Tag: Amanda Bynes

Women in Sports Week: Bend It Like Bynes: Ambivalent Empowerment in ‘She’s the Man’

Everybody has a secret …
This is a guest post by Caitlin Moran.
The first time I saw She’s the Man, I was in the middle of a 23-hour band trip bus ride, and probably in the first stages of delirium. I had low expectations for the movie, and even lower expectations for what remained of my sanity—and yet, when one of the chaperones popped in the She’s the Man DVD, I found myself loving it. I was sitting next to my best friend and varsity soccer teammate, and we were both loopy enough from extended time on the road to enjoy the goofier moments of the movie while still reveling in the extended soccer scenes. Still, I wasn’t sure what to expect when I returned to the movie seven years later to examine its depiction of high school sports—watching Amanda Bynes change clothes and genders on a Spin the Apple carnival ride can only be funny so many times, right? (Wrong—I will never not laugh at that scene.) But whether the rest of the movie would uphold the integrity of the female athlete was a different story altogether.

Justin and the rest of the Cornwall boys. You’re gonna regret this, bro.

Like that other perennial high school favorite set on an unbelievably beautiful campus, She’s the Man is based loosely—loosely—on Shakespeare, in this case Twelfth Night. Bynes plays Viola Hastings, a high school soccer star, living out the last days of summer playing the beautiful game with beautiful people, including her boyfriend Justin (Robert Hoffman), on the beach. But the start of school brings unwelcome surprises: in the first ten minutes of the movie, Viola and her teammates discover that their school, Cornwall Prep, has eliminated the girls soccer team, leaving them without a way to showcase their skills for prospective college scouts. (Viola harbors dreams of wearing the Carolina blue at UNC Chapel Hill, no doubt a nod to the women’s soccer legends like Mia Hamm and Kristine Lilly, among others, who played there.) If this were a very different movie, Viola would have brought a Title IX claim against Cornwall, and we would have been treated to courtroom montages instead of training scenes. But Viola takes a different route: after Justin laughs in her face at the idea of the girls trying out for the boys’ team—and gets himself epically dumped—Viola hatches a plan to impersonate her twin brother Sebastian (secretly in London with his bandmates) at rival high school Illyria, make the boys’ soccer team there, and beat Justin at his own game. Literally.

Hell hath no fury like a girls soccer team scorned

Complications ensue, as they must. Viola-as-Sebastian finds herself in the middle of a messy love triangle between her hunky roommate Duke (Channing Tatum, at his most bro-with-a-heart-of-gold) and Duke’s object of affection, Olivia (Laura Ramsey), who begins falling for “Sebastian” during intimate chats over dissected animals in science lab. Circling this sticky wicket are Monique (Alexandra Breckinridge), the real Sebastian’s horrid girlfriend who refuses to be dumped, and Viola’s mother (Lynda Byrd), who cherishes dreams of seeing her little tomboy walk across the stage as a debutante. Oh, and there’s a tarantula.
Even in the midst of all the hullabaloo, the movie does manage to devote a fair amount of time to soccer. Viola tries out for the boys’ team and makes second string, after informing Coach Dinklage, played by real-life footballer/testicle-grabber Vinnie Jones, that she is unable to play on the “skins” team in shirts v. skins because she is “allergic to the sun”—and yes, you can buy that phrase on a hoodie. Second string, however, isn’t good enough to get Viola on the field against Cornwall, so she strikes a bargain with Duke: he’ll help her up her game enough to make first string in time for the Cornwall game, and she’ll convince Olivia to give Duke a date. They both succeed, but when the real Sebastian returns from London the night before the big game, Viola’s tangled web begins to unravel. But still—I’m sure you can guess where this is going, in the end, right down to the final game-deciding penalty kick awarded to Viola against—surprise!—Cornwall goalie Justin.
Who is that handsome fellow?
 
