Alfred Hitchcock – Bitch Flicks

Hollywood Racism: Five Reminders from History and the Recent Past

It likes to think of itself as a progressive, meritocratic industry, but I don’t think any thoughtful person would dispute the fact that Hollywood remains a racist cultural institution. It continues to produce racist films, and it continues to shut out talented people of color. In fact, even those of us who have not bought the myth that Hollywood’s a liberal place full of cool, open-minded individuals have not fully recognized how deeply ingrained its racism really is. Here are just a few sobering reminders from history and the recent past.

Written by Rachael Johnson.

Promoting a White Supremacist Ideology

The two most repellent films I have ever seen are Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will (1935) and D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915). Both films have been long recognized by film critics and scholars as technically innovative and both prompt feelings of overpowering nausea. Triumph of the Will is a German propaganda film that (re)produces Nazi discourse. Experiencing the terrifying soullessness of Nazi ceremony on display is a simultaneously sickening and numbing experience. Praised by generations of film scholars as a masterpiece, The Birth of a Nation is the most rabidly racist movie ever made in the United States. Set in the Civil War and Reconstruction era, it is, in fact, a revisionist, white supremacist movie that portrays the Klan as the good guys. The story of the The Birth of a Nation’s reception is also astonishing. One of the first films to be screened at the White House, it reportedly received this response from President Woodrow Wilson: “It was like writing history with lightning and my only regret is that it is so terribly true.” The racism in The Birth of a Nation is of the vilest kind: Black men are portrayed as rapacious creatures fixated with white women while the Klan are celebrated as gallant saviors. Promoting a Fascist racist ideology, the film seeks to normalize ideas of white superiority. Its poisonous impact cannot be overstated. The Birth of a Nation was a huge commercial success and hugely influential. In fact, it was used as a recruiting tool by the Klan. Think about this: this was one of America’s first “great films.”

Propagating Racist Norms and Ideals of Feminine Beauty and Sexuality

Alfred Hitchcock is one of the accomplished directors in cinema history but he has also played a dominant role in constructing and reinforcing Anglocentric norms and ideals of female beauty and sexuality. It is well known that Hitchcock preferred blonde actresses to play his leading ladies–they were part of his sadomasochistic aesthetic vision and the object, it is said, of a quite pathological obsession in his personal life–but I have yet to read any film scholar or critic underscore the director’s essential racism. In an interview with fellow director Francois Truffaut, Hitchcock explained, “You know why I favour sophisticated blondes in my films? We’re after the drawing room type, the real ladies who become whores once they’re in the bedroom.” There is, you can see, a strong linkage between Hitchcock’s racism, sexism, and classism. The director, moreover, espouses a very specific white self-love. Consider the following statement: “I think the most interesting women sexually are the Englishwomen. I feel that the Englishwoman, the Swedes, the northern Germans, and the Scandinavians are a great deal more exciting than the Latin, the Italian, and the French woman. Sex should not be advertised. An English girl, looking like a schoolteacher, is apt to get into a cab with you, and to your surprise, she’ll probably pull a man’s pants open.” His take on Anglo-Saxon and Nordic women is an expression of his own fantasies but he also advocates here the chauvinistic, Anglo notion that non-WASP European women are sexually vulgar. Women of color are noticeably absent from his misogynistic erotic musings, as they were from his films. Hitchcock’s blonde, WASP female characters–slender blonde women, I should add–typified by Tippi Hedren in The Birds should not solely be seen as fetishistic products of his imagination. They are a product of a racist, sexist, and classist mindset. It could be argued that Hitchcock played a key role in Hollywood in propagating narrow, racist ideals of feminine beauty. The attitudes he propagated have had a toxic, long-lasting influence on the American cultural imagination.

Romanticizing Racist Stars

John Wayne was not only one of the most popular movie stars of his time; he also represented a romanticized kind of robust, individualistic American masculinity. Wayne, indeed, personified the country itself for both compatriots and viewers internationally. Behind the mythic America the star was intended to embody, are, however, the historical truths of genocide and slavery. The icon himself never recognized these truths. In a 1971 Playboy interview, John Wayne stated, “I don’t think we did wrong in taking this great country away from them. Our so-called stealing of this country from them (Native Americans) was just a matter of survival. There were great numbers of people who needed new land and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves.” This mind-blowing comment is worth breaking down. Wayne employs a Darwinian justification for the atrocities of his ancestors, an ideology devoid of morality and humanity. It is also, quite simply, as perverse as siding with a rapist calling his rape victim the aggressor. In the interview, he also shifts attention away from contemporary American atrocities in Vietnam, namely the My Lai massacre. On the civil rights struggles of Black Americans, he ever so vaguely acknowledges the anger of his fellow citizens before making this statement: “I believe in white supremacy until blacks are educated to a point of responsibility.” Here we have a Hollywood icon clearly articulating white supremacist thinking as late as 1971.

The Utter Indifference to the Deaths of Enemies and Civilians of Color in Hollywood War Movies

You can find numerous illustrations of American exceptionalism and selective empathy in Hollywood movies. The wildly popular, revisionist American Sniper (2014) is only the most recent dangerous example. From The Deer Hunter (1978) to The Hurt Locker (2008), there are many unsettling cases but there is one that I would like to presently highlight–the racism informing Black Hawk Down (2001). Directed by Ridley Scott, Black Hawk Down concerns the 1993 raid on Mogadishu. Like the vast majority of American war movies, Black Hawk Down never attempts to explore war from the perspective of the enemy soldier or civilian. It is solely dedicated to glorifying the sacrifice of American blood. The close of the film perfectly sums up white Hollywood’s absolute indifference to the deaths of enemies and civilians of color. We are told, “During the raid over 1,000 Somalis died and 19 American soldiers lost their lives.” Black African Somali Muslim deaths are solely an afterthought.

