Tag: Amber Leab

Animated Children’s Films: From the Archive: Fantastic Mr. Fox

After hearing repeatedly that Fantastic Mr. Foxis Wes Anderson’s best film, I gave it a try. I’m not the biggest Anderson fan—I generally find his aesthetic too precious, his characters over-privileged bores, and his daddy issues repetitive and tiresome—but it seemed to me that stop-motion animation might be the ideal medium to capture his intentions.
And, before I say anything else, let me say that the look of the film was great. It was fittingly retro and playful for (an overgrown man-child like) Anderson and (the all-style-no-substance preferences of) his ideal audience. The style, however, isn’t enough to garner the near universally-glowing reviews Fox has received. If you look at the film with anything other than squinty eyes and plugged ears, the problems are immediately evident.
Mrs. Fox. Meryl Streep voices the only female character in the entire cast. Okay, there’s a love interest to bat her eyelashes at the boys, but I don’t even think she had a line. Not only is the lone female character a wife and mother—seen cooking and husband-scolding more than any other activity—but also is a waste of a talented actress. Commenter gmarv on A.O. Scott’s NYT review puts it well:
Note to Wes: if your one female character (wife + mother) is supposed to be a professional artist, could you at least show her working during the DAY in her STUDIO, not cooking all day and painting outside at night with her kid and husband sitting around her?

It’s disappointing that this film incorporates Dahl’s lack of interest in women (that veers close to misogyny). I guess it’s not that much different from other Wes Anderson films that way…but with a little more imagination it could have been so much better.

“Lack of interest in women” seems to put it mildly. Anderson’s films do typically have problems with—and lack of (interest in)—women (the topless intern from The Life Aquatic comes to mind). But, not a single one of the creatures in the big plot to save the Fox family could have been female? Seriously?
While I’m not typically a stickler for accurate adaptations, Amy Biancolli of The Houston Chronicle points out some poignant changes from Roald Dahl’s novel:
1) In the original, Mrs. Fox was complicit all along. 2) Mr. Fox never went on the wagon. 3) Mr. and Mrs. Fox had four cubs, not one little nutcase, and Dahl made no mention of a yoga-bending super-nephew. 4) I’m pretty sure the point of the story wasn’t Mr. Fox’s flagging self-esteem or his strained relationship with his son. But this is cinema in the time of Oprah, when Reductio ad navelgazing is the inevitable narrative arc.

Wouldn’t Mrs. Fox have been so much more interesting and dynamic if she hadn’t been the domesticating, shaming force in the man’s (and boy’s) life? If she actually remained a person after marrying and having a child, who struggles with being a “wild animal” too? The tiny (ha) complication of keeping Mrs. Fox complicit would have done wonders for the story.

Wouldn’t it also have been great if Anderson—who, despite all my negative comments, does have directorial talent—had changed course just a little bit and not made a movie about a strained father-son relationship? Talent grows only when it’s challenged, and perhaps that’s why I keep giving Anderson another chance. After Fox, though, I’m not sure he gets another shot.

Animated Children’s Films: From the Archive: WALL-E – The Flick-Off

WALL-E (2008)

While the beginning of WALL-E is a lovely silent film (and would’ve been a fantastic short film), when you brush away the artifice and the adorable little robots, all you have is standard Disney fare: a male protagonist and a female helper, told from his perspective. Why the robots are gendered at all isn’t clear; the movie could’ve been about their friendship–and far more progressive than the heteronormative romance that ensues.

WALL-E “dating” EVE

EVE is sleek and lovely, and is physically able to do things WALL-E cannot, but she’s part of an army of task-oriented robots. The mere push of a button shuts her down, and she lacks the self-protectionist drive that WALL-E exhibits when his power reserve drains. He is, of course, beholden to no one since the humans left Earth; he is autonomous and self-sufficient. EVE, on the other hand, is fully robotic: she’s a badass, complete with gun, and she’s more intelligent and cunning than WALL-E, but she’s been programmed to be that way. She’s an advanced form of technology, but she needs WALL-E to liberate her.
WALL-E, it seems, has developed human qualities on his own. He is also capable of keeping up with a robot approximately 700 years newer (read: younger) than he is–an impressive age gap in any relationship. EVE worries over WALL-E and caters to his physical limitations (he is, after all, an old man–with childlike curiosity), acting as nursemaid in addition to all-around badass. Who says we can’t be everything, ladies? While EVE doesn’t have any of the conventional trappings of femininity, she’s a lovely modern contraption with clean lines, while WALL-E is clunky, schlubby, and falling apart (not to mention he’s a clean rip-off of Short Circuit‘s Johnny 5)–reinforcing the (male) appreciation of a certain kind of female aesthetic, while reminding girls that they should look good and not worry too much about the appearance of their male love-interest.
More contrary opinions about WALL-E–including the troubling way it portrays obesity–on:

If you know of some other good discussions on the film, leave your links in the comments.

