Based on a Book – Bitch Flicks

‘The Girl on the Train’: We Are Women Not Girls

Perhaps the depiction of “the girl” in ‘The Girl in the Train’ will reassure my fears by allowing the woman to literally “grow up” on-screen. Yet, the title makes me very pessimistic. Presenting women as “girls” continues to fetishize women’s powerlessness in cinema. By situating this girlhood in a similar way to the male fantasy construction of the Final Girl, and by enforcing an infantilizing return to post-feminism’s “girliness,” these films offer ultimately disempowering images of female subjectivity.

Written by Sarah Smyth.

Earlier this week, the trailer for the adaptation of Paula Hawkins’ best-selling psychological thriller, The Girl on the Train, was released, and the internet went into a melt-down. The film tells the story of Rachel (played by Emily Blunt), a divorcee and heavy drinker, who becomes obsessed with watching a seemingly idyllic couple on her commute to work. When the woman in the couple goes missing, Rachel finds herself dangerously implicated in the investigation. The film obviously parallels David Fincher’s 2014 film, Gone Girl. They are both psychological thrillers adapted from best-selling novels featuring untrustworthy and morally ambiguous leading female characters. They also both refer to their leading lady as the “girl” in the film. It is precisely this that I want to problematize in this piece: why are these female characters specifically referred to as girls when they are clearly women?

After all, both Emily Blunt and Rosamund Pike (who plays Amy, the lead female character in Gone Girl) will be/were 36 years old when their respective films will be/were released. The use of the “girl” in the titles, I argue, continues to position women in a position of vulnerability and weakness in two overlapping ways. Firstly, through “the girl” as a trope within both psychological thriller literature and film, I identify this figuration of girlhood within Carol Clover’s construction of the Final Girl. This figuration, as I will demonstrate, refuses women an autonomous subjectivity, instead constructing them through male fantasies and anxieties surrounding female sexuality. Secondly, by identifying “girliness” and girlhood as a key post-feminist sensibility, the identification of these characters as girls rather than women reinforces an infantilization of women.

Let’s start with the novels. Within the last two year, dozens of popular, mainstream psychological-thrillers have been released featuring “girl” in the title. These include: Girl on a Train (A. J. Waines 2015), The Girl with No Past (Kathryn Croft, 2015, who followed this up with The Girl You Lost, 2016), The Girl in the Ice (Robert Bryndza, 2016), Luckiest Girl Alive (Jessica Knoll, 2016), Little Girl Gone (Alexandra Burt, 2015), Pretty Girls (Karin Slaughter, 2016), The Hanging Girl (Jussi Adler-Olsen, 2016), The Girl in the Red Coat (Kate Hamer, 2015), Dead Girl Walking (Chris Brookmyre, 2015), and Lost Girls (Kate Ellison, 2015). Admittedly, some of the girls of the titles are babies or children, such as Little Girl Gone. Yet, the title of this novel recalls Gone Girl so obviously and even includes references to this novel and The Girl on the Train in it’s marketing on Amazon. In addition, although the “girl” may refer to her daughter, the novel centres around the mother, Beth, who begins ‘an extraordinary and terrifying journey’ after her daughter goes missing. Grown women’s vulnerability and endangerment is clearly the focus here.

This recent trend became visible through Stieg Larsson’s series of novels. Although collectively known as the Millennium series, within the English-speaking world, they are more widely known through the hook of the “the girl” within the title: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl who Played with Fire and The Girl who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest. At 23 years old, the girl of these novels is younger than her Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train counterparts (although Noomi Rapace was 30 when she filmed the Swedish adaptations of the books). Indeed, the novels and films explore Lizbeth Salander’s precarious position between childhood and adulthood, between girlhood and womanhood. Although extremely independent and resourceful, Salander is continually threatened with institutionalisation. When Mikael Blomkvist, a journalist she’s working with, asks her, “How come a 23 year old can be a ward of the state?”, she answers, “I’m mentally incompetent and can’t manage daily life.” Interestingly, the original Swedish title didn’t depend so much on this hook. Although title of the second book remains the same, the first book is called Män som hatar kvinnor (translated as Men Who Hate Women), and the third is called Luftslottet som sprängdes, translating roughly as The Castle in the Sky that was Blasted Apart. The change almost certainly acts as a marketing tool, creating a more easily recognizable brand within, clearly, a crowded marketplace. This book blog also suggests that the English translation attempts to create a thriller with a female character similar to James Bond for potential female readers. While almost certainly true, I ask, would a Bond book or film ever be called, The Boy with the Expensive Watch?

The emphasis on girls rather than women in these novels and the cinematic adaptations continue to reinforce the position of women (as opposed to men) as vulnerable. This, in itself, is not so much the problem. If anything, it is accurate given that women are more likely to experience rape, sexual assault and domestic violence at the hands of men than vice versa. The problem, I argue, is through the fantasies and anxieties that these images of (or identification of these images as) “girlhood” enact. I, here, use the trope of the Final Girl, first identified by Carol Clover’s authoritative and brilliantly titled book, Men, Women and Chainsaws: Gender in Modern Horror Films, to highlight the way in which this is constructed. Here, she explicitly addresses the trope of the Final Girl in slasher films, although her arguments correspond across genres. The Final Girl, she claims, is the film’s lead character, who, as both the victim but also the only survivor in the film, serves as both the site of the audience’s sadistic fantasies, and the anchor for the spectator’s identification. Primarily aimed at young heterosexual men, the Final Girl must be “masculine” enough so that this (assumed) spectator can identify with her; she is often androgynous or tomboyish in appearance and sometimes in name. More crucially, she must be sexualized but never sexual; she must provide the fleshy site for the heterosexual male’s voyeuristic fantasies but she must never have autonomy over her own body and sexuality.

My interest in the Final Girl, here, is less in the literal mappings of the trope within these psychological thrillers. Rather, I am interested in the way in which, for Clover, girlhood denotes a kind of vulnerability and lack of autonomy within cinema. This vulnerability through precisely her identification as a girl rather than woman positions this figure only through the sexualization which the audience allow her; namely as a bodily site of (male) sadistic fantasies, and as a space to contain and control women’s sexuality. Whether, these psychological thrillers are aimed at or primarily watched by men or women is almost beside the point (although it’s interesting to note that Gone Girl was called the second-worst date movie of all time after Fatal Attraction due to the polarizing and highly essentialist gender reactions the film is apparently likely to enlist). The construction of the image is so insidious, it seeps into films where women are also an intended audience. I am wary, therefore, of the representations of the women in The Girl on The Train and Gone Girl precisely because of this identification with them as “girls.” After all, as much as we can enjoy and celebrate Amy’s “cool girl” speech in Gone Girl (another image of “girlhood” constructed by men), she ultimately becomes a man’s worst nightmare: a “bat-shit crazy psychopath” who falsely accuses men of sexual assault and rape before either murdering them or trapping them into marriage. Progressive.

