Tag: Amber Leab

Ripley’s Rebuke: Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Welcome to the first installment of Ripley’s Rebuke, a series of reviews of films that pass Ripley’s Rule while remaining essentially misogynistic.
Written and directed by Woody Allen; starring Rebecca Hall, Scarlett Johansson, Javier Bardem, and Penelope Cruz.

I like Woody Allen, while admitting that his best work is (long) behind him. With all the accolades Vicky Cristina Barcelona has received, I decided to give it a shot.

Vicky (Hall) and Cristina (Johansson) are privileged college students spending two months of their summer in Barcelona; Vicky plans to study for her thesis on Catalan identity (despite not speaking a lick of Spanish), and Cristina tags along, hoping to find something about herself and art, after she devoted six months to making a 12-minute film she now hates (a humorous and revealing detail). Both young women fall for the same Spanish artist/lothario (Bardem), and a contemplation on the nature of love follows.

Vicky and Cristina represent the stereotypical blonde/brunette duo in film: the brunette is repressed, practical to a fault, cautious, and afraid; the blonde is adventurous, sexual, open, and fun. It’s almost as if these characters represent two halves of the same person. Vicky has a responsible businessman fiance back home in New York, while Cristina jumps into bed with the first Spanish man she meets–not knowing, of course, that Vicky is also hot for him. The three of them spend a weekend together, and a convenient little plot device ensures that Vicky will actually sleep with the artist first, but is soon left behind for the more sexually attractive (and less neurotic) Cristina.

Soon, Cristina moves in with Juan Antonio, and his ex-wife unexpectedly comes into the picture, providing the film some much-needed energy, and also its low point. Penelope Cruz as the seriously unstable Maria Elana barrels, shrieks, and smokes her way into a menage-a-trois relationship with Cristina and Juan Antonio. While the scenario sparks precious few laughs (in a film almost devoid of humor), a question haunts Cruz’s every scene: why did she win so much praise for this role? (For the record, Cruz won a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award, a Best Supporting Actress BAFTA Film Award, a Best Supporting Female Independent Spirit Award, Best Supporting Actress SAG Award, among others. The film also won Allen a Best Screenplay Independent Spirit Award and a Best Picture Golden Globe Award, along with numerous other nominations and wins.) Maria Elana’s hysteria is epic, almost nineteenth-century in its intensity, as she tries to commit suicide and murder during her limited screen time. We’re told she’s a better artist than her ex-husband (it’s worth noting that she accuses Juan Antonio of stealing her style, and he is the one who lives in the house they shared and who has artistic success), but also that she falls apart without him–and with him, until Cristina creates the triangularity that allows the relationship to work. And, yes boys, you get to see a brief scene of Scarlett Johansson and Penelope Cruz getting it on.

While all of Cristina’s sexy artistic madness happens, Vicky studies and regrets her choice of lifemate, Doug, who, despite his romantic gesture of flying to Barcelona for an impromptu marriage (with the promise of a lavish wedding back home, as previously planned), turns out to be a closed-minded dork. Vicky pines for Juan Antonio, endeared by his poet father and her surprise at perhaps (perhaps!) judging him too harshly. (Certainly there are no other sexy artists in Barcelona she could use to convince herself not to marry the man who planted that rock on her finger.)

In contrast to Penelope Cruz’s entire presence in the film, the high point, for me, comes at the end, when Cristina and Vicky head home, both resuming the lives they left behind, having come to no epiphany about the nature of love, having experienced no real growth or change of character. It’s bleak, it’s not funny, but it’s perhaps the most real and true moment of the entire film.

As for the need for a rebuke of this film, it (barely) passes the Bechdel Test, but does more to exploit its women than allow them to be full human beings. There are more than two named female characters, and they talk to each other, though almost every conversation is about men. There may be a brief line or two between Cristina and Maria Elana about photography, but soon after the conversation they kiss. And there’s nothing at all offensive about the kiss; it’s that there’s no believable passion–it seems like an act strictly performed for a male (ahem, Woody Allen) gaze. Further, Maria Elana objectifies herself for Cristina’s photography, posing as a prostitute in what passes for a rough part of town, mirroring the actual prostitutes that Cristina photographs while out with Juan Antonio.

Penelope Cruz deserved the Oscar for her role in Volver, not for her turn as a sexy shrieking cartoon character. The film deserves a rebuke for its pseudo-intellectualism about the meaning of love, and for the trite way it uses art and place. It deserves a rebuke for the flightiness and uncertainty of all of its female characters (including a weak turn from Patricia Clarkson, playing the ghost of Vicky’s future), while creating only confident, bold, male characters. Juan Antonio never seems to long for answers about love; he simply takes his conquests in stride, collecting lovers without thought. Women here don’t know what they want, and seem pathologically incapable of enjoying what they have or going after what they want.

