These three “bad moms” fashion themselves the Moirai, the Fates, the three women in control of everything on earth. … These films were just the start of audiences’ obsession with controlling mothers. We continue to see these tropes replayed in a multitude of ways.
Mothers who abuse their children, abandon them, or neglect them are easy to spot and label as “bad mothers.” Then there are the subtler forms of “bad mothering.” For these types it all comes down to control; control through religion, respectability, or ambition. It is in these three arenas that the Mommie Dearests of the world push their daughters to the breaking point. These three “bad moms” fashion themselves the Moirai, the Fates, the three women in control of everything on earth. These types of manipulation in the extreme are the things of nightmares, or of the big screen.
The insidious part is that it is meant to seem like this behavior stems from a slight corruption of maternal love, of wanting the best for your child. In the case of Carrie (1976), Margaret White (Piper Laurie) wants better for her daughter than she had for herself. Throughout the course of the film it’s revealed that Carrie was conceived after her mother was raped by her own husband, and now Margaret wishes constantly to cleanse Carrie of this sin through cruel and overbearing religion. After Carrie is tormented by her fellow students for finally getting her period, and having no idea what it is, her mother locks her away for prayer and reflection.
Carrie 1976
Of course, it being a horror movie based on a Stephen King novel, the outcome is not so simple as a terrifying “religious cleansing.” When Carrie and Margaret finally have a heart-to-heart it’s the biproduct of the telekinetic teenager having just murdered a good percentage of her high school. Margaret cannot suffer to let this witch live, and attempts to end her daughter’s life, a final act of ultimate control, and ends up on the wrong end of Carrie’s new found powers.
Movies have been curious about this maternal tension since the get-go. While Carrie may have had the super skills, all three of these mothers have very realistic power over their offspring. In Now, Voyager (1942), Bette Davis plays rich, mousey Charlotte Vale, a woman whose life is entirely dictated by her mother (Gladys Cooper). Mrs. Vale does not push Charlotte into closets, or chant biblical passages at her. In fact, this matriarch barely moves throughout the film. Instead, Charlotte’s life is controlled through her mother’s emotional manipulation. Like Carrie, Charlotte was an unwanted child and Mrs. Vale makes sure she knows it. She tells Charlotte what to wear, how to talk, whom to associate with, all in the name of ladylike propriety.
Now Voyager
Through therapy and travel Davis’s character finds her own voice (and was a babe-in-disguise, perhaps one of the earliest films in that trope as well). When the two women meet again they’re at a stalemate. What is a controlling mother without a child to control? Mrs. Vale’s demise is more similar to Margaret White’s than one might expect from a “weepie” film, finally leaving Charlotte to be her own woman.
Hollywood would like us to believe that this kind of parent is just one bad turn away in everyday life. And maybe that’s true: Mommie Dearest is based on the memoirs of Joan Crawford’s (Bette Davis’s biggest rival) daughter. It’s the tale of Joan Crawford (Faye Dunaway) tormenting her adopted daughter Christina in bizarre, abusive ways. Again an unwanted child, but this time not by her mother. Though Joan chose Christina, it becomes clear that it was all an act, like much of Crawford’s life in this film.
Mommie Dearest
Eventually Christina makes it onto the big screen herself, perhaps due to years of her mother’s ambition being shoved down her throat. But when she’s too ill to make it to set, Joan, a much older woman, takes the role from her. Joan doesn’t join Margaret White and Mrs. Vale in the Killed-By-Our-Daughters afterlife, but Christina did wait until after the death of her mother to publish these memoirs and, hopefully, find some resolution.
Mommie Dearest
These films were just the start of audiences’ obsession with controlling mothers. We continue to see these tropes replayed in a multitude of ways. Carrie (1976) was recently remade for the second time, Carrie (2014). Though this time it offered a slightly more sympathetic view of both mother and daughter. Audiences may not have loved it as much as the first attempt, but it was still the Halloween pick for many movie-goers.
Black Swan
Mommie Dearest’s fame-driven mother finds a spiritual successor in Natalie Portman’s mother in Black Swan (2010). Portman is driven to the brink of insanity by her own ambition, but couple that with her mother’s drive and it’s just too much for the young ballerina. You can also watch moms incredibly similar to Crawford and her drive for success in any of the many seasons of Dance Moms available on Lifetime. Or watch the beginning of “no more wire hanger” relationships in Little Miss Perfect, and, my personal favorite, Toddlers & Tiaras. Audiences seem to love to hate the controlling pageant mom.
Mothers are important, they guide children through life in a multitude of ways, but some children get stuck with the women who never wanted them. Perhaps these mothers, raped, or widowed, or abandoned, see too much of themselves in their daughters and push too hard. Perhaps the real life version of these mothers deserve more of our sympathy than to be turned into monsters of the big screen in a multitude of ways. But these three mean moms? Maybe they got the ends they deserved.
“You’ve got a lot to learn, Myrtle Mae, and I hope you never learn it.” These words, from 1950’s ‘Harvey,’ apply equally to sex and sanity. Harvey’s young women, Myrtle Mae and Nurse Kelly, are open and assertive about their sexual desires and frustrations. It is the older woman, Veta, who is inhibited. She flinches when a bosom jiggles and squirms when discussing sex. Society’s usual concept of sexual inhibition, as a natural innocence corrupted by experience, is flipped in Harvey: female sexuality is the natural innocence that experience disciplines into inhibition. Myrtle Mae and Nurse Kelly have a lot to learn, and we hope they never learn it.
“You’ve got a lot to learn, Myrtle Mae, and I hope you never learn it.” These words, from 1950’s Harvey, apply equally to sex and sanity. Harvey’s young women, Myrtle Mae and Nurse Kelly, are open and assertive about their sexual desires and frustrations. It is the older woman, Veta, who is inhibited. She flinches when a bosom jiggles and squirms when discussing sex. Society’s usual concept of sexual inhibition, as a natural innocence corrupted by experience, is flipped in Harvey: female sexuality is the natural innocence that experience disciplines into inhibition. Myrtle Mae and Nurse Kelly have a lot to learn, and we hope they never learn it.
As for sanity, Veta shares her brother’s ability to see Harvey, and hopes Myrtle Mae never learns the cost of socially unacceptable visions. Harvey‘s author, Mary Chase, won a Pulitzer for her dissection of the social stigma of insanity, but another aspect is less discussed: Harvey‘s insightful exploration of the gendering of madness. James Stewart’s Elwood P. Dowd accepts his rabbit visions without foreboding; Veta is haunted by the threat of losing social protection. Elwood is comfortable being stripped and bathed; for Veta, it is traumatic violation. Elwood’s accounts of Harvey receive sympathy from Doctors Sanderson and Chumley; Sanderson pathologizes Veta’s accounts as neurosis and cunning. In the midst of madness, we are in gender. Elwood P. Dowd has a lot to learn, and we hope he never learns it.
There is a contrast between the empowerment of psychotic males, in films like Fight Club and A Beautiful Mind, and the paternalist portrayal of psychotic females, in films like Benny & Joon and Barefoot. Insanity is open season for society’s most troubling ideas about controlling the female body. Bitch Flicks recently compared Black Swan and Birdman, highlighting their gendering of psychosis. The psychosis of Michael Keaton’s Riggan (Birdman) is existential, and ends with magic realist emancipation. The psychosis of Natalie Portman’s Nina (Black Swan) is psychosexual, and ends with masochistic self-destruction. If you want complex, autonomous psychotic heroines, you must look to life and not fiction: to Joan of Arc, Camille Claudel or Sylvia Plath.
Also, Dude, “manic pixie dream girl” is not the preferred nomenclature
Full disclosure: several years ago, I was institutionalized for a psychotic breakdown. Psychosis is a state of waking dream. Most mystical traditions contain techniques for inducing it: sensory deprivation, sleep deprivation and fasting; hyperstimulation such as frenzied dance; the ingestion of magic mushrooms, peyote or ayahuasca. When these drugs, or synthetic chemicals like LSD, are ingested for secular purposes, that recreational psychosis is called “tripping.” When psychosis is induced by the hyperstimulation of bipolar mania, or by schizophrenia, it’s called mental illness. Like other disinhibited states such as drunkenness, psychosis can lead to violence, but murderous rage is not a direct symptom. Using “psycho” for both psychotic and psychopathic conditions adds to the confusion – see this Bitch Flicks article, which presents evidence that Gone Girl‘s Amy is not psychotic to argue that she’s not psychopathic. Incidentally, the empathy deficiency that defines sociopaths (psychopaths) doesn’t necessarily cause sadism. Benedict Cumberbatch’s “high-functioning sociopath” Sherlock represents a real phenomenon: sociopathic emotional detachment suits high-risk, life-saving professions like surgery or criminal profiling. Who acknowledges the hardworking psychopaths that save lives daily? Homicidal maniacs are too dramatic; we’ve hardly seen a decent, pacifist maniac since Elwood P. Dowd.
