Australian Television – Bitch Flicks

Sex Worker Positivity in ‘Satisfaction’

Normalizing all sexual fantasies seems to be one of the main themes of the show. ‘Satisfaction’ offers a lot of varied sex positivity onscreen that centers on women. The show sets an example for what more television shows and films could portray when it comes to women, sexual desires, and sex work.

This guest post by Cameron Airen appears as part of our theme week on Sex Positivity.

There aren’t a lot of positive portrayals of sex work in film and television. Sex workers are typically seen as less than human–their lives disposable. The sex worker is often an object used for men’s domination, to shame her for the work she partakes in, or to be feared and avoided like she has the plague. How many times have we heard a woman in a film or TV show express something like, “Oh my god, I look like a whore!” or “She’s a whore!” in total disgust? It happens more often than we are conscious of because whorephobia and the stigma of sex work is deeply pervasive. We’ve been taught from the beginning not to look, or act like or be a whore. Being a whore is thought of as the low of the low; it is a shameful position in society.

Because sex workers are seen and thought of as inferior, violence against them is seen as normal, like we see in the film Dressed to Kill (1980) where a serial killer psychiatrist specifically targets sex workers. If a sex worker is not the target of violence, then they’re being objectified like in the recent film The Escort (2015) where Lyndsy Fonseca plays a sex worker whose story wants to be written by a white man. With the title “The Escort” you might think it would be HER story but she ends up being the pawn for his interesting journalism further perpetuating what the media does to sex workers consistently, objectifying them, which further perpetuates the stigma of sex work. But, I have good news.

One of the few shows that depicts sex workers in a positive way by challenging stereotypes of sex workers and the sex industry is the Australian drama, Satisfaction. Satisfaction centers on a circle of six women who work out of an upscale, legal brothel in Australia (where sex work is legal but its regulations vary regionally). The show doesn’t only focus on their sex work, but their friendships with each other, their personal sexual and romantic interests, and other parts of their lives unrelated to sex work. Satisfaction shows a realistic experience of sex work (for more privileged workers anyway), of sex workers’ clients and situations. Not every work situation turns out to be a positive one for these sex workers, but most do. It shows an assortment of realities that happen within sex work like clients falling in love with a sex worker or vice versa, the various fetishes that clients possess, coming out to loved ones about doing sex work, and dozens of dozens more. Also, safe sex is portrayed in Satisfaction by showing the workers doing STI checks on their clients before each session. When do we ever see safety around sex onscreen?

“People pay me to have sex with them, and yes, I’m OK with that” –Lauren

Satisfaction offers a variety of personalities and representations of its main characters. It gives older sex workers a voice with characters like Lauren, a receptionist of the brothel who picks up sex work after discovering that she has a knack for it, and Mel, an independent sex worker. It represents the kink side of sex work through Heather, who works as a Dominatrix, and Nat, who explores her kinky sexuality. Chloe, “the best sex worker in the brothel” as Nat describes, has been in the business a long time and is a mother of a teenage girl. A younger and more intellectual type of worker is played through Tippi, a bubbly girl who wants to study creative writing. The brothel is owned by Nat’s dad but Nat manages it with a strong business intent. Satisfaction also adds a male sex worker in season 3 showing some diversity among gender.

Heather, a lesbian Dominatrix

I do want to point out that Satisfaction is not as diverse as it could be. Heather is the only prominent gay character and sex worker of color. The rest of the women are white and heterosexual. All of the women are in a more privileged position in the sex industry. They have the privilege of working out of a safe and structured, fancy brothel, where clients are screened, instead of on the streets. Plus, they have the privilege of working in a region where sex work is legal. There is a new character in Season 3 who struggles financially, but up that point, no one else seems to struggle to pay the rent or bills on time. The show also lacks the representation of trans or genderqueer sex workers.

A great aspect of Satisfaction is that it focuses on and normalizes fetishes. When do we ever see sexual fetishes portrayed in a positive light onscreen? Fetishes are seen as a normal part of a person’s sexuality, and not just among the clients but among some of the women as well. It’s another way the show defies sexual and gender stereotypes and gives kink a voice.

Nat, manager of the brothel and latex Queen

While the last season of Satisfaction took a downturn overall by subtracting familiar characters and adding new ones, it explores one of the more interesting sexual expansions of one of the main characters, Nat. In Season 1, Nat, discovers her sexual appetite for latex. In the “Rubber Dubber” episode (Season 1, episode 7), Nat is intrigued by a client of Heather’s who enjoys being wrapped up in latex from head to toe. As she escorts the client in and out of the room, she is excited by the smell of latex and her curiosity begins. In Season 2, Mel’s younger brother, Sean, comes to visit, ends up being a sex worker, and crushes out on Nat. For a while, Nat doesn’t know what to do with this new guy pursuing her but ends up trying to date him. Her relationship with Sean leads her even deeper into her kink and fetish desires that has her wanting to open up their relationship. This is another sex positive moment because we hardly ever see people, but women in particular, wanting and initiating an open relationship with their partner onscreen.

Nat and Sean

Season 3 broadens Nat’s sexuality when she starts seeing Bernie, one of Heather’s ex-clients. They end up having a strong S/M connection that allows Nat to explore her relationship to intimacy, fetish, and kink in ways that are more authentic to her. Nat realizes that she needs and wants to be with someone who is more compatible to her desires. This is a great portrayal of showing how women can get their sexual needs and desires met no matter what they may be. Normalizing all sexual fantasies seems to be one of the main themes of the show. Satisfaction offers a lot of varied sex positivity onscreen that centers on women. The show sets an example for what more television shows and films could portray when it comes to women, sexual desires, and sex work.

You can watch all seasons of Satisfaction for free on Hulu.

