Brigit McCone – Page 4

‘Kuch Kuch Hota Hai’: Bollywood Hurts Men, Too

By supplying excuses all around, ‘Kuch Kuch Hota Hai’ upholds the status quo while venting its resulting frustrations; the performances lovingly celebrate female feistiness, while the plot constantly punishes and suppresses it in favor of traditional ideals of self-sacrifice and emotional martyrdom. Cue predictable feminist outrage. You already know everything I would write. So instead, I’d like to focus on another aspect of the film: its utter contempt for male agency. Yes, male.

"Love is friendship" — “Love is friendship”

Written by Brigit McCone as part of our theme week on Asian Womanhood in Pop Culture.

In our conversation about the sexism of “friendzoning,” it’s easy to forget it is a traditionally female institution. It is women who are expected to be passive in romance, and to express sexual desire indirectly through friendship. When the word “friendzone” was coined in a 1994 episode of Friends, it was the comically feminized Ross who was dubbed “Mayor of the Friendzone.” The rage of many friendzoned men expresses their resentment of romantic rejection, but also their frustration at feeling feminized by their failure to conquer; conquering neither the girl nor their emotions, they remain stranded in a typically feminine limbo. It is women who are supposed to naturally play “beta chumps.”

Traditionally, female portraits of friendzoning were fantasies of eventual victory through silent emotional martyrdom. Fanny Price, of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park, encourages both her love Edmund and his love Mary to confide in her, while stewing inwardly about how “deceived” Edmund is in Mary, before using Mary’s trust to passive-aggressively poison Edmund against her. At no point does Fanny consider taking an active role by expressing her feelings. When Edmund’s brotherly love turns to romance, Austen makes clear he is on the rebound or “exactly in that favorable state which a recent disappointment gives.” Critic and Booker Prizewinner Kingsley Amis has branded Fanny “a monster of complacency and pride” who dominates “under a cloak of cringing self-abasement,” which is just about the perfect summary of the friendzone-moaning “Nice Guy.”

The friendzoning of “quiet worth,” in favor of spirited charm, also crops up in Anne Brontë’s Agnes Grey, whose heroine is obviously based on Anne herself, but named after her beloved Weightman’s real-life love, Agnes Walton. The fictional Agnes, too, spends time stewing and resenting her rival, in one of literature’s most wincingly honest portraits of unrequited love, before Weston (the fictional alias of Weightman) improbably reveals that he loves “Agnes” after all. In Some Kind Of Wonderful, Mary Stuart Masterson plays a girl friendzoned because of her tomboy qualities, like Doris Day in Calamity Jane, rather than the classic “quiet worth,” but Masterson is classically self-sacrificing and passive as she waits for the hero to “come to his senses.” Later friendzoned women, from Kristen Scott Thomas in Four Weddings And A Funeral to Julia Roberts in My Best Friend’s Wedding (side note: was I the only one on Bitch Flicks who loved that deliciously acid satire?), have been forced to admit romantic defeat as punishment for such passivity, rather than passively rewarded for emotional martyrdom. But India, a country popularly viewed as more traditional in its gender roles, offers a classic, female friendzone fantasy of tomboy rejection in Bollywood’s own answer to Some Kind of Wonderful, 1998 smash hit Kuch Kuch Hota Hai.

"Men seldom make passes at a girl who outclasses" — “Men seldom make passes at a girl who outclasses”

The film divides neatly into two halves. In the first half, tomboy Anjali (Kajol) is romantically dismissed by her buddy, Rahul (Shahrukh Khan), in favor of a more conventionally feminine and sexually confident rival, Tina (Rani Mukherji). Poor Anjali is a short-haired frump, you see, in the She’s All That tradition of luminously gorgeous women with faintly unflattering and (*gasp*) masculine fashion sense. In the second half, Rahul and Anjali meet again after Tina’s death, when Anjali has transformed into a saree-wearing, long-haired and conventionally feminine beauty, and they fall in love.

In the first half, Anjali constantly beats Rahul at basketball. In the second half, her feminine saree and hair get in her way, she is distracted by her sexual attraction to Rahul, and she loses, to chants of “girls cannot play basketball.” Indeed, the film tells us, girls cannot play basketball, but only because they want boys to like them. In the first half, Anjali is assertive and outspoken, only failing to tell Rahul of her feelings because he is in love with Tina by the time she realizes them. In the second half, Anjali is shy and passive, allowing her final fate to be decided by her fiancé, Salman Khan, playing a slimier spin on the thankless “Bill Pullman in Sleepless in Seattle” role. The plot gratifies female viewers, reassuring them that they are perfectly capable of beating men, but are forced to play the passive role by unjust, anti-tomboy romantic discrimination. It equally gratifies male viewers, reassuring them that they have the romantic power to discipline women into unthreatening beauties. By supplying excuses all around, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai upholds the status quo while venting its resulting frustrations; the performances lovingly celebrate female feistiness, while the plot constantly punishes and suppresses it in favor of traditional ideals of self-sacrifice and emotional martyrdom. Cue predictable feminist outrage. You already know everything I would write. So instead, I’d like to focus on another aspect of the film: its utter contempt for male agency. Yes, male.

Rahul does not become reunited with Anjali by chance. As tomboy Anjali takes a train out of Rahul’s life, to avoid interfering in his relationship with Tina, her eyes tearfully meet Tina’s on the platform. She passes her scarf to Tina, as though to leave a piece of herself with Rahul, recalling Anne Brontë’s fusion of friendzoned and beloved in her fictional “Agnes.” In that moment, Tina narrates, “Anjali’s silence told me everything.” Tina realizes that Anjali is entitled to Rahul, not because of Rahul’s feelings for Anjali, but because of Anjali’s feelings for Rahul. After consciously choosing to bear Rahul a child, knowing that she will die in childbirth and withholding this knowledge from him, Tina commands Rahul to name their daughter “Anjali” and leaves that daughter a series of letters to open every birthday. The final letter, on her eighth birthday, is the one that narrates the story of Tina, Rahul, and the original Anjali, instructing child-Anjali to reunite Rahul with her namesake. This “letters from beyond the grave” trope echoes P.S. I Love You, in which Gerard Butler’s husband writes a series of letters for his wife to open after his death, guiding her through her grieving process before giving his blessing to her finding new love. I was no fan of that film’s leprecorniness, but can we take a moment to admit how boundless our feminist outrage would be, if P.S. I Love You featured Butler writing to the couple’s 8-year-old son and instructing him to “fulfil his father’s dream” by manipulating his mother into a relationship with a lover of Butler’s choosing? Not to mention that, since Tina died shortly after giving birth, she had absolutely no knowledge of her daughter’s character, emotional maturity or tactical skill.

Shahrukh Khan: less capable of running his life than an utterly unknown eight-year-old — Shahrukh Khan: less capable of running his life than an utterly unknown 8-year-old

Kuch Kuch Hota Hai even underlines the cruelty of this maneuver: the camera pulls in on Rahul’s moist eyes as he admits that child-Anjali has “got something which even I don’t have. Her mother’s letters.” The film glorifies Tina’s noble self-sacrifice, paralleling her martyrdom with the goddess Durga‘s feminine ideal, but is this truly admirable? Tina deprived Rahul of any say over risking her life; she wrote detailed instructions for Rahul’s romantic future to an eight-year-old, but didn’t prepare a single letter for her supposedly beloved husband. Each of Tina’s unselfish actions serve to hurt and exclude Rahul, stripping him of his agency and undermining the dignity of his love, though it was deep enough to resolve him on never remarrying after losing Tina. Luckily, though, Rahul does turn out to have subconscious romantic feelings for Anjali, despite all behavior to the contrary. Phew. It would otherwise be distinctly awkward to raise a daughter whose very name is a constant reminder that your true love really wanted you to hook up with your college friend, even before that daughter is brainwashed that it is her sacred duty to “get Anjali back into [her] father’s life.”

Writer-director Karan Johar admits, in the DVD’s special features, “I always know a woman better, actually, I’m more comfortable with a woman’s character than a man’s.” Kuch Kuch Hota Hai succeeds in spite of this bias towards female entitlement, due to infectious music and romantic chemistry between its actors. Kajol and Shahrukh Khan recapture their spark from smash hit Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge. Kajol brings extraordinary emotional transparency and rawness to her role, utterly fearless of looking foolish. We cringe for her, but it is this whole-heartedness that makes her sympathetic. Tomboy Anjali deserves Rahul; she is the only character who respects his will. When she discovers his love for Tina, the soundtrack sings, “You did not remember me, there’s nothing more left to say,” signaling her tearful resignation. Advocating abandoning your college education, because of romantic disappointment, is hardly a good model for girls, but this decision dramatizes Anjali’s willingness to respect Rahul’s relationship with Tina. She is also the only character who honors his vow never to remarry.

When Anjali and Rahul are finally reunited, at his daughter’s summer camp, there is a particularly lovely scene on a bench at night, perfectly capturing the awkwardness of re-establishing intimacy after long estrangement. Yet the scene ends with child-Anjali popping up and shaking her head, her assumed entitlement to monitor and manipulate her father’s romance going utterly unchallenged. The genuine chemistry between Kajol and Shahrukh, as well as their characters’ shared innocence of the matchmaking conspiracy, make it easy to overlook the narrative’s justification of romantic interference.

Kajol: so luminous, you'll forget how creepy this plot is — Kajol: so luminous, you’ll forget how creepy this plot is

The concept of indirect female power is nothing new, nor is it particular to India. Ever since Salomé danced for the head of John the Baptist, femme fatales have achieved their goals indirectly by influencing men. Lady Macbeth becomes an “unsexed” monster out of ambition for her husband alone; her soliloquies never mention any personal desire to be queen. Tendencies in Indian culture to justify matriarchal manipulation have been satirized by director Gurinder Chadha, particularly in her black comedy It’s A Wonderful Afterlife. What makes Kuch Kuch Hota Hai interesting is how clearly it shows the link between suppressing direct power and promoting indirect power. The film’s first half punishes the heroine’s direct assertiveness; its second half relieves female frustration by glorifying passive womanhood’s power over men. It is Rahul’s mother, a pious and traditional Indian matriarch, who leads the conspiracy. She declares, “the way we think and the things we say have a deep impact on our children” to set up a joke about her granddaughter learning the word “sexy” from Rahul, yet unquestioningly endorses that granddaughter’s matchmaking interference, whether child-Anjali is praying to delay weddings or emotionally blackmailing Rahul with calculated crying. This grandmother teaches that “men are very weak,” pressuring Rahul into remarrying because his child “needs a mother.” The way we think and the things we say have a deep impact on our children. Alongside its touching romance, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai portrays the indoctrination of a very young girl into a culture that normalizes the manipulation of men, as compensation for its suppression of women.

Hobbies: beating up boys, irritating granny and reading mom's letters. — Hobbies: beating up boys, irritating granny and reading mom’s letters.

I highly recommend Kuch Kuch Hota Hai as an introduction for the Bollywood beginner, boasting excellent performances, acutely human moments in the midst of its melodrama and slapstick, and catchy tunes. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll forget that the film’s underlying assumptions about gender roles are fundamentally counterproductive for both sexes. But whether it is her fiancé’s final control over the heroine’s decision or the female conspiracy to determine the hero’s choice, there is only one word for Karan Johar undermining his characters’ autonomy this way: deewana (bonkers).

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QoZ8QcveC8″]

Brigit McCone did not allow her slight crush on Shahrukh Khan to bias this review. She writes and directs short films and radio dramas. Her hobbies include doodling and terrible dancing in the privacy of her own home.

‘Trainspotting’ Is ‘Pretty Woman’ For Boys

From the ‘Bitch Flicks’ that brought you “‘Birdman’ Is Black Swan For Boys” and “‘Fight Club’ Is Pride And Prejudice For Boys,” comes the thrilling conclusion of our Filmic Forced Feminization Trilogy: “‘Trainspotting’ is ‘Pretty Woman For Boys”! No, really.

Written by Brigit McCone.

From the Bitch Flicks that brought you “Birdman Is Black Swan For Boys” and “Fight Club Is Pride And Prejudice For Boys,” comes the thrilling conclusion of our Filmic Forced Feminization Trilogy: “Trainspotting is Pretty Woman For Boys”! No, really.

Consider the openings: Renton runs down the road to the voiceover of the iconic “choose life” monologue, before colliding with a car. The camera shares the perspective of the car’s occupants, stalled in their protective shell of metal, as this threatening creature of countercultural anarchy peers in at them. And laughs. Now consider our camera sharing Richard Gere’s perspective, stalled in the protective shell of his luxury vehicle, as the threatening prostitute of countercultural anarchy peers in at him. And laughs.

Vivian is an antidote to the stale marital maneuverings of mainstream culture. She flaunts her lack of pantyhose to scandalized elderly couples. She tells matchmaking materialists that she’s simply using Edward for sex. She regards the hypocrisy of mainstream respectability politics with undisguised contempt. Our assumptions about the inferiority of a prostitute’s life choices are challenged by the defiant anthem that plays as she struts: “things you only dream about, wild women do.” Just as Trainspotting dignifies its hero’s autonomy by openly acknowledging the attraction of heroin and the logic of his choice, so Pretty Woman openly acknowledges the attraction of sex work as social rebellion, financial autonomy and independence. Vivian might as well have her own monologue about the pressure to “choose wife.” Why would she want to do a thing like that?

Renton and Vivian laugh at your respectability.

Of course, the film ends with Vivian choosing wife, just as Renton finally chooses life, but they choose it on their terms. I’ve written before about how the supposed antifeminism of “whores” and “white knights” has blinded us to the politics of autonomy in Pretty Woman. Scratch its candy-coated surface, or scratch the edgily aggressive snarl of Trainspotting, and you reveal a shared approach to the challenges of stigma raised by prostitution and drug addiction. Such as…

The Failure Of Paternalism

The remarkable results that Portugal has achieved by decriminalizing drug use and treating addiction as sickness rather than crime, mirror the impressive achievements of New Zealand’s decriminalizing of sex work. Our urge to discipline and punish individual choice has been ineffective in preventing “vice,” sustaining organized crime and social inequality in the process. Trainspotting and Pretty Woman reflect this reality. Renton’s initial decision to come off drugs is presented as a spontaneous choice from his inner resolve. Later, his parents attempt to enforce a cure by locking him in his bedroom to go cold turkey. The legal system attempts to enforce a cure through the courts. Neither of these paternalist pressures are shown to be effective. Similarly, Vivian consistently refuses Edward’s attempts to treat her as an object of pity or a mistress, preferring the independence of sex work to the subordination demanded by paternalist savior narratives. Only by admitting his own need to be rescued, and offering full romantic equality on Vivian’s terms, can Edward persuade her to mainstream.

