Violent films with a female at their center tend to be viewed differently than violent films with a male lead. When a woman is in this role, it’s controversial. When a man is in the same type of role, it’s a part of who he is as a human being. We’ve become numb to the violence that men engage in onscreen. As a result, we don’t criticize it like we do when a woman is engaging in it.
This guest post by Cameron Airen appears as part of our theme week on Violent Women.
Violent films with a female at their center tend to be viewed differently than violent films with a male lead. When a woman is in this role, it’s controversial. When a man is in the same type of role, it’s a part of who he is as a human being. We’ve become numb to the violence that men engage in onscreen. As a result, we don’t criticize it like we do when a woman is engaging in it. Also, female leads in violent films are usually represented differently than male leads in the same type of film. Because we are more accepting of violent films with male leads than with female leads, she needs to be constructed differently. Usually it’s her sex appeal that makes her more tolerable to conduct violence, fetishizing her in order to justify her acts. Or her sexual power is her weapon and she succeeds at getting what she wants with it. Or, she’s guided by a male partner almost the entire way through who seems to somehow “know the way” and it’s often the “right way.” She wouldn’t succeed without him. Somehow, we are unable to see her as an independent, powerful being just by her human self-without a man, without needing to be sexy, without needing to give sex in order to have more power.
In many ways, Salt is the action film that feminists have dreamed of. Its female lead character, played by Angelina Jolie, does not depend on her being female. What Salt does well is eliminate gender from its focus. Most action films with a female lead are clearly marked by gender. Instead of her character being motivated by experiences that have happened to her because she’s a woman (like in Thelma and Louise or Kill Bill), she’s driven by non-gendered circumstances. In fact, Salt is never once referred to as being a woman/female in the film. She is only referred to as “Salt” or a spy. Whereas, in other films like Kill Bill, she is known as The Bride and is committed to take revenge based on what happened with her wedding and an unborn child. The Bride’s character, experiences, and revenge is all about gender. Even though the lead in Salt was originally meant for Tom Cruise and the film was slightly changed for a female, Salt isn’t characterized by gender. Salt crosses all kinds of gender lines, including going as a “male” disguise, towards the end of the film, to kill the president of the United States. Since Salt’s character isn’t motivated or marked by gender in a way that fuels the story, any gender could easily play her.
Despite its plot holes, Salt is a solid action film. Evelyn Salt is a CIA officer accused of being a Russian spy. One of the most interesting points of the film is how ambiguous her character is. We don’t know whose side she’s on and whether we should root for her or not. While the plot is confusing, it’s refreshing to have a female action lead whose intentions are ambiguous, as we are starting to see onscreen more today.
Salt has some of the best violent scenes seen in an action film. After Salt has been accused of being a Russian spy, she tries to escape the CIA building. Her colleagues try to trap her but she makes a bomb to blow down the doors and runs away. Have we ever seen a woman make a bomb in a film before? This might be a first for women in film and it’s no surprise that Jolie is the one to instigate it. Not only is Salt’s action unrestricted by a female lead but Jolie performed her own stunts.
After Salt escapes and scales a tall apartment building, she gets cornered by the CIA and jumps off of an overpass onto a moving semi truck driving on the highway. The film’s already frenetic pace ratchets up another notch and actually gets even better when Salt meets up with Orlov, the Russian man who trained her. At a barge, Orlov has her husband killed right in front of her eyes by her Russian comrades. Salt has to hide her tears and emotions so that her comrades don’t suspect her as being a traitor. Later, when alone with Orlov, she makes no hesitation in killing him with a broken liquor bottle, then goes on to wipe out the rest of the men on crew with a machine gun and hand grenades. Salt doesn’t stop there. She lets herself get arrested after appearing to kill the Russian president. Handcuffed in the back of a police car, she knocks out the officers next to her, then tasers the driver and tries to steer the car. At this point, we have no idea why Salt let herself get caught, but the action scenes keep you at the edge of your seat.
One of the best scenes in Salt is after Salt is placed in handcuffs once again, and is being escorted out of the White House up a flight of stairs. Winter, her colleague who betrayed her and orchestrated her husband’s kidnapping, is waiting for her at the top of the stairs with a pair of scissors in hand. When she approaches him, Salt manages to wrap her handcuffs around Winter’s neck as her body jumps over the stair railing and chokes him to death. The way she fearlessly snatches Winter’s neck with her chain and lets her body dangle from the top of a staircase with her face bloody from fighting Winter is a creative and incredible scene that I’ve never seen in a film before.
One of the more interesting parts that the film lacks is a sex scene. We don’t once see Jolie in her underwear or naked. In fact, she is fully clothed the entire time except in the very beginning scene when she’s being tortured in a non-sexual way. As much as I wanted to see a sex scene with Jolie, I was happy that the film didn’t actually have one. When do we ever not see a hot, steamy scene with the beautiful and sexy, Jolie? This film somehow got away with it and it’s a breath of fresh air. It wasn’t her sexuality that saved her. Typically, a woman is identified by her “sex,” but in Salt, she is simply a human being. Sexual or not, we don’t know. But, her “sex/gender” makes no difference and is not a signifying factor of her character or action. We rarely see a woman kick ass without sexualizing her in some way. It’s great when women can be sexual beings and kick ass onscreen, but they tend to be oversexualized in a way that guides their character.
My biggest criticism with Salt is that it lacks diversity. Even though there is a female lead and a main Black male character (who doesn’t get killed), the rest of the main cast is white and male. There are barely any other women in Salt besides Jolie. Sometimes, we think that diversity is achieved simply by having a female lead even if the rest of the cast is male. But, this is false, and it would have been an even better film if there were more women in it. What Salt succeeds in is by having a mostly genderless lens in terms of the main character, and not defining her by sex. Salt is a refreshing action film with a female lead who has some serious violent scenes that will make one hunger for more.
Cameron Airen is a queer feminist with a M.A. in Anthropology and Social Change. When she’s not getting her fix from watching women in violent action films, Cameron is working on creating a (mostly) vegan cookbook. She resides in Berkeley, Calif. You can follow her on Twitter @cameronairen.
Angelina Jolie executive produced ‘Difret,’ a drama based on the true story of a 14-year-old Ethiopian girl, Hirut, who is kidnapped in her rural village by a much older man and kept captive as his future bride. When Hirut, played beautifully by Tizita Hagere, fights back and accidentally kills her captor, she faces the death sentence, as dictated by tribal law.
Difret producer and director at the 2015 Athena Film Festival
Angelina Jolie executive produced Difret, a drama based on the true story of a 14-year-old Ethiopian girl, Hirut, who is kidnapped in her rural village by a much older man and kept captive as his future bride. When Hirut, played beautifully by Tizita Hagere, fights back and accidentally kills her captor, she faces the death sentence, as dictated by tribal law.
The abduction of young girls by much older men who make them their wives is a cultural tradition in rural villages in this part of the world, as is the death penalty for Hirut’s so-called crime. But a tough, steely lawyer, Maeza (Meron Getnet), from the women’s legal aide practice takes on the case and fights for her client’s life. The movie also works well as a thriller and procedural courtroom drama with twists and heart-pounding reversals. That the story is based on a riveting true story gives the movie a timeliness and urgency that makes it understandable why Jolie, who directed In the Land of Blood and Honey, about the plight of women abused and raped during the Bosnian War, has attached her name and support to the film.
Difret is written and directed by Zeresenay Berhane Mehari, who was born in Ethiopia, but raised in Virginia, and is produced by Mehret Mandefro. The two married while shooting the film in Ethiopia. Difret closed the Athena Film Festival in February, and the director and producer brought along their two-year-old son and seven-week baby to the screening and Q&A moderated by Athena Film Festival co-founder Melissa Silverstein.
Following are selected highlights from the Q&A.
How did you get the movie made?
Mehret Mandefro: I’ve been working on it for over five years. I joined this project in 2009 … I started this project in 2007 technically. Zeresenay is a classically trained filmmaker and went to film school. I’m actually very non-traditional in my background. I’m a physician by training … I came to film through the back door. And about five years ago, I was speaking at a health and human rights conference, and Zeresenay was pitching his script to some NGOs.
He had exhausted his possibilities in Hollywood. The script was actually incredibly strong, so people had offered to buy it in Hollywood, but they wanted it done in English. They also wanted Hollywood actors, and Zeresenay had a very specific vision of the film to do it in Addis Ababa, cast it locally, which meant it took longer. But thankfully, when he brought it to me, I read the script, and it was such a page turner, and I was already very interested working on kind of women’s issues that I was like, “Oh, I know how to raise money for this. We’re going to do it.” So I actually started. I was producing the film before I married him, before we had babies and all that, so we joke that we had twins actually … I was pregnant with Lucas when we went into production, and Mena came along this year.
Difret producer and director at the 2015 Athena Film Festival
What was the inspiration for this script?
Z: By chance really. I met Meaza Ashenafi by chance … In 2005, I was in Ethiopia working on a documentary, and I was at a friend’s house, and her brother said, “You should make a film about my sister.” Like yeah, sure, why not? I didn’t know who she was and didn’t know about that organization that she started. By the time I met her, she’d helped more than 30,000 people, women and children … She was a judge and left her seat because she thought that the country was ready to move forward in human rights, so she started working with the constitution commission … From a filmmaker’s standpoint, that is a very interesting character, and you can already imagine what kind of difficulties that she’s going to face, so I was already locked in on that and then started reading about the organization, and it was amazing, so I found this story, and I left home in May 1996 to go to school, and this particular case happened literally four or five months after I left.
And it was also the organization’s biggest case then or since, and it kind of put the organization on the map, but it also was the first time that the country as a whole had a conversation about tradition, and that was my entry point. Another very strong subject matter to tackle is this tradition. My true point is always the characters and the struggles that they face.
