Classic Film – Bitch Flicks

Domesticating the Old West: Feminism and ‘The Harvey Girls’

In a world commonly presented as male dominated, ‘The Harvey Girls’ gives us a portrait of the Old West corralled by women; where women aren’t roped into marriage, take on male-centric jobs, run restaurants, and become friendly with their enemies. Though the 1940s Hollywood veneer of breeziness remains, ‘The Harvey Girls’ uses its flippant presentation to give a deeply feminist examination of how women worked and struggled to carve out a piece of the West on their own terms.

This is a guest post written by Kristen Lopez.

If history and Hollywood have taught us anything it is that the West was conquered by courageous cowboys on horseback who beat the “savages” out of the hills in a bid for MAN-ifest Destiny. This point has been reiterated endlessly by American cinema who put manly men like John Wayne, Randolph Scott, and Errol Flynn in the saddle and told audiences women-folk were there for local color or nursing but, no matter what, were always kept out of site. In this brave new world women are simply passengers… or are they?

Best known for directing bubblegum teen fare like Bye Bye Birdie (1963) and Viva Las Vegas (1964), director George Sidney and a crew of at least six credited writers crafted a feminist look at the old West in 1946 with The Harvey Girls, a tale of women, both good and bad, that extends beyond trite definitions and turns into a poignant musical of female friendship, uncompromising personalities, and a world where men get in the way of progress.

Set in the 1890s, the “Harvey Girls” of the title are waitresses at a burgeoning restaurant chain popping up along the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe train route. The selected girls are all meant to espouse “clean living,” displaying a patch of innocence in the rambunctious West. Heading to the small town of Sandrock are a new crop of waitresses, and Susan Bradley (Judy Garland), a young woman who’s answered a “lonely hearts” ad and hopes to marry her unseen lover in town.

The film immediately presents us with a group of women setting out to create their own futures. The Harvey Girls themselves seek nothing more than a job and a means of seeing the world, many leaving towns where they were told their looks are their only worth and marriage is their end goal.

The town of Sandrock is presented as a stereotypical lawless society where the men control commerce, religion, and safety. Yet their control is little more than a façade for their licentiousness. The town hasn’t progressed short of creating a saloon, and the men in charge are seemingly content with a world of duels, gunfights, and general primitivism. It isn’t until the Harvey restaurant opens that a semblance of domesticity arrives.

However, the term domesticity isn’t derogatorily applied here. Because the women aren’t on the hunt for men, their presence brings with it progress; the local priest believes he can reopen the church, the saloon is shown for the money trap that it is, etc. Women are even presented in male centric jobs; Alma from Ohio (Virignia O’Brien) shows her flair at shoeing horses better than the man in the position, singing and dancing while doing it. Even the Harvey House, with its male identification in the title, is saved through Susan’s dominance — and six guns – as she gets back the restaurant’s stolen meat on opening day.

Ned Trent (John Hodiak), the local saloon owner, starts out as a mild-mannered villain, but becomes an ally to Susan and the women in the Harvey House. Even then, though, his role is limited to shooting snakes and flashing muscle. It is the women’s ingenuity and interest in his proffered help that brings him into the fold; Trent is a man controlled, not the ruler.

It is within the saloon that The Harvey Girls’ true feministic impulses present themselves. The clean-cut Harvey Girls, with Susan as their leader, are contrasted with the garish, sexualized saloon girls led by Em (Angela Lansbury). Though Em and Susan are both in love with Ned, it is only a surface issue since Em refuses to compromise her ideals to attract Ned. Instead, she simply reiterates to Susan that Ned doesn’t love her.

The male-centric audience are presented with the Madonna and the whore through Susan and Em, but the focal point is firmly on both women’s presentation of their desires, personalities, and dreams in life. Em understands the simplistic men in Sandrock see the Harvey Girls as clean and pure, but Em and her girls are never presented as immoral as the men in the town. The audience, and the men, are tame in their lust for Em and her ladies – and there’s no implication of prostitution outside of imagination – but it is evident Susan and the other Harvey ladies represent clean living. Short of their wardrobes – the loud, thigh revealing costumes of the saloon versus the floor-length, black and white dresses of the Harvey House – the audience is left to interpret and give Em and her ladies a darker past than they actually have.

This all comes to the fore in the film’s climax. Em and her ladies decide to blitz out for greener pastures, leaving Sandrock and its newly staid atmosphere to the Harvey House. The women aren’t run out on a rail, but it is obvious Em fancies herself bigger than the small confines of Sandrock and her financial livelihood is at stake with the conversion of the saloon. Em is still allowed to have her dreams and pursue them without a man by her side. In fact, it is Em who, despite the fights and pettiness between both women, tells Susan that Ned adores her (Susan).

This moment is a breakthrough, particularly for a film mired in post-WWII images of Rosie the Riveter. Em, a character who has done little good in the movie, is allowed to have a moment of support and friendship with a female rival, a rival for a man no less. Em doesn’t end the movie with a newfound change of heart or a renunciation of her wicked ways. In fact, we’re given a glimpse into Em’s personality that the town of Sandrock and its male dominated chauvinism, has forced Em to hide. Though Susan is the film’s heroine, it is Em who is the truly fascinating character within The Harvey Girls; a woman with aspirations and flaws who still succeeds on her own terms and isn’t condemned by others, but, in fact, helps those different from her (like Susan) find their way.

Em and all the women in The Harvey Girls are not dragged into marriage. Marriage is joked about — “I sent my picture into one of those Lonely Hearts Clubs and they sent it back, saying, ‘We’re not THAT lonely” — but never stated as awaiting them at the train station. If anything, the men of Sandrock anticipate the women’s arrival with their own matrimonial intentions.

Upon arrival, Susan meets her intended, H.H. Hartsey (Chill Wills), only to discover he’s an “old coot.” Where the marriage plot usually becomes the climax, here it is the catalyst for Susan’s self-discovery. H.H. is a decent man living in an immoral town and is unwilling to marry Susan despite her beauty because the two aren’t compatible. Hartsey is the stereotypical cowboy, grizzled with an “aw, shucks” attitude shown for what it is, sweet but unattractive. We’re presented with the non-John Wayne version of the cowboy. The cowboys that existed, but weren’t Hollywood leading men. Though both characters are polite, it’s evident Sandrock isn’t interested in being a fantasy town, and both characters realize they’re unsuited for each other.

Coupled with the women’s seeming disinterest in it, marriage in The Harvey Girls is never brought up again within this context. Characters fall in love, but it’s never stated they’ll put a ring on it or that they’ll stay together past the end credits, though it is heavily implied due to its Hollywood tone. Marriage is presented as an open door, allowing Susan to become a Harvey Girl and gain her independence.

In a world commonly presented as male dominated, The Harvey Girls gives us a portrait of the Old West corralled by women; where women aren’t roped into marriage, take on male-centric jobs, run restaurants, and become friendly with their enemies. Though the 1940s Hollywood veneer of breeziness remains, The Harvey Girls uses its flippant presentation to give a deeply feminist examination of how women worked and struggled to carve out a piece of the West on their own terms.

Kristen Lopez is a freelance writer whose work has appeared on Film School Rejects, The Playlist, Awards Circuit, and Cinema Sentries. She is currently the Associate Editor at ClassicFlix and the owner of the classic film site, Journeys in Classic Film.

Blindness, Race, and Love in ‘A Patch of Blue’

Fifty years later, portraying disability on screen with empathy and respect is still rare. Showing an interracial couple is also extremely rare (Green says that some people sent terrible letters to him about the kissing scene; in fact, it’s reported that in some areas in the south the scene was edited out for theaters).

‘A Patch of Blue’ manages to weave together themes of disability, race, socioeconomic issues and family dynamics with beauty and grace.

A Patch of Blue movie poster.

This repost by Leigh Kolb appears as part of our theme week on Interracial Relationships.

Director Guy Green said of the premise of A Patch of Blue: “basically it’s a very corny story, a blind girl falling in love with a Black man.” He credits the writing of the novel it was based upon (Be Ready With Bells and Drums, by Elizabeth Kata) for ensuring that the story, and resulting film, were not corny at all.

The 1965 film centers around a young blind woman, Selina (Elizabeth Hartman), who has been abused and sheltered, and neglected any formal education, by her family–her mother, Rose-Ann (Shelley Winters) and her grandfather, Ole Pa (Wallace Ford). She’s befriended by a Black man, Gordon (Sidney Poitier), and they form a deep relationship, which centers on Gordon’s desire to help Selina lift herself up.

It would be easy to read that synopsis–blind girl falls in love with a Black man–and come to any number of conclusions about the film, especially since it was released at the height of the civil rights movement, but the film manages to capture something much deeper than being a superficial morality play on racism, and it treats Selina’s blindness with care and dignity.