Who’s the "Hero" of the 2012 Oscar Awards?

Billy Crystal: He’s gilded and swooping in to save the 2012 Oscars

I’m one of those old-fashioned people who enjoys watching the Academy Awards every year. Movies, spectacle, the opportunity to throw a party complete with Oscar Bingo and a contest to see who can best predict the winners — I love it for all of these reasons. Even knowing that the awards are essentially a political campaign, in which the studios/production companies/actors with the most money (and thus the most visibility and power) typically win, and even though the films/performances that I’m rooting for are often not even nominated, there’s still something important about the show (I’ve previously talked about why here): it reminds us of the film industry’s power structure and what kinds of films are supposed to be culturally important.
Let me be more specific. The New York Times ran a piece titled “Billy Crystal Is Gilded as Hero of Oscar Night” which discusses the Governors Awards ceremony, held on Saturday, November 12th, honoring the  Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award winner and honorary Oscar winners (which were previously part of the televised ceremony, but removed this year to “to speed up the telecast and give more personal attention to their winners). Because we wouldn’t want to take televised time to honor people who have made a significant contribution to film, or anything, am I right?
But what dominated the piece — and the ceremony, if we can trust what Michael Cieply wrote — is the fact that Billy Crystal is now hosting the Oscar Ceremony. Or, as the article states, he “swooped in to save the Academy Awards.” Um, okay. I imagine it was just like that. 
See, you might have missed it (if you don’t closely follow these things), but the person producing the show this year, Brett Ratner, said some pretty awful things, and when he resigned, the person he’d picked to host — Eddie Murphy — decided he would follow suit and pulled out of the gig. A new producer was selected, and he chose Billy Crystal, who has hosted the show eight previous times. 
Am I old-fashioned, or is that simply how I’m made to feel by the Academy?
Now, I have nothing against Billy Crystal. He seems like an overall pretty good guy, and I enjoyed When Harry Met Sally back in 1989, and thought City Slickers was pretty good back when I was eleven years old. I know he’s been in movies since then, but he’s not really on my personal radar as a Current Film Star. (Neither is Eddie Murphy for that matter, though I think he would’ve proven at least an interesting host, and would have improved on the Academy’s abysmal track record of including African Americans — at any capacity — in the program.) 
Back to that “old fashioned” idea. This year, the Academy at least showed its awareness that younger people were often alienated by the show when they shrewdly hired James Franco and Anne Hathaway as hosts, a move that backfired, mostly due to Franco phoning it in (I can’t be the only one sure he was stoned) and Hathaway trying her best to make up for her near-comatose co-host. According to the NYT article,

That it should be Mr. Crystal who saved the day met little disapproval from those who gathered on Saturday night, even if it means that the Academy’s quest for youth and a more diverse audience will yield once more to a neo-vaudevillian who is often compared here to Bob Hope, who holds the record as the 19-time host of the show.

Maybe I’m not old-fashioned; maybe I’m stupid for continuing to tune in to programming that doesn’t give a damn whether I watch or not. Or, even worse, maybe they’re just assuming they have “female viewers” (because we’re a silly monolith) because, you know, OMG Pretty Dresses. 
Oprah Winfrey wins the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award
There’s something else, though, that I can’t not notice about the NYT article: In the entire 1,187-word article, only about 200 words (3 paragraphs) were devoted to one of  the highest honors and most controversial moments of the night: Oprah Winfrey winning the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. She’s the first Black woman to win the award (Quincy Jones won in 1995, the only Black man to win it), yet her win has been called “boneheaded” and “a shameless bid for a ratings boost,” largely because her contributions to the film industry are seen by insiders as lacking. Further, according to NWFCC chair Armond White,

Is the Academy kowtowing to the silly complaints that no black actors were nominated this year?” says White. “The Oscars are supposed to be about the works Hollywood admires, not a score-keeping mechanism for ethnic and racial equality. By that standard the Oscars fail Native Americans, Asians, Africans, Scandinavians, and Latin Americans every year. I’m afraid those complaints were just media hype, an attempt by some to hold the Oscars hostage to political correctness.

