Tag: Classic Literature Film Adaptations Week

Classic Literature Film Adaptations Week: ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’ by Zora Neale Hurston

Zora Neale Hurston
  

This is a guest post by Martyna Przybysz.

Hurston’s novel has found a huge following not only amongst African-American readers and writers, such as Alice Walker, but ever since being brought into the spotlight back in the 1970s, it has had a growing female readership. It is not an easy novel to get through – the use of local dialects, and the ever changing narrative styles, make it an almost laborious read. As noted by a Black British writer, Zadie Smith, in the introduction to the novel from 2007 “Hurston rejected the ‘neutral universal’ for her novels – she wrote unapologetically in the black-inflected dialect in which she was raised.””Unapologetic” is the key word here – Zora, as the writer, and a woman, went against the grain, just like her character, Janie. That is what makes the novel compelling and draws the reader in. Similarly so, the character potrayed by Halle Berry is driving the film’s narrative.

Janie and Tea Cake
Janie Crawford is a survivor. In the opening scene of the film, just like in the novel, she has just come back from burying the dead – the only love of her life, a light-hearted slacker, Tea Cake. The first sentence signals the narrative that will later dominate the entire movie. It could be argued that film, being a visual medium, has an advantage over the written word in establishing the mood, and here it does so with the jittery camera movements, and extreme close-ups of Janie’s body. “There’s two things everybody got to find out for theyselves, they got to find out about love, and they got to find out about living” she says, as she stumbles through a village path, in nothing but dirty overalls.

Isn’t it a powerful, universal statement? It is indeed; however, as the film progresses, we lose the sense of identity search that is so prevalent in the novel. We are instead invited to a roller-coaster ride that are Halle Berry’s… wait, Janie Crawford’s romantic endeavours. Because yes, as aptly pointed out by one of the reviewers, “she’s Halle Berry – and the movie never lets you forget it.”

Halle Berry as Janie
Perhaps because I got to watch the film prior to reading the novel, it was easier for me to accept Halle’s interpretation of Janie. I couldn’t, however, shake off the feeling that a multilayered novel has been reduced to a Harlequin-esque epic drama. Having Oprah Winfrey summarise the film in the trailer only made that impression stronger. What the film fails to do is adapt the strong visual imagination of the writer that built a much more complex identity for Janie.
Whilst the novel slowly introduces us to Janie, and goes as far back as her childhood, in the film we are immediately transported back to that unlucky afternoon when her Gran spots her kissing a regular farm boy and decides to give her away to a rich land-owner. Logan Killicks is a non-invasive older man, who places Janie in the role of a housewife. It is by his side that she grows into a woman and realizes that her romantic dreams of love may not be fulfilled. It isn’t long, however, until she meets a handsome gentleman called Joe Starks (played by Ruben Santiago-Hudson) and runs away with him. And here again, the search for her own identity as a female seems rather futile. Janie becomes an accessory and feels restricted by her relationship and the social role (being the Mayor’s wife) that she has to fulfill. “I think it keep us in a kinda strain,” she says. She’s just there to stay by her man’s side and should not have any further expectations, as according to Janie’s granmother “de nigger woman is de mule uh de world.” Janie, however, will not rest until she finds happiness in a relationship.
DVD cover
Without fail, Halle Berry conveys her character’s search with utmost sensitivity and attention to detail – it is all in the small gestures that we learn about Janie and her heart’s desires. She wants to feel and love and share that feeling with the world, but most importantly, she adapts this approach to life and the world in order to find her own sacred place in the arms of a caring man. That, for her, is the destination. As a contemporary woman, I find this concept a beautiful one in itself, but not quite liberating, and based on a presumption that a woman cannot be whole without a man. The search for female identity through the romantic love of a man emanates from the character of Janie throughout the film. She loves nature, and she loves God; she’s curious, and open, and somewhat free and wild. Through the camera work and sentimental music, Their Eyes Were Watching God explores that aspect of Janie’s personality, and when oppressed by her second marriage, she confesses to the audience that she is not “petal-open anymore.” What a striking, if slightly sentimental, analogy that brings to mind one of my favourite quotes from Anais Nin: “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”

What the film, as well as the novel, are suggesting is not only that small town mentality is something that Janie has long outgrown, but by building her identity as a female in her own right, she is also going against the stale racial and gender stereotypes that enslave her community. When she finally meets “the love of her life,” Tea Cake (played by Michael Ealy), the passion between the two is undeniable, and so is everyone’s harsh judgment about their romance. But Janie is not a rebel; she simply follows her heart and is not afraid of being herself. Sexuality is an important aspect of her identity as a woman, and she is way ahead of her time with her natural and unconstrained ability to explore it.

However controversial or open-minded its description of sexual scenes was at the time when the novel was published (perhaps less when it was later read and fully acknowledged), Darnell Martin, the director of the TV movie, has made the scenes almost poetically erotic. The main sex scene between Halle and Michael brings us to a finale of the passion that has been building up between their protagonists – Janie looks and acts twenty years younger, just like a woman who has found herself by finding love in another. “I felt for the very first time like I was living my life – I had love, and it was real. Tea Cake gave me the whole world, every day.” That concludes Janie’s search for love, as well as her search for identity.

Although I find it thin and slow in places, I struggle to dislike Darnell Martin’s adaptation of Hurston’s novel. After all, it manages to carry a powerful message, despite it not being in favour of the current feminist perception of gender roles and female identity. Yet remembering that it is set in the early 20th century reality of African-Americans, one has to admit that it does a fair job at depicting a woman who goes beyond her time. Even if it does so not without pretense, and in a more simplistic way than Hurston’s beautiful novel.

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Martyna Przybysz is a Pole who resides in London, UK. She works in film production. This is her blog: http://martynaprzybysz.tumblr.com.

Classic Literature Film Adaptations Week: Titus the Tight-Ass: Julie Taymor’s Depictions of the Virgin and Whore

Written by Amanda Rodriguez

Trigger warning: frank discussion of rape & PTSD

Julie Taymor’s Titus (based on Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus) is a highly stylized production, involving elaborate costumes, body markings, choreography, era prop mash-ups, and extravagant violence. I tip my hat to Taymor for the scope and splendor of her vision, and I also applaud her for paving the way for other talented female directors in Hollywood. Though Taymor updates much of the Shakespeare play (using cars, guns, and pool tables alongside swords, Roman robes, and Shakespearean language), Taymor does little to re-interpret the female roles in an effort to make them more progressive and complex. 

The only two women of note in the film are the captured Goth queen turned Roman empress, Tamora, portrayed by Jessica Lange and Lavinia, the gang-raped and dismembered virgin daughter of Titus, played by Laura Fraser.

First, there’s Tamora, the barbaric queen of excess and unnatural sexual appetites.

Tamora: all-around orgy party gal
In college, I wrote a psychoanalytic paper on her called, “The Earth and Tamora: The Cannibalistic Vagina in Titus Andronicus (Or Chomp, Chomp: The Little Vagina that Could)”. Though it was a lot of fun to write, it focused on the unhappy subject of the demonizing of the Goth queen for her sexuality. Neither the play nor the film seem particularly concerned with sympathetically portraying a woman who’s lost her country, her eldest son, and been forced to marry the odious emperor who conquered and colonized her land and people. Instead, Tamora is exoticized and condemned as a bad mother who uses her boundless sexuality as her power. She uses this power to seduce the emperor, which opens the door for her to inflict her revenge on the Andronici.
Tamora is the unnatural mother with unnatural appetites, which is literalized at the climax of the film when Titus feeds her a meat pie filled with her murdered sons. Taymor shows Tamora’s relationship with her two surviving sons as bizarre and borderline incestuous. Her sons are wild, over-indulged, and psychotic. We see them knife fight each other all around the palace, bickering over which one of them will get to rape the virginal Lavinia. Tamora caresses and shares lingering kisses with them. Not only that, but she lounges in bed naked with them. Her sexuality is so gross and excess that it spills over onto her sons, which Taymor implies warps them into narcissistic mama’s boys who go around raping and dismembering girls for funsies.
This would be an awkward scene to walk in on.

Tamora lacks an appropriate maternal instinct. She’s either too overbearing and clingy with her children, which reveals itself in her sexual attitude toward them, or she is a cold and immoral figure as is evinced by her desire to murder the infant son born from her affair with Aaron the Moor. (Even her relationship with Aaron, her black lover, is meant to be another example of her unnatural appetites, which is hella racist and could be the topic of a whole other post.) Lavinia pleads for Tamora to just kill her without letting her sons rape her, but Tamora is unmoved. This is another lost opportunity to show Tamora as having complex, compassionate, or even conflicted feelings at the sight of another woman begging for mercy in a mirror image of Tamora kneeling at Titus’ feet, weeping that he spare her son. Lavinia says to the sons, “The milk thou suck’dst from her did turn to marble,” and, at that point, the audience is inclined to agree, especially since Tamora is apparently so turned on by all this raping and murdering that she declares she’s going to find Aaron and have sex with him. 

Then there’s Lavinia, the dutiful, virgin daughter.
Lavinia: post-rape with her arms cut off then stuffed with branches and her tongue cut out
Taymor hammers home Lavinia’s obedience by showing her meekly, willingly switching her betrothal from one brother (Bassianus) to the other (Saturninus) upon Titus’ instruction. This is another missed opportunity to complicate the personhood of a woman who is not treated as human, who is always depicted as a piece of her father’s property and a reflection of his honor.

Lavinia is raped, her arms hacked off then cruelly stuffed full of tree branches and her tongue cut out so that she can’t name her assailants. There is so much that a director could do to articulate the inhuman atrocity that’s been inflicted upon Lavinia. It is the epitome of victim silencing, literalizing the struggle many survivors face after their attack. Unfortunately, Taymor renders the rape of Lavinia in the same lavish, stylized manner as everything else. When Lavinia sees her attackers for the first time after her rape, Taymor uses an abstract hallucination sequence to symbolize the rape. Lavinia is wearing a deer head atop her own as two tigers leap towards her from either side.

W…T…F

The sequence is bizarre, trippy, and kind of pretty, but it in no way expresses the horror of rape (not to mention the unimaginable horror of being dismembered). With all the stylizing and symbolizing Taymor’s doing, Lavinia’s rape is effectively trivialized.

