Tag: Best Actress Academy Award

‘Still Alice’: The Horrors of a Mind Interrupted

“Why do you want to see a movie that looks depressing?” I asked, trying to persuade her to watch something more entertaining. In reality, what I wanted to say was “Look, I don’t want to re-live Aunt Grace onscreen.” I eventually did say that out loud as we walked into a theater full of people that looked my mother’s age and older. I did a double take. I could not believe there was no one else there my age or younger inside the theater.

Julianne Moore as Alice, a performance that earned her a Best Actress Academy Award.
Julianne Moore as Alice, a performance that earned her a Best Actress Academy Award.

 

Written by Lisa Bolekaja.

I was the youngest person in the theater. And I’m grown.

Still Alice was not a movie on my radar. I heard that Julianne Moore put in an Oscar-worthy performance prior to her actually winning the award. It looked like one of those small art-house films that I normally adore, however the subject matter was not up my alley.

Four years ago I helped care for an older Aunt who suffered from dementia after living a remarkable life as one of the first Black nurses in the U.S. Navy. We had talked for years about me writing her life story. Her mind was sharp, she was proudly independent in her own home, and liked to take drives around town on her own and still traveled the world. She was proof that an unmarried, child-free, financially independent woman could live a full life despite what a sexist and racist society from her generation deemed socially acceptable. My Aunt Grace was in her 80s when she died. I endured her shockingly fast deterioration with my mother and sister. It was literally experiencing the invasion of a body snatcher who stole my amazing Aunt’s mind. Robbed her of all agency. So nah, watching a movie about a woman who suffers early onset Alzheimer’s was not on my list of Must-See-Movies.

My mother saw the trailer and was really curious. She is retired and often takes classes for retired persons to keep them active and to gain access to information to help them live full lives during retirement. Lately, she had been reading up on dementia and Alzheimer’s. She wanted to see the movie with me.

“Why do you want to see a movie that looks depressing?” I asked, trying to persuade her to watch something more entertaining. In reality, what I wanted to say was “Look, I don’t want to re-live Aunt Grace onscreen.” I eventually did say that out loud as we walked into a theater full of people that looked my mother’s age and older. I did a double take. I could not believe there was no one else there my age or younger inside the theater. I got the distinct impression that everyone wasn’t there just to be impressed with a tour de force performance or a brilliant plot. I listened to the whispers in the crowd before the preview trailers. Most of them I imagined (like my mother) were here to see what could happen to them. I felt like they were here to learn the warning signs. The anxiety in the room was that visceral.

Alice and her husband John Howland (Alec Baldwin). Their normal life about to be disrupted.
Alice and her husband John Howland (Alec Baldwin). Their normal life about to be disrupted.

 

Because of that energy, my experience watching Still Alice was akin to viewing a horror movie. Going in we knew a horrible event awaited Alice Howland (Julianne Moore) before she did. And we, the audience, waited with bated breath for signs of the coming terror. Every minor occurrence in her life within the first 10 minutes was cause for anxiety. Every fumble of a word, every physical action Alice made that looked like a mistake caused my stress level to rise as the movie continued. I wondered if my stressful viewing would’ve been different if I hadn’t experienced the same drama that the Howland family goes through in the film. I wasn’t alone in my stress. My viewing audience gasped when Alice reintroduces herself to her youngest son’s girlfriend after meeting her five minutes previous. When Alice momentarily forgets where she is on her regular jogging route, a woman behind me said out loud, “Oh! She doesn’t know where she is already! Oh, no!”

Alice reintroduces herself to her son's new girlfriend after meeting her minutes before.
Alice reintroduces herself to her son’s new girlfriend after meeting her minutes before.

 

Still Alice unfolds in an episodic fashion. It is not interested in subplots, or melodramatic movie moments. It is a quiet film that builds on the rapid downward spiral of a successful linguist who has spent her entire life studying language and how the mind works with words, only to find herself losing the power of those words herself. In screenwriting circles this means she is the perfect character in which to explore this sudden change of events in her life with this disease. The film quickly runs through the basic plot drill of learning about the disease, disclosing this tragic news to her family and job, and then making the necessary lifestyle changes to prepare for the inevitable. Going in, it is obvious there will be no happy ending, nor even a satisfying resolution. Like real life, shit happens, and depending on where you are on the socioeconomic scale, your life choices can be limited or better than most.

In this case, Alice Howland has sufficient income from her own work as a linguist (she has seminal books written, she goes on speaking tours, etc.), as well as the income of her doctor husband John Howland (Alec Baldwin). Unlike most people, this upper income family has the best health insurance to see a specialist right away. They have the disposable income to survive without Alice’s salary after she leaves the career she loves, and they also have access to an in-home caretaker without changing any of their spending habits. There are no worries about losing their home, or even their second home near the beach. In fact, John is up for a prestigious new job with the Mayo Clinic, and the only downside is that they will have to move, which is a real concern for Alice’s condition. With Alzheimer’s, routine is very important. Familiar surroundings help people maintain security. Alec Baldwin is really good at conveying with his eyes alone the desire to thrive in his dream career, but also the pain of coping with and caring for his ailing wife, a woman who was an equal to his own brilliant mind. He wants to be there for her, but he doesn’t want his life circling around the drain too. To most, this might seem selfish, but it is a pressing issue and cause for real overwhelming angst.

Alice teaching linguistics, trying her best to maintain her normal life.
Alice teaching linguistics, trying her best to maintain her normal life.

 

Until the end, Alice and John’s own adult children really don’t have to change their lives or routines because there is money to handle that. How different this story would be if there was no abundance of income. For average Americans, a serious illness ruins families forever. Jobs are lost, homes are foreclosed, and people become homeless or slip into poverty that they can’t escape from. Despite the horrible circumstances the Howland family finds themselves in, they have a safety net that can keep them together. Even with devastating pain, certain privileges will help certain families overcome challenges better than others.

John and Alice during a consultation with a specialist. Higher incomes have access to better medical treatment.
John and Alice during a consultation with a specialist. Higher incomes have access to better medical treatment.

 

There is a poignant moment in the film where Alice, still in control of her mental faculties, makes a video for herself to watch when the time comes that she can no longer remember her name, her children’s names or even where she lives. In a rational and loving voice she tells her future self to swallow a bottle of pills and never tell anyone. She plans to kill herself when her mind betrays her. And there is a harrowing and quite dark comedic moment when the ailing Alice stumbles across the video and attempts to follow her own directions.

Alice tries her best to hide her condition. She is terrified of the stigma. She goes so far as to tell her husband that she wishes she had cancer instead, because people knew how to deal with cancer, and she would still have her mind. Her attempts to hide her illness at work backfires when her annual job evaluation reveals that her university students have raked her over the coals for being a terrible professor. Then and only then does she confide in her boss that she has Alzheimer’s. The look on her face as her boss comforts her says it all: this is the end of her life, the one anchor outside of her immediate family that held her in the fold of “regular Alice.” And let’s be honest, she’s right about the stigma. Our society still does not know how to deal with individuals whose minds seem to be turning against them. People struggling with mental health often feel like unwelcome pariahs around family and even close friends. When Alice’s youngest daughter Lydia (Kristen Stewart) asks her point blank, “What’s it like?” we can see Alice visibly relaxing as she tries to explain this frightening change to her sense of self. She thanks her daughter for not being too afraid to talk openly about it. Lydia appears to be the only person in the family dealing with Alice in the here and now. The rest of the family walk around on eggshells thinking of the old Alice and how she used to be, and also thinking about the problems they will deal with in the future, but always in the context of how it affects their personal lives.

Lydia (Kristen Stewart) showing great compassion and support for her mother.
Lydia (Kristen Stewart) showing great compassion and support for her mother.

 

The parting shots show Alice nearly a year later, sitting on her couch, oblivious to her family making plans for her future. John is moving for the new job. Once settled, he may or may not send for her. We hope so. There is reconciliation with Lydia who wants to be an actress in Hollywood which is the only real hiccup in Alice’s life before the progression of her disease. Alice has three happy, healthy, unbothered adult children. The fact that Lydia wants to be an actress and is pursuing her dream is such a petty thing for Alice to be concerned about. But appearances seem to be what she and her ice queen older daughter Anna (Kate Bosworth–with the best resting bitch face ever), live for. I guess everyone in this family is supposed to be a big impressive SOMEBODY in Alice’s eyes (Anna’s too). Lydia leaves L.A. to live at home for the sake of the rest of the family, (who continue to thrive unencumbered.) It is the free-spirit daughter who copes the best, and is the better person out of all the Howland clan to help Alice transition into this new life.

Sadly, writer/director Richard Glatzer died from Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) on March 10, 2015,  a month after  Julianne Moore won her Oscar under his direction. I will miss his creative voice after being first introduced to his work with his spouse and collaborative film partner Wash Westmoreland through the film Quinceañera. He and Westmoreland have a body of work to be proud of.

Still Alice was not an easy film to watch and process. The audience (and my mother) didn’t seem pleased with the ending. I heard people murmuring “That was it?” as we left. “I thought there would be more,” my mother said. There was nowhere for it to go really. And that was the point. Enjoy and love your family while they are still capable of knowing you. Then love and enjoy them when they forget. They are still themselves, trapped inside their minds, doing their best to not be frightened of the changes. It taught me to be thankful that my own mother, also named Alice, is still here with me, pushing her own mind to keep learning and growing.

Writer/Director Richard Glatzer (pictured in wheelchair) died recently under the loving care of his partner.
Writer/Director Richard Glatzer (pictured in wheelchair) died recently under the loving care of his partner.

