‘Chasing Amy’ is a complicated movie for a feminist fan. There’s the initial terror that it’s an “air-quotes ‘lesbian’ just needed to find the right guy” romcom. This fear is dissuades despite the film’s obtuse refusal to use the word “bisexual,” as we get to know more about would-be erstwhile lesbian Alyssa (Joey Lauren Adams). And there’s some really poignant criticism of straight men’s fear of and failure to understand women’s sexuality, as we see that Ben Affleck’s Holden prizes Alyssa’s lesbianism because he conflates it with sexual purity. And while this is a fascinating, under-explored facet of sexual politics, it does mean the movie ends up being about Holden’s hurt fee fees more than Alyssa’s actual sexual identity and choices.
When a movie has so much promise but such big problems, especially a movie so dated by the ebbing flannel tide of the late 1990s, there’s only one reasonable option: A REMAKE.
Ben Affleck as Holden and Joey Lauren Adams as Alyssa in Chasing Amy
Chasing Amy is a complicated movie for a feminist fan. There’s the initial terror that it’s an “air-quotes ‘lesbian’ just needed to find the right guy” rom com (see Katherine Murray’s piece for BF: “When It Seems Like the Movie You Are Watching Might Hate You”). This fear is dissuades despite the film’s obtuse refusal to use the word “bisexual,” as we get to know more about would-be erstwhile lesbian Alyssa (Joey Lauren Adams), and see that even though no one ever uses the word in the film, she is bisexual. And Chasing Amy levels some really poignant criticism of straight men’s fear of and failure to understand women’s sexuality, as we see that Ben Affleck’s Holden prizes Alyssa’s lesbianism not because of a fetish or the pride of a challenge, but because he conflates it with sexual purity. And while this is a fascinating, under-explored facet of sexual politics, the movie ends up seeming to be more about Holden’s hurt fee fees more than Alyssa’s actual sexual identity and choices.
When a movie has so much promise but such big problems, especially a movie so dated by the ebbing flannel tide of the late 1990s, there’s only one reasonable option: A REMAKE.
And in this remake, I humbly submit the following suggested improvements upon the original:
1. Make Holden less (or more) horrible (preferably less)
Holden McNeil: The Worst
Holden is one of those movie protagonists who is so abjectly hate-able I really doubt you’re supposed to like him. I mean, his name is Holden. He’s played by Ben Affleck at the height of his smug uselessness. He’s too cool for his own improbable success as a comic book writer and artist, refusing to sell out to producers who want to adapt his title into an animated series. He rolls his eyes at his friends more than he listens to them. He assumes Alyssa wants his D because she talks to him. He wears oversized cardigans over ratty white undershirts in public. (Plead 90s all you want, ‘Fleck. I won’t hear that defense in my court.) And he breaks up with his girlfriend because she’s encountered other penises before his, and absurdly insists the only way for her to make this up to him is to have a threesome with him and his best friend (more on that later).
Holden’s awfulness makes it harder to feel sorry for him when his total failures as a human being bite him in the ass, which takes up a lot of the third act. The remake could get around this problem by owning Holden’s The Worstness and framing the outcome as just deserts. But Holden’s awfulness also calls into question Alyssa’s character judgment. When she says she didn’t want her gender preference to stop her from being with someone who “complements [her] so completely”, you have to wonder what kind of person would feel that way about this knob. So if Holden is more likeable, so will be Alyssa, and the entire movie.
I would start by giving him a name other than Holden.
2. Explicitly address bisexuality.
Gif of Alyssa by Film Fatale
Alyssa is certainly within her rights to identify as lesbian despite having had sex with men and dating a man. But the total absence of the word “bisexual” makes the viewer worry that the concept isn’t in the filmmaker’s worldview. And given media’s track record with bi-erasure, that’s very troubling. Chasing Amy actually has interesting things to say about biphobia, shown in both the hetero- and homosexual sides of Alyssa’s social circles. But it is impossible to really appreciate them in a movie that may itself be so biphobic as to deny its central bisexual character that label.
Especially because Alyssa is probably not the only bisexual character in the film! Which leads me to…
3. Deal with male sexuality beyond male ignorance of female sexuality.
Holden and Banky (Jason Lee)
The weakest part of Chasing Amy is the subplot about Banky’s alleged repressed attraction to Holden, mostly because the actors are so uncomfortable with it there might as well be a flashing “no homo” chyron. That palpable discomfort really muddles what the film was trying to say about the potential for homoerotic tension in close male friendships. I honestly don’t know if we’re supposed to think Banky is really gay or bi or just in love with Holden, and to what extent Holden returns those feelings (for what it’s worth, he’s the one who kisses Banky and proposes they have group sex with Alyssa).
So the remake has got to clear all this up, and cast some actors who can handle the material.
And because our culture is currently obsessed with “bromances,” this kind of deconstruction will be all the more topical.
And speaking of topical, it’s 2014. The fluidity of female sexuality is not particularly fresh subject matter, and male sexuality is rarely depicted as anything less than concrete. Digging deeper into Holden and Banky’s relationship has a lot of potential. It would be even better to see trans and/or nonbinary characters in this mix so it’s not a lot of “men are from monosexual Mars women are from bisexual Venus” hooey.
4. Centralize Alyssa
Joey Lauren Adams as Alyssa
Even if the male characters are made more likable and interested as outlined above, Chasing Amy would still have the problem of making Alyssa the object and not the subject of the story. Why does Alyssa obscure her history with men to Holden? How does Alyssa feel about her gay friends feeling betrayed when she dates a man? What does Alyssa think about the potential sexual layer of Banky and Holden’s relationship? Chasing Amy hardly deals with any of this because it is really only about Holden’s wants, needs, and feelings. Which is silly, because who’s having the more interesting story here: “I thought I was a lesbian but I fell in love with a guy?” or “I thought I was straight and I fell in love with a girl.”? Obviously those are gross over-simplifications of Alyssa and Holden’s arcs, and would hopefully be even moreso in this new-and-improved remake. But seriously, it seems pretty clear the only reason Holden is the main character here is that he’s the white dude.
You’re welcome, Hollywood. With these four easier-said-than-done steps you can remake a problematic minor classic into a perfectly awesome MEGA CLASSIC. Or at least another staple of queer media studies syllabi.
Through its one and only season, the fake reality show chronicled the life of Valerie Cherish, played by my favorite Friend, Lisa Kudrow, an 80’s has-been trying to make a comeback through her role on an insipid sitcom. Valerie was a perfect reality star, yelling at the cameras, fighting with her co-workers and suffering one dignity after another, to the point where watching the show can be painful at times.
Poster for The Comeback
The Comeback is a deeply thought-out, complicated show about shallow television.
Through its one and only season, the fake reality show chronicled the life of Valerie Cherish, played by my favorite Friend, Lisa Kudrow, an 80’s has-been trying to make a comeback through her role on an insipid sitcom. Valerie was a perfect reality star, yelling at the cameras, fighting with her co-workers and suffering one dignity after another, to the point where watching the show can be painful at times.
But as a scripted series, The Comeback never really caught on. Created by Sex and the City’sMichael Patrick King, the cringe comedy only ran for 13 episodes on HBO before cancellation. It has since enjoyed a second life through DVDs and streaming, acquiring a reputation as a cult program. In May, HBO announcedThe Comeback’s revival for a six-episode limited series set to air this fall.
