Tag: Bridesmaids

Seed & Spark: The “Flawed” Female Protagonist Is, Quite Simply, My Favorite

Not everyone who loves romantic comedies, lives them. Not every happy ending looks like happily ever after. If you feel like you don’t know which box to check, find four lines and create your own.

This is a guest post by Christina Morelli.

In many ways, I am a traditional “girl.” I love getting dressed up. I’m a sucker for every romantic comedy ever made (particularly the solid run of Nora Ephron flicks in the late 80s/early 90s). I read chick lit, and I tend to sob right through it. I live for a good night in with a bottle of wine and my baking supplies. I’m a hybrid of Julia Roberts in “My Best Friend’s Wedding,” Debra Messing in “The Wedding Date,” and Renee Zellweger in “Bridget Jones’ Diary,” with a hint of Kate Winslet in “The Holiday.” My all-time favorite movie is, “When Harry Met Sally.”

Throw a pumpkin spice latte in my hand, turn the camera to selfie mode, and slap on the hashtag- #basicbitch.

And yet, that’s where it ends. For the most part, I’m lacking in several of the adult female stereotype categories. I have an averse reaction to the color pink, unless I’m supporting breast cancer. I don’t like glitter or anything on my body to be adorned with something large and/or sparkly. I’d prefer to elope, if I ever actually get married, and I have puppy fever far more often than I have baby fever. At the moment, “nesting” refers to the being too lazy to fold laundry so I simply sleep on top of it, like a baby bird. Large groups of women give me anxiety. Staying in one apartment, city, job or even room for too long gives me anxiety. And now that I live alone, I’m not going to lie- shaving, primping, and even sometimes, showering, are on an “as needed” basis. (Maybe that’s somewhat connected to the missing bride gene.)

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Bridget Jones’ is my spirit animal.

I’ve never completely felt like I fit in anywhere. Far too introverted for most of the women I know, far too emotional for most of the men. So when I ventured into scriptwriting a few years back, I naturally felt compelled to write leading ladies with the same notable flaws that I too experienced. “Write what you know!” they said. Well I know commitment issues, creativity ADD, heartbreak and friendship. I know shifting career paths and fear of the unknown. I know travel. Solo travel, to be exact. I know what it’s like to have trouble letting go. And I know the challenge of approaching something with no experience, including writing, and figuring out a way to make it work.

When I completed the first draft of the script for my full length play, Chasing Shadows, I was eager to get feedback. Chasing Shadows told the story of four fairies who decided to leave Never Land in pursuit of New York City. They traded their wings and magic for the chance to become “real women,” and were granted the exact lives they had wished for back when they were fairies. Tink, the last of the group to give up her freedom, was offered the opportunity to give the real world a one-month trial run. But upon arriving in New York, she found herself torn between her past and her present.

The idea came from the notion that it was socially acceptable for men to embody the “Peter Pan Syndrome” for their entire lives, but women who did not “grow up” and follow the same paths as their family and friends were viewed in a negative light. The Tinker Bell Effect. It was funny, it was dark, it was sarcastic, and it was about fairies- bound to be a hit!

Not so much. The first feedback I received from the few people I shared it with was that my protagonist was not likable. She was too angry, too bitter. No one was rooting for her.

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The fairies of Chasing Shadows will be recreating their roles for the web series DUST: A Fairy Tale.

I threw out that draft and started all over again. It took me close to a year to figure out Tink’s new story. I’m sure part of the reason was because I was trying to write what everyone else wanted to hear, and not the characters in my head. I struggled with the fact I was writing a “girly” script, in an age where people seem to crave blood, action, diversity and darkness. Even after several drafts and a few staged performances, people still questioned her journey. She seemed a little lost. She didn’t have an “arc.” It didn’t wrap up in a pretty little bow. I’m sure on some level, she simply made everyone uncomfortable. With all of those opinions in mind, I fought with the decision to keep pursuing the script.

About a month after the second staged reading of Chasing Shadows was performed, I came across an article in the Huffington Post called “Rise of the Woman Child,” by Lauren Duca. The article opened with discussing the predominant criticism Preggoland star Sonja Bennett received regarding her lead character- which was that she wasn’t likeable. The skies parted, the angels sang, a giant beam of light circled my head and I raised my arms victoriously… I wasn’t alone.

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A must-read for today’s crop of new female writers.

It goes on to site other contemporary female protagonists, such as Annie (Kristen Wiig) in Bridesmaids and Jenny (Anna Kendrick) in Happy Christmas, who embodied similar qualities that made viewers lack empathy. Unlike their male counterpart roles, such as the characters in Old School, The Hangover, or any Adam Sandler movie, it seems that women who have a different definition of happily ever after, audiences find difficult to relate to.

After reading that piece, I knew I had to continue sharing Tink’s adventures. I made the decision to adapt the play into something online and episodic, allowing me flexibility to develop the characters one tale at a time… and so DUST: A Fairy Tale was born. The thought of taking on yet another huge endeavor (and another career path) with little experience and just a small team behind me was terrifying, but I was inspired by the growing voice of women in the industry. I desired the opportunity for mine to be heard. We launched our Seed & Spark campaign two and half weeks ago, and every day I have to remind myself I don’t write to be liked or to fit in, I write because I have a story to tell.

Not everyone who loves romantic comedies, lives them. Not every happy ending looks like happily ever after. If you feel like you don’t know which box to check, find four lines and create your own.

Because perhaps, the most grown up thing anyone can do, is simply to accept another person for exactly who they are. Flaws and all.

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Writer. Director. Producer. Creative consultant by day, fairy by night. From her first ballet shoes to her first computer, Christina Morelli has been immersed in the arts for as long as she could walk and write. Her passion for creating paired with a strong entrepreneurial spirit carved the way for a number of lucrative business opportunities, from owning her own dance studio to producing staged readings of her original full length play in New York City and London. In addition to fueling her own artistic desires, Christina has worked as a writer and consultant for a number of sectors in the entertainment world, including music, production, dance and theater. She is currently thrilled to be bringing her favorite fairies from stage to screen in the upcoming web series, DUST: A Fairy Tale. When she’s not creating a new world of words, characters and scenarios, Christina loves photography, travel, wine and surprising people with her latest adventure. www.christinamorelli.com 

 

The Male Gaze, LOL: How Comedies Are Changing the Way We Look

The body is no longer a Lacanian reflected ideal, it is a biological mess that often exists beyond anyone’s control. The effect of this convention is two-fold–a bait and switch of expectations but also the creation of a sense of biological sameness: man or woman, everybody poops. By placing the body in a biological space instead of a symbolic one, physical comedy is questioning the visual tendencies of subconscious desire.

This guest post by Donna K. appears as part of our theme week on The Female Gaze.

When I was taught the definitions of comedy and tragedy as an angst-y teen, I remember being struck by the way in which they were generalized. In tragedy, everyone dies. In comedy, everyone gets married. I remember thinking, “Yes, marriage IS hilarious!” But in fact, marriage was comic in the sense that everything worked out for everybody–everybody often being defined as the white male with power. Over the last decade, the male gaze has quietly been averted through a new wave of female-driven comedies. Television shows like 30 Rock, Broad City, Orange is the New Black, The Mindy Project, Inside Amy Schumer, and films like Bridesmaids and Appropriate Behavior have paved the way for comedy, specifically the role of women in it, to be re-defined: comedy is a choice. Comedy is not who will marry whom it is the choice to marry or not, to tell one’s individual story, to laugh in the face of the controlling patriarchy until there is nothing left to laugh about.

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One of the hallmarks of the new class of female comedies is to subvert the “to-be-looked-at-ness” of the female form, begging an audience to gaze upon woman but then exposing the gawkers to the truths below the surface in a physical- almost biological- comedy; Julie (Julie Klausner) publically wets herself in the very first episode of the new series Difficult People; Amy Schumer’s skit “Milk Milk Lemonade” reminds audiences that the sexy booty fetishized in music videos is, in reality, “where your poop comes out”; the explosive diarrhea of food poisoning ruins the extravagant rite of wedding dress shopping in Bridesmaids. The body is no longer a Lacanian reflected ideal, it is a biological mess that often exists beyond anyone’s control. The effect of this convention is two-fold–a bait and switch of expectations but also the creation of a sense of biological sameness: man or woman, everybody poops. By placing the body in a biological space instead of a symbolic one, physical comedy is questioning the visual tendencies of subconscious desire. No longer do audiences expect to walk into a theater or turn on a TV and be greeted with a vision of feminine perfection; now they might be subjected to blood, sweat, tears, and all other kinds of bodily fluids of not just the female form but the human one. The body is an object but not one strictly made for pleasure (yet pleasure is nice too, of course).