Cameron Airen is a queer feminist with a M.A. in Anthropology and Social Change who did her ethnography with sex workers in the Bay Area. When she’s not obsessing over women & gender in film/TV, Cameron is trying to create a (mostly) vegan cookbook. She resides in Berkeley, Calif. You can follow her on Twitter @cameronairen.

‘Lady Detective’: ‘Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries’ Explores Feminism in the 1920s

Phryne acts just as independent and liberated outside of the bedroom. She knows how to fly a plane, she delights in driving her own car, a Hispano-Suiza, and totes around a golden revolver with a pearl-encrusted handle. Oh, she also has impeccable taste in clothes.

This is a guest post by Lauren Byrd.

The Australian TV show, Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries (the first two seasons are available on Netflix), is set in the roaring 20s, famous for its jazz, gin, shorter hemlines, bobbed hair, and Art Deco design. The protagonist, Phryne Fisher (pronounced Fry-nee), is an heiress to a small fortune, but she also possesses a sense of adventure and a knack for solving crimes, often outshining her male counterparts at the Melbourne Police Department. Sound like just another Miss Marple or Sherlock Holmes? Think again. Phryne is also a feminist.

Based on the series of novels by Kerry Greenwood, Phryne is an independent woman. Having inherited a small family fortune during World War I, Phryne doesn’t have to work. She could have her pick of a husband and spend the rest of her days reading, knitting, or traveling. Instead, she decides to start solving crimes to earn money. She builds her business from the ground up like any modern day entrepreneur.

However, the television series has made one significant change. In the books, Phryne is 28, which according to Downton Abbey, is past marriageable age. This seems modern enough (and probably quite scandalous for the time), but in casting Essie Davis–who is in her 40s–as Phryne, the series has created one of the few “older,” independent, sexually liberated female characters in television history. Davis herself cited Samantha Jones in Sex and the City as the only other television counterpart to Phryne.

So let’s talk about sex. Phryne has a string of lovers, both in the show and the book series. However, she perhaps possesses a unique set of feelings for her emotionally reserved male counterpart on the Melbourne police force, Detective Inspector Jack Robinson (Nathan Page). The show plays off their chemistry by trotting out the somewhat tired will-they-won’t-they dance, yet these two still make it a compelling tango to watch unfold. Their relationship is an example that speaks even further to Phryne’s independence. Like some female characters might, she doesn’t sit around and wait for Jack to figure things out. She continues to be herself, which means falling into bed with next man she takes a fancy to.

But it is precisely for her sexual liberation that Phryne has been criticized by American viewers. In 2013, the first season became available on Netflix. Shortly afterward, some viewers left comments saying the show would be more enjoyable if Phryne wasn’t such a “tramp” and “obnoxious airhead.”

Jezebel wrote a piece about the comments. Miss Fisher author Greenwood said she had been expecting outrage over her liberated, independent heroine for ages. But she didn’t receive a single complaint when the show aired on Australian television. “Not once. Not even from old ladies. Not even from nuns,” Greenwood said in an interview with The Sydney Morning Herald.

In fact, Greenwood finds Miss Fisher no different than similar male characters who solve crimes for a living. James Bond woos and beds a different woman in every film and is a hero to men and boys. “No one thinks their multiple lovers are indications of slutishness,” Greenwood pointed out.

Davis said in an interview with NPR that she was sent the Jezebel link and thought the reactions to it were fantastic. “The reactions towards the outrage were so powerful and outspoken. And that so many people who, on the Jezebel site, were like, ‘Right, well, if that’s what everyone’s saying about it, I’m watching it.’”

The series, when it comes to sex and violence, is actually quite tame. Even though the show features a different murder every week, the killings and violence are downplayed, and the sexual liberation of Phryne receives the same treatment. There’s the flirting, the first embrace, but then the show cuts to the next scene, leaving everything after implied. Or at the most, the pre-coital scene cuts to the post-coital, a pair of lovers ensconced in bed.

Her backstory, which comes out in bits and pieces in the series, is just as fascinating. She grew up poor in Melbourne and only after her English cousins died during World War I did her father inherit their peerage line, making him a count and her the Honorable Miss Fisher. During the Great War, Phryne ran off to France where she joined a French woman’s ambulance unit, where she received an award for bravery. After the war, she worked as an artist’s model in Montparnasse for a few years, before continuing to hop around Europe. In the book series, she’s returned from England back to her roots in Melbourne.

Phryne has an amazing cadre of characters she’s befriended and employed. Despite her statement that she’s “never understood the appeal of parenthood,” she’s certainly not selfish and takes in a young girl, Jane, as her ward in the second episode. Her relationship with her new maid/assistant, Dorothy “Dot” Williams, blossoms into a true friendship throughout the course of the series. At first, Dot is quite reserved, sheltered, and very Catholic, but under Miss Fisher’s influence and tutelage, she becomes much more than confident in herself and turns into a true asset to Phryne’s business.

Phryne met her best friend Mac while she was serving on the French ambulance unit. Mac is a physician and dresses androgynously, but her sexuality is never a point of contention or question in her friendship with Phryne. To round out her household, Phryne employs—funnily enough–a man named Mr. Butler as her butler and Bert and Cec, former dock workers, who drive a taxi and conduct odd jobs for Miss Fisher, both around the house and as part of her investigations. In the books, Bert and Cec are also “red raggers,” a term from that era for socialists.

The show is a delightful romp through the decadence of the late 1920s and while hemlines are higher, Phryne still butts heads with menfolk about her line of work. Frequently referred to as a “lady detective,” Phryne seems to have taken this sexist term and turned it into a calling card for herself, but she still gets talked down to by plenty of men. In fact, her relationship with Detective Inspector Jack Robinson is at first antagonistic. He wants her to butt out of his investigations and mind her own business, he threatens to arrest her for breaking and entering, and only allows her to stay in the room during an autopsy if she won’t say a word. Over time, however, they become partners. He wants her opinions on his investigations, and she wants him there for a second line of defense and in order to use his official title to secure records and information she otherwise wouldn’t be able to obtain.