It’s easy to figure out why the show was unpopular in its original run, as it’s unlike anything else on TV. Valerie is often unlikeable, out-of-touch and incredibly vain, traits not often found in female lead characters. Though there have been female characters like Valerie, they have generally been only supporting figures providing comic relief. Also unusual are the show’s dark tone and raw footage format, which allows Valerie to run through multiple takes of different actions which are supposed to be spontaneous reality, call for time-outs when something is said that she doesn’t want to air and repeatedly tell filmmakers to stop filming (though they never do). It’s important to note however, that similar shows with male leads like Curb Your Enthusiasm and The Office have been very popular.
The character of Valerie Cherish is well-observed and very specific. She is a Hollywood wife married to a successful executive, carting around her Birkin bag and her loyal closeted hairdresser, Mickey. She’s also incredibly fake, adopting an glamorous, affected attitude, a trendy passion for yoga and eastern spirituality, and a love of dogs and distancing herself from embarrassing friends, to put herself in the best possible light for the cameras.
Valerie’s character is referred to as “sad, pathetic Aunt Sassy”
Early on, Room and Bored, the sitcom Valerie is cast in, originally a show about four single women in their 30s and 40s, is retooled to be sexier and hipper. The leads are given to a former Disney star and a pop star taking on her first acting role, male “hunks” are added, and the sitcom instead focuses on sexy 20-somethings in bikinis sleeping with each other. There is barely space for Valerie, who is cast as Aunt Sassy, an uptight, frumpy woman who wears only pastel jogging suits and usually appears in only one scene of each episode. Still Valerie is unable to accept that she is not the star. While her former TV show, I’m It, is generally forgotten and she hasn’t worked it years, she refuses to admit that she even needs a comeback.
Throughout the series, Valerie often frustrates her co-workers by trying to control the production and writing of Room and Bored and get a larger role for herself. For example, in cast photo session, where she is asked to stand far in the background, she continuously moves forward to stand with the young cast. In another scene, she angers the writers by protesting a joke she feels would make viewers dislike her character and wins the studio audience’s approval by getting them to chant for her to get another take. She is reminded several times to view The Comeback as her show and her main shot and to allow the 20-somethings to have Room and Bored, but she never listens.
Valerie gives her opinions on what is happening in to-the-camera confessionals, a staple of reality TV
Though Valerie is generally well-meaning, she seems genuinely oblivious to the people she uses and takes for granted in her struggle back to the top. She uses a writer named Gigi to get better story lines, even when it complicates Gigi’s job, tries to convince a young gay fan to come out for the sole purpose of using his gushing praise of her on the show, and dismisses Mickey when it suits her. However, this behavior never comes from a place of outright meanness, but instead a lack of empathy.
But what The Comeback gets so right, is its display of Valerie’s humanity. While she’s not always likable, she is always understandable. In Valerie’s nervous, brittle laugh, her frequent clearing of her throat when uncomfortable and her obsession with appearing perfect, a deeply self conscious, even desperate woman emerges. Kudrow’s performance is as much in what she doesn’t say as what she does, and the pain behind her eyes when she experiences a setback and tries to brush it off makes her deeply sympathetic. Valerie absorbs a lot of ridicule and humiliation in 13 episodes, much more than most people could take. Yet she continues to grow and adjust rather than shut down. Rather than lash out at her cruel co-workers and risk her job she smiles and pretends to enjoy being the butt of jokes.
Valerie is also desperate to be liked and is constantly giving gifts and trying to take coworkers out to lunch. She plays out elaborate rituals, jokes and skits to get people to like her and yearns for the approval of her young costars. As her life continues to fall apart, Valerie keeps smiling. When Room and Bored gets bad ratings, she gives a speech to the cat about keeping up hope and trying harder. She’s the closest thing there is to a female Michael Scott: clueless and insensitive but ultimately redeemed through her genuine well-meaning.
Though viewers come to assume things are going to go wrong for her, nine times out of 10 she’s created the trouble for herself. It’s surprising when one of her seemingly delusional ideas works out, such as when she gets Tom Selleck to agree to play Aunt Sassy’s boyfriend. Often watching The Comeback is like watching a horror movie, which forces you to scream at the characters onscreen to stop and think about what they’re doing. While viewers are allied with Valerie and want her to succeed, we understand why she fails and agree with the realism of what happens. In reality, without an all access pass to Valerie’s insecurities and the moments where her persona falters, she would be very difficult to root for.
Reality TV is portrayed as intrusive and unglamorous, as cameras invade Valerie’s private moments
The Comeback has no great love for reality TV. Throughout the series, Valerie is followed around by her reality crew, who are always hoping something awful will happen in Valerie’s real life that will boost ratings. The crew creates chaos following her and require multiple conversations to plan logistics and their presence causes the cast and writers of Room and Bored to resent Valerie. In the final episode, when the reality show is pieced together, it is revealed that much of what Valerie and the people around her have said and done was manipulated in editing and used to created cheap laughs at her expense. Paulie G. (Lance Barber), a writer on Room and Bored who is relentlessly cruel to Valerie is portrayed as a consummate professional who Valerie abuses unprovoked.
Though Valerie tries to maintain control over the reality show and of how she is portrayed, she misunderstands what the show is and what viewers want. She decides the director, Jane (Laura Silverman) is her friend and tries to be close to her, getting her a gift bag at the awards show and inviting her to her premiere party. Valerie feels that a friendship with Jane will allow her to be portrayed in a positive way and feels betrayed as a friend and disrespected as the celebrity she feels she is, when she sees how Jane edited the footage. It takes her a long time to respect Jane’s judgement and understand what Jane always knew: that conflict is what makes a good reality show.
Another interesting facet of The Comeback is its portrayal of an adult workplace as full of immaturity and pettiness. In the same way Leslie Knope’s idealism is tested by the baffling ignorance of Pawnee’s city council, Valerie grapples with Paulie G., a fratboy misogynist who sees no value in women beyond sexual objectification. At every turn, Paulie G. tries to thwart Valerie and make rude comments about her, though its clear that if she was 20 years younger, he’d tolerate anything she did. In addition, Paulie G. torments Gigi, the sole female writer, for being overweight.
In one memorable scene, Valerie comes to the studio late at night to bring cookies to the writers and finds them mocking her and portraying her in crude sexual playacting. While she expected Paulie G., who wears his contempt for her on her sleeve, to mock her, she is shocked to see that behind closed doors, the other writers, including Tom Peterman who had appeared to like her, join in on the mockery and call her pathetic.
In an attempt to humiliate Valerie, the writers have Aunt Sassy dream of herself as a giant cupcake taunted for being fat
The show also explores Hollywood’s intolerance of aging women. Valerie is too young to play Aunt Sassy, an under developed character who appears to be written as a senior citizen. As an older woman, Valerie is shuffled off to the sidelines of the show and as Aunt Sassy, is exclusively given lines about how pathetic and sexually frustrated she is. When Aunt Sassy is given a spotlight episode about her romantic life, Valerie relishes the opportunity to flesh out the character and make her more than a punchline. But the episode is quickly cancelled and Valerie is told that writers and producers see giving Aunt Sassy a storyline as a step in the wrong direction.
Though Valerie still feels youthful and attractive, by Hollywood’s standards, she’s ancient. Valerie is married with a step-daughter and prefers staying home to going clubbing, she can’t keep up with the twenty-somethings on her show and along with her husband Mark, worries that she can’t do things like have adventurous sex or do coke anymore. Most of her young costars treat her with distanced politeness, like a visiting relative.
Still, the show allows Valerie to be attractive. In one episode, even Paulie G. drools over a sexy photo of her and briefly looks at her in a new light after seeing her. In another, Valerie wears a low-cut dress to an award show and is complimented for her body.