When Titus first sees Lavinia after the attack, he says, “My grief was at the height before thou camest,
And now like Nilus, it disdaineth bounds.” Her father monologues about how her attack hurts him.  Even Lavinia’s grief and her rape are not her own because Titus egotistically can only fathom his own pain, pride, and outrage. Throughout this scene and the rest of the film, Lavinia is a background adornment. As Titus bemoans his plight, Lavinia stands there without emoting or interrupting. The camera only shows her as meek and solemn. The only exception is a strange scene in which she is given a long stick in order to write the names of her attackers in the sand. Lavinia moves to put the tip of the stick in her mouth, and the audience recoils at the image that echoes fellatio (nobody wants to see a rape survivor performing simulated fellatio). Instead of putting the stick in her mouth, though, Lavinia frantically carves out the names as she is accompanied by discordant music. Instead of documenting her reaction to writing out the names (relieved? angry? exhausted?), the names themselves are focused on in an overhead shot, once again removing Lavinia’s agency and subjectivity.

Lavinia’s life and her death are both symbols. Her life is symbolic of her father’s honor, and after she’s raped, her lost chastity (puke) is symbolic of his shame. Her chastity, Titus insists, is more precious than her hands or tongue (projectile puke). In his mind, Titus must kill her in order to alleviate his own shame. Even Lavinia’s death at her father’s hands is meek and willing. The logic is that she’s so shamed, so “martyred” that death is preferable. It’s true that survivors may go through a host of emotions following their attack, and thoughts of suicide are not uncommon. Lavinia behaves as a doll, though, being positioned placidly for Titus to snap her neck. One could even defend her lack of emotions as PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), but I contest that Lavinia doesn’t have any real emotions because Taymor gave her very little depth of character, and Lavinia’s docile nature is more for convenience that to articulate the range of responses a survivor might have.

What’s the saying? “Like a lamb to the slaughter.”

 Tamora and Lavinia fit solidly into opposite camps of the virgin/whore dichotomy. Tamora = whore. Lavinia = virgin. The beauty of working from a play as source material is that a director has such incredible freedom to interpret character and setting appearance as well as character tone of voice, emotions, and actions. Though Taymor’s reboot is flashy and gritty, it doesn’t do much work to creatively re-imagine the inner life of its characters. In fact, it doesn’t appear to give much inner life to its female characters at all. In Taymor’s defense, the Shakespearean play does cast its women as virgin and whore, not allowing for much in the way of range. I just can’t accept a contemporary filmmaker (especially a woman) so cavalierly putting her only female characters in the same box as a 16th century white man, a box out of which women still struggle to climb today.

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Classic Literature Film Adaptations Week: A Love Letter to ‘Anne of Green Gables’

Megan Follows as Anne Shirley in Anne of Green Gables (1985)
I’ve admired strong, intelligent and assertive women and girls for as long as I can remember.
When I was 3 years old, I danced to my mom’s Tina Turner albums while donning my Wonder Woman Underoos or my Princess Leia gown. I proudly asserted my female identity – even changing my name to “Girl” when I was a toddler. But my favorite pastime by far? Reading. Books transported me to another world, spiriting me away from my painful childhood. I was especially drawn to strong female protagonists: Karana in Island of the Blue Dolphins, Miyax in Julie of the Wolves, Jo March in Little Women, Meg Murray in A Wrinkle in Time, and of course Anne Shirley in Anne of Green Gables.
Anne of Green Gables was my favorite book growing up. Featuring one of my literary idols, Anne Shirley is a 13-year-old orphan sent to live with Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert on a farm on Prince Edward Island, Canada in the early 1900s. When I watch the 1985 mini-series based on Lucy Maud Montgomery’s beloved series, I relive that childhood love all over again. I usually prefer books to their film adaptations. But in this case, both versions complement each other perfectly. Megan Follows embodies Anne, capturing her feisty, intelligent, sensitive, compassionate and defiant personality.

I saw so much of myself in Anne. A loquacious and opinionated chatterbox, she talked too much which often got her into trouble. She devoured books, acting out her favorite scenes. She excelled at school and strived to be the top in her class. Stubborn and bold, Anne is a drama-queen – sometimes describing her situation as “the depths of despair” – with romantic dreams, a vivid imagination, quick temper and an insatiable curiosity.

Forever quirky, she asked to be called “Cordelia” and insisted people write her name with an “e,” as she swore her name without that crucial letter was just too plain. She loathed people making fun of her red hair, letting her fiery fury flare when she slammed a slate board over Gilbert Blythe’s head after he calls her “carrots”and pulls on her pigtails. (Hey, keep your hands to yourself Gilbert).

Anne is also vain. She’s obsessed with appearances, wearing fashionable puffy sleeves and laments the curse of her crimson mane, which she accidentally turns green after attempting to dye it raven black. She doesn’t grow out of her beauty obsession. Rather her hair eventually darkens to an “appealing” auburn and people begin to remark on her attractiveness.

Now Anne’s beauty obsession would seem to detract from her feminism. While this is annoying, I liked that she wasn’t a paragon of perfection. Also, while I’m not sure this was the intent, it seems as if the film and book are commenting on the toxicity of beauty culture. Despite Anne’s proclamations that she would “rather be pretty than smart,” Anne’s intellect, creativity, kindness and loyalty are what win people over. Her relationships and her aspirations are what bring her joy. Not her appearance.

Female relationships are highlighted in Anne of Green Gables, which is great to see in our male-centric media. Anne anoints the amicable Diana Barry her kindred spirit and “bosom” friend. The two female friends nurture and support one another. When Anne is about to recite a poem in public, Diana tells her, “You’ve never failed at anything, Anne Shirley.”

We witness an interesting display of gender with Anne’s guardians, Marilla and Mathew Cuthbert. Matthew was kind, gentle and nurturing while Marilla was strong, disciplined and stern – reversing stereotypical gender roles.

Boys often seem to be revered in media and culture. But Anne of Green Gables challenges that notion. The brother and sister wanted to adopt a boy who would help them on the farm. Instead they got Anne, a boisterous girl. Anne tells Matthew, “If I’d been the boy you sent for, I could have spared you in so many ways.” But he replies, “I never wanted a boy. I only wanted you from the first day. Don’t ever change. I love my little girl. I’m so proud of my little girl.” When Matthew says to Marilla it was “lucky mistake” they got Anne, Marilla replies, “It wasn’t luck; it was Providence. He knew we needed her.” My favorite author Margaret Atwood points out that it’s not Anne but Marilla who goes through the greatest transformation. Anne teaches her how to not only love but how to express love. A boy didn’t save them; a girl did.

While we merely see a blossoming friendship, Anne’s eventual romance with Gilbert Blythe in the following film (and books) Anne of Avonlea, is still my ideal to this day. Despite being written over 100 years ago, it’s still refreshing to see an egalitarian partnership. Gilbert is Anne’s intellectual and emotional equal. He supports, nurtures and challenges her, pushing her to be her best. How could a feminist not search for her own Gilbert Blythe?

Dedicated to her career, Anne relentlessly advances her education with the goal of becoming a teacher. Always independent, she wants to forge her own path and pursue her dreams. She also hopes to fall passionately in love. Yet her aspirations, career, family and female friendships matter equally.

While the word “feminist” is never uttered (or written) in Anne of Green Gables, I have no doubt in my mind that Anne is a feminist, albeit “a stealth feminist.” As Chloe Angyal so eloquently writes:

“On the surface, she adheres to all the requirements of turn early twentieth century Canadian womanhood. She’s domestic, as is expected. She’s feminine and elegant, as is expected. She’s polite and courteous, as is expected, except for those occasions on which her temper gets the better of her. But underneath all that, she’s quite a rebellious young woman. She’s determined to be as educated as she possibly can – as educated as a woman was permitted to be in those days. Anne is an opinionated young lady, and she isn’t afraid to voice her opinions out loud when so many of her girl friends defer to men and to tradition.”

But as Angyal points out, Anne is also “a model for those of us who work for social justice.” Anne struggled through her early childhood, living with a cruel family until she’s 13. Never knowing love at all, she recites, “My life is a perfect graveyard of buried hopes.” Yet despite her pain and loneliness – or perhaps because of it – she seeks to make the world a better place:

“Anne is capable of turning pain into beauty, and injustice into love. She is able to imagine a better world. More than that, she views it as her duty and her delight to create that better world, through teaching and learning or even, simple though it might sound, through treating people with kindness and empathy and love.”

Children need role models. But girls especially need strong female role models because of the inundation of sexist and misogynistic media. Children’s (and adults’) movies and TV shows too often suffer from the Smurfette Principle, revolving around boys. In our pink sea of princess culture saturating girlhood, it’s refreshing to watch and read a bold, intelligent and unique – and feminist – character like Anne.

Even though I wasn’t an orphan, I related to Anne. With my tumultuous childhood – my parents’ divorce, moving in with my grandparents and my mother struggling with mental illness – I was a lonely and opinionated only child, never feeling like I belonged, never feeling loved. I desperately yearned to find my place in the world, just as Anne did. It was comforting to see, even if only on-screen and in the pages of a novel, that I wasn’t alone after all. I had a kindred spirit in Anne.

Classic Literature Film Adaptations Week: Hellraisers in Hoop Skirts: Gillian Armstrong’s Proudly Feminist ‘Little Women’

This is a guest post by Jessica Freeman-Slade.

