to get a laugh but rather their right to be as honest as men.” I love A.O. Scott and his writing is brilliant, and I agree with him—the “can women be funny?” argument is a weird pseudo-debate that managed to gain traction on the big world of the web.
However, I disagree slightly. I don’t think its as if the debate never happened, because for some insane reason, women have to keep proving that they are funny. Studies have been done to discover why woman might not be perceived as humorous as men and documentaries have explored the topic with famous comedians. Why people seem to believe that there aren’t funny women out there when there seem to be a million examples of hard-working funny women producing and creating funny material everyday, remains a strangely resilient, sexist mystery.
I mean SNL has been a hot spot for female comediennes for about 30 years—have people not noticed that a staple of modern comedy has been staffed by women for a LONG time?
Tina Fey and Amy Poehler
Tina Fey and Amy Poehler: the two incredibly popular, insanely talented funny women just sort of rule over popular comedy on TV—did you see them host the Golden Globes when they were awesome and made fun of George Clooney, Leonardo DiCaprio, made out with Bono (who makes out with Bono?) and cross-dressed. No one could ever deny that those two women aren’t talented and ridiculously hard working. Both of them write and produce TV shows and movies all the time. Do you know how hard that is? To write a full-length feature film and multiple episodes of TV shows? Oh, and books. I’ve been working on a novel for like five years and it’s still not finished.
There’s also Julia Louis-Dreyfuss who just racks up awards for TV comedy (also an alumni of SNL) and has been producing fantastic comedy since 1987 (longer than most of our readership has been alive). She’s an all-around comedienne whose portrayal of a self-centered, out of touch, Vice President of the United States of America on VEEP is absolutely spot on and fantastic. I love that she can portray someone so unlikeable and still make us love her.
I know that she’s probably not on many “funny women lists,” but she should be. Drescher is not only a writer, producer, and actress (The Nanny, The Simpsons, Thank God You’re Here, Living With Fran), she’s also one of the strongest, most inspiring women in Hollywood. Just Google her and understand exactly what this woman has been through in her life and how’s she not only, still funny and optimistic, but also a legit activist and US diplomat for Women’s Health Issues. Respect Fran Drescher.
Isla Fischer: First off, she’s married to Sascha Baren Cohen so you know she has a sense of humor. But more than that I love the way she completely commits to ditzy, hilarious roles (The Bachelorette, Confessions of a Shopaholic, Hot Rod). In fact, I can’t even think of any Isla Fischer role that wasn’t comedic.
Sarah Silverman: that woman has a mouth like a sailor and I want to be with her all the time. She says the C-word more than a drunk me and I love her. Oh, and she’s also hilarious, her standup is fantastic and she’s also not a bad actress (she was the best part of that weird movie,Take This Waltz).
Melissa McCarthy is bold and incredibly brave with her comedy—she’s a master of gross physical comedy and as a woman, that takes guts. I would actually consider one of the most cutting-edge female comediennes out there right out, and definitely the bravest. I want more interviews with a woman who is incredibly versatile and not afraid to take risks—Also, her gun-loving, foul-mouthed, “sex-goddess” role in The Heat was just fantastic, more funny characters with contradictions please!
Sandra Bullock unfairly has a very “girl next door” reputation, despite the fact that 90 percent of her career has been devoted to very silly, funny, relatable comedy.
Mindy Kaling: we all know her, and obviously this lady is one hell of a comedy writer. She started writing for The Office at an insanely young age (thanks for making me feel like a failure at life—you too, Lena Dunham), and then creating her own show. The Mindy Project is, I think, actually a high-cut above your standard sitcom, the jokes are funny and pointed, and Kaling has managed to cobble together a very silly, pop-culture-obsessed, shallow woman, and mix her up with an insanely smart, outspoken gynecologist, normal-sized, woman of color. Hello complex character that more accurately reflects women in America!