Erasing Interracial Relationships

Over the years, Hollywood has done an effective job in erasing interracial relationships from mainstream American culture. The lack of interracial relationships in Hollywood movies not only shows shameful cowardice on the part of the studios; it also reinforces racist norms and denies an increasing demographic reality. Every kind of relationship–sexual, romantic, and marital–has been deliberately obscured. With movies like 5 Flights Up (2015) and Focus (2015), there are indications that this may be changing but current depictions only serve to highlight the shortage. Certainly TV programs such as Grey’s Anatomy have depicted interracial relationships with greater regularity but Hollywood still has a long way to go. At the moment, they are not fully representing intimate human relationships in America.

Hollywood is, as you can see, an industry that has, from its very infancy, regurgitated racist cultural products, as it has shamelessly sought to provide narcissistic identification for white people. If there was ever an industry that needs to face its past and recognize its essentially backward, intolerant nature, it is America’s dream factory.

‘Marnie’: What We’d Like To Forget About Old Hollywood

With all the talk of ’50 Shades of Grey’ in the past few weeks, boycotts and debates, and a planned re-release of the superior BDSM-romcom ‘Secretary,’ the film that has really been on my mind is ‘Marnie.’ The 1964 Hitchcock outing is about the capturing (through marriage) and breaking of a young, beautiful and damaged con artist, played by Tippi Hedren, the grandmother of ’50 Shades’ star Dakota Johnson. The cinematography is beautiful, the performances are captivating, but the story? Watching it, I keep expecting someone to jump out and scream that it was all a joke, that we weren’t expected to swallow this. Maybe it’s dated, but I want to believe that the relationship in ‘Marnie’ was recognized as horrific and abusive even then.

Written by Elizabeth Kiy.

With all the talk of 50 Shades of Grey in the past few weeks, boycotts and debates, and a planned re-release of the superior BDSM-romcom Secretary, the film that has really been on my mind is Marnie . Since I first saw it several years ago, I’m been intermittently perplexed by the film, a 1964 Hitchcock outing about the capturing (through marriage) and breaking of a young, beautiful and damaged con artist, played by Tippi Hedren , the grandmother of 50 Shades star Dakota Johnson. The cinematography is beautiful, the performances are captivating, but the story? Watching it, I keep expecting someone to jump out and scream that it was all a joke, that we weren’t expected to swallow this. Maybe it’s dated, but I want to believe that the relationship in Marnie was recognized as horrific and abusive even then.

Mark dominates Marnie and breaks her down to reveal her weakness

If you didn’t already think Alfred Hitchcock was a horror movie villain , Marnie sure makes this clear. For starters, James Bond himself, Sean Connery plays Mark Rutland, is misogynist and unrepentant rapist who is the movie’s hero. Yes, he’s the hero. A wealthy industrialist and armchair zoologist, who discovers the young woman who just robbed a business acquaintance and blackmails her into marrying him.

As a con artist, Marnie slips and out of identities and hair styles, though blonde is always the constant, the “real” her. The one constant presence in Marnie’s life is her mother, who lives in a poor area down by the docks of an unknown town. She acts as the breadwinner for her mother, painting her as “unnaturally” masculinized. One of the things she brings her mother is a fur coat, a typical gift given by a rich lover at the time.

While Hedren was being abused by Hitchcock off-screen, on-screen Mark finds his new wife is cold and disinterested in sex. In Hitchcock world, this must mean there is something wrong with her. She is after all, the classic ice blonde taken to extremes. She holds her head high and meets men’s gazes and pulls her skirt down over her knees if she feels she is being gawked at. She’s disgusted and afraid of the thought of Mark touching her and extolls her hatred and mistrust of men, which lends the film to queer readings.

He rapes her on their wedding night when she refuses to have sex with him. It is not at all ambiguous. She screams and tries to fight him off but he keeps going. It’s as explicit as it could be at the time. Never are we told that what Mark did was wrong, or that it makes him a bad person. Instead, we are meant to sympathize with his urges. He is a red-blooded American man, he can be patient about other things, can treat Marnie as an animal, a case study to be analyzed at arm’s length, but on his wedding night? Moreover, as he is presented as normal while Marnie is damaged, his actions are represented as markers of his psychological superiority. He know Marnie better than she knows herself, he can tell it’s what she wants even when she says no; the standard defense of the rapist, only we’re meant to take it seriously here. Even when Marnie attempts suicide the next morning, it’s portrayed as a symptom of the things that were already wrong with her, not a reaction to being victimized.

In married life, Mark continues to hold Marnie under this thumb. He tells her how to dress and act and forces her to attend parties and act as his supportive partner. She must live in his house, trapped like a captive animal and studied, by her husband, zoology or Freudian text in hand. Privately she screams how much she hates him, how much she wants to get away from him, but he owns her, both as a husband and blackmailer.

And though she puts up a strong act, she seems to need him. The slightest flash of the color red or crash of lightening send her into hysterics and Mark’s arms. She seems to get a sense of sexual release from riding her horse (a hamfisted Freudian touch) and it’s his death that finally breaks Marnie’s spirit, like she is indeed the wild horse in need of taming that Mark viewed her as.