When Selina was five, her father came home unexpectedly while Rose-Ann was sleeping with another man (it’s insinuated that she worked as a prostitute, and still does). Her father killed the man, and when Rose-Ann threw a bottle–a chemical-laden cosmetic–from her dresser at him, it hit Selina in the face, scarring her eyes and leaving her blind.

Elizabeth Hartman wore opaque contacts to simulate Selina’s damaged eyes. Rose-Ann is the only one who berates her “ugliness”; even her grandfather explains that it’s just that people are nosy, not that she is ugly.

Selina’s life circumstances are desperate and miserable, but she is not. The opening shot of the film focuses on Selina’s hands, stringing together beaded necklaces–that’s what she does during the day to help her family (Mr. Faber, her boss, is presented as an important support person in her life). She yearns to spend more time in the park, and Mr. Faber takes her when he can.

It’s in the park that she meets Gordon (a caterpillar dropped down the back of her shirt and she needed help–a problem not reserved for a person who can’t see–and he helps her retrieve it). He’s friendly and gentle without being condescending, and his generosity helps strike up a quick friendship. He buys her sunglasses because she’s self-conscious about her scarred eyes and tells her she looks perfect with them on (this is presented as a generous act for her confidence, not because he actually feels she needs them).

He’s shocked that she’s never heard of braille and was never formally educated: “You haven’t heard of all blind people can do?” he asks, and she is self-deprecating yet unashamed of her lot in life.

Gordon and Selina eat lunch.

While Selina is uneducated (Gordon corrects her grammar when they first meet) and cannot live outside of her home independently, the audience never feels pity for her because she is blind and helpless. Instead, the focus of our pity is on her lack of support–she has an abusive home life and has been neglected. Her blindness isn’t pitiful; her family is.

When Selina is shown doing tasks that she’s been entrusted with–changing linens, washing dishes, cooking, cleaning–she does so perfectly. This is a reminder that her blindness hasn’t been a hindrance to her life and that she is capable of doing what she’s allowed to do.

Hartman, in studying for the part, spent time at a school for the blind to be able to accurately get into character. She wore opaque contacts (Green said they helped because they naturally obstructed her vision), and her family says she wore them constantly and never left character while she was filming.

This careful and empathetic approach to “acting” blind paid off. Hartman’s performance was incredibly convincing and she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress (A Patch of Blue was Hartman’s first film).

Gordon helps Selina find directions by the sun’s location.

In the film, Gordon attempts to feel as Selina must feel shortly after meeting her. He’s shown at his job–working as a night-shift reporter–getting up from his desk, walking across the room, and attempting to return to his desk with closed eyes (he is unsuccessful, and runs into his coworker’s desk). This short scene is poignant in that it further reminds Gordon–and the audience–what it must feel like to be Selina, if only for a few moments.

Gordon never tries to do things for Selina. From the beginning, he teaches her and empowers her to be able to completely take care of herself. Since it’s clear her limitations are environmental, not innate, she is capable. Her disability–caused and amplified by her family–is not what’s in her way. Her poverty and lack of support system are detrimental to her growth and development.

Gordon could have easily met Selina, befriended her, seen that she could clean and cook, and want to marry her, keeping her dependent and living simply for him. And while his romantic feelings for her are conflicted, he wants her to be independent and educated more than he wants her for himself.

Gordon gives Selina very practical advice (counting steps, listening for traffic) so she can navigate streets by herself–which she finally does, after realizing she doesn’t have to take her home life anymore.

Gordon never belittles or gets frustrates with Selina.

Gordon and Selina’s kiss–one of the first on-screen interracial kisses–was at the same time innocent and deeply passionate. When Selina references the fact that she’d been raped, and wishes she hadn’t so she could be with Gordon, he convinces her that she is not “bad” or “dirty,” like she worries she is. (Someone in 1965 understood how to not blame the victim.)

Their kiss was one of the first on-screen interracial kisses.

The filmography often focuses on Selina’s point of view, and is effective in portraying the sensory details she enjoys (the canned peaches or the music box), and the terrors she lives through–her time alone for the first time on the street, or the memory of being raped (we “see” the man from her perspective–what she could have seen, but only felt).

The racial components of the film are also nuanced and effective. When Gordon tells Selina that “tolerance” is one of his favorite words (and explains that it’s not just putting up with something, but that you don’t “knock your neighbor just because he thinks or looks different than you”), she tells him that he must be full of tolerance. He quietly shakes his head and says that he’s not. He looks deeply affected when white people stare and glare at him and Selina walking together, and clearly has deep inner conflict being a Black man in America in 1965 (of course, these aspects of the film don’t seem nearly as dated as they should be). His brother, a doctor, criticizes Gordon’s desire to help and educate Selina because she is white, and comments on the fact that she comes from a “trash heap” (to which Gordon responds, “She may, but she’s not trash”). Underneath the surface of the film is the fact that socioeconomic factors and family support systems are what determine a person’s opportunities.

Rose-Ann is, unsurprisingly, violently racist. We know that she forbade Selina from spending time with the only friend she ever made because the little girl was Black, so we also know that when Rose-Ann sees Selina and Gordon together, she will erupt–which she does.

The characters to be despised are racist, abusive and neglectful. But Selina and Gordon aren’t perfect–they are complex, sympathetic characters who struggle with their own shortcomings and emotions. Selina is only 18, so her naivety and her quickness to fall deeply in love are believable. Gordon loves Selina as a friend, but is unsure of anything beyond that. He says he’s snapped back into reality after getting lost in their embrace. He deals with anger and frustration, too–not only because of his experiences at the hands of racism, but also because of the injustice of Selina’s mistreatment.

By the end of the film, even the crowd of white people (who before had glared), realize that Gordon is no threat to Selina; Rose-Ann is.

The ending is hopeful, but not saccharine-sweet. The realness of the characters, their struggles and their emotions are highlighted by sparse, black-and-white film and a beautiful soundtrack.

Gordon has called a school for the blind and set up a space for Selina. Before the bus comes to pick her up, she is nervous, and wishes they could just get married. Gordon promises that in a year, they could see if their love has anything to do with marriage. He sits her down to tell her that he’s black, but she already knows.

She says, “I know everything I need to know about you.” As she feels his face she continues: “I know you’re good, and kind, and that you’re colored; and I think you’re beautiful.”

He’s shocked that she knows, and responds “Beautiful? Most people would say the opposite.”

“That’s because they don’t know you,” she answers.

A Patch of Blue portrays disability as a part of a woman’s life that only defines her because she’s grown up with an abusive and neglectful family. As soon as she gets access to a world (literally and figuratively) outside of their little apartment, she thrives, and we know she’s just going to continue to grow. She’s beginning her life–a life that won’t be defined by her blindness.

Her relationship with Gordon allows him to also redefine his own life and helps him see himself for who he is–a beautiful, kind and generous man, who knows how to share life with someone who’s never experienced it.

A Patch of Blue manages to weave together themes of disability, race, socioeconomic issues and family dynamics with beauty and grace. It was nominated for multiple Golden Globes and Academy Awards; Shelley Winters won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar, and notably, Sidney Poitier was nominated for the Golden Globe, but not an Academy Award.

A Patch of Blue is one of those films that manages to stay with you for years after you see it; and then, when you see it again, it’s just as beautiful as you remembered.

Leigh Kolb is a composition, literature and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri.

‘The Bad Seed’: Mother and Daughter, Autonomy Through Violence

In no way does this piece condone violence or 8-year-old serial killers. We all know that’s wrong and our mothers taught us better than that. But really, what’s the harm in a female character with autonomy and direction?

This is a guest post by Andrea Betanzos.

Once upon a time, I took a course in film school about horror films and learned that Leatherface’s chainsaw, Jason’s machete, and every other male killer’s choice of weapon were simply metaphors for their dicks.

When it slowly dawned on all of us (my classmates and I) that this was the central analysis our professor was looking for us to make, I’m sure our assignments must have been pretty interesting to read.

Horror and sci-fi seem to be the few genres where the actions of women stem from their own wills. In order to be the “final girl,” a woman must want to survive, must find it in herself to reject the role of caretaker, and find a way to fight. To be lethal, a woman must chase a singular idea, must view the road to her objectives as necessary and in no way compromise what’s hers.

In other words, there are less garage tools involved.

Before “Hit Girl” in 2010’s Kick-Ass and “Esther” in 2009’s Orphan, there was 8-year-old Rhoda Penmark, (the amazing Patty McCormack), the central character in Marvin Leroy’s classic The Bad Seed.

Let me clarify, we’re talking about the classier 1954 version of the film.

Not the 1985 one. Or the Lifetime one.

The golden child

Adapted from the novel written by William March, The Bad Seed was made during the imposed Hays Code in Hollywood. Despite the limitations the Code placed on the story and what could actually be shown onscreen, the strength still lies in the ruthlessness of Rhoda’s sociopathic evil.

