Tag: Biopic

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.

Biopic and Documentary Week: Women and Biopics–Where Are the Best Picture Nominations?

Women in Biopics
In November 2009, I wrote a brief analysis of the films that won the Academy Award for Best Picture between 2000 and 2010, ultimately asking the question, “What do these films have in common?” The answer is, of course, men. With the exception of Crash (which qualifies as an ensemble drama in all its racist glory), the Best Picture-winning films all center around men, with women either showcased as sidekicks or merely fulfilling one of the ridiculous tropes that drives the (male) narrative forward.
We’ve talked here before about the importance of looking at and analyzing pop culture–like the Academy Awards–even though we’re all well aware at Bitch Flicks that these types of ceremonies don’t actually honor The Best in Cinema. However, paying attention to what’s happening in pop culture helps us understand what society values as important. And according to the past 40 years or so of Oscar-nominated biopics, society thinks pretty highly of White Dudes.
Here is a list of Oscar-nominated biopics about men (since 1976), accompanied by critics’ ratings on Rotten Tomatoes. Asterisks denote Best Picture Winners.

*Patton (97%)

Lenny (100%)

Bound for Glory (88%)

The Elephant Man (91%)

Raging Bull (98%)

Reds (94%)

*Gandhi (88%)

*Amadeus (96%)

*The Last Emperor (91%)

Born on the Fourth of July (89%)

My Left Foot (100%)

Bugsy (88%)

JFK (84%)

In the Name of the Father (95%)

Shine (91%)

*A Beautiful Mind (78%)

The Aviator (87%)

Finding Neverland (83%)

Good Night, and Good Luck (94%)

Ray (81%)

Capote (90%)

Milk (94%)

Frost/Nixon (92%)

The Fighter (91%)

*The King’s Speech (95%)

The Social Network (96%)

127 Hours (93%)

Moneyball (94%)

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Here is a list of Oscar-nominated biopics about women (since 1976), accompanied by critics’ ratings on Rotten Tomatoes. Asterisk denotes Best Picture Winner.

Coal Miner’s Daughter (100%)

*Out of Africa (63%)

Elizabeth (82%)

Erin Brockovich (83%)

The Queen (97%)

The Blind Side (66%)

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So the only biopic about a woman to win the Oscar for Best Picture is Out of Africa, which–based on Rotten Tomatoes scores–critics disliked way more than any other nominated biopics within the past 40 years. 
I don’t have much analysis to offer here because it feels quite obvious to me that 1) Hollywood doesn’t care that much about women’s stories (gasp!) and 2) the stories that Hollywood does manage to tell about women often get much less critical praise. Is that because the films about women are just … worse? Or is it that, again–as is the case with everything from parenting to politics–we hold women to a much higher standard, imposing a level of scrutiny that makes it impossible to focus on women’s successes in the same ways we showcase the achievements of men?
However …
We love our women entertainers! I remember taking a class in college in which we discussed the dynamics of visibility in the patriarchy; we love women and minorities who sing for us, make us laugh, dance for us, play sports for us–but do we want them in leadership positions? Fuck no. And if one looks at a list of biopics in general (i.e. biopics that weren’t necessarily nominated for Oscars or other major awards), it’s easy to see the disproportionate number of biopics and documentaries focusing on women in the entertainment industry. That isn’t to say, of course, that entertainers don’t influence society in significant ways, but they’re less able to directly do so than, oh, women in high government offices, for instance.
I’m reminded of an important documentary, Miss Representation, which we wrote about here, and the astute tagline, “You can’t be what you can’t see.” We’ve got two Linda Lovelace biopics on the way. Wouldn’t it be nice to get, like, a Harriet Tubman biopic?

Biopic and Documentary Week: Blast from the Past: Jonathan Kaplan’s Heart like a Wheel

Heart Like a Wheel (1983)

This is a guest post from Melissa Richard.

Coming from a family of amateur drag racers (and a family where women outnumber men), it’s no surprise that my super-duper #1 female idol as a kid was Shirley Muldowney. A three-time National Hot Rod Association Top Fuel champion, Muldowney has been a part of professional drag racing since the mid-1960s and faced innumerable obstacles gaining entry into the boy’s club of the NHRA. Although not the first woman to race, she was the first to be licensed as a professional competitor and ran cars for the better part of nearly four decades, retiring only due to lack of sponsorship in 2003. Naturally, at the height of her career in the 70s / early 80s, her gender made excellent material for a biopic of her life, Heart like a Wheel (1983). And, perhaps just as naturally, the film does a pretty disappointing job of capturing the complexity of a woman who struggled to break the gender barrier in professional drag racing. 
Shirley Muldowney behind the wheel

Directed by Jonathan Kaplan and written by Ken Friedman, Heart like a Wheel hits the high points of Muldowney’s rise to prominence in the racing world: her beginnings as an amateur drag racer (which she did for extra money as a young, newly married waitress); her desire and ability to race professionally with the help of her first husband, mechanic Jack Muldowney, and son John; her divorce from Jack and relationship with fellow racer / crew boss Connie Kalitta; the failure of that relationship and, of course, the movie’s climax in which Muldowney beats Kalitta to take the NHRA U.S. Nationals championship in 1982. Heart like a Wheel has a certain B-movie quality to it, but garnered a 1984 Golden Globe nomination Best Performance by an Actress for Bonnie Bedelia, who plays Muldowney in the film. While not tremendously popular at the box office, it received favorable critical acclaim at film festivals and, among racing aficionados at least, still holds significant underground popularity.