Shooting in Ethiopia must have been intense, especially since you shot in some of the rural villages. Describe shooting some of those scenes.
Z: When we were doing the abduction scene with the horses, we rented the horses from the village and we had particular riders because we wanted to do it in a certain way, and also, there were insurance issues, and we didn’t want to be liable, and then so they went, “You guys are doing it wrong.” So they literally wanted to get all the guys, the professional riders that we brought from the city to ride the horses, and they wanted to show us themselves how it’s done.
So they showed you how they abduct girls?
Z: Right. See you have to understand because in their context, in that traditional context, it’s not something that’s bad. It is part of life. It happens there, and so it’s part of who they are.
How did you find your female leads? The little girl never acted before, so how did you guide her through the most emotional scenes?
Z: The lawyer, played by Meron Getnet, is a classically trained actor and had been in 10 or 11 movies before we got her, and she had two or three television shows and was taking her masters in theater … With Tizita Hagere, we got lucky. Two weeks before we shot, we had almost given up, and we weren’t going to shoot at all if we didn’t have the right person to play her because she is the core of the film. She has the emotional trigger that goes on through the film, and so, it’s too much to ask for a young person to play that, right? So you kind of have to find that person already born with those elements. She was 13 when we cast her. And I knew that I didn’t want to overwhelm her, so I didn’t give her the script. So we started working on a daily basis. And I would tell her exactly what happened for that scene. And so I’d tell her what happened before it, and then what’s going to happen after. So we would have a conversation, not about her, but about the character, Hirut. That is a real person. So she kind of felt like she got to know her as a friend, so she always talked about the part as a third person, so it’s not about her. She’s actually emulating somebody else’s story, which helped us because you can see when you talk to her. Most of the takes were first or second takes.
How did Angelina Jolie happen to become an executive producer for the film?
M: After really working hard to try and raise the money, we actually had the finishing cut and it was a month before we were going to premiere it at Sundance. And you know we were sitting there, and there were all these amazing films that get made and don’t really get out there, and so we were talking with one of the executive producers, and said, “Wouldn’t it be great to try and, like, get somebody,” and actually our executive producer was like, “You know, I know someone who knows Angelina; this is so up her alley, let’s try it.” Me and Z were like, “Whatever.” We were so tired at that point.
We sent the cut of the film and literally didn’t think anything of it and literally like a week later, she called us. We were sitting on a porch, and she called Z and was like, “Hi, it’s Angie. I love your film.” You know? And she’s been amazing. Like kind of opening doors and making sure. You know, a foreign language film about Africa. I mean this is a very hard market in America to try and get this film seen, so having her name totally helped in terms of, like, helping profile and just getting it known. She’s actually been a wonderful ambassador. She took it with her to the Global Seminar on Sexual Violence last June in England and had a screening with dignitaries in the U.N. She’s on the cover of Ms. Magazine this month actually talking about our film and the campaign that we’re doing about child marriage, so she’s been a true angel and so supportive of the film. It’s been awesome.
Difret opened October 23 at Lincoln Plaza in Manhattan.
Paula Schwartz is a veteran journalist who worked at the New York Times for three decades. For five years she was the Baguette for the New York Times movie awards blog Carpetbaggers. Before that she worked on the New York Times night life column, Boldface, where she covered the celebrity beat. She endured a poke in the ribs by Elijah Wood’s publicist, was ejected from a party by Michael Douglas’s flak after he didn’t appreciate what she wrote, and endured numerous other indignities to get a story. More happily she interviewed major actors and directors–all of whom were good company and extremely kind–including Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Morgan Freeman, Clint Eastwood, Christopher Plummer, Dustin Hoffman and the hammy pooch “Uggie” from The Artist. Her idea of heaven is watching at least three movies in a row with an appreciative audience that’s not texting. Her work has appeared in Moviemaker, more.com, showbiz411 and reelifewithjane.com.
Angelina Jolie: “I thought often in making this film about my children, my sons, who are of the age appropriate to see it – the older sons – and it’s a movie for everybody but I think it’s one you think about this great generation and the values they had and how they were as men and I think it’s one that we want to raise our children and remind this generation of their sense of family and community and honor and pay respect to them.”
Angelina Jolie swept into Manhattan last week for some serious Oscar politicking for Unbroken, her second time at the helm as a feature film director. She attended a dizzying round of luncheons, receptions, press conferences, and Q&As to promote the film and for some needed sizzle to propel it in the awards race. Treated like royalty – a week before those other Royals arrived – and even with more anticipation, the Maleficient star dazzled even the most jaded entertainment reporters.
Based on the best-selling book about Louis Zamperini by Laura Hillenbrand, the movie chronicles his life as Olympian runner, World War II bombardier, ocean castaway on a raft surrounded by sharks, and enslaved prisoner brutalized by sadistic guards. After the war, Zamperini struggled with alcohol addiction and PTSD but finally found redemption through faith and forgiveness. Jolie’s main concern is that the film honor Zamperini’s life and struggle and that it inspire audiences.
Oscar prognosticators hint Unbroken could bring Jolie a Best Director Oscar nomination and Universal has pulled out all stops to make that possible. With Ava DuVernay a shoo-in for her brilliant film Selma, an epic about another great man, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., this could be the first year two women are nominated in this category. (Even more historic would be Ms. DuVernay’s nomination because shamefully no African-American woman director has ever received this honor.)
Unbroken received an awards boast earlier in the week when the American Film Institute picked it as one of the outstanding 11 films of the year. (Selma is also on the list.) But two days later the Screen Actors Guild and the Hollywood Foreign Press left Unbroken off their list. This is especially surprising since the Hollywood Foreign Press loves glittery movie stars at their Golden Globe celebration.
In 2011 Jolie, who wrote and directed In the Land of Blood and Honey, a controversial film about a love affair between Bosnian woman and a Serbian solder, received a Golden Globe nomination for best foreign film. I spoke to her by telephone to get her reaction for the New York Times. She told me she knew the subject matter was a hard sell but it was a story she had to tell. “I didn’t want to be a director,” she told me, “I’ll just only do it if there’s something that I feel so compelling it must be told.” She also told me she never reads press about her or Brad Pitt. “It’s better not to know,” she said.
Both director and cast members, Jack O’Connell (Zamperini), Takamasa Ishihara (sadistic prison guard, Watanable), Garrett Hedlund and Finn Wittrock participated in a press conference last Friday at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel. Jolie choked up several times when she spoke about the subject of her film, with whom she became very close. Six hours later she teared up again at a Bafta screening when she discussed how she visited Zamperini in the hospital to show him the film and seek his approval. He died several weeks later in July of this year at age 97.
Jolie materialized at the press conference surrounded by her supporting and admiring cast, but she was the star attraction. Slender and fine boned, with her high cheekbones and saucer eyes, she is as spectacular in person as her pictures lead you to expect.
She was in New York a week before the leaked Sony e-mails in which producer Scott Rudin insulted her and the film. She has chosen so far not to comment.
The cast of Unbroken
Here are selected quotes from the press conference last week featuring Angelina Jolie.
Why it was so important to you to make the film:
I thought often in making this film about my children, my sons, who are of the age appropriate to see it – the older sons – and it’s a movie for everybody but I think it’s one you think about this great generation and the values they had and how they were as men and I think it’s one that we want to raise our children and remind this generation of their sense of family and community and honor and pay respect to them. And I want my children to know about men like Louis so when they feel bad about themselves and they think all is lost, they know they’ve got something inside of them because that’s what this story speaks to. It’s what’s inside all of us. You don’t have to be a perfect person or a saint or a hero. Louis was very flawed, very human, but made great choices and in the end a great man.
I came into this because I felt it was an important story. I was drawn to the message of the story. If you’d asked me a few years ago what kind of a film do you want to make? I never would have assumed to make a film that included shark attacks and plane crashes. I would never have thought of myself handling that kind of cinematic filmmaking. I wouldn’t think I could do that or should do that (laughs).
What was it specifically about this book that made you so passionate about bringing it to the screen? Was there one specific thing abut this story that said to you, this is it, this is my next movie?
I think what it was, like everybody, we wake up, we read the news, we see the events that go on around the world and we live in our community and we’re disheartened by so much. We feel overwhelmed and we don’t what’s possible and we don’t know where… We want something to hold onto and something to give us strength. And I was halfway through this book and I found myself inspired and on fire and feeling better and being reminded of the strength of the human spirit and the strength of having a brother like Pete and what that is and to remind us to be that for each other and how important that is to have that in your life… I realized if this was having this effect on me and I knew it had this effect on so many people, isn’t this what we needed to put forward into the world at this time? And I believe it is and I’m very happy also it’s coming out during the holidays. I think it’s an important time. It’s the right time.
Transforming the book into the film:
The Coen brothers (the screenplay writers) said something to me that helped me completely. They said when you put the book down you have a certain feeling and a certain understanding. That’s what they need to feel when they walk out of the theater. That’s your job. To literally put this book on film you won’t make a good movie and you’ll do no service to anyone. So know the themes and to us these themes, so then we would go back to the film and so for example, faith, faith is so important to him, instead of it being a specific chapter and how to put it all in, and all the experiences of his life, faith was represented from the beginning, from the little boy and represented all through the film in other characters but also in the sunrise and the darkness and the light and the struggle between them and him coming into the light. But it wasn’t literally, technically as it was in the book, but the things are the same, so that’s what we tried to do. But I think a lot of our favorite stories aren’t in the film.
It was tough. I’d be carrying the book, before we were doing the film, and a lot of people would say that’s my favorite book. You know what my favorite scene is? And I started to say don’t tell me.
Your next movie is with Brad Pitt, By the Sea. Is that sort of an antidote to this epic?
By the Sea was emotionally difficult acting in it but it was logistically a walk in the park in comparison to Unbroken. It was a nice break.
