Ang Lee – Bitch Flicks

‘Sense and Sensibility’: Sister Saviors in Ang Lee’s Adaptation

On first glance, it may well appear that the film follows the usual trappings of the romance genre, in which the young women eventually marry the men that they love, who fortuitously possess more than ample funds to elevate them and their families from poverty, thereby “saving” them. …If we delve a little deeper into Lee’s adaptation it becomes clear that the sisters are not saved by the men they marry, but rather by each other, and multiple times throughout the story.

This guest post written by Melissa-Kelly Franklin appears as part of our theme week on Sisterhood. | Spoilers ahead.

Much is made of the erotic undertones of recent adaptations of Jane Austen’s work, particularly the wildly popular BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice directed by Andrew Davies, and so it is easy for one of Austen’s most prevailing and insightful themes to be forgotten. Austen is deeply interested in the relationship between sisters and the almost mystical intimacy that stems from it. For Austen’s women characters, this sibling connection is vital in being able to cope with all the trials that family life, social circumstances, and a patriarchal world casts in their direction.

Amidst the clamor of swooning over Mr Darcy’s wet-shirt and Pride and Prejudice’s subsequent pop-cultural appropriations, the importance of the friendship between the eldest two Bennet sisters can sometimes be overshadowed. Indeed, the sensation around the “sexing up” of the BBC’s Pride and Prejudice somewhat sidelines the memory of another superb adaptation of the Austen canon, released in the same year: Sense and Sensibility. Emma Thompson’s Oscar-winning adaptation of Austen’s novel, beautifully directed by Ang Lee in his English-language debut, focuses on the relationship between sisters Elinor and Marianne, not only to highlight their divergent personalities and thus the “sense” and “sensibility” of the title, but how necessary the sisters are to each other’s survival.

The family of wealthy Dashwood women find their fortunes irrevocably altered on the death of their father, whose home and fortune legally passes to his eldest son from a previous marriage and his selfish, insensitive wife. The four women are left without a home and a mere £500 a year to live on (to put this into perspective, this translates to roughly £16, 980 in today’s currency — $22, 580 in U.S. dollars — according to the National Archives’ currency converter). By the end of the story, the two eldest sisters are happily married: Elinor (Emma Thompson) to a comfortably-off, kind-hearted gentleman turned vicar, and Marianne (Kate Winslet) to an exceptionally wealthy and honorable colonel.

Some may argue that this preoccupation with handsome, eligible men makes it “fluffy” or even unfeminist. On this point, I agree with Samantha Ellis, who recently discussed the application of the Bechdel Test and why it “doesn’t always work.” She believes it is a useful tool in holding us accountable to creating complex female characters, but it should not be the only way in which we measure gender equity in film — indeed this was never its intended purpose. Ellis asserts that “sometimes women’s conversations about men are feminist”; Sense and Sensibility certainly falls under this umbrella. In the film, women’s survival is inextricably bound to marriage, when legal traditions like primogeniture prevented them from inheriting financial independence, and social propriety prevented them from earning money professionally, as Elinor so eloquently expresses to Edward (Hugh Grant):

“You talk of feeling idle and useless; imagine how that is compounded when one has no hope and no choice of any occupation whatsoever… At least you will inherit your fortune, we cannot even earn ours.”

On first glance, it may well appear that the film follows the usual trappings of the romance genre, in which the young women eventually marry the men that they love, who fortuitously possess more than ample funds to elevate them and their families from poverty, thereby “saving” them. I would argue however, that if we delve a little deeper into Lee’s adaptation it becomes clear that the sisters are not saved by the men they marry, but rather by each other, and multiple times throughout the story.

When considering which sister is the “savior” of the Dashwood family, Elinor immediately springs to mind. The opening scenes in the film reveal Elinor to be a self-contained, capable young woman, holding together a family falling apart at the seams as she navigates the grief of her mother and sisters. While the others are stricken at the loss of their father, Elinor is already pulling herself together and thinking pragmatically about their physical survival, comforting her mother and even initiating her youngest sister Margaret (Emelie Françoise) into the realities of their situation.

The importance of Elinor’s capability in this situation cannot be overstated: she is the only one of the women who fully grasps the finer details of their financial situation. In a private meeting between Marianne, Elinor, and their mother as they search for a new home, the widowed Mrs. Dashwood (Gemma Jones) suggests a small manor house, which is certainly a down-size from their expansive home Norland Park, but Elinor has to remind her that it is well outside what they can afford on their small stipend. Even after they move to the tiny Barton Cottage which is to become their home, Elinor monitors the housekeeping expenses with even greater vigilance, even cutting “beef as well as sugar” from their already meager diets. Without Elinor’s practicality, the Dashwood women may well have found themselves in even more dire circumstances.

As much as Marianne relies on her eldest sister’s good sense to ensure her immediate survival, Marianne’s spirited nature provides Elinor some respite from the gravity of the path that lays before them. Where Elinor would politely hold her tongue at their sister-in-law’s money-grubbing behavior, Marianne refuses to surrender her family home without highlighting the injustice at every opportunity. Marianne is appalled at Fanny’s request for the key to the silver cabinet for example, and rather than keeping her candid remarks between herself and Elinor, she pointedly throws the question across the breakfast table the next day: “How was the silver? Was it all genuine?” Elinor sweeps in to change the subject to something more appropriate, but one cannot help but wonder if she sometimes wished she had Marianne’s free-spirited belief in not “hiding her emotions.” Further to this point, Marianne is an important confidante for Elinor: teasing, probing and encouraging her to open up about her feelings for Edward. The confidences the sisters share when alone become an imperative cathartic release from the social restraints of the day, particularly for the propriety conscious and emotionally reserved Elinor.

The sister’s relationship, like that of any sisters, is fraught at times: their divergent attitudes towards social propriety and emotional openness sometimes puts distance between them. Marianne laments to her mother that at times she does “not understand” her sister, while Elinor privately confides to Colonel Brandon (played with the perfect combination of sensitivity, warmth and tortured sadness by the late Alan Rickman) that “the sooner [Marianne] becomes acquainted with the ways of the world, the better.” Despite her wariness of the way in which Marianne’s free behavior can “expose [her] to some very impertinent remarks,” Elinor remains unwaveringly loyal to her sister. When Marianne espies her faithless lover Willoughby (Greg Wise) across a ballroom in London, it is Elinor who is by her side, sharing in the indignity of being socially snubbed by him and his wealthy new fiancée, and it is Elinor who catches her sister when she faints (unlike that other version in which Brandon, in a cheesy “hero” shot, catches Marianne while glowering in Willoughby’s direction). In Thompson’s adapted screenplay, Elinor is there for Marianne through every indignity and public embarrassment, without agenda and in spite of her private thoughts on her sister’s past behavior.