Australia was one of the first countries that gave women the right to vote, passing the law in 1902. Once soldiers left for the war in Europe, women emerged from the home to fill the jobs left empty by men, which included factory and domestic work, nursing, teaching, and clerical and secretarial positions. Of course, women were paid less than men so even once men returned from the war, many employers wanted to keep women on the payroll because they cost less. Australian politician M. Preston Stanley openly confronted male arrogance and encouraged women toward independence. In 1921, Edith Cowan was the first woman to be elected to the Australian parliament. And of course, the 1920s were the age of the flappers, women who believed in social equity, rather than political. Social equity for the flappers meant women were allowed to drink in bars like men and enjoy all the recreational activities that men did. Not all women embraced this new movement, however. Some women of an older generation, called “wowsers,” objected to these new-fangled practices. (See Phryne’s Aunt Prudence.)

If you have a penchant for 1920s fashions, love detective shows, or just enjoy watching a sassy woman kick some ass, then Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries is a shiny gem of a show in a sea of superhero movies, True Detectives, and Game of Thrones.

Lauren Byrd has worked in the entertainment industry in Los Angeles and New York. She currently writes a weekly series on her blog, 52 Weeks of Directors, focusing on a female filmmaker each week.

When Being Fat Isn’t A Big Deal: Jenny Gross on ‘Winners and Losers’

The default body size also extends to actresses who are not meant to be “decorative.” In writer-director Andrea Arnold’s powerful, excellent ‘Red Road,’ from the UK, star Kate Dickie has a nude scene which is neither meant to be nor is erotic, but her body has as little fat as that of a professional marathon runner. When women see these bodies as “the norm” in films and TV even those of us fortunate enough not to hate our bodies (and even those of us who are not habitually called slurs because of our size) have to fight against the tendency to ask, “What exactly did my body do wrong to be so unlike that of nearly every woman I see onscreen?”

This post by Ren Jender appears as part of our theme week on Fatphobia and Fat Positivity.

“Fat” isn’t just a loaded term when referring to actresses, but also a relative one. The late Joan Rivers infamously called Kate Winslet “fat” at red carpet appearances during the awards season for Titanic, even though Winslet seemed about the same size as she was in the movie, then the most financially successful of all time. Rivers’ pronouncement had enough power that Winslet was one of the few young women who came to the Academy Awards that year in long sleeves: to hide her “fat” arms. At the time Winslet was probably still well below the average size of women in the US (and the UK).

I grew up in the ’70s and although TV and movies then had more than its share of super-skinny actresses (especially noticeable in that era before most actresses had breast implants or muscles from working out), their bodies were much more in line with that of the general Canadian, US and UK population, since the average body size of those populations was smaller than the average body size (of both men and women) today. And the actresses on American TV, especially those who weren’t young (some of the most popular characters on the highest rated shows like Bea Arthur on Maude, Isabel Sanford on The Jeffersons and Jean Stapleton on All In The Family were in their 50s) weren’t expected to have the bodies (or faces or hair) of young teenagers–unless they were young teenagers.

As the general populace in the US, Canada, the UK and Australia have developed larger bodies than they had in past decades, most of the actresses from those places have shrunk. Although I was pleased to see Melissa McCarthy as the star of a film that makes good use of her talents (and is blessedly free of fat-shaming or slurs) in a preview screening of Spy (which I will review in full in June, when it’s in theaters), I couldn’t help noticing how sylphlike her equally hilarious Australian co-star, Rose Byrne, is. “Model-thin” has become the default body type for most actresses who wish to have a career in the English-speaking market and beyond: and of course fashion models now are also skinnier than they were in the ’70s and ’80s.

The standard ultra-thin body for an actress is common enough that when I saw the young actress Pauline Etienne topless in the French film Eden (a film I don’t recommend) I was surprised to note that not only did she have naturally large breasts (which are, after all, comprised mainly of fat) but her stomach, while flat was, unlike those of most contemporary actresses, not concave, let alone showing visible abdominal muscles. The default body size also extends to actresses who are not supposed to be “decorative.” In writer-director Andrea Arnold’s powerful, excellent Red Road, from the UK, star Kate Dickie has a nude scene which is neither meant to be nor is erotic, but her body has as little fat as that of a professional marathon runner. When women see these bodies as “the norm” in films and TV even those of us fortunate enough not to hate our bodies, even those of us who are not habitually called slurs because of our size, have to fight the tendency to ask, “What exactly did my body do wrong to be so unlike that of nearly every woman I see onscreen?”

The four main characters of "Winners and Losers" Jenny (Melissa Bergland) is second from the left — The four main characters of “Winners and Losers” Jenny (Melissa Bergland) is second from the left

The casual inclusion of a fat woman as one of four main characters on the soapy Australian TV series Winners and Losers feels like a triumph–especially because the body and weight of Jenny Gross (played by Melissa Bergland) are never the center of her storyline, any more than they are of the other leads: model-thin Bec (Zoe Tuckwell-Smith) and Sophie (Melanie Vallejo) and Frances (Virginia Gay) whose body is closer to average size. Jenny is, hands down, the most consistently well-dressed woman on the show, wearing vintage and faux-vintage fashions that look great on her and work well with her cherry-red hair and cat-eye glasses (which the actress wore to the audition and the producers decided to make part of her character). In a perhaps unwitting bit of verisimilitude the matching bridesmaid dress she was called on to wear with two of the other characters at the wedding of a third was equally unflattering to each actress (and body-type).