On Zamperini watching Unbroken in his hospital room:
Louis was 97 (when he died). He began skateboarding in his 80s. He was still living alone taking care of himself. He was very full of joy and love of life and very sharp. And he was doing speaking engagements for about two weeks prior to the day I got the call and he went into the hospital. So I put the film on my laptop – it was missing some of the special effects and music – (but it was) pretty much wrapped, and I went over to the hospital and I sat beside his bed and I held it over him and he watched the film and I watched him watch the film. I thought I would get some review, he would say good shot… and in reality I found myself in this extraordinary moment where I was watching this man at the end of his life reliving the moments of his life, remembering his mother, remembering his brother and all the friends he’d lost. He was the last alive, and preparing himself, as a man of faith… watching him cross the finish line while he was in this hospital bed and smiling…When it (the film) was over, he just looked at me and smiled. And then he told me a really inappropriate joke.
Paula Schwartz is a veteran journalist who worked at the New York Times for three decades. For five years she was the Baguette for the New York Times movie awards blog Carpetbaggers. Before that she worked on the New York Times night life column, Boldface, where she covered the celebrity beat. She endured a poke in the ribs by Elijah Wood’s publicist, was ejected from a party by Michael Douglas’s flak after he didn’t appreciate what she wrote, and endured numerous other indignities to get a story. More happily she interviewed major actors and directors–all of whom were good company and extremely kind–including Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Morgan Freeman, Clint Eastwood, Christopher Plummer, Dustin Hoffman and the hammy pooch “Uggie” from The Artist. Her idea of heaven is watching at least three movies in a row with an appreciative audience that’s not texting. Her work has appeared in Moviemaker, more.com, showbiz411 and reelifewithjane.com.
In the spirit of ‘Boys on the Side,’ along with a dose of teen angst, ‘Foxfire’ is perhaps the most bad ass chick flick ever. Many Angelina Jolie fans are not aware of this 1996 phenomenon, where Angie makes a name for herself as a rebellious free spirit who changes the lives of four young women in New York. Based on the Joyce Carol Oates novel by the same name, ‘Foxfire’ is the epitome of girl power and female friendship, a pleasant departure from the competition and spitefulness often portrayed between women characters on the big screen (see ‘Bride Wars’ and ‘Just Go with It’). However, it does seem that Hollywood is catching on as of late, and producing films that cater to a more progressive viewership (see ‘Bridesmaids’ and ‘The Other Woman’). When I first saw ‘Foxfire’ around 16 years old, I stole the VHS copy from the video store where I worked at the time.
This post by Jenny Lapekas appears as part of our theme week on Female Friendship.
In the spirit of Boys on the Side, along with a dose of teen angst, Foxfire is perhaps the most bad ass chick flick ever. Many Angelina Jolie fans are not aware of this 1996 phenomenon, where Angie makes a name for herself as a rebellious free spirit who changes the lives of four young women in New York. Based on the Joyce Carol Oates novel by the same name, Foxfire is the epitome of girl power and female friendship, a pleasant departure from the competition and spitefulness often portrayed between women characters on the big screen (see Bride Wars and Just Go with It). However, it does seem that Hollywood is catching on as of late, and producing films that cater to a more progressive viewership (see Bridesmaids and The Other Woman). When I first saw Foxfire around 16 years old, I stole the VHS copy from the video store where I worked at the time.
You don’t want to mess with these gals.
Angelina Jolie’s shaggy hair and tomboy style in the film, along with her portrayal of the rebellious Legs Sadovsky, play with gender expectations, challenging our assumptions pertaining to clothing, gait, etc. Legs’ biker boots and leather jacket highlight the general heteronormative tendency to find discomfort in these roles and depictions. An androgynous drifter, Legs oozes sex appeal and promotes the questioning of authority. She teaches the girls to own their happiness, to correct the injustices they encounter, and to assert themselves to the men who think themselves superior to women. Legs’ appearance in Foxfire is paramount; she’s even mistaken for a boy when she breaks into the local high school. A security guard yells, “Young man, stop when I’m talking to you.” We see this confusion repeat itself when Goldie’s mother tells her daughter, “There’s a girl…or whatever…here to see you.”
How can we resist developing a girl crush on Angie in this role?
The film’s subplot involves a romance of sorts between artist Maddy and Legs, the mysterious stranger, while Maddy feels a large distance growing between her and her boyfriend (a young Peter Facinelli from the Twilight saga). The intensity of the “girl-crush” shared between Maddy and Legs is akin to that of Thelma and Louise; while we come to understand that Legs is gay, Maddy’s platonic love is enough for the troubled runaway. Legs also assures Maddy after sleeping on her floor one rainy night, “Don’t worry, you’re not my type.” Similar to my discussion of the reunion between Miranda and Steve in Sex and the City: the Movie, the two young women coming together on a bridge is heavy with symbolism, especially when Legs climbs to the top and dances while Maddy looks on in horror and professes that she’s afraid of heights: a nice precursor for the unfolding narrative, which centers on Legs guiding the girls and easing their fears, especially those associated with female adolescence and gaining new insight into their surroundings and how they fit into their environment.
While this scene may not be aware of itself as being set up as a nice Romeo and Juliet visual, we realize perhaps Legs is a better suitor than Maddy’s boyfriend, whose male privilege hinders his understanding of what Maddy needs.
In a somber and almost zen-like scene involving Maddy and Legs, they profess their love for one another outside the abandoned home the gang has claimed as their own. Maddy says, “If I told you I loved you, would you take it the wrong way?” Obviously, while Maddy doesn’t want Legs to think she’s in love with her, she wants to make clear that the two have bonded for life and are now inextricably linked in sisterhood. Maddy indirectly asks if Legs would take her with when she decides to move on, and Legs hints that Maddy may not be prepared for her nomadic lifestyle. The platonic romance shared by both young women culminates in tears and heartache when Legs must inevitably leave.
Almost as if to kiss Legs, Maddy tenderly touches her face atop the gang’s house.
Legs is the glue that binds these young women, and she literally appears from nowhere. Her entrances are consistently memorable: she initially meets Maddy as she’s trespassing on school property, she climbs to Maddy’s window asking for refuge from the rain (another Romeo and Juliet moment), and eventually takes off for nowhere, leaving the girls stupefied and yet more lucid than ever. Legs is something that happens to these girls, a force of nature, a breath of fresh air. When she tells Maddy that she was thrown out of her old school “for thinking for herself,” we can safely assume it was just that–refusing to conform to the standards of others. The unlikely friendship that forms amongst this diverse group of girls clarifies the idea that this gang dynamic has found them, not the other way around; the pressed need for the collective feminine is what brings the girls together, rather than some vendetta against men.
Although Legs tattoos each of the girls in honor of their time together, they know they won’t need scars to remember Legs.
Legs sports a tattoo that reads “Audrey”: her mother, who was killed in a drunk driving accident, and we clearly see in the film’s final scenes that Legs suffers from some serious daddy issues, when she angrily announces that “fathers mean nothing.” Delving briefly into Legs’ painful past, we discover that she never knew her father. The quickly maturing Rita explains to Legs, “This isn’t about you.” Each of the girls has their own set of issues within the film: Rita is being sexually molested by her scumbag biology teacher, Mr. Buttinger, Goldie is a drug addict whose father beats her, Violet is dubbed a “slut,” by the school’s stuck-up cheerleaders, and Maddy struggles to balance school, her photography, and her boyfriend, who is dumbfounded by Legs’ influence on his typically well-behaved girlfriend.
After the girls beat up Buttinger, Legs warns him to think before inappropriately touching any more female students.
In an especially significant scene, the football players from school who continually harass the girls attempt to abduct Maddy by forcing her into a van. The confrontations between the groups progressively escalate throughout the movie, and climax after Coach Buttinger is apparently fired for sexually harassing several female students. Legs shows up donning a switchblade and orders the boys to let her friend go. Of course, the pair steal the van and pick up their girlfriends on a high speed cruise to nowhere, which ends in an exciting police chase and Legs losing control and crashing, a metaphor for the gang’s imminent downfall. The threat of sexual assault dissolved by a female ally, followed by police pursuit and a car crash has a lovely Thelma & Louise quality, as well. The motivation here is to avoid being swept up in a misogynistic culture of victim-blaming. What’s interesting about this scene is that another girl from school, who’s in cahoots with these sleazy guys, actually lures Maddy to the waiting group of boys, knowing what’s to come. Meanwhile, Maddy tells Cyndi that she’d escort any girl somewhere who doesn’t feel safe, highlighting the betrayal at work here. Cyndi, the outsider, exploits Maddy’s feminist sensibilities, her unspoken drive for female solidarity and the resistance of male violence to fulfill a violent, misogynist agenda and put Maddy in harm’s way. Later, in the van, Goldie excitedly yells, “Maddy almost got raped, and we just stole this car!” as if this is a source of exhilaration or a mark of resiliency. Perhaps we’d correct her by shifting the blame from the “almost-victim” to her attacker: “Dana and his boys almost raped Maddy.”
Legs says, “Let her out, you stupid fuck.”
Obviously, these are young women just blossoming in their feminist ideals, on the path to realization, and just beginning to question the patriarchal agenda they find themselves a part of in this awkward stage of young adulthood. It’s in this queer in-between state, straddling womanhood and adolescence, that we find Maddy, Legs, Violet, Goldie, and Rita, on the cusp of articulating their justified outrage. We may also question, how does one almost get raped? While the girls of Foxfire are young and somewhat inexperienced, with Legs’ help, they quickly obtain this sort of unpleasant, universal knowledge that males can perpetrate sexual violence in order to “put women in their place.” Dana announces, “You girls are getting a little big for yourselves.” We can’t have that. Women who grow, gain confidence, and challenge sexist and oppressive norms can make waves and upset lots of people. While the girls are initially hesitant in trying to find their way and make sense of their lives, Legs is the powerful catalyst for this transition from the young and feminine to the wise and feminist. While the high school jocks attempt to reclaim the power they feel has been threatened or stolen by this group of girls, Legs continues to challenge gender expectations by utilizing violence as well.