Marianne similarly supports her sister in potentially uncomfortable social situations. Despite her public humiliation and unequivocal rejection from Willoughby by letter, Marianne leaves the sanctuary of her room and puts aside her grief to greet Edward — the man she knows Elinor is deeply in love with — when he finally visits them. Marianne’s warmth and friendliness towards him is to both make him feel at ease in their family circle, and show her support for her sister’s choice, whatever her humorous misgivings about his passionless reading and reserved nature she expresses earlier in the film. She selflessly dismisses his questions about her own health and redirects the attention to her sister, insisting “do not think of me, Elinor is well you see? That must be enough for both of us.” Little does she know that Edward is secretly engaged to the other woman in the room, Lucy Steele (Imogen Stubbs), an uncomfortable fact that only she is unaware of. At times, Marianne resents the secret she senses that lurks between her and Elinor and accuses her of hypocrisy when probed for the details of her intimacy with Willoughby: “That is a reproach from you, you who confide in no one.” Elinor replies that she has nothing to tell, but the audience knows she would share the secret if only Lucy had not elicited her vow of silence. Marianne retorts: “Nor I, we neither of us have anything to tell. I because I conceal nothing, and you because you communicate nothing.” However, when the truth comes out, Marianne rallies to her sister’s side, insisting that she for once put her own desires above those of others.

It is not until we see Elinor open up to Marianne as she lays unconscious, begging her to live, that we fully understand that not only does Marianne’s survival depend on Elinor’s practicality and pragmatism, but Elinor’s survival equally depends upon Marianne. In the dead of night, after a day of nursing her sister and the doctor’s warning for Elinor to prepare herself for the worst, Elinor begs her sister to find the willpower to fight for her life. Emma Thompson’s performance in this moment is utterly wrenching; she runs her hand along Marianne’s leg, as if to memorize the details of her beloved sister’s body before gripping her hand. She barely contains the wall of emotion threatening to overwhelm her: “Marianne, try. Please, try. I cannot do without you. I try to bear everything else. Please, dearest. Do not leave me alone.”

The first conscious words Marianne utters after her life-threatening ordeal are, “Where’s Elinor?” which further emphasizes the symbiosis of their lives. Despite their differences and the tensions they create between them, the two sisters could not survive without the succor they provide each other by simply existing, let alone the many moments of tangible support they afford one another when life in many ways, has been unrelentingly hard on them both.

Too often, Jane Austen’s work and its various screen adaptations is dismissed as trivial or thematically narrow; a period “chick flick” chiefly concerned with the pursuit of a husband to save the protagonist and her family from poverty as a result of the evils of primogeniture. It is worth remembering however, that Austen herself was a pioneer in her day as one of the first women to earn a living by her writing. Equally unconventional was her active choice to remain unmarried, after causing quite the local scandal when she accepted and then rejected the proposal of a wealthy neighbor within a twenty-four hour period. She instead chose to live with her beloved sister Cassandra for the rest of her life. Such was the closeness of their relationship, that their mother is reported to have said, “If Cassandra were going to have her head cut off, Jane would insist on sharing her fate.”

Austen’s own experiences of sisterhood make her renderings of sisterly relationships nuanced and detailed. Her works explore the complexity and intimacy of that connection — which may make the relationship fraught at times, but no less vital. Emma Thompson’s screenplay of Sense and Sensibility depicts this beautifully, revealing through Ang Lee’s insightful direction, that the story is much more about sisterhood than it is about romance or finding the right man.

Melissa-Kelly Franklin is an Australian-born, London-based writer and director of independent short films, with an honors degree in English Literature and History. Her feminist period short film Portrait is soon to premiere at international festivals, and she has two other film projects cooking in pre-production. Updates about her work can be found at melissakellyfranklin.wix.com/writer-director/ and she occasionally tweets @MelissaKelly_F.

Pleading for the Female Gaze Through Its Absence in ‘Blue is the Warmest Color’

The female gaze, such as it exists in a world that denies its existence, is an insular one that exists between Adele and Emma as opposed to how the film itself is shot. The film presents the case for the female gaze by examining what happens when it’s withheld.

This guest post by Emma Houxbois appears as part of our theme week on The Female Gaze.

“You guys know about vampires?” author Junot Diaz once asked an audience of college students. “You know, vampires have no reflections in a mirror? There’s this idea that monsters don’t have reflections in a mirror. And what I’ve always thought isn’t that monsters don’t have reflections in a mirror. It’s that if you want to make a human being into a monster, deny them, at the cultural level, any reflection of themselves. And growing up, I felt like a monster in some ways. I didn’t see myself reflected at all. I was like, ‘Yo, is something wrong with me? That the whole society seems to think that people like me don’t exist?'”

This is the starting point of Blue is the Warmest Color, which contends, and grapples with, the fact that depictions of female pleasure by female artists do not exist in art. This condition, this lack of understanding and representation, is what dogs its protagonist, Adele, as she struggles and ultimately fails to achieve a sense of comfort with her queerness. Female pleasure abounds in the film from the explicit sex between Adele and Emma, whose romance the film charts the rise and fall of, to eating, and the particular pleasure of observing and being observed. Adele is sometimes the subject, as she pursues Emma or when they take in an art exhibit, her gaze on the nude female figures constructed by men the focus of the scene, and sometimes she is the object as she poses for Emma’s paintings, the first representational work of her lover’s career.

The English title of the film, the same as the graphic novel it was adapted from, implies an inversion of the normal way of seeing. We’re used to seeing blue as cool, cold, and distant, but the film challenges us to see it as a vibrant and passionate colour the way that it challenges us to reconceptualize the power and passion of queer love. The French title, La Vie D’Adele: Chapitres I & II are heavy with film and literary allusions. To The Story of Adele H, the loose account of how Victor Hugo’s daughter pursued an unrequited love across continents and La Vie de Marianne, a novel left unfinished, suggesting both tragedy and an unfinished quality, which both come into fruition. Adele remains restless and unfulfilled throughout the film as Truffaut’s depiction of Adele Hugo is, but the irony of the reference is that Blue’s Adele is an inversion. Instead of warping the world around her to believe that an unrequited love is genuine, Adele is dogged by the invisible weight of heteronormativity that propels her to hide her relationship and live in a private shame. The female gaze, such as it exists in a world that denies its existence, is an insular one that exists between Adele and Emma as opposed to how the film itself is shot. The film presents the case for the female gaze by examining what happens when it’s withheld.

The problem with the male gaze and trying to uplift or separate a female equivalent from it is that male gaze as a term and concept has shrunk in its application to a narrow didactic interpretation that borders on being universally pejorative. To wit, the simple unexamined usage of the term was thought to be all that was needed to condemn Blue is the Warmest Color by its skeptics, but the use of “male gaze” as a cudgel that immediately translates into prurience and exploitation does more harm than good to the conception of a female gaze not least because it immediately valorizes the alternative, as elaborated on by Edward Snow in his essay “Theorizing the Male Gaze: Some Problems”:

“Nothing could better serve the paternal superego than to reduce masculine vision completely to the terms of power, violence, and control, to make disappear whatever in the male gaze remains outside the patriarchal, and pronounce outlawed, guilty, damaging, and illicitly possessive every male view of women. It is precisely on such grounds that the father’s law institutes and maintains itself in vision. A feminism not attuned to internal difference risks becoming the instrument rather than the abrogator of the law.

