American Horror Story: Coven

“You Can’t Sit with Us”: Witchy Girl Gangs and Covens

Underwritten in this claim of selfhood, however, is a larger message. Each of the films and the TV series, to varying degrees, promote individuality over conformity. Eventually, each teaches viewers the importance of being true to yourself and avoiding the pitfalls of group mentality. …Each manifestation of the girl group trope proposes an affirmation of self-esteem, non-conformity, independence, and individuality.

This guest post written by Michelle Mastro appears as part of our theme week on Women in Horror.

The volume of films exploring the hazards of “girl world” is quite robust. Before the comedy Mean Girls there was cult classic Heathers, a darker satirical vision of teenage girl strife. Rounding out the cinematic landscape between these pillars of classic girl-on-girl warfare set in the average American high school are numerous other examples from Never Been Kissed to Jawbreaker. In fact, so hackneyed is the trope of female-centered cliques that if it isn’t treated as part and parcel of teen comedies as a genre, it is almost always at least a minor plot point. Yet horror films and television series grapple with themes inspired by catty drama and gossip as well, only the aesthetics are different to align better with their genre. In these iterations of the girl clique trope, girl gangs become covens, and the power of gossip is transformed into charms and incantations.

Swapping out girl gangs and cliques for covens is as easily done as replacing “witch” with that other not so nice pejorative term for women. In the TV series American Horror Story: Coven, for example, Fiona Goode (Jessica Lange) toys with both words, calling one of the school’s meaner pupils a “little witch bitch.” In that same episode, she takes the band of squabbling girls on a field trip through New Orleans, telling them all beforehand to “wear something black.” The show aired on Wednesdays, prompting fans to coin the phrase, “On Wednesdays we wear black,” another play on words, only this time in reference to Mean Girls. One of the frequently quoted lines from the film includes the “Plastics”’ rules about hump day association and uniformity: “On Wednesdays we wear pink.” The writers of AHS: Coven and fans alike got the joke: girls in groups can be mean — mean like witches.

This, of course, might seem like a sexist reading of girl friendships — and it would be even more understandable to question the show’s depiction of gender given how female sexuality is portrayed and its problematic depiction of race. Yet, given that women, historically, could only maintain their social status through heteronormative marriage — through their connections to men — it would make sense that the young women might begin to view each other as competition. In high school, who dates whom really matters, and thus the high schools of the films are more or less stuck in a time warp. Their cafeterias, the place of social gathering, are where romantic attachments are forged. The dining hall perfectly figures as a sort of Regency court of King George III, where marriages mattered to one’s social superiority. Social status dictated how close courtiers got to sit near the king. Terrifyingly, the king’s friendship could help produce advantageous marriages or dissolve them entirely. Thus, the more popular the girl in Mean Girls, the closer she resides near Regina George. She usually forbids more readily than she grants unions, however, and her despotic rule feeds much of the clique’s cattiness.

Which begs the question: why would these characters hang around each other at all? On the surface, each school clique offers a certain amount of protection. In AHS: Coven’s case, if the girls don’t band together, they will face assaults from outsiders. “If witches don’t fight, we burn,” says Fiona to the students. In Mean Girls (written by Tina Fey), the point of being in the Plastics is somewhat similar, though obviously not nearly as dire. For protagonist Cady Heron (Lindsay Lohan), lunchtime at the cafeteria posed as a minefield full of aggressive cliques, and not being a member of any group at first, she found herself the butt of jokes, a social outcast forced to eat alone in a women’s bathroom stall. Better to have fun at the expense of others with the Plastics in their “Burn Book” than get burned oneself. The same conclusion is proposed near the beginning of The Craft and Heathers. Sarah (Robin Tunney) in the former joins her clique more out of necessity than anything else, whereas Veronica (Winona Ryder) in the latter participates in spiteful pranks on fellow students, even though she questions the group’s methods and is quick to claim her own name in a gaggle of Heathers, stridently affirming: “I’m a Veronica.”

In The Craft, when the girls catch a bus together, they all wear dark sun-glasses and nearly identical fashions, precursors of the pink Plastics and black-draped New Orleans witches, not to mention references to the shoulder-pad loving Heathers of the 1980s. Each group of young women has made their own clique, but within each group, conformity is essential. What’s worse, the supposed protection proffered by The Craft’s coven in the form of casting spells is as spiteful as participating in any girl gang gossip. Both hurt and have unforeseen consequences. Sarah learns to be careful about what energy she puts out. “Whatever you send out, you get back threefold,” she is counselled. She casts a spell to get back at football player Chris Hooker (Skeet Ulrich) for spreading lies that the pair had sex. After the spell, he becomes her lapdog, but his obsession quickly turns violent. Apparently, her intention behind the spell was wicked, and the results matched. Although Sarah was right to seek justice, her spell was framed in a way that could only elicit revenge, a much more volatile act that inflicts a cost on both parties, although this in no way means that she deserved nor brought on herself slut-shaming or attempted rape. In AHS: Coven, one of the girls, Madison (Emma Roberts), is gang raped. She uses her magic to kill the boys, but also murders an innocent guy in the process. Her actions will come back to haunt her, as all the witches’ poor decisions inevitably do. Madison becomes more and more heartless as the series progresses, symbolized by an actual heart condition preventing her from ever serving as the coven’s leader. “The only good or bad is in the heart of the witch,” Lirio (Assumpta Serna) tells the girls in The Craft. Cady in Mean Girls arrives at a similar realization. The Burn Book of the Plastics is photocopied and dispersed among the students, and Cady will have to find a way to take back her words. It is too late, of course, just like in Sarah’s case. In The Craft, Lyrio tells her: “When you open a flood gate, how can you undo it? You unleash something with a spell. There is no undoing; it must run its course.” The mistake each of the girls all made was attempting a kind of vigilante justice — really a type of revenge.

The Craft is a cult classic that impacted many women due to its representation and messages of empowerment and “taking back the threat of female power.” In the oral history of The Craft at Entertainment Weekly, producer Douglas Wick said he “was curious about the phenomenon of girls marginalized in a man’s world who suddenly come into their sexuality and have this enormous power.” Actress Robin Tunney said, “Somehow it still speaks to everybody’s inner teenage girl.” In her Vulture article on The Craft‘s legacy, Angelica Jade Bastien writes:

“Witchcraft is more than mere teenage rebellion for these young girls. It’s a means to attain what at first glance appears unattainable: power, control, autonomy, the ability to live beyond the various oppressive forces that govern their lives. […] These girls, each in their own way, is calling out for something women learn early and often is hard to attain: the power to control your own life.”

Yet the girls’ friendship ultimately turns toxic and destructive, demanding conformity over individuality.

Sarah, Veronica, Cady, and the girls from AHS: Coven learn painful lessons. Words and spells cannot be taken back and cannot be undone, and the girls prove more powerful in their individuality. In The Craft, Sarah realizes her friends’ coven is organized more like a petty club and her fellow witches are just as spiteful as the young women and men they sought vengeance against. Veronica realizes she cannot undue the harm she has caused; she cannot bring back the kids she helped to murder. And Cady learns that being “personally victimized by Regina George” does not give her license to become another queen bee. Each of the protagonists find strength in themselves. Sarah is called a natural witch, for unlike the other girls, her “power comes from within.” After Sarah’s coven disperses, all the girls lose their magical powers except Sarah. Veronica and Cady, meanwhile, end their films with the promise of never allowing any future cliques to form in their respective high schools ever again. Or at the very least, they won’t conform to what others say; they will listen to their own moral compass. In AHS: Coven, the ruling mean girls Madison and Fiona have been ousted as well. And the rise of a new headmistress, Cordelia (Sarah Paulson) brings with her the promise of beginning the school afresh. Past mistakes will not be repeated, she informs the press, revealing the school to the world.