As she hitches a ride, Legs tearfully says, “You’re my heart, Maddy.”
Not only does this film pass the Bechdel Test with flying colors, it almost feels as if it’s a joke when the girls do manage to discuss men–like the topic is not something they take seriously or that boys rest only on the periphery of their lives. While Maddy suffers silently in terms of her artistic prowess and boyfriend drama, Rita–seemingly the prudest and most sheltered of the gang–talks casually about masturbation and penis size. However, it’s important to note that when men do make their way into the conversation, it’s at rare, lighthearted moments when the girls are not guarded or suspicious of the tyrannical and predatory men who seem to surround them. The penis-size discussion between Rita and Violet, we must admit, is also quite self-serving and objectifying. Rather than obsess over their appearances or the approval of boys, the girls’ most ecstatic moment is when Violet receives an anonymous note from a younger girl at school, another student Buttinger was harassing who is thankful for what the gang did. The fact that Violet is so pleased that she could help a friendly stranger who was also a target of the same perverted teacher says a lot about the gang’s goals and identity.
Thanks to Legs, Maddy overcomes her fear of heights.
Maddy and Legs recognize something in one another, and although theirs is not a sexual relationship, it is no doubt intimate and meaningful. With an amazing soundtrack that includes Wild Strawberries, L7 (wanna fling tampons, anyone?), and Luscious Jackson, and boasting a cast that includes Angelina Jolie and Hedy Burress, Foxfire is undeniably feminist in its message and narrative. With the help of Legs, the girls find agency, and with it, each other. Although most of the girls have been failed by men in some way, Legs offers hope in female friendship and lets her sisters know that male-perpetrated violence can be combated with a switchblade and a swift kick to the balls. Legs arrives like a whirlwind in Maddy’s life and leaves her changed forever. The lovely ladies of Foxfire will make you want to form a girl gang, dangle off bridges, and break into your old high school’s art room just to stick it to the man.
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Jenny holds a Master of Arts degree in English, and she is a part-time instructor at a community college in Pennsylvania. Her areas of scholarship include women’s literature, menstrual literacy, and rape-revenge cinema. She lives with two naughty chihuahuas. You can find her on WordPress and Pinterest.
We need heroines who tell girls that they are strong and capable entirely on their own, that they don’t need a family and ESPECIALLY don’t need a lover in order to become themselves. We need heroines who prove in action that no one ever—EVER—has the right to take your livelihood or body or home away from you, as well as that—if it happens—it doesn’t have to destroy you forever. Girls need to see that it’s okay to seek and use power, that there is nothing at all wrong with being a strong, emotional, powerful leader as a woman.
This is a guest post by Melissa Cordner.
***Sole warning: contains all the spoilers.***
Reviews and friends will tell you that Maleficent was predictable, at times slow, and seemed to be primarily an excuse for the artists to show off their CG skills (that dragon though!). In terms of action-based plotlines, this is fair, but those who are bored by the film are overlooking one key factor: character development. Maleficent is a classic stereotypical “total bitch”—and THAT’S PORTRAYED AS A GOOD THING.
Maleficent was a sweet little girl, adored by her community and brave enough to defend it peaceably. She fell in love, as we are prone to do, and had her heart broken when the object of her affections left to chase fame and fortune, as we are also prone to do. This heartbreak made her cautious, but it did not destroy her. No, it was when he came back, soothed away the pain of years with his sweet talk and cuddles, and then drugged her and brutally hacked off and stole her wings, that she went a little crazy with pain and rage.
Angelina Jolie as Maleficent
The importance of the wing theft seems a little underplayed in the film; at no point does Maleficent come out and say “the person I was in love with broke my body and spirit by taking away my main source of pride, mobility, and identity.” She spells it out a little for Aurora when she explains that her wings never faltered and were always dependable, but that doesn’t quite get to the heart of it either. On one level, her wings were what made her a fairy and made her the protector of the moors; without them, she is landlocked and crippled, incapable of work and even play. This would destroy anyone, but the fact that her wings were stolen not in battle but under the guise of romantic love adds another more complicated layer to the trauma. This man felt entitled to her body; he felt it fair to drug her and take what he wanted with no respect for what she wanted or needed or how she would survive afterwards. He took away her identity, her pride in her body, and her livelihood. He never asked permission, he never apologized, and she was left with trust in nothing and no one—not even herself.
It is interesting to note that he could not bring himself to kill her, but chose to cause her a lifetime of pain and suffering instead. Like Maleficent in the Sleeping Beauty saga, Stefan is easy to read as evil and malicious; however, we see he still has a bit of compassion when he can’t bring himself to drive the blade into her back. Of course he still destroys her in every way possible by tearing off her wings; does this make him better, or worse, than a murderer? He also could have used the knife and let her bleed to death from the experience but chose instead a chain which (we can guess) was made of iron and therefore cauterized the wounds; is this compassion, or cruelty? Even here, Maleficent shows that things are not always black and white.
It is also important to note that her wings—which Stefan keeps locked under glass as a bizarre morbid trophy—come to life and return to Maleficent when she is about to die, immobilized by her inability to fly away from the power-sapping iron (another secret her once-lover has used against her as a way to destroy her, for those of you keeping track). It is no accident that those wings lay dormant behind that glass for sixteen years while Maleficent’s heart was consumed by a bitter storm of resentment and revenge. It is no accident that they came to life when Maleficent was about to die, AFTER she had told Aurora to run, using close to the last of her strength to protect what her heart cherished most. It is no accident that sixteen-year-old Aurora is who topples that trophy case and frees the wings to return to the fairy. Maleficent’s wings return because her heart does when she puts Aurora before herself, just as they disappeared when her faith and ability to love were stolen. You don’t erase a rape or betrayal—ever— but it IS possible to get your livelihood back and become proud of your body again.
The fact that Aurora— the child upon whom Maleficent cast a vengeful curse so powerful even she could not undo it—is the reason Maleficent’s heart (and wings) return to her is hugely important. This shows audience members that we don’t only deserve love, even when we run from it; we also deserve forgiveness. Maleficent was bitter and hurting and angry and made a bad decision. She made a huge mistake that destroyed an innocent person’s life for the sake of revenge… and that person LOVED HER ANYWAY. If Aurora hadn’t loved Maleficent as much as Maleficent loved her, even after finding out the source of the curse, the kiss would not have been of true love and the spell would not have been broken. We know this because the kiss from Phillip didn’t work; they didn’t know each other well enough, they didn’t love each other truly enough. As in Frozen (and Enchanted now that I think about it), Disney finally gives us the message that love at first sight is not all it’s made out to be.
Maleficent and her wings
This generation of girls has had sassy, brave and strong heroines before Maleficent, of course, but all these heroines have left us wanting more complexity. I grew up with Hermione, the cleverest girl at Hogwarts—who solved riddles for the main male character and played a vital-but-still-merely-supporting role to his adventures. Teenagers now identify with Katniss, the badass figurehead of the rebel movement in The Hunger Games—an emotional, confused girl who bravely defended her sister and then forevermore served as a puppet for the movement rather than a leader. Disney’s movies have participated in this movement as well. Tangled’s Rapunzel dared to question authority but was still fulfilled by finding love and a throne; Brave’s Merida valued herself as more of a person than a princess and learned the value of bravery without a supporting man but remained a princess and even—painfully enough—underwent a “makeover” to become more stereotypically beautiful/soft/feminine later on. Frozen gave us female characters with a bit more emotional complexity, but even Anna—who proved that true love does not have to be romantic love—was sweet and a little bumbling and would never hurt a fly… and even she ended up with a boyfriend. All of these women show girls that it’s okay to be emotional and scared, it’s okay to rely on others, and it’s possible to be brave and strong and true to yourself while you do it. That is a message that our girls, who still dress up like Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and Cinderella, need desperately to hear.
But I, for one, think it’s time to take the “you don’t need to be helpless and dependent to be feminine” theme a little further. We need heroines who tell girls that they are strong and capable entirely on their own, that they don’t need a family and ESPECIALLY don’t need a lover in order to become themselves. We need heroines who prove in action that no one ever—EVER—has the right to take your livelihood or body or home away from you, as well as that—if it happens—it doesn’t have to destroy you forever. Girls need to see that it’s okay to seek and use power, that there is nothing at all wrong with being a strong, emotional, powerful leader as a woman. It’s time we tell our girls that you can fight back, even using defensive violence, and still be a good person. It’s time to tell our girls that they can make mistakes and even hurt the people they love, and still deserve that love. Yes, Maleficent DOES have a slow plot, instead centering almost entirely on the character development of one woman—and it is about damn time.
Mel Cordner is based in Connecticut, USA with her two cats and a car full of rubber ducks. She spends a lot of time writing about queer issues, fighting the system, and supporting local parks and restaurants. For more of her work, check out http://www.permissiontowrite.tumblr.com/
At its core, ‘Maleficent’ rewrites the morality tale that we all know. Instead of showing us that there is good and there is evil and never the twain shall meet, it tells us that sometimes people do bad things because they are hurt or scared but if they show remorse, realize the error of their ways, and act in ways that show love or kindness–they can be redeemed.
Spoiler Warning
Maleficentseems to be part of a growing trend to retell fairy tales in a way that complicate their morality lessons. For those that don’t know, the character of Maleficent is based on a classic Disney villain that first appeared in Sleeping Beauty. The original depiction of Maleficent is monstrous; in my opinion she was one of the most terrifying villains aimed at young children that Disney has produced. In the original she is an extraordinarily powerful evil fairy. She takes offense at not having been invited to Aurora’s christening and so as her birth gift curses the child to prick her finger on a spindle and die. The three good fairies are only to mitigate the curse so that Aurora would fall into everlasting sleep instead of dying.