[…]

Under the aegis of demystifying and excoriating male vision, the critic systematically deprives images of women of their subjective or undecidable aspects- to say nothing of their power -and at the same time eliminates from the onlooking “male” ego whatever elements of identification with, sympathy for, or vulnerability to the feminine such images bespeak.”

Simply put, the male gaze is not a monolith, and despite the way that the term is used in criticism and conversation, no one actually views film from the position that the male gaze is monolithic or purely informed by patriarchal values. To actually adopt that stance would require the conflation of Kenneth Anger with Quentin Tarantino, among other laughable absurdities. Male-directed film has always found ways to appeal to women on terms other than internalized misogyny, and of course the male vision in film has been frequently mitigated, influenced, or redirected by the work of women in other roles. Tarantino, for instance, is famous for his collaboration with the late editor Sally Menke, whom he sought out specifically for a feminine influence, which is hardly a rare event. Much recent buzz was generated by another female editor, Margaret Sixel, who worked on Mad Max: Fury Road with longtime collaborator George Miller (she edited Happy Feet and Babe: Pig in the City for him). Her contribution has been argued as being integral to the strong female reception to the movie, which, again, runs the risk of valorizing women’s work as being inherently superior.

The problem with strictly gendering the gaze is that it can improperly frame collaborations and essentialize the vision of female filmmakers. Mad Max: Fury Road, as a film, is more than the sum of a male director and a female editor, especially for a narrative so committed to dissecting toxic masculinity from within. So too ought Sally Menke’s work with Tarantino be seen more than just a mitigation, but a cornerstone of Tarantino’s desire to achieve more that what the limitations of his masculinity allow for, especially as the roles of women in his films evolved from non existent in Reservoir Dogs to the complete focus in Deathproof. Perhaps the most intriguing recent example of how a female collaborator transformed the work of a male director was in Gillian Flynn’s adaptation of her own novel Gone Girl for David Fincher, inverting the uncomfortable and frequently malicious male gaze that engenders his work, transferring the web of fear that his female protagonists like The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo’s Lisbeth Salander or Alien 3’s Ripley live in to the male protagonist and through him, the male audience. It’s a synthesis that cannot be easily essentialized into a single gendered gaze.

This is compounded by the fact that male nor female are fixed categories, nor are their desires. How are we, for instance, intended to properly frame the work of Lana Wachowski as a trans woman? How trans women engage with gender in our own lives and through our art cannot and should not be subsumed into a lens defined by the cisgender female experience. Which is only the beginning of how ruinous categorizations of gender in the gaze are on queer film and filmmakers. In comic book criticism especially, lenses of queer male masculinity are frequently co-opted and assimilated into constructions of the female gaze, which has the twin repercussions of narrowing queer male desire to a pinprick of feminized male figures and completely alienating queer female desire. If there are to be productive critical frameworks that utilize “male” and “female” gazes, they must be understood as needing a prism held up to them in order to properly understand the full spectrum of what informs a particular vision. There needs to be an understanding of intersectionality intrinsic to their uses.

On that note, Adele Exarchopoulos and Lea Seydoux, the stars of Blue is the Warmest Color, are the only actors to have been awarded Cannes’ Palme D’Or alongside their director, Abdellatif Kechiche. It was done by a jury made up of Steven Spielberg, Bollywood actress Vidya Balan, Christoph Waltz, We Need To Talk About Kevin screenwriter Lynne Ramsay, Romanian writer-director Cristian Mungiu (whose Beyond the Hills and 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days have tackled themes including queer femininity and access to abortion), Japanese writer-director Naomi Kawase, Nicole Kidman, and Ang Lee. Nicole Kidman, it must be recalled, co-starred in Stanley Kubrick’s erotically charged Eyes Wide Shut with then husband Tom Cruise. Ang Lee’s career as a director has been built almost entirely out of critically lauded portrayals of queerness and eroticism including The Ice Storm; Lust, Caution; Brokeback Mountain; and Taking Woodstock. The crowning of Kechiche, Exarchopoulos, and Seydoux by this jury, Lee and Kidman in particular, ought to have carried with it all the mythic importance of Quentin Tarantino, as head jurist, awarding Chan-Wook Park the Palme D’Or for Oldboy a decade earlier. Instead it’s treated as a footnote. Presumably because in this instance, that jury was more attuned to the nuances of the male gaze than the American critical establishment that presaged its arrival on US soil with cries of exploitation and misogyny.

The Cannes jury made it clear that they wanted to define the film as a collaboration, and I would extend that further to define it as a conversation. At its heart, Blue is the Warmest Color is a film about performances of identity and how the stresses of assimilation can erode and destroy fundamental parts of our being. One of the primary ways that we can perceive Kechiche’s self awareness that his masculinity limits his ability to conceive of and portray female queerness accurately is the insertion of a viewpoint character for him, an Arab actor Adele originally meets at a party thrown for Emma’s artist friends. He asks naive, well meaning questions about their relationship that queer women the world over hear, but understanding that he’s probed far enough or perhaps too far into her life and identity as an interloper, he opens up to her. He tells her about how he’s an actor and he’s just been to the United States, describing New York City in the same way that we dreamily describe Paris. “They love it when we say Allahu Akbar,” he says with a smile, telling her about how there’s always a hunger for Arab terrorists in Hollywood. Kechiche is, himself, Tunisian, and this is his exegesis.

He’s approaching the queer experience from the perspective of the immigrant experience. This is the Adam’s Rib that he proffers up towards the goal of uncovering female pleasure in art. This is the part of himself that he bares in order to justify the depth with which he probes Adele and Emma’s relationship. The clearest way that we see his Arab identity in the film is in the act of cooking and eating, which easily transcends the specific cultural context he takes it from thanks to the intimacy and care with which it’s handled. Cooking is framed as emotional labor, seen most keenly as Adele frets over making Spaghetti Bolognese for Emma’s friends, fretting over it as she serves it. Eating is, except for Adele’s junk food stash, a communal act, the consumption of the emotional labour of cooking as much as the food itself. This merges with queerness as Adele tries oysters, possibly the most yonic food imaginable, at dinner with Emma’s family. Her hesitance and discomfiture with eating oysters despite the welcoming attitude of Emma’s family mirrors the overwhelming tension she’s experiencing in her performance of queer femininity, and the difficulty she’s experiencing in how accepting Emma’s family is of it.

