Certainly, teenagers strain against authority and exert their independence. This doesn’t mean they’re immune to other big issues that plague society – issues such as sexism and racism. If the novels being written for this demographic want to call themselves true dystopias based on a futuristic society in which our current way of living led to some global disaster, then the writers of the novels and the film adaptations shouldn’t shy away from some of the biggest issues in current politics and society.
If book sales and box office numbers are any indication, young adults love their dystopian fiction. So much so that the creative powers that be are intent on keeping the momentum going with more and more additions to this fairly recent genre phenomenon, for better or for worse. Unfortunately, the repetition breeds dilution of the initial idea of a dystopia as an opposite of a utopia, or perfect world.
The idea of dystopia takes into account basic and flawed human nature, hinging on the idea that power, political in this case, corrupts, leading to a small group of oppressors and a greater group of oppressed. YA dystopian fiction tends to present this oppression as a necessary sacrifice to save the rest of humanity after some global and apocalyptic disaster, often environmental in nature and with the clear message that we should take care of our environment now or suffer our own dystopia later.
The common element in a true dystopia is politics, but in these YA versions, the politics have become metaphors for the seemingly oppressive nature of adult and school rules under which teenagers often chafe. This conversion leaves the stories one-sided and shallow, expecting the reader to assume that, because this is a common problem within the young adult mindset, it is also the biggest problem facing young adults today. At best, such an assumption stems from laziness, and at worst, it’s insulting.
Certainly, teenagers strain against authority and exert their independence. This doesn’t mean they’re immune to other big issues that plague society – issues such as sexism and racism. If the novels being written for this demographic want to call themselves true dystopias based on a futuristic society in which our current way of living led to some global disaster, then the writers of the novels and the film adaptations shouldn’t shy away from some of the biggest issues in current politics and society. It’s not realistic to assume that these issues would simply fade into the background as society crumbled.
Take The Hunger Games, for example. Society is divided by geography and profession as each of the 12 districts supplies the capital city with a specific product or skill. The districts live in various extremes of poverty and deprivation. While some would argue that such suffering would bring out the best in some people, the situation is also ripe for the desperation that leads to an irrational fear of other, a prime motivator of racism. And yet, while the author created a diverse group of characters, including Katniss who was described as “olive-skinned,” the discrimination based on this diversity is simply missing.
The same could be said for TheMaze Runner series (the first film is available on demand through Google Play and DirecTV), which provides representation of various races to include Asian and African American and yet never a hint of racial tensions either in the grove or once they’re out of it and into The Scorch Trials, the second installment of the book and movie trilogy. Possibly the worst offender of recent offerings, however, is the Divergent series, in which society is divided by faction only, with each faction based on a particular character trait. Not only is there no hint of racism anywhere in any of the three novels of this trilogy, but sexism is gone, too.
This latter is particularly hard to swallow given that the domestically abusive and oppressive male leader of one faction (while actively opposing the female leader of another) never once makes a disparaging reference to her being deficient because she’s a woman, even after his true character is brought to light and his crimes against his own family are revealed to all. There is one comment made by a male to the lead female Tris when Peter tells her she has nice legs for a “stiff,” but this is a reference to her previous faction only. No reference to her appearance as a female, only faction.
Overall, if writers and filmmakers wish to reach the widest possible audience, they’ll need to take a harder look at more than struggles with authority. By leaving out other important problems faced by today’s young people, they leave a glaring hole in the message.
Maria Ramos is a writer interested in comic books, cycling, and horror films. Her hobbies include cooking, doodling, and finding local shops around the city. She currently lives in Chicago with her two pet turtles, Franklin and Roy. You can follow her on Twitter @MariaRamos1889.
And just as the film articulates these contrasting attitudes and dilemmas with regard to controlling powers and zero sum attitudes, so too does it address these issues within themes of gender, sexuality and authority.
This guest post by Belle Artiquez appears as part of our theme week on Dystopias.
We have all seen dystopian futures represented in film and literature: desolate landscapes with survivors of some war-torn/zombie apocalypse struggling to live their bleak lives under the rule of brutal and selfish dictators who are only out for themselves. It’s a theme we are well-accustomed to, and there are numerous examples of different dystopian futures: zombie apocalypses are in full swing at the moment in TV and film (The Walking Dead, The Last Ship, World War Z), but then there is also the fall of religion (The Book of Eli), the loss of fertility (Children of Men), and the loss of resources such as water and oil (Mad Max).
The examples of how humanity could fall are in such abundance that when we get a film that doesn’t necessarily look that different to our own current world, it may not be the harsh dystopian world that we are so used to seeing on screen. Battle Royale (2000) is that film, and yet its reality is somewhat harsher than these other dystopian themes. Directed by Kinji Fukasaku, and adapted from a book of the same title, the apocalyptic film portrays a totalitarian government that rules Japan, where communication with the western world is forbidden, and every year one school class is chosen to be pitted against each other in the ultimate fight to the death as a way of controlling the young generations and reminding them that they cannot rebel, they cannot be free, and they will only ever be restrained by their government.
The actual Battle is set on a highly guarded, isolated island, and the chosen class (a ninth grade class) is brought to it and ordered to fight in a zero sum game of death in a highly publicized slaughter game where there will be only one winner. The children are given one weapon each ranging from sauce pans to rifles and survival gear with maps and other necessities as they navigate through the island, of which there are interchangeable “forbidden zones.” Around their necks, a collar with the power to instantly kill is fitted to make sure any student disobeying the rules or being in a death zone at the wrong time will be killed. It appears to all to be a completely unfair setup, but this is a harsh dystopian world, so what do we expect?
Ninth grade class photo–all looking like students, not murderers.