In this way, each manifestation of the girl group trope proposes an affirmation of self-esteem, non-conformity, independence, and individuality. The chilling and ominous tales about teenage witches invoke and summon the moral of their comedic cousins, warning female viewers against resentment and revenge, while encouraging them to always “do unto others as they would have done unto them.” What might seem like an allusion to Christian doctrine is, in fact, the basis of many beliefs, even Wiccan practices. “[I]t’s part of a basic spiritual truth. Said in many ways in many faiths,” Lirio says matter-of-factly. Spells, like gossip, will come back “threefold.”

See also at Bitch Flicks:

Girl Gangs Are Mean: Teenage Girl Gang Movies Through the Years

20 Years of The Craft: Why We Needed More of Rochelle

American Horror Story: Coven: Gabourey Sidibe’s Queenie as an Embodiment of the “Strong Black Woman” Stereotype

Exploring Bodily Autonomy on American Horror Story: Coven

I’m a Veronica: Power and Transformation Through Female Friendships in Heathers

Veronica Decides Not to Die — Heathers: The Proto-Mean Girls

How Should a Show about Witches Be?

Michelle Mastro is a graduate student at Indiana University, Bloomington’s English PhD program. She loves all things horror, and to her, autumn is the greatest season not just for Starbucks pumpkin spice but for the availability of horror film marathons on TV — of which she watches plenty.

How Should a Show About Witches Be?

It seems in Hollywood, you can’t talk about women without talking about witches.

This is a guest post by Kaitlyn Soligan.

If “Women in Television” has a unifying theme of the moment, it is this: Everybody Wants a Witch. American Horror Story, Witches of East End, Salem, and HBO’s new Jenji Kohan project The Devil You Know are only the latest instances in recent years of television venturing deeply into witchy woods, with decidedly mixed results. Besides a litany of recent shows devoted solely to Magical Women and Where to Find Them, witches also play various parts in the plethora of supernatural and fantasy shows on television right now; witches are featured in main or recurring roles on Supernatural, The Vampire Diaries, and Grimm, among recent others. More general mainstream fare, including Outlander, Pixar’s Brave, and even the upcoming Avengers: Age of Ultron have fantastical elements and crucial plot points that include or revolve entirely around witchy women. It seems in Hollywood, you can’t talk about women without talking about witches.

Historically, witches have been everything from women who speak their mind to women who own property. Witches have been men who supported women or wouldn’t back down from an argument; witches have been those with a more fluid gender expression or characteristics that failed to fit neatly into an acceptable box on medical forms. Witches have been those with a race or ethnicity that differed in any way from that of those around them, particularly when they occupied the space they did as a result of forceful intervention and colonization. Witches have been the poor and disenfranchised and unlucky. Witches have been sexually powerful and enviable, wealthy and confident; occasionally, witches have been anyone who accused someone else of being a witch, when the tides quickly turned and luck was unsettlingly re-distributed. Witches have those with a faith that differed even slightly from the dominant one of the place and time, including, at intervals, Jews, Pagans, Wiccans, practicers of Hoodoo, and those with basic medical knowledge or an interest in science, among others.

Witches are in the very fabric and nature of gender and queerness and the margins we live in. So if “the season of the witch” just won’t end, how, exactly, should a show about witches be? How about this: Womyn-centric. Gender queering. Aware of race and ethnicity and faith and their role and lived reality in any particular time and space. Deeply intersectional and examining of those aforementioned spaces in the context of that intersectionality. And, without reservation and above all else: totally, joyfully bonkers.

Recent attempts to bring witches to the mainstream have succeeded and failed in almost equal measure. American Horror Story: Coven, created by an out gay man, had a sense of camp about it that harkened back to The Witches; it had something of the horrible feminine in those early images of Kathy Bates smearing her face with blood, of what women will do for power when power is ferociously limited by age and desire; it had some notion to examine race and its implications in magic and magical portrayals. Unfortunately, it also had an abhorrently mishandled rape scene in the first episode, and, whether for fear or incompetence, neither asked the right questions about race nor answered any at all.

Salem, while certainly a missed opportunity to examine the actual Salem witch trials, which were consumed by all of these questions and more, also has camp, gore, and a gleefully nuts sexuality going for it. Witches – both men and women – are everywhere among the good townspeople, who are painfully repressed and not particularly good. The devil is real and holding massive orgies in the woods. Two witches seduce a man, pin him down, and force-feed him a frog. One witch feeds the frog nightly from an extra nipple. Pure insanity abounds.

Also, Salem is pretty gross. — Also, *Salem* is pretty gross.

What Salem and so many other shows that feature witches gets painfully wrong is race. The character of Tituba is weak and jealous, and, as one of the only characters with implications of queerness, leaves us with a jealous almost-lesbian who practices a weirdly racialized magic as the sole character of color on the show. While plenty of other characters are similarly messy or even mishandled, having the entire diversity of the cast rest on that one token portrayal makes Tituba’s mismanagement unconscionable as well as flat-out uncomfortable. Moreover, Tituba actually is a fascinating historical figure, and deserves some of the dignity of the woman herself, whose story is one of dislocation and survival in an extraordinarily dangerous time.

Surprisingly, Lifetime’s Witches of East End’s sometimes diverse cast handled the intersection of race and magic well – to a point. One early character was an African American librarian who thought magic was a fun game of pretend and was the incidental victim of real magic gone wrong, as was a brief romantic lead who became a ghost (obviously). A later romantic interest for one of the main characters was a badass warrior witch that resulted in a few episodes that explored a magical, interracial same-sex relationship of equals, making those traits incidental and the relationship itself about commitment and ego and family. The cast on the whole was diverse in a laid-back way that really worked, until a storyline about an ostensibly Caribbean witch fell into a trap earlier laid by historical misrepresentation, AHS: Coven, Beautiful Creatures, and many others: magic was suddenly racialized, with the Caribbean witch doing dark “blood magic” with bones and powders that was nothing like the ostensibly “better” or cleaner magic practiced by the white leads.

You can feel the sexual tension radiating off of this photo, and these two weren’t even the ones sleeping together.

Aside from the sadly typical mishandling of representation, Witches of East End had some of the things one would hope for; certainly bonkers, sexual, funny, community and family oriented, it also had a messy, sometimes defiantly non-existent narrative structure that in and of itself queered television – if only by making it almost unfollowable, requiring the viewer to give up on the notion of neat boundaries and control.

It’s this new Jenji Kohan HBO vehicle that shows the most promise and gives audiences the most to hope for in terms of what genre-bending things a show about witches could bring to TV. Kohan has headed the excellently written and extremely diverse Orange Is the New Black, proving that she gets women and deliberately women-centric spaces in television. That show also did some cool things with narrative structure, partly as a way to bring an audience in through a typical white-girl-fish-out-of-water point of entry and then go to different, much more interesting places. That cast gave us the unbelievably fabulous Uzo Aduba. The Devil You Know offers similar cause for excitement. It’s full of less-knowns who’ve shown enormous potential, particularly Zawe Ashton, who was part of the weird and moving Dreams of a Life, a queer kind of cinematic endeavor in and of itself, and better-knowns like Karen Gillan, a movie star and genre favorite in her own right as well as a badass action star who shaved her head for a role. Most significantly, the cast includes Eddie Izzard, simultaneously a seriously phenomenal dramatic actor and one of the greatest stand-up comedians in the world, who once explained to a reporter, “Drag means costume. What I do is just wearing a dress.” And all of these moving pieces will be on HBO, the venue that brought us True Blood, which was, for all its problems, queer, dark, funny, extremely sexual, and absolutely, joyfully, bonkers.