The only child of Christine (portrayed by Nancy Kelly) and Kenneth (William Hopper), Rhoda lives the idyllic childhood. Christine is a homemaker and the daughter of an esteemed crime writer, Richard Bravo. Col. Kenneth Penmark is an absent father who dotes on Rhoda and is on military leave for most of the film. The family lives in a picturesque suburb, renting an apartment from nosy landlord, Monica and an even nosier caretaker, Leroy.

With blonde pigtails, a perfect curtsy and charming smile, Rhoda is a pristine and well-behaved child. Her bedroom is always tidy, her chores are always done, and her speech is impeccable. However, beneath Rhoda’s immaculate exterior lies a boiling rage.

When Claude Daigle (Rhoda’s fellow classmate) beats her in a penmanship contest, and soon thereafter dies under suspicious circumstances, Rhoda’s true character is revealed. Her apathy towards his death is potent. The conviction with which she believes the award belongs to her is unsettling, considering that most children can barely decide what they want for Christmas. You rarely see this kind of devotion in adults, but at 8 years old, Rhoda not only possesses it, she owns it. Christine attempts to defend Rhoda unto everyone, as any mother would. Yet we watch her resolve crumble slowly, as she comes to the horrifying realization that her daughter is indeed, a murderer.

Almost every horror film does a fantastic job in blaming mom for birthing such fine human beings, (1980’s Friday the 13th, 1968’s Rosemary’s Baby), and this film is no different. Evil originates from a lineage of women. There is a legacy of murderesses, beginning with Bessie Denker, a notorious serial killer and Christine’s mother. Christine herself, who goes to great lengths to make Rhoda disappear. And last but not least, sweet Rhoda, who takes the reign and really puts everyone to shame with her prolific slew of murders.

Yes, the film is campy. Yes, it seems like Christine is always a few seconds from crying in every single scene. Yes, there’s so much overacting that it makes you eye-roll at the most inappropriate moments. But the relationship between Christine and Rhoda is fascinating, akin to Carrie and Margaret White in 1976’s Carrie. The constant push and pull. The way in which mother and daughter are both destructive and protective towards one another. The dualities of violence found within each Christine and Rhoda, how they intersect and compliment one another, give the film its complexity and nuance.

Rhoda and Christine illustrate two types of violence: one which is carried out maliciously, meant to harm those around her in the pursuit of her desires. The second is violence toward oneself, meant to protect the world, and transform her into martyr to erase a lineage that is destructive. It could very well be said that Christine represents our “final girl,” who must protect herself to survive. Rhoda is the monster, the Jason and Leatherface without the garage tools.

For this film, these two types of violence are incapable of existing without the other. They feed and sustain one another. Rhoda is birthed by said lineage of evil and learns how to take control of her abilities to get what she wants. She is for better or worse, driven and unapologetic in fighting for what’s hers. In a terrible way (i.e. not recommended to anyone!), Rhoda finds autonomy through deciding what role each person plays in her life. If they’ve wronged her, they have no place in her life. Throughout the course of the film, she only learns how to be more decisive in what she wants in needs. Rhoda learns how to manipulate situations in her favor. Let’s be clear though: if we weren’t talking about murder, this would be otherwise be admirable!

A feminist killer?

Christine’s arc is much more different, as she begins the story as fiercely protective of Rhoda. She is proud of her daughter’s perfection and proud to be her mother. Even when the first inklings of Rhoda’s behavior come to light, her maternal instinct to overrules reason. Regardless of how dangerous Rhoda is, Christine is still charmed by her daughter and in total disbelief that she could be capable of being evil. Yet when Christine actually witnesses one of Rhoda’s murders, she uses that same fervor to find strength and protect others from Rhoda. Yes, “final girls” must often reject the role of caretaker in order to protect themselves. In this case, it’s especially pronounced given that Christine must reject the role of mother. However, the real difference in this feminized violence is how Christine handles it. Rather than blame outward, she holds herself responsible for what she has created and tries to kill herself, but not without trying to kill Rhoda first.

Not Flintstones vitamins

Rhoda’s conviction has to lead her toward destroying others and Christine’s toward destroying herself.

Although both depictions are incredibly diverse and rarely juxtaposed, part of the problem is that there is no “in between”. The film almost hints that women are too emotional to make a careful decision and when they do; it can become too calculating and may deviate to cruelty. The extremes of each type of violence are just that, extremes. Yes, its unfortunate that each woman in The Bad Seed finds power and control through some pretty evil deeds. In no way does this piece condone violence or 8-year-old serial killers. We all know that’s wrong and our mothers taught us better than that. But really, what’s the harm in a female character with autonomy and direction?

Sorry not sorry

Andrea Betanzos likes dessert before dinner, strong coffee, feminism, and very good films.

Dead Woman Walking: ‘Phoenix’ and the Resurrected Femme Fatale

This is a guest post by Amy Woolsey.

You can scarcely read a review of Phoenix, the latest movie by German director Christian Petzold, without encountering a reference to Vertigo. Like Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 classic, Phoenix deals with trauma, mistaken identity, and male authority. Stylistically, it leans more toward restraint than melodrama, but it still makes use of double imagery and lush colors (red in particular) to create a surreal atmosphere that drifts through each frame like cabaret music onto nighttime streets.

As in Vertigo, red suggests romance – and danger.

Both films also include a woman who comes back from the dead. In Vertigo, Kim Novak’s Madeleine Elster inflames the passion of Jimmy Stewart’s ex-detective Scottie Ferguson, only to apparently commit suicide halfway through the movie by jumping off a bell tower. Later, the grief-stricken Scottie runs into a woman named Judy Barton who reminds him of Madeleine, and he grows obsessed with molding her into his former lover’s likeness. It turns out that the two women are the same person: Judy had been impersonating Madeleine as part of an elaborate murder scheme. In Phoenix, Nina Hoss plays Nelly Lenz, a Holocaust survivor who gets surgery to reconstruct her mutilated face. When she reunites with her husband Johnny (Ronald Zehrfeld), he doesn’t recognize her, but noticing a resemblance, he convinces her to masquerade as his “dead” wife so they can collect and split her inheritance.

The similarity isn’t a coincidence. Petzold, along with late screenwriter Harun Farocki, deliberately designed Phoenix as “Vertigo in reverse,” as he explained in an interview with The Film Stage:

“We always thought about the male perspective. We always thought about a man who creates a woman, but we never thought about the perspective of a woman… It was Harun that said we had to change the perspective, so we started thinking about what the male subjectivity had done to Kim Novak, and the studio system — to the actor and to the character in Vertigo. Why all these stories are made by men, huh?”

Far from a cheap gimmick, the point-of-view switch in Phoenix sheds new light on Vertigo and film noir, demonstrating how the genre has evolved since its World War II-era heyday.

As a genre, noir is somewhat nebulous. The term did not enter popular usage until the 1970s, applied in retrospect to a set of films from the 1940s and ‘50s with similar aesthetic and thematic qualities. Some critics don’t consider it a genre at all, but rather a cycle or style. Still, there are a number of conventions commonly associated with noir, from dramatic lighting that emphasizes shadows to a gloomy, even nihilistic mood, not to mention archetypes such as the world-weary detective and, most notably, the femme fatale – in the words of Roger Ebert, a woman who’d “just as soon kill you as love you, and vice versa.”

Barbara Stanwyck epitomizes the femme fatale as Phyllis Dietrichson in Double Indemnity.

Vertigo was released at the tail end of the classic noir period, but Madeleine Elster still displays the characteristics of a quintessential femme fatale. Slender, white, and platinum-blond, she has a statuesque, if patently artificial beauty, her face blank in a way that conveys mystery rather than vacuity – a discomfiting amalgam of sensuality and reserve. Yet even as she emanates danger, an air of tragedy surrounds her. Madeleine is doomed from the moment she appears onscreen; we’d already heard Gavin, her husband, speculate that she’s being possessed by the ghost of her suicidal great-grandmother, causing her to act “like someone I don’t know.” She may be an agent of death, but she’s also captive of it, perpetually haunted by the specter of her mortality. At one point, she tells Scottie that she feels “as though I’m walking down a long corridor that once was mirrored… and when I come to the end of the corridor, there’s nothing but darkness. And I know when I walk into the darkness that I’ll die.”

The femme fatale, then, embodies noir’s obsession with death – not only its inevitability but also its allure. Unlike the male hero, who strives to defy fate at every turn, the femme fatale is acutely aware of her vulnerability. As scholar Elisabeth Bronfen posits, she “accepts her death as the logical consequence of her insistence on a radical pursuit of personal freedom,” embracing ruin rather than wallowing in denial. It isn’t passivity so much as cynicism; as a woman in a patriarchal society, she’s familiar with the limits of autonomy and has no illusions of grandeur or righteousness. Judy describes her reunion with Scottie as “the moment I dreaded and hoped for,” suggesting she expected and possibly wanted to be found (she did stay in San Francisco and keep several items of clothing she’d worn as Madeleine). She accepts the immorality of her actions and the futility of avoiding retribution.