Not only does the film portray existing anxieties for Japan, it also represents the severe landscape of our current era–the fact that people struggle to survive already, that some are unfairly given better opportunities regardless of value (portrayed through the weapons the students are given) and are almost set up for failure. The fact that a ninth grade class is always the chosen class depicts the hardship and suffering of actual ninth grade classes in Japan currently. Up until that grade, students need only be in attendance to proceed to the next grade, but suddenly at ninth grade they are faced with extremely difficult exams in order to get a placement in a more prestigious school, putting immense pressure on students who are suddenly pitted against each other for these few places. Apart from this obvious nod, the film also suggests that we are already currently set up for failure worldwide. Our banking system for instance is the biggest fraud of our time, where people are given loans of money that doesn’t actually exist only to have to work even harder to repay the non-existent money back with actual hard cash. We are told that we need to earn a living doing jobs that we hate, instead of living and doing what makes us happy. We are born into constant monitoring, not being able to move around the world without asking permission or being watched. Governments may not be totalitarian, authoritarian ones but they certainly act in similar ways under the guise of protectors. These are all aspects of what the students of Battle Royale have to cope with. They are watched not only by the controllers of the battle, but by the entire country, as if nothing more than a reality show.
The “Forbidden Zones” also illustrate the ways in which laws are put in place. We know that most laws are put into place for our benefit–murder, theft, and abuse are all illegal for the good of the people–so that we feel safe in our day-to-day lives. However, governments have been known to create laws for their own benefit, take for example the new law created in Australia that states it is illegal for detention centre workers to report child abuse, rape and human rights violations. Or the American law that states it is illegal to film and report animal abuse on farms, establishing severe criminal sanctions for those who would report the abuse as opposed to those causing the abuse. These laws are not in place to protect the people, they are conceived in order to protect the corporations in charge, the authorities. This use of law-making is of course related to the “Forbidden Zones,” which are set up so the game will run within the three day time limit, and also for the entertainment of viewers watching from the safety of their homes. The students have not only to fight and kill their classmates with whatever they were given but they also have to worry about where they go, at what times.
The leader and man in charge of the battle is also the representative of our current powers/governments/politicians. Kitano is the man who tells the students the rules of the game, as well as handing them their weapons and survival gear, and who likewise has no problem killing two students before stating it is actually against the rules for him to do so. By breaking the rules in such a nonchalant manner Kitano shows the class that they must obey a hypocritical generation in order to survive. He even goes as far as asking the students to be friends with him, establishing a false sense of security, the contrast between being friends with this man and then witnessing him kill two of them is stark and also conveys the same governmental control that most countries understand, the “We are here to help you” attitude while they only ever help themselves. Another facet of this dynamic relationship refers to the fact that the classmates are all friends with histories and memories together and now they must let go of all of that and slaughter each other. However, not all students have the ability to do this and end up committing suicide as a way out of this and also as an escape of the imminent betrayal they will face.
Kitano threatens a student and shows the hypocritical nature of authority.
And just as the film articulates these contrasting attitudes and dilemmas with regard to controlling powers and zero sum attitudes, so too does it address these issues within themes of gender, sexuality and authority. Battle Royale does stereotype its female and male characters to conform to society’s ideas of femininity and masculinity. Most of the women are rendered weak, helpless, and in need of protection. Where some girls need the help of their male friends to survive (Noriko, whose protection is passed on when her initial protector is killed), others cling to each other in the hopes that some sort of sisterhood will unite them and make them strong enough to survive, showing a kind of stupidity on their part since there can only be one winner. These united girls end up in anarchy as one of them eats a poisoned dinner meant for a male classmate and suddenly they are all slaughtering each other without even trying to overcome the misunderstanding. In total contrast to this we see male students working together in perfect harmony even with a few moments of misunderstandings as a few of them work together to get the death collars deactivated. The male characters do their best to protect the female students, but only the ones that have strong emotional relationships with the men.
Noriko hides behind a male student for protection, portraying the fragile nature of the class’s female students.
The only strong female character also happens to be presented as the villain of the piece (as does the previous winner of the game who happens to be a young girl, although we only see her briefly at the beginning), and this is possibly because she is independent, sexual, and in control. Mitsuko is violent, she quickly becomes a killing machine in order to survive, and even uses her sexuality to do so. A loner in her class before the slaughter, a victim of sexual abuse and a murderer at a young age (in self defense against the man who was going to abuse her), she now just “doesn’t want to be the loser anymore” and uses everything at her disposal to win. This includes her obvious sexuality, which she uses in ways similar to a Venus fly trap. A good deceiver, she entices a two male classmates and while they feel at ease, happy to be getting any sexual action, she kills them. Now who’s at fault for this? The girl who was just playing the brutal game like all the other students in order to survive, or the boys who stupidly thought that sex was worth the risk? Yet Mitsuko is the villain, which may actually just be another acknowledgment of current gender expectation in Japan, which is where the film and book are based on after all. Gender roles are an important part of Japanese society: men are expected to work hard, and housewives are considered valuable for their child rearing abilities; this could be why we see the group of girls acting in ways similar to the housewife, while the male students work to either outright win the game or fight the authority by breaking the collars. Traits associated with individualism such as assertiveness and self-reliance is not seen in high regard, which is why we are shown Mitsuko in a negative, villainous way. So for a film that nearly entirely describes our current living situation, it could be said that the gender roles and stereotypes too are another way of acknowledging existing gender positions and expectations in Japan.
While the strong, independent female characters are shown in negative lights.
This is certainly a terrifying film; we are presented with a nightmarish portrayal of a hyper-violent, dystopian, totalitarian world we would be afraid to be a part of, yet we are also delivered a unique depiction of the word we are already a part of and that in itself is the most nightmarish aspect of Battle Royale. The film is an acknowledgment of not only the world we live in right now but also of the human condition and the gender roles that are currently prevalent in a society that is supposed to be based on equality; however, it is anything but. We need to look to such films and recognise that although they are fictional, and depictions of a harsh dystopia, they are also reflections of our present issues in society. They are showing us how bleak and grim our own realities are without the slaughter games and authoritarian powers that make the Battle Royale world so frightening.
Congratulations for being chosen to take part in this horror game called life!
Belle Artiquez graduated from film and Literature studies in Dublin and since has continued her analysis and critique of film, TV, and literature (mainly in the area of gender politics and representations) as well as cultural and societal critiques on such blog spots as Hubpages and WordPress.
While the men are shopping, Francine is left alone to fend off a zombie with no means of self-defence. As she attempts to escape onto the roof, the others return to save her from the zombie and bring her back inside. She is dismayed to realize that they intend to stay there indefinitely. While the men enthusiastically describe the mall as a “kingdom” and a “goldmine,” Francine describes it as a “prison.”