Witches are an energetic reality; like ghosts, monsters, and loneliness, they wouldn’t have such a deep psychological pull if they weren’t. We examine these things because they obsess us and keep us awake at night; we examine these things because they are an unquantifiable, intangible, undefinable reality, but a reality all the same. Witches have been terrified victims, sexual beings, rich women trapped in penthouse apartments and more; all of this is so. But what witches do has been and is another matter entirely. Witches upend: dreams, homes, lives, whole villages and cities. They make us uneasy. They steal outright: babies from cradles, men from beds; they take quietly in the night: crops, a sense of security; they give: love potions, stories, endless wonder. They pervert and fascinate beyond measure.

Witches have been wild and untamable for all of recorded human history, and for as long as we’ve had the written word, from The Brothers Grimm to Arthur Miller to Bewitched to Buffy, hardly a storyteller hasn’t tried to tame them. It’s time to stop trying. Let loose the beasts. They won’t promise not to hurt you, but if rumors or true, they will show you a hell of a good time.

Kaitlyn Soligan is a writer and editor from Boston living in Louisville, Kentucky. She writes about that, and bourbon, at www.ivehadworseideas.com. You can follow her on twitter @ksoligan.

“I’m Not Bad, I’m Just Drawn That Way”: The Exceptionally Beautiful Anti-Heroine

And if you’re anything like me, every reader of this site wants the same thing: to see more portrayals of women on film, televisions, and beyond that reflect their complexities, strengths and weakness alike. We want a greater range of body types, a greater representation of lifestyle choices, a broader world of occupations and skill sets and backstories and destinies.

This guest post by Jessica Carbone appears as part of our theme week on Unlikable Women.

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” This expression is meant to remind those who hear it not to conflate a beautiful face with a beautiful soul. However, when it comes to starring roles for women on television, the most important tool an actress can bring to the table is traditional, indisputable beauty. Why is this so valuable? Because from a storyteller’s perspective, it’s the perfect narrative loophole—if your main character is physically gorgeous, no matter what horrendous moral or criminal violations she might commit, viewers are still going to be hungry to see her on screen. Some newer anti-heroines deliberately break this mold (see Hannah Horvath on Girls), and we should be happy about that—whether she’s the hero or the villain, a female character can be much more than eye candy. But a beautiful actress unlocks some very interesting plotlines in the modern television writer’s rooms, and with the rise of the antiheroine, a woman on television can now get away with murder—literally and figuratively. But to do that, she can’t just be smart, funny, and fierce—she’s also got to be HOT.

just a few of the pretty TV heroines who escaped criminal punishment for their murderous deeds over the last decade. From left to right, Blake Lively as Serena van der Woodsen, Gossip Girl; Evangeline Lilly as Kate Austen on Lost; Tatiana Maslany as Sarah Manning from Orphan Black — Just a few of the pretty TV heroines who escaped criminal punishment for their murderous deeds over the last decade. From left to right, Blake Lively as Serena van der Woodsen, *Gossip Girl*; Evangeline Lilly as Kate Austen on *Lost*; Tatiana Maslany as Sarah Manning from *Orphan Black*

A pretty girl on television has never been an oddity—but it used to be easier to know that the attractive lead character was virtuous, just as the mustache-twirling side character was the villain. But with the first appearance of Tony Soprano, a violent gangster we could root for, writers began to craft all main characters as internally conflicted and morally compromised, crime-fighter and criminal, mama bear and femme fatale. (See Dexter, Hannibal , and Mad Men for more of this archetype). Audiences are willing to tolerate a lot from male antiheroes, partially because of historical precedent—as men have traditionally been in power, we expect our leading men to wield their power both for good and evil. But a good woman who goes bad? That prototype is sexy and revolutionary as hell—and we see that reflected in the constant shaping of the beautiful villainess, a woman who gets by being bad because she looks so good doing it. To be a woman aware of and in control of her sexuality is to be newly powerful, potentially dangerous, and thus, perfect material for the perfect anti-heroine.

The introduction of Weeds, a half-hour comedy about a pot-dealing widow, shone a whole new light on the suburban femme fatale, especially one who comes into her own by way of her criminality and who, newly single and newly living a life of crime, gets to be a fully sexualized force of nature. Nancy Botwin (played by the radiant and ballsy Mary-Louise Parker) would do anything to keep her upper-middle class lifestyle in check—be it selling dime bags to teenagers, collaborating with a Mexican drug cartel, or romantically tie herself to any number of criminals (a fraudulent DEA agent, the murderous mayor of Tijuana, a sleazy insurance magnate). Through everything, Nancy kept her family safe with her sexuality—even in the first season, Nancy has sex with a competing dealer to defend her territory. In many ways Nancy acts as though she’s invincible—something she believes because society confirms her ability to pass unnoticed through the criminal underground. When you’re an attractive prosperous white woman in a world dominated by impoverished non-white men, it’s easy to escape because you don’t look like a criminal. And yet Nancy’s good at her job because she’s selling herself as part of the product. Hell, Snoop Dogg even names her product “MILF weed,” because its delightful effects are exactly like Nancy. What makes Nancy an admirable yet deeply troubling anti-heroine is that she doesn’t mind being objectified in order to get what she wants—sometimes she even embraces it, because it’s an effective method of negotiation. In Season 3, she literally shakes her moneymaker to get a brick of product from another dealer.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtlElBLg354″]

Nancy does the brick dance

What starts as a dance of awkward desperation very quickly becomes something fun for her—another moment for Nancy to hold all the cards, and get what she wants.

While Nancy discovers her powers of seduction on Weeds, many of our best antiheroines stride into view fully aware of their desirability. Fiona Goode, of American Horror Story: Coven, is a new version of the Wicked Queen prototype, updated and empowered for a 21^st century kind of sexuality and MILF-status. As portrayed by the eternally flawless Jessica Lange, Fiona is the reigning Supreme (head witch) of the Salem coven, a inherited title passed down to a witch who shows mastery of her craft (which includes the power of concilium, mind-control, often demonstrated as flirtation and coercion) as well as blossoming health and beauty. Power and beauty are inextricably linked in Coven, and so Fiona is obsessed with her looks, to the point where she tries to sell her soul to a voodoo spirit to guarantee “life everlasting—no aging, no decrepitude, forever.” Fiona knows exactly how powerful beauty is, because she’s wielded it from a very young age—at age 17, she killed the reigning Supreme so she could claim the title, and given that the lone witness was in love with her, she had someone to cover up the crime (and future crimes as well). Fiona’s desire to eliminate all competition is strengthened by her love affair with the Axe Man, a murderous ghost who can be summoned to do Fiona’s bidding. (All the men on Coven are sidekicks or love interests, never once dominating the storyline, and that’s radical all by itself.) Whether Fiona is actually in love with the Axeman is unclear, but one thing is for certain—Fiona’s best weapon throughout her life has been her beauty and desirability. Whether or not the writers of Coven stand behind Fiona’s deeds, there is no question that she holds the screen, as well as all the other girls in the coven, in her thrall—when you hand a role like this to Lange, it comes a performance that’s part camp, part feminist tour-de-force, and you can’t help but admire it, even when she slaughters everyone in her wake.

"Who's the Baddest Witch?" — “Who’s the Baddest Witch?”

It’s one thing to wield beauty deliberately, to bend the universe to your will the way Nancy and Fiona can. But can a beautiful anti-heroine ever accidentally wield this power? Even with intelligence, ingenuity, and fearlessness to wield, does beauty become the most defining characteristic of an anti-heroine?

The last thing a real anti-heroine wants to be is a “damsel in distress,” and yet Olivia Pope, Scandal ’s most morally messed-up “gladiator,” is constantly finding herself in scenarios where being an object of lust is the only thing that will actually rescue her. Olivia Pope (played by the fiercely intelligent Kerry Washington) conceives of herself as a hero, a champion for the underdog, someone who “wears the white hat” and has an unfailingly good gut sense of right and wrong. But whatever ivory, bone-white, or champagne-colored hat she wears, Olivia is almost never championing the underdog. In fact, for the first two seasons of Scandal, the vast majority of her clients are powerful people needing a “fixer” to protect their image. And what better champion to call upon then, than a woman who is all perfect surface and no moral core? True, Olivia is constantly calling people out on their vile actions, but very often she is speaking more to the Scandal audience (or to her adoring employees) than to the actual person needing a shakedown. Yet Olivia is never punished for this hypocrisy because, as the series progresses, she is primarily valued for her beauty and the influence it wields—specifically, on the men who can’t resist her. But she never fully understands what that power means.