Like most “women breaking barriers” films, especially those involving sports, Heart like a Wheel has a sort of against-all-odds feel to it that makes you want to like it, even if you know hokey story lines like that tend to be amped up by filmmakers for the benefit of paying audiences. This is no surprise. What is surprising, however, is that viewers are privy only to a watered-down version of the significant odds that Muldowney really faced. There are the typical sexist lines that a female drag racer could’ve expected to hear in a male-dominated sport (like when an announcer decries Muldowney receiving a kiss from her husband prior qualifying for her competition license ) and scenes that illustrate the roles Muldowney had to play as an hyper-sexualized novelty in order to do something she loved and was good at (including taking on the exotic name conferred on her by Connie Kalitta, “Cha Cha,” which she later rejected as a racing moniker). 
The “Cha Cha” version of Muldowney, 1972

Instead of developing important moments, like those in which she has trouble getting sponsorship because of her gender or struggles to make ends in the furious balance between a burgeoning racing career and a family, the film aims most of its dramatic focus on Muldowney’s romantic relationship with Kalitta.  In all of the drama of her seven-year fling with her hot-headed, womanizing guy, the lines and scenes that purport to represent the barriers Muldowney broke down seem pale and artificial, like they’ve been inserted only for the sake of occasionally reminding the viewer that Muldowney had to put up with a lot of macho crap in order to race.  

In all fairness, Muldowney and Kalitta’s relationship did have a significant impact on her career. They were involved professionally as well as personally, and her decision to cut him from her crew once the romance died made her even more of an underdog that she already was in the NHRA (since she couldn’t make it in racing without a bigger name than her own, apparently—or a man). In life and in the film, Muldowney took advantage of Kalitta’s license suspension (for fighting) and asked if she could race his top-fuel dragster with him as her crew chief, which put her on the road (literally) to three NHRA top-fuel championships. In fact, Kaplan and Friedman’s decision to organize the movie’s plot around Muldowney’s relationships with men is not unwarranted and lends an interesting masculine frame to a movie about a woman who came from and broke into, well, a masculine-framed world. From the opening black-and-white scene in which we see a young Shirley sitting on her father’s lap as he drives “too fast” down a deserted road through to the end when she shakes her fist in victory alongside her son / mechanic, this is a movie about a woman who lives in a world of men, is influenced by men, is supported and abandoned by men.
However, the male relationships that fostered Muldowney’s confidence and faith in her abilities hardly go noticed—especially the encouragement of her father.  One of the more touching scenes occurs in the first 10 minutes of the film, when a young Shirley Roque and her then beau Jack Muldowney approach her burly father to ask for permission to marry.  Tex Roque, a rough-and-tumble Country and Western singer, does not necessarily object to the marriage based on Shirley’s age—she’s sixteen—nor does he object to her choice of husband—he says that Jack is a really nice kid. What he objects to instead is that Shirley’s decision to marry so young will thwart her development as a self-sufficient woman. He advises her that “there’s not a man anywhere who’s worth giving up your ability to take care of yourself.”  Tex died fairly early in his daughter’s racing career, so perhaps there just wasn’t enough of a presence there to make it a bigger part of the film, but his advice – that Shirley take care of herself – doesn’t necessarily serve as the story arc that it seems set up to be.  Muldowney certainly gets things some things done herself: soliciting sponsorship, getting those needed signatures of support for her license application, and generally making it known that she would “mouth off” when she needed to.  But the crucial lesson for Shirley behind Tex’s advice gets lost in the development of her relationship with Kalitta, who is important in telling the Muldowney story, but who is certainly not the whole of it. 
Connie Kalitta (played by Beau Bridges) in Heart Like a Wheel

The relationship with Kalitta, of course, sets up the film’s narrative climax: the 1982 U.S. Nationals race in which Muldowney beat Kalitta to claim her third national title. They’d separated before the ’82 race, and the romance – in the film, but also to NHRA fans at the time—injects the duel with a provocative rivalry in which the little lady who can drive fast beats not just a male competitor, but a cheating, lying bastard.  It’s one of those convenient moments from Muldowney’s life story that make for a good Hollywood story, but the real victory there is overlooked by the film.  In 1982, no one had won three national NHRA titles and suddenly, someone had.  And it happened to be a woman. This achievement, though, is lost behind the drama of Muldowney beating a former lover who treated her badly and, by the film’s end, you wonder if Heart like a Wheel was really about a woman breaking into the male-dominated world of racing to begin with.

