Canadian Television – Bitch Flicks

The Imaginary World of ‘Mona The Vampire’

The series chronicled the adventures of Mona Parker, a young girl who enjoys dressing up like a vampire and sees saving her town from monsters as her mission in life. The stories are Buffy-lite: a giant bug substitute teacher, a robot babysitter, doppelgängers, a computer virus with mind-control powers, and new cafeteria cooks who aim to poison the school with salmonella. Though the show often pulls out from Mona’s fantasies to reveal the reality of the situation, Mona’s fights against the forces of darkness, usually end up somehow solving the crime or prank, exposing a conspiracy or locating the lost item anyway.

Written by Elizabeth Kiy as part of our theme week on Children’s Television.

As a kid, I had a boundless imagination.

I put on plays in my backyard (notably a bowdlerized Romeo and Juliet) and my friends and I spent our recesses pretending we were princesses, fairies, cowgirls, mermaids and Hogwarts students. I convinced my little sister we were always traveling the world- any clock tower was Big Ben, a local bridge was the Golden Gate and power line towers were always the Eiffel Tower.

In short, I was a lot like Mona the Vampire. Or at least, I see a lot of myself in her.

I’m unsure if the show is at all familiar outside Canada. Here, it ran for four seasons (1999-2003) on YTV (basically our equivalent to Nickelodeon) and I binge-watched it on weekends and as treat whenever I stayed home from school sick.

Though the show often pulls out of Mona’s fantasies to reveal the reality of the situation, Mona’s fights against the forces of darkness, usually end up somehow solving the crime or prank, exposing a conspiracy or locating the lost item anyway.

And Mona is never deterred by rationality, in her mind, everything out of the ordinary has a supernatural explanation and nothing can convince her otherwise.

A typical day in Mona’s world may involve fighting space invaders.

As a lead character on a children’s show, Mona is refreshingly atypical. When deciding on alter ego, she eschews the traditional superhero or princess dress and chooses to be a vampire. As a female character, Mona is also unique in her love of scary stories and late night horror movies, comic books and gruesome creepy crawlies. With her usual costume, which she chose herself and slips on at every opportunity, she tries to make herself as frightening as possible with a wig of wild, gravity-defying braids, plastic fangs and exaggerated purple circles drawn under her eyes.

However, the general effect is more adorable than intimidating and with her high pitched voice, it’s clear she’s still a child, unsure of her place in the world, underneath it all.

In fact, like Batman, she considers her true self to be her caped crusaded identity. Mona Parker, not Mona the Vampire, is the disguise. Though Mona sees herself as a vampire, she never troubled with questions of morality, in her view, she’s a good vampire and that’s that. She doesn’t need to bite people or drink blood, but instead has vampire senses that tell her when trouble is near.

While Mona is a good vampire, Von Kreepsula is a evil one, who must be contained within the pages of a comic book

Unlike the brooding vamps we’re used to, Mona also has a child’s sense of morality. She believes that she and her friends are good while the monsters they fight are all bad. For example, Von Kreepsula is Mona’s nemesis, an evil vampire to match her good.

But like the children watching the program, Mona learns that morality is not so black and white

In several episodes, Mona learns the monster she’s been fighting is merely misunderstood, lost it’s home or separated from it’s family. Even her sense of self is challenged when Mona meets a vampire hunter and has to convince her of her essential goodness.

Though Mona is neither binary extreme of masculinity or femininity, the two options usually available to children’s heroes and heroines, her friends and sidekicks Charley (AKA Zappman) and Lily (AKA Princess Giant) certainly are.

Princess Giant, Zappman and Mona the Vampire — Princess Giant, Zappman, and Mona the Vampire

Like Mona, Charley and Lily are imaginative kids who love to play her games, though it’s a little unclear to what extent they believe in actually believe in the monsters and vampires infesting their town. While both are timid and scared on their own, Mona’s bravery and self-confidence buoys them are draws them into her world.

