I think it’s a total drag. I’ve been lucky to get interesting parts but there are still not that many out there for women. And everybody is so critical of women. If there’s a movie starring a man that tanks, then I don’t see an article about the fact that the movie starred a man and that must be why it bombed. Then a film comes out where a woman is in the lead, or a movie comes out where a bunch of girls are roller derbying, and it doesn’t make much money and you see articles about how women can’t carry a film.
On the controversy created by Juno:
I was like, “You know what? You all need to calm down.” People are so black and white about this. Because she kept the baby everybody said the film was against abortion. But if she’d had an abortion everybody would have been like, “Oh my God.” I am a feminist and I am totally pro-choice, but what’s funny is when you say that people assume that you are pro-abortion. I don’t love abortion but I want women to be able to choose and I don’t want white dudes in an office being able to make laws on things like this. I mean what are we going to do — go back to clothes hangers?
Perhaps in response to our Quote of the Day from Geena Davis, founder of the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, a reader asks:
As the father of a nearly year-old daughter, I’d be interested in getting some informed takes on children’s movies. We’ll undoubtedly be watching many in the next few years. Can we apply this Bechdel test to some of the classics of the genre or are there more complex forces at …work? If there are other considerations, what would they be?
While the Bechdel test is certainly a great place to start–seeing whether girls talk to each other about something other than boys–it’s not the end-all of determining feminist media. Female characters with true agency represent real role models for girls. So…avoid Disney? Certainly someone can offer better advice.
Help us out: What specific movies/television programs would you recommend for young girls?
Perhaps best known for her award-winning roles on television and in film, Geena Davis is the founder of the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media. According to the website
Five years ago, while watching children’s television programs and videos with her then 2-year old daughter, Academy Award winner Geena Davis noticed a remarkable imbalance in the ratio of male to female characters. From that small starting point, Davis went on to raise funds for the largest research project ever undertaken on gender in children’s entertainment (resulting in 4 discrete studies, including one on children’s television).
The research showed that in the top-grossing G-rated films from 1990-2005, there were three male characters for every one female – a statistic that did not improve over time.
The concern was clear: What message does this send to young children?
We’ve highlighted our disappointment with Pixar for its girl problem (WALL-E, Up), but nearly every Disney film deserves the same–if not worse–scorn (and that’s just picking on two production companies). As angry as films make us when they don’t depict real, complex women, the problem really starts with children’s programming–and the solution might, too.
We really learn our value in society by seeing ourselves reflected in the culture–kids more so than anyone. I mean, as they’re learning what their role in society is and what’s their place and value, they’re exposed to massive amounts of media, and the message that boys and girls are getting currently is that girls are not as valuable as boys, and that women are not as important as men.
Kudos to Geena Davis for tackling this important problem. Check out her website, and watch a short interview about her project below.
Yesterday was Labor Day here in the U.S., and we wanted to highlight some films about working women.
When I sat down to write this post, I thought it would be relatively easy: brainstorm and research a list of movies about working women. But the more I searched, the more frustrating the list became. I kept coming across the same movies. These movies:
A quick glance at the list and the most basic familiarity with the titles (which vary in decade and genre, and range from horribly anti-feminist to some of our personal favorites) reveals some disturbing trends:
The women featured in these films–the protagonists–are overwhelmingly white. Where are the women of color?
Professions in which women work–every imaginable profession–aren’t widely represented. Most of the women here have Careers rather than Jobs, although the careers are heavily in the secretarial /assistant arena. In the newer films, the women who are working class, as Caryn James points out in Slate’s XXFactor, are heavy on criminality.
The Hollywood working-class heroine is usually a Norma Rae or Erin Brockovich, a reformer making a grand social gesture. The new indie films more authentically depict their characters’ workaday lives. That’s why it’s so disappointing to find them undermining their own heroines, reinforcing an assumption that should have been blasted away long ago—that the poor are morally suspect and quick to steal.
Nobody gets ruder treatment than career women, who are routinely portrayed as bossy, uptight and utterly without personal lives. What they need, we’re supposed to think, is a man. But before they can get one, they must have a mortifying comeuppance.
These observations on my incomplete list lead me to a few questions:
How do we define “movies about working women?” First, I want differentiate movies that feature women who work from movies about working women. The former category could include almost any contemporary movie with a major female character. But, movies that are thematically about working women are a different, rarer thing. They question what it means to be a working woman in a culture that is both dependent upon and hostile to them.
How do we define “working woman?” A working woman is not a rare thing; nearly all women work. Women have professional careers and jobs of all sorts. There are lawyers, teachers, doctors, writers, police…the list is endless. Try to argue that a woman who cares for her children isn’t a working woman, even though, I suspect, many people tend to equate work with wage. How do we define work? What does our definition of work and its role in our lives mean for women? Does it mean something different for men? Do you think of yourself as a “worker?”