When I think of the inspiring women in the books I read as a kid, I don’t think of the girls my age like Ramona Quimby or Harriet Welsh. No, when I was 10 years old, I wanted, more than anything, to be Josephine “Jo” March, the central character in Louisa May Alcott’s extraordinary 1868 novel, Little Women. While some little girls would bristle at the hoop skirts and Civil War hardship and use of such offensive curses as “Christopher Columbus!” I adored it…in part because I saw the March girls as out of their time, rambunctious, admirable, and most clearly modern. There have been many film adaptations of Alcott’s story, but in Gillian Armstrong’s 1994 version, you feel the modernity first and foremost, as the brilliant screenplay and even more brilliant performances of Winona Ryder, Susan Sarandon, and the other girls show you what you’ve always suspected: that Little Women is a full-on feminist narrative.
March girls in bed
True, sometimes Little Women looks like “chick lit”—and certainly if it were published today, its cover would telegraph it as such, in curlicue text, pink background, and lacy border. But it was a truly subversive thing to have a female-centric novel in the late 1800s: a book in which the first half is without a wedding, where women talk to each other without needing a man to talk about, and where women rail against the limitations set upon them. Little Women was an extraordinary achievement and a commercial success, and it made Louisa May Alcott a literary icon equal to Jane Austen (who wrote about the rocky road to successful marriages) and the Bronte sisters (who wrote about the tragic consequences of failed romance). If you really want to hate on the “chick lit” classification of Little Women, just remember: before you could be a Hannah/Marnie/Jessa/Shoshanna, or even a Carrie/Miranda/Samantha/Charlotte, you had the much richer pantheon of Jo, Amy, Meg, and Beth to choose from. 
Winona Ryder as Jo
These young women talk openly about money, politics, education, love, and above all, the expectations set upon them. Jo (Ryder) drives the movie, narrates and controls its pace, and she gives the perfect period performance by a contemporary actress—in part because she doesn’t hide just how modern and unnatural she is in the heavy skirts she’s obligated to wear. She seems genuinely uncomfortable, just as Jo would be, slouching, hunching, galumphing about, talking with her mouth full, stomping her feet in the snow. Jo has bigger ambitions than to be pretty or charming: she has a bright mind, a passion for writing, and a dream of sharing her stories with the world. Ryder’s passion, the gusto with which she delivers every line, sings out, and makes this one of her best performances. 
Laurie (Christian Bale) and Jo
Jo’s impulse, in every situation, is to express her true opinions, which makes it difficult for her to imagine conventional love with any kind of traditional man. Her friendship with Theodore “Laurie” Laurence (a smoking hot Christian Bale), the rich boy next door, is grounded in an appreciation of each other’s good humor, intelligence, and kindness. When Laurie and Jo first meet, sparks fly not from physical attraction, but a heady, hilarious exchange of wits. Their relationship is rooted in mutual respect, and a mutual desire to cast off societal expectations for proper behavior. (No coincidence that they both go by nicknames.) Neither of them fit a mold, and so they fit perfectly together. “If only I were the swooning type,” jokes Jo after a night at the theater. “If only I were the catching type,” Laurie retorts playfully. When Jo insists the girls include Laurie in their theatrical enterprises, he’s only allowed to do so by volunteering a means of communication—a mailbox stationed between their two houses, to encourage “the baring of our souls, and the telling of our most appalling secrets.” Because the girls hold the power, they are the ones who decide whether Laurie can be trusted. They are the rulers of their own government, and so, Jo narrates, “And so Laurie was admitted as an equal into our society, and we March girls could enjoy the daily novelty of having a brother of our very own.”

But Laurie, however sibling-like, never gets a relationship as intense as that between the sisters: the girls are fiercely loyal to each other and collaborative in bringing life, culture, and comforts to their home. They write plays and newspapers, sing songs, and rally in times of great poverty and conflict. The first half of the film, focused on their childhood years during the War, brings each girl’s dreams and frustrations into focus, and establishes the characteristics that will follow them into adulthood. 
Claire Danes as Beth
A 14-year-old Claire Danes, perfectly suited to her role as a less moody Angela Chase dressed up in gingham, plays Beth. During a recent viewing, I found myself muttering, “Ugh, Beth sucks,” a reaction provoked by her demure, stick-in-the-mud, Mary Bennett-like status. But Beth is daunted by the prospect of having to grow up—and so, she never truly does, remaining housebound by a childhood illness. “I never saw myself as anything much,” Beth says, soft-spoken and sweet even on her deathbed. “Why does everyone want to go away? I love being home.” (Beth’s death scene, a tearjerker by any standard, is especially poignant when you realize that, though Beth’s adventures had a smaller sphere, they were no less wonderful to her.) 
Kirsten Dunst as Amy
The youngest March sister, Amy (played, in the first half, by a wonderfully petulant 12-year-old Kirsten Dunst) is constantly looking ahead, making proud declarations about how she plans to reshape her nose and marry someone “disgustingly rich.” “We’ll all grow up someday,” Amy says, “We might as well know what we want.” Amy’s vanity and flightiness are often, but Dunst brings a tender longing to her growing pains, giving real weight to the scene where she reveals that her schoolteacher beat her for trading limes at recess. When Amy tells her family “Mr. Davis said it was as useful to educate a woman as to educate a female cat,” they unite against him. Amy may be frivolous at times, but she has the same sense of outrage as her sisters.
But these girls are not always lovely in dealing with their problems: they get to have real conflicts, fully violent confrontations, and true arguments. No moment is more frightening than that of Amy’s revenge on Jo after a night out, an attack so specifically crafted that it could only result in a dramatic fight. “Your young ladies are unusually active,” says Mr. Brooke to Marmee (Sarandon), and she smiles coyly in response. These girls are unconventionally free, far from the “gentling influence” that others expect them to be—for better or for worse.
What drives the film, and what shows its strengths as a female-directed, written-, and produced endeavor, is addressing the complexities of female life even as the film pivots into the March girls’ adult lives. The oldest March sister, Meg (Trini Alvarado) chooses love over fortune when she marries Laurie’s former tutor, John Brooke (Eric Stoltz). Amy (now played by Samantha Mathis, far less feisty in adulthood) travels with Aunt March (Mary Wickes) to France, where she develops her talents as an artist and reassesses her ideas of romantic love. And Jo, when confronted with an unexpected proposal from Laurie, surprises even herself when she declines his offer—not because she doesn’t love him, but because she cannot envision herself as a wife.

Laurie’s proposal is full of admiration for Jo’s specific virtues (“I swear I’ll be a saint,” he pleads. “I’ll let you win every argument”), but Jo cannot see her dearest friend as any kind of conventional beau. Frustrated with herself, with her inability to change and become a traditional woman, Jo breaks down in tears, but soon charges forward on a challenge from Marmee: “Go and embrace your liberty, and see what wonderful things come of it.” The movie shifts to focus squarely on Jo on her own in New York, pursuing any chance to set her writing free, and to find someone who will love her as she is. 
Jo and Bhaer (Gabriel Byrne)
While shopping her writing to disdainful publishers, she meets Friedrich Bhaer (Gabriel Byrne), a professor who bonds with her first by intellect (they exchange lines of Goethe and Walt Whitman) and then by love. Bhaer encourages her to speak her mind, to take and defend her political stances, and to be bold in her writing and in her life. Jo is pushed to go far beyond her fantastical thrillers and to uncover something she truly wants to talk about, to deepen and shape her childhood fancies into real art. Jo finds herself able to love only when she can be loved for herself as she is. “Jo…” Bhaer says, tenderly embracing her at the film’s close. “Such a little name for such a person.” 
Meg played by Trini Alvarado
You can see Jo’s journey as the heart of Little Women, and that’s fine. But my admiration for Armstrong’s film truly crystallized when you look at how the movie treats Meg March. Though she possesses great compassion and intelligence, Meg is constantly appraised as a beautiful, eligible young woman ready for a proper beau. Her conflicts with Jo primarily arise over how much she should follow other girls’ examples in proper behavior at parties and balls, and the constant refrain from her Aunt March is that the “one hope for [the] family is for [Meg] to marry well.” However, Meg constantly questions how she’ll negotiate the world when she will always be seen as a pretty girl, whether she must play the part at every turn or strike out on her own. But there is a reason that you have Marmee played by the actress formerly known as Louise Sawyer: in her response to Meg’s questions, Marmee’s message about a woman’s place becomes not just bold, but revolutionary.
Marmee: Nothing provokes speculation more than the sight of a woman enjoying herself.

Meg: Why is it Laurie may do as he likes, and flirt and tipple champagne…

Marmee: … And no one thinks the less of him? Well, I suppose, for one practical reason: Laurie is a man. And as such, he may vote and hold property and pursue any profession he pleases. And so he is not so easily demeaned.

Meg: […] it’s nice to be praised and admired; I couldn’t help but like it.

Marmee: Of course not. I only care what you think of yourself. If you feel your value lies in being merely decorative, I fear that someday you might find yourself believing that that’s all you really are. Time erodes all such beauty—but what it cannot diminish is the wonderful workings of your mind. Your humor, your kindness, and your moral courage—these are the things I cherish so in you…. I so wish I could give my girls a more just world.

In this brief scene, Little Women’s focus shifts from being a story about a cozy band of sisters to an examination of where women have been, and where they might take themselves. Marmee says the world is unjust, but that the girls will strive to set it right, and in pursuing love and art in each of their lives, the March sisters manage to redefine, on every level, what kind of stories women might tell.

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Jessica Freeman-Slade is a cookbook editor at Random House, and has written reviews for The Rumpus, The Millions, The TK Review, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and Specter Magazine, among others. She lives in Morningside Heights, NY.

Classic Literature Film Adaptations Week: "John Would Think It Absurd": How ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ Fails in Translation to the Screen

“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

This is a guest post by Marcia Herring. 

“The Yellow Wallpaper” – the short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman – is almost universally recognized as a work of feminist horror. The nameless narrator, put on bed rest by her doctor husband, and perhaps suffering from post-partum depression, seeks release in the written word and eventually comes to believe that something is lying hidden behind the gaudy yellow wallpaper of her room. Fine fodder for a horror film, if you ask me. The tenuous line between a “true” haunting and the psyche of a woman treated less than human is a theme often explored within the horror genre, often pointing shakily toward the frailty of women lending to their traumatic supernatural experiences. It might have been nice to see an adaptation of “The Yellow Wallpaper” that addressed those themes and countered with themes of its own, offering that same supernatural phenomena as an escape or perhaps a savior from a traumatic real life. Unfortunately, 2011’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” co-written and directed by Logan Thomas, is not that film.
The film begins by introducing us to the three leads: John, his wife Charlotte (a nod, certainly, to Charlotte Perkins Gilman), and her sister Jennifer. They are moving to a new town after a fire took their house and young daughter Sara. This move comes prompted by an odd gentleman who seems to have sought them out as particular inhabitants: the house comes pre-furnished, and the 1900s realtor asks for nothing more than one month of rent to secure the property. The situation, while convenient (all too convenient, we horror veterans assume), is still less than ideal. All of the family’s money was lost in the fire, so John attempts to find work in town. Meanwhile, Charlotte turns to a strange room in the attic for inspiration while working on a short story. Then supernatural aspects begin to come into play.
When it seems like the presence of their daughter has followed them into this new lodging, Charlotte is comforted, and John increasingly and illogically distressed. (Perhaps, I guess, he is reacting to scenes that missed the final cut of the film.) Jennifer brings a medium friend to help attempt to figure out what is going on at the house, but whatever haunts the walls isn’t going to play nice. [Watch the trailer here.]
To call “The Yellow Wallpaper” an adaptation of the Gilman short story is a harsh overstatement – Director Thomas and co-writer (and star!) Aric Cushing have created a film that unfortunately both relies on the viewer’s familiarity with Gilman’s short story and sets itself up for failure because of its complete disregard for anything included in said story. Unless a viewer has read Gilman’s “Wallpaper,” they won’t understand the strange, wordless scenes in the wallpapered attic room (a room that isn’t given any other context), or the one or two throwaway lines from the story. And if indeed the viewer is familiar with the “source material,” Thomas’s “Wallpaper” will come off as something so bizarrely ignorant of its source text that viewing will be negatively affected.