The following Golden Gogol Awards are exclusively for cinematic representations of psychosis. So, no depressives from Girl, Interrupted or Prozac Nation, no sociopaths from Gone Girl. Films about insanity tend to be scrutinized for accuracy. Yet, what other issue does cinema represent accurately? Cinema does not represent. Cinema expresses, in the most visually dramatic way possible. Therefore, I’ll be awarding Golden Gogols, not according to technical accuracy, but according to the truth of a film’s overall message about mental illness. Actors like Josephine Hull, Isabelle Adjani, Russell Crowe and Natalie Portman have all scored Oscar nods for psychotic characters, but how will their films fare in the Golden Gogols?
First Principle: Audience Should Share the Psychotic Perspective
Golden Gogol for Disorienting: Black Swan
Nikolai Gogol’s Diary of a Madman is the original first-person narrative of psychotic breakdown. In the midst of hero Poprishchin’s confused ramblings, he reports finding a lapdog’s letters. The letters are clear, rational and fit the audience’s interpretation of the situation; readers can only be assured of their mental superiority by assuming that the madman is incapable of imagining these letters. The reader’s assumed mental superiority over madmen is thus made conditional on their believing that lapdogs can write (Gogol, how I love you).
One criticism of Ron Howard’s A Beautiful Mind was that it inaccurately portrayed Nash’s delusions. Nash heard voices, he didn’t see imaginary people. I don’t have a problem with this, though, because embodying Nash’s delusions serves a definite purpose: it allows the audience to share his perspective and his shock when the insanity is revealed. However, I think Fight Club is the film A Beautiful Mind wishes it was, seducing audiences into the hero’s paranoid empowerment fantasy without resorting to cheap sentiment.
So, how do narratives of female psychosis compare? Sylvia Plath’s novel, The Bell Jar, is an uncomfortably powerful, first-person portrait of psychotic breakdown. Bruno Nuytten’s film, Camille Claudel, by contrast, shows the inadequacy of realist cinema when portraying psychotic heroines. His film is beautiful, but fetishizes Isabelle Adjani’s fragility, presenting Claudel’s psychosis as pitiful spectacle and test of Rodin’s loyalty, rather than as psychological challenge for Camille herself. The approach of Julie Taymor’s Frida would have served better; Taymor’s visual blending of Frida’s art and life could have been used to center Claudel’s perspective, with its psychotic blending of imagination and reality. Black Swan wins the category as a great example of a film that shares the psychotic artist’s disorienting perspective.
Of course, one great psychotic heroine is Buffy Summers. In season six’s “Normal Again,” Buffy wakes on a psychiatric ward, where a psychiatrist explains all six seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer as manifestations of her psychotic empowerment fantasy. Meanwhile, in the Buffyverse, Buffy’s friends attempt to cure her of the hallucination of the psychiatric ward. The brilliance of this device is that the audience must confront their own desire for Buffy to reject reality, and return to the empowerment of the Buffyverse. We deeply want our heroine to be the Chosen One, not a pathetic, traumatized mental patient struggling with stigma. If you’ve ever wondered why a person with obvious mental problems was frustratingly resistant to interventions and cures, now you know: the same reason why we never acknowledge Buffy as psychotic heroine. This is why it is vital for the audience to share the psychotic perspective: Buffy’s resistance to recovery is incomprehensible from any perspective outside the Buffyverse, but totally sympathetic and rational to viewers who are emotionally invested in her female empowerment fantasy.
Second Principle: Protagonist Should Be Responsible For Recovery
Golden Gogol for Autonomy: Privileged, Misunderstood Genius Dude. Duh.
You cannot cure dissociative identity disorder by shooting yourself in the face. Kids, don’t try this at home. But the hero’s painful wounding while destroying Tyler Durden, like Buffy’s painful attempt to destroy her Buffyverse friends, gives vividly cinematic expression to the annihilation of self that is demanded when submitting to treatment. I love Fight Club‘s portrait of mental illness because the film never questions that Tyler is the hero’s own problem to confront and resolve. Similarly, it allows Marla Singer to be openly damaged while being wickedly witty, insightful and capable of asserting romantic boundaries. Tell me that’s not refreshing.
Buffy’s decision to return to the Buffyverse is also shown to be her own responsibility. It is a challenging cop-out: challenging, because it forces us to admit that we don’t want her cured, but a cop-out, because accepting her disempowerment and confronting harsh reality would surely be the heroic path. Elwood’s conscious decision to choose Harvey and alcoholism is equally challenging; it asks that we judge sanity by quality of life rather than by social evaluations.
Camille Claudel died in an asylum, but she wrote letters there, that wrestled the mental pressure of being institutionalized. If the film Camille Claudel had ended with this protesting voice, rather than the image of Claudel being carted away as pitiful spectacle, that would have asserted autonomy as effectively as any happy ending. I haven’t yet seen Camille Claudel 1915, but it sounds like a useful companion-piece redressing that balance. Screen representations of psychosis have never bettered 1928’s The Passion of Joan of Arc, featuring legendary psychotic artist Antonin Artaud. Brilliantly contrasting the stigmatizing of psychotic religious revelation with the acceptability of religious groupthink, the film portrays Joan’s psychosis with uncomfortable clarity (Maria Falconetti is perfection), while still making you root for her autonomy. It is also sensitive to gender: Joan is judged monstrous by a court of leering men, while crowds of women weep at her martyrdom as though female power itself is burning.
Though addiction is commonly acknowledged as an illness, I’ve never heard it called mental illness. Yet, addiction is a pattern of thought that has become compulsive. Recovery requires the addict to accept their condition as dysfunctional, submit to treatment, attend support groups, identify emotional triggers and adjust daily routines. That is true of most other mental illness. The reason we don’t tell addicts they’re mentally ill is because “mental illness” is a dehumanizing stigma, not an empowering diagnosis. A Beautiful Mind wins this category because it applies addiction’s recovery narrative to psychosis, while Russell Crowe’s raw performance rings true. Harvey gets special mention for paralleling Elwood’s addiction and his psychosis. But from a psychotic perspective, Black Swan is like an addiction narrative ending with the protagonist drowning in their own vomit. Not impossible, but a stone-cold bummer.
Third Principle: Social Stigma Should Be Realistic
Golden Gogol for Uncomfortable Paternalism: Camille Claudel
I’ve been criticizing Nuytten’s Camille Claudel, but it actually wins this category, along with The Passion of Joan of Arc, as the strongest examinations of society’s stigmatizing of female psychosis and its feminist connection to stigmatized female unruliness. Diary of a Madman is the brilliant male equivalent, challenging our instinctive mockery by the horror of the hero’s institutionalization. Psychosis is frequently flamboyant; it tests social tolerance. Our theoretical sympathy can’t withstand the actual outbursts of Amanda Bynes. For insight into this stigma’s impact on recovery, ask Sinéad O’Connor.
A Beautiful Mind, though, bends backwards to avoid challenging the audience’s comfort. Nash’s anti-Semitic outbursts are erased, making Super Crip easier to admire. Nash’s wife is easier to admire after erasing their 1963 divorce. The Nobel foundation is more admirable without their decision to prevent Nash’s acceptance speech. Nash’s colleagues admirably welcome him back. A Beautiful Mind is calculated, feel-good fellation of society’s savior complex. Gag.
By contrast, Harvey cunningly uses a non-threatening portrait of psychosis itself, to expose the irrational foundations of social stigma. Fight Club explores the attraction of Durden’s delusional conviction; society’s urge to fetishize Tyler as “Super Criptator” is a clear obstacle to his recovery. The mixture of visceral horror and pitying love on the faces of Buffy’s parents in “Normal Again” is equally spot-on. So far, Buffy ticks all boxes.
Final Principle: Heroine’s Psychosis Should Be Recognized
Golden Gogol: Best Psychotic Heroine (the Plathy)
Here’s where Buffy fails: critics, fans and feminists alike are uncomfortable acknowledging Buffy’s psychosis. If not Buffy, then who is womankind’s witty, psychotic Tyler Durden (Golden Gogol: Best Psychotic Hero)? Is it really more inspiringly feminist to wrestle vampires than to wrestle psychological challenges? I’m with Veta (Golden Gogol: Best Supporting Psychotic). Feminists have a lot to learn, and I hope they never learn it.
