Comedy – Bitch Flicks

“You Can’t Sit with Us”: Witchy Girl Gangs and Covens

Underwritten in this claim of selfhood, however, is a larger message. Each of the films and the TV series, to varying degrees, promote individuality over conformity. Eventually, each teaches viewers the importance of being true to yourself and avoiding the pitfalls of group mentality. …Each manifestation of the girl group trope proposes an affirmation of self-esteem, non-conformity, independence, and individuality.

This guest post written by Michelle Mastro appears as part of our theme week on Women in Horror.

The volume of films exploring the hazards of “girl world” is quite robust. Before the comedy Mean Girls there was cult classic Heathers, a darker satirical vision of teenage girl strife. Rounding out the cinematic landscape between these pillars of classic girl-on-girl warfare set in the average American high school are numerous other examples from Never Been Kissed to Jawbreaker. In fact, so hackneyed is the trope of female-centered cliques that if it isn’t treated as part and parcel of teen comedies as a genre, it is almost always at least a minor plot point. Yet horror films and television series grapple with themes inspired by catty drama and gossip as well, only the aesthetics are different to align better with their genre. In these iterations of the girl clique trope, girl gangs become covens, and the power of gossip is transformed into charms and incantations.

Swapping out girl gangs and cliques for covens is as easily done as replacing “witch” with that other not so nice pejorative term for women. In the TV series American Horror Story: Coven, for example, Fiona Goode (Jessica Lange) toys with both words, calling one of the school’s meaner pupils a “little witch bitch.” In that same episode, she takes the band of squabbling girls on a field trip through New Orleans, telling them all beforehand to “wear something black.” The show aired on Wednesdays, prompting fans to coin the phrase, “On Wednesdays we wear black,” another play on words, only this time in reference to Mean Girls. One of the frequently quoted lines from the film includes the “Plastics”’ rules about hump day association and uniformity: “On Wednesdays we wear pink.” The writers of AHS: Coven and fans alike got the joke: girls in groups can be mean — mean like witches.

This, of course, might seem like a sexist reading of girl friendships — and it would be even more understandable to question the show’s depiction of gender given how female sexuality is portrayed and its problematic depiction of race. Yet, given that women, historically, could only maintain their social status through heteronormative marriage — through their connections to men — it would make sense that the young women might begin to view each other as competition. In high school, who dates whom really matters, and thus the high schools of the films are more or less stuck in a time warp. Their cafeterias, the place of social gathering, are where romantic attachments are forged. The dining hall perfectly figures as a sort of Regency court of King George III, where marriages mattered to one’s social superiority. Social status dictated how close courtiers got to sit near the king. Terrifyingly, the king’s friendship could help produce advantageous marriages or dissolve them entirely. Thus, the more popular the girl in Mean Girls, the closer she resides near Regina George. She usually forbids more readily than she grants unions, however, and her despotic rule feeds much of the clique’s cattiness.

Which begs the question: why would these characters hang around each other at all? On the surface, each school clique offers a certain amount of protection. In AHS: Coven’s case, if the girls don’t band together, they will face assaults from outsiders. “If witches don’t fight, we burn,” says Fiona to the students. In Mean Girls (written by Tina Fey), the point of being in the Plastics is somewhat similar, though obviously not nearly as dire. For protagonist Cady Heron (Lindsay Lohan), lunchtime at the cafeteria posed as a minefield full of aggressive cliques, and not being a member of any group at first, she found herself the butt of jokes, a social outcast forced to eat alone in a women’s bathroom stall. Better to have fun at the expense of others with the Plastics in their “Burn Book” than get burned oneself. The same conclusion is proposed near the beginning of The Craft and Heathers. Sarah (Robin Tunney) in the former joins her clique more out of necessity than anything else, whereas Veronica (Winona Ryder) in the latter participates in spiteful pranks on fellow students, even though she questions the group’s methods and is quick to claim her own name in a gaggle of Heathers, stridently affirming: “I’m a Veronica.”

In The Craft, when the girls catch a bus together, they all wear dark sun-glasses and nearly identical fashions, precursors of the pink Plastics and black-draped New Orleans witches, not to mention references to the shoulder-pad loving Heathers of the 1980s. Each group of young women has made their own clique, but within each group, conformity is essential. What’s worse, the supposed protection proffered by The Craft’s coven in the form of casting spells is as spiteful as participating in any girl gang gossip. Both hurt and have unforeseen consequences. Sarah learns to be careful about what energy she puts out. “Whatever you send out, you get back threefold,” she is counselled. She casts a spell to get back at football player Chris Hooker (Skeet Ulrich) for spreading lies that the pair had sex. After the spell, he becomes her lapdog, but his obsession quickly turns violent. Apparently, her intention behind the spell was wicked, and the results matched. Although Sarah was right to seek justice, her spell was framed in a way that could only elicit revenge, a much more volatile act that inflicts a cost on both parties, although this in no way means that she deserved nor brought on herself slut-shaming or attempted rape. In AHS: Coven, one of the girls, Madison (Emma Roberts), is gang raped. She uses her magic to kill the boys, but also murders an innocent guy in the process. Her actions will come back to haunt her, as all the witches’ poor decisions inevitably do. Madison becomes more and more heartless as the series progresses, symbolized by an actual heart condition preventing her from ever serving as the coven’s leader. “The only good or bad is in the heart of the witch,” Lirio (Assumpta Serna) tells the girls in The Craft. Cady in Mean Girls arrives at a similar realization. The Burn Book of the Plastics is photocopied and dispersed among the students, and Cady will have to find a way to take back her words. It is too late, of course, just like in Sarah’s case. In The Craft, Lyrio tells her: “When you open a flood gate, how can you undo it? You unleash something with a spell. There is no undoing; it must run its course.” The mistake each of the girls all made was attempting a kind of vigilante justice — really a type of revenge.

The Craft is a cult classic that impacted many women due to its representation and messages of empowerment and “taking back the threat of female power.” In the oral history of The Craft at Entertainment Weekly, producer Douglas Wick said he “was curious about the phenomenon of girls marginalized in a man’s world who suddenly come into their sexuality and have this enormous power.” Actress Robin Tunney said, “Somehow it still speaks to everybody’s inner teenage girl.” In her Vulture article on The Craft‘s legacy, Angelica Jade Bastien writes:

“Witchcraft is more than mere teenage rebellion for these young girls. It’s a means to attain what at first glance appears unattainable: power, control, autonomy, the ability to live beyond the various oppressive forces that govern their lives. […] These girls, each in their own way, is calling out for something women learn early and often is hard to attain: the power to control your own life.”

Yet the girls’ friendship ultimately turns toxic and destructive, demanding conformity over individuality.

Sarah, Veronica, Cady, and the girls from AHS: Coven learn painful lessons. Words and spells cannot be taken back and cannot be undone, and the girls prove more powerful in their individuality. In The Craft, Sarah realizes her friends’ coven is organized more like a petty club and her fellow witches are just as spiteful as the young women and men they sought vengeance against. Veronica realizes she cannot undue the harm she has caused; she cannot bring back the kids she helped to murder. And Cady learns that being “personally victimized by Regina George” does not give her license to become another queen bee. Each of the protagonists find strength in themselves. Sarah is called a natural witch, for unlike the other girls, her “power comes from within.” After Sarah’s coven disperses, all the girls lose their magical powers except Sarah. Veronica and Cady, meanwhile, end their films with the promise of never allowing any future cliques to form in their respective high schools ever again. Or at the very least, they won’t conform to what others say; they will listen to their own moral compass. In AHS: Coven, the ruling mean girls Madison and Fiona have been ousted as well. And the rise of a new headmistress, Cordelia (Sarah Paulson) brings with her the promise of beginning the school afresh. Past mistakes will not be repeated, she informs the press, revealing the school to the world.

In this way, each manifestation of the girl group trope proposes an affirmation of self-esteem, non-conformity, independence, and individuality. The chilling and ominous tales about teenage witches invoke and summon the moral of their comedic cousins, warning female viewers against resentment and revenge, while encouraging them to always “do unto others as they would have done unto them.” What might seem like an allusion to Christian doctrine is, in fact, the basis of many beliefs, even Wiccan practices. “[I]t’s part of a basic spiritual truth. Said in many ways in many faiths,” Lirio says matter-of-factly. Spells, like gossip, will come back “threefold.”

See also at Bitch Flicks:

Girl Gangs Are Mean: Teenage Girl Gang Movies Through the Years

20 Years of The Craft: Why We Needed More of Rochelle

American Horror Story: Coven: Gabourey Sidibe’s Queenie as an Embodiment of the “Strong Black Woman” Stereotype

Exploring Bodily Autonomy on American Horror Story: Coven

I’m a Veronica: Power and Transformation Through Female Friendships in Heathers

Veronica Decides Not to Die — Heathers: The Proto-Mean Girls

How Should a Show about Witches Be?

Michelle Mastro is a graduate student at Indiana University, Bloomington’s English PhD program. She loves all things horror, and to her, autumn is the greatest season not just for Starbucks pumpkin spice but for the availability of horror film marathons on TV — of which she watches plenty.

‘Rosemary’s Baby,’ ‘Prevenge,’ and the Evils of the Trump Administration

Alice Lowe’s ‘Prevenge’ is in some ways a modernized version of ‘Rosemary’s Baby.’ … Throughout the course of history, and especially in Trump’s America, baby always comes first. Our government cares more about fetuses than it does about living, breathing women. This chills me to the core more than a scary movie ever could.

This guest post written by Lindsay Pugh appears as part of our theme week on Women in Horror. | Spoilers ahead.

[Trigger warning: discussion of rape and sexual assault]

Whether completely alone or with a partner standing by, pregnancy is one of the most terrifying and bizarre events to happen in real life. Of course, women are expected to handle it with aplomb and joy. “Oh, you mean my entire body is going to change and then if all goes well, another human being is going to rip through my vagina, hopefully only causing minimal tearing? Fantastic! Sign me up!”

As a woman in 2017, there’s plenty to be afraid of: increased attacks on abortion, unrelenting attempts to defund Planned Parenthood, rape culture and the normalization of sexual assault (“Grab ‘em by the pussy.”), etc. The litany of bullshit is horrific and interminable. How can anyone make a horror film that will scare women when real life has turned into a waking nightmare? Easy. Throw pregnancy into the mix; take all those standard fears and concerns and amplify them. Two films that do a great job portraying these atrocities are Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby (1968) and Alice Lowe’s Prevenge (2016).

I hate to give Polanski, creepy Keebler Elf and sexual predator extraordinaire, credit, but Rosemary’s Baby is one of my all-time favorite horror films and feminist as fuck. It makes me feel a little better to know that his screenplay is nearly identical to Ira Levin’s novel, so it’s not like Polanski is responsible for any of the genius plotting or characterizations.

In order to truly grasp the brilliance of Rosemary’s Baby, let’s quickly review the atrocities Rosemary (Mia Farrow) has to endure, from the sex before conception to her post-birth satanic cult discovery. First, it’s important to note that Rosemary’s pregnancy is the product of rape. Even though she’s been drugged c/o Minnie’s (Ruth Gordon) chocolate mousse, Rosemary is cognizant enough to realize, “This is no dream! This is really happening.” (Although even if she wasn’t cognizant, the fact is she was unable to consent.) The morning after her rape, Guy (John Cassavetes) tries to gaslight Rosemary by apologizing for the scratches on her body and telling her they only had sex when she was blacked out because he didn’t want to miss “baby night.” Rosemary is tense and suspicious for days, but those feelings are eventually eclipsed when a phone call from her doctor confirms her pregnancy. Instead of focusing on the traumatic conception, Rosemary diverts her attention to scheduling doctor’s appointments and spreading the joyous news.