 To look at the poster, one might guess that “Wallpaper” is a film about evil sisters! Perhaps rising up against poor, poor John.

That isn’t to suggest that “Wallpaper” might be a good film without the literary allusions. Far from it. “The Yellow Wallpaper” is muddied with grit and fog and overbearing crashes and bangs of director-composed score. By the time we start to sense where the story might be going, Thomas throws in a twist (or four) that are so far from rational that I actually spent time pausing the film to wonder if I had missed something in a previous scene or if I had mistakenly begun watching another film. “The Yellow Wallpaper” has it all: sloppy editing, a few attempts at CGI and a half-baked mythology all crammed into the last half-hour of the film. Ending with a predictable and expected wink-wink-nudge-nudge scene, the film rolled into the credits while I scratched my head and wondered what, exactly, I had just watched. Anything that might hint at the ending, or any real horror, is left off screen and only referenced as an addendum – not as premonition.
Even as straight horror without any implications of living up to an established narrative, “Wallpaper” plays against some traditional horror conventions – and not in a good way. The traditional horror female experiences the paranormal with a kind of jouissance in direct opposition to the linear/logical “male” perspective that does not allow for any presentation of reality beyond the norm. The story that seems to be building in Thomas’s “Wallpaper” is one of haunting, a missing presence (I say “seems” because [SPOILER: one of the final twists explains that everything is really about vampires].) Charlotte believes the spirit is a benevolent one, somehow connected to her daughter. She takes comfort in this, and she should.
But John, burdened not only with maintaining the household through means both monetary and sane, all without the moral support of his peers that Charlotte, as a woman, is afforded, but also with the fear that can come only from one so logical coming to understand that supernatural events, while completely illogical pass the “seeing is believing” litmus test. He perpetuates the same patriarchy he falls victim to. Perhaps, if he lived in a society where men were permitted – encouraged, even – to take advantage of the homosocial bond in times of grief and confusion, John would not fall so heavily into that linear/logical “male” role that is eventually his downfall.

Charlotte and the titular wallpaper. Only in this story, it has no relevance to the plot.
The film (and the path chosen by directors) reminded me of 2006’s adaptation of Wide Sargasso Sea. This adaptation of Jean Rhys’s classic novel (a feminist look at the Madwoman in the Attic of Jane Eyre) is also written and directed by men, redesigned to star a man, and sympathetic to the male’s plight at the expense of the original female protagonist. Both films go out of their way, in sympathizing with the linear/logical world of the male, to distance themselves from any logic or sympathy to be found in jouissance or explanations that are not predisposed.
One of the many lessons here is that literature, like history, has become another commodity in which the male perspective and experience is privileged. In case it was left to doubt, I do not recommend “The Yellow Wallpaper;” in fact, the scariest thing about Thomas’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” is that two men apparently read Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story and thought: “But what about the husband? What about the men?”

———-

Marcia Herring is a recently relocated writer from Missouri. She is still working on her graduate degree, working in retail, and writing freelance for ThoseTwoGuysOnline.com (one of the guys is her brother) and Lesbrary. She spends most of her free time watching television and movies. She wrote an analysis of Degrassi, Teens and Rape Apologism, contributed a review of X-Men First Class, and reviewed V/H/S, Atonement and Imagine Me & You for Bitch Flicks.

Classic Literature Film Adaptations Week: A New Jane in Cary Fukunaga’s ‘Jane Eyre’ (2011)

Movie poster for Jane Eyre (2011)
This is a guest post by Rhea Daniel.

The ghosts of Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë have suffered several film adaptations of their most famous works, and the problem with multiple film adaptations of the same novel, however well-meaning or loyal to the text, is that watching three versions of the same story before reading the book can numb one out to the brilliance of the original. I’ve seen this scene before, I’ve heard this dialogue before, I’ve had enough of this famous line because I got to see the three versions of Pride and Prejudice before I hit fifteen. Thankfully, Jane Eyre falls way below Pride and Prejudice in the best 100 books list, so its adaptations didn’t have as much reach or appeal of the latter. I did get to read articles and see films on the Brontës though and they were terribly interesting and creative people, their suffering contributing to the achey longing that filled their books. Lowood School with its pitiful conditions, for one, took its characteristics from the school where the writer lost two of her elder sisters.

The film uses a nonlinear timeline, choosing to begin with Jane’s long trek through the moors after she runs away from Thornfield Hall, her past played out as she is questioned by St. John, making her trudge down the unhappy path of memories again. This actually makes the film more interesting and we need that, because the story of a governess falling in love with her (much older) employer is one overdone in romance novels.

Mia Wasikowska awed us as Alice by blooming from an anxious young girl running away from an undesired proposal into a sword-wielding Jabberwock-killer. As Jane Eyre, she manages to convey the character of the (on the surface) insipid and sexless governess quite well. Blanche Ingram‘s blatant disrespect for her only reinforces the image of the dry governess, but the audience already knows that the deeply passionate Jane is more than that. As for Rochester, Brontë describes him as such: 

I traced the general points of middle height, and considerable breadth of chest. He had a dark face, with stern features, and a heavy brow; his eyes and gathered eyebrows looked ireful and thwarted just now; he was past youth, but had not reached middle age; perhaps he might be thirty-five.

As Byronic dudes go, Michael Fassbender is close with the stern features and heavy brow, but who are we kidding, both the stars have painfully good looks. Mia’s trademark furrowed brow only makes her more appealing. Michael Fassbender makes a great Byronic dude with his wrinkles. The match seems perfect. In fact the entire movie is terribly perfect; it lacked the rawness of the book, and that’s the only thing I could find wrong with it.

In the beginning, Adèle tells Jane the story of the vampire-woman haunting Thornfield hall, with Adèle’s doll pressed up against the window of a dollhouse in the background.

Jane Eyre (2011) screenshot
The doll represents the watchful presence of Bertha, not revealed as yet, keeping a close eye on the occupants of Thornfield Hall, whenever she manages to escape her prison at least.

Rochester assumes Jane is a bit of a weirdo after seeing her fanciful paintings, telling her as much. Her response, implying that she’s even weirder than he thinks, arouses his curiosity. Her gaze is direct, she is not cowed by him, she possibly hates his (initially) overbearing nature because she’s had her fill of men like him. In their second conversation he reaches out to her almost desperately, bringing his hidden vulnerabilities to light. He finds a kindred spirit in Jane and the inexperienced Jane is moved. We can tell because when she first arrives at Thornfield hall, she curiously glances at a nude painting and after her second conversation with Rochester, she dares examine it more closely. Jane is a decent artist; but for the prudery of the times, she would be practicing human anatomy, but she can’t of course. And considering the reactions to the presence of the painting in the film even in this day and age, one can have plenty of reasons to imagine why*. There’s is more to this painting: Jane’s latent sexuality is aroused, and the presence of the painting is a way of showing a fleshly desire for Rochester. I know this is obvious, but being an artist myself I tend to disagree about equating the two.

The kissing scene in the movie plays itself out exactly as I imagined in the book. Immersed as I was in the tale my reaction was in keeping with the times: what a little strumpet. She’s so enamored by the kiss that she barely notices Mrs. Fairfax’s horror, beaming happily from ear to ear before running off to her room. The insipid governess blooms; she is not so sexless after all. Suddenly she’s a biological creature, and it’s almost vulgar for the audience.

This is just a weak moment for Jane. She is stronger than Rochester. Rochester makes two wrong choices and pays dearly for them. He’s taken in by a profitable, loveless marriage. He falls for a woman’s charms before he is betrayed but he adopts her daughter; both choices stretch his misery yet Rochester is a man with a conscience. Jane has no money or physical charms to speak of, and he finds that simplicity “becoming.” He thinks she won’t cause him any problems. He doesn’t however, speak a word in the defense of Jane after Blanche’s acidic remarks about her profession. Is he spineless and afraid to mess up his courtship with Blanche, or is he trying to make Jane jealous? Would it be patronizing and tiresomely chivalrous of him to speak out on Jane’s behalf? Would Jane be insulted if he shushed Blanche and came to her rescue? We don’t get to see that resolved; all we have to settle for is his rejection of Blanche.

After Bertha’s presence is revealed, Jane refuses to go through with the illicit marriage. There is more for Jane to fear than loneliness with this decision. In Lowood school, there was one thing that kept her passions in check: physical chastisement. Later when Rochester begs her to stay, she is faced with her physical vulnerability again when he says “I could bend you with my finger and my thumb! A mere reed you feel in my hands.” Jane keeps her individualism intact at yet another level in spite of the memory and trauma of past physical violence. If she had said yes she would have to live with the specter of the first wife lurking in the background for the rest of Bertha’s life. As an unloved child, she is not lured into the comforts of heart and hearth, compromising the laws of societal convention that Rochester, who obviously has been burned by both love and marriage, is willing to put aside. Though Rochester’s revulsion for all manmade laws is understandable and his story worthy of pity, she does not hitch her fate to his, and for the abandoned child not to lunge at such an offer is surprising, for why should Jane worry about societal convention? In the book, it’s because it’s ethically wrong. In the movie it is because she must respect herself (thank you Cary, Moira). In spite of being confronted with the fear of loneliness once again, accentuated by her cold and the endless trek through the moors, Jane manages to make a decision well-balanced by intellect and intuition. She does it once again, refusing the offer of marriage from St. John, not giving in in spite of him berating her “lawless passion,” and in spite of owing him her life, because it would go against her nature and thus “kill” her. Jane is a classic proto-feminist**; she controls her passions enough to work out her priorities, but not at the expense of her deepest desires.