Like the psychological-thrillers I mentioned earlier, there are plenty of examples of films with “girl” in the title. Some like Steig Larsson’s novels, do so as an indication of the film’s investigation into a woman’s transition from childhood to adulthood. Some examples include Girl, Interrupted (1999), Mean Girls (2004), and The Diary of a Teenage Girl (2015). This was used most interestingly and (accidently) provocatively in Celine Sciamma’s 2014 film, Girlhood. The original French title, Bande de Filles translates as Gang of Girls. The English title recalls Richard Linklater’s Boyhood, a film released in the same year. But while Linklater’s film about white boy growing up in suburban Texas is considered epic and universal, Sciamma’s film about a group of black groups growing up in inner-city Paris received no such accolades. Granted Boyhood boasts an impressive technical achievement, having being filmed over a 12 years. Yet, the distinction nevertheless points to the continual idea that white men’s stories are universal while women’s stories, particularly women of color’s stories, are niche and singular. Inciting girlhood as a title, however, still comes with its own universalizing problems. Lena Dunham’s HBO-produced show, Girls, explores the transition from girlhood to womanhood in often hilarious and sometimes frustrating ways. However, the “girl” of this title has been criticised for its seeming universality. Although recent Pulitzer prize-winning television critic, Emily Nussbaum argues that this show is “for us, by us,” Kendra James pointed out that this “us” is overwhelming white and wealthy.

However, there are plenty of examples of films were the leading character is a woman who is, nevertheless, referred to as a girl: His Girl Friday (1940), Funny Girl (1968), The Good Girl (2002), Factory Girl (2006), Lars and the Real Girl (2007), The Other Boleyn Girl (2008), and, most recently, The Danish Girl (2015). By contrast, films with the word “boy” either fall into my former category of films concerning the transition from childhood to adulthood (Nowhere Boy (2009), Boyz N The Hood (1991)), or refer to an actual child (The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (2008), About a Boy (2002)). The disparity between the use of “girl” and the use of “boy” in film titles is, I argue, indicative of women’s infantilization in a wider post-feminist culture. I want now to point to one particular film, Working Girl (1988), as indicative of this problem.

Working Girl tells the story of Tess (Melanie Griffith), a secretary who goes to work in a Wall Street investment bank. After her boss, Katherine (Sigourney Weaver) breaks her leg, Tess uses her absence to put forward a merger deal. As you can imagine, mishaps ensue, but the film ends relatively positively with Tess offered her “dream job,” an office and a secretary. Nevertheless, the film articulates some of the problems, concerns and anxieties of women entering the workplace in the 1980s. Firstly, they still need a female scapegoat in the form of Katherine who becomes the real “evil” figure Tess must fight rather than the institutional sexism of corporate capitalism itself. Secondly, and crucially for my argument, by calling Tess a working girl, the film positions her “threat” to the masculine domain of work as somehow less than if she was a working woman. Indeed, it even recalls the 1986 Working Girls, a film based around prostitution: according to the overwhelmingly male-dominated film executives, is this it for women’s work? Again, I ask my question, if this film revolved around Harrison Ford entering the workplace, would it be called Working Boy?

I locate this obsession with girlhood within post-feminism. There is much debate as to what precisely post-feminism is. However, it is generally understood as a sensibility or aesthetic most generally visible in the late 1980s to early 2000s, after the second-wave women’s movement. Rosalind Gill argues that post-feminism is a distinctive sensibility made up of a number of themes: ‘the notion that femininity is a bodily property; the shift from objectification to subjectification; an emphasis upon self surveillance, monitoring and self-discipline; a focus on individualism, choice and empowerment; the dominance of a makeover paradigm; and a resurgence of ideas about natural sexual difference.’ Crucially, Suzanne Ferriss and Mallory Young argue in their book, Chick Flicks: Contemporary Women at the Movies, post-feminist chick culture involves a “return” to girliness:

“Chick flicks illustrate, reflect, and present all the cultural characteristics associated with the chick flick postfeminist aesthetic: a return to femininity, the primacy of romantic attachments, girlpower, a focus on female pleasure and pleasures, and the value of consumer culture and girlie goods, including designer clothes, expensive and impractical footwear, and trendy accessories.”

One of the first key texts to articulate this is Helen Gurley Brown’s 1962 book, Sex and the Single Girl (note the title), which was turned into a film in 1964. Gurley Brown advocated for women’s sexual and financial independence. Women, she said, should shun marriage in favor of a career. This sexy, single life, however, must be complimented with a trim figure and fashionable wardrobe in order to remain successful and desirable. It should come as no surprise that Gurley Brown acted as editor-in-chief at Cosmopolitan magazine for 32 years, and her book went on to inspire one of the most thoroughly post-feminist texts of the late twentieth century, Sex and the City.

However, I do not wish to simply dismiss post-feminism as a backlash against second-wave feminism or a return to pre-feminist concerns. After all, post-feminism remained concerned with many of the problems feminism attempted to tackle in the 1960s and 1970s such as women in the workplace, financial independence and motherhood. In addition, I argue that we are currently entering a new wave of feminism, tentatively called fourth-wave feminism, where issues such as sexual violence, intersectionality, body shaming and institutional sexism are more widely discussed and debated. Yet, because of post-feminism’s obsession with “girliness,” particularly as a means to “return” to childish girly pursuits, I remain wary of the dominance of “the girl” in the psychological thrillers I mention. The use of “girl” in both The Girl on the Train and Gone Girl signals a return to the return; a return to the post-feminism construction of womanhood through “girliness” which, in itself, is a return childhood. As infantilizing as it is debilitating, it reinforces women as only valuable in their youthfulness and refuses them the full subjecthood that “womenness” entails.

Perhaps the depiction of “the girl” in The Girl in the Train will reassure my fears by allowing the woman to literally “grow up” on-screen. Yet, the title makes me very pessimistic. Presenting women as “girls” continues to fetishize women’s powerlessness in cinema. By situating this girlhood in a similar way to the male fantasy construction of the Final Girl, and by enforcing an infantilizing return to post-feminism’s “girliness,” these films offer ultimately disempowering images of female subjectivity.

Sarah Smyth is a Bitch Flicks staff writer and recently finished a Master’s degree in Critical Theory with an emphasis on gender and film at the University of Sussex, UK. Winning the Chancellor’s Masters Scholarship, which enabled her to attend, Sarah owes her MA degree to the Kardashians after she wrote about them in her scholarship application. She also has a BA degree in English from the University of Southampton, UK, where she won an award for her dissertation, which examined masculinity in Ian McEwan’s novels. Men are often the subject of her investigation with her MA dissertation focusing on the abject male body in cinema, particularly through the spatiality of the male anus (yes, really). Still wondering whether she can debase herself through writing any further, the body, grotesque or otherwise, continues as a major source of interest. She’s also interested in queer theory, genre filmmaking, television and anything that might be considered “low-brow” culture. She currently lives in London, UK, and you can follow her on Twitter at @sarahsmyth91.

No Apologies: The Ambition of Gillian Armstrong and ‘My Brilliant Career’

However, Armstrong also doesn’t mock Sybylla’s ambition or treat it as a joke. In Armstrong’s world, the fact that Sybylla has desires and wants outside of marriage and men is treated seriously because Sybylla takes it seriously. She never needs to prove herself worthy enough for her desires.

This guest post written by Rebecca Hirsch Garcia appears as part of our theme week on Women Directors.

It’s almost impossible to think of Australian cinema without women directors. In recent years with her debut film The Babadook, Jennifer Kent has been declared a director to watch, but there’s also Julia Leigh, Sue Brooks, Cate Shortland, Shirley Barrett and Jocelyn Moorhouse, all of whom have had films play at Cannes and achieved various degrees of success and critical acclaim both in their home country and abroad. Not to mention Jane Campion who, while officially a Kiwi, went to film school in Australia and made some of her early films there.

Shocking then to realize that this flourishing of Australian women directors came after a near fifty year gap, a gap that began after Paulette McDonagh’s now lost 1933 film Two Minute Silence and finally ended in 1979 with Gillian Armstrong’s debut film My Brilliant Career.