The broader sense of how Kechiche attempts to conceive of queerness through the best available lens at his disposal is how he constructs France’s queer community as a diaspora. He portrays Adele’s budding queerness and her experience of the queer nightlife in much the same way as the child of immigrants might feel overwhelmed and illegitimate by their first exposure to their parents’ native culture. There are certainly parallels between Adele’s entry into the queer community while still in high school and A Prophet’s Malik’s early uncomfortable interactions with the Arab prisoners after having been forcibly assimilated into the ranks of the Corsicans.

Where they differ is that Malik is able to thrive within the group by shedding attachments to the structures that will never accept him while Adele folds under the pressure of maintaining both a queer identity and the public performance of a straight one, immolating her relationship with Emma and leaving her isolated. Similarly, the Arab character returns to the film as Adele visits Emma’s latest show after their reconciliation. He tells her that he’s left acting, that he got tired of that one narrow performance of identity that the film industry allowed him. He’s never been happier. Adele remains unable to shed that attachment to the normative world and leaves feeling more upset and isolated than ever before.

The pressure of assimilation asserted by heteronormativity and white supremacy are distinct yet similarly functioning forces, which is one of the main achievements of the film. While it is by definition an uneasy attempt at capturing the queer female condition, Blue is the Warmest Color succeeds magnificently by providing a context and a shared struggle with which to build solidarity between marginalized groups in contemporary France. In the scene immediately following Adele’s break up with Emma, we see her leading her children in a celebration of African culture, with Adele wearing a cheaply thrown together pastiche of African fashion, adopting a clearly false and ill fitting identity. It’s a stark metaphor for how poorly Adele assimilates into heteronormativity.

Kechiche’s attempts to conceptualize of others’ struggles by finding commonality is by no means uncommon or uncelebrated in contemporary film. Jim Sheridan found common ground with 50 Cent when making Get Rich or Die Tryin’ by taking him to where he was born in Dublin and exploring their differing experiences of 1980s New York City. In an oddly similar way, Steve McQueen launched his feature film career by exploring the Northern Irish experience of otherness in his account of Bobby Sands’ imprisonment in Hunger.

In regard to the female gaze, Blue is the Warmest Color isn’t an exemplar, but a cautionary tale in how conflating the gendered gaze with the gender of the director can obscure and severely harm incredibly brave and vital filmmaking. Especially in the case of a film that strives to achieve a sense of understanding between distinct groups that suffer similar forms of oppression.

Emma Houxbois is a fiercely queer trans woman whose natural habitat is the Pacific Northwest. She is currently the Comics Editor for The Rainbow Hub and co-host of Fantheon, a weekly comics podcast.

#Filmherstory: Six Royals Objectively Cooler Than Another Bloody Henry 8th

In honor of Henry’s wives and the #filmherstory campaign, here are six Royal women overdue the Hollywood treatment. To help with your visualizing, I’ll even toss in a pitch, director, and star.

Damian Lewis smirks at me from a magazine rack under the caption “Damian Lewis Makes Henry VIII Sexy!” Déjà vu. Clearly, I’m missing the exciting difference between Wolf Hall‘s sinister-but-sexy Henry VIII and Eric Bana’s sinister-but-sexy Henry VIII in The Other Boleyn Girl, which rewrote Jonathan Rhys Meyers’ sinister-but-sexy Henry VIII in Fifty Shades of Tudors (OK, OK, Natalie Dormer did rock), which updated Richard Burton’s sinister-but-sexy Henry VIII in Anne of the Thousand Days, which critics agree was sexier than Charles Laughton’s Oscar-winning sinister-but-lovable Henry VIII in The Private Life of Henry VIII. It would be easy to make this a feminist issue, considering that chronic womanizer Henry VIII executed two wives for infidelity, despite having won the right to divorce them. However, 18 actresses have immortalized Queen Elizabeth I on screen, earning Oscar nominations for portraying the woman who presided over campaigns of religious persecution and expansive colonization as heroic, or sinister-but-lovable at worst.

Nowadays, we theoretically agree that colonialism was a bad idea. Our conquering heroes have become conquering antiheroes. Yet antiheroes actually command empathy as effectively as heroes. A study by Chippewa researcher JoEllen Shively found that 60 percent of her Sioux focus group, viewing Western The Searchers, identified with John Wayne’s viciously racist (and misogynist) Ethan Edwards. While conflicted, “half breed” sidekick Martin Pawley is cited as evidence that the film is “morally complex,” according to Shively, “the Indians, like the Anglos, identified with the characters that the narrative structure tells them to identify with.” Tokens represent no-one, only their author’s urge to appear liberal, while vicariously identifying with conquerors. Meanwhile, today’s White Saviors admirably rescue natives from evil colonizers, thereby ironically reinforcing the colonialist assumption that white heroes should control the destinies of the colonized.

Women of the Third and Fourth World are doubly marginalized; they are the damsels-in-distress for the natives-in-distress for the White Savior: #filmheranticolonialstory. Here in Ireland, our anticolonial icons remain unfilmed, apart from Irish director Neil Jordan’s Michael Collins, but entry to the EU Colonizer’s Club has entitled our Mr. Rhys Meyers to play colonial icon Henry VIII (progress!). So, while I would love to see Fiona Shaw as Pirate Queen Grace O’Malley, storming fortresses and sailing to London to confront Elizabeth I (thereby nailing the elusive Royal Bechdel), it matters more to invite audiences to identify with female leaders of the Third and Fourth Worlds. In honor of Henry’s wives and the #filmherstory campaign, here are six Royal women overdue the Hollywood treatment. To help with your visualizing, I’ll even toss in a pitch, director, and star.

Ava DuVernay’s Nzinga

The plot: Queen Nzinga Mbande fought and maneuvered in 17th century Angola. Serving as diplomatic envoy for her brother, Ndongo’s King, Nzinga personally negotiated a peace treaty with Portugal, sitting on a willing follower when denied an equal seat by their governor. Taking the throne in 1626, Nzinga forged alliances with African neighbors and Portugal’s Dutch rivals, scoring a victory against the Portuguese at the 1647 Battle of Kombi, and personally leading troops in battle until the age of 60. Building her base, Matamba, as a strategic trading port, the abolitionist Queen resisted the Atlantic slave trade and foreign rule throughout her lifetime, dying peacefully in 1663.

The pitch: Elizabeth: The Golden Age in Africa.

The star: Lupita Nyong’o is an internationally celebrated African star, noted for her regal style on the red carpet as well as her Oscar-winning acting. Playing an actual queen is the logical next step.

The director: Ava DuVernay’s Selma shows she can find interesting humanity in inspirational icons. In her hands, Nzinga could be a pragmatic political player, juggling conflicting alliances, more than a romantic ideal, and shed light on African colonial history from a fresh angle.