‘Birdman’ bears striking similarities to ‘Black Swan,’ both in the broad strokes—each follow their protagonist’s slipping grip on sanity in the days before a high pressure stage debut—and in a strange number of superficial details—hallucinations of menacing black winged creatures, “surprise” lesbian scenes, and ambiguous suicides at least partially showcased on stage.
This review contains spoilers for both Birdman and Black Swan.
Michael Keaton in Birdman
Alejandro González Iñárritu’s new film Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) bears striking similarities to Darren Aronofsky’s 2010 film Black Swan, both in the broad strokes—each follow their protagonist’s slipping grip on sanity in the days before a high pressure stage debut—and in a strange number of superficial details—hallucinations of menacing black winged creatures, “surprise” lesbian scenes, and ambiguous suicides at least partially showcased on stage. Of course, these two films differ in many ways, most significantly in tone (Birdman is a black comedy, Black Swan is a chilling psychodrama if not an outright horror movie). It is in these departures that we see the significance of gender in stories about identity, art, and mental illness.
1. Phase of life
Riggan in front of his dressing room mirror in Birdman
Birdman‘s Riggan Thomson is a fading movie star, years after playing the title character in a series of superhero blockbusters (casting Michael Keaton in the role deepens the character tenfold). The play at the center of the film is his own adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, which he is also directing and starring in. This vanity project is Riggan’s hope to change his legacy, to transform from the kind of has-been actor who gets attention from tourists to the kind of eternally relevant artist who gets respect from theatre critics.
Nina in front of a mirror in Black Swan
Where Riggan is in the twilight of his career, Black Swan shows Nina Sayers is at the dawn of hers, as she ascends from the corps to play the Swan Queen in Swan Lake. Nina’s transformation over the course of the film is partially a metaphor for her belated sexual awakening and maturation from girl to woman. This becoming is the crucial moment in Nina’s life; she will never face Riggan’s struggle to stay relevant. As we see from the prima ballerina Nina replaces, Winona Ryder’s Beth Turner, there is no option to age gracefully. This is why, even as Nina apparently dies at the end of the film, it is “perfect.”
2. Perfection vs. Superpowers
Riggan’s first appears in Birdman, impossibly levitating
It is the pressure to be perfect that pulls Nina apart in Black Swan. Not only the physical rigors and intense competition of professional ballet, but the paradoxical obligations of womanhood as represented through her dual role as the Swan Queen and Black Swan. But Riggan doesn’t want to be perfect, he wants to be exceptional. His delusions of his superhuman abilities are his way of reassuring himself that his existence is noteworthy, that he matters, that he deserves to be remembered.
Nina finds herself sprouting feathers
Nina hallucinates body horrors and birdlike transformations reminding her of the separation between her human self and the perfection required for her role. Riggan has easily incorporated superhuman abilities into his sense of self. As a man, he is entitled to do so. Nina’s are horrific transformations as she loses her sense of self.
3. Rivals
Mila Kunis as Lily in Black Swan
Although early marketing for Black Swan played up the “rivalry” between Nina and Mila Kunis’s Lily, Lily is not so important to the plot as she is a character foil for Nina. Lily represents the raw sexuality and effortless grace that Nina’s drive for perfection precludes her from acheiving. Lily is the Natural Beauty, the girl who can eat hamburgers and stay ballerina slim, party all night and still be perky and gorgeous in the morning, who you’ll never see touching up her lipstick but she’ll always have a perfect glossy pout. No matter how hard Nina works, she’ll never best Lily, because she’s less than her just by having to work for it at all.
Edward Norton as the difficult Method actor Mike Shiner in Birdman
In Birdman, Riggan’s “rival” is a hotshot actor named Mike Shiner (Edward Norton), even though he is known to be difficult to work with. Mike, a rigorous method actor, is the opposite of Lily: his talent comes from his dedication to his craft. And it is Mike’s well-honed skills that make him threatening to Riggan, who landed his career through charisma, good looks, and luck. That’s not the fame Riggan wants. It is the fame of a woman, and he knows he cannot carry it into old age and beyond (see Beth Turner). As a man, Riggan is not only allowed to “work for” his success, he even more respectable for doing so.
Just before opening night, Riggan faces off with theatre critic Tabitha Dickinson (Lindsay Duncan), who resents a movie star for taking up Broadway stage space that could go to a real artist. Riggan throws back the usual barbs against critics labeling art without making it: “None of it costs you anything. You risk nothing.” Putting on the airs of the hardworking artist he knows he is not, Riggan sounds just like someone denying their male privilege played any role in their success. Because achieved greatness is the highest virtue for a man.
4. Conclusions (the films’, and mine)
Both Birdman and Black Swan end ambiguously, with their protagonists appearing to die by suicide. In Black Swan, we see Nina’s apparent murder of Lily was not real, and that Nina rather stabbed herself. At that point in the film we’re neck deep in duality symbolism and pretty much all accept Nina attacking herself with a shard of mirror glass is a metaphor for killing the innocent side of herself, especially because girlfriend is one heck of a dancer for a stab victim. But in the final moments first Lily, then director Thomas and the other dancers also see the wound and the audience is left thinking Nina’s suicide must have been real. Because, as I mentioned before, dying after a brilliant debut performance is actually perfect for Nina, because she has nowhere higher to go from there.
Nina’s apparent suicide in Black Swan
In Birdman, Riggan first attempts suicide by replacing a prop gun with a loaded pistol on stage. Apparently, he only shoots off his nose (earning him a superhero’s face mask of bandages). Then, after hearing Tabitha gave him a glowing review and finding personal resolution with his estranged ex-wife, his best friend, and his troubled daughter, he leaps from his hospital room window. When his daughter Sam (Emma Stone) returns to his empty hospital room with an open window, we see her horrified realization that her father probably jumped. But when she looks down to the street level, she appears confused. Then she looks up, to the sky, and her face fills with wonderment. There’s ambiguous hope where Black Swan offers only ambiguous despair. Even in the darkest interpretation, that Riggan actually killed himself on stage and these final scenes aren’t real, we see that Riggan has successfully circumvented his fade to mediocrity. He “wins” in a way that Nina never could.
The more hopefully ambiguous final moment of Birdman
Looking at Birdman and Black Swan as two versions of the same story highlight the immense differences men and women face in life and in art, in expectation and in reality. It is in large part the significance of gender that makes these two movies that seem to have so much in common ultimately turn out to be quite different.
Robin Hitchcock is an American writer living in Cape Town who cannot fly nor grow feathers.
This is not an article that will chronicle empty mother characters. This is for all the badass mamas out there—the honest mother roles that women have nailed. Hopefully this will present a case for why we need a million more. Here’s to the female characters who have outlived the digital revolution and will continue to. Characters that live with us and remain faulted heroes. And here’s to the women who made them so electric.
Women have been speaking the hell up about gender in Hollywood this year and it’s been an awesome uprising to see. There has been an outpouring of voices across multiple demographics in media getting aggressive about the lack of opportunities available in all of its platforms.
What I find challenging, though, is the near constant focus on scarcity—the highlighting of women missing chances to shape film and media.
Rather than dive into the dark abyss of what feels a regression of women’s roles in the world, I decided to focus this article on what is working. On our successes. It’s much easier to model our creative designs and ourselves after things that we can see. So, if I had a beer right now, I’d pour it all out for my female homies who have trail blazed contemporary cinema. Here’s to the women who are “crushing it” in complex roles, who take every opportunity on screen to serve as their own victory of what can be done.
Last week I went to see this summer’s hot blockbuster Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. Now I will fully admit that this black and white, Italian Neorealism nerd fully enjoyed the ride. Much to my surprise, the film actually had me thinking of Shakespeare and Greek tragedy because— in terms of technicalities of story and character structure— they pulled some classic tricks out of the bag and that’s always cool with me. But during the movie there was one note that kept hitting the wrong key. Can someone, anyone, please explain why Keri Russell had only a one line backstory (that she lost her child as the Simian Flu spread) but then was never touched on again in the film? She was prescribed the role of mother, lone survivor, who clings to others and is a surprisingly talented nurse on a whim. But where in the film did she represent what a woman who has lost her child in a bleak new world might actually be like? There was a human being missing in her character.
(Also brief aside, ladies we’re not really going to survive the apocalypse based on the ratio presented in the film. Because, uterus.)
Keri Russell in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes after walking into ape territory
This article is not one that will chronicle those empty characters. This is for all the badass mamas out there—the honest mother roles that women have nailed. Hopefully this will present a case for why we need a million more. Here’s to the female characters who have outlived the digital revolution and will continue to. Characters that live with us and remain faulted heroes. And here’s to the women who made them so electric.