Unfortunately, Rosemary’s happiness wanes when her body begins to change. In order to combat her feelings of unease, Guy, Minnie, and Roman (Sidney Blackmer) concoct a plan to ensure that no matter how bad her symptoms become, Rosemary never believes they’re abnormal. Dr. Sapirstein (Ralph Bellamy) tells Rosemary not to ask any questions or listen to advice from friends or books. Instead of taking vitamins, she’s to drink one of Minnie’s herbal concoctions every day. Rosemary wants what’s best for her baby, so she listens to the doctor, even as she becomes scarily gaunt. She knows something is wrong, but the people closest to her have done a great job of convincing her she’s paranoid and can’t trust her own instincts.

Throughout the film, Rosemary vacillates between trusting her intuition and dismissing it because she wants what’s best for the baby and doesn’t always trust herself to provide it. At several points, she tries to take control of her situation, but external forces usually convince her she’s made the wrong call. By effectively gaslighting her, Guy and the Castevets have ensured that Rosemary no longer trusts her own body or motherly intuition. At the end of the film, when Rosemary decides to embrace her role even though her child is a fucking demon, it’s a total act of rebellion. These people have taken away her sanity, her health, and nine months of her life, but they won’t take away her baby. Even though this situation isn’t what she signed up for, she’s on board for lack of a better option.

Even with a wanted baby, pregnancy can be a terrifying situation full of unknown elements. Alice Lowe had this in mind, that “pregnancy is an alien experience,” while making Prevenge. Without the power to ask questions and make informed decisions, a beautiful, exciting life event could easily turn into a waking nightmare full of anxiety and dread. The Trump administration wants to make Rosemary’s Baby a reality. Something is wrong with your pregnancy and you need to terminate it in order to avoid a lifetime of pain for yourself and your child? Too bad. You must carry the pregnancy to term and deal with the ramifications alone. Your pregnancy is the result of rape and you’re unable to deal with the psychological trauma? Or you simply don’t want to be pregnant? I hope you have the time, money, patience, and strength to deal with abortion restrictions like mandatory waiting periods, forced ultrasounds, TRAP laws, personhood laws, insurance and funding limitations, 20-week bans, forced counseling, and ideological shaming that you’re likely to encounter depending your state. And restrictions to abortion access disproportionately impact women in poverty, women of color, and women living in rural areas.

Rosemary’s Baby is as relevant today as it was forty-nine years ago. Like Guy Woodhouse, the Trump administration uses women as pawns and attempts to stave off rebellion by gaslighting, discrediting, isolating, and emotionally manipulating them.

Prevenge is in some ways a modernized version of Rosemary’s Baby. Ruth (Alice Lowe) is a widow, convinced something is wrong with her pregnancy but told by her midwife (Jo Hartley) that she needs to stay positive and listen to her instincts. The midwife tells Ruth, “Baby knows what to do. Baby will tell you what to do.” The only problem is that Ruth’s baby tells her to kill people, not to relax and eat some Cheetos dipped in clam chowder. With influences ranging from the Greek Furies, to American Psycho and Taxi Driver, Lowe “wanted to show a powerful pregnant woman,” which counters how pregnant women are traditionally depicted or viewed as frail.

During her pregnancy, Ruth is even more isolated than Rosemary. She lives out of hotel rooms, has no friends, and only interacts with her midwife and people she plans on killing. The bond with her unborn baby is the sole one we’re privy to and it’s obviously very twisted. Even when we finally see a flashback of her deceased husband, it’s of his death and not their time together.

While we often hear the midwife voice concern for the baby, we never hear her ask Ruth how she’s doing. Even after she looks through Ruth’s paperwork and realizes that her partner is dead, she doesn’t feign sympathy. She essentially tells Ruth to suck it up and remain positive because her negative energy won’t do anything to help the baby. This is the conversation she has with Ruth after realizing she’s a single mother:

Midwife: It’s very important to let the past stay in the past. It’s just nature’s way.
Ruth: I think nature’s a bit of a cunt, though, don’t you?
Midwife: Oh, negativity’s not good for the baby’s spirit, really.
Ruth: Do you think?
Midwife: Yes. I think it’s good to try to stay positive.

Ruth is clearly struggling with mental health issues and needs someone to step in and help her, but no one gives a shit about her problems; her job is to serve the baby and as long as she’s following through, there’s no cause for concern. As soon as Ruth becomes a mother, her grief and depression are non-issues to those around her because the baby comes first. Throughout the course of history, and especially in Trump’s America, baby always comes first. Our government cares more about fetuses than it does about living, breathing women. This chills me to the core more than a scary movie ever could.

Ruth and Rosemary both try to do what they think is best, but are swayed by outside influence. Ruth’s midwife tells her to listen to the baby; Dr. Sapirstein tells Rosemary to listen to him. No one tells either of these women to listen to themselves — to trust their bodies, experience, or intuition. Women are not to be trusted in any capacity, in any situation. Ruth knows that something isn’t right, that her pregnancy and mental state are abnormal. But she squashes these feelings, listens to her “baby,” and continues to kill people. Rosemary fights like hell at the end of the movie and tries to tell anyone who will listen that there’s a conspiracy against her, but she’s branded as “crazy” and immediately dismissed.

This Halloween, what’s keeping me up at night isn’t fiction; it’s real life. It’s the possibility of a 20-week abortion ban and the knowledge that I live in a country where women aren’t valued or trusted — where a majority of white women would rather have Donald Trump represent their interests than Hillary Clinton. I watch films like Prevenge and Rosemary’s Baby because I want to remind myself to stay vigilant. In 1979, Loretta Lynn said, “We’ve come a long way, baby,” but these films remind me we haven’t come far enough.

See also at Bitch Flicks:

Rosemary’s Baby: Marriage Can Be Terrifying

The “Blurred Lines” of Body Horror and Rape Culture

Rosemary’s Baby: Who Possesses the Pregnant Woman’s Body

Recommended Reading:

Woman in Revolt on Prevenge

Refinery29’s Interview with Alice Lowe: The Pregnant Serial Killer Movie Taking a Knife to Stereotypes on Film

The Most Cursed Hit Movie Ever Made by Rosemary Counter

Lindsay Pugh runs Woman in Revolt, an intersectional feminist film blog that focuses on female directors in television and film. She is a self-described militant feminist and can be found wandering the streets of Ann Arbor wearing a leather jacket adorned with “Fuck Paul Ryan” pins and shaking her fist at the patriarchy.

We Need To Talk About ‘Claws’: The TV Series We Need and Deserve

This powerhouse series is led by Niecy Nash, who has finally been given the leading lady role she deserves. … The friendship and loyalty between these five women places this show in a long legacy of TV shows about female friendship, from ‘Sex and the City’ to ‘The Bold Type,’ but it handles itself in a much more realistic manner — it isn’t afraid to call out their flaws just as it highlights their strengths.

This guest post by Odalis Garcia is an edited version of an article that originally appeared at Enjoy the Marina. It is cross-posted with permission.

With the summer now over, I have to say that the best “summer show” premiered this year. Yes, of course we have all been preoccupied with the twists, turns, incestuous deeds, and dragons of Game of Thrones and yes, The Handmaid’s Tale won numerous Emmys, but I’m talking about Claws.

This powerhouse series is led by Niecy Nash, who has finally been given the leading lady role she deserves. She is introduced as Desna, a nail technician from Palmetto, Florida trying to get out from under the hold of the Dixie Mafia, an organized crime syndicate, and open a new nail salon in the wealthier part of town. However, the unplanned murder of her flame (Jack Kesy), the Dixie Mafia’s golden boy, sets her back a couple of steps.

The main story focuses on Desna wanting to give herself and her brother (Harold Perrineau), who’s on the autism spectrum, a better life. Yet in the span of 10 episodes, you start to care deeply for the other members of Desna’s crew and see that they are unique and complex characters. The crew comprises Quiet Ann (Judy Reyes), Polly (Carrie Preston), Jennifer (Jenn Lyon), and Virginia Loc (Karrueche Tran). The friendship and loyalty between these five women places this show in a long legacy of TV shows about female friendship, from Sex and the City to The Bold Type, but it handles itself in a much more realistic manner — it isn’t afraid to call out their flaws just as it highlights their strengths. These women are mothers, caretakers, sisters, nail techs, and lovers; they are absolutely badass and unafraid to ruin anyone who gets in their way.

Quiet Ann, is a lesbian character who’s not a punchline or a trope. She’s a pivotal, if not the most important, member of the crew. She protects the team and keeps them grounded. Plus, she gives great pedicures. She rarely ever speaks but when she does, her words are insightful and always taken as sage advice. Quiet Ann is their protector at all times, but we see her go through a journey of love and inevitably, she must decide to whom she is most loyal.

Polly is a force to be reckoned with. We catch up with her as she is just released from prison after conning older people in a retiree community out of their money. Even though she lied her way through life, she always stays true to Desna and the crew, even if that means she reverts to the criminal habits that landed her in jail in the first place. Preston has been in the game acting for a long time, from True Blood to The Good Wife, (as have Niecy Nash on Reno 911!, Getting On, and Scream Queens, and Judy Reyes on Scrubs and Jane the Virgin), and this is yet another iconic role, a testament to her talent.

Jennifer Husser, is Desna’s best friend but there is more to her than just the constant companion. She’s a mother and recovering from alcoholism, who has already been hurt by the mob’s influence in her life, though she technically married into it. She will ferociously defend her daughters and family even if at times it conflicts with the interests of her best friend.

And last but not least is Virginia, who at first seems to be Desna’s foil. But as the series progresses, we see her evolve from petty and competitive to realizing that she seeks acceptance, a way to get out of the stripping business, and a desire to have a “found family” who will support her and have her back.

Devoted to each other, these women are as intense in their loyalty to one another as they are in their manicure game. They will just as easily create art while simultaneously framing some evil, rich, white people for murder. It’s not to say that there aren’t divisions in the friendships at times and that trust doesn’t falter every now and then, but that’s just life. Friendships will chip but the beauty of women, which Claws illustrates, is that even when we’re not on great speaking terms, we will root for each other.

Of course it makes sense that the female characters are so complex and intriguing since the creative team is composed mainly of women, including showrunner, executive producer, and writer Janine Sherman Barrois (The Jamie Foxx Show, Criminal Minds, ER) — one of the few Black women showrunners — as well as directors Victoria Mahoney (Yelling to the Sky, Queen Sugar, Power) and Nicole Kassell (The Killing, The Closer, The Americans), and executive producer Rashida Jones.

This show is the perfect example for what happens when diversity isn’t just written into the script but is also practiced behind the camera; because of this the women of color in the show are written with the nuance and care that any other character (read: usually white characters) gets.

It could be because of this same reason that its characters are so intriguing. It goes beyond women understanding the way female friendships work, but also knowing that one woman doesn’t have to be a paragon of strength for all women. Women also fail, are complicated, and will get angry. Women are saintly but also manipulative. Women are people too. The creators of this show demonstrate that through the way they’ve written the characters.

Claws also deconstructs gender roles and toxic masculinity. The three main male Hussers of the Dixie Mafia are not afraid to express their emotions and cry. When (SPOILER ALERT) Roller is believed to be dead, the Husser men cry openly and in front of everybody, unafraid to show how they feel. Bryce Husser (Kevin Rankin), Jennifer’s husband, is very vulnerable and honest with his wife about their marriage and is willing to talk about how to make it better — instead of just closing off.