[youtube_sc url=”http://youtu.be/iJ3UBneiB9I”]

Fitz and Olivia

We know that Shonda Rhimes writes brilliant, passionate women of all orientations, races, ages, and life experiences. (We’ll be thanking her for Cristina Yang for years to come.) The development of the Rhimes heroine prototype makes for better and better television, and there’s no question that Olivia is part of that tradition—but she’s also a setback. Because every time she is imperiled, every time it looks like she will finally receive some comeuppance for any of the multitude of crimes she has committed, there’s a guy who loves her ready to swoop in and protect her. What the show does by making Olivia so desirable is actually reduce her exceptional qualities, and treats her more like a cardboard damsel in distress. (Unlike Fiona and Nancy, Olivia doesn’t suffer from the same delusions of untouchability, and that’s a byproduct of knowing just how hard she’s had to work as a black woman—class and race are a huge yet currently unexplored part of the Scandal storyline.) And while we’d like to say that Olivia’s love interests are merely incidental (and make for great soapy plotting), you could practically write a drinking game around what I call the “Pope” test. (Take a drink for any scene where two men talk to each other for more than a minute about someone other than Olivia. That’s one sober hour of television.) If Olivia really is claiming to choose herself, you’d think that would also mean choosing to take back the conversation about her own beauty, and what it can do. But instead of reckoning with that power, she constantly tries to throw it off, to disregard it or dismiss it as unimportant. And that doesn’t make her look strong—it makes her look naïve.

[youtube_sc url=”http://youtu.be/twNxmKU-jcI”]

Start at 0:52

So when we talk about television’s anti-heroines, which would we rather have—women behaving badly who are also, conveniently, beautiful? Or women who go full anti-heroine, knowing that they can be pretty when they need to? Making a female protagonist unaware of her own power, wherever it comes from, neuters her strength as a character. If Nancy didn’t know that she could get away with being a drug dealer, she’d never discover how much she could fight her own battles. If Fiona hadn’t known she was beautiful, she never would’ve become supreme. When will Olivia sit up and realize just how much she can take control of the men in her life, and use or discard them as she needs to? Rhimes has said repeatedly that she never intended Olivia to be a role model, that she “has always been an antihero,” and maybe that’s true. But maybe Olivia needs to realize that she might not be bad at the core, but being drawn that way sure makes being bad easier. And taking ownership of her sexuality, her allure, her ability to draw people in and make them love her isn’t a sign of weakness—it would be a sign of self-knowledge, and a new coat of armor. Just ask Amazing Amy. Or Cersei Lannister. Or Six.

Cersei Lannister, Six from BSG, Rosamund Pike as Amy — Cersei Lannister, Six from *BSG*, Rosamund Pike as Amy

Of course, it does pain me to think that we need more beautiful villainesses, more femme fatales, more female bodies on screen to ogle over and objectify. Haven’t we had enough of that? And if you’re anything like me, every reader of this site wants the same thing: to see more portrayals of women on film, televisions, and beyond that reflect their complexities, strengths and weakness alike. We want a greater range of body types, a greater representation of lifestyle choices, a broader world of occupations and skill sets and backstories and destinies. But if we’re going to ask for more valid portraits of strong women, we also have to validate more sources of power—and maybe in looking at television’s most beautiful antiheroes, we have to consider the value of beauty as a legitimate weapon, used for both good and evil. When it comes to my nightly viewing schedule, I’d rather have lots of beautiful girls acting out across the moral spectrum than simple pretty ingénues any day.

Jessica Carbone spends her days researching food history and editing cookbooks, and her nights writing film, television, and literary think pieces for The Rumpus, The Millions, and The Los Angeles Review of Books, among others. She lives in Washington, D.C.

Recommended reading:

From The Artifice, “Olivia Pope as modern antihero”

From Complex, “the women of American Horror Story: Coven rewriting male-dominated television”

From Flavorwire, “Just Because There’s No Tony Soprano doesn’t mean we can’t have female antiheroines”

‘AHS: Coven’: Gabourey Sidibe’s Queenie as an Embodiment of the “Strong Black Woman” Stereotype

Firstly, a definition of sorts: the myth of the “strong Black woman” is loosely defined as a Black woman who is emotionally hardy to the point of feeling no pain. She is never fazed or hysterical. She is cold and calculating. She has no personal needs or desires and doesn’t complain. She can take a beating and come out on the other side unharmed. This is supposed to be seen as a good thing. Black women are “so strong” that no amount of abuse will break them. They will always keep plodding on. “Strong black women” are superhuman.

This guest post by Cate Young previously appeared at her blog, BattyMamzelle, and is cross-posted with permission.

Last week, I read a great article by Nichole Perkins on Buzzfeed that talked about the way the character development of the leading ladies of both Scandal and Sleepy Hollow were working toward dismantling the harmful depictions of “strong Black women” in media. It was a great read, and I loved that someone else shared my conclusions about Olivia Pope’s characterization.

What stuck out to me however, was Perkins’ characterization of Gabourey Sidibe’s character Queenie on American Horror Story: Coven as a negative embodiment of the “strong Black woman” stereotype. She says:

Then there is Gabourey Sidibe as Queenie on American Horror Story: Coven, a “human voodoo doll” whose supernatural power is the inability to feel pain, even as she inflicts said pain onto someone else. […] These Strong Black Women feel no emotional pain, tolerate severe physical trauma with no reaction, and menace others with stone faces.

I love American Horror Story: Coven. But even though I had immediately made the connection to the racialized violence against Black bodies this season, I hadn’t picked up on Perkins’ perspective of Queenie as an SBW. After seeing the episode “The Replacements,” I not only vehemently agree with her, I also want to expand on her observations.

Immediately, we can see the issues with this so-called “positive stereotype.” It paints Black women as unfeeling, and incapable of emotional pain. It justifies abuses perpetuated against them as “not as bad” because “they can take it.” In essence, it makes Black women a target for “warranted” violence, because the belief is that said violence will not affect them.

Now, on Perkins’ original point, AHSC‘s Queenie is a Black witch (superhuman) whose magical power is to literally injure herself without feeling pain. The only way she is able to inflict pain on other people is to inflict it on herself first. Her suffering is part and parcel of her experience. And yet, she feels no pain, therefore hurting her isn’t really hurting her is it? She can take it! With Queenie, Ryan Murphy has conceived of a character that is the literal embodiment of a harmful stereotype.

That’s not all. In “The Replacements,” Fiona Goode (Jessice Lange) appoints the racist Madam LaLaurie (Kathy Bates) as Queenie’s personal slave as punishment for her bigotry. LaLaurie is openly racist towards Queenie and uses every opportunity she can to demean her, and “remind her of her place” even though their “traditional roles” have been effectively subverted. Queenie takes it all in stride until she realizes who exactly LaLaurie actually is and recalls her reputation for torturing her slaves.

Later though, the minotaur that LaLaurie created comes back to haunt her, sent by former lover Marie Laveau (Angela Basset). Terrified, LaLaurie begs Queenie to protect her. The very same woman who she said wasn’t worthy to be served at breakfast, should put her own safety on the line to save her. And she DOES. Despite all of LaLaurie’s ill treatement, Queenie still feel compelled to protect her against the present threat. This plays into ideas about Black women being in service to white women, but never equal to them. Think The Help and Hilly Holbrook‘s “Home Health Sanitation Initiative.”