When Jane returns after the fire, she finds what remains of the painting is but the frame, the canvas burnt out and the half-burnt doll sitting inside it (symbolism much?). Jane has been jolted out of her brief experience with earthly pleasure (burnt nude painting), and her love for Rochester has matured. Bertha (the doll) is gone; no hurdles remain between Rochester and Jane’s union. Jane picks up the doll with some sadness when Mrs. Fairfax finds her. In spite of Bertha being Rochester’s ball and chain, neither of them blames her. Considering the lack of knowledge in the field of mental health, Rochester was being kind for the time by locking her up. She was still the madwoman in the attic though, standing like a rock between Jane’s and Rochester’s happiness, and once she was gone, they could all breathe a sigh of relief and move on. Perhaps she represents the wild, passionate part of Jane’s psyche that is now released, but I’m not going to stretch that one out…

The central story of the complex lone woman, unloved and unwanted–matched with the world-weary hero set in a background that’s far from sumptuous–is in great danger of turning into a great depressing drag of a tale, so it’s incredibly important for that spark and pull between them to work. The script by Moira Buffini aids this, taking only the relevant bits from the novel and chipping away at them so that they shine at the significant parts of the movie, avoiding the verbal diarrhea that can come with being loyal to a classic novel. The music too, soars lonesome and yearning to match the tormented souls of the main characters. The lighting is superbly planned, muted and misty in the day and full of deep flickering shadows in the night, the house dark and creaky just like the gothic Thornfield of the book. From what I saw of the deleted scenes (those are always interesting) Helen’s ghost arrives to guide Jane through the moors. This coupled with Jane’s hearing Rochester’s voices would have been clairvoyant overkill, so I’m glad that was edited out. Jamie Bell is amazing as St. John, a warmer version than the book. Judi Dench plays Mrs. Fairfax, sticking to the role of a secondary character and not pressing her presence, the trait of a self-assured and experienced actress***. The claim to the horror element by the crew though, I can’t really place. This movie wasn’t remotely nail-biting or scary.

Whether Jane Eyre purists agree with me or not, there’s little not to like about Jane Eyre (2011), and I eagerly anticipate the release of director Cary Fukunaga‘s next film.

*It’s art, barely pornographic, get over it people.

**Not sure if the term applies, but I love it so I’m using it!

***For who can forget the woman who called James Bond “a sexist, misogynist dinosaur“??

———-

Rhea Daniel got to see a lot of movies as a kid because her family members were obsessive movie-watchers. She frequently finds herself in a bind between her love for art and her feminist conscience. Meanwhile she is trying to be a better writer and artist and you can find her at http://rheadaniel.blogspot.com/.

Classic Literature Film Adaptations Week: ‘Farewell My Concubine’

Official movie poster for Farewell My Concubine
 This is a guest post by René Kluge.
[Trigger Warning for rape and sexual violence.]
The protagonist in Farewell My Concubine (PR China, 1993) is a woman. Or is it? On the one hand the lead role is played by the famous male Hong Kong actor Leslie Cheung. On the other hand, since being a little boy in a Bejing Opera training school, Cheng Dieyi gives up his male identity and plays the female parts in renowned Beijing Operas. The rest of the movie shows him adapting femininity not only on stage but also in real life. In fact, he struggles with telling the Opera world and real life apart. Even his stage name – Dieyi, which loosely translates to Butterflydress – has a female connotation. His femininity is contrasted with the hyper masculinity of his stage partner Duan Xialou. Between him, Xialou and Xialou`s wife Juxian, a complex ménage à trois with changing relationships develops. According to some commentators[1] the asserted analytical solution to this scenario is to take Dieyi as a symbolic woman. Dieyi is male, but in the context of the movie, he performs the function of a woman.
Leslie Cheung as Cheng Dieyi
The interesting part is how he becomes that symbolic woman. It is not his own decision based on sexual preferences, as in known trans* movies like The Birdcage or Boys Don´t Cry; it is also not cross-dressing as in Some Like it Hot or Mulan. Instead, Dieyi suffers through a violent process, which forces him to adapt a female identity and give up his masculinity. Right in the beginning of the movie, Dieyi´s own mother cuts of his sixth finger with a butcher knife in order to make him acceptable for the opera school admission standards. Dieyi´s mother is a prostitute and even in the brothel there is no place for him. He has to go through this act of “straightening” to be fit for any kind of social community. While the sexual connotation of this brutal amputation is not outright obvious, the next initiation Dieyi has to endure has a clear symbolism. Dieyi starts training to become a Bejing Opera actor. It quickly transpires that he is exceptionally gifted in all the required skills and talents. The only problem is, when asked to recite a passage from a traditional play, he refuses to sing the correct line I am by nature a girl and not a boy and stubbornly sings, I am by nature a boy and not a girl. In the presence of an influential opera producer, this behaviour risks the future of the whole company. Consequently Xiaolou, who is by now Dieyi´s close friend, forces a pipe down his throat. He does this so vigorously that a small stream of (defloration) blood flows out of Dieyi´s mouth. As a result, Dieyi dutifully sings the role and uses the correct words: I am by nature a girl. Dieyi has to submit to this procedure in order to become a successfull Opera actor – a Dan, male actors who only play female roles. After Dieyi´s and Xiaolou´s first big and successful opera performance, the two get seperated. Dieyi is led to the chamber of an old eunuch who rapes the still very young boy. Right after this, Dieyi finds an abandoned baby on the street side, which he decides to take with him. Continuously disciplined with brutal beatings by the harsh opera teacher, Dieyi runs the gamut from castration, penetration rape, and accidental motherhood to complete his way to a female identity. The symbolic woman is not born, but the product of (violent) social conditions. It is therefore not completely absurd, as some commentators argue, to see Farewell as a filmic interpretation of the feminist philosophies of Judith Butler and Simone de Beauviour.
The young Deiyi after the penetration with a pipe
To get a broader view of the filmic representation of femininity in Farewell we have to take a closer look at Juxian, the other (biological) woman in this movie. Juxian is played by Gong Li. As with other movie stars, Gong Li brings with her the aura of her prior roles. She is particularly known for starring in Zhang Yimou’s so-called Red Movies. In Red Sorghum, Judou, and Raise the Red Lantern, she playes women who are unwilling to passively accept the rigid social roles that the traditional Chinese society reserved for them. Whether through deceit, protest, escape or inner refuge, all those female protagonists fight against the oppression of women by men. Juxian herself is proud and strong. She is a prostitute, but buys herself out of a brothel to marry Xialou. While Xialou is unemployed and suffers from depression, she runs the little inn they own by herself, and when Dieyi struggles to overcome an opium addiction, she is the one who brings up the emotional and physical strength to lead him through detoxification. In an enigmatic scene at her wedding, she takes the red veil – which serves as the symbol of domestic oppression in all the Red Movies – off herself, signaling that it is she who initiated the wedding and that she is no victim of an arranged marriage. But if we look closer, it becomes obvious that her goal is not independence, but rather seeking Xiaolou´s love and companionship. The women in the Red Movies were trapped by the social institution of marriage and struggled to get out. Juxian, on the other hand, is a social outcast and seeks to find her way into mainstream society and into marriage. She needs Xiaolou; she needs the male to accomplish this goal. The emancipatory impetus of Juxian is therefore a double-edged sword.

The same double-edgedness can be found in the portrayal of homosexuality in Farewell. There is no mention or depiction of homosexuality in Farewell, but the connotations are very clear. While there seems to be some underlying homoerotic tensions between Dieyi and Xiaolou, Dieyi engages in an escapade with an influential opera patron. Homosexuality was virtually absent from Chinese cinema up to that point, so having a homosexual protagonist in a big and expensive production movie seems like a big step forward. Sadly, this protagonist is teemed with homophobic stereotypes: he is timid, soft, and jealous. In contrast to A Lan, the protagonist in the Chinese independent movie East Palace West Palace, that premiered just three years later, Dieyi is not openly homosexual. He has no self-confident homosexual identity. Instead he hides his preferences from society and from himself. Most importantly, he plays the role of a woman. Probably the most common prejudice that gay men have to tackle is the imagined coherence between femininity and homosexuality. Dieyi becomes gay when he takes on the female identity. Masculinity and homosexuality still seem to be mutually exclusive phenomenons. Zhang Yuan, the director of East Palace West Palace is not a homosexual. In an interview, he explained that he still felt capable of identifying with the stigmatization and hardship that gay men in modern Chinese society have to endure because he himself, being an underground artist, often faces similar problems. On the other hand Chen Kaige, the director of Farewell is not an underground artist. The commercial and critical success of Farewell made him one of the most popular Chinese directors today, who seldom has problems with funding, obtaining filming permits, etc. One could argue that Zhang Yuan´s marginalized social position enabled him to show an attitude of solidarity toward homosexual men and create a filmic image of them, which is free of discriminating stereotypes. In contrast, Chen Kaige was incapable of obtaining this position of solidarity. Thus his portrayal of homosexuality is more abstract and artificially detached.

Gong Li as Juxian
A gender conscious reading of Farewell hence raises a question that seems to play a big role in many contributions on Bitch Flicks: In light of a film history that has in big part either ignored women or made them the objects of the male gaze, is the sheer visibility of women and/or trans* people already a step forward, or must we pay closer attention to the substance of the representation? This is a question that is not easy to answer, especially for me being a white heterosexual male with no shortage of role models and media idols. Maybe this question is actually very personal and revokes an abstract theoretical analysis. Maybe every female, trans* and/or homosexual person has to choose for her/himself. If they can relate to Dieyi or Juxian, identify with them and understand their personal emancipation and empowerment through them, then no detached scholarly interpretation could argue with that.
[1] For example Wendy Larson: The Concubine and the Figure of History. Chen Kaige´s Farewell my Concubine. In: Sheldon Lu: Transnational Chinese Cinema. Identity, Nationhood, Gender. Honolulu: 1997.