This guest post by Jennifer Krukowski appears as part of our theme week on Dystopias.
George A. Romero’s 1978 zombie classic, Dawn of the Dead, poses many of the same questions as your average zombie flick: what is the difference between living and surviving, and what makes us human? Where Dawn of the Dead stands apart from the rest is its exploration of the childlike bliss of denial in a time of crisis. We don’t know what the world looks like in this particular zombie epidemic because the heroes isolate themselves from it after seeing a mere glimpse of the beginning of the end. The characters spend more time literally watching paint dry than fighting zombies, and yet it is still an entertaining, scary, and thought-provoking experience for the viewer. The end of the world means not having to plan for the future. There’s a banal comfort in that. It is pleasurable to imagine certain responsibilities crumbling away in the wake of a disaster.
Of the four main characters in this film — Roger (Scott H. Reiniger) and Peter (Ken Foree) who are police officers, and Francine (Gaylen Ross) and Stephen (David Emge) who work for a local news station — Francine is the only one who does not indulge in the luxury of denial. She is willing face the scary and uncertain future of the outside world, whereas Peter, Stephen, and Roger prefer to distract themselves from the possibility that there may not be one. Being that Francine is nearly the only survivor, Romero seems to express through this film that, against all odds, hope for a better life — or at the very least, a “real” life — is far more brave than it is naive.
Stephen, Roger, Peter, and Francine flee the city in a stolen helicopter — the most detached mode of transportation available. When they land on the roof of an abandoned shopping mall, the initial plan is to rest briefly, get a few supplies, and move on. As the men sleep, eat, and smoke, Francine paces anxiously, ready to keep moving. Initially, Peter and Roger venture into the mall only to collect a few essential supplies. On their way down, they switch on the power for everything in the mall because “we might need it,” although things like rotating window displays and decorative water fountains are functionally useless beyond creating the illusion of normalcy. As soon as they realize that they have access to a fully stocked department store, the desire for necessity is lost in the wake of a delirious shopping spree. Even Francine’s boyfriend, Stephen, agrees that Peter and Roger are acting like “maniacs,” and yet he grabs a gun that he doesn’t know how to shoot and rushes off to join the fun.
No rest for Francine
While the men are shopping, Francine is left alone to fend off a zombie with no means of self-defence. As she attempts to escape onto the roof, the others return to save her from the zombie and bring her back inside. She is dismayed to realize that they intend to stay there indefinitely. While the men enthusiastically describe the mall as a “kingdom” and a “goldmine,” Francine describes it as a “prison.” And though it may be smarter to leave, it is certainly more convenient to stay. Squatting in a shopping mall seems like a viable option to everyone but Francine who, feeling trapped and vulnerable, knows that it is too delicate a bubble to settle into. She makes frequent attempts, often subtle and sarcastic, to remind the others that they are simply indulging in a fantasy, most notably when she refuses to accept a wedding ring from Stephen, telling him that “it wouldn’t be real.” If he wants to marry her, he must part with his fantasy life first. He never does.
The dichotomy of real/artificial is exhibited in many ways as the characters go through the motions of daily life, where everything is an imitation of something familiar and resources seem unlimited. Pre-recorded announcements to shoppers are an unsettling reminder of how alone they are. Roger gorges himself on candy and plays an arcade game wherein his character dies, but comes back to life to play another round with no consequence. For a moment, Peter may be contemplating a return to the outside world when he takes money from the bank, but when he and Stephen strike a pose for the security cameras with fists full of cash, he knows that his actions lack consequence, and thus the money, too, lacks value. He will never spend it.
Stephen and Peter pose for security cameras
Mannequins, a vaguely threatening presence, are featured almost as prominently as zombies and contribute similarly to the theme. Roger is startled briefly by a mannequin, and the mannequins are also used for target practice. When Francine attempts to comfort herself by indulging in a makeover, she models her hair and makeup after a gaudy mannequin head. It is one of the film’s more disturbing images, reflecting her slow mental break from reality, which she is ultimately able to overcome.
Francine’s makeover
Time seems to stand still for a while in the shopping mall, perfectly preserved and untouched by an outside world that grows increasingly mysterious as radio and television broadcasts become more sporadic. One of the only signifiers of time passing is Francine’s pregnancy. As she nears her due date, her body is as a visual reminder of the inevitability of change, which may subconsciously threaten the others who are less willing to consider the future when, for the moment, everything they need is right at their fingertips. While it would be possible to give birth inside the mall, Francine’s pregnancy forces her more than anyone else to physically experience the passage of time and consider her future, no matter how uncertain it may be. It is very possible that the mall is the safest place for them to be at the time, and while we can only speculate as to why exactly it is so important to Francine that they get away, what really seems to make her nervous is not having an exit strategy. She is the first to demand helicopter lessons from Stephen in case anything happens to him. As Stephen is her lover and presumably the father of her unborn child, it is surely more difficult for her to imagine the possibility of his death than it is for Peter or Roger, but she has the strength to consider the dangerous reality of their situation and prepare for the worst case scenario.
Francine contemplates maternity
It is not only her future responsibilities as a mother that gives Francine strength. This is a part of her personality. She is often drinking and smoking, so she is not portrayed as a perfect mother-to-be. Not everything she does is for the benefit of her child’s future. While at her job in the television studio, we see that she is highly focused and assertive. When a cameraman walks off the job during a live broadcast, Francine quickly jumps behind the camera and takes over. This example of taking the wheel is mirrored later when she has completed her flying lesson with Stephen, sincerely happy for the first time in the film. It is in her nature to take charge, which is ultimately what saves her life.
Francine may not have a perfect survival strategy. It could be that she is the one who is truly in denial. But in the end, Francine wants to leave the mall, and she does. Roger and Stephen want to stay, and they die inside. When their bubble becomes overrun by looters and zombies, Peter decides that he would rather kill himself than face the uncertain outside world, but at the last moment he changes his mind and joins Francine in the helicopter. They don’t have much fuel and they might not survive, but waiting to die is no way to live, no matter how you pass the time. Although the future probably isn’t optimistic for Francine and Peter, their willingness to face reality is what keeps them alive. At least until they take off.