Maybe Heart like a Wheel is just a love story with fast cars in it—something for the boys and the girls in the Hollywood mindset. But the real story here is one about a woman who loved to drive and compete, inaugurated the participation of women in a sport decidedly “for boys,” and dealt with a mountain of complexity in the process (the usual accusations of being a bitch that go along with being an ambitious woman, the failure of her first marriage because of her racing career, and the emasculating threat a woman with a great ability posed to her male competitors). As someone who watched this movie over and over as a kid, and who could still watch it over and over as an adult, I can’t help but love Heart like a Wheel because I love Shirley. But I don’t love what Heart like a Wheel says about a woman who had a tough row and has served as a significant influence to those who follow in her footsteps– and what it doesn’t say about the challenges of women in a world dominated by men.


Melissa Richard is a PhD candidate at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and a part-time English instructor at High Point University in the Piedmont Triad area of North Carolina. She writes about nineteenth-century factory girls in British literature and culture, likes to take photographs of things and stuff, and thinks that dancing is really fun. 

Biopic and Documentary Week: Persepolis

This piece on Persepolis, by Amber Leab, first appeared at Bitch Flicks on July 1, 2009.


Marjane can’t hide behind ABBA
In Persepolis, we meet Marjane (Satrapi), a young girl living in Iran at the time of the Islamic revolution of 1979. The society changed drastically under Islamic law, as evidenced by Marjane’s teacher’s evolving lessons. After the revolution, in 1982, she tells the young girls, who are now required by law to cover their heads, “The veil stands for freedom. A decent woman shelters herself from men’s eyes. A woman who shows herself will burn in hell.” In typical fashion, the students escape her ideological droning through imported pop culture: the music of ABBA, The Bee Gees, Michael Jackson, and Iron Maiden. 
While the film is a personal story, it does offer a concise history of modern Iran, including the U.S. involvement in the rise of Islamic law and in the Iran-Iraq war. This time in Iranian history is especially important right now, with the disputed re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the ensuing protests. One scene in particular depicts a group of people protesting when a young man is shot, bleeds to death, and is hoisted over his fellow protesters’ shoulders–eerily reminiscent of what happened with Neda Agha Soltan, whose public murder has rallied the Iranian protesters and people all over the world. 

Biopic and Documentary Week: Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work

This piece on Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, by Amber Leab, first appeared at Bitch Flicks on March 21, 2011.

Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work (2010)
Most reviews of the documentary Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work begin by describing how the film opens–with a close-up shot of Rivers’ face, without make-up. This is, of course, a metaphor for the goal of the film (to get behind the facade) and an acknowledgment of what Rivers has come to be most famous for–her surgically-altered appearance. While her face is surely a piece of surgical work, the far more fascinating work is that of her long life in the spotlight, and her drive to keep going, keep performing, keep selling, when the culture tells her she should stop (or that she should have stopped long ago).
I went into this film feeling ambivalent. On the one hand, it’s a documentary about an extraordinary woman, made by two women–Ricki Sternand Anne Sundberg, who are known for their previous films The End of America, The Devil Came on Horseback, and the forthcoming Burma Soldier, among others. It’s about a mouthy broad (and I love mouthy broads, women who speak their minds and aren’t afraid to put themselves out there), who is funny, and who has been at it since 1966. On the other hand, it’s yet another film about a wealthy white woman (I just watched and reviewed The September Issue, about Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour) who lives like “Marie Antoinette, if she’d have had money.”

Biopic and Documentary Week: Gorillas in the Mist

Gorillas in the Mist (1988)

This piece is from Monthly Contributor Carrie Nelson.

