Tag: Class

For F—‘s Sake, Watch ‘The Thick Of It’

The fourteen episodes of Armando Iannucci’s brilliant BBC show The Thick Of It appeared on Hulu a couple of weeks ago, and the upcoming fourth season will stream there as well. I am having a bafflingly hard time convincing even my most devoted Anglophile friends to watch it. Maybe the pace and intensity are off-putting: it’s a show that demands your full, rapt attention to decipher its rapid-fire dialogue (and British accents, if that’s a difficulty for you). Maybe the unrelenting cynicism is discouraging for my starry-eyed friends (I know a LOT of Aaron Sorkin devotees). Maybe the Westminster setting is daunting to Americans who assume that familiarity with the ins and outs of UK politics is a prerequisite, when in reality all a non-Brit would miss are throwaway jokes about odds and ends of British culture (Mark Kermode’s flappy hands, anyone?). Whatever it is that’s giving people pause, I wish they’d overcome it, because this is a really, really good TV show.
As a cynical comedy about the relationship between a hapless government minister and a Machiavellian civil servant, The Thick Of It is naturally a spiritual successor to excellent 1980s sitcom Yes Minister– but it is a very 21st-century successor. The archly satirical wit of Yes Minister isn’t wholly absent from from The Thick Of It, but it is rather overshadowed by, well, the gloriously colorful and endlessly creative obscenity. A viewer conducting even the most casual compare-and-contrast of the two series will notice two interesting trends:
1. Twenty-first-century Westminster is no less white than 1980s Westminster. This, unfortunately, is a reflection of reality: people of color currently comprise 4% of MPs (a figure that was significantly lower when The Thick Of It began in 2005), and Parliament’s own website admits that even though “[t]he House of Commons is more reflective of the population it represents than ever before […] it remains the case that more than 400 MPs, 62% of the total, are white men aged over 40.”
2. There is a far wider variety of accents, and a hell of a lot more swearing, in the newer show. This is something that cannot be explained without a brief discussion of the deeply complex question of class in British politics, so please bear with me. UK politics has always been an old boys’ club. The traditional track to Westminster runs through a private school, ideally Eton, and a top-tier university, ideally Oxbridge. That same Parliament webpage notes that over a quarter of current MPs went to Oxbridge, and over a third went to private schools. This is vastly disproportionate to the general population – but it is an improvement over the past. In 1982 Yes Minister could include lengthy rants about Greek and Latin quotations and jokes mocking a minister who attended the LSE; one suspects that that simply wouldn’t fly today.
The delicate subtleties of regional accents in the UK are far beyond my capacity to explain; suffice it to say that, first, regional accents are historically the marker of a working-class background, and, second, they are much more acceptable in politics and media today than they were 30 years ago. There is, then, a more or less explicit class dynamic at play in The Thick Of It between the RP-accented ministers and the very Scottish Peter Capaldi, who stars as very terrifying government spin doctor Malcolm Tucker.
Good God this man is terrifying.
Malcolm is the core of the show, and he is a wonder to behold. In creating Malcolm Tucker, Iannucci seems to have drawn from both his own Scottish heritage and from the well of “terrifying Scot” archetypes that populate the British imagination: from Wallace bellowing “FREEDOM!” to Miss Jean Brodie to Professor McGonagall to the monstrous Manda in Alan Warner’s The Stars In The Bright Sky (get a copy; you’ll thank me later), echoed in US pop culture through figures like Groundskeeper Willie and Shrek. An explosive hurricane of Caledonian fury, Malcolm tears through Westminster, bullying, threatening, effing, blinding, and occasionally punching anyone unfortunate enough to oppose his will. He’s the kind of villain who’s an absolute joy to hate, reveling in his own evil machinations and spouting quotable profanity like it’s going out of style.
Not that the other characters lack for memorable quotes. The writing for this show reminds me of Oscar Wilde (in a potty-mouthed, 21st-century kind of way): all the characters essentially speak with exactly the same voice, but it’s such a very funny voice that nobody really minds. And, of course, a great strength of this style is that the women characters sound as though they were written to be characters first, women second. Our culture is swimming in female characters who sounds as if they were written by someone who, at best, has never actually interacted with a woman, and, at worst, genuinely believes women to be a completely different species than human beings. Armando Iannucci’s women are not like this at all, and it’s depressing how refreshing that is.
In my opinion, The Thick Of It only really hits its stride with the introduction of Rebecca Front as Nicola Murray, MP, in the third season. (The first two were only three episodes each, so she’s still in more than half the series.) This was a matter of necessity, owing to Chris Langham’s ignominious fall from public grace, but it gives the show a dynamic it really needs. When Langham’s Hugh Abbott was the hapless minister struggling to hang onto his job in the face of mockery from special advisers Glen and Ollie and relentless terrorism from Malcolm, the cast was just toohomogeneous. Nicola has to deal with not only the pressures Hugh faced as an overworked, underprepared, perpetually outgunned minister trying desperately to be relevant; but she also has to cope with the specific challenges of being a woman in a profession that is still 78% male-dominated. Dubbed a “glummy mummy” by the press, Nicola is caught in the damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t position of the woman in the high-pressure job – expected to prioritize her work while simultaneously being the World’s Greatest Mother, in a way that men are simply never expected to do. Being at the nexus of such impossible expectations never overwhelms Nicola’s character or turns her into a straw person of any kind, but it is a constant presence in the dynamic of her interactions with others, to the point that even the ferocious Malcolm appears to have a little sympathy for her.

