90s – Bitch Flicks

‘Smart Guy’: Intelligent Black Families and Race-Bending Tropes

The humor isn’t meant to put down white folks, but rather poke fun at the very real actions of white guys who attempt to adopt Black culture simply because it’s “cool.” This sort of behavior has existed in “white sitcoms” for nearly a century (making the Back character the “token” of the show) and it seems the only reason ‘Smart Guy’ comes under fire is because white critics are now seeing the characters they identify with in positions that aren’t of power or virtue.

This guest post by BJ Colangelo appears as part of our theme week on Black Families.

As a proud child of the 1990s, I was lucky enough to grow up with some of the best sitcoms on television. Perhaps my nostalgic love of these shows have clouded my view on whether or not these shows were any good, but I still stomp my curmudgeonly feet around and shout, “These kids today don’t know good TV!” I grew up in a lower-middle class family in an extremely diverse community, so I’ve always been exposed to multi-cultural families. Hell, my mom named my (white, red-headed) sister after a guest-starring character she loved on Hangin’ With Mr. Cooper. Disney Channel used to show re-runs of a lot of shows I loved growing up, and I distinctly remember running home off the bus to make sure I wouldn’t miss the “newest” episode of Smart Guy.

I. Loved. Smart. Guy. Growing up, I was a gifted child, so T.J. Henderson was a boy after my own heart. He was living the life I always dreamed of having. I probably wasn’t high school smart at 10 years old the way he was, but all I could think about was how awesome it would be to outsmart all of the older kids that picked on me for being so little. T.J. had a super-hip older sister named Yvette who was a staunch feminist and loved the fine arts. I saw a lot of myself in Yvette, even at a young age. T.J.’s older brother Marcus was the big man on campus, and I idolized how cool he was. The patriarch of the family was Floyd Henderson, the most caring father on TV (next to Danny Tanner of Full House), but was way, way cooler than Danny Tanner could ever hope to be.

One of the biggest criticsms people seem to give Smart Guy, is that it’s “racist” against white people. First of all, “reverse racism” doesn’t exist, so I’m not going to even go into that argument. However, critics tend to site Marcus and Mo’s (Marcus’ best friend) white pal Mackey to be one of the major reasons the show is “racist.” Mackey is one of the few major white characters, and he’s a giant doofus. He consistently tries to “fit in” with Marcus and Mo, usually to no avail, and had a tendency to respond to his failures with, “It’s because I’m white, isn’t it?” The entire cast would nod their head in agreement and the canned laughter would play. Smart Guy isn’t racist, but it wasn’t afraid to race-bend a “token” character usually reserved for a Black man on a sitcom, and instead attach the attributes to a white character. The humor isn’t meant to put down white folks, but rather poke fun at the very real actions of white guys who attempt to adopt Black culture simply because it’s “cool.” This sort of behavior has existed in “white sitcoms” for nearly a century (making the Back character the “token” of the show) and it seems the only reason Smart Guy comes under fire is because white critics are now seeing the characters they identify with in positions that aren’t of power or virtue.

Smart Guy definitely fell into the “Huxtable Effect” of making Black families palatable for white audiences at times, but it was never afraid to point out the indifferences and injustices Black families face on a day to day basis compared to white folks. It was a safe and “beginner’s guide to systematic racism” for white audiences. For example, in the episode “Working Guy,” T.J. gets a job working on (at the time) a brand new product called a DVD. As expected, Marcus is invading T.J.’s new gig and T.J. is left to explain to his coworker (an old white guy) to ignore Marcus, because he’s just T.J.’s brother.

“Oh, I get it – it’s a Black thing,” the guy exclaims. He raises his fist. “Righteous!”

“No, he’s my actual brother,” T.J. explains. “Same house, same parents… similar genetic coding.”

This is a common situation of a white person trying to relate to a Black person with limited knowledge of their culture, as well as the ever-popular trope of an older person trying to interact (and failing) with a younger member of society. However, Smart Guy’s influence is something far more important than allowing black families to be seen as something other than token.