In theory, Madeleine’s “suicide” should humble Scottie, a reminder of his own vulnerability. But being a noir hero, he shuns enlightenment and clings to the very American, very masculine belief that individuals have absolute mastery over their destinies and the world around them. His efforts to manage Judy stem from not only male hubris, but also an obsessive need to regain a sense of control and repel knowledge of life’s impermanence. Instead of directly confronting his guilt and failure, he deflects blame onto Judy, convinced that by vanquishing her, he can attain redemption and subdue his inner turmoil. While driving back to the bell tower where Madeleine died, Scottie declares, “There is one final thing I have to do and then I’ll be free of the past.” Novak’s dubious expression articulates what her character has no doubt learned: you can’t escape the past.

A more prevalent interpretation of the femme fatale reads her as a male fantasy, a screen onto which spectators can project their erotic desires. Although the narrative often penalizes the hero for succumbing to lust, it implicitly encourages the audience to participate in his temptation, establishing his point-of-view as dominant and rarely developing the woman beyond her surface. As Laura Mulvey’s oft-cited male gaze theory goes, men look, while women are looked at. Is it any wonder that the most memorable image from Vertigo is a shot of Madeleine sitting in front of a painted portrait, her back to the camera? She’s anonymous, part of the surrounding artwork. In this case, the femme fatale doesn’t personify fate but transcends it, her temporary demise and subsequent resurrection reinforcing her abstract nature – her fluid identity, otherworldly glamour, and general elusiveness. She’s not mortal because she’s not real. If that sounds contradictory to the “femme fatale as the essence of mortality” theory, it’s because the femme fatale is a fundamentally contradictory figure: elegant yet violent, volatile yet cunning, egocentric yet self-destructive, catering to female empowerment yet also male pleasure.

Hitchcock frames Madeleine herself as a work of art.

At Vulture, Angelica Jade Bastién lamented that noir has shriveled into an empty shell of its former self, tending to appropriate the genre’s most superficial aspects (the violence, the hardboiled dialogue) while neglecting its underlying meaning (the commentary on power, sexuality, deviance, and the American Dream). As a result, the femme fatale has lost much of her potency. Her influence is visible in the demented predators of psychosexual thrillers like Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct and the ravishing, albeit ultimately harmless sirens of neo-noirs like L.A. Confidential and Drive, but these characters lack their predecessors’ complexity and subversive edge. Along with David Fincher and Gillian Flynn’s twisted romance Gone Girl and Alex Garland’s sleek science-fiction parable Ex Machina, Phoenix takes strides toward salvaging the modern femme fatale, playing with perspective in order to deconstruct gender dynamics and genre tropes.

By situating her at the center of the story, Phoenix grants Nelly an agency Madeleine was denied, turning her into a fully realized individual with her own arc and interior life instead of a mere manifestation of the male hero’s subconscious. Behavior that could come across as illogical and contrived makes sense because Petzold exhibits genuine interest in understanding Nelly and what drives her. Without compromising subtlety, he peels back the layers of his heroine’s enigmatic façade, hinting at her willful nostalgia (she implores the surgeon operating on her face to make her look how she used to) and simultaneous, conflicting urge to find the truth about her husband. Hitchcock, meanwhile, never bothered to devise an explanation for why Madeleine/Judy goes along with Gavin’s plan to murder his wife; she just does what the plot requires of her.

It’s clear right away that Nelly is not a conventional femme fatale. She first appears huddled in the passenger seat of a car, her face covered with bandages and shadows – a stark juxtaposition from Madeleine’s introduction in Vertigo, with Scottie furtively eyeing her emerald-clad figure as Bernard Hermann’s score swells. There’s no attempt to hide Nelly’s fragility; as she wanders through the desolate streets of postwar Berlin, she seems to fade into the background, a ghost haunting ruins. Here, the false death illustrates the effects of trauma, the feeling of having witnessed the end of the world and no longer belonging in the present. Johnny’s manipulation isn’t just inconvenient for Nelly; it’s oppressive, a refusal to acknowledge her personhood. When the bandages come off and she undergoes her transformation, Nelly starts to occupy more of the screen, but that initial sense of alienation and repressed anxiety lingers, etched in Hoss’s searching gaze and tentative walk.

Especially telling is the scene where Nelly enters Johnny’s basement, looking like her old self for the first time. The camera establishes a close-up of her shoes before gliding upward, revealing her body in fragments as she descends the stairs. It’s a familiar technique, used to elicit awe at a female character’s appearance in movies as varied as the Bette Davis romance Now, Voyager and the James Bond-esque spy romp Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol. In Phoenix, however, the sequence unfolds with an unease that defuses the sensationalism and, as a result, undercuts its effectiveness as a tool of the male gaze. Gone is the mystique that shrouded the femme fatales of classical noir; we’re too conscious of Nelly’s suffering to romanticize her. That’s not to say she is depicted as weak: even at her most ostensibly docile, when Johnny dictates her appearance and movements, Nelly is in command of the narrative. She obtains power not through violence or seduction but knowledge, her willingness to exploit the discrepancy between her real identity and Johnny’s perception of her.

A silent power struggle

Noir is traditionally regarded as the realm of men, with its unsentimental look at crime and corruption. Yet, at its best, the genre has always been as much a portrait of femininity as of masculinity, showing how women navigate and resist the social, moral, and sexual standards imposed on them. After all, one of the reasons for its enduring popularity is its fascination with outsiders, the people lurking in the margins and dark corners of society. Phoenix succeeds where so many have fallen short because it recognizes the value of women’s experiences, presenting a heroine who exists for her sake, not the hero’s, who is neither vilified nor fetishized. At last, the femme fatale manages to transcend the male imagination and become human – free.

Amy Woolsey is a writer living in northern Virginia. Since graduating from George Mason University in May, she has started interning at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. She spends her free time consuming, discussing, and generally obsessing over pop culture. You can follow her on Twitter and Tumblr, and she keeps a personal blog that is updated irregularly. In addition to freelancing at The Week, she wrote about The Bling Ring for Bitch Flicks’ “Unlikable Women” theme week.

Recommended Reading

The Modern Femme Fatale in Nicolas Wending Refn’s Neo-Noir Drive

No Place for a Woman: The Family in Film Noir

Vertigo by Jim Emerson

Hoss Is Boss: The Enigma of Christian Petzold’s Muse by Scott Tobias

‘Mother India’: Woman, Pillar of the Nation

‘Mother India’ treats Radha’s abnegating nature as a positive. Look how nobly she suffers for her husband and sons, the movie seems to say. In real life, such glorification of women’s suffering enables an exploitative system of economic growth on the backs of underpaid, overworked women. They get nothing except lip service, sometimes not even that.

This guest post by AP appears as part of our theme week on Asian Womanhood in Pop Culture.

“All Hindi films come from Mother India” – Javed Akhtar (lyricist, poet and scriptwriter)

Many people consider Mother India (1957) the definitive Hindi film. This legendary film won countless accolades, earned higher revenues than any film before it, and ran for more than three decades. Wondering what all the fuss what about, I watched it recently for the first time. It’s highly entertaining and moving, with a great plot, dialogues and music. It’s three hours long, so I spread my viewing over a couple of days. Despite its length, it drags very little.

The iconic Mother India poster, where Radha (Nargis) bears a heavy wooden plough almost like a crucifix — The iconic *Mother India* poster, where Radha (Nargis) bears a heavy wooden plough almost like a crucifix.

The film tells the story of Radha (Nargis), a farmer, from her days as a young bride to her old age. When Radha gets married and moves to her husband’s house, she lives a happy life until she learns that her mother-in-law has taken a loan from the usurious village moneylender to pay for the wedding. Unable to repay the loan, and beset by tragic accidents and a disastrous flood, the family eventually becomes impoverished. Radha loses her husband and mother-in-law, and raises her children on her own. She suffers great hardship but raises them to adulthood, and even faces down the crude advances of the moneylender.

Years pass; the family survives, but continues to be exploited by the moneylender. One of Radha’s sons, Birju, grows to hate the moneylender, and finally snaps. Circumstances lead him to become a bandit. He kills the moneylender, and for further revenge, abducts his daughter.

One son dutifully gets married and settles down. The other, Birju (reclining), is much more rebellious and restless.

Radha is distraught: she cannot stand to see a girl’s honour violated. She threatens to kill Birju, telling him that dishonouring any girl of the village, is tantamount to dishonouring the entire village, which includes his own mother. When Birju tries to ride away with the kidnapped girl, Radha shoots him dead.

“I am a woman. I can give up a son, but I can’t give up honour.”

Several years pass; Radha is an aged woman. There is a hopeful note in the air: modern technologies are being introduced by the government to increase agricultural productivity and lessen the peasant’s burden. The villagers revere Radha for all she’s done, and invite her to inaugurate the new irrigation canal. Water the colour of blood flows through the canal, a reminder of Radha’s sacrifices.