Poor Nicola.
Iannucci seems to have recognized how interesting this dynamic is, and attempted to replicate it this year in his HBO show Veep, starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus as a (once again) hapless vice president. Veep is an intriguing attempt to transplant the magic of The Thick Of It to a US context (foreshadowed to some extent in the transatlantic hijinks of 2009 alternate-universe spin-off film In The Loop), but I’m not yet convinced that it’s a fully successful one. For one thing, the US televisual landscape is so prudish that, even on HBO, the swears don’t roll off tongues as organically as on British TV. For another, the lack of a truly nefarious Malcolm Tucker figure, while an understandable artistic choice to create distance from The Thick Of It, in my opinion undermines the show’s cohesiveness. And I question the wisdom of choosing to piss away a potentially really interesting pregnancy subplot offscreen.
My reservations notwithstanding, I will be watching Veep‘s second season, because it’s pretty funny, and because I trust Armando Iannucci. But I’m much more excited for The Thick Of It season four, and it would be nice if the rest of America cared too.
—
  
Max Thornton is a grad student who doesn’t really like pronouns but won’t object to either ey/em or he/him. Too British for the US and too American for the UK, Max currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area but dreams of London and New York. Max likes theology, intersectional feminism, and pop culture, and blogs about these things at Gay Christian Geek.

LGBTQI Week: ‘Albert Nobbs’ Review: Exploring Constrictions of Gender & Class

Mia Wasikowska and Glenn Close in ‘Albert Nobbs’

This review by Staff Writer Megan Kearns previously appeared at Bitch Flicks on February 2, 2012.
“You don’t have to be anything but what you are.” Hubert Page (Janet McTeer) tells the titular Albert Nobbs played by Glenn Close. But in a time where women possessed no status, no rights – when your only options were as a wife, servant or prostitute – how could you be yourself if you yearned for another life?

Haunting and sad, Albert Nobbs tells the tale of a woman who disguises herself as a man in order to survive in 19th Century Ireland. A “labor of love” and a “dream fulfilled,” Oscar nominee Glenn Close, who co-wrote the screenplay, tried to get Albert Nobbs made into a film for 30 years. Adapted from the play, which Close starred in on Broadway in 1982, is itself adapted from George Moore’s short story. Moore’s books were controversial “because of his willingness to tackle such issues as prostitution, extramarital sex and lesbianism.” Rodrigo Garcia’s poignant film Nine Lives, which Close also appeared in, showcasing 9 vignettes of women’s lives, is one of my favorite films. So my expectations were high for Albert Nobbs.

Was this a “jaw-dropping performance” by Glenn Close? She was absolutely outstanding. I didn’t realize at first just how good of a job she did until I realized I completely forgot that it was Glenn Close! I’m used to seeing her play strong, confident or assertive women. Here, Close plays a character shy, awkward, guarded and desperately lonely. She melts into the role. She’s as straight-laced and tightly wound as the prim and proper world around her. 

It might be easy to initially dismiss Close’s performance as merely donning make-up and male garb, forever sporting a stoically immutable countenance. But Close completely lets go in Albert’s few aching outbursts of emotion. With a child-like naïveté, Close played Albert as an “homage to Charlie Chaplin.” About the role, she said:
“Albert was particularly tricky because there’s always the question of how much should show on her face because a lot of it is somebody who’s totally shut down, who doesn’t even look people in the eye. Servants weren’t supposed to look people in the eye, but she’s an invisible person in an invisible job. And then her whole evolution is slowly being able to look up – the first time she really looks someone in the face is after she’s told Hubert her story and then she kind of looks out to her dream.”

Janet McTeer and Glenn Close
Albert’s world begins to change after she meets outgoing house painter, Hubert Page (McTeer). In her well-deserved Oscar-nominated role, Janet McTeer exquisitely steals every scene. Hands down, she’s the absolute best part of the film. I couldn’t wait until her magnetic presence appeared on-screen again. McTeer, who plays the qualities of the character, not the gender, exudes a soulful swagger and charismatic kindness. She radiates confidence, warmth and a bold assertiveness. McTeer, also playing a woman in disguise, possesses a strong sense of self, the complete polar opposite to Albert who has no idea who she is as a person. About her character, McTeer said:
“I tried to be, on the one hand, very male, by which I mean large and expansive and confident and sitting on the back of the heels, as it were, and on the other hand I wanted [my character] Hubert to have as many as what we consider to be the loveliest of the female qualities — empathy, compassion, kindness. I wanted Hubert to be a really good mixture of both.”

It’s the embodiment of these qualities that makes Hubert unique. But we also see this mélange in Albert. Helen (Mia Wasikowska) tells Albert, “You’re the strangest man I’ve ever met.” What makes Albert so strange? Is it that she treats women with thoughtfulness, kindness and equity stereotypically lacking from the other men Helen met?

After Albert meets Hubert, she realizes she could have a life of companionship. SPOILER -> Hubert is married to a woman she adores and a beautiful scene between the two portray a tender, loving and devoted couple. <- END SPOILER Hubert gives Albert hope for a different future: a life free from the shackles and confines of loneliness. In a bittersweet scene, Hubert and Albert walk along the beach together. Albert in a dress, the first she’s worn in 30 years, runs along the beach. Reminded of her old identity, in a rare expression of emotion, she’s unconstricted, buoyed by freedom and sheer joy.