Although we in the audience are briefly reminded of the abuse fat women can receive, these moments never overtake the show, not even for one “very special episode”. At one point a “player” who is using Jenny refers to her as a “cash cow” (the four women were “losers” in high school but after their reunion became “winners” when they jointly bought a lottery ticket with a large payout) with a laugh on the “cow,” and as with the other three main women characters, we know Jenny was bullied in high school (with remarks centering around her size). In another episode Jenny confronts her older sister, when she briefly visits home, that she too needled Jenny about her weight (Jenny’s parents and other siblings do not and are very close to and supportive of her) but otherwise Jenny has similar problems to the other three main women. She dates the wrong guys (one of her early boyfriends came out as gay, which was my original reason to start watching the series). She was the center of a love triangle for some episodes, spent a period drinking and partying too much, saw her mother through a breast cancer diagnosis and treatment and found out, in the most recent season, that she carries the gene that marks her as likely to develop breast cancer too.

Jenny waits with her sister to find out if she has a gene that will make her likely to develop breast cancer.

She’s also not always the fat girl who wants everyone to like her: she can be quite cutting (and Bergland has a great touch with these lines) as when she informs a boyfriend with whom she is on the outs that he can’t hope to recover the pants he misplaced during a drunken night out because, “You lost them along with your wallet, your phone, your keys and your dignity.” When Rhys, the boyfriend from several seasons ago confessed to her that he was gay, he said about Sophie finding out (after he tried to kiss a mutual gay friend, Jonathan), “I thought she was going to beat the shit out of me.”

To which Jenny replied, “I kind of wish she had.”

Although Jenny is something of a late bloomer who lost her virginity at 27 (to Rhys) and at that time still lived at home in her childhood bedroom, filled with stuffed animals, the show is free from “Woe is me, I can’t get a boyfriend because I’m fat,” speeches. The show also avoids the cliché in which the fat woman is the f*g hag with no sex life of her own: although Jenny remains friendly with Rhys after he comes out, Frances is the one who is best friends with a gay man, Jonathan (Damien Bodie)–and Frances has had boyfriends of her own too. In the seasons since Rhys (who eventually settled down with Jonathan), Jenny has had a number of love interests, equally, if not more, handsome than the boyfriends and husbands of the other main characters on the show.

So the question remains: why, when I know several such women in real life, do I have to look halfway around the world to find a main woman character on TV who is beautiful and fat, who wears the cutest outfits, has love interests and all sorts of concerns (each episode of this series never has just one crisis when it could fit five) that have nothing to do with her body size? Perhaps US show creators will one day have an answer for me.

Ren Jender is a queer writer-performer/producer putting a film together. Her writing. besides appearing every week on Bitch Flicks, has also been published in The Toast, RH Reality Check, xoJane and the Feminist Wire. You can follow her on Twitter @renjender

Binge Watch This: ‘Dance Academy’

‘Dance Academy’ is a teen soap opera set at a ballet school. So basically, it’s ‘Degrassi’ meets ‘Center Stage.’ That should be enough to have you diving for your remote right now.

The central female characters of 'Dance Academy' — The central female characters of *Dance Academy*

Netflix subscribers, as soon as you’ve gotten through Gilmore Girls (or maybe sooner, should you get GG fatigue once Logan gets in the picture), you need to watch the Australian TV series Dance Academy. My Cape Town bestie KDax has been telling me to watch Dance Academy for months, and now that I’ve finally taken her advice I can only think “so much lost time!” I could be through my third rewatch by now, instead of only having seen one of the three available seasons! Don’t make my mistake: watch this series NOW.

Dance Academy is a teen soap opera set at a ballet school. So basically, it’s Degrassi meets Center Stage. That should be enough to have you diving for your remote right now, but if you need more convincing, here are some more details:

Psst... the joey is a metaphor for Tara! — Psst… the joey is a metaphor for Tara!

Tara Webster is a naive 15-year-old girl from the Australian Outback whose talent for ballet has her plucked out of her small-town life and brought to the National Academy of Dance in Sydney. We see her adjust to life in the big city and going from being the best dancer for miles to a small fish in a big, ultra-competitive pond, while going through the standard coming-of-age drama with the rest of her teenage classmates.

The cast of Season One of 'Dance Academy' — The cast of Season One of *Dance Academy*

There’s her best friend Kat, who grew up in the industry as the daughter of the Sydney Ballet’s prima ballerina, who is as loyal to her friends as she is rebellious against authority. Kat’s older brother, Ethan, is the self-serious choreographer and apparent ladies’ man who Tara instantly crushes on. Kat and Tara’s platonic dude friend is Sammy, equal parts awkward and earnest. Christian, the troubled kid from the wrong side of the tracks, is out on bail after robbing a convenience store (also, distressingly, the only PoC in the main cast of the first season). And finally Tara’s roommate Abigail, the Queen Bitch antagonist, who remains a sympathetic character despite all her cruel manipulations.

While the teen drama plots of Dance Academy are not particularly original, the cast is so natural and likable that the even the most standard material feels fresh. The first season relies very heavily on two intersecting love triangles (I’d say love quadrilateral if two of the points were not siblings, and Dance Academy is not enough of a soap opera to head down Incest Drama Lane). I would have said that another teen love triangle was number one with a bullet on my list of things I never needed to be asked to care about again. But Dance Academy made a liar out of me, by making every character involved compelling, every relationship plausible, and all the shifting degrees of attraction and loyalty make sense within the story.