Black Snake Moan: A Review in Conversation

Welcome to the first installment of a new feature on Bitch Flicks: Reviews in Conversation. We take a movie that’s worth talking about, and do just that.

“This is some revolutionary shit. We’re tying up white women in Mississippi.” –John Singleton, on filming Black Snake Moan in the South

Why does the revolution necessitate wholesale exploitation of women?

Since Black Snake Moan was one of the initial movies (along with Hustle & Flow…maybe we should officially thank Craig Brewer for the inspiration) that made us want to start this site, it’s fitting that we discuss the movie in our first Review in Conversation segment.

Here’s the IMDb summary:

In Mississippi, the former blues man Lazarus is in crisis, missing his wife that has just left him. He finds the town slut and nymphomaniac Rae dumped on the road nearby his little farm, drugged, beaten and almost dead. Lazarus brings her home, giving medicine and nursing and nourishing her like a father, keeping her chained to control her heat. When her boyfriend Ronnie is discharged from the army due to his anxiety issue, he misunderstands the relationship of Lazarus and Rae, and tries to kill him. (Claudio Carvalho)

Before I address the film’s atrocious sexism, which the above summary characterizes well, I’d like to say what I love about BSM. The music, first and foremost, is outstanding. Brewer calls this a movie about the blues, and I’d like to take that a step further and say the movie is the blues. Or it tries to be, at least. The movie and its story are too small, conflicted, and tone-deaf to achieve greatness. It tries to be the blues and ends up being a blues music video, where Lazarus (Samuel L. Jackson) is the tortured and tired star, and Rae (Christina Ricci) is the video vixen, shaking her ass for the camera.

This is a movie that I want to love. It’s gritty, unique, and aware of class and race—a rare combination. However, there is no female perspective in the movie. Is it really too much to ask for a sharp film to also be sharp about gender? Is it right for a film like BSM to claim gender as a theme, while not really exploring women at all? Rae is the only female character (brief appearances by Lazarus’ wife, Rae’s mother, and a kind pharmacist easily fit into the angel/monster dichotomy), but she isn’t quite a real person. What is wrong with her? She is talked about as a nymphomaniac, and has strange, demonic fits of desire, but she’s really a victim of rape and abuse. Lazarus, whose trauma is that his wife aborted his baby and left for his younger brother, takes it upon himself to “cure” her by chaining her to a radiator. Even if the movie isn’t to be taken literally (but as a metaphor of sorts), why are the other characters so human and she so other, so animal?

Response by Stephanie R.

I, too, fell in love with the music in this film. It complements the key themes—race and class, as you mentioned, religion, and I’d also take it a step further to include sex. The scenes with Ricci shaking her ass for the camera are wonderfully sexy, and I found myself wavering back and forth during those scenes, wondering, is this just another female character being exploited by the camera? Or, is this a female character finally owning her sexuality?

Early on, she’s portrayed as a woman who’s at the mercy of her untamable sexual desires, and I didn’t ever get the feeling that she enjoyed them. She’s often shown squirming around on the ground, rubbing her hands all over her body, and moaning, like she’s struggling to fend off an attack. It’s at that point that she must find someone, anyone to screw, in order to make that feeling go away.

Later though, after Lazarus “cures” her by wrapping a giant chain around her waist and attaching it to a radiator, Rae is allowed to enter society again, showing up at a bar with Lazarus, drinking, rubbing up against everyone on the dance floor while Lazarus watches her from the stage, almost approvingly. What’s going on here? I truly want to read this as much more complicated than a man giving a woman permission to flaunt her sexuality, and I think it is.

But I also can’t help getting a little unnerved by the frivolity with which her sexuality is treated earlier in the film, when she’s portrayed as nothing more than the town whore. (At one point, the local mechanic says, “It’s already noon, Rae. Do you think those shorts should still be on?”) And when she’s described as “having the sickness” by another character (meaning nymphomania), it’s impossible not to think about the double-standard we still hold for men and women, especially when it comes to sexual desires.

As you mentioned, she is portrayed as “other,” often animalistic in her sexual conquests. Since I don’t think a film like this would work at all if a man were the one with the sexual “disease” (it’s natural for men to have uncontrollable sex drives, after all) then what does one make of using the myth of nymphomania to drive the plot? (See Peter Green’s “All Sexed Up,” a review of Carol Groneman’s 2000 book Nymphomania: A History, for a brief discussion of the myth.)

Response by Amber L.