Valerie shows she is still attractive with her revealing awards show dress
It’s difficult for Valerie to watch everyone fawn over Juna (Malin Akerman), the star of Room and Bored. Juna is young, thin and her attractiveness is constantly discussed and stressed by the show’s direction. In one scene, Juna’s costume, a tiny bikini, is contrasted with Valerie’s dowdy jogging suit. When Juna changes in front of Valerie’s cameras and Valerie notices her young body, she enters a one sided competition with the young star. Valerie is determined to prove herself still relevant and attractive, as shown when, Juna lands the cover of Rolling Stone with a provocative pose and Valerie responds by bringing in topless poster from her own youth.
But Juna proves to be Valerie’s only consistent ally and she eventually decides to put aside her jealously and act as a mentor. Their relationship seems to grow into a genuine friendship, but continues to be frequently manipulative on Valerie’s part as she uses her allegiance with Juna to boost her own star and her place on the show. Her friendship with Juna also helps her to connect with her stepdaughter, Francesca a rebellious teenager who loves Juna and thinks Valerie is cool for knowing her.
Valerie is jealous of young star Juna Milken
The Comeback was a show ahead of its time, but maybe it’s time has finally come. Reality TV is more omnipresent than ever, and with no sign of slowing down.
There’s a retrospectively ironic moment in one of the early episodes, when Valerie sees a magazine cover that asks, “Is Reality TV Dying?” and becomes worried that her show will fail. But by the series’ final episode, it’s clear Valerie Cherish’s comeback will be a huge success, as it offers everything viewers expect from reality TV. I’m looking forward to the seeing how the series will tackle our current media and to catching up with a fascinating female character when it returns this fall.
Women in comedy are often held to a double standard that’s rarely talked about, even in the tiresome and wrongheaded “Are Women Funny?” debates. A better question might be “Are women allowed to be funny?” Because while male comedians famously defend their right to make jokes about any topic they want to women who draw on their own outrage, experience and even their own bodies receive an extra layer of censorship.
Women in comedy are often held to a double standard that’s rarely talked about, even in the tiresome and wrongheaded “Are Women Funny?” debates. A better question might be, “Are women allowed to be funny?” Because while male comedians famously defend their right to make jokes about any topic they want to, women who draw on their own outrage, experience and even their own bodies receive an extra layer of censorship. Elayne Boosler, a comedian popular in the 80s, talked about asking the powers that be why she hadn’t yet gotten her own cable comedy special. The executives told her that featuring her in a special of her own was out of the question, because she touched her breasts during her act. When she watched the specials of other comedians popular at the time, like those of Robin Williams she said, “I realized I had my hands on the wrong thing.”
Later when Sarah Silverman was with Saturday Night Live, she wrote in response to legislation that required abortion waiting periods: “I think it’s a good law. The other day I wanted to go get an abortion. I really wanted an abortion, but then I thought about it and it turned out I was just thirsty.” Even though SNL, then as always, was in dire need of lines that actually make people laugh, she wasn’t allowed to include it. She made it part of her stand-up act instead.
The protagonist of writer-director Gillian Robespierre’s Obvious Child, an aspiring stand-up comedian in Brooklyn namedDonna (Saturday Night Live’s Jenny Slate) starts out the film doing a routine that breaks the taboo about women speaking about their own body parts and functions (which leads to a great payoff scene later in the film) as well as making fun of her relationship with her current boyfriend. After she comes offstage, triumphant, her boyfriend informs her he’s dumping her: he and her best friend have been having an affair and want to get together. Instantly Donna is reduced to a pile of tears and insecurity, soothed at home by her level-headed, caring roommate, Nellie (Gaby Hoffmann).
Jenny Slate as Donna
One night, still vulnerable, Donna gets drunk with her gay comedian friend Joey (Gabe Liedman) after she bombs onstage and meets Max (Jake Lacy), a blue-eyed computer nerd, who is dazzled by her. Although the trailer often shows Slate in unflattering hats and poses, we can see why Max is drawn to her: even though she’s still an emotional mess, she looks great (while not at all resembling most kewpie-doll model-actresses) with her long, dark, hair loose, wearing a tight sleeveless t-shirt, and, after she embarrasses herself onstage, has a fun, nothing-left-to-lose affect. He gets drunk with her and they end up having a one-night stand (after raucously stumble-dancing in his apartment to Paul Simon’s title song).
Weeks pass and a casual remark from her roommate causes Donna to think that she might be pregnant. She tells Nellie of her drunken encounter with Max, “I remember seeing a condom. I just don’t know…what exactly it did.” After a pregnancy test confirms her suspicions, she schedules an abortion at a clinic.
Here Obvious Child also veers away from other films, which sometimes mention abortion as an option for unplanned pregnancy, but make sure it’s never something nice girls, like Juno, the Michelle Williams character in Blue Valentine, or the character Katherine Heigl played in Knocked Up ever go through with–even though, in real life, 30 percent of women in the U.S. opt to have an abortion during their reproductive lifetimes. In keeping with that reality, Nellie has had an abortion (when she was much younger) and tells Donna what to expect.
Donna and Max
In the middle of this crisis, Max reappears and he and Donna still have a spark between them, but she’s reluctant to go out with him because she doesn’t want to tell him about the abortion–and risk his disapproval. During a wine-fueled dinner Nellie, Joey, and Donna debate what she should do. Nellie offers a spirited defense that the abortion is none of Max’s business, after which Joey tells her he agrees with her but adds, “You’re scaring the dick off me right now.”
As interviews and other reviews have mentioned, no one in Obvious Child is anti-choice, again a nice respite from other movies, but this film, which hews so closely to the romantic comedy formula in most ways (except in its attitude to abortion), could use some tension. Everyone, even Donna’s business professor mother (Thirtysomething’s Polly Draper), who disapproves of Donna’s unremunerated comedy career, supports Donna wholeheartedly in her decision to abort, so the stretching of this film from its origins as a short begins to show. Max, in particular, could use some fleshing out, but instead with his big, clear eyes and irreproachable behavior at every turn he’s more like a fantasy of the perfect man than a character.
Where Obvious Child succeeds is in letting women be funny, not in the faux-humor of humiliation that too many comedic actresses in movies are subjected to these days, but in actual laugh-out-loud funny lines and situations (most of which are woven deeply into the context of the movie, so they don’t make it into the trailer) that reminded me, in spirit if not in content, of Roseanne Barr during her 80s heyday (before her current incarnation as an unfunny, anti-trans crank). Slate is wonderful as Donna (the role she also played in the short) and pulls off a late laugh line about the abortion (yes, there is one) with aplomb. Former child star Hoffmann who radiates no-nonsense kindness and compassion makes us wish more movies featured her. And Lacy, although he isn’t given much to do, is a believable Max and has a nice chemistry with Slate.
Nellie and Donna
My main quibble with this film is one that many of us bring up repeatedly with similar works, but it still doesn’t seem to ever be addressed. In a film that takes place in Brooklyn, the only person of color who has a name is Donna’s Asian American gynecologist. The only Black people we see are, first, a woman with no lines who crosses a street (really) and, second, a comedian onstage who talks about his father being a crack addict. In a film that rights so many wrongs about gender-stereotyping a lot of us would like (and, at this point, expect) a cast that better reflects racial as well as gender (and sexual orientation) diversity especially when that film takes place in Brooklyn. Hoffmann is actually part Latina (her father’s last name was Herrera), but we never get any hint that her character is less than 100 percent white.