Many movies contain cross-dressing plotlines for comedic effect. But not a lot exist that focus on gender-bending from a dramatic angle. Boys Don’t Cry and Transamerica explore the lives of a trans man and woman while Yentl and The Ballad of Little Jo both echo Albert Nobbs as they feature women who choose to live as men in order to survive or pursue their dreams. An act of violence as a young girl catalyzes Albert to live as a man to protect herself and survive.

Critics have focused on the gender components. But class, an equally important theme, threads throughout the entire film. Albert Nobbs depicts how women contended with and endured poverty. We witness the stark dichotomy between the lavishly wealthy clients and the servile wait staff in the hotel. Servants in the Victorian Era were to be invisible, never looking the upper class in the eye. With her downcast eyes, Albert remains dutiful. Yet she begins to aspire for more. Albert has been saving her money all her life and hopes to open a shop of her own.

The film portrays relationships and courtship as an economic contract. When Albert courts the coquettish Helen (Wasikowska), Helen expects and asks for all sorts of gifts and trinkets. SPOILER -> We also see class play out after Helen gets pregnant. Women needed men in order to survive financially. Women who give birth to children out of wedlock were punished fiscally, fired from their jobs. Husbands provided fiscal security. <- END SPOILER Gender and class coalesce. You realize Helen’s gender and station in life condemn her situation. Albert and Hubert would never be able to attain their dreams (and Hubert her independence) had they retained their identity as women.

I perpetually worry audiences watch period films with dangerously confining gender roles and then sit back thinking, “Phew, we’ve come so far!” Yeah, no, we so haven’t. Albert Nobbs raises so many thought-provoking questions. Why is the male gender the more “desirable” gender in society? What does it say about a society where half its population has a mere two options for their lives? How can women take charge of their own lives amidst confining gender norms? But therein lies my problem with the film. It provides no conclusions, the answers remain elusive. 

It’s a slow and unassuming movie that at times moves at a methodical pace. But the more I pondered, the more I realized the film possessed many intricate layers. Throughout we see women’s perspectives and hear women’s voices. Albert Nobbs contains not one but two powerful female actors with other women in memorable supporting roles; a film rarity. Neither Albert or Hubert are defined by their gender or sexuality. They both transcend gender.

The tragic story of Albert Nobbs lingered in my memory long after I left the theatre. Its exploration of female friendship, lesbian love, class and poverty, gender roles and a woman’s self-discovery, truly make it a rare gem. 

———-
Megan Kearns is a Bitch Flicks Staff Writer. She’s a feminist vegan blogger and freelance writer living in Boston. Megan blogs at The Opinioness of the World, a feminist vegan site she founded in 2010 which focuses on gender equality and living cruelty-free. She writes about gender and media as a Regular Blogger at Fem2pt0, a site uniting social issues with women’s voices. Her work has also appeared at Arts & Opinion, Feministing’s Community Blog, Italianieuropei, Open Letters Monthly, A Safe World for Women and Women and Hollywood. She earned her B.A. in Anthropology and Sociology from UMass Amherst and a Graduate Certificate in Women and Politics and Public Policy from UMass Boston. You can follow all of  Megan’s opinionated musings on Twitter at @OpinionessWorld. 

‘Albert Nobbs’ Review: Exploring Constrictions of Gender & Class

Mia Wasikowska and Glenn Close in ‘Albert Nobbs’
“You don’t have to be anything but what you are.” Hubert Page (Janet McTeer) tells the titular Albert Nobbs played by Glenn Close. But in a time where women possessed no status, no rights – when your only options were as a wife, servant or prostitute – how could you be yourself if you yearned for another life?

Haunting and sad, Albert Nobbs tells the tale of a woman who disguises herself as a man in order to survive in 19th Century Ireland. A “labor of love” and a “dream fulfilled,” Oscar nominee Glenn Close, who co-wrote the screenplay, tried to get Albert Nobbs made into a film for 30 years. Adapted from the play, which Close starred in on Broadway in 1982, is itself adapted from George Moore’s short story. Moore’s books were controversial “because of his willingness to tackle such issues as prostitution, extramarital sex and lesbianism.” Rodrigo Garcia’s poignant film Nine Lives, which Close also appeared in, showcasing 9 vignettes of women’s lives, is one of my favorite films. So my expectations were high for Albert Nobbs.

Was this a “jaw-dropping performance” by Glenn Close? She was absolutely outstanding. I didn’t realize at first just how good of a job she did until I realized I completely forgot that it was Glenn Close! I’m used to seeing her play strong, confident or assertive women. Here, Close plays a character shy, awkward, guarded and desperately lonely. She melts into the role. She’s as straight-laced and tightly wound as the prim and proper world around her. 

It might be easy to initially dismiss Close’s performance as merely donning make-up and male garb, forever sporting a stoically immutable countenance. But Close completely lets go in Albert’s few aching outbursts of emotion. With a child-like naïveté, Close played Albert as an “homage to Charlie Chaplin.” About the role, she said:
“Albert was particularly tricky because there’s always the question of how much should show on her face because a lot of it is somebody who’s totally shut down, who doesn’t even look people in the eye. Servants weren’t supposed to look people in the eye, but she’s an invisible person in an invisible job. And then her whole evolution is slowly being able to look up – the first time she really looks someone in the face is after she’s told Hubert her story and then she kind of looks out to her dream.”

