And the main thing about ‘Violet & Daisy’ I couldn’t puzzle out is what we’re meant to make of the incessant and brutally unsubtle reminders of the title characters’ schoolgirl trappings: popping bubble gum while blasting machine guns, stopping to play hopscotch on the way to pick up ammo, sucking lollipops while chatting with their boss and sharing cookies and milk with their target, giggling while jumping on the bellies of their victims to see blood spew from their mouths. I get that there is a “shocking contrast” between these innocent activities and their professional murdering, but could Fletcher really think that was novel or interesting enough to warrant a whole movie?
And then I think: Oh god, is this a sex thing? This is probably a sex thing. Wait, that’s too gross. This can’t be a sex thing. But oh god, lollipops. Lollipops are always a sex thing.
People who know me and know I write for Bitch Flicks love to give me suggested post topics. “I watched this movie and there was a girl in it—you should totally write about that!” Sometimes it is a case of “I can’t tell if this is sexist, could you sort that out for me in ~1000 words?” (I tease, but I actually really appreciate these suggestions because deciding what to write about is often the hardest step. Dance Academy is in my Netflix queue, KDax!)
Movie poster for Violet & Daisy
Yesterday was my husband’s birthday, so I am finally yielding to a long-standing request and reviewing the film Violet & Daisy. Collin’s gchat-transmitted review of the film is “I just liked that it was about two killer women and it had Tony Soprano in it.”
A slightly longer synopsis: Violet (Alexis Bledel) and Daisy (Saoirise Ronan) are young, girlish assassins, who take a new assignment because they want to buy dresses from the fashion line of a pop singer named Barbie Sunday. For contrived reasons, they fail to kill the target (James Gandolfini) initially and form a strong emotional bond with him while periodically fending off other assassins after the score. Gratuitously violent dramedy ensues.
Alternate title: Cutesy Murderesses!
The whole thing is rather twee and aggressively quirky, Tarantino-by-way-of-Wes Anderson (down to the Futura title cards). It’s so patently derivative I started to wonder if that was The Point somehow. Did writer-director Geoffrey Fletcher (who also wrote Precious, the polar opposite of this film in terms of tone) get carried away with a style mimicry writing exercise and actually make the movie?
Violet and Daisy play a hand clapping game
And the main thing about Violet & Daisy I couldn’t puzzle out is what we’re meant to make of the incessant and brutally unsubtle reminders of the title characters’ schoolgirl trappings: popping bubble gum while blasting machine guns, stopping to play hopscotch on the way to pick up ammo, sucking lollipops while chatting with their boss and sharing cookies and milk with their target, giggling while jumping on the bellies of their victims to see blood spew from their mouths. I get that there is a “shocking contrast” between these innocent activities and their professional murdering, but could Fletcher really think that was novel or interesting enough to warrant a whole movie?
And then I think: Oh god, is this a sex thing? This is probably a sex thing. Wait, that’s too gross. This can’t be a sex thing. But oh god, lollipops. Lollipops are always a sex thing.
Lollipops are always a sex thing.
But wait, the guy who wrote Precious couldn’t possibly think the sexualizing little girls is the key to a winning film. That doesn’t make any sense. This must be a critique of these sexist and icky tropes. The punchline is coming any minute. Any. Minute. Now…
This sort of Poe’s Law experience is probably familiar to many feminist film-watchers: is this patriarchal trash or is it secretly a critique of patriarchal trash? A classic example is Sucker Punch, a movie that scientists have proven cannot be written about without using the word “masturbatory.” Most feminists (including myself) barfed all over the movie and its icky initialization and objectification of victimized women, but director Zack Snyder insists his film was meant to be a critique of the audience’s desire for such content. Which makes my bullshit meter go off. The sad truth is we live in a world where it seems more likely that a movie about abused women with names like “Baby Doll” and “Sweet Pea” fighting fantasy steampunk wars is much more likely to be catering to the perverted male gaze than challenging it.
Sucker Punch
And ultimately, Sucker Punch was too unpleasant a viewing experience for me to worry too much about the validity of its claims to feminism: it is a terrible movie either way. Thankfully, Violet & Daisy isn’t nearly as gross as Sucker Punch, but if anything that makes me even less bothered to decide if the movie was trying to deconstruct these tropes or just replicating them. Either way, Violet & Daisy is not really worth watching unless doing so will somehow make your partner happy.
Have you experienced Poe’s Law at the movies?
Robin Hitchcock is an American writer living in Cape Town who will write a negative review of a movie you like as a birthday present.
Being friends with people of the opposite gender is important because ideally it can bridge empathy gaps. Leslie and Ron have a mutual respect for each other even when they don’t see eye to eye. Despite Ron being a super macho guy that you would assume to be sexist, he’s actually very supportive of Leslie. Whenever they have disagreements, it’s more to do with her enthusiasm for government than with her gender.
Baby Daddyis a cute and funny show with a progressive edge. However, it’s not without its flaws. It deconstructs stereotypes in some areas but reinforces stereotypes in other areas. Its issues could be fixed by taking cues from one of my favorite modern comedy shows, Parks and Recreation.
First, the good: BD accomplishes its main goal which is to be funny. The funniest moments usually include Ben’s spitfire mother, Bonnie and goofball friend, Tucker, played by the talented Melissa Peterman and Tahj Mowry respectively. It shines in other ways too:
1. Male stereotypes are deconstructed.
Ben, Tucker, and Danny in Baby Daddy
Ben’s two roommates are Danny–his brother–and Tucker. All three of them are shown handling Emma with tender love and care. Their softness towards her is never framed as emasculating. In the beginning stages, the three bachelors fumble when it comes to taking care of Emma but it has less to do with them being guys and more to do with them being young and inexperienced when it comes to babies.
Danny is a handsome hockey player who predictably is a ladies’ man. In any other show or movie, he would be a dumb and/or mean sports player character or he would be an emotionally-stunted playboy archetype. He can be dumb at times but so can his brother who isn’t a sports player. So, Danny’s occasional dimwittedness is framed more as a family trait than a jock trait. He refreshingly contradicts the jock stereotype by being sensitive, romantic, and sweet. Despite his promiscuity, he is secretly in love with his childhood friend, Riley.
2. Old-fashioned mother stereotypes are dismantled.
Bonnie is far from the 1950s-stereotype perfect mother and that’s what makes her so entertaining. She’s a sassy, loving mother and just like her sons, she enjoys playing the field. Usually women, especially mothers, are expected to be the moral center. Sometimes, she is the voice of reason. But most of the time, she exhibits the same immaturity, narcissism, and selfishness as her sons but never does it go to the point of her being irredeemable. She isn’t demonized for being imperfect and free-spirited. Just like Elaine from Seinfeld, her quirks and flaws make her funny, charming and likeable.
3. Racial minority characters and gay characters aren’t stereotypical.
Tucker is one of the leads and he is African American. His personality has nothing to do with his race. Various racial minorities show up as minor characters throughout the series, never appearing as offensive stereotypes. Positive depictions of gay people are in the episode “The Christening” and a few other episodes too.
Now, let’s move on to the bad:
1. There are too many underwritten female characters.
In a show about a young man raising a daughter, you would think the female characters would be better than this. When it comes to the male characters on BD–like Tucker’s uptight dad, for instance–there are layers to them; they’re never as bad as they seem. However, if they’re not boring pretty faces like Tucker’s girlfriend, Vanessa, then most of the female side characters are just as evil as they seem. They’re also usually the source of conflict–whether it’s Riley’s childhood female rival or Danny’s female general manager. The worst offender was Emma’s mom, Angela, who was already framed as a terrible slut for forgoing being a mother. Her terribleness was further emphasized by having her be an evil seductress who tries to tear Riley and Ben apart.
Solution:
Add more three-dimensional female characters that have quirks and interests the way the male characters do. Every major and minor female character on P and R is unique and interesting because they aren’t solely defined by being a girlfriend. In P and R, April Ludgate could have easily been written as a one-dimensional vixen like Angela. But April’s meanness is not shaped by her sexuality. And every now and then, she shows her softer side. She’s grown over time, showing that she has great admiration and respect for Leslie even if outwardly she pretends to be annoyed by her.
Even though Tammy, Ron’s ex wife, can be argued to be similar to Angela of BD, she was written in a more tongue-in-cheek way for the audience to laugh at-especially considering the fact that the actors that play Ron and “evil” Tammy are married in real life. So, the character was more a parody on the seductress archetype.
Leslie and Tammy on Parks and Recreation
2. There’s too much female rivalry and not enough female friendship.
Tucker, Ben, and Danny are roommates who have a friendship that’s a joy to watch; they joke with each other, they support each other, they tease each other, and they love each other even when they disagree. Their positive male friendship is at the center of the show while positive female friendships are sadly nonexistent. Female characters usually barely interact with each other. When they do, there’s either indifference or an adversarial feeling between them. Even Bonnie succumbs to it; she shows hostility towards the only other prominent female character, Riley. She gets along better with Tucker more than women her own age. There’s one episode where Riley explains she doesn’t have female friends because all girls are catty. I’m sick of male friendships being framed as superior to female friendships.
Cat fight on Baby Daddy
Solution:
P and R portrays female friendships so much better by not flattening female characters or their relationship to each other. I’m not asking BD to romanticize female relations either. Leslie Knope gets along better with some women (like Ann) than she does with other women (like Joan Callamezzo) just like she gets along with some men (like Ron) better than other men (like Congressman Jamm). That’s life. The show did have women disliking each other–for example, April disliking Ann. But they also showed women getting along in the form of Ann and Leslie. Who someone gets along with depends more on how their personalities mesh together rather than gender. P and R doesn’t set up a false dichotomy that all women are catty and all men are nice. Women get to be individuals just like the men do. Please follow suit, BD.
Ann and Leslie on Parks and Recreation
3. There aren’t enough entertaining platonic male-female relationships
Just like I don’t like gender stereotypes being used to dismiss same-sex friendships between women, I don’t want gender stereotypes being used to dismiss friendships between men and women. If women can’t be friends with women because of cattiness and they can’t be friends with men because of sexual/romantic tension then who can women befriend? The love triangle between Ben, Riley, and Danny and then Ben, Riley, and Angela adds to the archaic belief that men and women can’t be friends. Making Riley the love interest/childhood friend is an easy trope to use to create drama between the male leads. Tucker is the only one of the three male leads that doesn’t have feelings for her.
Solution:
Being friends with people of the opposite gender is important because ideally it can bridge empathy gaps. Leslie and Ron have a mutual respect for each other even when they don’t see eye to eye. Despite Ron being a super macho guy that you would assume to be sexist, he’s actually very supportive of Leslie. Whenever they have disagreements, it’s more to do with her enthusiasm for government than with her gender. They advise each other on different matters and they help each other out when one is in trouble. Their friendship isn’t framed as a consolation prize to the “superior” thing of being a couple. Instead, their friendship is presented as an edifying, significant thing that helps make them better people. And it’s not just about deep connections, friendships between male and females can be fun and lighthearted. Just look at Donna and Tom.
Donna and Tom on Parks and Recreation
Add more compelling scenes with Tucker and Riley. Add to the community raising Emma by putting in female characters for the male characters to befriend. I’m not banning BD from showing romantic relationships. I’m just saying don’t add fuel to the “friend-zone” fire by showing male-female friendships as this desert/limbo/wasteland. Show the good sides of being platonic the way P and R does.
4. Stop scraping the comedic bottom of the barrel by making fat a continual punch line.
Riley, like Monica from Friends, goes from being fat and insecure to being skinny, still insecure, but more conventionally attractive and therefore, more aesthetically pleasing to the boy she likes. There are many jokes that refer to Riley once being fat. Danny loved Riley even when she was larger which I guess is supposed to show he has a heart of gold. But chubby women shouldn’t be framed as a walking punch line nor should they be viewed as unattractive beasts that only the purest hearted of men could love/pity.
Solution:
Take Donna of P and R for instance. She’s confident, witty, and beautiful and she has no trouble attracting men. She carries herself well and dresses in flattering clothing. She’s shown doing the rejecting rather than being rejected.
Donna on Parks and Recreation
She doesn’t serve as a thing to be pitied. Unlike Riley, her weight isn’t a running gag. Riley’s transformation from ugly duckling to swan didn’t have to be the same old cliché of physical transformation. Why not have made her shyness the true problem instead of her perceived physical unattractiveness? Having her attractiveness stem from becoming more confident and vivacious would have been a nice change from the weight loss arc. It’s too late to alter her character back story now, so I suggest stopping the fat jokes altogether. Also, maybe introduce a Donna-like female character whose weight isn’t her sole defining trait.