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In Broad City the character of Ilana (Ilana Glazer) sets the mood propping up mirrors, putting on make-up, prepping herself to be a vision of desire (Season 2 Ep. 8, ““Kirk Steele””). She turns on her vibrator, and some porn, and is ready for some self love: she is not here to please anyone but herself. When Danny (Chris Messina) opens the drawer of Mindy Lahiri’s (Mindy Kahling) nightstand in The Mindy Project and proclaims “Mindy has the same neck massager as Ma,” (Season 3, Ep. 8 ““Diary of a Mad Indian Woman””) not everyone might understand the implication (pssst, pharmacies sell vibrators in disguise). New female comedy isn’t presenting sex as a males want toward females; it is showing sex as a thing all genders desire, even to the point they make it happen alone. Self-love in female comedy could potentially feed into the male gaze, making him even more afraid of castration or exciting him through pleasurable moans, but what is also occurring is a normalization of female sexual pleasure. Sex and the City led the way and now movies like Appropriate Behavior (full of bi-sexuality, threesomes, and a strap on!) and Trainwreck (even if Apatow is undeniably a slut shamer!) are reminding audiences that women use their vaginas for things other than birthing and male satisfaction. These comedies are creating what Laura Mulvey calls a “new language of desire” (where the controlled and the controller are interchangeable between genders, quietly inserting the fact that this dynamic has, in actuality, always existed).

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Much like the voice-over in 90s comedies that presented a personal and omniscient guide to female protagonists (Sex and the City, Mean Girls, Clueless, and Election), flashbacks are now the go-to convention used to expose the inner and past lives of women. Desiree Akhavan’s Appropriate Behavior is a flashback in its entirety, slowly showing the steps that led to the opening break-up between Shirin (Akhavan) and Maxine (Rebecca Henderson), a slow methodical break-down of motivations and personal histories. In 30 Rock, a nerdy child Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) speaks German in a short moment of memory, a happening common in the series with the young Liz sometimes played by Fey’s real life daughter. The characters of OITNB have constant, harrowing flashbacks that connect their present to a long receding past, in Sophia’s (Laverne Cox) pre-transition flashback her character is played by Cox’s real life twin brother. How can one see a character as a hollow, empty image when they are created with an entire life? A life that sometimes even edges into their fictional world? Women are not, as Mulvey says, “Freez[ing] the flow of action.” They are, and have always been, part of the action, whether recognized or not. The stories of women remain untold and the reminder that lives exist beyond their simple image, even in a fiction, is an enormous step forward in terms of making an active female figure rather than a passive one. Herstory isn’t a joke, it is a thing that roots woman in the world, it makes women makers of meaning and not strictly bearers of it.

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And then come our good, old friends satire and parody! Comediennes are taking the unattainable expectations and fears of the male gaze, pointing at them and laughing as hard as possible, exposing the ridiculousness in objectification and shaming the power struggle into submission- it is almost like an S&M relationship with the status quo. When Liz Lemon does promos for her show “Dealbreakers”  (Season 4 Episode 7, “Dealbreakers Talk Show,” a show that points out the faults in men that make them un-marriable: yas!), she ends up becoming so nervous about her appearance she is reduced to crying from her mouth after off-brand eye surgery. When Amy Schumer consults every possible man in her life, from doctor to mailman to boy scout, on whether she should go on birth control, it is hilarious but it is also not too far from the truth. When Annie (Kristen Wiig) wakes up early to apply make-up and return to bed before her sex friend wakes to give the illusion of flawlessness, it is a joke, and it is also, unfortunately, not a joke. Satire is a powerful way of exposing questionable societal norms, ridiculous attitudes, and insane standards; it is a socially acceptable way to challenge the patriarchy and air our grievances. If we collectively confront the male gaze through satire those in power can no longer turn a blind eye to the true absurdity that exists.

By choosing how we are looked at and creating comical stories beyond the marriage plot, we are making an enormous reclamation of our bodies and ourselves: power lies in choice. Alternative ways of seeing and being seen are created with each new story told, a visibility that is only just starting to be explored as we struggle to be better represented in mainstream media. Contemporary comedies with female leads are now ruled by countless types of desires as we are stick out our tongues at the gazing males frozen in the audience. Raising our laughter is just another form of raising our voices for change.

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References

  1. Mulvey (1975). “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Screen, 16.3 Autumn, pp. 6-18

 

 

Donna K. is a cultural critic, film festival consultant and creative producer based in Southern Vermont. She is a member of the Women Film Critics Circle and a writer for Hammer to Nail. You can follow her musings about visual storytelling on her blog Gravity Was Everywhere Back Then.

 

 

Call for Writers: Fatphobia/Fat Positivity

Negative depictions of fat people are the norm throughout all of pop culture. Though fatphobia crosses racial, gender, and class lines, audiences judge women the most harshly. Fat characters are frequently shown as disgusting, sad, or unlovable. In the horror genre, fatness is frequently represented as terrifying and unnatural. In comedies, fat bodies are often the source of humor. Though few and far between, there are a growing number of fat positive representations popping up throughout TV and film.

 

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Our theme week for April 2015 will be Fatphobia/Fat Positivity.

Negative depictions of fat people are the norm throughout all of pop culture. Though fatphobia crosses racial, gender, and class lines, audiences judge women the most harshly. Fat characters are frequently shown as disgusting, sad, or unlovable like Chrissy Metz’s Barbara/”The Fat Lady” in American Horror Story: Freak Show or Darlene Cates’ Bonnie from What’s Eating Gilbert Grape. Fat people are often cast as the villains, their bodies being a symbol of excess, shame, and/or nonconformity–examples being Ursula from The Little Mermaid or Miss Trunchbull from Matilda. In the horror genre, fatness is frequently represented as terrifying and unnatural (Slither and Crazy Fat Ethel II). In some cases, fatness is a punishment like in Drop Dead Diva or Mean Girls.

In comedies, fat bodies are often the source of humor, such as Melissa McCarthy’s character Megan in Bridesmaids or pretty much anything starring Chris Farley. The deplorable practice of donning a fatsuit to get some laughs (Shallow Hal, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, and all The Nutty Professor movies) seems to be on the rise.

Though few and far between, there are a growing number of fat positive representations popping up throughout TV and film. Though sometimes problematic, these examples show fat people as multifaceted human beings (Girls), sympathetic (Louie), heroines/heroes (Precious), sexy (The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency), and/or funny because of who they are and not their bodies (Roseanne). Are these samples of fat positivity the beginning of a movement? Are they enough to change the prejudice and fatphobia inherent in Hollywood and our culture?

Feel free to use the examples below to inspire your writing on this subject, or choose your own source material.

We’d like to avoid as much overlap as possible for this theme, so get your proposals in early if you know which film you’d like to write about. We accept both original pieces and cross-posts, and we respond to queries within a week.

Most of our pieces are between 1,000 and 2,000 words, and include links and images. Please send your piece as a Microsoft Word document to btchflcks[at]gmail[dot]com, including links to all images, and include a 2- to 3-sentence bio.

If you have written for us before, please indicate that in your proposal, and if not, send a writing sample if possible.

Please be familiar with our publication and look over recent and popular posts to get an idea of Bitch Flicks’ style and purpose. We encourage writers to use our search function to see if your topic has been written about before, and link when appropriate (hyperlinks to sources are welcome, as well).

The final due date for these submissions is Friday, April 24 by midnight.

Shallow Hal

Gilmore Girls

American Horror Story

Matilda

Bridget Jones’ Diary

The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency

Tammy

Game of Thrones

Precious

South Park

Crazy Fat Ethel II

Louie

Tommy Boy

Roseanne

Drop Dead Diva

Bridesmaids

Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me

Austin Powers: Goldmember

Enough Said

The Nutty Professor

Death Becomes Her

Broad City

Girls

The Little Mermaid

Mean Girls

Shrek

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reclaiming Conch: In Defense of Ursula, Fairy Octomother

Ursula’s show-stopper, “Poor, Unfortunate Souls,” presents case studies of mermen and mermaids made miserable by culture. What this song really teaches is that internalizing cultural messages is a fatal weakness, and rejecting cultural conditioning is a source of great power. Small wonder that Ursula had to die the most gruesome onscreen death in all of Disney.

Fear not the dark feminine's suspiciously vaginal conch
Fear not the dark feminine’s suspiciously vaginal conch

Written by Brigit McCone as part of our theme week on Unlikable Women.

