1990s – Page 3 – Bitch Flicks

What ‘Now and Then’ Taught Me About Friendship

Summer has always been a magical time where childhood lingers, and every time I get on a swingset again, or have a hankering for a push pop, or throw on my ‘Now and Then’ soundtrack, I think of my childhood and feel invigorated with that rush of youth. I think of Taylor and Sara, and a time when we were so eager to make our own adventures. I also think of those four girls from the Gaslight Addition; somehow they affected my life by making me appreciate what it means to be and have a true friend in this wild world.

This guest post by Kim Hoffman appears as part of our theme week on Female Friendship.

I was pretty excited about Sara’s 11^thbirthday party. Her mom owned a print shop and I was told we’d be having cake and playing games there; I enjoy the smell of paper so it didn’t seem like an odd place to have a party. After Sara opened presents we were outside at a picnic table lit by a floodlight from the print shop, glittering and bedazzling hats and T-shirts.

Sara’s birthday was in March, and just a few months before, a group of us went to the movies to see a new film called Now and Then. Since then, it was all any of us could talk about. We’d gone back to see it countless times, and one of those times, we were the only ones in the whole theater, a group of four or five of us girls, running around, doing cartwheels and singing and dancing. (I’d be remiss not to mention that I actually still have the original soundtrack, and it’s in my car as we speak.)

What Sara hadn’t told us was that her mom’s print shop was located right next door to a crematorium. It was a small grey building with a giant stone yard, filled with coffins of all sizes. I saw that my finished hat masterpiece was drying next to one that said the same thing as mine, “Teeny,” speckled with orange and yellow flower power decor. A blonde girl walked over with an impressed-looking grin on her face. “Wow, you actually look like Thora Birch,” she said to me. A few other girls formed around us and we all began to gush over our favorite movie of the year. A fancy car drove by at that very moment and we all squealed, pumping each other with a sugar high as if one of the actors from the movie was in our neighborhood, you know—cruising by the print shop and the crematorium on a dark Saturday night.

Now and Then wasn’t just a coming-of-age ‘90s girl movie. It was intersecting itself into my life as an 11-year-old fifth grader; I was same age as the characters in the film. And I felt we were all doing this “growing up” thing together. I cut out any clippings from magazines I could find on the movie, though it wasn’t hard because Devon Sawa, who played wormy Scott Wormer, was a common household name among girls my age. He was a teen heartthrob all over the pages of Tiger Beat and Bop and I instantly obtained both the movie soundtrack and the film score (and amassed a huge pile of pinup photos of Sawa). In 1995, there was a resurgence of the trippy hippie ‘60s style and I was obsessed with rock ‘n roll for the first time. The only thing my bedroom was missing was a lava lamp. You could say I didn’t care all that much about the boys in my class, just what my friends and I would do over the weekend at our upcoming sleepover. I savored this new art of forming real bonds with girlfriends.

Now and Then is a film about four friends: Samantha, Teeny, Roberta, and Chrissy, who are growing up in the Midwest in the ‘70s (though much of the film was shot in Savannah, Georgia). A couple of decades have passed and Chrissy (played by Rita Wilson) is pregnant, living in her parents’ old home, and married to a guy she once thought was a mega dork. Teeny (Melanie Griffith) is a blossoming actress in Hollywood, with, as Roberta puts it, “Long legs, a tiny waist, and large, perky breasts.”

“Roberta you know how I feel about swearing,” Chrissy says back.

“Chrissy, breast is not a dirty word,” Roberta insists.

Which leads me to Roberta (Rosie O’Donnell), who has become a doctor and according to Chrissy, “Lives in sin with her boyfriend.” But more on that in a moment. Last but never least is Samantha (Demi Moore), a writer, and the narrator of this film; she is sarcastic, jaded, and arguably depressed. She explains that she hasn’t been to the Gaslight Addition in years (the neighborhood where all the girls grew up, which looks like any other midcentury American neighborhood). Now the girls reunite at their familiar stomping grounds for the arrival of Chrissy’s baby—and boy is she ready to pop. Waddling around in the house in a bow-tied muumuu dress, Chrissy opens up her home to her old friends, who awkwardly situate on the plastic-covered couch as if nothing’s changed in 25 years. Roberta is helping Chrissy around the house and offers the girls a beer, Samantha slinks into the backyard in all-black threads perfect for a moody writer, and Teeny inches through the yard in her heels, wearing a pearly white skin-tight skirt and matching jacket. As they play catch-up, they stare up at the treehouse they spent so much of their time as kids saving up money for, and slowly that eternal summer of their youth begins to skim back to the surface…

In our own little ways, my friends and I were making our own pacts for the first time—Sara, me, and our friend Taylor, plus the new girls we’d just met at Sara’s birthday. We would ride our bicycles from Taylor’s to Sara’s house, singing and laughing, stopping downtown at an old diner in the hopes we might see Janeane Garofalo in character as Wiladene, diner waitress by day, clairvoyant mystic by night. You could say I was enamored by this new, untapped part of me that the film was bringing out. I had a mix of confidence and fear—to explore, not just on our bicycles, but also in our minds—through séances and tarot cards, music and making up stories. (We commenced our friendship that night at Sara’s birthday party when we snuck over to that crematorium and had our first-ever séance.) We were in search of Dear Johnny in our own ways. But as our knees bobbed against one another’s and we formed a circle that night, I simply felt that brief but blissful form of excitement you feel when you’re a kid.

Now, the line about Roberta and her boyfriend “living in sin” is somewhat of a discussion among fans of the film, because word has it that from the beginning, Roberta’s character was written to be gay. I. Marlene King, writer, producer and director of Pretty Little Liars, was the writer on Now and Then. In earlier versions of the script, Chrissy says, “Roberta, for example, has chosen to be alternative, but she is still normal. She hasn’t been married four times or gone through a series of monogamous relationships…or wear all black. She’s happy. Aren’t you Roberta?” When the girls flash back to that summer when they were kids, we meet young Roberta (played by Christina Ricci), binding her chest and stumbling over her macho brothers wrestling in the hallway. Her mom died when she was four, and she is deeply bothered by it, refusing to succumb to any bullshit standards set aside for girls and the ways girls are supposed to dress or act.

Instead, Roberta is the girl at the softball game who’s throwing punches at boys or pranking her friends in a not-so-funny incident where she fakes drowning. She’s constantly testing her limits and the trust she so craves with the people in her life. But what she doesn’t yet understanding is that she needs to give others a chance to get through to her, too. Samantha (played by Gaby Hoffmann) is next to kin when it comes to tough-girl stuff because she’s in the midst of her parents’ divorce, and she’s completely in favor of rebelling against her clueless mother—which also means punching out a boy at a softball field if the moment calls for it, especially if she’s standing up for a friend. (I bet Sam is a Libra.) I used to wonder if there wasn’t more to Roberta and Sam’s relationship, especially because I could totally see Rosie O’Donnell and Demi Moore’s grown-up versions getting together and living “alternatively” as Chrissy puts it. Whatever happened in post-production to cause anyone to add in that line about Roberta’s boyfriend is a terrible shame.

Young Teeny (played by Thora Birch) is the girl who sits on her roof and memorizes lines from old movies playing on the big drive-in screen. Her parents are always hosting lavish parties while she floats about in her room upstairs, obsessing over actresses from the Golden Hollywood heyday. Teeny is down for everything and anything, but we quickly get the sense that it’s all smoke and mirrors and in truth, she’s the least experienced, at least for right now. She stuffs her bra with vanilla pudding-filled balloons to bide her time before she reaches adolescence. (She got the idea from the Wormer boys after they surprise-attack the girls with water balloons.) Sex, dating, and romance—it’s all mysterious and lusty to her and she is rushing to grow up. In one of my favorite scenes in the movie, Teeny is making all the girls take a quiz and she discovers she’s a sexual magnet, “attracting men from all four corners of the world.” The look on her face as she reads her results say it all–she’s googly-eyed over all this possibility.

Sam is nothing like Teeny, but she doesn’t try to act prudish, she just prefers to focus on other things, like books, magic, science, and what really happened to Dear Johnny. She’s the one with the bag of candles and cards who’s happy to tote her wares to the cemetery. Sam has to look out for her little sister, but she also has to contend with her mom’s new dating life. Here, she’s expected to act mature and mind her manners, while she sees her mom dressing differently and gushing over a man who isn’t her father. Her only way to cope is to escape, and her friends support that; in their not-as-R-rated way, they’re basically saying, “Fuck that. We’re your family.” Sam and Teeny make great friends because they’re so out of each other’s way and they so easily understand this place their at in their lives—with Sam’s parents’ divorce and Teeny’s parents being nearly as absent under the same roof.

Roberta and Chrissy have a special bond that’s set to the side too, because they’re so opposite yet they balance each other’s personalities to a tee. Chrissy (played by Ashleigh Aston Moore) feels Roberta is her best friend. I can’t imagine what Chrissy’s mom must think of that—what if Roberta were to track mud into her pristine home? Chrissy’s bedroom is perfectly tidy and manicured pink. She is completely sheltered by her mother’s discussions about sex—and probably still believes a garden hose and a watering can are involved. She’s the last in line when the girls hit the road on their bicycles, and she’s the first one to say, “I’m not doing that,” when she feels uncomfortable or nervous. But a little mild giggling and convincing and the girls have Chrissy believing in herself and feeling connected to them in no time. Despite her doubts that she isn’t as pretty or skinny as the other girls, Chrissy manages to find her place in the group by just being Chrissy. That’s why Roberta makes such a great best friend. For her, friendship and acceptance isn’t about appearances. Chrissy has a heart of gold. A promise is a promise with her.