The other major issue I had with this episode was the presentation of Queenie’s sexuality. Queenie is presented as being the only one unworthy of love or sex. Early on, we learn that Queenie is the only virgin in the house. Later she tells LaLaurie that she is fat because “Dr. Phil says that kids from broken homes use food to replace love,” indicating quite explicitly that love is not something she feels she as access to. After confronting the minotaur to save LaLaurie, she offers to have sex with him as she masturbates:

You just wanted love, and that makes you a beast. They called me that too. But that’s not who we are. We both deserve love like everybody else. Don’t you want to love me?

So, not only is Queenie not worthy of love or sex, the only love/sex is entitled to is from a literal beast. And let’s not even get into the demonization of black sexuality by literally and figuratively turning a Black man into a beast. Queenie’s sexuality is degraded as being less than, a fact that she seems aware of. She is so “desperate and deranged” that she loses her virginity to an animal.

The use of the word “we” is significant to me also. Not only does Queenie see the minotaur as a beast, she sees herself as one too. She has internalized the idea that her blackness correlates to bestiality, and has now literally given into that characterization. The fact that she sees herself as equal to an animal that is subhuman and that that idea isn’t challenged in any way is a very problematic and racist way to portray black sexuality.

There is a lot of anti-Black sentiment tied up in Queenie’s character and it makes me uncomfortable and unhappy. It could be argued that half the story is about a racist slave owner who was renowned for her cruelty, and so anti-Blackness is to be expected in the narrative. But in my opinion, not enough is done to subvert those stereotypes. Having Fiona declare that she hates racists simply isn’t enough if every interaction of Queenie’s upholds the existing status quo. It is a disservice to have a talented actress like Sidibe, who has already been heavily maligned because of her weight, be characterized in a way that reinforces ideas about why she isn’t suitable for better more complex roles in Hollywood.

This isn’t the first time that AHS has had a problem with women. The show has a long history of disempowering women through rape, so it’s not surprising that it would also have a problem with Black women specifically. But to play into deeply racist ideas about Black womanhood is unsettling to me in a completely personal way. Having Queenie be characterized as a superhuman beast who is unworthy of love is a powerful message to send in a world rife with anti-Blackness where #stopblackgirls2013 can trend for an entire day. I can only hope that the rest of the season gets better.

Cate Young is a Trinidadian freelance writer and photographer, and author of BattyMamzelle, a feminist pop culture blog focused on film, television, music, and critical commentary on media representation. Cate has a BA in Photojournalism from Boston University and is currently pursuing her MA in Mass Communications so that she can more effectively examine the symbolic annihilation of women of colour in the media and deliver the critical feminist smack down. Follow her on twitter at @BattyMamzelle.

Death by Stereo: Innocence Lost in ‘The Lost Boys’

‘The Lost Boys’ is a classic 1980s vampire flick directed by Joel Schumacher. It is as famous for its soundtrack as it is for its content. The entire film in fact is exemplified in its main theme–“Cry Little Sister,” by G Tom Mac–from the typical horror themed sections to its classic 80s rock moments down to its choral moments. These sections sum up the film almost perfectly.

This guest post by Bethany Ainsworth-Coles appears as part of our theme week on Movie Soundtracks.

Spoilers Ahead

The Lost Boys is a classic 1980s vampire flick directed by Joel Schumacher. It is as famous for its soundtrack as it is for its content. The entire film in fact is exemplified in its main theme–“Cry Little Sister,” by G Tom Mac–from the typical horror themed sections to its classic 80s rock moments down to its choral moments. These sections sum up the film almost perfectly.

The film itself seems pretty simple; Lucy (and her two sons Michael [Jason Patric] and Sam [Corey Haim] move to Santa Carla to live with Lucy’s dad in Santa Carla. However, Michael falls in with a bad crowd and is seduced into being a vampire by David (Keifer Sutherland), the pack’s leader. There is of course more to it than this (a pair of vampire hunters, a small child, and a generic love interest), but that’s the main gist.

“Cry Little Sister” links to this film perfectly, the way only the best movie themes do. I’m organizing this article in three subtitled sections, which employ quotes from “Cry Little Sister” in relation to parts in the film.

“Love Is With Your Brother”–Homoeroticism and Forgotten Women

In an article about The Lost Boys it would be a travesty to dare forget the amounts of male bonding and homoerotic tension. The vampires and their culture in particular is shown in this light with the androgynous (and gorgeous) David, the supposed leader of the gang as they steal and kill people to feed. He also seduces Michael into drinking the blood, thus beginning his transformation into a vampire. This is an interesting twist on the female seductress trope as seen in most vampire movies. This twist is best summed up Jeff Allard in his review: “Typically (especially today in our Twilight world), either Michael or David would’ve been written as a girl but in The Lost Boys you’ve got a male bringing another male into the fold.”

This is certainly true if we look at typical vampire stories–e.g. Edward turns Bella in Twilight, Dracula turns Lucy Westernra in Dracula, etc. The victim is often the woman and is seen as weak and inferior; by subverting this, Schumacher includes not only an equal playing field but also huge amounts of sexual tension. Especially as in most vampire novels, films etc. the transformation into vampire is often treated incredibly sexually. While this isn’t the first time a man has turned a man into vampire (Anne Rice’s Interview With a Vampire, which is also homoerotic) it is a very interesting occurrence that should not be avoided. David even takes him to his first feed on human blood.

The women throughout this are mainly forgotten and depicted in two major roles: the sister or the mother. All the boys share a bond shown throughout the film. Through the vampires themselves, who are the “sons” of Max (Edward Hermann), to the actual brothers of The Frogs (Corey Feldman and Jamison Newlander) and of course are main brothers Sam and Michael. Most of the story revolves around Michael’s betrayal of Sam from trying to attack him when the first gets too great. Sam chooses to help him and save him from the Frogs’ vampire killing obsession. This is shown equally in the song “Cry Little Sister” with “love is with your brother,” which repeated several times throughout the song, reinforcing its importance in the piece.

“The Masquerade, Strangers Will Come”–Broken Families

Whilst brotherhood may be a strong point in the film, families themselves are not shown to be as sturdy. Lucy has had a messy divorce, which is the reason she and her boys have moved to Santa Carla. They themselves despite their non-functional new lives get along well and cracks only appear when Lucy dates Max and Michael becomes half vampire. However, this family is not the most interesting of the families. It’s not even the Frog family, who we only see very briefly as a whole unit.

It has to be Max and the boys. Max is the head vampire but has lost control of his boys and is longing to find them a mother, a role he thinks Lucy would be just perfect for. He does genuinely love his boys though, especially when as he walks into the house the final time he sees David’s body.

However, this twisted family image also encapsulates the portrayal of women. During this film, both Star and Lucy take on maternal roles. Lucy, of course, is already a mother, and Star looks after Laddy (the child half vampire). They are both shown to be manipulated by the vampires into becoming family members and helping the group.

“Thou Shall Not Fall”–Innocence Lost

“Cry Little Sister” features a large section of choral vocals repeating religious-type phrases sung by what sounds like children. These are used to great effect during the final scene, where David is impaled and killed by Michael. During this section, once he is impaled, his face slowly regresses back to a child and how he was before he was turned into a vampire thus showing him as an innocent young boy rather than a dead monster. David’s death accompanied by “Cry Little Sister’s” faded choral section singing “thou shall not die” gives the audience just a glimpse of who he was before Max transformed him, probably like Michael against his will. The audience is presented with the horrible truth that David and all the vampires were just missing children shunned by their leader. In death for both David and Marko (Alex Winter, who is the first to be killed and youngest of the boys) they are taken back to being lost children.

“Cry Little Sister” is the perfect song for a fantastic horror movie. Whilst the movie certainly isn’t flawless, it really is an excellent take on the vampire genre (plus who in their right mind doesn’t like teen vampire with cool hair, leather jackets and motorbikes who lives in an abandoned hotel?). They are living the twisted teenage dream and the soundtrack portrays that perfectly.