Marnie is only truly happy with her horse

This all leads up to the final confrontation with Marnie’s mother, wherein Mark blames her for “ruining” Marnie. It begins when he literally drags her to her mother’s house, crying and weak from the earlier trauma and ends with the heavy-handed revelation that of repressed memories of a near sexual assault in her childhood. Hearing this, grown up Marnie regresses back to her childhood, a little girl crying for her mother’s love and leaning on her husband’s strong shoulder.

In the last scene they walk out into an uncertain future but it seems like things might be all right for these crazy kids. They’re ready to love each other. Mark is our hero, he’s fixed this girl and she can now have a normal sex life. She can be a wife, like a woman is supposed to be.

Marnie is forced to stand by Mark’s side as his society wife

Of course this is crazy and nauseating and its rightfully a lesser Hitchcock. But the film is beautiful and seductive, dressed up in Classic Hollywood glamour and its easy to be lulled into ideas of the unilateral superiority and wholesomeness of old films. But not everything a great director touches turns to gold. For all the ills of contemporary filmmaking and modern culture, at least you couldn’t make a film like Marnie anymore.

At least, I hope so.

Elizabeth Kiy is a Canadian writer and journalist living in Toronto, Ontario.

Rape Culture, Trigger Warnings, and ‘Bates Motel’

A lot of rapes that occur on film and TV are unnecessary and unrealistic while subtly serving to punish the rape victim, to pruriently show the dehumanization of victims (most frequently women), and to trigger audience members who are survivors. A show like ‘Bates Motel’ that so cavalierly uses a tired and painful device in its first episode is definitely not worth my time.

"Bates Motel" Drawing — *Bates Motel* drawing

Written by Amanda Rodriguez
Trigger Warning: Rape, Sexual Assault

Since I really liked Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho when I was younger, I decided to give the A&E prequel series Bates Motel a try. Despite that the cinematography was rich, the actors were quality, and the atmosphere was a great mix of foreboding while paradoxically retro and contemporary, I was roughly halfway through the first episode when I turned it off and washed my hands of it. What makes me think I can give a worthwhile review of a series that I watched for only 20-30 minutes? A rape occurs in that first episode about halfway in, and I know enough about TV formulas, characterizations, and plotlines to safely determine that this rape was gratuitous. A lot of rapes that occur on film and TV are unnecessary and unrealistic while subtly serving to punish the rape victim, to pruriently show the dehumanization of victims (most frequently women), and to trigger audience members who are survivors. A show like Bates Motel that so cavalierly uses a tired and painful device in its first episode is definitely not worth my time.

I generally think rating systems, especially Hollywood’s, are for the birds (maybe even the Hitchcockian birds… har, har). The MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) is a joke with its Catholic priest sitting in on viewings along with its hatred of all things involving female pleasure (check out the documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated to learn more about the secret society that is America’s rating board). I’ve been known to gleefully watch trailers, waiting for the rating description only to scoff, mock, and laugh. My personal favorite is still, “Some scenes of teen partying.” However, maybe I wouldn’t mind a system that cued its viewers in a way that, say, the new Swedish rating system does by integrating the now famous Bechdel Test to judge the level of female involvement in a film. If we’re going to be given a heads up about a film or TV show’s content prior to watching it, there should absolutely be a trigger warning system. The number of survivors of PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) seems to be growing every day, so the compassionate, responsible thing to do would be to let viewers know if there are scenes of combat violence, sexual assault, child abuse, etc.

To give you an idea of the visceral response seeing certain triggering acts on film can cause in someone with PTSD, I’m going to describe to you what happened to me while watching the scene in Bates Motel where Norma Bates was attacked and raped in her home. The former owner of the Bates property, Keith Summers, breaks into the Bates house when Norma is home alone. He attacks her with a knife, brutally beats her, and rapes her. The familiar prickling of my skin and elevated heart rate kicked in when it became clear that Keith was planning to rape Norma. My thoughts were racing; I kept telling myself that she would get away, that she would fuck his shit up because she’s a manipulative murderess, but that didn’t happen. As Keith raped Norma, I found myself in a blind panic, yelling aloud, “STOP! STOP! STOP!” while crawling across the floor to get to the TV to turn it off because I no longer had the motor functions required to walk or use a remote control. After turning off the TV, I sat on the floor, breathing heavily, staring off in a daze. I did housework then, trying to calm down, trying to lift the feeling of dark ooze filling up inside me. After several hours of this, I was lucky enough to have a kind and perceptive friend call me, discern something was wrong, and let me vent about how upsetting and unnecessary the scene was.

I ask you, should anyone be forced to go through that? I’ve continued to be bothered by that scene days later and outraged enough to be compelled to write about it. If there had been a warning at the beginning of the episode that it contained scenes of sexual violence, I would’ve been prepared or, more likely, chosen to watch something else.

Despite the fact that I was triggered by this scene, I have thought and thought about it as objectively as possible to discern whether or not the scene did have value, and my conclusion is that Norma’s rape was, in fact, a broad application of a storytelling technique that is overkill. The scene is designed to render Norma helpless and to give justification to her future actions and neuroses. Guess what? Norma was already crazy before she was raped; she may or may not have murdered her husband, and he may or may not have been an abusive asshole. She already had an unhealthily sexual relationship with her son as evinced by her jealousy, possessiveness, and physicality with him. Not only that, but home invasions are traumatic events on their own. Having her home broken into and being beaten and knifed by a man are all enough to give Norma PTSD and to incite dysfunctionality. We already have all the justification for her behavior here without having Norma raped as a cheap plot device.