 

Professional raconteur and pop culture agitator, Lisa Bolekaja can be found on Twitter @LisaBolekaja or co-hosting on Hilliard Guess’ Screenwriters Rant Room (Stitcher and Itunes). Her latest short story can be found in the SF anthology How to Survive on Other Planets: A Guide For Aspiring Aliens from Upper Rubber Boot Publications.

 

The Horror of Female Sexual Awakening: ‘Black Swan’

What disappointed me most, I think, was that Black Swan could easily have been a progressive film with a positive, young woman-centered journey out of repression at its center. It could have recouped that gender-centric childhood ballerina dream of so many little girls into a message about determination, hard work, personal strength, and emotional growth. Instead, Darren Aronofsy has produced an Oscar-winning horror film. That’s right: I said HORROR. While that might seem like a stretch, it seems clear to me that the horror I refer to is the possibility of changing an age-old story. The horror of Black Swan is the absolutely terrifying idea that a young woman might make it through the difficult process of maturation, develop a healthy, multi-faceted sexuality, and be successful at her chosen career at the same time.

Natalie Portman in Black Swan
Natalie Portman in Black Swan

 

This guest post by Rebecca Willoughby appears as part of our theme week on Child and Teenage Girl Protagonists.

I don’t know what I was expecting when I settled in to watch Black Swan, long after its theatrical release and subsequent meteoric rise to Oscar stardom.  I knew there would be ballet (that quintessential representation of femininity and near-unattainable physical characteristics), and there had been much talk about a lesbian scene.  Plus, it wasn’t as if I didn’t know that Swan Lake ends in a suicide; there’s quite a lot of that in ballet, opera, or virtually any other artistic, dramatic work produced over a wide range of historical periods.  In the words of Tomas, the pretentious (male) genius ballet company director in the film (Vincent Cassel): “in death she finds freedom.”  Yep, I can see where this is going.

So I saw the tragic ending of Swan Lake coming, but the tragic ending of the film was kind of a surprise.  Or, maybe not so much a surprise as a disappointment. What disappointed me most, I think, was that Black Swan could easily have been a progressive film with a positive, young woman-centered journey out of repression at its center.  It could have recouped that gender-centric childhood ballerina dream of so many little girls into a message about determination, hard work, personal strength, and emotional growth.  Instead, Darren Aronofsky has produced an Oscar-winning horror film.  That’s right: I said HORROR. While that might seem like a stretch, it seems clear to me that the horror I refer to is the possibility of changing an age-old story.  The horror of Black Swan is the absolutely terrifying idea that a young woman might make it through the difficult process of maturation, develop a healthy, multi-faceted sexuality, and be successful at her chosen career at the same time.

Natalie Portman is no stranger to this maturation process, and she’s done most of it in the spotlight.  She has been acting since age 13, and in her first starring role she portrayed an orphan captured by a hit man in Leon: The Professional (1994).  It might also be worth noting that this first role, even, was a strange one in terms of sexuality: Mathilda is quite a precocious young girl, and in a fit of Stockholm syndrome does, weirdly, “fall in love” with her much older (though admittedly endearing) kidnapper, played by French actor Jean Reno.  Older man, French accent, I can understand.  We might say that she “rocketed” to stardom, however, due to her casting in the Star Wars prequels as Queen Amidala, a role encompassing conventions of action, romance, and motherhood.  While those films were slowly driving sci-fi fans mad, Portman was working on a Bachelor’s degree in psychology at Harvard, and it’s impossible to ignore the historic links between psychology, madness, and horror when watching Black Swan. We also need to remember, however, that Portman’s character Nina’s journey is viewed through the cinematic lens of a male director, and that seems to only lead… well, nowhere new.

Portman does not portray a young girl in this film, as much as she portrays a woman who has left her sexuality at the door in pursuit of being “perfect” at ballet.  When the film opens, she is “getting older,” which, in the world of ballet, means you’re about 25 with no body fat, which makes you look like a young girl.  But you certainly don’t feel like a young girl: you are a woman.  Nina seems to have missed that memo.  She is arguably already imbalanced when the film begins (not to mention frighteningly infantilized by her mother), but when she is cast as the Swan Queen in her company’s production of Swan Lake–a role that must embody both the “beautiful, fearful, and fragile” nature of the White Swan alongside the “dark impulse” of the Black Swan–her delicately constructed vision of herself begins to disintegrate.  She sees herself—clad in a pink coat and white scarf— stroll past herself—wearing a black coat and heels— in an alley.  Her reflection in the dance studio mirror stops mirroring and takes on a life of its own.  These are just some of many moments throughout the film where Nina is faced with her shadowy double.  Sometimes that double takes on horror-film qualities, as when she imagines herself as Beth, the ballerina whose place she has taken in the company, stabbing herself in the face with a nail file while screaming, “I’m nothing!” At these moments, things get a little harried in the genre department.

caption
Power play

 

Even given Nina’s sometimes horrifying hallucinations, it might be a hard sell to classify Black Swan as a horror film.  When we discuss films as horror, we’re usually talking about narratives chock-full of gore, jump-scares, suspenseful music, shadows, violence, and “stupid girls running up the stairs when they should be running out the front door.”* We get some of those conventions in Black Swan, but only because, in her stressed mental state, Nina imagines them.  Horror films also typically give us a heaping helping of misogynistic, male-gaze visuals, though that might be changing, albeit slowly.  I suppose we could say that there are a lot of female bodies to be looked at in a variety of ranges of sexual objectification in this film.  Dancers are, after all, performing.  The intent is that someone watches.

But these aren’t the real reasons I think it’s a horror film.  It’s a horror film not because Nina slowly descends into madness from the pressure of portraying the starring role in Swan Lake.  It’s not even because Aronofsy makes use of this madness in amazing visuals that leap over the bounds of realism into the realm of the surreal with scenes where Nina appears to literally be transforming into a swan.  It’s because at the very moment when it seems that Nina might recover from this nightmare and become a whole, happy person, the film kills her off in a twist of tragedy that is narratively as old as the hills. Isn’t there any other female story to be told? 

All the cracks in Nina’s psyche, which are brought to visual life by the film’s surreal images as well as real-world physical disintegrations—she constantly scratches at herself, picks at hang-nails, bandages her abused feet— viewers can see sympathetically as Nina struggles to find balance between the two sides of her leading role.  Some of these struggles manifest themselves in her relationship with fellow dancer Lily, with whom she forms a tenuous bond.  When she leaves her house to go “out” with Lily (Mila Kunis), her foray into social nightlife is encouraging— yes, I know she does drugs in this scene, and that we generally want to frown on potentially destructive behavior. But I was happy that in this scene Nina is, in some small way, controlling her own destiny for once, even if it means recognizing that she can use a bit of chemical assistance to escape the many forms of repression and oppression of which she finds herself a victim.  Though the drugs could be said to promote a few more slips between Nina’s reality and her fantasy world—where she has a satisfying sexual encounter with Lily, but where she also begins to sprout black swan feathers from her back—I would argue that those fantasies allow Nina to explore her budding sexuality.

It doesn’t help that Nina’s mother (Barbara Hershey) is the ultimate helicopter parent and, it seems, Nina’s only friend until she begins her relationship with Lily.  I cheered Nina as she literally bars her mother from her life (read: bedroom) so she can have enough privacy to even fantasize effectively.  The mother/daughter relationship in this film reminded me of Brian DePalma’s Carrie (1976)—another horror film about a young girl becoming a woman.  Nina’s mother not only lives vicariously through her daughter’s success in the ballet, but also tries to control her and prevent her from being a success, a competition stemming from the fact that Nina’s mother was never cast in a starring role.  These realities, as well as the creepy portraits her mom paints of her, and that bedroom decorated for a ten-year-old show that the maternal relationship does nothing but stifle Nina, and compound her problem with coming to terms with any type of sexual desire.

For Portman, this role is a mix of childlike body type and pubescent girl growing pains.  The casting choice brings to mind the warped sense of ageism experienced by dancers, as well as the stunted emotional development often suffered by young performers transitioning into adulthood.  Portman would ostensibly know the latter well. It’s a character that is both stuck in girlhood and desperately coveting the transformation that signifies becoming a woman.  That transformation is made flesh in the visual shifts that equate Nina with the swans she tries to portray through dance.

Nina's dark double
Nina’s dark double

 

On the opening night of the ballet, Nina apparently kills Lily, her understudy, in a jealous rage after almost being replaced.  As Nina chokes Lily (and then stabs her with a bit of shattered mirror), she exclaims, “It’s MY turn!” and partially transforms into a swan.  Surreal and horrifying: check.  A few moments later, she thrillingly dances the Black Swan, and comes completely out of the repressive shell she’s been trapped in for the whole movie.  As she moves, she “loses herself” in the dance, her arms transforming into wings, freed from her oppressive prison.  These scenes are the climax of the film, employing dizzying 360 shots, dazzling lighting effects, close-ups on Nina’s face, and stunning CG.  When she leaves the stage exhilarated, a good few moments are devoted to Nina’s ecstatic face and heavy breathing—it is an emotional orgasm.  So imagine my horror when she realizes that rather than stabbing Lily in the dressing room before the performance, she has actually stabbed herself, significantly with that piece of mirror.  She becomes not a whole, realized being, but her own fragmented, shattered worst enemy.  When she returns to the stage to dance the finale of Swan Lake, she is dancing to her own death.  While Swan Lake’s narrative is already known to include a suicide, slowly we learn that Black Swan also requires one.  For each to be “perfect,” Nina can live just long enough to complete one perfect performance.