The auspiciously named movie takes its title from the 1901 novel of the same name by Australian author Miles Franklin. Though the novel was popular, it wasn’t till the mid-70s that serious efforts were made for it to be adapted into a film. It was at that time that producer Margaret Fink bought the rights and began to cast about for a director that was right for the material. Fink reportedly considered Roman Polanski before setting her sights on Armstrong, a film-grad with a series of internationally acclaimed shorts under her belt who, at the time she met Fink, was working in the props department on another director’s movie.

There is much that is familiar, and loveable, about Armstrong’s first film. Set just before the turn of the century in 1897, it features a plain-looking and plain-speaking tomboy by the name of Sybylla Melvyn living on a farm in the Australian outback and dreaming of a better, i.e. more glamorous, life. Charmingly played by a young Judy Davis, in what was her first leading role in her second ever movie, Armstrong introduces us to Sybylla as she is sitting at her desk on a dusty farm while the rest of her family toils outside, prematurely beginning her memoirs, reflecting back on the career she has yet to even begin. As she pens her foreword she openly proclaims, “I make no apology for being egotistical, because I am.”

But Sybylla is quickly brought back to reality by her mother who supports her right to work; as a servant. Sybylla, despite being the daughter of a penniless farmer, has loftier ambitions of being a pianist (despite her discordant key bashing and minimal skills) or an opera singer (despite her untrained voice and the fact that she knows only drinking songs gleaned from the hours spent with her alcoholic father) or a writer (despite the fact she knows little of the world and her days are filled with drudgery). Armstrong never shows Sybylla as being particularly prodigious at any of the things she wants to do, in fact many times she shows just the opposite. However, Armstrong also doesn’t mock Sybylla’s ambition or treat it as a joke. In Armstrong’s world, the fact that Sybylla has desires and wants outside of marriage and men is treated seriously because Sybylla takes it seriously. She never needs to prove herself worthy enough for her desires.

Shortly after the dispiriting conversation between mother and daughter, good news arrives. Sybylla is sent to her wealthy maternal grandmother’s home to live a life closer to the luxury she dreamed of. In her grandmother’s house, her grandmother and her aunt Helen attempt to turn Sybylla into a proper young lady; montages involving the brushing of her unruly hair, face masks and various home remedies are applied. Armstrong’s film, and Sybylla herself, aren’t content to simply wallow in luxury however. Filmed standing in a giant bird’s cage or behind a mosquito net, it is clear, even before Sybylla says the words, that she is not exactly happy, still desperate for the chance to prove herself and to develop the career in the arts that she longs for.

Her ambitions are temporarily pushed aside however once her physical transformation is complete. Sybylla is courted by two potential suitors: the first a smarmy trainee of her grandmother’s and the second, and more interesting prospect, Sybylla’s childhood friend, Harry Beecham (Sam Neil). From the start the chemistry between Sybylla and Harry is electric. Sybylla is unwilling to act coy with Harry and he is willing to meet her on her level playing along when she shows her mischievous spirit by capsizing the boat during a romantic river ride. Sybylla declares them “mates” but the term, which Sybylla means in friendship has a double meaning. From almost the first time they meet it is clear that Harry is fascinated with Sybylla and means to marry her. The romance between them falls along conventional beats right up until an exasperate Harry finally proposes, a proposal which Sybylla declines right before whipping Harry in the face with a riding crop when his romantic overtures become too aggressive.

The moment feels as revolutionary to modern audiences as it must have felt when the movie was first screened in 1979. It is one thing for Sybylla to simply say that she doesn’t want to get married or to turn down the advances of a suitor she finds ridiculous. But in Harry, Sybylla finds not only a handsome, rich man but also a peer, someone who is not only at home getting whacked in the face by a pillow but whom she can talk to about the unfairness of the world, someone who easily apologizes for stepping out of line by acting too aggressively, who empathizes with her need to take two years to try to figure out, “What’s wrong with the world, and with me, who I am, everything.” Watching Sybylla say no to what would be considered the height of success in the society in which she lived in order to feed her own ambition is a sight all too rare in cinema. Despite the love Harry feels for her, and the fact that Sybylla feels, or nearly feels, the same way, she becomes through her rejection, a woman who bravely acts according to her own desires, someone willing to risk everything in order to have what she wants and who recognizes that men and romance are not the sum total of her world.

Armstrong never tells us whether or not Sybylla will have the brilliant career she so desperately craves. There are no scenes of an editor appearing to tell her she is a literary genius and no scenes of anyone reading her work and declaring her a prodigy. In the final scene of the film, a calm and confident Sybylla walks to the mailbox of her father’s farm to post the manuscript she has written, its destination a publishing house in Scotland. It might be a masterpiece or it might be junk, but after Sybylla posts her manuscript she turns her attention to the setting sun, her face filled with hope and the confidence that no matter what happens she can take pride in the fact that at least she tried.

It is easy to imagine that Armstrong was filled with a similar feeling as she crafted her debut film. Women filmmakers today still face an uphill battle having their work financed and distributed. At this point in time, gender parity for directors, at least in the U.S., seems like an unrealistic dream. But at the time in which Armstrong was filming, it wasn’t even a matter of a few women directors fighting to get in the room to pitch their ideas to studios or struggling for financing. In Armstrong’s case, there was very little Australian cinema to speak of and a gap of nearly 50 years separating her from the last feature length Australian film directed by a woman. Like her audacious main character, Armstrong carved her work out of pure ambition, uncertain of the future but willing to try.

The movie may leave Sybylla and the audience forever waiting and wondering as to whether she was able to write her way to a better life. But in terms of Armstrong and her career, the answer is much clearer. My Brilliant Career became a seminal part of what was later termed the Australian New Wave (a movement that also included George Miller and his Mad Max series, the first film of which coincidentally was also released in 1979). Armstrong and the film went on to play In Competition at the Cannes film festival, something that to this day is exceedingly rare for women directors. The film would go on to be nominated for an Oscar, a BAFTA, a Golden Globe and win several awards at the Australian Film Institute (AFI) awards including Best Director for Armstrong making her the first of many female Best Director AFI winners.

Perhaps best known for her 1994 adaptation of Little Women, Armstrong continues to work in film to this day, and has directed cinematic luminaries like Cate Blanchett, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Kirsten Dunst, and Diane Keaton. By anyone’s standards she has had a brilliant career.

Rebecca Hirsch Garcia is a Canadian cinephile. She has previously written for Awards Watch. You can find her on twitter @rhirschgarcia.

‘White Bird In A Blizzard’: A Storm of Crime, Carnality, and Coming of Age

For months, Kat idly notes her mother Eve’s increasingly odd behaviour, but is too busy falling in love and losing her virginity to care, until, suddenly, one day, Eve disappears without a trace. Kat assumes she ran away because she didn’t love them, and attempts to go on with her life, but a police investigation slowly begins circling her family. As an audience, we’ve been conditioned to see a movie with thriller or mystery elements in it as a thriller or mystery story. But Gregg Araki’s film, ‘White Bird in a Blizzard,’ is only part mystery, part coming of age story, and part haunted dreamscape, and refuses to be easily categorized as any of the above.

The poster for White Bird in A Blizzard — The poster for *White Bird in A Blizzard*

Spoilers ahead!

As White Bird in a Blizzard opens, Kat Connors (Shailene Woodley) is a teenage girl like any other, just at that point where she’s realizing how the life she wants for herself differs from the one modeled by the adults around her.