Boyhood is, by logline and poster art, a film about a boy. But I was not alone in walking out of the theater thinking, “Patricia Arquette, you are a baller.” She is undoubtedly the silent hero of the film. From the start, she’s energetic, imperfect, driven, smart (but not genius) and loves her kids even though she wants nothing more from them than to go the hell to bed. She was a single mom who worked hard, got tired, got things moving in her life, and kept on. We’ve seen the foundations of her role a thousand times. (I will hold my comments about any Tyler Perry rendering of real life.) As the film evolved, she made mistakes; her body changed; at times she was involved with her kids and at times she was distant. What to me makes this a successful female role is that if you were to remove the rest of the cast from her, she still has an identity. Motherhood is a part of what she does in the same way that being married or single is a part of what she does. But stripped of supporting cast, she remains a real person with ambitions that grow internally and thoughts that are driven by her own needs and wants.
You see, there was always a storyline that belonged privately to her. She was the master of her own life and the force behind her children’s. When they grew, she grew too. She was very much a mother character AND an individual. It’s roles like these that are needed time and time again in the process of redefining the women we want to see on screen. She is multidimensional and therefore, truthful. (And, yes, I realize the film spans a very real 12 years in the world but even so. ) Kudos to Arquette for rocking the mom jeans like a warrior for 12 years.
Mother and individual: Patricia Arquette in Boyhood
Definitely more overbearing but equally complex was Melissa Leo’s character in The Fighter. She was so nuanced. She got violent, volatile, and was packed with emotion. While she was unpleasant at many points in the story and her motivations were often outwardly selfish, she was honest. It was a straightforward portrayal of a mother not wanting to be outdone, even by her own children. She channels her own life through them and while this may not be a method condoned by any parenting books, she was very much alive and outspoken—faulted and capable of deep love. Again, if robbed of the other characters in the story, she was still a complete human being. There was nothing sexy added to her and yet her ferocious state of mind made her enigmatic and inescapable. (We need not bare tons of boob to get people to watch.) Her dynamic portrayal of a woman in a particular region and socioeconomic position, coupled with the hyper masculine surrounding pulls from her a wealth of complex emotions and decisions. And, let us not forget, unlikeable characters can still serve as outstanding representations of the depth of the female mind, soul, and existence. One of the elements ignored by women’s press this year is crowdpleasing. We want more opportunities. In every way. But I don’t care about crowd-pleasing characters. I go to the movies in search of truth. Give me that.
The pistol Melissa Leo in The Fighter
Taking it even farther into the realm of complex is Julianne Moore in her disturbingly on point performance as Amber Waves in Boogie Nights. Apart from the fact that the movie itself is genius, much of its success is brought out by the powerful performances of its all-star cast. Moore’s character is particularly wild to follow. She has the softness and natural nurturing quality of a mother who has always wanted to be a mother. She is a soothing source of support but this, in the world of Boogie Nights, of course becomes complicated and perverted by the fact that she is also sexually drawn to the very young Mark Wahlberg. Her attraction to him, their on camera sexploits, and her simultaneous motherly qualities make her immediately full of wonder, questions, and provocations.
Adding to that, she’s an exciting hot mess. The woman likes her cocaine as she proves when doing hearty lines with Heather Graham in the bedroom one fateful afternoon. While in this heightened state, if you will, her inner life comes bubbling out and she emotionally confesses about how much she misses her son. She may be all over the place and her nose miiiiight be white at the end of it but she’s given fair treatment by the filmmaker and audience alike. She is trapped by her history, moves in certain ways because of it and, like any fully formed human being, when in a vulnerable position (or totally f***ed up), her inner demons come out into the world. She misses motherhood and longs for her child. It’s a part of her wiring and yet she continues to live outside of it. A hot mess with a real history—it’s a beautiful, vital performance. She embodies multiple elements of a woman in the world in this time and place and she won’t let you look away from it.
Julianne Moore before the infamous coke binge in Boogie Nights
Compared to the Hollywood backup female roles we usually passively sit through, not one of these roles and not one of these women has created as a silent, flat, disturbingly calm character. That is an untruthful portrayal in this spectator’s opinion. They came out screaming. Their exuberance breathed into these will written roles the fiery heat of a person with a true life, true purpose and fluid identity. These are the kinds of roles that make more room for women to prove that we thrive in the complex—that we are complex and that we want truth on screen.
Examples of female roles that kick ass exist. Women who will not let their roles become secondary exist. It’s been done since the beginnings of film. Alice Guy Blache’ didn’t take any shit and that was at the turn of the 20th century. She directed, produced and wrote more than 700 films. She was doing it then, and women behind and in front of the camera have done it ever since. It’s our job now, in 2014, to recreate what we can accomplish based on our current industry model and find ways to make sure that truthful performances enter the marketplace. Hollywood films have always had plenty of fluff roles. But they’ve always had standouts. We are still in this position. We have model characters who broke ceilings once before in storytelling and will again. So…carry the torch and rock on.
In case you need further encouragement: Eva Khatchadourian in We Need to Talk About Kevin, Ofelia from Pan’s Labrynth, Kym from Rachel Getting Married, Nina Sayer from Black Swan. Marnie, Briony Tallis, Thelma Dickinson, Kate “Ma” Barker, Marge Gunderson, Bonnie Parker, Shoshanna Dreyfus, Nikita. Judy Barton/Madeleine Elster, Amelie, Evelyn Mulwray, Blanche Dubois, Betty Elms/Diane Selwyn, Coffy, Mia Wallace, Lisbeth Salander, Jackie Brown, The Bride, Hermione Granger, Clementine Kruczynski and Annie Hall.
Like Costner said in The Untouchables, “Let’s take the fight to them, gentlemen.” (ladies)
Mara Gasbarro Tasker is a filmmaker based in Los Angeles. She’s currently working as an Associate Producer at Vice Media and has co-created the Chattanooga Film Festival, launching later this spring. She holds a BFA in Film Production from the University of Colorado at Boulder. She is directing a grindhouse short in April and is still mourning the end of Breaking Bad.
Almost 20 years later, we need more of what My So-Called Life gave us a taste of. We need teenage girl protagonists to be sexual, not sexy. We need honest portrayals of what it is to be a teenager–not only for teenagers who need to see themselves in faithful mirrors, but also for adults who are still trying to figure themselves out.
The expectations for girls in film and television are incredibly mixed. It is naïve to say that girls nowadays are just expected to be a sexy sidekick or afterthought. With more strong female roles popping up in bigger budget films such as Harry Potter and The Hunger Games, there is the expectation that girls should also be intelligent and incredibly clever (while also being visually pleasing)… There isn’t really a place for the all-around average girl. The first two examples of strong female protagonists that I could think of are in fantasy franchises. Are real female characters really that difficult to come up with? Real female characters are often created with good intentions but tend not to work on a larger scale.
…Lisa takes a stand against the sexism spouting from the mouth of the new talking Malibu Stacy doll. Frustrated with the doll’s collection of sexist catchphrases that include “Let’s bake some cookies for the boys,” “Thinking too much gives you wrinkles,” and “My name’s Stacy, but you can call me *wolf whistle*,” Lisa collaborates with the creator of Malibu Stacy to create their own talking doll, Lisa Lionheart. When Malibu Stacy outsells Lisa Lionheart, our creator feels temporarily dejected, until she hears her own voice speaking behind her: “Trust in yourself and you can achieve anything.” She turns to see a girl her age hold a Lisa Lionheart doll in her hand and smile.
Delightful Tina. Shy, painfully weird, butt-obsessed, quietly dorky, intensely daydreamy Tina. Tina is a little bit like all of us (and–cough–a lot like some of us) at that most graceless, transitional, intrinsically unhappy stage of life that is early adolescence. She is also a wonderfully rich and well-developed character, both in her interactions with her family and in her own right, and she’s arguably the emotional core of the whole show.
It’s common wisdom that maintaining relationships requires constant work, but there’s often an assumption (in TV, movies, and real life) that this only applies to romantic relationships. Platonic relationships are rarely the focus of a story, and when a storyline deals with issues in these relationships, they’re often easily dealt with, and the friendship goes back to being simple. Exceptions to this are problems that are caused by romantic relationships. Veronica Mars is an exception to this; for its first two seasons, it depicts many platonic relationships, and explores the many issues involved in navigating them (some of these problems are related to romance, but many are not, showing platonic relationships have their own complexities, separate from romance).
My Sister’s Keeper is a story about growing up, identify, family, death, and life (how can we truly tell any story about life when death isn’t the costar?), but its uniqueness is that it is told primarily through two young girls.