A Bitch Flicks review of the film Bridesmaids analyzes it using Maureen Murdock’s model of psychological descent and confrontation with the dark feminine. In Bridesmaids, it is Melissa McCarthy’s “dark feminine” mentor who must literally slap sense into Kristen Wiig’s heroine. She must bite Wiig in the ass, to symbolize life biting her ass and provoke her to fight back.

Such unruly mentors are more commonly male. The Empire Strikes Back‘s Yoda is a beloved mentor, yet pushes Luke to his physical limits and forces him to confront his deepest fears. The Lion King‘s Rafiki beats Simba’s head with a stick, to teach him to learn from pain. Dodgeball‘s Rip Torn targets defenceless adolescents while bellowing, “If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball!” Yet, if any elder woman endangers our heroine’s naivete or passivity, she is usually a villain. Tough love isn’t likable. Our Fairy Godmothers offer a change of wardrobe, not trials by fire. Outside the Buffyverse, the right to “have every square inch of your ass kicked” is an under-appreciated male privilege. After all, Cinderella is a woman enslaved in a house she could leave. She doesn’t need a new dress; she needs a new attitude. Cinderella needs a Fairy Godmother who will bite her ass to save her soul. Instead, she gets slippers. What is it with women and shoes, am I right?

In a recent post, I used the model of “Manawee,” from Clarissa Pinkola Estés’ book of storytelling and Jungian psychology, Women Who Run With the Wolves. I now look to Estés model of female initiation in “Vasalisa the Wise.” In her reading, Estés takes the Baba Yaga, the sinister witch of Russian folklore, and examines her as Crone mother and initiator into wisdom. It is Estés’ belief that feminine teaching tales are often distorted by patriarchal disapproval; our mentors are rewritten as our villains, our role models as our cautionary tales.

Ursula the Sea Witch, from The Little Mermaid, seems a prime candidate to reclaim as tough love mentor, as directors Ron Clements and John Musker did themselves with Mama Odie; what other villains make “evil” schemes so perfectly tailored to help “victims” confront mental obstacles and achieve personal growth? Ursula actually shares many qualities with McCarthy’s character in Bridesmaids: she is sexually assertive, shameless, and models fat acceptance. She positively oozes anarchic vitality. We are drawn to these qualities in McCarthy but, as young girls, we learn through Ursula that they are grotesque and associated with evil. Theoretically. We’re not told why Ursula was banished from Triton’s palace, but she embodies “dark feminine” qualities that are routinely suppressed or mocked by our own culture. Ursula’s show-stopper, “Poor, Unfortunate Souls,” presents case studies of mermen and mermaids made miserable by culture. What this song really teaches is that internalizing cultural messages is a fatal weakness, and rejecting cultural conditioning is a source of great power. Small wonder that Ursula had to die the most gruesome onscreen death in all of Disney.

The punishment for failing Ursula is harsh: transformation into a worm-creature. As her victims are shriveled and rooted to the spot, the process resembles grotesquely accelerated aging. But, just as McCarthy yells, “I’m life!” before biting Wiig’s ass, challenging Wiig to fight for her “shitty life,” so we can read a darker version of that challenge in Ursula’s threat: “I’m life. I will wither your flesh and steal your beauty. I will hunch your back and shrink your body. I will drain your power and tie you down. Face me. Fight me. For I am life. Now, make your choice.” Ursula confronts “victims” with a stark choice indeed: dig a little deeper or surrender all power. Yet, in the slow creep of everyday aging, we face that same choice without noticing. We choose wrongly, because we are not made conscious that we are choosing at all. Ursula challenges that inertia, demands that we define our desires, and face ourselves honestly. Ursula mercilessly punishes self-pity. If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball. But what is worth fighting for? Always let your Conch-wench be your guide:

 Lesson 1: Your Voice Is a Terrible Thing to Waste

“Your silence will not protect you” – Audre Lorde
“Your silence will not protect you” – Audre Lorde

The Little Mermaid has been described as an anti-feminist film, in which a girl must sacrifice her voice to get a man. Not so. Not only does Eric love Ariel’s voice, but it is by Ursula’s bargain that the mermaid learns to appreciate it herself. When we meet Ariel, she is conducting extensive research into the human world, yet never shares her findings or seriously challenges Triton’s bigotry. She has “the most beautiful voice,” but skips rehearsals and concerts to sing in solitude. She falls in love with a man, but confesses that love only to his statue. Ariel is a character wasting her voice in every possible way. Her first honest outburst: “Daddy, I love him!” is the catalyst for her descent to the Crone Octomother, to face Ursula’s trials.

Ursula sings mockingly to Ariel that her voice is a “trifle, never miss it,” and sneers “it’s she who holds her tongue that gets her man.” She dares to voice (ha!) a cultural message that gains power from being unspoken. Ariel has been rewarded for her princess status and “pretty face” all her life, but discouraged from voicing her opinions. She has chosen silent rebellion over self-expression. She has chosen wrongly, because she was not made conscious she was choosing at all. Surrendering her voice teaches its value, climaxing when Ursula seduces Eric with that same voice. Ariel’s happy ending can only come after she fights to regain her voice, exposing her true feelings in the process. Lesson learned.

 Lesson 2: Power Is Not Given, But Taken

"Power can be taken but not given" - Gloria Steinem
“Power can be taken but not given” – Gloria Steinem

 

Ursula believes in her own power to rule. She does not wait for permission or recognition; her confidence is absolute and she bends life to her will. With tactical skill, she forces Triton to surrender his power to her. Of course, rule by Ursula’s matriarch would be dictatorship, as unjust as that of Triton’s patriarch. But it is society’s attempts to banish Ursula that make fairer power-sharing impossible. The more she is opposed, the larger she swells and the more violent the storms that prove her power. Recall Frederick Douglass: “Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.” Ursula is a born agitator; hear her waters’ awful roar as she smashes King Triton’s patriarchy. After all, our heroine Ariel is not granted her dream by Triton either, until she has dared to defy his rule and seize it independently. The lesson is clear: power must be taken before it will be given.

Lesson 3: It’s Patriarchy Or Your Daughter

"The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off" - Gloria Steinem
“The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off” – Gloria Steinem

King Triton is a patriarch trapped in traditions that crush Ariel’s dreams and silence her voice. He chooses his own power as ruler over the happiness of his beloved daughter. He chooses it, because he is not made conscious that he is choosing at all. Octomother Ursula confronts him with that choice in the harshest terms. Ariel is literally trapped, withering in accelerated aging. Her freedom is incompatible with Triton’s power as king. Which is more important? When faced with the conscious choice, and his daughter’s visible disempowerment, Triton realizes that his own life and power mean less to him than hers. When he regains his power at the film’s end, he uses that power to liberate Ariel and support her choices. The idea that patriarchs must sacrifice female freedom to uphold tradition is another cultural message that gains power from being unspoken. Confronting his choice has a profound effect on Triton, transforming him into a just ruler.

 Lesson 4: Screw Body Policing

"Dare to be as physically robust and varied as you always were" - Susie Orbach
“Dare to be as physically robust and varied as you always were” – Susie Orbach

 

Hopefully, as research shows fat-shaming leads to weight gain, we can finally abandon our mumbling about health concerns and admit that it is simply another bullying tactic to enforce social hierarchy. Among Ursula’s “poor, unfortunate souls” are an obese mermaid and a puny merman, both obviously depressed and self-conscious. She sings, “This one longing to be thinner, that one wants to get the girl,” then Ursula transforms them into conventionally beautiful specimens and they fall in love. Of course, they could have fallen in love just as well in their original forms, but the same culture that taught them to despise themselves has also taught them to disdain each other. We are never told the price for which Ursula “rakes them across the coals,” but we can see that their love is made weak by being conditional on external approval – they have literally surrendered control over their self-image. Dreamworks’ Shrek offered a longer critique of such conditional “romance,” but Ursula’s “paaathetic!” said it all.

Ursula is by far the most sexual and confident woman in the film. She applies lipstick with relish, gyrates and flaunts her curves without shame. Later, she takes the form of a slender beauty to trick the human world–meaning that Ursula had the power to appear thin any time, but understood it was irrelevant to her self-esteem and enjoyment of her body. Thin Ursula still loves the fat lady in the mirror. With an image inspired by drag legend Divine, not since Tim Curry’s Dr. Frank-N-Furter has there been such a defiantly flamboyant villain/liberator.