I can see BD is trying to be an enlightened comedy and it has a lot of potential. By climbing out of its cliché pitfalls, it can become a truly modern show just like P and R has done. Not only can it improve in the ways I suggested and still remain funny, it can be even funnier. After all, the best humor comes from truth, not from stereotypes (unless you’re parodying those stereotypes, of course).
Nia McRae graduated summa cum laude from Medgar Evers College where she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Liberal Studies with a concentration in history. She has a strong passion for critiquing racial and gender politics in the media and putting it in historical context.
’22 Jump Street’ alternately endorses and makes fun of the idea that we should be sensitive, tolerant people, but it isn’t mean-spirited or offensive – it’s just sort of harmlessly dumb.
22 Jump Street alternately endorses and makes fun of the idea that we should be sensitive, tolerant people, but it isn’t mean-spirited or offensive – it’s just sort of harmlessly dumb.
The Whole Movie in One Screenshot
The premise of 22 Jump Street is that the characters from 21 Jump Street — two undercover cops played by Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill – have to do the exact same thing they did in the first movie, but with a bigger budget, and in a slightly different setting. I’m not being sarcastic – that’s actually the brief they get from their Captain at the start of the movie, because 22 Jump Street is one long, self-referential joke about making a half-assed sequel.
In this particular case, the cops, who went undercover as high school students in 21 Jump Street, are now undercover as college students. There are jokes about college, jokes about movies, and jokes about how the characters look really old, but the dominant theme in the movie is that it, and its characters, try really hard to be not homophobic, not sexist, not racist… and don’t always figure out how.
The most obvious example of this, and the one that’s been discussed the most often in reviews, is that the friendship between Tatum and Hill’s characters – Jenko and Schmidt – plays out as if it’s a romance. Jenko becomes friends with a football player, making Schmidt jealous, and leading them to fight about whether they should split up and “investigate different people.” There’s a sad musical montage while they think about how much they miss each other, before they agree to team up again as “a one-time thing.” When they reconcile, in the end, Jenko’s football player friend looks on with a mixture of joy and regret, declaring, “That’s who he should be with!”
Despite their cover story being that they’re brothers, and the fact that Schmidt starts dating a woman, other people mistake them for a couple, too. A school counselor makes them hold hands and attend couple’s therapy; some drug dealers think they’re having oral sex during a bust.
The movie is trying hard to be not homophobic – there’s even a part where Jenko, who’s forced to take a seminar on human sexuality, explains why you can’t use gay slurs – but, when you boil it down, the joke is still, “They seem gay, but they’re not!”
After a long period of time where movies couldn’t allude to homosexuality at all, and a shorter period of time where they could only do it in a derogatory or pejorative way, we’re now in a place where mainstream movies are totally cool with joking that their leading men are gay… as long as it’s clear that they don’t have gay sex. It’s a step forward, for sure, and you can argue that 22 Jump Street is just making fun of the homoerotic subtext that’s already present in buddy cop movies, but the joke is still based on the idea that actually being gay is a bridge that can never be crossed.
This kind of humor has gotten more and more prevalent as public acceptance toward the LGBT community has increased. Homosexuality is no longer something so taboo that we can’t even talk about it – and it’s no longer a career killer for heterosexual actors to play a gay character, or to joke about their masculinity. “They seem gay, but they’re not!” has shown up in R-rated comedies, and most of the recent Sherlock Holmes adaptations – including the Robert Downey Jr. movies, House, and, most notably, BBC’s Sherlock – and the punch line is always the same: “Ha ha ha. This looks gay, and we’re fine with looking gay – and doesn’t it reflect well on us, that we’re not afraid to look gay – but, just so you know, we’re not gay.”
If you were watching a movie or TV show about a man and woman who really, really acted like a couple, and people mistook them for a couple, and there were constantly jokes introducing the idea that they should be a couple, chances are they’d end up as a couple. Usually, the point of making those sorts of observations in the early part of a movie or series is to plant the idea in the audience’s mind that the characters should get together, and introduce tension about whether or not they will. It’s the same principle as We’re the Millers, where Jennifer Aniston and Jason Sudeikis pretend to be married as part of con, but end up falling in love. Or the second season of Orange is the New Black, where Larry and Polly are mistaken for a couple, and it makes them realize that they should be one. Or even the later seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where Buffy and her mortal enemy, Spike, fall under a spell that makes them act like they’re in love, which leads to them actually falling in love.
With 22 Jump Street and its contemporaries, we’re under no illusion that the story will resolve itself that way. In fact, part of the point of the joke is that we take for granted that it won’t. That’s what makes it a “safe” joke to tell. That doesn’t offend me, and I understand that joking about things in a non-judgemental way can be a step toward acceptance. The movie just isn’t as progressive as it seems to want to be.
Most Awkward Fistfight Ever
Speaking of things that aren’t as progressive as they seem to want to be, 22 Jump Street, intentionally or not, dramatizes the same type of struggle in Schmidt. While the movie is awkwardly trying to avoid homophobia without being sure what to do, Schmidt awkwardly tries to avoid being sexist or racist, with mixed and confusing results.
There’s a running joke in the film where he tries to suck up to the Captain (played by Ice Cube) by saying what he clearly thinks are appropriately sensitive things about race. When the Captain flips out and starts yelling for the waiter in a restaurant, Schmidt defends him by saying, “He’s black! He’s been through a lot!” When the case is initially explained to him – that a black woman died after taking drugs sold to her by a white man – Schmidt comments that’s it’s refreshing to have a black victim, and that the fact that she’s black makes him care so much more. Jenko corrects him that he means to say he cares equally, but Schmidt’s adamant that he cares more.
In both cases, everyone else in the scene is confused or annoyed by his comments, and the joke seems to be that he’s trying too hard to seem sensitive without knowing how to go about it. (In the second case, the joke might also be that people who criticize casting decisions in movies are similarly misguided about it).
Schmidt’s also confused about how to relate to women. One of the antagonists in the movie is his girlfriend’s roommate, Mercedes (played by Jillian Bell). Her idea of conversation is to crack deadpan jokes about his age, even when they’re in life or death situations (which is funny), and, at one point, they get into a fistfight, where he’s not sure if it’s okay to hit her. She yells at him that, if he saw her as a person, he’d punch her in the face, and he does it, but he feels really awkward and uncomfortable. (There’s also an improvised moment where they become confused about whether they’re going to kiss during the fight.)
The fistfight scene stands out as one that captures Schmidt and 22 Jump Street’s dilemma pretty clearly – as a reasonably progressive straight, white guy, he wants to do the right thing and not be racist, sexist, or homophobic, but he has no idea what he is and isn’t supposed to do and say. The absurdity of a situation where, in order to be feminist, you have to punch a woman in the face sums up the conflict pretty clearly – in this brave new world we live in, well-meaning people still get confused about how they’re supposed to behave.
The film also has less thoughtful sequences. Schmidt hooks up with a woman named Maya, and we’re supposed to laugh at the idea that he wants to have a relationship while she’s looking for a one night stand (because women are supposed to want relationships, and men are supposed to want one night stands, get it?). He does the walk of shame in the morning, where it appears that he’s the only man among a group of women, and a later scene in the movie follows this up by showing us that Schmidt is now on a first name basis with the same women (implicitly because he’s done this so often that they’ve all gotten to know each other).
The joke “Schmidt makes friends with the other people doing the walk of shame, because he does it all the time” is funny in itself, but Jonah Hill, for some reason, adopts a more effeminate posture and delivery during those scenes, making the joke more like, “Schmidt’s become one of the girls!” Which is funny because… it’s emasculating? Like being gay?
I honestly don’t know.
22 Jump Street exists in a sort of no-man’s-land where we don’t want to be bigoted or hateful, but where even the least homophobic person in the world can reach for a gay slur in anger, and where, even a movie that’s trying to be progressive can reach for jokes that tacitly confirm the same stereotypes it’s opposing. It’s a snapshot of where mainstream culture is, now, where we want to be better, and thoughtful, and kind, but we haven’t dismantled the language that came before. We’re in a transitional stage between the generations that would find this movie offensively tolerant, and those that will find it offensively backward.
You’re Welcome
Katherine Murray is a Toronto-based writer who yells about movies and TV on her blog.
Mike Nichol’s ‘The Graduate’ has one of the most popular soundtracks of all-time. The songs reveal the dynamics of a character, theme, and a moment without the use of dialogue or a backstory, but simply through the lyrics of a Simon and Garfunkel song.
This guest post by Caroline Madden appears as part of our theme week on Movie Soundtracks.
The marriage of two different art forms- the sounds in our ears and the image on screen- can take a scene far beyond what was written on paper. With a well-placed song, a moment in film can be experienced on all levels, staying in our head long after the credits roll. Lyrics to a song can provide an insight into a character’s mind on a deeper level than just dialogue. Mike Nichols’s The Graduate has one of the most popular soundtracks of all time. The songs reveal the dynamics of a character, theme, and a moment without the use of dialogue or a backstory, but simply through the lyrics of a Simon and Garfunkel song.
The most renowned song used in the film is “The Sound of Silence,” which acts as the soliloquy of film’s protagonist, Benjamin Braddock. Inspired by the Kennedy assassination, the song became a popular hit associated with the 1960s counterculture and antiwar protests. “The Sound of Silence” holds what is the ongoing and overarching theme of the film–youths rebelling against the middle-class values of their parents’ generation. It also most representative of the inner turmoil Benjamin finds himself on upon graduating college and embarking on his new journey to “the real world.”
The first time the song plays is during the opening scene. The song kicks in after Benjamin’s plane has landed in Los Angeles. The pace of the song follows the speed of Ben’s monotonous progress through the airport. It peaks as he rides an escalator to meet his family and then fades out as the scene dissolves into a close-up shot of Ben at home, sitting unhappily in front of his fish tank, ready for his new life.
The next few scenes play out the lyrics we have just heard in the opening.
And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more
People talking without speaking, people hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices never share
And no one dared disturb the sound of silence.
“Fools,” said I, “You do not know –Silence like a cancer grows.
Hear my words that I might teach you.
Take my arms that I might reach you.”
But my words like silent raindrops fell
and echoed in the wells of silence.
These lyrics echo the graduation party, where Benjamin is surrounded by a stifling crowd of his parents’ friends, all talking and asking him about his future without bothering to hear his answer. No one listens to his concerns or apprehensions. Benjamin wants to make sense of his world first before worrying about his future, but adults want him to have a plan. In the film’s most famous line, a family friend suggests Benjamin goes plastics.
The older generation wants the younger generation to follow in their footsteps, to conform for the sake of safety and tradition. This is the reasoning for all of Benjamin’s aimlessness and disaffectedness, seeing that his only option seems to be unhappily working in a sterile corporate setting until middle-age. His zombie-like drone in the airport opening reflects the future Benjamin pictures if he follows in his elders’ lead.
“The Sound of Silence” is also featured in a second montage. The song plays right after Benjamin has shut the hotel door to have sex with Mrs. Robinson, his first time. The montage begins with brilliant dissolves and intercuts as Benjamin monotonously (just like the airport opening) goes through the motions of his days at home with his parents over his shoulder and nights alone with Mrs. Robinson. The affair is not the answer he is looking for, though. He still suffers through “the sounds of silence” with no one around to understand or hear him. The song is played again because Benjamin is still as confused as he was at the beginning of the story.
Although “The Sound of Silence” has been told through Benjamin’s point of view, the lyrics can also reflect Mrs. Robinson’s state of being. We learn that she got pregnant before marriage, and that is why she is with Mr. Robinson. Mrs. Robinson was raised in the 30s, 40s, and 50s, and the mindset of that upbringing gave her no other choice. The consequences of her actions were that she had to live her life being with a man she did not want to truly be with.
Not only was she stuck in a marriage she did not want, she also makes it clear throughout the movie that she regrets letting her education go to waste. It is a sore spot for Mrs. Robinson, she goes from “I don’t like art” to “I studied art in college” in a matter of minutes.
“Hear my words that I might teach you.
Take my arms that I might reach you.”
But my words like silent raindrops fell
and echoed in the wells of silence.