What is the function, then, of having Norma raped? Would this have happened if young Norman, instead, was home alone and Keith had attacked? It’s hard to see Norma’s rape as anything other than bringing a powerful woman low, turning her into an object that is acted upon, divesting her of her status as a subject. I also can’t help but see Norma’s rape as an intended lesson for Norman. After Norma told him he couldn’t go out, Norman climbed out of his window to hangout at a party with some cute girls. Knowing his mother was attacked and raped and he wasn’t around to stop it does more to service the forwarding of Norman’s feelings of responsibility and male protectiveness towards his mother, which I think still would’ve been possible if Norma suffered a home invasion and not a rape. This means Norma’s rape isn’t even about her. Talk about lack of subjectivity.

Norma’s rape is also problematic in the same way that many Hollywood depictions of rape are: they are intensely physically violent. Of course, rapes like that occur, and, of course, strangers rape people they’ve never met, but these things don’t happen with nearly the frequency their coverage by mainstream film and TV would lead us to believe. In addition to Bates Motel, some key examples of these physically brutal rapes are: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Downton Abbey, House of Cards (the rape is described by the survivor…not shown), Leaving Las Vegas, I Spit on Your Grave, and Straw Dogs (a Peckinpah film that caused massive controversy and was banned in the UK because the rape victim actually began to enjoy her rape). The list goes on and on. The problem with rape scenes like these are that they obscure and delegitimize rapes that are perpetuated without physical abuse. As far as the media is concerned, rapes where the victim is beaten are more cut-and-dry. The rape that occurs between friends or a married couple where the victim simply says “no” are apparently more questionable as to whether or not the victim “wanted it.” Depictions of such monstrous acts make it hard to see our fathers, brothers, husbands, and friends as rapists, but, most of the time, that’s who they are, not the psychotic strangers Hollywood would have use believe in.

This mentality and this refusal to show the true gamut of situations in which rape and sexual assault occur is harmful to survivors. Because their rape didn’t involve slapping and screaming, it takes a long time for many survivors to even acknowledge and accept that they were raped. Many survivors doubt that their claims will be believed. Many survivors’ claims aren’t believed. This allows many perpetrators to go free without any consequences, and because there was no kicking and crying, I suspect many perpetrators don’t even believe that they are rapists. Isn’t that a scary thought? We value nuance and realism in film and TV characterization; why don’t we place the same value on the varied experience of survivors? Rape culture insists that we only see a narrow representation of rape because if we admit that rape occurs in so many different contexts and with so many different circumstances, then we must admit that rape is a pandemic, that survivors are telling the truth, and that we need to do something about it.

——-

Amanda Rodriguez is an environmental activist living in Asheville, North Carolina. She holds a BA from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio and an MFA in fiction writing from Queens University in Charlotte, NC. She writes all about food and drinking games on her blog Booze and Baking. Fun fact: while living in Kyoto, Japan, her house was attacked by monkeys.

‘Stoker’: The Creepiest Coming-of-Age Tale I’ve Ever Seen

Stoker movie poster

Written by Stephanie Rogers.

If I were asked to describe my reaction to Stoker using an acronym, I’d go with “WTF,” although I definitely experienced some “OMG” and “STFU” moments here and there. By the end, I could hear myself mentally reviewing the film and toying with the idea of titling this piece merely, “OFFS.” That’s the overall reaction, distilled, I had to Stoker from the first five minutes of watching the film all the way to the final credits. I mean, I’m not saying I didn’t like it. Or even love it. Or possibly want to find all existing film reels (and whatever digital incarnations exist) and set them on fire. I just won’t be able to tell for a few months or so. It’s one of those movies.

Uncomfortable mother-daughter interaction

In a lot of ways—okay, like, two—it reminded me of Silver Linings Playbook. Its genre-mixing, unpredictability, and innovative storytelling, particularly with how it illustrates the hereditary aspect of mental illness, works incredibly well. Of course, while Silver Linings Playbook can make a person joy-cry at the end, Stoker’s ending (and beginning and middle) should come with a Serious Trigger Warning for depictions of violence, sexual assault, and incest. I plan to address those things in this review as well, and I’ll also add a Spoiler Alert, if only to avoid writing a horrible paragraph like this ever in my life:

It’s hard to avoid spoilers at this point, but let’s leave it at this: India discovers that her parents have been concealing something very important regarding her uncle—and, given her emotionally close relationship with him, something very important about herself, about character traits that are a part of her own blood. When the truth comes out, her world is overturned, her monsters are unleashed, and she finds herself without the solid footing of character, self-knowledge, and moral clarity to fight them.

(It’s probably not nice to make fun of Richard Brody of The New Yorker, but since Vida’s Count recently showed us in its annual illustration of literary journals that unapologetically refuse to publish women writers or review the work of women writers, The New Yorker can go fuck itself. Also: “her monsters are unleashed” … No.)

Evie (Nicole Kidman) and India (Mia Wasikowska)

Seriously though, what the hell did I just watch? One could categorize Stoker as any of the following: a coming-of-age tale, a crime thriller, a sexual assault revenge fantasy, a love story, a murder mystery, a slasher film, a romantic comedy (I’m hilarious), or even an allegory about the dangers of bullying, parental neglect, or keeping family secrets. Throw a recurring spider in there, some shoes, a bunch of random objects shaped like balls, along with a hint of incest, some on-screen masturbation, imagined orgasmic piano duets, and a handful of scenes that rip off Hitchcock so hard that Hitchcock could’ve directed it (see Shadow of a Doubt), and you’ll have yourself a nice little freakshow!

Seriously though, shoes and balls are really important in this movie.