Francine escapes with Peter
Jennifer Krukowski is your average eco-feminist horror enthusiast. A graduate of York University’s Theatre Studies program, Jennifer currently works as an actor and odd-jober in Toronto while pursuing an interest in writing for film and television.
It becomes apparent that the characters are facing not just a disagreement over who gets to use the sauna, but also the prospect of being the last remaining humans on a dead planet, on a train, with nowhere to go and nothing to do.
Snowpiercer (2013) is timely, and in more ways than one. I live in southwestern Arizona, and it’s exploding-eyeballs hot. So I was all like, “Snowball Earth? We should be so lucky.” But, the premise…the film opens by tuning us into 66.6 FM The Exposition, which informs us that scientists have decided to fight gas with gas by releasing a chemical, the innocuously-named CWX-7, into the atmosphere to combat our global warming non-problem. Chemtrails, man…
Somebody must’ve misplaced a decimal point in a metric conversion factor, because too much of the chemical is released, and the Earth quickly becomes very Hoth-like. Just about everything and everybody dies. A train magnate, Wilford (played with creepy awesomeness by Ed Harris), quickly converts one of his luxury lines into a perpetual-motion Ark that circles the globe endlessly, completing a full circuit once a year.
Seems reasonable.
Wilford packs it full of rich people, support staff, and (because he’s a nice capitalist) a bunch of riffraff who were complaining about their juicy babies freezing solid or something.
The thing about trains is that they have two ends. The front cars feature hot tubs, mahogany, and club kids. The rear has roach-flavored jello and bed-head. And that’s the movie – a bloody, single-column metaphor for the ongoing clash between the haves and have-nots, wrapped in sheet metal and a plausibly implausible apocalypse.
Chris Evans as Curtis.
Chris Evans plays Curtis, the White Male Lead, and early on he works his grungy antihero shtick to good effect. He’s first mate to John Hurt’s character, Gilliam, King of the Poors. In the first act, we learn that the train has been running continuously for 17 (almost 18) years since the big freeze. During that time, the rear passengers have attempted several uprisings, only to be viciously put down each time by Wilford’s security force. But Curtis and Gilliam have new plan, and this time It Just Might Work.
Director Bong Joon-ho (The Host, 2006) does an excellent job, particularly in the early scenes, of making the viewer feel claustrophobic in a large auditorium. The angles he chooses, the play of light and shadow, and the constant, subtle rocking make the audience feel as if they were on the train, too. As Curtis and crew move towards the front, each car is visually distinct, like the rooms in Willy Wonka’s factory. My favorite was the school car – bright, yellow, and eerily cheery.
Less subtle is the film’s exploration of its class struggle theme. The rear units are more like cattle cars than coach cars, and the haves take perverse pleasure is abusing the have-nots. Bong spares no expressions of pain, misery, and grief as Wilford’s goons rip children from their mother’s arms or engage in freestyle amputation. Much of this malice is directed by women, including Wilford’s moll, Claude (played by Emma Levie).
Tilda Swinton as Minister Mason.
But Tilda Swinton steals the show as Minister Mason. I mean, she aced it. While her actions are deplorable, fascistic, and cruel, we never quite can tell if she’s inherently evil or if she’s merely been pushed to a place we all could go if we knew we were going to live out our days on the Polar Express. She presides over the bloodiest scene in the film, as Curtis leads his army of unwashed against a larger force of Wilford’s thugs, who are armed with wicked axes, sickles, and pikes.
The scene is blood-drenched with stylized hackery, and it’s actually quite good. We feel each blow of the axe and it takes, as it would, many blows to bring down an enraged prole. The scene also features Curtis performing some slow-motion, ballet-quality jugular slicing that actually feels fresh and not at all like a weak replication of the slow motion fight scene effects in the Matrix films.
But there’s comedy, too. The film develops a rhythm–an illustration of crushing inequality, some tension, and then some bloody ultraviolence punctuated on both ends by jarringly quirky humor or esoteric symbolism. For example, other critics have noted the scene where, while in the middle of the aforementioned battle, the train crosses a specific bridge that marks the new year. Each side stops fighting and stands in place during the crossing, both so as to not knock the train from the track and to observe the event. Wilford’s death squad, imposing and faceless in their black masks, turns en masse to the bloodied resistance fighters, counts down from ten as if they were in Times Square, and deliver an obscenely cheery and sincere “Happy New Year!” Then the carnage resumes.
However, my favorite discordant instance was the propaganda video played for the kids in the schoolhouse car. In black and white, with campy mid-century aesthetics, it details Wilford’s early obsession with trains. Young Wilford looks at the camera and says, “I want to live on a train, forever!” As the story progresses, it becomes apparent that the characters are facing more than just a disagreement over who gets to use the sauna, but the prospect of being the last remaining humans on a dead planet, on a train, with nowhere to go and nothing to do.
Octavia Spencer as Tanya.
There are several other interesting female characters in Snowpiercer. Octavia Spencer puts in a strong performance as Tanya, one of the rear car passengers whose child is stolen by Wilford. She is extremely believable, and the viewer clearly registers the grief and resignation in her eyes. Ah-sung Ko plays Yona, the daughter of one of the train’s designers, Namgoong Minsoo (played by Kang-ho Song). While her performance didn’t move me, her character is written well, and proves vitally important to the plot. But really, the film is too busy focusing its dark symbolism on human extinction to really comment very pointedly on the plight on women in the world, or on the train. In fact, aside from Mason, the female characters with speaking parts are fairly one-dimensional; either they’re victims of horrible injustice, or psychotic perpetrators of horrible injustice.
Bechdel? Nope.
Two scenes did give me pause: at one point, Curtis has the upper hand on Mason. She pleads, removes her partial dentures and, as I interpreted it, offers to fellate Curtis in exchange for her life. It seemed out of character, as if the directer really wanted to punctuate, in a spiteful way, Mason’s reduction in power at the hands of a man. In a later scene, one of the rebels kills a pregnant woman. Granted, she had just shot his friend in the head. When considered against the nihilistic, slightly insane tone of the movie, and some of the stories Curtis tells, maybe the act contributes meaningfully to the story. I’m not so sure, and I’ll level with you: I’m not a big fan of violence in film for its own sake, and violence against pregnant women just jerks me out of a movie and puts me in an uncomfortable place. Speaking of, if you haven’t seen Shoot ‘Em Up (2007) or Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007), don’t.