———-

René Kluge is a German PhD. student. He studied Philosophy and Chinese Studies in Berlin, Potsdam and Beijing. His main interests lie in questions of labour, gender and interculturality. 

Classic Literature Film Adaptations Week: ‘Farewell My Concubine’

Official movie poster for Farewell My Concubine
 This is a guest post by René Kluge.
[Trigger Warning for rape and sexual violence.]
The protagonist in Farewell My Concubine (PR China, 1993) is a woman. Or is it? On the one hand the lead role is played by the famous male Hong Kong actor Leslie Cheung. On the other hand, since being a little boy in a Bejing Opera training school, Cheng Dieyi gives up his male identity and plays the female parts in renowned Beijing Operas. The rest of the movie shows him adapting femininity not only on stage but also in real life. In fact, he struggles with telling the Opera world and real life apart. Even his stage name – Dieyi, which loosely translates to Butterflydress – has a female connotation. His femininity is contrasted with the hyper masculinity of his stage partner Duan Xialou. Between him, Xialou and Xialou`s wife Juxian, a complex ménage à trois with changing relationships develops. According to some commentators[1] the asserted analytical solution to this scenario is to take Dieyi as a symbolic woman. Dieyi is male, but in the context of the movie, he performs the function of a woman.
Leslie Cheung as Cheng Dieyi
The interesting part is how he becomes that symbolic woman. It is not his own decision based on sexual preferences, as in known trans* movies like The Birdcage or Boys Don´t Cry; it is also not cross-dressing as in Some Like it Hot or Mulan. Instead, Dieyi suffers through a violent process, which forces him to adapt a female identity and give up his masculinity. Right in the beginning of the movie, Dieyi´s own mother cuts of his sixth finger with a butcher knife in order to make him acceptable for the opera school admission standards. Dieyi´s mother is a prostitute and even in the brothel there is no place for him. He has to go through this act of “straightening” to be fit for any kind of social community. While the sexual connotation of this brutal amputation is not outright obvious, the next initiation Dieyi has to endure has a clear symbolism. Dieyi starts training to become a Bejing Opera actor. It quickly transpires that he is exceptionally gifted in all the required skills and talents. The only problem is, when asked to recite a passage from a traditional play, he refuses to sing the correct line I am by nature a girl and not a boy and stubbornly sings, I am by nature a boy and not a girl. In the presence of an influential opera producer, this behaviour risks the future of the whole company. Consequently Xiaolou, who is by now Dieyi´s close friend, forces a pipe down his throat. He does this so vigorously that a small stream of (defloration) blood flows out of Dieyi´s mouth. As a result, Dieyi dutifully sings the role and uses the correct words: I am by nature a girl. Dieyi has to submit to this procedure in order to become a successfull Opera actor – a Dan, male actors who only play female roles. After Dieyi´s and Xiaolou´s first big and successful opera performance, the two get seperated. Dieyi is led to the chamber of an old eunuch who rapes the still very young boy. Right after this, Dieyi finds an abandoned baby on the street side, which he decides to take with him. Continuously disciplined with brutal beatings by the harsh opera teacher, Dieyi runs the gamut from castration, penetration rape, and accidental motherhood to complete his way to a female identity. The symbolic woman is not born, but the product of (violent) social conditions. It is therefore not completely absurd, as some commentators argue, to see Farewell as a filmic interpretation of the feminist philosophies of Judith Butler and Simone de Beauviour.
The young Deiyi after the penetration with a pipe
To get a broader view of the filmic representation of femininity in Farewell we have to take a closer look at Juxian, the other (biological) woman in this movie. Juxian is played by Gong Li. As with other movie stars, Gong Li brings with her the aura of her prior roles. She is particularly known for starring in Zhang Yimou’s so-called Red Movies. In Red Sorghum, Judou, and Raise the Red Lantern, she playes women who are unwilling to passively accept the rigid social roles that the traditional Chinese society reserved for them. Whether through deceit, protest, escape or inner refuge, all those female protagonists fight against the oppression of women by men. Juxian herself is proud and strong. She is a prostitute, but buys herself out of a brothel to marry Xialou. While Xialou is unemployed and suffers from depression, she runs the little inn they own by herself, and when Dieyi struggles to overcome an opium addiction, she is the one who brings up the emotional and physical strength to lead him through detoxification. In an enigmatic scene at her wedding, she takes the red veil – which serves as the symbol of domestic oppression in all the Red Movies – off herself, signaling that it is she who initiated the wedding and that she is no victim of an arranged marriage. But if we look closer, it becomes obvious that her goal is not independence, but rather seeking Xiaolou´s love and companionship. The women in the Red Movies were trapped by the social institution of marriage and struggled to get out. Juxian, on the other hand, is a social outcast and seeks to find her way into mainstream society and into marriage. She needs Xiaolou; she needs the male to accomplish this goal. The emancipatory impetus of Juxian is therefore a double-edged sword.

The same double-edgedness can be found in the portrayal of homosexuality in Farewell. There is no mention or depiction of homosexuality in Farewell, but the connotations are very clear. While there seems to be some underlying homoerotic tensions between Dieyi and Xiaolou, Dieyi engages in an escapade with an influential opera patron. Homosexuality was virtually absent from Chinese cinema up to that point, so having a homosexual protagonist in a big and expensive production movie seems like a big step forward. Sadly, this protagonist is teemed with homophobic stereotypes: he is timid, soft, and jealous. In contrast to A Lan, the protagonist in the Chinese independent movie East Palace West Palace, that premiered just three years later, Dieyi is not openly homosexual. He has no self-confident homosexual identity. Instead he hides his preferences from society and from himself. Most importantly, he plays the role of a woman. Probably the most common prejudice that gay men have to tackle is the imagined coherence between femininity and homosexuality. Dieyi becomes gay when he takes on the female identity. Masculinity and homosexuality still seem to be mutually exclusive phenomenons. Zhang Yuan, the director of East Palace West Palace is not a homosexual. In an interview, he explained that he still felt capable of identifying with the stigmatization and hardship that gay men in modern Chinese society have to endure because he himself, being an underground artist, often faces similar problems. On the other hand Chen Kaige, the director of Farewell is not an underground artist. The commercial and critical success of Farewell made him one of the most popular Chinese directors today, who seldom has problems with funding, obtaining filming permits, etc. One could argue that Zhang Yuan´s marginalized social position enabled him to show an attitude of solidarity toward homosexual men and create a filmic image of them, which is free of discriminating stereotypes. In contrast, Chen Kaige was incapable of obtaining this position of solidarity. Thus his portrayal of homosexuality is more abstract and artificially detached.

Gong Li as Juxian
A gender conscious reading of Farewell hence raises a question that seems to play a big role in many contributions on Bitch Flicks: In light of a film history that has in big part either ignored women or made them the objects of the male gaze, is the sheer visibility of women and/or trans* people already a step forward, or must we pay closer attention to the substance of the representation? This is a question that is not easy to answer, especially for me being a white heterosexual male with no shortage of role models and media idols. Maybe this question is actually very personal and revokes an abstract theoretical analysis. Maybe every female, trans* and/or homosexual person has to choose for her/himself. If they can relate to Dieyi or Juxian, identify with them and understand their personal emancipation and empowerment through them, then no detached scholarly interpretation could argue with that.
[1] For example Wendy Larson: The Concubine and the Figure of History. Chen Kaige´s Farewell my Concubine. In: Sheldon Lu: Transnational Chinese Cinema. Identity, Nationhood, Gender. Honolulu: 1997.

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René Kluge is a German PhD. student. He studied Philosophy and Chinese Studies in Berlin, Potsdam and Beijing. His main interests lie in questions of labour, gender and interculturality. 

Classic Literature Film Adaptations Week: ‘For Colored Girls’ Reveals Power of Sisterly Solidarity & Women Finding Their Voice

Written by Megan Kearns, originally published at The Opinioness of the World.

I was excited to see For Colored Girls. A film about 9 women, as a feminist, how could I not be? But I have to admit, I questioned whether or not I should even be writing this review. Writing about a film revolving around African-American women, based on a seminal play on race, and I’m not a woman of color…would it be inappropriate? Would I be breaking some kind of taboo? But then I realized after reading the play and watching the film, while it speaks to women of color and the experiences they endure, it portrays myriad experiences women face.

I don’t want to diminish the unique racial struggles that women of color encounter in this film and in life for that matter. I will never know what it’s like to be followed in a store because of the color of my skin. I will never be told that I should have babies with a white man so my children will have lighter skin and be prettier. But I think this is an important film for women and men to see for the commentary it makes on gender and race and the struggles women of color endure.

For Colored Girls follows 9 African-American women whose lives intersect in a New York City brownstone. A mosaic of stories as their lives weave together. Janet Jackson is an unyielding corporate magazine mogul with intimacy issues; Loretta Devine, a nurse opening a non-profit clinic dating an unreliable boyfriend; Anika Noni Rose, an effervescent and optimistic dance instructor; Kerry Washington, a happily married social worker who can’t have the one thing she so desperately wants; Kimberly Elise, Jackson’s personal assistant and a mother of two living in an abusive relationship; Phylicia Rashad, the all-knowing wise neighbor; Whoopi Goldberg a devoutly religious woman and mother of Thandie Newton, a promiscuous woman with a thirst for life and a painful past, and Tessa Thompson, a teen who aspires to be a dancer. Almost every aspect of a woman’s life is shown: sex, losing virginity, abortion, rape, falling in love, jealousy, domestic violence, murder, sisterhood, motherhood, infidelity, infertility, break-ups and friendship.