Movies like Maleficent and shows like Once Upon a Time have complicated the notions of good in evil. In these types of stories we are given a view that Evil is not simply birthed, it must be created and can come down to the different ways in which people react to trying circumstances. For example in Once Upon a Time, both Snow White and Regina face hardship from an early age. This shows us that what separates the two is that Snow is able to work through her pain and practice compassion, whereas Regina becomes fixated on vengeance and tallying up all the wrongs that have been done to her, further fueling her undying need for vengeance which creates a vicious cycle.
In Sleeping Beauty, we know nothing about Maleficent’s origins; she is just a proxy for the forces of evil. She does bad things because she is bad; there is no further analysis required. Her motivations are irrelevant–we are meant to think nothing could possibly justify the things she does. Maleficent serves to complicate what we know as evil. Instead of Maleficent simply being caricatured as the “mistress of all evil,” we are introduced to her as an innocent, young girl who is kind to strangers and and is concerned with looking after the other fairies. As she grows older, Maleficent becomes powerful and takes on the mantle of protector of her people–a role that she takes very seriously. She ends up leading the fairies into battle when the King of the humans comes to try and conquer them out of greed. In this version, Maleficent is portrayed as a woman with power who is also virtuous, at least until she is hurt very badly.
There is little development of Aurora the princess; she comes off as a very naive child, despite her circumstances, which force her to become somewhat self-reliant. In some ways while giving Maleficent her person-hood, the movie removes that from Aurora. She seems to be merely a plot device. While not ideal, I am OK with it in this context.
Generally, female fairy tale villains can be divided into two broad categories (obviously there are exceptions): vain sorceresses – think the Evil Queen in Snow White or women with power who are just evil for the sake of it. Aside from Maleficent, Ursula the sea witch also fits into this category as does the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland.
The subtext is of course that women with power are dangerous and cannot or should not be trusted. The hero or heroine of a fairy tale is often concerned with removing the evil woman from power and restoring the natural balance of things, so to speak. This is why reshaping these narratives is so necessary; it allows us to disrupt the common gendered tropes that exist in a way that has real power. It is nice that in this case the true evil is not a woman with power, but instead a man who has greed and ambition and is willing to do whatever it takes to get what he wants, even if it means hurting the only person who has shown him kindness.
Maleficent’s downfall is love or sentimentality; her old human friend uses his relationship against her for his own personal ambitions and she is left bereft. She becomes hard and un-trusting because the violation she suffered was so traumatic. Angelina Jolie’s portrayal of Maleficent’s pain and loss at this point is quite poignant. Maleficent believes that she is doing her best for her people but she can no longer relate to them as she is not the carefree young girl that she was. At the same time it is love that redeems Maleficent when she falls deeply in maternal love with the object of her curse. She realizes that her pain and isolation have stopped her from truly being who she wants to be, and she will no longer let the man who assaulted her have that power over her anymore. There is something quite lovely about this; it tells us that yes, love can sometimes lead to hurt and betrayal, but it can also bring out the best in us. Love is an overarching theme in Maleficent, and one of the best moments comes when Prince Philip, who has met Aurora once, is unable to wake her with true love’s kiss. The good fairies are highly disgruntled, and for it seems to prove that love cannot exist. However when her own kiss wakes Aurora, she realizes that love comes in many forms, and it is not always a lie.
At its core, Maleficent rewrites the morality tale that we all know. Instead of showing us that there is good and there is evil and never the twain shall meet, it tells us that sometimes people do bad things because they are hurt or scared but if they show remorse, realize the error of their ways, and act in ways that show love or kindness–they can be redeemed. The contrast between Maleificient and the king is quite clear. Whereas Maleficent has been able to move on from her hurt through love, the king becomes consumed by his desire for vengeance; it becomes the only in thing in his life and that ends up making him the real evil and leading to his downfall. As far as fairy tales go, Maleficent is the most feminist retelling of one that I have seen in a long time.
Gaayathri Nair is currently living and writing in Auckland, New Zealand. You can find more of her work at her blog A Human Story and tweet her @A_Gaayathri.
Though very different, the two films based on Joyce Carol Oates’s novel, ‘Foxfire: Confessions of A Girl Gang,’ have a shared message: that rape culture is pervasive and the experiences of girls and women within it are sadly, universal. In both films, one set in the 90s, the other in the 50s, teenage girls inhabit dangerous territory, full of sexual assaults and near misses, all ignored by the authorities around them. Their experiences aren’t considered unusual or justified within their respective narratives, instead, they point out that women are given a lot of reasons to feel unsafe and afraid in our society. At the very least, we’ve all been told not to walk home at night or to be frightened by a man following too close on our heels.
Written by Elizabeth Kiy as part of our theme week on Rape Revenge Fantasies.
Though very different, the two films based on Joyce Carol Oates’s novel, Foxfire: Confessions of A Girl Gang, have a shared message: that rape culture is pervasive and the experiences of girls and women within it are, sadly, universal. In both films, one set in the 90s, the other in the 50s, teenage girls inhabit dangerous territory, full of sexual assaults and near misses, all ignored by the authorities around them. Their experiences aren’t considered unusual or justified within their respective narratives; instead, they point out that women are given a lot of reasons to feel unsafe and afraid in our society. At the very least, we’ve all been told not to walk home at night or to be frightened by a man following too close on our heels.
Unlike a lot of other films discussed this week, the girls of Foxfire are not avenging a particular rape, but are instead rebelling against rape culture in many forms: catcalls, description of women by only their physical attributes, slut shaming, rape and molestation, predatory authority figures and the society that allows men and their opinions more power than women.
While rape revenge films are often criticized for using rape for titillation or as a means to justify nudity and graphic violence, the ideas are invoked here to make viewers think.
In these films, one girl is mocked by a teacher for her appearance and has her intelligence demeaned. One girl is groped while another is shamed. Yet another is offered a free typewriter by her uncle in exchange for sex; a fifth is spied on in the shower. During a trial, the defendant’s promiscuity is the most important factor in deciding her guilt. And when one girl returns home after being raped, her mother’s only response is to tell her to clean herself up before her father sees.
Forming a girl gang allows the characters to stop seeing sexual assault as the problem of each individual victim, but as something that effects all of them. When one girl, Rita, thanks the group for helping her, their leader assures her that she isn’t to blame–if Rita wasn’t the victim, it would have been someone else. Women need to band together instead of shaming each other if they have any hope of changing things.
Both films center on a passionate and androgynous leader, named Legs, who mobilizes the girls, first in a series of pranks and acts of rebellion small enough that viewers can cheer them on, then through several dangerous and criminal acts, before culminating in the kidnapping of a wealthy man at gunpoint. Maddy (Hedy Burress), Legs’s closest confidant, observes the events and acts are narrator, chronicling the group’s rise and fall.
The original 1996 film, starring Angelina Jolie as Legs, is clearly a product of the 90s Girl Power movement, a period known for being overly commercialized, but it’s an earnest effort with a female screenwriter, Elizabeth White and director, Annette Haywood-Carter. It’s also an attempt to modernize the novel, about working class 50s teens in Upstate New York, relocating the story to Oregon and dressing it in grunge fashion, with topics for discussion like sexism, female disenfranchisement, parental neglect, and masturbation. However, as a mainstream film, it’s sanitized, more playful than the book and as the girls are middle or upper middle class, the stakes are less dire. Foxfire never becomes a literal gang or a lifestyle, just an episode in their lives, that facilitates their coming of age.
For the remake, director Laurent Cantet restored the novel’s setting and stuck pretty faithfully to the book, attempting to cram in all the causes Foxfire rebels against, including ageism, racism, animal rights, and economic disparity as well as sexism. Lead by a cast of newcomers, Cantet’s film takes a more cautionary tone, as Maddy’s attempt to redeem Foxfire, now remembered only for their criminal acts, by telling their history and their original noble goals.
While Legs in the remake (Raven Adamson) was a classmate of the other girls who they had known for years, in the original, she’s an outsider, a drifter who enters into their lives one day and helps them find their voices. Legs is given a grand entrance, heralded by thunder and followed as she boldly trespasses through the school halls.
Punishing Mr. Buttinger for abusing Rita is the impetuous for Foxfire’s founding
Like a superhero, she arrives to save one of the girls, Rita (Rilo Kiley front-woman Jenny Lewis) who is being bullied by her teacher, Mr. Buttinger, for refusing to dissect a frog. Legs tells the student to “Make him stop,” and it’s a truly revolutionary idea, that a teenage girl could have any power over an adult. Her dream-like entrance and exit through the window, mark her as powerful and unconstrained by society’s rules, she doesn’t go to the school and Mr. Buttinger can’t punish her.
Legs is clearly marked as Other–she’s aggressive, with a leather jacket, heavy boots and swagger. As the camera pans up her body when she’s first introduced, not showing her face for several minutes, it’s clear viewers were meant to think momentarily, that she was a man. It is unclear why she goes by such a strange nickname, one usually thought of as objectifying; perhaps it is an attempt to reclaim something men have called out to her in the street.
Her relationship with Maddy is marked by obvious lesbian subtext, as they frequently flirt, confess their love for each other and share a bed, but her sexuality is never explicitly discussed. It is problematic that the character with the courage to fight against rape culture is the one given traits marked as masculine, while the girls she recruits, are mostly feminine and/or weak. It is also troubling that Legs’s suggested queerness is paired with her hatred of men, two things which are often falsely equated.
Legs enjoys driving the girls in the stolen car
In both cases, the girls are enamored with Legs, who quickly becomes their hero and undisputed leader. In the original, they are all introduced as broad high archetypes, Violet (“the slut”), Goldie (“the druggie”), Rita (“the fat girl”) and Maddy (well-rounded and popular), characterizations which become more three dimensional as the film goes on.