Just for the record, there is a part of me that digs the catharsis and frustration in this ending.  I get it.  Really.  But I am classifying this film as horror for a few reasons: the disturbing imagery, the dark implications of Nina’s downward spiral, her obsession, her crazy mom, and the fact that the poor girl isn’t allowed to have a sexual awakening without dying.  Or, more accurately, it’s because she actually HAS that moment of fulfillment and is able to embrace her sexual nature for even an instant, the film punishes her.  Aronofsky’s narrative seems, therefore, to argue that women—especially those temperamental dancer-types—are perennially unbalanced, unable to maintain a healthy equilibrium between the Black and White Swans; the virgin and the whore.  Once Nina has felt the power of the Black Swan, her signifier for sexual assurance and agency, she can’t escape it; can’t return to the innocence and fragility that society prefers, so she has to be eliminated.  She is too dangerous, because she wants to tell another story: the story of a whole woman.  You could argue that it’s the classical tragic form I’m railing against, and you’d be right.  But this form has repressed and oppressed female characters for hundreds of years.  The very use of Swan Lake (circa 1875, people!) as a narrative to tell the story of a contemporary woman points to the fact that we’re revisiting a problem we can’t escape, rehashing the same gendered issues.  I hoped maybe this film could move beyond that.  Or, we could give it an Academy Award.

*A phenomenon pointed out by another female horror heroine, Sidney Prescott of Wes Craven’s Scream (1996).

 

Rebecca Willoughby holds a Ph.D. in English and Film Studies from Lehigh University.  She writes most frequently on horror films and melodrama, and is currently a lecturer in Film/Media Studies at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.   

 

 

Disabilities Week: One Woman Holds The Breakthrough Key In ‘The Miracle Worker’

The Miracle Worker film poster.

The Miracle Worker summarizes the turbulent beginnings of one of the most remarkably profound relationships in history–Anne Sullivan and her pupil/mentee Helen Keller. Various films have been made about this duo, but nothing quite compares to the original 1962 adaptation of William Gibson’s stage play. Both Broadway actresses, Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke, reprise their respective lead roles as Anne Sullivan and Helen Keller.

The first scene ends on Kate Keller screaming in outlandish revulsion at the shocking discovery of having a blind daughter, as though the crib contained a grisly, terrifying monster straight out of her nightmares. Helen’s discrepancies are depicted in extreme exaggeration on the film poster–an open mouth on blurred face looking possessed by devil’s agony while a calm, serene woman holds her steady, showcasing psychological depth rather than horror thriller.
Helen’s parents spoil instead of nurture–Captain Arthur Keller (Victor Rory) and Kate Keller (Inga Swenson).
Years pass by and despite being rich, slave-owning Southerners, the Kellers have searched far and wide for solutions in curing their deaf, blind and mute child. The family has somewhat accepted Helen, coddling her ignorance. They hover and pet her like a wild animal, but do not educate further while Helen desires to learn and comprehend the world around her.
“Put her in an insane asylum!” protests Jimmy, Helen’s half brother, after Helen accidentally knocks down the baby’s crib–with baby still inside.
It is easy to place an incomprehensible diagnosis inside a box and throw away logic. Back in the turn of 19th century, people of Helen’s delicate condition would have been sentenced inside “madhouses” because no one knew how to communicate with them or even try. Jimmy is oblivious in seeing that Helen’s manic outbursts are not signs of mental disorder. Helen’s incoherent mumbles, cries, and physical punches stem from frustrations of an isolated mind desiring to learn how to address humankind–not doctors, needles, and shock therapy. It doesn’t help that Kate wants to keep Helen just to baby her and Captain Keller simply obliges Kate’s wishes to have their daughter close. They love her, but none of them realize what Helen sincerely needs.
Helen has a mind dying to be nurtured, but the Kellers don’t know to broaden her horizons.
Helen (Patty Duke) explores Anne’s (Anne Bancroft) suitcase.
In comes Anne Sullivan the answer to their troubles. She is a freshly graduated valedictorian tormented by events of a troubling past. She often remembers desiring to learn amongst strict caretakers who believed her incapable due to blindness. That lifelong quest for knowledge is a trait companionable to Helen’s silent plight. When Anne greets her young protégé on the porch, Helen immediately touches both Anne’s suitcase and her face, feeling Anne’s entire structures with curiously wandering hands, knowing instantly that she is a new person.  Helen picks up the suitcase, slaps Anne who tries taking it away, and takes her suitcase inside house and up the stairs–signs of both kindness and gracious hospitality. Helen’s joy slips away suddenly at Anne’s stern ways of teachings, in a stricter fashion than Helen is unused to. The angry, spoiled child locks Anne into her room and hides the key, revealing a sneaky intelligence and fiery spirit.
Captain Keller, however, is displeased with Anne’s age and appearance, especially her rounded black spectacles.
“Why does she wear those glasses?” Captain Keller asks.
“She had nine operations on her eyes,” Kate says. “One just before she left.”
“Blind! Good heavens! They expect one blind child to teach another?” He asks, very disapproved. “Even a house full of grown adults can’t cope with a child. How can an inexperienced half blind Yankee school girl manage?”
Anne (Anne Bancroft) and Helen (Patty Duke).
Anne manages, and she manages well.
In the breakfast scene of severe sound and action, in moments of brutally charged, disturbing pandemonium, Anne single-handedly demonstrates powerful mastery over Helen’s wildly aggressive tendencies by battling fire with fire instead of pampering her. Anne is trying desperately to get Helen to eat with a spoon instead of the barbaric, uncivilized audacity to eat off her family’s plates with bare hands. Helen bites, slaps, spits, and bangs on locked doors, fighting stubbornly against new lessons, but Anne is forceful and undeterred, pushing Helen into unlearning childish behavior. Glasses shatter and food is spilled everywhere, but Anne has made an alarming advancement.
“The room is a wreck but her napkin is folded,” she reveals to Kate.
Kate beams with pure joy at this statement, but Captain Keller doesn’t see why.
“What in heaven’s name is so extraordinary about folding a napkin?” He asks.
“It’s more than you’ve ever done,” Kate replies.
The real life Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan.
Men appear to be damaging catalysts–undermining Anne’s progress in every which way since she arrived. From first appearances alone, Captain Keller believes Anne to be young and inept, but after giving her a chance to prove diligence he wants to fire her because she’s not docile and kind like fair sex allots. In fact, she tells him what to do on many occasions and it infuriates him. On the other hand, Jimmy wants Anne to give up and see that Helen is a creature that needs pity, but with being typical male, in the same breath he also says, “You could be handsome if it weren’t for your eye.”  These two characters appear to be more angered by the fact that she’s a woman and that threatens their authority. Captain Keller just wants another instructor while Jimmy still insists that Helen be institutionalized.
However, Anne sees the true thorn in the Keller household and it’s not just the men making circumstances problematic.
Slowly Helen (Patty Duke) is learning from Anne’s (Anne Bancroft) unorthodox methods.
“Mrs. Keller, I don’t think Helen’s greatest handicap is deafness or blindness,” Anne reveals to Kate, her devout champion. “I think it’s your love and pity. All these years you’ve felt so sorry for her you’ve kept her like a pet. Well, even a dog you housebreak.”
Surprisingly, she doesn’t include the hired help. Although slavery has been abolished (15 years before Helen was born), they too are considered lower housebroken beings, hardworking “dogs” that labor for the wealthy family. They don’t get the same favorable treatment as Helen due to their skin color and a cruelly unjust class system. When Anne forces a black child to get up out of bed and factors him into her lessons with Helen, he winces in fright. This demonstrates that the child is expendable and however much Helen hurts him, no one would care.
Anne gets permission to teach Helen for two weeks outside of Keller custody. Helen is upset to be alone with her, but in a couple of days, Anne’s instructions and experiences start sinking in as well as emotional components of joy, excitement, and humor. Manic episodes diminish slowly and engaging happiness brightens Helen’s once timid disposition.
Helen’s (Patty Duke) remarkable breakthrough of water thanks to Anne (Anne Bancroft).
Unfortunately, Kate doesn’t agree with Anne’s need for more time alone with Helen, claiming to miss her daughter and saying that obedience is enough. It’s off-putting. Anne wants to teach Helen, but iron gates have once again been placed around Helen as though she were a living doll to adore and not a person worthy of truly learning about words and meanings behind them.
Back at home, Helen is determined to revert back to her old ways, but Anne wants her not to forget all that she has taught and thanks to Jimmy’s surprising aid she does just that. It is just as she is refilling the pitcher, water covering her hands, that Helen makes a most impressive breakthrough.
“She knows!” Anne shouts joyously.
And in a bittersweet exchange, towards the end in an utterly touching display of symbolic affection, Helen finally gives Anne back the key to her locked room.
The Miracle Worker is a wonderful portrayal of two strong women, and Bancroft and Duke won Academy Awards for their leading and supportive roles. Anne and Helen impacted the world by not letting blindness or deafness confine them into a shelled prison sentence. They relied solely on one another. Partly due to Anne’s vigorous aide, Helen–a writer, activist and lecturer–went on to become the first deaf blind person to earn a bachelor’s degree. Together Anne and Helen used these unique circumstances as stepping stones toward helping others find their worthiness, showing that though the world appears black and soundless, this is not a hindrance or burden.
Helen (Patty Duke) touches her parents (Victor Fury and Inga Swenson) in a beguiling discovery. 
Their friendship may have faced tempestuous struggle and staggering barriers, but Anne Sullivan and Helen Keller concluded 40 years of camaraderie with compelling milestones that continue to be worth honoring today.