The film For Colored Girls is Tyler Perry’s adaptation of the critically acclaimed Obie award-winning 1974 play and choreopoem For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf written by Ntozake Shange. I had never even heard of the play until a couple of years ago when my co-worker Nai adamantly insisted that I must read it. I was so glad she did as I was blown away by Shange’s brutally honest yet devastatingly beautiful prose. It’s raw and rhythmic, moving with a fierce visceral cadence. In the play, each woman is represented by a color: red, blue, yellow and so on. With striking visuals, the film incorporates this theme by having each of the women who signify wear outfits and garments that symbolize that color. When one of the women is raped, she stops wearing her bright color, donning black clothing instead, as if the trauma had drained her color, her vibrancy. Each woman was so unique: different classes, ages, shades of black (as my co-worker pointed out). It’s rare to find a powerful woman lead a film; it’s almost unheard of for a film to tell nine women’s distinctive tales. The movie and the play both open with these pleading words:

“somebody / anybody sing a black girl’s song bring her out to know herself to know you but sing her rhythms carin / struggle / hard times sing her song of life she’s been dead so long closed in silence so long she doesn’t know the sound of her own voice her infinite beauty she’s half-notes scattered without rhythm / no tune sing her sighs sing the song of her possibilities sing a righteous gospel…”

Perry incorporated most of the play’s language into the dialogue of the film. The powerful poetry is so strikingly beautiful and haunting, so lyrical, that at times it can yank you out of the film, reminding you that it’s not real.All of the women gave fantastic performances, particularly Thandie Newton, whose portrayal could have meandered into a caricature yet never did, Anika Noni Rose, yielding a heartbreaking depiction, and Kimberly Elise, whose restrained and poignant performance made it feel all the more authentic. I noticed that the dialogue separated the decent actors from the outstanding ones. The phenomenal actors (Rashad, Newton, Jackson, Divine, Rose, Elise), inhaled Shange’s words, tasted them and exhaled seamless monologues, making them truly their own.

Women knowing their own worth and finding their voice are messages continually conveyed. Thandie Newton utters one of my fave lines (which differs slightly from the play’s text),

“Being alive and being a woman is all I got, but being colored is a metaphysical dilemma I haven’t conquered yet.”

While it speaks to the unique intersectional experiences of race, gender and identity black women confront, I found I could still relate. I’m proud to be a woman; my gender shapes my identity yet I don’t want it defining who I am. Shange wrote the play in 1974, just after Roe v. Wade had been passed. Yet the material still rings true today. It was surprising to see one of the characters not only seeking an abortion but actually obtaining one. As I’ve written before, it’s still rare for a film or TV show to portray women getting abortions. When describing a back-alley abortion, one of the women cries:

“…metal horses gnawin my womb / dead mice fall from my mouth…”

Some of the characters contend with unspeakable hardships. When one of the characters is raped, she has to defend her actions to a police officer, how she didn’t ask for it. She whispers:

“the stranger we always thought it would be, who never showed up, cuz it turns out the nature of rape has changed…”

But watching the scenes with Kimberly Elise, in which she tiptoes, avoiding upsetting her abusive boyfriend, were some of the hardest for me to sit through, especially as a domestic violence survivor. Elise’s subtle performance makes the pain that much more palpable.
The film shows how far many women will go to please men. For Colored Girls doesn’t blame women. Rather, it shows the responsibility women bear in navigating their lives through the choices, good and bad, they make. When the hilarious Loretta Devine finally has had enough with her cheating boyfriend letting her down, she yells:

“I got a real dead loving here for you now, because I don’t know anymore how to avoid my own face wet with my tears! Because I had convinced myself that colored girls have no right to sorrow!”

She goes on to tell the women at her clinic:

“somebody almost walked off wid alla my stuff…like a kleptomaniac workin hard & forgettin while stealin this is mine / this ain’t your stuff…did you know somebody almost got away with me / me in a plastic bag under their arm…”

Many women often do too much for men, putting up with too much mediocrity. Janet Jackson experiences a similar epiphany when she tells her husband that she’s tired of hearing his apologies. She says,

“…I got sorry greeting me at my front door you can keep yours …I’m gonna haveta throw some away I can’t even get to the clothes in my closet for all the sorries… …well I will not call I’m not goin to be nice I will raise my voice & scream & holler… …& I wont be sorry for none of it”

Perry’s film has been simultaneously criticized and lauded with reviewers at both ends of the spectrum. Some have called it a “choppy mess”, claimed he “butchers” Shange’s play while others have criticized it for its men bashing. While the overly negative depictions of men may be valid, the point of the play was that men can and do inflict pain and suffering on women. Women need to look for happiness and fulfillment not with men but in themselves. But maybe some people have a problem with a film in which the men are superfluous. Manohla Dargis of the NY Times gave a favorable review discussing the tragic storylines:

“That might sound unbearable, but done right it’s thrilling — specific in its pain, universal in its reach — and Mr. Perry works very hard and gets it mostly right.”

Matt Zoller Seitz at Salon praised the film and Perry:

“[Perry] gathers together some of the greatest African-American actresses in America — actresses who are lucky to get one or two scenes in a film with a predominantly white cast — in leading roles that let them chase dreams, make mistakes, fall in love, have their hearts broken, flirt, seduce, manipulate, preen, pout, rail against injustice, and endure and transcend Old Testament-level suffering. And they reward Perry with performances so heartfelt, and often so accomplished, that they make all of his films worth seeing no matter what you think of him as a director.”

For those who hated it, I can’t help but wonder that if the tribulations these women confronted were faced by men, people would have enjoyed the film more. Perhaps people are uncomfortable seeing this much pain, this much torment. But women do experience these painful situations, even the shockingly horrific domestic violence scene near the end of the film. I think people miss the movie’s point by scoffing at it for being too depressing. I’m not going to sugarcoat it and claim it’s not gut-wrenching and horrific. Oh it is, at times dipping into the melodramatic. And yes, I felt like a mack truck had run me over halfway through the film. Yet the ending was ultimately hopeful, a testament to sisterly solidarity amongst women.
In the beginning of the film, the women fight with one another and can’t get along. I was worried saying to myself, “What the hell has Tyler Perry done to Ntozake Shange’s beautifully feminist play?!” But my fears were unfounded. Women in the film face a crossroads in their lives. They suffer unspeakable tragedy and then must find a way to move forward. After the women brave wave upon wave of heartbreak and terror, the film ends, as the play does, with the women coming together; a united front, knowing their self-worth. Kimberly Elise declares,

“…I wanted to jump up outta my bones & be done wit myself leave me alone & go on in the wind it waz too much I fell into a numbness till the only tree I cd see took me up in her branches held me in the breeze made me dawn dew that chill at daybreak the sun wrapped me up swingin rose light everywhere the sky laid over me like a million men I waz cold / I was burnin up / a child & endlessly weavin garments for the moon wit my tears I found god in myself & I loved her / I loved her fiercely”

I was initially apprehensive about Tyler Perry directing and writing this adaptation, as was Shange who said in an interview that she was “worried about his characterizations of women as plastic.” While a more adept filmmaker might have done something different or even better, I don’t think people are giving Perry due credit. He portrayed fully dimensional characters, showing the respect for women I’ve always assumed he feels despite his previous lackluster films. Perry added some important pieces to the film, like Whoopi Goldberg, as my co-worker Nai pointed out, divulging how her father gave her to a white man as he didn’t want ugly grandbabies. He also added Janet Jackson’s line where she says, “Women give up too much of their power.” I think Perry did a fantastic job of knowing what to keep and what to leave out. He remained faithful to the play, capturing its breathtaking essence.
Professor and writer Reza Aslan said in an interview on the Colbert Report:

“the best way to reframe perceptions is not through information or knowledge or education…but through the arts, through literature, through film. These are the things that really break down the boundaries and borders between us…”

Making this argument tangible, in Elle Magazine’s Women and Hollywood November 2010 issue, director/actor Victoria Mahoney (Yelling at the Sky) said that if we want to see more women’s films, we must go and see them; we need to vote with our dollars, a sentiment uttered by Melissa Silverstein at Women and Hollywood. If we want to see women on-screen, if we want to open the dialogue on racism and sexism, if we ever hope to open our minds to experiences that both differ from and echo our own, then we need to support films with women and women of color as protagonists.
The theme of a woman’s voice echoes throughout the film. Women being silenced…by shame, fear, abuse, their mothers, the men in their lives, society…is threaded throughout. Shange’s play and Perry’s film testify the power of women finding solace, self-acceptance and strength in themselves and reclaiming their voice. It’s time we listened to women’s voices and hear what they have to say.

Classic Literature Film Adaptations Week: ‘Ballet Shoes’

 Written by Max Thornton.
If people see a list of things I love – science fiction, fantasy, progressive rock, movies about zombies, witty and charming sitcoms that you will watch on NBC Thursday nights at 8/7c starting February 7 – they might be surprised to learn that I think ballet is awesome.
If people see a list of my favorite authors – a small selection: China Mieville, Ursula LeGuin, Alan Warner, J. G. Ballard, Margaret Atwood – they might be even more surprised to learn that some of my most dearly beloved childhood books are about ballet.
This odd and rather niche enthusiasm neither stemmed from nor translated to any interest in performing myself. Slightness of build, grace, agility, physical stamina, a right and a left foot instead of two lefts: I have never in my life possessed any of the attributes necessary for success in the field of ballet dancing. My single semester of lessons was a comedy of ineptitude for my watching family, and a crushing humiliation for me.
Me.
All of which is to say, the depth of my love for Noel Streatfeild’s 1936 children’s classic Ballet Shoes might initially seem baffling. Until you read it, and learn how very very awesome it is. Alternatively, you could watch the 2007 BBC adaptation starring Emma Watson, which is very nearly as charming as the book.
 