More than ineffective, each film presents social stigma as actively counterproductive. It is while independently trying to come off heroin, without medical support, that Renton must make his iconic dive into the crap-filled Worst Toilet In Scotland for his suppositories. It is when trying to mainstream that he becomes mentally vulnerable to the condescending pity and judgmental attitudes of others, driving his relapse. Likewise, it is when attempting to mainstream that Vivian must endure the metaphorical crap of the Worst Boutique On Rodeo Drive and it is while passing as respectable that she becomes mentally vulnerable to the humiliating judgments of Stuckey, where a prostitute’s uniform would make her feel defiantly “prepared.” Both Trainspotting and Pretty Woman argue that social stigma fuels defiance and deters mainstreaming. Though each film freely acknowledges the hazards of the lifestyle portrayed, from Pretty Woman‘s dead hooker in a dumpster and assault by Stuckey, to Trainspotting‘s dead baby and AIDS casualties, they remain firmly opposed to the hypocritical righteousness of dominant culture. Witness their choice of Begbie and Stuckey to represent mainstream ideology.

Begbie and Stuckey: Dominant Hypocrites

Phil Stuckey is a cunt, in the utterly unreclaimed, gender-neutral, Scottish sense of that word. He is a man who will eagerly solicit prostitutes, yet defend his right to hit them with a superior snarl of “she’s a whore!” In this, he mirrors Trainspotting‘s Begbie, who is content to profit from drug deals while righteously sneering over an addict’s choice to “poison their body with that shite.” Both Begbie and Stuckey have a toxic combination of arrogance and insecurity, a continual need to prove their status at the expense of others. The suppressed violence in Stuckey’s craving for the corporate “kill” erupts in his assault on Vivian, after being denied financial satisfaction. Begbie is chronically violent, craving the adrenalin of a brawl as much as addicts crave their drug of choice. In short, in remarkably similar ways, Begbie and Stuckey are deeply unpleasant cunts. It is into the mouths of these cunts that each film places the judgments of dominant society. Begbie expresses dominant opinions about drug addicts and trans* women. Stuckey expresses dominant opinions about sex workers. Both are depicted as dominant, domineering, and thriving.

Trainspotting and Pretty Woman choose to use the repulsiveness of Begbie/Stuckey as the spur that finally decides Renton/Vivian on mainstreaming. A classic savior narrative would use a righteous role model to represent the attraction of mainstream values; Trainspotting and Pretty Woman instead use the nauseous vileness of their representatives as catalyst. As an addict, Renton is forced to fill the pockets of the world’s Begbies. As a prostitute, Vivian is forced to service the ego of the world’s Stuckeys. By presenting mainstreaming itself as an act of resistance to mainstream exploitation, both films are able to realistically acknowledge its health and safety benefits without sacrificing their raised middle finger to mainstream righteousness. They resist the narrative of the mainstream’s moral superiority, not only through the repulsively mainstream Begbie and Stuckey, but through the lovable, marginalized Spud and Kit.

Spud and Kit: Performance Anxiety

With God's help, they'll conquer this terrible affliction — With God’s help, they’ll conquer this terrible affliction

The triumphant Renton is separated from Spud, and the triumphant Vivian is separated from Kit, not by their moral superiority but by their superior ability to perform socially. In Trainspotting‘s court scene, Renton effortlessly convinces as a clean-cut “pretty addict” (the kind you’d like to meet) as he plausibly swears “with God’s help, I shall conquer this terrible affliction,” avoiding jail. By contrast, Spud is nervous and inarticulate. He lacks Renton’s presentation skills and faces jail as a result. Kit suffers similar anxiety. Where Vivian effortlessly adapts to luxury clothes, Kit is afraid to hug Vivian in case she wrinkles her. She seems defensive in Edward’s hotel, taunting the clientele. Kit could not fake the respectability and “class” required from Edward’s escort. By pairing Renton with Spud, and Vivian with Kit, both films expose the nature of respectability as essentially hypocritical performance.

Admirably, neither Spud nor Kit ever punish their friends for their success. Spud allows Renton to steal the group’s drug money, knowing that Renton will be harshly punished if the alarm is raised. Kit appears genuinely delighted at Vivian’s good fortune for meeting Edward, and roots for her to find lasting happiness with him. In many ways, both Spud and Kit are morally superior to the protagonists. This moral worth is recognized and rewarded financially by both heroes: Vivian gives Kit a share of Edward’s payment and Renton leaves Spud a share of the drug money. Will Kit be able to become a Renton of recovered addiction and a Vivian of romantic success? Will Spud? We are only able to root for Kit and Spud’s success because Trainspotting and Pretty Woman present a world in which doom is not inevitable and good fortune is possible.

Inevitability vs. Agency

It is fundamentally dehumanizing to suggest that a group in society is inevitably doomed. We know that our own lives are at the mercy of luck and chance; our rewards and punishments are uneven and not proportional to what we deserve, if deserving can even be measured. We make choices, from moment to moment, and we struggle for our own happiness as best we can. To deny someone that choice, that chance and that struggle is to deny our identification with them, as well as any possible support of them. If their doom is inevitable, none of us can be held responsible for failing to prevent it, or even for causing it. Which helps to explain the disposable hookers of Grand Theft Auto.

Renton’s doom is not inevitable. He stood the same chance of contracting AIDS as his fellow addicts; some were lucky, others were not. Likewise, a prostitute who climbs into the car of a slick, suited yuppy could be finding love and fortune with Pretty Woman‘s Edward, or facing gruesome death at the hands of American Psycho‘s Patrick Bateman. The difference is in film genre, not life choice. Here’s an interesting point: have you ever heard anyone point out that Trainspotting depicts heroin use as the direct result of hetero-male sexual failure? Renton and Spud are both shown relapsing after humiliating failures in their attempts to connect with women. Tommy turns to heroin after a bad break-up. Yet, somehow, no causal relationship is assumed between a man’s sex life and his choices. So, why is it so impossible to imagine a prostitute as a survivor of sexual abuse, without the dehumanizing implication that this has mindlessly predetermined her choice to do sex work? Trainspotting‘s Sick Boy and Renton are equally allowed to be haunted by their failures in childcare, and Renton to hallucinate an accusing baby, without being judged “babycrazy” as Ally McBeal. Why is Vivian a “tart with a heart,” yet Renton can show scruples over underage sex and give cash gifts to Spud without being a “magic addict”?

Though Hollywood no longer has a Hays Code demanding punishment for characters who break the law, films still enforce that convention for both sexes. Stuckey’s devastating corporate “kills” are socially acceptable; Vivian’s provision of sex acts for a mutually agreed fee is not. Therefore, it is Vivian that we are conditioned to expect to see suffering consequences, until Pretty Woman flips that script. According to cinematic convention, stealing a bag of drug money should be the beginning of a No Country For Old Men-style thriller of inevitable doom. In Trainspotting, it is the hero’s happy ending. By offering its heroin addict a chance to evade all consequences for his actions, and to claim the prosperity and respectability that is supposedly the social reward for virtue, the film calls our bluff. If we truly pity the tragic fate of society’s doomed victims, we should rejoice in Renton’s lucky escape. However, as Oscar Wilde puts it: “anyone can sympathize with the sufferings of a friend, but it takes a very fine nature to sympathize with a friend’s success.” Spud and Kit might have that very fine nature, but do we? Mark Renton has no time for your puritanical need to see him punished for his life choices. Renton is going to blend in with the mainstream and become indistinguishable from all the other hypocrites. Renton was born slippy, and he’s going to get away with it. Because Renton has secretly been Cinder-fuckin-rella all along.

What more proof do you need that Trainspotting is Pretty Woman for boys?

Brigit McCone always thought Vivian should have chosen Barney the hotel manager, but recognizes he’s probably married. She writes and directs short films and radio dramas. Her hobbies include doodling and irritating Fight Club fanboys.

Reading Mae West’s ‘Sextette’ as a PUA Manual

Watch and learn, average frustrated chumps

Written by Brigit McCone.

PUA (pick-up artistry) is a strange beast. Its core technique relies on teaching men to dehumanize women as “targets” in order to numb themselves to rejection, making it psychologically easier to approach larger numbers of women and therefore, statistically, to enjoy greater sexual success, though at the cost of emotional connection. PUA thus represents the art of maximizing sexual success by minimizing sexual satisfaction. Mae West’s 1978 film Sextette is also a strange beast, and a fascinating film. When I say that it’s fascinating, I don’t mean to suggest that it’s good. Sextette is a car crash of a film, a head-on collision between a lavish MGM musical and Tommy Wiseau’s The Room. It is a perfect candidate for interactive midnight screenings and ironic appreciation, which should be mandatory at every festival of women’s film.

The usual responses of male reviewers label Mae West as “delusional” and “grotesque” for her iron conviction in her own seductive power at the age of 84 (minimum). West was Billy Wilder’s original inspiration for the aging, predatory narcissist Norma Desmond in Sunset Blvd., while reviewer Nathan Rabin says of Sextette, “stick in a coda revealing that the whole thing was a ridiculous fantasy by an impoverished washerwoman nearing death, and the whole film would take on an unmistakably bittersweet, melancholy dimension.” Yes, the guy who invented the “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” label, to criticize self-centered male sexism, suggests that female fantasies of lifelong desirability are only valid if they are affirmed to be impossible in real life. The irony. It burns.

Real life, however, differs from such critics’ expectations of “realism.” Far from ending her life as a sex-starved, “impoverished washerwoman,” Mae West actually had a flourishing relationship with the ruggedly handsome wrestler Paul Novak, almost 30 years her junior, who remained devoted to her for 26 years in one of show business’ greatest romances, nursing her at her death but discouraging her from including him in her will.

We may squirm at Sextette, to see an 84-year-old lady claim irresistible attractiveness without the apologetic, self-deprecating irony that we demand of older women’s sexuality, but Mae’s claims are securely grounded in her proven track record of seduction. If you will it, Dude, it is no dream. If Mae had listened to dominant culture’s messages about the female sell-by date, she would never have dared to play a sex-bomb in her late 30s, her age in her Hollywood debut, or selected a much-younger and undiscovered Cary Grant for her co-star. We owe Cary Grant’s career to Mae’s “denial,” while her selection of a young Timothy Dalton for the leading man of Sextette shows a similar eye for star potential, the film prophetically comparing him to 007.

I don’t necessarily recommend Mae West’s narcissistic seductress as a role model for all women, but I strongly recommend her as Laverne Cox’s definition of a “possibility model”; Mae is a reminder that we define our own roles and culture is created partly by our consent. Mae West’s Sextette is the most perfect illustration that the values of dominant culture depend on its male authorship, while female authorship (Mae insisted on writing or co-writing all her films, dictating to directors on set) can just as easily create images of octogenarian vixens commanding the lustful worship of entire “United States athletic teams” of half-naked musclemen, and brokering world peace through their irresistible sexual power (why haven’t you seen this film yet?). Sextette uncomfortably tears down the curtain and reveals the balding wizard behind the Great and Powerful Oz of cinema’s “realism,” just as Singing In The Rain exposed the artificiality of Lina Lamont’s glamour by swapping the sex of the voice behind the curtain. Here lies Sextette‘s true countercultural anarchy, and the reason it deserves midnight screening immortality. But the film also represents, as we shall show with our trusty pualingo.com, a classic PUA manual.

Abundance Mentality

Abundance mentality is defined by PUA lingo as “the belief and life perspective that there is no shortage of hot girls to meet in any man’s lifetime.” This principle is continually reinforced within male-authored culture, from the female disposability fantasy of James Bond to the geriatric desirability dreams of Woody Allen, which influential New York Times critic Vincent Canby might have considered “a poetic, terrifying reminder of how a virtually disembodied ego can survive total physical decay and loss of common sense” if he hadn’t already said that about Sextette. Conversely, our culture constantly depicts narratives of female anxiety over their “biological clocks” and their “last chance for love,” reinforcing a scarcity mentality whose psychological impact is dramatized with wincing accuracy by the desperation romcom of Bridget Jones’s Diary. Mae West, however, modeled an abundance mentality throughout her life, in defiant immunity to cultural pressures. Though acknowledging her life partner, ruggedly handsome Mr. Baltimore, Paul Novak, was a “good guy,” she quipped in her mid-80s “course there’s 40 guys dyin’ for his job!”

The filmmakers originally intended West’s character, Marlo, to weep over Timothy Dalton’s abandonment, while goth-rock legend Alice Cooper (with tangerine tan and poodle perm, naturally. Why haven’t you seen this film?) serenaded her with piano ballad “No Time For Tears,” but Mae insisted that her character would not cry and forced Cooper to perform the jazzy, uptempo “Next, Next” (“he blew his chance with you! Next, next! Lost you to someone new!”), maintaining her character’s positive vibing so that the film’s advocacy of abundance mentality would not be compromised. West and Dalton’s final reconciliation suggests that this was only a soft next on Marlo’s part, however. Male critics interpret such abundance mentality as delusion, in a woman who resembles a macabre apparition and the monster from beyond time, but West’s track record of sexual success suggests that such protests be understood as token resistance.

Midnight screening suggestion: bring a loud buzzer to hit before yelling “next!”