Saddle Shoe (girlhood!) and High Heel (womanhood!)

Unlike this review, Stoker starts off straightforwardly enough. Mia Wasikowska (our favorite) plays India Stoker, a comically quiet teenager reminiscent of Wednesday Addams, at least until she evolves into a full-blown psychopath, who hates to be touched, gets bullied by boys at school—they call her “Stroker”—and mourns her father (Dermot Mulroney) after his suspicious death in a car accident on her 18th birthday. Nicole Kidman plays Evie, India’s mother, in typical Kidman as Insufferable Ice Princess casting, and there’s pretty much nothing redeeming about her. She gloms onto her dead husband’s estranged brother Charlie at the funeral (played by Matthew Goode), whom she’s never met and never once questions the presence of, and when Mrs. McGarrick, her housekeeper of a million years mysteriously vanishes, she says things like, “Oh no, what will we do for dinner now!” with earnest incredulity.

Evie loses her shit on India (finally!)

I realize Evie isn’t supposed to be likeable, that we’re meant to roll our eyes at her upper-class privilege and displays of affection toward her husband’s mysterious younger brother, that maybe we’re even supposed to feel a tiny bit sorry for her. But I despise one-dimensional women characters onscreen, and Evie is just that, a collection of simplistic tropes used to move the narrative forward: a bad wife, a bad mother, a bad boss (like, aren’t you even going to look for your missing housekeeper?), and a bad niece-in-law (Aunt Gin needs to talk to you alone for a reason, you idiot.) Her obliviousness to everything happening around her doesn’t read as the dissociated or even unstable response of a wife in mourning; it reads as the selfish and feigned cluelessness of a generally awful person.

Goodbye, Auntie Gin

Evie—hats off to Nicole Kidman—eventually delivers one of the scariest monologues I’ve ever seen on film. It’s the first time she utters anything longer than a few sentences at once (which are usually about the importance of polite behavior and playing the piano), but this monologue, I mean, chills. It’s also the only time Evie exhibits just as much overt “crazy” as the other characters, and I found myself savoring that moment. Isn’t it funny how a character can become interesting once she’s allowed to do things other than comment on etiquette and pass out drunk?

I wish we got to see that less passive side of Evie earlier in the film because, the thing is, we don’t need to dislike Evie in order to feel sympathy for her daughter. It’s certainly possible to make characters bad and villainous while also making them complex and even charming. The makers of this film know that, too. You know how I know that? Because Charlie Stoker exists.

Evie and Charlie (Matthew Goode)

This fuckin’ guy. He rolls onto the family estate during his brother’s funeral like he’s been there all along, and somehow, “I’ve been travelling the world for 20 years” seems like a reasonable excuse for his lifelong absence. Naturally, he decides to move in with Evie and India because why not, I’m sure everyone will be totally fine with that, nice to meet you! And they are. Except for Aunt Gin and Housekeeper McGarrick, who genuinely—rightfully—fear this bro, even with all his charisma and sexy-sheepish smiles. They know some shit. India mistrusts him at first, too, but the more she learns about him, and the creepier (and more murderous) he becomes, the more India identifies with him. Queue The New Yorker’s Richard Brody: her monsters are unleashed.

Accompanied by a few feminist themes.

India imitating a yard statue, accompanied by saddle shoes

For one, I don’t think it’s possible to not read Stoker as a coming-of-age tale, mainly because it puts so much emphasis on India’s burgeoning womanhood. We see her in flashbacks as a young girl, a semi-tomboy who hunted birds with her dad, who wore the same pair of black-and-white saddle shoes all her life—she received a bigger size every year on her birthday (remember, shoes and balls are really important in this movie)—who never identified with her beautiful, quintessentially feminine mother, and whose experiences with boys include stabbing one in the hand with a sharpened pencil (loved that) when he and a group of friends sexually harass her behind their high school.

These fucking shoes!

That foreshadows India’s upcoming attempted rape … because what would an onscreen coming-of-age tale of burgeoning womanhood be without an attempted rape scene? (I’m only half-joking here; considering one in three women lives through a sexual assault in her lifetime, and most films seek to reveal some Truth About Humanity, I’m surprised the issue of sexual assault and rape isn’t addressed more often—and accurately—onscreen. Oh wait, I forgot we’re talking about women’s stories here: UNIMPORTANT.) Um.

In my mind, the film exists in two parts: everything that happens before the attempted rape and everything that happens after it.

I’m sure this is a 100% acceptable uncle-niece interaction

Stoker addresses India’s sexual feelings early on; she clearly feels an attraction toward her uncle, and she seeks out a boy from school immediately after she catches her mother and uncle kissing. The juxtaposition of these scenes—India watching two people engage in sexual activity and her subsequent desire to do so herself—touches on a couple of familiar adolescent emotions. One could read India’s reaction to discovering her mom and uncle’s indiscretion as a big Fuck You to both of them. One could also read India’s reaction to discovering her mom and uncle’s indiscretion as an attempt to behave like an adult, to emulate what she sees (remember: coming of age!). Both of those responses ring true to me, and Stoker effectively captures the confusion inherent in leaving the familiarity of girlhood and entering a not-yet-entirely-defined womanhood.

But India decides during her make out session in the woods with the rapist that she doesn’t want to do anything more than kiss, at which point she tells him she wants to go home. He ignores her, physically assaults her, and attempts to rape her. And that’s when her monsters are unleashed. (I can’t stop saying it.)