There is purpose to these friendships in Now and Then like there is purpose to Chrissy’s naivety about sex, Samantha’s imaginative curiosities, Teeny’s desires for passion in romance and career, and Roberta’s capacity for strength and weakness in equal measure. See, it was easy for all of us little girls who loved the film to attach ourselves to a character we related to or liked a lot because we too were on the verge of something—and being on the verge of anything is a beautiful and surreal feeling. When you’re 11, or 12, or 13, you are a part of this magical in-between moment that connects childhood with adolescence, and the friends you have during those few years may be some of the most important friends you will ever have—not because of how long they’ll be in your life, but because they’ll be the first people on board in your life journey who are up for the same adventures you are, and they’ll challenge you somehow—maybe to get in touch with your emotions when you’re embarrassed you cried in front of them, maybe to remind you that you’re all in this together. It’s the age where you’re searching for something, anything, and you’re old enough to find those things with your friends.

It wasn’t that long after Now and Then that I became the class scapegoat—they had decided I was weird. Instead of leaving it at that, they just had to hammer away at my self-esteem for good measure. What happened to riding our bikes, playing in our backyards, jumping into swimming pools and playing slumber party games? Now, friendship was considered by how much you impressed some queen bee, how far you’d go to stake your coolness. An eighth grade girl named Tara once saved me from a bathroom incident where a girl I once thought was my friend was mocking and making fun of me. I thought, “Here’s a true Roberta.”

I treasure the time around 1995 with an appreciation that goes soul deep. Those friends opened my eyes to the kinds of friends I would look for later on in my life, hoping to attract by weeding out the fair-weathered friendships, hardened, jealous-types, and egocentric bullies. Forget the thrill of being popular, well-liked, admired and noticed—those accolades are blips on the maps of our lives. Instead, relish in your weirdness, the glue that makes you who you are, and remember that embracing something weird is not a bad thing, it’s actually a wonderful thing; that’s the lesson I learned as a kid, when we snuck in to see Now and Then for the umpteenth time. Summer has always been a magical time where childhood lingers, and every time I get on a swingset again, or have a hankering for a push pop, or throw on my Now and Then soundtrack, I think of my childhood and feel invigorated with that rush of youth. I think of Taylor and Sara, and a time when we were so eager to make our own adventures. I also think of those four girls from the Gaslight Addition; somehow they affected my life by making me appreciate what it means to be and have a true friend in this wild world.

All for one and one for all.

Kim Hoffman is a writer for AfterEllen.com and Curve Magazine. She currently keeps things weird in Portland, Oregon. Follow her on Twitter: @the_hoff

‘Reality Bites’: A Tale of Two Ladies

While a fun exercise, it’s really just as counter-productive to reduce these two women to their ‘Reality Bites’ character archetypes as it is pointless. But yet, there is something familiar and soothing in these roles. We want the pretty girl who falls from grace punished, just as we want the girl wearing glasses to have a political point of view and to not be too concerned about whether she has a boyfriend.

This guest post by Beatrix Coles previously appeared at Filmme Fatales and appears as part of our theme week on Female Friendship.

“As a female, how many roles are out there anyway? And for women over 40 who don’t go to the gym, like myself? C’mon”

– Janeane Garofalo (New York Times)

Reality Bites was sleepover fodder when I was a teenager, played on high rotation with Empire Records (“I’m going to Art School…in Boston…so I can be near you”), Clueless (“You see how picky I am about my shoes- and they only go on my feet”) and Dazed and Confused (need I say the thing about the high school girls staying the same age?). Of all of them, it felt the most dangerous and exciting, in hindsight for the simple reason that these characters were older, mired somewhere between The Wonder Years and FRIENDS. They were bravely navigating that bit of life we weren’t sure about. The part that we would go into armed with university degrees and emerge from with mortgages.

Ben Stiller’s directorial debut was penned by debut screenwriter Helen Childress, who is yet to have another film produced. Rumoured to have gone through 70-odd re-writes before hitting the screen, the script was based on the exploits of her college friends–which means that the end credit mish-mash “television pilot” is some kind of simulacra on par with the Disney Castle.

The film follows four recent college graduates living in Houston in the early 90s. The two male characters are fairly aimless and harmless. Ethan Hawke plays Troy, will-they-won’t-they love interest to Lelaina and a philosophy graduate turned inevitably unemployed beardy. He’s in a band though (Hey, That’s My Bike!), and that makes him a prospect (that and the fact he looks a lot like Ethan Hawke). Steve Zahn plays Sammy, the closeted charmer who spends most of the fim grappling not with his sexuality, but with his parent’s likely reaction to finding out their son is gay.

The ladies, thankfully, are a lot more complicated. Would-be filmmaker Lelaina (Winona Ryder) is the outlier of the small group, driven, privileged and beautiful. She’s the leader of this motley pack, a self-starter, destined for great things. She would step away from these great things though to pursue her love of documentary filmmaking. For now, she has a second-hand BMW and a production assistant role on a terrible daytime television show.

Janeane Garofalo’s Vickie is a different kettle of fish. She’s sexually assertive, keeping a list (annotated perhaps?) of her conquests. She’s come out of college claiming to have learnt only her social security number. She works at the Gap where she is responsible “for so many sweaters,” and this is OK by her.

Billed as “a comedy about love in the 90s,” the poster places the love triangle of Leilana, Michael, and Troy front and centre. Michael is played by Ben Stiller, and is a marvellous creation of the early 90s–a “youth” television executive, from whom the doe-eyed Lelaina represents the Manic Pixie Dream Girl of, well, his dreams. There’s a meet cute, when she flings a cigarette (people smoked then) and he’s all affronted in his sport jacket. Her share house and love for bucket-sized sodas quickly see him whisking her away for weekends in hotel suites, and he begins to pitch her documentary as a series (The Real World was first broadcast two years prior in 1992).

It’s so tempting to draw parallels between the characters of Lelaina and Vickie and the future careers of Winona and Janeane. Ryder’s career is going to be forever marked by both her relationship with Johnny Depp (Wino Forever) and her arrest for shoplifting. Johnny Depp may be a little more successful than Troy was ever fated to be, but Troy’s version of fame would probably include the Viper Room and dressing up as Keith Richards.

Post arrest, Winona alternated wearing Marc Jacobs, the brand she attempted to pinch, to her court appearances, and “Free Winona” t-shirts in photoshoots. But despite the spin, it was a Manic Pixie nightmare. Looking back now, Lelaina’s middle finger to her job seems equally problematic. Everyone has a bad first job, a lame boss, demeaning tasks to do in order to get money, to, you know, pay for things.

While Janeane Garofalo has never reached the level of fame or notoriety of Winona, she has had a number of roles in films that will long outlast How to Make an American Quilt (and I’m thinking mainly of Wet Hot American Summer, because cultural importance). She has used her influence to promote her political views, even co-hosting The Majority Report on Air America Radio. She has openly opposed her conservative father, supported and then unsupported Nader, and openly questioned America’s interest in Iraq and the supposed existence of Weapons of Mass Destruction.

While a fun exercise, it’s really just as counter-productive to reduce these two women to their Reality Bites character archetypes as it is pointless. But yet, there is something familiar and soothing in these roles. We want the pretty girl who falls from grace punished, just as we want the girl wearing glasses to have a political point of view and to not be too concerned about whether she has a boyfriend.

Of course, it all goes deeper than this. It’s the fact that the female screenwriter hasn’t made another film. It’s the fact that Winona’s last big role was the fading ballerina in Black Swan. That for a long time she was just Johnny’s ex. It’s that Janeane’s unholy desire to be Black Swan has seen her sidelined and that when she said she found working on Saturday Night Live sexist, that she was probably right. It’s the idea that women aren’t meant to screw up, aren’t meant to deviate and aren’t meant to be honest about their experiences. Again, it seems too tidy. But this reality certainly bites.

Beatrix Coles is a Melbourne-based writer who is passionate about crowdfunding, coffee, and Saturday Night Live and can be found discussing all of these at @beatrixcoles.

‘The First Wives Club’ and First World “Feminism”

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 a t 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.

In the novel, as the American Popular Culture Archive explains,

“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/.

20 Years Later: Powerful Realism and Nostalgia in ‘My So-Called Life’

Twenty years later, we need more of what My So-Called Life gave us a taste of. We need teenage girl protagonists to be sexual, not sexy. We need honest portrayals of what it is to be a teenager–not only for teenagers who need to see themselves in faithful mirrors, but also for adults who are still trying to figure themselves out.

: My So-Called Life

This repost by Leigh Kolb appears as My So-Called Life turns 20.

Our teenage years are often unfulfilled and disappointing. We relentlessly try to find ourselves, to make things good, but those short years are over quickly, and we don’t truly get it until much later.

These years are much like the short-lived My So-Called Life, which aired from 1994 to early 1995, and was canceled after just one season. The protagonist of My So-Called Life, Angela Chase (Claire Danes), is a powerful representation of those short teenage years. She is self-centered, horny, and emotional. She is pulled from every direction, trying to separate from her parents and evolve with new friends. She has high expectations and deep disappointments. Angela and her friends are painfully accurate portrayals of what it is to be a teenager.

As sad and unjust as it is that the show only lasted one season, there’s something poignant about how it was short and open-ended, yet packed such intensity into 19 episodes. My So-Called Life is, essentially, a mirror image of adolescence not only in narrative, but also in format.

: Angela Chase

My So-Called Life is a gold mine for feminist analysis–the show includes many thoughtful critiques of what it means to be a young woman in our culture, what it means to be a wife and mother, what it means to be a man, and what it means to be gay. Topics typically reserved for superficial after-school specials (sexuality, drug use, abuse, coming out) are treated with an intensely real humanity that many critics have argued completely changed the genre of adolescent and family dramas.