Ang Lee’s Cixi

The plot: Chinese historian Jung Chang‘s biography of Empress Dowager Cixi highlights her role in industrializing the country, opposing foreign rule, banning torture and foot-binding, educating women, establishing a free press and initiating China’s transition to parliamentary democracy. This semi-literate concubine forged a stable alliance with the Emperor’s wife (another Royal Bechdel), loved and lost a palace eunuch, whose execution was ordered by her own brother-in-law, faced down continual threats to her power and was driven by European encroachments to back the devastating Boxer rebellion. Not forgetting a Japanese invasion, a rebellious Emperor’s gay love affairs and Cixi’s final decision to prevent her reactionary adopted son from undoing her reforms by poisoning him. Drama!

The pitch: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon meets The Last Emperor.

The star: Michelle Yeoh should be in everything. From her delicate portrait of repressed longing in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon to her commanding turn in The Lady, Yeoh is the natural choice.

The director: With a heroine forced by convention to rule from behind a silk screen, this demands a director like Taiwan’s Ang Lee, who can make gripping drama out of restraint.

Deepa Mehta’s Lakshmibai

The plot: Though Rani (Queen) Lakshmibai was the heroine of India’s first technicolor epic, 1956’s Jhansi Ki Rani, she deserves Hollywood stardom and a grittier reboot. After her Maharajah husband died, Lakshmibai’s claim to rule, as regent for her adopted son, was denied by the British East India Company to justify their annexation of her state, Jhansi. Learning martial arts in childhood, Lakshmibai became a major leader of the 1857 Indian Rebellion, training women to fight in her ranks. Her role in a mutiny that massacred British forces at Jhansi’s fort remains unclear. Fighting off invasions by two neighboring rajas, her city finally fell to British heavy artillery. Lakshmibai fled in male disguise with her infant son, joined the rebel army of Tatya Tope and died fighting in the battle of Gwalior.

The pitch: Ashoka the Great meets Braveheart. For girls.

The star: Shriya Saran, who played Parvati in Mehta’s Midnight Children, showed the determination to prepare for her role by working for two months in Mumbai’s slums, and has an athletic body trained in Kathak and Rajasthani dance, with the striking beauty that even her British enemies admired in Lakshmibai.

The director: Deepa Mehta has tackled epic narratives of India’s Partition in Earth, taboo sexuality in Fire, the cruel treatment of widows in Water, and the diaspora experience in Heaven on Earth, but never explored British colonial rule. Like Sam Mendes directing Skyfall, putting Mehta in charge of an action epic could bring psychological depth to its high-octane clashes. Lakshmibai is so iconic in India that she is almost saintly, but Mehta has the guts to give her human flaws and delve into the brutal dilemmas of warfare.

Shonda Rhimes’ Ranavalona

The plot: “I will rule here, to the good fortune of my people and the glory of my name!” Ranavalona I has been labelled the “Mad Queen of Madagascar” for overseeing religious persecutions, inquisitions under torture and sweeping purges of political enemies, just like sinister-but-supposedly-sexily-sane Henry VIII. Rising from a commoner’s background, marrying the king and seizing absolute power on his death in a masterful coup, Ranavalona murdered the father of her child for his infidelity (*cough* Henry VIII), and harnessed French lover Jean Laborde to oversee Madagascar’s industrial revolution. Her later years were marked by excess, with numerous Malagasy dying to construct a road for her buffalo hunt, but Ranavalona foiled all plots to overthrow her (including ex-lover Laborde’s) and kept Madagascar free from colonial rule. There was method in her madness.

The pitch: The Tudors meets Shaka Zulu. For girls.

The star: Angela Bassett’s Emmy-nominated voodoo queen, Marie Laveau in American Horror Story: Coven, shows she can be commanding, scary and sympathetic in turn. Ranavalona is the role she was born for.

The showrunner: Ranavalona’s journey to the dark side deserves a Tudors-style series to fully develop. In Scandal and How To Get Away With Murder, Shonda Rhimes has proved that she relishes antiheroines and moral ambiguity. Ranavalona would take Rhimes into the lush historical epic, too long monopolized by white royalty.

Steve McQueen’s Nanye-hi

The plot: After snatching the rifle of her dead husband and rallying Cherokee warriors against their Creek rivals to win the 1755 Battle of Taliwa, Nanye-hi was elected Ghighau (Beloved Woman), heading the Women’s Council and sitting on the Council of Chiefs (OK, the Cherokee were too advanced to technically have royalty, cut me a break). Nanye-hi, also called “Nancy Ward” after marrying settler Bryant Ward, was a political moderate juggling extreme pressures, alerting settlers to Cherokee plans for a massacre, saving a white woman from burning at the stake and personally negotiating the peace treaty of 1781, but strongly opposing the sale of Cherokee lands and petitioning against plans for removal, which would culminate in the Trail of Tears after her death. Nanye-hi would showcase Indigenous traditions of “petticoat government” that inspired the first suffragettes, within a tense drama of compromise and resistance.

The pitch: Princess Kaiulani meets Borgen.

The star: If you’ve seen her powerful performance in Blackstone (lucky American readers can catch up on hulu), you know Michelle Thrush should be in everything that does not already star Michelle Yeoh (actually, I just had a great idea for a buddy cop movie). She’s a natural choice to capture the strain of Nanye-hi’s political conflicts.

The director: I haven’t yet seen Georgina Lightning’s Older Than America, so I can’t suggest any Native American women to direct. However, Steve McQueen’s treatment of the Irish Troubles in Hunger, and American slavery in 12 Years A Slave, prove the British director is unafraid to tackle controversial history with an outsider’s fresh eye. Lupita Nyong’o’s Oscar, for her first major film role, also shows his talent at coaxing raw performances from his actresses. Disney’s Pocahontas this would not be.

Timur Bekmambetov’s Khutulun

The plot: Mongols were pretty imperial, what with the largest land empire in history. But Central Asia’s absorption into the Russian/Soviet sphere has made it invisible, with Sacha Baron Cohen selecting Kazakhstan for Borat because “it was a country that no one had heard anything about” despite being the ninth largest in the world and launching the first man into space. Played by the physically slight Korean actress Claudia Kim, as a supporting character in Netflix’s Marco Polo, champion wrestler Khutulun deserves solo stardom. Excelling in battles against the armies of her cousin Kublai Khan, this Mongolian princess demanded that suitors beat her in wrestling, or forfeit 100 horses. She acquired 10,000 horses before making a politically strategic match of her own choosing. Nominated for khanship after her father’s death, Khutulun reportedly backed her brother Orus’ bid in exchange for being appointed Commander-in-Chief of his army.

The pitch: Mongol for girls.

The star: Mongol actress Khulan Chuluun was mostly stuck in the love interest role, but showed flashes of stubborn spirit. With a director like Bekmambetov, known for making action heroes of character actors like James McAvoy, could she train up and become an icon?