Yes, the Oscars do fail African Americans, Native Americans, Latin Americans, and many more marginalized groups every year. But it isn’t “political correctness” at work in pointing out these gross injustices. It’s a privileged group of people (members of The Academy) who willfully ignore contributions in film by people of color–especially women of color–and an industry operating with a severe case of institutionalized racism.
The night’s other two winners, James Earl Jones and Dick Smith, got two paragraphs and one paragraph, respectively, in the NYT piece. Jones has appeared in over 50 films, yet is even more of an afterthought than Winfrey.
So, what does this single article tell us about the Academy, the Oscar Awards, and the New York Times?
Do I really need to spell it out?

‘Fire’: Part One of Deepa Mehta’s ‘Elements Trilogy’

Fire (1996)
Fire is the first film in Deepa Mehta’s Elements Trilogy (Earth and Water follow). Made in 1996, it focuses on a middle-class family in present-day (funny how I still think of the 1990s as “present day,” despite the global changes of the past fifteen years) India.
The film centers around two married couples–Ashok (Kulbhushan Kharbanda) and his wife Radha (Shabana Azmi), and Ashok’s brother Jatin (Javed Jaffrey) and his wife Sita (Nandita Das)–who run a carryout restaurant and video store, and who share a home with the brothers’ mother, Biji (Kushal Rekhi), and their employee, Mundu (Ranjit Chowdhry). Jatin and Sita are newlyweds, but we quickly learn that Jatin loves another woman (Julie, a Chinese-Indian woman who has perfected an American accent and dreams of returning to Hong Kong), and married a “traditional Indian woman” out of pressure from his brother and mother.
The film offers the womens’ perspectives on the conflicts between desire and duty, and between tradition and the realities of a modern India.
As with almost any film centering on family drama and dynamics, we see the tensions simmering beneath the surface as the film focuses on the two women and their lack of fulfillment from their marriages. Mehta, in the DVD’s Director’s Notes for Fire, states,
I wanted to make a film about contemporary, middle-class India, with all its vulnerabilities, foibles and the incredible extremely dramatic battle that is waged daily between the forces of tradition and the desire for an independent, individual voice.
More than 350 million Indians belong to the burgeoning middle-class and lead lives not unlike the Kapur family in Fire. They might not experience exactly the same angst or choices as these particular characters, but the confusions they share are very similar–the ambiguity surrounding sexuality and its manifestation and the incredible weight of figures (especially female ones) from ancient scriptures which define Indian women as pious, dutiful, self-sacrificing, while Indian popular cinema, a.k.a. “Bollywood”, portrays women as sex objects (Mundu’s fantasy).
To capture all this on celluloid was, to a large part, the reason I wanted to do Fire. Even though Fire is very particular in its time and space and setting, I wanted its emotional content to be universal.
Sita learns very early in her marriage that her husband is in love with Julie–he doesn’t hide the relationship from her–and she seeks solace and comfort from Radha. Radha hasn’t been intimate with her husband in 13 years; when Ashok learned she was unable to conceive, he sublimated his desires (and began channeling a good bit of their income) into religious study with his swami. The friendship between Sita and Radha soon evolves into a sexual relationship, and when the women are found out by their family, they must decide whether to obey tradition or follow their hearts.
Radha and Sita
The film explores what traditional marriage has done to alienate these women–particularly Radha–from their own desires. The desire for intimacy and sex, sure, but also the desire to live their lives for themselves, rather than for their husbands. My reading of the film is certainly from a Western perspective, however, and you could argue that the film is about discovering desire (rather than reconnecting to it after a period of alienation), since the traditional, conservative Hindu/Indian culture didn’t allow much–if any–space for individual desire for women. Sita embodies changes in the society, as she comes from a traditional family, but is more critical of the traditional rituals and more in touch with her body and her desires. (When we first meet her, for example, she playfully tries on her new husband’s pants and dances around their bedroom, unashamed of her body.) Sita is also the one who initiates a physical relationship with Radha.
Depicting a lesbian relationship on film fifteen years ago proved hugely controversial, and Fire was immediately banned in Pakistan, and soon after pulled from Indian cinemas for religious insensitivity. Although the film twice passed the Indian censor board–they requested no editing, and no scenes removed–violent protests caused movie houses to stop showing the film. In “Burning Love,” Gary Morris writes,
The reaction of some male members of the audience was so violent that the police had to be called. “I’m going to shoot you, madam!” was one response. According to Mehta, the men who objected couldn’t articulate the word “lesbian” — “this is not in our Indian culture!” was as much as they could bring themselves to say. 

It isn’t only the tangible pleasures of a lesbian relationship that created such heated reactions, though that’s certainly the most obvious reason. This beautifully shot, well-acted film is a powerful, sometimes hypnotic critique of the rigid norms of a patriarchal, post-colonial society that keeps both sexes down.