It’s 1988 and she’s challenging the limits for what she get away with, stomping out of her suburban home in heavy make-up and short skirts, enjoying loud music and lots of sex, and through all of it, fighting with her disdainful housewife-in-pearls mother, Eve (Eva Green, popping in to play a variation of the cold, elegant woman role she’s perfected).

As she matures, Kat begins to see the cracks in her parents’ 1950s style-American Dream-marriage. Her nebbish father Brock (Christopher Meloni) is flailing in his attempts to understand Eve, who is displaying depressive symptoms and acting jealous and even cruel toward Kat.

For months, Kat idly notes Eve’s increasingly odd behaviour, but is too busy falling in love and losing her virginity to care, until, suddenly, one day, Eve disappears without a trace. Kat assumes she ran away because she didn’t love them, and attempts to go on with her life, but a police investigation slowly begins circling her family.

As an audience, we’ve been conditioned to see a movie with thriller or mystery elements in it as a thriller or mystery story. But Gregg Araki’s film, White Bird in a Blizzard, is only part mystery, part coming of age story, and part haunted dreamscape, and refuses to be easily categorized as any of the above. The atmosphere, steamed up with Kat’s barely contained lust and Eve’s frosty shadow, dominates.

The real mystery is not who killed Eve or where she disappeared to. In fact, these answers are hinted at early on and are clear to the audience long before Kat even cares to investigate for herself. If a mystery is at important, it’s the mystery of what kind of person Kat will end up being and how her memories of her difficult, often unlovable mother, will shape her in her adulthood.

Eve feels stifled by her role as a housewife

The film follow Kat through two years pivotal years, as she finishes high school and begins college, punctuated with voiceover narration, flashbacks to her earlier relationship with her mother and introspection delivered in appointments with her psychiatrist. For most of this time, Kat is unmotivated to solve the mystery and this plot is sidelined by her burgeoning sexuality.

Things drag a bit in this section, as the film becomes merely a teenager’s sexual odyssey with hints of something darker just offscreen, just outside of her experience. We watch Kat get tired of her dumb and shiny first boyfriend, Phil, the boy next door (Shiloh Fernandez), and move on to the macho cop in charge of her mother’s case (Thomas Jane). Kat is unapologetically sexual. She admits that she is “horny” and excited to have sex again and again, complaining to Phil that it has been too long since they’d last done it. For Kat, this was not true love and she knows it. Her desire is sex itself, not sex with him specifically. In her conscious attempt to seduce of the detective, assuring him she is already 18 and already sexuality active, she is not a lost little girl manipulated by an older man, attempting to use this relationship to make an official move into adulthood. However, besides sex, there is little at stake until the final act.

Kat is overcome by lust and explores her sexual desires

Kat enjoys sex and admires her body, rare things for a teenage girl to be allowed in either movies or in real life. She has reason to be proud, as she has carved and shaped out her body, from beneath the prepubescent baby fat her mother always teased her about. Eve was the kind of mother who tsk-ed at every bite her daughter took, constantly reminding her of how much thinner and more appealing she was at her age. But as Kat relates, her mother only became crueler toward her as she came into her own.

Their dynamic is a Grimm’s fairy tale, the beautiful daughter sucking the life out of her once beautiful mother, slowly killing her and then replacing her as an object of lust. In Eve’s mind, they appear to be in competition. After noticing Kat’s new body, she appears in revealing clothes in front of Phil and flirts with him. She watches Kat dress and do her make-up, hidden in the shadows, and lingers too long to watch her fooling around with Phil. In one harrowing scene, she comes into Kat’s room at night and attempts to physically assault her.

Eve is consumed by jealousy while observing her daughter’s youth

One possible flaw in the otherwise skilled depiction of their difficult relationship is the casting of Eva Green as the mother of Shailene Woodley’s character when she is only 12 years older than her. By casting an actress who is not old enough to be Kat’s mother, the idea of the sexual identity crisis and aging Eve is experiencing is skewed. This is not how she should look at this age, because the actress is not of the right age.

The disappearance of Kat’s mother echoes the conflict between a mother and her daughter as she comes of age. Kat must reject her mother’s influence and ideals in favor of forming her own. Here, Kat’s mother services as a destructive influence on her life, but this influence is pervasive and unshakeable. Kat cannot reject her mother, even when she is sure her mother has rejected her, even that her mother never loved her. Even as she tries to, Eve haunts her memories and she has recurring dream of her naked in the snow and calling out for her.

Kat dreams of her mother vulnerable and in need of her help

Because of their troubled relationship, Kat feels little pain or sadness at her mother’s disappearance. She blames all her and her father’s unhappiness on Eve and encourages him to move on and find a woman who deserves him.

Still, the film resists the temptation to make Eve into a monster. Though Kat struggles to find something redeemable about her mother, some humanity in her that she can love, she never doubts Eve’s essential humanity and that the rational behind her actions. Kat speaks of Eve’s history like a biographer, dissecting her thoughts and motives as if she was there to hear them

As viewers used to suspense plots, we expect from the beginning that something sinister has happened to Eve. With this in mind, Kat’s attempts to reconstruct her mother are shadowed by our idea of Eve as a victim.

This presents a challenge to viewers: Can Eve be both villain and victim? And which is a crueler – the physical violence visited on Eve or the psychological destruction Eve imposes on her daughter?

From Kat’s narration, the viewer is compelled to sympathize for Brock and share her hatred of Eve, a strange position for the narrative as it becomes clear to the viewer that Brock had a hand in Eve’s disappearance. The eventual reveal, that Brock murdered Eve, is not subtle, as viewers we expect this, as we are used to stories where the good-guy husband is revealed to be a killer. Kat, from her biased perceptive as his child, perhaps willfully blind to his true character, is more naive than us as an audience and than other characters.

Kat’s milquetoast father seems broken by Eve’s disappearance

In fact, every one around her, from her cop boyfriend to her two friends, tell her father has long been the chief suspect in Eve’s disappearance. At this point, it has never been in the least implied by Kat’s narration, by the story steered by her point of view. We never see hints of her father’s jealousy or his fits of rage, which Kat is told until the last act, instead we make these realizations along with her. For most of the film, Brock seems like a harmless milquetoast harangued by his dissatisfied wife. This is the view Kat uses to introduce us to her father and to contextualize her parents’ relationship, thus it catches the viewer off guard, and even scares us, when he reveals hidden stores of anger and turns them on his daughter, his long-time supporter

Though the voiceover is relayed in Woodley’s voice with infrequent teenager vernacular, Kat’s view on the events, is cold and distanced, full of beautiful prose (most straight from Laura Kasischke’s source novel) and bloodless dissection of her mother’s motives. The wounds of her mother’s disappearance and her complicated adolescence do not seem at all fresh (note that Kat begins her narration with a suggestion of time passing, “I was 17 when my mother disappeared”). Her narration is composed, even going as far to recall her mother’s prim, patrician energy. The blossoming girl Kat has become a jaded woman, still fighting to care about her mother.

Yet, she seems unaware of events until there are revealed and gives no foreshadowing of Eve’s eventual fate. Eve is posed as the villain and Brock is the victim, even though Kat should know how these roles are reversed. While she struggles to see her mother as sympathetic, she seems to make no effort to rectify the two sides of her father.