And a couple of possible conclusions:
Women of color who are workers don’t weigh heavily in the American cultural imagination. When women of color appear in films, they tend to be secondary characters in low-paying jobs. Rarely do we see movies about working women who happen to be women of color. Rarely have I seen it, at least, which may be a personal failing.
All in all, I’m not very happy with this list, and I’d love to enlist your help in making it more complete.
Readers, help out! What are some of your favorite movies about working women?
*Remember, we’re not just talking about movies that feature women who work, but ones that explore what it means to be a working woman.
UPDATE: Readers have contributed additional films to the list. Here they are so far (we’ll continue to add any films you suggest):
Whenever anyone has called me a bitch, I have taken it as a compliment. To me, a bitch is assertive, unapologetic, demanding, intimidating, intelligent, fiercely protective, in control–all very positive attributes. But it’s not supposed to be a compliment, because there’s that old, stupid double standard: When men are aggressive and dominant, they are admired, but when a woman possesses those same qualities, she is dismissed and called a bitch.
These days, I strive to be a bitch, because not being one sucks. Not being a bitch means not having your voice heard. Not being a bitch means you agree with all the bullshit. Not being a bitch means you don’t appreciate all the other bitches who have come before you. Not being a bitch means since Eve ate that apple, we will forever have to pay for her bitchiness with complacence, obedience, acceptance, closed eyes, and open legs.
There is a dangerous myth going around this country that sexism doesn’t exist anymore, that we have gotten past it and that “alarmist” feminists are an outdated nuisance. Warnings like “Oh, watch out–here comes the feminazi!” abound in our culture, as if for a woman, entitling yourself to an opinion puts you on a par with followers of the Third Reich.
The plot of Inception is deceptively simple: a tale of corporate espionage sidetracked by a man’s obsession with his dead wife and complicated by groovy special effects and dream technology. As far as summer blockbusters and action/heist/corporate espionage movies go, it’s not bad. Once you get beyond the genuinely beautiful camera work and dizzying special effects, however, you’re not left with much.
One thing that really bothers me about the film–aside from its dull, lifeless, stereotypical, and utterly useless female characters (which I’ll get to in a moment)–is that nothing is at stake. Dom Cobb (Leo DiCaprio) and his team take on a big new job: one seemingly powerful businessman, Saito (Ken Watanabe), wants an idea planted into the mind of another powerful businessman, Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy). Specifically, Saito wants Fischer to believe that dear old dad’s dying wish was for him to break up the family business, so that, we assume, Saito wins the game of capitalism. Should the team go through with the profitable job? We aren’t supposed to care about the answer to this question or what is at stake in the plot.
It’s assumed that, of course we want Cobb to win because he’s really Leo, and, you see, Leo is talented but Troubled. What troubles him? You guessed it: a woman. A woman whose very name–Mal (played by Marion Cotillard, an immensely talented actress who’s wasted in this role)–literally means “bad.” Who or what will rescue Cobb/Leo from his troubles? You guessed it again: a woman. This time, it’s a woman whose very name–Ariadne (played by Ellen Page in a way that demands absolutely no commentary)–means “utterly pure,” and who is younger, asexual (a counter to Mal’s dangerous French sexuality) and without any backstory or past of her own to smudge the movie’s–and her own–focus on Cobb/Leo. So, it’s not a stretch here to say that Cobb needs a pure woman to escape the bad one. Virgin/whore stereotype, anyone?
SPOILER ALERT
So, what makes Mal so bad? In life, she was his faithful wife (for all we know) and mother of his two children. In the film, she’s not even a real woman, but a figment of Cobb’s imagination, haunting him with her suicide. (Note: For a better version of this story, see Tarkovsky’s Solaris, or the crappy Soderbergh adaptation starring George Clooney.) Her constant appearances threaten Cobb’s inception task, and while we can imagine a suicide haunting this hard-working man, we learn the much uglier truth later: while developing his theory of “inception,” Cobb used Mal as his first test subject–planting the idea in her mind that reality was not what she believed it to be. Now we have a main character who exacted extreme emotional violence on his wife, driving her kill herself–yet she’s the evil one.
What makes Ariadne so pure? It’s simple, really. We know she was a brilliant student of architecture, and…and…and…that’s it. The film needed an architectural dream space that wouldn’t be marred by trauma, or memory, or the like, so the natural choice would be for a computer program to design it, right? But a computer program couldn’t also counsel Cobb through the trauma of his wife’s suicide and, ultimately, coach him through killing her apparition. She is invested in getting through the job, as her life depends on it, but why does she give a damn about Cobb? Because she’s a woman architect, and women are nurturing creatures, right? So, we have a main character who exacted extreme emotional violence on his wife and threatens to kill his entire team through self-sabotage over guilt, but luckily he has one good woman to pull him through.