Mrs. Robinson must have felt the truth of these words throughout the course of her life. Wanting to express to her parents how she did not love Mr. Robinson and did not want to be with him, how she wanted to continue her education. She was, and is, a woman in an unhappy marriage trying to make herself heard. But gender roles in the 1950s meant women were silenced, only expected to do their duties as a housewife, to serve their homes and husbands’ wills.
Mrs. Robinson’s unhappiness manifests itself within her actions in film. These changes in her actions were due to her increasing unhappiness in her mandated role as a housewife. These new ideals and changes of the 1960s led her to understand that women have just as many rights as men do, negating her ingrained mindset of the 1950s that women are supposed to bow to their superiors (men).
“The Sound of Silence” song ends, and “April Come She Will” quickly picks up as Benjamin lays in the hotel bed, cutting to him bored in his room and then leaving for the pool. The song ends with a clever match cut as Benjamin jumps off of a pool raft and into bed with Mrs. Robinson.
“April Come She Will” is a simple and bittersweet song that represents the seasons of Benjamin’s relationship with Mrs. Robinson.
April, comes she will,
When streams are ripe and swelled with rain
May, she will stay,
Resting in my arms again.
These lyrics represent how smitten Benjamin was with Mrs. Robinson at the beginning of their affair. Mrs. Robinson continues to stay, and their affair goes on for some time.
June, she’ll change her tune.
In restless walks she’ll prowl the night.
July, she will fly,
And give no warning to her flight.
However, their relationship is beginning to change after Benjamin being pressured by his parents and Mr. Robinson to go on a date with their daughter, Elaine.
August, die she must.
The autumn winds blow chilly and cold.
September, I’ll remember.
A love once new has now grown old.
Their relationship is coming to an end, and though the affair was exciting and new at first, it cannot go on forever it will soon dissolve.
The third song in the film is “Scarborough Fair,” and is played several times. It first plays as Benjamin is driving to Berkeley to find Elaine, who he is now newly smitten with.
Are you going to Scarborough Fair?
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme
Remember me to one who lives there
She once was a true love of mine.
This can be read as representative of his journey, Benjamin is searching for what he believes to be is his love, the answer to all of his uncertainty and meandering and questions of what to do with his life.
Between the salt water and the sea strands
(A soldier cleans and polishes a gun)
Then she’ll be a true love of mine
The war references represent the battle within him, the questions Benjamin is facing with his love life and whether or not he is going to do something about it. He is here in Berkeley to find Elaine and to convince her to be with him.
Are you going to Scarborough Fair?
These lyrics play as the film pans on Elaine, the first time we see her at Berkeley. The lyrics question if Benjamin is going to make the choice fight for what he believes he wants in his life? Is he going to go for it?
An early version of the chart-topping hit “Mrs. Robinson” is another highlight of the film’s soundtrack. Originally written about Mrs. Roosevelt, the title and character of the lyrics was changed to fit the film. The song plays several times throughout the film, most notably throughout the chase scenes as Benjamin heads to Elaine’s wedding.
The lyrics do not directly comment on what is happening on screen, but is instead a further reflection on Mrs. Robinson’s character. It is also a song that again reflects the theme of the film, the old generation vs. the new generation, and the ideals of the 50s vs. the changes of the 60s.
Hide it in the hiding place where no one ever goes.
Put it in your pantry with your cupcackes.
It’s a little secret just the Robinson affair.
Most of all you’ve got to hide it from the kids.
The entire older generation of the 60s was desperately trying to maintain an unmaintainable false image that they’ve been trying to hold up for years. Hide it from the kids, they’ll rip off the covers and expose everything that’s wrong with their generation’s ideals, which were forcing you to hide your true self or submit to a forced gender role. Work at a job you hate. Give up your education to get married because you are pregnant.
Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?
Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you.
Joe DiMaggio represents the heroes of the past, the traditional American values that were so highly honored in that time. But the ideals the past have given way to the upcoming changes, the defiance of gender roles and roles in society.
The Graduate begins and ends with the same song, “The Sound of Silence.” Elaine and Benjamin’s rebellion against their elders culminates here. Benjamin has stopped Elaine’s wedding and they leave together. They run onto the bus, their smiles and glee slowly turning to lost and forlorn looks as the music starts to play.
“The Sound of Silence” also speaks to Elaine’s character. Elaine has surely felt the “sounds of silence” as Benjamin has. She is also struggling with the idea of not wanting to spend her life being dictated and controlled by the ideas of her parent’s generations. Elaine must have felt pressure from her father and mother to marry this man, a perfect man to secure her future. Who needs an education from Berkeley when you can get married? But Elaine is not going to be doomed to repeat her mother’s mistake of being in a loveless marriage. What better way to out rightly and outrageously defy her parents than running away on her wedding day?
Although Benjamin and Elaine have succeeded in doing everything to defy their parents, now they ask “What are we left with?” What do they do now? Are they going to repeat the mistakes of the past and stay together without really loving or knowing each other? Benjamin’s questioning of what to do with his life is no different now than at the beginning of the film. He is just as confused and directionless as ever. The film ends as it began, book-ended with the famous Simon and Garfunkel tune.
The Graduate changed the world when it became one of the first films to reuse popular music for a film, as well as one of the first representations of counterculture youth. It proved that music could be used to comment and highlight themes and characters of a film. The songs impeccably fit with a film that first represented the future changes that would rock the country.
Caroline Madden is a recent graduate with a BFA in Acting from Shenandoah Conservatory. She writes about film at GeekJuice, Screenqueens, and her blog. You can usually find her watching movies or listening to Bruce Springsteen.
We hear the song one more time in a moment that mimics the first, after Tom’s illusion is shattered. Instead of listing what he loves about Summer, Tom lists the things he hates about her, concluding with “It’s Like The Wind,” and yelling, “I hate this song!” The romantic illusions are finally cracked. This isn’t the movie he thought this was.
This guest post by Victoria Edel appears as part of our theme week on Movie Soundtracks.
“This is a story of boy meets girl.”
It’s the first line of (500) Days of Summer and also the first line spoken on the soundtrack. Both, then, begin with a summation of our two characters. There’s Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), the hopeless romantic who doesn’t understand the point of The Graduate, and Summer (Zooey Deschanel), who doesn’t believe in love. By beginning the soundtrack with this summary of the movie’s central conflict, (500) Days of Summer posits that the soundtrack is just as much of a storytelling tool as the movie is.
Like the narrator says during Track 1, this is a story of boy meets girl, but this is not a love story. Instead, it’s a story about obsession, about idealizing other people, and about having the strength to rebuild after your worldview is shattered. Its message would be impossible without the soundtrack, which places us in Tom’s obsessive mind, music conveying the depth of his feeling. And then, it helps us understand his recovery.
The movie lulls us in with the sweet sounds of Regina Spektor’s “Us,” a song about a monumental love. Accompanied by photos and videos of Tom and Summer growing up, it’s dreamy and romantic, just like Tom when he meets Summer.
A quick plot summary to refresh your memory: Tom meets Summer. Tom wants to date Summer. Summer explicitly does not want a relationship. Tom and Summer embark on something more than friendship, but less than a relationship. Tom thinks he loves Summer. Tom insists that this is, in fact, a relationship. Summer calls the whole thing off. Tom is angry, until he realizes he was wrong.
Music is essential to the audience’s understanding of Tom’s feelings for Summer. The duo originally bond over their mutual love of The Smiths. Cue “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out”: “And if a ten-ton truck killed the both of us / to die by your side / well the pleasure and the privilege is mine.” That’s an intense feeling to have about anyone, let alone someone you just met. The song is about longing, about abandoning everything you have to.
The movie only works because while Tom is in the over-the-moon, in love stage, the audience is brought there with him. And the music is essential to creating this loving feeling. As they spend time together, we hear Carla Bruni’s “Quelqu’un M’a Dit,” so breathy and romantic and French, and “Sweet Disposition” by Temper Trap, excited and airy.
Then, after Tom and Summer finally have sex, he leaves his apartment and participates in an impromptu dance number to Hall & Oates’s “You Make My Dreams Come True,” complete with friendly strangers who join in and some animated birds. But this isn’t Tom celebrating getting laid. The lyrics give us his feelings: “You make my dreams come true.” Summer, he’s decided, is the culmination of the girl he’s always dreamed of, the true love he’s always wanted. With just music and dance, (500) Days of Summer tells us everything we need to know about Tom’s quick, rash, all-encompassing feelings.
When he describes how Summer makes him feel, he says every time he thinks of her he hears “She’s Like The Wind,” in his head. The Patrick Swayze song was recorded for Dirty Dancing, and used when Baby and Johnny part ways for what they think is forever. It’s a sad song to remember when you think of someone you love, but it does inform the way Tom sees his story. It’s romantic and dramatic, as classic as Baby and Johnny’s.
Until it’s not.
We hear the song one more time in a moment that mimics the first, after Tom’s illusion is shattered. Instead of listing what he loves about Summer, Tom lists the things he hates about her, concluding with “It’s Like The Wind,” and yelling, “I hate this song!” The romantic illusions are finally cracked. This isn’t the movie he thought this was.
Thankfully, things are brighter by the end. Tom realizes that he tried to use Summer to mask his unhappiness, instead of changing his life. He finally dedicates himself to architecture — his original love — and we experience it in montage, accompanied by Wolfmother’s “Vagabond.” The lyrics: “Take away this lonely man. / Soon he will be gone.” The song is loud and sprawling and rhythmic, in sharp contrast to the romantic, soft songs from earlier in the film. Tom’s finally started to change.
This isn’t to say that Tom at the movie’s end doesn’t love the Smiths or believe in love; in fact, quite the opposite. Instead, he’s realized what a horrible thing it is to idealize another person, to project your hopes and dreams onto them without getting to know them. If we don’t know much about Summer by the film’s end, it’s because Tom didn’t learn that much about her either. He saw her as much as he wanted to, ignoring everything that didn’t fit into the picture.
And in the end he learns from his mistakes.
This is not a love story. It’s better than that.
Victoria Edel lives in Brooklyn, NY, but not the trendy part. The sitcoms is her one true love, so she’s currently watching every episode of 30 Rock and blogging about it here. Follow her on Twitter @victoriaedel.
Like most horror films, prom horror is about teenage girls and what they chose to do with their bodies. As a culture, it’s a topic we find truly terrifying.
We’re taught to think of prom night is an important moment, as a signifier for burgeoning, barely contained sexuality and transformation. It’s the night good girls become bad girls, shy girls reveal their hidden confidence, and ugly girls shed their glasses or comb their hair and look almost beautiful, imperceptible from their peers.
Like most horror films, prom horror is about teenage girls and what they chose to do with their bodies. As a culture, it’s a topic we find truly terrifying.
We’re taught to think of prom night is an important moment, as a signifier for burgeoning, barely contained sexuality and transformation. It’s the night good girls become bad girls, shy girls reveal their hidden confidence and ugly girls shed their glasses or comb their hair and look almost beautiful, imperceptible from their peers. Prom is also held up as a sort of pre-wedding, “the night” where a couple must have special sex in a fancy hotel room with roses on the bed and special lingerie, and the night when “good girls” decide to lose their virginity. It’s as close as we have to a coming of age ceremony, like a young woman’s first menstruation or first sexual encounter, prom night is a milestone where she can be said to change from girl to woman. In the slasherProm Night, it’s no coincidence that the high-schoolers face the killer’s vengeance on this particular night, when they enter adulthood and are finally old enough to face the consequences of their actions.
Before the pig blood is dropped on her, Carrie feels her dreams have come true.
In the three Carrie films, Carrie White’s first period comes just ahead of her senior prom, and along with it, the full bloom of her telekinetic powers. Her prom also awakens her repressed sexuality, as Carrie admires her body in her prom dress, displaying the tops of her breasts, which her mother has taught her are shameful “dirty pillows” she must always cover, for the first time. In the 2013 remake, Carrie’s delight in her power is also tied to her sexuality as she makes slightly orgasmic facial expressions when using them.
Part of the extreme resentment, Chris, Carrie’s chief tormenter, shows toward her, can be seen as stemming from jealousy of Carrie’s excitement about prom and with it, sex. For Carrie, these things come to mean rebellion and at least initially, in preparing for prom, are empowering for her. Meanwhile, Chris, in the original 1976 film at least, appears to treat sex as a chore. What appears to turn her on, is her hatred of Carrie; she licks her lips before releasing the bucket of blood and talks about Carrie while fooling around with her boyfriend.