Race and the Academy: Black Characters, Stories, and the Danger of Django

“It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.” – W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk
 
Written by Leigh Kolb
When I first wrote about Django Unchained, I focused on the power of Django’s story, and how Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) and Quentin Tarantino give Django the “white access” he needs to get into Candyland and into movie theaters.
I was excited and hopeful about what the film could symbolize on a grand scale, that a revenge-fantasy that shows the horrors of slavery and has a Black protagonist who overtakes his oppressors was a box office hit and was set to receive numerous award nominations.
My excitement was short-lived. Jamie Foxx (Django) and Samuel L. Jackson (Stephen) were shut out of acting categories for both the Golden Globes and Academy Awards.
While their co-stars are completely deserving of recognition for incredible acting (Waltz and Leonardo DiCaprio were nominated for Golden Globes and Waltz for an Academy Award–Waltz won both), Foxx’s lack of nominations is symptomatic of a larger Hollywood problem–not only whose stories audiences see, but also whose stories get awards.

When Tarantino understandably felt uncomfortable with the thought of filming scenes of a slave auction and brutality against slaves, he struggled with not wanting to film those scenes in the American south. He sought advice from Sidney Poitier (the first African American to win a Best Actor Oscar). His response:

“‘Sidney basically told me to man up,’ Tarantino says. ‘He said, ‘Quentin, for whatever reason, you’ve been inspired to make this film. You can’t be afraid of your own movie. You must treat them like actors, not property. If you do that, you’ll be fine.'”

Overall, Tarantino was fine. His Black actors, however, were not recognized for their performances (this was reminiscent of his 1997 film Jackie Brown, which received Golden Globe nods for Samuel L. Jackson and the title character, Pam Grier, but only received an acting Academy Award nomination for white co-star Robert Forster).

In an Oscar year that feature films that deal with race (The New York Times recently published an excellent article examining race and the roles of Black men in this year’s Oscar contenders), the acting awards nominations are startlingly white (Denzel Washington and Quvenzhané Wallis being the exceptions).

I want to focus mostly on the Black actors and actresses who have won Academy Awards, the plots of the films they were in (synopses from imdb.com) and their character descriptions. I know that this topic is complex and demands analysis far beyond this, but a brief reflection shows a pattern.

[Warning: spoilers ahead!]

Lilies of the Field (1963, Sidney Poitier, Best Actor): An unemployed construction worker (Homer Smith) heading out west stops at a remote farm in the desert to get water when his car overheats. The farm is being worked by a group of East European Catholic nuns, headed by the strict mother superior (Mother Maria), who believes that Homer has been sent by God to build a much needed church in the desert.
– Homer Smith: handyman who provides unpaid labor to a group of nuns
Training Day (2001, Denzel Washington, Best Actor): On his first day on the job as a narcotics officer, a rookie cop works with a rogue detective who isn’t what he appears.
– Alonzo Harris: crooked narcotics officer, killed at the end
Monster’s Ball (2001, Halle Berry, Best Actress): After a family tragedy, a racist prison guard reexamines his attitudes while falling in love with the African-American wife of the last prisoner he executed.
– Leticia Musgrove: struggling single mother, incarcerated husband, object of lust for racist cop
Ray (2004, Jamie Foxx, Best Actor): The life and career of the legendary popular music pianist, Ray Charles.
– Ray Charles: blind man overcomes odds, becomes music legend
The Last King of Scotland (2006, Forest Whitaker, Best Actor): Based on the events of the brutal Ugandan dictator Idi Amin’s regime as seen by his personal physician during the 1970s.
– Idi Amin: Ugandan president, evil, hundreds of thousands died under his regime

Flight (2012, Denzel Washington, Best Actor – pending): An airline pilot saves a flight from crashing, but an investigation into the malfunctions reveals something troubling.
– William “Whip” Whitaker: alcoholic, drug-addict pilot, ends up incarcerated
Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012, Quvenzhané Wallis, Best Actress – pending): Faced with both her hot-tempered father’s fading health and melting ice-caps that flood her ramshackle bayou community and unleash ancient aurochs, six-year-old Hushpuppy must learn the ways of courage and love.
– Hushpuppy: precocious five-year-old girl living in poverty with a dying, abusive father
An Officer and a Gentleman (1982, Louis Gossett, Jr., Best Supporting Actor): A young man must complete his work at a Navy Flight school to become an aviator, with the help of a tough gunnery sergeant and his new girlfriend.
– Gunnery Sergeant Emil Foley: rigid drill instructor, trains protagonist
Gone With the Wind (1939, Hattie McDaniel, Best Supporting Actress): American classic in which a manipulative woman and a roguish man carry on a turbulent love affair in the American south during the Civil War and Reconstruction.
– Mammy: “outspoken handmaid”
Glory (1989, Denzel Washington, Best Supporting Actor): Robert Gould Shaw leads the US Civil War’s first all-Black volunteer company, fighting prejudices of both his own Union army and the Confederates.
– Pvt. Trip: escaped slave, dies fighting
Ghost (1990, Whoopi Goldberg, Best Supporting Actress): After being killed during a botched mugging, a man’s love for his partner enables him to remain on earth as a ghost.
– Oda Mae Brown: con artist/psychic, “confidence trickster”
Jerry Maguire (1996, Cuba Gooding, Jr., Best Supporting Actor): When a sports agent has a moral epiphany and is fired for expressing it, he decides to put his new philosophy to the test as an independent with the only athlete who stays with him.
– Rod Tidwell: football player
Million Dollar Baby (2004, Morgan Freeman, Best Supporting Actor): A determined woman works with a hardened boxing trainer to become a professional.
– Eddie “Scrap-Iron” Dupris: narrator, retired boxer, employee at gym
Dreamgirls (2006, Jennifer Hudson, Best Supporting Actress): Based on the Broadway musical, a trio of Black female soul singers cross over to the pop charts in the early 1960s.
– Effie White: lead singer of the Dreamettes until she gets forced out of the group, becomes an “impoverished welfare mother”
Precious (2009, Mo’Nique, Best Supporting Actress): In New York City’s Harlem circa 1987, an overweight, abused, illiterate teen who is pregnant with her second child is invited to enroll in an alternative school in hopes that her life can head in a new direction.
– Mary Lee Johnston: unemployed, abusive (sexually, physically and emotionally), scams government for more welfare
The Help (2011, Octavia Spencer, Best Supporting Actress): An aspiring author during the civil rights movement of the 1960s decides to write a book detailing the African-American maids’ point of view on the white families for which they work, and the hardships they go through on a daily basis.
– Minny Jackson: outspoken, difficult maid; good cook
Of the four Black men who have won Best Actor Oscars, two are in powerful positions of authority and are evil (they serve as foils to their noble white co-stars), one provides free labor (let that sink in), and the other is a musician. The Black Best Supporting Actor winners quite literally support white protagonists.
The Black female actresses’ winning roles are even more troubling. None of them really has independent agency, except for maybe Hushpuppy–who is a child (she’s also not expected to win). Otherwise the list is full of maids, single mothers on welfare, and one trickster con artist. It felt horrible to even type that.
These characters are comfortable and safe to white audiences. If the character seems unsafe to white audiences, he or she is punished. Last year, the LA Times released a study that Oscar voters were 94 percent white and 77 percent male. Certainly this affects the Academy’s choices.
Now let’s look at the plot synopsis for Django Unchained.
Django Unchained: With the help of a German bounty hunter, a freed slave sets out to rescue his wife from a brutal Mississippi plantation owner.
– Django Freeman: trained, violent bounty hunter, whips and kills white people, burns down a plantation
One of these things is not like the others.
Django Unchained ends with a triumphant Black couple who have gained their revenge, freedom, and love. Think about how vastly different that ending is than those that are provided to Black characters in  the films above. Many white couples and individuals end those films successfully, with complex story arcs that show their agency and growth.
When W.E.B. Du Bois discusses the “double consciousness” of seeing oneself “through the eyes of others,” he could very well be talking about modern-day Hollywood. He saw the world looking at African Americans with “amused contempt and pity,” and it’s hard to look at that list of Academy Award winners and not come to that same conclusion.
Meanwhile, Lincoln has been nominated in three out of the four major acting categories (all white actors). This is a film about abolishing slavery from a totally white and white-washed perspective (the omission of Frederick Douglass is unbelievable).
Whose stories get told? Whose stories get accolades?
It’s pretty clear. The Academy (94 percent white and 77 percent male) values stories that reflect their  privileged consciousness and reinforce the Black double-consciousness that Du Bois was attempting to push through over 100 years ago.
Those chains, it seems, remain unbroken.
—–
Leigh Kolb is a composition, literature, and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri.

Fun with Stats: Winners of Oscars for Acting by Age

Written by Robin Hitchcock
Michael Caine, Angelina Jolie, Hilary Swank, and Kevin Spacey at the Academy Awards in 2000
I’ve seen a lot of Oscar talk asserting that the acting categories for women skew younger than the acting categories for men, which certainly seems true (and would logically follow from the relative scarcity of good roles for older women in Hollywood). But you know me, I’m not satisfied until I’ve seen the cold hard stats.
So I ran the numbers. I only used the winners instead of the entire field of nominees this time around, mostly because calculating the ages various people were on various dates in history is a real chore and someone already did all that pesky arithmetic when it comes to the winners.  
Scatter plot of ages of Oscar winners in acting categories

I apologize for the hokey pink and blue color scheme, but it’s the easiest way to illustrate that the cluster of women winners in the acting categories falls a bit below that of the men.  This plot also makes it clear that there have been no major trends over the years; the winners aren’t generally getting any older or younger in any category. 