Is it possible to look differently at these two characters? Even if you read the movie as an allegory of filmmaking/storytelling, we’re still left with women who are sidekicks, and who serve merely as plot devices. Maria of The Hathor Legacy writes
In other words, even if you refute the realism of the film and its characters, you’re still left with some major gender trouble. Is Cobb a sympathetic character? No. Do we want his big inception job to work? Don’t care. What I care about, for the purposes of this review, is that we have–yet again–a successful mainstream movie that relies on tired tropes of female characters.
American Violet tells the true story of an African American mother of four girls arrested and falsely accused of selling crack cocaine. Set in a fictional Texas town with the 2000 presidential election as a fitting backdrop of confusion and corruption, we see Dee Roberts fight–with the help of ACLU lawyers–to clear her name and the names of other innocent people arrested in a broad sweep that day.
Newcomer Nicole Beharie gives a powerful performance as Dee, and the supporting cast, including Alfre Woodard as Dee’s mother, and Tim Blake Nelson and Malcolm Barrett as lawyers for the ACLU, do an equally good job. There are good guys, bad guys, and everyone in between in American Violet.
It’s impossible to not love Dee–a beautiful woman, a kind and patient mother, a hard worker, and a caring friend. Her temper gets the best of her once in the film, but she’s protecting her children from their alcoholic father and his accused child molester girlfriend, and can hardly be faulted for it. I’m inclined to think the movie tries too hard to make her character likable. In contrast, Dee’s friend and neighbor Gladys–who is not a conventionally attractive woman, and does not have four adorable children trailing her–is a compelling and empathetic character, but the film completely drops the ball, even failing to credit the actor who plays her. Gladys is Dee’s inspiration for continuing to fight the DA even after her charges are dropped (because Gladys took a plea deal, while Dee would not), but we don’t get to explore Gladys or her situation. I’m curious as to why she’s part of the story, but not really allowed to be a character in the film. While the movie is about Dee, I would’ve liked to get to know Gladys a bit.
The film treats Dee with respect. We learn that her four children have three different fathers, but her private life is mostly kept private. When the DA questions Dee about “how many men she’s had sex with by the age of 24,” her lawyers quickly step in to remind them–and us–that a woman’s character is not to be judged by her sexual history. This was a refreshing moment in the film, when even in so-called women’s films, slut-shaming is regular and almost perfunctory. In another moment of the film, we see testimony from the DA’s ex-wife and daughter, and it’s the daughter’s mocking of her own father’s (racist) slut-shaming that ultimately brings him down. (An ironic and uncomfortable twist is that while Dee’s private life is off limits, the DA’s private life is the strongest testimony against him.)
American Violet is the kind of movie I don’t like to criticize, because it’s a movie interested in Doing Good. It’s a sincere film, it addresses real-life social problems, it has a heroine we root for and get to see achieve a victory, despite the odds. And, it’s enjoyable to watch. Doing Good movies rarely achieve blockbuster status; they typically don’t have large budgets, stars, or major marketing campaigns. Doing Good movies are the kinds of movies we wish the public, at large, would see. However, films that expose social ills tend to suffer from cliched characters, predictable narratives, and overly simplified stories. American Violet–despite its powerful performances—doesn’t escape these problems.
There are a couple of troubling things about the film. First, its creators have a background in documentary filmmaking, and their dramatic attempts were stilted (I’ll expound upon this point in the following paragraphs). Second, while I appreciate the surprise change of direction in the film–criminal charges against Dee are dropped, and the dramatic focus becomes her lawsuit against the racist DA–attacking a single DA for racism leaves the system intact. Yes, I realize this was a true story, but the filmmakers’ choice to dramatize this specific case–reportedly after they heard the story on NPR–feels a bit suspect to me. Texas law was changed as a result of Dee’s case (previously, a tip from a single informant was enough for an arrest), but the system itself seemed enforced; the “one bad apple”–the racist DA–abused the law, and was reprimanded. However, the DA remained in his position and was re-elected by voters who, in this district, weren’t particularly bothered by his racially-motivated policies. There was a real sense of ambivalence in Dee’s victory–a monetary settlement for her and the others wrongly accused, and a personal victory, but barely a scratch on the system. Perhaps the film’s inability to create great drama reflects our society’s inability to really change the system. We want the system to change. But the best we can get–in film or life–are small (yet not insignificant) steps in the right direction.