The controversy surrounding the film may have superseded the film itself–which is beautifully shot, heartbreaking, and even darkly comedic at times. Fire contains so many elements that I love in film: strong female characters, an exploration of complex issues that is never oversimplified and that never leads to individuals being labeled good or evil (although they certainly behave in good and/or evil ways), and immersion into a culture that isn’t entirely familiar to me. Speaking to a Western audience, Mehta has stated that one of her goals in filmmaking is to “demystify India,” its culture and its traditions. Fire complicates our understanding of a traditional patriarchal culture, and throws into sharp relief the ways these traditions impact women in particular.

Again, here’s Mehta on Fire:

We women, especially Indian women, constantly have to go through a metaphorical test of purity in order to be validated as human beings, not unlike Sita’s trial by fire.

I’ve seen most of the women in my family go through this, in one form or another. Do we, as women, have choices? And, if we make choices, what is the price we pay for them?

***

There is a ton of information online about Fire. Here are some selected articles for further reading:

Preview: The Iron Lady

The Iron Lady (2011)

One of the questions I always ask myself about new movies is this: Why this film at this particular time? While movies are always a blend of art and moneymaking, they don’t rise up in a vacuum. They are informed by the culture surrounding them, by the political landscape, and by the consumer demands of the time.
The Iron Lady stars Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher, the UK’s first and thus far only prime minister. The film bills itself as a story of gender, class, and power–and specifically the price Thatcher paid for obtaining her power. But there are clearly lines to be drawn–in the US, at least–between her time as PM (1979-1990) and our current political climate, between her conservative attacks on unions, deregulation, and privatization and what’s happening in states like Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin. 
Watch the trailer:

It’s also interesting to think about the film in the context of women in politics–again, I’m thinking primarily of the US–and what it takes for a woman to be successful. At the beginning of the trailer we see an emphasis on her appearance and her voice (which reminds me of The King’s Speech, last year’s Best Picture Oscar winner–the similarity is likely no accident), and the importance of maintaining an image of leadership and power. Our culture is obsessed with image, and we see how closely scrutinized female politicians are–from Hillary Clinton’s pantsuits and alleged cleavage when she was running for president in 2008, to Michele Bachmann’s french manicure and shoe choices this year, the media tears down Women who Want to Lead.
Thatcher is, of course, a very controversial figure, and it’ll be interesting to see how the film actually deals with her political decisions. Just as I was skeptical about Oliver Stone’s film W (about the rise of George W. Bush), I’m skeptical of a biopic about another living (and conservative) politician. We’ll have to wait and see how this one turns out.
The Iron Lady opens in the US on January 13th and in the UK on January 6th. Are you planning to see it?

On Entertainment Weekly’s "42 Unforgettable Nude Scenes"

This morning I found myself reading old NYT news-alert emails, surfing Facebook, and, finally, browsing a slideshow from Entertainment Weekly called “Bodies of Work: 42 Unforgettable Nude Scenes” which was published earlier this month. (It was a productive morning, see?)
We talk a lot at Bitch Flicks about female bodies in films (and especially in film marketing, as evidenced in our posters series), and how bodies are offered up for viewers’ consumption. There are a few things that strike me about the scenes that EW highlights. I haven’t seen every film mentioned, so there may be more complexities in some of the examples, but there are certainly identifiable trends.
I recommend looking through the slideshow before you continue reading, but you can always go back and look through it afterwards. There is very little nudity in the screen shots from the scenes, so I’d label the slideshow safe for work.
Uma Thurman in The Adventures of Baron Munchenhausen
1. Male bodies are comedic, female bodies are sexy.

There are, of course, a few exceptions, but this is overwhelmingly the case in these scenes. Photo after photo reveals male actors in comedic situations. Whether it’s the odd object hiding genitals (Ryan Gosling with Steve Carell’s head in Crazy, Stupid, Love; John Cleese with a picture frame in A Fish Called Wanda; Peter Sellers with a guitar in A Shot in the Dark) or the uncomfortable display of homophobia (Sacha Baron Cohen in Borat; Ed Helms in Cedar Rapids; Tyler Nilson in Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story), the naked male body is often played for laughs. At the same time, a majority of the female actors are shown as beautiful objects to look at, including women showering (Jessica Alba in Machete; Beverly D’Angelo in National Lampoon’s Vacation; Phoebe Cates in In Paradise) and women revealing themselves for a man (Kate Winslet in Titanic, or, as the article states “in almost anything”; Uma Thurman in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen; Halle Berry in Monster).
This tells us something we likely already know: the female body is most often presented for male viewers’ consumption, yet the male body is also being presented for male viewers–most often in a comedic way that reinforces heterosexuality. This emphasizes the notion that Hollywood employs the male gaze, and that films are being made for a (white, heterosexual) male audience. Which leads me to my next point…
2. “Unforgettable” bodies are white bodies.