The average age of the Best Actress winners is 36.2 with a standard deviation of 11.67; and the average age of Best Actor winners is 43.9 with a standard deviation of 8.86. Best Supporting Actress’ ages average at 39.9 with a standard deviation of 13.86; Best Supporting Actors’ ages average at 49.6 with a standard deviation of 14.44.  Here’s how these distributions overlap:
Histogram depicting ages of winners in acting categories
In the supporting categories, we see a wider distribution of the ages of the winners, not only because children and the elderly are more often in supporting roles, but because child actors are often placed in the supporting category even when they play lead roles (e.g. Timothy Hutton, Tatum O’Neal, Patty Duke). [This year, of course, breaks from that pattern, with both the oldest-ever and youngest-ever nominees in the Best Actress category (Emmanuelle Riva, age 85, and Quevnzhané Wallis, age 9).]

I ran an ANOVA (analysis of variance) test and Tukey’s multiple comparison post-test and found that nearly all the groups’ distributions vary to the point of statistical significance. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there is no statistical significance between the distribution of ages in the lead and supporting acting categories for women (but the difference between ages of lead actors and supporting actors is significant). Interestingly, there’s also no statistical significance between Best Supporting Actress winners’ ages and Best Actor winner’s ages.

So I also lumped the best lead and best supporting categories together by sex and ran a t-test to get more a more simple answer. This test yielded a p<.0001, indicating extreme statistical significance. 
   
Now that we know this data is statistically significant, let’s try to visualize it more clearly:

First I broke the groups down demographically:

Age demographics of Oscar Winners in Acting Categories
As you can see here, more than half of Best Actress winners (62.35%) are age 35 or younger, whereas only 14.12% of Best Actor winners are that young. Male actors younger than 35 are also rarely awarded in the supporting category (14.48%), but women under 35 still make up nearly half the winners of Best Supporting Actress (47.37%).  

I also broke down the winners’ ages by decade:

Age by decade of Oscar winners in acting categories
This chart further illustrates what we already know: the supporting categories are open to a wider range of actors of either sex, but the female categories are dominated by younger performers, whereas the male categories skew older. Like with my analysis of Best Picture nominations versus lead acting nominations, I don’t think this is as much of a problem with the Academy as it is with Hollywood itself. If there were more strong roles for older women (and perhaps more strong roles for younger men?) the age distribution of Academy Award winners for acting would be more aligned between the sexes.

Perhaps the most striking figure I found is that there has been only one winner of Best Actor under the age of 30 (Adrien Brody, who won at age 29 for The Pianist in 2003) but twenty-nine Best Actress winners in their 20s. 
Adrien Brody, the only person to win Best Actor under the age of 30
As a final note, I’ve been asked, as an Oscar-obsessed feminist, if there is any reason why the acting categories should be split by sex. I’ve never had a good answer, mostly because it opens up a whole kettle of cats about the rejecting the gender binary and biological essentialism while celebrating gender differences that I generally don’t have the time or interest to drag into my awards talk. But reviewing all this data and seeing the reflection of various types of sex discrimination within it, I think the Academy isn’t ready for a gender-neutral “Best Performance” award. 

Fun with Stats: Best Actor/Actress Nominations vs. Best Picture Nominations

Written by Robin Hitchcock
Last year’s Best Actress and Best Actor Oscar winners, Meryl Streep and Jean Dujardin. The Iron Lady was not nominated for Best Picture. The Artist was nominated for and won Best Picture.
It’s February, which means it is the Dog Days of Oscar Season. So for this week’s post I’ve done what any obsessive fan would do: create a massive database to conduct some simplistic statistical analysis to which I will subsequently ascribe excessive importance and profundity!
Specifically, I decided to look at the Academy Awards’ 843 nominated performances for Best Actress and Best Actor over their 85-year history, and see how many of those were from films that also received a nomination for Best Picture. My hypothesis was that the movies that earn their leading ladies Best Actress nominations are less likely to be nominated for Best Picture than those films that garner Best Actor nods. I’ll speculate on some of the reasons why that might be in a bit, but first I will share the results I found:

Pie chart illustrating relationship between Best Actress nominations and Best Picture nominations
Out of the 423 performances that have been nominated for Best Actress, 153 were in films also nominated for Best Picture. This means that approximately 33.16% of Best Actress nominees were from Best Picture-nominated films.  In contrast, 229 of the 420, or 54.5% of the performances nominated for Best Actor were in Best Picture-nominated films.[1]
Pie Chart illustrating relationship between Best Actor nominations and Best Picture nominations
[1]Some minor notes on how I calculated these figures. These are incredibly minor quirks that only the hugest of geeks would care about, so push up your glasses. I counted all of the performances for which the nominees in the first year of the Academy Awards separately, even though winners Janet Gaynor and Emil Jennings were awarded for their cumulative work.  I did not include Bette Davis in Of Human Bondage in 1934, because she was not nominated even though she did come in third place through write-in votes. I separated films not nominated for Best Picture but nominated for Best Foreign Language Film in the above pie charts but not in the calculation of data, because several foreign language films have received Best Picture nominations straight out (for example, this year’s Amour). You can check my work in my [Oscar Spreadsheet of DOOM, and you probably should, because my brain DID NOT want to accept the fact that The Reader was nominated for Best Picture, and that was only four years ago.
The disparity here is plainly evident but I did my statistical due diligence and ran a chi squared test, proving that the distribution of Best Picture nominations between the sub-groups of Best Actor and Best Actress deviates from what you would expect. The chi squared value here equals 28.634, with 3 degrees of freedom and a p<.0001. That's math talk for "something isn't right here." Basically, these figures offer proof of the statistical significance of Best Actor nominees more frequently appearing in Best Picture nominated films than nominees for Best Actress do.
Now let’s consider why this might be the case. Oscar nominations for Best Actor and Best Actress require more than a great performer: that performer needs a meaty role to play. What this data suggests is that the kind of movies that provide these great parts for actresses are less likely to be “Best Picture caliber” than the films that have Best Actor-worthy male roles. The films that yield Best Actress nominations are more often “small” (e.g. Frozen River, TransAmerica, You Can Count on Me) or “non serious” movies (e.g. Julie & Julia, Bridget Jones’s Diary) that aren’t as attractive to the Academy as Best Picture contenders.

2003 Best Actor  winner Sean Penn (for Best Picture-nominated Mystic River) with 2003 Best Actress winner Charlize Theron (for non-nominated Monster).

Notably, in the years where there were 5 or fewer nominees for Best Picture (1927/28–1930/31, 1944–2008), the disparity between Best Actors and Best Actresses appears even greater: 109 out of 348 (31.32%) Best Actress nominations were for Best Picture-nominated films; whereas 177 out of 347 (51.01%) Best Actor nominations were for films nominated for Best Picture. The chi squared for this data set is actually a smidge lower at 27.841, but that still indicates considerable statistical significance.
Conversely, isolating the years with an expanded list of Best Picture nominees (1931/32–1943, 2009–2012) finds no statistical significance in the disparity between Best Actor and Best Actress nods correlation with Best Picture nominees. Both Best Actor and Best Actress nominees see a significant bump in the chances of their film being nominated for Best Picture: up to 71.23% for men and to 58.6% for women. The chi squared is 2.565, df=3 and p=.4637, so these results aren’t statistically significant. Unfortunately, this data set is much smaller than the other ones I looked at, and makes the strange bedfellows of the last four years of Oscars and a set of nominees from 8 decades ago, so it may need to be viewed more skeptically.
To get a better idea of how these trends might have changed over time, I also split the data into two roughly equal blocks, everything before 1970, and everything after.  The good news is that the disparity had already started to narrow in the modern era even before the Best Picture nominations field expanded in recent years. When the data is split into these two groups, the earlier era gets a chi squared score of 20.037 (df=3, p<.0002), indicating extreme statistical significance; the newer data computes to a chi squared of 9.816 (df=3, p=.0202), which indicates statistical significance as well but less dramatically. 
But this does not mean there has been steady progress on this front over the years. These graphs show fluctuation over the years and decades for both genders of nominee, with men remaining slightly above women most years and more substantially above women in all decades: 

Charts showing disparity between Best Actor/Actress and Best Picture nominations over years and decades
To sum up: Academy Awards nominees for Best Actor have been nominated for films also nominated for Best Picture to a much greater degree than the nominees for Best Actress. In years that have a wider field of Best Picture nominees, the disparity between actors and actresses narrows to the point it is not statistically significant. The disparity has also decreased in more modern years but remains statistically significant. 
I believe, optimistically, that this is more of a problem with Oscar’s past than it’s present and future. With more (but still not enough!) women filmmakers active, we’re going to see more and more women in central roles in the Big Important Pictures that tend to get nominated for Best Picture, as we have this year with Best Actress nominee Jessica Chastain at the center of Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty. Furthermore, the expanded list of nominees for Best Picture makes room for different kinds of films, so smaller, women-centric gems like Amour, The Kids are All Right, and Winter’s Bone are included in the Best Picture nominee club. In the future, I hope the sex of a nominated performer won’t be predictive of the Best Picture nomination of his or her film. While this is certainly only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the Academy’s limitations in recognizing diversity in their nominees, I’m still glad we’re seeing progress here. 

Indifferent To Suffering, Insensitive To Joy: ‘Network’s’ Dangerous Career Woman

Women In Politics Week: Indifferent To Suffering, Insensitive To Joy: ‘Network’s’ Dangerous Career Woman
By Myrna Waldron
Network DVD Art
For a while, I think people got the impression that I don’t like films if they’re not explicitly feminist. The reality is, most films are not feminist, but it doesn’t necessarily diminish their respective quality – Back to the Future, Casablanca and The Third Man are amongst my favourite films of all time, but I could not describe them as remotely feminist. Amongst that list of favourite films is the 1976 black comedy/satire Network, which is a scarily prescient skewering of the television industry. It won four Academy Awards, three for acting – Best Actress Faye Dunaway, Best Actor Peter Finch (which was awarded posthumously) and Best Supporting Actress Beatrice Straight. The fourth award was for its screenplay penned by Paddy Chayefsky.