I agree that the scene in the bar was very sexy, and I think I agree with what you said about that being a moment of Rae owning her sexuality. I think we’re supposed to understand that scene as a very important moment in which both characters are owning something that they’d lost—or lost control of. For whatever reason, Lazarus had lost his music (and I suspect it had to do with his wilting marriage), and Rae had lost control of her sexuality. However, that scene was exhilarating, and I think it has to do with reclamation and individual victory.

But back to the way gender and sex intersect. If nymphomania is itself largely fictitious, the strange way Rae’s fits were portrayed—moments in the film that were suspended between fear and comedy—reveals some of the ideological confusion of the film. If not for her nearly-naked body, battered and bruised and constantly displayed, I might have more sympathy for the film’s motivations. Add that to Rae’s moment of catharsis where she beats the shit out of her mother with a mop handle (for allowing Rae to be raped, either by her father or another male figure in her home), and we see women destroyed by sex who we’re supposed to sympathize with.

The final topic I want to bring up is religion. We can’t deny the role Christianity plays in the film. From the name of the main character to the supporting cast (which includes a preacher), the issue of faith (and a very certain brand of faith) comes up again and again. If the movie is a metaphor for “anxiety, fear, and unconditional love,” according to Brewer himself, then religion is the element that holds it all together. The instantiations of religion, however, are clunky at best; the radiator is God, the chain is faith, et cetera. I don’t really know where to go from here, except to acknowledge the large role of religion, although it plays out in hackneyed ways.

Response by Stephanie R

While I would like to see both characters in this film actually achieve some level of reclamation and individual victory, I think it fails for the most part, but the film especially fails Rae. She remains “chained” in a metaphorical sense, even in the final scenes. I don’t believe her character discovers much, or achieves much of an arc; she remains, for me, completely static. In fact, the film pretty much uses her as a vehicle to showcase the success of Lazarus, (which is yet another example of female exploitation that Brewer has either no awareness of or no desire to address).

I was left feeling no hope for Rae in that final scene—she’s imprisoned, (in a stuffy car, surrounded by semi-trucks) stuck in a relationship with a man who’s essentially a child needing to be coddled, with only the memory of her radiator-chain to keep her from jumping from the vehicle and fucking her way across the interstate. But Lazarus has his music again. He’s managed to overcome his anger about his wife leaving him, and he’s even got a nice new chick to look after him. See how chaining up a white woman in Mississippi can revolutionize an entire worldview?

The truth is I never gave a shit about Rae. I could’ve cared for her, if Brewer hadn’t used her sexuality against her—it’s filmed as if the abuse she suffers is deserved. (See what you get when you go around whoring yourself? Tsk, tsk.) By the time we get to know her character, when, as you mentioned, she divulges her history of sexual abuse, then beats the shit out of her mother with a mop handle, it’s way too late for sympathy. By that point, Brewer has already managed to turn a young woman’s sexuality into a cross between sketch comedy and porn, where nothing about it feels real.

In that moment of catharsis with her mother, I found myself detached. Instead of sympathizing with Rae and coming to some kind of realization myself, I just rolled my eyes at the ridiculous, clichéd consequences of her abuse—girl gets raped by father-figure while mother does nothing to stop it, girl develops low self-esteem, girl becomes town slut, girl develops a fictional sex disease, girl gets chained to radiator by religious black man. Wait, what? Ah religion, how you never cease to reinforce the second-class citizenship of women, perpetually punishing them for their godless desire to fuck.

So Rae is possessed by an evil sex demon, and, at one freaky moment, Lazarus’s ex-wife. Lazarus and his brother are Cain and Abel. There’s adultery, lust, preachers, fire-and-brimstone, bible passages, and judgmental townsfolk. Basically, the religious themes receive the same clichéd treatment as women’s sexuality. Rae is pretty much “saved” by Lazarus, and Lazarus pretty much gets his shit together and “rises from the dead” (as Lazarus in the bible).

And, after this conversation, I’m starting to wonder if I’m the problem, if I made the mistake of taking this film seriously, when what it really wants to be is one big sensationalist metaphor. A metaphor for what, though? I’ll conclude with something Brewer says in an interview.

“I’m not writing from a place of progress. I’m not writing a movie that I want people to necessarily intellectualize. And I think that really messes with people who feel that they need to make a statement against this, and they don’t quite know what it is they’re against. Because man alive, you look at this imagery on this poster, and I’m so obviously banging this drum. It’s like, you really believe that I believe this? That women need to be chained up? Can we not think metaphorically once race and gender are introduced?”