There is a lot of tokenism going on in EW‘s piece. There is one Asian man (Ken Jeong in The Hangover II), one Black woman (Halle Berry), one Hispanic woman (Jessica Alba)–and every other person on the list is white. Let me say that again. Out of 42 scenes, there are 3 people of color. Three. Uno, dos, tres. Oh, there’s also Bart Simpson, who is yellow, but also a cartoon. (Update: I left Jaye Davidson of The Crying Game off the list, so there is also one Black man–who is, incidentally, not the person prominently shown in the image for that film/scene. Thanks to reader Soirore for pointing this out to me.)
This speaks to the cultural desirability (and also the perceived comedic potential*) of bodies belonging to people of color. Although people of color are often objectified and exoticized for consumption, none–or very few–of these incidents have been deemed “unforgettable” by the fine folks at EW. On one level, it’s good that we don’t see the vulgar objectification of people of color here, in a piece that is essentially based on objectification (or, EW might argue, celebrating memorable nude scenes), but it also peculiar and disturbing that the list is so damn white.
*I also want to note that for nude bodies to have comedic potential, those bodies have to have a certain amount of cultural privilege. We can laugh at the white male body because laughing at the white male body poses no threat to men, precisely because white men have the privilege and power to laugh and be laughed at.
David Kelly in Waking Ned Devine
3. Male bodies are active, female bodies are passive. Thus, men are active and women are passive.

This is very close to the first conclusion highlighted above, but it’s worth separating because it’s so prevalent in our culture and in this piece. Two comedies–The Full Monty and Calendar Girls–exhibit the divide perfectly. Both films play the nude body as comedic, but also subvert the comedy and allow for some moments in which bodies generally not considered desirable by mainstream standards are both sensual and wanted. However, Calendar Girls features a group of older women who are photographed for a (nude) calendar (read: the female body as a static, passive object), while The Full Monty shows a group of men performing a stage show (read: the male body in motion, in action). 
It’s not just these two examples in the list, either. You have a man riding a motorcycle nude (David Kelly in Waking Ned Devine), a man running down the street nude (Will Ferrell in Old School), a man riding a horse nude (Russel Crowe in Hammers over the Anvil), a man fighting (Viggo Mortensen in Eastern Promises), etc. 
4. EW has an interesting definition of the word “scene.” They actually mean “person.”

It seems that the piece is mistitled, and that the word “person,” or even “performance” more accurately describes their interest. Nearly every picture features a single person, even if that person isn’t the only nude one in the scene, with only a few exceptions: Sandra Bullock & Ryan Reynolds in The Proposal; Mike Meyers & Elizabeth Hurley in Austin Powers; “The Old Gals” in Calendar Girl; “The Men” in The Full Monty; and Julian Sands, Rupert Graves & Simon Callow in A Room with a View (probably the most subversive example in the piece, as the scene features the three men frolicking together, comfortably nude, in a lake).
Thus, “unforgettable” images of nude bodies are ones that are generally individual people, for the viewers’ consumption, and there is very little interest in portraying (or viewing) sensuality or healthy sexuality.
There are a lot of other things I could say about this collection of nude scenes. There’s certainly something interesting about violence and the male body, and it can’t go unmentioned that there is only one example (from The Crying Game) or maybe two (if you include the scene from A Room with a View) that is not explicitly heteronormative.
What else do you notice about the scenes and/or bodies offered up in EW’s slide show? 

Also, we can play the same game as EW: What unforgettable scenes are missing from the original list?