Being a teenage girl in our culture is fraught with cultural expectations and disappointments. Angela–along with girlfriends Rayanne and Sharon–are portrayed not as caricatures, not as virgins or whores, not as good girls or bad girls. They are complex and sexual; they are selfish and confused; they are wonderful and awful.

Teenagers are typically–biologically–self-centered and sexual, and the power of nostalgia drives us to consider and reconsider our teen years (in them and after them). My So-Called Life stands the test of time because it deals with these issues through characters and plot lines that reflect reality.

Self-Centered

Early in the season, the writers frame most episodes with lessons that the students are learning in school. Kafka’s Metamorphosis is juxtaposed with Angela changing her looks (dying her hair red) and feeling misunderstood by her parents. Angela sits in a class about JFK’s assassination, and says she’s “jealous” that she hasn’t had that defining moment in life that she’ll always remember where she was when it happened. Malcolm X’s words are turned into a lament about a zit. Students flirt and make out, ignoring the art on a field trip to the art museum.

On the surface, these woven-together stories seem jarring–we watch Angela turn everything into an insignificant comparison to her own life. But this is exactly what we do in adolescence. We pout that nothing important has happened in our lifetime without understanding the weight of history because we think that we are the center of history. There is scientific proof that teenagers’ brains function differently–it’s important to remind ourselves of that.

My So-Called Life, specifically through Angela’s narrative, portrays that era of life perfectly. Creator/writer/producer Winnie Holzman said, “I just went back to what it was like to be a teenager for me. Sure, Angela’s me. But at the risk of sounding. . . whatever, all the characters were me.” Holzman researched further by teaching at a high school for a couple of days, and realized that teenagers were “exactly the same” as they always had been (which is perhaps why the show still seems so real).

: The unending journey to define “self”

This selfishness is not presented with judgment or disdain, though. All of the characters–teens and adults alike–have human motivations, which we sometimes like, and sometimes don’t. Their selfishness is examined through the consequences and normality of being self-centered as a teenager, and how that looks and feels different when one is a parent or teacher. Angela worrying about a zit over Malcolm X’s words seems off-putting, but it’s painfully real.

Angela’s relationships with her friends–Rayanne, Rickie, Brian, and Sharon–also highlight the inflated sense of self that navigates us through those formative years.

Horny

One of my favorite aspects of the show is the way young female sexuality is portrayed. Angela is horny as hell. Those fresh, out-of-control adolescent sexual urges are clear and accurate throughout the series, and the writers deal with teenage sexuality with truth and nuance that is too rare in portrayals of teenage sexuality (especially teenage girls’ sexuality). Angela’s inner monologues about–and eventual makeouts with–Jordan Catalano reveal that intensity.

: Intense

Angela is clearly sexual, but also struggles with the disappointing reality of teenage male sexuality when Jordan tongue-attacks her with a terrible, awkward kiss, or expects sex before she’s ready. She wants him so much, but the expectations and imbalance of sexual power are crushing. Angela is never anti-sex, but she is nervous. She speaks with her doctor about protection, and opens up to Sharon. Her reasons for not being quite ready don’t have to do with her parents or religion–it’s about her. And that’s just how it should be.

Meanwhile, straight-laced Sharon is getting it on constantly. She shares with Angela that the expectations that disregard female agency are problematic, but she enthusiastically enjoys sex. While Sharon seems the most judgmental and prudish, she has a fulfilling and active sex life. Angela realizes–as do we–that sexual acts don’t define a person, but sexuality is an important part of who we are.

Rayanne is known by her peers as promiscuous and “slutty,” but we are also challenged to look beyond that. She wants to define herself, and that’s the label that has stuck–so she decides to be proud of the designation (she and Sharon share sub-plots about their sexual reputations). Her sexual experiences–the drunken night with Jordan being the only time we know she has sex–don’t seem to be healthy or for her. All of the characters needed more seasons to have their stories fully realized, but Rayanne especially needed more than 19 episodes to be explored.

My So-Called Life turns the virgin-whore dichotomy on its head. Young women’s sexuality–the intensity, the confusion, the expectations–is presented realistically, and the message that when it’s good, it’s good, is loud and clear.

: INTENSE

Angela and Jordan’s makeout scenes are, well, amazing, and the female gaze is often catered to. When Angela is skipping geometry study sessions to go make out with Jordan in the boiler room, we understand why she’s doing it. That episode has some excellent commentary on young women’s educational motivations, especially mathematics. When an instructor laments that it’s “so sad” when these smart girls don’t try, another instructor says that it’s because of their low self-esteem.

While that’s not an untrue assessment, it’s also important to recognize that in Angela’s case, she was horny as hell. We brush off boys’ behavior–the idea that they can’t stop thinking about sex in their teen years–but girls are right there, too.

As Angela tells a confused Brian, “Boys don’t have the monopoly on thinking about it.”

My So-Called Life reiterates that idea, which is heartbreakingly rare in depictions of teenage girl protagonists.

: Commentary on the pressures that teenage girls face is woven throughout the show.

Nostalgic

The Greek roots of the word nostalgia are to return (home) with pain. We often think of nostalgia as telling stories with old friends, or looking through old yearbooks as we reminisce. But it’s much more than that.

Angela says, “I mean, this whole thing with yearbook — it’s like, everybody’s in this big hurry to make this book, to supposedly remember what happened. Because if you made a book of what really happened, it’d be a really upsetting book.”

My So-Called Life ends with Angela stepping into a car with Jordan and driving away. Jordan has just met her mother, Patty, and the two sit and visit. Patty has been waiting for her old high-school love interest to stop by for a drink (and a business conversation), but he doesn’t show up. Patty and Jordan share a fairly intimate conversation, and both seem to understand something they hadn’t before.

Jordan comes outside, asks Angela to come along with him, and says that her mom says it’s OK. In understanding her own trajectory from teenager to adult, Patty has released Angela.

It’s sudden, it’s unclear, and it’s vague. It–the show, and adolescence–goes by so quickly, and we can’t fully understand it until we look back at the literal and figurative pictures of our life. Not just the smiling yearbook photos, but those things that remain inside.

We don’t know exactly where Angela is going at the end of My So-Called Life, and neither does she. The restraints and possibilities of adolescence can be overwhelming, and as life changes into adulthood, the restraints and possibilities both tighten and grow. By looking back–in all of its pleasure and pain–into those years of intense growth and confusion, we can better know ourselves.

: Angela rides away with Jordan at the end.

When My So-Called Life originally aired, I was in middle school. Our antenna didn’t pick up ABC, so I wasn’t able to watch it in real time. I knew, however, from the occasional Sassy magazine that I wanted to be Angela Chase, and I wanted Jordan Catalano. Years later, after living through almost all of the plot lines of the show, I watched the entire series. And then again, years after that. I’m struck by how much I can still feel what I felt at 15 by listening to Angela’s internal monologue. Good television, like good literature, can do that–take us, through fiction, back to times and places. Whether those times and places are crushing or celebratory, there is a distinct pain in going back–that nostalgia that shapes us and creates our realities.

: Imagine the power in seeing this ad as a teenage girl: “Yes, I DO know how it feels!”

Twenty years later, we need more of what My So-Called Life gave us a taste of. We need teenage girl protagonists to be sexual, not sexy. We need honest portrayals of what it is to be a teenager–not only for teenagers who need to see themselves in faithful mirrors, but also for adults who are still trying to figure themselves out.

That season of our lives is fleeting, open-ended, and ends abruptly. It’s meaningful but unfortunate that My So-Called Life so accurately portrayed those particular aspects of adolescence.

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

What’s in a Soundtrack? The Sweet Sounds of ‘Romeo + Juliet’

Zeffirelli’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’ is one told by the older generation. Luhrmann’s ‘Romeo + Juliet’ is one told by “unfaded” youth. When Des’ree was singing “Kissing You” as Romeo and Juliet kiss (and oh, how they kiss), she is singing with deep longing and pain. When Glen Weston sings “What is a Youth?” he sings at Romeo and Juliet, about how youth–and female virginity–fades.

William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet: Music From the Motion Picture (this CD was--OK is--one of my greatest treasures) — *William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet*: Music From the Motion Picture

Written by Leigh Kolb as part of our theme week on Movie Soundtracks.

When you are 14, your senses are heightened–music permeates every part of you, a brush of a hand sends shock waves through your body, and the smell of someone’s shampoo and chewing gum is enough to evoke lust. It’s no surprise that for adolescents, music is a powerful, integral part of their self-identity and emotional expression.

I’m thankful that I was 14 in the mid-90s. I know it’s easy to be nostalgic and believe that the moment we came of age was the best moment in the history of the world (“When I was that age…”), but I’m confident in saying that 1996 was really an epic year for being 14.

Riot grrrl was hanging in the air. Female musicians were featured on the airwaves, many male rockers were feminist, and teen films featured complex female protagonists. I was saturated in feminist media. We were riding an idealistic wave of feminism–a new generation of daughters whose mothers had lived through the women’s movement, who lived in a world where Title IX and Roe v. Wade always existed.

When I was 14, Baz Luhrmann’s William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet was released, and the play that has been speaking to and about teens for 400 years awakened my already heightened senses. As someone who identified more with Wuthering Heights than Pride and Prejudice as a teenager, this intense angst really spoke to me. And the music that accompanied the film was woven into the fiber of my life–I imagined it as my soundtrack, not just the film’s soundtrack.

I’ve written before about how I see the film (and Shakespeare‘s text) as challenging patriarchal social orders and revealing the toxicity of masculinity. Luhrmann’s version highlights this, certainly more so than Franco Zeffirelli’s 1968 version.