Similarly, Dance Academy successfully takes on many After School Special-esque “Issue” storylines by committing to the emotion at their core. I was particularly impressed with the handling of the seemingly inevitable eating disorder plot when Abigail responds to her growing breasts with extreme calorie restriction. Dance Academy is able to condemn the ballet world’s absurd body standards without falling into the insulting oversimplification that ballet causes anorexia, and never blames the victim even though she’s the ostensible “villain” of the series. Her eating disorder isn’t confined to a single “Lesson Episode” along the lines of DJ Tanner’s exercise bulimia or Jessie Spano’s “I’m so excited I’m so scared” caffeine addiction; Abigail’s recovery and how it effects her relationships and other emotional issues is an ongoing plot.

Oh, and did I mention how whatever ballet they are working on always has symbolic parallels to the plot? I love this show.

Dance Academy does have a handful of awkward fumbles, though, like the cringe-inducing episode where Christian takes Ethan to “the hood” to show him what Real Hip Hop Moves look like. As painful as that was, I wish the series didn’t shy away from class commentary so much. For the first half of the season it feels like Christian only exists as a character so they can “address” class, which is as unfair to the character as it is to the issue. There’s also a huge contrast between Tara’s rural upbringing and the world of privilege most of her classmates come from, but it is rarely acknowledged. The one episode that really deals with Tara’s embarrassment over her “simple country folk” parents swiftly overshadows cultural class differences by making the story about cold hard cash, when Tara’s mom asks her to defer school to save their finances. This problem is immediately solved with a scholarship and never mentioned again. Meanwhile, Kat and Ethan are never called out on their bratty entitlement (Kat’s my favorite character, but when she complains about traveling the world with her famous mother I seethe).

Pretty much any time they do hip hop it is awkward.

But this is just season one, and every time I’ve made a criticism of Dance Academy, KDax has said, “just you wait.” For example, this would be the paragraph where I’d complain about the universally cis-het cast and grumble some more about the general excess of white people, but I know the subsequent seasons are going to attempt to correct these problems.

Given how much I’ve loved this first season of Dance Academy despite its failings, I have high hopes for my ongoing obsession over the next two seasons. Won’t you come and dance with me?

Robin Hitchcock is an American writer living in Cape Town who had bits of Swan Lake stuck in her head the entire time she was writing this.

The Complicated Women of ‘Please Like Me’

This realism seeps into the portrayal of women characters. They’re not the fantasy women whom straight men put in their shows, nor do we see the evil matriarchs of some popular cable series who seem more a manifestation of show creators working out their issues with their own mothers than portraits of women any of us have known.

Josh Thomas’s Please Like Me is close to winding up its second season in the US on Pivot. It is produced in Australia, where Thomas is a well-known stand-up comedian. Please Like Me is trying to be a different kind of “reality” television. Although the series is fictional and tightly scripted (by Thomas, co-star Thomas Ward, Hannah Gadsby, and Liz Doran) Thomas plays a character very like himself, an out gay man named “Josh” who has a straight-guy, best friend named Tom (played by Thomas’s best friend since childhood Thomas Ward) and a dog named John (played by Thomas’s dog, John). This realism seeps into the portrayal of women characters. They’re not the fantasy women straight men put in their shows, nor are they the evil matriarchs of some popular cable series who seem more a manifestation of show creators working out their issues with their own mothers than portraits of women any of us have known.

Josh’s Mum, Rose (Debra Lawrance), tried to kill herself at the beginning of Season 1 (in a sequence that Thomas says was very much like when his own mother attempted suicide; some of these scenes, like the rest of the series are unexpectedly, deeply funny): the impetus for Josh to move back home. In last season’s final episode, she’d vomited up a half-hearted attempted overdose (following the funeral for her live-in mother-surrogate, Aunty Peg– Judi Farr) and when Josh discovered her, disoriented and partially undressed on the kitchen floor, she begged him not to hospitalize her. He reluctantly went along with her wishes. The last lines showed a touching camaraderie between the two. “How did you lose your skirt?” he asks.

She tells him she doesn’t remember but “I made sure to put on some underwear before you came home.”

“That was considerate of you,” he says, almost smiling.

In the second season’s first episode Rose gets a puppy and a makeover and can’t stop talking; at the end she announces the to the rest of the characters that she has stopped taking her medication. In the next episode she is at a “mental home” (as most of the characters call the private hospital), the place she had always wanted to avoid in the first season. She’s not happy there and uses her new roommate Ginger’s (Denise Drysdale) attempted suicide to slip out and visit Josh during a cookout he and his housemates are throwing. He brings her back and she has stayed at the “home” for most of the rest of the season except for a visit to the zoo and a camping trip with Josh.

JoshRoseCampingPleaseLikeMe — Josh and Rose go camping

The two go on the trip because Ginger, who became Rose’s close friend at the “home,” succeeded in killing herself while Rose (as well as fellow residents, Hannah–co-writer Hannah Gadsby–and Arnold played by Keegan Joyce) were away at the zoo. At night in the tent, Rose cries inconsolably in the sleeping bag next to Josh’s but is dry-faced as they hike during the day while she wonders aloud why Ginger didn’t tell her she wanted to kill herself–and is angry at her for succeeding. Josh is puzzled because Rose has tried repeatedly to kill herself so if anyone should understand Ginger’s actions she should.

Of her own attempts Rose asks, “Weren’t you angry?” Josh explains that he knew that she was attempting suicide because she had a mental “disorder,” so he didn’t take her actions personally. Then he tells her that after one attempt (Rose has tried to kill herself many more times than we have seen onscreen) doctors told him that they weren’t sure they had pumped her stomach in time–and if they hadn’t she would die slowly over the period of two weeks.

“I mean, you’re my mum…” he starts. When the doctors told him they had gotten the drugs out of her system in time and she would recover he states, “Then I got angry.” This show’s thoughtful treatment of suicidality (Thomas has spoken on mental health issues to members of the US Congress), both for those who try to take their own lives and those close to them is a striking contrast to the inconsistent, gimmicky portrayal of the same subject matter on television and in recent films like The Skeleton Twins.