Rent Black Snake Moan from Netflix
Read Carol Groseman’s article, “Nymphomania: The Historical Construction of Female Sexuality,” published in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society
Read the Salon.com interview with Craig Brewer

‘One Woman, One Vote’: A Documentary Review

Seneca Falls. Susan B. Anthony. Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Alice Paul. Lucy Burns. Iconic American names that we recognize from our last history course, but often without knowledge of the full extent of their courage and suffering. The suffrage movement is one filled with small victories, setbacks, and defeats, and with men and women of often clashing ideas and ideologies.

Women’s suffrage was a 72-year movement that finally attained nation-wide victory in 1920 with the ratification of the 19th constitutional amendment prohibiting sex discrimination at the polls. Up to this point, women met, organized, marched, fought amongst themselves, lobbied, and protested. They were threatened, ridiculed, attacked, beaten, tried, arrested, and placed in solitary confinement for their actions. In retaliation, they fought harder. They organized hunger strikes in prison. They surrounded the White House in protest, despite angry mobs of men who dragged them to the ground and tore not only their banners, but also clothing from their bodies.

One of the more shocking discoveries I had from watching One Woman, One Vote was that women were not united in the cause of suffrage. There were a number of women who believed that politics were corrupt, and that women would only participate in the corruption, and sully their clean, domestic image, by voting. There was even strong disagreement amongst the suffragettes; they divided and formed separate groups on different occasions, opposing each others’ strategies and tactics for earning the vote, and finally unified when ratification of the amendment seemed inevitable. There were many diverse opinions and motivations driving the movement and its opposition, including racism, temperance, religion, and cultural norms.

The documentary was made in 1995, but only the graphics seem dated (and, despite the fact that One Woman, One Vote is part of the PBS American Experience series, the film has no official website). Susan Sarandon narrates, and the film is full of varied voices, letters, film reels, photos, and cartoons. There are great clips of historic songs throughout, too, which are often funny, incisive, and scathing. I learned so much about a part of American and women’s history that is so often summarized into a single paragraph.

Here are a few highlights of the women who made the movement.

On November 5, 1872, Susan B. Anthony led a dozen women to the polls in Rochester, New York, and convinced the worker there to allow her and the others to vote—despite the fact that it was against the law. Four hours later, U.S. Marshals arrested and handcuffed Anthony. She was later convicted of a federal crime by an all-male jury–after being forbidden to testify on her own behalf (women were deemed incompetent to testify because of their sex). Before her sentencing, however, she was permitted a statement:

“In your ordered verdict of guilty, you have trampled underfoot every principle of our government: my natural rights, my civil rights, my political rights. I have been tried by law made by men, interpreted by men, administered by men, in favor of men, and against women. May it please, your honor, I shall never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty. Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God.”

African American women were quite unified in their support of suffrage. However, mainstream groups were seeking the support of Southern Democrats, who strongly opposed suffrage for black women, and thus largely left black women out of their cause. Mary Church Terrell was one of the few black women invited to speak at national conventions, and there she urged white suffragists not to forget black women:

“Not only are colored women handicapped on account of their sex, they are everywhere mocked on account of their race. We are asking that our sisters of the dominant race do all in their power to include in their resolutions the injustices to which colored people are victims.”

Despite the efforts of Terrell and other African American leaders, they never enjoyed mainstream acceptance from the suffrage movement. Regardless, they organized and grew their supporters to half a million members, including active support from men.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who first called for women’s rights at Seneca Falls (the right to vote was her most radical demand; the group met to call for property rights, divorce rights, and a woman’s right to her children), told her friend Susan B. Anthony that as she grew older, she grew more radical. Their relationship is widely considered one of the greatest relationships of the 19th century, and Stanton’s radicalism seems to be one of the few areas of disagreement–though it did not end their friendship. When Stanton was in her 70s, frustrated by women who still refused to join the suffrage movement, she denounced the church as responsible for the oppression of women.

“The Bible teaches that woman brought sin and death into the world. I don’t believe that any man ever talked with God. The Bible was written by man, out of his love of domination.”

She rewrote every section of the Bible that degraded women, and published The Woman’s Bible, which was translated into six languages. The Woman’s Suffrage Association denounced the work, and rebuked Stanton. After her death, Stanton’s daughter, Harriet Blatch, led the movement.

Alice Paul earned numerous academic degrees in her lifetime, and also served numerous prison sentences for acts of civil disobedience in her campaign for women’s suffrage. When she arrived in Washington in 1913, she was one of the few women in the United States who held a doctorate degree in political science. While in prison she led hunger strikes, and was tortured with forced-feedings:

“Dear Mama,
The forcible feeding was terrible. They tied me to a chair because I struggled. One wardress sat astride my knees, two others held my arms and hands while two doctors forced a tube five or six feet long through my nose, like driving a stake into the ground.”