In light of the Senate’s recently passed legislation to reduce, not rectify, the mandatory minimum sentencing discrepancy for crack cocaine possession, we see a drug policy that is racist to the core. In the United States, possession of five grams of crack cocaine carries a mandatory minimum prison sentence of five years, while it takes 100 grams of powder cocaine to trigger the same sentence. According to the NAACP,
Everyone seems to agree that crack cocaine use is higher among Caucasians than any other group: most authorities estimate that more than 66% of those who use crack cocaine are white. Yet in 2006, 82% of those convicted and sentenced under federal crack cocaine laws were African American. When you add in Hispanics, the percentage climbs to above 96%. Since enactment of this law, the 100 to 1 ratio has had a devastating and disproportionate impact on the African American and Hispanic communities.
The mandatory minimum sentencing law was enacted in 1986 under false beliefs about crack cocaine, and its results have been devastating. Instead of equalizing the penalty, however, the Senate agreed to make it less worse: reduce the discrepancy from 100:1 to 18:1.
The facts about US sentencing laws are a bit beside the point in relation to American Violet; in the case of the film, the women we focus on are innocent. Police found no drugs or evidence of drug possession, distribution, or use. The filmmakers’ true interests here were legal in nature, though, and the characters in the film felt, at times, like tools for exploring the law. The specific laws on trial in the film are the now-defunct Texas single-informant law, the Clinton-era financial incentive to law enforcement agencies based on the number of drug convictions per county, and the rules surrounding and use of the plea bargain. While in jail, Dee learns that she can take a plea bargain to have her sentence suspended and return home to her children, or she can fight the allegations with her court-appointed attorney–who essentially tells her she’d be crazy not to take the plea. Before seeing this film, I never really thought about plea bargains–who cuts these deals and who ultimately benefits from them. In films we typically see the plea bargain used by people guilty of a crime to bring down the more-guilty parties involved. The issue felt like a minor point in the film, but in the end we see how invested in exposing the corrupt nature of the plea bargain the film really is. Ninety percent of the US prison population accepted a plea bargain, 95% never saw a jury, and the US has the world’s largest prison population. It’s a shame that the most shocking and dramatic moment of the film appeared in the end screen of statistics.
In this case, neither the DA nor the tactics really were impacted; what we get is Dee’s personal victory, which is still powerful and important. Not only was her arrest record expunged, but the other innocent people who were arrested with her also had their records expunged–meaning they could remain in their homes, apply for a job without fear of a background check, and not have to live with a false arrest haunting them.
Ultimately, I liked this film, and encourage others to see it. I do feel ambivalence about it, and am a little disappointed in some of the choices made, but do think it’s a strong, woman-centered film.
Watch a preview of American Violet and learn more about the film here. Leave your thoughts about the film–and any links to reviews or discussions you’ve read–in the comments.
We don’t usually talk about music videos here at Bitch Flicks, but for Lady Gaga we’ll make an exception. With the release of her nearly 10-minute long music video, the blogosphere lit up. Here’s a sampling of what we found regarding Gaga & Beyoncé, feminism, trans-phobia, exploitation, ironic product placement, female empowerment, the prison of pop music, and the like. Enjoy!
Survey Third Wave communities and one descriptive phrase keeps coming up over and over again regarding Lady Gaga—badass. In such spaces, no higher compliment could ever be paid than that. When so many women feel that their voices are routinely stifled or that they’ve been conditioned to stay silent while men talk first and act first, young feminists understandably find something courageous and enviable about women, particularly women their own age, who force the world to accept them on their own terms. Furthermore, Lady Gaga’s music videos in particular have directly, though a bit clumsily at times, taken on questions of same-sex attraction between women and done so in terms that are far closer to the way it actually exists in reality. The pure fantasy and grotesque parody of lesbianism, itself a construct clearly adopted by men, is at least pushed to the background of her work rather than set forth as the truth.
The first three minutes are lost on me and left me confused, offended, and too pissed of to appreciate the next few minutes. Had the video started when the song started, I might (might) have been able to stomach the rest of the prison scenes. However, after the objectification, glamorizing of lesbian fetishism, and excessive girl-on-girl violence I was too pissed to rationalize sitting through the first dance routine, which could have just as well been the Pussycat Dolls (whom Gaga has written for in the past). Feminist Gaga fans can try to justify this as another example of how she subversively turns what we usually find hot into something that leaves a nasty taste in our mouths and therefore makes a statement, but if any other artist (particularly any male artist) incorporated this much objectification and violence against women we would be outraged. Is it any different just because it’s a woman, or because it’s specifically Gaga?