Geena Davis recently wrote that screenwriters could automatically achieve gender parity in scripts simply by making half of the characters women, and the writers of Obvious Child (along with Robespierre, Karen Maine, Elisabeth Holm and Anna Bean) could have done something similar with this script to make it less white: Nellie could easily have been made a Latina (instead of just played by a part Latina actress), Joey could have been played by a Black actor (a Black comedian from Brooklyn is not terriblyunusual). Hoffmann even could have played the lead with a Latino actor cast as Donna’s father instead of Richard Kind: although in many ways, Slate is the incarnation of Donna, Hoffman and Draper would make a more believable daughter and mother, both physically and temperamentally.
Yes, women should support Obvious Child when it opens in theaters this coming weekend, but as more filmmakers attempt to expand the limits imposed on white women in film and on television, we (critics and audiences) need to continue to put pressure on them to provide roles for others who have traditionally been ignored or stereotyped. White people shouldn’t be the only people we see as fully formed characters onscreen, any more than white men should be.
Ren Jender is a queer writer-performer/producer putting a film together. Her writing has appeared in The Toast,xoJane and the Feminist Wire. You can follow her on Twitter @renjender.
For whatever reason, all the reactionary tropes inherent in pop culture seem to get amplified in comedy. If it’s still rare to find a mainstream comedian with openly feminist leanings, finding one who speaks openly and progressively about mental illness is almost impossible.
One of the true blessings of my grad school experience thus far has been a relative openness about mental illness. My fellow students and I compare notes on our medications, encourage each other to get the help we need, even theorize about our mental illnesses in papers and dissertations. Perhaps this is uncommon outside of programs with “philosophy” in the title – maybe even outside of the two graduate institutions I have attended – but it’s certainly almost unknown in wider society.
And, for whatever reason, all the reactionary tropes inherent in pop culture seem to get amplified in comedy. If it’s still rare to find a mainstream comedian with openly feminist leanings, finding one who speaks openly and progressively about mental illness is almost impossible.
Luckily, there’s at least one.
It’s probably incorrect to call Maria Bamford “mainstream,” despite her ongoing voice work on Adventure Time and those Target ads from a couple years ago.
[youtube_sc url=”http://youtu.be/Eh9vddkombM”]
“Watch it again. Sometimes it takes a second to get it” is not a bad mantra for Bamford’s stand-up. Hers is an unusual brand of existentialist tragicomedy specializing in the use of funny voices.
My introduction to Bamford’s work came a few years ago, when I stumbled across her series of 20 short videos, The Maria Bamford Show. The show is about Bamford’s experience of moving back in with her (hilariously Midwestern) parents after a breakdown, which was not wholly irrelevant to my own life when I first saw it. Using her endless arsenal of voices and her wonderfully expressive face, Bamford performs all the characters – her parents, her sister, old high-school rivals – in their interactions with herself. It’s odd, idiosyncratic, and hilarious (doubly so once you have heard her parents speak at the end of her Special Special Special and realized just how spot-on her impressions of them are).
My favorite entry in The Maria Bamford Show, hands down, is episode 10, “Dark.”
[youtube_sc url=”http://youtu.be/SCqDReW8f_s”]
If I had to pick a single clip as a quintessential encapsulation of what I love about Bamford’s work, it would have to be that one. It’s hilarious and sad, painfully relatable for anyone with experience of mental illness, existential and weirdly comforting, all at the same time.
Bamford also tackles the social stigma around mental illness in a head-on fashion. In the Special Special Special (currently streaming on Netflix! Go watch it!), she uses one of her most brilliant jokes:
People don’t talk about mental illnesses the way they do other illnesses. [snooty voice] ‘Apparently Steve has cancer. It’s like, fuck off! We all have cancer.’
This bit is not incidental to Bamford’s comedy agenda. In interviews, she makes it explicit that, while she doesn’t have an idealistic view of comedy as world-changing, one of her goals is to make a small-scale challenge to the mental illness stigma:
[A]t least I can try to change it for myself. Because I feel super insecure and embarrassed and ashamed about mental health issues.
As wonderful and important as her focus on mental illness is, it would be unfair to reduce Bamford solely to a “mental illness comedian.” As a woman on the far side of 40, she has an important and under-heard perspective on sexism and ageism in the entertainment industry. For example, at the beginning of this clip, she responds to a suggestion that she should use Botox by exploring the range of excellent things she can do with her face:
[youtube_sc url=”http://youtu.be/GQyPCcuVHiI”]
Maria Bamford is not interested in conforming to conventional beauty standards. She’s not interested in conforming to convention, period. Thank Diet Coke and People magazine for that.
Sex and sexuality are complicated, whether we believe it or not. Most of us have experienced some type of same-sex attraction or participated in some kinky activity in the bedroom. Movies often help us to make sense of these feelings and experiences. However, too often, female sexual pleasure and arousal are still deemed unfit for viewing by mainstream film and television. America has a bipolar and hypocritical relationship with female sexuality. Our culture consumes copious amounts of porn and then doesn’t hesitate to slut-shame the women who create and act in pornographic films. Is this because pornography can be seen as objectifying women, while mainstream film humanizes them? Why does the marriage of sexuality and human intimacy feel so dangerous?
Written by Jenny Lapekas as part of our theme week on Representations of Female Sexual Desire.
Sex and sexuality are complicated, whether we believe it or not. Most of us have experienced some type of same-sex attraction or participated in some kinky activity in the bedroom. Movies often help us to make sense of these feelings and experiences. However, too often, female sexual pleasure and arousal are still deemed unfit for viewing by mainstream film and television. America has a bipolar and hypocritical relationship with female sexuality. Our culture consumes copious amounts of porn and then doesn’t hesitate to slut-shame the women who create and act in pornographic films. Is this because pornography can be seen as objectifying women, while mainstream film humanizes them? Why does the marriage of sexuality and human intimacy feel so dangerous?
The depiction of female sexuality and sexual desire in the offbeat romance, Secretary (Steven Shainberg, 2002), is central to its themes of dominance and submission. Lee (Maggie Gyllenhaal) can be read as “sexually uncontrollable” by some viewers and critics, but her sexuality complements Mr. Grey’s (James Spader), which is structured and contained. Lee finds she cannot be sexually aroused or satisfied by the traditional man she’s set to marry; not only is their sex centered on his laughable spasms on top of her, Lee can’t even pleasure herself while his photo sits by her bedside. We may say that he’s so bad in bed, he interferes with Lee’s orgasms even when absent.
Lee gets to better know herself by exploring her body and entertaining erotic thoughts about her inaccessible employer.
Lee has just been released from a mental hospital, and she struggles to gain some independence as she moves back in with a hovering mother and a drunk father. Among her masochistic tools, we find a hot tea kettle and the sharpened foot of a ballerina figurine, a rather melodramatic image as she sits in a bedroom that is reminiscent of early girlhood, rather than that of a 20-something young woman. It’s no mistake that Gyllenhaal’s character has an androgynous name; when we meet her, she is not sexually realized, and the way the camera maneuvers around her small frame and conservative clothing communicates this very clearly.
Lee is giddy over her new title of “secretary.”