 Lesson 5: Don’t Dream It, Be It

"Men are not the enemy, but the fellow victims" - Betty Friedan
“Men are not the enemy, but the fellow victims” – Betty Friedan

 

I’ve discussed my objections to Ursula violating Eric by brainwashing him. It is totally out of character with her previous bargains and their dependence on free will. It also misses a much more interesting chance–to confront Eric with a choice between the substance of his dream girl and the surface of his dream. Prince Eric is introduced as a commitmentphobe, who dreams of an ideal woman he has never met. He claims he will recognize her when he finds her, then fails to recognize Ariel as “the one” without her singing voice. Instead, he pines over a singing girl that he barely glimpsed (paaathetic!). So, Eric hesitates. He requires entire animal orchestras to nudge him into action. He chooses to miss his opportunity for love, because he is not made conscious that he is choosing at all. After waking up to how Ursula has enslaved him with the false allure of his own fantasy, Eric finally confronts its hollowness. He is forced to stop hesitating and choose: lose Ariel forever or fight for the girl who is right before his eyes. The commitmentphobe must commit (ha!) to saving Ariel at any cost, diving into the ocean where he almost drowned and piloting the ship where he almost burned. It is a Zen principle of enlightenment that one must kill the Buddha, empowering no master to limit your independent development and self-discovery. As Ariel and Eric unite to kill Ursula, their enlightenment seems complete.

Ursula’s trident sinks through the water, setting her captives free. We can interpret this as the final will of the Sea Witch, at the end of her pupils’ trials. Perhaps now, the mermaid who longs to be thinner, and the merman who longs for the girl, can learn to long for each other as they always were. Certainly, our king has learned to use his power to liberate, our prince has learned that real love is choice and struggle, and our heroine has learned to treasure her voice and opinions. Yes, Ursula the Fairy Octomother has had the odd complaint but, on the whole, she has been a saint to those poor, unfortunate souls.

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

Somebody, please introduce Ursula to Cinderella

  

Brigit McCone adored The Little Mermaid growing up (but weirdly overidentified with Sebastian the reggae crab), writes and directs short films and radio dramas. Her hobbies include doodling and bad karaoke.

Wedding Movies Revisited

The staggering majority of wedding movies take on the inherent drama of an impending lifelong commitment by tearing apart the engaged couple for a more “meant to be” love, generally with either a close friend or someone working on the wedding. This trope became incredibly frustrating for me when I was engaged, because I wasn’t inclined to root for weddings falling apart at the altar. I became so jaded about the genre, hating that so many movies with central female characters are wrapped up in the wedding world. But this week I’ve been rethinking wedding movies a bit.

'Bride Wars', the quintessential obnoxious wedding movie
Bride Wars, the quintessential obnoxious wedding movie

The reason I’ve been delinquent with my Bitch Flicks posts the last couple of weeks is I have been neck-deep in the choppy waters of Wedding Sea. My best friend from college is getting married, and I am Chief Mermaid (our vastly superior way of saying “Matron of Honor,” which, barf.) I’ve traveled nearly 10,000 miles to be here. I have engaged in crafting I never imagined I would (for example, I now know how to rivet). I have enabled my friend’s quest toward giving zero fucks as endless wedding “problems” present themselves (all things considered, she’s doing great).

And it is my third wedding anniversary is this week, so I’ve also been thinking back to the immersive planning experience I went through for my own wedding, which I blogged along the way. This is where I actually got my start writing about movies, as I dove head-first into the extensive genre of wedding movies. My takeaway on the genre when it was a Bitch Flicks theme week last year was as such:

Weddings are such popular centerpieces for movies because they’re sort of a free pass on logical character behavior. Even in real life, weddings exaggerate emotions and make people do strange things (like spend thousands of dollars on chair rental). So in the movies, weddings are basically an anything-goes wonderland of high drahms. None of the characters have to act realistically or believably and the stakes are always extremely high (“’til death do us part”!!!).

The staggering majority of wedding movies take on the inherent drama of an impending lifelong commitment by tearing apart the engaged couple for a more “meant to be” love, generally with either a close friend or someone working on the wedding. This trope became incredibly frustrating for me when I was engaged, because I wasn’t inclined to root for weddings falling apart at the altar. I became so jaded about the genre, hating that so many movies with central female characters are wrapped up in the wedding world.

'My Best Friend's Wedding' is one of many love triangle wedding movies.
My Best Friend’s Wedding is one of many love triangle wedding movies.

But this week I’ve been rethinking wedding movies a bit.

Weddings are dramatic all on their own, even without the ubiquitous love triangle-engendered cold feet. I wish more wedding movies explored the more mundane, but no less histrionic, issues that come with this cultural juggernaut. Women, in particular, are forced to confront a crap-ton of societal expectations when they wed. Families are drawn together and meant to be happy and celebratory regardless of the actual state of their relationships (the best representation I’ve seen of this issue thus far is Rachel Getting Married). People are pushed to their breaking point by hot glue guns and last-minute cancellations and unexpected lighting technician fees. There’s a lot of drama (and tragedy + time = comedy) inherit to weddings that doesn’t involve jiltings, which I hope are relatively rare.

'Rachel Getting Married' a wedding movie about family relationships
Rachel Getting Married: a wedding movie about family relationships

So I wish there were more movies that explored these facets of weddings. I want more movies that use a wedding as a catalyst for relationship reckonings that aren’t between the doomed would-be bride and groom. But I also want wedding movies about the rest of the bizarre whirlwind surrounding weddings: I want a movie that takes on the “Wedding Industrial Complex” as an evil empire that a superpowered bride takes down. I want a race-against-time action comedy about recovering misplaced wedding rings.  I want more gay wedding movies, wedding movies about people of color, wedding movies about people with disabilities.

Basically, I think weddings are interesting, and I want to see weddings in film as something other than the backdrop for a pro-forma romantic comedy. (Even Bridesmaids and Bachelorette, two female-relationship-centric wedding flicks, heavily feature romcom subplots.)

Even 'Bridesmaids' has romcom elements
Even Bridesmaids has romcom elements

I still stand by what I wrote before, that “it’s a shame that they take up so much of a share of the movies Hollywood makes about women.” Obviously we can all agree that Hollywood needs to be making more movies about women, and that our culture over-emphasizes the importance of weddings in women’s lives, so maybe I shouldn’t be asking for more wedding movies. I suppose I don’t want MORE wedding movies, I just want different and superior ones.

So I don’t think wedding movies are just a particular weakness of mine anymore. I think weddings are a valid and rich subject for a movie. Just not the same movie 500,000 times.

Robin Hitchcock is an American writer with 24 dresses to go before she ties Katherine Heigl.

‘They Came Together’ and the Sins of Romantic Comedy

It’s easy to look at the ads for ‘They Came Together’ and expect a straight romcom. The poster and the film are glossy and full of comedic stars. New York is so important to the story it’s like another character. The leads, Amy Poehler and Paul Rudd as Molly and Joel, play exaggerations of the roles they could be cast in in any other film. She’s the big-hearted and dangerously clumsy proprietor of a quirky little candy shop that gives all its proceeds to charity, while he’s a big candy executive who dreams of a simpler life, obsesses over sex, and threatens to shut down Molly’s shop. They get together. That much is obvious once you hear it’s a romantic comedy.

Poster for They Came Together
Poster for They Came Together

 

It’s easy to look at the ads for They Came Together and expect a straight romcom. The poster and the film are glossy and full of comedic stars. New York is so important to the story it’s like another character. The leads, Amy Poehler and Paul Rudd as Molly and Joel, play exaggerations of the roles they could be cast in in any other film. She’s the big-hearted and dangerously clumsy proprietor of a quirky little candy shop that gives all its proceeds to charity, while he’s a big candy executive who dreams of a simpler life, obsesses over sex, and threatens to shut down Molly’s shop. They get together.

That much is obvious once you hear it’s a romantic comedy.

They Came Together, the latest from David Wain and Michael Showalter, the team behind cult pic Wet Hot American Summer, intends to parody these easy conventions, and though an enjoyable film, it’s debatable what it actually accomplishes. Comedy is a difficult matter to critique as so much of what we find humorous is specific to us as individuals, as well as to factors like our culture, class, and age, that it’s nearly impossible for one person to stand up on a soapbox and declare whether or not something is funny. Adding to that, They Came Together is a polarizing film by nature. Its humor is absurdist and jokes zig and zag completely out of left field, sometimes feeling more like an extended sketch than a feature film. There are subtle visual gags, highly telegraphed centerpiece jokes, clever observations about life both in the real world and in the sunny world of the romantic comedy, plenty of raunch and some of those repetition bits that run just long enough to stop being funny and then to get funny again, thrown in for good measure. In short, it’s a comedy grab bag for which both rants and raves are justified.