So, these are the important things in Sixteen Candles: Samantha’s family forgets her birthday; she’s in love with a hot senior who’s dating Caroline (the most popular girl in school); and there’s a big ol’ geek (Farmer Ted) from Sam’s daily bus rides who won’t stop stalking her. Oh, and Long Duk Dong exists [insert racist gong sound here]. Seriously, every time Long Duk Dong appears on screen, a fucking GONG GOES OFF on the soundtrack. I suppose that lines up quite nicely with the scene where he falls out of a tree yelling, “BONSAI.”
Since the entire movie is like a machine gun firing of RACIST HOMOPHOBIC SEXIST ABLEIST RAPEY parts, the only way I know how to effectively talk about it is to look at the very problematic screenplay. So, fasten your seatbelts and heed your trigger warnings.
My main issue with the film is that it is speckled with meaningless platitudes and clichés about girl empowerment when the film simply isn’t empowering. The women in the film are portrayed as oversexualized, helpless, damaged goods. Though there are metaphors at work that symbolize abuse or objectification of women, nowhere does the film stress an injustice or seek to dismantle its source. It is just like any other formulaic action movie complete with boobs, guns, and explosions, but it has a shiny, artificial veneer of girl empowerment. The false veneer is the aspect of the film that truly infuriates me, along with the side of artsy pretentious bullshit.
Early in the film, Dawn is a nymph-like virgin committed to “saving herself” until marriage. She is the poster child for the “good” girl: a loving daughter who obeys the doctrines of the church and spends her time spreading the gospel of virginity. Everything Dawn knows about the world and herself changes when her falsely pious boyfriend Tobey takes her to a far off swimming hole and tries to rape her. A confused and terrified Dawn reacts by screaming and then—much to everyone’s surprise—cutting off his penis to interrupt the rape. Little does Dawn know that her lessons about Darwin in her biology classes are taking hold in her own body.
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.
While most teen movies revolve around coming-of-age stories, gang movies reveal the extreme side to adolescence—the misfit, criminal, and violent side. Gang movies are rather simple, either focusing on episodes of gang debauchery, or revolving around rivalry and jealousy. Usually the viewpoint is that of the ring leader, or the “new girl,” who is initiated into the gang but is still an outsider. Yet, among the plethora of girl gang movies, every decade has produced stories involving specific issues and specific types of teenage girls.
Kiki’s Delivery Service carefully constructs a world where a girl’s agency is expected, accepted and supported, while Disney movies typically present a girl’s agency as unusual, forbidden, and denied. The difference between these two messages is that Kiki’s world anticipates and encourages her independence, while the women of Disney are typically punished for this.
For example, in The Little Mermaid Ariel wants to “live out of these waters,” but her father forbids her exploration of the human world and punishes this dream. Sea witch Ursula exploits Ariel’s desire to discover another world beyond her own as well. This is hardly an isolated incident.
Liesel, unlike so many young heroines, resists romance—from her friend Rudy’s early problematic insistence and then throughout the remainder of the movie. Instead of being positioned in relationship to romantic partners, she has three male best friends—Rudy, Max and Hans (Papa)—as well as two females of great importance to her life, Rosa (Mama) and Ilsa Hermann (the mayor’s wife who, transgressively, supplyies Liesel with books). As for Liesel, like her futuristic counterpart, Katniss Everdeen, she is a life-saving heroine and inspirational rebel.
Terri sets out to explore the luxury of male privilege disguised as a young man. Just One of the Guys smacked us straight in the face with the unspoken universal knowledge that sexism was real, it existed and the film gave us tangible proof. Terri decides to use her parents’ trip out of town to switch things around for herself by getting another shot at the newspaper internship with another article, an expose of sorts. She switches high schools and uses her brain, and as much as she can, is herself.
Initially the girls of Troop Beverly Hills are portrayed as clueless and privileged, but they are allowed to grow and transform themselves over the course of the movie. The film writers don’t do it unrealistically by turning them into tomboys overnight or at all. The girls retain their femininity, which they are made fun of for by the Red Feathers, throughout the film.
Immortality is not what makes a world better. Hope, friendship, and love do, and love is not limited by sex, gender, ethnicity, or race. Women like Homura and Kyoko can fall in love with other women like Madoka and Sayaka respectively. We have the responsibility to stand up with people like them. This series is part of the reason I try to do that and more. I hope that many others to do the same.
Is Wanda a girl/teenage female protagonist? Technically she is not “young” as she is 1,000 years old and seemingly immortal, but she is new to Earth so that makes her young in some sense. Also, why would the Souls even have genders that mirror that of humans or have genders at all? The Souls look like beams of light and they probably aren’t even a carbon based species and yet somehow Wanda is a female? So. Frustrating. Nonetheless she is controlling a person’s body who identifies as a teenage girl and is thus somewhat restricted to her occupied body’s feelings, emotions, and categorizations.
Ten questions between filmmaker Morgan Faust and 13-year-old actress Rachel Resheff.
Morgan: The truth is when I was growing up in the 1980s, the child actresses were often given pretty syrupy roles (with the exception of Journey of Natty Gann and Labyrinth). It was the boys who got to have the cool movies–Goonies, Stand by Me, even The NeverEnding Story and E.T., which did have girls, but the boys were the heroes. That is why I write the movies I do–adventures films for girls–because that’s what I wanted to do when I was a kid, go on adventures, be the hero. I still do want that. I mean, who doesn’t?
The Hunger Games, saturated as it is with political meaning (the author admits her inspiration for the trilogy came from flipping channels between reality TV and war footage), is a welcome change from another recent popular YA series, Twilight. As a further bonus, it has disproven the claim that series with female protagonists can’t have massive cross-gender appeal. With the unstoppable Katniss Everdeen at the helm (played in the films by the jaw-droppingly talented Jennifer Lawrence), perhaps the series will be the start of a new trend: politically themed narratives with rebellious female protagonists who have their sights set on revolution more than love, on cultural change more than the latest sparkling hottie.
The CW is a rarity among the many networks of cable television. Its target demographic is women aged 18-34, and as a result has a majority of its original programming centered on the lives of young women. On paper, this sounds like a noteworthy achievement to be celebrated. However, the CW produces content devoid of any sense of the reality of its young audience, and as a result actually harms its most devoted viewers. The CW creates an unattainable archetype for what a teenager should look like and fails to maturely handle issues of murder and rape.
OK, sure, my big sister didn’t have superpowers, and as far as I know she did not save the world even one time, much less “a lot.” But from my perspective as her bratty little sister, I felt like I could never escape her long and intimidating shadow. I could never be as smart as her, as special as her; I couldn’t hope to collect even a fraction the awards and accolades she racked up through high school. And she didn’t even properly counteract her super smarts with social awkwardness: she always had a tight group of friends and the romantic affections of cute boys. She was the pride and joy of my family, and I always felt like an also-ran. Trust me: this makes it very hard to not be at least a little bratty and whiny.
The protagonist of Wizards is a girl who acts like girls really act: she has boyfriends and broken hearts, but isn’t overly boy-crazy or dependent on them; she’s curious and smart enough to ask questions when other people are telling her not to; and throughout the series she faces a lot of the struggles women really do face throughout their lives.
Power dynamics mean something in comedy. Making fun of someone less powerful than you is sort of like beating up someone who’s small, or taking advantage of someone naive. It’s not very sporting, and it makes you look mean. The problem is that the same person can be powerful in some contexts and not in others. A rich, white 17-year-old girl, for example, might be very powerful in contexts where she’s bullying her classmates at school, but less powerful in contexts where she’s trying to meet the demands of a sexist culture. If you’re an adult man nearing 40, it’s hard to make fun of the way a teenage girl dresses, flirts, and moons over boys without starting to look kind of petty.
Mattie wears dark, loose, practical clothing. She climbs trees and carries weapons. She shows utter disdain for male privilege or La Boeuf’s pervy allusions to sexual contact. She has no interest in the older men for romance or protection. She is only concerned with their usefulness to her task, and she uses her will and her reasoning rather than seduction to convince them. Steinfeld’s Mattie emanates competence and confidence.
Not since Megan Follows played Anne of Green Gables in the 1985 adaptation of the novel with the same title have girls had a young protagonist on screen who fights against social conventions that are designed to limit her because of her age and gender. Mattie’s similarity to Anne doesn’t end at their indignation and fearlessness, they both also share a love of long braids, both can be found wearing ill-fitting clothes, both of their stories are set in a similar time period, and finally, both girls are orphans.