When Mr. Grey (50 Shades, anyone?) is “interviewing” Lee, he forwardly observes, “You’re closed tight.” Lee is so willing to do anything and everything Mr. Grey tells her that he cures her of her cutting simply by telling her that she is never to do it again. We may be tempted to label Mr. Grey rude or offensive, but his character is much more complicated than that, and Lee depends on his behavior to further develop throughout the film. He is seemingly cruel as he explains that her only tasks are typing and answering the phone, and yet she is incompetent since she routinely makes spelling errors and answers the phone without gusto. Lee wants desperately to please Mr. Grey. The film contains two masturbation scenes where we watch Lee climax at the memory of doing exactly as Mr. Grey tells her. Considering some of the recent controversy surrounding the censorship of female sexual pleasure on television, it feels daring and refreshing to find these scenes in a film. Gyllenhaal has also received criticism for playing the love interest in The Dark Knight(Christopher Nolan, 2008) since viewers find her “cute,” and not “sexy” enough to take on such a role, which makes her portrayal of a sexually adventurous young woman all the more empowering.
Lee looks like a little girl playing dress-up as we watch her apply the eyeshadow anther woman at work leaves in the bathroom.
While Lee is shown to be a sexually submissive woman–parallel to the sexually dominant Grey–she discovers her own agency as she blossoms into a more complete person. She dramatically leaves her fiancé, Peter, and, while wearing her wedding dress, professes her love to Mr. Grey. She also slaps Mr. Grey across the face as he fires her and successfully fights off Peter when he interrupts her sit-in. Although Lee gets off on being subservient, she makes it clear that she isn’t afraid to let others know what she wants outside the bedroom; Lee literally runs to Mr. Grey and then screams at Peter to get out. Paradoxically, Lee’s emergence as a “submissive” accompanies the forming of her newfound independence.
Upon doing what she’s told, Mr. Grey asks Lee if she’s afraid he’s going to fuck her.
What this film shows us is that sexual submission is a legitimate practice of men and women alike. During Lee’s “sit-in,” we even see a women’s rights scholar (most likely a local graduate student) visit her to lecture about her apparently anti-feminist choice to obey Mr. Grey by sitting and waiting for his return. I think it’s unwise to dismiss Lee’s portrayal of a “sexual submissive” as inaccurate or ineffective since this is not an archetype we see very often on the silver screen. This film is subversive, transgressive, and feminist in its message, its imagery, and its challenging the popular belief that feminist sexuality is a one-size-fits-all cloak we all quibble over and clamber into when it’s time to play academic dress-up. We watch Lee masturbate, fall in love, and cure an alienated man of his debilitating need for space and order, so I think it’s safe to say that the more Lee embraces her desire to be dominated, the more she controls the events of her own life and discovers agency.
Mr. Grey finally admits he loves Lee by undressing her and bathing her.
The desire to be told what to do or to obtain permission to do particular activities is undoubtedly linked to sexual arousal and gratification in both men and women. Although Lee is sexually submissive, she alone pushes Mr. Grey out of his toxic bubble of isolation and shame; she declares her love for the brooding lawyer and kindly informs him that they are a match and can be themselves, together, every day, without embarrassment that their sexual preferences may be considered perverted or taboo by the dreaded status quo.
While this brand of complex female sexuality may not be readily understood by most, it would be reductionist to dismiss Secretary as a misogynistic film, especially when Gyllenhaal’s performance reflects a multi-layered persona and a powerful sexual identity that remains obscure in mainstream cinema. Lee finds sexual agency, and we stand by to watch and enjoy the pleasure she finds, along with the man who becomes her husband. The binary of dominance and submission, along with its negotiation of sexual boundaries, is what makes Secretary work.
Jenny has 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.
Mindy Lahiri knows she’s hot, she’s comfortable saying it (“bet you didn’t think with this bod that I had brains too, and pretty good boobs”), and she takes it as a given that others generally agree. When Mindy slaps a stranger in a case of mistaken identity, she regrets it not because he was innocent, but because he’s a European immigrant, and “he’s gonna go back to his country and say ‘In America, hot girls can do whatever they want.’ That’s a bad message, Danny!”
The importance of Mindy categorizing herself as a “hot girl” is that it means all the times she says her ass won’t quit isn’t just her blowing smoke to cover up her insecurity over her body. Furthermore, the other characters on the show generally DO agree.
Mindy Kaling on ‘The Mindy Project’
My relationship with The Mindy Project is as complicated as its protagonist’s average romance. All feminism and politics aside, I’m ambivalent regarding its actual quality as a television show. Every episode makes me laugh out loud, but the structure and pacing can be, well… there’s an obvious reason this show abandoned its working title of It’s Messy.
Some of the characters are extremely appealing (Dr. Lahiri herself, of course; Danny Castallano, who taps into something deeply imprinted on me from years of living in the Good Ol’ Italian Boy thicket of North Jersey; Morgan, the sweet-hearted human non sequitor).
“I have the right to life, liberty, and chicken wings.” – one reason I love Mindy Lahiri.
And then there is everyone else, who are bland at best (Ed Weeks’s Jeremy), irritating at worst (Adam Pally’s Peter), and universally pointless and without a clear place in the show, contributing to an overall disjointedness that has barely smoothed out over the course of two full seasons. Despite their fuzzy and unsuccessful characterization, Jeremy and Peter still get plenty of screen time and dialogue.
Contrast the small and dwindling number of female supporting characters on the show, who are strictly on the sidelines. Mindy’s best friend Gwen (Anna Camp) was originally meant to be a main character, but was quickly edged out and forgotten, ultimately appearing in only 13 episodes. Nurse Beverly (Beth Grant) gets a lot of laughs, but compare her screen time to Morgan’s, who fits essentially the same role (bizarre nurse). Betsy (Zoe Jarman) might seem like a one-note “gasp!” character, but think about how far Community took Annie Edison? And then there’s Tamra (Xosha Roquemore), the only other woman of color on the series, who is a pro forma sassy Black woman straight out of an ABC sitcom circa 1992. Gwen might not have fit within the workplace setting of the show, but there have been opportunities to add other main female characters: Dr. Lahiri is the only woman doctor to have practiced with Shulman and Associates, even though we’ve seen at least six doctors work there, mostly young, and women make up 75 percent of current OB/GYN residents.
Mindy Kaling surrounded by white dudes. (Like on her show.)
Which pulls me back to my EVEN MORE COMPLICATED feminist feelings about this show. I admire Mindy Kaling as an extremely funny and talented actress and writer, and love her as a relatable celeb persona (I’m writing this piece in bed! Mindy Kaling writes episodes of TV in bed, as per her memoir! Stars: they’re just like us!). I respect how far she’s come as a woman of color in television and in comedy, two playgrounds full of white dudes hogging all the shovels in the sandbox.
The Mindy Project‘s original writing staff, from Mindy Kaling’s Instagram
But Mindy Kaling is one of those people who finds a secret passageway through the glass ceiling and then just holds up a sign that says, “sorry, suckers!” to the people left on the other side. Her initial writing staff had only one other woman on it, and only four women other than Kaling have earned writing credits on the show. When asked about the lack of diversity on her show at SXSW last March, she answered:
I look at shows on TV, and this is going to just seem defensive, but I’m just gonna say it: I’m a fucking Indian woman who has her own fucking network television show, OK? I have four series regulars that are women on my show, and no one asks any of the shows I adore — and I won’t name them because they’re my friends — why no leads on their shows are women or of color, and I’m the one that gets lobbied about these things. And I’ll answer them, I will. But I know what’s going on here. It is a little insulting because, I’m like, God, what can I — oh, I’m sitting in it. I have 75 percent of the lines on the show. And I’m like, oh wait, it’s not like I’m running a country, I’m not a political figure. I’m someone who’s writing a show and I want to use funny people. And it feels like it diminishes the incredibly funny women who do come on my show… I don’t know, it’s a little frustrating.