Viola’s conquest of her gross ex is facilitated through this penalty kick, on a pitch where the winners and losers are clearly delineated. This isn’t a symbolic victory: Viola literally puts the winning point on the board. Unlike the weak, intolerable Monique, who is destined to storm in and out of scenes in a constant state of prissy frustration, Viola uses soccer to transcend her status as a girl, which otherwise would mark her as an idolized object of desire (Olivia), a walking punchline (her unfortunately headgeared classmate Eunice), or tokens of sexual conquest (her former teammates Kia and Yvonne, who pretend to be her desperate exes to increase her cred with the Illyria boys). Through her athletic talent, Viola gets to vanquish the boy who insulted and belittled her on a playing field where the subsequent victors are easily recognizable.

Amanda Bynes as Viola in She’s the Man

Interestingly, although Justin almost immediately becomes the villain who Viola must overcome, it didn’t start out that way. In fact, the first lines of the movie are Justin’s, emphatically celebrating Viola’s goal during the beach soccer game, before telling her that she’s better than half the guys on his team. Here is a perfect example of the affirming boyfriend that sunny, sassy Viola deserves. It’s only when Viola threatens to encroach on Justin’s (literal) turf that he changes his tune, agreeing with Cornwall coach Pistonek that girls can’t play sports at the same level as boys. Obviously we’re meant to revel in the downfall caused by his misogyny, and I certainly did, but we’re also meant to celebrate the willingness of Duke—and Coach Dinklage—to give Viola a spot on the team despite her gender once she’s found out. Yet I find myself unable to believe that the eminently “no homo” Duke we met in the first half hour of the movie would have reacted any differently than Justin did, if he knew that “Sebastian” was a girl all along.
In the end, She’s the Man is ambivalent about the role of soccer in Viola’s life. On one hand, Viola does prove that she can play with the boys, and at times even exceed them. She conquers Justin and Coach Pistonek, who doubted and mocked her. But everything about her soccer career is irreparably tangled up with her relationships with boys. When she decides to impersonate her brother, she’s doing it just to stick it to Justin—no UNC Chapel Hill scouts will come to see her as a boy. Even the side volley she uses to score on Justin in the final game wouldn’t have been possible without a setup from Duke (who taught her the move in the first place).

Viola (aka Sebastian) hanging with the guys

The last shot of the movie shows Viola and Duke together on the field in Illyria red, seemingly bearing out Coach Dinklage’s rather touching commitment to equality on the pitch. But whether this equality can be sustained long term—especially on a team of guys who were so impressed when Viola-as-Sebastian cruelly humiliated Monique in front of an entire restaurant—remains to be seen. And even if it can be, what happens to the rest of Viola’s former teammates, still stuck at Cornwall without a team or a twin brother to impersonate? Don’t they deserve a revenge penalty kick as well? For real-life Violas—and Kias and Yvonnes—the importance of Title IX protection can’t be overstated. What the movie could have done was show that all female athletes—not just the ones good enough to play with the boys—deserve their day on the pitch. Perhaps there will be a sequel—She’s the Man: Title IX Lawsuit. Now that’s a sports movie I would pay to see.
Caitlin Moran is a textbook editor with a penchant for sassy footnotes. After spending many years battling Western New York winters, she now lives in Queens with a cat and too many books for her apartment. Her work has appeared in Post Road, Pleiades, Pure Francis, and the Women’s Media Center blog.



Guest Writer Wednesday: Easy A: A Fauxminist Film

Emma Stone stars in Easy A

This is a cross post from The Funny Feminist.
It appears that star power is on the rise for the funny, luminous Emma Stone.  She first caught my attention as the snarky cool girl who was way too good for Jonah Hill’s character in Superbad(and not because she was hot and he was fat, but because she was sarcastic and witty and he was whiny and entitled).  She continued to charm me all the way through Zombieland, which was no easy feat when she was the prickliest of the four main characters.  Finally, someone decided to give her a starring role in a movie called Easy A. I saw the trailer for this and was immediately intrigued.