What I found so refreshing was Mona’s personality as a leader, the Really Rosie type, the Queen of the neighborhood. As a leader, Mona also helps her less confident friends discover their skills and strengths by making them vital parts of her fantasy narrative. She can only defeat the monsters with the help for Charley’s Zapp-A-Rama Gun, his aptitude for science and Lily’s ability to grow.

She introduces them to the highly covetable idea of developing a superpower that makes your weaknesses into strength. Sure Charley is easily scared and often bullied, but with Mona’s encouragement to be the superhero she sees in him and encourages him to see for himself, he’s just like his hero, the Man with Nine Lives. Likewise, without Mona, shy Lily hides behind her hair and lets others push her around and feel her small. When they meet, Mona tells Lily she can have any type of alter ego she wants and chose her own powers. Lily chose to become the braver version of herself that she hopes to grow into, and takes on the power to make herself as big as she wants, so no one can intimidate her and make her feel unimportant.

In their daily lives, Mona and her friends are ordinary elementary school students

Closing out the pack is Mona’s trusty cat and confidant Fang is always there as back-up and a (silent) voice of reason anyway. Fang may have more sense than either kids or adults and his expressions often silently suggests the problems in Mona’s logic that no one else can see.

Mona’s parents are supportive but weary. They believe they are raising a highly intelligent, imaginative child, one who gets in her fair share of trouble but is loyal to her friends and always able to find a way out of a jam. They’re the kind of parents every wildly imaginative kid should have, people who always know there are many reasons to be proud of their daughter and nurture her creativity.

Moreover, Mona’s friends are also posed as underdogs throughout the series. Mona’s nemesis is Angela, the cruel and vain daughter of lottery winners who believes she can win friends by showing off her enormous wealth. George, often Angela’s henchmen, is a crude bully who mainly picks on Charley, but is the Principal’s nephew, so he rarely gets in trouble. In comparison, each episode, Mona shows she can save the day with just her wits and imagination, teaching young viewers their value above all.

As with many children’s shows, the kids on Mona the Vampire are smart and resourceful, solving crimes even the police can’t and speaking and working with adults like colleagues, the ultimate fantasy for most real-life kids. In many episodes, Mona deals with the local chief of police, Officer Halcroft who offers rational explanations to each incident. Each time, she dismisses them as ridiculous and unbelievable.

I also love how improvised the character’s costumes seem, like real things the kids could have gathered from around the house. Mona’s floral cape is an old curtain, while Princess Giant’s long blonde hair is a mop. This small aspect of the series adds realism to their imaginings and suggests that the show’s creators consider or remember the actual mechanics of children’s fantasy games.

The typical effect used to transition between “fantasy” and “reality”

In addition, the show refuses to underestimate children as an audience, the stories are never definitively attributed to natural or supernatural causes and the show never overtly indulges or refutes her world. The transition effect between “reality” and Mona’s fantasy gives viewers room to judge how much of the fantasy is real. Many episodes even end on an uncertain note, with even the adults unable to explain every detail rationally, suggesting there may be some truth to Mona’s imagination.

Mostly I liked the show because it clearly respected and celebrated the dreamworld so essential to childhood and creative, curious children. With imagination like Mona’s, even the ordinary world can be magical.

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

Reproductive Rights in ‘Orphan Black’ Season 2

What’s shaping up to be the forefront theme in ‘Orphan Black’ season two is reproductive rights. Of all the clones, Sarah is an anomaly because she was able to give birth to Kira when all her clone counterparts are infertile. The seemingly impossible birth of Kira has the forces of science and religion both vying for access and control over clone bodies.

Written by Amanda Rodriguez.

I’m sure it comes as no surprise that I continue to be a fan of Orphan Black into its second season. My review of season one—Orphan Black: It’s All About the Ladies–focuses on the strength and wide range of female characters that the show revolves around (not to mention Tatiana Maslany‘s formidable acting talents as she portrays all of the clones). In season two, the compelling female relationships continue to be integral to the heart of Orphan Black‘s plotlines. In particular, we see a deepening of Cosima’s connection to and lingering distrust of her monitor, Delphine.