When the other girls learn Mr. Buttinger has been groping Rita’s breasts during detention, they originally hold her responsible. It’s Legs’s influence that makes them realize there is no excuse for Mr. Buttinger’s behavior and no way Rita could deserve his abuse. In the remake, Legs blames Rita only for not fighting back, telling her, “It’s up to you to decide how men are going to treat you.” Rita takes this message to heart, exposing him as sexual predator by painting statements about his attraction to young girls on his car.
In the original, Legs tells the girls that the only way to stop his is to band together. During Rita’s detention, the girls gang up on him, physically assault and threaten him. Rita begins to come out of her shell, finally gaining the confidence to confront her abuser, threatening to castrate him if she ever touches her again. The next day, the girls are called into the principal’s office and suspended, despite their claims of sexual harassment, which are ignored.
The girls perform a candlelit ritual in their headquarters, during which they give each other tattoos
Legs’s idea, that they can fight against abusive men only if they all stick together, but not as individuals, leads them to start Foxfire as their own collective, their own subculture. Before they had banded together, the girls went to the same school and had shared experiences, but cliques kept them segregated. Maddie, from her privileged perspective as a popular girl, looked at someone like Goldie as a sideshow, dismissed Violet as a slut and disdained Rita’s shyness as pathetic, and the cause of her own problems. Later, when they become friends, Goldie is hurt when she notices Maddie’s art project includes an unflattering Polaroid of her, clearly posed as someone to mock.
They begin to gather in an abandoned house in the woods, which they use to make a community and a safe space. Hanging around in the house, they become real friends and partake in typical teenage bonding practices, drinking, dancing, ogling guys, and laughing together. They cement their bond by tattooing each other’s breasts with a small flame logo, marking themselves as part of Foxfire, grouped together for life.
In the remake, the girls rent a house and live together in their own cloistered society as Legs intends to create an institution that would outlast her. The idea of a formal female gang with a manifesto, rules, ritual tattooing, criminal practices and recruitment, is an example of young women adapting masculine rough culture and altering it to suit them. Gangs are typically the province of disenfranchised youth (usually male), those neglected by mainstream society, such as racial minorities and the working class. Foxfire suggests the characters are disenfranchised as women and it is natural for them to act out against the society that oppresses them, as the men around them, in their own gangs, have been doing for years.
Maddy admires her tattoo
In the original film, rape culture is tied to sports culture, as both are posed as masculine spaces men feel women have no right to infringe on nor attempt to police. Their attack on Mr. Buttinger upset a group of jocks who respect him as the coach of their football team and they resent the girls. The boys begin harassing them, visiting their house in the woods and attempting to attack them, eventually trying to rape Maddy. Struggling to escape the jocks, the Foxfire girls steal a car and are arrested for it. At their trial, is implied that the jocks lied and blamed the girls for everything, leading to a “he said, she said” dynamic where the boys’ testimonies are taken more seriously. Legs in sentenced to juvie, while the others are on parole. For trying to dismantle rape culture and save themselves from attack, they are punished and lose Legs, the heart of the group.
There are also girls who help the jocks; one lures Maddy into an ambush, understanding the goal is to rape her, and lies at their trial. Later she gains some redemption when she confesses to the judge. Early on in the remake, the girls in Foxfire are reluctant to let Violet, a beautiful girl all the boys are crazy about, join. They decide Violet is promiscuous because she attracts male attention, without any evidence she returns their interest, and look down on her for it. In the remake, Legs’s mental state begins to deteriorate as she becomes disillusioned with her vision of women helping each other as a community after watching women fighting each other in juvie.
After juvie, both versions of Legs turn to darker, more violent acts. Narrating the remake, Maddy says the committed many crimes against men but most of their were not reported because their male victims were ashamed of having been attacked by girls. The films suggest revenge is acceptable to a certain level, where it’s exposing men who have who they know to be predators or teaching lessons to men who have wronged them, but is wrong once the focus moves away from specific individuals. When Foxfire starts targeting men in general, moving out of the area of defensible grey morality, Legs moves into villainous territory herself.
The Foxfire girls use their members as bait to rob men
Strapped for cash, Foxfire (in the remake) begins to use its most conventionally attractive girls to bait men, luring them into secluded areas and then ambushing them and stealing money. One girl, Violet, finds she can make more by pretending the man tried to rape her and acting afraid until he gives her money to try and comfort her. Though baiting, these girls attempt to turn rape culture on its head and make it work for them. These acts are justified in their eyes as Foxfire begins to operate with the view that all men are rapists deserving punishment, even casting out any girl involved in a relationship as the enemy.
Out of the group in the original film, only one girl, Goldie (Jenny Shimizu) has a dysfunctional home life. In one scene, her father orders her into his car and hits her while her friends watch. Instead of struggling or hitting back as would be expected from the character, Goldie submits. When the girls discover Goldie has been using drugs, Legs goes to her father, demanding money to pay for rehab. When he refuses, though he can clearly afford it, she kidnaps him at gunpoint and ties him up, continuing to pressure him for money. The girls, as both teenagers and girls, would ordinarily be powerless to help Goldie, here, as in many areas of their lives, they find they can only get results through violence. In these scenes, the other girls surround her yelling that she’s gone too far.
In the end, Legs leaves town to escape arrest, as well as the loss of the other girls’ respect. These girls who had previously viewed Legs as a hero, looked at her with disgust and disappointment and admitted to being afraid of her. In the remake, we get some understanding of Legs’s family and background, as her father, an alcoholic, condemns her at her trial and refuses to let her live with him. Conversely, the original leaves Legs’s origins a mystery. She’s clearly damaged and something must have happened to make her, a teenage girl with a criminal record, no place to live, and roaming from town to town. The easiest explanation, is that she may have left home because of her own abuse and it’s easy to speculate that her anger at society, particularly fierce towards Goldie’s father, comes from projecting her own experiences onto their relationship.
Everything begins to go downhill when Legs is released from juvie
Moreover, the 1996 version is framed as a coming of age story, cast as the year Legs came to town, changing everything, making Maddy question her perfect world and then disappeared never to be seen or heard from again- merely an episode in her life. But while the Maddy is central to the remake as its narrator, her observations of Legs and Foxfire’s history form the thrust of the narrative, rather than her own maturation. Both films end with the mystery of Legs’s disappearance and Maddy’s continuing obsession. In the original, Maddy’s decision not to go with Legs when she leaves town is framed as the one decision of her life she has always looked back on, wondering “what if?”
While the original film shows what happens when the leader of a group becomes an extremist or is mentally unstable, the remake suggests the whole group, excluding Maddy who defects, has begun to reject the rules and laws of society. Toward the end, most of the other girls are excited by their efforts at baiting and see Foxfire as one big, dangerous game that allows them to reject the limiting framework they grew up in. For her part, Legs always means well, trying, in the only way she understands, to help her friends and women as a whole.
Both endings are bittersweet. Foxfire disbands and the girls stop fighting for their causes, but they’ve helped some people and made their mark. But Legs is gone and it’s uncertain what ideas viewers are meant to come away with. It’s tricky to judge, as the films are full of feminist ideas and urgings for female empowerment, yet have dark endings where characters are hurt and disgraced. A tagline for the original celebrates the girls’ rebellion and encourages the teenage girl viewer to follow suit: “If you don’t like the rules, Make your own.”
In more light-hearted moments, the girls still have fun together
But what are these films saying about young women who dare to break the rules? That their efforts will succeed unless our leader is unstable? That movements for rape revenge will always become uncontrollable and dangerous or that they’ll succeed only while punishing the guilty, but not when attempting to change the culture?
In the end, what the girls of the Foxfire films have is a strength they might not have found otherwise. That strength and the idea of community are what viewers should remember.
At first glance, Girl, Interrupted appears to be Hollywood’s version of feminist nirvana. It’s a veritable oasis in an industry where only 23% of speaking roles belong to women, an industry that tends to only depict women as supporting characters for the ever-important leading men. This 1999 film adaptation of Susanna Kaysen’s memoir of the same title features a strong core cast of women, some of whom went on to bigger stardom in the aftermath of the commercial success of the film.
Set to the backdrop of the late 1960s, Girl, Interrupted chronicles a fictionalized Susanna’s (Winona Ryder) year-long stint in the woman’s ward at Claymore, a private mental institution, after her attempted suicide and subsequent “break” with reality. Susanna is diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, a diagnosis she reluctantly accepts and from which she eventually “recovers.” Throughout the year, Susanna comes face-to-face with the “real” crazies in the form of sociopathic Lisa (Angelia Jolie), pathologically lying Georgina (Clea DuVall), schizophrenic Polly (Elizabeth Moss), and cocktail-of-issues Daisy (Brittany Murphy) who grapples with eating disorders, OCD, and a history of sexual abuse. The film suggests, sometimes overtly, that Susanna, by comparison to her ward-mates, isn’t doing so badly. In fact, Nurse Valerie (Whoopi Goldberg), in one of the most emotionally resonant scenes of the film, declares Susanna is “not crazy” but instead “a lazy, self-indulgent little girl who is driving herself crazy.” At this point, viewers are likely nodding their heads. Certainly, we’ve all met that girl. Or maybe we are that girl.
Winona Ryder as Susanna Kaysen in Girl, Interrupted
Thankfully, Girl, Interrupted decidedly positions itself as not a love story. In fact, all of Susanna’s romantic interests are purely sexual, involving little emotion, a ”symptom” that gets her labeled as a borderline in the first place. Instead, Girl, Interrupted explores a young woman’s coming of age as she struggles in an uncertain world, meditates upon what it really means to be “mentally ill,” and, ultimately, discovers her sense of self. The equation is simple: the almost all-female cast + a story of female self-discovery = a feminist victory in a male-dominated Hollywood, right?