This post contains spoilers about the film Gorillas in the Mist.
For nearly 20 years, zoologist Dian Fossey lived and worked among the mountain gorillas in Africa. Her work as a researcher and animal rights activist is responsible for raising awareness about Africa’s gorilla population and the threat of their extinction. Gorillas in the Mist, a film directed by Michael Apted in 1988, follows Dian (Sigourney Weaver, in an Oscar-nominated role) as she works in the Congo and Rwanda to study the behavior of mountain gorillas and protect them from poaching. As the film was produced after Dian’s untimely death (she was murdered in 1985; to this day, the precise circumstances and perpetrators remain unknown), it is impossible to know how she would have responded to the film. However, based on what I understand about Dian’s real life, I believe she would appreciate the film. I believe she would see it as an honest portrayal of her life, and I also believe she would be happy to see that the film avoids common clichés that are typically found in mainstream films about the lives of women.
Over the course of the film, Dian experiences a radical transformation in gender presentation. At the beginning of her travels, she is incredibly conscious of her appearance. When she meets her mentor, Dr. Louis Leakey (Iain Cuthbertson) at the start of her mission, he explains that there isn’t room for all of the luggage she’s brought with her, to which she stubbornly replies, “Those cases contain my hairdryer, my makeup, my underwear and my brassieres. If they don’t go, Dr Leakey, I don’t go.” I thought this was a throwaway line, so I was surprised that there were several additional mentions of her interest in make-up, hair products and clothing soon after this exchange. I was frustrated with this focus on materialism, thinking that the writer was using these moments as shorthand to remind the audience that the protagonist is, indeed, a woman; I felt as if the filmmakers were saying, “Well, what woman wouldn’t want to bring her cosmetics to the jungle?”
But as the film goes on, the references to beauty cease, and it becomes clear that these lines are not comments on Dian’s gender identity but on the materialism that she gradually gives up as she becomes committed to living among the mountain gorillas. The lines about clothing and make-up eventually stop, and Dian lets go of the previous signifiers of her femininity. It isn’t that she becomes masculine, as Weaver’s character in the Alien series is often perceived – it’s that she no longer needs these material possessions and outward signifiers to feel comfortable in the world and convey her identity. Dian’s transformation is subtle, but it adds significant depth to her characterization as she becomes comfortable in her new surroundings.
A similar transformation occurs in Dian’s romantic life. When she moves to Africa, she leaves behind her fiancé, David. Over the course of the film, her mentions of him become fewer and fewer, until a passing remark reveals that they have ended their engagement. She does, however, meet photographer Bob Campbell (Bryan Brown). Bob is married, but his and Dian’s shared passion for studying the gorillas leads them to start a passionate love affair. His work as a photographer makes him travel frequently, but he always returns to visit Dian, until he finally reveals to her that he is divorcing his wife to marry her. Initially, Dian is thrilled with this proposal; though she is devoted to her career, she often expresses an interest in wanting a family. But ultimately, she chooses her career over Bob anyway. He is offered a job that would take her away from Africa and the mountain gorillas, and she tells him that if he accepts the job and leaves, he should never write or come back to her. It’s a tragic moment, as the film demonstrates how much Dian and Bob love each other, but it is ultimately a refreshing and honest one. Given how many films feature women sacrificing ambitions and goals in order to preserve romantic relationships, Dian’s lack of compromise is a welcome change of pace.
Fossey represented as maternal
The most fascinating and complex depiction of Dian’s gender identity, however, is her portrayal as a maternal figure. Dian never has children of her own, and her interactions with children in the film are troubling. At one point, she catches a young boy found among gorilla poachers, and in an attempt to uncover information about the poachers, she has his hands tied and dresses as a witch to scare him into talking. Dian is not above torturing children to get what she wants; it would seem, therefore, that she is not particularly maternal. However, this is not entirely accurate or fair. Rather than being maternal in a traditional sense, Dian channels that energy toward the gorillas. At one point, she saves baby Pucker from capture, and she takes care of her in her home until Pucker is healthy and taken away to a zoo. In the moments when she is seen taking care of the gorillas, particularly the young ones, it is clear that there is a certain maternal sensibility to Dian that remains constant throughout all of her other personal transformations. Though it is common to see women presented as mothers and caretakers in cinema, Dian’s role as one is untraditional. It may echo common tropes, but it remains a unique facet of her life and work.
Gorillas in the Mist does not always paint Dian Fossey in a positive light. It does, however, present her in a realistic one. She’s often portrayed as stubborn, unfriendly and even abusive; these traits, however, reflect the reality in which she lived. Dian did not have time to be feminine or nice or accommodating. She was too busy focusing on her work and dedicating her life to ensure the protection and well being of the mountain gorillas. Gorillas in the Mist constantly references the usual clichés of films about women – namely, an overwhelming focus on beauty, romance and children – but rather than reaffirming them, the film counters them. Dian’s characterization proves that there is no single way in which to be a woman and that, often times, it is women who step outside of the boxes of conventional femininity who are able to create the most radical change in the world.

Carrie Nelson is a Bitch Flicks monthly contributor. She is a Staff Writer for Gender Across Borders, an international feminist community and blog that she co-founded in 2009. She works as a grant writer for an LGBT nonprofit, and she is currently pursuing an MA in Media Studies at The New School.

Biopic and Documentary Week: American Violet

This piece on American Violet, by Amber Leab, originally appeared at Bitch Flicks on April 5, 2010.

American Violet (2008)

American Violet tells the true story of an African-American mother of four girls arrested and falsely accused of selling crack cocaine. Set in a fictional Texas town with the 2000 presidential election as a fitting backdrop of confusion and corruption, we see Dee Roberts fight–with the help of ACLU lawyers–to clear her name and the names of other innocent people arrested in a broad sweep that day.
Newcomer Nicole Beharie gives a powerful performance as Dee, and the supporting cast, including Alfre Woodard as Dee’s mother, and Tim Blake Nelson and Malcolm Barrett as lawyers for the ACLU, do an equally good job. 

It’s impossible to not love Dee–a beautiful woman, a kind and patient mother, a hard worker, and a caring friend. Her temper gets the best of her once in the film, but she’s protecting her children from their alcoholic father and his accused child molester girlfriend, and can hardly be faulted for it. I’m inclined to think the movie tries too hard to make her character likable. In contrast, Dee’s friend and neighbor Gladys–who is not a conventionally attractive woman, and does not have four adorable children trailing her–is a compelling and empathetic character, but the film completely drops the ball, even failing to credit the actor who plays her. Gladys is Dee’s inspiration for continuing to fight the DA even after her charges are dropped (because Gladys took a plea deal, while Dee would not), but we don’t get to explore Gladys or her situation. I’m curious as to why she’s part of the story, but not really allowed to be a character in the film. While the movie is about Dee, I would’ve liked to get to know Gladys a bit.