The director: Kazak director Bekmambetov’s talent for tongue-in-cheek, inventive action would be perfect for the unbelievable legends that have grown up around Khutulun. Witness his wild portrait of his namesake, Central Asian conqueror Tamerlane (Timur) in the opening of Day Watch. He’s also a great director of women, from Galina Tyunina’s scene-stealing Olga to Angelina Jolie’s tough-but-fair Fox in Wanted. Movie, please.

So, who would be your historical (anti)heroines? For the Soska Sisters to realize their dream to film Bathory? Michelle Rodriguez in Robert Rodriguez’s Malinche, as a punk survivor of sex trafficking who wants to watch the world burn? Gong Li as Zhang Yimou’s Wu Zetian? Kerry Washington in Fanta Régina Nacro’s Mama Yaa Asentewaa? Saoirse Ronan as a young Countess Markievicz for Juanita Wilson? Iman as Hatshepsut? Join the conversation – #filmherstory.

Brigit McCone writes and directs short films and radio dramas. Her hobbies include doodling and memorizing lists of forgotten female leaders (Brigit McCone is an extremely dull conversationalist).

Foreign Film Week: Female Empowerment, a Critique of Patriarchy…Is ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’ the Most Feminist Action Film Ever?

Written by Megan Kearns. | Warning: Spoilers ahead

Can an action film portray exquisitely choreographed fighting scenes, badass fully dimensional ladies, tragic romantic love and make a searing social statement? Yes, yes, yes. One of my favorite films, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is an undoubtedly feminist action film with a potent gender commentary woven throughout.

In Ang Lee’s lyrical, Oscar-winning wuxia masterpiece, the lives of 3 women warriors are embroiled in the quest for a prized missing sword. Easily labeled a feminist film with its “slant on feminist empowerment,” Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon “advances a revolutionary agenda of female equality.”

Shu Lien (the amazing Michelle Yeoh), a famous warrior, exudes a quiet strength and dignity. She knows her abilities and what she wants. Yet she feels bound by duty, loyalty and patriarchal norms, unable to follow her heart. A governess by day, a thief and murderer by night, the bitter and vengeful Jade Fox (Cheng Pei-pei) frantically wants control. She’s filled with fury and vengeance over her denial to learn the ways of the revered Wudang skills due to her gender. Zhang Ziyi as Jen, a governor’s daughter and secret protégé of Jade Fox, steals the show. Fiery, impetuous, strong-willed, she’s a fierce warrior, desperate to break the chains of gendered aristocratic expectations placed on her by her family and society. Whether her lover, a friend or a warrior she admires, Jen stubbornly refuses to yield, obey or acquiesce to anyone. More than anything, she wants to make her own decisions, to live her own life.

While Li Mu Bei (Chow Yun Fat), a dude, is considered the most respected warrior, women are unquestioned in their capacity to be skilled warriors. A man who just had a baby girl says he hopes his daughter will be half as strong as Shu Lien. But while women are respected and admired, society simultaneously expects them to obey certain norms.

Jen strives to live the life of a warrior. She doesn’t want to be shackled by an arranged marriage. Jade Fox wants power and to rule, to not let her gender hold her back. Jen and Shu Lien both yearn for freedom, to freely love who they choose. But sexist patriarchy holds each woman back from attaining what each desires.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon continually questions stereotypical gender roles for women.

Jen laments her monotonous future as an aristocratic wife with both Shu Lien and Jade Fox. She must marry into a noble family in order to boost her father’s business. Jen says she hasn’t yet lived the life she wants. Jen reveals to Shu Lien how she envies her life, even though Shu Lien explains it’s not as romantic as it seems:

Jen: “It must be exciting to be a fighter: to be totally free.”
Shu Lien: “Fighters have rules too: friendship, trust, integrity. Without rules, we wouldn’t survive long.”

Jen craves a sisterhood between her and Shu Lien. The two discuss gender and marriage and how society views it as “the most important step in a woman’s life.” Jen questions if Shu Lien is married and then realizes that if she “probably couldn’t roam around freely” if she was a wife. Jen says to Shu Lien:

“I wish I were like the heroes in the books I read, like you and Li Mu Bai. I guess I’m happy to be marrying. But to be free to live my own life, to choose whom I love, that is true happiness.”

Jen thinks the key to her freedom is in remaining unwed and following the warrior’s path. But Shu Lien shares her own pain of thwarted love. Due to her warrior duties, she did not want to dishonor the memory of her murdered fiancé and pursue her love for Li Mu Bai:

“So the freedom you talk about, I too desire it. But I have never tasted it.”

Jade Fox’s gender, that she’s a female criminal, surprises people. Like Jen and Shu Lien, Jade Fox also bemoans the sexist constraints placed on her not being allowed to pursue her career. So she took matters into her own hands and stole the precious Wudang secrets. When Li Mu Bei confronts Jade Fox for her thievery and for murdering his master, she says:

“Your master underestimated us women. Sure, he’d sleep with me but he would never teach me. He deserved to die by a woman’s hand!”

In her eyes, she was good enough to fuck but not good enough to be an equal.

Women are expected to enter marriage, to strive to be wives and mothers. Societal norms dictate women should be nurturing and gentle, women should support the men in their life and they shouldn’t be too outspoken or too unruly. If they transgress these societal norms, they’re often punished. But here, we see the women speak out and push back against the hypocrisy and strains of sexism. We witness a delicate balance exists of respecting tradition while pursuing personal happiness and fulfillment, along with continued resistance to patriarchal norms.

Feminema’s Didion discusses the film’s “overwhelming” and “explicit” feminism:

“So that’s the first thing: the contrast of the yearning, reserved restraint of Yeoh/Chow, and the woo-hoo! of Zheng/Chang. The second thing is the feminism, which is so overwhelming and explicit I can’t believe no one made much of it at the time. And it’s not just that the fight sequences always feature women — who win — nor that the best sequence faces off Michelle Yeoh and Zhang Ziyi in the very best, funniest, most exciting matchup ever. The heart of the story relies on the fact that its three main female characters (Jen, Shu Lien, and Jen’s governess, Jade Fox) have each been foiled in their attempts to live as they desire because they are women. Each takes a different approach in response, and they inevitably find themselves in opposition with one another as well as with men.”

As Didion points out, the women all end up opposing one another. It’s interesting in the beginning of the film, Jen starts off as friends with both of the other women. Jade Fox mentors her and she yearns to forge a friendship with Shu Lien and emulate her life. Eventually all women are at odds with each other. Jen feels betrayed by Shu Lien that she wants her to return to her parents. Shu Lien is disappointed with Jen as she’s unappreciative of her support, Shu Lien and Jade Fox are at odds. Jade Fox feels jealousy and betrayal after she discovers Jen hid her talents in combat, particularly because she was the older mentor, the supposed wiser one bestowing knowledge, not the other way around.

Despite the fighting and rivalries, it never felt catty in the typical way the media depicts women as tearing each other down. Rather it feels like an indictment of sexist patriarchy that wants to pit women against each other. It’s up to us women to remember to nurture and support one another.