The film’s “heroine,” Diana Christensen, played by Faye Dunaway, is very much a product of the 70s. She has directly benefitted from the second wave feminism movement, breaking the glass ceiling and becoming the sole female television executive at UBS, the fictional network depicted in this film. But…she is not a feminist character. Yes, she is strongly written, sexually confident, and an obvious success in her field, but she is also obsessive, emotionless, cynical and dangerous. In short, a ball-breaking career woman. She has achieved much based on the sheer power of her ambitions, but it is clear that her single-minded ambitions are meant to contrast negatively to the more idealistic and grounded outlooks of the male “heroes,” Howard Beale (Peter Finch) and Max Schumacher (William Holden).

Diana is the Vice President of UBS’s programming division, but eventually worms her way into taking Max Schumacher’s job, which was to be in charge of the news division. The news division gets lousy ratings and haemorrhages money, so they make the decision to fire their news anchor, Howard Beale. This instead causes Beale’s mind to snap, and he begins ranting about planning to commit suicide on air (which was based on a real-life event) and how he has “run out of bullshit.” The ratings spike, prompting the obsessive Diana to seize on the newscast and turn it into a combination variety show and talk show. The integrity of the news and the political system that it influences mean nothing to Diana – she is singularly obsessed with getting ratings and making money for UBS.

Diana Christensen
In her work to get better ratings for the network, she offers a deal to Laureen Hobbs, a leader of the Communist Party, to get video footage of a radical leftist terrorist group known as the Ecumenical Liberation Army (a parody of the terrorist group which kidnapped Patty Hearst). Both women are deeply cynical and sarcastic, and introduce themselves to each other as what they are stereotyped to be: “Hi, I’m Diana Christensen, a racist lackey of the imperialist ruling circles.” “I’m Laureen Hobbs, a bad-ass commie nigger.” (Hobbs is African-American) “Sounds like the basis of a firm friendship.” Diana does not care at all about the political ramifications of allowing the Communist Party an entire hour of weekly propaganda, or of glorifying the violent tactics of domestic terrorists. She even openly encourages Hobbs to put whatever content she likes in the show just so she can get the terrorists’ crime footage. Meanwhile, she has added several other kitschy segments to The Howard Beale Show, including a psychic who predicts the week’s news every Friday.

This same psychic tells Diana that she will be having an emotional affair with a craggy middle-aged gentleman. She interprets this man to be Max Schumacher, with whom she starts an affair. She knows that he has been married for 25 years and has children, and doesn’t care at all, she, in fact, was the one who initially approached him. Her cynicism and selfishness extend to her personal life as well. The affair abruptly ends when she steals Schumacher’s job and exploits the mentally ill Beale for ratings. They reconnect after an executive’s funeral – her attraction to Schumacher being the only thing besides television that she shows remote joy in (Schumacher is emotionally obsessed and infatuated with Diana). But even that joy is short lived, for she continually blathers about her job even while having sex.  To go along with how she has elbowed herself in to a social caste normally populated by men, she even describes herself as being sexually masculine: “I can’t tell you how many man have told me what a lousy lay I am. I apparently have a masculine temperament. I arouse quickly, consummate prematurely, and can’t wait to get my clothes back on and get out of that bedroom. I seem to be inept at everything except my work.”

Howard Beale’s Rant
Diana’s tenure as the producer of The Howard Beale show has significant political ramifications. Beale’s famous rant, in which he encourages his audience to scream, “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it any more!” fosters an atmosphere of discontent with the status quo and outrage that their individualism is insidiously being taken away from them. It becomes a catchphrase, and Beale begins making daily rants, and eventually even believes himself as a kind of political prophet with the unique ability to communicate via the television. The angrier the audience gets, the more the ratings increase, and the more Diana likes it. The show eventually becomes the #1 most watched program in America, and Diana unabashedly takes all the credit for its success.

UBS is owned by a media conglomerate called the CCA (Communications Company of America), and the corporate influence of the conglomerate gradually takes over how the network is run. Frank Hackett (Robert Duvall), Diana & Max’s direct supervisor, eventually becomes CEO after the original CEO dies of a heart condition. This marks the end of UBS’s journalistic credibility, for Hackett is a blatant corporate shill. Unfortunately for Beale, he makes an enemy of the CCA when he learns that the conglomerate is to be bought out by Saudi Arabians, and thus goes on a rant about how much of American property and commerce is owned by the Saudis. He demands that his audience send telegrams to the White House demanding that they put a stop to Saudi money taking over American culture. UBS is not a wealthy network, and absolutely depends on this merger to survive. The CEO of CCA, Arthur Jensen (Ned Beatty) demands to see Beale, and goes on a thunderous rant about how there is no such thing as nations or individuals – that money is the only thing that matters, the only reality in the modern world.

He scares Howard Beale into promoting his own viewpoints, which are directly opposite to the previous subjects of Beale’s rants. The ratings begin to fall because the audience resents being told that they are only cogs in a great moneymaking machine, not the worthy individuals Beale originally told them they were. Laureen Hobbs, by this point, has been sucked in too by the temptations of the corporate system, and becomes so obsessed with earning enough money to continue her show she has, instead of being a Communist, become a classical Capitalist. Furious at how Howard Beale’s flagging ratings are damaging her show, she rants to Diana that Beale should be fired. Diana has already been planning to end Beale’s show.

Diana celebrating The Howard Beale Show’s success
Meanwhile, Diana’s cynicism and lack of emotional depth have taken a toll on her relationship with Max Schumacher. She defines their relationship, yet again, in relation to television: “It’s time to reevaluate our relationship, Max. I don’t like the way this script of ours is turning out. It’s turning into a seedy little drama. Middle-aged man leaves wife and family for young heartless woman, goes to pot.” Instead, Max turns the tables on her. Noting that she, unlike him, has grown up only knowing the artificiality of television, he realizes that she is completely unable to form or articulate genuine emotion. That television has destroyed her, destroyed Laureen Hobbs, and will destroy him too if he continues to have a relationship with her. He tells her that she is “…Indifferent to suffering, insensitive to joy. All of life is reduced to the common rubble of banality.” The man who left his wife of 25 years is apparently morally above a young woman who, by his own admission, is not to blame for the artificiality of her emotions. Instead, Diana’s single-minded ambition damns her.

Losing Max seems to spark a final unforgivable act of cynicism – Diana completely disregards the right to human life and orders Howard Beale’s assassination. Since Beale is now espousing the moral and political beliefs of Mr. Jensen, Jensen wants the show to continue, but the UBS executives are unable to ignore or forgive Beale’s flagging ratings. Instead of risking the wrath of CCA by firing Beale or allowing him to retire, they hire the Ecumenical Liberation Army to shoot him to death onscreen. Money is the only reality. The cynical, emotionless career woman says, “I don’t see that we have any options. Let’s kill the son of a bitch.” They can then dredge up one last ratings spike out of Beale. The footage of Beale being shot to death is broadcast over and over, next to other newscasts and commercials – in the end, even the murder of a mentally ill man is as meaningless as everything else when it comes to television.

Diana Christensen is a tremendously complicated character. It is hard to hate her, but the audience is meant to be repelled by the sheer scope of her ambition and obsession. It is quite revealing that Laureen Hobbs, the other major female character in the story, becomes just as cynical and hypocritical as Diana and abandons everything else for the sake of the mighty rating. Is it true that the generations that have grown up only knowing a world with television have become emotionally stunted? Does Chayefsky think all ambitious career women are as single-minded and emotionally/sexually stunted as Diana, or is she just a mere satirical exaggeration? What is apparent is how eerily this movie predicted the future – a fourth major television network that abandons all pretence of delivering objective news, instead relying on stunt footage, pundits, propaganda, cheap ratings ploys and answers to a dangerously powerful media conglomerate? Sounds familiar. Diana is not remotely a feminist character, but her creation has definitely been influenced by the second wave feminist movement. One thing, however, is clear from Network’s script: Beware the ambitious career woman.

Myrna Waldron is a feminist writer/blogger with a particular emphasis on all things nerdy. She lives in Toronto and has studied English and Film at York University. Myrna has a particular interest in the animation medium, having written extensively on American, Canadian and Japanese animation. She also has a passion for Sci-Fi & Fantasy literature, pop culture literature such as cartoons/comics, and the gaming subculture. She maintains a personal collection of blog posts, rants, essays and musings at The Soapboxing Geek, and tweets with reckless pottymouthed abandon at @SoapboxingGeek.

Women in Politics Week: ‘The Lady’ vs. ‘The Iron Lady’: Who Gets the Vote?

Michelle Yeoh as Aung San Suu Kyi in The Lady

Meryl Streep as Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady

 
Guest post written by Candice Frederick. Originally published at Reel Talk. Cross-posted with permission.