Zeffirelli’s soundtrack featured a score by Nino Rota and its “Love Theme” is known in two versions–“What is Youth?” and “A Time for Us.” “What is a Youth?” is included in the score, and features the lyrics that are sung on screen during the Capulet party when Romeo and Juliet meet. The lyrics to this version focus on how “cupid rules us all,” and that “youth” and the “fairest maid” all fade. In contrast, the lyrics to “A Time for Us” are more hopeful: “…some day there’ll be a new world / a world of shining hope for you and me.” Romeo and Juliet as a text can be read in both ways, of course. It’s important to think about Zeffirelli’s version in the context of the “youth” movement of the 1960s–anti-war rebellion, women’s rights activism, rising counterculture–and what Romeo and Juliet tells us about the utter ignorance and destruction of adults’ decisions.

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

Luhrmann also pulls Romeo and Juliet into the context of an era dominated by youth culture (see aforementioned links and 1,000 Buzzfeed posts about how rad the 90s were). However, this Romeo + Juliet is marked with much more poignant commentary on gender and culture. The “Love Theme” from Romeo + Juliet is sung by Des’ree, a Black woman (she performs on screen at the Capulet party, a nod to the Zeffirelli version). “Kissing You” is a more abstract look at love: “Pride can stand a thousand trials / The strong will never fall / But watching stars without you / My soul cries… Touch me deep, pure and true.” The entire scene, and the song itself, is a more intimate and moving addition to the party scene.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7eH9qnH8TM”]

Luhrmann’s soundtrack (he is, after all, known not only for his showy films but also for his curated soundtracks) was the soundtrack to my teen years. If I want to really feel those 14-year-old feelings, I just need to listen to Romeo + Juliet. The choices of popular musical artists of the time (Des’ree, Garbage, The Cardigans, Radiohead, Butthole Surfers, Everclear, etc.) related the story of Romeo and Juliet through their own eyes, not those of a stodgy old narrator. And the diversity of the artists–male, female, Black, white–also reflects the progressive nature of youth culture.

Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet is one told by the older generation. When Glen Weston sings “What is a Youth?” he sings at Romeo and Juliet, about how youth–and female virginity (eye roll)–fades. Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet is one told by “unfaded” youth. When Des’ree sings “Kissing You” as Romeo and Juliet kiss (and oh, how they kiss), she is singing with deep longing and pain.

Luhrmann’s soundtrack, then, does what we imagine Shakespeare aimed to do with this play–forces us to look critically at love and life through the eyes of youth to critique the patriarchal social orders that cause the tragedy.

Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is often read in school when students are freshmen in high school. I would imagine the framers of this curricular choice were thinking that Romeo and Juliet is a cautionary tale against rebellion and teen lust. Instead, Romeo and Juliet really is about the absurdity and destructive nature of society’s bullshit norms and rules.

The songs in Romeo + Juliet aren’t just for backdrop; instead, these songs are characters–edgy, angry, beautiful, and poppy representations of the sweeping emotions of youth, love, anger, and rebellion.

Just listen, and be transported to a youth that won’t fade:

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4xPXlneCGs”]

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJbXjIEP6rM”]

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkXdeUjM1pc”]

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JNb93N3-ek”]

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GU6i_JhbVsc”]

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIbiG04X3ws”]

See also at Bitch Flicks: The Tragedy of Masculinity in Romeo + Juliet

___________________________

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

Sexual Desire on ‘The X-Files’: An Open (Love) Letter to Dana Scully

Oh Scully. You beautiful, badass, rosebud-mouthed, flame-haired Valkyrie wearing a blazer two sizes too big for you: what do you desire? We know what Mulder desires. He wants to look at porn in his office. He wants to flirt and call the shots. He wants ALIENS. He does not want to give you a desk.

This guest post by Caitlin Keefe Moran appears as part of our theme week on Representations of Female Sexual Desire.

But what about you? Why do we get such a cursory glimpse into your passions? How is it possible that in nine years we only see you go on two dates, Scully? (Three if we’re counting that one weird dinner with the Smoking Man… Lord help us if that was a date.) And when we finally do see you express interest in someone…oh, Lord. Remember him? The guy with the hallucinogenic tattoo? You were pretty into him; plus you felt stagnant in your personal life, and Mulder wouldn’t give you the damn desk. And it was nice to see you let loose a little bit, honestly. You even got a terrible lower-back tattoo of a snake biting its own tail, which… OK it’s not what I would have picked for you, but hey! You were living. All this fun goes sour when this dude’s tattoo tells him to murder you after you slept together. That you slept with him at all is conjecture—the camera pans away before we even see you kiss him, which is much more prudery than the show’s directors ever exercised with Mulder. Tattoo guy tries to put you in his building’s incinerator. It wasn’t pretty.

Did it seem to you that the message you were supposed to get was, “Whoa, rein it in there, girlie! Don’t go flaunting those goods all over town!”? Because that’s what it seems like to me. Expressing your sexuality makes you vulnerable, the message goes, and, if the snake tattoo is any indication, faintly ridiculous. Expressing your sexuality makes you shameful. Expressing your sexuality makes you deserving of punishment.

Or how about Padgett, the writer who stalked you? Remember him? John Hawkes at his most moon-eyed and creepy? He might be the king of the all the men lining up to mansplain your feelings to you (though he’s only slightly ahead of the Smoking Man and his “wall around your heart” speech. STFU, Smoking Man). He has a lot to say (and write) about the way you present or hide yourself as a woman, and it hurts because it’s pretty much all true (and because he’s straight-up bonkers). Padgett watched you for long enough to read your insecurities as if they were typed out in one of his manuscripts—and sometimes they are. He knows that you downplay your femininity as much as possible so your (almost exclusively male) coworkers will take you seriously, because, as Padgett puts it, “to be thought of as simply beautiful was bridling, unthinkable.”

In fact, most of the women on The X-Files only show their sexuality when they are outside of themselves. Sometimes they’re controlled by an unusual alignment of the planets, like Detective White in “Syzygy.” Other times they’re products of a male fantasy (or an artificial intelligence’s approximation of a male fantasy), like the nurses in Kill Switch, or a lingerie-clad Diana Fowley in The Sixth Extinction II: Amor Fati. It would make sense, then, that you would want to keep your sexuality on lockdown beneath the frumpy blazers (also: it was the 90s). But that doesn’t make it any less frustrating to see you squash any hint of womanhood (let alone sexuality) because any hint would be unwelcome in the testosterone cloud of the FBI.

I wish you had a female friend, Scully. We hardly ever see you talk to another woman, much less confide in one. It’s not like she has to be your bosom buddy or anything. Just a pal you can get drinks with after work, blow off some steam, swap stories about your frustrating coworkers. Maybe you two could talk about what you want, at work, in bed, in life. As people. If only Monica Reyes could have shown up a couple of seasons earlier. I like to imagine the two of you at a drunk brunch, bonding over pumpkin spice pancakes with maple bacon glaze and a gallon-sized bucket of Bloody Marys. There’s strength in numbers, after all. Maybe with the two of you together, everything wouldn’t have seemed so….buttoned-up. Maybe with someone to talk through your anxieties with, you and Mulder wouldn’t have waited seven years to…but never mind, that’s a whole other article.

Let’s talk about Baby William for a second. Your miracle baby. Your super soldier. Your half-alien messiah. The Christ allegory in the Season 8 finale was slathered on so thick we could have spooned it off and eaten it. The lowly birthplace, the star of Bethlehem (which was, what, a spaceship? Do we ever figure that out?), the Lone Gunmen showing up after the fact with gifts like the Three Wise Men. But what does this say about you, Scully? The virgin mother of the miracle child. Immaculate and without sin. Clean. It takes us a season and a half to learn that you weren’t, in fact, visited by the Holy Spirit, or the aliens, or the government; your baby was born of sexual intercourse with another human being, like most other babies. But we don’t get to see this moment, with Mulder, no less, the love of your life—instead we hear it described callously by an NSA agent, who had the whole place bugged. Why is this, Scully? Is it because once presented with the idea that you might be a sexual being, we couldn’t see you any other way? That we wouldn’t be able to take you seriously as a person if we understood that you could, just possibly, desire sex?

It certainly seemed that way in “Three of a Kind,” when the Lone Gunmen snooker you into helping them spy on a Defense Department contractor’s convention in Las Vegas. Of course you remember this, Scully—when a government operative injected you with an anoetic histamine that inhibited your intellect so you would forget the damning results of the autopsy you just finished? You certainly were silly then, trying to push a table bolted to the floor as if it was a rolling cart, tickling strangers at whim. Everyone attributed it to jetlag until you found your way to the hotel lobby and began flirting with the assembled contractors. The sight of you seductively taking a cigarette out of Morris Fletcher’s (admittedly skeezy) fingers so disturbed Lone Gunmen member Frohike that he grabbed you and immediately brought you in for evaluation. Message: a flirting Scully isn’t Scully at all. Sexual desire is something you’re above. You roll your eyes at Mulder’s innuendo and come-ons, because you are a Serious Woman, doing Serious Work. The roles you can play are proscribed by your gender, even as you have greater freedom than many of television’s women, what with the gun-touting and the badge-flashing. But there is a limit to this freedom: sexual desire is dangerous, dangerous, dangerous. And in the face of this danger, sometimes it’s just easier to clam up and clamp down. To go quiet. But Scully, I wanted so much more for you.

Caitlin Keefe Moran is an editor in New York City. Her work has appeared on The Toast, in The Iowa Review, and other outlets. She lives in Queens and feels passionately about donuts and splitting infinitives as a form of protest.

‘The To Do List’: The Movie I’ve Been Waiting For

And then I saw it–a film that extols the importance of female agency and sexuality with a healthy dose of raunch, a film that includes a sexually experienced and supportive mother, a film that celebrates female friendship and quotes Gloria Steinem, a film that features Green Apple Pucker and multiple references to Pearl Jam and Hillary Clinton.
Yes. This is it.