Joel is given advice by friends, A-list comedians who each represent a different archetype
Joel is given advice by friends, A-list comedians who each represent a different archetype

 

Much of the romcom references are bang on. The basic plot, cribbed from You’ve Got Mail, pegs an uptight man against a free-spirited woman and tells us he needs her to help him believe in his dreams, while she needs him to help her become more grounded. To stress this point, they’re even given wrong partners as contrast, ever-literal accountant Eggbert (Ed Helms) and perfectly put together Tiffany (Cobie Smulders). All the genre staples we know and are growing tired of are there: Joel gets advice from basketball playing pals who each represent a different point of view (and tell us out-right which idea they represent), they bond over their “quirky” shared tastes, in this case a love of fiction books and a hatred for the complications of modern life, spread their clothes all over Molly’s apartment while making out and fall in love through a montage that shows them buying fruit and playing in fallen leaves.

 

Joel and Molly fall in love through a montage of cliche activities
Joel and Molly fall in love through a montage of cliche activities

 

There are also some new and intriguing points made by the film about how race and class are portrayed in earnest examples of the genre. For existence, Molly’s assistant is Black woman who appears to have no life other than helping her, even picking up the phone in one scene and assuming the call is for Molly before even asking. Later into the film, it is revealed that Molly has a young son, and has such an easy time being a single mother that his presence in her life wasn’t even noticeable until it was pointed out. The movie fantasy of easy success and money is also briefly deconstructed in the end, when the main character’s business fails and cannot be salvaged.

With the film’s absurdist style, the plot and characters can’t really be dissected at length. But a romcom parody is particularly interesting for its power to point out annoying or offensive staples of the genre, in particular, their portrayals of women. Though a genre geared toward women, female characters in romantic comedies are uniformly portrayed as cardboard cut-outs, needy bleeding hearts or catty and conniving villains. In They Came Together, the one-dimensional nature of the female characters is pointed out as part of the joke. Molly’s business is failing because of her compulsion to give candy away and she never once thinks of changing the way she runs things. Likewise, Tiffany tells Joel point-blank that she is untrustworthy. In contrast, Joel is a complicated character who supports his younger brother, is conflicted about his job, and has strange feelings for his grandmother.

 

Joel’s ex Tiffany warns him to be suspicious of her morals while seducing him
Joel’s ex Tiffany warns him to be suspicious of her motives while seducing him

 

The difference between men and women is also boiled down to one point, that men are easy-going and order from the menu, while women are needlessly complicated (like Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally) and have impossible specifications for how their food must be prepared. This idea, a common one in romantic comedies that has even bleed into real life expectations, is clearly posed as ridiculous.

But one target the film should have paid more attention to is the derision of the romantic comedy genre without our collective culture. When a new romcom opens, most of us expect it to be terrible, sight unseen. Horror films, another genre that can be cheaply and quickly made, don’t suffer the same derision, perhaps because the genre is generally geared toward a masculine audience. While bad horror is recognized as such, masters like John Carpenter and Wes Craven are still routinely praised, even by film buffs who are not major fans of the horror genre. Meanwhile, giants of romcoms like the late Nora Ephron, are seen as bi-words for schmaltzy “chick” movies no serious person would admit to liking. In my own life, I can’t recall the last time I heard a woman admit to a fondness for the likes of Sleepless in Seattle or Never Been Kissed without adding “as a guilty pleasure” in a knee-jerk reaction.

 

The ladies of ‘game-changing’ romantic comedy Bridesmaids
The ladies of ‘game-changing’ romantic comedy Bridesmaids

 

That was a big part of the wild success of Bridesmaids and its reputation as a game-changer: while a lot of the story presented wasn’t new, it was the first romantic comedy in a long time that we were “allowed” to like as something more than the garbage film meant for watching alone in sweatpants while nursing a carton of Hagen Daas.

Somehow it got drummed into our heads that the romantic comedy isn’t meant for us.

I’m making some wild generalizations about you as a reader here, but I’m going to guess that you’re something like me. You consider yourself smart, cynical and wary of the phase, “Well if you didn’t like it, that means you didn’t get it.” I’m not generally a fan of romcoms, but I’m starting to wonder how much of that distaste comes from the idea that they’re not “serious movies,” that they’re not worth my time, that I’m not supposed to like them. Sure, I’m turned off by the cutesy modern touches like klutzy women, quirky businesses, the plague of architect love interests (one trope missing from They Came Together) and honestly by the term “romcom” itself, but none of those things are that tied up in my ideas of modern womanhood and my comportment. I roll my eyes at them and I’m over it.

A romantic comedy where characters always succeed regardless of business sense or marketability and end up up happily ever after, is like a fairy tale to me; I don’t feel held to the expectations of women presented in them. But what I do feel constrained by is the idea of a universal taste, the final opinions formed in almost unspoken consensus that this show is a masterpiece or this show is crap, wherein anyone who disagrees loses all credibility.

Genres that cater to women are already disadvantaged in this respect as they’re seen as veering away from the universal, generally masculine path of canonized media. No matter how much important journalism or honest snapshots of our lives women’s magazines present, they’re still seen as trash. Female bloggers that write in a colloquial style that mirrors their style of speech and engages with their female readers are seen as unserious and dumb. Likewise, Girls was only acceptable as a good show after it gained the approval of young male viewers and with the approval of bro-humorist Judd Apatow.

A popular joke
A popular joke

 

There’s joke I’ve heard a lot recently: “I’m not like most girls”- most girls.

For most young educated women, romantic comedies are for those others, the stereotypical girl we imagine existing somewhere (basically characters played by Mindy Kaling), the one we’re deathly afraid of appearing be. We claim not to diet, we have female friends, we would never force a date to see the latest Jen Aniston movie, we call ourselves low maintenance. Sure, we want someone to love but we don’t see it as the ultimate goal in life.

But in truth? I’m sure we’ve all got “girly” things we truly love that compromise a good portion of identity. And it shouldn’t be shameful to like things that are supposed to be for women, just like shouldn’t be shameful to reject them or to like media geared toward both masculine and feminine audiences.

As in most romantic comedies, Joel and Molly have a meet cute when they wear the same costume to a halloween party
As in most romantic comedies, Joel and Molly have a meet cute when they wear the same costume to a halloween party

 

It’s probably taking things too far to say I hope They Came Together will change filmmaking or consumption; it’s a light comedic parody without activist intentions. Still, it’s the kind of film that, intentionally or not, makes you think about what we’re used to seeing on the screen and wonder why we have accepted certain ideas presented to us without complaint. Like why is one genre for women and another for men/everyone?

It hasn’t always been this way. Past romantic comedies from the 30s, even through the 90s where much of the tropes in They Came Together originated from, have been acclaimed as serious films, targeted to a universal audience and even Academy Award-ed. Many of these films were even posed from a masculine point of view, following a male character’s quest for love instead of a woman’s.

Sure They Came Together is parody, but despite its basic romantic comedy structure, it’s aimed at any audience appreciative of its brand of comedy and assumes even male viewers are familiar with the genre. Is it hopelessly naive to wish that the very existence of this film, which takes for granted that the audience will recognize romantic comedy tropes and see them as stale, will lead to some innovations?

 

See Also: The Romantic Comedy is Dead

________________________________________________________________________

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

Wedding Week: The HitchDied Guide to Wedding Movies

Written by Robin Hitchcock

When I was planning my own wedding in 2010 and 2011, I blogged about the strange experience of getting sucked into wedding-world as an allegedly savvy and feminist chick who nevertheless loves weddings. To round out my personal journey through wedding culture (and have a good excuse to watch and write about movies), I watched and reviewed dozens of wedding movies on HitchDied. I’ve finally compiled a full index for those of you following Bitch Flicks’ wedding movies week.