I cringed at first at Josh’s father’s much younger girlfriend Mae (Renee Lim) who is originally from Thailand and has a heavy accent, because I expected her to be a stereotype. But Mae’s lines (and Lim’s delivery) make her one of the wryest wits on the show–and not in the “Asians are magic” way that Josh decries in an episode to a blind date who has just come from Reiki therapy.

When Rose first tries to kill herself, Josh’s father, Alan (David Roberts), is convinced she wanted to die because of his and Rose’s divorce, which happened many years before. Mae says to Josh, who erupts in laughter, “If your father breaks up with you, you might as well just end it all, because you have known perfect love,” before she tells Alan to get over himself.

During the visit to the zoo, Mae and Alan, along with their baby daughter, Grace, tag along and when they are alone together Alan is antsy, saying he has to get back to work. Mae (who frequently looks stressed out, with messy clothes and hair, much more life-like than the blissful, neatly dressed, perfectly coiffed new mothers of American sitcoms) tells him he works too much and that she and Grace need his presence more than they need additional money. When he counters that he bought the big house they live in for them, she holds up her daughter and asks, “Have you counted how many people are in this family?”

I thought at first that the character of Niamh (Nikita Leigh-Pritchard) would be a study in misogyny. She started out last season as the bad girlfriend (or boyfriend) everyone’s bestie has had at one point: she’s completely insufferable to everyone including Tom (who is also Josh’s roommate)–but Tom can never bring himself to end the relationship. Toward the end of Season 1 Tom did end things with Niamh or rather his new girlfriend, Claire (Caitlin Stasey ) did, interrupting his waffling to tell him (in front of Niamh!) “Oh for fuck’s sake, Tom, of course you’re choosing me.”

please_like_me_claire_naimth_tom — Claire, Tom, and Niamh

This season began with a five-year time lapse after the first (Lucas has explained that the series was in development for years and wanted his character to be closer to the age he is now) and Claire, we find out, has been in Germany for 12 months, for work, leaving Tom–and their relationship–behind. Tom has started to hook up with Niamh again, which Josh warns him against, not because of her personality, but because she still loves Tom. Josh tells him that after they have sex he imagines she feels very bad.” And you’re supposed to feel quite nice after sex.”

Niamh isn’t the asshole she was in Season 1, either. She’s sweeter, more vulnerable. We can see as clearly as Josh how much she cares about Tom in the ways she tries to get into his good graces. She has changed the way our own offscreen friends and acquaintances change through the years. The person who was charming and a little outrageous in the first encounter elicits eye-rolls in the 30th. The person who, in the beginning, seemed a little cold and distant becomes, with time, a close and trusted friend. We also see a hilarious glimpse of Niamh ‘s old self when she finds out from Josh that Tom is not only seeing someone else, but has promised to be “exclusive” with this new high-school-student girlfriend, Jenny (Charlotte Nicdao), Niamh picks up Tom’s phone, calls Jenny’s number on speaker (with Tom and Josh in the room) and informs her she and Tom had sex the night before. Before Tom can explain himself Niamh tosses the phone in a flower vase full of water. Later when she talks with Josh (who still doesn’t really like her, even though he feels bad for her) we see that she is heartbroken–and there’s no one there to comfort her.

Tom is both “such a nice boy” (as Rose calls him after he rolls a joint for the camping trip) and emotionally cloddish–in a way that is rare for straight young men on television but not for those in life. He’s genuinely sorry he cheated on and hurt Jenny, but didn’t hesitate to have sex with Niamh, as if he couldn’t have foreseen Jenny might be affected. He doesn’t understand, until she tells him, that Claire had left the country to work in Germany because their relationship wasn’t working–and is despondent at this news.

Josh’s love interests on the show are also more complex than those that populate series created by straight men. Instead of wish-fulfillment cheerleader-model types we get…male model types, but each deeply flawed in ways that sitcom creators rarely make “the girlfriend”. Season 1’s Geoffrey, though he looked like a Greek god, could barely hold a conversation with Josh. Patrick, Josh’s roommate this season, told him he enjoyed hanging out and even making out with him, but didn’t want to have sex. Arnold spends time in the same “mental home” as Rose does.

I’m happy more women are getting the chance to create more television, but I’m eager for one to be able to create a series with Please Like Me’s combination of autobiography, serious issues and comedy–not to mention its expert touch with queer characters. I can’t wait for the day an openly queer woman, playing a role she wrote, based on her own life, kisses a woman on her TV show with the pure pleasure that Thomas radiates whenever he kisses one of his male co-stars.

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

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Ren Jender is a queer writer-performer/producer putting a film together. Her writing. besides appearing every week on Bitch Flicks, has also been published in The Toast, RH Reality Check, xoJane and the Feminist Wire. You can follow her on Twitter @renjender. She is hosting a reading in NYC at Henrietta Hudson on Sat., Oct. 11. Go to the Facebook invite for more info.

‘Outland’: An Unsung Treat for Queer Sci-Fi Fans

‘Outland’ is a little-known but hilarious Australian miniseries about five gay nerds in Melbourne. It has been called “a gay answer to ‘The Big Bang Theory,’” but I don’t think this description does it justice.

Written by Max Thornton.

Outland is a little-known but hilarious Australian miniseries about five gay nerds in Melbourne. The six half-hour episodes aired on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in 2012. Each of the first five focuses on a different member of the group, as each takes his or her turn hosting their sci-fi movie-watching club and nothing goes according to plan.

First there’s Max. Max is the closest thing this show has to the everyman character, the Ted Mosby or Jim Halpert – but this is a show about queer nerds, so he’s a gay science fiction enthusiast with an anxiety disorder. As far as I’m concerned, this makes him far more relatable than the Mosbys and Halperts of the televisual landscape.