Biopic and Documentary Week: Sofia Coppola’s ‘Marie Antoinette’ Surprisingly Feminist

Kirsten Dunst in Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette
Many chastised Sofia Coppola’s re-imagining of Marie Antoinette. Some critics complained about the addition of modern music while others thought it looked too slick, like an MTV music video (remember those??). But I think most people missed the point. Beyond the confectionary colors, gorgeous shots of lavish costumes and a teen queen munching on decadent treats and sipping champagne is a compelling and heartbreaking film that transcends eye candy. Underneath the exquisite atmosphere exists a very powerful and feminist commentary on gender and women.
Marie Antoinette chronicles the life of Austrian-born Maria Antonia Josephina Joanna (Kirsten Dunst) as she becomes the Dauphine and then Queen of France leading up to the French Revolution. Writer and director Sofia Coppola loosely based the film on Antonia Fraser’s sympathetic biography of the French queen. Coppola injected the dialogue with actual quotes from the queen’s life. Dunst skillfully exhibits the queen’s naïveté, loneliness and charisma. In an outstanding and underrated performance, she adeptly captures the jubilance of a young woman who desperately desires freedom as well as a woman burdened with the knowledge that her only value lies in her ability to bear children.
In the beginning of the film, we see Marie Antoinette travel from her homeland of Austria to France as her mother has arranged for her to be married to the Dauphin, Louis XVI (Jason Schwartzman) in order to unite the two antagonistic kingdoms of Austria and France. In a heartbreaking scene, Judy Dench tells Marie Antoinette she must leave everything she knows behind to make room for her new French identity, including abandoning her adorbs dog Mops. No, not her dog! That scene seriously broke my heart reducing me to tears. Marie Antoinette is upset yet she swallows her pain and obeys. She enters a tent placed on the two countries’ borders, entering on Austrian soil and exiting on French land. In the tent, she must strip off all of her clothes in order to don her new French garb – a symbol of her having to strip away her identity.
Once Marie Antoinette marries Louis XVI, we see Versailles’ ridiculous and over the top traditions again and again. Every morning, an entourage of servants and royalty awakens Marie Antoinette, dressing her in garments with outlandish pomp and ceremony.
As she navigates royal society’s mores, we witness Marie Antoinette’s close friendships with the free spirited Duchesse de Polignac (Rose Byrne) and the reserved Princesse de Lamballe (Mary Nighy). When she is told she should choose more appropriate friends, particularly ditching Duchesse de Polignac, Marie Antoinette defends her friend saying she enjoys her fun spirit. Yes, there are moments when Marie Antoinette indulges in vapid, decadent luxuries. But people forget she’s a teenager. Um, that’s what they do! To take her mind off the constant societal pressure, she distracts herself by gambling, singing in plays and shopping. She’s so confined by societal expectations; she’s exploring her identity and experimenting as much as she can.
Marie Antoinette’s mother, the Austrian duchess Maria Theresa warns her, “All eyes will be on you.” After their wedding night, it’s clear that Louis XVI has no sexual interest in his bride. Through her constant letters, Maria Theresa perpetually reminds her daughter that “nothing is certain” about her place until she gives birth to a son. Even after Louis XVI is crowned king and Marie Antoinette becomes queen, her place is still not entirely secure until she has a son. After her sister-in-law gives birth to a son, Marie-Antoinette feels even more pressure to have a child. Her mother condemns her for not being charming enough or patient enough to entice her husband. As Marie Antoinette reads her mother’s letter, the stinging words wound her, we see and feel her solitary pain.
Women were reduced to their vaginas, only valued if they got pregnant so they could produce an heir. No one bothers Louis XVI about this, even though he’s the one who doesn’t want to have sex. Nope, just the woman; of course she’s to blame. Eventually after 7 years with no children, Marie Antoinette’s brother, the Holy Roman Emperor, talks to him. But Marie Antoinette is repeatedly blamed for not becoming pregnant. Clearly her body and reproduction are her only salient attributes in the eyes of society. 
Throughout the film, we’re reminded that women aren’t desirable, lesser than men. When her first child a daughter is born, Marie Antoinette says to her:
“Oh, you were not what was desired, but that makes you no less dear to me. A boy would have been the Son of France, but you, Marie Thérèse, shall be mine.”
In a world where nothing, not even her own body truly belongs to her, it’s touching to see Marie Antoinette, a devoted mother, take such joy in her relationship with her daughter.
Throughout history, people erroneously vilified Marie Antoinette, attributing her with more political influence than she actually possessed. And of course she was demonized after she supposedly told starving peasants, “Let them eat cake.” As civil unrest grows inching ever closer to revolution, the film’s Marie Antoinette says she would never say such a thing. Because of her Austrian heritage and I would also argue her gender, Marie Antoinette was repeatedly used as a scapegoat for France’s financial woes and the public’s strife.
The film divided audiences. At the Cannes Film Festival, critics notoriously booed yet it also received a standing ovation. Some critics dismissed it, saying it was nothing more than a pop video or that “all we learn about Marie Antoinette is her love for Laduree macaroons and Manolo Blahnik shoes.” Sofia Coppola, who consciously chose to omit politics from the film, fully acknowledged Marie Antoinette was not a typical historical biopic:

“It is not a lesson of history, it’s an interpretation carried by my desire for covering the subject differently. 
Would people still complain and moan if a dude was at the center of the film or a dude had directed this?? Nope, I think not. Does anyone else remember that Mozart acts like an immature douchebag in the critically acclaimed Amadeus??
But some delved deeper, understanding its rare beauty. Critic Roger Ebert praised Marie Antoinette astutely pointing out:

“This is Sofia Coppola’s third film centering on the loneliness of being female and surrounded by a world that knows how to use you but not how to value and understand you.”
Told almost entirely from the Queen’s perspective, we see the world through Marie Antoinette’s eyes. Her loneliness and the pressure she faces to be everything to everyone is palpable. 
With its commentaries on gender, women’s agency, reproduction and female friendships, Marie Antoinette is surprisingly deeper and more feminist than many realize. Sofia Coppola created a lush and sumptuous indulgence for the eyes. More importantly, by humanizing the doomed queen and adding modern touches, Coppola reminds us of the gender constraints women throughout history and today continually endure.

Biopic and Documentary Week: Poster Girl

This piece on Poster Girl, by Stephanie Rogers and Amber Leab, first appeared at Bitch Flicks on February 17, 2011, as part of their coverage of the Athena Film Festival.

Poster Girl (2010)
Poster Girl was, without a doubt, my favorite film at the Athena Film Festival. It’s no surprise that the film is nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary – Short Subject, even though this was a first effort at filmmaking from director Sara Nesson. 
[…]
Nesson also juxtaposes photos of Robynn prior to her Army experience–where she’s in a cheerleading uniform, smiling and having fun with friends–with the post-Army Robynn, a tattooed, pierced, PTSD victim who stares at the former photos as if they couldn’t possibly be her. And they aren’t anymore. The new Robynn is an activist who speaks out against war and gun violence, even while dealing with debilitating panic attacks.

Biopic and Documentary Week: Monster

Monster (2003)
This is a guest post from Charlie Shipley.

“Well, I’ve walked these streets / A virtual stage it seemed to me / Makeup on their faces / Actors took their places next to me”
-Natalie Merchant, “Carnival”