Besides the whole telekinetic powers thing, the part of Carrie that has always seemed unrealistic to me is that Carrie, a girl who has been tormented and abused by her classmates her whole life, even goes to prom. It’s always been slightly unbelievable that she would accept Tommy’s invitation without insisting it had to be the set up for a trick. But maybe she believes in what pop culture has always told us about prom night, that it has transformational powers, a strange magic that could make one the most popular boys in school ask out an outcast and end up really liking her upon getting to know her, that all her classmates could see the change in her and honestly vote her prom queen. After all, visually she does transform. She’s beautiful in her new dress, everyone is shown admiring her and as she gains control over her powers, she has become much more confident. With the final show of her telekinetic revenge from the stage, abused Carrie transforms into something monstrous, but understandable. On prom night, she gains her autonomy and reveals and revels in her adulthood.
Lola and Brent pose for twisted prom photos.
Likewise, in The Loved Ones, a 2009 Australian film, a shy, quiet outcast (Robin McLeavy) reveals her true self on prom night. In the beginning of the film, she asks her crush, Brent (Xavier Samuel), to the prom, and is rejected. At school, she appears awkward and weird, and is never really an option for Brent, who has a conventionally attractive, sexually confident girlfriend. Horror arrives when Brent is kidnapped by Lola and her father, and learns that they have been regularly kidnapping teenage boys in search of “the one” for her. Lola’s father has set up a prom night for her in their own house, including a spinning disco ball, showers of glitter, and her favorite song on the stereo, and within it, she is powerful and frightening, a monstrous creature who tortures Brent and believes that on prom night, this may make him love her.
Horror films can also play on our culture’s fear of sex as an act that can change a good girl into a bad girl, by showing a virgin literally turn into a insatiable succubus after her first time. Prom Night 2: Hello Mary Lou follows Vicki (Wendy Lyon), a virginal sweetheart nominated from Prom Queen at her high school, who becomes possessed by the spirit of dead 1957 Prom Queen, Mary Lou (Lisa Schrage). Like Carrie, Vicki’s sexuality is repressed by her religious mother, who refuses to buy her a new dress for prom, as she finds them inappropriately sexual.
“Bad girl” Mary Lou was killed after being named prom queen in 1957
Though it’s a horror film and she goes on a murderous rampage, we are meant to understand Mary Lou is a “bad girl” when she is shown confessing her sexual exploits to a priest and refusing to repent for them. Instead, she leaves her phone number in the confessional, and writes, “For a good time, call Mary Lou.”
Using Vicki’s body, she lures students to her death by promising sex and in gratuitous one scene, chases a rival through the locker room, completely nude and attempts to seduce her. All of Mary Lou’s villainy is tinged by her equally villainous sexuality, including one scene where she, within Vicki’s body, gives Vicki’s father a passionate kiss.
Vicki is an innocent young girl who Mary Lou uses to reap her revenge
The rituals of prom night–getting dressing and applying makeup in front of the mirror, posing for pictures, crowning of the prom queen, and the first slow dance–are familiar enough as cultural markers that horror movies can illicit a strong response by perverting them. Prom horror typically lulls viewers into complacency before everything turns dark, by playing some of these traditional markers straight and suggesting the film is merely a happy story of prom night as wish fulfillment. Lola and Brent’s story is intercut with scenes of the more realistic, wish-fulfillment prom night experienced by his best friend. Similarly, the 2008 remake of Prom Night led up to the big night with scenes of the young characters excitedly getting their hair done, trying on their dresses and sticking their heads out of the limo’s sunroof, all set to bright poppy music. In The Loved Ones, Lola and her father force their captives though a series of twisted prom night rituals, where they eat dinner together, dance under the disco ball, pose from pictures, and are crowned prom king and queen, only through all this, Brent’s feet are nailed to the floor and the prom photos display him more like a trophy than a date, with Lola’s initials carved across his chest. Early on, Lola’s moment of transformation is perverted, as while she changes into her perfect prom dress, she tells her father to stay and he watches, lustful from the door.
Otis forces Riley to be his prom date
2008’s Otis is a similar type of captive prom date film. In it, a pedophilic serial killer (Bostin Christopher) kidnaps a teenage girl, Riley (Ashley Johnson) and forces her to play the role of the girl who rejected him in high school and help him reenact the prom he dreamed of. Through the film, he drags her though a prom tableau set up in his basement: a girly bedroom where he calls to ask her out, a car where he forces her to pleasure him and finally a dance floor where he holds the actual prom. Otis is influenced by an idea of what a classic, even cookie cutter prom should be. In his prom-fantasy, he dates a blonde cheerleader, drives a classic car and is even named prom king.
It’s interesting that pink dresses are so common in these films. Carrie’s homemade prom dress is pale pink, all the better to show off the pig blood stains. Mary Lou’s dress in the 50s is pink, as is the cookie cutter dress Otis buys for Riley. In The Loved Ones, pink is Lola’s power color and her room is full of it. Both the paper crown and the prom dress her father buys her are bright, stinging pink, that nearly glows. Pink is a traditionally girly color, one that signifies childhood and innocence, and it’s no coincidence that the chief wish fulfillment prom film is called Pretty in Pink.
Lola’s prom dress allows her to transform
As a signifier of adulthood, prom night also suggests a dismissal of childish things, shortly after, there will be graduation, maybe college, and the graduating class will move out of their childhood rooms. In a disturbing scene in Hello Mary Lou, a possessed Vicki, all dolled up for prom, sits atop the pastel colored rocking horse in her bedroom, as it comes alive, with a twisted, demonic face, red eyes and an outstretched tongue. Likewise, Lola perverts her dolls and stuffed animals by setting them in sexual positions, showing the uncomfortable melding of childhood and adulthood in her mind.
On prom night, a possessed Vicki plays with her childhood rocking horse
That these girls chose pink dress also suggests their purity is slightly tarnished or that their dresses are white that has been diluted by blood. Moreover, it suggests a junior or training wedding.
Like a wedding, prom night is characterized by patriarchal rituals that make a father responsible for his daughter’s sexuality. In pop culture, fathers joke about having to lock up their daughter on prom night and worry about them getting pregnant or secretly giving birth in the bathroom. It’s the first time they are asked to see their daughters as sexual beings and trust them to be grown-ups going out into the world.
In typical prom rituals, a father meets his daughter’s date when he comes to pick her up and in shaking his hand, symbolically hands her over to him. Otis goes as far as to call Riley’s father, once he already has her held hostage, to ask for his permission to take her out. In The Loved Ones, Lola’s incestuous desire for her father helps paint her as monstrous. As they dance together, she tells him she can’t be satisfied with any of the teenage boys they have kidnapped because he is the only one for her.
Moreover, though the characters in these prom horror stories arrive with a date, they tend to leave alone, as if abandoned after sex, for a “walk of shame” the morning after. In Otis, Riley escapes, still in her prom dress, while The Loved Ones ends with a morning after chase sequence through the outback between Lola and Brent and his girlfriend. In this last fight, Lola appears to lose both her strength and confidence, as if depleted by her prom night. Likewise, after leaving the school gym, Carrie enacts more brutal wrath on her long walk home. In all versions, she walks alone through the town, as if possessed, until she arrives home for her final confrontation with her mother, her final symbolic shift into adulthood.
Carrie transforms a walk of shame into something triumphant
A culture’s horror stories have always reflected what they finds terrifying, by exaggerating it and moving it into allegorical contexts. To some extent, this has always included female sexuality, from the fear of liberated women in Dracula to the virgin/whore dichotomy of the slasher film, and probably always will. Prom continues to resonate as, displayed by last year’s Carrie remake. Although the film has its problems, the basic storyline continues to be as relevant today as it was in the 70s. Prom Horror will likely continue to crop up every few years, shaded by whatever trend in their teenagers’ lives are frightening adults at the time, like the use of cyber bullying in Carrie.
‘Parenthood’ is about showing us rounded human beings, triumphantly showing us their strengths and compassionately portraying their weaknesses. The interconnectedness and communication of this family is inspiring, and the series is always true to its characters’ unique psychology.
Despite my largely cynical personality, I found myself really enjoying the NBC TV series Parenthood. The show follows the intergenerational lives of the Braverman family living in Berkeley, California. The family is very close-knit, helping each other raise children, weather difficult times, and answer tough questions. Sometimes bordering on goody-goody or saccharine sweetness, the show mostly impresses me with the breadth of important issues addressed and the true-to-life character depth and psychology.
First, let’s address the ways in which Parenthood falls short. The cast is predominantly white. Crosby (Dax Shepard) marries a Black woman, Jasmine (Joy Bryant), and they have two children together, who constitute most of the non-white main characters on the show.
Aida is born to Jasmine and Crosby
With a cast that big, mainly casting periphery characters of color is a missed opportunity to dig into the intersection of race, culture, class, and family. Though in a limited, somewhat unsatisfactory way, the show does, however, capitalize on Crosby and Jasmine’s life together to delve into issues of interracial family. In a plotline about interracial dating, Adam (Peter Krause) and Christina’s daughter, Haddie, dates a young, Black man, which they forbid under the guise of his age and experience, when it’s clearly more about their discomfort with his class and race. It’s unclear whether or not the show truly acknowledges the racism of Haddie’s parents.
Haddie and Alex: young love
Parenthood also intersects race, class, and adoption themes when Julia and Joel adopt Victor (Xolo Maridueña), an abandoned 10-year-old Latino. Though the way the Braverman clan embraces Julia and Joel’s new son wholeheartedly is full of warmth and humanity, Victor’s representation brings into high relief the lack of class diversity depicted on the show. Though the character Sarah Braverman (Lauren Graham) struggles with money, she has the wealth and home of her parents to fall back on.
The entire Braverman clan comes out for Victor’s adoption day
I waited five whole seasons for them to introduce a queer character. We all thought it would be young Drew, the quiet, sensitive younger brother of Amber and son of Sarah. Nope! In the very last episode of the most recent season (Season 5), Parenthood showed a long absent Haddie (Sarah Ramos), home from college, in love with a woman.
Haddie kissed a girl…and she liked it
Talk about a token LGBTQ character. She’s not even on the show anymore! It felt like Parenthood wanted to show us it was down with the gays without having to deal with any of the issues, hardships, or questions that come with being a young, queer woman in the US. Haddie also dated Alex, a Black man, so the implication is that she’s boundary-pushing and possibly a LUG. Not cool, Parenthood. Not cool.
Props for NBC’s on-screen lesbian kiss
Its shortcomings with regard to race, class, and sexuality mean that Parenthood disappointingly represents a narrow, unrealistic demographic of people. Though that seems like a massive fail, now we get to talk about the ways in which Parenthood succeeds. As I already referenced, the show deals with adoption and infertility with its Victor storyline. Not only that, but tackling the “C word,” the gentle-natured Christina (Monica Potter) is diagnosed with breast cancer. While Christina eventually goes into remission, she struggles with sickness, lack of energy, a desire to see her children through their challenges, loss of self-esteem, the death of close friends who also have cancer, and, most importantly, her own agency, her own ability to choose how she will live, how she will face cancer, and how she will prepare herself and her family for her potential death.
Christina shaves her head while undergoing chemotherapy
Fear, insecurity, trust, and love are repeatedly called into question when Parenthood deals with infidelity. We see Camille and Zeek secretly separated before they slowly repair their marriage due to an affair Zeek (Craig T. Nelson) had, showing how time, history, and forgiveness are crucial to any long-term relationship. We see Crosby destroy and slowly rebuild his family when he sleeps with Gaby (Minka Kelly), Max’s aide, which highlights how Crosby needed to grow up, accept responsibility for his actions and choices, and become more steadfast in his relationships. We see Adam and Christina weather a kiss Adam’s assistant, Rachel (Alexandra Daddario), plants on him during a rainstorm, showcasing the need for honesty and compassion within a marriage. The series primarily features male partners transgressing against their female partners, but in the most painful and drawn out indiscretion of all, we see Julia kiss another man and lie about it for a time, which leads to a separation and a difficult custody situation.
Julia and Ed acknowledge their shared attraction
Both characters are sympathetic: Julia (Erika Christensen) is desperate, lonely, and feels invisible, while Joel (Sam Jaeger) feels betrayed and unsupported by his wife in the pursuit of his career. We can also see both of their faults in the situation: Julia is selfish and can’t handle being a stay-at-home mom even though she rashly quit her job, and Joel is rigidly unforgiving and untrusting, refusing to communicate or work on their underlying marital troubles. It’s rare to see an honest, balanced, yet sympathetic portrayal of a drowning relationship due to infidelity.