Amy Sedaris: if you don’t know who that is, go and Google her. If I could go to any dinner party in the world, I would ask that it be at Amy Sedaris’ house. Sedaris’ straight-faced comedy is in its own category of genuine silliness, biting sarcasm, and sheer absurdism. I died when I read her Simple Times: Crafting for Poor People book and desperately wish that she would bring back her show, Strangers with Candy, on Comedy Central and go back to writing that insane advice column.
Broad City: Have you seen this quirky new show on Comedy Central? Created by newcomers Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson (and produced by Amy Poehler) as a spin-off of their web series, there’s a scene in ep. 6 that had me in tears it was so brilliant. Again, young, talent-ridden comediennes bursting with genuine, funny girl comedy that is so “buddy-buddy” and focused on female friendship that we could just talk about it for days.
Chelsea Handler: I get that a lot of people find Chelsea Handler a bit in-your-face with her, “I got drunk and slept with my boss” kind of humor, however I think she’s marks a really important step for comediennes. Handler is crass, sexual, wildly inappropriate, brags about her lack of self-awareness, and most importantly, doesn’t apologize. Handler has put herself out there as an unreformed party girl and carved out a great space for funny women who also may or may not be alcoholics and sex addicts. Cool. The world needs all kinds and her unabashed account of one-night stands in My Horizontal Life is hilarious and awe-inspiring.
Oh, and she was also the only female comedy-based late-night talk show host for about eight years and told off Piers Morgan for being an idiot.
Rachel Redfern has an MA in English literature, where she conducted research on modern American literature and film and its intersection, however she spends most of her time watching HBO shows, traveling, and blogging and reading about feminism.
When characters on TV shows or in feature films encounter “a scientist,” that person is usually a man. The rare times when actresses play scientists in mainstream films, they’re more likely to be a punchline than a real character, like Denise Richards in the James Bond film ‘The World Is Not Enough.’ Audiences have to look to documentaries like ‘Particle Fever’ (released earlier this year) about the discovery of the Higgs boson, to see women scientists in prominent roles on film. The new Netflix documentary ‘Mission Blue’ focuses on one woman scientist, Sylvia Earle, a former chief at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and pioneering oceanographer and marine biologist who is on a quest to save the world’s oceans from dying.
When characters on TV shows or in feature films encounter “a scientist,” that person is usually a man. The rare times when actresses play scientists in mainstream films, they’re more likely to be a punchline than a real character, like Denise Richards in the James Bond film The World Is Not Enough. Audiences have to look to documentaries like Particle Fever (released earlier this year), about the discovery of the Higgs boson,to see women scientists in prominent roles on film. The new Netflix documentary Mission Blue focuses on one woman scientist, Sylvia Earle, a former chief at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and pioneering oceanographer and marine biologist who is on a quest to save the world’s oceans from dying.
If that last sentence seems like an exaggeration, you should probably see this film. Earle, now 79, has been scuba diving as part of her research for the past 60 years (where she got her undergrad degree was one of the first places to adopt this “new” technology) and has seen firsthand the destruction that pollution and overfishing have wrought–even in areas “in the middle of nowhere” we (and she) think might be unaffected. She points out plastic bags and bottles she encounters on the ocean floor along with long stretches of dead coral and hardly any fish in places where both previously flourished.
She asks, “”How can we use the ocean and not use it up?” She’s not afraid to take on the fishing industry, describing her stint at NOAA: “I went to one meeting of the fisheries council. And I was never allowed to go again.” When she warned of the (still) impending extermination of bluefin tuna (because of overfishing) she earned the nickname, “The Sturgeon General.” She resigned from her government position so she could further ocean conservation without being tethered by politics.
The film isn’t all doom and gloom. We also see, in some stunning underwater cinematography (both reminiscent of the Jacques Cousteau documentaries and surpassing them) places where ocean life is plentiful: huge schools of fish that seem like shimmering silver walls along with harmless whale sharks and sea turtles touchingly unwary of divers. Earle is a great advocate of everyone exploring the ocean in this way, theorizing that people care more about wildlife and its environment if they can see it: if wildflowers, birds, trees and deer were hidden away from us we might not have many protections for them either. Earle points out that even though she’s not “big and muscly,” she’s been diving her entire adult life and was able to convince her own mother, at 81, to give it a try. She loved it.