Can Cosima trust her lover and monitor Delphine?

We also delve into the dark past of Sarah’s foster mother Mrs. S, full of secrets, violence, and questionable intentions.

Is Mrs. S helping or hurting Sarah and Kira?

We also meet a new and powerful clone, Rachel, who works for the dubious cloning research corporation, Dyad, and who doesn’t seem to feel a kinship with her fellow clones.

Sarah and Rachel get off on the wrong foot — Clone-Off: Sarah and Rachel

We also see more of Sarah coming into her own as a responsible, present parent for her medical miracle daughter, Kira. Though Felix is not a woman, his close relationship with foster sister Sarah and his queerness seem to get him into the inner circle of Clone Club, and it’s always a pleasure to watch scenes where he calls Sarah on her shit, is nurturing to Kira, is hilarious, and remains fabulous the whole time.

What’s shaping up to be the forefront theme in Orphan Black season two is reproductive rights. Of all the clones, Sarah is an anomaly because she was able to give birth to Kira when all her clone counterparts are infertile. The seemingly impossible birth of Kira has the forces of science and religion both vying for access and control over clone bodies. Yes, a pitched battle between science and religion is mounting over the reproductivity of female bodies. Sound familiar? Art imitating life perhaps…

The Prometheans, a religious cult, attempt to bind Helena to their cause

Both the Prometheans (religious nutjobs) and the Dyads (cold, calculating scientists) are deceptive, selfish, and don’t see the clones as autonomous human beings. Our heroines must navigate these treacherous forces that seek to exploit them. Even more remarkable is the way in which the clones fight back by using these forces for their own gains by gathering, stealing, and manipulating resources and information in order to better understand themselves: their origin, DNA, and purpose. From within a system that attempts to abuse and dehumanize them, these woman are making their own way, living by their own rules, and relying on their collective strength to survive. Now that, my friends, is a feminism.

Bitch Flicks writer and editor Amanda Rodriguez is an environmental activist living in Asheville, North Carolina. She holds a BA from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio and an MFA in fiction writing from Queens University in Charlotte, NC. She writes all about food and drinking games on her blog Booze and Baking. Fun fact: while living in Kyoto, Japan, her house was attacked by monkeys.

‘Orphan Black’: It’s All About the Ladies

‘Orphan Black’ is gritty sci-fi with layered mysteries, mistaken (and impersonated) identity, and lots of complicated female characters. The most intriguing part of the show is that many of those multifaceted female characters are played by the same woman, Tatiana Maslany. She portrays all the clones involved in a seemingly nefarious scientific experiment.

Spoiler Alert

Canada’s compelling show Orphan Black will be airing its second season on BBC America this spring, and though Ms Misanthropia reviewed it on Bitch Flicks, I had to weigh in now that I’ve finally had a chance to finish watching the series! Orphan Black is gritty sci-fi with layered mysteries, mistaken (and impersonated) identity, and lots of complicated female characters. The most intriguing part of the show is that many of those multifaceted female characters are played by the same woman, Tatiana Maslany. She portrays all the clones involved in a seemingly nefarious scientific experiment.

At first, I was skeptical of Maslany’s acting abilities because there’s a lot of subtlety and nuance required to play at least nine characters with different upbringings, nationalities, socioeconomic backgrounds, and habits. Not only that, but the clones do a lot of impersonating each other. I was sold when I could tell one clone was impersonating another before the narrative announced it. Each clone’s mannerisms, body language, and even facial expressions are different. Damn. My hat’s off to Maslany who can make her smile different enough that I can tell which character she is without context.

Bravo, Tatyana Manslany. Bravo. — Bravo, Tatiana Maslany. Bravo.