Ballet Shoes is the story of three sisters, Pauline, Petrova, and Posy Fossil. Adopted from assorted circumstances of orphanhood by the eccentric fossil-collector Great-Uncle Matthew, or “Gum,” they are brought up by his great-niece Sylvia and her beloved nurse Nana while Gum is off on a decade-long expedition around the world. When poverty compels Sylvia to take in boarders, the Fossils’ lives change dramatically: they are sent to a stage school to learn dancing and acting.
Much of the story’s genius lies in the characterization of the three sisters. Beautiful Pauline is a talented actress who feels the responsibility of being the eldest sibling; dreamy, waifish Posy thinks of nothing but dancing, to the point of complete otherworldliness; Petrova is the tomboy, the middle child, and the odd one out, who loathes being onstage and is happiest around engines. This set-up creates a lovely interplay of strong, distinct personalities who are united by the loyal bonds of sisterhood, which is really the heart of the story.
Petrova (Yasmin Paige), Posy (Lucy Boynton), Pauline (Emma Watson)
The adaptation is fairly faithful, notwithstanding the inevitable glossing over of details and eliding of the timeline. Two notable changes that, in my opinion, weaken the story are the character assassination of Winifred and Theo’s happy ending. Winifred is an enormously gifted actor and dancer, who is consistently overshadowed by the classically beautiful Pauline. In the book, she is also a genuinely sweet person and a stalwart friend to the Fossils; in the film, she’s rather bratty and unkind. Theo, one of Sylvia’s boarders, has no personal life to speak of in the book, but gets an unlikely reunion with a long-lost lover at the end of the film. I understand the motivation for these changes – they heighten the story’s fairy-tale feel: every character, good and bad, gets what she deserves – but they’re unfortunate from a feminist standpoint. Female friendship is undermined in order to perpetuate the tired trope of the jealous, spiteful girl; while the cleaning up of romantic loose ends reinforces the old chestnut that a single woman couldn’t possibly be happy.
Probably the biggest alteration made from the book to the film is the Sylvia and Mr. Simpson subplot. The book Simpsons are a happy couple, both boarders who act as friends and parental figures to the Fossils; movie-Simpson is a widower who lost his wife (and child, for added Tragic Backstory) to typhoid. Seeing that Mr. Simpson is the only male character of any presence in the story, he and Sylvia somewhat inevitably get a little romance.
This subplot has overtones of a lot of tedious cultural tropes, from the above-mentioned Unhappy Single Woman thing to the Wounded Man Who Can Only Be Healed By The Love Of A Good Woman, but on balance I think it’s a good thing. Sylvia gets very little characterization in the novel outside of her noble devotion to her girls; the love story is only one of several ways in which she is fleshed out for the film – she also gets an ongoing health problem and a rather charming unlikely friendship with Theo.
Theo (Lucy Cohu) and Sylvia (Emilia Fox)
What I really love about this story (apart from the “lady doctors,” who are certainly a couple) is that it’s ultimately a story about sisterhood and chosen family. Three orphans, a young woman, an older nurse, two retired professors, a dancing teacher, and a widower – none of them related by blood – come together, mostly by chance, and constitute a family. That’s pretty progressive for 1930s Britain. The three sisters love each other dearly, but they also have dreams and big ambitions. Their familial devotion and their wild ambitions are never presented as being in conflict; in fact, it’s those very ambitions that bind them together, as they vow on every Christmas and birthday: “We three Fossils vow to put our name in the history books, because it is uniquely ours, and ours alone, and nobody can say it’s because of our grandfathers.”
At the end of the story, Gum – the patriarchal male figure who has been totally useless and absent from the entire thing – returns after a decade abroad. He asks in surprise, “Who are all these women? … I brought entrancements! I brought babies!” To him, the girls were souvenirs, fossils, which he brought back as presents from his globe-trotting exploits. In his absence, they have grown into a close family of faithful sisters and strong, ambitious women, and it’s because of their guardian and their wealth of female role models, and certainly not because of their grandfathers. 

Max Thornton blogs at Gay Christian Geek, and is slowly learning to twitter at @RainicornMax.

 

Classic Literature Film Adaptations Week: The Depiction of Women in Three Films Based on the Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen

This is a guest review by Alisande Fitzsimons.
Danish author Hans Christian Andersen is one of those writers whose stories—like those by the Brothers Grimm and Scheherazade (the Persian Queen who spun the stories that make up A Thousand and One Arabian Nights)—are so much a part of our culture that you undoubtedly heard them, and watched film adaptations of them, as a child.
Andersen had an unfortunate habit of falling in love with unobtainable women and later unobtainable men. The theme of lost love, and of the thing we love the most coming to destroy us is repeated throughout his fiction, much of which features a woman or female character in a lead role.
This essay will look at some adaptations of his most famous stories, and examine the role of the female protagonist in them.

Moira Shearer as Vicky in The Red Shoes

The Red Shoes (1948)

The film of the The Red Shoes differs slightly from HCA’s original tale. Rather than using it as a template for the whole film, the story is used as the basis for a fifteen-minute ballet that is performed in the movie. The composing and performing of the ballet is a crucial plot point within the movie.
The film revolves around Vicky (Moira Shearer), a prima ballerina, whose love for dance destroys her, the same way that the girl in HCA’s original story is destroyed by her beloved red shoes which eventually force her to dance herself to death.
The female protagonist Vicky is presented on-screen as flame-haired and beautiful. Less sympathetic though is the character’s passion for dance, and for The Red Shoes ballet in particular. Her obsession with it is such that she leaves her husband so that she can dance it once more, only to realise she’s made a mistake. She follows him to the train station and ends up being injured by an on-coming train, while wearing the red shoes she used to perform in.
Though the girl in HCA’s story is vain and wished for shoes that would let her dance forever, you’re aware that she’s also desperate to get out of the situation. In the film, it is Vicky who is possessed. She’s so obsessed with her career, and in particular the ballet that made her famous, that she cannot pass up a chance to dance it. Even when running after her husband, she does not remove her performance shoes.
It’s basically another film where a woman who’s career-focused is depicted as mentally ill because of it, and duly punished. No wonder it’s one of Courtney Love’s favourite films.

Bridget Fonda’s Snow Queen makes her romantic rivalry with Gerda clear

The Snow Queen (2002)

There have been many adaptations of The Snow Queen over the years (she’s a consistently scary bitch) but I’m talking about the 2002 made-for-TV adaptation starring Bridget Fonda as the eponymous villain of the piece. (It falls on me here, for no reason other than the fact that I’m immature and enjoy this kind of thing that “Bridget” rhymes with “frigid,” and to be frigid is to be icy and so on. Anyway…)
The most striking difference between HCA’s story and the film is that when it was made for TV the producers opted to make the story’s heroine, Gerda, into a love rival for the queen. In the fairy tale, Gerda and Kai—the boy the queen wants to own/seduce depending on the version—are best friends rather than girlfriend and boyfriend.
In the film, they are romantically involved, and so a story about friendship and sacrifice becomes one about a love triangle in which two women fight over a man. So far, so typical a Hollywood adaptation. But bearing in mind that HCA’s original story was about two children, and the sacrifices one was willing to make to save the other’s soul, isn’t that a bit sad?
It’s not just that two women can’t see each other as anything other than rivals for a man (even when one of them is a supernatural being with the power to control winter). By making the story “more accessible to modern audiences,” which producers love to do by reducing women to the sum of our ancestors’ parts (because once-upon-a-time we would have had to fight each other in order to make the best marriage we possibly could) they’ve actually made it a lot more boring. Sigh.

Disney’s Little Mermaid Ariel gets her fairytale ending

Splash (1984) and The Little Mermaid (1989) based on The Little Mermaid

The fact of the matter is that, if you’re looking for an accurate rendering of The Little Mermaid on-screen, you probably won’t find one. The animated Disney version of the story, complete with singing lobsters and a best friend called “Flounder the fish,” sticks closely to the majority of the story but leaves out the fairy tale’s violence, pain and death in favour of a good inter-species marriage at the end.
It’s hard to overstate how violent HCA’s original story is. The mermaid’s tongue is cut out, she dances for the human prince despite being in excruciating pain, having never quite gotten her landlegs, and—after she realizes he will never love her—she has to decide whether or not to shed his blood using a massive knife. It’s no wonder that the man who received this story in the form of a love letter from HCA turned down his affections.
Directed by Ron Howard, Splash is one of the more enjoyable romantic comedies of the eighties, possibly because of the fairy tale elements it contains. Like the little mermaid of the fairy tale, Daryl Hannah’s gorgeous mermaid Madison first catches sight of her prince as a child.
Years later, when she washes up on the shores of Manhattan, the two are re-united and romantic and comedic chaos ensues until he decides he loves her so much that he will follow her to the sea, from where he can never return (although he will live for 300 years which might be some compensation).
Although Splash is very loosely based on HCA’s story The Little Mermaid, the decision of the male protagonist to follow his love into the sea is a direct contradiction of it. For one thing, in HCA’s story the mermaid does not get her man. He marries a more suitable human instead, and the mermaid perishes before becoming a spirit (it’s a bit complicated but very spiritual).

Daryl Hannah as Madison in Splash

I rather like this ending to a film because despite not sticking to the original story, it offers viewers a chance to see something that is still relatively unusual on-screen: a successful male character giving up his life for the woman (mermaid) he loves. He sacrifices everything for her, with no real guarantee that he’ll be happy, and absolutely no way back. In that way, the male lead (Tom Hanks) is more like the little mermaid of HCA’s original story, who gave up her life below the sea for the human she loved, than Daryl Hannah’s character.
Both Splash and Disney’s The Little Mermaid stick to HCA’s premise that once a mermaid is on shore, she will be rendered mute. Feminists have had a field day with this part of the story but bearing in mind HCA’s sexuality, it’s also possible to read their silence as a manifestation of his desperation to be loved.
Rather than forcing his female characters into silence as a nod to the social roles enforced by the patriarchy of the era, might this be HCA’s way of telling his love that he will silence himself for them?

Conclusion

The adaptation of works from previous centuries is, if sometimes undesirable, inevitable. The fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen, though still accessible to readers today, often shock with the violence and victimization that occurs to his lead characters, many of whom are, yes, female.
What strikes the modern reader, especially in light of what we know about HCA’s sexuality and relationships, is that many of these characters, though written as female are likely to be the writer consciously or unconsciously expressing parts of himself.
It’s curious then to see a character such as the Little Mermaid, who in literature sacrificed everything for the man she loved, pursued by a man who willingly sacrifices everything for her in one film version of the story, and happily married in another.
The film versions of The Red Shoes and The Snow Queen offer up more interesting re-interpretations of HCA and his characters’ psyches. In The Red Shoes, a character is destroyed by her mental illness and vanity—qualities the homophobic are very quick to attribute to gay men.
In the film version of The Snow Queen, the love of a good woman (Gerda) turns the character of Kai from a jealous, spiteful, mean young man (again qualities that homophobes love to attribute to young gay men) into the caring, loving, definitively heterosexual boy the filmmakers want him to be.
While it’s nothing new to argue that books and fairy tales reinforce the heteronormative, it’s interesting to think that HCA might once have been trying to do something quite different, and to imagine what a queer filmmaker might be able to come up with.

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Alisande Fitzsimons likes to eat. She blogs regularly at xoJane.co.uk and tweets about it @AlisandeF.