Parenthood features a teen abortion without judgement. Drew’s (Miles Heizer) girlfriend, Amy (Skyler Day), becomes pregnant. Amy decides to get an abortion, and Drew, in his awkward, teenage way, tries to support her choice and be there for her. Despite his attempts to be a good boyfriend, their youthful relationship disintegrates as a result of the very adult situation they find themselves in. My major complaint is that much of this happens from the perspective of Drew, and we only get glimpses of how Amy feels and how, over a year later when Amy and Drew reconnect, Amy is still troubled by the secret she keeps from her family.
Drew and Amy’s relationship falls apart after her abortion
One of Parenthood‘s pet issues is Asperger syndrome and more broadly autism spectrum. In Season 1, Adam and Christina’s son, Max (Max Burkholder) is diagnosed with Asperger’s. Together, the family rally, compassionately supporting Max to give him structure, safety, and a quality education that doesn’t discriminate against him. Later on, the show introduces Hank (Ray Romano), a love interest of Sarah and a mentor for Max, who is pained to discover that he, like Max, is autism spectrum.
Max and Hank share their love of photography
The series strives to show that despite the very real challenges they face, neither Max nor Hank are incapable of normal lives or of being loved. There aren’t a whole lot of representations of autism spectrum individuals that don’t tokenize them as a “character with a disability”–certainly very few make them primary characters on TV, and even fewer cast them as love interests.
I was impressed with the very real, honest depictions of addiction, in particular the plight of the loved ones of addicts. Sarah’s ex-husband, Seth (John Corbett), is an addict and an absentee father. He flits in and out of his children’s lives, promising to change and disappointing them each time. Amber (brilliantly, viscerally performed by Mae Whitman) is so sensitive that when we meet her, she is acting out, a lost teen with little self-worth who’s hardened her heart to her deadbeat dad, while her younger brother, Drew, yearns for his father, constantly forgiving him and eternally holding out hope that he’ll have a real relationship with his father this time. Sarah, herself, never gives up on Seth, and (while I think it’s unrealistic that Seth does, in fact, go to rehab and eventually maintains his recovery since it happens more often than not that people don’t ever recover) the Holt family exemplifies dysfunction and the behavioral patterns of living with an addict.
Drew finds his wasted father playing a show
For example, Sarah can’t ever choose the potential partner who has his shit together. She’s always drawn to the one who needs her most. Amber also grows up to embody this same trait when she falls in love with deeply troubled war veteran, Ryan (Matt Lauria). Ryan’s storyline allows Parenthood to delve into PTSD as well as the way in which veterans come home haunted. While I’m disappointed that the show has yet to explore PTSD as a result of sexual violence and/or trauma (especially considering how real that storyline is for so, so many people, especially women), Ryan’s arc and the way in which it intersects with Amber’s is crucial for revealing to us how much she’s internalized that responsibility of caring for someone who isn’t healthy.
Ryan nearly dies as a result of his PTSD-motivated reckless behavior
One storyline that I’ve been incredibly pleased to see is that of Camille (Bonnie Bedelia), the matriarch of the Braverman family. Her family takes her for granted and neglects her needs, invalidating her as a human being. They’ve so cast her in the role of “wife” and “mother” that they don’t see her as anything but an extension of themselves. This is clear in the resistance she meets from the entire clan when she wants to explore her love of painting on an extended, solo trip to Italy followed by her family’s baffled disbelief that she wants to sell the house in order to travel more and not be weighed down by that behemoth of a home. I’ve not often seen a story like this that calls out husbands and children for forgetting that their wives and mothers are human beings with separate hopes and desires.
Zeek realizes his love for Camille is the most important thing in his life
Bottom line, Parenthood is about showing us rounded human beings, triumphantly showing us their strengths and compassionately portraying their weaknesses. The interconnectedness and communication of this family is inspiring, and the series is always true to its characters’ unique psychology, revealing to us that every choice each of them makes is connected in a subtle way. If Season 6 would show us more race, class, and LGBTQ diversity, Parenthood would go from being a really good series to a really great one.
Bitch Flicks writer and editor Amanda Rodriguez is an environmental activist living in Asheville, North Carolina. She holds a BA from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio and an MFA in fiction writing from Queens University in Charlotte, NC. She writes all about food and drinking games on her blog Booze and Baking. Fun fact: while living in Kyoto, Japan, her house was attacked by monkeys.
Suicide is no laughing matter, but we try. If it’s not a heavy drama or inspirational story telling you to stop and watch the sunset, stop and smell the roses, and the like, making a film about suicide requires a light touch and buckets of understanding and sensitivity. As a comedy plot, it only seems to work when sensitivity is disposed of completely. Suicide has been a successful plot for dark comedies, most notably ‘Heathers’ and ‘Harold and Maude’, which are full of irony, satire, insight and meditation. But ‘A Long Way Down’, a British film based on the bestselling novel by Nick Hornby, is not a dark comedy
Poster for A Long Way Down
Suicide is no laughing matter, but we try.
If it’s not a heavy drama or inspirational story telling you to stop and watch the sunset, stop and smell the roses and the like, making a film about suicide requires a light touch and buckets of understanding and sensitivity.
As a comedy plot, it only seems to work when sensitivity is disposed of completely. Suicide has been a successful plot for dark comedies, most notably Heathersand Harold and Maude, which are full of irony, satire, insight and meditation.
But A Long Way Down, a British film based on the bestselling novel by Nick Hornby, author of About a Boy and High Fidelity, is not a dark comedy (through its Wikipedia page suggests otherwise). Instead, it’s a light comedy that wears its life-changing intentions on its sleeve and comes across too obvious to be genuine.
The story begins when four very different people meet on a roof, intending to commit suicide
The film follows four people of varying ages who meet when they all try to commit suicide on New Year’s Eve. The first we meet is Martin Sharp (Pierce Brosnan), a disgraced talk show host jailed for a liaison with a 15-year-old girl (ridiculously he claims she looked 25). As his relationships with his wife and child were ruined by the scandal and he has becomes widely hated and unemployable, he plans to throw himself off a building. At the top, he meets Jess (Imogen Poots), Maureen (Toni Collette), and JJ (Aaron Paul), who had the same idea.
Politician’s daughter and club kid Jess impulsively decides to jump after being dumped by Chaz, a character so unnecessary that after one early scene, he is never mentioned again. Maureen is an anxious, religious woman existing in a world she considers crass (as exemplified by Jess), who refuses to engage with pop culture or create a life for herself outside of caring for her son. Her grown son, Matty, has severe cerebral palsy and requires constant care. Rounding out the group, JJ is a pizza delivery boy and washed-up musician who tells the group he has brain cancer so they’ll take him seriously.
Decisions in the film seem less guided by character or logic than by a map of where the plot should go to hit from point A to B. In a chain of events that would never happen in real life, the group bizarrely form a makeshift family and convince each other to stay alive until Valentine’s Day. In quick, fragmented episodes, they become the target of a media frenzy, go on a beach holiday together to escape and return to London, where hardly anything happens until the film ends and everyone’s fine. In the midst, there’s an intriguing story suggested, as the foursome inspires others to reconsider their plans for suicide by lying to the press and saying they were stopped by an angel, but the thread is quickly dropped and never returned to.
Director Pascal Chaumeil has produced a film that’s pretty to look at, and tries to be aspirational and life-changing, but ends up more being more offensive than anything else. It’s particularly irritating when a film with such sloppy storytelling and such a gross inability to create characters that feel like flesh and blood (instead of quip generators) is used in such a manipulative manner to try force an epiphany in its viewers. It’s possible A Long Way Down has good intentions; it certainly has a positive message, but it doesn’t feel like the filmmakers really put their hearts into it. The film has a lot of good points, for the most part–it’s funny and enjoyable, it hosts several capable performances, and is glossy and fluffy enough to feel like a quality picture. But it’s completely tone deaf.
The group forget their problems by goofing off together
The story aimlessly moves between characters, whiplashing from corny moments of the group splashing around in the ocean together to close-ups of the characters looking off sadly into the distance with little coherence. By the end, it’s suggested that suicidal depression can be completely overcome by a tropical vacation, goofing off and forming a wacky inter-generational friendships. Harold and Maude seems to be successful version of what the film is aiming for: an unlikely connection between two people that a gives a young person a new lease on life.
The problem with portraying a complex issue like depression in a film is that it makes it difficult to create characters that feel universally “likable,” an oft-cited necessity for a successful film. A viewer with no sympathy or personal experience is liable to find characters with clear mental health problems like Jess and JJ irritating and self-indulgent for complaining about their lack of what others might consider real problems. The film tries to counter this possibility with first person narrative, a tactic that allows the viewer a look into the characters’ heads; however, these narrations provide little else besides an opportunity to include some witty, classically Hornby lines cherry-picked from his book.
In addition, the film refuses to take Jess’s depression seriously. She clearly has some mental health issues, as she wishes she were invisible, appears slightly sociopathic and unable to relate to other people and filter out inappropriate speech, and even stalks a boyfriend to the point where he fears for his life. Add to this her severe alienation from her parents and her missing sister, the golden child, and she comes off as the most developed, relatable character. Still, her problems are played down and attributed to her merely being a dramatic teenager. It’s the same tendency we’ve seem in other media, to regard any problems felt by a privileged young woman as “first world” or “rich white girl problems.” Instead of showing us that Jess does have mental health problems despite her privileged background, she’s portrayed as a poor little rich girl who makes problems for herself.
Jess stalks the others around the city to make sure they’re following the pact
There is also a desire between the characters to give one specific reason for their suicidal intentions and for the most part it’s very easy for them to do. Martin has his blighted reputation, Maureen has the burden of caring for Matty, and Jess, because Chaz doesn’t love her. The lone exception is JJ and much his arc through the film centers around the lie he tells the others to get them to take him seriously (that he has cancer) and the accompanying depression of not having a reason for being depressed. In the last act, the other characters finally take him seriously when he goes back to the tower roof to commit suicide but any meaningful character development or recovery is overshadowed in favor of an ill-thought-out romantic relationship with Jess. The relationship comes out of nowhere towards the film’s end (they do not get together in the book), suggesting the filmmakers couldn’t imagine a platonic relationship between young attractive male and female characters, even when they appear to emotionally vulnerable for a serious relationship.
However, real-life people are more complex than that and there are often many reasons why someone might consider suicide, as well as biological and social factors, such as what support system they have in place. It is rare that it can be so easily reduced to a sentence. Rather than portray the characters as learning they are being reductive, even with JJ’s second suicide attempt, the film itself produces characters who can be easily reduced to types (Martin is slimy, Jess is manic, Maureen is restrained and JJ is a would-be rocker) and scarcely gives us any reason to see them in three dimensions. The characters’ back stories are so glossed over and devoid of context, that it’s unclear what is motivating them most of the time. For example, there is no explanation of why Martin’s children do not factor into his decision to commit suicide or why Maureen does not have the support of her family, any friends or of Matty’s father.
By the ending, on New Year’s Eve of the next year, everyone seems fixed. They still talk, but less like a support group helping each other stay afloat than four people that can barely remember why they felt so hopeless a year ago. Like I said, maybe that message has moved some viewers. It’s true that Depression is like that. You find yourself so desperate you can’t imagine living a second longer and then one day, much later, you look back and feel like a different person.
But A Long Way Down promises an unequivocally happy movie ending. These people are capital F- fixed, they’ve been in the trenches together, but they’ll never be up on the ledge again. There’s no reason to keep worrying about them or an acknowledgement of the reality that depression is a mental illness that can recur again and again. Though Jess and JJ mention being in therapy, which suggests their mental upkeep is a constant process, it doesn’t seem as important to them as the happily ever after of their romance.
At the last minute, an obligatory romance develops between Jess and JJ
Likewise, Martin and Maureen’s stories are played as if they’re cured. Sadly for character development, the resolutions for both their stories take place off-screen and are never detailed. Though Martin’s reputation and job prospects are forever destroyed and people call him a pervert in the street, all is well when he gives up worrying about everything else to spend time with his kids.
Through grotesquely underdeveloped, Maureen appears to be a fascinating character, with a life we rarely see onscreen. She is raising a special needs son alone, worried about his future and burdened by the responsibility, all of which make her a complex character with an intriguing story of her own stuffed into a meandering flick where she is allowed little onscreen development.