Kaling is right that she’s held to a double standard. All showrunners should be made to answer for the lack of diversity on their shows and in their writing staff. Mindy Kaling should get asked more questions about her art, and not her symbolic importance. But her answer here is a cop-out that perpetuates that system of unfairness. “I want to use funny people” is the same bullshit justification used to give countless white dudes jobs over other women and people over color. Hearing it from someone on “our side” is incredibly disheartening.
Anyway, sheesh, I’ve already spilt 700 words on my complicated feelings about The Mindy Project, without even delving into such issues as that time it depicted a woman raping a dude as NBD. What I INTENDED to focus on here was one of the specific things I love about The Mindy Project that helps make up for all this stuff in the minus column, and that is Mindy Lahiri’s body image.
Mindy’s answer to Varsity Blues
Mindy Lahiri knows she’s hot, she’s comfortable saying it (“bet you didn’t think with this bod that I had brains too, and pretty good boobs”), and she takes it as a given that others generally agree. When Mindy slaps a stranger in a case of mistaken identity, she regrets it not because he was innocent, but because he’s a European immigrant, and “he’s gonna go back to his country and say ‘In America, hot girls can do whatever they want.’ That’s a bad message, Danny!”
Mindy can get it.
The importance of Mindy categorizing herself as a “hot girl” is that it means all the times she says her ass won’t quit isn’t just her blowing smoke to cover up her insecurity over her body. Furthermore, the other characters on the show generally DO agree. There have been a few gross jabs at Mindy for her weight, especially in the earlier episodes (Danny tells her in the pilot she should lose 15 pounds if she wants to look nice on a date, and in a later episode gives her the side eye when she [falsely] claims to do the elliptical four times a week), but there have been a parade of hot dudes (including Danny, the Ross to her Rachel!) who want “up in them guts.” In the same episode Mindy declares, “I’m a hot, smart woman with an ass that doesn’t quit,” Morgan describes her as “The Indian doctor whose ass won’t quit?” It’s not a joke that Mindy thinks she’s hot, even if some of the ways she expresses that belief are funny.
“I’m not overweight, I fluctuate between chubby and curvy.”
Mindy Lahiri isn’t entirely devoid of body insecurity, though. She insists she’s chubby and NOT “overweight.” She has developed a series of “illusions and tricks” to have sex without her partner seeing her naked. She goes through diet and exercise phases to lose weight because she’s “sick of being the person with a good personality.” Which is why Mindy’s body confidence reminds me of selfies, and how they’re simultaneously derided for being an expression of insecurity (what are you trying to hide with that lo-fi filter?) and overconfidence (why do you think we care to see your face again, even if you’ve perfectly executed the cat-eye look?). The truth about being a woman in the patriarchy is that regardless of your closeness to the impossible ideal, you’ll probably feel hot as eff some of the time, completely hideous other times. The Mindy Project captures that perfectly.
Unfortunately, because all the other women on the show are such minor characters, this message all rests on one character and one body: Mindy’s. And one woman who isn’t a skinny white chick is still just one woman.
At the time of its release, ‘Broadcast News’ was lauded as feminist for depicting talented, authoritative, driven career women while only mildly pathologizing their dedication to their work. Sure, Jane Craig takes a few minutes out of her busy schedule every day to privately sob, and her personal life is inextricably tied to her work life, but the film does not judge or punish her for her priorities.
But there’s more to ‘Broadcast News’ feminism than women in the workplace. It also presents an ahead-of-its time criticism of the Nice Guy™ phenomenon.
The newsroom of Broadcast News
Growing up, I wanted to grow up to be a nosy reporter. I blame His Girl Friday, Lois Lane, and to a lesser extent, Broadcast News. I wanted to be a fast-talking, four-steps-ahead, take-charge champion of the truth and master of storytelling, just like Holly Hunter’s Jane Craig. That was my childhood proto-feminist power fantasy.
Revisiting the film as an adult, I expected Broadcast News‘feminism to feel somewhat dated, even though it is less than 30 years old, just barely predating the swell of Third Wave feminism.
Holly Hunter as Jane Craig
At the time of its release, Broadcast News was lauded as feminist for depicting talented, authoritative, driven career women while only mildly pathologizing their dedication to their work. Sure, Jane Craig takes a few minutes out of her busy schedule every day to privately sob, and her personal life is inextricably tied to her work life, but the film does not judge or punish her for her priorities.
But there’s more to Broadcast News‘ feminism than women in the workplace. It also presents an ahead-of-its time criticism of the Nice Guy™ phenomenon.
Nice Guy Aaron (Albert Brooks)
Jane’s colleague and best friend Aaron Altman (Albert Brooks) is a Nice Guy™. And he’s one of the worst kinds of Nice Guys. On top of the entitlement and resentfulness and extreme self-centeredness, he’s not even remotely nice. He’s sometimes astonishingly mean, especially to Jane, whenever she dares to choose another man over him, personally and/or professionally.
The “Unworthy Jerk” in this case is Tom Grunick (William Hurt), a handsome but dim newscaster being groomed for lead anchor. To his credit, Tom is upfront that he’s uninformed and relatively unintelligent, and seeks Jane’s help because he wants to do better. And to Jane’s credit, she tells him flat-out that she doesn’t have the time to teach him “remedial reporting,” in spite of her attraction to him.
Despite his intellectual shortcomings, Tom is talented on camera, and tries to be a better newsman. He produces a powerful (although it will be revealed, fatally flawed) segment on date rape (which, in perhaps his worst moment, Aaron loudly dismisses as a fluff piece, declaring “you really blew the lid off nookie.” Nice Guys notoriously and dangerously dismiss rape, so this is a crucial detail).
Jane yields to her attraction to Tom as he reveals his competence. When he’s placed as last-minute lead anchor in a breaking news update, Jane is terrified he won’t be mentally up to snuff. But he effortlessly relays the information Jane feeds him through his earpiece and proves his strong presence on camera.
Slick but stupid Tom (William Hurt)
Tom says their interplay was like “great sex,” and it seems they are headed for the real thing. But Jane misses the opportunity when she stops to check in on Aaron while he bitterly indulges in a spectacular bender. I enjoyed seeing that side of the “friendzone” depicted: the actual friendship that goes unacknowledged because the Nice Guy is being deprived the sex he “deserves.” As toxic as their relationship ultimately is, Aaron is Jane’s closest friend, and she shows him a lot of care and support. And he’s perpetually mean and judgmental, under the guise of wanting the best for her. But when he finally confesses his love and she rejects him, he cruelly wishes her a lifetime of loneliness while he finds his happy ending.
Jane and Aaron in the Friendzone
Aaron also pettily reveals that Tom unethically re-shot a cutaway to his faked on-camera tears in his date rape piece, prompting Jane to dump him. It’s a relief to the viewer; Tom is ultimately too hollow a person and Jane will never truly respect him, even without this egregious incident focusing her disdain. I hate to agree with Aaron, but Tom is just not good enough for her.. And it is nice that Broadcast News racks up some more proto-feminist points with the “I choose me” resolution to its love triangle.
The film’s epilogue does present some problems. Several years later, we see Aaron did get his happy ending with a wife and adorable child, even though he’s now working in the meager Portland market. Tom has followed his upward career trajectory to the lead anchor position and is engaged to a beautiful blonde. Jane is in the beginning of a relationship, but it may be threatened by her true love, her job, as she moves to New York for a major promotion. I’m relieved Future Jane isn’t a lonely spinster suffering for her choices, but the relationship disparity still feels pointed. And Aaron’s happy ending suggests he’s meant to be a more sympathetic character than he seems to a feminist watching this film in 2014.