Mob boss, Clay Husser (Dean Norris), who goes by the nickname “Uncle Daddy,” has his own side boy toy who’s treated as part of the family. He’s also devoted to his wife (Dale Dickey), treating her with the reverence due a warrior empress. Uncle Daddy’s masculinity and bisexuality are never questioned.

The show addressed Roller’s (Kesy) trauma after being a victim of kidnap and sexual assault; a narrative that’s not usually given to male characters. It’s a sad reality that men are less likely to report when they have been abused for fear of not being understood or supported. However, about 14% of survivors who report rape are male.

When it comes to the women and gender roles, Desna, and the rest of the women for that matter, are not judged for their sexual desires and casually talk about sex in the nail salon — really the best place for that kind of gossip. Quiet Ann is probably the most physically strong but there is a tenderness to her when it comes to falling in love. And it’s admirable that her queerness is a simple fact, giving her a love interest without anyone batting an eyelash. The only issue with the woman she falls for is that she’s a detective looking into the Dixie Mafia and Desna by default.

Claws is the show that you can’t miss. Now that it has been renewed for a second season, I can’t wait to see how the series will further develop. And I will repeat: it is SO GOOD to finally see Niecy Nash in the spotlight she deserves.

Through Nash’s Desna, we see a character that is not often explored in the world of television. She’s unapologetic, driven, and totally badass — characteristics not usually attributed to actresses in their late 40s, and especially not to women of color. We, as the audience, want to see her achieve her goals of opening the new salon, of finally getting out from under mob rule, of her getting that big house her brother always dreamed of, of finally leaving abusive people behind. Women need to see that happen, no matter how dramatic it may be; it’s a message they can relate to.

Here’s hoping that next summer won’t just be about the arrival of winter or whatever else, but about the heat and vibrancy of the sunshine state and the five women who stick together through thick and thin and all that humidity.

Odalis Garcia is currently trying to figure life out, in the meantime, she watches all of the TV shows and likes to yell about them to her friends, occasionally writing about those feelings. She is originally from Puerto Rico but calls Miami home (#Miss305) and is very passionate about Cuban food, empanadas, and the salsa dancing emoji. You can read more of her work at her website and you can follow her on Twitter @odcgg and Instagram at odalis.gg.

The Chameleon Woman in ‘Dollhouse’ and ‘iZombie’: Personality Swapping and Agency

The problem presented by both ‘Dollhouse’ and ‘iZombie’ is that of the “Chameleon Woman.” Both Echo and Liv carry the metaphor of the expectation that women adapt based on the needs and desires of others. However, both TV series point to this societal issue with two very different takes.

Guest post written by Audrey T. Carroll.

“Would you like a treatment?” This phrase is repeated throughout the course of Joss Whedon’s television series Dollhouse, meant to cue the “Actives” or “Dolls” — people, mostly women, whose personalities have been stripped from them — to let the in-house scientist imprint them with a personality, memories, or skills that someone pays for them to have. After the client encounters, they are again wiped of their memories and personalities. The “Dollhouse,” one of approximately 20 facilities that rents out Dolls, is a human trafficking ring. The Dolls are meant to fulfill the expectations of others, especially (though admittedly not exclusively) male clients and often in a sexual or sexually enticing capacity. For example, in season one episode two “The Target,” the show’s protagonist, Echo (Eliza Dushku), is sent on a date with a man who loves outdoor activities. She is clearly hired in an arousal capacity, which takes a turn for the worst when the guy starts to hunt her.

Echo changes every week. We’re supposed to root for her because she’s the protagonist and Eliza Dushku does a wonderful job infusing the character with as much sympathy as possible. Of course we feel bad for her because of her situation. However, it can be difficult to connect to a character who has to change in accordance with each situation. Echo, in a lot of ways, embodies an ideal of “the chameleon woman.” She changes depending on the needs of the partner who paid for her, a sickening representation of the expectation that women exist solely to service the needs of others, most commonly men — if they like the outdoors, then so must she; if they need a doting wife or neighbor, then she must fit that description; if they need someone cold and calculating, then that’s what she becomes.

Why, out of all of the Dolls in the House, do we predominantly follow Echo? Because Echo is unique in that she has a “defect”: she has the ability to retain some semblance of self and she becomes more self-aware. Because of this, we can root for her as an audience; it gives us some sort of personality continuity that we can connect to emotionally. But the characters in power — scientist Topher (Fran Kanz); Adelle, (Olivia Williams) who runs the Dollhouse; Echo’s handler, Boyd (Harry Lennix) — make it clear that this is a defect, not something impressive or victorious as the audience might perceive it. In fact, this can land Echo in a lot of trouble. Specifically, she can end up in “the Attic,” which serves as a punishment of permanent entrapment and mental torment for Dolls who are “broken” or “defective” (in the view of the Dollhouse).

Echo’s unique skill doesn’t help her to not be stripped of her agency the vast majority of the time. She has no say in what personalities she gets imprinted with, or who her clients are, or even the most basic “yes or no” consent. Even before she was a Doll, when she was Caroline, the head of the Dollhouse essentially backed her against the wall, making Caroline’s agreement to be a doll in the first place ethically compromised even beyond the basic premise of “humans used as shells for the pleasure of people who pay for them.” It was hardly a choice at all. And for some other characters — namely Sierra (Dichen Lachman), who was institutionalized by a man after she rejected him and then involuntarily sent to the Dollhouse — there was literally no choice at all.

Based on the comic books, the TV series iZombie, created by Diane Ruggiero-Wright and Rob Thomas, focuses on the crime-solving medical examiner and pseudo-psychic Olivia “Liv” Moore (Rose McIver). Liv helps Detective Clive Babineaux (Malcolm Goodwin) with homicide cases. She’s able to do this because, in the process of eating the brains that come down to the medical examiner’s office to keep herself as human as possible, she takes on the memories and personalities of the deceased. This can lead to visions that give Liv clues for Clive to identify the killers he needs to put away. Because of the way that eating brains affects Liv, she changes personalities every week — a dominatrix one week, a frat boy the next.

Liv is able to help in the pursuit of justice, albeit in a highly unconventional way, and she’s able to develop meaningful and consistent relationships not solely centered on sex or her sexual appeal. She has no sexual history nor, as far as the show presents, sexual engagement with most of the other characters: Ravi (Rahul Kohli), her fellow medical examiner; Peyton (Aly Michalka), her best friend; and Clive. It could be argued that Clive benefits from what Liv can do, but he is friends with her outside of her abilities and, while he can be very determined and dedicated, he’s never forced or coerced Liv into a situation or actions that morally compromise her.

Echo’s defect is that she maintains a semblance of self; Liv’s is that she can deviate from her true self. When Liv eats the brains of a deceased hitman, she almost lets Ravi get eaten by a much more monstrous “Romero zombie.” When she’s on vigilante brains, she almost gets herself killed. When she’s on nymphomaniac brains, she cheats on her boyfriend. But most of the time, Liv is still Liv, just with some goofy quirks and moments of zoning out when she sees someone else’s memories. At first, Liv’s voice-over narration in the show reflects her thoughts and demonstrates that she’s still herself. Later, the writers let Rose McIver’s acting and her consistent chemistry with the other actors do the heavy lifting of demonstrating that Liv is always Liv, and that this Liv is who her friends connect to and care about.

Liv is also not robbed of her agency. She chooses to eat the brains of murder victims for many reasons tied to her character, probably the two foremost being that the person is already dead and she wants to help find their killer. She also turns down the “brain mush” from the company Fillmore-Graves, which would give her the sustenance she needs without imbuing her with the personalities or memories of the deceased. Liv chooses to help others, to accept the drawbacks of her current feeding situation so that being a zombie — a state of being that was beyond her control — becomes something that benefits the greater good. Liv is able to make the choice to not let what she is control who she is — zombie Liv is different from human Liv, but she is still at her core Liv.

The problem presented by both Dollhouse and iZombie is that of the “Chameleon Woman.” Both Echo and Liv carry the metaphor of the expectation that women adapt based on the needs and desires of others. However, both TV series point to this societal issue with two very different takes. In Dollhouse, women (who comprise most of the recurring named Dolls) are commodities waiting to have a skin put on them. The framing can make it difficult to create emotional connection to Echo, and all of the non-Dolls are morally compromised because they are either actively involved in the actions of the Dollhouse or otherwise complicit in its continued existence.

The argument could be made that Dollhouse is about women struggling to regain agency. However, there is the example of Alpha (Alan Tudyk), a Doll who escaped and became homicidal because he, like Echo, was remembering personalities that the Dollhouse gave him. He can theoretically be read as a warning for Echo not to be anything more than the childlike drone she is when between personalities. This is to say nothing of the constantly looming threat of “The Attic.” Whether Echo retaining her memories and sense of self is a positive quality is much more ambiguous and comes with a much greater sense of personal danger for the protagonist than is presented on iZombie.

In iZombie, situations can happen to a person that they can’t control but they can still make choices about how to move forward and, in this way, maintain agency. It’s not a flaw; letting the adopted personality control you is the failing. Liv’s zombie boyfriend Justin (Tongayi Chirisa) even tells her, when she cheats on him while on nymphomaniac brains, “I’ve eaten brains before, Liv, and you can fight them if you really want to.” At the end of the day, Dolls are Dolls; they can function as objects or they can be made to disappear. Zombies can become monsters, either the ilk of serial killer criminal bosses like Blaine (David Anders) or mindless and violent “Romero zombies.” But zombies do not have to choose to be monsters.

Both TV series are all about choice, and this becomes colored a certain way with female protagonists. Women are too often robbed of choice, or are presented with choices that range from bad to worse. The struggle for women’s agency seems inextricably linked to the struggle for women’s choices. Examining what women do with choice is a natural extension of this effort. At the end of the day, Dollhouse is about what a woman does with a lack of choice; iZombie is about what a woman does within her realm of choices.

Audrey T. Carroll is a Queens, NYC native currently pursuing her English PhD at the University of Rhode Island. Her obsessions include kittens, coffee, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Queen of Pentacles, her debut poetry collection, is available from Choose the Sword Press, and she can be found at http://audreytcarrollwrites.weebly.com and @AudreyTCarroll on Twitter.

‘Fanny Pack’: An Indian American Woman Pursues Her Dreams in Woman-Directed Short Film

Directed by Uttera Singh, “traditional values and modern dreams collide in this comedy about a young Indian-American woman who attempts to elude her fanny pack-clad father and board a plane in pursuit of a less conventional future. The film was inspired by the filmmaker’s own experiences of traveling in the U.S. as a recent citizen.”

Fanny Pack is a short film directed by Uttera Singh, which she made at USC. It’s also one of the premiere short films for the fifth season of Film School Shorts. The principal cast includes Dorothy Blue, Jerilyn Clayton, and Brian George.

ABOUT FANNY PACK:
“Traditional values and modern dreams collide in this comedy about a young Indian-American woman who attempts to elude her fanny pack-clad father and board a plane in pursuit of a less conventional future. The film was inspired by the filmmaker’s own experiences of traveling in the U.S. as a recent citizen.”

“When you’re brown, airports are a fun family activity,” says Singh, “My family has been stopped at airports more frequently than I can remember.”