After watching the film, I understand why it was such a big deal. It’s because it captured the mood of the nation, its values, hopes and aspirations. At the time, about 80 percent of Indians were engaged in agriculture. The colonial yoke had been thrown off. The film reflects the period’s broad consensus that for the nation to progress, two things were required: food security through advancement in agriculture, and rapid industrialization through investment in heavy machinery. The film is a celebration of farming, and shows reverence of the land that nurtures us.

The movie also celebrates the idea of woman as the nation’s pillar of strength. I’ll focus on this theme, and on the character of Radha.

The Bad

In some ways, Mother India is quite conventional. Its intended messages about women are regressive from a feminist point of view. The movie conveys that the ideal woman is nurturing, self-sacrificing and hardworking. It ignores the reality that women did all of this for very little reward. For all their sacrifices, did woman have a say even in basic decisions like how many children to have? Not much. In the 1950s, when the movie was released, women’s legal rights were severely restricted; for example, the progressive legislations introduced by stalwarts like B. R. Ambedkar and Jawaharlal Nehru, for Hindu women’s inheritance and marriage rights, had been stonewalled and diluted in Parliament.

Mother India highlights the plight of the farmer, but glosses over or erases the specific difficulties faced by women farmers specifically: lack of access to resources, invisibilization of their labour, and their self-deprivation in times of scarcity. In times of food insecurity, adult women often deprive themselves and girl children of adequate food. It is not necessarily forced upon them; more often it’s a choice (made in the context of patriarchal society).

Mother India treats Radha’s abnegating nature as a positive. Look how nobly she suffers for her husband and sons, the movie seems to say. In real life, such glorification of women’s suffering enables an exploitative system of economic growth on the backs of underpaid, overworked women. They get nothing except lip service, sometimes not even that.

Lastly, a central theme of the movie is honour/modesty. Radha values honour – her own and other women’s – over and above everything else. Maintaining honour is the prime duty of a woman. Her honour is not just her own, but the family’s, the village’s, and by extension the nation’s. But the problem with honour is that to maintain it, women’s mobility, freedom and sexuality must be tightly controlled.

The Good

Having said all that, there are some ways in which the character of Radha is a triumph for women’s representation in Indian cinema. She is a formidable, determined woman. She is uneducated (she can’t read the moneylender’s accounts), but she is tough and practical. She has the skills, knowledge, and the will to protect and raise her children. She never dithers or acts silly. She commands respect from her sons, from the villagers, and from the audience. She has to make tough choices in bleak circumstances. She breaks two negative stereotypes: that women are not intelligent, capable decision-makers, and that women don’t do arduous labour. In Mother India, it is the woman who builds the nation with her sweat and toil.

Through images, music, and lyrics, the movie establishes Radha’s sheer physical strength. The foregrounding of physical power is rare in today’s female characters, but appropriate for a portrayal of a rural woman.

Standing in waist deep water, Radha holds her children up on a wooden platform during the flood.

On one hand, the audience is inspired (maybe even awestruck), by Radha’s resilience, and by her steadfast adherence to her moral code. But at the same time her humanity takes centre stage, and she is allowed to express a range of emotions. She suffers devastating losses, is disrespected, and is sometimes terrified for herself and her family. She also enjoys periods of relative prosperity, good harvests, the joys and frustrations of family life.

After the flood, a helpless Radha begs food from the moneylender, who makes improper advances.

Radha turns furiously and beseechingly to the image of the goddess in the moneylender’s house. “You may lift the burden of the entire world, goddess. But try lifting the burden of motherhood – your feet will falter.” — Radha turns furiously and beseechingly to the image of the goddess in the moneylender’s house: “You may lift the burden of the entire world, goddess. But try lifting the burden of motherhood – your feet will falter.”

Radha celebrates the birth of a grandchild.

Radha hears of her son Birju harassing village girls, especially the moneylender’s daughter. She refuses to speak to him, or eat. A contrite Birju adopts the murga position to convince her to eat.

She warns Birju that she can forgive all his mischief, except for maligning the reputation of a girl of the village. She ties up her sons to teach them a lesson.

In the climactic scene, Radha shoots dead her son Birju. Framed starkly against the sky, Radha is an awe-inspiring figure, a wrathful goddess. She is rendered human the next minute, when she runs to her dying son and holds him, weeping.

The last point about Radha is her love for the land. She does backbreaking work with dignity and forbearance, not just because she has to feed her children, but because she considers the land her mother.

When the villagers want to abandon the village after a devastating flood, Radha persuades them to stay, and together they begin the laborious task of clearing the flooded land.

On one hand, Mother India suffers from fatal flaws – the glorification of traditional gender roles and modesty/honour. On the other hand, the film’s recognition of women’s contribution to building then nation, its characterization of Radha, and its reverence for farmers, are its triumphs. Paradoxically, the character of Radha is mired in stereotypes, but also represents women’s labour, and can serve as a source of strength and inspiration for Indian women.

The agricultural focus is also key. I’ll end with this evocative scene: the villagers have weathered calamities, and there is a song celebrating a good harvest. With the last line of the song, there is an image of haystacks shaped like the map of India, inside which farmers are singing and dancing. Today, with agriculture in dire straits in India and several other parts of the world, Mother India’s image of agricultural prosperity becomes even more important to work toward.

AP is a student. She likes traveling, good food, and movies.

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.

‘Marnie’: What We’d Like To Forget About Old Hollywood

With all the talk of ’50 Shades of Grey’ in the past few weeks, boycotts and debates, and a planned re-release of the superior BDSM-romcom ‘Secretary,’ the film that has really been on my mind is ‘Marnie.’ The 1964 Hitchcock outing is about the capturing (through marriage) and breaking of a young, beautiful and damaged con artist, played by Tippi Hedren, the grandmother of ’50 Shades’ star Dakota Johnson. The cinematography is beautiful, the performances are captivating, but the story? Watching it, I keep expecting someone to jump out and scream that it was all a joke, that we weren’t expected to swallow this. Maybe it’s dated, but I want to believe that the relationship in ‘Marnie’ was recognized as horrific and abusive even then.

Written by Elizabeth Kiy.

With all the talk of 50 Shades of Grey in the past few weeks, boycotts and debates, and a planned re-release of the superior BDSM-romcom Secretary, the film that has really been on my mind is Marnie . Since I first saw it several years ago, I’m been intermittently perplexed by the film, a 1964 Hitchcock outing about the capturing (through marriage) and breaking of a young, beautiful and damaged con artist, played by Tippi Hedren , the grandmother of 50 Shades star Dakota Johnson. The cinematography is beautiful, the performances are captivating, but the story? Watching it, I keep expecting someone to jump out and scream that it was all a joke, that we weren’t expected to swallow this. Maybe it’s dated, but I want to believe that the relationship in Marnie was recognized as horrific and abusive even then.

Mark dominates Marnie and breaks her down to reveal her weakness

If you didn’t already think Alfred Hitchcock was a horror movie villain , Marnie sure makes this clear. For starters, James Bond himself, Sean Connery plays Mark Rutland, is misogynist and unrepentant rapist who is the movie’s hero. Yes, he’s the hero. A wealthy industrialist and armchair zoologist, who discovers the young woman who just robbed a business acquaintance and blackmails her into marrying him.

As a con artist, Marnie slips and out of identities and hair styles, though blonde is always the constant, the “real” her. The one constant presence in Marnie’s life is her mother, who lives in a poor area down by the docks of an unknown town. She acts as the breadwinner for her mother, painting her as “unnaturally” masculinized. One of the things she brings her mother is a fur coat, a typical gift given by a rich lover at the time.

While Hedren was being abused by Hitchcock off-screen, on-screen Mark finds his new wife is cold and disinterested in sex. In Hitchcock world, this must mean there is something wrong with her. She is after all, the classic ice blonde taken to extremes. She holds her head high and meets men’s gazes and pulls her skirt down over her knees if she feels she is being gawked at. She’s disgusted and afraid of the thought of Mark touching her and extolls her hatred and mistrust of men, which lends the film to queer readings.

He rapes her on their wedding night when she refuses to have sex with him. It is not at all ambiguous. She screams and tries to fight him off but he keeps going. It’s as explicit as it could be at the time. Never are we told that what Mark did was wrong, or that it makes him a bad person. Instead, we are meant to sympathize with his urges. He is a red-blooded American man, he can be patient about other things, can treat Marnie as an animal, a case study to be analyzed at arm’s length, but on his wedding night? Moreover, as he is presented as normal while Marnie is damaged, his actions are represented as markers of his psychological superiority. He know Marnie better than she knows herself, he can tell it’s what she wants even when she says no; the standard defense of the rapist, only we’re meant to take it seriously here. Even when Marnie attempts suicide the next morning, it’s portrayed as a symptom of the things that were already wrong with her, not a reaction to being victimized.