In Orphan Black, the clones are often wildly different from one another, really hammering home the nature over nurture angle, which is an important representation of how women (and other marginalized groups) are affected by their environment. Orphan Black shows us women who thrive due to their environment (Cosima with her scientific brilliance), struggle because of it (grifter Sarah Manning), or become deviant and destructive as a result of it (religious serial killer Helena). There are tweaks made to each of their genetic code that explain away Katya’s respiratory disease, Cosima’s need for glasses as well as her gayness, and perhaps other anomalies among the clones yet to be introduced, but the message is clear that the DNA of these women is virtually identical making the entirety of their development environmentally-based.

The show even tries to give social reasons for the expression or dormancy of homosexuality. — The show gives social reasons for the expression or dormancy of homosexuality.

I also want to take a second to talk about big brained science nerd Cosima, my favorite clone.

Maybe it’s because I, too, am a queer nerd girl, but Cosima’s aptitude for science and her lesbian sexuality are awesome. Where Sarah must use her body to get what she needs (like seducing Paul to distract him from realizing she’s not Beth Childs), Cosima uses her intellect. Cosima is the glue. Without her, the clones wouldn’t be able to do DNA testing or crawl down the rabbit hole of the scientific experimentation that created them. Not only that, but she is the one who discerns that each known clone has a “monitor” to observe and report back on clone activities. This means that Cosima is also capable of understanding and anticipating the psychological factors involved in genetic testing and cloning. It’s great to get to see the nerd girl shine and not be deemed sexless because of her brain power, as her affair with her monitor Delphine is the most engaging of the romances played out in the show.

Delphine & Cosima bond over science geekoutery

Orphan Black showcases great female characters who are strong or interesting or smart or even infuriating, but they’re all unique and full of depth. The series also shows that the path of each clone’s development is dependent upon her environment, which is a huge statement about how oppression and opportunity are what shape us. In order for women to succeed, we must cultivate an environment that encourages achievement, and that means we’ve got to bust up gender norms.

Aggressive & unpredictable serial killer clone Helena — Aggressive and unpredictable serial killer clone Helena

Orphan Black exists on the strength of one actress’s ability to play multiple characters convincingly. Most importantly, it’s a show about a group of women: their lives, their families, their loves, their history, their interaction with each other, their deaths, and, most poignantly, their quest to solve the mystery of their existence. Good stuff, no? It’s getting harder and harder for the media to claim that people won’t watch stories about women, especially in the face of Orphan Black‘s gripping action, great story telling, and superb acting.

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Amanda Rodriguez is an environmental activist living in Asheville, North Carolina. She holds a BA from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio and an MFA in fiction writing from Queens University in Charlotte, NC. She writes all about food and drinking games on her blog Booze and Baking. Fun fact: while living in Kyoto, Japan, her house was attacked by monkeys.

The Male/Female Gaze on BBC America’s First Season of ‘Orphan Black’

Orphan Black poster

This is a guest post by Ms Misantropia.

Last Saturday was the season finale of BBC America’s Orphan Black, a fast paced Canadian sci-fi series about human cloning. The show’s main protagonist, Sarah Manning (Tatiana Maslany), is a street-wise orphan just returning to Toronto after having spent a year abroad. She barely lands in the city before a woman who looks exactly like her commits suicide by train, right in front of her. In the following commotion — out of curiosity and hoping to score some cash — Sarah grabs the woman’s purse and walks away.

She does find some money in the woman’s purse, but also a cell phone and keys to a nice flat. Having no place to live hiding from an abusive ex-boyfriend, Sarah hatches a crazy plan: she will temporarily switch lives with this woman — Beth Childs — and let the world believe that Sarah Manning is dead. Then she will pick up her young daughter, who is currently living with Sarah’s own foster mother, and she will clean out Beth’s bank account and skip town. To set the plan in motion Sarah enlists the help of her foster brother and best friend, Felix (Jordan Gavaris). However, things start to get complicated quickly when Sarah realizes that Beth was a police detective (with a nosy detective partner), that she lives with a man — Paul (Dylan Bruce) — and that there are even more women out there who look exactly like her. To make matters worse, there also seems to be someone out there trying to kill them all.