ABOUT UTTERA SINGH:
“Drama has always been a part of Uttera Singh’s life. On the day she was born, her mother, who was nine months pregnant, was hit by a firecracker, and her father rescued her and rushed her to the hospital to deliver the baby. That’s how Uttera — a real life firecracker — was born and that same fiery spirit is still very much alive in her. Uttera is a 2016 MFA graduate of the USC School of Cinematic Arts. She is a recipient of one of the first ever Ryan Murphy Diversity Fellowships and just finished directing her thesis film, Fanny Pack starring Brian George (Big Bang Theory, Seinfeld), a proof of concept for a half-hour TV show. Her one-woman show “Indian Lady Shakespeare wears Underwear” is set to premiere in Los Angeles in the fall of 2016. While still attending USC, Uttera was chosen as one of the directors on the USC/James Franco feature film Mad Whale starring Camilla Belle, Dominic Rains, Summer Phoenix, and James Franco. Uttera lives in Los Angeles. She spends her time going on adventures and then writing about them.”

You can follow Uttera Singh on Twitter @uttera. Filmmaker bio and film description courtesy of Film School Shorts.

ABOUT FILM SCHOOL SHORTS AND KQED:

“Film School Shorts is a national half-hour weekly series that showcases short student films from across the country. Each week, viewers can watch well-crafted films with high production values, strong dialogue and riveting drama. Grouped together around a central theme or topic, and featuring production values that rival their indie film counterparts, KQED is proud to present award winning entertainment to a national audience. Featured are the best short films from major institutions like NYU, Columbia University, UCLA, USC, and University of Texas that have wowed audiences at Cannes, Sundance, Toronto, Telluride, and SXSW.”

“KQED serves the people of Northern California with a public-supported alternative to commercial media. An NPR and PBS affiliate based in San Francisco, KQED is home to one of the most listened-to public radio stations in the nation, one of the highest-rated public television services and an award-winning education program helping students and educators thrive in 21st-century classrooms. A trusted news source and leader and innovator in interactive technology, KQED takes people of all ages on journeys of exploration — exposing them to new people, places and ideas.”

Stanley Tucci’s ‘Final Portrait’: What about the Women?

‘Final Portrait’ is entertaining, fun in parts, silly, and a bit melancholy. It is also deeply, inescapably misogynist, so lost in being impressed with male genius that it forgets that women are even human. Giacometti, it is suggested, hates women. And yet, by never properly addressing his hatred and his fear, so, it seems, does this film.

Guest post written by Laura Witz.

The Guardian gives writer/director Stanley Tucci’s Final Portrait four stars, missing out on the fifth simply due to a lack of action. The Hollywood Reporter dubs it “a narrative with little consistent forward momentum and an anticlimactic ending, though the film remains agreeable thanks largely to Rush’s flavorful performance.” Little White Lies considers it too “French” for some, but notes that “while hardly a masterpiece itself, Final Portrait is exceptionally warm company.”

Yet, as I sat in the UK premiere of Final Portrait at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, I have to admit that it was not warmth I felt, but anger. There is no doubt, as all of these reviews note, that Geoffrey Rush is wonderful and Armie Hammer, while a little less so, is still quite good. But it is the film’s dismissal of women as either silly, dowdy, or dangerous, that allows it to slowly sink in that Final Portrait’s creators have seemingly internalized the misogyny of its subjects.

The film is a chamber piece about the artist Alberto Giacometti (Geoffrey Rush). It revolves around his creation of his “final portrait” — a title that rather gives away the ending. The portrait is of young writer, James Lord (Armie Hammer); the film is an adaptation of Lord’s memoir. Lord is originally told the portrait will take just one afternoon, but this stretches out for weeks as Giacometti misses the deadline and Lord delays multiple flights due to an awkward combination of politeness and vanity.

The set up for the film is a nice one and it creates a good basis for comedy, and indeed, it is in the comedy that Final Portrait does itself proud. However, what left me with a chill was the way the narrative turned the moment it included a woman. Giacometti has a wife and he frequents a sex worker, the latter of whom he makes no secret of.

The female characters are primarily kept out of the comedy and saved for the moments when the film takes a darker turn. Annette, the wife, played sympathetically by Sylvie Testud, provides the only relatively rounded woman/female character in the narrative. Annette is interesting, but not well enough drawn for us to understand her motivations for staying with a man who is borderline abusive. The scene in which it is implied that she is indulging in consolatory extramarital sex sits uncomfortably, a kind of narrative attempt to let Giacometti off the hook for his behavior. There is little reasoning for this and no further mention. Quite simply, the narrative, like Giacometti, is not interested in Annette.

Caroline (Clémence Poésy), a sex worker, is a nerd boy’s wet dream. She is sweet, girly and energetic to the point of irritating; she dances on screen and covers Giacometti’s eyes, calling him, cutely, “the old gray one,” and willfully dismissing Lord from the modeling chair. But, importantly, she is a sex worker, so Caroline’s entire job is presumably designed to make smug, aging, insecure men feel good about themselves. Yet by never showing us past this persona, the film itself buys into it, indulging in the non-threat of this child-like woman. At one point Caroline goes missing, and we wonder if we might be about to see more to her character, but then she turns up rained on and cute; her return to Giacometti is played like the end of a rom-com.

Amidst all of this, there is a baffling scene, played for laughs, where the wealthy Giacometti (who will give his wife no money) gives Caroline’s pimps more money than they ask for. In this, we are to forget that this is four men bargaining over the body of a woman and simply enjoy the concept of paying too much to greedy men. This is one of a number of scenes dropped in, seeming out of joint with the film at large. Another more disturbing scene involves Giacometti drunkenly searching the town for a replacement for Caroline. The camera shakily presents Giacometti’s perspective of the sex workers: cold, unforgiving and, most damningly, not Caroline. In this, they are the aggressors, and the drunken man looking to pay for a night of comfort is their victim.

Finally, following this scene, back in the studio Giacometti asks a baffled Lord if he has ever fantasized about raping and murdering two women. Lord looks surprised, and a little amused. Giacometti comments that when he was a child he found such fantasies comforting. And this scene, passed by without a second glance or any additional commentary, sums up the careless misogyny of the film.

Final Portrait is entertaining, fun in parts, silly, and a bit melancholy. It is also deeply, inescapably misogynist, so lost in being impressed with male genius that it forgets that women are even human. Giacometti, it is suggested, hates women. And yet, by never properly addressing his hatred and his fear, so, it seems, does this film.

Laura Witz is an editor and writer of plays and stories living and working in the UK. She has written plays that have performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and the Jane Austen Festival in Bath and her articles and stories have been published in a number of institutions and publications, a few of which can be found on her blog. Witz hopes to one day become an aerial clown. You can follow her on Twitter @Charlotte_Prod.

Post-Feminist Rom-Coms and the Existing Female in ‘Trainwreck’ and ‘Legally Blonde’

In the post-feminist romantic comedy, female characters transition from being non-existent objects, into existing, as subjects, in the course of love. … In ‘Trainwreck,’ Amy begins the film as a subject, but ends as an object. Amy’s opposition becomes submission to male desires, for a man, which erases her. In ‘Legally Blonde,’ Elle begins as object, but ends the film as subject. Initially, the gaze of the camera and the characters objectify Elle’s body. But eventually, Elle demonstrates her worth and success outside of male desires and ultimately finds love.

This guest post is written by Claire White.

In cinema, female characters do not exist (as subjects), especially in the course of finding love. Looking at the origins of feminist film theory, it is easy to establish why the idea of the non-existent female in cinema is present. However, when female heroines are the main protagonist, the female oscillates between existing and being erased. I will convey this oscillation of existence through the analysis of two post-feminist romantic comedies, Trainwreck and Legally Blonde, in which the female protagonist ultimately finds love.

In the case of Trainwreck (directed by Judd Apatow, 2015), the lead character, Amy (Amy Schumer), exists as love subject at the beginning of the film. However, by the film’s end, Amy erases herself by submitting to male desires, becoming the love object, in order to ultimately find love. On the other hand, in Legally Blonde (directed by Robert Luketic, 2001), Elle Woods (Reese Witherspoon) does not exist at the beginning of the film, due to her characterization as a typical dumb, rich, and spoiled blonde who is portrayed as object. Nonetheless, it is how her character develops and reacts to male criticism which legitimizes her, and in the end she finds, proving that in the post-feminist romantic comedy, the female can exist and find love.

The concept of the non-existent female character in cinema has been prevalent as far back as the 1970s, as highlighted in the works of key feminist film theorists Claire Johnston and Laura Mulvey. In her 1974 essay “Myths of Women in the Cinema,” Johnston contends in cinema, “woman as woman is largely absent” (Johnston 1974, 410). Johnston examines the sexist ideology of the male-dominated cinema, and discusses the woman as a myth (1974, 410). Women in cinema exist under fixed iconography, only ever as erotic myth or stereotype, with no variety, whereas men play various different roles (Johnston 1974, 408). Laura Mulvey’s 1975 essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” discusses the “male gaze,” which remains a prominent concept in contemporary film criticism. The Male Gaze is understood as men in the cinema being the active holders of the gaze, which is imposed onto the women as passive bearers of “the look” (Mulvey 1975, 418). The Male Gaze “projects its fantasy onto the female figure, which is styled accordingly” (Mulvey 1975, 418). These critiques arise out of the recognition of the cinema being male-dominated, meaning male directors were the ones portraying women as object, and inflicting their gaze.

Claire Mortimer recognizes, while the romantic comedy is thought of as a woman’s genre, “the romantic comedy heroine is almost always the construct resulting from the work of men, due to the patriarchal nature of the film industry” (Mortimer 2010, 20). Applying Johnston and Mulvey’s theory in the cinematic love story, the woman does not exist outside of a sexualized and erotic or love object, not love subject. Over twenty years after Mulvey’s essay, Jane M. Ussher discusses the Male Gaze in film and art, and describes the woman appearing “as a creature to be worshiped or an object to be denigrated; her very essence is irrevocably linked to sexuality in all its myriad forms” (Ussher 1997, 84). This is a testament to the weight of Mulvey’s argument, and demonstrates over time that women as object in cinema endures.

I assert that Trainwreck and Legally Blonde fall under the term of “post-feminist.” Yvonne Tasker and Diane Negra, in the introduction of their edited book Interrogating Postfeminism: Gender and the Politics of Popular Culture, describe post-feminism as an ideology which “broadly encompasses a set of assumptions, widely disseminated within popular media forms, having to do with the ‘pastness’ of feminism, whether that supposed pastness is merely noted, mourned, or celebrated” (Tasker & Negra 2007, 2). Post-feminism acknowledges the work of feminism as over, and exists through the idea of gender equality having been achieved, allowing young women to feel empowered through sexual acts and consumption.

The post-feminist romantic comedy presents what Negra and Tasker describe as “a limited vision of gender equality as both achieved and yet still unsatisfying” (Tasker & Negra 2007, 2). Trainwreck and Legally Blonde both portray empowered and successful women, living in post-feminist success, yet also highlight the gaps and unsatisfactory nature of the post-feminist society. The two concerns post-feminist culture emphasizes, which are most relevant to these films, are the “educational and professional opportunities for women” and “physical and particularly sexual empowerment” (Tasker & Negra 2007, 2).

In the contemporary romantic comedy, Mortimer describes the female heroines as those who “work hard and play hard, seemingly living the post-feminist dream” (Mortimer 2010, 30). This is the site of the female character’s existence, through empowerment and agency. However, as Mortimer further explains, in the romantic comedy love story, “at a decisive point in the narrative, [the female heroine’s] values are overturned and they can no longer find happiness in their former lifestyle” (Mortimer 2010, 30). The contemporary romantic comedy heroine will make “significant sacrifices for a traditional heterosexual partnership; she embraces the romantic dream and is whisked off her feet by the right guy, having realised that love conquers all” (Mortimer 2010, 30). This is what happens to Amy in Trainwreck, which ultimately erases her as a character of existence.