Let’s get to work, vagina. – Brandy Klark, The To Do List

The To Do List

This repost by Leigh Kolb appears as part of our theme week on Representations of Female Sexual Desire.

I remember leaving the theater after seeing Superbad and asking my friends if any of us could imagine a film like that being made about young women–quirky best friend teenage girls who were on a quest for those things that so many teenagers are on a quest for.

We agreed that we couldn’t imagine it (and then I probably delivered a lecture on the great harm of stifling female sexuality).

That notion–that those teenage “cumming-of-age” stories are reserved for boys only–has been deeply ingrained in us through pop culture. When American Pie came out while I was in high school, the message was clear: there’s a myriad of ways that teenage boys get to claim and act out their sexuality, but if you’re a woman who does the same, you will be singled out and considered an oddity, a freak or simply a prize.

Even before that, I remember always noticing that young adult novels or films about teenage girls that I enjoyed often de-sexed the female protagonist. Teenage female sexuality was either nonexistent or an anathema, set apart to frighten girls or teach lessons. I never saw myself and my feelings truly and fully reflected back to me.

“Sisters before misters”–best friends Fiona (Alia Shawkat), Brandy (Aubrey Plaza) and Wendy (Sarah Steele).

When I saw the trailer for The To Do List, I started to get excited. Maybe this is it–what I’ve been waiting for all of these years.

It’s set in the early 90s. My heart rate quickens.

I see the soundtrack‘s track list. I just can’t even.

Yes. This is it.

It was everything I wanted.

I especially love how the “To Do List” itself wasn’t borne out of peer pressure. Brandy (Aubrey Plaza) is mildly affected when her peers shout “Virgin!” at her, but what makes her want to explore and understand her own sexuality is twofold: she wants to be able to be comfortable knowing what to do with hot guys (she’s the one who is attracted and drawn to the college guy), and it’s explained to her that college is like a sexual pop quiz, and she needs to study to ace it.

Brandy takes notes as her older, experienced sister (played by Rachel Bilson) talks about sex.

She understands studying. She understands her own blossoming sexual desires. So she opens up her Trapper Keeper, lines her paper into a grid, and makes a list of sexual acts she must complete before the end of summer, with the ultimate goal being “Intercourse.” (The fact that the film was set in 1993 is important not only for nostalgia’s sake but also for the fact that Brandy didn’t have the Internet and couldn’t easily look up the definitions of the “jobs” she was writing on her list.)

Brandy’s “To Do List” replaces buying shower shoes for the dorm with sexual exploits.

Early on in her journey, Brandy reads statistics about how few women achieve orgasm, and she’s incensed. She writes “Masturbation” on her list (and does so wearing a “Pro-Choice Pro-Clinton” T-shirt, which writer-director Maggie Carey said she wore frequently in high school). The masturbation scene is important because, as Carey says, “When you do see women masturbating, it’s usually a male fantasy about a woman masturbating, it’s not what actually happens.”

Brandy voices anger over the virgin/whore dichotomy, referencing Gloria Steinem. And yet as much as this film empowers female sexuality and independence, it does not do so at the expense of the men in the film. (Remarkable, how completely possible it is to have fully sympathetic male and female characters in a raunchy comedy.) Even Brandy’s father, a Rush Limbaugh-reading, overprotective man who is uncomfortable talking about sex, is portrayed in a sympathetic light.

The teenage boys have stereotypical sexual desires, but Brandy’s desire is always paramount. For the first time while watching a teen comedy, I got to reminisce and laugh from my own perspective–and oh, how I could taste that Pucker when I saw it on screen and feel those goosebumps when “Fade Into You” started playing–instead of imagining what life must have been like for boys I knew in high school.

The film also really has a “radical” message about virginity–not panicked, not preachy, but reasonable and realistic. Maybe most importantly, Brandy never has any regrets (“Teenagers don’t have regrets,” she says. “That’s for your 30s”). The To Do List is “nonchalantly” feminist from start to finish.

After she read the script for the first time, Aubrey Plaza said,

“When I read the script, I just thought it was funny, be it female or male, but I love that it was from a female perspective, and I’d honestly never seen anything that had explored the specifics of that time in a girl’s life when they’re experiencing all their firsts.”

This film is a first full of firsts.

And unlike most first-time sexual exploits, writer-director Maggie Carey knew what she was doing and made it really pleasurable for the audience.

“It’s a skort!”
(And who doesn’t want to make out to Mazzy Star?)

A teenage sex comedy that subverts what’s usually “reserved for the boys” and shows female sexuality and agency as, you know, an actual thing (while celebrating 90s pop culture)? Check.

And just as Brandy will want more and more of the final exploit she checks off, I want movies like this to keep coming and coming.

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

First Jane Tennison DCI: Revisiting ‘Prime Suspect’s Complex Lead

In the final episode of ‘Prime Suspect,’ the long-running British series, Jane Tennison (Helen Mirren), a hardworking, hard drinking detective who has sacrificed so much of her life for her job and made more than a few enemies, skips her own retirement party and walks out and into the rest of her life. In the other room, her colleagues are jovial, waiting for the stripper they hired, preparing balloons, and liberally dipping into the refreshments.
But Jane is uncertain.

In the final episode of Prime Suspect, the long-running British series, Jane Tennison (Helen Mirren), a hardworking, hard drinking detective who has sacrificed so much of her life for her job and made more than a few enemies, skips her own retirement party, and walks out and into the rest of her life. In the other room, her colleagues are jovial, waiting for the stripper they hired, preparing balloons, and liberally dipping into the refreshments.
But Jane is uncertain.

Jane in the final episode, the weight of everything she’s seen finally catching up with her.

She’s triumphant as she’s solved her last case, but it’s taken a clear toll on her. She’s tired, she’s unsure what else she can be other than a cop, is struggling with her alcoholism and the reality of how few people she has in her life to lean on, and yet, she’s free of the relentless politics and bureaucracy she’s faced throughout her career and has finished it she way she intended. For all she’s sacrificed, she’s lived the life she wanted and refused to compromise either personally or professionally. And after seven series of watching and cheering her on, we’re sure she’ll be okay. If she’d gone to the party, there’d be cause to worry about her.

Prime Suspect ran for seven series airing between 1991 and 2006, earning Emmys, Golden Globes, and BAFTAs as well as serving as an inspiration of several character-driven and female-led police dramas. The series was created by mystery writer Lynda La Plante after discovering there were only four female Detective Chief Inspectors (DCIs) in Scotland Yard at the time and Tennison was based on Jackie Malton, a celebrated officer with success in homicide, fraud, and robbery divisions.

Prime Suspect Title Card — *Prime Suspect* title card

The first series followed Jane’s journey to gain the respect of her male colleagues as she leads her first investigation, fighting to be taken seriously at every turn. The idea of the police force as a boys’ club colors much of the first series and continues to a gradually lessening degree throughout the rest of show’s run as Jane earns respect (and contempt) for her own merit. Subsequent series feature groundbreaking investigations for a show of the time period, probing into institutional racism, pedophilia, agism, genocide, police brutality and misconduct and well as a rather shakily handled portrayal of gay prostitution, a mistreated Transwoman character, and a sensitive depiction of abortion.

Prime Suspect relentlessly delves into dark territory; the cases are horrific and the victims ghettoized by police bureaucracy, and without Jane at its centre, never losing focus of the goal of obtaining justice for the victims and securing convictions and Mirren’s fierce portrayal of her, it could easily become depressing and marred by its focus on interviews and interrogations over of gun fights and chases. Jane is the rare female character who is allowed to be flawed, yet continues to be likable both in the perspective of the narrative and in the viewer’s eyes. Even if you dislike her as a person, it’s impossible not to respect her and to be a bit awed by what she does. And she is not always easy to like.

The show doesn’t shy away from graphic forensic evidence and interesting police science, such as reconstructing a face from this skull — The show doesn’t shy away from graphic forensic evidence

From the start, Jane is abrasive and difficult, as in the first episode, she begins angling for a promotion right after her colleague dies. Frequently, she is too harsh on suspects after deciding their guilt and asked variations of, “What kind of person are you?” She also feigns empathy to get information, a tactic that works even accidentally as it becomes her default mode (notably in series 4). Most interestingly, Jane is often wrong and insensitive: she commits the cardinal sin of a woman in power by not supporting other women, goes after the wrong man and causes a hostage situation, appears racist for not wanting to work with a her former lover, a Black detective, as well as several other incidences.

In series 4, Jane’s breakthrough case is reopened and with her entire career called into question, she goes off investigate on her own. This involves visiting her suspect’s elderly mother, pretending to be a family friend and bringing her out to an isolated pier when Jane harshly interrogates her, in a manner bordering on abusive as the old woman grows increasingly frightened. In the end, she proves her suspect’s guilt but in a manner that sets her in the worst possible light for the audience.

Before she is given an investigation to lead, Jane is invisible to her male coworkers, who talk about cases around her, but never asking for her opinion — Before she is given an investigation to lead, Jane is invisible to her male coworkers, who talk about cases around her

As a leader, her refusal to compromise means she is determined to catch the guilty party, while her co-workers urge her just to get someone to confess, guilty or not. She’s tough, telling her squad in her first briefing, “All I ask is your undivided loyalty and attention. … You don’t like it, put in for a transfer.” She is also very clever, shown in series 2, when she eliminates a possible identity for a murder victim by putting her own watch with the victim’s effects and allowing her mother to falsely claim it.

Mirren’s acting skills are highlighted in tense interrogation scenes

But for all her prickly meanness and seeming detachment, Jane really cares about getting justice for victims and becomes deeply emotionally involved. After long periods of procedural drama, the show imbues a great deal of cathartic release in the moments when she celebrates a victory by pumping her fists and cheering and in the private moments where Jane, overwhelmed and exhausted, breaks down and cries.

