The radical notion that women like good movies
But lately there’s been a surge of female writers who inspire me. Not only for their individual writing styles, but also for their ability to be so unapologetically female. Which, as my writing partners and I launch into production of our web series ‘Supporting Roles,’ means everything.
Maybe sitting through years of shitty queer characters in films and TV has sensitized me, because, even though I’m not trans*, I often get a similar, sickly feeling about films and TV with trans* characters made by people who aren’t trans*, most recently the two (or maybe it was one and a half) episodes of the Emmy-nominated ‘Transparent’ I watched when (cis) people I respect raved about it.
I would pay real money to watch any of these movies. The larger point though, is that I bet, if we actually tried, we could come up with amazing projects for lots of women in Hollywood that aren’t based on assuming that the only thing we want to watch them do is act sexy (or crazy). There’s no shortage of talent in the film industry, so, maybe rather than waiting for screenwriters to craft great starring roles for women at large, Hollywood could also take a closer look at the stars who are already there and custom build some awesome ‘Spy’-like films for them.
A few months ago I wrote, “Today, no one who is relevant doubts that women are funny, at least not out loud.” And here we are in 2015 and Important Men are making casual declarations that only certain types of women aren’t funny. In this case, unbelievably beautiful women. Progress?
Unlike Bond, who uses the dangers of his job as a pretext for casual flings with disposable women, Stirlitz holds himself longingly aloof from women to avoid endangering them. Unlike Bond, who is empowered by his “license to kill,” Stirlitz kills only once, and his victim is fully humanized. Finally, unlike Bond, Stirlitz’s cinematic image is the creation of a woman.
Women aren’t really treated poorly by ‘Silicon Valley,’ but it’s weird that they’re treated as being so different from the male characters on the show. Where the men have recognizable – if exaggerated – human failings, motivations and personality tics, the women are much more inscrutable, like adults who’ve walked into the middle of a children’s game. It’s a pattern that exists outside of just this show, but it’s something that stops women from being full participants in the story even if they now, at least, exist there.
As the evil dictator of the territory he occupies in a post-apocalyptic world, he demands more and more gasoline (which is in rare supply), while withholding water from his starved and sickly citizens. He also has a collection of women that he imprisons and uses for breeding purposes. In this single character we see some of the worst aspects of rampant hyper-masculinity condensed into one truly horrifying man.
The life Brody has lived is utterly different, if not entirely sheltered. What dangers or dilemmas he’s faced in his life simply haven’t left the kind of marks Hooper and Quint bear. And their lack prevents him from engaging in any stereotypical masculine posturing. He is, by that criteria anyway, untested.
Wrapped in a hypermasculine Trojan Horse of violence and war custom is a heady lesson about the dangers of ceding to those expectations, and about the road away from them and toward something like redemption. Here is a film where women are shown to be men’s combatative equals. Even more so, it is a film where the only way the men can escape their own oppression is to join up with, and occasionally defer to, these women.
Narrator Jackson Katz uses visuals and film clips to argue that such a view of masculinity is creating a crisis in young boys as they grow up being made to feel that violence=agency and that rape is just fine because you should get what you want—and if the answer is “no,” then you just take it.
‘Welcome to Me’ is pitched as “woman wins the lottery and uses it to finance her own daytime talk show.” I interpreted this as “Joan Calamezzo: The Movie” and immediately added it to my to-watch list. What that quick summary fails to mention is that Kristen Wiig’s character Alice Klieg has borderline personality disorder, and that her decision to produce her talk show coincides with her going off her meds.
Director James Kent: “People offer me these projects and I’m immediately intrigued by the woman’s story in history because often I think women are written out of in history because they are the underdogs. Often it’s a better story than the one who’s king; he’s got it all his way. “
![“[Unbelievably Beautiful] Women Aren’t Funny”: Progress Through Modifiers?](https://btchflcks.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/unbelievablybeautifulgoldie.png)