Swiffer Reminds Us that Women Are Dirt

We’ve all been here before: watching a television show, cut to commercial break, and on comes that particular ad that you absolutely loathe. You switch the channel, mute the TV, or just rant through the entire thing…again (I’m not the only one, right?).
Not too long ago, I wrote about the spate of “man up and drink a manly beverage” ads (Dr. Pepper Ten specifically), which certainly qualify as loathe-worthy. But there’s another ad campaign that just annoys me to no end: the Swiffer Wet Jet ads that feature women as dirt and show these different varieties of “dirt” falling in love with the cleaning product that gets rid of them so well.
Here’s the one I’ve seen most often — “The Film Star:”

Here, we have a dramatic actress portraying the “film” left behind after mopping, and when the Swiffer mop comes after her, she throws herself at it, clearly lusting after the mop pad that will sweep her away. The ad pulls back and shows a woman satisfied with her freshly-cleaned floor.
Taken alone, the ad is silly and obnoxious, and just about as regressive as your typical gendered ad for cleaning products. The fact that dirt is personified as a woman is disturbing, the fact that she lusts after a mop to essentially destroy her is bizarre (and suggests some deeply fucked-up sexual politics), and the fact that a woman’s enemy (a filmy floor–oh no!) is another woman plays into the typical trope that says women are naturally enemies.
If you look at the other ads in the campaign, however, it gets worse. Here’s “The Mud Lady” (note: this is embedded from YouTube, so if it gets removed, you can likely find the ad somewhere else with a simple search):

Again, we have a woman personifying something you mop up–mud, in this case–and here the woman even claims she’s “not easy” before (literally) throwing herself at the mop pad. Again, the camera pans out to a woman happily mopping her floor. Just as the dramatic actress behaves stereotypically, this woman has a “Valley Girl” (is that term still in use?) accent and quickly contradicts what she says with her actions.
There’s another one featuring an elderly woman as yet another variety of dirt, which I can’t find online (if you know of a link, please let me know and I’ll update!) and she’s unhappy that no one’s given her any romantic attention in a while. Once again, enter that irresistible mop and the woman throws herself at it. And yet another woman mopping is pleased that her floors are now so clean.
These three ads are the only ones in the campaign that I’ve seen on TV here in the U.S. When I went to the official product website, there were some ads I’d never seen that feature men in lust with the mop pad. As a matter of fact, there are two ads there featuring women, and two featuring men (perhaps they’re attempting to thwart accusations of sexism there, but I doubt the ones featuring men are in rotation as heavily as the others)–although all of them show women doing the actual cleaning.
It’s remarkable how different the portrayals of the dirt people are: the men-as-dirt ads show a Crocodile Dundee-esque character (also stereotypical) and two buddies lamenting the state of their romantic lives, while the women-as-dirt ads always show a lonely, solitary woman desperate for the kind of attention provided by this wonder mop.
I’m less interested in equal-opportunity offense here: men as dirt is disturbing, too. But for me, there’s something particularly insidious about these women-as-dirt ads. This isn’t the first time Swiffer has been accused of sexism in their ads, either. In 2008, The Hathor Legacy called out the bizarre ad campaign featuring women in relationships with their cleaning tools:

Swiffer has a whole line of commercials featuring women breaking up with their old mops and brooms to hook up with Swiffer, or the rejected cleaning tools sending flowers in an attempt to woo back their former owners. All the commercials frame women’s relationships with cleaning tools like relationships with boyfriends who are/aren’t meeting their needs. Some of them have involved the woman and the mop in couples therapy, too.

I mentioned in my Dr. Pepper Ten post that I actually like that company’s product, and I feel the same way about Swiffer. And although my husband usually cleans the floors in our home, I’m still the one who buys a majority of the products we use. Swiffer has succeeded in pissing me off and alienating me with this ad campaign to the point that I’m basically finished with their products. It’s yet another example of a company’s humor gone wrong, outdated gender roles, and the assumption that customers will just accept sexism as the norm. Nope. Not here. It doesn’t take much effort to replace a company’s product that has no respect for its customers (and that just makes horrible ads).

Question of the Day: Favorite Female Filmmaker?

One of my favorite kinds of posts to write–although we haven’t posted very many of them yet, and very few people ever comment on them–is the Director Spotlight. (If you haven’t already, check out spotlights on Allison Anders, Kathryn Bigelow, Jane Campion, Sofia Coppola, Tanya Hamilton, Nicole Holofcener, Deepa Mehta and Agnes Varda.) While the posts themselves are fairly cut-and-dry, I always enjoy focusing on a woman who makes (or who made) movies and learning about her filmography.
Though most of the women we’ve profiled are already fairly successful, I also believe these posts do a service: more female filmmakers should be household names (think for a moment about all the male filmmakers who are), and by calling attention to them, maybe a few more people will know them as such.
We can all agree that if more women make films, and if these women get more attention, depictions of women in all forms of media has a chance of improving over time. So, in the spirit of celebrating women who make movies comes today’s question:

Who are your favorite female filmmakers?

Preview: ‘Alice Walker: Beauty In Truth’

You can help Alice Walker: Beauty in Truth by donating to its Indie GoGo campaign.

“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” 

–Alice Walker.