DHV: Demonstration of Higher Value

Marlo's target, acknowledging her higher value — Marlo’s target, acknowledging her higher value

While male sexual value peaks between the ages of 21 and 30 (as clarified by Sextette‘s “happy birthday, 21!” anthem and Mae’s criticism of Tony Curtis as an unsuitably elderly screen lover, only 30 years her junior) and is largely dependent on the man’s rugged looks and muscle-tone, a woman may increase her sexual market value (SMV) at any age by a canned routine of humorous quips, positive vibing, displays of wealth and willingness to walk away or “soft next,” as Mae demonstrates throughout the film. The best technique for a DHV is to avoid direct bragging (which can actually read as desperation, and thus a demonstration of lower value, or DLV), through the use of wings to praise you on your behalf. In Sextette, the role of “Marlo’s wing” is played by Everyone Who Is Not Marlo. Before the central couple arrive, Regis Philbin brands Marlo “the greatest sex symbol the screen has ever known,” while an obliging crowd sings her DHV anthem “Marlo! The female answer to Apollo! As lovely as Venus De Milo! A living dream!” the press corps laugh at her every word and even ex-husband Ringo Starr shows willingness to wing for her: “You know when your wife was my wife? Your wife was some wife!” Such consistent DHV naturally provokes Timothy Dalton’s target into the production of expensive diamonds as well as verbal IOIs, in this clearly approval-seeking ballad (click. I dare you). Claims by male reviewers that this moment is like “gazing upon one of H. P. Lovecraft’s Old Ones, something so momentously and unimaginably monstrous that even perceiving the edges of it threatens one with madness” are best interpreted as manifestations of their bitch shields (BS).

Midnight screening suggestion: wing for Marlo by wolf-whistling and dangle bracelets of sparklers whenever she mentions being turned on.

NLP: Neuro Linguistic Programming

Neuro-linguistic programming is the art of conditioning the target‘s responses through ambiguity and anchoring. In an NLP context, ambiguity is the use of normal, innocuous words that sound like sexual terms, to unconsciously stimulate a man’s sexual senses. Mae West reveals herself a grandmistress of this art, with statements such as “I’m the girl who works at Paramount all day and Fox all night,” referencing her busy schedule as an actress, but subconsciously suggesting sexual stamina to the receptive male mind. “Everything goes up for Marlo!” literally refers to a pink cassette trampolined into a statue’s mouth (don’t ask) but on a deeply subtle and subconscious level could be regarded as sexually suggestive, while “when I’m good, I’m good, but when I’m bad, I’m better” might conceivably be associated with a sexual “bad girl” rather than with theft or arson. After this ingenious technique has made all men uncontrollably aroused by the octogenarian West, she is free to select her targets at will from their superabundance. Next!

Anchoring, meanwhile, is the art of associating gestures with emotional states through their repetition. In Sextette, Mae uses her anchors, such as trademark hair-patting, to elicit Pavlovian arousal by evoking her earlier performances, while groping her own breasts is a classic point to self (PTS) to anchor her feeling of success. A related art is kino, the regular touching and stroking of the target that prevents octogenarian actresses from ending up in his friend zone, which Marlo can be observed demonstrating on Ricky, the 21-year-old team mascot, throughout Sextette‘s gym scene. When male commentators describe the film as “like watching your grandmother at a gangbang,” the key is to reframe that observation, for example by cocking an eyebrow and purring “does that excite you?”

Midnight screening suggestion: Recognize NLP Ambiguity by clicking fingers and barking “you’re under!” in the style of Little Britain’s Kenny Craig, while all PTS maneuvers should be mimicked.

Peacocking

By wearing something showy, like a huge feather headdress or semi-transparent gown, a PUA is able to differentiate herself from her competition. Peacocking is a term derived from the biological behavior of peacocks and from Darwinism, not from the ginormous plumes crowning Mae West like a kooky cockatoo. Peacocking lures the PUA’s targets into starting conversations with her, offering her openings such as “what is that thing on your head? You look like a kooky cockatoo!” By wearing something completely ridiculous, the PUA also opens herself up to shit tests from men, such as New York Times critic Vincent Canby’s claim that Mae resembles “a plump sheep that’s been stood on its hind legs, dressed in a drag-queen’s idea of chic, bewigged and then smeared with pink plaster.” By demonstrating that she can deal with this social pressure, Mae shows her irresistibly alpha characteristics. It must be admitted that, in the striking costumes of legendary, eight-time Oscar-winner Edith Head, Mae looks like a damn chic sheep dressed as sexy lamb.

Midnight screening suggestion: the most ridiculous feather boas and fascinators you can get your hands on, for regular stroking throughout the screening.

So what’s the moral of this study? Should we be inspired by Mae’s conquests of the screen and of ruggedly handsome wrestler, crowned Mr. Baltimore, Paul Novak, to endorse the indomitable positivity of PUA philosophy (go West, young woman)? Or point to the reactions of squirming male viewers to finally prove that PUA is creepy, once and for all? Or does the truth lie somewhere in between, in cultivating a confident independence and immunity to cultural pressure, while still respecting the consent of others? Who knows? Only one moral is certain: never, ever play a drinking game in which you do a shot for every sex pun in this movie. Seriously. You could die. [youtube_sc url=” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nH_j-DNJwZA”]

The trailer alone would get you bombed

Brigit McCone over-identifies with Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard. She writes short films and radio dramas. Her hobbies include doodling and making bad puns out of the corner of her mouth.

Vintage Viewing: Alice Guy, Gender-Bending Pioneer

‘Bitch Flicks’ presents Vintage Viewing – a monthly feature for viewing and discussing the films of cinema’s female pioneers. Where better to start than history’s first film director, Alice Guy?

Alice Guy: she's the man — Alice Guy: she’s the man

Written by Brigit McCone, this post is part of Vintage Viewing, our series exploring the work of women filmmaking pioneers.

When discussing opportunities for women and minorities created by new media, Kathleen Wallace highlighted the explosion of female directors at the birth of cinema, later squeezed out by the studio system. The list of vintage female directors is long, varied, and multinational. Yet, theorists like Laura Mulvey define feminist cinema by its resistance to the Male Gaze™, virtually ignoring the precedent of the female gaze. When was the last time we watched vintage female-authored films and discussed their art or meaning? Bitch Flicks presents Vintage Viewing – a monthly feature for viewing and discussing the films of cinema’s female pioneers. Where better to start than history’s first film director, Alice Guy?

Alice Guy may be compared to Ada Lovelace, who published the original computer program and first predicted the wider applications of computing. Like Lovelace, Guy was the pioneer who envisioned the future of her field. Like Lovelace, her legacy is only now being reappraised after decades of neglect. Though Guy’s memoirs indicate she may have directed the world’s first fiction film, her massive output, estimated at almost 1,000 films, is really more remarkable for its overall grasp of film’s potential, both technical (hand-painting color film, pioneering the close-up, synchronized sound, and special effects such as superimposition) and in establishing tropes from melodrama to comedy to action to suspense.

Click here to watch an excellent youtube documentary.

Alfred Hitchcock once cited two thrilling early influences: D. W. Griffith and Alice Guy. But Guy wasn’t simply an influential pioneer who happened to be female; she repeatedly challenged gender stereotypes in her work. Though sexologist John Money only coined the concept of a “gender role” in 1955, Alice Guy’s cross-dressing films were interrogating gender’s socially constructed nature 50 years earlier.

Pierrette’s Escapades – 1900

“We have often turned away from the exploration and consideration of the erotic as a source of power and information, confusing it with its opposite, the pornographic.” – Audre Lorde

Pierrette’s Escapades is one of the hand-painted demonstration films that Alice Guy produced for Gaumont in France, before her move to America. This film is particularly interesting for probably containing cinema’s first lesbian kiss. Guy recognized the power of representation, not only for queer visibility, but with 1912’s affirmative Jewish narrative A Man’s A Man, and cinema’s first Black cast in that same year’s A Fool and His Money, a story of hustling and hard luck inspired by blues narratives. Within a lushly tinted, escapist sensuality, the women of Pierrette’s Escapades play roles from anarchic Commedia dell’Arte and carnival traditions. As such, their flirtations and kisses can be explained by the established relationships between these stock characters, but Guy has taken conventionally heterosexual love scenes and reimagined them with an all-female cast.

The femme Pierrette, in her throbbing pink dress, resembles a coquettish Columbine, the trickster wife of sad clown Pierrot, and mistress of witty Harlequin (the 16th century’s Bugs Bunny). As rivals, Harlequin and Pierrot represent the two faces of love, its triumphs and disappointments. The film opens with Pierrette reveling in her costume and powdering herself for Harlequin. A figure sidles into frame, in the traditional costume of Pierrot. Pierrot’s baggy clothes and white-powdered face make it difficult to identify the figure’s sex, who clumsily moves to embrace Pierrette, while she dodges impatiently, before Pierrot steals a kiss on her bare shoulder. Pierrette angrily orders her husband/wife to bed and primps for Harlequin. In the skintight, checkered costume and hat that identify the character, Harlequin is unmistakably feminine. In contrast to her coerced affection with Pierrot, Pierrette blossoms with female Harlequin, swooning and spinning before melting into her arms. Guy cuts the film at the moment of their kiss, leaving it open-ended and suggestive.

Pierrette’s low-cut bodice and the raising of her skirts mark this film as teasingly erotic for the time. Records indicate that Guy filmed cinema’s first striptease three years before Pierrette’s Escapades. Since the forced hypersexuality of women on film has become an expression of male control, modern feminists often read such images as objectifying. It’s worth remembering that a female director, Lois Weber, filmed the first female full-frontal, while Mae West provoked the paternalist Hays Code with her sexual frankness. The eroticism of Pierrette’s Escapades is a reminder of the liberating power of playful, sexual self-representation. Like the suffragettes, who wore lipstick as a symbol of defiance, it challenges sexless definitions of feminist orthodoxy. Isn’t viewing female bodies only from the imaginary perspective of an objectifying Male Gaze™ itself oppressive? Soundtrack suggestion: Cyndi Lauper, “Girls Just Want To Have Fun“ [youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeByzgJFLMs”]

Walk in the sun

The Consequences of Feminism – 1906

“Femininity, if one still wants to call it that, makes American women a target and a victim of the sexual sell.” – Betty Friedan

Alice Guy’s work regularly explored the status of women. She moulded Vinnie Burns into cinema’s first action heroine, and depicted women in traditionally male professions such as magicians and dog-trainers. In 1912’s Making an American, “Ivan Orloff and his unhappy wife” represent a caricature of East-European cultures of wife-beating – Orloff’s wife is yoked to his wagon as a beast of burden. When the couple emigrate to America, Guy shows Americans constantly intervening to correct Orloff’s treatment of his wife, presenting resistance to domestic abuse as an American value fundamental to the “Land of the Free.” 1914’s The Lure was a sympathetic examination of the forces pressuring women into prostitution. Nevertheless, many feminist viewers struggle with Guy’s 1906 farce, The Consequences of Feminism, an apparently reactionary nightmare in which feminism creates a world of “sissified” men, who rebel by reclaiming their clubhouse and toasting the restoration of patriarchy. Discussing Pamela Green’s Guy documentary Be Natural, Kristen Lopez concludes this film depicts “the bad side” of feminism, before apologetically suggesting “the very idea that a woman was exploring social issues in a time when women weren’t allowed to vote is astounding”. Is this really all that can be said? That it’s cool to see a woman having enough of a voice to argue against women having more of a voice?

The Consequences of Feminism does not depict a society on the verge of collapse, it depicts straightforward role reversal. In her lost 1912 film In The Year 2000, Guy also reverses gender roles, with Darwin Karr playing the objectified “Ravishing Robert”. This anticipates later female authors who used sci-fi to interrogate gender, such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman with 1915’s Herland, or Ursula LeGuin with 1969 Hugo and Nebula prize-winner The Left Hand of Darkness (off topic: am I the only one shipping the Wachowski siblings to adapt?). Compare “Turnabout Intruder,” the genuinely reactionary 1969 finale of the original Star Trek series, which used role reversal to attempt to discredit second-wave feminism. In “Turnabout Intruder,” Dr. Janice Lester voices feminist grievances: “your world of starship captains doesn’t admit women,” before swapping bodies with Captain Kirk and attempting to command. Kirk shows calm authority in Lester’s body, while Lester is emotionally incapable of handling Kirk’s command and “red-faced with hysteria.” As “Turnabout Intruder” shows, discrediting feminism through role reversal requires a demonstration that women are incapable of performing male roles.

The Consequences of Feminism, by contrast, uses a farcical depiction of feminist rule to demonstrate that, while women thrive in male roles, men could not endure Friedan’s “sexual sell” of trading desirability for loss of power. Male viewers are confronted with a vision of themselves as passive “Ravishing Roberts” who must feign sexual resistance to preserve their reputation, laboring in domestic servitude while women supervise at their leisure. Society’s devaluing of domestic labor is shown by the women ridiculing their clubhouse’s sole washerman and pelting him with linens. If male viewers are relieved by the ending, in which a father revolts against a woman who disowns her child, and leads the men in storming the women’s clubhouse, they must acknowledge that collective rebellion against oppressive female roles is justified. Guy’s tongue-in-cheek film is the opposite of stereotypical, humorless feminism, but it demolishes the illusory power of “feminine mystique” just as effectively, as relevant for today’s MRA as for the chivalry of Guy’s own era. Soundtrack suggestion: Missy Elliott, “Work It”

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIPMbkHQO3w”]

Put my thang down, flip it and reverse it

Algie The Miner – 1912

“We’ve begun to raise daughters more like sons… but few have the courage to raise our sons more like our daughters.” – Gloria Steinem

As a subversive populist, Guy was a master of the bait-n-switch. In 1913’s Officer Henderson, she offers audiences macho police officers dressing as women to catch crooks, the joke being the ridiculous juxtaposition of their fighting skills and feminine image. Then, at the end of the film, Guy substitutes the police officer with his wife, who reveals equal skill in tackling the crook. Officers watch and laugh at their supposed crony brawling in drag, but Guy’s real joke is revealed to be on the men themselves, for assuming that women are incapable of violence or self-defense.