I want a gun basket.
I have to admit that I was a little disappointed overall. The film didn’t quite live up to the hype for me, and I can’t really give it as glowing a recommendation as Rebecca Phale did at The Mary Sue. The dialogue was clunky at times, the theme delivery was sledgehammer-heavy upfront yet muddled at the end, and the third act suffered from ponderous pacing.
Still, Snowpiercer is a good film, and you should see it. The dystopia is very tangible, and you will appreciate the carefully crafted visuals and the tantric tension throughout. Swinton’s performance is worth the price of admission, if nothing else.
Note: Snowpiercer is based, loosely, on a French graphic novel.
After years of special-effects heavy, testosterone-infused, end-of-the-world dramas, your Roland Emmerichs and your Michael Bays, lately there’ve been a lot of apocalyptic comedies. Still though, not much has changed. These comedies take place on the larger scale, with big effects and big death tolls and more disconcerting, a lack of prominent or believable female characters. ‘This Is the End’ was a bro-fest, ‘The World’s End’s lone female was a love interest, and ‘Seeking a Friend for the End of the World’ delivered another Manic Pixie Dream Girl to the list.
‘It’s a Disaster’ is a quiet, low-budget comedy about four couples, friends gathered for a monthly brunch, who become trapped in a house together when they hear that a terrorist attack nearby has spread deadly nerve gas in the air and they will all soon experience excruciating deaths.
It’s a Disaster film poster
After years of special-effects heavy, testosterone-infused, end-of-the-world dramas, your Roland Emmerichs and your Michael Bays, lately there’ve been a lot of apocalyptic comedies. Still though, not much has changed. These comedies take place on the larger scale, with big effects and big death tolls and more disconcerting, a lack of prominent or believable female characters. This Is the End was a bro-fest, The World’s End’s lone female was a love interest, and Seeking a Friend for the End of the World delivered another Manic Pixie Dream Girl to the list.
It’s a Disasteris a quiet, low-budget comedy about four couples, friends gathered for a monthly brunch, who become trapped in a house together when they hear that a terrorist attack nearby has spread deadly nerve gas in the air and they will all soon experience excruciating deaths. But the movie isn’t even really about the end of the world. It’s an extended character study wearing the clothes of an apocalypse story. It’s a story about commitment and friendship and love, and how they’re all tested when disaster strikes and all lines of communication are down.
The group is stunned to hear the news and displays a range of conflicting emotions and reactions
The spectacle of the disaster takes place off-screen, we hear snippets over the radio and from the few people from outside who interact with the people in the house. Instead, the movie examines human nature and the disaster is just a catalyst that opens up the characters and strips away all pretense of civility. It’s the cheapest end-of-the-world movie, but it’s probably the most realistic; the characters, as narcissistic and bourgeois as they are, having their private brunches and mourning over watching The Wire, resemble people we all know, at least in the broad strokes.
Of the eight main characters, the cast’s four women are interesting and dynamic. They aren’t love interests, but equal protagonists, who get to tell their own stories and suffer their own break-downs. Emma and Peter Mandrake (Erinn Hayes and Blaise Miller), control-freaks with a seemingly perfect marriage who hide their plans for a divorce, are hosting the brunch. Their guests include Buck and Lexi (Rachel Boston and Kevin M. Brennan), a pair of free spirits with an open marriage and Shane and Hedy (Jeff Grace and America Ferrera), a conspiracy theorist and high school chemistry teacher who’ve been engaged forever with no wedding in sight. Completing their friend group is Julia Stiles’s Tracey, a neurotic doctor who complains that she’s always dating guys who turn out to be crazy.
As it always is in movies with large groups of friends, the viewer is forced to suspend disbelief to buy that all these people are close friends. Though the characters are all stereotypical, the ways they behave and react to each other and the apocalypse ring true. These are close friends kept together by their rituals; the monthly brunches that everyone feels obligated to attend hang like a millstone around their necks, but no matter how much they dread brunch, none of them feels comfortable ending a tradition. Especially as it means admitting they’re no longer as close as they were. With the news of the disaster, along with the hidden resentments, lusts and rages that come to the foreground, so does the news that many of them don’t actually like each other. For instance, Peter tells Tracey that after his divorce, he doesn’t want her to contact him any more as he can’t see them being friends.
Tracey and Glen, a new couple on their third date, arrive at the Mandrakes’ house for their monthly brunch
Our initial vantage point on the group is that of an outsider. Tracey’s new boyfriend Glen (David Cross) is meeting her friends for the first time. In a foreboding twist, Tracey is more anxious about introducing Glen to her friends than he is about meeting them. This is only their third date and poor Glen is completely alienated by her friends and caught in the middle when the chaos begins. The awkwardness is made worse by the intense gender segregation of the gathering, where men convene in one room to watch sports, while the women gossip in another.
It’s easy to see It’s a Disaster as two different films, split by the characters’ awareness of the attack. If you started watching it without reading any synopses, you might not know it’s an apocalypse movie until the Mandrakes’ neighbor, Hal (writer-director Todd Berger) comes by wearing a Hazmat suit and informs them.
If you were going to judge the movie on just its first part, it’d be a cliche, just whining hipsters complaining about their relationships, but the film’s second half causes the viewer to look back and reassess, noticing how the characters try to hide their problems and pretend everything is fine.
Hal, a neighbor, who’s prepared for anything, arrives to inform the group about the disaster (and berates them for not inviting him)
There’s also the foreshadowing. They lose cellular signals, the cable and internet go out, and sirens recur in the background. Originally none of these things appear abnormal; the sirens seem like ordinary background noise, there could be issues with weather and then Emma and Peter fall into a tense fight, each believing the other didn’t pay the bills because of their divorce. All that comes before the reveal is imbued with a sense of impending doom as most viewers are aware going in of what the movie is about. Part of the fun of the movie is watching each small detail grow into a larger conflict which builds into convincing character development.