The real surprise of the film is the ending twist, which is the sort of twist that seems calculated to give viewers something to talk about as they leave the theater. Instead of revealing that Brock discovered Eve was sleeping with Phil and killed her out of jealousy, as most of the film seemed to imply (and is the ending of the book the film is based on), Eve discovers Brock was sleeping with Phil and he explodes in rage when she laughs at him.

Eve sees Kat as her rival and flirts with her boyfriend, hinting at a possibly affair

If you believe in auteur theory, this is a clear example of director Araki putting his own stamp on the material, as he is primarily known for the Queer themes of his films. Though a unique twist, this ending feels tacked on for shock value, rather than organic to material. There are no hints at this twist to look back on, and in fact it seems as if it was just made up on the spot after the rest of the film was shot with the original ending in mind. Much of Eva Green’s performance and the importance of her dynamic with Kat no longer make sense in light of this ending.

Still, as a coming of age film, White Bird in a Blizzard is a success at depicting Kat as a real teenage girl, hovering in that confusing stage of adolescence where she is neither fully grown up but is certainly not a child. It is a quiet, often very beautiful film about growing up and coming to terms with the sins of your parents, figuring out how you will use their lessons and to form your own identity. In the end, Kat has lost both her parents and has reasons to hate both of them, yet she still has to live in the world and try to figure out how she can understand who they were and what they made her.

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Elizabeth Kiy is a Canadian writer and journalist living in Toronto, Ontario.

What’s Missing from the ‘Gone Girl’ Debate? Privilege!

‘Gone Girl’ has been called misogynist, an amalgamation of negative stereotypes of women, a text that perpetuates rape culture, and a narrative that fuels Men’s Rights Acivtists’ ugly depiction of the gender equality feminists are trying to achieve.

Putting the talent of the author aside – because I do think Gillian Flynn is an incredible writer – I want to address this feminist ire directed at ‘Gone Girl.’

To an extent, I agree with it. Yet, what is missing from the discussion is a focus on privilege.

This guest post by Natalie Wilson previously appeared in a shorter version at the Ms. Blog and is cross-posted with permission.

WARNING: THIS PIECE CONTAINS SPOILERS!

Gone Girl has been called misogynist, an amalgamation of negative stereotypes of women, a text that perpetuates rape culture, and a narrative that fuels Men’s Rights Acivtists’ ugly depiction of the gender equality feminists are trying to achieve.

Putting the talent of the author aside – because I do think Gillian Flynn is an incredible writer – I want to address this feminist ire directed at Gone Girl.

To an extent, I agree with it. Yet, what is missing from the discussion is a focus on privilege.

Amy Elliot Dunne, the protagonist of Gone Girl, is white, wealthy, heterosexual, and conventionally attractive (many privileges which her creator, Gillian Flynn, shares).

Yes, Amy is a female, but she is an EXCESSIVELY privileged one, so privileged, in fact, that she has the necessary funds, skills, know-how, and spare time to concoct a near iron-clad story in which she convinces the media, the law, her community, and her family that she has been raped, abused by her husband, kidnapped, imprisoned, and possibly murdered.

Flynn, even given the worldwide success of her writing, is, I would guess, not nearly as privileged as Amy. Plus, if details at the author’s website are correct, she worked odd jobs throughout high school; Amy is not the type of female that had to work in high school, and especially not at anything where she would be made to dress up as a cone of yogurt.

In addition to her privilege, is Amy in fact a compilation of the evils MRAs spout on about in relation to “strong” women? In ways, yes. But this is just it – she is able to be strong – and, yes, to be evil – because she has the privilege to do so. As the saying goes, idle hands make the devil’s work.

Amy is narcissistic, vain, and shallow – and has enough time on her hands to fill her calendar with carefully labeled, color-coded post-its with details of her murder plot. And, once the plot is set in motion, handily has secured enough cash to buy a car, a new wardrobe, and keep her going for who knows how long. When that falls through, there is the very rich former boyfriend Dezi, who will put her up in his “lakehouse” – a spare house that makes many mansions look shabby.

Yes. This is fiction. Yes, it’s a dark, twisted, mystery. It is obviously meant to be. The author herself made it clear that she “wanted to write about the violence of women” after her first book, Sharp Objects. And this is not a problem – not at all – but what is vexing with Gone Girl is at the heart of its narrative is a woman that falsely accuses several men of rape and assault – and tries to frame one of them for murder. This story is a fiction. But rape and assault are at epidemic levels in our society – along with the horrible statistics is a pervasive narrative often called “blaming the victim.” At the heart of this narrative is the myth that females lie about rape. Not once in a blue moon. But often.

This is not what I want to focus on though – what I want to focus on is how privilege allows the fictional Amy to get away with all the atrocities she commits. If she “cried rape” (as MRAs and the media often suggest women do), would she be as readily believed if she were a woman of color? What if she were a prostitute? What if she committed murder and tried to convince the cops of her innocence via mere words? Would she be believed if she were, say, a young Black male? If she accused her partner of physical abuse and adultery would she become America’s media darling if she were not cisgender?

The story of Kalief Browder, featured in The New Yorker, who served three years at Ryker’s Island, most of it in solitary confinement without trial before he was deemed innocent; of Renisha McBride; of Ferguson; is proof that innocence does not mean much for people of color in a society that frames those with non-white skin as born guilty (to borrow Dorothy Roberts claim made in her classic Killing the Black Body).

Gone Girl is not making a critique of privilege though, nor of how Amy’s whiteness and wealth – at least in ways – puts her above the law. Instead, Amy’s ability to frame others for crimes they did not commit and become America’s media darling has been acclaimed as a wonderfully concocted mystery by a talented author. As for Amy’s ability to pull off her fictive story within a story in the novel and the film adapation, this ability is never overtly linked to her privilege – unless you count the fact the film nods toward how wealthy she is, given her cat has its own bedroom. Rather, her success at framing others is presented as a very well-planned revenge plot carried out by a very smart, very malicious woman.

Admittedly, there are things the story does well in terms of critiquing societal problems. A key area in this regard is the portrayal of the media. As with the novel, the film delves into the media circus, giving us talking heads that spin hypotheses about Amy’s whereabouts and who is to blame for her disappearance – hypotheses that quickly lead to the narrative Amy intended: that her husband Nick is guilty, and she is the innocent, abused spouse all America should be routing (and praying) for.

Amy clearly knows how to play straight into the hands of the of “The Ellen Abbot Show” – a fictionalized version of the likes of Nancy Grace. Amy notes, while concocting her plan, that “America loves pregnant women,” and, indeed, Ellen plays up Amy’s pregnancy to garner sympathy for her – and ire for her husband Nick. However, had Amy been a pregnant Latina, or working class, or a single woman, would she still be framed in this way by the real Ellen Abbots of the world? Doubtful.

In fact, if Amy’s accusations of rape against not one, but three men, were to be reported in the real world media, it is likely she would blamed, interrogated, and have her reputation besmirched, especially if she lacked many of the privileges Amy’s character has. As noted in “Gone Girl and the Specter of Feminism,”

“Our society makes real-life survivors of rape into villains every single day. We assume ulterior motives. We invade and question their sexual history as if it’s relevant. We make rape survivors into whores and sluts, into evil, evil women who are only out to hurt and punish men. And that’s if we don’t ignore them altogether, or if they can summon the courage to report the rape at all.”

And though only 2 to 8 percent of reported rapes are determined to be unfounded, it is, as #2 reports, a “norm of the media to question the authenticity of rape victims that dare to step forward and seek justice.”