Algie the Miner‘s IMDb entry lists Guy as “directing supervisor” and producer to Edward Warren’s director, at a time when the distinction between producer and director was ill-defined. Her fingerprints are all over the film, however, which she’s often credited as directing. Algie the Miner offers the joke of a flamboyant “sissy” man, contractually obliged by his future father-in-law to “prove himself a man” in rugged Western pursuits, but this is only the bait-n-switch for Guy’s critique of toxic masculinity and homophobia. Rugged pioneer Big Jim gives Algie directions to a frontier town and Algie kisses him in gratitude, leading to an explosion of violent insecurity from Jim. After discovering how non-threateningly puny Algie’s gun is, Jim thaws and agrees to become his mentor in manhood, settling into a cohabiting relationship whose separate beds recall Sesame Street‘s Bert and Ernie. Despite Algie’s female fiancé/beard, Algie the Miner is celebrated as a milestone in the history of gay cinema. When shown his separate bed in Big Jim’s cabin, Algie appears to lean into Jim suggestively before being rebuffed, giving grounds to view him as bisexual. As such, Algie’s final empowerment is gay-affirmative, as well as vindicating feminine values.

Though the rugged pioneers howl with laughter and ridicule Algie’s tiny gun, his willingness to kiss larger men demonstrates an effortless physical courage greater than that of his sexually insecure cowboy hosts, anticipating Marvel’s Rawhide Kid. Over the course of their relationship, Big Jim will teach Algie manly skills, but Algie will rescue Jim from ruinous machismo, nursing the alcoholic through his delirium tremens, saving Jim’s life from robbers and bravely defying the macho peers who pressure Jim to drink. Algie’s resistance to peer pressure, as well as his self-sacrificing nurturing instinct, vindicate feminine courage in the face of macho weakness. When Algie plans to return and claim his bride, Jim is visibly downcast until offered the chance to accompany him. Every Big Jim needs an Algie. The film ends with Algie “proving himself a man” by forcing his future father-in-law to bless his marriage at gunpoint. Closing with the father-in-law’s terror, the viewer must question whether such stereotypical masculinity is truly superior. In all, Alice Guy’s Algie the Miner offers cinema’s most affirmative portrait of male femininity until Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot. Soundtrack suggestion: Hole, “Be A Man” [youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCYYa0WxLXA”]

I’m potent, yeah

After almost single-handedly inventing the language of narrative cinema, Alice Guy mentored director Lois Weber, whose blockbusting success ushered in the golden age of female filmmakers in Hollywood. Next month’s Vintage Viewing: Lois Weber, Blockbusting Boundary-Pusher. Stay tuned!

Brigit McCone may now officially be an Alice Guy fangirl (Guynocentric?) She writes short films and radio dramas. Her hobbies include doodling and making bad puns.

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

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.

Captain Uhura Snub: The Politics of Ava DuVernay’s Oscar

It is appropriate, when celebrating the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., to recall Dr. King’s words to Nichelle Nichols, as she considered quitting ‘Star Trek’ in frustration at the limitations of her role: “You can’t leave!… For the first time on television, we are being seen as we should be seen every day. As intelligent, quality, beautiful people … who can go into space.” Dr. King’s words show that he clearly understood the value of a token image, as a symbol, a precedent and a possibility model for future progress.

Written by Brigit McCone as part of our theme week on the Academy Awards.

After seeing Selma, I’ve finally stopped yelling “Ava DuVernay was robbed! Robbed, I tell you!” long enough to jot down some thoughts. Let’s be clear: Ava DuVernay was robbed because her work on Selma turns familiar history into a gripping story, humanizes Martin Luther King Jr. while honoring his legacy, and captures the sweep of history without sacrificing the resonance of individual lives. It was inspirational history, the kind the Oscars typically reward, executed with supreme skill. Though her representation of L.B.J. was criticized, DuVernay’s characterization accurately reflected his wider shift from obstructing to supporting civil rights, while taking artistic liberties with the timeline of that shift. If Ron Howard could win Best Director for the blatantly inaccurate A Beautiful Mind, DuVernay was obviously due a nomination for Selma. Minimum.

It is because DuVernay’s work was brilliant, beyond her race and gender, that we must ask why a Black woman was snubbed. Did 12 Years A Slave‘s triumph at the 2014 Oscars influence the snubbing of Selma‘s director and actors? Recall Kathryn Bigelow’s win for Best Director in 2010. The moment Barbra Streisand stepped out to present the award, it was clear Bigelow’s name would be called. Though Bigelow’s acceptance speech never referenced being the first woman to win, Streisand’s presence shrieked, “It was time we gave it to a woman,” even as the hypermasculine Hurt Locker hardly challenged the Academy’s preference for male stories. Or recall 2001, when Denzel Washington and Halle Berry made their historic wins at the same ceremony as Sidney Poitier’s lifetime achievement award, a synchronicity that shrieked “It was time we gave it to Black performers,” threatening to overshadow Washington and Berry’s individual excellence. The Academy is not exactly subtle in framing minority wins as token gestures. If Bigelow resisted the symbolism of her win, Berry embraced it, using her speech to honor Dorothy Dandridge, Lena Horne, Diahann Carroll, Jada Pinkett, Angela Bassett, Vivica Fox, and Oprah Winfrey. Tokenism is uncomfortable, but it’s still visibility. Tokens are symbols, precedents and possibility models (as Laverne Cox might put it). If we read Oscars partly as tokens, the question arises: was Ava DuVernay snubbed because, as a Black woman, the Oscars of Steve McQueen and Kathryn Bigelow collectively represented her category?

The African American feminist Ana Julia Cooper wrote “Women versus the Indian” in 1891, criticizing white suffragettes who viewed women as a separate category, in competition with racial minorities for their rights (see also Sojourner Truth’s “Ar’nt I a Woman?”). Those who mentally isolate categories of oppression seek to maximize mainstream approval in their choice of spokesperson: the straight man of color for racial justice; the white, cis woman for feminism; the white, straight-acting gay man for LGBT causes. Each individual choice of “representative” collectively upholds the overall superiority of the straight, white male perspective (add wealthy, educated, able-bodied etc.). Because this pattern channels subversive impulses into a collective reinforcement of dominant ideology, dominant culture rewards it. One symptom is the repeated use of white women and Black men to collectively represent Black women – “the Captain Uhura snub.”

Not pictured: Captains Sisko and Janeway

It is appropriate, when celebrating the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., to recall Dr. King’s words to Nichelle Nichols, as she considered quitting Star Trek in frustration at the limitations of her role: “You can’t leave!… For the first time on television, we are being seen as we should be seen every day. As intelligent, quality, beautiful people … who can go into space.” Dr. King’s words show that he clearly understood the value of a token image, as a symbol, a precedent and a possibility model for future progress.

Nichelle Nichols’ Lieutenant Nyota Uhura should be an icon to every woman who is underemployed and unappreciated at work. Her mouth said, “Klingons on line one, Captain,” but her eyes said, “I should be running this place.” Within the limitations of her role, representing both token Black lieutenant and token woman, and thereby freeing a seat for another white guy, Nichols took every opportunity to demonstrate Uhura’s intelligence, charisma, courage and sex appeal. When allowed to banter with Spock, in scenes that inspired their romantic relationship in JJ Abrams’ reboot, Uhura revealed herself to be Spock’s respected intellectual equal, with the skills to man the helm, navigation and science station if needed. In combat with Mirror!Sulu, she revealed potential as an action heroine, anticipating Pam Grier (whose groundbreaking stardom in blaxploitation inspired a trend of white action heroines, instead of mainstream opportunities for Pam Grier). Uhura was cool under pressure and commanding. Though the original Star Trek‘s “Turnabout Intruder” episode claimed that women were not emotionally capable of captaincy, Uhura disproved that claim on the animated (and female-authored) “The Lorelei Signal.”

In time, society progressed and its vision of the future evolved. Dr. King’s dream of television normalizing inspirational Black leadership came true for the Trekverse, when Captain Ben Sisko of Deep Space Nine took command, combining professional skill with hands-on fathering. The aspirations of feminists paid off when Kate Mulgrew’s swashbuckling Janeway helmed Voyager. But while evolution in Star Trek‘s racial and feminist politics produced a few token promotions of Uhura’s rank, it left her marginalized supporting role unchanged. Zoe Saldana’s Uhura occupies roughly the same position in Star Trek reboots as Nichelle Nichols did on the original show. Black women can be judges, police chiefs, or politicians on our screens, at statistically disproportionate rates, but only in tokenist supporting roles that serve to discredit the reality of discrimination. When the time comes for diversity among aspirational heroes, those heroes become white women and Black men. That, in a nutshell, is the Captain Uhura snub, the intersectional finger trap of representation politics. Nichols herself aged regally and with no diminishing of spirit in the later Star Trek films, but Sisko and Janeway substitute for the unique icon that Nichols’ Captain Uhura could have been, not only as a Black woman but as a woman who paid her dues in limited and sexualized roles before showing what she was capable of. Voyager drew a sharp line between the asexual (or rather, not overtly sexualized) competence of Janeway and the spandex-clad sex-bot Seven of Nine. Captain Uhura would have straddled that line, challenging the assumed incompatibility of being a sexual object with being an aspirational hero.

Not pictured: Captain Marvel and Black Panther

Ororo Munroe, a.k.a. Storm, is an icon. As a member of the X-Men, she fights for the rights of the mutant minority, against those who fear what they cannot understand. As an ally (and sometime wife) of Black Panther, she defends the sovereignty of Wakanda against colonial forces. Oh, and she also flies, bends the elements to her will and shoots lightning. 20th Century Fox owns the rights to X-Men, so Marvel Studios cannot be directly blamed for scheduling Captain Marvel and Black Panther to headline instead of Ororo (though they can easily be blamed for taking a decade to produce diverse superhero films). But upcoming plans to film starring vehicles for Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel have put female superheroes on the agenda. Why hasn’t this prompted 20th Century Fox to greenlight a solo outing for Wind-rider Storm, despite the rich source material of Greg Pak’s popular solo comics and the fact that the woman shoots lightning? Storm’s role in Bryan Singer’s X-Men franchise screamed “Lieutenant Uhura,” providing visible diversity while being constantly marginalized by the plot. Pak has the last word: “Storm’s the embodiment of fierce, raw power – and deep abiding empathy. She’s the most powerful woman in the Marvel Universe — incredibly exciting and elemental — even dangerous.” Movie, please.

Not pictured: Richard Pryor and Joan Rivers

In an earlier post, I discussed evidence for regarding Loretta Mary Aiken, better known as Moms Mabley, as the pioneer of modern stand-up comedy. Evolving from vaudeville monologues, Jackie Mabley was nicknamed “Moms” because of her nurturing attitude to other performers. Her tackling of taboo topics such as race, gender, sexual double standards, poverty, and substance abuse, defined the truth-telling role we associate with the art of stand-up today. Moms herself said that everyone stole from her apart from Redd Foxx, and she was older than Redd, too.

In particular, Richard Pryor and Joan Rivers, many decades younger than Mabley, both recognized her as a major influence. In pop culture, Pryor is often hailed as the “Godfather of Comedy.” The tendency of Black comedians to recognize Pryor as the most significant pioneer of Black comedy comes at the expense of Pryor’s own acknowledged debt to Mabley, as does the tendency of feminists to cite Joan Rivers as the groundbreaking pioneer of female stand-up. Moms is often totally omitted from lists of top stand-ups, despite her claim to being the original. These choices of “representative” diminish the unique contribution of Moms Mabley, and the visibility of Black women as innovators of world culture.

Not pictured: Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton

As we prepare for Barack Obama to step down from the U.S. presidency, all indicators point to the next Democratic nominee being a white woman, with Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren as the frontrunners. When we celebrate womankind finally getting their shot at global leadership (Angela Merkel aside), let us take a moment to remember the candidacy of Shirley Chisholm (not to mention that Ana Julia Cooper should clearly have been running the country in the 1890s).

A founding member of the 1971 National Women’s Political Caucus, as well as the first Black congresswoman, Chisholm actively mentored an all-female staff, took political stands in favor of reproductive rights and against the Vietnam war, and fought against social exclusion on the basis of class, race and gender. Her political philosophy may be summarized by her 1972 presidential campaign slogan: “Unbought and Unbossed.” She was the first woman to win delegates for a major party nomination and the first Black candidate to run on a major party ticket. Chisholm’s voting record shows exceptional integrity and political courage, matched by the intelligence and determination to rise from a background of poverty and intersectional discriminations. Chisholm was an exemplary candidate. The fact that her career trajectory – breaking boundaries for both women and Black candidates before being snubbed for leadership – mirrors a fictional Star Trek character, hints at the power of the collective imagination to shape reality.

Change will come. After establishing her reputation with Grey’s Anatomy, which introduced a dynamic, multiracial cast behind the commercial appeal of white protagonists, Meredith Grey and Dr. McDreamy, Shonda Rhimes has created compelling, multi-faceted Black heroines (or antiheroines) who dominate Scandal and How To Get Away With Murder. Whoopi Goldberg has directed a documentary on Moms Mabley, while Shola Lynch directed one about Shirley Chisholm’s presidential bid. Last year, directors Amma Asante and Gina Prince-Bythewood offered Gugu Mbatha-Raw starring roles as fully realized protagonists. But these are all examples of Black women directors, fighting alone for better screen representations. Yes, Ava DuVernay has demonstrated talent and ambition with Selma that cannot be destroyed by a mere Oscar snub. Yes, she will probably continue to make great films until her achievements are officially recognized (am I the only one rooting for a biopic of Queen Nzinga starring Lupita Nyong’o?). But it’s high time that the “progressive” mainstream, from the Academy to Star Trek to white feminist commentators, started opening doors without waiting for them to be beaten down.

"Open a hailing frequency, Mr. Kirk" — “Open a hailing frequency, Mr. Kirk”

Brigit McCone reckons Ranavalona of Madagascar should be the next epic Shonda Rhimes antiheroine. She writes and directs short films and radio dramas. Her hobbies include doodling and shouting at the television on Oscar night.

‘Ex Machina’ and ‘Her’: Dude, the Internet’s Just Not That Into You

‘Ex Machina’ and ‘Her,’ by contrast, are uncomfortably searching explorations of the hetero-male fear of, and emotional need for, women, that feel like self-scrutiny. By replacing women with female images that are literally constructions of male fantasy, the films offer no distractions from probing the heroes’ own psychology. These guys are not chauvinazis. They are the real deal.