Though we begin the movie posed from Glen’s point of view, as the film progresses, it moves from Glen’s perspective to a more general, fly on the wall view of the action. Because the shift doesn’t happen exactly at the point of the reveal, viewers go seamlessly from outsiders entering a place we don’t understand and being forced to participate, to watching action we are not involved in.
Like the characters, there’s very little we know about the actual disaster. Insulted that he wasn’t invited to their brunch, Hal informs them that bombs have gone off downtown and they have to remain inside, before leaving them to their own devices. For a great deal of the film, the characters aren’t sure if the reports they’ve heard are real or how bad things are outside, so it isn’t until the very end that they start to think of concrete plans. The movie isn’t about how they’re going to survive the disaster (eventually they just decide they’re all going to die); instead, it’s about how they slowly learn to deal with each other and air their long-suppressed grievances.
For Emma and Peter, the disaster brings back them together, allowing them time to relax and listen to music in the car, reconnecting in a context far from their everyday problems. Lexi and Burt play around on an acoustic guitar, wear bedsheet togas and eventually realize they don’t have much that bonds them together; that in all their experimenting they were only trying to find something novel to share. Hedy, whose chemistry knowledge makes her hyperaware of what’s going to happen to them, stops caring about anything. She breaks up with Shane and then spends the day drinking and mixing chemicals to make ecstasy, feeling that they can at least go out having fun. Later, when a suicide plot is considered, Hedy’s extensive knowledge of all the symptoms they will run through before they die, is what convinces them that it’s the best option.
The group meet in the living room for an impromptu sing-along that turns into an escape planning session
Throughout the afternoon, the group had mentioned another couple who were supposed to attend the brunch, but who always show up late. Near the end of the movie, these friends arrive, clearly suffering from the effects of the toxin and everyone inside the house refuses to let them in. Tracey in particular, shuts them out, and even as they die on the porch and are eaten by crows, maintains that they deserved it for being late. Their inhibitions have been so loosened by the disaster that rules of order and civility have completely broken down. Things that were mere annoyances, like their friends’ habitual lateness take on outsized importance when the stakes are raised.
Meanwhile, Tracey and Glen bond fast and appear to have a real love connection, the conventional romantic comedy relationship set against a disaster. However, in the eleventh hour, Glen proves himself to be a religious fanatic and anti-Semite, when he serves everyone wine laced with rat poison. He believes they should all die together before the rapture begins and though the others don’t agree with his beliefs, they consider drinking the wine to spare themselves a painful death.
Glen, who is meeting the group for the first time, is an outsider, alienated by their relationship problems
It’s an interesting, albeit abrupt, twist as Glen originally appeared to be the most logical one in the group. However, it does seem like a bit of a betrayal when the character whose perspective we were aligned with at the start turns out to be crazy and is suddenly shut out of the group as an outsider. Glen’s status as a “religious nut job” is the glue that binds the friends back together, allowing them to bond over laughing at him. It is also a form of redemption for Tracey as she explained earlier that her friends never believed her when she told their that her other boyfriends were crazy.
In the end, everyone has their own belief systems–among them science, superheroes, and the wisdom of crowds and they hesitate to drink the poisoned wine. They’re afraid of being wrong, of killing themselves a minute before help arrives. The film abruptly ends (recalling an earlier conversation between Tracey and Glen) with everyone poised to drink. Whether you believe they do or not depends on your opinion of each character and who they would be in real life.
The ending shows that no matter how much they try to change, the tightly wound taking a risk and dancing around in togas, the free spirits trying to think in concrete, logical terms, they’re all going to continue to be the same types of people until they die.
In the film’s final tension-filled moments, the characters must decide whether or not to drink the poisoned wine and spare themselves a painful death
Though I had many good things to say about the movie, there are also some criticisms that shouldn’t be ignored. It’s great that the movie focused equally on female and male characters, but as in most films, women’s characters are explored only insofar as they are as parts of couples. I have to wonder if screenwriters can conceive of a woman in a context outside of a romantic relationship. In addition, starting the film from a male character’s POV, even though he doesn’t end up playing a more significant role than anyone else, sets him up as a default protagonist.
Though this may be an attempt at satire, the characters refer multiple times to the destruction of multiple American cities as the end of the world. As they speak to a call centre worker overseas who is not experiencing anything out of the ordinary, it’s clear that only the US is affected and the characters’ occasionally self-centered view extends to their conception of the world.
It’s a Disaster is a unique twist on the disaster movie. The point of the movie isn’t the apocalypse, but the character’s relationships. Whether or not they’re going to survive isn’t the point either. It’s a disaster movie that isn’t a disaster epic, instead it’s a captivating and often hilarious comedy of manners.
Elizabeth Kiy is a Canadian writer and freelance journalist living in Toronto, Ontario. She recently graduated from Carleton University where she majored in journalism and minored in film.
If you’re at all like me, you’re constantly frustrated by the characterizations of the women of The Walking Dead AMC series, their choices, and their actions. The show has received significant criticism for its paternalistic attitude, its throwback gender roles, and its lack of strong, capable female characters. Though the current season (Season 3) has made some positive changes with the greater development of Maggie, Andrea, and Carol as well as the addition of the samurai sword-wielding Michonne, a lot is left to be desired. As a huge fan of the sometimes flawed, but overall intelligent and compelling graphic novel series by Robert Kirkman, I feel it is my duty to show you what you’re missing. Through a comparison of the women of The Walking Dead comic and TV series, it’ll become clear that the negative and weak representations of women are conscious, deliberate choices that the writers of the show have made in a departure from the original source material of the comic series.
Let’s start with Lori Grimes, the pregnant wife of Rick and mother of Carl who dies in childbirth in Season 3 of the TV series.
Yes, TV Lori does a lot of laundry & traditional “woman’s work.”
Lori has an affair with Shane, Rick’s best friend, when she’s under the impression Rick died during the zombie outbreak. Interestingly enough, the TV Lori is given far more reason to believe Rick is dead because Shane lies to her, telling her he saw Rick die. In the comic, she, like most people, can’t realistically hope that loved ones survived the outbreak, especially because Rick was comatose in a hospital. Despite the fact that she is given ample validation for seeking comfort in the arms of a long loved and trusted friend, TV Lori is consistently villainized. Her character is unlikeable, weak-willed, flighty, and she refuses to take a stance on important issues for her group, then blames others when things don’t work out. In fact, she Lady Macbeths (that’s a verb now) Rick and Shane into fighting over her to the death. Shane dies very early on in the comic series, and his beef with Rick is only partially his rabid love of Lori (the rest being their fundamental disagreement concerning how best to protect the group as well as Shane’s growing mental unbalance).