Sylvia with a whale shark
The film shows us the deep sea animals that Earle first encountered over 30 years ago in a special atmospheric diving suit she, along with her third husband, helped design. The natural flashing luminescence of fish and other sea creature at these depths look like city neon signs and gaudy Christmas displays all at once.
We also hear of Earle’s own journey first as a child allowed to explore, alone and for hours at a time, the wild places around her home (as few children now get the chance to do) and later her career as a scientist. She is careful to include herself when she says repeatedly that no one foresaw the depletion of a resource–the ocean and its inhabitants–that seemed too vast for human beings to impact. But now Earle says, “No ocean, no life. No ocean, no us.”
We see the ocean in this film as a living thing.
Earle became a scientist before second-wave feminism, when hardly any women entered that profession and we see in the media coverage of her accomplishments (when she was often the first or only woman but usually called a “girl”), the sexism of the era, which she undoubtedly encountered on the job as well. But the film’s co-director and interviewer Fisher Stevens (yes, the same one who acted in films like Short Circuit–but more recently was a producer for The Cove) doesn’t ask about these instances, only gushes about how “beautiful” she was. Earle is polite to him, but, at 79, she might be wondering when she will finally be excused from the unofficial beauty pageant all women are subjected to.
This film could use more women. We barely see Earle interacting with other women scientists or divers in Blue (except very briefly in Australia and in vintage footage of her time as part of an all-woman team of researchers)though many more women are in the field now than when she started her career. Not enough women are behind the scenes either: the film was directed and written by men. When we consider Earle is not just a scientific pioneer, but also writes books about ocean conservation for the general public (including one released to coincide with thisdocumentary—as well as children’s books) and is an effective enough speaker for lay audiences that she won a substantial monetary award as part of TED Talks, the omission of her from the film’s writing team is baffling. If her own writing had been included some elements, like a casual mention of the acidification of the ocean (thanks to carbon dioxide emissions) might have been better explained.
I also would have appreciated more of Earle’s take on her personal life. She was married three times and had three children (with the addition, for about a decade, of stepchildren too) but as her daughter (who now runs the deep sea equipment company Earle founded) tells us she “wasn’t June Cleaver.” Earle was taking part in underwater expeditions halfway across the world from her family at a time when wives and mothers were expected to make their homes and their husbands (and their husbands’ careers) their first priority. Her marriages suffered because of her absences, even though each of the husbands shared her interests. In this era of Lean Inand “having it all,” I’m sure I’m not the only one who would like to hear in more detail about the experience of someone who attempted this balancing act before most of the so-called “experts” were born.
When we see the “Happiness is being in over your head.” sticker (illustrated with a scuba diver) in her office we think Earle may be a lot more interesting than the documentary makes her (an impression that Earle in interviews seems to confirm), but she’s still able to get in some good, informative quotes like, “What we’re doing to the ocean, what we’re doing to the planet as a whole comes back to us in bigger storms, more powerful storms, more frequent storms.”
A better film might have tied in Earle’s past status as an outsider (when she was one of the few women in her field) and rebel (in not conforming to the ’50s and ’60s cultural expectations of what a wife and mother should be) to her current role as an environmentalist. When we see (in graphic footage) gleeful fisherman cutting the fins off living sharks and then dumping their mutilated bodies into the ocean to die, we can’t help thinking that this boys’ club gives its members permission to behave badly–as most boys’ clubs do. Because she’s never been one of the boys, Earle can see their cruelty–and its consequences–more clearly: she even films a fishing boat “vacuuming” up its catch–from the vantage point of the fish.
In spite of its flaws, Blue is well worth seeing–and succeeded in making me want to try scuba diving. Some of the shots in the film seem more magical than the brightly colored, hologram illustrations in my childhood copy of The Little Mermaid. As Stevens accompanies Earle through storybook seascapes I thought, “This is the ‘beauty’ he should be gushing over.”