Trainwreck tells the story of party girl and journalist Amy Townsend (Amy Schumer, who also wrote the screenplay). She lives in New York City, and is assigned to write an article on sports surgeon Dr. Aaron Conners (Bill Hader). The two pursue a relationship, the main tensions of the relationship coming from Aaron’s eventual unacceptance of Amy’s wild, weed-smoking, excessive drinking, and emotionally distant ways.

In an introductory voice-over, Amy describes her life with her “great job,” “sick” apartment, and “awesome” friends and family, all while the audience are shown images of Amy sleeping with various men. Amy is a successful protagonist without being tied down to one monogamous relationship; she embodies Angela McRobbie’s description of the new, young post-feminist woman who “brazenly enjoy their sexuality without fear of the sexual double standards” (McRobbie 2007, 38). Even when Amy enters her relationship with Aaron, she remains existing while finding love by sticking to her own principles, regardless of male desire. This is seen predominantly in the scene where Amy first sees the Knicks City Dancers perform.

In the scene where Amy and Aaron attend a basketball event together, editing and framing positions Amy as a female character who exists. This is due to her obvious opposition to the male desire Aaron and the male characters around her exhibit during a performance by the cheerleading group, the Knicks City Dancers. After the camera reveals the scantily-clad dancers beginning their routine in a long shot, the film cuts to a medium shot of Amy and Aaron in the crowd, watching. The camera frames both of the characters into a two shot and positions them in the center of the frame. Due to the two shot, the difference in opinion on the dancers are given emphasis. Amy looks on with a disgusted expression on her face, while Aaron cheers in support and claps. In the background, male extras dance in enjoyment to the performance, while Amy remains stationary and opposed. She gives a slight shake of the head in disapproval, and the camera cuts back to the performance.

Amy’s refusal to accept the image of woman as erotic spectacle is what validates her as a female character which exists as subject. However, in a post-feminist culture, “whilst it is clear that women are active in resisting the narrow restrictions of the feminine masquerade,” women still do not have the “freedom to decide what being a ‘woman’ means to us” (Ussher 1997, 131). While Amy’s opposition to male desire may be the effect of Schumer’s writing, Apatow, as director, still maintains control over Amy’s character. In discussing how female desire is portrayed by male directors, Geetha Ramanathan stipulates “female desire … is underwritten by a male desire which conflates the image of woman with desire itself” (Ramanathan 2006, 141). This underwriting is apparent in the final sequence of the film.

In the final scene of the film, and in an effort to truly find love, Amy erases herself by performing as a cheerleader for Aaron. Trainwreck follows Roberta Garrett’s description of the new romantic comedy tradition, in which “the [female] central protagonists modify their behaviour in accordance with the desires of the [male] other” (Garrett 2007, 101). As Amy dances with the Knicks City Dancers, she is dressed in the same revealing costume as the dancers in a short skirt and plunging neckline, which is not unusual for Amy’s character. However, by wearing a cheerleader costume and not her usual clothes, and dancing in the center of the performance, Amy has shifted in character from flaunting her sexuality for her own empowerment, to submitting to male (Aaron’s) desires. A medium shot cut to Aaron as he watches the performance positions him in the center of the frame, surrounded by empty chairs. This performance is for him, and him alone, and his obvious enjoyment is indicated by the astonished expression and smile on his face. This performance is regressive from Amy’s earlier opposition to the dancers, and represents what Garrett describes as the “patriarchal desire to return to pre-feminist conceptions of sexual difference” (Garrett 2007, 99). In the course of finding love for the post-feminist, their “pursuit of ‘personal’ happiness [is] understood in relation to men,” as their professional success and financial stability is no longer enough (Garret 2007, 94). As shown in the diegesis, Amy has changed significantly since she last spoke to Aaron, while he has not changed at all. To finally achieve love, as cemented by the kiss which ends the film, Amy has had to completely change herself to fit male desire, and, as a result, erases herself into the love object.

In Legally Blonde, the shift from real to not real in the pursuit of love for the female protagonist works in reverse. The film tells the story of Elle Woods (Reese Witherspoon), a Californian Sorority President who goes to study at Harvard Law School to chase her college boyfriend, Warner Huntington III (Matthew Davis) after what she thought would be a proposal resulted in Warner dumping her for being too “blond.”

In the first half of the film, Elle is a female character who does not exist, as she embodies ditzy blonde stereotypes and, as a result, most characters expect little of her outside of being a trophy wife. Where Trainwreck‘s Amy flaunts her sexuality for personal empowerment, Elle uses it specifically to appeal to men. Indeed, Carol M. Dole describes Elle’s Harvard admissions tape as her “employing her sexuality … featuring herself in a bikini” (2008, 62). Elle is a character who is “unashamed to employ the spectacle of her adorned body to gain her ends,” which is common for post-feminists (Dole 2008, 67). Legally Blonde begins in the classical romantic comedy tradition, “[exhibiting] a structural drive towards marriage and coupledom” (Garret, 2007, 96). For the first half of the film, Elle’s main character drive is to be proposed to. However, as a romantic comedy made in the post-feminist society, when Elle’s attitudes shift, the limits of post-feminism is critiqued.

The scene where Elle is misled into believing a Harvard party is a costume party by Vivian (Selma Blair), pinpoints the moment in which the character of Elle switches from non-existent to existing. The scene begins with a close-up on Elle’s high-heeled shoes which pans slowly up her body, revealing her tight, pink bunny costume. The camera remains behind Elle as she walks up to the door of the party, allowing the emphasis to remain on her body and behind, which is situated in the center of the frame. As Elle walks into the party and realizes Vivian lied to her about the costumes, the camera remains in a medium shot. This use of camera ensures Elle’s body and tight, sexualized costume of silky corset and tights is always in frame. Elle is positioned as another ditzy, sexualized blonde, evident in her easily being manipulated and her choice of costume. However, when she talks to Warner, who suddenly pays attention to her and reaches out to grab her hips, despite having ignored her up until now within the diegesis, a shift in framing and camera angles occur. When Warner insult’s Elle’s intelligence, she steps back and the camera cuts to a close-up, which zooms slowly towards her face. This camera movement removes the objectifying gaze, and emphasizes her outraged expression as she realizes Warner and her fellow classmates will never take her seriously, despite being smart enough to get accepted into Harvard Law School, just like anyone else.

It is in this way Legally Blonde points out the limits of post-feminism. Post-feminism purports feminism’s work is done, and espouses empowerment through sexualization. However, what Legally Blonde does here is “[warn] women viewers that extremes of femininity” that is, flaunting her sexualized body, “can be socially unacceptable” and damaging (Dole 2008, 68). Elle realizes she is more than the beauty she has been conditioned to believe is the most important part about her. It is from this point onward that Elle’s character is validated and becomes a real person, and becomes subject, outside of erotic spectacle.

The final scene of Legally Blonde proves female characters can exist and find love in the cinema, as Elle does. This scene is set “two years later” after Elle wins her first big murder trial, indicated by a title card at the bottom of the screen. Elle has been announced as class speaker at her graduation from law school, having earned the love and respect from her fellow students. Eleanor Hersey pays particular attention to the role the public speech plays in contemporary romantic comedies. She argues a public speech “reminds women that they are not going to find all their fulfilment in men” (Hersey 2007, 152). Elle’s anger from Warner is channeled into her studying, and upon graduation, she has succeeded. Legally Blonde shifts post-feminist empowerment from sexuality to education (Hersey 2007, 156).

During Elle’s speech, the camera cuts to high angle shots of the ensemble characters in the audience, watching her. As the camera views Vivian, who was originally Elle’s opposition due to being Warner’s fiancée, she now smiles up at Elle and a caption along the bottom of the screen reveals Vivian “dumped” Warner and is now best friends with Elle. Similarly, when the camera cuts to the character Emmett (Luke Wilson), captions reveal he and Elle have been dating for two years, and he is going to propose to Elle that night. Elle has been able to find and attain love, not only in the form of a proposal but also in friendship. Elle’s love story has come full circle from the proposal-that-never-was with Warner, to Emmett, who loves Elle for her mind (Hersey 2007, 156). She was able to prove herself outside of stereotypes, and ultimately find love, despite her existence as subject.

In the post-feminist romantic comedy, female characters transition from being non-existent objects, into existing, as subjects, in the course of love. However, as argued, this transition can go either way. In Trainwreck, Amy begins the film as a subject, but ends as an object. Amy’s opposition becomes submission to male desires, for a man, which erases her. Legally Blonde, however, works opposite: Elle begins as object, but ends the film as subject. Initially, the gaze of the camera and the characters objectify Elle’s body. But eventually, Elle demonstrates her worth and success outside of male desires and ultimately finds love.

Bibliography:

Dole, C M 2008, ‘The Return of Pink: Legally Blonde, third-wave feminism, and having it all’, in Ferris, S, Young, M (eds.), Chick Flicks: Contemporary Women at the Movies, Routledge, London and New York, pp 58-78

Garret, R 2007, ‘Romantic Comedy and Female Spectatorship’, Postmodern Chick Flicks: the return of the women’s film’, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, pp 92-125

Hersey, E 2007, ‘Love and Microphones: Romantic Comedy Heroines as Public Speakers’, Journal of Popular Film and Television, vol. 34, no. 4, pp 149-158

Johnston, C 1974, ‘Myths of Women in the Cinema’ as printed in Kay, K and Peary, G (eds.) 1977, Women and the Cinema: A Critical Anthology, E. P Dutton, New York, pp 407-411

McRobbie, A 2007, ‘Postfeminism and Popular Culture: Bridget Jones and the New Gender Regime’ in Negra, D, Tasker, Y (eds.) Interrogating Postfeminism: Gender and the Politics of Popular Culture, Duke University Press, USA, pp 27-39

Mortimer, C 2010, ‘The Heroine of the Romantic Comedy’, Romantic Comedy, Taylor and Francis, Hoboken, pp 20-44

Mulvey, L 1975, ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ as printed in Kay, K and Peary, G (eds.), 1977, Women and the Cinema: A Critical Anthology, E. P Dutton, New York, pp 412-428

Negra, D, Tasker, Y 2007, ‘Introduction: Feminist Politics and Postfeminist Culture’ in Negra, D, Tasker, Y (eds.), Interrogating Postfeminism: Gender and the Politics of Popular Culture, Duke University Press, USA, pp 1-26

Ramanathan, G 2006, ‘Desire and Female Subjectivity’, Feminist Auteurs: Reading Women’s Films, Wallflower Press, London, pp 141-167

Ussher, J M 1997, ‘The Masculine Gaze: Framing ‘Woman’ in Art and Film,’ Fantasies of Femininity: Reframing the Boundaries of Sex’, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, New Jersey, pp 84-142

See also at Bitch Flicks:

Trainwreck‘s Unexpected Dose of the Feels

Raunchy and Unfiltered, Amy Schumer Talks about Trainwreck at the Apple Store

The Feminist’s Box Office Call of Duty

Watch Me Shine: Legally Blonde and My Path to Girl Power

Claire White is a Screen & Cultural Studies and Media & Communications graduate, bookseller, and production intern based in Melbourne, Australia. She is founder and writer of the all-female stage and screen blog Cause a Cine. You can follow her on Twitter @clairencew.

Concerning the Confusingly Named ‘Love & Friendship’ (Jane Austen’s ‘Lady Susan’)

Whit Stillman’s adaptation celebrates this power. Taking the text off the page necessarily removes it from the female form in which it is written and therefore extends the realm of female power. … Jane Austen is one of the most, if not the most, famous female authors in the world. Yet, over the course of a series of progressively shittier adaptations… a great comedian and social satirist has been pigeonholed as a romance writer.