Unlike many sitcoms, Smart Guy focused on a single-parent household. In particular, Smart Guy focused on a household headed by a single, Black father. For the last two decades, the media has tried to paint Black fathers as absent, neglectful, and violent. Smart Guy showed a Black father not only successfully raising three children on his own, but also managing to keep the needs of his wildly different children in check. We all know the importance of representation, but the fact Smart Guy was picked up by The Disney Channel after its WB cancellation is absolutely vital to its existence. This means that Smart Guy was thrown onto one of the most popular and wildly accessed channels for children at the peak of its popularity. The people who grew up watching Smart Guy on their televisions as children are the same people who are now of voting age.

Smart Guy was also a little bit ballsier compared to shows like The Cosby Show. T.J. was a child of the new millennium, and the show wasn’t afraid to explore things like internet predators, systematic racism (like shoplifting accusations), and pre-teen sexual awakenings. At only 51 episodes, Smart Guy covered more topical situations than just about every other show on television at the time.

The ever popular statement of “racism isn’t something you’re born with; it’s something you’re taught” rings especially true for the audiences that grew up watching Smart Guy. By allowing children to see a Black family as something other than what Fox News wants to make them out to be, it gives children a starting point to develop their own beliefs and understanding of families that may look a little different from their own.

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

‘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

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

When I Say Go We Go: Popular Feminism and ‘Spice World’

Some people see the Spice Girls as champions of female empowerment, and others as mindless actors in a consumerist pantomime of feminism. Like most artifacts of pop culture feminism, the Spice Girls presented an image that was neither perfectly laudable nor perfectly awful and shaming – they gave us a sincere attempt at female empowerment that wasn’t entirely free from the culture they lived in.

Some people really hate the Spice Girls. I’m not one of them.

We can’t really talk about Spice World without talking about the Spice Girls, in general, and why everybody seems to love and hate them.

Since “Wannabe” first topped the charts in 1996, the public attitude toward the Spice Girls has whipped back and forth between love and rejection faster than Willow Smith’s hair (because remember when that was a thing? This is a timely pop music joke). Some people see the Spice Girls as champions of female empowerment, and others as mindless actors in a consumerist pantomime of feminism. Like most artifacts of pop culture feminism, the Spice Girls presented an image that was neither perfectly laudable nor perfectly awful and shaming – they gave us a sincere attempt at female empowerment that wasn’t entirely free from the culture they lived in.

It’s hard to remember, because they looked so old when we were twelve, but the Spice Girls were a group of very young women (aged 18-22, when the band first formed) who wanted to be professional entertainers and answered a casting call beginning with the words, “R. U. 18-23 with the ability to sing/dance?” This is not an auspicious beginning for ground-shaking social and political work.

If you’re curious, or hungry to hear all the details of how terrible the pressure-cooker of fame really feels when the whole world is calling you fat, the one-hour documentary, Spice Girls: Giving You Everything, includes footage of the shockingly young, shockingly ordinary-looking Spices auditioning and rehearsing their first songs. It also includes some fairly well-spoken and introspective reflections on what it was like to live in the whirlwind of temporary Spice fame, and stories that should put to rest the idea that these women were mindlessly doing whatever a man said to do.

It isn’t hard to attack them; if I were a baby feminist scholar in undergrad, still getting used to my claws, the Spice Girls would make for some easy, delicious prey. They dress really sexy; they’ve each been reduced to a single personality trait; one of them is supposed to be childlike and that’s kind of creepy; the Black one is “scary” and that feels weird; the band was forged in the fires of consumerism, and that seems pretty evil to me – I’m licking my chops just thinking about it, but wait!

To paraphrase Camille Hayes, let’s remember that not everyone has a degree in Sociology and Gender Studies. Some people are just doing their best on their own, and, rather than demonizing them for not doing well enough, let’s at least acknowledge that we’re on the same team.