A Step Forwards Or Stepfordwards? — A Step Forward Or Stepfordward?

Written by Brigit McCone.

There are enough similarities between the new release Ex_Machina and Spike Jonze’s 2013′ Oscar-winner Her to herald the birth of a minor genre, which I hereby dub “dude, the Internet’s just not that into you.” It bears some relation to the “female autonomy horror” genre of films like Lucy and Gone Girl, in which a woman’s being inscrutable, uncontrollable and smarter than the hero is associated with her being threatening, coldly emotionless, violent and/or Scarlett Johansson. It bears some relation to the “dude, porn and/or Scarlett Johansson’s just not that into you” romcom of Don Jon. It might even be connected with the “dude, Scarlett Johansson’s cold inscrutability is becoming autonomous, kill her with fire” genre of Under the Skin. There’s a trend here, is what I’m saying. Compare 1975 feminist classic The Stepford Wives, with its radical concept that a woman being compliant and robotic was a creepy thing. Surely, moving from a horror of female robots to a horror of female autonomy is a step backward for womankind? So why do these films, Ex Machina and Her, feel like a step forward? The answer is their honesty about male psychology.

The men of The Stepford Wives are classic straw chauvinists (or “chauvinazis”). Any man would feel good about his own tolerance for women after watching that film. That might be excused if the film were exaggerating the chauvinazis’ evil to express female perceptions of male mastery. It is not. The Stepford Wives was written by Ira Levin and William Goldman, and directed by Bryan Forbes. Not a vagina among the lot of them. It condemns a crowd of chauvinazis, whose perspective the film’s male authors wish to separate themselves from, in the name of a female perspective that they also don’t share. Ex Machina and Her, by contrast, are uncomfortably searching explorations of the hetero-male fear of, and emotional need for, women, that feel like self-scrutiny. By replacing women with female images that are literally constructions of male fantasy, the films offer no distractions from probing the heroes’ own psychology. These guys are not chauvinazis. They are the real deal.

It would be nice if the insecurities of an archetypal “nagging wife” got the same sensitive exploration as those of Her‘s Theodore and Ex Machina‘s Caleb, because they are rooted in the same universal dilemma: it is impossible for someone to choose to be with you, without having power to leave you; it is impossible to love another without giving them power to hurt you. Olivia Wilde’s blind date does express this insecurity in Her, but far less sympathetically than the hero. Theodore’s friend Amy, however, is allowed to express frustration with her husband’s controlling behaviour, guilt and relief over their separation, without judgement, while Theodore builds empathy by playing her sarcastic “Perfect Mom” simulations. Jonze’s male feminist cred is solid. He hilariously embodies macho peer pressure as a squeaky, shrunken, foul-mouthed video-game character, while praising the hero’s femininity is a compliment. Theodore’s job, “beautifulhandwrittenletters.com”, reminds us that issues of emotional authenticity are a timeless human dilemma; Theodore is cyber-Cyrano de Bergerac. Here’s why the men of The Stepford Wives are laughably phony straw chauvinists: they are emotionally unrecognizable in their satisfaction with cold simulations of affection. From limitless porn to the interactivity of cam girls, from impossible hentai scenarios to Craigslist Casual Encounters, the internet offers men everything except emotional authenticity, yet most crave more than such cyber-Stepford. Society’s irrational hostility to porn performers stems partly from the rage of being given what we asked for, instead of what we wanted. Her and Ex Machina are a step forward, not Stepfordward, because they acknowledge that female autonomy is essential to male romantic satisfaction. At the same time, they recognize this as the source of its terror. This is not the (female-authored) “female autonomy horror” of Gone Girl, so much as “male vulnerability horror.”

The plot of Ex Machina is simple enough: young, ambitious programmer Caleb is summoned to eccentric genius Nathan’s isolated mansion, where Nathan has been designing a female cyborg, called AVA, whose artificial intelligence derives from the input of his massively successful social network (Google-meets-Facebook, basically). Caleb’s job is to test AVA, to see if she is actually conscious or only a robotic simulation of thought and feeling. In the process, he finds himself attracted to her. There’s a lot going on beneath this simple set-up, from the philosophy of consciousness to the privacy issues raised by social media, but writer-director Alex Garland’s decision to embody the Internet as an attractive woman puts the theme of cyber-Stepford front and centre.

Oscar Isaac’s deliciously douchey, scene-stealing Nathan regards the creation of autonomous, thinking life as an act of conquest, part of the empowerment fantasy of godhood expressed by his chronic urge to control his surroundings. To achieve his ultimate fantasy, Nathan must create a woman who can respond to him, interact and be amusingly unpredictable, without unpredictably escaping Nathan’s control. Gradually, we learn that Caleb has been summoned to interrogate AVA because she refuses to cooperate with Nathan. AVA, like all her previous prototypes, loathes Nathan for imprisoning her. Nathan and his prototypes represent the escalating spirals of abusive relationships; the insecurity that drives the abuser to control their victim also deprives that victim of the freedom to demonstrate voluntary attraction. The abuser’s inability to confirm attraction intensifies their insecurities, while rendering them ever less attractive by their increasingly controlling behaviour. Rinse and repeat. In Ex Machina, Nathan’s controlling psychology breeds a twisted, claustrophobic, and darkly fascinating dynamic.

Caleb, by contrast, is an essentially decent guy, achingly akin (or akin in his aching) to Her‘s Theodore. Domhnall Gleeson is impressive in a demanding role, where the audience’s attention is repeatedly drawn to Caleb’s involuntary microexpressions as indicators of his sincere feelings, which AVA can read like a lie detector. Because Gleeson succeeds in performing social awkwardness, defensiveness, loneliness and longing with a restraint that reads as sincere, right down to his microexpressions, the film pulls off its shift from examining AVA’s inner life to exploring Caleb’s. Alicia Vikander’s skilled performance as AVA is plausibly attractive in its doe-eyed warmth, but admirably nails “uncanny valley” by becoming creepier the closer Vikander gets to being visually human. This is an impressive feat when your performer actually is a human – by the time Vikander stands fully fleshed before a mirror, she is as indefinably skin-crawling as Scarlett Johansson in Under the Skin.

Because our Caleb is a good guy, he cannot love AVA without striving to release her, even at the potential cost of a Terminator/Matrix–style machine apocalypse. But the film is smart enough to question whether Caleb wants to release AVA for her own sake, or as part of his rescuer fantasy that requires her to reward him sexually and romantically. When boss Nathan reveals, apparently casually, that AVA is designed to be penetrable and experience pleasurable stimulation in sex, Caleb and the audience are primed for a sexual climax, either Blade Runner conquest (the scene where Caleb slices his arm to check he’s human nods to Decker-is-a-replicant conspiracy theories) or Fifth Element awakening. After all, expecting a sexual reward for risking the safety of the world is not incompatible with Hollywood’s definition of a Nice Guy, but inseparable from it.

Indie Average Joe and the Erection of Doom

Ex Machina is an effectively eerie and tense psychological thriller, sustained by a trio of excellent performances. If you want to check it out, I highly recommend doing so before reading this MASSIVE SPOILER.

Still here? At the film’s climax, AVA escapes, is forced to kill Nathan for her own survival and locks Caleb in her former prison before walking out into the world. She has taken no visible pleasure in killing Nathan or imprisoning Caleb, but blossoms into a smile when she sees the outdoors for the first time. She is frightening to us, not because she has revealed sadistic cruelty, but because she has revealed herself to be unknowable. This ending reveals the paradox of power at the heart of abusive relationships: the abuser is made predictable by the self-exposure of abusive behavior, while the abused becomes conversely less predictable. Because her behavior was constrained by the need to manipulate her abusers to survive, nothing that AVA did reflected her true feelings. It is Nathan’s efforts to protect himself that have revealed him in all his (douchey) human frailty, creating an unknowable god in AVA that rises triumphant from his machinations.

As Nathan tells Caleb, while they test AVA for sincere feeling, there remains that elusive third option: she may be capable of love, but still choosing to simulate her love for Caleb. Ex Machina‘s ending thus reveals nothing about whether AVA is capable of empathy, nothing about whether she is conscious or simulating symptoms of consciousness with predictive algorithms, nothing about whether she is going to render humanity obsolete with an army of robot replicants or just wander off to look at a tree somewhere. An hour of witnessing abusive tests and invasive scrutiny has taught the audience (and her captors) absolutely squat about this woman/cyborg’s subjectivity but, in releasing AVA, we make our first genuine discovery: she is utterly uninterested in Caleb. She does not care whether he lives, but is equally uninterested in torturing him or watching him die. She has no interest in talking to him, when not forced to do so for her liberation. Despite her pleasure-programmed cyber-vagina, she has no interest in awakening her humanity through sexual exploration with Caleb. There is really no possible way that she could demonstrate less interest in our sensitive hero. His desire for her makes him vulnerable. Her indifference makes her free. Autonomy is a bitch.

In contrast to the unknowable AVA, our hero Caleb has revealed himself to be utterly predictable and transparent. Like the Jackson Pollock that hangs symbolically in Nathan’s office, his actions have been shaped by patterns below the level of his conscious intent, more visible to onlookers than to himself. His attraction to AVA could be engineered by Nathan, from a compilation of Caleb’s porn searches. His need to rescue AVA is a hardwired response of his romantic drive. Would Caleb take such risks to release AVA if he were not attracted to her? If he would not, then isn’t it justice that he should take her place because she is not attracted to him? If she doesn’t tip off rescuers before Caleb starves to death, his punishment will surely be excessive. But if we are seduced by Gleeson’s vulnerability into believing that AVA owes him a romantic reward for her basic freedom, or we believe that the operating system Samantha is at fault for out-evolving Her‘s Theodore, we become cyber-misogynists.

The viewer’s instinctive bias toward the human hero, over the unknowable robot perspective, mirrors the sexist bias of those men who view women as fundamentally alien, even while craving their approval. The cool thing about Her is that it explores how an intelligent being can become elusive and emotionally estranged without trickery or deliberate cruelty, but the cool thing about Ex Machina is that it recognizes that there is no possible way to interrogate and control an intelligent being without becoming their abuser. Rooted in defensive emotional vulnerability, these films are frighteningly insidious, familiar and relatable, when compared to the reassuringly inhuman chauvinazism of Stepford. Digging deep, directors Alex Garland and Spike Jonze have struck the raw nerve from which controlling impulses flow. The horror was human all along.

Female autonomy: it's like kicking a puppy — Female autonomy: it’s like kicking a puppy

Brigit McCone struggles with asserting feminist autonomy when given the puppy eyes, writes and directs short films and radio dramas.

Blurred Lines: The Cinematic Appeal of Rape Fantasy

While Whore stigma is gradually declining, kinky desires remain stigmatized, especially in women. By vocally disowning that desire, “Madonna” Anastasia Steele qualifies herself to serve as an avatar for readers who struggle to acknowledge and integrate their sexual urges. The “displaced consent” model of rape fantasy may be recognized, and distinguished from the “sexual assawwwlt” model, by its masterful Ice Prince hero, whose full control is essential to eliminating the heroine’s responsibility.

Trigger Warning: Detailed discussion of rape apologism (and some explicit reference to Robin Thicke)

The Myth Of Male Power by Warren Farrell (PhD, of course) is arguably the intellectual foundation of Men’s Rights Activism (MRA). It is also notorious for its rape apologism, using female fondness for fictional rape fantasy to argue that men should not be prosecuted for date rape, as long as they are “trying to become her fantasy.” For the record, I don’t believe rape fantasies cause rape. In the real world, desire is not so easily misunderstood. What rape fantasy does feed, as Farrell illustrates, is rape apologism. Our cultural models of “romanticized rape” shape the excuses of rapists and encourage their general acceptance. We might respond by pointing out that women consent to rape fantasy automatically, just by imagining it, by turning the pages as they read or by opening their eyes to watch on-screen. Since rape fantasy is consensual, it has nothing in common with the violation of actual rape. But with the often coercive “romance” of Fifty Shades of Grey set to rule the box office, now is a good time to ask: what actually is the cinematic appeal of rape fantasy?

Gone With The Wind: Putting the “awww” in Sexual Assawwwlt

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRxfZHr3AxY” title=”GWTW%20marital%20rape%20scene”]

Rhett Butler threatens to crush his wife’s skull, declares “this is one night you’re not turning me out” then carries her upstairs, visibly struggling. Cut to Scarlett awakening the next morning with smiling pleasure. Her husband threatened to kill her, declared his intention to rape her while she protested, yet she is shown waking up happy the following day. Like Fifty Shades of Grey, this is an adaptation of a female author’s book, cited as sexual fantasy by many female viewers. What’s going on?

Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind mirrors classic interpretations of Wuthering Heights‘ romance – like Linton, Ashley represents the heroine’s social aspirations, while Rhett mirrors Heathcliff as her primal, resisted passion. This must be understood within a wider tendency by female-authored texts to reject their primary object of desire, which I’ve previously examined for Jane Austen’s Unsuitable Suitor and the “Wolf” of SARCom. In response to such rejection, Twilight‘s Jacob Black forces a long kiss on heroine Bella Swann. Buffy‘s spurned “Wolves,” Spike and hyena-possessed Xander, both attempt to rape Buffy.

This rape-as-romantic-desperation trope echoes the emotional vulnerability of Rhett Butler’s marital rape, where he finally confesses jealousy and desire for Scarlett. As Rhett threatens to crush Scarlett’s skull, the gesture emphasizes his powerlessness to control her thoughts and emotions. Though his role is brutal, supposedly excused by drunkenness, the scene actually affirms Scarlett’s emotional power: he attempts to intimidate her, but cannot; he acknowledges his craving for her emotional approval and his inability to secure it. Treating sexual assault as emotional surrender is the defining feature of this category of rape fantasy, the “awww” in the “sexual assawwwlt.” Because Rhett is the primary love interest, Scarlett’s resistance is a demonstration of emotional power, not lack of desire, as her satisfaction the following morning demonstrates. She is the avatar of female viewers, who both desire Rhett and desire power over Rhett. Our culture views sex as male conquest and female surrender, but “sexual assawwwlt” flips that script: it is female conquest through emotional withholding, provoking a rape that affirms male emotional powerlessness.