Recommended reading: Boomer Beefcake and Bonding’s analysis of subtext in The Lost Boys

Bethany Ainsworth-Coles is a young writer from England who enjoys overanalyzing things and watching films. She tweets over at https://twitter.com/wierdbuthatsok.

Becky, Adelaide, and Nan: Women with Down Syndrome on ‘Glee’ and ‘American Horror Story’

Characters with physical or developmental disabilities are rarely given prominent roles on television ensembles, much less well-developed characters. ‘Glee’ and ‘American Horror Story,’ TV shows created by Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk, both feature important characters with Down Syndrome and have received much praise for it. However, the mere existence of these characters is not enough to suggest they are well portrayed and in each character there are several questionable areas that warrant discussion.

Characters with physical or developmental disabilities are rarely given prominent roles on television ensembles, much less well-developed characters. Glee and American Horror Story, TV shows created by Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk, both feature important characters with Down Syndrome and have received much praise for it. Glee’s Becky Jackson and AHS’s Adelaide Langdon and Nan are all portrayed as flawed women and are allowed their own inner lives, desires, and triumphs.

However, the mere existence of these characters is not enough to suggest they are well portrayed and in each character there are several questionable areas that warrant discussion. Though one must take this criticism with a grain of salt, as Glee is a surreal over-the-top comedy where everyone is made fun of to a degree (though has been consistently problematic in its portrayal of women, the disabled, bisexuality and transwomen, among others) while American Horror Story is literally a horror show, where nearly everyone suffers and dies and indulges in many horror movie cliches–among them the child-like prophet and the martyr.

Becky

Becky Jackson (Lauren Potter) was introduced in Glee’s first season to as a means to character development for the show’s previously one-dimensional villain, Sue Sylvester. She was a shy, young girl with Down Syndrome, a social outcast who just wanted to be a cheerleader.

When Sue put her through a rigorous audition process, viewers and Glee Club leader Will Schuester assumed this was yet another of Sue’s cruelties. Obviously Sue was just torturing this girl for her own amusement with no hope of her actually making the squad, but this assumption was proved wrong when the show revealed that she reminds Sue of her sister Jean, who also has Downs.

Sue tells Will she is treating Becky just like everyone else because that’s what she wants and from then on Becky is a Cheerio, Sue’s constant sidekick and assistant and frequently recurring character.

Becky also continues to aid in the development of Sue’s character, as she becomes her voice of reason, being the the only one who can criticize Sue’ behaviour and talk to her on her level without fear of retaliation. For example, when Becky learns that Sue’s baby will likely have Downs, she is able to tell Sue that she needs to work on her patience to be a good parent. Becky functions as Sue’s heart and when Sue is shattered by her sister’s death, she expresses her grief by casting aside the only other thing that made her human, and kicks Becky off the Cheerios. Their bond is restored when Sue welcomes Becky back to the squad and promotes her to captain, after realizing how much it helps her to have Becky in her life.

Becky and Sue have a strong relationship that gives Sue humanity and Becky, a role model

However, for Becky, her relationship with Sue results in the loss of her own personhood. In a relatively short length of time, Becky gives up any other interests or ambitions she had and becomes a miniature version of her hero, Sue (even dressing her for Halloween). For most of the show, Becky is Sue’s mouthpiece, echoing her criticisms and opinions and making snarky and frequently offensive comments in the same manner that Sue is known for. She even shares Sue’s grossly inflated sense of self worth and importance (Helen Mirren is her inner voice) and heckles and sabotages other students when given the opportunity.

For brief period, it was fun that Becky could be as mean and snarky as almost all the other characters, but as the show dragged this on to become Becky’s defining characteristic, it become patronizing and unfunny. Becky is not portrayed as an otherwise ordinary teenage girl with interests in sex and blue humour but as low comedy, like a child swearing. The joke wasn’t what she was saying but that she was saying these kind of things at all.

Becky is disturbingly infantilized as Baby Jesus in the school’s nativity scene

In addition, Becky is constantly prepositioning other characters and making crude sexual comments about them. She lusts over the Glee Club’s Men of McKinley calendar and claims ownership of one-time date, Artie Abrams when she sees him kissing his girlfriend, calling him her future husband. However, none of her attractions are treated as valid. When she pays for a kiss at a kissing booth run by quarterback Finn Hudson, he kisses her on the cheek; when she and Artie bond over their disabilities on their date, he breaks up with her after she asks him to “do it” with her (in an alternate reality where Artie never went out with her, Becky became “the school slut”); and when she seems to find happiness with Jason, who also has Down Syndrome, she claims the relationship couldn’t work because he liked hot dogs and she liked pizza. By hypersexualizing a character who is treated as humourous for having a sexual desire and never considered as a viable romantic option, she is also desexualized and infantilized, treated like a child who doesn’t understand that (from the narrative’s perspective) the conventionally attractive characters aren’t interested in sleeping with her and she’ll never be prom queen.

There have been two particularly problematic plot lines featuring Becky in Glee’s recent seasons, both which could be essays in their own right. In season four’s much-maligned Shooting Star , Becky brings a gun to school because she fears the world outside the safe bubble of McKinley High, suggesting individuals with Down Syndrome are unstable and dangerous. In season five episode, Movin’ Out, frequent misogynist Artie decides to “save” Becky and helps her find a college with programs for people with developmental disabilities, something she hadn’t considered previously. While this recent story has a positive message about Becky’s future and her abilities, the fact that another character, one who she stalked after he rejected her, imbues it with the same patronizing dynamic found in much of the plot lines featuring Becky.

Adelaide

The first episode of American Horror Story: Murder House opens in 1978 with Adelaide Langdon, a young girl with Downs ominously warning two boys they will die if they go into the titular house. In the next scene, her warning comes true.
As an adult over 30 years later, Adelaide (Jamie Brewer) continues to given warnings, frightening the Harmon family who have just moved into the house, next door to where she lives with her mother Constance (Jessica Lange). Though she is well meaning and friendly, her warnings are constantly misconstrued as threats due to her creepy habit of starring unblinking and appearing out of nowhere in the Harmon house.

Addy’s mother Constance is relentlessly cruel to her

Being a character on a horror television show, Addy’s Down Syndrome is used to frame her as an uncanny figure, an other in the style of Tod Browning’s Freaks. In horror or gothic media, the uncanny is something that is familiar, yet strange at the same time, producing an unsettling and comfortable feeling, such as identical twins, mutes or people with developmental disabilities. Seemingly, Addy is able to enter the house whenever she desires, no matter what barriers are in her way, suggesting a magical, otherworldly aspect of her character. Her Down Syndrome alone is meant to produce discomfort in the viewer, manipulating them into wondering if she is evil or will, even unthinkingly, harm the family, for no other reason than that she is so othered.

Raised to believe she is an ugly monster who should keep out of sight, Addy wants nothing more than to be “a pretty girl” and mourns that she doesn’t look like the women in her fashion magazines. Her mother frequently insults her, calling her a burden and a ‘mongoloid’ and reinforcing over and over that Addy’s dream will never happen. Cruelly, Constance punishes her by locking her in the “Bad Girl Room,” a closet full of mirrors, further reinforcing Addy’s monstrous self-image.

As punishment, Addy is terrorized in a closet full of mirrors, where she is forced to see her face

Addy’s story ends sadly on Halloween when she is hit by a car and killed. Here, the show’s treatment of Addy continues to be problematic as it tries to have it both ways, portraying her as both something to fear and as an object of pity, a tragedy for viewers to mourn. When Addy dies she is wearing “a pretty girl” Halloween mask and just minutes before, she was ecstatically happy to finally be the person she’d always wanted, even if it was only in a small, temporary way. Like Sue, Addy is also used to humanize a bigoted character, as Constance, who caused most of the problems in Addy’s life puts makeup on Addy’s corpse and cries while telling her she’s “beautiful.” This suggests that Addy’s purpose in the narrative was chiefly to facilitate Constance’s character development, rather than a storyline or a life of her own.