Granted, Ashitaka (voiced by Billy Crudup) is an important character. Even so, it is a bit disconcerting when the IMDb blurb about this movie only mentions him, and almost none of the female characters who are equally, if not more, important to the story. Princess Mononoke (voiced by Claire Danes) is the title character, but is only mentioned toward the end of the blurb. This movie is so much more than yet another “save the princess” quest!
In Pretty In Pink, Andi is a self-sufficient, seemingly self-aware teenage girl who lives in a little cottage with her single father. Andi isn’t the type of girl who goes gaga for cocky, linen suit-wearing Steff (James Spader). She’s too busy at home sewing and stitching together her latest wardrobe creations. To her fellow girl students, she’s just a classless, lanky redhead who shouldn’t dare be caught dead at a “richie” party. So, she spends her time at TRAX, a record shop she works at, and a nightclub that showcases hip new wave bands like Ringwald’s real-life fave, The Rave-Ups. Her best friends Duckie (Jon Cryer) and Iona (Annie Potts) admire and envy Andi.
What is clear is that Campion is interested in the strategies women use to survive in patriarchy. But she is not only interested in the fate of women. She is also interested in how girl-children negotiate their way in a male-dominated world. It is through Ada’s daughter as well as Ada herself that Campion explores the feminine condition in the 19th century. Her rich, multi-layered characterization of Flora is, in fact, one of the most remarkable features of The Piano. She is as interesting and compelling as the adult characters and, arguably, the most convincing. The little girl also has huge symbolic and dramatic importance. This is, of course, unusual in cinema. There are relatively few films where a girl plays such a significant, pivotal role.
However, the tomboy was a prominent figure in two well-loved films of the period aimed at young girls, though both presented her as a transitional stage in development. My Girl (1991), is the story of precocious 11-year-old Vada Sultenfuss (Anna Chlumsky) who grew up in a funeral parlor and is obsessed with death, while in Now and Then (1995) four childhood friends reunite as adults and remember (in flashbacks) the summer they were 12.
Basically, Brave isn’t really that brave of a film. It’s traipsing through a well-established trope that, though positive, is stagnant. Don’t get me wrong; I love all the prepubescent female power fantasy tales I’ve listed, and I’m grateful that they exist and that I could grow up with many of them. However, we can’t pretend that Brave is pushing any boundaries. It sends the message that little girls can be powerful as long as they remain little girls. The dearth of representations of postpubescent heroines who are not objectified, whose sexuality does not rule their interactions, and who are the heroes of their own stories is appalling.
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
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.
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
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.
The documentary20 Something is a labor of love for its creator Lanze Spears.With a non-existent budget while sleeping on floors as he filmed, Spears followed and actualized his dream, which is exactly what 20 Something is about.
20 Something trailer.
The documentary follows a handful of early “twenty somethings” who are struggling to “make it” in the world. Spears isn’t documenting any aspiring teachers, accountants or chefs, though; his subjects’ dreams are of fame, fortune, stardom and critical acclaim. We’ve got a model, a painter, an actress, an indie filmmaker and an artist working through communication and digital design.
I was disappointed that the two women Spears followed were interested in professions that placed a very high premium on physical appearance (the model and actress), and I kept thinking even the inclusion of a dancer would mix things up a bit because, despite the fact that her carefully sculpted body would continue to be paramount, she would be using hard-earned physical prowess, technique, and discipline. It turns out that Spears’ follow-up in his series is 20 Something New York, following a trio of, you guessed it, dancers, all of whom are women! Though more limited in its exploration, I’d definitely be interested in seeing Spears’ take on the New York dance scene, the struggles of female dancers to make it in that business, and get a chance to see how accurate Black Swan‘s depictions of ballet life really is.
(To be fair, the model, Clare, like the male communications specialist and graphic designer Taylor, finds her passion in advertising and graphic design with a more nuanced perspective on success in the “real world,” unlike her foundering starlet cohort Anastasia.)
The documentary stylistically reminded me of a more compassionate version of MTV’s The Real World. It was a bit too hip, didn’t always delve deep enough, and had some painfully artistic shots and stomach-turning use of camera filters. I wanted the film to critique the American Dream more than it did because success isn’t out there for everyone. Everyone can’t be rich and famous. Sometimes how hard you work doesn’t make a dent, and that is just how life is.
However, 20 Something very much captured that bittersweet 20 something feel, caught between dreams and the real world, one’s perception of one’s potential and the cold need to earn money to survive. Some of our stars compromise their dreams (Anastasia gives up on LA, deciding to teach English as a second language, hopefully in France in order to get involved the French film scene) while others expand their vision (Sean begins to imagine curating art, his and others, in a gallery dedicated to medium inclusivity as well as human diversity). The cast’s slowly dwindling naivete made me sad for them, forced me to roll my eyes at their self-absorption, lingering like baby fat, and inspired me a bit to dream again, as it reminded me what it was like when I was that age and the future held so many possibilities.
I don’t want to see the film Oliver Stone will want to make about Romney
Here is my draft of an open tweet I am working on for directors and producers of Hollywood who continue directing and producing movies mostly about rich white men:
@WealthyDirectors&Producers I know ppl r told 2 “write what u know” & the nxt logical step 4 filmmakers would b 2 “film what u know.” But, stop, we’ve had enuf of rich men.
So, an open tweet might not be the best format to address my frustration with Hollywood and the seeming upsurge in rich-white-man-falling-from-rich-graces story arc. And, it might not be practical to address it to a made-up twitter handle. But, when the system is so dang exclusive, I got to get by with my gimmicks.
Our whole movie-making industry fits comfortably into the laps of well-to-do white men between the ages of 18-35. So, even though great films are coming out, the ones that are – during a recession for Christ’s sake – are falling radically at the ends of a spectrum at around poverty porn or bewailing the epic fall of an epic hero.
Why is it, for instance, that we had to endure another Oliver Stone movie – a sequel to Wall Street – Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps? While it touched on some pretty timely issues – i.e. it followed our fall into economic crisis – it only looked through wealthy characters. These characters’ flaws were pretty solidly greed and excessive ambition. Help me out here, but that is just not where most Americans are at right now.
The two highest grossing movies of this year both feature obscenely rich playboys wielding their pocketbooks to fight crime. Tony Stark in The Avengers, is brilliant, but can only functionally be a superhero because he’s wealthy. While Bruce Wayne, in The Dark Knight Rises, would still be pretty badass without the money, he wouldn’t have gotten far in challenging Gotham’s worst without his high-tech gadgets and his martial arts training obtained overseas.
Past the summer blockbusters, even Oscar-chasers are focusing mostly on the stories of the rich and prestigious. Black Swan followed the story of a woman, (yes, a woman!) but she was a ballerina (not exactly an art form available to the middle-class budget) whose fall was connected with her ambition and rise to enormous success. The Great Gatsby is coming out in 2013, and while a great story on the failures of the “American Dream” it is still about the fall of a rich white man.
It seems like directors are pretty fascinated with the greed and corruption that led to the desperate state of our current economy. But, what about the result for the majority of Americans? You know, the big group of folks who are now dealing with tight budgets and un/underemployement? And why is the more pertinent entertainment not accessible to the groups who could relate to it? Why was Death of a Salesman only on Broadway? Doesn’t that seem like a good thing to send to theaters? I mean, if we have to look at the woes of white men – can they at least be struggling with culturally relevant strife? Why is Lena Dunham’s show Girlscentered around the stories of struggling twenty-something (white) women, such a big hit on HBO and not a network? As in: why is a show about financially struggling young people available on a station that only people who can afford cable can watch.
Of course we’re not completely sunk. The third highest grossing film was The Hunger Games – a film featuring a strong young woman fighting the powers that be that continue to disenfranchise her and her society.
We need more people making film who aren’t obsessed with wealth and power. We need to address themes other than those concerning megalomaniacs. Wouldn’t it be a relief to see some blockbusters where the audience can actually relate to the problems the characters face?
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Erin Fenneris a writer based in Portland. She likes film and feminism and alliteration.
Afghan Women Fight to Not Have Their Rights Bargained Away in ‘Peace Unveiled’ in ‘Women, War & Peace’ Series: In the documentary Peace Unveiled, the third installment of Women, War & Peace, written by Abigail E. Disney and directed by Gini Reticker (and WWP series co-creators), we witness 3 tenacious female activists, Parliamentarian Shinkai Karokhail, Hasina Safi and Shahida Hussein, struggling for their voices to be heard in Afghanistan’s treacherous peace negotiations. Following the 2010 surge of U.S. troops, the Afghan government arranged peace negotiations with the toppled Taliban. The women valiantly fight to protect their gains and not have their rights bargained away.