I thought, “Ooh, feminist issues!  A comedic look at sexual hypocrisy in society, especially high schools!  A cast with funny actors!  Count me in!”
I saw it in the theater.  I laughed.  I sympathized with Emma Stone’s character Olive, found myself crushing on the character played by Penn Badgley even though he failed to even make a blip on my radar on the one episode of Gossip Girl I watched, and thoroughly enjoyed every scene with Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson as Olive’s quirky, hippie parents.  I went home with a smile on my face.
The smile soon turned into a straight line, which eventually became a scowl, as the more I thought about the movie, the more it annoyed me.  I think it’s much less feminist than it seems, and for that matter, not as funny as I thought it was when I first saw it.  (Warning: Spoilers ahead).
Why the Movie Fails on a Feminist Level
1) Olive is awesome.  All other women are bitches.
How would I describe Emma Stone’s character, Olive Penderghast?  First of all, she has the coolest name for a character in a teen movie since Anne Hathaway’s Mia Thermopolis in The Princess Diaries. She’s also independent, feisty, compassionate, and refuses to let other people define who she is.  When the school labels her as a slut, she decides to take her reputation into her own hands.  Note that it’s already inherently problematic that she’s embracing the “slut” label as a form of rebellion – it’s kind of a stupid rebellion, in my opinion – but her motive behind that rebellion is still laudable.  And of course she Learns and Grows from the experience and finally tells the world that her sex life is nobody’s goddamn business but her own.  That is a fairly satisfying conclusion, even if getting there was a bit of a struggle.
But let’s take a look at the other female characters.
We’ve got Rhiannon, the hypocritical best friend of Olive played by Aly Michalka.  At first, she eagerly devours Olive’s account of her made-up sex life, but then turns on her and joins the rest of the school in slut-shaming her.  She’s a pretty crappy best friend, and of course, she’s motivated by jealousy.
We’ve got Marianne, played by Amanda Bynes, the holier-than-thou religious girl who begins the campaign to slut-shame Olive.  In addition to being judgmental, she’s also a cheap, less funny ripoff of Mandy Moore’s character from Saved!
We’ve got all of Marianne’s friends, who join in on the slut-shaming campaign. 