But this is no (500) Days of Summer. Even if there is some sympathy for Aaron, there’s also plenty of criticism of his attitudes, and next to none for Jane for not returning his affections. We’re meant to question how much Jane puts into their friendship because of the negative effects on her life, not because it is “unfair” to Aaron. The film pointedly values Jane’s emotional needs more than Aaron ever will, despite his declarations of love. For a film pushing 30 years old, Broadcast News offers quite the nuanced deconstruction of the Nice Guy™ trope.
Robin Hitchcock is an American writer living in Cape Town who counts the theme song scene in this movie as one of the greatest moments in the history of film.
I only recently discovered the ‘Despicable Me’ movies, and I’m overjoyed that I have an excuse to review the second one and to explicate its feminist elements, especially since so many women have primary roles in the ever-changing life of villain-turned-hero Gru (Steve Carell). In fact, I love these films so much, I enjoyed a Despicable-themed birthday cake earlier this week. It’s no mistake that the second movie concludes while Cinco de Mayo festivities ensue–my birthday!
I only recently discovered the Despicable Me movies, and I’m overjoyed that I have an excuse to review the second one and to explicate its feminist elements, especially since so many women have primary roles in the ever-changing life of villain-turned-hero Gru (Steve Carell). In fact, I love these films so much, I enjoyed a Despicable-themed birthday cake earlier this week. It’s no mistake that the second movie concludes while Cinco de Mayo festivities ensue–my birthday!
Gru returns to us in Despicable Me 2 (Pierre Coffin and Chris Renaid, 2013) as a nurturing father to three wonderful little girls–Agnes, Edith, and Margo–and we find that he’s able to merge his fatherhood duties with his exciting lifestyle. In the first film, Gru’s main priority is to become the most evil villain in the world, and he competes with the nerdy yet skilled Vector (Jason Segel) for the title. While Gru’s evil deeds range from cutting in line for coffee to encouraging his ugly dog to poop on his neighbor’s flowers, he literally gives up the moon for his girls, which now includes his new wife Lucy (Kristen Wiig), sent from the Anti-Villain League to request his help in pursuing a new villain. Because Lucy completes the image the girls maintain of the exemplary family before they were adopted, and she finds a way into Gru’s heart as well, I would like to focus primarily on her in this post.
Gru is slow to recognize that Lucy’s antics complement his nicely.
The various roles Lucy plays in this movie are pivotal to the plot and character development we see throughout as we come to understand her as a professional, a cunning and intelligent woman, and an undeniably feminist hero. That isn’t to say that Gru is not a feminist character as well–indeed, he is very much so. Lucy becomes Gru’s work partner as the two get themselves into trouble, only to come to each other’s rescue. She then becomes the temporarily unattainable love interest, then the damsel in distress, and finally Gru’s bride and a mother to the precocious girls, who find their new mom pretty amazing. As Gru is busy uncovering clues for the Anti-Villain League and combating Margo’s (Miranda Cosgrove) newfound interest in boys, he can’t help but fall for the poise and quirky charm that Lucy emanates.
At Agnes’s birthday party, an unnamed woman is persistent in setting Gru up on a blind date. Why the push to find someone to love and marry? This buzzing in Gru’s ear is symptomatic of the heteronormative agenda Gru is struggling to resist. Gru rejects the woman’s invitations both intellectually and socially by not-so-politely declining, and bodily by spraying her with a garden hose. His comical proclamation “I did not see you there…or there,” as he knocks her off her feet, signifies the ex-villain’s outright refusal to acknowledge his own “aloneness” (not to be confused with “loneliness”) that others may see when they look at a single (and new) father. Quite simply, Gru feels perfectly fulfilled by his daughters and his rather eccentric life fighting villains and manufacturing delicious jams and jellies.
However, I think it’s important for us to notice this dynamic as a downtrodden Gru admits to “liking” Lucy to his youngest daughter Agnes (Elsie Fisher), trusting her with this intimate and sensitive knowledge. Although Gru inevitably gives in to the social contract that we should all marry, especially when we have children, he does so on his own terms and in the name of true love.
Dressed as a fairy princess for the birthday party, Gru is excitedly told, “I know someone whose husband just died!”
Lucy arrives quite unannounced and throws Gru in the trunk of her car after assaulting him with her “lipstick taser,” a handy tool that helps her to take advantage of her femininity while fighting crime. After Gru proves his strength and cunning in the first movie, it’s a bit of a surprise to watch an unknown character take him down so quickly. However, it’s only fitting that the pair then fall in love and marry; Gru has met his match in more ways than one. Lucy is kind yet assertive, and possibly most important, she knows how to balance these qualities to embody the type of woman that Gru’s daughters can hope to become someday. We love her even as Gru’s minions are chasing her car to save their boss, and we continue to adore her even as she embarks on her journey to Australia to take a new job far away from Gru and the girls, only to jump out of the plane and claim Gru as hers.
As we’ll see, the violence in the film is naturalized as a source of comedy.
When Gru is forced to go on a date with the insufferable caricature Shannon (Kristen Schaal), Lucy takes the initiative to end the date prematurely because she sees that Gru is being demeaned by the shallow woman, specifically for wearing a hair piece in order to hide the fact that he’s bald. In perhaps one of the darker scenes in the film (along with Gru indirectly threatening to kill his neighbor’s dog in the first movie), Lucy shoots Shannon with a tranquilizer dart, and the two load Shannon’s inanimate body on the roof of Lucy’s car, reasoning to bystanders that she has drunk a bit too much wine with her meal, and they proceed to dump her body at her doorstep as if she’s dead. If we look carefully later on, we see that Shannon is actually a guest at the couple’s wedding.
Gru is thankful to Lucy for rescuing him.
In the final action scene, I think it’s important to refrain from classifying Lucy as purely a “damsel in distress,” although this is how I reference her above–because this is, after all, what she is when she’s strapped to a rocket–along with a comically large shark–that’s set to launch into a volcano. However, from the moment we meet Lucy, we know she’s self-sufficient and more than anything, smart; after all, her decision to love Gru is smart as he’s likely the only person capable of defeating El Macho. In fact, every decision Lucy makes throughout Despicable Me 2 is for the betterment of Gru and his growing family. He doesn’t rescue Lucy–just as he rescued Edith, Agnes, and Margo in the first movie–because these characters are helpless females; rather, this conclusion confirms his placement as a hero rather than a villain. On the contrary, the women found in the Despicable movies are quite capable of protecting themselves and those they care about.
As Gru attempts to deactivate the rocket, Lucy offers her expertise: “Is there a red one? It’s usually the red one.”
In the wedding scene, which of course involves some skillful dancing, Agnes recites a monologue that she struggles with earlier in the film: an homage to her mother. The meaning of this recitation has now shifted since she’s gained a mother. Earlier, we also enjoy a private moment when Agnes first meets Lucy at the mall and she’s simply dazzled by her presence, a nice precursor to the girls coming to know her as their own mother and celebrating their status as a complete and unique family.
Agnes recites, “She kisses my boo-boos, she braids my hair, we love you mothers, everywhere, and my new mom Lucy, is beyond compare.”