India as Hunter

I won’t reveal what happens during this scene because—damn—but believe me, it changes everything for India, for everyone. From here until the end of the film, Stoker explores India’s equating of death and violence with sexual awakening, and it looks at the relationship between power, innocence, and what it means for a young woman to lose both. It also asks a question about choice, about how much power we really have over ourselves, our actions, over who we become.

The film opens with a voiceover (that bookends the film) of India telling us, “Just as a flower does not choose its color, we are not responsible for what we have come to be. Only once you realize this do you become free.” This, contrasted with what the film reveals about Charlie’s past and India’s present—and the similarities of both—raise an important, albeit subtle point regarding mental health and the genetic predisposition of mental illness. Stoker takes it even further though, with a welcomed feminist slant; because, while India seems to make difficult choices to protect her mother and herself from violence at the hands of men, we’re ultimately left wondering just how much of a choice—like many women in relationships with abusive men—she really has.

2013 Oscar Week: ‘Hitchcock’ Turns the Master of Suspense into a Real Life Dud

Hitchcock

Guest post written by Candice Frederick, originally published at Reel Talk. Cross-posted with permission.

You’d think that any movie that involves the late great Alfred Hitchcock would be riveting, spectacular and painstakingly suspenseful to watch. But Hitchcock, Sacha Gervasi’s debut feature film that follows the days leading up to the production of the filmmaker’s classic film, Psycho, is none of the above.

Right out the gate, Hitchcock struggles to simply be interesting. Although Anthony Hopkins looks comfortable inside the physical girth of Hitchcock and the actor captures both his enthusiasm for movies while also basking in the perks of being “the master of suspense,” John J. McLaughlin’s trite screenplay gives him little to work with. It makes his performance look like a great imitation, at best (reminiscent of Meryl Streep in 2009’s Julie & Julia). Instead of offering a candid and enlightening view of Hitchcock outside of his work, or even his deeper psychological thoughts behind Psycho, we get an artless chronicle of Hitchcock’s financial straits and lack of support from the studio. After McLaughlin’s brilliant screenplay for 2010’s Black Swan, this is a real letdown.

Another thing the film focuses on is the infamous shower scene in Psycho. Arguably one of the finest shot scenes in film history, Hitchcock spends so much time enticing the audience with it that when it happens, it’s just not special and just a quick moment. It really just plays up Hitchcock’s satisfaction with the audience’s reaction to the scene. Then it all fades to black. You just don’t do Hitchcock like that.

Helen Mirren as Alma Reville (aka Lady Hitchcock), Anthony Hopkins as Hitchcock in Hitchcock

The one-dimensional character development doesn’t end with Hitchcock. Helen Mirren’s Lady Hitchcock (Alma Reville) is not much better realized. Mrs. Hitchcock’s story almost solely exists as an aside to her husband’s. Granted, the movie does show that she was more than just a wife; she was her husband’s right arm. She often helped rewrite his scripts, including Psycho, and appeared to be the glue that held her husband’s motivation for his career, even when he was deemed too old for Hollywood and the cards were stacked against him. Her talent was apparently overshadowed by her husband’s success. The arc is far too bland for an actress of Mirren’s caliber, but at least Mirren gets a few zingers to deliver to counter Hopkins’ “Try the finger sandwiches. They’re made of real fingers.”

Lines like that will undoubtedly give you a twinkle in your eye, since it’s easy to believe that Hitchcock the man might have had a fondness for perverse humor like that. But it just seems like lazy writing if you throw a couple of lines like that here and there when the rest of the film left much to be desired.

(L-R): Jessica Biehl as Vera Miles, Scarlett Johansson as Janet Leigh, James D’Arcy as Anthony Perkins in Hitchcock

With an impressive cast, including Toni Colette and Scarlett Johansson, and a rich subject, Hitchcock really should have been a better movie. Colette was completely underused as Hitchcock’s assistant, and Johansson’s portrayal of actress Janet Leigh provided nothing more than a few quips about her décolletage and screaming in the shower. Cloud Atlas‘ James D’Arcy as Anthony Perkins is a dead ringer for the actor, even if he only had one tepidly compelling scene with Hopkins that digs into the character. Even Jessica Biel as actress Vera Miles is decent, even though her storyline had such potential but was glazed over and ultimately flatlined.

Gervasi at least manages to recapture the essence of Hollywood in the 50s and 60s with a recreation of the vintage studio lot and classy Tinseltown fashion. But stripping the character down to a point where his fictional depiction is far less fascinating than the actual persona seems counterproductive. If Hitchcock himself was alive today, he’d undoubtedly turn his nose up.

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Candice Frederick is a former NABJ award-winning journalist for Essence Magazine, and the writer for the film blog, Reel Talk. She is also the TV/Film critic for The Urban Daily. Follow her on Twitter.

Classic Literature Film Adaptations Week: Mrs. Danvers, or: ‘Rebecca’

Movie poster for Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca

This is a guest post by Amanda Civitello.

There is a trio of women at the heart of Rebecca. There’s a male love interest, to be sure – the dashing, wealthy, ostensibly noble Maxim de Winter – but at its most essential, Rebecca is a story of women: the unnamed protagonist, the second Mrs. de Winter; Rebecca de Winter, Maxim’s first wife, whose seeming omnipresence at the de Winters’ country seat, Manderley, haunts her replacement; and Mrs. Danvers, Manderley’s housekeeper, and Rebecca’s personal maid, devoted to her mistress even after death. The narrator of Daphne du Maurier’s 1938 novel and Alfred Hitchcock’s 1940 film adaptation might be the second Mrs. de Winter, but Rebecca – particularly the novel – doesn’t belong to her in the slightest. Despite a script which departs from the novel in several crucial instances and the talent of Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine, the story is Mrs. Danvers’s, and the film is Judith Anderson’s.