We’ve got Mrs. Griffith, played by Lisa Kudrow, who turns out to not only be an incompetent guidance counselor, but cheating on her husband with a student.  Of course, her husband is the best teacher in the school, making her crimes even worse.
In other words, Olive is a great character because she’s not like the other girls – implying that most “other” girls are bitchy, catty, jealous, conniving, and mean.
I can’t praise a movie for its feminism if ONE female character is strong and the others are horrible.
2) The boys get a free pass for their douchey behavior.
We’ve talked about why the girls are bitches.  But what about the boys?  Are they portrayed as being jerks for taking advantage of Olive, for participating in a system that allows her to be shamed while they reap the benefits of her fallen reputation?
No.  No, they are not.  We’re supposed to think that the boys are wrong, certainly, but we’re also to feel sorry for them.  Brandon asks Olive to fake-fuck him at a party so he can pretend to be straight and stop getting bullied.  Never mind that he’s indirectly asking her to put her reputation on the line, so she can get bullied in a different way.  We’re supposed to feel sympathy for the poor, bullied gay kid, not angry with him for being a hypocrite.
I also feel that we’re supposed to make the same kind of excuses for the other boys who ask Olive for permission to say they had sex with her.  It’s wrong of them to do it, but they’re shy nerds who aren’t good with girls, so all they want is to build their reputations so that girls will like them.  Wow, what a feminist message – guys use a girl’s fallen reputation to build up their own “street cred” so they can trick other girls into actually having sex with them!  And the girl participates in this deceit of other girls!  But that’s okay, because other girls are shallow!  I think I have to take back what I said about Olive being awesome.
There’s also Cam Gigandet’s character, a 22-year-old high school student named Micah, who is dating Marianne.  He is supposedly religious and chaste, but he turns out to be cheating on Marianne with Mrs. Griffith!  And he tells everyone that he got syphilis from Olive! DUN DUN DUNNN!  Is he condemned for this?  No.  Why?  Because the poor guy was under pressure to lie after – wait for it – his mother beat him over the head and threatened to beat him more if he didn’t tell her who he slept with!  His mother browbeats him, and his lover denies him.  Older women = bitches, amirite, guys?
On a less serious note, there’s Thomas Haden Church’s character, Mr. Griffith.  By Olive’s account, he is the best teacher in the school.  Yet, when one of Marianne’s minions calls Olive a tramp in the middle of the class, and Olive responds by calling her a twat, he sends Olive to the principal’s office!  This was all contrived so we could get a very awkward, unfunny scene in the principal’s office as he ranted about private schools vs. public schools (um…what?) but any teacher worth hir salt would have sent both Olive AND Nina to the principal’s office – or, at the very least, publicly condemned Nina for attacking Olive out of nowhere.  Come on.  That’s Classroom Management 101.
The only male character who the movie acknowledges to be a jerk is the guy who tries to pay Olive for actual sex.  The screenplay and tone of the direction clearly condemn him.  But he is the only one.  The rest of the men (excluding Olive’s supportive, quirky dad) are either being used by evil bitches, or using women because they can’t help it.
3) Sex is still bad, especially for girls.
I appreciate that this teen movie is acknowledging slut-shaming and why it’s wrong.  I really do.  But I feel like it chickens out, by the very fact that Olive is still a virgin by the end of the movie.  I think the movie is implying that slut-shaming Olive was bad because she never actually had sex.  Would the screenwriters have written a movie with the same message about a sexually active young woman?
I doubt it, because of the scene where Olive confides in her mother.  I didn’t mention Patricia Clarkson’s character under my first point because she’s not a bitch.  She’s a quirky, supportive, loving mother.  That’s great!  But she admits to Olive that, when she was in high school, she had sex with a bunch of people (“mostly guys,” HAHA LESBIAN EXPERIMENTATION LOL!).  But don’t worry, viewers!  She didn’t have sex because sex is fun and enjoyable.  She did it because she had low self-esteem.
Of course she did.  That’s the only reason why teenage girls ever have sex, or why adult women ever have sex outside of monogamous relationships. Low self-esteem.
Pffft.
At the end of the movie, Olive spells out the message, that it’s nobody’s business what people do with their private lives.  That’s admirable, and true. But the message means very little when the journey getting there is so icky and filled with double standards – the same double standards that the movie is supposedly criticizing, but tacitly embracing.
Why the Movie Fails on a Humorous Level: “Remember that funny line when…um…that person said that one thing?”
I have a great memory for dialogue.  It’s a family trait that I share with my younger brothers.  I can recite entire episodes of The Simpsons and Buffy the Vampire Slayer (and will do so upon request, though I’ve begun charging by the word.  Speak to my agent and we’ll talk rates).  I can recite movies after seeing them once.  But the movie has to make an impression on me before I can do that.  I have to really like the movie.  The dialogue has to be memorable.
When I left Easy A, I tried to recall particular lines of dialogue that struck me as funny.  I drew a blank.  I had to go onto imdb.com to look it up.  I never have to go to imdb.com to find funny dialogue.  Reading through the “memorable quotes” page, there was only one line that really made me laugh.  It was Mr. Griffith to Olive: “I don’t know what your generation’s fascination is with documenting your every thought… but I can assure you, they’re not all diamonds.”
That was very funny, and I like anything that mocks Facebook and Twitter (even though I use both).
But any other moments that made me laugh, I chalk up to the strength of the actors.  The scene where Olive’s parents try to find out the “T” word that their daughter used in class would’ve been insufferable and awful in the hands of lesser actors than Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson.  The movie has a strong cast that can handle any dialogue you throw at them.  I only wish they had better material to work with.
In Conclusion?
I didn’t talk about how the movie misses the point of The Scarlet Letter, because I hated The Scarlet Letter – I admire Hawthorne’s politics, but hate his prose, and when I was forced to read this book in my sophomore year in high school, I actually wrote in my annotations: “Does the scarlet A symbolize shame?  Because I didn’t get it the FIRST HUNDRED TIMES YOU MENTIONED IT!”  Misappropriating and misunderstanding literary themes seems like a very high school thing to do, so it oddly works for the film.
However, I’m afraid I can’t give Easy A the letter grade it wants.  On a humorous level, it gets a C for “Cast is Awesome Despite Mediocre Dialogue.”  On a feminist level, it gets an F for “Fauxminist,” with a note home to the parent: “Shows good effort, but fails to grasps key concepts.” 
Lady T writes about feminism, comedy, media, and literature at the blog The Funny Feminist.  Her essay “My Mom, the Reader” has also been featured at SMITH Magazine.  A graduate of Hofstra University, she teaches English to eighth graders and writes fiction about vampires, superhero girlfriends, and feisty princesses.  