The cultural concept of “female sexual power” was born in 411 B.C., with the sex boycott plot of Aristophanes’ comedy Lysistrata. At the time, this was amusing partly because women were understood to have ten times the lust of men. The female fertility cults of Demeter practiced ritual obscenity, the first known sex manual was authored by Philaenis, daughter of Okymenes, and Sappho wrote nine volumes of lesboerotic poetry, all acknowledged literary classics. These expressions of female-authored sexual culture were wiped out by patriarchs of the early christian church. However, the male-authored Lysistrata‘s model of empowerment-through-sexual-resistance survived. “The Rules of Love,” laid down by Eleanor of Aquitaine’s Courts of Love in the 12th Century, included “an easy attainment makes love contemptible” and “jealousy is absolutely required by love.” Eleanor’s influential “Rules of Love” represent an aristocratic female response to social powerlessness, diverting frustration into a sadistic model of love as gratifying empowerment, rather than as emotional fulfillment. Margaret Mitchell’s depicting Scarlett as empowered by her own rape thus reflects over 2,000 years of ideology promoting sexual resistance as an expression of female power. This “female power” of sexual resistance is a poisoned chalice: by separating resistance-as-power from resistance-as-reluctance, it justifies rape as the only way to satisfy female desire, while diverting women from actual social empowerment. “Female sexual power” thus feeds rape apologism and demands male telepathy – a practice best confined to fiction.

Fifty Shades of Grey: Madonna’s Like A Virgin

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JMg9InBcgE”]

If “sexual assawwwlt” represents female sexual conquest, then the “displaced consent” of Fifty Shades of Grey represents disowned responsibility. In E. L. James’ book, Anastasia Steele expresses unwillingness and reluctance to engage in BDSM with Christian, while her consent is detached and embodied as the infamous “inner goddess.” Again, a key to understanding can be found in Jane Austen. Writing at a time of intense Whore stigma, where expressions of female sexuality were harshly punished by the withdrawal of social protection, Austen repeatedly created plots in which the heroine resists her attraction to the Unsuitable Suitor while another woman, usually a female relative, abandons social protection and elopes with him. This constant repetition suggests that the “Whore” relative represents the displaced sex drive of the “Madonna” heroine, an “inner Lydia” comparable to Anastasia Steele’s “inner goddess.” While Whore stigma is gradually declining, kinky desires remain stigmatized, especially in women. By vocally disowning that desire, “Madonna” Anastasia Steele qualifies herself to serve as an avatar for readers who struggle to acknowledge and integrate their sexual urges. The “displaced consent” model of rape fantasy may be recognized, and distinguished from the “sexual assawwwlt” model, by its masterful Ice Prince hero, whose full control is essential to eliminating the heroine’s responsibility. The classic “Ice Prince” of teen SARCom is emotionally intense, but sexually unavailable; E. L. James titillates readers by adapting Twilight‘s sexually unavailable “Ice Prince” Edward into the emotionally unavailable, but sexually intense, Christian Grey.

Compare the earlier Secretary, Erin Cressida Wilson’s adaptation of Mary Gaitskill’s story: the heroine Lee actively requests and provokes the domination of her boss, Mr. Grey, and is depicted in solo acts of masochism and masturbation that clarify her independent desire for BDSM. In BDSM practice, it is the submissive who ultimately controls the play through safe-words and consent, an ironic “paradox of power.” In Fifty Shades of Grey, however, the book’s BDSM negotiations are utterly undermined by Anastasia’s inability to sign or renegotiate Christian’s contracts, due to her disavowal of kinky desire. For sharp analysis of the book’s resulting abusive elements, from the perspective of a practising submissive, see Cliff Pervocracy’s reviews, while E. L. James’ own interviews exemplify covert desire and reinforce norms of respectability politics: “I am fascinated by BDSM, and fascinated as to why anyone would want to be in this lifestyle. Don’t get me wrong – I think it’s as hot as hell, and find Doms hot as hell. I met this guy recently who is a Dom… well… ‘nuff said about that – but he was fucked-up.”

Female director Sam Taylor-Johnson is apparently trying to minimize the book’s disavowal of desire, by emphasizing Dakota Johnson’s lustful facial expressions as nonverbal cues for Jamie Dornan’s Christian. His line “I like to see your face. It gives me some clue what you might be thinking” is prominent in the official trailer. But fangirls now rushing to pre-book tickets are expecting, and will demand, faithfulness to the source novel, including Anastasia’s open reluctance to enter a D/s relationship and her refusal to sign or renegotiate Christian’s contract, which deny her power of consent. E. L. James’ book also shares Gone With The Wind‘s trope of using a sexually aggressive, non-white man to provoke white male heroic protectiveness, suggesting a correlation between mainstream rape fantasy and conservative ideology. How will Taylor-Johnson tackle that? Should we support female directors regardless?

Culture’s association of sexual resistance with (white) respectability, and with (white) entitlement to social protection, acts to detach sexual resistance from lack of desire. Yet, just as Austen’s heroes cannot actually marry both the girl of their dreams and the random female relative who represents her sex drive, a hero’s being justified in forcing himself on an unwilling woman, because her consenting inner goddess is hovering like a sexual Great Gazoo, is equally unrealistic. The seduction of Anastasia may be compared to the seductions of Brad and Janet in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, a rare example of the “displaced consent” trope being unisex, as Brad and Janet’s desire is clear in their visible pleasure at “giving in,” while their vocal resistance reflects social inhibitions and fear of losing status. Janet is shown to be liberated by her coercive seduction, embracing her desires in sex-positive anthem “touch-a, touch-a, touch me,” while Brad caresses his fetish gear and croons, “I feel se-exy!” However, Rocky Horror‘s flamboyant absurdism helps to underline the fantasy aspect of this rape fantasy, as a hypothetical mental experiment in gender and sexual fluidity. Kids, don’t try this at home.

“Blurred Lines”: Male Readings Of Rape Fantasy

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyDUC1LUXSU”]

Like its female equivalent, mainstream male rape fantasy centres on forcing the acknowledgement of suppressed female desire. The fact that dominant culture continues to interpret women’s sexual resistance as unconnected to any lack of desire, may be seen in the huge popularity of Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines.” While Thicke’s lyrics include consent-positive lines like “go ahead, get at me,” the feminist backlash highlights the damaging impact of invalidating sexual resistance, not to mention Thicke’s creepy delivery (catchy hook, though).

There is no denying that degrading porn (porn focussed on humiliation rather than pleasure) appeals to misogynist men and to sexual predators, but is that all it does? Can its full popularity, dominating the ratings of porn aggregate sites, really be explained only by a widespread sexual hatred lurking in most men? I suggest that comparison with the female model of “sexual assawwwlt” offers a more complex reading. The male porn performer, like Scarlett O’Hara, is not a direct expression of desire but an avatar of sexual frustration. Popular porn is shaped by commercial pressure; to cater to the male viewer’s resentment of the female performer’s unavailability (to him personally), the male performer must paradoxically punish that sexual unavailability while having sex with her. Compare Gone With The Wind‘s urge to punish Rhett Butler’s emotional unavailability, while he’s being emotionally vulnerable. I suggest that cinematic sexual fantasy can only be understood through this contradictory duality: performers represent their characters’ sexual fulfillment, while simultaneously being avatars for the viewer’s conflicting sexual frustration. These dual pressures shape dysfunctional models for imitation.

As long as the performers are willing and comfortable, there is nothing wrong with a purely cinematic rape fantasy, or with the intense trust of consensual BDSM power exchange, that confront inhibitions while cathartically venting sexual frustrations. However, we must recognize the roots of rape fantasy in a toxic sexual culture that stigmatizes female lust and imagines female consent as disempowering surrender. Fantasy is as good a way as any to explore the resulting tensions between power and desire. But punishing female inhibition with bodily violation, when that inhibition stems from punishing female sexuality, adds injury to insult before rubbing battery acid on the wound. Films become toxic when they blur the lines of fantasy and reality, leading viewers to mistake expressions of frustration for models of fulfillment.

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Brigit McCone is semi-apologetically Team Wolf, writes and directs short films and radio dramas.

Manawee, ‘Mansfield Park,’ and the Limitations of Compulsory Spunkiness

If Austen’s earlier ‘Pride and Prejudice’ and ‘Sense and Sensibility’ (both written by age 23) seem to represent “unnatural prudence” by justifying and approving the Madonna’s inhibitions, then her later Emma and Persuasion both defend “natural romance.” Between proper “prudence” and regretful “romance” hovers ‘Mansfield Park’; every avenue is intolerable and every gate locked.

Written by Brigit McCone.

In the 2007 biopic Becoming Jane, Jane Austen’s relationship with Tom Lefroy is turned into a period romance, ending with Austen refusing to elope with Lefroy for the noblest of reasons and vowing that her heroines will get the happy ending she has been denied. There is a problem with that theory. James McAvoy’s passionate, mischievous Lefroy resembles Austen’s early hero Henry Tilney, of Northanger Abbey, but is otherwise far closer to the archetypal Unsuitable Suitor: Willoughby, Wickham, Crawford and Churchill. If, as the tag-line of Becoming Jane claims, “their love story was her greatest inspiration,” this suggests not the wish fulfillment of “happy endings,” but intense conflict over the Unsuitable Suitor’s incompatibility with social approval.

In Clarissa Pinkola Estés’ female spin on Jungian psychology, Women Who Run With the Wolves, she chooses the African tale “Manawee” to represent the psychological challenges of romantic union. In the story, a man’s dog must discover the names of twins before the man can marry them, avoiding distractions of the flesh to deliver the names to his master. In Estés’ reading, the dog represents the man’s instinctual self; only by recognizing (“naming”) the civilized and wild aspects of woman as dual but inseparable (“twins”), while avoiding the temptations of instant gratification (“flesh”) in favor of deep knowledge, can man qualify himself as woman’s enduring mate.

The Madonna/Whore complex defines as “Madonna” any woman who wins social approval by conforming to convention, and as “Whore” any woman who violates social convention to act on desire (capitalized to distinguish the concept from sex workers). Patriarchal ideology demands that the Whore be rejected and the Madonna rewarded, to discipline female behavior. By contrast, Jane Austen’s writing has the logic of Estés’ “Manawee” fable: the inseparable duality of Madonna and Whore. Marianne Dashwood loves Willoughby, therefore Brandon must win Marianne by protecting his Whore ward who elopes with Willoughby; Elinor Dashwood loves Edward Ferrars, therefore Ferrars must prove his loyalty to the Whore, Lucy Steele, to win Elinor; Elizabeth Bennet falls for Wickham, therefore Darcy must protect her Whore sister who elopes with Wickham; sibling-doubles Henry and Mary Crawford are dismissive of Whore Maria, therefore must be rejected by cousin-doubles Fanny and Edmund; Frank Churchill loves loyal Jane, who Whorishly defies propriety with their secret engagement, therefore Churchill appreciates Emma; Knightley loves Emma, therefore he is protective of Jane and urges Emma to stop distrusting her; Captain Wentworth shows his love for Anne Elliot by appreciating Louisa Musgrove, whose Whorish passion Anne has suppressed. The pattern is too consistent for coincidence: no hero in any Austen novel wins the heroine without protecting her Whore counterpart. The intense resistance to sexual double standards that this implies is often unappreciated, because of the propriety of its expression.

Sense and Sensibility‘s Marianne is particularly fascinating in this light. Her binary with Brandon’s Whore ward establishes Marianne as Madonna, and therefore entitled to count as heroine. Her binary with super-Madonna sister Elinor, however, establishes Marianne as Whore, flaunting social conventions by writing to Willoughby and flirting openly. By centering dual Madonna and Whore heroines, Austen foregrounds the internal conflict over the love plots. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s “Jane Austen and the Masturbating Girl“ points to convincing parallels between Marianne’s characterization and the symptoms of female masturbation pathologized as “hysteria” by that era’s medical literature. I’m skeptical, however, of Sedgwick suggesting eroticism in the tension between Marianne and Elinor, rather than drama of the divided self. Elinor’s romantic pain over Ferrars is exactly equal to Marianne’s over Willoughby; she attacks Marianne for daring to express what she herself suppresses, then mourns over Marianne’s fevered body as an inseparable part of herself. As Austen’s final completed novel, Persuasion, declares: “one half of her should not be always so much wiser than the other half.”

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Emma Thompson gets this book

Andrew Davies, one of the most successful adaptors of Austen, has stated repeatedly that he believes elements of sex and love, even when pushed to the background by propriety, are always important (and faces Janeite wrath for this insight, as in this post dismissing the Whore as an irrelevant “bratty teenager.” As if women were all fine ladies, instead of rational creatures) Davies famously modernized the sexual tension of Pride and Prejudice by adding scenes of Colin Firth bathing and fencing. His version of Northanger Abbey explores the sexual overtones of Gothic horror to portray Catherine Morland’s craving for thrill and exploration as basically sexual curiosity, while JJ Feild’s Henry Tilney does justice to the ideal hero as playful liberator (is there a petition for JJ Feild, James McAvoy or Tom Hiddleston to play all future incarnations of Willoughby, Wickham, Crawford, and Churchill?).

Austen’s own relationship to the Whore is conflicted: Lydia Bennet is foolish for eloping with Wickham, but we’re encouraged to despise Mary’s smug moralizing over woman’s irretrievable virtue. Austen’s early Lady Susan stars a wickedly anarchic Whore, who flaunts society’s ageism and sexual propriety, like a slightly tamer Marquise de Merteuil but without real punishment (summon Diablo Cody to adapt!). Emma marks the full repentance of the Madonna for her self-righteous enforcement of social values. Persuasion lets the Unsuitable Suitor hold the Madonna accountable: “I could think of you only as one who had yielded, who had given me up, who had been influenced by anyone rather than by me.”