The HitchDied Guide to Wedding Movies

I’ll also share my general reflections on the wedding movie genre: Weddings are such popular centerpieces for movies because they’re sort of a free pass on logical character behavior. Even in real life, weddings exaggerate emotions and make people do strange things (like spend thousands of dollars on chair rental). So in the movies, weddings are basically an anything-goes wonderland of high drahms. None of the characters have to act realistically or believably and the stakes are always extremely high (“til death do us part”!!!). Wedding movies practically write themselves.
So you have your “I suddenly love this person now that they are marrying someone else!” movies (My Best Friend’s Wedding, Made of Honor), “I am going insane because my sister is getting married and I am still single!” movies (When in Rome, The Wedding Date), your “I’m trying to be a good friend here but engagement has turned you into a pod person” movies (Bridesmaids, Bride Wars), your “Oh crap going to this wedding means confronting people and events from my past!” movies (The Best Man, Rachel Getting Married). Ur-Wedding Movie 27 Dresses hits all of these notes and more! 
Even though I had fun with it, I have to say if you are engaged, you should probably limit your exposure to wedding movies. Because so many of them end with broken engagements or dramatic jiltings at the altar, you’ll start seeing potential wedding saboteurs in all your friends, family, and hired wedding professionals. You’ll see the obviously doomed engagements at the start of those movies and worry that if those characters could be so deluded, are you and your partner as well? You’ll think spending thousands of dollars renting chairs is ok because at least you didn’t invite random strangers from your mother’s past for an ABBA-scored  paternity-off. 
Wedding movies are really silly, and they all kind of follow the same patterns, and as such it’s a shame that they take up so much of a share of the movies Hollywood makes about women. But action movies are really silly and all kind of follow the same patterns, and I certainly don’t want Hollywood to stop cranking those out. Really, I love wedding movies (just like I love weddings) even though—or more honestly, because—they can be absurd.

Robin Hitchcock is an American writer living in Cape Town, South Africa. Her wedding colors were blush and bashful. 

Wedding Week: Why We All Need to See ‘Bridesmaids’

Movie poster for Bridesmaids
This guest post by Molly McCaffrey previously appeared at her blog I Will Not Diet and is cross-posted with permission. 
I keep hearing people say they aren’t going to watch Bridesmaids because it’s a rom-com or a chick flick, and since this is really an important movie for women, I want to tell you why it’s not either of those things and why you need to see it.
Maya Rudolph and Kristen Wiig exercising in Bridesmaids
1. First and foremost, this is not a rom-com. Yes, this movie is a comedy, but it’s not a rom-com because those movies put the romance first (and it’s usually cheesy, unbelievable romance) and the comedy second. Notice that the word “rom” comes before the word “com”? That’s because the rom is center stage, and in Bridesmaids, comedy definitely trumps romance. (By the way, women don’t exercise in a rom-com; they just look perfect without trying.) Also, this movie is not a rom-com or a chick flick because the main plot of the story is not about a woman who would only be happy if she could just find the right guy, which brings me to my next point … 
Drinks, pre-food poisoning, in Bridesmaids
2. No, this is a movie about … wait for it … female friendship. I know what you’re thinking—a movie about female friendship? I’ve never heard of such a thing. Well, there was Thelma and Louise, but that was like a million years ago. Yes, that’s my point. It’s been WAY TOO LONG since we’ve had a movie about female friendship, which is why people are saying … 
3. This film is the first of a new genre. Perhaps you’ve heard of the bromance? Well, Bridesmaids is supposed to do for women what Wedding Crashers did for men. This new genre still doesn’t have a name—“sismance” and “wom-ance” just don’t sound quite right, and if you come up with a clever moniker (maybe “broad-mance”?), I’m sure you could make millions doing so.
Bridesmaids karaoke
4. And because this is a movie about female friendship, it passes the Bechdel Test, which asks: 1) Are there two named female characters in the film? There are SIX in this movie. 2) Do they talk to each other? Yes, they do. 3) About something besides men? Absolutely. I don’t have the exact numbers, but I would venture to guess that about 90% of the movies made in Hollywood do not pass this test, reinforcing the wrong-headed notion that women are only in the world to be accessories to funny male comedians or hot male action stars. In other words, that women are defined by men. And guess what? We’re not.
Kristen Wiig in Bridesmaids
5. It’s also the first Hollywood movie in a long time about a woman who is not played by an A-list actress. This may seem like no big deal at first, but when you think about it, it really is. The reason that most movies about women have to feature A-list actresses is because the people in Hollywood think good stories about women aren’t interesting enough to make us want to see them on their own and that they need something else—like Julia Roberts or Reese Witherspoon or Angelina Jolie—to get us in the seats of the theater. But we know that’s not true, and by giving Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph the leading roles in this movie, the powers-that-be are also giving us a chance to prove that. And because they are played by “regular” actresses … 
The ladies of Bridesmaids
6. Bridesmaids features women who look like women in real life, which is almost unheard of in Hollywood movies these days. Kristen Wiig, as beautiful as she is, also looks her age in this film. She has wrinkles and bags under her eyes and doesn’t dress like she just stepped out of a Prada boutique. Maya Rudolph looks adorable, but she also doesn’t look stick thin. Nor does Wendi McLendon-Covey or Melissa McCarthy. Yes, three of the women in this bridal party are Hollywood thin, but three are not. And three out of six really ain’t bad. And the fact that we get this range of curvy bodies—from Rudolph to McLendon-Covey to McCarthy is really unbelievably impressive since normally Hollywood only features the two extremes of big and small with no in-between. Not only do the women in Bridesmaids look real … 
A sweaty Kristen Wiig in Bridesmaids
7. Like real-life women, they talk about sex … If Sex and the City was important because it showed women talking about sex in raunchy ways that we had previously only associated with men, Bridesmaids is important because it shows them talking about it—and acting on it—in believable ways. Now that we’ve experienced Samantha Jones (and thank God we did), we can have authenticity, which is what you’ll find when Wiig and Rudolph discuss sex over breakfast, a scene that reads like an homage to the post-coitus brunch that was a staple of Sex and the City.

8. They also talk like real-life women. Like the rest of us, they talk about everything in life … they talk about their jobs, their life choices, their regrets, their bodies, their friendships, other women, their hopes and dreams, and, yes, their clothes and even sometimes men. But they don’t ONLY talk about men, which is crucial.

Kristen Wiig’s airplane freakout in Bridesmaids
9. And, for me, the most important thing is that these woman are well-rounded characters who have personalities and genuine flaws. And, no, I’m not talking about their bodies. I’m talking about the fact that these characters sometimes make the wrong decisions about their friendships, their jobs, their roommates, their lives, and as a result, the audience can’t help but feel for them while also wanting to kick their butts. Kristen Wiig’s character goes through the same kinds of ordeals we all go through—the kind that make us question who we are and what life is about. And her struggles are so frustrating and so moving that I found myself actually sobbing through the middle of the movie. The crazy thing about it is that while I was sobbing, I also started laughing. I’ve laughed and cried in a movie, but I’ve never before done both at the same time, and I did both while watching this movie more than once. I always tell my students that over-the-top comedy only works if it is paired with real, honest emotion, and my response proves that is something Bridesmaids does really well.
Annie Mumolo and Kristen Wiig in Bridesmaids
10. Finally, this movie was written by two women, Kristen Wiig and her former Groundlings castmate Annie Mumolo (pictured above). As we all know, there are not nearly enough women in Hollywood, so we need to support them as much as we can.

So what are you waiting for?

Molly McCaffrey is the author of the short story collection How to Survive Graduate School & Other Disasters, the co-editor of Commutability: Stories about the Journey from Here to There, and the founder of I Will Not Diet, a blog devoted to healthy living and body acceptance. She has worked with Academy Award winner Barbara Kopple and received her Ph.D. from the University of Cincinnati. Currently she teaches at Western Kentucky University and designs books for Steel Toe Books. She is at work on her first memoir, You Belong to Us, which tells the story of McCaffrey meeting her biological family.