Dressed as a “pretty girl” Addy is hit by a car and killed on Halloween

Nan

Unlike Adelaide, whose story is presented as a tragedy centered around her Down Syndrome, Nan’s condition is never mentioned but subtly informs how she is treated by the narrative and the other characters. A young clairvoyant on American Horror Story: Coven, Nan (Jamie Brewer) is in most ways, portrayed as a normal girl. She admires the hot neighbor with her classmates, joins in on their catty comments and using her powers for cruel, teenage girl teasing (trying to make Madison put her cigarette in her vagina) in a way that doesn’t seem like the joke is that she is saying these things at all.

Nan is however, constantly dismissed even within the group that tacitly includes her (problematically, Queenie who is Black is treated as the real outsider). She is never considered a serious contender in the season long competition to see who is the most powerful witch of her generation, the Supreme, called ugly by Queen Bee Madison and the discovery that the neighbor, Luke is interested in her is treated as unbelievable by other characters.

Nan and Madison (Emma Roberts) compete for the affections of their neighbor Luke

However, sad as it may be, this is probably be an honest portrayal of how such a character would be treated in such an environment full of bitchery and backstabbing over any character flaw or deficit in appearance. Unlike Queenie, whose difference and feelings about her exclusion from the coven’s majority of white witches are explored in detail, Nan’s feelings are glossed over. She is different, but her difference is never examined, so it becomes an elephant in the room.

Like Adelaide, Nan insists she is not a virgin when it is assumed by other characters. She says she has sex all the time and men find her hot, however because the show never gives any background on who Nan was before she came to the school (as is given for all other characters), it is not clear whether this is true. The storyline of her romance with Luke is never able to progress to a romantic or sexual relationship as he is quickly murdered by his mother so he will not reveal her secrets.

Nan is portrayed as the moral center of the school/coven as her power, allows her to see into the hearts of the people around her. She mediates in fights and threatens to tell the police about the baby Marie Laveau had kidnapped earlier. However, Nan has a dark side which is briefly explored when she uses her powers to kill Luke’s mother, by compelling her to drink bleach, as revenge for her murder of Luke.

After her murder, Nan’s spirit looks down at her body and decides to leave the coven

She is ultimately murdered by matriarchs Marie and Fiona Goode, functioning bringing them closer together. Her death is used as the sacrifice of an innocent soul, but it is suggested that Nan had some choice in the matter and decides to leave the coven to destroy each other so she can be at peace. The one bad thing she does, the neighbor’s murder is excused because it was deserved and as she is accepted as an innocent, a soul too pure for this world. In this manner, Nan comes close to the stereotype of the saintly disabled person, and is portrayed as a martyr, the lone character over the season who is never resurrected.

Ultimately, though are three characters discussed here have problematic and debatable qualities, both in their personalities and in the way they are framed by their respective narratives, they offer unique portrayals of women with Down Syndrome. If nothing else, they are all prominent characters who are treated as people rather than public service announcements in major television shows. Hopefully they are seen as steps in the right direction.

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Elizabeth Kiy is a Canadian writer and freelance journalist living in Toronto, Ontario. She recently graduated from Carleton University where she majored in journalism and minored in film.

Exploring Bodily Autonomy on ‘American Horror Story: Coven’

From the get go, female sexuality in Coven is positioned as dangerous, sometimes deadly and something that people will try over and over again to control. In the first episode, a young witch, Zoe Benson, comes to the knowledge of her powers by accidentally killing the boy she chooses to have her first penetrative sexual encounter with, one of the few fully consensual sex acts we see on Coven. She literally kills a man with her vagina. The message that female sexuality is dangerous if not deadly is hammered home with the language Cordelia uses to welcome Zoe to the school for witches. The other girls claim that Cordelia wants them to suppress their witchy powers, and she responds, “Not suppress–control.” She expresses the idea that their powers are dangerous unless they are strictly controlled. This is not a subtle metaphor for the repression and control of women’s bodies and sexuality.

This is a guest post by Gaayathri Nair.

The horror genre is not commonly kind to women. It has a tendency to rely on violence against women for cheap thrills and is notorious for positioning women as passive objects. Ryan Murphy and Brian Falchuk have claimed that American Horror Story: Coven is an explicitly feminist season of American Horror Story. Previous seasons of American Horror Story have attempted to address sexism and misogyny in the horror genre. However, both American Horror Story: Murder House and American Horror Story: Asylum relied heavily on both the objectification of and violence against women as a plot device.

There are definitely cool things about Coven. The core cast is made up entirely of women, and each one of them is richly developed and three-dimensional. Overall, the show is deliciously complex and there are many plotlines that attack certain issues in an interesting way. One of the key concerns of Coven appears to be bodily autonomy, both in terms of gender and race, and many of the storylines can be read as explorations of the issues surrounding bodily autonomy. I think that the first episode of Coven serves as a great microcosm for how the show handles these issues so I will focus my analysis on that while bringing in content from later episodes where relevant.

Coven opens in 1834 New Orleans in the house of Madame Delphine LaLaurie, a real historical figure. She is having a dinner party and over the course of the dinner party we are introduced to the fact one of her daughters has her eye on Bastian, a house slave. Later that night, La Laurie’s nighttime ablutions are interrupted by her husband telling her that during the dinner party her youngest daughter Pauline had sex with Bastian. What follows next is horrifying. La Laurie abuses Pauline physically and verbally and then says, “You know what we’re gonna say? We’re gonna say that he took you by force like the savage he is.” Bastian pleads his innocence stating that “Pauline came on to me and I told her I belong to someone else.” Bastian is a helpless victim in a power game being carried out by two white women. Bastian is taken upstairs to La Laurie’s torture chamber where she says, “Bastian, if you want to act like a beast then we’re gonna treat you like one.” She then proceeds to place a bull’s head over his own and turns him into a Minotaur, the literal embodiment of racist assumptions about black men–part man part beast. The whole scene is thick with imagery that calls to mind the myth of the black buck or brute .

The scene works well at subverting the myth as Bastian’s clear innocence is juxtaposed with LaLaurie’s depravity. The other slaves in the attic have been horribly tortured and when one of them asks her, “Why are you doing this to us?” La Laurie flippantly replies, “Because I can,” once again reinforcing the power structures at play. It is thought that between 1865 and 1895 approximately 10,00 black men were lynched, ostensibly for the crime of raping white women, although only about one third of these people were actually accused of rape and those who were, were mostly in consensual relationships with white women. Bastian has no bodily autonomy; he is completely at the mercy of the white women who own him. Pauline uses his body because she can and Delphine dehumanises him because she can. It illustrates the truth about the destructive racist myths that surround black men that they are just that–myths. Black men have much more to fear from whiteness than the other way round.

From the get go, female sexuality in Coven is positioned as dangerous, sometimes deadly and something that people will try over and over again to control. In the first episode, a young witch, Zoe Benson, comes to the knowledge of her powers by accidentally killing the boy she chooses to have her first penetrative sexual encounter with, one of the few fully consensual sex acts we see on Coven. She literally kills a man with her vagina. The message that female sexuality is dangerous if not deadly is hammered home with the language Cordelia uses to welcome Zoe to the school for witches. The other girls claim that Cordelia wants them to suppress their witchy powers, and she responds, “Not suppress–control.” She expresses the idea that their powers are dangerous unless they are strictly controlled. This is not a subtle metaphor for the repression and control of women’s bodies and sexuality. She emphasises that the world they live in is dangerous and they must protect themselves as best they can by only using their powers in tightly controlled situations.