Well, yes and no.
At its core, Girl, Interrupted strives to be a feminist film. However, I find the film’s representations of “mad women” problematic, particularly the ways in which mental illness becomes so closely linked with eroticized otherness. And here is where the film’s deep ambivalence comes into play: it attempts to dispel the myth of what it means to be a mentally ill woman, while at the same time reinforcing cultural stereotypes that portray mentally ill women as hypersexual, dangerous, amoral, or inherently unfeminine. In the end, Girl, Interrupted posits mental illness as a choice from which one, like Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, can always return.
As Susanna checks into Claymore, she catches a glimpse of her doctor’s case notes that indicate her “promiscuous” tendencies as one symptom of her ailment. Yes, she had an affair with a married man, and, yes, she slept with the brother of one of her classmates; she loves neither of these men. At one point Susanna notes, “What kind of sex isn’t casual?” Certainly, her disavowal of love as a necessary component of sex is a feminist gesture. In the free-loving 60s, that sweeping diagnosis—promiscuity—encompassed nearly every rally, march, or peace protest in America, or at least modern-day viewers might suspect from the comfort of our viewing couches.
The women of Girl, Interrupted
Yet, her “promiscuity” continues, even at Claymore where Susanna engages in a physical relationship with a doting orderly. When challenged on this point by her therapist, Susanna becomes indignant, and rightly so. She argues, “How many guys would a girl have to sleep with to be considered promiscuous? Three, four, ten? How many girls would a guy have to sleep with? Fifteen? Forty? A hundred and nine?” Feminists across America high five each other.
At several junctures, such as this one, Girl, Interrupted positions itself firmly as a feminist film, shattering assumptions that there exists one “proper” behavior for women. We sympathize with Susanna and with her plight against The Man, against a gendered, cultural understanding of what is and is not appropriate sexual behavior for a young woman. In many ways, her “illness” manifests itself in the typical American teenage coming-of-age way. Susanna asks herself questions we all have asked, at one time or another: Where do I fit in? Who am I? What do I value?
Throughout the film, Susanna’s character works to unravel stereotypes about what it means to be a woman with a mental illness: she’s beautiful; she’s smart; she’s never threatening. She’s much like any other young woman as we watch her negotiate friendships, write in her journal, sneak out at night with her friends, smoke cigarettes, and, generally, protest authority. In most ways, she’s an ordinary girl, just like you might find on the “outside.” The viewer begins to question if Susanna even really needs to be at Claymore in the first place.
Susanna Kaysen (Winona Ryder) and Nurse Valerie (Whoopi Goldberg)
Yet, if Girl, Interrupted creates a binary with Susanna on one side, dismantling preconceived notions about mental illness and female sexuality, on the other side lies Lisa, who reinforces cultural narratives about “crazy bitches.” Let’s face it: Lisa is the real villain of the movie, a sociopath with no real moral compass, a young woman who is manipulative and unnervingly magnetic all at once. The moment she enters the film, returning from one of her many attempted escapes, we’re to understand that she’s a threat. She pins Susanna in the corner of her room shouting at her, demanding to know where her friend Jamie had gone, until she is physically restrained.
However, like many “crazy bitches” of cinema (Nina Sayers in Black Swan, Alex Forrest in Fatal Attraction) she exudes sexuality and charisma, deepened only by her sense of danger. As Susanna and Lisa spend time together, their growing friendship feels more like a courtship. Susanna herself can’t help but be drawn in by those pouty lips, her playfulness, her rabble rousing and bravado. At one point, as Susanna and Lisa are on the lam from Claymore, the two share a kiss. The moment is innocent enough, but the implications become clear. Lisa represents the eroticized other, the taboo, the forbidden, dark and amoral mad woman.
Angelina Jolie in her Oscar-winning role as Lisa in Girl, Interrupted
This stereotype becomes clearer a few moments later, in a pivotal scene of the film, when Lisa and Susanna crash at the apartment of Daisy, who has been newly released from Claymore. Susanna sits mute as Lisa taunts Daisy, exposing her deepest vulnerabilities. Lisa points out the cuts on Daisy’s arm, accuses Daisy of enjoying the sexual abuses of her father: “Everyone knows your father fucks you, what they don’t know is that you like it.” Lisa speaks the unspeakable, and Susanna watches doe-eyed, stunned at Lisa’s capacity for cruelty. The next morning, upon witnessing Daisy’s limp and lifeless body—she hanged herself—Lisa calls her an idiot, then picks her pocket for cash. Lisa, Susanna finally learns, has no capacity for emotion, no nurturing feelings at all. If anything makes her less than human—less than woman—it is this fact.
This scene in the movie, arguably the most important one, pits Lisa and Susanna against each other. But it also pits “good” against “evil,” and “feminine” against “unfeminine,” which is tied up in representations of mental illness. Susanna is faced with a choice: continue life with Lisa, a life that will certainly lead to chaos and casual sex and countercultural adventures, or return to Claymore to truly invest in her recovery. It’s a choice.
Brittany Murphy as Daisy in Girl, Interrupted
But is mental illness always a choice? And if so, between what and what?
Here’s a statistic: nearly 1 in 5 Americans suffers from mental illness of some sort, and a majority of these cases are women. This alarming number becomes even more important when recognizing that the film industry plays an important role in shaping public or cultural perception. In light of this, I wonder how detrimental a film such as Girl, Interrupted might be when questioning the legitimacy of mental illness and perpetuating stereotypes of those who suffer from these invisible diseases. Susanna’s renewed commitment to get better situates itself as a choice, and not necessarily one between health and illness or between one treatment and another. Instead, Susanna’s choice is oddly contingent upon morality, what’s right and wrong. Will she choose to return to Claymore? Or will she tread the darker path, represented by the villainous Lisa?
Which brings us back to Nurse Valerie’s diagnoses that Susanna is “not crazy” but, instead, “a lazy, self-indulgent little girl who is driving herself crazy.” The idea that Susanna is not really sick—that her invisible illness is a complete manifestation of her imagination or her culture—may be true. But it may be equally true that she, and young girls like her, are not just lazy and self-indulgent. That no amount of “trying harder” or “choosing to be well” necessarily helps, without the proper intervention. The movie wants to suggest that, yes, Susanna is a little confused, uncertain, depressed, even, but at least she doesn’t burn her face, or hide chicken bones under her bed, or require the padded room for her outbursts. At least she’s not crazy-crazy. Not like “them.” Girl, Interrupted paints a world where mental illness is not an invisible illness. Invisibility means conformity means health, and only when one adapts more culturally-sanctioned “moral” or “feminine” behavior will she be considered well again.
Susanna (Winona Ryder) and Lisa (Angelina Jolie) share a kiss
I wonder, too, why films depicting men with mental illness rarely cast their subjects in the same light. Films like A Beautiful Mind, or One Flew Over the Cuckcoo’s Nest, for example, present their flawed heroes as just that: heroes. Sure, these flawed fellows need treatment, but they are brilliant, misunderstood, complicated men. They are sympathetic precisely because of their mental states, not despite them. Viewers are never lead to question the sexuality, morality, or masculinity of these leading men. Moreover, films such as these don’t portray mental illness as a choice or a course of action, but as a circumstance. Hollywood afflicts male protagonists with insanity as a cross to bear, which makes them all the more heroic.
Susanna’s heroism, however, comes distinctly from her choice to overcome her diagnosis. To be fair, in real life, choice does play a legitimate aspect in the treatment of diseases. One can choose to be in treatment, or not to be. However, Susanna doesn’t simply learn to live with her personality disorder, she defeats it entirely. Toward the end of the film, the TV in Claymore’s living room flashes a scene from The Wizard of Oz as Glenda the Good Witch says, “You’ve always had the power to go back home.” Here, the film’s message reveals itself clearly: the power of recovery has always been with Susanna.
Angelina Jolie and Winona Ryder in Girl, Interrupted
Susanna’s declared “recovered” by her doctors and ultimately joins the ranks of the “outside” world where she now belongs. It’s fitting that her penultimate scene at Claymore shows her applying make-up to look more suitably feminine. Her final act at Claymore is to polish the nails of a now drugged and restrained Lisa. “I’m not really dead,” Lisa says—and so the movie leaves us with a glimmer of hope that she, too, can choose to go home. If only all women could be cured of mental illnesses by clicking their heels together three times, painting on some Cotton Candy No. 7—and believing.
Viewers should be happy for Susanna, and I think most root for her. I know I do. But even as she’s being driven away from Claymore in the final scene, I wonder if she, herself, downplays the magnitude of the year she’s just spent under professional care. Perhaps she’s doing this because in the “outside” world, it’s still not okay to talk about such things or to admit to a mental illness without suffering stigmatization, or sideway glances, or nervous, sympathetic looks.
Lisa (Angelina Jolie) confronts Susanna (Winona Ryder) on her first day at Claymore
She notes, “Being crazy isn’t being broken or swallowing a dark secret. It’s you or me, amplified.” That’s a nice thought. Mental illness is a reality for many, a part of their very composition, what makes many individuals unique, or creative, or sensitive. But the problem in the film—just like the problem in our real world, our post-Adam Lanza world—is that we must find ways to have conversations about mental illness, and not just within the confines of hospitals or therapy rooms. In real life. In the “outside” world. Susanna calls herself a “girl, interrupted,” and not a girl with a history of mental illness. What might the need for this euphemism say about the world that she’s rejoining? If 20% of Americans suffer from mental illness, a majority of these women, this issue is not just a cultural problem, but a feminist one.
Sarah Domet is the author of 90 Days to Your Novel. She writes fiction and nonfiction and currently teaches at Georgia Southern University.
Angelina Jolie has written an extraordinary op-ed for the New York Times, titled “My Medical Choice,” about her recent decision to have a preventative double mastectomy after learning she carries the BRCA1 “breast cancer” gene and had an estimated 87% risk of developing breast cancer.