Together, comic Lori & Rick look adoringly upon their new baby
Though Lori wasn’t my favorite character in the comics, we empathize with her affair, and her bond with Rick is cemented and deepened when they choose together to raise the baby she’s carrying as their own, regardless of its parentage. Her TV pregnancy and resulting death in childbirth are punishment for her affair and for the continued implication that she’s a bad mother to Carl. It seems the writers believed that the only way for Rick and the viewers to forgive Lori was to have her die in unspeakable pain; she is given a C-section with a dirty pocket knife and no anesthetic in a dingy basement. The only way for her to redeem herself, they seemed to think, was for her to selflessly sacrifice her life for that of her infant. In the comic, Lori lives through childbirth along with the infant, Judith, and they die together during an attack upon the prison that proves to be a bloodbath. Comic Lori’s death is shocking and tragic, revealing to the readers that no one is safe in the most visceral way imaginable. Her death in its chaotic meaninglessness becomes the most meaningful death in the entire series thus far.
Then there’s the badass Michonne who is deadly with a katana blade and makes her first appearance during the season finale of the TV show’s second season.
Both Michonnes are gallows serious & stone-cold warriors
Luckily, there’s not too terribly much different between the comic and TV Michonne characters…yet. TV’s Michonne is even more laconic and untrusting than her comic counterpart, though. Comic Michonne is obviously intelligent and admits to being a lawyer before the outbreak. She also suffers from some schizophrenic tendencies as a result of enduring the harsh road alone for so long (she hears the voice of and talks to her dead boyfriend). Unlike her TV version, comic Michonne knows she needs Rick’s group to keep her sane and to fight back those symptoms of mental instability she experiences early on. Her fierce independence is tempered then by a knowledge that working together with a group is the only way to survive and thrive. I’m seeing tendencies, however, in her TV version toward an almost debilitating anti-authoritarianism and a propensity to go rogue. This is evinced by her inability to “play nice” with the Governor even just to find out answers as well as her separating from the Rick group during their raid on Woodbury in order to exact her personal revenge. Her behavior makes Rick eager to send her packing, unlike in the comic where she is one of the most valued members of the group upon whom Rick relies always.
So, so much badassery
Her introduction to the Rick group on the TV show is problematic in the way that it diverges from her comic introduction. TV Michonne shows up at the prison badly injured, falling unconscious from her wounds after an impressive display of her skill at dispatching walkers. As the remaining walkers descend upon her inert form, the Rick group rushes to save her and treat her wounds. When she regains consciousness, she growls to Rick, “I didn’t ask for your help,” which is, of course, ridiculous because we all know she would have died without it; this is more of that display of self-destructive anti-authoritarianism. In the comic, she rescues Otis (yup, he’s still alive at the prison) from a zombie horde. Otis vouches for her, which gains her entry into the prison and the basic trust of the group. Instead of joining the group as a valued, proven member as she did in the comic, TV Michonne remains of questionable trustworthiness and is immediately indebted to Rick, his rescue of her a display of innate dominance. Even the fact that she rescued and cared for Andrea for months in the series becomes a strange downplay of her comic rescue of a male member of the group, as if the life of Andrea, a woman, isn’t as worthy as the life of Otis, a man.
Finally, we have Andrea. Tsk. Tsk. Andrea, Andrea, Andrea. Sigh.
I promise you’re missing so much Andrea awesome if you don’t read the comic
The paths of TV and comic Andrea are unrecognizably dissimilar, and her character, more than any other, proves that the TV writers cannot bring themselves to fully empower a female character. TV Andrea claims to be a good shot, but we have no evidence of it…other than her shooting Daryl instead of a walker. She is suicidal for quite some time, randomly sleeps with Shane, and ends up being sheltered and protected by Michonne for months as she recovers from sickness. Not only that, but she ends up ignoring Michonne’s warnings about Woodbury and having an affair with the psychotic Governor. In the most recent episode “The Suicide King,” the Governor’s unjustifiably erratic and cruel behavior becomes obvious even to Andrea (pitting brothers against each other in a fight to the death, admitting that he held Glen and Maggie without telling Andrea, and refusing to provide much needed leadership to the community he built). Andrea says to him, “Don’t push me away. Not now.” With my eyebrows climbing all the way to my occipital lobe, all I could think was, “Girl, why aren’t you running for the hills?!” TV Andrea lacks self-esteem and is consistently making bad choices with regards to men as well as her own safety. She takes orders from the Governor even though she knows better and can’t seem to realize, despite a plethora of evidence, that the Governor is simply bad news bears.
Now comic Andrea’s badassery rivals that of Michonne.
Blam, Blam, Blam is right
Between comic Glen and Andrea, I’m not sure which of them is the MVP of the group, both having a skillset that would be really difficult to train into a replacement. Glen’s ability to hide, scavenge, and stealth his way past walkers may actually be trumped by Andrea’s uncanny sharpshooting talents. She saves the group on countless occasions, and she’s the real reason why the body count after the prison raid wasn’t 100%, as she stood up in the guard tower picking off attackers like they were soda cans at a carnival. The scar across her freckled face is a manifestation of the toughness and survival instinct that defines her character. Not only that, but she does not have an affair with the repugnant Governor; her romantic relationship is with a much more likeable comic Dale. The two form a unique and lasting bond that brings them both solace amidst unspeakable loss and terror. They are together until Dale dies.