Janet McTeer and Glenn Close
Albert’s world begins to change after she meets outgoing house painter, Hubert Page (McTeer). In her well-deserved Oscar-nominated role, Janet McTeer exquisitely steals every scene. Hands down, she’s the absolute best part of the film. I couldn’t wait until her magnetic presence appeared on-screen again. McTeer, who plays the qualities of the character, not the gender, exudes a soulful swagger and charismatic kindness. She radiates confidence, warmth and a bold assertiveness. McTeer, also playing a woman in disguise, possesses a strong sense of self, the complete polar opposite to Albert who has no idea who she is as a person. About her character, McTeer said:
“I tried to be, on the one hand, very male, by which I mean large and expansive and confident and sitting on the back of the heels, as it were, and on the other hand I wanted [my character] Hubert to have as many as what we consider to be the loveliest of the female qualities — empathy, compassion, kindness. I wanted Hubert to be a really good mixture of both.”

It’s the embodiment of these qualities that makes Hubert unique. But we also see this mélange in Albert. Helen (Mia Wasikowska) tells Albert, “You’re the strangest man I’ve ever met.” What makes Albert so strange? Is it that she treats women with thoughtfulness, kindness and equity stereotypically lacking from the other men Helen met?

After Albert meets Hubert, she realizes she could have a life of companionship. SPOILER -> Hubert is married to a woman she adores and a beautiful scene between the two portray a tender, loving and devoted couple. <- END SPOILER Hubert gives Albert hope for a different future: a life free from the shackles and confines of loneliness. In a bittersweet scene, Hubert and Albert walk along the beach together. Albert in a dress, the first she’s worn in 30 years, runs along the beach. Reminded of her old identity, in a rare expression of emotion, she’s unconstricted, buoyed by freedom and sheer joy.

Many movies contain cross-dressing plotlines for comedic effect. But not a lot exist that focus on gender-bending from a dramatic angle. Boys Don’t Cry and Transamerica explore the lives of a trans man and woman while Yentl and The Ballad of Little Jo both echo Albert Nobbs as they feature women who choose to live as men in order to survive or pursue their dreams. An act of violence as a young girl catalyzes Albert to live as a man to protect herself and survive.

Critics have focused on the gender components. But class, an equally important theme, threads throughout the entire film. Albert Nobbs depicts how women contended with and endured poverty. We witness the stark dichotomy between the lavishly wealthy clients and the servile wait staff in the hotel. Servants in the Victorian Era were to be invisible, never looking the upper class in the eye. With her downcast eyes, Albert remains dutiful. Yet she begins to aspire for more. Albert has been saving her money all her life and hopes to open a shop of her own.

The film portrays relationships and courtship as an economic contract. When Albert courts the coquettish Helen (Wasikowska), Helen expects and asks for all sorts of gifts and trinkets. SPOILER -> We also see class play out after Helen gets pregnant. Women needed men in order to survive financially. Women who give birth to children out of wedlock were punished fiscally, fired from their jobs. Husbands provided fiscal security. <- END SPOILER Gender and class coalesce. You realize Helen’s gender and station in life condemn her situation. Albert and Hubert would never be able to attain their dreams (and Hubert her independence) had they retained their identity as women.

I perpetually worry audiences watch period films with dangerously confining gender roles and then sit back thinking, “Phew, we’ve come so far!” Yeah, no, we so haven’t. Albert Nobbs raises so many thought-provoking questions. Why is the male gender the more “desirable” gender in society? What does it say about a society where half its population has a mere two options for their lives? How can women take charge of their own lives amidst confining gender norms? But therein lies my problem with the film. It provides no conclusions, the answers remain elusive. 

It’s a slow and unassuming movie that at times moves at a methodical pace. But the more I pondered, the more I realized the film possessed many intricate layers. Throughout we see women’s perspectives and hear women’s voices. Albert Nobbs contains not one but two powerful female actors with other women in memorable supporting roles; a film rarity. Neither Albert or Hubert are defined by their gender or sexuality. They both transcend gender.

The tragic story of Albert Nobbs lingered in my memory long after I left the theatre. Its exploration of female friendship, lesbian love, class and poverty, gender roles and a woman’s self-discovery, truly make it a rare gem. 

Things They Haven’t Seen: Women and Class in Mad Men

Towards the end of the first season, Peggy Olson goes out on a date set up by her mother. The guy, Carl, drives a potato chip delivery truck, and makes it clear that he doesn’t think too highly of Peggy’s chosen profession. “You don’t look like those girls,” he tells her. Peggy storms off, snapping at Carl, “They are better than us. They want things they haven’t seen.”
I don’t agree, at least not when it comes to the main women of Mad Men. Joan and Betty are victims of both their class and their gender, and the only thing they would seem to aspire to is what they know and what they see: the comforts of an middle-to-upper class existence.
One element that has always fascinated me about Mad Men has been the element of class mobility and class-based constraints. The women, in particular, embody the opportunities and limitations of class during the 1960s. Looking at the characters of Peggy, Joan, and Betty, it becomes clear that if the people who live in Manhattan want things they haven’t seen, they are limited in being able to attain those goals by their class and class constraints.
Peggy Olson
From the beginning, Peggy is presented to us as a girl in her dress and her manners. She tells Joan that she attended “Miss Devers Secretarial School,” and while Joan reveals that it is one of the best, it isn’t a college education. We also see her small and simple apartment, later learning she is from the Bronx and, during the second season, Catholic. Her sister’s husband has been hurt on the job and unable to work, and their rather large family is living in a small apartment. All of this indicates that Peggy comes from a working-class background.
The episode mentioned above is an important moment for Peggy; in the same episode, Peggy has a successful pitch for the “Electrolizer.” Peggy is able to somewhat comfortably talk about the fact that the machine is a vibrator. Juxtapose Peggy’s ability to articulate the benefits of the Electrolizer versus Betty’s experience with the washing machine in the same episode. One embraces the freedom the machine can/could provide for women, while the other has to make do.
Betty Draper Francis
Betty came from both class and means; her family is wealthy, and from the descriptions of her mother, quite proper in terms of gender and class norms. Her mother disapproved of her brief career as a model after Betty had graduated from Bryn Mawr College. All of her married friends seemed to have attended one of the “Seven Sister” schools and traveled extensively in Europe.
For her, her marriage is her goal. She was raised to want to look pretty in order to attract an acceptable husband. She might be unhappy in her marriage to Don, but she has no idea how to escape or to fulfill herself. I saw her holding a rifle, smoking a cigarette, and shooting her neighbors birds not as a symbol of a woman rising up to defend her family, but of a woman who couldn’t bear even a reminder of freedom. Like the birds, she, too, would always come home.
Joan Holloway Harris
Joan, too, is the picture of elegance. She has gone to college and has moved up as far as she can professionally, enjoying being single while looking for a husband. She finds (and problematically marries) an aspiring surgeon. While it isn’t clear what kind of background Joan comes from, it is clear that she possesses the proper credentials for a woman who came from class or means.