What do you think about the new breed of younger pop stars — and some have accused Gaga of this — who claim bisexuality or a kind of pansexuality in an effort to use queer culture for their own personal gains? That’s been going on since the dawn of time. Elvis stole from African American music. Everybody’s constantly riffing — Madonna stole voguing from poor, disenfranchised black drag queens in Harlem. This isn’t a new concept. I think there’s more reverence with regard to Lady Gaga as she’s obviously educated herself in her trajectory with visual arts practices and the stuff that she’s doing isn’t light stuff. It’s difficult when they’re making millions of dollars and placating to the masses — it’s tricky to maintain that, but I think she tries. And even including someone like me is a part of that. The thing that was kind of interesting was that in between takes I was getting kind of annoyed because the camera guys were really kind of drooling and talking about “girl-on-girl action” and I said, “What about boy-on-girl action?” And she turned to me and said “Oh. Do you identify as male?” [Laughs] And I said, “Well, probably more than you do.” And she said “I’ll be sure to tell people that.” We just had this abstracted conversation about gender in the middle of this shoot, which I thought was really weird and pretty interesting: A) that she would take the time and B) that she would even ask me about that.
Her art provides a running commentary on gender, sexuality and beauty. There are hints of David Bowie, Prince and Madonna in the way she plays with sexuality, but while Gaga acknowledges these similarities she wants it to be clear she is something entirely her own. With her deliberate juxtaposition of conventional platinum blonde beauty and fashionably ugly costumes, she toys with conventional rules of attractiveness. Half of her appeal throughout 2009 seemed to be the question of whether or not she was pretty, whether or not people felt comfortable liking her. “I am not sexy in the way Britney Spears is sexy,” Gaga is quoted in the bio, “I just don’t have the same ideas about sexuality that I want to portray. I have a very specific aesthetic–androgyny.”
Replete with references to films like Caged Heat, Kill Bill, Thelma and Louise, and heaped with nods to golden age sexploitation from Russ Meyer flics to Betty Page pin ups to busty comic book heroines like Wonder Woman (H/T Lisa Duggan and Sam Icklow for IDing some of these for me), Telephone is a high femme pastiche of mini-epic proportions.
The plot is straightforward: thrown into “prison for bitches,” Gaga is bailed out by co-star Beyoncé (in a telling reversal of the usual hierarchy between white and black), and the two then set of on a mission of vengeance against Beyoncé’s boorish beau, played by male model/singer/actor Tyrese. But this bare summary belies the profusion of signifiers strewn across the surfaces of this visual feast of a video. To attempt to account for them all (crowdsource project anyone?) would leave any critic floundering on the shoals of interpretation. So I’ll just focus on one, ahem, prime signifier: Lady Gaga’s penis.
The video is peppered with both real (e.g. Miracle Whip, Wonder Bread, Polaroid, Chanel, Diet Coke, Virgin, Plenty of Fish) and fake products (e.g. Poison TV, Double-Breasted Drive-Thru, CookNKill Recipes). This combination of real and fake allows the video to both enjoy the benefits of product placement, and parody the enterprise in the same swoop. Once again, we’re dealing, I think, with a carnivalesque aesthetic, or a type of conceptualist art that parodies by displaying too loudly or too blatantly that which is being mocked. The comfortably familiar form is being used to market poison, and at the same time its used to promote Polaroid. Gaga’s having her cake and eating it too.
In this entire video, as well as, “Bad Romance” and “Paparazzi,” Gaga reverses this gaze in a variety of ways. She refuses the male heterosexual narrative as the only way to see the world, and presents her views in a decidedly “feminine gaze” or at least a gaze that does not abide by male standards. Women’s bodies are not present in “Telephone” for male pleasure, they do not progress a male storyline, nor are women defeated for male purposes of sex or domestication. Women are not “othered.” In some ways, the bodies seen here are for female pleasure, sexual perhaps, or at least aiding in seeing women in positions of power, both as prisoners and prison guards. Women are in control, even in prison and outside of it. Gaga and Beyoncé’s emotions, ideas, and selves drive the story of the music video, not men’s. Women are central, not peripheral, they are the main autonomous actors in control of their destinies. Even as we see women in traditionally powerless situations, in prison, as diner wage workers, or as objectified bodies for male consumption, these positions are problemitized, and their meanings changed. When we see women in these places, we do not get the impression that they are mere tools of the patriarchy. They have agency, they have will, and they are not the “other.” We get a unique and visually appealing story from women’s perspectives, ideals, and world view that is so lacking in today’s media.
As a trans woman, she mostly caught my attention due to the transphobic and intersex-phobic rumours about her being either trans or intersex. While these rumours were typically a product of living in a transphobic and transmisogynist culture, Lady Gaga’s response was one of gender and genital essentialism, stating that her vagina was offended by the claims.
To me, the absurdity of that mismatch is part of the point: incredible frivolity combined with serious issues. People go to clubs and complain about reception while prisoners cannot get a proper phone connection and are strip-searched for no other reason than the guards’ prurient interests all the time. Outside of a Lady Gaga video, however, it usually isn’t the same people who have a dance party and are abused in prison (at least not simultaneously), nor do the dance parties (which occur at the same time as mass murder) usually happen at the crime scene.
By collapsing the distance between these events, “Telephone” points to the absurdity of a world in which people dance even though they are aware that other people are suffering, an awareness intensified by the very medium for which “Telephone” was created.