Rather than defeat her, the experience only made Paul more determined to devote her life to the suffrage movement. Among her many accomplishments were the organization of a parade that essentially upstaged the inauguration of newly-elected president Woodrow Wilson and caused a riot in the streets that brought out the U.S. Cavalry, and a “perpetual delegation” of women who picketed outside the White House, six days a week, in which women from all backgrounds stood silently with banners protesting the administration’s refusal to support a federal amendment to enfranchise women, and even outrageously mocking the president’s hypocrisy. Finally, police began to arrest the silent protesters, who were regularly being physically attacked, and charged them with obstructing traffic and imprisoned them–sometimes for months at a time.

The year was 1917. It took an additional three years for the 19th amendment to be passed and ratified by all of the states.

Remember the women who fought for women like us. We’ve only had the vote for 88 years. Exercise your right: Vote today.

Rent One Woman, One Vote from Netflix.
Purchase the DVD from PBS.

Movie Review: Baby Mama

Just to put it out there, I love Tina Fey. Who doesn’t right now, with her Emmy-winning TV series 30 Rock returning soon, and her riotously funny return to Saturday Night Live as Sarah Palin? If you haven’t yet seen Baby Mama, starring (but not written by) Fey and Amy Poehler, rent it. It’s funny, it’s smart, and–as a bonus–it’s one of the few movies that passes the Bechdel Test.

Baby Mama opens with a monologue from Kate (Tina Fey) that states a central problem for women who value both work and family, and it’s worth quoting here at length:

I did everything that I was supposed to do. I didn’t cry in meetings, I didn’t wear short skirts, I put up with the weird upper-management guys that kiss you on the mouth at Christmas. Is it fair that to be the youngest VP in my company I will be the oldest mom at preschool? Not really, but that’s part of the deal. I made a choice. Some women got pregnant; I got promotions. And I still aspire to meet someone, and fall in love, and get married, but that is a very high risk scenario. And I want a baby now. I’m 37.

Everything that Kate was supposed to do is a negation—she actually did nothing she wasn’t supposed to do: she didn’t get emotional, she didn’t inappropriately use her sexuality, she didn’t reprimand her superiors for inappropriate behavior. In other words, she put up with sexism and accepted the lies about women in the workplace, like “choice,” and “fairness.” She didn’t argue and she didn’t speak up for herself. She was a Yes Woman.

The beginning of the movie sets a high standard—and high hopes—for what follows. The initial joke here is that her monologue doesn’t address us—the audience—but a date. A first date. At the same time as give us our first laugh, she establishes her character as smart and ambitious, and still a woman who wants a child.

The plot of the movie is rather traditional, with a few twists, but it isn’t the plot that makes the movie so good. It’s the inherent critiques of male-dominated institutions that are subtle enough to avoid sounding topical or preachy, but strong and effective enough to reach the film’s smart viewers.

Real Life and Business

First is a critique—that runs throughout the movie—of the corporate business model. Kate’s sister, Caroline (Maura Tierney) first introduces the divide between “business” and “real life” when she chides Kate that “having a baby isn’t like opening one of your stores.” Caroline, who represents the perfect “mommy” in the movie, thinks that Kate’s approach to having a baby is too business-like.

Further, Chaffee Bicknell (Sigourney Weaver), who runs the surrogacy institute, refers to surrogacy as “outsourcing” and a “growth market,” and takes serious note of Kate’s joke about women in third-world countries carrying babies for wealthy women. Bicknell equates a nanny with a surrogate; a nanny takes care of your baby after it’s born, a surrogate takes care of your baby before it’s born. The ironic twist is that Bicknell is fertile to the point of absurdity, and didn’t start the business out of empathy, but simply for capitalist reasons.

This divide between “real life” and “business” is affirmed further by a conversation between Angie (Poehler) and her common law husband, Carl (Dax Shepard). In a scene where Carl refers to Kate as “Katie,” Angie defends her relationship with Kate (a plot twist, which I won’t reveal here, initiates the conversation). Carl tells Angie “You think you guys would be friends in real life? She’s a business lady. It’s just business.”

So what does this all add up to? Kate is, in fact, an unapologetic business lady. When love interest Rob (Greg Kinnear) warns her against “the man,” Kate thinks he means the cops when, in fact, he’s talking about rival smoothie makers Jamba Juice. “Jamba Juice is the man?” she asks. Kate, VP of operations for a corporate organic grocery, is also “the man.” It’s not clear, however, whether she’s aware of this fact, or how important the fact really is—to Kate and to the movie. The movie certainly critiques (and parodies) her corporate culture, but it still celebrates her success within it.