Rebecca recounts the story of the second Mrs. de Winter (Joan Fontaine), the new bride of the wealthy widower Maxim de Winter (Laurence Olivier), who married him after a whirlwind courtship. Though not especially acquainted with her frequently secretive, moody husband, she nevertheless adores him and, despite her modest upbringings, resolves to do her best as lady of the manor at Manderley. She meets with resistance, of course, from a likely corner, the housekeeper Mrs. Danvers (Judith Anderson), as well as from a more unlikely one, Maxim’s late wife Rebecca de Winter, who drowned tragically but whose ghost seems to haunt Manderley and its inhabitants in more ways than one. The second Mrs. de Winter finds herself at odds with Mrs. Danvers, who is by turns cruel and falsely sweet, and utterly bent on removing Mrs. de Winter from Manderley, at one point attempting to coax her into suicide. The film is something of a thriller, and so of course there are questions surrounding Rebecca’s mysterious drowning – particularly about Maxim’s part in it. Fortunately for our heroine and her romantic lead, Maxim is miraculously exonerated, in a disappointing departure from the novel, and Mr. and Mrs. de Winter, it is presumed, enjoy something of a happy retirement after the closing titles, despite a final act of revenge.

Mrs. Danvers (Judith Anderson) and the second Mrs. de Winter (Joan Fontaine)

Rebecca is frequently described as Joan Fontaine’s film, and while she’s excellent in her role, and clearly has the most screen time, her role is not, by far, the most interesting of the film. Her character, the second Mrs. de Winter, is never allowed to grow up: in spite of everything, by the close of the film, she’s much the same frustratingly childlike shrinking violet she was at the beginning. Fontaine carries off the ingénue type very well, and it’s not her fault that her character has bursts of growth – short-lived instances in which she takes her staff in hand, or speaks her mind to her husband – but then, inevitably, regresses. She’s beautiful and even sympathetic in her persistent naïveté, at least to a point, but as a woman, the second Mrs. de Winter is ultimately disappointing. Part of the problem lies in the fact that she’s consistently portrayed as the opposite of Rebecca de Winter, who is never seen and never speaks for herself, in the film or the novel. She is the sweetness and light to Rebecca’s coldly Machiavellian, sinister calculation. The second Mrs. de Winter is innocent, concerned only for her husband, and perpetually unsure of herself, which makes her rather nice, but somewhat simpering, and sadly, not especially interesting. Rebecca de Winter is not, by anyone’s account, nice, but she’s certainly more interesting than her wide-eyed replacement, and hers is the silenced voice.

Rebecca, Hitchcock’s first Hollywood film, is beautifully shot and wonderfully acted, but it’s also caught, somewhat uncomfortably, between genres. It doesn’t quite want to be a true Gothic thriller, because it shies from the moral ambiguity that makes the novel such a rich book, but nor is it a straightforward romance, for nothing is ever straightforward with Alfred Hitchcock. Unfortunately, the major casualty of this uncertainty is the novel’s most interesting female character: the housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, a brilliant turn by Judith Anderson. In the novel, Mrs. Danvers haunts each page just as much as the ghost of Rebecca de Winter. In Hitchcock’s hands, Rebecca becomes a cross between a Gothic thriller and a mannered romance, ultimately tending towards the latter, but even this does not fully temper Mrs. Danvers’s omnipresence: she is the link between the unnamed protagonist and the unseen antagonist, not the husband they share in common. However, the novel is full of contradictions in its characterization of Mrs. Danvers which the film does not address. Through the second Mrs. de Winter’s eyes we see Mrs. Danvers as “tall and gaunt,” with “great, hollow eyes,” a “skull’s face set on a skeleton’s frame,” and possessing of “limp and heavy, deathly cold” hands. While Judith Anderson’s costuming is not, perhaps, as skeletal as du Maurier intended, she nevertheless embodies the chilly lifelessness of her character. Her Mrs. Danvers is ghostly in her carriage, but terrifyingly real in her interactions with her new mistress. Yet in the film adaptation, the other-worldliness never leaves her, and Anderson plays it masterfully, creating a character who is deeply unsettling and deliciously spooky. But du Maurier’s novel tempers this description; the Danvers of the novel is not always an evil, unbalanced ice queen. She’s desperate and half-mad with grief, still living in the past and passionate about her mistress.

Mrs. Danvers (Judith Anderson) in Rebecca de Winter’s bedroom

In the film, Danvers is well written, but nevertheless tends towards one-dimensional in the part the script allows her to play; in the book, Danvers’s complexity is far more difficult to ignore. A novel of Rebecca‘s length must necessarily be condensed; the kind of explicated description possible in page upon page of prose is simply untranslatable for the screen. Much of Mrs. Danvers’s complexity in the novel, therefore, is sacrificed so as to streamline the narrative. Where the film paints Danvers as more sadistic than anything else, the Mrs. Danvers of du Maurier’s novel is significantly more multifaceted. She becomes the definite antagonist in the film, the cruelly calculated, disconcertingly creepy nemesis of the wide-eyed ingénue. This is necessary: the viewer needs to believe that, not only would Danvers definitely set fire to Manderley, but that she would perish in Rebecca’s bedroom and deserve it. (On this point, the novel says very, very little, and it’s only one possibility among many that it’s Danvers who torches the great estate, and no mention is made of her fate.)