The excellent second episode focuses on Rae, who is coping with the aftermath of her breakup from her girlfriend, Simone. Max voices his sympathy for Rae’s situation as a lesbian of color in a wheelchair: “Black, gay, and disabled – it’s like a discrimination trifecta.” She responds by quoting James Baldwin and then agreeing to have a nude photo of her displayed in an art exhibit. Rae is the literal best.

Then there’s Andy, the openly kinky one. As his friends try to get him down from his ceiling harness (this is a sitcom), Andy expounds upon the connection between his two favorite hobbies: “Science fiction and sex: they’re two sides of the same coin. Exploration, adventure, discovery…” In the DVD special features, writers John Richards and Adam Richard make it clear that this isn’t wholly a joke. There’s a thematic throughline undergirding the whole series which draws parallels between geekdom and queerness, from Max loudly “coming out of two closets” to the whole gang narrowly avoiding a queerbashing as they cosplay on their way to Pride. Being queer and being a nerd are two ways of being outside of the mainstream, and forming countercultural communities are a (perhaps the) major way for outsiders to survive.

Even communities with really really low effects budgets!

Fab is probably the most stereotypically gay character. He’s a flaming queen, he’s delightfully bitchy, he has tragically flamboyant fashion sense, and he lives with his nan. This is a great way for the writers to sneak in a bit of social commentary – when the others are creeped out by being around an old person, Andy points out, “You’re only saying that because we’ve been conditioned to believe that aging is the worst thing that can happen to a gay man.”

The last member of the gang is Toby. Poor Toby, whom nobody likes. Toby is an uptight rich kid who’s sure nobody outside of the group knows about his obvious queerness. His episode has songs and dancing and is totally amazing.

In the final episode, the splintered gang tries to overcome their assorted squabbles and neuroses to reunite for Pride. As a frustrated Max says, “All I wanted was a group where I could fancy the guy from Farscape without anyone making a big deal out of it!” Ultimately it’s the external threat that brings them back together, as the nerds realize that, as dysfunctional as their little group is, it’s a community that serves their needs in a hostile world.

Outland has been called “a gay answer to The Big Bang Theory,” but I don’t think this description does it justice. The Big Bang Theory has (or had, when I last watched it, which was admittedly several years ago now) a palpable contempt for its characters, and concomitantly for the nerd culture it purports to portray. Outland, on the other hand, comes from a genuine place of affection for its characters and their geeky pastimes. This is evident in a wonderful subtlety of Outland, which is that its nerds have overlapping but distinct nerdy interests. Toby is the one who collects figurines; Max is the one who owns a Dalek suit; Rae is the one who’s into gender politics and Ursula LeGuin (obviously). This entirely reflects my experience with sci-fi club: we all loved science fiction and fantasy, we were all conversant in the obvious stuff, but everyone had their niche – Tim was our Middle-Earth expert, Michael knew everything there was to know about comic books, Heda was a Star Wars extended universe obsessive. (I was the go-to guy for zombies and B-movies.) Over the nearly 100 episodes of Big Bang I saw, I don’t recall ever seeing the specific interests of Howard, Leonard, Raj, and Sheldon being so well delineated as the Outland crew’s in six. This is nowhere better illustrated than in the group’s cosplay effort, where the interests and personality of each character shine in each specific iteration of the same costume.

Dressed as Lulara from show-within-a-show Space Station Beta. — Dressed as Lulara from show-within-a-show *Space Station Beta*.

Outland is broader and less nuanced than Spaced (oh, Spaced, will anything ever match your brilliance?), but it’s perhaps the closest thing we have to a queer Spaced. It’s unfortunately lacking in female characters; episode 2 is the only one that passes the Bechdel test, and you almost wonder if there’s self-awareness in making Rae do triple duty as the proverbial black disabled lesbian – oh, hell, can we just see a spinoff that follows Simone’s splinter group, the Lesbian Separatist Feminist Fantasy League?

Until the day we see a specifically lesbian and/or trans nerd sitcom, though, Outland is a delightful and very funny show (even if it can, alas, only be imported at great expense in the wrong DVD region).

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Max Thornton blogs at Gay Christian Geek, tumbles as trans substantial, and is slowly learning to twitter at @RainicornMax. He’d like to thank his friend Gary for hooking him up with the Outland DVD.

‘Wentworth’ Makes ‘Orange is the New Black’ Look Like a Middle School Melodrama

Wentworth poster

Written by Amanda Rodriguez

Wentworth is an Australian women’s prison drama that is much grittier, darker, more brutal and realistic than Netflix’s Orange is the New Black could ever hope to be. This bleak realism also makes Wentworth‘s well-developed characters and situations much more compelling than its fluffier American counterpart. Don’t get me wrong; I really enjoyed Orange is the New Black. The stories of incarcerated women are always important because they are a particularly marginalized and silenced group. However, the over-the-top, zany approach to characterization that OITNB utilizes for comedic effect renders the characters less substantive overall. Consider the lesbian-obsessed prison worker Caputo who has a mail order Russian bride or the insane abortion doctor murderer and ex-meth addict Pennsatucky Doggett who believes she has a calling from Jesus or the flame-haired Russian mobster cook Red played by my beloved Captain Kathryn Janeway (er, I mean Kate Mulgrew). Very colorful. Very little depth.

Pennsatucky is one craaaaaaaazy lady.