Joan’s rape has, obviously, generated a lot of debate. I read it, however, as a type of class sacrifice; in order to “keep” her professional and respectable husband, she has to stay silent about her rape. It is never made clear if Joan truly loves Greg, or views him as her last chance at class respectability. Joan also quits her job at Sterling-Cooper once she is married because it is no longer necessary, but also no longer socially acceptable. But it isn’t just that. When she has the opportunity to read scripts and make valuable contributions to the newly-formed television department, Joan doesn’t speak up when an inexperienced man receives her job. Contrasted with Peggy’s courage to ask for Freddy Rumsen’s old office, Joan would seem to be trapped not just by the constraints of her gender, but the constraints of her upper-class upbringing.
One could also read the competition between Joan and Peggy as a competition between two women from different socio-economic class; Peggy doesn’t know the rules, doesn’t “look” the part, and Joan tries to help her “fit in” as an women with middle-class aspiration. But Peggy isn’t interested in marrying up; her ignorance of the rules is her biggest strength as she is not limited by the gender pressures of middle and upper-class expectations.
Peggy, in her quote about wanting things they haven’t seen yet, could be referring to the women that Don Draper consorts with throughout the first two seasons. Midge Daniels is a bohemian, for class seems to hold no allure or power. Rachel Menken has managed to transcend class (and racial/religious) boundaries and become a power-driven professional woman. The same goes for Bobbie Barrett, who manages her husband’s show biz career with savvy and ruthlessness. Each of these women is successful at eschewing the limits placed on them by class expectations.

It is interesting that when Don is faced with a choice between a non-traditional woman (Dr. Faye Miller) and his secretary (Megan), he chooses the latter. Faye and Peggy are, ultimately romantically punished for their non-traditional interpretations of class and gender norms. It remains to be seen how Faye bounces back from Don’s rejection, but Peggy is certainly doing better than either Betty or Joan when it comes to personal and professional success.
Call it the limitations of an upper-class upbringing; sometimes we can only want what it is we see.
Lee Skallerup Bessette has a PhD in Comparative Literature and currently teaches writing in Kentucky. She also blogs at College Ready Writing and the University of Venus. She has two kids, and TV and movies are just about the only thing she has time for outside of her work and family.


Guest Writer Wednesday: Horrible Bosses and the So-Called ‘Mancession’: A Review in Conversation

Horrible Bosses (2011)

This is a guest post by Byron Bailey and Kirk Boyle.

Kirk’s Take:
Claiming that Horrible Bosses is horrible understates the case and misleads one into thinking the movie is very unpleasant or disagreeable for formalist reasons: incoherent plotting, unsympathetic characters, humorless comedy. No. Horrible Bosses is an ideological atrocity, not just a shitfest farce. It should be titled Triumph of the Will of the Hapless White Male, for here the Great Recession is a ruse exploited to indulge the twin fantasies that white-collar, white men suffer just the same as everyone else during hard times and, in the satirical words of Michael Scott from The Office, “I think the problem is the chicks. The problem is the chicks, and you gotta blame them.” In sum, the movie channels economic frustration into misogyny. Instead of “Jump! You fuckers!” we get “Let’s kill this bitch!”

Isn’t this movie the double-inversion of 9 to 5 (1980)? A progressive flick about exploited women enacting their (pot-induced) revenge fantasies against their bosses becomes, in these times, a reactionary tale about privileged men enacting their (resentment-fueled) revenge fantasies against their bosses. Where Parton and company hate their bosses for exploiting them, Batemen and bunch hate their bosses because they want to be (or fuck) them but can’t.

Am I being too harsh?

Byron’s Take:

Not at all. Your comparison with 9 to 5 is apt: the militantly fun, woman-power message of the earlier film has been replaced with mean spirited and murderous male hijinks. Horrible Bosses represents a kind of unconscious backlash in its portrayal of the economic downturn. We’re presented with three reasonably well-to-do white guys and their suffering. All three men have jobs, and two of them have what seem to be high-paying jobs. (I’m sure those who’ve been laid off and have lost their homes will sympathize.) The sexually harassed dental assistant, Dale Arbus (Charlie Day), is stuck in his less-than-satisfactory position because of his sex-offender status (for urinating in a public playground) and exists mostly as a whining comic foil. The characters played by the two Jasons (Bateman, Sudeikis) actually do have horrible bosses (Kevin Spacey, Colin Farrell), whose onscreen moments are responsible for the film’s few real laughs. The idea that even guys with good jobs have it rough is a bit like millionaire Mitt Romney complaining to campaign audiences that he, too, is “unemployed.”