While a few men duke it out to take control at the White House later this year, let’s take a look at two films that followed the life of female politicians. On our right we have The Iron Lady (previously reviewed here), the Oscar-winning biopic on U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (played by Meryl Streep), and on our left is The Lady, a film on the life of Burmese politician Aung San Suu Kyi (played by Michelle Yeoh, of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon fame). 
Both films offer an account of women both lauded and defamed in their own countries, and who defied gender stereotypes to become relatively successful leaders. But only one did it successfully — The Lady. 
Here’s a brief press release synopsis of The Lady, to give you a better idea of the movie: 
Long ago in a land far away, a young girl’s father, a national champion of political freedom, was brutally assassinated by an evil military junta. Though her mother was unable to flee, those loyal to her father spirited the young girl out of her homeland to a new life across the sea. Many years later, upon hearing her mother was gravely ill, the young girl, now a grown woman, married and a mother herself, bravely decides to return to her native country—a country still in the grip of restrictive military rule. How will the despots react to her return? How will the people, who, because of her martyred father, see her as a link to their hope and struggle for liberty, react to her return? How will she balance her love of country and family? 
And here are a few reasons why the Aung San Suu Kyi film rocks, and why The Iron Lady still doesn’t: 
Beautiful direction. After the disastrous Mamma Mia!, it’s a wonder why director Phyllida Lloyd was allowed back behind a camera again. Her style in The Iron Lady was heavy-handed, deliberate and all over the place. It looked more like an amateur effort. Luc Besson (The Professional), on the other hand, directed The Lady with gentle yet poignant strokes that never seemed forced. 
Acting that captivates you. We all know Streep can act circles around most everyone in the business, man or woman. But, in the battle of 2011 portrayals of renown officeholders, Yeoh has Streep beat, hands down. Streep seems more like she’s imitating Thatcher and doesn’t come off as fluid in her performance. Meanwhile, Yeoh embodies Suu Kyi. She immerses herself in her life and you truly feel like she’s sympathetic towards her struggle, 15-year house arrest, her every decision — something that is needed to convincingly play a real person. 
A touching depiction. Aside from the shoddy direction of The Iron Lady, the movie leisurely told Thatcher’s story from the point of view of a distant third person, which gave it an apathetic tone. Screenwriter Abi Morgan’s (Shame) script came off cold and uninspired, only to be saved by its more affected performances.The Lady offers a heartbreaking chronicle of Suu Kyi’s political career amid strife, while also weaving in her relationship with her husband and kids, which humanized her. Screenwriter Rebecca Frayn’s full feature debut is alluring, fascinating to watch and, most importantly, makes you care about Suu Kyi. 
Girl power done right. In a position dominated by men, it’s no argument that the real-life heroines, Thatcher and Suu Kyi, proudly overcame gender barriers to reach the levels of success they did, at whatever the cost. But The Iron Lady presented more of a feminism 101 class, an introduction to the inequalities between men and women, and a look at one women who prevailed above it. Lloyd’s sweeping displays of how Thatcher was not taken seriously and was treated differently because she was a woman was not a sensitive look at the the issue. The Lady spoke more about Suu Kyi’s feminism, without hitting us over the head with it. After all, feminism isn’t always about preaching your views to a male audience, but also about leading an extraordinary life as a woman–despite the odds–that inspires other women, the way The Lady presented. In other words, you feel inspired by her story, even if the story wasn’t intentionally trying to inspire you. 
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Candice Frederick is a former NABJ award-winning journalist for Essence Magazine, and the writer for the film blog, Reel Talk. She is also the TV/Film critic for The Urban Daily. Follow her on Twitter.

10 Statements ‘Shakespeare In Love’ Makes About Women’s Rights

Shakespeare In Love Poster
Shakespeare In Love is one of those films that gets a lot of hate from critics and movie buffs. Its crime? Beating Saving Private Ryan for the Best Picture Academy Award. Funny, I didn’t know that when the Academy makes a decision you disagree with, it somehow instantly makes the winning film terrible. The Academy makes terrible decisions all the time – but that’s a problem with the voters, not the films they choose. At any rate, I think another reason why this film gets an enormous amount of hate is because it’s a romantic comedy. A CHICK FLICK, OH MY GOD! And yet, this supposed ‘Chick Flick’ was directed by a man, written by men (including Tom Stoppard, a playwright most famous for Rozencrantz & Gildenstern Are Dead) and with a cast (for historical reasons) mostly populated by men. 

And yet, oddly enough, this film is pretty feminist. The rights and roles of women have come a very, very long way since the 1590s, and yet this film shows us the major societal problems that occur when women are denied agency. The lack of rights given to the film’s heroine, Viola DeLesseps, seem needlessly cruel and puritanical to modern standards. However, Queen Elizabeth I’s reign should be seen as an important time in feminist history. Not only did she prove to England, and the world, that a woman could rule and be a highly capable leader on her own without a husband, she brought England into a Golden Age. Elizabeth I is thus used in this film as a symbol of the kinds of heights women can achieve if they are only given the opportunity.

What this shows me is that if feminists keep fighting for women’s (and LGBTQ, and POC) rights, future generations will also look back on our era and see our as of yet denied rights the same way we view the rights denied women in the Renaissance era. The things we have been fighting for will be considered a given. Progress is only a future away.

By showing the major societal flaws that occur when women are denied agency, here are 10 statements that Shakespeare In Love makes on Women’s Rights:
Shakespeare kisses Viola as Thomas Kent
1. Women were not allowed to be actors: The first major conflict of the film is Viola’s longing to be an actor. She adores Shakespeare’s plays and reveres poetry above all. But it was the law that only men can appear on stage as actors in plays; it was seen as lewd and obscene for women to act. This is one of those aspects of Elizabethan society that seem positively absurd by modern standards. Could you imagine our movie industry today if every female character was played by crossdressing men and prepubescent boys? And yet, some vestiges of this type of law still remain – women are still seen as the gatekeepers of morality. It is still a fact that some things are seen as okay for men to do, but obscene and disgusting for women to emulate. Slut vs. stud, anyone? At any rate, there is a blatant women’s rights violation here in that Viola’s true ambition – just to act – is seen as illegal and immoral.

2. Fathers control their daughters’ destinies. As the beautiful daughter of a social climbing merchant, Viola DeLesseps is seen by her father as a mere asset, not his child. He does not even ask her if she desires to be married, nor does he tell her that he has decided her future for her behind her back. He is even contemptuous of her when speaking to her future husband, and blatantly bribes the Earl of Wessex to marry her: “Is she obedient?” “As any mule in Christendom. But if you are the man to ride her, there are rubies in the saddlebag.” Marriage at this time, at least for nobility/aristocracy was seen more as a business or political transaction, and love is never considered.
3. Husbands control their wives even before they’re married. Lord Wessex is not a nice guy. At the DeLesseps’ party, Wessex refers to Viola as “my property” before their engagement is even official. He threatens Shakespeare’s life for admiring Viola – he is extremely possessive of her, and Viola does not even know yet that she is to marry him. He later starts ordering Viola around, throwing screaming fits if she dares to be late. Viola’s unguarded contempt of Wessex, and her later escape from their wedding carriage to see the play, show that she is strong-willed, and not at all likely to be the submissive bride he was hoping for. Viola is thus pushing the limits of freedom that are available to her in defiance of the arranged marriage.
4. Women are not allowed to make their own choices of marriage. The pain that Viola’s arranged marriage causes serves as the other major conflict of the film. Viola can never marry Shakespeare. Even if he were not married with children, he is poor, and playwrights/actors are seen as the amongst the lowest class people in London. As the daughter of a rich merchant, she would never be allowed to marry so far beneath her station. Her father has bought the Earl of Wessex so his grandchildren will be nobility – she is not even given the choice as to whether she may have children or not. It is Viola’s duty to follow her father’s wishes – she does not get any choice at all. She also knows that were she to defy Wessex, Queen Elizabeth would know the cause, and execute Shakespeare for it, as Elizabeth has given her official consent to the marriage. 
5. Women are expected to be submissive and humble. The Earl of Wessex must get the Queen’s consent to marry, so Viola is to appear at court before her. Wessex thus demands that she be “submissive, modest, grateful and brief” when she is presented to the Queen. He is in effect asking Viola to defy everything that she feels inside just so Lord Wessex can increase his personal fortune. Because she is an actor, she initially behaves as he requests, but when she impulsively defends the ability of plays/poetry to represent the truth and nature of love, she actually impresses Elizabeth enough for her to officiate a wager between Lord Wessex (who denies that plays have this power) and a disguised Shakespeare. The ironic subtext of Wessex’s demands is that he is expecting Viola to behave as would please a man of that time, forgetting that Elizabeth is first and foremost a woman.
Viola and Shakespeare as Romeo & Juliet
6. Women are seen as possessions. As mentioned earlier, Lord Wessex refers to Viola as “my property” before their engagement has even become official. Her father compares her to a mule, and vulgarly makes a double entendre about “riding” her to Lord Wessex. Lord Wessex also goes into a murderous rage and is intensely jealous that William Shakespeare has won Viola’s love. The only thing that he shows pleasure in is when he believes that Shakespeare (who he thinks is Christopher Marlowe) has died. His power is such that he can threaten Shakespeare’s life, in public, in front of multiple witnesses who are friends of his, without fear of repercussion – Shakespeare covets that which belongs to Wessex. But the women in this story know better. On Viola’s wedding day, both her Nurse and her mother are weeping – not for joy, but for knowing that the men of the age control Viola’s destiny.
7. Consent is seen as optional. There is a very strong contrast between Lord Wessex and William Shakespeare in how they approach Viola as a lover. When Wessex informs Viola that they are to be married, he tells her, “You are allowed to show your pleasure.” He then informs her that he chose her because he was attracted to her lips, and then forces a kiss on her. When she slaps him, he reminds her that she cannot defy her father nor her Queen. In contrast, when Shakespeare and Viola prepare to make love for the first time, he interrupts her to make sure that she truly does consent to sex with him: “Wait! You’re still a maid, and perhaps as mistook in me as I was mistook in Thomas Kent.” “Are you the author of the plays of William Shakespeare?” “I am.” “Then kiss me again, for I am not mistook.” The true and ideal nature of love is for both parties to enthusiastically consent to physical pleasure – it is quite telling that the poor playwright respects the agency of women far more than the rich Earl does.
8. Virginity is seen as a prize to be won. When Viola is presented to Queen Elizabeth, she detects that something is different about her, and correctly surmises that she has fallen in love and lost her virginity since the last time she saw her. She tells Lord Wessex: “Have her, then. But you are a lordly fool. She’s been plucked since I saw her last, and not by you. It takes a woman to know it.” Notably, she is not implying that Wessex is a fool for marrying a non-virgin, but for marrying a woman that will never love him. This above all makes Wessex murderously jealous. And yet, Viola too sees her lost virginity as something that was precious: “I loved the writer and gave up the prize for a sonnet.” She has no regrets about her love affair with Shakespeare, but also knows that Lord Wessex is not likely to forgive her for emotionally and physically loving anyone but him.
9. Elizabeth I is sympathetic to Viola’s situation. Viola was recruited to play Juliet when the teenage boy actor’s voice had suddenly broken, and the Master of the Revels was intending to arrest all of the actors for knowingly allowing a woman to act onstage. Elizabeth I was watching the play in disguise. She comes to Viola’s rescue, and decides to pass her off as her pseudonym, Thomas Kent: “The Queen of England does not attend exhibitions of public lewdness. So something is out of joint. Come here, Master Kent. Let me look at you. … Yes, the illusion is remarkable. And your error, Mr. Tilney, is easily forgiven. But I know something of a woman in a man’s profession. Yes, by God, I do know about that.” Her last statement is incredibly powerful when related to how this film interprets women’s rights. She, more than anyone else in that era, knows what it is like to be someone who has all the power in the world, and yet none of it at the same time. She later reflects on the powers she does not have: “Why, Lord Wessex. Lost your wife so soon?” “Indeed, I am a bride short, and my ship sails for the new world on the evening tide. How is this to end?” “As stories must when love’s denied — with tears, and a journey. Those whom God has joined in marriage, not even I can put asunder. Master Kent. Lord Wessex, as I foretold, has lost his wife in the playhouse. Go make your farewells, and send her out. It’s time to settle accounts.”