From what we see, her life magically sorts itself out though Maureen’s routine barely changes. She saves Matty from a possibly fatal heart attack and realizes her son needs her, but of course, the burden of being his sole carer was the main reason she felt suicidal to begin with. Other than that, all she needed to fix her life was to join a quiz team and get a boyfriend.
In my opinion, A Long Way Down could have been a satisfying film. Framing it as a serious and subtly meaningful film, with black comedy to lighten the mood, could have saved it.
The core premise, of a bunch of strangers coming together, and helping each other have a better future is fairly classic and has proven itself to be a creatively fruitful jumping off point in the past. But it’s not handled capably here.
Martin, Maureen, Jess and JJ form a non-suicide pact: stay alive until Valentine’s Day
Still, I could be reading the whole thing wrong. Maybe approaching suicide with a feather-light touch has made the story more accessible and even cheered some honestly depressed real-life people. It’s possible to see how it could be moving or even inspiring that everyone gets a happy ending. But I’m a cynical person, I like my comedies dark, so A Long Way Down isn’t for me. But maybe it can help you.
We all know that male superheroes get reboots for their (often shitty) movies over and over and over again. There are an ever-increasing number of Batman, Superman, and Hulk movies, not to mention a growing franchise of Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor flicks. With this mentality of quantity over quality, there’s no excuse for denying reboots to some of my favorite female superheroines and their considerably fewer films. Some of the movies that made my top 10 list admittedly sucked, and their heroines deserve a second chance to shine on the big screen. Some of the movies, however, were, are and ever shall be totally awesome, and I just want a do-over to enhance the awesome.
We all know that male superheroes get reboots for their (often shitty) movies over and over and over again. There are an ever-increasing number of Batman, Superman, and Hulk movies, not to mention a growing franchise of Iron Man, Captain America and Thor flicks. With this mentality of quantity over quality, there’s no excuse for denying reboots to some of my favorite female superheroines and their considerably fewer films. Some of the movies that made my top 10 list admittedly sucked, and their heroines deserve a second chance to shine on the big screen. Some of the movies, however, were, are and ever shall be totally awesome, and I just want a do-over to enhance the awesome.
1. Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Buffy catches a knife before cheerleading practice
When the film Buffy the Vampire Slayer came out in 1992, I loved it. At the tender age of 10, I was already a huge movie nerd, so I was delighted to see all those celebrity cameos (Kristy Swanson, Donald Sutherland, Pee-Wee Herman/Paul Reubens, Rutger Hauer, Luke Perry, David Arquette, and I still associate the Academy Award-winning Hilary Swank with her bit part in this flick as an annoying, backstabbing valley girl). I loved the cheesiness and the unexpected badassness of its cheerleading heroine, Buffy. The movie, though, doesn’t hold a candle to the quality, thematic breadth, character depth, epic scope and feminism of the subsequent TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer that aired 1997-2003.
Buffy vs. Buffy
Buffy has become one of the most iconic superheroines in our pop culture history. She has prophetic dreams and preternatural strength, agility, speed and healing along with the mantle of a dark destiny as “the chosen one” who must give her life in service to protecting the world from unseen demonic threats. A reboot could draw more from the material of the TV show, focusing on friendship, community and sisterhood while keeping all the action and humor that draw in crowds. Combine that with a die-hard cult fanbase, and a BtVS reboot can’t lose.
2. Supergirl
Supergirl must save the Omegahedron…whatever that is
The 1984 movie Supergirl, starring a young, fresh-faced Helen Slater, was another childhood favorite of mine. Even now 30 years after its release, my nostalgia-tinted view doesn’t allow me to see Supergirl as anything other than a formative superheroine movie about a woman who chooses her duty, her family, and her planet over romantic love. Though Supergirl (aka Kara) has the exact same powers as her cousin Superman (superhuman strength, flight, x-ray and heat vision, freezing breath, invulnerability and an aversion to kryptonite), Kara was so much more exciting than the Man of Steel from whom her comic incarnation was spawned.
One of the many Supergirl comic incarnations
Supergirl, like Superman, is an uncomplicated role model for young girls and boys. She is always brave, good, and righteous, and her moral code guides her and always triumphs in the end. I say if Superman got a series reboot, then fair is fair and Supergirl should get one, too.
3. Red Sonja
Despite Arnold’s size in this poster, Red Sonja is the true badass here
My love of Red Sonja is downright legendary. She’s a barbarian babe and the greatest sword-wielder who ever lived. The film is full of grand, beautifully choreographed fight sequences, dramatic accents and lines that I’ll probably utter on my deathbed (“You can’t kill it; it’s a machine!“). Sonja faces off against Queen Gedren, a lesbian super villainess played by the mistress of the sword and sandal genre: Sandahl Bergman (more on her later). As a young child, I adored watching these strong, independent women face off in single combat–women who would decide the fate of the world.
Red Sonja reboot rumors titillate but don’t deliver
Both based on comics, Red Sonja is part of the Conan universe. If Conan got his very own craptastic reboot of Conan the Barbarian (starring Jason Momoa of Khal Drogo fame), then it’s high time Red Sonja got hers, too. Hell, they should even make Sonja a lesbian since she’s none to fond of the gentlemen folk and just look at that Kentucky waterfall action she’s rocking. Wow, the idea of an epic lesbian swordswoman is really blowing my mind. That. We need that S.T.A.T.
4. Aeon Flux
Aeon Flux fail
The 2005 film Aeon Flux was generally considered a flop. Based on the animated series Aeon Flux that appeared on MTV’s Liquid Television in the 90s, the film was so loosely based on its source material that it disappointed fans and failed to engage newcomers. Animated series creator, Peter Chung, called the film version “a travesty” that made him feel “helpless, humiliated, and sad…Ms. Flux does not actually appear in the movie.”
The animated Aeon contorting
Frankly, the movie just wasn’t weird enough. The cartoon is populated by bizarre bodies that bordered on the grotesque, trippy visuals, nonlinear narratives and complex political and philosophical musings. The animated Aeon Flux was really cool, iconic, unexpected and unpredictable. Hollywood could use an injection of surreal, nonconformist cinema. Aeon should get a second shot, one that stays truer to its eccentric cartoon.
5. Lara Croft: Tomb Raider
Lara Croft wielding her two handguns
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and its sequel Lara Croft Tomb Raider: Cradle of Life are based on the wildly popular video game series Tomb Raider. A female Indiana Jones-type adventuring archeologist, Lara Croft is an ideal heroine: brilliant, capable, inventive and athletic. Croft is proof that female-centric video games that don’t sexually exploit their heroines can be extremely successful and lucrative.
Video game Lara Croft over the years
The movie, however, had a long, convoluted, boring storyline. With a Bond-style episodic approach, the film left me feeling like I hadn’t gotten to know any of the characters in a meaningful way, and even the much anticipated action sequences dragged on and on and on. I don’t want to say good-bye, though, to such a magnetic female character who draws both male and female fans. With a quality script and a judicious editor, a Lara Croft reboot could be amazing, encouraging little girls to want to be Lara Croft (not Indiana Jones) when they grow up.
6. She
She is a matriarch revered as a goddess
1982’s She is a cult classic full of the most random-ass shit you can imagine. I was obsessed with it as a kid. Starring the arresting Sandahl Bergman, of Red Sonja and Conan the Barbarian fame, the film is probably very loosely based on the H. Rider Haggard novel She. The movie takes place in a bizarre post-apocalyptic world wherein She is a ruler of a matriarchal society. Worshiped as a goddess, She protects her people and accepts male (sexual) sacrifices. She is a warrior who goes on a journey to rescue a young woman, encountering werewolves, exploding mimes, a giant in a tutu and some green dudes who seem like they have some kind of leprosy.
The mighty and sexay She
Keeping the darkness and the zaniness of the original film, a reboot about a powerful, complicated, not always righteous female ruler set in a dystopian, magical world would be an exciting challenge. If I had my way, Bergman would reprise her role as She or at least have a cameo in the reboot.
7. Elektra
Elektra waaay outshone Daredevil
Though the character Elektra has a long comic book history, she first appeared as a love interest in 2003’s Daredevil. Though she died in the end of that massive pile of festering turds, she was later resurrected for her own spin-off film, Elektra, which was a box office flop. Truly, I was impressed with actress Jennifer Garner who performed the role of Elektra, mainly due to how excellent she was with the physicality of the role. She trained hard for the part and looked graceful, strong and natural in her martial arts performance and sai use, which is a hell of a lot more than I can say for fat-headed Ben Affleck’s awkward, cringe-worthy fighting “skills.”
Comic Elektra and live action Jennifer Gardner
The plotline of the Elektra film was silly with a throwaway story, but I appreciate that our heroine strives to protect a young girl much like herself and presumably goes on to train this girl, bringing about a new era where women work together and aren’t pawns of a male secret group. Marvel can do better with this dark ninja assassin fighting her own demons. I vote for a do-over!
8. Sheena Queen of the Jungle
Sheena had so many super cute/cool animal pals
Another childhood favorite of mine was Sheena, starring Tanya Roberts as a female Tarzan who communicates with animals and saves her “people” and homeland from exploitation. I used to run around as a kid putting my fingertips to my forehead Sheena-style, hoping I, too, had a gift for speaking to animals (you probably know how that turned out). When I grew older, I actually became too ashamed to watch the film because it’s so painfully racist (I can’t stand that white savior trope).
Sheena as the great white hope
The thing is, Sheena is a female icon with a lot of history behind her. In 1937, she became the first female character to have her own title. She’s had her own movie and TV series. She is self-reliant, clever, righteous and part of a unique community that includes people and animals, and she chooses her home over love. The character of Sheena speaks to women. My solution to Sheena‘s inherent racism is to make the character African and Black like the people of her community. If The Beastmaster, Sheena’s (totally sweet) animal communicating male counterpart, got his own film trilogy (in which Tanya Roberts herself co-stars) and TV show, then Sheena deserves a second shot as a new and improved Black superheroine to be a role model for the next generation of women, particularly women of color.
9. Tank Girl
Tank Girl had a pretty wacky style
The 1995 film Tank Girl was unsuccessfully translated from its comic origins to the big screen. Despite having a series of celebrity cameos and high profile artists contribute to its soundtrack, the film, like its comic book, was a crazy conglomeration of imagery, absurdist, barely cohesive narrative and haphazard political commentary. Roger Ebert said of the film,
Whatever the faults of Tank Girl, lack of ambition is not one of them…Here is a movie that dives into the bag of filmmaking tricks and chooses all of them. Trying to re-create the multimedia effect of the comic books it’s based on, the film employs live action, animation, montages of still graphics, animatronic makeup, prosthetics, song-and-dance routines, models, fake backdrops, holography, title cards, matte drawings and computerized special effects. All I really missed were 3-D and Smell-O-Vision.
The Tank Girl comic continues its popularity
So Tank Girl didn’t make money. It did become a cult classic, and it was directed by a woman (Rachel Talalay), which are both wins in my book. It’s a story that revolves around a woman who doesn’t take shit from anyone. She smokes, she farts, she has tons of sex and just generally does what she wants. The anarchy of the character of Tank Girl and the defiant example she provides for women deserves another chance to show women that we don’t have to meet a feminine mold; we can call the shots and we can be as weird as we want to be…and still save the day in the end.
10. Frozen
Elsa uses her powers in Frozen
Frozen is the highest grossing animated film of all time and the 5th highest grossing film of all time. Damn. That is some serious popularity. That is some serious proof that people are starving for quality stories about the love and relationships between girls and young women. Loosely based on the Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale The Snow Queen, the Disney film Frozencenters around Elsa and her sister Anna, showing how their love for one another is what truly saves the day.
The power of sisters in Disney’s Frozen
This is the perfect opportunity for Disney to take the reins in their neverending quest for more money and reboot Frozen as a live action movie with all the bells and whistles that a mega-corporation can afford. Such a high profile movie about the beautiful and important bond between young women will help feminism more than I can say. Plus, it’ll be cool to see a live action Elsa use her sweet ice powers.
As I was compiling this list, I realized what a huge influence these superheroines were for me as I was growing up. It’s sad how few of my examples extend into the new century. Though I may have missed a few, it seems more likely that this is because Hollywood hasn’t been making movies about female heroes nearly as often as they should be. With films like Frozen, The Hunger Games, and Divergent, I hope to see a shift in that pattern that neglects the tales of heroines. These movies don’t always get it right, but their very existence is a triumph. Maybe with their success, the lazy producers of movies will dig up some of the films on my list and give them a second, maybe better chance to inspire women of the next generation.