In the film, Tanner Bolt , the big-shot lawyer defending Nick, is portrayed as particularly media savvy. He says of Amy, for example, that “she is telling the perfect story.” And though his race is not highlighted as a factor, his know-how of the media and the key role public perception plays can be read as shaping the story he tells the world in public appearances.

Tanner advises Nick to do the same, telling him, “This case is about what people think of you,” and emphasizes the need for a huge re-alignment of public perception. Tanner knows this, and Nick should (especially given his former work as a journalist). Read through the lens of race, however (a lens, let me emphasize, the narrative itself does NOT interrogate), one can argue Tanner has to be more savvy than Nick and that Nick is allowed to live in a privilege bubble, one that leads him to assume people are going to believe him.

What people think of Amy – and Nick – is largely determined by their privilege. They live in a huge house, she is a “housewife,” they are both former writers, they are attractive, white, heterosexual, and have the requisite pet – as well as aspirations – on Nick’s part at least – to have children. They are the picture-perfect American couple.

But, this image is a fiction. And the fact the story plays around this fictive construct of what perfection is – and what a perfect marriage is – is one of its most intriguing features. Amy’s diary, a mixture of truth and fiction, is key here. In one telling scene, Detective Boney (my favorite character by far, perhaps as she has the most feminist gumption) goes through Amy’s diary, now being used as police evidence, and asks Nick what is true and what is fiction. The mixture of lies and truth within the diary, and within the entire narrative, make it hard to discern any reliability.

As argued in “The Misogynistic Portrayal of Villainy in Gone Girl,” Amy makes a magnificent unreliable narrator. Sadly though, she is believed – by the media, by the community, even by us, the audience.

If only her believability was tied to her privilege, Flynn could have had a narrative that did something feminists could applaud – a narrative that pulled back the sham of “perfect femininity” and showed the ugly undersides of unfair societal dictates.

Instead, Flynn gives us a character that shares her own privileges – and her own penchant for spinning fictions – rather than one who lays bare the injustices that make the likes of Ellen Abbott believe her, that have lawyers running to defend Nick pro bono, that result in a media machine feeding off this one tragedy while ignoring wider injustices – injustice the camera actually lingers on at the start of the film, making the Missouri of Gone Girl remind one of the Detroit featured in Michael Moore’s Roger and Me.

While the narrative condemns what director David Fincher calls the “tragedy vampirism” of the media, it never takes the next step of pointing out how the poverty and homelessness of the community in which the story takes place plays a role in why Amy becomes a media darling and allows her husband to plausibly suggest the “homeless” are to blame for Amy’s disappearance.

The narrative also never takes any step toward addressing the reality of widespread sexual violence and domestic abuse, instead using this device as just one more piece of grist for its suspenseful, plot-twisting mystery.

In one scene, Amy creates the “proof” of her rapes via thrusting a wine bottle inside herself as she icily gazes in the mirror (a scene also in the book). This comes after we learn she has destroyed the life of a completely innocent man by also framing him for rape, merely because he lost interest in her. And, in the most fraudulent, unbelievable plot point, this man tells us he was about to be put away for 30 years on a first degree felony. Guess how often rapists are put away for 30 years? Not often.

So, yes, Amy is a villain, some suggest a sociopath, but I heartily disagree that her horribleness could only come from a “female mind” – which is exactly what the actress who plays her – Rosamund Pike – claims, that “the way her brain works is purely female.”

Instead, Amy’s villainy, and the fact she gets away with it, can be linked to her substantial wealth, her Ivy League schooling, her full immersion into the culture of “cool girls” and personality quizzes and, perhaps most of all, her sense of entitlement, revealed particularly in the way she expects to be treated, especially by Nick. In a key passage from the novel (also used in the film), Amy embodies the faux-feminism that defines her character, condemning constricting expectations of femininity on the one hand, but, on the other, hinting at the narcissistic darkside of her anger:

“I hated Nick for being surprised when I became me. I hated him for not knowing it had to end, for truly believing he had married this creature, this figment of the imagination of a million masturbatory men, semen-fingered and self-satisfied. He truly seemed astonished when I asked him to listen to me. He couldn’t believe I didn’t love wax-stripping my pussy raw and blowing him on request. That I did mind when he didn’t show up for drinks with my friends… Can you imagine, finally showing your true self to your spouse, your soul mate, and having him not like you?

In ways, we want to applaud Amy for condemning the “cool girl” and demanding females deserve to be listened to – as this seems a feminist message. But, ultimately, Amy is far more like Ann Coulter than Amy Poehler.

Though some might argue Amy is fully aware of and even using her privilege, I disagree. She is aware of being attractive, wealthy, and powerful, yes, but not any feminist way that questions or denounces or even deliberately deploys her privilege. One of the most telling parts of the narrative to display this is in her interactions with Greta, a working class character Amy assumes to be stupid and inept. Greta sees through Amy’s disguises though, and craftily separates her from her wad of cash (which is when Amy is forced to call on Desi to rescue her). The stark difference in the scope of their crimes can be linked to privilege – Amy’s excess verses Greta’s lack. Their experiences and attitudes toward violence are also telling, Greta is familiar with how common male violence against women is, where Amy is not – the violence she accuses men of is actually violence her privilege has protected her from. This is not to say priviledged women never experience violence – but Amy does not, at least not physical violence. Though this strand of the narrative has much feminist potential, the narrative overall does not offer a feminist critique of privilege, let alone violence.

Further, as argued in a post at Interrogating Media, there is a discernible backhanded attitude towards feminism littered throughout the novel. Amy condemns post-feminist men afraid of sexual roughness, for example. But, more than actual comments from Amy, there is a sort of post-feminist cheerleading in the narrative, one that is in keeping with Flynn’s discussion of why she is drawn to writing about the violence of women::

“Isn’t it time to acknowledge the ugly side? I’ve grown quite weary of the spunky heroines, brave rape victims, soul-searching fashionistas that stock so many books. I particularly mourn the lack of female villains — good, potent female villains. Not ill-tempered women who scheme about landing good men and better shoes (as if we had nothing more interesting to war over), not chilly WASP mothers (emotionally distant isn’t necessarily evil), not soapy vixens (merely bitchy doesn’t qualify either). I’m talking violent, wicked women. Scary women. Don’t tell me you don’t know some. The point is, women have spent so many years girl-powering ourselves — to the point of almost parodic encouragement — we’ve left no room to acknowledge our dark side.”

This passage seems to come from within a privilege bubble – one that allows the author to suggest that “fashionistas” or “WASP mothers” or “soapy vixens” – and of course “brave rape victims” – are rather dreary and boring, and that what is needed is to do away with this annoying “girl powering” so we can fill libraries with stories of generations of brutal women (something Flynn seems to envy about male stories). And, don’t get me wrong, like Flynn, I agree we need wicked queens and evil stepmothers and villainous women. It is her reasoning I don’t agree with, that “women like to read about murderous mothers and lost little girls because it’s our only mainstream outlet to even begin discussing violence on a personal level.” Hello? Gillian? Have you heard of this little thing called feminism? Perhaps the phrase “the personal is political” rings a bell?

You see, Flynn’s version of “girl-powering” feminism leaves out actual feminism. Like the stuff of an Ann Coulter dream, it points a finger at Amy, a “girl who has it all” and says, “look at what that women’s lib stuff has wrought!” What it does not point a finger at, not even give a quick passing glance, is those working in sweat shops to make the shoes the “fashionista” covets, the thousands of rapes that go unreported, not due to lack of bravery, but to do the complicated realities of living in a rape culture, the girls who don’t have access to the “parodic encouragement” of any sort of girl-power because they are poor, they are undocumented, or, to use Flynn’s fictive idea, they are nothing like the “Amazing Amys” of the world.