 

Guest Writer Wednesday: Film Review Roundup

In lieu of a guest review this week, we’re posting links to reviews of a few women-centric films we haven’t yet discussed at Bitch Flicks. Enjoy!


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Starring Annette Bening and Julianne Moore
Written by Lisa Cholodenko and Stuart Blumberg
Directed by Lisa Cholodenko

Roxie Smith Lindemann at Roxie’s World writes:

… what finally—and deeply—disappointed us about the film, despite the splendid performances and some pitch-perfect moments of dialogue, were what felt like multiple failures of imagination in its depictions of lesbian sexuality, long-term partnership, and queer family-building. In the end, to use a metaphor in keeping with the film’s upscale SoCal look and value system, The Kids Are All Right opts to put new wine in an old narrative bottle, and the result is a vintage that looks good but leaves a nasty, corked aftertaste.


… the film gratifies the straight male fantasy that what every lesbian needs is a good roll in the hay and presents lesbian relationships as cheap imitations of the worst heterosexual marriages: like them in being riven by conflict, frustration, and inequality, unlike them in lacking the almighty penis …

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Starring Jennifer Lawrence and John Hawkes
Written by Debra Granik, Anne Rosellini, and Daniel Woodrell (novel)
Directed by Debra Granik

Natalie Wilson at Ms. Magazine Blog writes:

The film offers an extraordinary portrait of the ways class and gender intersect, revealing how the patriarchal Dolly clan abuses not only drugs, but also its female family members. As such, the narrative offers a lesson about the feminization of poverty, illuminating how poverty’s vice is harder to escape and more likely to ensnare when one is female.


… this gem of a feminist film has been attacked for the very thing that makes it so unique and so rare: its understated, implicit feminist narrative that rails against patriarchy, violence against women, cold-hearted capitalism and militarism, as well as critiquing the insidious and complex ways females are framed first and foremost as objects for male use and abuse.


Also, be sure to check out Part I and Part II of Lisa R. Pruitt’s posts at Saltlaw on “Winter’s Bone” and the Limits of White Privilege.

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Starring Emma Stone, Amanda Bynes, and Patricia Clarkson
Written by Bert V. Royal
Directed by Will Gluck

MaryAnn Johanson at FlickFilosopher writes:

This wonderful, hilarious, subversive film is a smart, witty smackdown to the slew of “dweeby teenaged boys on a quest to lose their virginity” movies we’re currently under barrage from, not to mention the general unfairness of how the universe treats women who own their sexuality. Easy A overtly shames the slut-shaming of our culture, the bizarre pressures that tells us girls and women that we must be sexy all the time, but for Christ’s sake, don’t actually have sex—except under certain strict conditions—unless you want to be labeled a slut, and humiliated for it.


… As satire goes, this is brilliant stuff. As an exploration of the tangled web of popularity and individuality teenaged girls have to navigate, and do so at more peril than boys do, it’s damn nigh unparalleled. More’s the pity.