Thus begins the epic dance break—celebrating a new America. An America that steers away from gender constructs. An America where you don’t have to wear pants! Lady Gaga is the modern-day Wonder Woman—a DC Comics superheroine created in the early ’40s and regarded as the model of the feminist movement. Created by Dr. William Marston, Wonder Woman is an Amazon princess sent to earth to assist America in the war effort. Called upon by the goddess Aphrodite, Wonder Woman was “created as a distinctly feminist role model whose mission was to bring the Amazon ideals of love, peace, and sexual equality to ‘a world torn by the hatred of men.” However, Wonder Woman loses her powers if a man binds together her trademark bracelets, and she’s commonly depicted as being chained by male villains and having to break free of their power and control. We see these details referenced through Gaga’s chained-getup in the prison sequence, and in the Wonder Bread appearance.
Gaga’s relationship with feminism is uneasy and uncertain, not unlike my own, and even as she has more recently copped to being “a little bit of a feminist” after a long period of rejecting the term, her work seems more inclined toward interrogating and challenging culture, sexism, and exploitation without necessarily overtly condemning it. This video is no exception, dabbling as it does in lesbian undertones combined with a monstrous revenge fantasy and mass murder literally draped in American flags, and concluding with the infamous Thelma & Louise hand-clasp which serves as a forceful barring-of-the-door against the meddling of trifiling men who’d seek to break our terrifying yet compelling heroines apart. The visuals are riddled with sex from beginning to end, but it’s complicated sex, a queer romp dressed up in straight drag. The lingering shot on Beyoncé’s cleavage is so unabashed as to be uncomfortable, which is insane considering the amount of women’s cleavage media serves up on a daily basis, but like the product placement, we are accustomed to it being more subtle. The overtness here renders our standard voyeurism into something downright embarrassing. The prison-yard makeout-sequence is likewise skewed and queerified, as it shows a lesbian hookup that would be of great appeal to straight men if only it involved two women with larger breasts and more traditionally-feminine presentations; instead we see Gaga paired with a decidedly butch partner, whilst surrounded by fellow inmates representing a diversity of genders, shapes, sizes, and ethnicities.
Kelsey: so she went to jail for murdering that guy and it was supposed to be a statement about celebrity and fame and now she is sort of doing the same thing but starting in “fame jail” where there are lots of hot lesbians Kjerstin: so she’s sort of addressing the intersex rumor, but as one blogger at gudbuytjane pointed out, is it transmysoginistic to be like “see, no dick!” Andi: That’s definitely what I thought. Maybe she wants to start it up again? Kjerstin: it also happens so early in the video Kelsey: she has been so intentionally vague about the intersex thing, I’m surprised she’d address it like this (or maybe I’m not) Kjerstin: it’s extra shocking Kelsey: but yeah, like gudbuytjane said, it’s like “Oh thank God she doesn’t have a dick now I can relax”
In an interview with Carson Daly on LA’s 97.1 AMP radio, Gaga remarked that the video’s concept revolves around a critical look at the inundation of media in our modern lives and the sort of brainwashing the mass marketing of everything from tampons to pop artists to fast food creates when it tells us what to think. This makes me want to ask you girls some study questions: Is Lady Gaga trapped in a prison of what pop music is expected to be? Is that why she is so determined to escape? Is her “punishment” for being an independent woman — represented in the extreme by killing her sadistic boyfriend — a metaphor for being stuck behind the bars of what the record labels demand of their cookie-cutter pop artists? But wait a second, there are hot lesbians in prison. Is being sent to a jail full of sexy women a reward for ditching some man she didn’t really want? Where is the intersection of queerness, prison culture and femininity? Is homosexuality a behavior, an all-encompassing identity, or a complicated blend of both? So many layers here, like peel-and-eat lingerie (did I just say that?)
Because if there’s one thing that we’ve seen a thousand times over the past few decades, it’s old-style sexism dressed up as new-style irony. Does the fact that Gaga seems to be winking knowingly at the camera as she dances in a bikini make the vision any less predictable, any less boring, any less reminiscent of sexist video after sexist video that you’ve seen in the past few years? Nope. It’s a disappointment from someone who seems to be popping with so many ideas. Gaga will do something great, I’m sure. But this isn’t it.
If you find/have written any interesting Gaga-analysis related to “Telephone,” leave your links in the comments!
Written and directed by Catherine Breillat, Bluebeard (Barbe Bleue) likely explores the same themes that Angela Carter highlighted in her retelling, “The Bloody Chamber.” Read the original fairy tale by Charles Perrault here and Angela Carter’s version here.