It’s her frustrations dealing with bureaucracy or snags in her investigations that frequently lead her to do things like snap at her subordinates, splash wine on her supervisors, and find solace in smoking, drinking, and sex.

Prime Suspect is also noted for its straightforward depiction of workplace sexism. Rather than catcalls, pranks, or groping, sexism manifests itself in subtle gestures meant to undermine her authority, such as suggestions that she is irrational or hormonal and her male coworkers being promoted over her.

Jane’s biggest detractor is Detective Sergeant Bill Otley, while DI Frank Burkin and DS Richard Hawley become two of her supporters

Moreover, as the first series goes on, Jane slowly gains the respect and support of her colleagues, they take orders willingly and the entire squad sign their names on a petition to keep her on the case when their superiors threaten to remove her. Throughout the program, Jane’s constant refrain (made humourous thanks to Mirren’s role in The Queen) is: “Don’t call me Ma’am I’m not the bloody queen.” She tells people she wants to be called “boss or guv,” but never ma’am. At the end of the first series she knows she has gained their respect once the squad calls her guv.

Jane is an interesting character to examine in a feminist critique as it doesn’t seem that she would consider herself a feminist. Even as Jane advances through the force, within the show’s narrative, the pinnacle of her success is not when she reaches the highest rank but when she gets to a point where her colleagues complain about her and her supervisors sabotage her not because she’s a woman but because of her personality and her leadership. In the last episode, as she prepares to retire, she is celebrated as the first female DCI, to which she responds, a detective first, woman second: “First Jane Tennison DCI.”

Still, there are several incidences when Jane uses her gender to her advantage. Notably, in the first series, she hides in the women’s locker room when she knows her supervisor is looking for her to pull her off the case, knowing it’s the only place he can’t go. Later, when interrogating her suspect’s girlfriend, she fusses over her appearance to uncharacteristic degree as she knows the girlfriend will be less contrary if she believes Jane is concerned with her appearance. In another series, she gets information unavailable to a male officer when she has a drink with two prostitutes and talks to them about their friend’s murder, establishing a friendly bond when a man propositions her that makes them comfortable with her.

Hyperaware of how she is perceived, Jane knows that if she shows any weakness, she will lose all the respect she’s gained. In series 4, she has difficulty dealing with DS Christine Cromwell (Sophie Stanton), a woman who does things a lot like she did in earlier series: going off on her own to investigate, losing her temper in front of the press, and sharing a close relationship with a male colleague. These things make Jane fearful both of associating herself with a woman who could be perceived to be sleeping her way to the top, and of the perception that she could be giving Cromwell special treatment or unearned sorority. As a result, Jane in harsher to female subordinated than males and sets them to a higher standard as she believes they need to be tougher to make it in the department.

After Cromwell proves herself, Jane takes her under her wing and acts as her mentor

Eventually Cromwell proves herself clever and determined, leading Jane to develop a productive partnership with her, as the two investigated in a pair for much of the rest of the investigation.

Another recurring theme in the series is Jane’s struggle maintaining stable relationships. Her relationship in the first series is introduced as loving and supportive, with Jane excited to meet his son, but quickly crumbles with the stress of her new job. Jane, as anyone who knew her would expect, puts the investigation first, complains when he laughs about what the tabloids are saying about her, and is unable to make dinner for his business partners. The boyfriend yells at her that she cares more about “your rapists and your tarts” than him, and leaves her without discussion after a fight. In the next series, she has moved on and taken the break-up in stride, but in the rest of the program Jane seems lonely when she is given silent moments, begins to a routine of eating frozen dinners and drinking alone and puts up with less before ending her relationships. In series 4, she has new boyfriend, who makes question her priorities: “This is the first time in my life I’ve had the feeling that I don’t want to get up, go to work, don’t want to screw up another relationship.” Still though, he refuses to support her when things get difficult and is gone by the next series. Without fail, Jane refuses to stay in a relationship with any man who can’t acknowledge the importance for her career.

The pressure begins to get to Jane as she talks a moment to collect herself.

At the end of series 3, Jane finds herself pregnant and despite realizing this is her last chance to have a child, decides to have an abortion. It’s a difficult decision for her and not one she takes lightly, but it’s presented as the right thing for her to do based on where she is in her life and what she wants for her future. True to the character, Jane’s decision-making process is not fraught with meaningful glances at mothers with babies or discussion with her friends or family; instead, she when she calls the doctor to arrange it, she is calm and businesslike. Only after it’s arranged does she take a minute to mourn, turning away from the camera and the audience to cry, showing only her shoulder moving up and down for an extended shot.

Jane Tennison is a fascinating character whose DNA is found in several of its predecessors. Notably, the failed American remake, a serviceable cop show with Maria Bello as its strong lead and The Closer, whose creators have acknowledged the debt they owe to Prime Suspect. Gillian Anderson has also compared her role in The Fall to Jane Tennison

But there is only one Jane, the kind of woman who leads with a quiet integrity who manages to be both poised and ruthless, who tries to wear different lives that don’t fit her and has the courage to cast them off, always knows what she wants and what she values: giving justice to her victims, and solving crimes instead of succeeding in departmental politics and earning promotions. It’s a series that deserves revisiting.

_______________________________________________________

Elizabeth Kiy is a Canadian writer and freelance journalist living in Toronto, Ontario. She recently graduated from Carleton University where she majored in journalism and minored in film.

Temporary Tomboys: Coming of Age in ‘My Girl’ and ‘Now and Then’

However, the tomboy was a prominent figure in two well-loved films of the period aimed at young girls, though both presented her as a transitional stage in development. My Girl (1991), is the story of precocious 11-year-old Vada Sultenfuss (Anna Chlumsky) who grew up in a funeral parlor and is obsessed with death, while in Now and Then (1995) four childhood friends reunite as adults and remember (in flashbacks) the summer they were 12.

This guest post by Elizabeth Kiy appears as part of our theme week on Child and Teenage Girl Protagonists.

Young girls have little power.

Controlled by their parents and teachers as well as financial and societal restrictions, often their only agency is the refusal to obey and to fit into standard gender roles. In early adolescence, they mature physically and socially but have yet to assume real adult responsibility.

A clear example of the the transitory nature of this period is the frequent presence of the tomboy character in coming-of-age films.

Though in real life many girls maintain masculine identities into adulthood, in these films as in much of society, the tomboy is a temporal figure tied to early adolescence that girls are expected to grow out of it order to be a healthy, happy (and inevitably heterosexual) adult. And in coming-of-age films, a genre where characters go through moral tests and life-changing tragedies and emerge stronger and wiser, the proof of her growth is her adoption of a female identity.

Because of female liberation movements in the 1970s, media scholars tend to see the decade as the heyday of the tomboy character in popular culture, with stars such as Jodie Foster, Christy McNichols, and Tatum O’Neal. Female-focused narratives gradually tapered off at the end of the decade, with a rise in powerful male protagonists, effects-driven blockbusters and action heroes in the 80s. In the 90s, “Girl Power” movements brought about an increase in female-directed media, but with a different framing. Gay and lesbian films encouraged positive portrayal of masculine women, but were directed exclusively to adults and others in the community.

Tomboy Roberta in her element, the lone girl who can challenge the boys

However, the tomboy was a prominent figure in two well-loved films of the period aimed at young girls, though both presented her as a transitional stage in development. My Girl (1991), is the story of precocious 11-year-old Vada Sultenfuss (Anna Chlumsky) who grew up in a funeral parlor and is obsessed with death, while in Now and Then (1995) four childhood friends reunite as adults and remember (in flashbacks) the summer they were 12. The girls each fill a particular character archetype, with Christina Ricci and Rosie O’Donnell playing child and adult versions of tomboy Roberta Martin.

As adolescents, both characters are depicted as going through the early stages of puberty, where their female body and nascent sexuality are becoming impossible to ignore and they must come to terms with their gender identities.

Their tomboyism is only a cause for fear or treatment, when the girl appears to have extreme male identification or her tomboyism threatens to extend into adulthood. In this vein, it is acceptable for Roberta and Vada to climb trees, play sports and dress like the boys, but fear of puberty is a step too far.

Roberta pushes the limits of acceptable tomboyishness by binding her breasts

Roberta is panicked about the growth of her breasts and regularly measures them and binds them. Although it is not explained exactly why she is sensitive about them, the film portrays her anxiety as irregular. The other girls, all more acceptably feminine, tease her about their size and tell her she is lucky because men will like them. In this discussion, Roberta is clearly uneasy and disgusted by the idea.

Similarly, Vada is horrified when she learns about her period rather then feeling pride at becoming a woman as girls often do in coming-of-age narratives. She tells her father’s girlfriend Shelly (Jamie Lee Curtis) that it isn’t fair because nothing happens to boys and kicks her friend Thomas J (Macaulay Culkin) out of the house until it is over. As with Vada, a girl’s crisis of gender is because of her difficulty reconciling her view of herself with that of her new sexualized body and differences from male playmates. In both cases however, unease with the tomboy’s female body is portrayed as transitory or naiveté, rather than indication of transsexuality, while her lack of interest in boys is because of her youth, not lesbianism.

Both girls are also established as outsiders who are different from their peers and attempt to be independent from them. Roberta is the only one of her friends who is not feminine and who isn’t interested in romance. Likewise, Vada is neurotic and is a hypochondriac who always feels she is sick. In both cases, they have lost a parent, which leaves a gulf between them and their friends that they cannot possibly understand. As such, the masculine girl often functions as a lone outsider rather than as part of an elaborate subcultural group.