In married life, Mark continues to hold Marnie under this thumb. He tells her how to dress and act and forces her to attend parties and act as his supportive partner. She must live in his house, trapped like a captive animal and studied, by her husband, zoology or Freudian text in hand. Privately she screams how much she hates him, how much she wants to get away from him, but he owns her, both as a husband and blackmailer.

And though she puts up a strong act, she seems to need him. The slightest flash of the color red or crash of lightening send her into hysterics and Mark’s arms. She seems to get a sense of sexual release from riding her horse (a hamfisted Freudian touch) and it’s his death that finally breaks Marnie’s spirit, like she is indeed the wild horse in need of taming that Mark viewed her as.

Marnie is only truly happy with her horse

This all leads up to the final confrontation with Marnie’s mother, wherein Mark blames her for “ruining” Marnie. It begins when he literally drags her to her mother’s house, crying and weak from the earlier trauma and ends with the heavy-handed revelation that of repressed memories of a near sexual assault in her childhood. Hearing this, grown up Marnie regresses back to her childhood, a little girl crying for her mother’s love and leaning on her husband’s strong shoulder.

In the last scene they walk out into an uncertain future but it seems like things might be all right for these crazy kids. They’re ready to love each other. Mark is our hero, he’s fixed this girl and she can now have a normal sex life. She can be a wife, like a woman is supposed to be.

Marnie is forced to stand by Mark’s side as his society wife

Of course this is crazy and nauseating and its rightfully a lesser Hitchcock. But the film is beautiful and seductive, dressed up in Classic Hollywood glamour and its easy to be lulled into ideas of the unilateral superiority and wholesomeness of old films. But not everything a great director touches turns to gold. For all the ills of contemporary filmmaking and modern culture, at least you couldn’t make a film like Marnie anymore.

At least, I hope so.

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

King Vidor’s ‘Stella Dallas’ and the Utter Gracelessness of Grace

These repeated conflicts make for a number of scenes in the film that, as Basinger has also asserted, are painful to watch. Our emotions are in conflict: Stella’s aims are noble, her execution hopelessly flawed. It’s hard to like her when she’s so inept, impossible not to sympathize because her purpose is so noble.

This guest post by Rebecca Willoughby appears as part of our theme week on Unlikable Women.

Melodrama is a film genre that can get a bad reputation: overblown emotions, sweeping musical scores, a lot of “drama.” In its heyday in the 1950s, these films were primarily marketed to women, and (perhaps disparagingly) known as “weepies.” But melodrama is also an island in old Hollywood—an island full of complex, flawed women, the kinds of characters viewers can simultaneously love and hate, dynamic creatures who inspire and who are also cringe-worthy.

For me, one of the best examples of this is King Vidor’s Stella Dallas (1937). IMDb gives this one-line summary of the film: “A low class woman is willing to do whatever it takes to give her daughter a socially promising future.” Film scholar Jeanine Basinger, author of A Woman’s View: How Hollywood Spoke to Women 1930-1960, takes a more sympathetic tone, calling Stella Dallas a “portrait of a poor girl who marries out of her class,” and notes that film icon Barbara Stanwyck’s performance as Stella is one of “great depth.” I would tend to agree with Basinger, but I must point out that the audience’s relationship to the eponymous woman is a complicated one.

Rather than an elegant, wealthy, and charismatic, Stella is a shameless social climber with no real “taste.” She comes from a ramshackle, cracker-box house and a factory-worker family, where Father and Brother both work at the local mill. Her only obvious female role model is her sallow-faced mother, who seems at once endlessly, admirably sacrificing and a woman who has had the life completely sucked out of her. Stella resists being anything like her mother. She puts little effort into making her brother’s lunch every day, and is instead invested in her looks, her clothes, and her culture (this last illustrated superficially by her enactment of reading a book—India’s Love Lyrics— as mill workers pass by her house). Eventually, Stella identifies down-on-his-luck former millionaire Stephen Dallas (John Boles) as her romantic conquest, and does everything in her power to land him for a husband who will take her away from her humble origins.

But class differences run deep. Though Stephen falls for Stella, perhaps because of her innocence and earthiness, she is unambiguous about wanting to make herself “better,” a cloudy idea she has that includes knowing the “right” people, going to the “real” places, as well as learning how to “talk like” those aforementioned people. The film makes it clear that Stella and Stephen are mismatched from the start—after their wedding and the subsequent birth of their daughter, Laurel, Stella can’t wait to get back to the River Club, and dance the night away with some high-class friends. Starting at this point, Omar Kiam’s costumes do their best to visually identify Stella as a gaudy parody of all things well-bred—she appears in all manner of spangle and print, usually together, and Barbara Stanwyck’s padded physique seems to be literally bursting at the seams of each ensemble. She is excess personified. Embarrassed by her flashiness and uncouth behavior, Stephen recoils from the relationship, finally taking a promotion that keeps him in New York City. Stella welcomes the separation, and yet one of the consequences of this move seems to be that Stella transfers her desire for upward mobility onto Laurel.

So why don’t we like her? What’s wrong with a mother wanting her daughter to have all of the best? Part of what makes Stella unlikeable is her effect on Laurel (played as a young woman by Anne Shirley). On the occasion of Laurel’s 16th birthday (for which Stella has made her daughter a beautiful, appropriate dress—why can’t she apply this savvy to her own clothes??) Stella takes a train to the city to obtain fancy party favors and table settings. She makes this trip in the company of good-hearted but loud, brash Ed Munn (Alan Hale, Sr.), who has lost some of his own formerly respectable class status through gambling disasters; as one country club attendee says, “He’s involved in horse racing.” He’s also clearly infatuated with Stella, though she rebuffs his affections and says, “I don’t think there’s a man living could get me going anymore.” Instead, she intones, all her energy is bound up in raising Laurel—both in the traditional sense of her upbringing, and in “raising” her social status above Stella’s.

Munn and Stella’s antics on the train are then observed by Laurel’s upright teacher and the mother of another girl invited to Laurel’s birthday party. Both of whom immediately pass judgment on the household, and by extension, Laurel, because of Stella’s behavior. The result is that no one attends Laurel’s party, which ends up being just the first in a series of unfortunate events, documented by Basinger in her writing on Stella Dallas, that occur when Stella’s class clashes with the class of those she strives to emulate. These repeated conflicts make for a number of scenes in the film that, as Basinger has also asserted, are painful to watch. Our emotions are in conflict: Stella’s aims are noble, her execution hopelessly flawed. It’s hard to like her when she’s so inept, impossible not to sympathize because her purpose is so noble. Class culture is indicted when viewers are asked to identify with Laurel, even when Laurel herself isn’t on screen—we understand the gap between the young woman’s intrinsic conservatism (which is deployed as a marker of upper-class behavior) and Stella’s inescapable and tragic inability to embody this value. This gap has a profound effect on how Laurel is perceived by the rest of the world, further inciting our sympathy for both women. Stella also articulates her own selfishness in several of these scenes, desiring to dance, shop, and be seen among these “right” people, before she realizes the she is not a blessing for Laurel, but a curse.

There’s a turning point in Stella Dallas that may or may not redeem Stella in the eyes of the audience. After Laurel has narrowly avoided an awkward scene with her mother in an ice-cream parlor, the two take a sleeper back to their home. As each of them pretends to sleep, they overhear other passengers talking about Stella’s larger-than-life appearance at the country club they’ve just left. The gossipy biddies agree that Laurel’s boyfriend will never continue their relationship when he’s made aware of Laurel’s lineage, and Stella slowly becomes aware that she’s a detriment to everything she has ever wanted for Laurel.

For the rest of the film, Stella forgets about her own desires and moves heaven and Earth to get Laurel away from her. This is simultaneously the best thing she could do to achieve her goal of propelling Laurel into the upper-class, and depicted as tremendously cruel for Laurel herself—another reason that, even in her glory as a “sacrificial mother,” there can exist a complicated seed of dislike for Stella. Though she eventually succeeds, it’s at the cost of sabotaging her relationship with Laurel forever, and never seeing her again. In the final scenes, we understand Stella’s plan has been both successful and monumentally hurtful for her daughter, who continues to love her mother in spite of Stella’s rough rejection of Laurel and disappearance from her life.

It’s only in the final scene of the film that we are given the green light on Stella, when we’re finally allowed to wholeheartedly admire her for what she’s done. Stella stands outside a fancy private club where Laurel is about to wed her sweetheart, gathered with other urchin-like onlookers, gawking at the beautiful couple just inside a large picture window. She begs a policeman to remain as he shoos these others away; “I just want to see her face when she kisses him,” she pleads. As the vows are solemnized, Stella’s eyes fill with tears, and she performs a signature act that has punctuated Stanwyck’s performance throughout the film—at moments when she is most conflicted, uncomfortable, and troubled, she reaches for her mouth, worrying her fingers, chipping at her front teeth with a fingernail. Here, she twists a handkerchief with her teeth as she looks on, her now much sleeker-looking physique still bursting, this time with pride. We want to applaud and weep at the same time—Stella’s sacrifice is so terrible, its goals so lofty. Finally, we can like her. But only after relinquishing nearly everything that gave her purpose.