The most execrable aspects of this star-studded mediocrity radiate from the characterization of Dr. Julia Harris (Jennifer Aniston) as the dirty-talking, sexually harassing dentist-boss. Now have there ever been instances of female-on-male sexual harassment in the workplace? No doubt, but the truth is that women endure unwanted sexual attention from men at an astronomically higher rate. This is yet another example of portraying the danger–as is often the case, beneath a veneer of mirth–of uncontrolled female sexuality (a very old formula indeed), here inflated into physical coercion. It has the effect of seeming to level the playing field: “See, women do it, too!” I’m not saying the makers of Horrible Bosses set out to accomplish this ideological task. They just wanted laughs, but the cumulative effect of such filmic representations has a way of getting into the cultural consciousness. Fatal Attraction (1987) unleashed its depiction of a crazed female stalker into a culture rife with male stalkers of women. Horrible Bosses presents an attractive, oversexed woman essentially stalking her hapless male employee, a scene right out of hetero male fantasy. Both films present female sexual desire as out of control.

Surely the worst moment in Horrible Bosses occurs just after Dr. Harris shows her assistant a series of photos depicting her taking advantage of him while he was under dental anesthesia. It is not clear, but some of the posed pictures may actually involve sex. The assistant (Day) says, “That’s rape!” He may well be right. She replies, “Just hold on there, Jodie Foster.” This can only refer to the 1988 film The Accused, an account of a real-life gang-rape victim whose character was essentially put on trial. (After all, she must have been “asking for it,” right?) Googling the film to get my details correct, I was met with “Jodie Foster Hot Rape Scene Video,” first result. I am not kidding. Try it. (Think we still have a problem?) So, what can Aniston’s line mean? “Don’t be so fast to accuse me like Jodie Foster did in that movie?” Or what? Because Horrible Bosses‘ point of view is that female-on-male sexual harassment is not really so bad (and most men would enjoy it if the woman were “hot”), how can this comparison of what the film sees as merely humorous, or at most embarrassing, with a filmic account of a real-life gang-rape do anything but belittle the seriousness of harassment and rape? Look, I’m not holding up The Accused as some sort of holy object, beyond humor. Laughing can help us deal with horrific things. Given the context, though, I really couldn’t believe my ears. I certainly don’t expect a mainstream comedy to conform to my ideological beliefs, but Horrible Bosses goes beyond the typical misogynistic gross-out humor so popular in recent years and graduates to the realm of the truly offensive.

Kirk’s Take:
I like the claim that “Horrible Bosses represents a kind of unconscious backlash in its portrayal of the economic downturn.” The movie is not about the downturn directly but a latent reaction to it. Nevertheless, it makes passing references to the recession. The most overt one involves a former acquaintance of the main characters from Yale who used to work as an executive for Lehman Brothers but who is now reduced to offering hand-jobs to men for money. Director Seth Gordon explains that “We needed to put a fine point on the fact that these guys didn’t have other options.” Horrible Bosses reminds heterosexual white men that capitalism makes of us all prostitutes or, as Spacey enlightens Bateman, “I own you. You’re my bitch.” YET, within the misogynistic and homophobic kaleidoscope of this motion picture, the “fine point” is that “real men” must fight back against being treated as pieces of meat. This threatened species has one of three choices: be fucked by bosses (read “exploited by capitalists for labor power”); be fucked by gay johns (read “exploited by perverts” (because, according to the movie, homosexuality = perversion, e.g., the whole “wet work” scene writ large)); be fucked by prisoners (read “you might as well try breaking the law by murdering your boss because you are already being fucked, so what do you got to lose?”). Of course, within the fucked-up-world of this film, all three choices are the same. The only way out is serendipity, i.e., the writers-as-gods-in-the-machine sweep down and save you via a racist plot device involving an outsourced super-Garmin.

As you rightly note, these three downtrodden amigos hold not just jobs but careers, and they enjoy disposable income. For example, while brewing up the idea to kill their bosses, Sudeikis mentions paying someone to clean his apartment and cut his hair. This line of thinking informs their plot to kill their bosses by hiring a hitman. Although they gripe about their jobs, any dirty work (housekeeping or murder!) is beneath them and within their means to outsource (to black men who are stupid (Jamie Foxx), but wait, might be smarter than they seem to be. Essentially, what we have is two privileged white men (Batemen and Sudeikis) whose exasperation derives from being unable to take the next step up the corporate ladder because the economy has turned sour right when they were in line for a promotion, but since the dominant ideology peddled by Hollywood cannot represent the true culprit of their thwarted desires, it displaces responsibility onto the figure of the “horrible boss.” It’s not the perverted (rotten-to-the-core) capitalist system that is to blame for your unfair treatment, it’s the perverted (bad apple) capitalist.

The logic of the third guy’s (Day) “occupational” ressentiment, as you allude to, seems different than his buddies’. Day’s character is not “trapped” because he can’t get as sweet of a position as the one he already holds within this busted economy. No, he’s trapped because he is getting married and wives-to-be are expensive commodities (and untrustworthy, cheating whores, e.g. Spacey’s character’s wife). Perhaps, however, this plot line simply serves to amplify the ever-so-slightly-less-explicit misogyny of the other two.