Bitch Flicks writer and editor Amanda Rodriguez is an environmental activist living in Asheville, North Carolina. She holds a BA from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio and an MFA in fiction writing from Queens University in Charlotte, NC. She writes all about food and drinking games on her blog Booze and Baking. Fun fact: while living in Kyoto, Japan, her house was attacked by monkeys.
It’s easy to look at the ads for ‘They Came Together’ and expect a straight romcom. The poster and the film are glossy and full of comedic stars. New York is so important to the story it’s like another character. The leads, Amy Poehler and Paul Rudd as Molly and Joel, play exaggerations of the roles they could be cast in in any other film. She’s the big-hearted and dangerously clumsy proprietor of a quirky little candy shop that gives all its proceeds to charity, while he’s a big candy executive who dreams of a simpler life, obsesses over sex, and threatens to shut down Molly’s shop. They get together. That much is obvious once you hear it’s a romantic comedy.
Poster for They Came Together
It’s easy to look at the ads for They Came Together and expect a straight romcom. The poster and the film are glossy and full of comedic stars. New York is so important to the story it’s like another character. The leads, Amy Poehler and Paul Rudd as Molly and Joel, play exaggerations of the roles they could be cast in in any other film. She’s the big-hearted and dangerously clumsy proprietor of a quirky little candy shop that gives all its proceeds to charity, while he’s a big candy executive who dreams of a simpler life, obsesses over sex, and threatens to shut down Molly’s shop. They get together.
That much is obvious once you hear it’s a romantic comedy.
They Came Together, the latest from David Wain and Michael Showalter, the team behind cult pic Wet Hot American Summer, intends to parody these easy conventions, and though an enjoyable film, it’s debatable what it actually accomplishes. Comedy is a difficult matter to critique as so much of what we find humorous is specific to us as individuals, as well as to factors like our culture, class, and age, that it’s nearly impossible for one person to stand up on a soapbox and declare whether or not something is funny. Adding to that, They Came Together is a polarizing film by nature. Its humor is absurdist and jokes zig and zag completely out of left field, sometimes feeling more like an extended sketch than a feature film. There are subtle visual gags, highly telegraphed centerpiece jokes, clever observations about life both in the real world and in the sunny world of the romantic comedy, plenty of raunch and some of those repetition bits that run just long enough to stop being funny and then to get funny again, thrown in for good measure. In short, it’s a comedy grab bag for which both rants and raves are justified.
Joel is given advice by friends, A-list comedians who each represent a different archetype
Much of the romcom references are bang on. The basic plot, cribbed from You’ve Got Mail, pegs an uptight man against a free-spirited woman and tells us he needs her to help him believe in his dreams, while she needs him to help her become more grounded. To stress this point, they’re even given wrong partners as contrast, ever-literal accountant Eggbert (Ed Helms) and perfectly put together Tiffany (Cobie Smulders). All the genre staples we know and are growing tired of are there: Joel gets advice from basketball playing pals who each represent a different point of view (and tell us out-right which idea they represent), they bond over their “quirky” shared tastes, in this case a love of fiction books and a hatred for the complications of modern life, spread their clothes all over Molly’s apartment while making out and fall in love through a montage that shows them buying fruit and playing in fallen leaves.
Joel and Molly fall in love through a montage of cliche activities
There are also some new and intriguing points made by the film about how race and class are portrayed in earnest examples of the genre. For existence, Molly’s assistant is Black woman who appears to have no life other than helping her, even picking up the phone in one scene and assuming the call is for Molly before even asking. Later into the film, it is revealed that Molly has a young son, and has such an easy time being a single mother that his presence in her life wasn’t even noticeable until it was pointed out. The movie fantasy of easy success and money is also briefly deconstructed in the end, when the main character’s business fails and cannot be salvaged.
With the film’s absurdist style, the plot and characters can’t really be dissected at length. But a romcom parody is particularly interesting for its power to point out annoying or offensive staples of the genre, in particular, their portrayals of women. Though a genre geared toward women, female characters in romantic comedies are uniformly portrayed as cardboard cut-outs, needy bleeding hearts or catty and conniving villains. In They Came Together, the one-dimensional nature of the female characters is pointed out as part of the joke. Molly’s business is failing because of her compulsion to give candy away and she never once thinks of changing the way she runs things. Likewise, Tiffany tells Joel point-blank that she is untrustworthy. In contrast, Joel is a complicated character who supports his younger brother, is conflicted about his job, and has strange feelings for his grandmother.
Joel’s ex Tiffany warns him to be suspicious of her motives while seducing him
The difference between men and women is also boiled down to one point, that men are easy-going and order from the menu, while women are needlessly complicated (like Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally) and have impossible specifications for how their food must be prepared. This idea, a common one in romantic comedies that has even bleed into real life expectations, is clearly posed as ridiculous.
But one target the film should have paid more attention to is the derision of the romantic comedy genre without our collective culture. When a new romcom opens, most of us expect it to be terrible, sight unseen. Horror films, another genre that can be cheaply and quickly made, don’t suffer the same derision, perhaps because the genre is generally geared toward a masculine audience. While bad horror is recognized as such, masters like John Carpenter and Wes Craven are still routinely praised, even by film buffs who are not major fans of the horror genre. Meanwhile, giants of romcoms like the late Nora Ephron, are seen as bi-words for schmaltzy “chick” movies no serious person would admit to liking. In my own life, I can’t recall the last time I heard a woman admit to a fondness for the likes of Sleepless in Seattle or Never Been Kissedwithout adding “as a guilty pleasure” in a knee-jerk reaction.
The ladies of ‘game-changing’ romantic comedy Bridesmaids
That was a big part of the wild success of Bridesmaids and its reputation as a game-changer: while a lot of the story presented wasn’t new, it was the first romantic comedy in a long time that we were “allowed” to like as something more than the garbage film meant for watching alone in sweatpants while nursing a carton of Hagen Daas.
Somehow it got drummed into our heads that the romantic comedy isn’t meant for us.
I’m making some wild generalizations about you as a reader here, but I’m going to guess that you’re something like me. You consider yourself smart, cynical and wary of the phase, “Well if you didn’t like it, that means you didn’t get it.” I’m not generally a fan of romcoms, but I’m starting to wonder how much of that distaste comes from the idea that they’re not “serious movies,” that they’re not worth my time, that I’m not supposed to like them. Sure, I’m turned off by the cutesy modern touches like klutzy women, quirky businesses, the plague of architect love interests (one trope missing from They Came Together) and honestly by the term “romcom” itself, but none of those things are that tied up in my ideas of modern womanhood and my comportment. I roll my eyes at them and I’m over it.
A romantic comedy where characters always succeed regardless of business sense or marketability and end up up happily ever after, is like a fairy tale to me; I don’t feel held to the expectations of women presented in them. But what I do feel constrained by is the idea of a universal taste, the final opinions formed in almost unspoken consensus that this show is a masterpiece or this show is crap, wherein anyone who disagrees loses all credibility.
Genres that cater to women are already disadvantaged in this respect as they’re seen as veering away from the universal, generally masculine path of canonized media. No matter how much important journalism or honest snapshots of our lives women’s magazines present, they’re still seen as trash. Female bloggers that write in a colloquial style that mirrors their style of speech and engages with their female readers are seen as unserious and dumb. Likewise,Girls was only acceptable as a good show after it gained the approval of young male viewers and with the approval of bro-humorist Judd Apatow.
A popular joke
There’s joke I’ve heard a lot recently: “I’m not like most girls”- most girls.
For most young educated women, romantic comedies are for those others, the stereotypical girl we imagine existing somewhere (basically characters played by Mindy Kaling), the one we’re deathly afraid of appearing be. We claim not to diet, we have female friends, we would never force a date to see the latest Jen Aniston movie, we call ourselves low maintenance. Sure, we want someone to love but we don’t see it as the ultimate goal in life.
But in truth? I’m sure we’ve all got “girly” things we truly love that compromise a good portion of identity. And it shouldn’t be shameful to like things that are supposed to be for women, just like shouldn’t be shameful to reject them or to like media geared toward both masculine and feminine audiences.
As in most romantic comedies, Joel and Molly have a meet cute when they wear the same costume to a halloween party
It’s probably taking things too far to say I hope They Came Together will change filmmaking or consumption; it’s a light comedic parody without activist intentions. Still, it’s the kind of film that, intentionally or not, makes you think about what we’re used to seeing on the screen and wonder why we have accepted certain ideas presented to us without complaint. Like why is one genre for women and another for men/everyone?
It hasn’t always been this way. Past romantic comedies from the 30s, even through the 90s where much of the tropes in They Came Together originated from, have been acclaimed as serious films, targeted to a universal audience and even Academy Award-ed. Many of these films were even posed from a masculine point of view, following a male character’s quest for love instead of a woman’s.
Sure They Came Together is parody, but despite its basic romantic comedy structure, it’s aimed at any audience appreciative of its brand of comedy and assumes even male viewers are familiar with the genre. Is it hopelessly naive to wish that the very existence of this film, which takes for granted that the audience will recognize romantic comedy tropes and see them as stale, will lead to some innovations?
One of the most difficult arenas to navigate while feminist is comedy. Misogynist, male-centric comedies are a dime a dozen. I think back to the comedies of my youth–Dumb and Dumber, American Pie, anything with Adam Sandler or Jim Carrey–and while some of those films may have seemed funny at the time, revisiting them through a feminist lens is pretty horrifying.
I hadn’t seen There’s Something About Mary for well over a decade, and I stumbled across it last weekend. Holy shit. When Woogie–who stalked Mary in college so severely that she had to change her name and move–spits out at her at the end, “Shut up, cocktease,” it was all I could do to keep my head from spinning and short-circuiting while screaming “RAPE CULTURE,” “MISOGYNY,” “PATRIARCHY,” “MALE GAZE,” “LAURA MULVEY SAVE ME.”
I get tired of constantly pointing out that something is Problematic From a Feminist Perspective™; I want to enjoy, not eviscerate. I want to laugh.
So I’ve been writhing around in feminist television and film lately, and damn, does it feel good. These are popular and critically acclaimed comedies and they are feminist as fuck. I love it. I can’t get enough of it. As we watch, I frequently look at my significant other with a shit-eating grin on my face as if to say, “Can you even believe that this exists?”
Broad City–starring Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer–debuted on Comedy Central in January and was quickly picked up for a second season. The pair started Broad City as a web series, and Amy Poehler took them under her (feminist superstar) wing and produced the TV show.
As many feministcommentators have already pointed out, this show is great. The writing, the acting, the story lines… I simply can’t get enough (really–I’ve seen all of the episodes multiple times). Abbi and Illana love sex, weed, and more than anything, one another. They also love themselves. It’s incredibly refreshing to see young women on screen who are so comfortable, even in their most uncomfortable moments.
“…Broad City‘s feminism isn’t so much sneak-attack as baked-in, with an emphasis on the ‘baked’: Ilana and Abbi are as aimless, goofy, boring, and entitled as any guy of their generation. And they’re striking a blow for equality just by subverting the image of the striving young woman who, well, sees her every move as a blow for equality. “
It’s hilarious, it’s relatable, and it’s inspirational–I’m inspired to be more confident by watching them, and I was inspired by their interior design to finally buy that Urban Outfitters quilt that I’d been lusting after (I understand this is a Problematic From a Feminist Perspective™ company, but I really wanted that quilt).
Sometimes watching young 20-somethings in the city (when I’m a 30-something in the country) can make me feel wistful, or bitter, or jealous, or judgmental, or any other cocktail of quarter-life psychoses. Broad City doesn’t evoke any emotion but joy. And maybe it’s because I can relate to a few of the story lines, but more likely it’s because it’s a universally great show.
Broad City–somewhat shockingly–isn’t the lone feminist wolf on Comedy Central (a station not known for progressive, feminist comedy).
We don’t have network or cable TV, so I sometimes have no idea what’s going on on stations I don’t frequent. Algorithms on Netflix and Amazon Prime probably have me pegged as a clear Feminist Killjoy, and avoid recommending comedies to me (“Feminist Killjoy logging in. Suggest ‘Obscure Dark Foreign Female-Centric Dramas'”).
After falling in love with Broad City, I thought we should try that Amy Schumer show I’d vaguely heard about, Inside Amy Schumer. It didn’t look like something I’d like, and if I’ve learned anything in my almost 32 years, it’s to always judge a book by its cover.