Wedding Week: The Top Hollywood Wedding Scenes

This is a guest post by Marcela de Vivo.
Weddings in the movies and in television always seem to be more elaborate than those we experience in reality. Fictional characters with traditionally low-paying jobs somehow find a way to have a wedding that would cost literally a million dollars in the real world. They’re often over-the-top with hundreds of guests, extravagant meals and elaborate ice sculptures–you know, fluff.
Wedding scenes on the big screen are a fantasy of what viewers would want if we had unlimited funds. But we don’t, so watching these top wedding scenes will have to do! 
Movie still from the wedding scene in The Princess Bride
The Princess Bride
Princess Buttercup may not have wanted to marry Prince Humperdink, but that doesn’t mean she couldn’t appreciate the fairy tale ambiance of her wedding. Flowers and candlelight decorated the large church, which was filled with the richest, most powerful wedding guests in the land. As Buttercup hoped the rebellion outside the doors was on her behalf, the most memorable priest in movie history spoke about the joy of “maawwaaage.”
The wedding itself didn’t end too well for many of the characters, but all-in-all, it was a memorable wedding.
Movie still from the wedding scene in The Godfather
The Godfather
The father of the bride traditionally feels obligated to grant favors on the day of his daughter’s wedding, at least according to Marlon Brando’s character, Vito Corleone. Apparently, that extends to the bride herself.
Corleone’s daughter is known to have one of the most extravagant weddings in movie history, with a large tent and vivacious celebration with singing, dancing and plenty of alcohol. The best part of all was having the entire family together to celebrate–after that enormous cake, of course. 
Movie still from the wedding scene in Bridesmaids
Bridesmaids
Lillian may not have been the main character, but when it came to her wedding, she was truly the star. Despite a case of terrible food poisoning, a disaster bachelorette party and temporarily losing her best friend and maid of honor, Lillian’s wedding was indeed spectacular, complete with a waterfront setting, designer wedding dress and colorful strobe lighting–something we could all admit to be somewhat jealous of.
The kicker was the entertainment: a surprise performance by Lillian’s favorite childhood band, Wilson Phillips. And best of all, she had all of her best friends by her side. 
Movie still from the wedding scene in My Big Fat Greek Wedding
My Big Fat Greek Wedding
Sometimes family can complicate what should be the best day of a person’s life. For Toula, the days leading up to her wedding were difficult due to her incredibly traditional family. But when it came to the day of the wedding, it seemed like the universe was doing its best to ruin everything.
It was Toula’s family, as big and loud as they were, that made the day so special. Toula’s parents finally accepted her new husband and even gave her a house as a wedding gift (an entire house!). This is one movie wedding that goes to show that it doesn’t take perfection to have a perfect wedding.
Movie still from the wedding scene in The Graduate
The Graduate
One of the most iconic wedding scenes in movie history is also one of the least successful. Although the church wedding was nearly empty, the bride, Elaine, looked beautiful in her classic white wedding gown–at least Benjamin Braddock thought so. Unfortunately for Ben, he wasn’t the groom, but that didn’t stop him from whisking away the bride!
Ultimately, Elaine and Benjamin run off together, just minutes after she says, “I do.” Sure, there was a brawl, and the bride and groom didn’t stay together for longer than 5 minutes, but at least it was memorable.
We might not always get the perfect wedding of our dreams, with the fancy sculptures, favors, gift bags and decorations, but at least we can appreciate and treasure what marriage is actually about more than these films do.

Marcela De Vivo is a freelance writer from California whose writing covers everything on health, travel, gaming and technology. Watching these films really reminds her of what marriage truly involves and the value of family. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter today!

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

Network TV is Broken. So How Does Shonda Rhimes Keep Making Hits? by Willa Paskin via The New York Times

Girls on Film: The Danger of the ‘Female Filmmaker’ Label by Monica Bartyzel via The Week 

The Onion Can Go to Hell [Trigger warning: on their “joke” over Chris Brown beating Rihanna to death] by Melissa McEwan via Shakesville

YA Author Takes on Gendered Book Covers with the Coverflip Challenge by Rebecca Pahle via The Mary Sue 

The Gender Coverup by Maureen Johnson via The Huffington Post

This 17-Year-Old Coder Is Saving Twitter from TV Spoilers (Spoiler: She’s a Girl) by Dana Liebelson via Mother Jones

The Women of Mad Men Kick Ass in Season 6 by Nicole Aragi via Buzzfeed

What have you been reading or writing this week?? Tell us in the comments!

Gender and Food Week: ‘Bridesmaids’: Brunch, Brazilian Food, Baking, and Best Friends