Having built a career on provocative, sexually explicit yet cerebral fare (“Romance,” “Sex Is Comedy”), Catherine Breillat shocked auds with her 2007 period piece, “The Last Mistress,” because it was not all that shocking. Now the Gallic helmer’s latest, “Bluebeard,” features considerable blood but no sex. This offbeat but compelling take on the tale, arguably the first serial-killer yarn, emphasizes sisterly bonds but still gets to the original story’s heart of mysterious darkness with impressive results.
In “Bluebeard,” a sly rethink of the freakily morbid fairy tale, the filmmaker Catherine Breillat makes the case that once-upon-a-time stories never end. Divided into two parallel narratives — one focuses on Bluebeard and his dangerously curious wife, while the other involves two little girls in the modern era revisiting the tale — the movie is at once direct, complex and peculiar. It isn’t at all surprising that Ms. Breillat, a singular French filmmaker with strong, often unorthodox views on women and men and sex and power, would have been interested in a troubling tale about the perils of disobedient wives. Ms. Breillat never behaves.
Welcome to our second installment of the Review in Conversation: Sex and the City: The Movie. Our first RiC discussed the film Black Snake Moan.I had liked the early seasons of Sex and the City when it was on HBO, and while acknowledging its problems–unawareness of class most troubling, though in the late 90s perhaps it was permissible in our cultural imagination for a newspaper columnist to live a fabulous life –I thought it was funny and well-written. Oh, how things have changed. The fantasy of a newspaper writer being able to afford shoes with designer names I can’t pronounce has morphed into a successful book writer being so fabulous that she receives a free couture wedding gown from a designer I’ve even heard of, and her super-rich boyfriend buys a multi-million dollar penthouse apartment. The silly consumerist fantasy exploded like a vomit balloon all over this materialistic movie.Here’s a secret: I like fashion. It’s an art form, and its creators are capable of beautiful design and cultural statements. It’s also an industry, and like all major industries, has a very ugly side. I liken it to professional sports: I watch from the sidelines, aware of the way I’m being manipulated, but enjoy it nonetheless—all without expressly participating. In the TV show, Carrie Bradshaw stepped into the world of New York fashion, and we could laugh at her ridiculous ensembles and her forays into a world in which she didn’t—and probably didn’t want to—completely belong. In the movie, we’re watching The Carrie Bradshaw Brand, and she’s become very much a part of that thing called fashion. The fact that she wore a bird on her head as part of her wedding ensemble isn’t a joke, but played straight and serious. In other words, we’re no longer identifying with an outsider to fashion; she’s now part of the machine.Carrie’s friends have all been similarly transformed from dynamic characters into commodities—who are all far too rich and insincere for any comedy to ensue. There were clearly moments in the film when we were supposed to laugh (and during which I imagined a cheesy sitcom laugh track), but all felt so dated, so out of touch, and so, frankly, ADOLESCENT MALE, that they completely fell flat. I mean, come on, Charlotte shits herself? Samantha gets a pocketbook dog that humps everything in sight (standing in for her own caged libido)? A 50-year-old woman gains ten pounds and is OMG! FATTY McFAT FAT? Are you fucking kidding me? This is only the tip of the iceberg, but my question is this: In a movie we can’t possibly take seriously (in terms of reality), which claims to be nothing more than a (guilty) pleasure, did you laugh at all?
The women go through Carrie’s wardrobe
Stephanie’s response:
No, I didn’t laugh. I didn’t laugh when Charlotte shit her pants. I didn’t laugh at Samantha’s dog humping its (his/her?) way through the film. I didn’t laugh at Charlotte’s screaming over-reaction to Carrie’s engagement, where she went as far as to stand up and announce it to the entire restaurant. (That’s just the kind of crazy stuff women do, isn’t it ladies?) I didn’t laugh at Miranda’s unshaved bush. I didn’t laugh at the stereotypical workaholic Mom who won’t fuck her husband (forcing him to cheat!). And I certainly didn’t laugh at Jennifer Hudson’s role as Carrie Bradshaw’s slave. Yeah, I said it. I’m not sure we weren’t meant to take this film seriously. Where’s the evidence of that? Because I’m an intelligent person, I can discern ridiculousness from reality, but I also personally know many people, men especially, who would most certainly walk away with the notion that women actually behave this way. Call me a humorless feminist, but honestly, were there actually any women in this movie?
However, when this film opened, it dethroned Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull for the number one spot at the box office. It seemed as if women (who comprised about 85% of the audience, according to sources that keep track of such things) couldn’t wait to see it, and it’s since been touted as the biggest box office opening for a women-centered film (and romantic comedy) … basically ever. When I read about these female-driven films raking in the money, like The Proposal, for instance, which made tons of money as a woman-centered romantic comedy, I never know quite how to handle it. On one hand, yes! Go women! But on the other hand … seriously? We can’t do better than characters who start off as gung-ho career women who, by the end of the film, ultimately validate the dominant ideology that women are, by their nature, relationship-obsessed?