Based on a novel, Lee said it’s “one of the rare cases where we take the emotional tour with the women. We take their point of view, and they get to carry the story.” But while he calls martial arts a “very male-dominant” and “macho genre,” actor Michelle Yeoh offers a different perspective. When asked about Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon called a “feminist martial arts film” and “the role of women,” Yeoh said:

“If you read a lot of Chinese literature, there has always been very strong women figures — warriors, swordswomen — who defended honor and loyalty with the men. So it’s not new to our culture, it’s always been very much a part of it. It’s good that now the Western audience would have a different image of the Chinese women. Where for a while, it was very stereotypical — the demure, very quiet, strong in a very silent way.”

The film runs shows 3 strong, assertive, outspoken women – which counters Western media’s pervasive stereotypes of Asian women as docile and subservient.

In theory, women action heroes break that mold. But in reality, most female film characters don’t shatter gender stereotypes, ultimately succumbing to stereotypical gender roles. As researcher Katy Gilpatric discovered, women in action movies rarely lead as heroes, usually serving as props to the male protagonists, and serving as love interests. She also found women often meet their death, frequently by self-sacrifice, by the end of an action film.

But in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the women are the stars. And not just one woman. 3 women. Of different ages and different socio-economic statuses. Sure, there are men, romance and star-crossed lovers. But the female characters aren’t objectified for the male gaze or reduced to their sexuality. The women don’t sacrifice their identities in order to love or be in romantic relationships.

I don’t automatically find female action characters empowering. I find assertive, intelligent, self-reliant, female survivors empowering, whether they strap on a gun or wield a sword or not. But what makes these female characters and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon so feminist? We see their stories, their perspectives. We also get an indictment of patriarchy and a staunch argument in favor of gender equality.

Li Mu Bai calls Jen a dragon, and Jen refers to herself this way as well. On the symbolic color of green, director Ang Lee said that “anything green is hidden dragon, desires and repression…” The film is about repressing your desires — the pain it causes when you do (Shu Lien and Li Mu Bai) and the price you pay if you don’t (Jen). Jen runs away and steals the Green Destiny sword, calling herself the “Invincible Sword Goddess,” defeating a slew of dudes in the process. She taps into her hidden desires and literally wields and shapes her own destiny.

Li Mu Bai realizes the capacity of Jen’s skills and wants to train her in the Wudang way. When Shu Lien reminds him that they don’t accept women, he says they will have to make an exception. Li Mu Bai, who has also felt trapped by his duty and honor, impeding him from following his heart and confessing his love for Shu Lien, finally realizes the ridiculousness of stereotypical gender roles.

You can interpret the ambiguous ending — Jen leaping off the balcony over a cliff — as Jen committing suicide, unable to bear the thought of the damage her yearning for freedom has wreaked. Lo, Jen’s lover, tells her a story about a boy who made a wish and it came true after he leapt off the side of a cliff because his heart was true.

But I never saw the ending as her suicide. I saw it as Jen’s liberation. Jen’s choice conveyed her refusal to be tied down, her transcendental awakening rejecting society’s gender norms and patriarchy and embracing her individualism. She refused to live a life of obedience. She wanted to follow her heart and live life on her own terms. But Jen also realized that if she was the wife of a nobleman or perhaps even the wife of a rebel, she would still be immersed in patriarchy. Even if Jen and Lo reunite — his wish — she won’t be a docile, servile wife. She will be her own person.

But Jen also learned that she didn’t want to turn her back on female camaraderie, refusing Shu Lien’s help, the way her mentor Jade Fox turned on her through betrayal. Jen’s initial shunning of sisterhood ultimately led to Li Mu Bai’s death.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon focuses on the lives of different women on different paths with parallel obstacles. Ultimately, each woman forges her own path. When Shu Lien and Jen reconcile at the end, she doesn’t advise Jen to be loyal or obedient. She tells her that no matter what, Jen should remain true to herself. And that’s precisely what Jen does.

Ultimately, the film argues that sexist gender roles trap us all. Sexism remains a toxic barrier to happiness and enlightenment. And that’s what makes this film so empowering. Women must be true to themselves in order to achieve freedom and happiness.

Foreign Film Week: Gender, Family and Globalization in ‘Eat Drink Man Woman’

Chef Chu and his “middle daughter” Jia-Chien in Eat Drink Man Woman

Guest post written by Emily Contois. A version of this post previously appeared at her blog.

In Eat Drink Man Woman (1994), director and co-writer Ang Lee expertly tells the story of changing family dynamics in Taipei, Taiwan during a time of rapid modernization, employing a universal medium — food. Through Chef Chu who has lost his sense of taste and his three adult daughters, this film addresses many themes, chief among them gender roles, family, and globalization, which each progress forward in divergent, but equally valid and flexible ways.

Starting from its dichotomous title, gender and authority come to the fore in this film, issues that also greatly shape the roles of women in the public world of food where men in general are more likely to hold positions of power. Such is the case for Chef Chu. While he no longer works full time at The Grand Hotel, he acts with assured confidence when he is called in one evening to help the all male staff to rectify a dish that is being served at an important dinner.

Chef Chu presenting the “saved” shark fin soup, transformed into a lucky dragon

The traditional, powerful, masculine role of “The Chef” is complicated in the film, however, as Chef Chu’s authority is not well recognized by his daughters. Furthermore, as he parents alone, Chef Chu serves as both mother and father and performs many conventionally feminine duties, such as feeding his daughters, folding their laundry—even waking them up in the morning. Throughout the film, Chef Chu prepares elaborate family dinners, which his daughters attend, but half-heartedly and with a degree of frustration, irritability, and irreverence.

Chef Chu serving dinner to his three daughters early on in the film

Further complicating Chef Chu’s authority, his “middle daughter” (Jia-Chien) aspires to be a master chef like her father. Chef Chu dissuaded her from following a culinary career, however, encouraging her to attend university instead. Jia-Chien had assumed her father did this based upon conventional views that women do not make good chefs, but that proves to not be the case. A close family friend reveals that what Chef Chu wants for his daughter is an easier and better life away from the kitchen. Interestingly, it is Jia-Chien’s return to the home kitchen and cooking for her father that brings back Chef Chu’s lost sense of taste. This act can be read as either thwarting or promoting feminist views, as her cooking can be interpreted as the provision of conventionally feminine nourishment or as a demonstration of female culinary power.

Jia-Chien cooks for her father, causing the return of his lost sense of taste

Beyond transforming gender roles, Eat Drink Man Woman also discusses family, again focusing on transition. Though he is unable for much of the film to communicate with his own daughters—through food or otherwise—Chef Chu is able to connect with his (somewhat secret) fiancé’s daughter. For her, he prepares lunches so elaborate that they elevate her status at school, nourishing her both emotionally and physically. In this way, these special noontime meals are similar to obento in that they aid a child as she makes a transition that could be difficult, not from the home to school, but from a single-parent family to a new one that includes Chef Chu. Six family meals around the table punctuate the film, as the changing participants and their relationships to one another demonstrate the transition within this family, as well as in Taiwan as a whole.