Considering that they were a bunch of 20-year-olds in a manufactured pop band, the Spice Girls did a pretty good job of carrying the feminist flag. They didn’t say or do anything radical and challenging; they didn’t provide stunning new insights into gender equality. The explicit message they preached (to their core audience of tween-aged girls) was that friendship is important, and so is self-expression, and girls are just as good as boys. That’s not earth-shattering stuff, but they also modelled through their behaviour that women can be confident and ambitious – outspoken, funny, loud, accomplished – and still receive mainstream acceptance.

The Spice Girls were competent performers who made decisions that they believed would further their careers. Were they perfect? No. Is it important to discuss the ways that Spice feminism falls short, in order to shed light on larger cultural and societal problems? Yes. But they were rowing in the same direction as the rest of us, even if their strokes weren’t especially powerful, so let’s all just ease up a bit, yeah?

The Part Where I Actually Talk About The Movie
Okay, right. So, there was a movie. Spice World was filmed at the height of the band’s popularity in 1997, and released five months before Geri Halliwell announced she was leaving the group. As of this writing, it enjoys as 29 percent Fresh Rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

The film follows the Spice Girls’ fictionalized Spice adventures as they tour in a massive, double-decker Spice bus and learn lessons about the importance of friendship, etc, etc. The adventures range from the commonplace (going to a fancy party) to the outlandish (making first contact with aliens), and the whole thing is wrapped in a framing story about movie executives pitching the worst, most random, half-assed tie-in movie ever (i.e., the movie we’re watching). Add to that roughly a million cameos from other celebrities, a whole bunch of singing, and a villain who makes cryptic pronouncements under the soft cloak of darkness, and you have not yet begun to imagine all of the nonsense packed into this film.

I don’t know why so many people hate it.

It’s bad, but it’s purposely bad – it’s a campy, ironic comedy that makes fun of the idea of the Spice Girls as a manufactured, highly commercialized product. It sells the central Spice Girl fantasy – that being a pop star means hanging out with your very best friends and occasionally rehearsing in between wacky adventures – and it includes a fake Spice Girl origin story – that they began as best friends who spontaneously formed a band one day – but it also addresses many of the criticisms people had of the band in a tongue-in-cheek way. It’s actually kind of smart.

For example, one of the (valid) criticisms people have made of the Spice Girls is that, by reducing each member to a single personality trait or caricature, the band is participating in an ugly interaction of consumerism and patriarchy in which women are a commodity that comes in five types. Spice World is full of scenes that make fun of these simplified personas and highlight the fact that these women are actually whole human beings. They talk about things that have nothing to do with their Spice personalities, like chess, and manta rays; they do unflattering impressions of each other performing their Spice personalities; and they complain that everyone stereotypes them while (deliberately and obviously) acting out the stereotypes in question.

They also drive a bus over a model bridge and sleep in a haunted mansion. It’s not The Color Purple. But the movie is self-aware enough, and self-reflexive enough, that it ends up being a fun, playful story that ultimately resists the idea that there are Five Types of Women defined by specific traits.

It’s also a mainstream movie aimed at young girls where the heroes are all women who make their own decisions and who are way more concerned with their careers, their friendships, and chasing their dreams than they are with meeting some boys. In fact, the topic of boys comes up very rarely in Spice World, as though it’s possible for a woman to get through the day without raising the subject at all.

There’s this scene early on in the film, where the Spice Girls are meeting with fans, and they decide to ditch the planned trip on the Spice bus and run off to make their own fun. Mel B. says, “When I say go, we go,” and then they sprint away from the bus, dragging ten-year-old girls behind them, into adventure and freedom and Doing Your Own Thing and other big movie clichés – and maybe I’m getting soft in my old age, but I can think of worse heroes for those girls to have.

Spice World isn’t going on my imaginary shelf of Greatest Movies, but it captures a really interesting moment in pop culture history, and an interesting look at feminist ideals, as filtered through and expressed by mainstream entertainers.

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