Sex and the City also wants to claim it’s about female sisterhood, but I couldn’t take that seriously so much. I’ve heard some women in the blogosphere describe this film as nothing more than Pop-Feminism. To me, that might be a criticism of the idea of female sisterhood showing up as shoe-obsessions, clothing-obsessions, (eg “Big, please build me a gigantic closet for all my shoes and clothing,”) obsessions with thinness and fashion in general, and other materialistic obsessions that ultimately become symbols of female empowerment. And let’s not forget, this is also a film about white women. Doesn’t that seem to be the trend, especially in the most recent onslaught of romantic comedies?
Jennifer Hudson in SATC
Amber’s response:
While I dismiss the film itself as pure fantasy—in the way that a prince-charming fairy tale is fantasy—you may be right to question that reaction. It’s naïve to think that the Disney princess fantasy is anything but insidious, so why give the adult fantasy a free pass? Hyper-consumerism has become inseparable from female identity in the media, and I don’t think we really need yet another citation of this ideology. Purchasing the right products doesn’t equal empowerment, and while the film half-assedly nods to this fact, its product obsession completely undermines any real effort to argue that friendship is the most important thing in life.However, Pop-Feminism or not, these are women who sincerely love one another–who aren’t conniving against each other, who aren’t in direct competition with one another. Also, they are over twenty-five, have healthy sex lives, and aren’t shamed in any way for being sexual beings. This was a revolutionary element of the TV show when it premiered in 1998, and considering the cultural environment, is no less revolutionary ten years later. Yet, ten years later, we should expect something more than basic “women are human beings” arguments masquerading as feminism. And, yes, we should expect something more than thin, beautiful, wealthy, fashionable, white ladies representing female empowerment.Jennifer Hudson’s role was abominable. Not only was she Carrie Bradshaw’s servant and charity recipient, we didn’t see her character grow and mature. What she learned, apparently, while working as a PA in NYC, is that boys are really important, and that knowledge led her back to her hometown to get married. Hell, maybe working for that vortex of narcissism, I’d run too. But the only thing I see about the inclusion of her character is a cynical instance of tokenism. It’s really as if the filmmakers said, “Hey, there are a whole lot of black women out there–maybe we should try to not completely alienate them. Let’s give Carrie an assistant!” FAIL. Is it just me, or does mass media seem more segregated now than in any other time during our lives? Also, how many sequels do you predict?
The women of SATC
Stephanie’s response:
The reason I refuse to take Sex and the City’s self-proclaimed celebration of sisterhood very seriously is because the women rarely permit one another to slack off on their duty to maintain Fabulous Fashionista status at all times. As I stated earlier, Miranda gets shit for not porn-waxing and Samantha gets shit for gaining weight (from comfort-eating due to her tanking relationship—because that’s another thing we all do, ladies!). They permit Carrie’s days of depression when Big leaves her at the altar, literally feeding her at one point, but I still couldn’t help but cringe at that simultaneous depiction of female-infantilizing coupled with creepy mommy-moment.
Yet I believe they do really love one another. You’re right to point out the refreshing portrayal of women who aren’t in direct competition or who aren’t conniving against one another. One could also point out many scenes where genuine love exists among them—my favorite scene is when Carrie sucks it up and takes the train (but not without fur coat!) to Miranda’s apartment so she won’t be alone on New Year’s. It feels … honest, in a way that so much of the rest of the film doesn’t.
I never saw the television series. From what I’ve heard and read, the women were very much unashamed sexual beings. So I had to ask myself after I saw the movie, “Where the hell is all this sex I’ve been hearing about?” Samantha has sex exactly zero times on-screen. Miranda struggles with sex and her husband’s infidelity—it’s very much implied that he cheats because she won’t sleep with him (another one of her wife-duties shirked). Charlotte claims to have a wonderful sex life, but … where’s the evidence? Perhaps the film wants to show the progression of their lives and the complications that might come with aging, but they chose to do it by regressing to traditional gender expectations regarding marriage and pregnancies and preoccupations with couple-hood.
I get the feeling that the show, while still portraying the women as rich and fashion-obsessed, actually represented their shunning of traditional, more conservative ideas regarding adult womanhood. They didn’t have to get married and have babies and buy houses. They could have sex! And live in the city! And have fulfilling careers! If that’s the case, the film-version seriously dropped the ball.
With scenes like Miranda telling her child to “follow the white person with the baby” when they’re looking for a new apartment in a less-rich neighborhood; with scenes like Carrie showing up to reclaim her metaphorical glass slipper while her metaphorical prince conveniently awaits in her giant, specially built metaphorical (closet)-castle—the film only reinforces good ol’ traditional American values about class, heterosexual relationships, and especially about womanhood.
is a small victory of a movie.