Audiences are hard on women like Stella Dallas. Culture’s ideas of motherly perfection, class values, and models of “acceptable” behavior force them into molds they were not meant to fit in. If anything, Stella Dallas points out the most exacting of those ideals in us, the viewer, and criticizes our potential dislike of Stella. The film’s saving grace is that it allows us, and Stella herself, to leave the film not broken, but stronger for the fight.

Rebecca Willoughby holds a Ph.D. in English and Film Studies from Lehigh University. She writes most frequently on horror films and melodrama, and is a Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.

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.

‘Cinderella II’: The Gender Identity Romcom of ‘Some Like It Hot’

Jerry never leads with Joe or Sugar. This suggestion, that the character might be made more assertive and empowered by a female role, effectively challenges the patriarchal concept of femininity as necessarily submissive and disempowering; femininity in ‘Some Like It Hot’ is portrayed as empowering and liberating when it better expresses the individual’s natural impulses and identity.

This is a guest post by Brigit McCone.

Some Like It Hot topped the AFI poll as funniest film of all time, almost always ranking high in similar surveys. It is, beyond doubt, the most popular choice for the greatest cross-dressing farce of all time. While we regularly debate whether political correctness is killing comedy, it is worth remembering that the greatest cross-dressing farce is also the most humanizing (and, rather depressingly, unequaled since 1959). Where most cross-dressing comedies (except possibly those by Alice Guy) rely on the humor of insecure masculinity in a one-joke premise (“it’s funny because they think we’re gay/women, but we’re actually not gay/women, which is embarrassing because being gay/women is inferior”), Some Like It Hot expertly raises these anxieties, but has the courage to interrogate them by exploring the possible attractions of a female role. The film is still among the only cross-dressing comedies to feature a genuine gender identity crisis by a sympathetic protagonist; the human depths that this adds to the flimsy set-up are the key to its comedy. Jack Lemmon’s Daphne/Jerry is not the butt of the joke; Daphne/Jerry is an acid-tongued wit in hir own right and the film casually assumes our maturity to follow hir on hir gender journey, laughing along with its contradictions and pressures.

According to Wilder, he was unsure himself whether the legendary “nobody’s perfect” was strong enough to be the final line of the film. This suggests that Wilder was unaware of the extent to which he had crafted perfect romantic comedy between Daphne/Jerry and Osgood, along the lines of Jane Austen’s genre-defining Pride and Prejudice, which uses romance as a catalyst for confronting the self. Where Tony Curtis’ Joe and Marilyn Monroe’s Sugar Kane have a relatively flimsy romance, begun in lies and concluded with inertia as each reverts to their established type, the romance between Osgood and Daphne/Jerry is the catalyst for a psychosexual crisis as profoundly subversive as it is hilariously expressed. Although Daphne’s relationship with Osgood has been interpreted as a “low comedy flip” of the primary relationship between Curtis’s Joe and Monroe’s Sugar, I suggest that the brilliance of I. A. L. Diamond’s final line is how satisfyingly it flips that interpretation, revealing Daphne’s relationship with Osgood as the major love plot. I have explored how Austen’s template structures the psychological struggles of Fight Club; I’d now like to explore the way that it deepens and illuminates the gender identity struggle at the heart of Some Like It Hot.

Cinderella the Second: The Meet-Cute — *Cinderella the Second*: The Meet-Cute

The classic Pride and Prejudice meet-cute occurs when the judgmental Elizabeth Bennet is herself judgmentally dismissed by Darcy as “not handsome enough to tempt me” – its cuteness lies in the irony of the similarity at the root of the mutual hostility. The meet-cute of Some Like it Hot occurs when Osgood chivalrously leaps to restore Daphne’s lost stiletto, provoking her to comment that she is “Cinderella the Second.” The irony is double: Jerry feels the ironic absurdity of being treated as a princess when he is really a man, yet the character’s story will genuinely serve as a comic twist on the Cinderella archetype. Jerry is the downtrodden servant, constantly bullied by Tony Curtis’ alpha Joe, the wicked stepbro of macho peer pressure; Daphne is the mysterious stranger who captivates the prince. Jerry loses the coat off his back because Joe demands it; Daphne is showered with diamonds. Jerry must watch Joe get all the girls (it is significant that hir attraction to Sugar never makes Daphne/Jerry consider attempting to woo her in male form, as Joe instantly does); Daphne is a sexually irresistible “firecracker.” Daphne is swept off her feet for a night of glamorous dancing, then bullied into becoming Joe’s “Jerry” again in the morning.

The stiletto heels play a significant symbolic role in this transition. When we first see Jerry in drag, he is complaining that he doesn’t understand how women can “walk in these things.” Despite his theoretical attraction to cross-dressing (Jerry suggests cross-dressing for cash even before the pair are forced to flee the mafia, and appears titillated by the idea), he is the one who panics and feels threatened by taking on a female identity – “it’s a whole different sex!” – which for Joe is only a meaningless disguise. Where Daphne wants to choose her own name, Joe apathetically takes the feminine form of his male name. The Cinderella meet-cute with Osgood turns Daphne’s clumsy inability to walk in heels into the beginning of her fairy-tale romance, rather than a betrayal of masculinity. It is therefore a stroke of genius that the mafia recognize Daphne, at the end of the movie, because she’s still wearing her heels even when fleeing in a male disguise. Jerry is not betrayed as “really a man” while attempting to be Daphne; rather, Daphne’s true nature is revealed by her heels as she attempts unsuccessfully to pass as male. Jerry’s transition into accepting Daphne’s heels as second-nature suggests Daphne may likewise accept Osgood’s love, a conclusion as taboo in the 1950s as it was satisfying to leave to the viewer’s imagination. If the shoe fits…

I'm a Boy. I Wish I Were Dead: Protagonist Rejects Love Interest — *I’m a Boy. I Wish I Were Dead*: Protagonist Rejects Love Interest

In Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth’s initial aversion to Darcy’s arrogance is compounded by a series of misunderstandings that peak in her explosive rejection of him in the famous proposal scene. In Some Like It Hot, Daphne’s loudly stated aversion to the “dirty, old man” Osgood is, from the very beginning, comically insufficient to prevent her from repeatedly flirting with him. The climax of their relationship is also a proposal scene: the sweeping of Daphne off her feet in the film’s delirious tango sequence. Daphne can’t stop leading during the dance; that might be seen as a joke reflecting her actual maleness, but it is equally a sign of her growing confidence, spark and fire. Jerry never leads with Joe or Sugar. This suggestion, that the character might be made more assertive and empowered by a female role, effectively challenges the patriarchal concept of femininity as necessarily submissive and disempowering; femininity in Some Like It Hot is portrayed as empowering and liberating when it better expresses the individual’s natural impulses and identity.

After a night of zinging banter, heady admiration and dance, Daphne is seduced and agrees to marry Osgood. In the morning, Joe forces the male role back onto her: “You’re a guy! Why would a guy want to marry a guy?” and Daphne agrees to renounce her plan. It is true that Daphne’s claim to be marrying Osgood for “security!” ironically reflects Joe and Sugar’s relationship, where Sugar believes she is chasing money and Joe believes he is chasing sex. However, rather than simply parodying their shallowness, Daphne’s shining eyes and glee after the tango scene reveal that her own attraction to Osgood is more than mercenary, just as Osgood will later reveal that his attraction to Daphne goes far deeper than a comically blind urge to chase anything in a skirt. The key to Daphne’s decision to reject Osgood’s proposal is the unquestioned assumption that Osgood would reject Jerry if he discovered his true nature; this is the underlying misunderstanding that keeps the lovers apart, forcing Daphne to define her seduction as an impractical dream. Like Cinderella’s ball, it is magical but incompatible with her real self. Where she formerly chanted “I’m a girl! I’m a girl!” to resist her sexual attraction to women, now she must chant “I’m a boy! Boy, oh boy, am I a boy!” before sighing “I wish I were dead” as she renounces her fantasy self. The use of gender identity as romantic obstacle complicates the usual dynamic of love interests rejecting each other. It is more accurate to say that Daphne rejects herself on Osgood’s behalf.