This piece is remarkable for a lot of reasons. Jolie notes that she “finished the three months of medical procedures that the mastectomies involved” on April 27, and: “During that time I have been able to keep this private and to carry on with my work.” And having managed to keep it a secret, itself a rather impressive feat, she decided to then publicly disclose it, in order that “other women can benefit from my experience.”
It’s remarkable because she writes very plainly that her ability to get the $3,000 BRCA1 test is a privilege, and advocates wider access:
Breast cancer alone kills some 458,000 people each year, according to the World Health Organization, mainly in low- and middle-income countries. It has got to be a priority to ensure that more women can access gene testing and lifesaving preventive treatment, whatever their means and background, wherever they live. The cost of testing for BRCA1 and BRCA2, at more than $3,000 in the United States, remains an obstacle for many women.
And because she does not assert or imply that her decision is the only right decision, but one of many options:
For any woman reading this, I hope it helps you to know you have options. I want to encourage every woman, especially if you have a family history of breast or ovarian cancer, to seek out the information and medical experts who can help you through this aspect of your life, and to make your own informed choices.
I acknowledge that there are many wonderful holistic doctors working on alternatives to surgery. My own regimen will be posted in due course on the Web site of the Pink Lotus Breast Center. I hope that this will be helpful to other women.
And it’s remarkable because Angelina Jolie is generally regarded as one of the most beautiful women in a world that profoundly values beauty and defines women’s worth by their sex appeal, and she is telling women to value their health.
There is something deeply moving to me for a woman whose body, by nature of her profession, has been treated like public property even more than most of us, writing such an intimate piece about her body, making it public property in yet another way by her own choice, for the benefit of other women.
Melissa McEwan is the founder and manager of the award-winning political and cultural group blog Shakesville, which she launched as Shakespeare’s Sister in October 2004 because George Bush was pissing her off. In addition to running Shakesville, she also contributes to The Guardian‘s Comment is Free America and AlterNet. Liss graduated from Loyola University Chicago with degrees in Sociology and Cultural Anthropology, with an emphasis on the political marginalization of gender-based groups. An active feminist and LGBTQI advocate, she has worked as a concept development and brand consultant and now writes full-time.
She lives just outside Chicago with three cats, two dogs, and a Scotsman, with whom she shares a love of all things geekdom, from Lord of the Rings to Alcatraz. When she’s not blogging, she can usually be found watching garbage television or trying to coax her lazyass greyhound off the couch for a walk.
The general media obsession with Mirren’s sex life has been replaced these days by a kind of awe, no less misogynistic, that a woman in her 60s can look attractive and happy. At 65, Mirren is adored and venerated; if it’s true that, after being made a Dame in 2003 and winning an Oscar in 2007 for playing the title role in The Queen, she has become that dreaded property, a national treasure, then at least she is one with plenty of sharp edges capable of giving you a painful nick if you’re not careful.
Feminism has gotten somewhat of a bad rap lately. Many people feel that it’s outlived its goals. Don’t women have equal rights now? What is there to complain about? The answer to this is that just giving people the legal possibility to do something doesn’t mean you are genuinely opening opportunities for them. Saying that giving people equal rights leads to them instantly being regarded as equals is like saying that giving African-Americans the right to vote ended racism in America. But what has all this to do with movies? Well, feminism isn’t just a political movement, but also an academic one. And yes, there is something like feminist film theory.
Not so for the moment a little earlier when, after spraying CCTV cameras with a fire extinguisher to cover the lens, she inexplicably, with the fire extinguisher still to hand, whips off her knickers to block the final camera. This she can do easily and a million times more gracefully than any knicker removal I’ve seen or executed in real life, thanks to the massive slit in the tight skirt she wears to her office job in the CIA. I can’t believe Jolie even did it, really. I’d have been tempted to punch the director in the face. There’s also a questionable moment at the beginning of the film when she’s learning to fold napkins for her anniversary dinner with her husband. I find it very hard to believe this was part of the original script, and while the function of the episode is clearly to establish the husband and the occasion, this would never have been written for the character as Cruise would have played it.
In the February 23, 2008 episode of Saturday Night Live, Tina Fey made a seemingly serious case for Hillary Clinton as president, arguing that we shouldn’t mind if she’s a bitch because “bitches get stuff done.” Fey went on to bolster her argument with the following observation: “That’s why Catholic schools use nuns as teachers and not priests. Those nuns are mean old clams, and they sleep on cots and are allowed to hit you. And at the end of the school year, you hated those bitches, but you knew the capital of Vermont.” How did nuns become part of this discussion? And how did they get reduced from the historical reality of their significant contributions to such a narrow and nasty caricature?
Shortly after the Oscars ended Sunday, Samuel L. Jackson sent an e-mail to a Times reporter wondering why no black men had been chosen to present awards on the film world’s biggest stage.
“It’s obvious there’s not ONE Black male actor in Hollywood that’s able to read a teleprompter, or that’s ‘hip enuf,’ for the new academy demographic!” Jackson wrote. “In the Hollywood I saw tonite, I don’t exist nor does Denzel, Eddie, Will, Jamie, or even a young comer like Anthony Mackie!”
Jackson may be on to something, at least when it comes to the young comers.
For me, this frustration is usually borne of being othered and disrespected, when I simply aimed to be entertained by a trashy novel or TV show. I dipped into Charlaine Harris’ Aurora Teagarden series, hoping to enjoy the books as I enjoy the TV series based on Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse series. Instead, I got a bunch of thinly-written, triggering stories where all women (but the protagonist) are routinely judged harshly and women like me (black women) are alternately sassy or angry or dead or running from the law, and blackness or Jewishness or gayness or any other “ness” that is not small-town and conservative and Southern and Anglo and Christian is to be frowned at or remarked upon or, best, hidden. And so, instead of enjoying a cozy mystery in my downtime, I wound up feeling uncomfortable and marginalized.
I dislike SATC for the way it forced its central characters into stereotypes. To service those stereotypes for the sake of a storyline. Chris Noth was the tall-dark-and-handsome wealthy man. Kim Cattrall the over-sexed hyper-assertive female who had to stumble over failed romances or personal trauma (breast cancer) to show her sensitivity. Cynthia Nixon is the cynical New York career-woman. Kristen Davis the doe-eyed, Rules playing, sweater-set wearing woman on a mission for the nuclear family and nothing else. Sarah Jessica Parker is the child who plays dress-up, even in her marriage, trying on costumes in the hopes that they’ll make her lifestyle complete. These roles needed to be boldly and sharply drawn in oder to parody or even slay some of the stereotypes of women.
At a do last year to crown Lennox Barclays Woman of the Year, barely half the roomful of 450 of Britain’s brightest women admitted to being a feminist. Lennox was disgusted. “They were afraid,” she says. In a sort of stream of consciousness ramble, she adds: “The word feminism needs to be taken back. It needs to be reclaimed in a way that is inclusive of men. Men need to understand, and women too, what feminism is really about. And it is not the parody that it has been diminished and turned into, and it is not this parody about whether you burn your bra or shave your armpits or whatever. That’s just nonsense. Actually it’s a red herring. It’s really disgraceful that it has become the kind of dumbing down of something that has to do with human rights, social and political values – and where we’re going as a world that is dominated by war and strife. And young women being born still have no rights over what is done to their bodies.”
Thelma and Louise came out in May of 1991 and change was in the air. The film touched a raw nerve in women that had been lying dormant during the Reagan backlash years. It became a cultural touchstone, was on covers of magazines, and got both Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon Academy Award nominations. Geena Davis tells stories of women seeing her on the road and honking at her and thanking her for the film. But here we are 20 years later and it feels like that film was never made.
Today, it’s time to look back at ten women who’ve made cinematic history. I won’t claim that this ten constitutes the “best,” because to do so would immediately detract from the hundreds and thousands of women developing cinema worldwide. These are, quite simply, ten women you should be familiar with. Some have the honor of “first,” while others have left an indelible impact on the industry.
Consider this your springboard to a rich history of female talent.
On the silver screen women are usually seen as a helpless mother, submissive wife, devoted girlfriend, overcaring sister, daughter or a vamp, but directors like Vishal Bharadwaj and Alankrita Shrivastava are trying to break the mould and present women in a more realistic, vibrant and unconventional way.
One-film-old Rajkumar Gupta’s “No One Killed Jessica” was an attempt to bring alive the struggle of Sabrina Lall’s fight with the Indian judiciary for years to get justice for her murdered sister.
Kathryn Bigelow may have been the first female filmmaker to win a Best Director Oscar for 2009′s The Hurt Locker. But did you happen to notice that for the most recent Academy Awards, the nominees in the same category were all men — in a year when two movies directed by women, Winter’s Bone and The Kids Are All Right, were up for Best Picture?
Gender inequalities exist throughout the arts, but they’re especially pronounced in the rarefied world of film directing. We all know a few big-name women filmmakers: Bigelow, Sofia Coppola, Susan Seidelman, Catherine Hardwicke, Nora Ephron, Julie Taymor. In honor of International Women’s Day, we present ten great, contemporary female directors who you may not know but should definitely check out.
The key to the influence of film is HOW film is used to represent violence against women to the masses. The key is to see film as a tool:
Done well, a powerful documentary, movie, public service announcement, music video or television episode can give might momentum to helping activists and nonprofits working to end violence against women motivate grassroots support for the cause.
Done right, the film-maker will be able to walk the balancing act of accurately depict the horrors of violence against women while inspiring the viewer to join the movement to end violence against women.
Leading up to the 2011 Oscars, we’ll showcase the past twenty years of Oscar Acceptance Speeches by Best Actress winners and Best Supporting Actress winners. (Note: In most cases, you’ll have to click through to YouTube in order to watch the speeches, as embedding has been disabled at the request of copyright owners.)