We know the mass-culturally-sanctioned narrative about Patty Jenkins’ directorial debut, Monster: Charlize Theron got “ugly” and delivered a tour de force turn as serial killer Aileen Wuornos that was hailed by Roger Ebert in an effective, rare use of Travers-esque hyperbole as “one of the greatest performances in the history of the cinema.” That quote made it to countless one-sheets and adorns the DVD cover of the film, and perhaps rightly so; Theron’s performance (or “embodiment,” as Ebert puts it) so overwhelms the mise-en-scène and soundscape of the film that Christina Ricci’s stern gaze on the DVD packaging seems little more than a futile attempt to market the film visually as a buddy film gone terribly wrong. Thelma & Louise, this is not.
As is so often the case with art films that reach a wide audience, these cultural metanarratives surrounding the film as a consumer object threaten to overwhelm our consideration of the film itself. For that reason, I’m less concerned with the well-documented “bravery” of Theron’s transformation than I am with the question of whether this film does justice to Wuornos, or if that’s even possible.
It’s not difficult to argue against that possibility. Anytime there are agents in positions of relative privilege attempting to dramatize the life of a person at society’s margins, it’s so easy to colonize and reimagine those lives without regard to their complexity. Even with that enormous caveat, though, Jenkins does a remarkable job here of letting Wuornos the character speak for herself using canny structural and sonic devices to centralize her experiences; we can interpret her opening voiceover – “I always wanted to be in the movies” – as both a wish we know will be fulfilled and a bitterly ironic reminder of the aphorism “be careful what you wish for.” This and other voiceovers serve as a latticework within Monster, lending structure and even beauty to the narrative while allowing us to get a glimpse of Wuornos’s inner life.
This distinction between voiceover monologues and spoken dialogue is crucially important because Wuornos speaks in a desultory, often self-contradictory way that conceals a labyrinthine underlying psychology driven by the opportunism of someone in a literal and emotional fugitive state. In a powerful scene late in the film when Selby (Ricci) finds out the extent of Wuornos’s crimes and tries to plead ignorance, Wuornos makes the seemingly contradictory claims within the span of a few minutes that “you don’t know my life” and “you know me.” The first quote is Wuornos’s attempt to claim that her killings were justified, the second an appeal to Selby to trust her. In this dramatic context and in the context of the biopic genre generally, this distinction (knowing the events of a life vs. knowing a person’s “essential self”) is a subtle but important one. In the world of this film, when spoken dialogue resists clear meanings as in this scene, voiceover serves not to explain away the ambiguity but provide the emotional context for it. 
Charlize Theron and Patty Jenkins both gave interviews implicitly confirming that both of these modes of narrative – factual reportage and emotionally honest characterization – were of paramount importance in telling this story about Wuornos. In a way, the titular epithet, “monster,” bridges this gap by taking a label that many undoubtedly applied to Wuornos and giving her the agency within the film to choose the identification for herself in the voiceover at the Fun World carnival. 
Just as voiceover provides a fantastical cinematic refuge for Wuornos to articulate her feelings and meanings without worrying about the judgment of others, so too does pop music provide a visual and temporal escape hatch into the realm of fantasy. There is an instrumental score for the film that is used in a somewhat traditional way to heighten dramatic, dialogue-driven scenes, but these music cues are used more often in the latter part of the film. By contrast, the film’s opening and the first meetings between Aileen and Selby are characterized by a deep sense of naïve wonder, culminating in their first kiss at a roller skating rink set to Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing.”
Selby (Ricci) and Wuornos (Theron) at the roller rink
This scene subverts the traditional biopic form by supplementing documented events in Wuornos’s life with a scene that would just as easily fit into a more traditionally feminine-identified genre, romance. It’s placed in the narrative before Wuornos has killed anyone, so the dream of class mobility and migration away from small-town life is especially bittersweet in light of what the viewer knows is to come. This is a theme of Aileen’s pledges to Selby throughout the movie; the promises-turned-fantasies of a better life “far, far away” echo the escapism promised by “a midnight train going anywhere.” There are elements that stretch the bounds of plausible reality as well. To give one example, women participating in a couples’ dance in 1980s Florida and openly kissing in an iconically “family-oriented” space such as a skating rink would presumably not be met with the same level of indifference as it is here. Furthermore, while the songs before “Don’t Stop Believing” are 100% diegetic – that is, coming from within the world of the film – “Don’t Stop Believing” begins as a song being played in the skating rink but continues as the film cuts to Selby and Aileen passionately kissing against the outer wall of the building. Just like Wuornos’s voiceovers provide relief from the naturalistic tension of the more narratively straightforward scenes, the pop music that plays here widens the bounds of what is possible. 
These liberties – voiceover and pop music – are often derided as lazy narrative fillers by film critics and screenplay-writing guides alike, but in the case of Monster, they give Wuornos’s character a space within the otherwise relentless film to express herself clearly and put words to her desires. 
A powerful intertext to Monster is the song “Carnival” by Natalie Merchant, which is used to great effect in the documentary Aileen: Portrait Of a Serial Killer and which Wuornos requested to be played at her funeral. (It also, if only by association, brought to my mind Bakhtin’s concept of the “carnivalesque,” which one can find in Monster’s elements of interclass contact and vernacular speech but not in its tone.) Merchant’s lines “Makeup on their faces / actors took their places next to me” eerily and concisely summarize the dilemma we face when asking whether a film like Monster can do justice to its subject. I think it can, and I think it does, for while Charlize Theron has indeed “taken her place” next to Aileen Wuornos in the collective consciousness, her commitment along with that of Patty Jenkins to giving center stage to Wuornos and channeling a conscientiously rendered version of her truth leaves us with a complex characterization – deeply flawed, and deeply human.

Charlie Shipley has a B.A. in English with a minor in Women’s and Gender Studies from the College of Charleston. He blogs about mental health, fat acceptance, feminism, and all the things at A Mind Unquiet. 

Biopic and Documentary Week: What’s Love Got To Do With It?