I’m excited to learn about a new documentary in the works about Alice Walker, the first Black woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Literature (for The Color Purple), from Kali Films. Information about the film and its preview have been making their way around the blogosphere, but we hope you’ll learn more if you’re not already familiar.
The filmmakers have an Indie GoGo campaign to fund the completion of the film; they are 85% through, but need to raise a total of $50,000 more (they have currently raised over $15,000 of their goal).
Here’s more about the film from the fundraising site:
ALICE WALKER: BEAUTY IN TRUTH has been 4 years in the making. During this time we have most definitely rolled up our sleeves, put our heads down and dedicated ourselves to getting this film out in the world by any means necessary. On this ever eventful journey, we have been joined by some truly committed and amazing people who share our vision to tell this inspiring story of hope. We have got this far with the help of generous donations from individuals, grants and awards, major extensions on our personal credit cards and most recently filmmaker support from ITVS. We have now completed 85% of the filming and are working towards the completion of a rough cut.

The filmmaking team is award-winning filmmaker Pratibha Parmar and producer Shaheen Haq. 

[…]

Alice Walker’s dramatic life has been lived in a spirit of resistance and grace. Born in 1944, in a paper-thin shack on a cotton plantation, the eighth child of sharecroppers in rural Georgia, her early life unfolded in the midst of violent racism and poverty in the segregated South. Her poor, black, Southern upbringing and her activism in the civil rights movement in Mississippi in the 1960’s greatly influenced her consciousness and shaped her writing. Being forced to ride at the back of the bus, and watching her parents being brutalised by racist segregation, instilled in her a life long commitment to justice and equality. In 2010, Walker was awarded the LennonOno Peace Award for her humanitarian work by Yoko Ono, another visionary and a risk-taker.

Watch the trailer:

Alice Walker: Beauty in Truth – Trailer from Kali Films on Vimeo.

If you can afford to, we encourage you to donate to this important project. If not, please help them by spreading the word about the film.

Director Spotlight: Deepa Mehta

Deepa Mehta

Indian-born and Canadian-based writer and director Deepa Mehta has gained international acclaim and numerous awards and nominations for her films. She is probably most famous for her Elements Trilogy, which includes the films Water, Earth, and Fire. Her latest project is an adaptation of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, which she is directing and adapting with the author.
I’m currently working my way through the trilogy, with plans to write a piece about the films in the not-too-distant future. Her work tends to deal with the experience of Indian women, both in their home country and as immigrants. If you’re not familiar with Mehta’s work, I strongly recommend checking her out. Here is a selection of her feature-length films.

Heaven on Earth (2008)
Heaven on Earth is Mehta’s most recent film. It won awards from the Chicago International Film Festival and the Dubai International Film Festival, along with several other nominations, including two from the Director’s Guild of Canada. I haven’t yet seen it, but here is the description from the film’s official website:
When Chand (played by Bollywood superstar Preity Zinta) arrives in Brampton, Ontario to meet her new husband, she leaves behind a loving family and supportive community. Now, in a new country, she finds herself living in a modest suburban home with seven other people and two part-time tenants. Inside the home, she is at the mercy of her husband’s temper, and her mother-in-law’s controlling behaviour.

After a magic root fails to transform her husband into a kind and loving man, Chand takes refuge in a familiar Indian folk tale featuring a King Cobra.

Watch the trailer:

Water (2005)
Although the final film in her Elements Trilogy, Water was the first one I saw. In addition to being a beautiful film, I learned something about Indian culture in the time of the rise of Mahatma Ghandi, and a practice that segregates widows from society that continues even today. There was a good bit of controversy in the making of the film, which took Mehta some seven years to complete–due, in part, to moving the filming to a different country and recasting its leads (be sure to check out the Director’s Statement for more on the story). Water was nominated for a Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award, won numerous other awards, and garnered even more nominations. Here’s the description from IMDb:
In 1938, Gandhi’s party is making inroads in women’s rights. Chuyia, a child already married but living with her parents, becomes a widow. By tradition, she is unceremoniously left at a bare and impoverished widows’ ashram, beside the Ganges during monsoon season. The ashram’s leader pimps out Kalyani, a young and beautiful widow, for household funds. Narayan, a follower of Gandhi, falls in love with her. Can she break with tradition and religious teaching to marry him? The ashram’s moral center is Shakuntala, deeply religious but conflicted about her fate. Can she protect Kalyani or Chuyia? Amid all this water, is rebirth possible or does tradition drown all?