This guest post written by Laura Witz is an edited version of an article that originally appeared at Witzster. It is cross-posted with permission.

Whit Stillman’s Love & Friendship follows the narrative of Jane Austen’s novella Lady Susan rather neatly and although many reviews seem to be, often ignorantly, telling us that this is Austen with teeth or some such, what I don’t think they realize is that Austen already has teeth. The film is great, but it is great because it is so faithful to tone.

Austen probably wrote Lady Susan when she was about eighteen (although it wasn’t published until long after her death in 1871), already aware that her hyper intelligence may not stand her in good stead as a woman, but long before the much sadder points in her life, when she was also to fantasize about being able to intellectually and physically subject herself to the whim of the man intended to be her superior (Mansfield Park).

Where in Mansfield Park the Lady Susan character (Mary Crawford) is sidelined and punished, in Lady Susan, she is celebrated. I once read that Lady Susan is a fantasy of female power in a world where, legally speaking, women had none. This power is in the most part manifested in the original text by the fact that the story is told through letters, a medium really only upper class women engaged in, and since the women control the letter form, they do in fact control the boundaries of this reality. Whenever men get involved, their letters are short and stilted and ineffective. I would argue that, to a degree, this reality is also an idealized version of a very real subculture that did exist.

Stillman’s adaptation celebrates this power. Taking the text off the page necessarily removes it from the female form in which it is written and therefore extends the realm of female power. The men in the film are useless and defunct, from the wonderfully silly Sir James Martin (Tom Bennett) (my new crush), to the priggish and apparently clever Reginald DeCourcy (Xavier Samuel) and in particular to the “very handsome” Mr. Manwaring (Lochlann O’Mearáin) who, although he appears in several scenes, has no lines, not one.

As in the original text, this is a battle between two women, Lady Susan Vernon (Kate Beckinsale) and her sister-in-law Catherine Vernon (Emma Greenwell). Catherine has her mother (Jemma Redgrave) in her court and Lady Susan has her friend Alicia (Chloë Sevigny) in hers. Throughout the film, these two vie for power, over Catherine’s brother, Reginald, over Lady Susan’s daughter, Frederica (Morfydd Clark), and arguably over a position as matriarch of the family.

The film is great and so are the actors. Tom Bennett as Sir James Martin made me cry with laughter. And the ending, in particular, is very interesting. The original text finishes with Austen getting slightly bored and making fun of her own narrative form. Stillman’s adaptation sticks very closely to the spirit of the text, ignoring the potentially problematic tone of the final passage, which is arguably written in the voice of Catherine Vernon anyway. And most importantly, this film has steered clear of any attempt to romanticize the story.

As most people who know me know, I have an ax to grind where it comes to Jane Austen and I’ve been grinding it for the better part of the last seven years. Jane Austen is one of the most, if not the most, famous female authors in the world. Yet, over the course of a series of progressively shittier adaptations made by people who in some cases don’t even seem to have read the source text (Joe Wright’s Pride & Prejudice), a great comedian and social satirist has been pigeonholed as a romance writer. Now there’s nothing wrong with romance, I very much enjoy a good rom-com (and quite frequently a very crap one). But the fact is that this genre has been sidelined as one that is trivial and silly ever since Austen herself wrote and idle upper class young women got kicks from reading saucy French novels.

Of course if you actually look at Austen’s works, only Pride and Prejudice can reasonably be described as a romance and that romance is running alongside a lot of social commentary and out and out comedy. In particular, look at Sense and Sensibility, where Elinor marries Edward the bland (a far cry from Hugh Grant / Dan Stevens) and Marianne gets Brandon the old. As a rom-com alone, Sense and Sensibility fails since the major love affair of the text remains unfulfilled.

Dickens wrote romances into every book, but nobody refers to him as a romance writer. The name Allan Woodcourt – or I suppose Woodcourt – hasn’t been adopted as a catch-all for everything women desire and everything that is irritating about the romance genre (Bleak House, in case you’re wondering). Because Dickens doesn’t represent a threat because he is a man and therefore it’s okay for him to be a writer and we don’t need to undermine and diminish him.

So what if we make Austen adaptations that don’t conform to that stereotype? What if we write fan fiction that doesn’t include shit fantasies about pseudo-romances with a misunderstanding of Mr. Darcy? What if someone decides to adapt texts Austen wrote that do not conform to this? What kind of writer do we call her then? And that’s where Love & Friendship comes in. It might not seem groundbreaking that there is yet another period drama out there getting some attention and some critical acclaim, but trust me, this film is rocking my fucking world.

And Whit, if you’re reading this, I have an adaptation of the actual Love & Friendship that we can start work on any day. Although the title might be a problem.

Women-Directed Films at the Asian American Showcase

The lineup included The Tiger Hunter, (directed by Lena Khan)… Light (directed by Lenora Lee and Tatsu Aoki), and Finding Kukan (directed by Robin Lung). … Depictions of stories that are absent from an experience that is generally thought to be collective is definitely the point of film festivals like the Asian American Showcase. The film offerings this year illuminated the immigrant experience as an American one. At the same time, the breadth of the experiences represented, while hardly a cohesive or even complete picture, offered nuanced views of stories never heard in textbook discussions…

This guest post written by Josephine Maria Yanasak-Leszczynski appears as part of our theme week on Women Directors.

The Asian American Showcase is a series of films by Asian Americans or about the Asian American experience alongside an art exhibition. It features a wide variety of films from many viewpoints. Sponsored by the Foundation for Asian American Independent Media (FAAIM), this year’s Showcase, which took place March 31st to April 12th in Chicago, featured mostly women-directed films, plus the Sundance Film Festival audience favorite, Gook, and the timely documentary on Japanese internment camps in the U.S., Resistance at Tule Lake. The lineup included The Tiger Hunter, (directed by Lena Khan), Motherland (directed by Ramona S. Diaz), Wexford Plaza (directed by Joyce Wong), Light (directed by Lenora Lee and Tatsu Aoki), and Finding Kukan (directed by Robin Lung).

Light is an artistic interpretation of the beginning of immigrant Bessie M. Lee’s life in America. It melds dance interpretations, poetry, re-enactments, and historical documentation against the backdrop of Aoki’s innovative sound and musical design. While laboring under her master’s oppressive demands, Bessie is told girls like her are a “dime a dozen.” It was an insult that rang true; something too many women have been told, especially while labor was being extorted from them. In this case, an immigrant seemingly without connections in a new country, Bessie, like so many women before her, was working hard while being told she was worthless, as if she should be grateful for her abusive circumstances.

Lenora Lee has created several works about Chinese migrant women and their lives after coming to the United States. In other films, she uses choreography, filmography, and setting to explore the stories of women who were trafficked from China and other women’s lives. Through a combination of projection, fully produced cinema, and live dance performance that references Tai Chi, she expresses narrative emotions as well as historical occurrences. Ultimately, her work elevates and personalizes stories that in a textbook may be a footnote meant to represent the experience of a larger population of people.

Depictions of stories that are absent from an experience that is generally thought to be collective is definitely the point of film festivals like the Asian American Showcase. The film offerings this year illuminated the immigrant experience as an American one. At the same time, the breadth of the experiences represented, while hardly a cohesive or even complete picture, offered nuanced views of stories never heard in textbook discussions of the American experience.

Robin Lung chases in the footsteps of erased Hollywood innovator Li Ling-Ai in Finding Kukan. In 1941, during a war that still in many ways defines the U.S. today, a film produced and funded by an Asian American woman won an Academy Award. Li never received credit for the documentary Kukan, but Lung attempts to discover a copy of the missing story and the full extent of her involvement with the film. Along the way, Lung also attempts to revive interest in the film after a heavily damaged copy is discovered in a basement.

There are several road bumps along the way, and some brick walls. Lung expresses discontent at being unable to prove her theories throughout the documentary. The film becomes as much about her perceptions of what makes a woman a hero, as what made Li a hero. To Lung, she wants to bring to life an active, fearless woman who traveled to China during a war to bravely capture what no one else was showing. At one point, Lung expresses her desire to see Li doing the work alongside the men as an “American” perspective. Yet the film Li has produced shows the women in China supporting the country alongside the men in the way Lung longed for. Adversely, Li lives a cosmopolitan life in New York, tirelessly supporting the film at social events and garnering connections and possible supporters in any way that she can. By the end of the film, Li has taken on the role of a more traditional American producer giving life to a project more meaningful than most in Hollywood could hope for.

Lung is ultimately unsuccessful in garnering American interest in a recovered Kukan. However, after discovering a letter of frustration Li authored to one of her best friends about what would become her book on the lives of her parents, she is reinvigorated and tries a new tact. Traveling to China, Lung brings a videotape of Kukan for a special viewing to a group of historians.

This American film that once inspired interest in a horrifying conflict across the world from the U.S., takes on new importance in the People’s Republic of China. While it depicts a Nationalist China, the film contains views of attacks made by Japan from the ground, something these historians had never before seen. Ultimately, while it seems it will be years before Li receives her full due in American cinematic history, her work has taken on new importance in an unexpected way.

Stories told about the general perception of the American Dream all include some tie to our collective immigrant past (aside from Indigenous peoples). Rarely does a film tell that story while holding onto that past as part of the protagonist’s future. While it struggles with straddling at least two comedic audiences, The Tiger Hunter successfully presents a story about coming to the U.S. without distancing itself from its characters’ cultural background.

After years of chasing the fantasy of his father’s hyper-masculinized role in the lives of his village, Sami (Danny Pudi) attempts to impress the father of Ruby (Karen David), his childhood sweetheart. The intimidating General Iqbal (Iqbal Theba) has decided he will only arrange his daughter in marriage to someone who has become successful in the U.S. Director/co-writer Lena Khan presents a classic romantic comedy with Indian American and Indian Canadian leads. It is a hilarious look at the lengths a man will go to marry the woman of his dreams.

While the film focuses on earning the right to marry a woman, she is conspicuously absent from most of the film. At first this appears to be an oversight, or playing into so many classically male-centered heterosexual romance narratives. Pleasingly, Khan eventually turns this on its head.

After forming farcical friendships with other outcasts who fail at being “professional Americans,” Sami sets up a fake home in his boss’ abode to impress Iqbal, and by extension his daughter, who travels with him. It is when the truth comes to light (due to Sami’s inability to keep up the lie for moral reasons) that the object of his desire hits the audience with the element they may or may not have noticed was missing. “It is me you have to marry,” Ruby points out, in light of the many lies he has told to impress her father. While her father has final say, ultimately Sami and Ruby have to share a marital trust that would last them a lifetime. In the end, it is her opinion that truly matters.

The film leaves a lot of questions about the arrangement unanswered, and while the end of the film is endearing, its ambiguity leaves a lot to be desired as far as clear moral heading. Yet it is undeniable that the final confrontation between Sami and Ruby becomes a twist for the role of women in this particular narrative, whether intentional by its creators or not.

There are many more tales to be told and heard by audiences that are sorely in need of them, whether they’re aware of it or not. This year’s Asian American Showcase offered many impressive narratives told and directed by women.

Josephine Maria Yanasak-Leszczynski is a museum educator by day (and often night), and a freelance writer every other time she manages to make a deadline. She can be found on Twitter @JMYaLes.

‘The Love Witch’ Looks Familiar but Feels Remarkably Fresh

Yet behind the eye-catching homage to Technicolor cinematography, the retro-glamorous hair and makeup, and the stylized performances of the pitch-perfect cast [Anna Biller’s ‘The Love Witch’] is a sharp-eyed satire of how society views female sexuality as simultaneously desirable and dangerous. …It is a remarkable look at the way our modern world views and values women — a serious statement about sexual politics wrapped up in a cocoon of cats-eye liner and cake, making it all the more dangerously potent.