The Omelet's About To Hit the Fan: Fate Intervenes — *The Omelet’s About To Hit the Fan*: Fate Intervenes

The psychological dynamics of acceptance and rejection in Pride and Prejudice are interrupted in the book’s final third by the dramatic elopement of Lydia, which brings relationships to crisis-point and a more dramatic conclusion; at first appearing to separate the lovers, it ultimately unites them. It is at roughly this same point in the plot of Some Like It Hot that the mafia re-enter. The mafia function throughout the film as a device to express transphobic anxieties without confronting them. By providing an urgent motivation for the characters’ cross-dressing, they allow the audience to avoid confronting the issue of any internal motivation. The intense, scrutinizing pressure and threat of violence which the openly transfeminine are subjected to, even today, is expressed through the extreme anxiety of the need to “pass” under mafia scrutiny, but it is not confronted: the characters of Some Like It Hot are never threatened with transphobic violence, only with murder as witnesses to the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre (although it could be regarded as symbolic that the mafia become murderous after flirting with the girls, then stripping Daphne’s curvaceous double bass to reveal her true identity – “there’s your valentine!”). Although the mafia threat appears to be a force that will drive Daphne away from Osgood, her fear of the sinister and shaming “ladies’ morgue” is ultimately the only catalyst strong enough to make her defy society’s conventions and to push her into his arms. Both the mafia and the ladies’ morgue represent exposure anxiety; they also represent an inevitable mortality before which a person’s greatest regrets are usually the things they have left undone.

Nobody's Perfect: Sacrificing The Ego — *Nobody’s Perfect*: Sacrificing The Ego

The final reconciliation of Pride and Prejudice is made possible when Elizabeth Bennet sacrifices her ego to make a humiliating admission of her feelings for Darcy to Lady Catherine de Bourgh. In an even more major sacrifice, Daphne risks murder by mafia as well as humiliation by confessing her true identity to Osgood. After a series of comically escalating confessions, she finally tears away her wig and announces “I’m a man.” Osgood replies, shrugging, “nobody’s perfect.” This might be an easy laugh at Jerry’s awkward entrapment, but we have already seen his glowing eyes after their night of tango. Rather, the line “nobody’s perfect” flips our assumption that we are watching a farcical romantic parody on its head, to become supremely romantic. In a trademark Wilderism, Some Like It Hot reveals cynicism to be a facade for romance rather than the reverse: Joe and Sugar’s “real” goals of sex and money give way to their “pretended” love; Daphne and Osgood’s “real” identities as fraud and womanizer give way to their human connection. A night of chemistry at Cinderella’s ball is as real as the enforced roles of our daytime reality. The oddball coupling of a cross-dresser and a wrinkled millionaire can seem more lovable than the photogenic pairing of Monroe and Curtis. It is the genius of Lemmon’s performance that he is able to make Daphne’s personality more vivid, enticing and three-dimensional than Jerry’s, so that Daphne seems seductively like the true self that Osgood appreciated all along. Finally, a character defined for the entire film by comically escalating discomfort with their own identity meets absolute and unconditional acceptance. Our image of what happens next is a Rorschach test of each viewer’s own assumptions, of their varying levels of ageism, transphobia and romantic cynicism. But in my own interpretation, Cinderella the Second has a ball.

Brigit McCone is a shameless Wilder groupie, writes and directs short films, radio dramas and The Erotic Adventures of Vivica (as Voluptua von Temptitillatrix). Her hobbies include doodling and making weird Pride and Prejudice analogies.

Scarlett and Melanie: The Ultimate BFFs

This guest post by Jennifer Hollie Bowles appears as part of our theme week on Female Friendship.

Gone With the Wind is one of my favorite movies of all time. Of course, it has its social ills, historical flaws, and damn if super-strong Scarlett doesn’t whine over men a lot, but I still love it. The dynamic relationships and subtleties of emotions and interactions captured on film is a classically beautiful adventure to behold. Yeah, so I dig the movie, and I’ve always been a fan of Scarlett, her southern spitfire, and her bold feminist acts.

I’ve seen the movie at least a dozen times. When I first watched it as an adolescent, I remember almost hating Melanie. She was so mealy mouthed and annoying. I was, however, not in tune with the more demure, mature, calm, centered, and otherwise introverted part of myself at the time. Flash forward five years, and I start to see Melanie in a different light. Flash forward a decade, and I love her as much as I do Scarlett.

Scarlett was often a bitch to Melanie, and even though Scarlett was a bitch to everyone unless she wanted something, she was an uber-bitch to Melanie on purpose—most of the time. Until Melanie needed her. Then she was the most helpful bitch in the world. Melanie, on the other hand, was the epitome of kindness and compassion to everyone—most of the time. Until Scarlett needed her. Then she was kindest you-can’t-say-no-to-me bitch in the world.

One of the most intriguing things about the extreme Scarlet-Melanie polarity is that their best and worst traits were ultimately highlighted through their friendship. Together, they show the manifested metaphors of fire and water. Scarlett maintained a world view of passion; Melanie maintained a world view of non-judgment. Every time that Melanie seemed weak and dispassionate, she rose to the occasion to exhibit passion with Scarlett, and every time that Scarlett seemed strong and judgmental, she rose to the occasion to exhibit compassion with Melanie.

Melanie’s character was filled with a rare sort of gratitude that most people utterly lack. She was able to read others and feel gratitude for their existence, no matter how different it was from her own (take her kindness toward the prostitute Belle as a prime example). She mentored everyone around her, and she was continuously counted upon to aid those in need. Melanie also had a very deep love for Scarlett right from the beginning. She revered (and perhaps envied in her own way) Scarlett’s hot-headedness, and she expressed her love for Scarlett throughout the film.

Scarlett, on the other hand, was filled with a rare sort of will power and drive that most people utterly lack. She would forge through any circumstance in order to not only survive, but thrive. She was counted upon to make things work when others failed. Scarlett had a very deep jealousy of Melanie, and she expressed criticism and indignation about Melanie countless times throughout the film. However, while the movie does not expose Scarlett’s unfolding realizations per se, we definitely discover Scarlett appreciating Melanie as the story progresses. Scarlett sees Melanie’s strength in an unforgettable scene where Scarlett kills a “Yankee” intruder. Melanie yells out the window and promptly makes up a lie about the gunshot so the others in the household won’t worry. Scarlett says, “What a cool eye you are, Melly.”

An amazing juxtaposition of their characters occurs later in the film. A couple of gossiping no-gooders find Scarlett and Ashley (Melanie’s husband) hugging. Oddly enough, it is the one scene in which Scarlett is not really being inappropriate with Ashley. Everyone in town knows about the hug, and everyone is bashing Scarlett for her shameful behavior. Rhett coerces Scarlett into wearing a gorgeous, sexy scarlet dress and drops her off all by herself at Melanie’s house for Ashley’s big social birthday party.

Both Rhett and Scarlett expect Melanie to publicly throw Scarlett out of her house for being inappropriate with her husband. Melanie does no such thing. She goes against the suggestions and wishes of everyone in the room and embraces Scarlett, doting on her with a plethora of kind, welcoming statements. She even asks Scarlett to help her receive guests, and then refers to Scarlett in the presence of Ashley as “our Scarlett.” Scarlett is obviously immensely grateful for Melanie’s character, friendship, understanding, and behavior in this scene, and Melanie is obviously driven by her own passionate motives to do what she wants, regardless of what others think—just as Scarlett would.

The implications for Scarlett’s ridiculous pining over Ashley and her friendship with Melanie is a complicated one. On the one hand, it seems as though Scarlett is driven by something she can’t put her finger on when it comes to her obsession with Ashley, and Melanie just happens to be his wife. Yet, if we observe closely, we find that Scarlett is as drawn to Melanie as she is Ashley, and near the end of the film, we see Scarlett identifying the highest ideals of a lost way of life with both of them. She loves and yearns for them both along with her love and yearning for lost southern culture because it is in her nature to want what is difficult, and in this case, impossible to attain.

If we get really psychological, we find that Melanie and Ashley are both representations of everything Scarlett is not. It is easier, however, for Scarlett to outwardly—project and individuate—through Ashley, the shadow male/animus archetype of her psyche, rather than the far too close anima/shadow female archetype of her psyche.

Regardless of how psychological or interpretive you want to get with Scarlett and Melanie’s friendship, it serves as an invaluable example for how women can accept, value, and interact with one another. For example, if a woman dresses more provocatively than you, perhaps, as Melanie stated, she is just more “high-spirited,” and she can’t help that the men just “naturally flock to her.” If a woman needs help during childbirth, nothing else matters but helping her, just as Scarlett helped her “Melly.”

It’s suggested all along that Melanie understood Scarlett, and Scarlett understood Melanie. It’s as if Melanie knew all about Scarlett’s pining for Ashley and the underlying reasons why she felt that way, and Scarlett knew all about Melanie’s knowing acceptance. On her deathbed, Melanie asks to see Scarlett, who is the last person she communicates with before she dies. Scarlett receives Melanie’s last words with respect, holding on to their guiding significance and meanings with deeply rooted trust. The entire dynamic of their relationship just makes sense at that point: their bond was unbreakable.

Jennifer Hollie Bowles is a widely published multi-genre writer, including satire, poetry, op-eds, erotica, horoscope columns, fiction, eco living blogs, how-tos, and beyond. She lives in the Greater Boston area with her amazing husband and their blissed-out pit bull. She enjoys cooking from scratch, teaching creative writing workshops, and providing unique services via www.holisticnook.com.