10. Gender is but a performance. One of the more interesting subtextual elements of this film is how it chooses to approach gender. Most obviously, Viola convincingly played two male parts at the same time – that of her pseudonym, Thomas Kent, and as Romeo Montague. She would never have been discovered if she had not made love with Shakespeare in a place where they could be spied on. She binds her breasts when playing Thomas, which is a common practice used by transgender men. The laws requiring that only men can be actors cause another layer of representation of gender – older men must play older women, and prepubescent boys play young women. They do not show shame or discomfort at being made to crossdress – it is a just part to play, just like all gender is an instinctive societal role that is played. In the end, when Shakespeare immortalizes Viola as the heroine of his next play, Twelfth Night, that play eventually becomes famous for its metacommentary on the nature of gender and theatre itself: Viola is a female character who masquerades as a man, but is played by a young man masquerading as a woman. A man plays a woman playing a man. The lines of gender are blurred – even in Shakespeare’s time he knew that there’s no such thing as the gender binary.
This film deserves to be loved again. Its producers may have bought its many Academy Awards (though I don’t think anyone is going to argue about Judi Dench’s win) but that does not invalidate the film’s greatness. It is one of the few comedies to win Best Picture, and though it is bittersweet, it is a film that fills me with joy every time I watch it. And anyway, I’m an English major. Loving Shakespeare comes with the territory.

Myrna Waldron is a feminist writer/blogger with a particular emphasis on all things nerdy. She lives in Toronto and has studied English and Film at York University. Myrna has a particular interest in the animation medium, having written extensively on American, Canadian and Japanese animation. She also has a passion for Sci-Fi & Fantasy literature, pop culture literature such as cartoons/comics, and the gaming subculture. She maintains a personal collection of blog posts, rants, essays and musings at The Soapboxing Geek, and tweets with reckless pottymouthed abandon at @SoapboxingGeek. 

Biopic and Documentary Week: The Blind Side, Take 2: The Most Insulting Movie Ever Made

This piece on The Blind Side, by Nine Deuce, first appeared at Bitch Flicks on March 23, 2011.

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The Blind Side movie poster

 

Davetavius and I consider ourselves the world’s foremost authorities on watching movies for reasons other than those intended by their producers. As such, we go way beyond just watching “cheesy” (whatever that means) movies, 80s movies, or kung fu movies (which I refuse to watch but which every dork on Earth has been pretending to like in some attempt at letting everyone know how “weird” they are since Quentin Tarantino’s ridiculous ass popularized kung fu movie fandom as the #1 route to instant eccentricity cred in True Romance) to focus our attention on recently-released romantic comedies, those obnoxious movies in which two assholes just sit around and talk to each other for 98 minutes, and “serious” movies for which people have been given gold-plated statuettes. One can learn an awful lot about the faults and failings of our social system and corporate entertainment’s attempts to sell us its version of culture by watching movies created by and for the anti-intelligentsia, and if one were to try hard enough, I’m sure one could find the string that, if tugged, would unravel the modern world system buried somewhere in a melodramatic Best Picture Oscar contender intended to make people who refer to beers as “cold ones” feel like they’re considering The Big Issues. There was no way we were going to miss The Blind Side.
Spoiler alert: this is the worst movie I’ve ever seen, and I’m going to spoil your desire to see it yourself by writing this post. Also, I may, if I can manage to give a fuck, divulge important plot elements. But it’s based on a true story that everyone has already heard anyway, so who cares.

Let me say up front that I’m aware that I’m supposed to feel sorry for Sandra Bullock this week. She’s purported to be “America’s sweetheart” and all, she has always seemed like a fairly decent person (for an actor), and I think her husband deserves to get his wang run over by one of his customized asshole conveyance vehicles, but I’m finding it difficult to feel too bad. I mean, who marries a guy who named himself after a figure from the Old West, has more tattoos than IQ points, and is known for his penchant for rockabilly strippers? Normally I’d absolve Bullock of all responsibility for what has occurred and spend nine paragraphs illustrating the many reasons Jesse James doesn’t deserve to live, but I’ve just received proof in the form of a movie called The Blind Side that Sandra Bullock is in cahoots with Satan, Ronald Reagan’s cryogenically preserved head, the country music industry, and E! in their plot to take over the world by turning us all into (or helping some of us to remain) smug, racist imbeciles.

Click here to read the full piece on The Blind Side.

Biopic and Documentary Week: The Blind Side, Take 1

This piece on The Blind Side, by Stephanie Rogers, first appeared at Bitch Flicks on March 3, 2010.

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The Blind Side movie poster

No. No to the over-abundant racial stereotypes showcased throughout the film. No to the kind-hearted southern woman as the Black man’s White Savior. No to the shallow, embarrassing, surface-level portrayal of class issues. No to the constant heavy-handed references to God and prayer and sexual morality. No to falling back on the tired tropes of wives as mommies and women as over-bearing and emasculating ball-busters. No to this film’s best picture nomination. Just … no.

imdb synopsis, as composed by Anonymous:

The Blind Side depicts the story of Michael Oher, a homeless African-American youngster from a broken home, taken in by the Touhys, a well-to-do white family who help him fulfill his potential. At the same time, Oher’s presence in the Touhys’ lives leads them to some insightful self-discoveries of their own.

Living in his new environment, the teen faces a completely different set of challenges to overcome. As a football player and student, Oher works hard and, with the help of his coaches and adopted family, becomes an All-American offensive left tackle.

The real synopsis, as composed by me:

The Blind Side depicts the story of a white woman who sees a Black man walking down the street in the rain. She tells her husband to stop the car, and he obliges—oh, his wife is just so crazy sometimes!—then, out of the goodness of her white heart, she allows him to spend the night in their offensively enormous home.

Unfortunately, she can’t sleep very well—the Black man might steal some of their very important shit! But the next day, when she sees that he’s folded his blankets and sheets nicely on the couch, she realizes that, hey, maybe all Black men really aren’t thieving thugs.

Then she saves his life.

There’s a way to tell a true story, and there’s a way to completely botch the shit out of a true story. Shit-botching, in this instance, might include basing the entire film around an upper-class white woman’s struggle to essentially reform a young Black man by taking him in, buying him clothes, getting him a tutor, teaching him how to tackle, and threatening to kill a group of young Black men he used to hang out with.

Click here to read the full piece on The Blind Side.

2012 Oscar Nominations

 

I just watched the live announcement of the Oscar nominations. My only thoughts right now are 1) Where the hell is Tilda Swinton’s nomination for We Need to Talk About Kevin? 2) Did Woody Allen’s piece of shit film Midnight in Paris seriously get a best picture nomination? 3) Yay Melissa McCarthy! 4) The Help? Really? 5) Did Hollywood miraculously get more racist this year?

Best Picture

  • The Artist
  • The Descendants
  • Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
  • The Help
  • Hugo
  • Midnight in Paris
  • Moneyball
  • The Tree of Life
  • War Horse

Best Actress

Best Supporting Actress

Best Actor

  • Demian Bichir, A Better Life
  • George Clooney, The Descendants
  • Jean Dujardin, The Artist
  • Gary Oldman, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
  • Brad Pitt, Moneyball

Best Supporting Actor

  • Kenneth Branagh, My Week With Marilyn
  • Jonah Hill, Moneyball
  • Nick Nolte, Warrior
  • Christopher Plummer, Beginners
  • Max von Sydow, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

Best Director

  • Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist
  • Alexander Payne, The Descendants
  • Martin Scorsese, Hugo
  • Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris
  • Terrence Malick, The Tree of Life


You can view the rest of the nominations as a PDF or on the Web site for the Academy Awards.