Hotheaded Roberta leads the group to fight the local boys

In both films, the tomboy takes on a leadership role within their group as well. Roberta constantly places herself in the front and distributes things to the other girls; she is also the first to act and suggest new ideas. In this fashion, My Girl begins with Vada selling tickets to a tour of the funeral home, attempting both to scare the boys and make money off them. Vada goes a step further, not only being the protector in her group but the protector of a more feminine boy. Tomboy characters are often paired with effeminate male characters, as it reinforces the binary of masculinity and femininity, suggesting there is no grey area between them.

Vada’s tomboyishness is balanced by effeminate Thomas J

Roberta also transgresses into what is consider boy’s territory by placing herself in direct conflict with the boys, most notably after they steal the boys’ clothes. Later at the baseball game, she gets in a physical fight after one of the boys tells her she needs to remember to act like a girl and says she needs a mother to teach her how to be one. She tries to defend her right to be present in the masculine space, but her friends restrain her, supposedly to keep her dignity.

Moreover, both girls grew up without mothers or a feminine influence on their lives. Instead, each has a father who encourages her tomboyishness rather than attempting to suppress it. Vada’s father (Dan Aykroyd) is portrayed as well meaning but incapable of raising her properly alone. The film suggests he has done a fine job to this point, but he does not know what to say about as she is going through puberty. Likewise, Roberta grew up with a father and three older brothers.

This familial structure suggests their tomboyism is acceptable because they have no female role models. It is suggested, at least in Vada’s case, that her tomboyism is because she doesn’t know how be a woman, rather than a conscious decision.

Shelly acts as Vada’s mother, comforting her and teaching her a beauty routine.

That the film begins with the introduction of an older woman to become Vada’s female role model/motherly influence suggests she couldn’t go on living this way without it.

Shelly is the epitome of femininity–she is a makeup artist, well-versed in fashion and romance. Vada sees Shelly as fascinating and exotic and allows her to take on a motherly role, showing her how to put it on lipstick and reassuring her boys will think she is pretty. In the next scene Vada, wearing full makeup, is trying to walk in an exaggerated impersonation of a movie star’s walk and posing for Thomas J. His next line, asking where her bike is, subtly suggests she will begin to abandon her tomboy qualities as she discovers femininity.

The transformed Vada in a party dress and pretty hair

Both Thomas’s death and Shelly’s influence bring her to a point where, by the end of the film she has nearly abandoned her tomboyishness. At the film’s end, she shows up at her last writing class with her hair out its ponytail, having abandoned her t-shirt and jeans for a frilly dress. Yet she retains some of her old self, still riding bikes, even in her dress.

In contrast, Roberta receives no new mother figure or female role model and could be viewed as what Vada might have become with Shelly. The adult Roberta, though straight, is portrayed as a stereotypical lesbian, a doctor who wears masculine clothes, drinks beer, and plays softball.

Adult Roberta continues to dress in a masculine style, while Chrissy is overtly feminine

Despite this, in the scene where Roberta finds the newspaper with her mother’s death notice in it, she remarks at how beautiful she was. Though she is usually portrayed as strong, this makes her cry and because she keeps repeating the comment, it seems as if she is yearning to be like her mother, but she does not know how to get there without her.

The film uses Chrissy (Ashleigh Aston Moore), Roberta’s childhood friend, as her “mother figure.” Chrissy is naïve and sheltered, to the point where most of what she says is clearly something parroted from her mother. She reminds Roberta to “be a lady” rather than fight and reminds her to “act like a girl” when she is splashing in the mud. In a sense, Chrissy’s mother, though not present in these scenes, is sort of a mother figure to Roberta.

Though best friends, Chrissy and Roberta seem to be opposites. While Roberta is a tomboy, Chrissy is the most stereotypically feminine in the group, easily scared and weak. In the future scenes, where Chrissy is having her baby, they are coupled, with Roberta taking on the husband role. While Chrissy’s actual husband only arrives to hold the baby after its born, Roberta drives her to the hospital and delivers the baby. After it is born, rather than sharing a look with her husband, Chrissy and Roberta are shown looking at each other mouthing “I love you.”

Furthermore, in both films, their first hint of romance is used to suggest a softening of their personalities and movement into a feminine disposition. Early on, Roberta is disgusted by the love quiz her friends are completing.

Her kiss with Scott Wormer plays on her need to question masculinity as he tells her she is good at basketball, not just for a girl but for a guy. Though she threatens to beat him up after if he tells anyone about their kiss, it is revealed later that she has stopped taping her breasts as a result.

Likewise, Vada has a crush on her teacher, an impossible object with no real hope of a future. At the same time, she is disgusted by Shelly’s romance novels and doesn’t understand why people have sex and get married.

When she kisses Thomas J, it is approached as an experiment to see what it is like. Magical sounding music plays as they kiss, as if this kiss will result in a big moment where a spell is broken. Though nothing happens immediately afterward, the kiss marks a change as she is now able take him, someone her age, as a realistic love object.

Vada and Thomas J’s kiss and her first step into a feminine adulthood

His death soon after suggests that his function was merely to pull her out of her tomboyishness and introduce her to heterosexual romance. Indeed, only after Thomas J’s death is she able to make her first female friend. In this sense, the kiss could be seen as breaking a spell.

Though these films make no mention of links between tomboyism and lesbianism, as tomboy characters are given romantic subplots in films where more feminine characters are not; it is suggested that these romances are included as proof they are heterosexual.

Though Now and Then shows the adult Roberta as a fairly masculine woman, it reinforces her heterosexuality as she is referred to as “living in sin with her boyfriend.” Interestingly, this character was based on a real person who did grow up to be a lesbian, but all references to this were edited out at the last momen t. This inadvertently serves to tell viewers that even the most masculine girl can grow up heterosexual.

As such, these tomboy characters emerge at the end of their respective films with more submissive feminine gender identities, the experience of their first love, and close female friends or role models. Due to this, the young girl viewer is meant to assume they fit comfortably into society and are no longer outsiders or ostracized. As such, she is give the message that she too, can only grow up straight and feminine.

Hopefully she realizes it is in her power to question it.

Elizabeth Kiy has a degree in journalism with a minor in film from Carleton University. She lives in Toronto, Ontario and is currently working on a novel.

Powerful Realism and Nostalgia in ‘My So-Called Life’

Almost 20 years later, we need more of what My So-Called Life gave us a taste of. We need teenage girl protagonists to be sexual, not sexy. We need honest portrayals of what it is to be a teenager–not only for teenagers who need to see themselves in faithful mirrors, but also for adults who are still trying to figure themselves out.

Written by Leigh Kolb as part of our theme week on Child and Teenage Girl Protagonists.

Self-Centered

Defining self — The unending journey to define “self”

Angela’s relationships with her friends–Rayanne, Rickie, Brian, and Sharon–also highlight the inflated sense of self that navigates us through those formative years.

Horny

As Angela tells a confused Brian, “Boys don’t have the monopoly on thinking about it.”

My So-Called Life reiterates that idea, which is heartbreakingly rare in depictions of teenage girl protagonists.

Commentary on the pressures that teenage girls face are woven throughout the show. — Commentary on the pressures that teenage girls face is woven throughout the show.

Nostalgic

Jordan comes outside, asks Angela to come along with him, and says that her mom says it’s OK. In understanding her own trajectory from teenager to adult, Patty has released Angela.

Angela rides away with Jordan at the end.

asdf — Imagine the power in seeing this ad as a teenage girl: “Yes, I DO know how it feels!”

Almost 20 years later, we need more of what My So-Called Life gave us a taste of. We need teenage girl protagonists to be sexual, not sexy. We need honest portrayals of what it is to be a teenager–not only for teenagers who need to see themselves in faithful mirrors, but also for adults who are still trying to figure themselves out.

That season of our lives is fleeting, open-ended, and ends abruptly. It’s meaningful but unfortunate that My So-Called Life so accurately portrayed those particular aspects of adolescence.

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

Eddie Vedder’s Feminism: Flannel-Clad Activism

Written by Leigh Kolb as part of our theme week on Male Feminists and Allies.

Toward the end of Pearl Jam’s Oct. 16 show in Oklahoma City, Eddie Vedder turned the microphone over to a woman in the front row who wanted to propose to her boyfriend. She got down on one knee, proposed, and kissed the man who had said “yes.”

Vedder congratulated them and said, “That’s beautiful–it’s a modern world.”

Vedder has spent his career fighting for a modern world that accepts and promotes women–he’s fought for reproductive rights, spoken out against sexual assault, and worked for worldwide safe pregnancy/childbirth. Vedder’s feminism has followed him from the highest rafters at Lollapalooza in 1992 to being the father of two daughters in 2013.

Justin Hampton’s PJ20 poster, featuring Neil Young, Gloria Steinem, and young Pearl Jam members.

His politics have never taken second stage, and his feminism has always been a part of what is stereotypically a masculine, male-dominated, female-unfriendly world of rock.

Vedder’s ethos shaped my adolescence, and normalized feminism. While Pearl Jam as a whole (Jeff Ament, Stone Gossard, and Mike McCready) presented itself as a progressive force in the grunge scene, taking female protagonists and feminist issues to the radio and MTV, Vedder’s voice and actions made an incredible impact on me as I fully realized my own feminism, even if I couldn’t name it at age 10.

Listening to Pearl Jam growing up, I consistently heard songs with female protagonists. I loved reading the lyrics–they weren’t against me or at me. The lyrics told stories about women and girls facing mental health issues, disappointing relationships, being misunderstood by parents and men, and aging in a small town–all from the woman’s perspective. They commented on the privilege of being white and male in our society, the ramifications of not having that privilege, and the damaging and idealized masculinity of guns.

When Vedder scrawled “Pro-Choice” on his arm with a Sharpie during an MTV Unplugged performance, he did what many celebrities don’t–loudly proclaim to a huge audience a commitment to the right to choose. Pearl Jam performed at Rock for Choice concerts. Vedder wrote an essay for SPIN magazine in 1992 (“Reclamation”) looking at abortion on a macro and micro level.