Sarah kicking ass

Orphan Black is what television could have evolved into after the 1990s, had not the Internet — with its masses of misogynistic and pornographic material — caused such a backlash during the beginning of the new millennium. The show does not have an overtly feminist agenda; it doesn’t present us with in-depth looks at inequality or the hardships of women, or serve up feminist slaps on the wrist. What it does is tell a story using a modern and more equal filming/viewing alternative, in female (and male) characterization and in camera focus/gaze. The formula is brilliantly simple: Whatever the story, simply avoid the habitual sexism and misogyny that the audience has, sadly, become so used to.

There are many TV shows at the moment that are loaded with gratuitous female nudity. Game of Thrones might be the most widely discussed example, but even shows like critically acclaimed Homeland and the amazing The Americans employ the trick to gain or boost ratings. At a premiere or during sweeps week it becomes glaringly obvious that producers think they can’t promote or continue a show without throwing in random “boob-shots” here and there (and unfortunately they might be right). Sure, we sometimes get a token man-ass-shot during a sex scene, but in actual screen time most sex scenes are almost completely shot at an angle zooming in on the woman’s breasts, naked arched back or orgasmic face.

While naked women in media are almost always beautiful, young and skinny — and constantly sexualized — male nudity is shown in other ways: a man preparing for battle, a man stumbling to the fridge for a snack, a man running down the street in a drunken stupor. Naked men are most often more “normal” looking and are allowed to be old, obese or even ugly. A naked over-weight silly man is funny, even relatable, while a naked over-weight silly woman is either completely invisible, shamefully pitied or horribly degraded — if not in the media itself, then on the Internet afterward. It always comes down to the same thing: a naked man is still a human being, a naked woman (and often also a fully clothed one) is an object.

Paul with his morning coffee

Orphan Black contains quite a few shots of naked bodies, but no obvious gratuitous “boob-shots,” and where there is female sexualized nudity there is also male sexualized nudity. As an example, in the first episode when we see Sarah jumping Paul’s bones in the kitchen (to avoid conversation that would tip him off that she is not Beth) we get to see actor Tatiana Maslany’s naked body for a moment, but it is followed up in the next scene by shots of only Paul’s naked body. The camera lingers on Paul, as Sarah’s gaze lingers on his body. This allows the audience the female gaze — for a change.

Orphan Black hosts an entourage of diverse female characters. Considering that Tatiana Maslany has to introduce several different clone personalities over just a few episodes, the audience can forgive what only briefly feels like parodied acting. As the show develops, 28-year-old Maslany’s skills as a versatile actor become more evident. Though the fast pace of the show doesn’t leave much time for developing very complex characters, the diversity among them makes up for that. Orphan Black has female characters who are strong, weak, smart, caring, neurotic, sexy, tough and downright crazy.

Helena, one of the clones

With a more diverse and equal viewing experience also comes portraying other characters and relationships than just white straight people. Orphan Black has one main character — Art, Beth’s detective partner — and three other characters who are black, and it has two regular Latina/o characters. The show has not yet made it onto GLAAD’s LBGT characters list but I suspect it is only a matter of time, since two of the main characters are gay — Felix and Cosima — and they are both getting a lot of screen time in every episode.

Felix is, as mentioned earlier, Sarah’s foster brother and best friend. He is an artist and a male prostitute. He can be silly and flamboyant at times, but he is also caring and funny. He’s an excellent sidekick in complex social situations, he always has Sarah’s back, and he gets to serve as the voice of reason more than once. Despite him having to resort to prostitution to make ends meet, he seems to be secure in himself and his sexuality. Cosima is one of the clones, a scientist who is trying to map them all out, and find out the wheres and the whys of their existence. She is smart and sweet, but her scientific curiosity at times gets the better of her and puts her in danger. The show gets extra points for portraying Cosima’s courtship with a fellow scientist without objectifying the two women for the straight male gaze — something most shows nowadays fail miserably at.

Felix and his lover bidding adieu

Orphan Black has been picked up for a second season and is slated to premiere sometime during the first half of 2014.

Ms Misantropia blogs here.