Hip Hop Culture

Critique of the hip hop industry comes from two subtle moments in the movie. In the first, we meet Kate’s doorman, Oscar (Romany Malco), singing along with his iPod to a song objectifying women. Oscar, for me, is probably the most troubling issue with the movie. Not only is he perpetually popping up in scenes, but his characterization reeks of stereotype and is a little cringe-worthy at times. He delivers some smart, funny lines, but doesn’t become a fully-realized character. Yet, viewers recognize a silly divide between the man he is and the music he consumes.

Not long after, Carl rummages through Kate’s media drawer and, dissatisfied, asks “Don’t you get down with rap?” Kate replies “Boy, somewhere in there I have an old Salt-N-Pepa CD.” While Kate name-checks some 90s hip hop that’s certainly more female-friendly than most of today’s fare, the implication is that she wouldn’t listen to music that she could, in no way, relate to. Or, it may simply show how out-of-touch she is with popular culture. The latter could certainly be the case, as an evening out with Angie shows how rarely Kate lets loose for a good time.

Men and Women, Talking

The movie’s men are all boyfriends, bosses, sidekicks—the standard roles for women in mainstream movies. While Kate’s boss, new-ager Barry, Carl, and Oscar are stereotypes, her love interest is a bit more round, even addressing gender during their first date. After Kate places a very specific Philly steak order, she says “I’m sorry. I’m a little overly thorough. Some people would say that I am bossy and controlling.” Rob replies “No, that’s just prejudice. They call you bossy and controlling ‘cause you’re a woman. But if you were a man doing the same stuff, you’d just be a dick.” The joke here is that he doesn’t say she’d be called “assertive” or the like; he actually insults her. While some enjoy this method of flirtation more than others, the recognition of a gender power dynamic is a cue for sympathetic viewers that he’s a smart match for Kate.

The real story of the movie isn’t the baby, of course, but the women. I love that about the movie. Kate and Angie fight, and are allowed real conflicts—in their own lives and with each other. There’s a nasty exchange of words between the two, where Kate reveals her classism, which had previously just shown up in comedic moments. A real friendship develops between them, and the movie is no less funny for it.

Movie Review: Juno

It took me a long time to see the film Juno. I was thrilled when Diablo Cody won the Oscar for Best Screenplay, but at the same time suspicious about her little movie being so lauded. To win an Oscar, the film must be saying the “right” things to the “right” people, a dynamic that rarely favors progressive thinking (see the movie Crash as a recent example). In other words, when too many people love a movie, there’s probably something wrong.

Aside from critical praise and popularity, the topic of teen pregnancy is rarely done without a hefty dose of morality. While we are in a peculiar cultural gray area on the subject—consider the cover of OK Magazine, featuring smiling teen mom Jamie Lynn Spears, or the Republican VP nominee’s pregnant teenage daughter—there seems to be an anti-choice undercurrent running through pregnancy plots, not to mention the culture at large.

The expectations I had going in were also based on reading commentary about the ultra-hip dialogue and soundtrack of the film. While certainly not negative in themselves, coupled with a controversial topic, these features could be enough to couch a conservative, anti-woman message in a hip, fresh film.

It turns out, however, that after an initial adjustment period to the dialogue (and a question about whether the film is set in the early ‘90s), Juno turns out to be planted in a feminist worldview, and is a film that teenagers, especially, ought to see. It was thoroughly enjoyable, funny and touching. I liked it so much that I watched it again, but when I started to write about it, what I liked about the movie became all the more confusing. I loved the music, although Juno MacGuff is way hipper than I was (or am), and I saw a representation that reminded me of myself at that age. I saw a paternal relationship that I never had and a familial openness that I’ve also never had. I saw characters who I wanted as my childhood friends and family.

And while in Juno we have a strong, unconventional female character—and a lead character, at that—the film itself was very, very safe. And I worry whether that’s a good thing. It’s certainly understandable for a first film. A Hollywood outsider would have a much more difficult time making an overtly progressive movie about teen pregnancy, but if she plays the politics safe, and if her own personality is enough of a draw, she just might make it.

I was worried when Juno visited the dumpy abortion clinic and met her pro-life classmate protesting in the parking lot, and I was worried by the very dumpiness of the clinic. I was struck by the notion that a clinic like that would look and feel much more sterile—even in the lobby, as far as Juno went. The thought of fingernails sent her running out of the building. A detail like “fingernails” made the abortion too real for Juno, a teenager, I suppose. Is this a good or bad thing? I don’t know.