Penning first-person narratives of abortion experiences is still groundbreaking 20 years later, and too often women are held responsible for telling stories to effect change.

Vedder’s essay is gorgeous and powerful–he manages to stress that reproductive choice is a human rights issue, and men and women must come together and “shout” to make their voices heard. He points out that if it were about men’s bodies, “there would be no issue.” In just a few paragraphs, he acknowledges patriarchy, religious influence, the notion of “freedom,” women’s autonomy, and weaves in his personal experience with abortion.

Twenty years later–we still need more of these voices. And although I’ve read Vedder’s account over and over, I’m moved every time.

In 1995, Vedder took to the airwaves, citing Ms. Magazine and Gloria Steinem, and reading a lengthy memo from Voters for Choice about the heightened violence against abortion providers.

Eddie Vedder and Gloria Steinem at a Voters for Choice press conference

Vedder still brings up a woman’s right to choose as one of his top priorities when talking about his activism.

Anti-rape messages have also been woven through Vedder’s rhetoric over the years. At the very beginning of their career, Vedder commented on a Red Hot Chili Peppers’ song entitled “Party On Your Pussy” before launching into a cover of Fugazi’s anti-rape “Suggestion.” He said, “Don’t go partying on anybody’s pussy unless they want you to.”

What a novel idea… one that still doesn’t seem clear in our culture.

While Vedder and Pearl Jam’s commitment to reproductive rights and women’s sexual and bodily autonomy stand out, they’ve also consistently been outspoken about other feminist causes–environmentalism, gun control, the justice system, health care, bullying, unjust war, and child abuse. Certainly not all of their fans appreciate their politics, which makes their conviction all that more poignant.

Vedder has also recently contributed “Skipping” (which features his daughter’s voice) to the compilation Every Mother Counts, an album that raises funds for women and maternal health in underserved areas around the world. Fatherhood hasn’t softened Vedder beyond recognition; in fact, he’s said that fatherhood just “fueled” his anger about the world around him and the injustices he sees. In a recent interview, he discusses the importance to be present as a father, reasons to celebrate in our society (increased gay rights and pot legalization), and reasons to mourn (compromised voters’ rights).

Vedder showing support for Every Mother Counts

The company that Vedder and Pearl Jam have kept over the years–Sleater-Kinney, Cat Power, Natalie Maines, Carrie Brownstein–certainly add to their feminist cred.

As Pearl Jam wrapped up their weekend-long 20th anniversary PJ20 celebration in Troy, Wisconsin in 2011, Vedder said to the crowd, “Everybody, every member of this group has a very powerful woman next to us, behind us and in front of us… We love you.”

Their career has proven that they see women in general as behind, beside, and in front of them. This clearly goes for the women in their personal lives, but it has always felt that way for their audiences as well.

As a girl, I would press my forehead against the cool glass in the backseat of my parents’ car, having convinced them to put in Vitalogy as I flipped through the fascinating liner notes. I never felt like a girl or an object, or otherized by their music and lyrics. It was just part of me. As I grew older, and more political–naming my feminism and activism–how surprised and relieved I’ve been to realize that Vedder and company have been there all along. Next to me, behind me, and in front of me, normalizing women’s stories, fighting for women’s rights, and working for a greater, more equal world.

Cheers to feminism (and Eddie Vedder and Ani DiFranco tattoos)

Related: “Nirvana’s Secret Feminism,” by Amanda Marcotte

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

Revisiting ‘Down In The Delta,’ Maya Angelou’s Only Feature Film

Down in the Delta film poster.

Written by Janyce Denise Glasper

I love, LOVE Maya Angelou.

She is one of my favorite inspirational women of all time, and I could praise her remarkable contributions to writing and activism forever.

When I discovered that she directed only one feature film, a film I had actually seen long ago, I decided to give it another watch and looked online. Thank you, Netflix!

Down in The Delta, with a screenplay by Myron Goble, begins with Loretta Sinclair, an undereducated African American woman strung out on drugs and alcohol, raising two children in a three-generational household, and struggling to find a job in rough Chicago. Upset that she cannot answer a single mathematical equation or find a job sweeping or mopping floors at a corner store, she dives deeper into the free, alluring drug world and her mother has to save her yet again.

In films and television, the poor single mother angle never stops, and adding lack of book smarts becomes a horse beaten to death. I personally didn’t think Angelou would angle into this pigeonholed concept of minority women, but eventually Alfre Woodard turned into a “Phenomenal Woman”–just not in the most congratulatory manner.

Rosa Lyn (Mary Alice) has a big idea that will keep her daughter on the righteous track.

Rosa Lyn, Loretta’s savior of a mother, pawns off a sterling silver candelabra heirloom (which is nicknamed “Nathan”). Loretta looks at it both shocked and hungry–that notorious expression of a drug fiend knowing prize could score ample amounts of desired inebriation. Alas, Rosa Lyn only intends that Nathan be sacrificed in order to pay for bus tickets so that Loretta and her kids have a brighter future down south.

However, Rosa Lyn wants Loretta to earn the money necessary to get Nathan back in the family.

Rosa Lyn (Mary Alice) pawns off Nathan the candelabra for bus tickets to Tracy (Kulania Hessan), Nathan (Mpho Koaho), and Loretta (Alfre Woodard).

Away from tempting drugs and hardship, Earl asks Loretta to work for him at his restaurant, Just Chicken, and teaches her how to make his famous chicken sausages. She has a hard time getting it right, but eventually she does and moves onto playing a bigger role into the restaurant field. This leads to the most disappointing part of the film. She discovers purpose not just in the Delta itself, but inside of a greasy chicken sausage joint. The situation isn’t particularly humorous or exciting. In fact, speaking from a vegan standpoint, I find it pretty distasteful, especially as a climactic point. When the small town bands together to stop the closing of the chicken plant, it becomes a cheesy outstretched manifesto of people proudly boasting about their beloved meat, disregarding slaughterhouses where the most incredibly unimaginable suffering takes place–a sacrificial unwanted suffering so eerily similar to that of Jesse. Chickens are forced into small cages, plucked and boiled alive, and all kinds of other horrors before being murdered, but Angelou praises the long hindered stereotype about African Americans’ adoration of chicken. It is heard so clearly that ears start to bleed from preaching. One wonders if that passion would remain devoutly strong if fruits and vegetable crops were similarly threatened.

I’m not trying to bash the love of chicken, but the chicken and African American relationship is so difficult to handle that it in itself becomes ludicrously overdone. The closeness to joining hands and singing spirituals left behind a sour taste.

However, the story behind Nathan the candelabra serves as a better narrative and has Angelou’s signature poignancy all over the polished sentimentality. Jesse, a family ancestor, stole the valuable sterling silver antique from his former owners, an act of revenge instilled inside since age six when watching his father get sold off auction block style, as though he were nothing more than a common object, not a human being with mind and beating heart. Candelabra, named Nathan after a father Jesse never found, has been passed down to the male line, but Eddie gives it to Loretta, marking a new sense of tradition, a new entrusted foundation.

Years ago, no one would have ever considered her worthy.

Loretta (Alfre Woodard) and Earl (the late Al Freeman Jr.) have much in common.

Down In The Delta brushes on Alzheimer’s Disease and autism and beautifully weaves how family copes with the two perilous circumstances. In one of Esther Rolle’s final roles, she plays Annie, Earl’s wife. It is wonderful how much Earl cares about Annie and has overprotective need to keep her safe from harm. But he has to keep doors and windows locked, shielding Annie inside a childproof environment.

“First she couldn’t find her keys,” states Earl. “Then she forgot what the keys were for.”

Meanwhile, Tracy, Loretta’s autistic daughter, has screamed, cried, and hollered nearly the entire film, leaving terrified strangers to think her a monstrous and demonic child. In a scene after the bus arrives at a location, a distraught woman blasts Loretta’s parenting skills, blaming her for not being able to control Tracy. Everyone wonders why Loretta keeps Tracy inside of a crib, but like Earl, Loretta is protecting Tracy from endangering herself. Angelou parallels Earl and Loretta’s dealings with disease, their gnawing frustrations and little triumphs, and bridges their connection closer together. It is not romantic, but friendly, familial, and bittersweet, one that succeeds because they provide comfort to each other.

Loretta also spends time with Annie’s caretaker, Zenia who offers her beer. Now Loretta, appearing uncomfortable and noticeably silent, could have easily declined. Alcoholism is a real disease to master and for her to suddenly kick back and have a chuckle makes light of the real difficulty people have just being around a bottle–having one little drink (or in this case, a whole bottle) is downright impossible.

The late Roger Ebert, however, was one of several critics who enjoyed Down in the Delta:

“Angelou’s first-time direction stays out of its own way; she doesn’t call attention to herself with unnecessary visual touches, but focuses on the business at hand. She and [Myron] Goble are interested in what might happen in a situation like this, not in how they can manipulate the audience with phony crises. When Annie wanders away from the house, for example, it’s handled in the way it might really be handled, instead of being turned into a set piece.”

Down in the Delta ends with the “feel good” message that life can be filled with turmoil and can appear inescapable, especially to a minority woman, but it’s never too late to turn things around. After Nathan is “rescued” from the pawn shop and handed down to Loretta, everyone now trusts her, the threat of drugs/alcoholism disappears, and Earl promotes her to running Just Chicken so that he can spend more time with Annie. Loretta now has reached a positive place.

As director, Maya Angelou’s spirit floated between the Mississippi-centered delta, but sometimes drifted away like it was never there.

However, that doesn’t mean that I don’t want her to make another film.

In fact, I wish she would.