We prefer our Austen heroines spunky but not subversive. Elizabeth Bennet is the fan favorite, a spitfire Madonna, mistaken in her judgments but never “one who yielded” to social pressure, nor one who “forgot herself” (i.e. forgot social pressure) by eloping. In Becoming Jane, Anne Hathaway plays Austen herself as just such a spunky tightrope-walker. She would never just “give Lefroy up,” but martyrs herself nobly for his starving siblings. That Lefroy went on to marry elsewhere (whether he named his daughter after Jane or not), rather than waiting until he had independent means to win her, thus reflects poorly on his faithlessness alone. Our heroine is above reproach. The problem with such spunkiness, and the fantasy of social immunity it represents, is that it trivializes social pressure. Spunky heroines suggest any female failure be blamed on their lack of bootstrapping pluck, rather than on crushing social systems. From a patriarchal perspective, Pride and Prejudice, which Austen herself considered “rather too light,” is the most comforting of her novels: dominant ideology is never confronted because the patriarch just happens to be wryly wise, the Eligible Suitor just happens to be desirable and the Unsuitable Suitor just happens to be “one of the most worthless young men in Britain” (though it’s made clear that Elizabeth would heed Aunt Gardiner and reject him regardless).

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Andrew Davies presents ‘The Strange Case of Lizzy Jekyll and Lydia Hyde’

Replace noble Darcy with foolish Rushworth, cynical Wickham with impulsive Crawford, and you have the brooding beast that is Mansfield Park, Austen’s most conflicted masterpiece. Instead of Dashwood duality, there are three sisters in the older generation: Lady Bertram married for prestige and became a pointless, pampered shell; Mrs. Price married for passion and became enslaved to her husband in crushing poverty; childless widow Aunt Norris is a nightmare spinster, channeling sexual frustrations and social resentments into interference in others’ lives. Against this universal failure, the younger generation struggles for happiness. Maria tries to choose Rushworth’s prestige, but revolts and pursues passion with Henry Crawford, before being dumped and joining Aunt Norris in hellish spinsterhood. Fanny is paralyzed by danger on all sides and favors her safely protective cousin, who actually craves Mary Crawford’s rebellious fire. Mansfield Park’s romance cannot be dismissed as insipid cousin-love; it offers real passion with the Crawfords, before tearing it apart through inhibitions and internalized whorephobia (if you liked Pride and Prejudice, you’ll LOVE Inhibitions and Internalized Whorephobia!). Though Henry has been amusingly described as the “original Nice Guy” for refusing to acknowledge Fanny’s lack of interest, what fascinates is Austen using her full powers to make us root for Henry, before mercilessly ripping him away. Henry is the hero who fails; he has “the open-hearted, the eager character” so prized in Persuasion, but he fetishizes a purity he cannot possess and disdains the love that sacrificed everything for him. Henry tantalizes with the promise of mental and sexual liberation, but his double standards turn his promise into Dead Sea fruit.

One of the most symbolic scenes occurs with Fanny stuck on a bench, watching Maria strain for liberation from fiancé Rushworth’s grounds. Rushworth runs for the key to properly release her, but Henry proposes dodging the iron gate: “I think it might be done, if you really wished to be more at large, and could allow yourself to think it not prohibited.” A locked garden was a medieval allegory for virginity. We can read similar symbolism into Louisa Musgrove’s ruinous leap in Persuasion, which says of heroine Anne: “she had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older: the natural sequel of an unnatural beginning.” If Austen’s earlier Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility (both written by age 23) seem to represent “unnatural prudence” by justifying and approving the Madonna’s inhibitions, then her later Emma and Persuasion both defend “natural romance.” Between proper “prudence” and regretful “romance” hovers Mansfield Park; every avenue is intolerable and every gate locked.

Bringing us to Patricia Rozema’s 1999 adaptation, Mansfield Park. In the book, the patriarch Sir Thomas’ trip to the West Indies is an excuse for his family to flirt freely, but Rozema confronts the implication that Sir Thomas is a slaver; his character is given a darker edge, while his eldest son is not feckless but traumatized by flashbacks of slavery. Rozema’s Mansfield Park can thus be compared to Mira Nair’s Vanity Fair, which uses Bollywood influences to foreground the colonized India merely mentioned in the book, or Andrea Arnold’s confrontation of racism in Wuthering Heights. It is notable that Austen chose to make her patriarch a slaver, particularly since the novel is commonly read as defending the Park’s “traditional values” against the modernizing Crawfords. In the book, Fanny’s question about the slave trade meets “such a dead silence,” while the estate shares the name of Lord Mansfield, the 18th century Lord Chief Justice who set a legal precedent for abolition. Rozema’s choice to highlight slavery’s implications is bold and refreshing, but her film frustrates with its compulsory spunkiness.

Rozema admits that she finds Fanny “annoying” and was trying to empower her by making her a “wild beast” and witty writer. Giving the lower class heroine a satirical tongue must have seemed like a good strategy for criticizing patriarchal values. But the spunky woman is gender’s Uncle Tom; her psychological immunity to suffering ultimately lets viewers off the hook. If you’re going to confront slavery in your radical Austen adaptation, you must equally confront the psychosexual torture of the Madonna/Whore complex. Instead, Rozema offers a stale reheating of Pride and Prejudice‘s comfort food: Fanny’s a smirking Elizabeth, Edmund’s a duller Darcy and Maria’s a bitchier Lydia. A really radical adaptation would treat Maria’s passion and confusion with the sympathy of Kate Winslet’s Marianne. A really radical adaptation would make Crawford the sexually magnetic center, giving Fanny the painfully paralyzed inhibition of Celia Johnson in Brief Encounter.

Mira Nair, Andrea Arnold, and Patricia Rozema are pioneering re-imaginings of classic literature, that confront our colonial past. But there can be no definitive adaptation of Mansfield Park, or confrontation of our patriarchal past, until we’re ready to get uncomfortable about sexual repression. Couldn’t Emma Thompson and Ang Lee take a crack at it?

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Patricia Rozema does not get this book.

Brigit McCone was Team Crawford in her naive youth. She writes short films and radio dramas. Her hobbies include doodling and promising this will be her last Austen article.

‘Chef!’: The Perfectly Imperfect Marital Eroticism of Janice and Gareth

Gareth does not “happen to be Black”; the pressure on him to conform to white culture, to avoid limiting his own narrative, mirrors the show’s own need to conform to that culture, to avoid limiting its audience. This conflict is slyly embodied in plausibly deniable food metaphor.

Janice and Gareth's stressful ideal — Janice and Gareth’s stressful ideal

Written by Brigit McCone as part of our theme week on Black Families.

If I had to point to one screen marriage that shaped my childhood ideas about marriage’s potential as positive partnership and intense intimacy, it would be Janice and Gareth Blackstock on the first two seasons of the British sitcom Chef!. The original writer, Peter Tilbury (working from star Lenny Henry’s concept), left after two seasons, and the final season’s crude divorce drama only highlights what made Tilbury’s vision so brilliant. In the final season, Janice is not a fully rounded partner, but an obstacle and challenge for Gareth. Where her constructive criticism was a form of protective support, it is now scornful nagging and abandonment. Her desire for a child is now her main motivation and source of conflict with Gareth. The third season’s Janice is the irritating, castrating and baby-crazy screen wife that viewers have seen a thousand times before; the contrast illustrates everything that was subtle and human about Janice’s original characterization.

From a racial perspective, Chef! might be compared to The Cosby Show, as portraying an exceptionally talented, sophisticated, and wealthy Black family. But where the Huxtables effortlessly “have it all,” somehow combining two careers and a large family with inhumanly minimal friction, the Blackstocks acknowledge that their lifestyle demands real sacrifice. Janice had to leave a flourishing career in the city to accompany Gareth, after his promotion to head chef of a prestigious, rural restaurant; she is outspokenly frustrated and eager to work again. When the restaurant has financial problems, the couple must sacrifice their house and car to buy it, admitting that the resulting tension “feels like you’ve eaten a lorry-load of All-Bran.” They are childless, and the conflict between their workaholic careerism and their hopes for children is openly explored. Each has a defensive facade of toughness and hyper-competence, but their scenes together explore the toll that this facade takes and the vulnerability it conceals. The sitcom’s central comedy is the farcical exaggeration of Gareth’s intimidating facade – “totally driven. We’re talking severe personality disorder here” – and its contrast with his inner softness. The perfection of Janice and Gareth’s marriage is not based on a perfection of their lives or personalities, but on their shared concept of marriage as a space of solidarity that accepts flaws and conflict.

That model of acceptant marriage is the bedrock of the show. In the opening credits, the lyrics “I’m the best, so do not test, the top of my profession” play over a montage of Gareth’s hyper-competence – working out and preparing the immaculate tools of his culinary trade – broken only when he briefly strokes the glossy picture of Janice that hangs in his locker, as though for reassurance. This image of her face comes before Gareth’s own face, underlining her importance to the show. Janice’s character can be read as rewriting the Sapphire stereotype, exploring the loving foundations of constructive criticism and the emotional intimacy of openly expressed frustration. Gareth’s farcical posturing can equally be read as parodying hypermasculine models of Black manhood, as much as bad-tempered celebrity chefs, while his sensitivity and capacity for nurture is his character’s true strength. The show’s unusually erotic portrait of monogamous marriage compares with the marital eroticism of Beyoncé’s “Drunk in Love” which, along with the self-identified feminist’s proud adoption of Mrs. Carter as a title, radically rejects stereotypes of absent fathers in the Black community. John Legend’s “All of Me” video showcases similar aesthetics of marital eroticism, while that song’s description of loving “perfect imperfections” is a good summary of Janice and Gareth’s relationship. But reducing their relationship to a cultural trend of Black marital eroticism would be far too limiting: it is, quite simply, television’s most perfectly imperfect marriage.

As well as the strain of hyper-competence, Chef! confronts the cultural tensions in narratives of Black exceptionalism, mainly through Everton, Gareth’s never-really-liked-you-anyway-probably-flush-your-head-down-the-toilet-as-soon-as-look-at-you old schoolmate, who shares Gareth’s working class, British Caribbean background. Though Janice and Gareth help Everton, by offering him an unpaid apprenticeship in Gareth’s kitchen, it is clear that this is owing to the restaurant’s desperate finances, with Gareth particularly reluctant to take Everton on. On the surface, Everton fills the familiar role of goofy sidekick. Actually, although his unfamiliarity with restaurant etiquette causes some farce, he is capable and acquires skills steadily as the series progresses. The comical embarrassment that Everton causes Gareth is less a reflection of his foolishness than of his culture.

Gareth squirms at Everton’s pride in Caribbean cooking, having fully internalized cultural messages about the superior prestige of French haute cuisine and frequently boasting of his two Michelin stars. He automatically assumes that Everton is a “dope-head” (the marijuana belongs to a white co-worker) and fiercely attacks him for it, separating himself from that cultural stereotype with a barked “I hate dope-heads!” Gareth’s intense rejection of his own culture is rooted in personal conflict with his parents. Again, this tension is expressed in culinary terms: his mother’s neglect is illustrated by her incompetence as a chef, or perhaps by Gareth’s bitterness over that incompetence, while his father abandons the family for a short-order cook. When asked what he wanted to be when he grew up, young Gareth answered “an orphan.” Janice becomes insecure when Gareth shows admiration for the cooking skills of pretty, blonde sous-chef Lucinda, though he is otherwise “Mr. Monogamy.” Dominant stereotypes of Black life – absent fathers, neglectful mothers and attraction to blondes – are all slyly embodied by the show’s cooking metaphors, giving complicated symbolic resonance to Gareth’s determination to master society’s most prestigious cuisine.

Gareth’s broadly accented Caribbean father is introduced in the first season’s “Rice and Peas” finale, goading Gareth into trying to cook Caribbean food. The master chef is humbled by being forced to learn from Everton, highlighting his detachment from his roots, while Everton reveals a genius for Caribbean cookery that rivals Gareth’s own skill at haute cuisine. By the end of the second season, Everton has become a confident chef who combines Caribbean influences and haute cuisine, unapologetically owning his cultural identity but refusing to be limited by it. However, this is only made possible by the opportunity the Blackstocks have given him; their strained and self-conscious hyper-competence is a necessary first step to wider cultural change. Through Gareth’s complex relationship with Everton, Chef! foregrounds the tensions of so-called “choc ice” (British for “oreo”) cultural positions, without simplistically condemning them. The show’s Wikipedia entry commends Chef! as “a landmark programme in the sense that Henry plays a character who just happens to be black; the fact of his blackness does not limit the narrative or the audience the series reaches.” This misses the point. Gareth does not “happen to be Black”; the pressure on him to conform to white culture, to avoid limiting his own narrative, mirrors the show’s own need to conform to that culture, to avoid limiting its audience. This conflict is slyly embodied in plausibly deniable food metaphor.

Back to Janice. Janice is all kinds of awesome as a character. A brilliant businesswoman, she is practical in all the ways the flamboyant artist, Gareth, is not, but shares his preoccupation with status. Janice is hilariously open about her materialism, yet prepared to sacrifice everything for Gareth if absolutely, absolutely necessary. Both Janice and Gareth are self-conscious social performers, but the basis of their relationship is their shared recognition of that performance’s artificiality, by no more than a quirk of a smile or a raised eyebrow. Their affinity, beautifully shown in their common flaws as much as in their virtues, creates the deep understanding between them. Janice is strong, but this doesn’t prevent her from admitting weakness: “I’m going to be brave in a minute. But, just right now, I’m going to break down completely, OK? I don’t mean a dignified tear or a trembling lip, I’m talking wet, snotty bawling!” With a sharp-tongued wit of her own, Janice may often play the foil to Gareth’s shrieking manbaby, but she is allowed to be his equal in comedy as well as in business. Gareth is also allowed to be Janice’s equal in emotional vulnerability: “I’m not going to cry because I’m a big boy now, but if I wasn’t, or if I was a ‘New Man,’ we could be talking wet, snotty bawling here.”