This guest post written by Lee Jutton originally appeared at Medium and appears here as part of our theme week on Women Directors. It is cross-posted with permission.

On the surface, director Anna Biller’s sophomore feature, The Love Witch, might look like a grab-bag of filmmaking tropes from the 1960’s and 70’s, a contemporary film designed to play on audience nostalgia for cinematic eras gone by (a recurring theme at theaters this winter; see: La La Land). Yet behind the eye-catching homage to Technicolor cinematography, the retro-glamorous hair and makeup, and the stylized performances of the pitch-perfect cast is a sharp-eyed satire of how society views female sexuality as simultaneously desirable and dangerous.

We first meet Elaine Parks (Samantha Robinson) as she drives along a quintessentially Hitchcockian rear projection of the Northern California coast in her cherry-red convertible. She devours cigarette after cigarette, continuously stubbing them out in her car’s ashtray; her long dark hair is made even longer by a shiny synthetic wig, and her eye makeup is heavy and hypnotic. She’s the ultimate honey trap, with everything about her look and attitude designed to project maximum glamour and sensuality. Through voice-over, Elaine informs us that she’s leaving her old life in San Francisco behind after the death of her ex-husband, Jerry, to move to the small town of Eureka and start anew. After Jerry left her, Elaine sought solace in the arms of a coven of witches, and is now a master (better, mistress) of love and sex spells. Obsessed with obtaining the love that Jerry always held at arm’s length, Elaine is determined to do whatever it takes to make a man fall for her, and when not actively pursuing love herself, she constantly urges her friend Trish (Laura Waddell) to do whatever she can to make her own husband happy — even at the expense of her own wants and desires. Elaine strives to embody all of men’s fantasies about the ideal woman — she cooks delicious meals, performs spontaneous stripteases in sexy lingerie, and coos words of comfort every time one of them starts feeling insecure (which is often). She both literally and figuratively casts a spell over nearly every man that crosses her path. Yet Elaine’s spells start to seem more like curses when the men she targets start meeting rather unpleasant ends.

Elaine’s coven, led by the creepy Gahan (Jared Sanford) and his partner, Barbara (Jennifer Ingrum), spends a substantial amount of time camped out in a burlesque club; dancing is how Elaine first met Barbara and was introduced to the world of witchcraft. Gahan and Barbara teach new recruits how to use dance to manipulate the male gaze, and how to embrace their sexuality as a source of power just as potent as magic. During one scene, set against the backdrop of a burlesque performance, Gahan and Barbara lecture two girls on how the history of witchcraft has been eternally tied to women’s sexuality. Women are supposed to be sensual and available, but never too aggressively — never too much. Then, men feel threatened by them, afraid that they’ll lose control of themselves (and naturally, this lack of self-control is always the woman’s fault, never the man’s). The Love Witch explores these conflicting feelings and then some, examining the ways men view women — not to mention, the ways other women view women, too. Biller fills her film with close-ups of her casts’ eyes and mouths, lingering over their heavy false eyelashes, glossy lips, and frequently imperfect teeth as though daring you to succumb to them.

Biller, a multitalented artist who also wrote, produced, edited, scored and designed the costumes and sets of The Love Witch, is clearly a dedicated scholar of the pulp fiction and thrillers of the 60’s and 70’s. The film, despite taking place in the modern day, thoroughly sticks to its retro conceit, right down to being one of the last films to cut an original camera negative on 35 millimeter film. The campy tone and stylized performances are so spot-on in regards to mid-century, low-budget horror that I kept expecting icon of the era Udo Kier to pop up at any moment. It is lovingly made down to the last detail, from the frilly and frothy Victorian tea room that the women of Eureka frequent to the jewel-toned paintings of pentagrams that decorate Elaine’s apartment. So many modern films are shot to be dark and dour; The Love Witch, by pleasant contrast, dazzles with its delightful use of color and light.

The Love Witch is lovely to look at, but like Elaine herself, it’s so much more than just a pretty face. (Speaking of Elaine: Samantha Robinson’s performance is an absolute stunner; her shy, breathy voice and fluttering eyelashes create a picture-perfect facade of feminine fragility that barely masks the seething anger and disappointment within.) It’s laugh-out-loud funny, cartoonishly violent, and so, so smart. It might look and feel like a film from the past, but at its heart, it is a remarkable look at the way our modern world views and values women — a serious statement about sexual politics wrapped up in a cocoon of cats-eye liner and cake, making it all the more dangerously potent.

Lee Jutton has directed short films starring a killer toaster, a killer Christmas tree, and a not-killer leopard. She previously reviewed new DVD and theatrical releases as a staff writer for Just Press Play and currently reviews television shows as a staff writer for TV Fanatic. You can follow her on Medium for more film reviews and on Twitter for an excessive amount of opinions on German soccer.

Teen Girls Coming of Age in ‘Clueless’ and ‘The Edge of Seventeen’

These two women directors, Amy Heckerling (‘Clueless’) and Kelly Fremon Craig (‘The Edge of Seventeen’), use their films to give a focused examination on the insecurity and self-doubt teen girls face. Cher and Nadine’s personal struggles, as well as their relationships with older mentors, reveal how patriarchal expectations shape their lives as they come of age.

This guest post written by Emma Casley appears as part of our theme week on Women Directors.

The Edge of Seventeen’s protagonist Nadine (Hailee Steinfeld) says, “There are two types of people in the world: The people who naturally excel in life and the people who hope all those people die in a big explosion,” placing herself firmly in the second camp. Though Cher Horowitz (Alicia Silverstone) is the star of an entirely different film released 21 years before, there’s little doubt that Nadine would categorize the Clueless character in the first group. Despite differences in tone and the personalities of their leads, both films share a similarity in subject matter: teenage girls growing up. And both films are written and directed by women – a rarity in mainstream movies.

These two women directors, Amy Heckerling (Clueless) and Kelly Fremon Craig (The Edge of Seventeen), use their films to give a focused examination on the insecurity and self-doubt teen girls face. Cher and Nadine’s personal struggles, as well as their relationships with older mentors, reveal how patriarchal expectations shape their lives as they come of age. Though the two films both focus on a very particular demographic of white, well-off teenagers, they do point to the ways in which even these girls of relative privilege suffer under the boundaries of gender roles. The films do what they aim to do well: give depth and nuance to a demographic that is often written off as being frivolous and shallow. However there are obvious limits in what these films can portray. Though casting a critical look at male privilege, both films leave issues like racial and economic inequality untouched. The success of Heckerling and Craig’s films demonstrates the need for even more diversity of voices in film rather than being the end goal of more inclusive filmmaking.

The similarities between Clueless and The Edge of Seventeen can be most clearly seen in the parallels between their lead characters. Their actions reveal how they both struggle with the immense pressure that society places on young women. Cher sees herself as an expert and mentor for her family, fellow students, and teachers; Nadine frets over her social awkwardness and isolation. Cher spends her weekend choosing non-school books to read and workout regimens; Nadine’s nights off involve crying while throwing up into a toilet while her one friend (Haley Lu Richardson) holds her hair back. Cher uses strategically delivered flowers and chocolates to woo the object of her affection; Nadine sends a painfully awkward and explicit Facebook message to her crush about “doing it in the Petland stockroom.”

Cher might present herself as more put together through reading Fit or Fat and working out to buns of steel, but this urge to constantly “improve” herself and others demonstrates how she sees herself as something that needs to be improved upon. She complains about “feeling like such a heifer” after spending the day eating candy and snacks, and after her friend declines her suggestions for sex, she worries that she wasn’t presenting herself as attractive enough: “Did my hair get flat? Did I stumble into some bad lighting? What’s wrong with me?” While it’s a line played for laughs in the film, Cher clearly isn’t so different from Nadine as she despairs that she “feels so grotesque” and outcast from her cooler peers. They just have different ways of expressing this insecurity.

It doesn’t help that the few female role models Cher and Nadine have don’t provide much reassurance that things will get any better once they reach adulthood. Nadine’s mother (Kyra Sedgwick) seems to be constantly on the edge of breaking down – struggling between her job and taking care of her children and dealing with the emotional aftermath of her husband’s death. Cher’s mother has passed away, but her teacher Miss Geist (Twink Caplan) serves as an example of what the future might have in store for her. Similar to Nadine’s mom, Miss Geist is overworked and lonely. Though Miss Geist has a happier ending in Clueless, she still demonstrates the difficulties of living up to social expectations, even as an adult. Nadine and Cher are young women struggling with insecurity and feeling like they’re failing to perform femininity in the right way and they watch as their older female mentors struggle with the exact same performance. Nadine’s mother even tells her that she comforts herself thinking that everyone is as miserable and dead inside as she is – not exactly an “it gets better” message for the teenager.

Especially in comparison to many of the male characters in both films, the women in Clueless and Edge of Seventeen are unhappy and flawed, unable to provide support for the young female protagonists. While one reading might interpret this as plain old sexism in the writing, another way to look at it is that these films showcase the wear and tear that these women experience under a patriarchal society. While Nadine and Cher feel the pressure to twist and conform to impossible standards, their male counterparts (both teenagers and adults) are allowed to just simply be. This translates into many of the male characters being mentors or supportive figures for the female characters: Nadine has her teacher Mr. Bruner (Woody Harrelson); her mother has her son Darian (Blake Jenner); Cher has her father (Dan Hedaya) and Josh (Paul Rudd). Darian might express frustration with being the only “stable” one in the family, but The Edge of Seventeen never shows him struggle to live up to gendered social expectations as his mother and sister experience. Both films portray many of the male characters in a very positive way: they act as a sympathetic ear to Nadine and Cher’s problems without having much personal stake in the matter.

However, both films also demonstrate how a lack of awareness of societal pressures on women manifests a much less positive, and much more dangerous, way in other male characters. The Edge of Seventeen and Clueless contain very similar scenes that take place between the protagonists and a male classmate while they drive together in a car. In both cases, the girls reject the boys’ sexual advances and subsequently are stranded after leaving the car to escape the situation. In these scenes, from the boy’s perspectives, they were responding to “obvious” signs that the girls were interested in a romantic and/or sexual relationship with them. But the films suggest that actually the boys simply felt their own desires and assumed that the girls would accommodate them.

In this way, the male characters in both films, whether they are understanding mentors or aggressive sexual assaulters, are ignorant of their own power. Characters like Mr. Bruner and Cher’s father can be so “good” because they’re not dealing with the same kinds of social pressures as characters like Nadine’s mother and Miss Geist are, and can instead be pillars of stability in the main characters’ lives. But their pillar-like quality can be seen in a different way: as the men stay static, then women must constantly bend and be flexible to accommodate their positions. Cher’s father and Mr. Bruner remain ignorant to this dynamic, even when offering support to the two girls. This lack of awareness shows its darker side in the two car scenes. The two boys assume that they “know best” in these situations and expect the girls to acquiesce to their advances. Neither film gives credence to this assumption. They instead give a sympathetic view to Cher and Nadine’s hurt and betrayal, pointing the finger at the dangerous presumption of male privilege. Clueless and The Edge of Seventeen show empathy for the deeply flawed female characters and the societal oppression they face. They also demonstrate how men, as kind advisers or dangerous predators, have a tendency to assume the impartiality of their views — of course they can give good advice to their students and daughters, of course they know that when a girl gets in a car with them it’s an invitation for sex. One of the main functions of male privilege is men not even knowing that they have it.