Comic Andrea is always an asset and never a liability to the group. Her stalwart character is too robust, too invaluable for the TV writers to translate to the screen, so they undercut her at every opportunity in a blatant attempt to make her weak, dense, and unlikeable to the audience. Both Michonne and Lori suffer similar fates in that many of their finer qualities of strength, perseverance, and cooperation are lost in translation. It’s hard to see these changes as anything less than the creators of AMC’s The Walking Dead being threatened by or at least incredulous at the prospect of powerful female characters. For any of you who think they make these changes for the sake of drama, I’ll tell you a little anecdote. I once had a friend who said, “I want to watch a horror movie where the characters do all the right things; they’re smart and skilled, and shit still goes sideways.” For the most part, that is the case with the graphic novel series. It’s a page-turner, a gut-wrencher, a heartbreaker, and without fail all the characters are more well-rounded, empathetic, and ass-kicking than their TV counterparts. The drama is in those pages, along with plenty of strong women. I hate to say this, but the writers need to STOP being “creative” and stick to the complex, morally fascinating dystopian story that inspired the series.
In Hollywood action flicks, hypermasculinity is a key tool for survival. The folks who have zombie-apocalypse bunkers and piles of military-grade weapons last longer – if they never cry. It’s reinforced in Red Dawn, the 1984 movie starring Patrick Swayze and directed by John Milius.
Milius’s Red Dawn adoringly plays with the premise of an occupied U.S. What if the Russians, Cubans and Nicaraguans successfully invaded? Apparently they would start with rural middle-America and send paratroopers to attack a high school. While this may not seem like a practical strategy (considering the U.S. is large both in actual size and military might) it actually works out pretty well for the invaders of Red Dawn.
This movie romanticizes unexpectedly-skilled kids forfeiting life and well-being for country and vengeance. A group of teens become guerilla warriors and name their group after their high school mascot: the Wolverines! (I feel compelled to put an exclamation point after each use of “Wolverines!,” because I am pretty sure yelling is part of the official pronunciation.) This movie looks like how an eighth-grader might conceive war: its premise is grand, unrealistic and the values are oversimplified and packed with hormones.
And, guess what? This jacked-up fantasy is being redone. There’s a new Red Dawn on the horizon. Dan Bradley, who is known mostly for his stunt coordination work, is redoing the film that was the first to get a PG-13 rating. (Aimed at kids, yet rife with violence.) While I want to jump on the ridiculous 2012 trailer, I have to go back and explain why it’s even more ridiculous to produce now, considering the badness of the original Red Dawn.
To start: Milius’s Red Dawn was already absurd when it came out in 1984. Sure we had just warmed up from the Cold War. But, the idea that the Cuban army would be occupying a small U.S. town and launch its first attack on a high school: this movie was made to be laughed at. If it had merit it would be that it’s an excellent satire of nationalism. Unfortunately, that merit is based on wishful imagination on my part.
Wrapped up tight in that too-sincere-nationalism is tradition and subsequently: traditional gender roles. But, what’s interesting is its push for hypermasculinity – not just for the boys in the film, but also for the girls. So, while there are “when men were men” attitudes, the stereotypical role of women are cut out even for the female characters. I guess there’s not a lot of room for femininity in spastic red-blooded propaganda flicks.
Yes, the Wolverines! are equal-opportunity in their stereotypically male stoicism and aggression. They don’t discriminate between genders when it comes to muddy survivalist tactics and the refusal to cry, ever.
The boys’ dad (Harry Dean Stanton) tells them to not even think about crying.
Crying was very specifically pointed out as an action not to be taken by survivors. When the main characters of the film Jed and Matt Eckert (Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen) find their Dad (Harry Dean Stanton) in a prison camp he imparts advice that is repeated throughout. He doesn’t give them tips on how to survive, or even a trying-to-be-poignant call to cling to hope. Instead the boys’ dad tells them, “I don’t want either one of you to ever cry for me again. Don’t ever do it. Not as long as you live.” I am sure that’s the most important thing he could have told his kids who were hiding in the mountains from an invading army. Don’t worry. Mr. Eckert follows this up with a prolonged “Avenge me!”
Again, Red Dawn fails at practicality. But, it wins at perpetuating a narrative of strength via glamorized old-school warrior manhood.
I want to address the women of Red Dawn. But, frankly it’s hard to talk about any of the characters in the movie. There’s just not a whole lot of character development. Erica (Lea Thompson) and Toni (Jennifer Grey) join up with the boys after hiding from would-be-assaulting enemy forces. We actually meet the girls as their guardians reveal them by pulling up a hatch in the floor. The two have been hidden and we first see them as they are crouched, looking upward and eager to melt into the bland multi-personed-character of Wolverines!
Toni and Erica (Jennifer Grey and Lea Thompson) in Red Dawn
Toni gets pretty much no development. She laughs and carries an assault rifle – like the rest of the group. She blends into the steely amalgam. Toni doesn’t stand out, but neither do the boys, really.
Erica on the other hand gets one of the few lines acknowledging gender difference. Matt (are we surprised that it’s Sheen’s character who says this?) tells Erica she should do the dishes. Erica reacts viscerally and says, “You wash it! We’re never doing your washing again! Me and her is as good as any of you!” She also (spoiler alert) gets to be one of the few remaining survivors. This was the 80s after all, a time when we were celebrating women’s equality, but that equality looked a lot like redistributing stereotypical masculinity.
So from Milius’s Red Dawn we learn that the key to being a successful militia is having seemingly endless access to big-ole weapons and suppressing emotion. This is very possibly true. What’s makes the premise not-so-likely is that a high school quarterback, his visiting-home brother and their buddies would probably not have the aforementioned weapons, the skills to use them and the ability to root out emotion. What is even less likely, is that Cuban and Nicaraguan armies could make their way across the U.S. and successfully invade because they had magical Russian weapon technology. It’s hilariously unrealistic. But, the old premise might be more believable than what’s coming next.
Not only are we sticking to a pretty ridiculous idea (except now it’s North Korea who’s the even-more-unlikely invader), it looks like this round of Red Dawn could come with an extra dose of unnecessary sex appeal. One thing to appreciate about Milius’s Red Dawn was that, while there was a creepy crush thrown in, the movie didn’t go out of its way to exploit romance. Milius was too busy with gratuitous violence.
But, in Bradley’ Red Dawn trailer we have clean made-up characters and obvious moments of sexy-slow-motion-kissing time. It’s not clear exactly how gender will play a role in the upcoming redo. But, with rapid cuts to gunfire, explosions and car wrecks – it seems like hyper-violence inspired masculinity will probably continue to play a role.