Juno, in a rather nonchalant way, seeks permission of the baby’s father, her good friend Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera), for the abortion. Or, rather, she seeks his opinion; she seems to want him to resist her plans. But his lack of resistance causes her to make the following decisions on her own. This straddles the line somewhat. She wants to be told what to do, and rather than seeking out someone smarter and more experienced than she is, she asks the boy whose approval she’s still seeking.

Juno wants her baby to have the perfect family; one unlike her own, which her mother abandoned. Her family now consists of her father, her stepmother Bren (Allison Janney), and her half-sister Liberty Bell. Juno doesn’t have a bad deal going. Her folks are markedly working class (they’re both members of the labor class, a group that doesn’t see much Hollywood recognition; he’s an HVAC repairman, she’s a nail technician). Yet Juno imagines a perfect life to consist of two loving parents and a McMansion.Why would she seek out people of this particular class? Is this a case of Juno’s lack of class awareness or the film’s?

The film’s real progressive moment comes when Juno realizes that her idea of perfection isn’t perfect. She realizes that a father who doesn’t want to be there would be as bad as a mother who hadn’t wanted to be there. She sees that a father isn’t a necessity–or perhaps simply that two parents aren’t a necessity. Yet what does this all add up to mean? There’s certainly a moment of female solidarity (and this isn’t the only one, certainly, in the film), and a difficult decision that she makes independently. But, as with other conclusions I’ve made, I’m left with the question of “So what?”

The film does love all of its characters, which is a refreshing change for a high school flick. Juno’s best friend, Leah, is a cheerleader who exhibits some flaky, teenage qualities (her crush on the chubby, bearded, middle-aged math teacher takes a cliché and gives it a twist), but the film loves her nonetheless. Vanessa Loring (Jennifer Garner) is an obsessional, middle-class mommy blogger type, but we see that she would be a good mother, and the film cares for her. We even have sympathy for Mark (Jason Bateman) who, through his relationship with Juno, realizes that he and his wife no longer want the same thing (if they ever did). There are cringe-worthy moments with Mark and Juno, but none that damn him completely. It’s a rare film that gives us no bad guys, which is a large part of its charm.

It’s easy to want to live in a world like this, where a pregnant sixteen-year-old seems to get by pretty well, with her parents’ support and a relationship with her baby’s adoptive family. She has a sweet teenage love affair and doesn’t seem to struggle much. While teen angst is the stuff of Hollywood cliché, things just seemed too easy for Juno. I wish my teenage years could’ve been a bit more like Juno’s. Hell, I wish my life now could be.

The final question remains, though, about whether we should criticize a movie like Juno. Representations of role models for American girls tend to inhabit the poles; either young girls are encouraged to be the beautiful bimbo or the chaste Christian. This film has a strong personality (that masquerades as strong values—even an ethic) without being preachy or moralistic. That can’t inherently be a bad thing. Yet I find myself asking for more, wanting more–something that steps outside of the realm of safety. Perhaps Juno isn’t the film to give me more.

In all, I fear Juno suffers from the same postmodern condition afflicting so many films today. It strives for a non-message in order not to offend anyone, thus allowing anti-choice advocates to cheer the film as loudly as pro-choice feminists. There’s a problem here. If a film that almost universally passes as hip and progressive is so murky in its values and allegiance that we’re not really sure what to think of it, how can a truly hip and progressive film make it today?

Documentary Review: Paris Was a Woman

Paris Was a Woman (1996)

Paris Was a Woman is a documentary about artists living in Paris during the time between the wars–specifically in the 1920s. Paris has always been a place for artists, but at this time, Prohibition, inexpensive living, and a general openness to different lifestyles and art made American women flock to the Left Bank area of the city. The film looks at Gertrude Stein, Alice Toklas, Colette, Djuna Barnes, Berenice Abbott, Gisele Freund, and Janet Flanner, among others.

The film will certainly be of interest to fans of these writers, artists, and other literary figures—in particular of Stein. There is home movie footage that most of us have probably never seen, and interviews with people intimate with the women in their Parisian heyday–and a lot of information from a housekeeper. One problem with the film, though, is that it’s really about lesbians living in Paris in the 1920s, which perpetuates the untruthful equation of lesbianism and feminism. Part of the problem might be that the film was released in 1995, and mainstream attitudes have changed to the extent that it may no longer be necessary to disguise a film about lesbian artists. In other words, I would like the film better if it wasn’t pretending to be something other than what it is.

In terms of quality, the film has its high and low points. One of my favorite things was a map of the homes, shops, and meeting places of the women—updated each time someone new was introduced. This visual really drives home the point about their close proximity, and makes me wonder how many neighborhoods—full of amazing artists—exist today. There are probably many, but with our fragmented modern lives, I don’t know of any. The quality of the film left something to be desired (making it look older than it is), and it seemed pretty disorganized, overall. This likely has to do with the fact that Paris Was a Woman was first a book, and was then turned into a documentary.