Hitchcock, however, is a director unafraid of ambiguity and a master of great subtlety, and he addresses the Rebecca-Danvers relationship most decisively in the pivotal bedroom scene, which prompts the second Mrs. de Winter into assuming more control of her household. Throughout, Judith Anderson keeps her delivery crisp and preternaturally calm, conveying Mrs. Danvers’s madness only with her eyes and movement, to great effect. The scene is as utterly disquieting on screen as it is in the novel, perhaps even more so, given the refinement of Judith Anderson’s performance. Danvers catches the second Mrs. de Winter in Rebecca’s closed-off bedroom in the west wing, and then proceeds to show her new mistress Rebecca’s personal things: her furs, still hanging pristinely in the armoire; her hairbrush, laid in exactly the same place; her nightdress, still laid out for the mistress who won’t return. It’s very easy to make it entirely Gothic in character – a bit of ghostly theatre to unsettle the new bride – but really, there’s much more at play. Again, however, the film and the novel are at odds: in the novel, there’s an undercurrent of grief for the late Rebecca that cuts through Danvers’s cruelty, such that the housekeeper is mad with grief, and motivated by love for her mistress. Death has not relinquished the hold Rebecca had on Mrs. Danvers; in fact, it’s intensified it. Judith Anderson is frighteningly convincing as she caresses Rebecca’s lace underwear, such that the scene is laced with an almost palpable degree of sexual tension and lesbian subtext. Mrs. Danvers’s passion for her mistress is undeniable, and the nature of that passion is left unspecified. The question of a lesbian subtext to the Danvers-Rebecca relationship is one to which the novel alludes as well, and it gives a layer of richness to Mrs. Danvers’s character. If there was a degree of romantic passion on Mrs. Danvers’s part, her grief becomes more sympathetic; her madness, more understandable. But in Rebecca, the scene must be viewed within the context of the film as a whole. Where, in the novel, the reader ultimately feels a degree of pity and sympathy for Mrs. Danvers, despite the assessment of the narrator, on screen, it’s simply, in the end, a briefly penetrating look into an unbalanced, hostile, malicious woman’s madness.

Mrs. Danvers showing Rebecca’s furs to the second Mrs. de Winter, part of the subtext-laden bedroom scene

These perplexing editorial choices in the novel’s adaptation for the screen make for a viewing experience which leaves audiences with a distinctly different perception of the characters and the story. The viewers are denied the absolutely disquieting story of the novel. What’s so disturbing – and so Gothic – about Rebecca isn’t Rebecca herself, and not even the image of Rebecca, the spectre of her, that the different characters construct, but the moral ambiguity surrounding the characters we’re supposed to like and dislike. If a novel – or a screenplay – is meant to be a constructed world, one that functions according to its own rules, then du Maurier’s Rebecca wreaks havoc with that framework. The reader is guided to like certain characters, to dislike others, only to find those perceptions entirely spun on their heads: by the last few pages, the reader realizes that the romantic hero she’s come to like and defend is a murderer. Changing the ending removes the ambiguity around Maxim, and turns Rebecca into a Gothic-tinged romance, and casting Mrs. Danvers as, for the most part, the cruelly sinister, unsympathetic antagonist paradoxically makes Rebecca spookier but far less disquieting, far less unsettling, than the novel.

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Amanda Civitello is a Chicago-based freelance writer and Northwestern grad with an interest in arts and literary criticism. She has recently written on Jacques Derrida and feminist philosopher Sarah Kofman for The Ellipses Project and has contributed reviews of Sleep Hollow, Downton Abbey and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind to Bitch Flicks. You can find her online at amandacivitello.com.

Too Many Hitchcocks

Sienna Miller and Toby Jones in HBO’s The Girl

1997 had volcano movies. 2000 had Mars movies. 2006 had magician movies. 2012 has Hitchcock movies.

The Girl, premiering tomorrow on HBO at 9PM, stars Toby Jones as Hitch, Imelda Staunton as his wife Alma, and Sienna Miller as Tippi Hedren. Hitchcock, opening in limited release November 23rd, stars Anthony Hopkins as the title character, Helen Mirren as Alma, and Scarlett Johansson as Janet Leigh. Having only seen the trailers, it is my suspicion that the close proximity of these movies’ releases will sabotage the artistic impact of both films.

Based on Donald Spoto’s book Spellbound by Beauty, The Girl centers on Hitchcock’s obsession with and harassment of Tippi Hedren as he worked with her in The Birds and Marnie. It is a dark and unpleasant story, where the director is clearly depicted as a creepy antagonist:

And while “it’s not TV, it’s HBO,” The Girl debuts in the shadow of its theatrical release twin, Hitchcock. Toby Jones yet again plays the also-ran version of the lead actor in a biopic, six years after his take on Truman Capote in Infamous was eclipsed by Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Oscar-winning turn from the previous year. For me, the biggest “this is only a TV movie” black mark is the casting of “We wanted X, but we got” Sienna Miller as Tippi Hedren.

But The Girl may well get its revenge on the flashier Hitchcock by undermining its depiction of the Master of Suspense as a lovable maverick; eccentric, sure, but far from diabolical:

It’s awkward to watch these trailers together, especially with the one for Hitchcock taking multiple opportunities to ogle ScarJo T&A and closing with a zinger about large breasts. I’m wagering that uncomfortable disconnect will be only more noticeable when comparing the two actual films. So while Hitchcock gets the bigger stars and better buzz, The Girl may pull the red carpet out from underneath it.

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Robin Hitchcock (no relation) is an American writer living in Cape Town. She has been grumpy for years that the adjective form of her last name is already taken.