Bridesmaids
 
Guest post written by Laura A. Shamas.
The rituals of contemporary female friendship are punctuated with food and drink as signifiers in the 2011 comedy hit Bridesmaids, directed by Paul Feig. Many of the key emotional moments of the film involve food and drink. Intimate aspects of female friendship are revealed while eating; a female collective bonds over feasting (and its repercussions); and a developing romance is linked to carrots and cake. 
In the opening scene of Bridesmaids, set in Milwaukee, and written by Annie Mumolo and Kristen Wiig, Annie Walker (Kristen Wiig) is sexually involved with Ted (Jon Hamm). Their encounters are casual, or so they say to each other. When Ted asks her to leave his home in the morning, the disappointment shows on Annie’s face. But later, over brunch with her best friend Lillian (Maya Rudolph), we learn how detrimental “the Ted thing” is for Annie. Annie tries to frame the torrid night with Ted as an “adult sleepover” but Lillian tells her she can do better: “You hate yourself after you see him.” The female friendship ritual of a weekend brunch with a girlfriend is highlighted here. Lillian’s loyalty to Annie is established through her candor, her desire to protect Annie, and her inspiring admonition to Annie to find a better partner. The scene ends with the goofy pair playing with their food, placing it in their teeth — a reflection of the playful nature of their bond and its longevity: they’ve been friends since childhood. They are comfortable and authentic with each other. 
In the next scene, as they walk away from the restaurant, Annie’s deeper tie with food is revealed. Lillian and Annie stroll past a deserted bakery named “Cake Baby,” a business Annie opened during the recession. Annie registers sadness as she sees the empty building again. To comfort her friend Lillian comments: “They were good cakes, Annie.” 
Annie is no longer a baker. She currently works in a jewelry store as a sales clerk, where she tells frequently customers that love doesn’t last — a philosophy that goes against the “eternal bliss” code needed to sell wedding rings to couples. And her home life is equally unsettled because her male roommate’s sister has moved in to the small apartment; the roommate’s sister is featured in a food-related scene when she pours an open package of green peas on her back in order to calm a new tattoo. 
Annie’s one bright spot in life is getting together with Lillian. She brings a bottle of wine over to Lillian’s apartment for an evening in with drinks and magazines. There’s a wire basket filled with apples on the coffee table, and Lillian, holding out her hand in a formal way, says: “I want to eat an apple.” It is then that Annie notices Lillian’s glittering ring. Lillian is newly engaged to Doug. Apples, as symbols, are present in many ancient stories, such as “The Golden Apples” from the Garden of Hesperides or the tale of Adam and Eve. Apples classically represent knowledge; according to legend, this comes from the five-point star present in the apple’s core (Chevalier and Gheerbrant 36). By becoming engaged, Lillian indicates she is ready to move on to another phase, to gain more knowledge, to individuate. This is underscored by the visual and textual reference to apples in this scene. Lillian asks Annie to be her Maid of Honor at the impending nuptials. 
When Annie goes to pick up her mom (Jill Clayburgh) to attend Lillian and Doug’s engagement party, her mother gently states that Annie is in a downward spiral: “Hitting bottom is a good thing…because there’s nowhere to go but up.” In Maureen Murdock’s book The Heroine’s Journey, Murdock differentiates the steps of a female hero’s journey from those of a male hero. One of Murdock’s vital points involves a “Descent to the Goddess” to heal aspects of a mother-daughter split. According to Murdock, a woman begins an initiation process on the descent arc of a heroine’s journey: “It may involve a seemingly endless period of wandering, grief, rage, dethroning kings, of looking for the lost pieces of herself, and meeting the dark feminine. It may take weeks, months or years” (8). These steps may be seen in Annie’s journey in “Bridesmaids.” Her fruitless dalliance with Ted, her aimless job and transient home life, her connection to a lost childhood through Lillian (and the mourning of childhood’s end) are all present in the early part of the film. Annie’s meeting of the “dark feminine” in Bridesmaidsis yet to come. 
At the subsequent fancy engagement party, another ritual of female friendship is revealed. In a sequence with Annie and the beautiful Helen (Rose Byrne), Lillian’s newer “best friend,” Annie and Helen compete with each other to deliver the best bridal toast, with alternate, escalating praise of Lillian in front of the gathered crowd. There, Annie drinks champagne, and reveals that Annie and Lillian have a ritual of “drunken Saturday nights at Rockin’ Sushi.” Saturday nights are times of revelry and letting loose; Annie and Lillian have a standing BFF hangout restaurant ritual on that night. We later learn that Helen longs for this: an ongoing invitation to female revelry and even the spontaneity involved in such female revelry. It’s something the seemingly perfect Helen doesn’t have. 
At the engagement party, the rest of the female collective in the film is 3 introduced: the “Bridesmaids.” Newlywed innocent Becca (Ellie Kemper), jaded mother-of-three Rita (Wendi McClendon-Covey), and the intrepid Megan, sister to the groom (Melissa McCarthy) are there. They, along with Helen and Annie, complete Lillian’s assembled group of female wedding supporters. It is through the activities of this group that the “dark feminine” is explored more fully in the film. 
In the hierarchy of a wedding, a bride and groom are the most important roles. Bridesmaids, taken as an archetypal female construction, may be seen to represent “sisterhood,” a unified group of female attendants to the bride. If so, the dysfunction of this specific collective, as revealed in Act Two, serves as wry, hilarious commentary on aspects of the dark feminine and our wedding rituals from the female gaze. 
Near the end of Act One, Annie is pulled over at night for a violation by a state policeman named Nathan Rhodes, his last name perhaps a commentary of Annie’s own life at a crossroads. Annie’s tail lights need to be repaired, a recurring metaphor reflecting Annie’s inner life. Rhodes (Chris O’Dowd) recognizes Annie from her bakery days. He tells her how much he admired her delicious pastries, especially her cream puffs. In this scene we learn that the bakery is connected to emotional pain for Annie — and not just for the financial devastation she suffered when it failed. Her boyfriend, who worked there, left her when it closed. Rhodes reminds her: “I appreciated your cakes.” 
After this encounter, a brief baking sequence follows for Annie. In the kitchen alone, she bakes a beautiful cupcake for herself, decorated with a gorgeous flower on top. Annie’s baking skills and her artistry are displayed. Pensively, she eats the single perfect cupcake, alone. 
A baker is someone who could be seen to work “alchemically”; the transformation of raw materials into something edible and wonderful involves the use of an oven, which, as an image, could resonate as “womb.” Annie begins, in the scene above, to try to reconnect with her baking skills, and the warmth of the womb. 
In Act Two, Annie meets the dark feminine as reflected by the bridesmaids — and her own psyche. It is in perhaps the most famous sequence in the film, involving feasting at an authentic Brazilian restaurant and subsequent scenes at an exclusive couture bridal shop named “Belle en Blanc,” that the dark feminine is revealed in a graphic, scatological way.
The competition between Annie and Helen is highlighted throughout this sequence. Whether it’s over the theme of the bridal shower, or where the bachelorette party should be held, Annie and Helen are at odds. Annie’s taste is seen as déclassé compared to Helen’s standards. After the meal at the Brazilian restaurant, presented as a communal feasting experience, Helen and Annie spar over the selection of the bridesmaids’ dresses. It is then that the group becomes sick with food poisoning, leading to the massive need for a bathroom, including a toilet, a sink, and in Lillian’s case, the city street. When Annie tries to pretend she does not feel sick, Helen tests her resolve by handing her a Jordan Almond to eat. 
The juxtaposition of the name of the shop, “Belle en Blanc,” compared to what happens to the collective, suggests an ironic commentary on aspects of the dark feminine. And it is related to food. The food poisoning underscores the feminine spiritual poisoning felt between Annie and Helen, and even Lillian, as revealed by competition and wedding stress. At one point, a character says that one of the dresses at “Belle en Blanc” is so pretty that it makes her stomach hurt. 
On Annie’s way home from another Ted encounter, she stops at a small liquor market, and reaches to buy a drink called “Calm.” There, she sees Rhodes again, and he offers her carrots. She ends up eating carrots with him, sitting on a car hood outside. He tells her she should be setting up a new bakery. Annie replies that she doesn’t bake anymore. A carrot is dropped on the ground, and Rhodes says that there is always one lucky, ugly carrot in the bag. He offers it to her. She won’t take it. But their fun continues into the dawn, as he shows her how to use his official radar gun to catch speeders. 
When the Bridesmaids return home prematurely — after a disastrous attempt to fly to Vegas for a bachelorette party — Annie encounters Rhodes. They go to a bar. Upon hearing her tale of woe, Rhodes dubs her the “Maid of Dishonor” and urges Annie to start baking again. Annie says it doesn’t make her happy anymore. She spends the night with Rhodes, and they become sexually involved. In the morning, he surprises her by assembling baking supplies to encourage her to bake again: “Your workshop awaits.” Angered, Annie refuses: “I don’t need you to fix me.” She leaves, declaring their encounter a mistake. 
After losing her job and apartment, Annie moves back in with her mother. She refuses Rhodes’ calls. Annie tells her mom that she hadn’t hit bottom before. Now, perhaps she finally has. This realization is underscored when she drives by her old bakery and sees the business name “Cake Baby” newly defaced with a sexual slur. 
At the elaborate French-toned bridal shower, arranged perfectly by Helen but stolen from Annie’s idea, is a chocolate fountain and a giant heart-shaped cookie. As a shower gift to Lillian, Annie assembled an amazing box of childhood memories. Helen tops Annie by giving Lillian a trip to Paris to meet with the couture wedding dress designer. At the party, Annie breaks down, and in a culminating Act Two event, attacks the giant heart cookie and the chocolate fountain. In a rant, Annie calls out Lillian for participating in such a pretentious social gathering. Lillian responds: she disinvites Annie from the wedding. By attacking the giant cookie heart, Annie embodies her own need to address matters of the heart, and even her “baking.” The dark chocolate fountain is perhaps an ironic visual callback to the dark feminine as seen earlier in the “Belle en Blanc” sequence. Annie’s rage could also be seen as a part of dark feminine power — her own. 
After Annie’s car is damaged in a hit and run, she’s depressed. With nowhere to go, she stays inside her mother’s home all the time — the ultimate “Return to the Womb.” Megan comes to visit, with the nine pups she stole from the bridal shower. Trying to encourage her, Megan tells Annie: “You’re your problem and you’re also your solution.” 
Annie starts baking. She cracks eggs, whisks, blends sugars. Her car is finally repaired, and it’s all gratis, thanks to a deal Rhodes made with the mechanic who owed him a favor. To show her appreciation, Annie leaves a beautiful cake with a carrot on top at Rhodes’ doorstep, a reference to the lucky carrot he told her about. This is a signifier that Annie is ascending, healing, back on her path. Her descent spiral is over. She can “bake” again. A carrot, in folklore, is related to fertility and seeding; it also is reputed to have medicinal qualities connected to “sight.” The carrot on the cake represents the renewal of Annie’s vision, her “warming,” and her outreach to Rhodes. But Rhodes leaves the box outside on his front step. Annie sees raccoons eating from the box, at one point. 
Further Act Three action involves trying to track down the missing Lillian, who has disappeared. Helen locates Annie at her mom’s house, and the two frenemies try to find Lillian. It is in through this activity we learn of Helen’s longing for true female friendship — that she’s never had a long term female friendship like Lillian’s and Annie’s relationship. 
Eventually, Lillian is found at her apartment. She walked out on her own rehearsal dinner. She tells Annie: “I outcrazied you.” On the brink of her own life — changing step, Lillian worries about what will happen to Annie in the future. 
Annie reassures Lillian: “I’m gonna be fine, I am fine” — an indication that Annie knows she’s better. Then she helps Lillian get ready for the ceremony. The wedding is back on track. 
Act Three culminates in entire wedding rocking out to Wilson Phillips’ performance of “Hold On,” an extravagance arranged by Helen. But after it all, Annie invites Helen to a Saturday evening out sometime at Rockin’ Sushi with Lillian and Annie — the ultimate girlfriend ritual. This makes Helen happy, and signals also that Annie has “warmed up” to Helen. Annie wants to include Helen in the drunken Rockin’ Sushi ritual of female friendship, including revelry and spontaneity. 
After Rhodes and Annie get together at the movie’s end — when he picks her up after the wedding and reveals “I ate your cake”– a final coda to the film involves Megan and Air Marshall Jon who use food, “a bear sandwich,” in bawdy foreplay. The rituals of contemporary female friendships are underscored by the use and presence of food and drink as signifiers at important emotional moments throughout Bridesmaids. Annie Walker’s journey in the movie, in a downward spiral or “descent motif” is healed through her encounters with aspects of the dark feminine as revealed in the shadow side of “sisterhood” and in her own psyche. Annie’s healing process, after failing at business and at love, is also reflected in her great talent to bake again in Act Three. But this time, she’s not baking for business or commerce — she’s baking to express herself, to be warm, to acknowledge finding the Lucky Carrot. 
Works Cited 
Chevalier, Jean and Alain Gheerbrant. The Penguin Dictionary of Symbols. 
John Buchanan-Brown, trans. London: Penguin, 1996. Murdock, Maureen. 
The Heroine’s Journey: Woman’s Quest for Wholeness. Boston: Shambala, 1990. 
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Laura Shamas is a writer, film consultant, and mythologist. Her newest book is Pop Mythology: Collected Essays.

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Stephanie‘s Picks:
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The Brainy Message of ParaNorman by Natalie Wilson via Ms. Magazine
Megan‘s Picks:
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TIFF Preview: The Female Directing Masters Playing at the 2012 Toronto Film Festival by Melissa Silverstein and Kerensa Cadenas via Women and Hollywood
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