Coven’s exploration of the repression and control of female sexuality falls down for me later on in the episode where there is a graphic depiction of a drugging and gang rape of one of the young witches. Madison Montgomery is a character who appears to be modeled on Lindsay Lohan–a once successful film star whose career has become overshadowed by substance abuse problems and her eccentric behaviour is drugged and gang raped by frat boys who film the attack on their phones. This is obviously meant to call to mind the Steubenville case.

Madison sizzles on the screen; she is sexy, confident, and aggressive. It is unsurprising, from an analytical perspective, that she is the one who is raped. The manner in which it happens and her interactions with the instigator before the fact, where she commands him to go get her a drink, makes it seem like she is being punished for her confidence and sexual availability by being drugged and raped by a pack of frat boys. This ultimately serves to support rape culture narratives. I cannot see anything subversive about this story arc. Madison gets her revenge when the frat boys try to escape on their bus by using her telekinetic powers to flip it over–killing most of them. I think the writers view this as the ultimate feminist payback fantasy, especially as Madison is the quintessential imperfect rape victim, one who would be unlikely to ever see justice through the court system.

There are some positives; for example, it is made exceedingly clear that it is the frat boys who are at fault. However the damage is done, regardless of intention the show reinforces, not subverts the myth that only “bad girls,” i.e. girls that have sex on their own terms and dress provocatively, are the ones that get raped. This flies in the face of the truth about rape–that it is something that can happen to any woman regardless of her dress or demeanour. The show does get one thing right: drug-facilitated rape is one of the most common forms of rape, but that type of rape doesn’t just happen to sexually aggressive beautiful girls.

Rape culture positions women generally (because of the impossible standards) but “bad women” in particular as being deserving of or asking for their assaults. While we know that it is the frat boys who are at fault, the juxtaposition of Madison’s actions with the rape creates a certain subtext. If only she was nicer, if only she wasn’t so rude and arrogant, this would have never happened to her. The lead frat boy clearly wanted to take her down a peg. At its core, the whole story arc serves to reinforce rape culture tropes. Furthermore, the depiction of the gang rape is deeply disturbing, cutting between Madison’s point of view and the rapists. It is fundamentally objectifying and serves to glamorise violence against women.

These lessons about female sexuality are followed through in later episodes, particularly episode three where Queenie, the only fat and black witch that lives in the house, attempts to seduce the Minotaur that has been sent by Marie Laveau, the voodoo practitioner, to attack the witch school in episode three. She winds up being attacked; we don’t know exactly what happens to her but it is severely debilitating. Once again a woman who was, perhaps problematically, trying to own her sexuality is punished for it. Queenie also equates herself as a fat black woman as something analogous to Bastian the Minotaur–society sees them both as something monstrous. I can’t decide if presenting this actually subverts or supports the idea. Fat women generally and fat black women in particular are constantly dehumanized in our society and this scene could be read as purely reinforcing that; at the same time it holds up an uncomfortable mirror to the world we live in. Queenie is not being mocked or used for laughs, she is expressing her sadness at the way the world sees her. The fact that the words are coming from Queenie’s own mouth makes them a powerful indictment of a world that treats women like her as less than human. At the same time, Queenie is just another sad fat chick reinforcing dominant narratives about fatness. At least Queenie is not a “sassy black woman” a trope that confines most fat black women in pop culture.

Another way in which Coven explores bodily autonomy and sexuality is in how ageing affects women. It speaks to the way in which women of a certain age are made invisible in our society. Jessica Lange’s character, Fiona, is the supreme, the most powerful of all the witches and therefore their leader. Over the course of the season we learn that a new supreme is rising and that means her power is waning. In the first episode we are treated to the sheer desperation she feels. She pays a doctor to give her experimental treatments that have never been used on humans, and her anxiety is more pronounced with each moment she is on screen. When the injections do not work she resorts to sucking the life force out of the doctor and killing him. This gives her what she craves for about a minute. Delphine La Laurie also goes to extreme lengths to preserve her youth using blood and pancreases harvested from her slaves to make a poultice to keep her young.

The portrayal of these two women is very much wrapped up in the male gaze. A large part of what is making Fiona unhappy is that she no longer gets the attention she craves, especially from men, and in Delphine’s case her need to keep the roving eye of her husband is reinforced throughout the season. These women reveal the obsession with youth and beauty that is forced upon women, but Coven fails to truly capture the ways in which these are societal expectations–not ones that are innate to women on their own. Delphine and Fiona are evil or morally complex in their own ways and the dire lengths they go to for youth and beauty are just another expression of their ruthless natures. The idea of the “vain sorceress” is as old as Snow White and I was a little disappointed to see it play out in Coven. A fixation on youth and beauty is not something that makes women evil; it is something that is pushed on to women by a culture that only values women for their youth and beauty, no matter what other qualities they might have. Women’s bodily autonomy is constrained by the narrow social roles that are enforced upon us.

The failings of Coven are unsurprising considering it is a mainstream television show in the horror genre. I think that a pro-woman intention has tangled with the male gaze to create a product that both supports and subverts misogyny and is as objectifying as it is empowering. I have to give Murphy and Falchuk credit for creating a vehicle for so many talented women and giving them interesting and nuanced storylines. My hope is that things only get better from here.

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Gaayathri Nair is a freelance writer and feminist activist. You can find more of her work at her blog A Human Story and on twitter as @A_Gaayathri.

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

Check out what we’ve been reading this week–and let us know what you’ve been reading/writing in the comments!

Women Writers Week: Table of Contents at RogerEbert.com

10 Best Female-Centric Biopics by Nina K. Guzman at Bust

Mapping the Margins of Middle Earth by Camille Owens at Bitch Media

Watch ‘Adama’ – 55-Minute Film About 16-Year old Muslim Girl Mysteriously Tagged A Suicide Bomber by Emmanuel Akitobi at Shadow and Act

The Hunger Games’ Gender Role Revolution by Sarah Seltzer at RH Reality Check

Gabrielle Union talks about BET’s Being Mary Jane and being a black woman in Hollywood by Deneen L. Brown at The Washington Post

Fire and Ice: On Box Office For Films With Women as Protagonists by Carrie Rickey at RogerEbert.com

Heroines of Cinema: An A to Z of Women in Film in 2013 by Matthew Hammett Knott at Indiewire

Manic Pixie Dead Girl: Why I’m Done With TV Shows by Jessica Valenti at The Nation

A Renaissance of Female Characters: We’re ‘Broads, Dames, Girls and Bitches’ (Guest Column by Alex Borstein) at The Hollywood Reporter

No, 2013 Was Not The Year Of “The Black Movie” by Shani O. Hilton at Buzzfeed

Earth to Hollywood: People Will Pay to See a Female Superhero Film by Kathryn Funkhouser at The Atlantic

American Horror Story: Coven is getting race all wrong by Sesali Bowen at Feministing

Five Memories From My Year of Watching Women by Alyssa Rosenberg at RogerEbert.com

The Hollywood Reporter’s 2013 Women in Entertainment Power 100 at The Hollywood Reporter

Geena Davis’ Two Easy Steps To Make Hollywood Less Sexist (Guest Column by Geena Davis) at The Hollywood Reporter

Five Reasons to Love Beyoncé, The Feminist Work in Progress by Jamilah King at Colorlines

5 Reasons I’m Here for Beyonce’, the Feminist at Crunk Feminist Collective

That Time Beyonce’s Album Invalidated Every Criticism of Feminism EVER by Christina Coleman at Global Grind

Eat the cake, Anime: On White Cluelessness (and Beyoncé) by Alexander Hardy at the colored boy.

OBVIOUS CHILD: a 2014 Sundance World Premiere! (fundraising at Kickstarter)

What have you been reading/writing this week? Tell us in the comments!

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

This week we’ve been reading about how an actress prepares for violence in a film, women directors, the common flaw of TV’s strong women, and more. Tell us what you’ve been reading and writing this week in the comments!