Of course other kinds of structural oppression exist in conjunction with male privilege, and both Clueless and The Edge of Seventeen center on the lives of well-off, white, suburban girls. The two films focus on giving detailed portraits of a single character so it does make sense within the context of their stories for them both to have such a focus on a particular demographic and lifestyle. However, neither film deviates from the larger film canon’s intense fixation on the stories of the rich and the white and the otherwise privileged at the expensive of other narratives. Both directors have discussed their process in writing and directing their films; Heckerling details how she fought for Clueless to focus on the girls rather than the boys, and Craig used her own experiences with self loathing and insecurity to inform Nadine’s struggles. So while it might not have been essential that these films give nuance to female coming-of-age stories, in both cases, their role as writers and directors shaped the films into stories that echoed their own life experiences. What would other women, of different backgrounds, bring to their stories if they were given more opportunities to get behind the camera?

For both Heckerling and Craig, their efforts have translated into films that bring depth to the stories of teenage girls, but Clueless and The Edge of Seventeen shouldn’t be seen as the end goal of gender inclusivity in film direction. They represent two good examples of what can be accomplished when women directors are given more control over the stories they tell, but there are still a vast array of voices that have remained unheard.

See also at Bitch Flicks:

Clueless: Way Existential

Emma Casley is a Brooklyn-based film writer. Last year she participated in the New York Film Festival’s Critics Academy. She can be found wandering the streets for good coffee and also on Twitter @EmmaLCasley.

Versions of Yourself: Nora Ephron as Women’s Storyteller

In addition to her work in film, Nora Ephron was a journalist, playwright, and novelist; unsurprisingly, her stock in trade is words. Crucially, what she does with these words is to give women room. For these women at the center of her films, there is, above all, space. Space not simply to be the best version of themselves, but all the versions of themselves: confident, neurotic, right, wrong, flawed.

This guest post written by Katie Barnett appears as part of our theme week on Women Directors.

There is a moment in Nora Ephron’s You’ve Got Mail (1998) where Kathleen (Meg Ryan) and Joe (Tom Hanks) are conversing via their AOL inboxes. “Do you ever feel like you’ve become the worst version of yourself?” he types. The two of them ponder the question, Joe criticizing his own tendency to “arrogance, spite, condescension” while Kathleen laments her own inability to conjure up a well-timed comeback in a confrontation. This discussion of the gulf between inner thoughts and actual behavior is, perhaps, a prescient nod to the ways the internet – still a novelty in the world of You’ve Got Mail – would foster these gaps between reality and projection. It is also an acknowledgement of the multiple selves one person might harbor beneath the surface.

One of the many joys of Nora Ephron’s films lies in the recognition that there may be more than one version of yourself. Indeed, her 1996 Wellesley commencement speech – the origin of Ephron’s plea, “above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim” – is built around this recognition that young women’s lives will contain multitudes, will be rife with contradiction. “You are not going to be you, fixed and immutable you, forever,” she tells the graduating class. Mutable is a state of being for Ephron’s on-screen women.

Nora Ephron began her film career in 1983, when she wrote the screenplay for Silkwood. Her first directing credit followed in 1992, with This is My Life; a year later, she would direct and write (alongside Jeff Arch and David S. Ward) the fifth highest-grossing film of 1993, Sleepless in Seattle. By the time of her death in 2012, she had directed eight films, with a screenwriting credit on seven of them, and written numerous others, including one of her best known works, When Harry Met Sally (Reiner, 1989). For her screenplays, she was nominated three times for Best Original Screenplay at the Academy Awards. Ephron’s work as a director is difficult to separate from her work as a screenwriter; through these twin roles, she carved a space in which to craft funny, interesting, hopelessly neurotic characters, navigating life with a mixture of optimism, introspection, and the occasional flicker of disappointment.

Ephron helped to revitalize the smart romantic comedy. In Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve Got Mail, she made two of the 1990s’ most successful examples of the genre. Yet critical attention that considers her work as a filmmaker has been slow to emerge: the consequence, perhaps, of Ephron’s status as “woman director,” but also, crucially, of her work in a much-maligned genre. Ephron herself was archly dismissive of the pigeonholing of women’s cinema. Her list, “What I Won’t Miss,” which appeared in her book I Remember Nothing (2010), included the entry “Panels on Women in Film.”

In addition to her work in film, Ephron was a journalist, playwright, and novelist; unsurprisingly, her stock in trade is words. Crucially, what she does with these words is to give women room. For these women at the center of her films, there is, above all, space. Space not simply to be the best version of themselves, but all the versions of themselves: confident, neurotic, right, wrong, flawed. They have time to figure themselves out, and Ephron’s films do not punish them for it. This exchange, from Ephron’s final film, Julie and Julia (2009), neatly encapsulates the idea that the authenticity of these characters comes from their flaws as much as their more redeeming features:

Julie: …because I am a bitch. I am, Sarah. I’m a bitch.
Sarah: I know. I know you are.

Julie challenges Sarah – “Do you really think I’m a bitch?” – to which Sarah responds, “Well, yeah. But who isn’t?” There is no judgment on Sarah’s part. The implication here is that Julie can be a bitch (which, in this context, amounts to her realization that she can be self-absorbed), but that this does not preclude everything else she is. Being prone to a meltdown over a casserole gone wrong does not automatically negate Julie’s other qualities.

In fact, Ephron’s women sometimes have so much time to figure themselves out that the central romance almost becomes a secondary concern, as in Sleepless in Seattle, in which Annie (Ryan) and Sam (Hanks) do not lay eyes on each other until the very end of the film, brought together at the top of the Empire State Building in a meeting engineered by Sam’s son Jonah (Ross Malinger). A risky move, surely, for any romantic comedy. It is a risk that ultimately pays off for Ephron, despite the flawed notion of constructing a romance around two people who have never met, yet who are apparently perfect for each other. But consider how the space of Sleepless in Seattle functions. This is Annie’s story: it is her family we visit alongside her and her fiancé Walter (Bill Pullman); it is her workplace and her colleagues we see; it is her car where we first hear Jonah call the radio show. The romance may be contrived, may even be problematic, but it is Annie’s romance. Of whose story we are being told, we should be in no doubt.

This may seem like nothing new to a genre built around the romantic expectations of female characters, and the eventual fulfillment of these expectations. What elevates Ephron’s women is that they transcend the one-dimensional caricature of a rom-com protagonist. Instead, we find complex, changeable women, incapable of being reduced to a definitive version of themselves. In You’ve Got Mail’s Kathleen, for instance, we find a woman who is willing to believe the best of her as-yet-unmet online friend, deflecting concerns that he might be married, unattractive, or a serial killer. Yet she is also a woman who once suspected her own boyfriend of being a domestic terrorist: “Remember when you thought Frank was the Unabomber?” She is a woman who loves books, daisies, and New York City, who got a manicure instead of voting (but feels bad about it), and who is ambitious without being ruthless. Kathleen owns her own business and wants that business to be successful, but she is never reduced to the brittle caricature of an ambitious woman.

Julie and Julia orients the audience’s attention around the lives of two more ambitious women, separated by time and geography: chef Julia Child (Meryl Streep), finding her feet in 1950s France, and writer Julie Powell (Amy Adams), living in post-9/11 New York and attempting to cook Julia’s back catalogue of recipes in a kitchen the size of a postage stamp. Once again, what is remarkable about Julie and Julia is just how much space is given over to these women, to their food, their cooking, their enjoyment of both of these things. “The day there’s a meteorite heading towards the earth and we have thirty days to live, I’m going to spend it eating butter,” Julie opines, as chunks of butter sizzle invitingly in a frying pan.

The film opens on Julia and her husband Paul (Stanley Tucci) newly arrived in Paris. When the two go out to eat, Julia’s delight at French cuisine is palpable. It is her voice we hear, exclaiming over the meal; her food, her delight, that dominates this scene. When she leans over to have Paul taste the fish, the camera follows her, and she – and this accompanying sense of delight – continues to fill the frame. Minutes later, the film shifts to New York, where Julie and her husband Eric (Chris Messina) are moving apartments. Here, space is once again the preoccupation – “Repeat after me. 900 square feet,” Eric reminds Julie when she questions the wisdom of moving to live above a pizzeria in Queens, although wherever this space is, it certainly isn’t in the kitchen – and it is Julie who takes up this space. On arriving in the new apartment, she does a sweep of the bare interior, moving from room to room, as we move with her. Ephron employs a similar tactic as Julia explores the Paris apartment and the camera pans across the windows, tracking her movements. The film invites us to follow these women, and these first steps into their respective lives place them at the forefront of their own stories.

Physical space remains important in Julie and Julia, as we see an unhappy Julie crammed onto the subway and wedged into her cubicle at work, and a determined Julia sequestered in a kitchen at the Cordon Bleu cooking school, the only woman amongst a collection of male chefs, fighting to prove herself in the face of skepticism. Just as Julia must carve out a niche for herself in this male-dominated environment, Julie strives to be seen and heard from her small corner of the internet, where the physical becomes virtual, and where her mother is quick to wonder why Julie is wasting her time on strangers.

Within the film, one way that both women take up space is by talking. A scene of Julia at a French market tracks her exuberant progress through the crowd, exclaiming over the food on offer in her distinctive high-pitched voice, gesturing with enthusiasm, and practicing her less-than-perfect French without embarrassment. Julie, meanwhile, is reminiscent of Ephron’s earlier heroines, amongst them Sally, Annie, and Kathleen, prone to vocalizing her frustrations and disappointments in a bid to understand them, whether rational or otherwise. (Recall Sally’s plaintive wail: “And I’m gonna be 40!” – “When?” – “Someday!”) After Julie’s friend Annabelle writes a scathing magazine piece about turning 30, in which she belittles the direction Julie’s life has taken, Julie memorizes the offending passage and rants about Annabelle’s “stupid, vapid, insipid” brain. Just as they are allowed to be irrational at times, Ephron does not always allow her protagonists to rise above their uncharitable thoughts; indeed, this is a reminder that what Ephron achieves in her films is the foregrounding of authentic – and authentically flawed – women. “What do you think it means if you don’t like your friends?” Julie asks Sarah (Mary Lynn Rajskub). “It’s completely normal,” Sarah assures her, much to Eric’s confusion. “Men like their friends,” he points out. “We’re not talking about men,” Julie snaps back. “Who’s talking about men?”

Ephron stood by the fact that When Harry Met Sally was not about whether men or women could be friends, but about the differences between men and women. Her films are equally generous to her male characters, but at their heart these films are testament to the women who occupy them: their hopes, their fears, their triumphs, and their failures. As a filmmaker, Ephron’s astuteness when it came to people should not be underestimated; it is this quality, as much as any other, that characterizes her skill at telling the stories of the women on whom she concentrated her pen and her camera.

In that 1996 Wellesley commencement speech, Ephron reminded her audience that there would always be time – and space – to change their minds. “Maybe young women don’t wonder whether they can have it all any longer, but in case any of you are wondering, of course you can have it all,” she told them. “What are you going to do? Everything, is my guess. It will be a little messy, but embrace the mess. It will be complicated, but rejoice in the complications. It will not be anything like what you think it will be like, but surprises are good for you. And don’t be frightened: you can always change your mind.”

See also at Bitch Flicks:

The Fork Fatale: Food as Transformation in the Contemporary Chick Flick

A Woman’s Place in the Kitchen: The Cinematic Tradition of Cooking to Catch a Man

Katie Barnett is a lecturer in film and media at the University of Worcester (UK) with an interest in representations of gender and family in popular culture. She learned the rules of baseball from Penny Marshall, the rules of espionage from Harriet the Spy, and the rules of life from Jim Henson. Find her on Twitter @katiesmallg.