To be clear, I am not suggesting that all narratives need to pack a social justice punch. However, given that Flynn’s novel explores an extremely hot button issue, and created quite the intense feminist debate, it seems odd Flynn never directly addresses the key critique lobbied at Gone Girl, but instead made widely publicized claims the ending of Gone Girl would be changed in the film adaptation–suggesting the changes to the narrative would reframe the very things that angered readers. Though the screenplay is altered from the book, the ending remains the same overall – Amy is not arrested or even blamed – instead, she has manipulated Nick into staying with her and keeping mum about her guilt by impregnating herself with some of his semen she handily stored away. Ah, the privilege of access to sperm banks!

Such tales are not by any means unique in Hollywood – nor are they bad per se. Rather, Flynn’s keenness to defend her work while naming herself a feminist seems off somehow – at least – what seems missing – is a recognition of her own partial, and very privileged, viewpoint. Some women do in fact have to discuss and think about violence all the time in order to survive, not to write bestselling novels. And I want her to keep writing – she is a great writer – but it would be wonderful if at some point she could address – specifically – some of the realities of the rape culture of our society in an interview or public appearance. Not addressing feminism is fine, but to do so in the vein of being so burnt out on “spunky heroines” and “brave rape victims”? Well, that doesn’t sit so well with this feminist.

Perhaps the “parodic encouragement” Flynn refers to as defining feminism is her experience of feminism. Maybe this is partly what fueled the plot point in Gone Girl wherein Amy’s parents made their fortune via “Amazing Amy” books – a series whose main character is much like the real Amy, but better. In a sense, these books are parodying Amy’s life and encouraging her to be more amazing. A woman who has and does it all. A real go getter. This fact serves as an explanation as to why Amy “has never really felt like a person, but a product” (Gone Girl).

But, again, the story falls short of condemning this type of “you go girl” faux-feminism or the notion women can (and should) have it all. It also is not critical of celebrity, fame, and fortune – even though the fortune of Amy’s family comes at the expense of her happiness and sanity. Yes, at one point Amy notes that her parents exploited her childhood and she does seem bitter about this. But this exploitation, from parents she interestingly defines as feminist, is partly what leads to her ability to constantly be playing at being Amy – to live the role of cool girl, good wife, battered wife, and so on. We are not instructed to condemn Amy’s parents exploitation of her – instead we are encouraged to be angry at her parents for mismanaging their money and having to borrow from her trust fund – leaving poor Amy to survive in a Missouri mansion rather than a Manhatten brownstone.

Though much has been written about Flynn’s comments about feminism, her portrayal of women, and her writing, I have not come across her ever mentioning privilege being something she was interested in exploring, even though her characters and her own discussions of why she chooses the focus matter she does drip with privilege. Flynn comes from a privileged background herself, and perhaps this partly explains Gone Girl’s failure to own up to the role Amy’s privilege plays in her “success” in any overt way. Who knows. What I do know is this: not addressing Amy’s privilege directly – and Nick’s, and Dezi’s and Margot’s – has the effect of making the novel seem to be – as argued in the “Gone Girl and the Specter of Feminism,” a piece that serves as a “crystallization of a thousand misogynist myths and fears about female behavior” as if we had “strapped a bunch of Men’s Rights Advocates to beds and downloaded their nightmares.”

In The Guardian piece, “Gillian Flynn on her bestseller Gone Girl and accusations of misogyny”, Oliver Burkeman writes “This is a recurring theme in Flynn’s life: the psychological bungee-jump that permits an author to plunge into barbarity precisely because she’s securely moored in its opposite.” Detailing how Flynn locks herself away in her writing basement for hours, Burkeman notes that “In the early afternoons, she surfaces from the gloom into daylight, to play with her son for an hour or two.” Then, in Flynn’s own words, “It’s back down through the basement again, to write about murder.” Ah, the joys of a post-feminist life!

So, to wrap up this privileged take on Gone Girl: is it a good film? Yes and no. Fincher is great director and Flynn is a great writer – they both tell dark stories well. The movie is compelling and Pike is great as Amy, as is Kim Dickens as Detective Boney, the most feminist character of the film and the one I would most like to see a spinoff series about!

It is good as a film, but it is not a feminist film.

As Esther Bergdahl asks rhetorically in her post, “Is a film feminist if a female character vindicates every men’s rights activist on Reddit?” Of course not. But, just as obviously, this doesn’t mean feminists shouldn’t see it – and discuss it – in fact, just the opposite.

Natalie Wilson, PhD is a literature and women’s studies scholar, blogger, and author. She teaches at Cal State San Marcos and specializes in areas of gender studies, feminism, feminist theory, girl studies, militarism, body studies, boy culture and masculinity, contemporary literature, and popular culture. She is author of the blogs Professor, what if …? and Seduced by Twilight. She is a proud feminist mom of two feminist kids (one daughter, one son) and is an admitted pop-culture junkie. Her favorite food is chocolate.

Consent, Taboo Reading and Vanity: Lifetime’s ‘Flowers in The Attic’

If you were once a certain type of precocious, fanciful preteen girl chances are you encountered ‘Flowers in the Attic.’
Maybe it was the cover drew you in, the face of a young girl, pale and uncertain, peering through red shutters, and when you opened it, three other eerie blonde children huddled together under the spectral form of a sinister old man. Who were these strange beautiful children? And why was unquestionably evil figure about to crush them with his bare hands? If you saw the cover, surely you had to wonder.

Lifetime promoted their 2014 TV movie with full knowledge of the book’s significance to readers

If you were once a certain type of precocious, fanciful preteen girl chances are you encountered Flowers in The Attic.

Maybe it was the cover drew you in, the face of a young girl, pale and uncertain, peering through red shutters, and when you opened it, three other eerie blonde children huddled together under the spectral form of a sinister old man. Who were these strange beautiful children? And why was unquestionably evil figure about to crush them with his bare hands? If you saw the cover, surely you had to wonder.

And then you had to read it, in secret most definitely, huddled under your covers gasping, passing it around at a sleepover, maybe you snooped through your parents’ or other sister’s copies or pursed through it at the house where you babysat. Or that one loud friend who gave you all the facts on sex recapped the story over school lunch.

The famous keyhole cover for Flowers in the Attic — The famous keyhole cover for *Flowers in the Attic*

Even if you didn’t read it, a lot of us did. First published in 1979, V.C. Andrews’s trash-classic has since sold more than 40 million copies worldwide and spawned 4 bestselling sequels known as the Dollanganger series. It also was the beginning of a ghostwritten empire of family saga books, full of Andrews’s favorite themes: incest, child abuse, rape, imprisonment, slut-shaming and beautiful girls wandering around in flimsy peignoirs.

Flowers is the story of four children hidden away in their grandparents’ attic so their mother can inherit a fortune from her father, who will disinherit her if he ever learns she had children with her late husband, her father’s brother and her half-uncle.

Like any book that couples salacious elements with overwrought highly purple prose, it’s both chilling and laughable, part fairytale, part gothic horror story, and as its success makes clear, it’s a delicate formula. The 1987 film adaptation starring the original Buffy (Kristy Swanson) and Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher) was reviled by fans for excluding one element they felt crucial to the story: the incestuous relationship between brother Chris and sister Cathy. So when Lifetime announced plans for a TV movie remake they were quick to note their version would keep the incest intact.