However, what I got was an onslaught of hilarious, biting feminist commentary.
When I was waxing poetic about it to a friend, she admitted that she was a fan but didn’t think that I would like it at all, seeing signs of it being, perhaps, Problematic From a Feminist Perspective™. I explained that I loved it, and what makes satire work for me is self-awareness. I can understand why it might be confusing that I hate on-screen gender essentialism, but cannot stop watching and quoting the parody commercial for SandraGel.
“In its second season, Inside Amy Schumer has become the most consistently feminist show on television, a sketch comedy series in which nearly every bit is devoted in some capacity to gender politics. But Schumer channels her perspective through an onscreen persona that is insecure, self-proclaimedly slutty, crass, selfish, glossy—onscreen, Amy Schumer thinks feminism is the ultimate F word… This pairing is extremely canny. Schumer hides her intellect in artifice and lip gloss—that’s how she performs femininity. By wrapping her ideas in a ditzy, sexy, slutty, self-hating shtick, her message goes down easy—and only then, like the alien, sticks its opinionated teeth in you.”
In “I’m So Bad” and “Compliments,” Schumer parodies stereotypical female behavior (connecting morality to food and being self-deprecating, respectively). The message, however, isn’t “Aren’t these bitches crazy?” Schumer’s comedy sketches show the insidious social construction of these ultimately ridiculous and self-destructive behaviors.
Certainly one could watch these sketches through a different lens, and think instead about the possible audience perception. If a Tosh.0 fan tunes in to Inside Amy Schumer, I’m not confident that he/she will understand the commentary in the comedy.
But I do. And I love it. Being able to laugh at ourselves and the ridiculous behaviors and norms that we are socialized to embody is powerful.
And in the Upper Northwest, Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen parody feminism in their “Feminist Bookstore” sketches on Portlandia. Portlandia turns a hilarious mirror on a certain segment of American society in front of the backdrop and personality of Portland, Oregon. In the bookstore sketches, Toni (Brownstein) and Candace (Armisen) run Women and Women First (which is based off Portland’s In Other Words, a feminist community center).
They are absolute caricatures of radical feminists, and it’s glorious. They are not mean-spirited in their depictions (in fact, they have a working relationship with In Other Words, which manned–I mean womanned–Portlandia‘s Twitter feed to live-tweet the Oscars and the Super Bowl).
Watching Portlandia gives me ample opportunity to laugh at myself. When we were contemplating putting an NPR sticker on our new used Subaru, I realized that my life is pretty much filled with Portlandia sketches that would be too boring to air. I recognize many of Toni and Candace’s scenes as extreme versions of my own thoughts and conversations. The blurring of lines between fiction and reality was clear when Toni and Candace met with gender studies professors to “debate” feminism; they brought irreverence and comedy to an otherwise serious, analytical conversation.
Contemplating blatantly satirizing women and feminism is enough to make most of us prickle a bit, and be validly concerned about further marginalization of issues that affect our lives. Laughing about the effects of estrogen on our emotions might feel dangerous when we have Supreme Court justices who don’t understand how contraception works. Hearing women repeatedly align feminism with man-hating might make chuckling at Toni and Candace feel depressing.
However, it feels empowering to laugh in the face of adversity, and put ourselves–as women and as feminists–on the line for good comedy. There’s a clear difference between comedy aimed at feminists and comedy created by feminists, and I’m so thankful that I can bask in the latter. These shows are aimed at wide audiences full of men and women, and they lift women up and laugh at them without tearing them down.
Pure joy.
I’ve been rolling around in a lot of other TV and film that’s getting me all stunk up with feminism: Obvious Child shows how incredibly moving and entertaining women’s lives are; Orange is the New Black overwhelms me with so many women’s stories, such diversity, such power; House of Cards shows that feminist media isn’t always what we think it is; and Parks and Recreation is a consistent delight.
It’s easy to get caught up in all of the terrible, misogynist bullshit that infiltrates our screens and sound waves. Seeing just the trailer for Seth McFarlane’s A Million Ways to Die in the West almost unwound the hours and hours of feminist film and television that I’d stocked up as a defense. The Feminist Killjoy rises again and again–and she’s an important voice–but damn if sometimes it doesn’t feel good to just revel in the excellence of feminist comedy.
___________________________
Leigh Kolb is a composition, literature, and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri.
Why examine this offbeat show through a feminist or ethical lens? Because ‘Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends’ (Craig McCracken, 2004-2009) is wildly inventive and subversive. Its plot, which explains that children’s imaginary friends must eventually go live at Madame Foster’s zany orphanage after he or she has outgrown their friend, insists that a child’s imagination has the power to make something real, whether adults believe it or not. At this home, young children are welcome to come and “adopt” one of the friends who is housed there. In this way, the friends are concepts that are “recycled” in order to accommodate children as they grow up.
Written by Jenny Lapekas as part of our theme week on Children’s Television.
Why examine this offbeat show through a feminist or ethical lens? Because Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends (Craig McCracken, 2004-2009) is wildly inventive and subversive. Its plot, which explains that children’s imaginary friends must eventually go live at Madame Foster’s zany orphanage after he or she has outgrown their friend, insists that a child’s imagination has the power to make something real, whether adults believe it or not. At this home, young children are welcome to come and “adopt” one of the friends who is housed there. In this way, the friends are concepts that are “recycled” in order to accommodate children as they grow up.
It’s interesting that Wilt is created with physical defects (his eye and his arm), pointing up the fact that these are not considered flaws by his young creator, but rather just part of who he is, like a hairstyle or shoe size.
There’s a certain level of manic energy present in some of today’s children’s cartoons (see SpongeBob SquarePants), and Foster’s is no exception. It seems as if so much is taking place all at once–most of which is pure nonsense–that we must comb through a cartoon’s goofy dialogue and fast-paced antics to discover central themes of kindness, friendship, and teamwork. I grew up watching David the Gnome, Eureeka’s Castle, Will Quack Quack, Noozles, and Faerie Tale Theatre, all shows that were modest and plodding, patient in their moral messages for kids watching at home. Although Foster’s can be grouped with other kids’ shows that consistently feature a great deal of commotion, this Cartoon Network show boasts some of the most creative characters and engaging plots, even for adults who are fans of clever cartoons with positive messages for everyone. I never had an imaginary friend growing up, and this show is a reminder of that for me.
The commercial for Foster’s states that it’s a place “where good ideas aren’t forgotten.”
We have an eclectic mix of primary characters who we follow throughout the series. The atmosphere at Foster’s rests somewhere between a low level psych ward and a daycare full of rambunctious trouble-makers. Although female-gendered “friends” are largely underrepresented on the show, the lessons Foster’s has to offer to child viewers are healthy and powerful, as they promote building friendships, using your imagination to have fun, and exploring the world around you.
After a fight with his brother, Terrence, which leaves the apartment in disarray, Mac’s mother tells him that at eight years old, he should have outgrown his imaginary friend, Bloo, by now. The fact that after Mac is forced to surrender his kind imaginary friend, yet continues to visit him every day, is evidence that Mac is not quite ready to grow up yet, and perhaps that’s not such a bad thing. We’re never too old to dream, imagine, and tell stories. This pressure to “grow up” translates to a sort of censorship, which inhibits our creative impulses as adults. We can’t be afraid to embrace nonsense; it can always be the root of something spectacular.
We can assume that Mac creates Bloo to cope with the bullying he receives from his obnoxious older brother on a daily basis.
Since the inhabitants of Foster’s are the products of children’s imaginations, it may make more sense to focus on these characters, rather than the humans who help to run the institution. If we simply take a look at the appearance of many imaginary friends, we may surmise that this show is the ultimate lesson in diversity for children viewers. Wilt is very tall with some bodily “deformities,” Eduardo is a Latino creature resembling a bull, and Coco is a bird-like friend whose vocabulary stops at her own name. By observing many of the friends, we get a sense of the psychology behind each creature’s origin. Coco, for example, was dreamed up by a little girl who survives a plane crash and becomes stranded on a desert island; if we look closely, the bird’s head and hair mimic a palm tree, and her body looks like a crashed airplane. In this way, Foster’s can be seen as literally fostering childhood stressors, including the confusion many of us can remember from our early years; the home we find in this cartoon works to make sense of that uncertainty.
Coco’s image is a direct reflection of her little girl’s trauma after a near-death experience.
Because Coco is the only female character within our primary group of imaginary friends, I think it makes sense to focus on her presence in the home. Foster’s houses dozens of more friends, a few of them female, and many of them become entangled in the lives of the main characters. One secondary female character we meet right away is the insufferable Duchess, who believes that she is the best idea anyone’s ever come up with. This leaves Coco as the only primary character who is an imaginary friend in Foster’s (excluding, of course, the humans who help to run the home). What luck that Coco, in spite of her limited vocabulary (or perhaps because of), is simply delightful.
Because Coco is only able to say her own name, she must alter her tone to let her friends know if she’s happy or upset, or if she’s asking a question or giving a direction, etc. This communication has its own set of rules in relation to the other characters (see Stewie from Family Guy). When Bloo first meets her, he repeatedly says “Yes” because he thinks she’s asking if he’d like some cocoa. However, Wilt understands her and explains that she was offering Bloo some juice.
In the first episode of the series, Coco repeatedly squawks “Coco!” at Eduardo as he rescues Mac from a vicious monster created by a “jerky teenage boy,” and Eduardo eventually says in Spanish, “Yes, thanks, Coco, you have a way with words,” clearly an ironic joke that Coco is adept at resolving tense situations, despite the fact that we can’t understand her on some level. It’s also made clear that when we make friends, we eventually begin to speak the same language, even if outsiders are unable to translate it. The show’s inclusion of a Latino character also exposes children to the Spanish language, which can only be a good thing. This scene also solidifies Eduardo as a character we cannot and should not judge based on appearances alone. Despite his large stature and booming voice (not to mention that he’s a bull!), he’s the gentlest friend at Foster’s and is often terrified of children, another example of comical irony in the cartoon.
In season three, Mac responds to Coco’s “gibberish” with an ominous, “Coco, I think if we did that, we’d go to jail,” alerting us to a darker side of Foster’s and its whimsical friends. Like everything else on the show, her thought is left to our own imaginations. What’s convenient and exciting about having Coco around is that she can lay eggs that contain fun prizes. She’s so excited when Bloo arrives at Foster’s that she lays an egg filled with a Ming vase, in addition to a bundle of other mysterious items that Mac carries off when he leaves. Coco also proves her kindness on Bloo’s first night at Foster’s when she gives him an egg with Mac’s photo inside.
Mac is delighted to gather the plastic eggs Coco has laid.
Coco is important not only because she’s one of the only female characters in the house, but because her presence is a mark of understanding: that childhood is its own language, and that play and learning are interconnected and necessary for growth. What children can take away from Foster’s is the understanding that imagination is not synonymous with foolishness, and that it is a muscle to be flexed as often as possible. If this key lesson is instilled in children at a young age, we can expect them to become more creative and tolerant adults who in turn raise their own children to view the world as being full of possibilities, as opposed to the frightening monsters we carry with us from childhood. We may find that those monsters hiding in our closets when we’re kids become the unrealized ideas we hide from as adults. Foster’s materializes this concept beautifully and offers adult viewers the opportunity to live vicariously through each imaginary friend we meet.
Foster’s appeals to kids as it depicts authority figures in a patronizing light, such as the uptight Mr. Herriman, who happens to be a huge rabbit (and also reminds me of the androgynous and high-strung Rabbit of Winnie the Pooh). And yes, most of the friends we follow on the show are males. However, these are forgivable offenses considering the lightheartedness the show promotes, not to mention its celebration of childhood and the endless possibilities of the imagination. Madame Foster’s home offers childhood friends a second chance, proving that imaginary friends don’t die or disappear but are lovingly passed on to the next child who is in need of a wacky companion. Child viewers who actually entertain imaginary friends can easily find some validation in this show’s exploration of that thin line that separates reality from make-believe. Foster’s is a fantastic wonderland for young viewers and a gentle push to adults to pay attention to their child’s imaginary friend, who is always very real for the child.
Note: Season one of Foster’s is currently available on Netflix.
______________________________________
Jenny holds a Master of Arts degree in English, and she is a part-time instructor at Alvernia University. Her areas of scholarship include women’s literature, menstrual literacy, and rape-revenge cinema. You can find her on WordPress and Pinterest.