On Entertainment Weekly’s “42 Unforgettable Nude Scenes”: This speaks to the cultural desirability (and also the perceived comedic potential*) of bodies belonging to people of color. Although people of color are often objectified and exoticized for consumption, none–or very few–of these incidents have been deemed “unforgettable” by the fine folks at EW. On one level, it’s good that we don’t see the vulgar objectification of people of color here, in a piece that is essentially based on objectification (or, EW might argue, celebrating memorable nude scenes), but it also peculiar and disturbing that the list is so damn white.
Profiling Gender: Punishing the Professional for the Personal on ‘Criminal Minds’: Employing embedded feminism and enlightened sexism, Criminal Minds uses familiar tropes to reinforce the idea that women can either be professionals or mothers, but never both. As a prime-time drama based almost entirely in the workplace, how women are treated on the show becomes an important representation, and subtle reinforcement, of the double binds still faced by working women. Criminal Minds, and prime-time shows like it, reinforce double binds because they reach a wide audience, and are typically employed in conjunction with what Susan J. Douglas termed embedded feminism, which is “the way in which women’s achievements, or their desire for achievement, are simply a part of the cultural landscape.” The cultural landscape of the Criminal Minds universe is that women FBI agents are valued, trusted, and competent members of the team. Their abilities and equality within the institution are uncontested; therefore, the workplace goals of the women’s movement have been accomplished, and no longer require representation.
Preview: The Iron Lady: It’s also interesting to think about the film in the context of women in politics–again, I’m thinking primarily of the US–and what it takes for a woman to be successful. At the beginning of the trailer we see an emphasis on her appearance and her voice (which reminds me of The King’s Speech, last year’s Best Picture Oscar winner–the similarity is likely no accident), and the importance of maintaining an image of leadership and power. Our culture is obsessed with image, and we see how closely scrutinized female politicians are–from Hillary Clinton’s pantsuits and alleged cleavage when she was running for president in 2008, to Michele Bachmann’s french manicure and shoe choices this year, the media tears down Women who Want to Lead.
Guest Writer Wednesday: Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan: Viewers’ and Critics’ Miss-steps in a Dance with a Female Protagonist: Many feminist film reviewers also lambasted the misogyny of the ballet’s artistic director, Thomas (played by Vincent Cassel), even though his character’s inherent sexism (referring to his principle dancer as his “Little Princess,” for example) is essential to the themes of repression and being able to break free from said repression. Jill Dolan, at The Feminist Spectator, says that “As her [Nina’s] relationship with Thomas gets more and more entwined, she begins to suffer from a kind of Stockholm Syndrome, idealizing and even identifying with Thomas and his mercurial cruelty.” This is begging the question that Nina is the victim–would we ever assume a grown man in a similar role was the victim? Perhaps we’d glance at the notion, but never give him the simple, passive role of “victim.” Relegating Nina to the role of the victim belittles and negates the larger focus of the film.
Movie Review: Martha Marcy May Marlene: And still, in both of these environments, bonds between women flourish. Martha and Lucy have their differences, but it is clear that they both want to have a relationship again, and they are determined to do whatever they can to make that possible, even while Ted makes Martha feel threatened and unwelcome. Meanwhile, Zoe takes Marcy May under her wing and eases her into the community; this relationship is mirrored later in the film, when Sarah joins the cult and Marcy May transitions from initiated to initiator. Despite the traumas witnessed and experienced by these women, their relationships stay strong. They share support, laughter and strength in the face of abuse, time and time again. Complex relationships between women aren’t commonplace in film these days, so Martha Marcy May Marlene is a refreshing change of pace in this regard.
As Mila Kunis’s character descends upon Natalie Portman’s in the (dream) oral sex scene in Black Swan, a college-age young woman in the movie theater audibly whispers, “And this is why every guy in the theater is here.”
Darren Aronofsky’s 2010 Black Swan is a film about repression, perfection, and letting go.
It is a film about finding, torturing, losing, and gaining oneself through destruction, much like many postmodern films of the same genre (Fight Club, along with Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream and The Wrestler).
But to too many in that theater and in theaters across the country, it is a sexy, crazy, girl movie about ballet.
Even though most of the marketing of the film catered directly to the male gaze (focusing, of course, on that oral sex scene, which had nothing to do with sex in the context of the film), it is considered either a movie about a girl, or a movie for girls. Even in the sponsored post on Jezebel (which was heavily promoting the film through advertising), women were supposed to come see the film because of pretty ballet, and shocking scenes—psychological and sexual—all touted in a juvenile, sing-song manner: “Natalie violently masturbates face-down on a mattress under the gazes of two creepy stuffed bunnies. For real.” “Natalie makes out with Mila!” The advertisers seemed desperate to sell a different film to audiences. Females would surely flock to theaters to see ballet, so how could it be marketed toward men (and as seen here, women)? Frivolous lesbian sex. Because certainly men wouldn’t want to see a film about a ballerina (note that these marketing concerns certainly weren’t an issue for The Wrestler).
The IMDB page describes Black Swan as “A thriller that zeros in on the relationship between a veteran ballet dancer and a rival.”
But it’s not. Nina’s (Portman) rival, Lily (Kunis), has almost nothing to do with the central plot and theme of this film. However, the allure of feminine cattiness, jealousy, and competitiveness is much easier to digest than the idea that a film could focus on universal human conflicts with a female protagonist.
Aronofksy’s 2008 film The Wrestler is described on IMDB as follows: “A faded professional wrestler must retire, but finds his quest for a new life outside the ring a dispiriting struggle. “
Personal conflict, inner-struggle, the gender-neutral “quest.”
In an interview that touched upon gender issues in Black Swan, Aronofsky said, “… to me, if you paint a human character with real emotions and really empathize with them, it doesn’t matter if it’s a 50-something aging wrestler, or a 20-something ambitious dancer, they’re just people.” How unfortunate that we must hear that explanation from a director, instead of simply understanding it.
Lest the blame of this feminine vs. universal (masculine) protagonist issue be placed solely upon the marketing and audience, the feminist lens must also be properly focused. In Debra Cash’s “Swanday Bloody Swanday: Darren Aronofsky’s Sadistic, Misogynistic New Film,” she refers to the film as a “textbook demonstration of what academics refer to as the male gaze… Aronofsky’s fable portrays female powerlessness on every level—youth, friendship, collegiality, retirement, motherhood.” And that in itself is misogynistic? Should we not portray powerlessness because we want to be powerful? Had Aronofsky been celebrating powerlessness, maybe that argument would hold true, but he certainly was not. Showing how destructive powerlessness is should be viewed as a feminist action.
Many feminist film reviewers also lambasted the misogyny of the ballet’s artistic director, Thomas (played by Vincent Cassel), even though his character’s inherent sexism (referring to his principle dancer as his “Little Princess,” for example) is essential to the themes of repression and being able to break free from said repression. Jill Dolan, at The Feminist Spectator, says that “As her [Nina’s] relationship with Thomas gets more and more entwined, she begins to suffer from a kind of Stockholm Syndrome, idealizing and even identifying with Thomas and his mercurial cruelty.” This is begging the question that Nina is the victim–would we ever assume a grown man in a similar role was the victim? Perhaps we’d glance at the notion, but never give him the simple, passive role of “victim.” Relegating Nina to the role of the victim belittles and negates the larger focus of the film.
While Thomas’s advice to Nina to touch herself is uncomfortable, it is effective, not purely sexist, in trying to force her to find her Black Swan. What better way to discuss this clearly feminist idea—the female orgasm and the difficulty to attain it due to outside and inside pressures—than in the context of the dichotomy of the White and Black Swans? When she finally does achieve orgasm during the aforementioned dream sequence, it’s clear she can do so only when she has lost herself enough, and lost herself to a point where she can blame someone else for her destruction, that she can let herself (and her Black Swan) free.
While this literal and figurative climax also serves as the beginning of her perfection and destruction, we can see that the destructive nature of this epiphany relies on the fact that she has not achieved freedom by herself. Dolan presents this scene as if it is a lesbian sex scene, as does Cash. In doing so, these feminist commentators take away the importance of the scene by assuming it’s simply for the male gaze, when in fact it is all about Nina overcoming, or attempting to overcome, the passive social and sexual world that she inhabits, while still striving for perfection.
This leaves the feminist viewer to wonder what makes a film feminist? Must sexism lose and the oppressed woman break free and live happily ever after? Instead, perhaps the truly feminist film is one that makes the female protagonist represent humanity, not just womanhood. Dolan ends her article with the line: “That’s a message that’s not good for the girls.” This further proves the idea that the message of success through self-destruction cannot be gender-neutral with a female protagonist.