Despite poor reviews, ratings-wise it was a huge success; according to the Hollywood Reporter , 6.1 million viewers tuned in to the film’s premiere Saturday night. The 1950s-set drama was also the highest rated basic cable TV movie since 2012.

Like the book, the film is full of heightened emotions. Every other line is delivered with a slap and an exclamation mark and the acting vacillates between wooden and frighteningly animated. Mad Men ’s Kiernan Shipka (maybe someday we’ll see her in a modern day role) who plays Cathy does as well as she can with a poorly paced script and clunky dialogue, often lifted directly from the book. It’s really not such strange territory for Shipka after playing Sally Draper through her difficult adolescence. Mason Dye as her onscreen brother/lover and Ava Telek and Maxwell Kovach as twins Carrie and Cory gave unremarkable performances, with the twins just hovering around the room not given anything to do.

Ellen Burstyn gave a nuanced performance as the children’s grandmother

As the children’s cruel grandmother, Ellen Burstyn gave her character some degree of ambiguity and humanity, particularly in her reaction to the children’s Christmas present. Burstyn allows the grandmother to become an interesting character when she visibly struggles with her affection for the children and at the film’s end, her own fears of the attic. I’ve gone back and forth on Heather Graham’s portrayal of the children’s mother, Corrine. Her line reading range from flat and vapid to manic and bug eyed with no sane middle ground, but if it’s an acting choice, it may be a good one as it does suit the character.

The Grandmother teaches the children a lesson about disobeying her by showing them their mother’s whipped back

For a story about people tempted to inflict and endure suffering for the promise of wealth, the film has cheap production values and poor effects (such as the whip marks on Corrine’s back that look like lipstick streaks) and never shows viewers the house’s glamour or gives the sense of opulence that gave the children their hopes even in the darkest moments. We are also informed of the passage of time, but never truly feel it, so it becomes difficult to relate to the characters’ ordeal. Though most of the creepy elements from the book are there: the beatings, the taring, the poisoned doughnuts, the film never becomes creepy as it should. For all its Gothic dressing, it’s still a Lifetime movie, cheesy and tonally awkward.

There are interesting ideas about vanity and appearance carried over from the book that become more significant in the film as a visual medium. The book’s premise, that Corrine refuses to work to support her family after her husband’s death, is given more sympathy in the film thanks to the constant reminders from the backdrop and clothing that the film is set in the 50s where this would be difficult for a woman.

Corrine explains why she needs her parents’ money

Born wealthy and raised to be a wife, she is also given a sad Daisy Buchanan quality, absent in the book, as she tells the children, she can’t support four children because she only knows how to look pretty. Her assertion in the book, that her incestous marriage was not sinful because her children are not physically deformed and are “perfect” is given more weight as the viewer can actually see the children and their grandmother’s appraisal of them. Here and in Cathy’s refusal to cut her hair when given the choice of cutting it or allowing herself and her siblings to starve, vanity is heightened to hubris as it leads Chris and Cathy into their relationship, which shows they are far from the perfect children their mother had assured herself they were.

There are some changes from the original story, the addition of electric fence as a pointless obstacle, the heavy handed symbolism of the deer being shot, but the most problematic (though it does make the film easier to watch) is the change of the main incest scene from a rape into a consensual encounter between siblings. I have to wonder if Lifetime felt they could tell story of incest and imprisonment, but that incest and imprisonment punctuated by rape (a Lifetime staple) would make the story too dreary.

Chris and Cathy engage in consensual romance

Though Chris explicitly acknowledges that it was a rape in the book, Cathy forgives him saying it was her fault because she could have fought him off if she didn’t want it, leaving it unclear to young readers what they supposed to believe about Cathy’s rape and who to blame in real life. A blogger who writes as The Fifth Dollanganger runs the blog, The Complete Annotated VC Andrews Blog-o-Rama frequently posts the search terms readers use to access her blog. Some of them include things like “flowers in the attic chris and cathy make love” and “flowers in the attic sex excerpt”, showing at least some readers misinterpreted the dynamics of the scene. By making a rape scene into a love story, Lifetime lessens the gothic horror of the story, as well as romanticizing and confusing the abusive conditions Cathy faces. Though there is one scene where Chris is rough towards Cathy and grabs her wrists, he stops quickly when he is asked to, suggesting Cathy has the power in the situation and could indeed stop him if he wanted to hurt her, a very problematic message for the film to give.

The removal of Chris’s aspiration to be a doctor from the film takes away the authority the book allows him, adding power imbalance to the conditions leading up to the rape. As a would-be doctor, he approaches the removal of the tar from Cathy’s hair as an experiment and gives the excuse of clinical interest for his fascination with Cathy’s naked body and developing breasts. Whittled down to such easy gender roles, Chris and Cathy are starkly contrasted as boy doctor doll and girl ballerina doll. In caring from their young siblings, Chris’s aspiration towards this ideal 50’s husband profession casts him as the ideal masculine father, paired easily with ballerina Cathy as a feminine mother. It also allows his to take over from his father in his authority over his sister, as he frequently knows more about Cathy’s body than she does. It is Chris who tells their mother to buy bras and pads for Cathy and instigates the sex talk between mother and daughter. Cathy’s relationship with her father is given an incestous element in the film as she refers to the ring her gave her as a promise ring, a deeply creepy custom which allows him guardianship of her virginity. As Chris becomes the male head of the family, her also takes “ownership” of Cathy.

We’ll have to see what happens with the upcoming sequel based on the second Dollanganger book, Petals on the Wind, which Lifetime green-lit even before the first film aired. The book includes three additional rapists as love interests for Cathy.

Corrine lounges on the legendary swan bed, living in luxury while her children suffer

But I have to wonder who is meant to enjoy this movie. There’s no fun at all if you have no familiarity with the material, be it nostalgia or morbid curiosity. Though its suggested for teens on Lifetime’s website, the film has a mature content warning and airs on a channel targeted to older women. And anyone who read the books when they were younger is at that stage where their former interest amuses or embarrasses them, to watch it and talk comfortably about it, I think you need a mix of both.

Flowers in the Attic is ultimately the kind of story you’d act out with your Barbies, it’s appeal belongs in your youth, before you’re too self aware, too conscious of reality, the workforce and job training, of sex and money. They belong to that time when you think adult women just lie around in silks and feathers, eating pastel candies and periodically putting on gowns and dancing with gentlemen. They have to pass into your consciousness like a young girl’s daydream, Cathy’s salacious horror, her sexual curiosity, her bright ambition for attention and beauty and love. When you encounter it you have to be the type of girl who reads too much, plays elaborate fantasy games at recess and runs through long scenarios in math class of what she’d do with millions upon millions of dollars. A girl who wanted to be a ballerina, then an actress, then an artist, then a witch and then an impossibly glamourous authoress lounging around in marabou heels and furs. A girl who puts on Shakespeare plays in the backyard and wears cat’s eye sunglasses, a feather boa and jean shorts and it never occurs to her to find it crazy.

Cathy looks out the attic window, uncertain if she will ever be free

I think the film’s real failure is in its removal from the forbidden environment of taboo consumption, presented onscreen and sanitized for grown-ups where there’s nothing to fear in engaging. As with the books, the only way to give the story its enduring significance is to watch in secret, imposing your prepubescent imaginings over the narrative. It’s the type of story that needs the constant fear that someone will burst in the door and find you, engaged in the literary equivalent of masturbation.

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