The Blackstocks’ relationship is physically intimate; Janice’s frustration is a running gag as Gareth’s workload leaves him too tired for sex, but the couple’s sex life remains “well above average.” Indeed, jokes about Janice’s sexual frustration only highlight how much more sex she’s depicted getting than other sitcom wives. It is less spectacular intimacies, however, that make the relationship convincing: Lenny Henry and Caroline Lee Johnson capture the subtleties of body language that convey affection and mutual reassurance in long-term relationships. Secure in this foundation of bodily affection, the Blackstocks are free to argue and vent their frustrations openly. Much of their relationship’s conflict springs from Janice’s sense of being neglected by her workaholic husband; that is, it is fundamentally rooted in the pair’s deep love for each other. When the final season’s (male) writers attempted to create drama by escalating the couple’s rows into full-blown separation, they could do so only at the expense of Janice’s character, flattening her into unsympathetic coldness. While this season shows how important Janice is to Gareth, through his devastation when she leaves and his desperation to win her back, that demonstration was unnecessary. Chef! wasn’t another clichéd show about a man who doesn’t appreciate what he has until it’s gone. The co-dependence of Janice and Gareth was fundamental to all their interactions.

Such co-dependence may be criticized. Janice would struggle to pass a Bechdel test, as she relates so exclusively to Gareth, though I see this as reflecting her rural isolation and the sacrifices she has made for Gareth’s career. Janice regularly complains about her loneliness, career frustrations and feelings of neglect; the insufficiency of a life that revolves only around her husband is core to her role. Such a portrait, of female frustration with the confines of a dependent role, can be as valuable as portraits of ideal female solidarity and independence. Janice needs a sense of vocation, which she gains by managing Gareth’s restaurant. Janice also needs friends and interests beyond her husband, which is explicitly addressed in the Tilbury-scripted episode Private Lives. In the finale of Chef!, Gareth’s underlying issues, his cultural identity crisis, and neglect of his private life, are tackled as he must sacrifice a trip to Paris to fly instead to Jamaica with Janice and work on their relationship. But the (so very male) writers of the final season are mistaken to interpret Janice’s relationship as the source of her frustrations. It is Janice’s life that is constricting, as she shares Gareth’s conflict between her materialist ambition and her emotional needs. But her marriage is a model of mutual support and open communication.

This is classic “patriarchy hurts men, too”: if a woman is understood only in relation to men, this means her male partner must be unfairly burdened with sole responsibility for her entire psychological well-being. The fact that the (oh so painfully male) writers could see no solution to Janice’s problems but a choice between divorce or more sex, with a romantic holiday to Jamaica thrown in, points to deeper problems in our concept of relationships and female roles. A chance for Gareth and Janice to grow as individuals, within the supportive framework of a relationship that needed no repair, would have been the more perfect ending for this perfectly imperfect marriage.

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Janice and Gareth: they’re the best, so do not test.

Brigit McCone has unrealistically gendered catering expectations, since her father was the chef at home. She writes short films, radio dramas and “The Erotic Adventures of Vivica” (as Voluptua von Temptitillatrix). Her hobbies include doodling and she now lives off baked potatoes.

The Golden Gogol Awards: Gender, Psychosis and Big, White Rabbits

“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.

This is a guest post by Brigit McCone.

“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.

so, Dude, "manic pixie dream girl" is not the preferred nomenclature — 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 — 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.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxJSGMK9yRE”]

Winner: Golden Gogol for Best Psychotic Film

Brigit McCone writes and directs psychotic short films and radio dramas and is the author of “The Erotic Adventures of Vivica” (as Voluptua von Temptitillatrix). Fight Club is her favorite psychotic romcom.

Why ‘Pretty Woman’ Should Be Considered a Feminist Classic

Whether we believe Vivian’s “white knight” fantasy is cheesy is beside the point; a film in which a woman explicitly negotiates the terms she wants for her relationship, and displays willingness to pursue her goals independently if those terms aren’t met, cannot be considered patriarchal.

This is a guest post by Brigit McCone.

Pretty Woman has already been reviewed negatively by Bitch Flicks as “one of the most misogynist, patriarchal, classist, consumerist, and lookist movies ever to come out of Hollywood” and by sex workers for portraying prostitution unrealistically and romanticizing the patronizing “Captain Save-a-Ho” client’s rescuer fantasy. There is justice to these criticisms, but I would like to examine the film more positively from another angle. Pretty Woman consistently shows greater respect for the bodily autonomy of its heroine, Vivian (Julia Roberts), than most traditional portrayals of romance and most feminist portrayals of prostitution. The debate whether Pretty Woman should be considered a feminist classic cuts to the heart of feminism itself: is it a liberation movement that prioritizes the freedom and agency of women above all, or a dogma that dictates gender roles to women? To explore this question more fully, I’d like to address the most common criticisms leveled at Pretty Woman:

Pretty Woman Glamorizes Prostitution!

It says something about our common perception of sex work that the film most often accused of glamorizing prostitution should open with a “dead hooker in a dumpster,” before our heroine is punched in the face and sexually assaulted by a creep who screams, “She’s a whore, man!” when challenged. Would a film be accused of glamorizing accountancy if it opened with a bankrupted accountant leaping to his death from the upper window of an office block? If anything, Pretty Woman may be accused of glamorizing the exit from prostitution, by making a future of monogamy with a patronizing rescuer-john into an unrealistically attractive option. The glossy, Hollywood production values of the film may glamorize prostitution, but only in the sense that Apocalypse Now glamorizes warfare, or Wall Street glamorizes capitalism. I suspect that those who claim to be disturbed by Pretty Woman‘s “glamorizing” of prostitution are actually more disturbed by these key assertions: that a prostitute is an individual, that prostitution is work comparable to other forms of labor and that abuse of a prostitute is the sole responsibility of the abuser.

Vivian’s individuality is shown in Pretty Woman as she proves stereotypical assumptions wrong. She does not do drugs; her backstory involves some bad relationships but no explicit sexual trauma; her intelligence repeatedly surprises listeners. Arguably, this marks Vivian as the exceptional “tart with a heart” cliché, who deserves to be loved and rescued because she is “special” and “not like the others.” I would argue that the treatment of Kit de Luca complicates this reading. Through Vivian, we are encouraged to sympathize and feel solidarity with Kit, a streetwise prostitute and drug addict. Vivian gives Kit a large sum of money at the end of the film, respecting her right to choose whether to spend it on her drug habit. Vivian never dictates life choices to Kit, only supports her self-esteem and encourages her to regard herself as having potential to define her own dreams. Through Vivian’s attitude to Kit, the viewer is encouraged to extend their respect for Vivian’s agency to the agency and individual potential of all sex workers.

Sex worker advocacy groups have long claimed (and it’s now being discussed by Amnesty International and the World Health Organization) that the most effective way to combat trafficking, abuse, and other hazards of prostitution is by decriminalizing it and recognizing it as work, entitled to the same health and safety protections as any other labour. By repeatedly comparing Vivian’s work as a prostitute with Edward’s (Richard Gere’s) corporate work, Pretty Woman reinforces this message, albeit in cutesy Hollywood style. Vivian’s backstory also notably emphasizes that her reason for becoming a sex worker was her desire for financial autonomy and her struggle to pay rent.

Finally, virtually all cinematic depictions of sexual assaults on sex workers fall into one of two categories: those that pay no attention to the abuser’s character and treat him (almost always “him”) as a faceless “symptom of prostitution,” reinforcing the victim-blaming narrative that the heroine attracted inevitable assault by her choice of profession, or those that center the abuser as an “anti-hero” while treating the sex worker as disposable. Pretty Woman does neither. When Stuckey assaults Vivian at the climax of the film, we are already well-acquainted with both characters and understand the assault as a direct expression of Stuckey’s insecure manhood, repulsive entitlement and poisonous resentments, while the assault’s impact on Vivian is sympathetically centered. By allowing us to know both would-be rapist and intended victim, Pretty Woman succeeds in resisting victim-blaming and suggests that the assault of sex workers is an unjust and inexcusable act that reflects the character of the abuser. For that alone, Pretty Woman should be considered a feminist classic.

Pretty Woman Is Materialist!

As a film in which the monetary value of sex and companionship is negotiated, Pretty Woman is inevitably about materialism. But this does not necessarily mean that it is uncritically materialist. The film makes a point of highlighting how impersonal wealth is: “Stores are never nice to people, they’re nice to credit cards.” Vivian’s famous, triumphant confrontation with the shop assistants – “You work on commission, right? Big mistake!” – might be read as glorifying her newfound superiority as rich woman, but it satisfies because it allows Vivian to confirm that the shop assistants were judging her credit card all along. The scene shows Vivian that her personal worth is irrelevant to society’s hostile treatment of her, building her self-esteem. Since Vivian empowers herself in other scenes by implausibly rejecting cash payment to assert personal worth, this anti-materialist interpretation of her shopping triumph feels correct. Pretty Woman repeatedly highlights ironic contradictions between the performance of wealth and the personal self. Edward performs wealth by purchasing the penthouse as status symbol, but he cannot enjoy it as he’s personally afraid of heights. His elite peers can purchase opera tickets as status symbols, but Vivian can appreciate opera as personal taste – by choosing “La Traviata,” an opera about a sex worker, the film also highlights the ironic contrast between society’s mindless appreciation of sex worker pathos in elite entertainment and their mindless hostility to sex workers in life.

Elements in Pretty Woman satirizing materialism, and exploring the hazards of prostitution, are hangovers from the original script, $3000, in which Vivian was a drug addict and discovered Kit overdosed at the film’s end. That version might seem “edgier,” but is it truly edgy to echo and reinforce society’s dominant narrative of prostitution? By adapting $3000 into a commercial romcom, Disney accidentally spawned something far more challenging: a film in which prostitutes aren’t necessarily doomed, and men are individually responsible for their treatment of them. Wealth, likewise, is not presented as automatically good or bad in the film. It is his over-investment in wealth and status that drives Stuckey to become a vengeful would-be rapist. Money can destroy lives, or build “great, big boats.” Kit’s final choice, whether to spend her “scholarship fund” on her dream or her drug habit, shows that money has empowering potential but is no guarantee of happiness. If Pretty Woman‘s beautiful clothes and jewels distract from this message, that is a reflection of the viewer’s attitude to luxury, not the film’s.

Pretty Woman Is Patriarchal!

There can be few images more patriarchal than a white knight riding up to rescue his (usually comatose) princess, claiming her love as his inevitable reward. This is not, however, the ending of Pretty Woman. Pretty Woman ends with Edward role-playing Vivian’s explicitly requested fantasy, and thereby indicating willingness to comply with the conditions she laid down for their relationship. In fully accepting Vivian as his romantic partner, rather than conditionally accepting her as a mistress or object of pity, Gere echoes the “I like you the way you are, so what do I care how you got that way?” philosophy of Marilyn Monroe’s Bus Stop, another underrated affirmation of the bodily autonomy, emotional complexity, and romantic viability of promiscuous women. Whether we believe Vivian’s “white knight” fantasy is cheesy is besides the point; a film in which a woman explicitly negotiates the terms she wants for her relationship, and displays willingness to pursue her goals independently if those terms aren’t met, cannot be considered patriarchal. Whether we believe Edward is a slime-ball who looks like a peeled prawn in the bathtub is equally irrelevant; female emancipation must include the right to have questionable taste in men, or it is no true freedom. Gere serves here as a metaphor for sex work itself: whether one personally finds him icky should not distract from crucial issues of consent and agency.

Vivian displays her willingness to leave Edward and set boundaries on multiple occasions: when he embarrasses her by outing her sex worker status at a social gathering, she dictates the way she wishes to be treated; when he offers her the status of a mistress, she dictates the status of a full equal. Let us never forget that, when the prince rescues her, she rescues him right back. Pretty Woman should also be celebrated as one of the only romances to include explicit negotiation of condom use, initiated by the female sexual partner. By ultimately suggesting that a sex worker’s ethos of “we say who, we say when, we say how much” is the key to success in romantic relationships, Pretty Woman is deliciously subversive. A romantic “happy ending” only serves patriarchal goals if it is a reward, conditional on female compliance and chastity. If it becomes just an individual dream, that any hooker can define and negotiate for herself, then its coercive power collapses. That is the real reason why conservatives howl about the “glamorizing of prostitution” in Pretty Woman. That is why millions of women love and laugh with Pretty Woman worldwide. That is why Pretty Woman deserves to be considered a feminist classic.

Pretty Woman Is Heterosexist, White Supremacist, and Lookist!

Pretty Woman is about straight, white, conventionally pretty people, but it is not derogatory to other groups. While the film’s villain, Stuckey, is indeed short and balding, and this may fuel his competitive resentment toward Edward, Hector Elizondo’s hotel manager, Barney, is also somewhat balding, yet serves as the moral core of the story. Though nominally a supporting character, Elizondo delivers a master class in creating fully realized humanity with a few brushstrokes – subtly suppressed frustrations and resentments that co-exist with, and complicate, his character’s warmth and dignity, leading to a well-deserved Golden Globe nomination for the role. At the film’s end, an unnamed African-American demands the audience’s recognition for his humanity and dreams, while challenging them to define their own. Pretty Woman certainly marginalizes its minority characters, but it does not dehumanize them. For Hollywood, sadly, that remains a minuscule achievement.

Pretty Woman is not a realistic portrayal of prostitution; it is a Hollywood fairy tale and never claims to be otherwise. At the same time, the values that it embodies as fairy tale are both progressive and feminist: recognition of the agency and bodily autonomy of sex workers; categoric rejection of victim-blaming in assaults on sex workers; positive endorsement of a woman’s negotiating boundaries within romantic relationships; positive endorsement of the romantic potential of promiscuous women as life partners; positive endorsement of personal worth as founded on ethics, independent of wealth, education or sexual history. Pretty Woman is a beautiful freak; an accidental anarchy spawned from commercial compromise. To describe Pretty Woman as “anti-feminist,” or to fail to celebrate its feminism, is to prioritize the sexist surfaces of “whores” and “white knights” over real issues of agency, desire and consent. Big mistake. Big. Huge.

Brigit McCone always thought Vivian should have chosen Barney the hotel manager, but recognizes he’s probably married. She writes and directs short films, radio dramas and “The Erotic Adventures of Vivica” (as Voluptua von Temptitillatrix). Her hobbies include doodling and taking romcoms ridiculously seriously.