Watch the trailer:

Bollywood/Hollywood (2002)
Somewhat lighter fare, Bollywood/Hollywood is a comedy of marriage, tradition, and identity. Here is the description, again from IMDb, as I couldn’t find an official film site for this one. (If anyone knows of the site, please leave it in the comments and I’ll update the post!)
After Rahul’s white pop-star fiancée dies in a bizarre levitation accident his mother insists he find another girl as soon as possible, preferably a Hindi one. As she backs this up by postponing his sister’s wedding until he does so, he feels forced to act, the more so as he knows his sister is pregnant. But it’s a pretty tall order for an Indian living in Ontario, so when he meets striking escort Sunita who can ‘be whatever you want me to be’ he hatches a scheme to pass her off as his new betrothed. Things get complicated when his family start to take to her and he realises his own feelings are becoming rather stronger than that.

Watch the trailer:

Earth (1998)

Earth is the second film in Mehta’s Elements Trilogy. The film seems to have won only a single award, and is based on Bapsi Sidhwa’s novel, Cracking India. Released in India as 1947: Earth, the film chronicles the division of India and Pakistan. From a plot summary on IMDb:

This story revolves around a few families of diverse religious backgrounds, namely, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, and Parsi, located in Lahore, British India. While the Parsi family, a known minority in present day India, are prosperous, the rest of the families are shown as struggling to make a livelihood. Things change for the worse during 1947, the time the British decide to grant independence to India, and that’s when law and order break down, and chaos, anarchy, and destruction take over, resulting in millions of deaths, and millions more rendered homeless and destitute. In this particular instance, Shanta is a Hindu maid with the Sethna (Parsi) family, who is in love with Hassan, a Muslim, while Dil Navaz loves Shanta, and wants her to be his wife, she prefers Hassan over him. This decision will have disastrous effects on everyone concerned, including the ones involved in smuggling Hindus across the border into India.

Watch the trailer:

Fire (1996)
Fire, the first film in the Elements Trilogy, is the one set in most recent times. It won numerous awards, including Audience Choice at various film festivals. The film was banned in Pakistan, and later in India for “religious insensitivity” and the depiction of a lesbian relationship. 
Here is a brief description from Amazon (but for a more in-depth take read Burning Love from the Bright Lights Film Journal):
Fire is the first film to confront lesbianism in a culture adamantly denying such a love could ever exist. Shabana Azmi shines as Radha Kapur in this taboo-breaking portrayal of contemporary India and the hidden desires that threaten to defy traditional expectations. In a barren, arranged marriage to an amateur swami who seeks enlightenment through celibacy. Radha’s life takes an irresistible turn when her beautiful young sister-in-law seeks to free herself from the confines of her own loveless marriage and into the supple embrace of Radha.

Watch the trailer:

Mehta’s films not mentioned here include Sam & Me, Camilla, The Republic of Love, and more.

You can read previous Director Spotlights on Allison Anders, Kathryn Bigelow, Jane Campion, Sofia Coppola, Tanya Hamilton, Nicole Holofcener, and Agnes Varda, and a Quote of the Day on Dorothy Arzner.

Quote of the Day: Andi Zeisler

Andi Zeisler, Co-Founder of Bitch Magazine
In The B-Word? You Betcha., published in the Washington Post in 2007, Andi Zeisler, co-founder of Bitch Magazine, discussed the choice of title for the magazine and the cultural significance of the word “bitch.” The piece was published during the 2008 Democratic primary, when the term was routinely applied to candidate Hillary Clinton, as a term of derision and as a compliment (Tina Fey’s Saturday Night Live Weekend Update segment comes to mind, in which she declared “bitch is the new black” and “bitches get things done”). Still, the word remains controversial, and one that many people choose not to embrace. With respect to those people, we do embrace the term.

Here’s Zeisler on the word “bitch:”

People want to know whether it is still a bad word. They want to know whether I support its use in public discourse. Or they already think it’s a bad word and want to discuss whether its use has implications for free speech or sexual harassment or political campaigns.

[…]

So here goes: Bitch is a word we use culturally to describe any woman who is strong, angry, uncompromising and, often, uninterested in pleasing men. We use the term for a woman on the street who doesn’t respond to men’s catcalls or smile when they say, “Cheer up, baby, it can’t be that bad.” We use it for the woman who has a better job than a man and doesn’t apologize for it. We use it for the woman who doesn’t back down from a confrontation.

So let’s not be disingenuous. Is it a bad word? Of course it is. As a culture, we’ve done everything possible to make sure of that, starting with a constantly perpetuated mindset that deems powerful women to be scary, angry and, of course, unfeminine — and sees uncompromising speech by women as anathema to a tidy, well-run world.