Perhaps the best part of the film was its emphasis on two women and their bookshops. Sylvia Beach was the owner of Shakespeare & Company, perhaps best known for publishing the first edition of James Joyce’s Ulysses, which had been deemed obscene, making it unpublishible by mainstream houses. A sad irony is that, later, Joyce never paid Beach, who was virtually bankrupted by her action. Adrienne Monnier lent books to women who couldn’t afford to purchase them from her bookstore, La Maison des Amis des Livres, which was located across the street from Shakespeare & Company. Monnier and Beach also translated T.S. Eliot’s “The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock” into French for the first time.

Women nurturing—and even launching—the careers of men is nothing new. I think we often forget–or even never learn–to what extent, however. Ernest Hemingway served as an errand boy to Gertrude Stein before he became a published writer. She also bought paintings by Pablo Picasso when few other people would purchase his strange work. Despite my formalist reservations about the film (organization, film quality, clearness of content), it was amazing to see such a strong community of female artists living, working, and even making love together. It teaches us not only about these particular women, but about a city, an era, and, in some sense, about how to be an artist–as all good art, on some level, should.

Movie Review: Norma Rae

Sally Field’s career, honestly, hasn’t meant much to me. Aside from recent Boniva commercials, Forrest Gump, and Steel Magnolias, I haven’t seen much of her work. She’s always struck me as a respectable actress, but not someone I seek out from a personal interest. Not being familiar with her early career, her so-called serious turn in Norma Rae was lost on me. What wasn’t lost, however, was an honest portrayal of a working woman, and a social issue that continues to dog women and men (though women, I suspect, suffer more from lack of unions) everywhere.

A primary question about social fiction is whether the story remains relevant, or if the sociopolitical situation remains mired in the past. Norma Rae does retain relevance, though she’d likely be working in Wal-Mart today instead of a textile mill (as I watched, I wondered how many textile mills still operate in the U.S.). While the movie seems to be a window on a past time in working America, it’s still relevant—and progressive—on many levels.

The plot of Norma Rae is inspired by the real life experience of Crystal Lee Jordan, a woman who worked in a North Carolina mill to unionize its employees, spurred on by an out-of-town organizer, until being fired on a bogus charge of “insubordination.” Norma Rae (played by Field, who won the Best Actress Oscar for the role) lives with her parents in the beginning of the movie, and reunites with an old friend who she marries after a brief courtship. As Norma Rae becomes more involved with union activities, the she experiences the usual relationship (romantic, familial, and work) strains, but doesn’t quit until the mill bosses force her out. It’s at this time she makes her famous stand; she refuses to leave, scrawls “UNION” on a piece of cardboard, stands on a table in the middle of a busy factory floor, and stoically remains–in an exhilarating climax to the film–until all her fellow employees shut down their machines and stand with her. She’s arrested and fired in the end, but finishes what she started and believed in.

It’s true that Field gives a standout performance, and the union-organizer Rueben (played by Ron Liebman) isn’t bad either. But what stands out for me in the film–and what makes this, in my opinion, a good piece of feminist muckraking–is the character’s relationship with men. We don’t learn too much about her relationship with other women, but what’s striking about her relationship with men is the lack of romanticism involved. Norma Rae has a couple of kids from a couple of different men–neither of whom are present in their lives–and when she marries Sonny, it’s for entirely pragmatic reasons. He proposes while on a date with both their children present, and makes his case to her that he’s a good man and that their lives might be easier if they lived them together. There’s no grand romance, and it’s refreshing to see marriage represented as the economic institution that it essentially is–particularly in the face of contemporary Hollywood, which just can’t seem to make a movie without a romantic sub-plot geared toward female viewers.

The other–and more prominent–relationship in the movie is between Norma Rae and Rueben. I admit that while watching the movie I waited for romance to blossom between these two characters, but felt great relief when it never happened. We see their relationship go from cautious skepticism to a fully fledged friendship, as Norma Rae becomes dedicated to the union cause. There are few representations of purely intellectual relationships (not to mention asexual friendships) between men and women that come to mind in movies, and though one could certainly argue that there is sexual antagonism underlying their interaction, it’s an emotion that stays below the surface, never consummated–all the way to their farewell handshake at the end of the movie.
Norma Rae isn’t a super mother, nor does she fit the description of a woman we’re typically supposed to look up to. She’s made mistakes in her life and she’ll probably make a few more. She’s not looking to move away from her roots and improve her life based on others’ terms; she doesn’t act out of selfish desire. In other words, she’s a rarity in film: a real woman.