Aviva Dove-Viebahn, in her Ms. Magazine Blog review “Sex, Lies and Ballet,” acknowledges Aronofsky’s “fascination with the intense humanity and obsessive desires of his characters” in a refreshingly comprehensive review. Dove-Viebahn clearly sees what the others miss—that we as viewers are supposed to be questioning and compelled by Aronofksy’s narrative.
In the Variety article “Stalking the perfect ending,” Mark Heyman (one of the writers of the film, along with John McLaughlin and Andres Heinz) said about the film’s end: “We wanted it to have some kind of emotional weight and significance and somehow be satisfying, even though it’s tragic… so that it felt like she had achieved something even as she had destroyed herself.” It seems that the writers and the director have a clear understanding of the purpose of the film, and the complicated, yet simple, themes. Why did so many audiences and critics miss the point?
In Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, he explores probability and the human urge to predict in his Black Swan Theory (typically used to explain world and financial events). He derives the title of the book and theory with the story of the white swan in the “old world”—people had only ever seen white swans, so they assumed all swans were white. The sighting of a black swan was a complete surprise. He says, “It illustrates a severe limitation in our learning from observations or experiences and the fragility of our knowledge. One single observation can invalidate a general statement derived from millennia of confirmatory sightings of millions of white swans.” The male protagonist is the white swan—the millions of white swans. Aronofsky’s Black Swan—the female protagonist—has shocked the people in our “old” world. We don’t know what to do with it exactly, and are unclear of its purpose.
Taleb goes on to describe the three attributes of the Black Swan: “it is an outlier, as it lies outside the realm of regular expectations,” “it carries an extreme impact,” and “in spite of its outlier status, human nature makes us concoct explanations for its occurrence after the fact, making it explainable and predictable.” The audiences who quickly categorize Black Swan as a movie for/about women, or the critics who lambast its misogyny, are unable to otherwise grapple with the outlier of a female protagonist who can show us ourselves—male and female.
Unfortunately, we are still entrenched in a culture where men’s stories are universal stories of humanity, and women’s stories are women’s stories. Until we move past that, and realize that just as we don’t have to be aging professional wrestlers to understand the humanity and struggle of The Wrestler’s protagonist, nor do we have to be young female ballerinas to see Nina as a character that speaks to us in Black Swan, we will continue to be in gendered places in the movie theater, where male protagonists are the norm, and female protagonists are only noteworthy if they are being gone down on.
Leigh Kolb is an English and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri, and has an MFA in creative nonfiction writing. She lives on a small farm with her husband, dogs, chickens, and garden, and makes a terrible dinner party guest because all she wants to talk about is feminism and reproductive rights.
Motherhood is a theme we’ve visited before (Black Swan comes immediately to mind, as does the mother character in Rachel Getting Married), and anxieties about it abound in film and television. Mothers can’t seem to escape the same virgin/whore dichotomy structure that plagues all depictions of women in sexist media: either the woman is domestic, passive, nurturing, and selfless, or she’s a monster whose desires ultimately destruct the familial unit. (I’m currently watching the first season of the AMC show The Walking Dead, and waiting to see if the mother character falls into the latter cliche. I suspect she will; stay tuned for a probable Flick Off.)
In the 1940s and ’50s, when wartime taught women that they could be economically successful on their own, and as divorcees and widows became more common, Hollywood switched gears. Single moms, here transformed into the dreaded “career women,” were now messing up not their kids’ economic chances but their psyches. The most spectacular example was the 1945 classic Mildred Pierce, in which Mildred kicks out her deadbeat husband and builds a successful restaurant chain, only to have one daughter die and the other turn into an amoral murderess.
[…]
In Baby Boom, Diane Keaton’s J.C. is a high-powered Manhattan exec who suddenly inherits a baby. Initially, this looks like a radical twist on the Three Men and a Baby concept, as the film introduces the idea, in several comic sequences, that motherhood is no more instinctual for women than it is for men. But before the audience can grab another handful of popcorn, she’s quit her job and fled to a farmhouse in Vermont, a move that the plot reassures us is all for the best: J.C. has always dreamed of a house in the country. In this movie, children don’t entail real sacrifices, just changes that turn out to be redemptive. It’s the baby’s job to feminize Mom and, in the process, save her from the rat race.
[…]
A single mom and her kids are by definition a family without a father, and the female-headed household is destruction of the patriarchy at its most basic level. Needless to say, in Hollywood, showing its unproblematic success is still a huge taboo. Contemporary single-mom films are truly reflective of our culture: A massive amount of energy is expended in a desperate attempt to prove that single parenthood is not good enough, even as an ever-increasing number of women parent on their own. (It’s important to note that this anxiety manifests itself onscreen with an almost exclusive focus on white, middle-class single moms, despite the fact that more than one-third of American single moms are women of color. Though this is part and parcel of the overwhelming whiteness of Hollywood in general, it conveniently allows mainstream films to ignore the factors of class and race that are inextricably intertwined with single parenthood.
With the recent mini-series remake of Mildred Pierce in mind, I’d love to see an updated version of this article. (I also can’t help but think about The Kids Are All Right, which is not about a single mother but about lesbian mothers, and how it fits right into Nolan’s description of the “family without a father” in the final quoted paragraph above; here, lesbian “parenthood is not enough,” hence the disruption brought about by the sperm donor’s entrance into their lives, and the family is white and upper-middle class.)
What movies, in the past decade, have depicted mothers in a positive way, moving forward from one-note stereotypes and bucking the trend of “keeping single moms in their place?” With all the focus on the negative, I’d like to see some positive examples.
The 2011 Film Independent Spirit Awards Ceremony took place on Saturday night–the night before the Academy Awards–and aired on IFC. (Which I didn’t watch, because I don’t get IFC.)
In terms of who and which films were nominated, there was a good bit of crossover this year for indie films: four of the five Best Feature nominees were also Best Picture Oscar nominees (Greenberg didn’t make the cut); five of the six women nominated for Best Lead also received Oscar nods; and the Best Foreign Film award went to the Best Picture award winner–The King’s Speech.
But there are some very important differences, some of which we highlighted in our post about the Spirit Nominees. Namely–you guessed it–how much better women fare in the indie world. Here is a selection of winners, and some thoughts about each. You can see a list of all nominees and winners here.
There is nothing near a consensus on how to read this film. Some find it a feminist statement about the unbearable pressures put on women in modern society, while some find it a misogynist exploration of madness and exploitation of the female body. Nevertheless, it is a female-centered film.
Best Director: Darren Aronofsky for Black Swan
Although a man won, there were two women (Lisa Cholodenko for The Kids Are All Right and Debra Granik for Winter’s Bone) in contention, and the winner directed a woman-centered film.
This was a great category for women. In addition to Cholodenko, Debra Granik and Anne Rossellini were nominated for Winter’s Bone, and Nicole Holofcener was nominated for Please Give.
The best “first” categories are important, in that they give exposure to mostly little-known films (in terms of the mainstream audience) and help launch new voices into the world of filmmaking. The other female nominee in the category is Diane Bell, for Obselidia.
In addition to promoting new filmmakers, this category is exciting because it often introduces films many of us haven’t seen, or haven’t heard much about, including Tanya Hamilton’s Night Catches Usand Dunham’s Tiny Furniture.
Best Female Lead: Natalie Portman for Black Swan The winner here is no surprise; Portman swept the awards for her portrayal of determined ballerina Nina, which, regardless of how you feel about the film, was an amazing performance. The other nominees were Annette Bening, Greta Gerwig, Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Lawrence, and Michelle Williams.
Best Supporting Female: Dale Dickey for Winter’s Bone This is another exciting Spirit category, as was the corresponding Oscar category (for different reasons), though there was no overlap between nominees. Other nominees were Ashely Bell for The Last Exorcism, Allison Janney for Life During Wartime, Daphne Rubin-Vega for Jack Goes Boating, and Naomi Watts for Mother and Child.
While the Spirit Award nominees represent a slightly more progressive and inclusive range of stories and people who tell them, they also reveal a continuing problem: the lack of films about, centering on, made by, or starring people of color. As far as I can tell (as I haven’t seen all the films, nor do I know each storyline), Hamilton’s Night Catches Us is the only nominee focusing on the experience of people of color, specifically Black Americans.
The Spirit Awards may be better than the Oscars, but we still have a long way to go.
. Edited by Lisa Jervis & Andi Zeisler
, and waiting to see if the mother character falls into the latter cliche. I suspect she will; stay tuned for a probable Flick Off.)
and 1987’s 
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didn’t make the cut); five of the six women nominated for Best Lead also received Oscar nods; and the Best Foreign Film award went to the Best Picture award winner–
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, Allison Janney for 
, Daphne Rubin-Vega for 
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