Though OITNB and Wentworth deal with similar themes, Wentworth (based on an Aussie soap opera from the 70’s and 80’s called Prisoner) takes a no-holds-barred approach to subjects like officer sexual exploitation of prisoners, turf wars and hierarchy, sexuality, the inmate code of silence, gang beatings, gang rapes, prison riots, and the brutality of the crimes that landed these women behind bars. Because the Australian prison system is different from ours, my first glimpse of Wentworth Correctional Centre left me comparing the prison to middle school with its catty girls and basic rights stripped from the inmates, much like the ones that are stripped from children, i.e. rules govern when they use the restroom, showers, bed times, how they spend their free time, classes are mandatory, and they are allowed no privacy save that which they sneak. The finale of the first episode (“No Place Like Home”) concludes, however, in a chaotic riot with a body count, leaving a major character dead. I rapidly revised my initial reading, realizing that the women of Wentworth play for keeps in a way that those of OITNB do not.

The show evokes a primal sense of self-preservation amidst the complete absence of the basic human need for safety. It is unflinchingly honest in its representations of women who’ve committed terrible acts, lived complicated lives, and must continue their struggle for survival in the place that’s supposed to give them structure and rehabilitate them but in actuality further hardens and traumatizes them.

The racial diversity of Wentworth‘s cast leaves a bit to be desired. One of the primary prison guards, Will Jackson, is played by Robbie Magasiva, a Samoan New Zealander.

Mr. Jackson escorts our heroine, Bea Smith.

Aboriginal Shareena Clanton portrays the integral matriarchal role of prisoner Doreen Anderson.

Doreen Threatens to cut Bea in order to keep the child she protects on their unit (that’s right, Aussies have kids in prison).

Lastly, there’s Frankie Doyle’s steady girlfriend, Kim Chang, played by Korean Ra Chapman.

Kim walks with her lover Frankie.

To be fair, I don’t know enough about the racial/ethnic composition of Australia to know what would constitute a balanced representation. In addition, though, there isn’t as much lesbianism as one might expect from the show either, though the lesbianism depicted is as graphic as the rest of the series. Though there are more lesbian characters in OITNB, I often wondered why their relationships were so censored on Netflix that can call its own shots…was it an effort to not exploit lesbian sexuality as so many shows typically do or was it to not “turn off” viewers?

On Wentworth, Frankie Doyle is the only major LGBTQ character along with her minor character girlfriend, Kim. We also find that the “Governor” Erica Davidson harbors a secret attraction to Frankie.

Governor Erica Davidson steals a covert look at Frankie.

Erica Davidson is one of the more interesting characters represented in the show. Erica becomes Governor through semi-devious means, but she continues to claim that the welfare and rehabilitation of the female prisoners are her number one priorities. The show constantly pits her genuine empathy for the women against her career ambition. Her sexuality is gratifyingly complex. We are given background on her relationship with her (male) fiance who is very vanilla when it comes to sex. Erica fantasizes about a fetish club she once visited as part of her pre-Wentworth lawyer work. When she asks her fiance to pull her hair during sex, he loses his shit. They don’t have a conversation about it, like, say a couple might if the man requested anal sex or a ménage à trois; instead he issues an ultimatum. They almost end a five plus year relationship because her request makes him feel inadequate. He asserts that she may have picked the “wrong guy.” He stifles her sexual curiosity completely. The repression of her sexual fantasies exacerbates Erica’s desire to step outside the bounds of sexual propriety as is evinced by her lesbian attraction to an inmate, a woman who constantly challenges her authority. The complex sexual power dynamic at work between Erica and Frankie feeds into Erica’s fantasies. The psychological context given for Erica’s sexuality gives her much more depth than, say, Piper Chapman from OITNB, whose sexuality is the cause for much debate but is given little room for its inherent fluidity.

Erica fantasizes about sex with Frankie within the prison walls.

Lastly, we’ve got Wentworth‘s heroine Bea Smith. Wentworth is a sort of prologue intended to give the backstory for the woman Bea later becomes in the series Prisoner (which many Aussie fans have already watched). In many ways, Bea and Piper aren’t so very different. They’re both women out of their element, gentle by nature. Neither woman wants to rock the boat, but both are possessed of a streak of moral righteousness that alternately gets them in trouble and gains them respect. Both undergo major transitions before the end of their first seasons, the prison setting actually accentuating their buried inner violence and pushing them to acts of vicious aggression.

Bea Smith from Prisoner on the left, and Bea Smith from Wentworth on the right.

Bea’s pre-prison life, however, is not as ideal as Piper’s perfect upper middle class New York existence. Bea is a hairdresser whose husband brutally beats and rapes her on a regular basis. Bea is imprisoned for attempting to kill him when she finally snaps and decides to fight back. Piper’s crime is an isolated incidence of non-violent drug trafficking that she did simply as a youthful thrill and to help out Alex, her then girlfriend. Though she, like Piper, is bewildered by prison culture when she is first incarcerated, Bea is no stranger to darkness. Though Bea and Piper both undergo major personality shifts by the end of their first seasons, Bea’s prior life, her family, and her meek disposition are truly and permanently eradicated by her stay in prison (and she hasn’t even had a hearing, nevermind trial and sentencing, as the first season closes).

Wentworth cast

I think I’m asking too much from Orange is the New Black. In fact, I know I am. It’s a mainstream show that focuses on the marginalized stories of women in prison, many of them LGBTQ. Shouldn’t that be enough subversion to keep me happy? Walking into the show, I’d already watched a couple of seasons of the British women in prison drama Bad Girls, and then after seeing Wentworth, I knew that I wanted more from the trope of women and prison than Orange is the New Black could provide. I didn’t want these important, often untold stories turned into humorous fluff in order to make them palatable to an audience. I didn’t want the complexity of the lives and struggles of these women to be minimized in order to keep them within their pre-determined stereotype boxes for the sake of simplicity and a huge, mainstream audience. I’ll keep watching OITNB, but I’ll keep turning to Wentworth for stories about ostracized women with fascinating psychology, depth of character, and complexity of emotion and motivation.