Perhaps too, we have reached a point in the post-ironic, late capitalist, culture industry where we need as many words for “sexism” as the Inuit have for snow. Horrible Bosses does its very best to showcase them all. Explicit misogyny: Jennifer Aniston’s character is introduced with white-lettered words that fill the screen: “Evil, Crazy Bitch.” Patronizing sexual harassment: Sudeikis’s character’s treatment of the “FedEx girl” who delivers to his company. Objectification: Sudeikis leaves a sports bar stool so he can “see that girl about her vagina.” Homophobia-as-misogyny: Aniston calls Day a “little pussy” and “little faggot” when he won’t sleep with her. Reverse-sexism-is-traditional-sexism: Aniston’s character is meant to imply that men can be sexually assaulted at work like women, but all it really reinforces is that men have a right to hate women for not fulfilling their fantasy images of them. Meta-misogyny: the outtakes include Sudeikis looking directly at the camera to remind the frat row yahoos of the film’s takeaway absurdist joke: “bend her over and show her the fifty states.” That’s not even to mention the relentless rape-is-hilarious misogyny.
 
Byron’s Take:

Indeed, this movie–in terms of contemptible messages of all kinds–makes uniquely explicit the old phrase about “an embarrassment of riches.” I couldn’t agree more with your “bad apple capitalist” point. (After all, it wasn’t the system as such that failed us back in 2008, just a few dishonest swindlers who made the other Wall Street paragons look bad!) Sutherland’s brief portrayal of the environmentally responsible, good-guy CEO is meant to reinforce the idea of capitalism-with-a-human-heart and occlude the amoral, monopoly-tending behemoth as it really is (absent sound regulatory restraint), a smokescreen at least as old as Frank Capra’s sentimental masterpiece, It’s A Wonderful Life (1946). For every evil Mr. Potter, there’s a kindly George Bailey. (Yeah, maybe in the days of mom & pop savings and loans.) The TV show Undercover Boss serves a similar function. It seems only necessary that “the big guy” lower himself to the loading dock for a couple of weeks to see what wonderful human beings those little people actually are. (Why, they have feelings and dreams and everything!) At the end they all have a good hug-n-cry, the peons receive a slight raise, and the boss is whisked back to his smoked-glass penthouse office suite, a better, humbler millionaire. As for the former Lehman Brothers employee having to do humiliating gay stuff to survive– is Seth Gordon fucking kidding me? Almost no one actually got dumped from the worst offending banks that helped precipitate the crisis, at least not without sumptuous bonuses, and then kicking and screaming the whole way as if they’d been the real victims. I suppose some lower-level people who were “just following orders” may have been downsized out of their jobs at such firms (though I heard nothing about it), but the film makes no distinctions. We only have a guy from Lehman Brothers selling hand-jobs, as if he were representative of those greedy law-breakers finally getting their comeuppance. Please.

The use of “little faggot” and “little pussy” as companion terms of abuse (as you observe) unites misogyny and homophobia in one neat “little” package (pun intended). On broadcast television where the explicitness of those words calls for a cleaner alternative, the admonition “Man up!” encompasses both notions. (Why are we getting so many examples of women ordering men to be more masculine lately?) Horrible Bosses goes out of its way to police male affect, from the insufficiently masculine dental assistant (Day) to the automatically-masculine-by-virtue-of-blackness ex-con (Jamie Foxx) and his fellow bar patrons. There is, however, a moment of slippage. It occurs in the scene that follows the trio’s consultation with “Motherfucker Jones” (Foxx), their presumed hit-man. The two more successful–and in the film’s gaze, seemingly more attractive–guys (Bateman, Sudeikis) begin to argue about which of them would be raped the most if they went to prison. This works within a constellation of rape references in the film as yet another way in which white guys (with good jobs) can (potentially) get fucked (or fucked over) by someone or something. Allow me to overlay another reading. Psychological surveys suggest rather strongly that the most virulently homophobic males tend to be haunted by same-sex desire; hence, they project their loathing outward. They unconsciously know something about themselves, something that gnaws at them. This scene could be the film (or its screenwriters) expressing its/their unconscious gay desire. Additionally, the scene explores a blurring of subject positions; that is, it depicts desire and gender performance as a continuum rather than an either/or. While the film berates “faggots,” it nonetheless depicts hetero males displaying an affect that the culture defines as “feminine” (“Will they find me attractive?”). There’s a moment of complexity here, as if the film (like a human mind) knows more about itself than it thinks it knows. Still, this knowingness is itself part of a regressive network of references whose overall messages you’ve summed up perfectly, to which I would add the cultural acceptance of men being raped in prison as an eventuality that can’t–or needn’t–be avoided. (After all, they’re mostly black, right? Don’t even get me started on our rapacious prison-industrial-complex and how the “justice” system so ably feeds it).