As the Chu family evolves, the contrasts from scene to scene also depict the theme of generational gaps, conflict, negotiation, and change. Busy streets scenes filled with the mechanical hum of cars and motorcycles represent the growing and changing nature of Taiwan; these visuals are juxtaposed with the pastoral, traditional, and idyllic entrance to the Chu home, where Chef Chu prepares meals in the traditional style—scenes aptly termed “culinary pastoral.”

While Eat Drink Man Woman discusses transitions in gender roles and family structure through food, the film’s overarching theme is not food itself, but rather the forces of modernization and globalization that bring on these changes. For example, Chef Chu’s elaborate traditional family meals, the luxurious cuisine of The Grand Hotel, and the fast food restaurant where his youngest daughter works all coexist, representing the contemporary state of globalized Taiwan. The film also portrays a variety of new, “non-traditional” relationships and family structures. For example, Chef Chu’s youngest daughter gets pregnant while still a student and subsequently marries her boyfriend, leaving her father’s home sooner than expected. Chef Chu also negotiates a new familial structure when he marries a younger woman and moves out of the family home, charting a new future.

The transformed Chu family eating a meal near the end of the film

Perhaps Jia-Chien best embodies these forces of change, however, as she has achieved the career her father hoped for her — she works in a highly globalized field, holding a managerial position with an international airline. At the same time, she aspires to cook professionally. In this way, Jia-Chien most fully expresses the complexity and ongoing negotiation of these global transformations. Through her — not coincidentally the “middle” daughter — Lee’s film portrays a character caught between the fluid states of tradition and modernization, family obligation and independence, who eventually finds balance and solace in food. In this way, food—so oft considered a conventionally domestic, maternal, feminine concern — emerges as a powerful and dynamic symbol of change in all its complexity, and ushers in evolving gender roles, family structures, and global life.

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Emily Contois works in the field of worksite wellness and is a graduate student in the MLA in Gastronomy Program at Boston University that was founded by Julia Child and Jacques Pépin. She is currently researching the marketing of diet programs to men, and blogs on food studies, nutrition, and public health at emilycontois.com.

2013 Academy Awards Diversity Checklist

Written by Lady T

I want to talk a little about the Oscar nominees this year. (“But, Lady T, you talk too much about the Oscars.” “Oh yeah? Your MOM talks too much about the Oscars!”)

Seriously, she can’t shut up about him.

Mostly, I want to talk about the Oscars in terms of diversity. We all know that the Academy Awards are usually all about white dudes recognizing other white dudes (and women, in the acting categories). How did the Academy fare this year in terms of recognizing women in non-acting roles, and people of color in general? Let’s take a look.

Number of Men Nominated for Best Director: 5/5

Commentary: Kathryn Bigelow was infamously snubbed for a directing nomination for her work on Zero Dark Thirty. Was this a deliberate act of sexism on the part of the Academy? I would say yes, except for the fact that Ben Affleck was also overlooked for his work on Argo, and they were both considered frontrunners in this category. (Bigelow won almost all the precursor awards prior to the announcement of the Oscar nominations, and Affleck has won all the precursor awards after the announcement.) I think Bigelow and Affleck were overlooked simply because everyone underestimated the appeal of Amour and Beasts of the Southern Wild, the two little movies that could. The backlash against Bigelow in the press, however, certainly reeks of sexism.

Whatevs, she already has two.

Number of People of Color Nominated for Best Director: 1/5

Commentary: Ang Lee is nominated for his work on Life of Pi. This is good news, because Ang Lee is an excellent director and deserves every nomination that comes his way.

The “A” in “Ang” stands for “Awesome.”

Number of Best Picture-Nominated Films With a Person of Color as a Protagonist: 4/9

Number of Best Picture-Nominated Films With a Person of Color as a Protagonist, Played by a POC Actor: 3/9

Commentary: Beasts of the Southern Wild, Django Unchained, and Life of Pi have all been nominated for Best Picture, and their films all have POC actors/protagonists (Quvenzhane Wallis, Jamie Foxx, and Suraj Sharma, respectively). Argo technically has a POC protagonist, but the role played by a white actor (Ben Affleck). I don’t know whether Affleck cast himself out of vanity, an understandable desire to perform and direct at the same time, fear that the racist film industry wouldn’t stand behind and promote a film without a famous white actor in the lead role, or all of the above.

Jamie Foxx as Django in my favorite movie of the year

Number of Best Picture Winners With a Person of Color as a Protagonist, Played By a POC Actor: 5.5/84

Commentary: In the history of the Academy Awards, 5.5 films with POC as protagonists have won the Best Picture award – In The Heat of the Night, Gandhi, Driving Miss Daisy, The Last Emperor, Slumdog Millionaire, and Crash. (I said 5.5 because Crash is an ensemble film without a clear protagonist, and also because it’s not well-written and barely counts a movie.) It’s also worth noting that two of those films – In the Heat of the Night and Driving Miss Daisy – have white co-protagonists who share an equal load with their POC co-leads.

So, this year’s crop of Best Picture nominees have almost as many POC leads as all Best Picture WINNERS in history. Does that make this year awesome or previous years really, really white? Make of that what you will.

The unbelievably cute kids in Slumdog Millionaire

Number of Best Actor Nominees From Best Picture Nominees: 3/5

Number of Best Actress Nominees From Best Picture Nominees: 4/5

Commentary: Last year, exactly one Best Picture nominee out of nine (The Help) had a female protagonist, and only one Best Actress nominee was from a Best Picture nominee. (Three of the Best Actor nominees were from Best Picture nominees.) This year, the number of Best Actress nominees from Best Picture nominees actually outnumber the number of Best Actor nominees from Best Picture nominees.

Now, it’s worth mentioning that two of these Best Actress nominees – Jennifer Lawrence in Silver Linings Playbook and Emmanuelle Riva in Amour – are co-protagonists to their male leads, played by Bradley Cooper and Jean-Louis Trintignant. But Quvenzhane Wallis in Beasts of the Southern Wild and Jessica Chastain in Zero Dark Thirty are unquestionably the leads in their films.

Quvenzhane Wallis in my other favorite movie of the year

Is the Academy finally starting to recognize that movies starring women, about women, are worthwhile films, films that tell universal stories about the human condition, films that are not just “women’s films?” Let’s hope so.

Did you notice anything about the diversity, and lack thereof, in the Academy Award nominations? Have at it at the comments!

Lady T is an aspiring writer and comedian with two novels, a play, and a collection of comedy sketches in progress. She hopes to one day be published and finish one of her projects (not in that order). You can find more of her writing at The Funny Feminist, where she picks apart entertainment and reviews movies she hasn’t seen.