Angela Bassett as Tina Turner in What’s Love Got To Do With It?
This is a guest post from Candice Frederick.
Angela Bassett is one of those actresses who could breathe life into any role, no matter how flimsy—from her role as the matriarch of the Jackson family in The Jacksons: An American Dream to playing the wife of a slain political leader in Malcolm X. One could attribute that talent to the power in her delivery, the depth she gives to every line, and the gut-wrenching emotion she brings to every character.
But it is her star-making turn as rock and roll superstar Tina Turner in 1993’s What’s Love Got To Do With It? that catapulted her to the A-list. Complete with the rock star wigs, superhero body and slightly timid but ever-so-deliberate snarl in her speech, Bassett embodied the icon during her slow and steady rise to fame, and her tumultuous marriage to late musician Ike Turner (Laurence Fishburne).
It was her piercing portrayal of Tina that also contributed to the evolution of women’s roles in cinema, and one which still arrests audiences almost twenty years later. Bassett turned what could have been a whimpering, damsel in distress character in the hands of a lesser actress into a strong, unflinching woman worthy of admiration and one so memorable that it became a model for nuanced female characters for years to come.
Ike (Fishburne) and Tina (Bassett)
Because of Bassett’s performance, a new crop of fans could appreciate how a woman could be seen as more than merely a survivor, but a hero to her generation. And we’re not only talking about the female generation, or the African-American generation.  We’re talking about a star whose undeniable talent and wicked charisma helped shaped the face of rock and roll, regardless of age, color, creed and gender. It wasn’t an easy feat to step into Tina’s studded stilettos, but Bassett was able to humanize the icon. She showed the world some of the lowest points in Tina’s life, and turned them into a promise, a promise to her fans that she was going to overcome all of it to remind us all of how great she is. It was an exceptional cinematic tribute to a woman who touched the lives of many, and showed that even though she might have been victimized by her abusive husband, Tina was never a victim. It’s a fine line to walk, but Bassett’s diligent performance effortlessly revealed a multidimensional woman who was still a role model for many. It was respectful, rather than downtrodden (and it really could have gone either way).
That’s not to say Tina didn’t become a punching bag for Ike in the movie. The fast-talking, egotistical producer and bandleader often battled with drugs, money woes and a failed solo career, so whenever he got really burned up about things, he’d take them out on Tina every chance he had. Struggling with his own demons and crushed dreams, he decided to take out his aggression on his wife, and attempt to dash her ambitions. But regardless of what Ike tried to do to Tina, we never saw her broken afterwards. She got right back into that recording studio and belted out some of the classic tunes we still listen to today. She got back up and perfected that firm “I’m okay” smile for her friends and family, and remained a rock for her children. Because, as Lena Horne once said, “it’s not the load that breaks you down; it’s the way you carry it.” She never let Ike or anyone else see her down; she got right back up.
Bassett and Fishburne
It also helped that she had an edge on Ike that he wasn’t willing to admit, one that made them look more like world class fighters in a ring, rather than one champion and one lightweight.  In many films, we often see the female as the victim, the weakling, the one who can’t defend herself, has no mind of her own and is led to believe she is nothing without her abuser. In other words, the abuser is always seen as the dominant figure in the relationship. But in What’s Love Got to Do With It?, we’re watching two very fierce characters, Tina and her husband Ike, fight a very similar fight against each other. Where Ike uses physical force and brutality to control Tina, Tina uses her unyielding emotional strength and supersized talent to ultimately eclipse Ike.
Bassett’s was not only one of the defining performances for women in cinema; it was also one that became a benchmark for actresses of color. Her riveting portrayal role was further punctuated by the remarkable writing. Many lead roles for women of color since then are often subordinate characters. And in many other instances, they’re the tough, ever wise figures, which don’t often allow them inhabit any other emotion. Even in the heavily lauded yet divisive drama, The Help, we saw the stories of two African-American characters glossed over and unrealized, lacking the measure of which they were worthy. Overall, too many roles written for African-American actresses have them simply orbiting around the larger story of the movie without actually being a part of it and making any real impact.
Nearly two decades later, Bassett’s performance still stands as one that turns all of that on its ear by actualizing all the those things a woman (of any color) can be—timid yet fierce, bold yet shy, loud yet subdued, happy yet sad—all at once. It’s a feast of emotions, and one which as a female viewer you crave to watch. We yearn to see it unfold and go through those same emotions along with Bassett in the movie, and she delivers. She takes a celebrated icon and gently peels away her tough outer layer to reveal a vulnerable inner core that so desperately screamed to be unchained. It is heartbreaking story, but one in which few tears are shed, but ultimately turns into a victory dance. You can’t help but to want to dance with her.

Candice Frederick is an NABJ award-winning print journalist, film critic, and blogger for Reel Talk.

Call for Writers: Biopics/Documentaries About Women

March is Women’s History Month. In honor of that, we’ve decided to feature reviews of biopics and documentaries about women. Many biopics about women tend to focus on their relationships and love lives exclusively, in a way that biopics about men usually don’t. So, we’d love to read reviews that praise these films, but feel free to write about biopics and documentaries that seriously fail the women being depicted. (Check out Gabriella Acipella’s analysis of the Margaret Thatcher and Marilyn Monroe films for an example of this.) There are currently TWO Linda Lovelace biopics in the works, yet we rarely see biopics or documentaries about women who changed lives (and cultures) … and there are plenty of women who did.

Here’s a very, very brief list of biopics–many of which are terrible, ha, and include lots of singers and entertainers–to think about, but please propose your own ideas for film reviews–including reviews of documentaries about women, too.

Helen Mirren as Queen Elizabeth II in The Queen

Meryl Streep as Julia Child in Julie & Julia

Angela Bassett as Tina Turner in What’s Love Got to Do With It?

Julia Roberts as Erin Brockovich in Erin Brockovich

Marion Cotillard as Edith Piaf in La Vie En Rose

Reese Witherspoon as June Carter Cash in Walk the Line

Diana Ross as Billie Holiday in Lady Sings the Blues

Angelina Jolie as Gia Carangi in Gia

Faye Dunaway as Bonnie Parker in Bonnie and Clyde

Jennifer Lopez as Selena in Selena

Sissy Spacek as Loretta Lynn in Coal Miner’s Daughter

Charlize Theron as Aileen Wuornos in Monster

Halle Berry as Dorothy Dandridge in Introducing Dorothy Dandridge

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Here are a few basic guidelines for guest writers on our site:

–We like most of our pieces to be 1,000 – 2,000 words, preferably with some images and links.
–Please send your piece in the text of an email, including links to all images, no later than Friday, March 23rd.
–Include a 2-3 sentence bio for placement at the end of your piece.

Email us at btchflcks(at)gmail(dot)com if you’d like to contribute a review. We accept original pieces or cross-posts.