There will probably be those who say we’re making an awfully big deal about a throw-away comedy, something that’s “just entertainment.” Unfortunately, contemptible crap like Horrible Bosses teaches the culture to affirm its worst negative stereotypes beneath a veneer of farce. (If only it were smart enough to satirize them at the same time.) Leaving these complaints aside, in the plainest terms of bang-for-the-bucks multiplex entertainment, this film is still a dismal failure. The considerable talents of Spacey, Farrell, Bateman, and Foxx are wasted, and Aniston, who can be very effective in the right role, hits an all-time low. (I guess we’re supposed to find it progressive that Aniston, at the advanced (Hollywood) age of 42, can still be displayed as a sex object. Granted, but she’s playing young, not “cougar,” which is another issue altogether.) Bateman’s character alone is marginally sympathetic, and mostly because one associates him with better material. Arrested Development is a comedic project that pushed the limits of taste, dealt with a character going to prison, presented a female character who satirized sluttiness, explored sexual orientation for laughs, had characters contemplating violence, and mixed a great many other over-the-top situations together for the sake of humor. That show illustrates how topics like these can be the occasion for genuine belly laughs, and at the same time be thoughtful and smart and not at all mean-spirited. Nearly everybody I know who watched Arrested Development–people of diverse ideological outlooks–found the show hilarious, and it was anything but safe or tame. Neither of us is asking for politically-correct comedy (which would suck), just comedy that makes us laugh without adding overtly to the negative aspects of our culture. Lately, this seems too much to expect.

Byron Bailey is an adjunct instructor at the University of Cincinnati and Wright State University. He’s currently trying to finish his dissertation on Shakespeare and Machiavelli.
Kirk Boyle is an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina Asheville. He previously contributed pieces about The Day the Earth Stood Still, Revolutionary Road, and Good Dick to Bitch Flicks.

YouTube Break: Roseanne Barr Is Awesome

From the description at Democracy Now:

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Emmy Award-winning actress Roseanne Barr starred in the popular and groundbreaking show on television titled simply Roseanne, the first TV series to openly advocate for gay rights. Roseanne featured one of the first lesbian kisses on TV, in an episode when Roseanne kisses Mariel Hemingway. Roseanne was also the first sitcom to ever feature a gay marriage. The series tackled other controversial topics, as well: poverty, class, abortion and feminism. From her open support of unions in earlier shows to her tribute to Native Americans toward the end of the series, Roseanne never shied away from contentious issues. The writer Barbara Ehrenreich once praised Roseanne Barr for representing “the hopeless underclass of the female sex: polyester-clad, overweight occupants of the slow track; fast-food waitresses, factory workers, housewives, members of the invisible pink-collar army; the despised, the jilted, the underpaid.” We play excerpts from the groundbreaking sitcom and speak with Barr about her childhood in Utah, where she was raised half-Jewish and half-Mormon, and talk about how she “made it OK for women to talk about their actual lives on television.

Quote of the Day: Roseanne Barr

Roseanne Barr
In her recent New York Magazine piece, Roseanne Barr talks about creating and starring in a number-one sitcom, and relates her experience to the breakdown of Charlie Sheen, the state of comedy today, and the hostility Hollywood has toward women–and especially working-class women. Here’s an excerpt. I highly recommend reading the entire piece here.
Hollywood hates labor, and hates shows about labor worse than any other thing. And that’s why you won’t be seeing another Roseanne anytime soon. Instead, all over the tube, you will find enterprising, overmedicated, painted-up, capitalist whores claiming to be housewives. But I’m not bitter.

Nothing real or truthful makes its way to TV unless you are smart and know how to sneak it in, and I would tell you how I did it, but then I would have to kill you. Based on Two and a Half Men’s success, it seems viewers now prefer their comedy dumb and sexist. Charlie Sheen was the world’s most famous john, and a sitcom was written around him. That just says it all. Doing tons of drugs, smacking prostitutes around, holding a knife up to the head of your wife—sure, that sounds like a dream come true for so many guys out there, but that doesn’t make it right! People do what they can get away with (or figure they can), and Sheen is, in fact, a product of what we call politely the “culture.” Where I can relate to the Charlie stuff is his undisguised contempt for certain people in his work environment and his unwillingness to play a role that’s expected of him on his own time.

But, again, I’m not bitter. I’m really not. The fact that my fans have thanked and encouraged me for doing what I used to get in trouble for doing (shooting my big mouth off) has been very healing. And somewhere along the way, I realized that TV and our culture had changed because of a woman named Roseanne Conner, whom I am honored to have written jokes for.

Preview: Prom

You all know that Disney’s latest atrocity teen flick, Prom, is in theatres now, right? For those of us without teenaged girls in our lives, sometimes it’s hard to keep up with the latest flicks–aside from Twilight (H/T to reader Emilie for cluing me in). 
Here’s the official trailer:

I especially enjoy the stereotypical male versus female behavior here, and the cherry on top is, of course, the two young men at the end who misogynistically bond over OMG Women! How do we deal with these creatures?!
I have some problems with the U.S. tradition of prom. Prom is this really odd cultural beast: it’s about gender roles, first and foremost, and it’s this weird space in which teenaged girls are highly sexualized and have their sexuality policed at the same time. Any deviation from heteronormativity is frowned upon–at best–and at worst…well, there are a lot things I could say here. Remember Constance, whose prom was cancelled when she wanted to wear a tux and attend with her girlfriend, and when she won a lawsuit against her Mississippi school, was then cruelly sent to a fake prom? Or look at the U.S. South, where de facto segregation continues to the point that schools just in the past decade have held their very first racially integrated proms? Prom is a divisive ritual in which girls are encouraged to spend outrageous amounts of money (yeah, it’s definitely about class performance, too) on a dress, shoes, hairstyle, nails, etc., and in which teenaged boys rent a tux and buy a corsage. And maybe pitch in on a ridiculous limo, too.
Believe it or not, I was a teenaged girl at one point and even went to prom–twice! And I know that it can be a fun celebration of a transitional time in a young person’s life. But the crass consumerism of it all and the gender norms…well, I’m sure Disney will actually critique those elements, right?