Because of Lucy and the girls, Gru comes to understand that he’s not merely a villain in a perpetually bad mood; he’s a caring father, a loving husband, and a boss who’s willing to give goodnight kisses to each and every one of his funny, yellow workers, who are, after all, part of his family as well. Both Despicable films can be read as feminist pieces as Gru is transformed by the feminine energy he finds pervading his life, influencing his decisions, and causing him to reevaluate his ideals as a villain and a single man. A concurrently responsible yet offbeat character, Gru represents the new family man in this second film. With the introduction of the delightful Lucy, Gru finds yet another reason to strive to be his best possible self by taking on the role of husband and learning that if he overcomes his fear of the unknown (and women!), he can attain true happiness.
A lovely wedding photo, complete with Gru’s cranky mother and adorable minions.
With the upcoming release of Despicable Me 3 (2017), we can expect more zaniness from the extraordinary family!
Jenny has 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.
It’s been more than 12 years since ‘Daria’ ended and it’s still in public consciousness. The beloved MTV series and its heroine frequently end up lists of best TV shows, cult shows, favourite female characters and 90s nostalgia. Music licensing issues that held up home video releases for years, ended in 2010, when a DVD set with the series’ entire run of 65 episodes and two TV movies was released. And last year, College Humor produced a fake trailer for a live-action movie starring Aubrey Plaza. In today’s media landscape, where cancelation no longer means the end of a series, Daria is often one internet commentators beg for more of. And yet, the memory most people seem to have of Daria as a character isn’t quite right.
A memorable shot of an uncaring Daria from the show’s theme song
It’s been more than 12 years since Daria ended and it’s still in public consciousness. The beloved MTV series and its heroine frequently end up on lists of best TV shows , cult shows, favourite female characters and 90s nostalgia. Music licensing issues that held up home video releases for years ended in 2010, when a DVD set with the series’ entire run of 65 episodes and two TV movies was released. And last year, College Humor produced a fake trailer for a live-action movie starring Aubrey Plaza. In today’s media landscape, where cancellation no longer means the end of a series (as seen in recent resurrections like Arrested Development, 24 and Veronica Mars), internet commentators often beg for more Daria. In the comments section for College Humor’s video, many implored the website to find a way to make the movie for real.
And yet, the memory most people seem to have of Daria as a character isn’t quite right.
On the internet, as in real life, the Daria Morgendorffer people remember is a misanthrope with a monotone voice. An uncaring, almost comatose girl, wandering through the world and hating it indiscriminately.
Aubrey Plaza plays Daria in College Humor’s fake trailer
Plaza plays her this way, never excited, never caring, never attached to anyone or insecure. Several articles about the College Humor video even praised her performance as a perfect Daria impression. But Daria, though often monotone, was much more than that. While she did wander around uncaring through the theme song, in the series proper, she was always running into walls- the people and institutions around her, her world’s expectation of what she should be, and most crucially, her view of herself.
More than anything, Daria wanted to be the girl we remember as unfazed by anything, but instead, kept disappointing herself with her insecurities and the inadvertent connections to people she formed. She was like so many of us as teenagers, deciding what kind of person we were supposed to be while killing ourselves to fit the mold.
But did she cared. Perhaps she cared about things more than anyone else around her. Through five seasons, she fought against fake sincerity, commercialization, and the power and respect given to those with status, money and good looks. She refused to lie about herself for a college scholarship, fake enthusiasm for a part-time job and challenged authorities who threatened the quality of her education, her integrity and her artistic expression. While she scoffed at false values like school spirit, popularity and edginess (a word adults use to sell things to teenagers), she hated them for robbing her generation of meaning and for talking down to youth.
There was a sour taste in her mouth when consuming media directed at youth but written by adults attempting to remain cool. She rejected media directed at teen girls in favor of Conrad, Camus and many political, philosophical and feminist texts, giving 90s teens perhaps their first exposure to classic writers and important ideas. That Daria read these kind of things on her own without a teacher assigning them shows how much she valued learning and encouraged many viewers, myself included, to revisit things we’d been assigned in school and written off as boring.
In her spare time, Daria wrote short stories, acted out No Exit with dolls, made anatomical models, learned about art history from her artist best friend, Jane, and music history from her crush, Trent, and enjoyed watching trash TV–all ways of developing an intelligent mind and broadening her conception of the world outside Lawndale High: her personal idea of hell.
Daria feels contempt for her peers, dismissing them as idiots
I think you can best understand Daria as a character by seeing her as the type of girl who suffers through high school, assuring herself that in college everyone will magically understand her and speak to her on her level. Sadly, when she visits a local college, she realizes that the people there are the same ones she knew in high school; they’re just older.
Like many of us, Daria looks down on her peers, believing she is more intelligent, sophisticated and mature than them. Though in many cases she’s right, as her classmates, particularly the jocks and cheerleaders are often cartoonishly stupid (even for a cartoon). The popular crowd can’t even spell their own names, and they view being a “brain” like Daria as a fate worse than death. She’s different from her peers, and that difference stands out, as in one episode, she and Jane are the target of a witch hunt.
But Daria is often shown that her assumptions of people’s character and her contempt for them are unwarranted. Her vain sister Quinn is capable of writing a vaguely intelligent poem, ditzy cheerleader Britney has moments of insight and a brilliant tactical mind, and infrequently Daria meets intelligent boys who understand her and her weird sarcastic humor. It’s even painted as a character flaw that Daria clings to first impressions and judges everyone around her. She’s never surprised when someone disappoints her, displaying their true self as self-centered, calculating or dense; she’s only surprised when they go along with her joke or give her an intelligent argument. For example, when she finds out Andrea, a would-be friend from summer camp, idolized her, she can only respect Andrea when she stands up to her.
Daria has a crush on Trent, her best friend’s older brother
Even Daria herself doesn’t always measure up to her ideals. Though she is a a teenage girl, Daria wants to be so much more than that. Along with her dismissal of her peers and of the media they enjoy, she views being a teenage girl as a weakness and refuses to allow herself to be human. She has a hopeless crush on an older “bad boy” who rarely notices her, even though she’s smart enough to know he’s irresponsible and totally wrong for her. If she’s being logical, she knows he’s not an option for her and the type of life she wants to live, but still she finds him irresistible and even gets a navel piercing to please him; something she would never do otherwise.
She feels ashamed when she realizes she really wants a romantic celebration for her anniversary (like 30 Rock‘s Liz Lemon and her wedding), as she views sentimentality as pathetic. In several episodes, she struggles with her own sense of vanity, attempting to hide a rash across her face and attempting to wear contacts even though they hurt her eyes because she likes how she looks with them. She disappoints herself with her desire for contacts as she feels there is no reason to want them besides vanity.
Within her school, Daria is known as “the brain” and “the misery chick,” identities she never chose for herself, doesn’t completely like but feels entirely lost without. Within her family she’s the smart one, and Quinn is the pretty one. When that balance is disturbed and Quinn is praised for her intelligence, Daria feels threatened. If she isn’t a brain and smarter than everyone else, she doesn’t know who she is. In another episode, she struggles with her peers’ view of her as someone who is always miserable and thinking about death.
Daria briefly gives herself a makeover to look like her sister, Quinn
Though when people meet Daria, they frequently gasp (to an exaggerated degree) in disgust at her appearance, it is frequently suggested that she could easily fit in and be popular if she wanted to. Modeling scouts at the school first zero in on Daria over supposedly more attractive classmates, and in one episode, she dresses like Quinn and her appearance threatens her sister. Through she sees herself as far above her peers, she clearly understands them and knows how to appeal to them, once inciting a riot by manipulating them with a short story.
Daria’s friendship with Jane Lane is one of the greatest things about the show as it portrays them as two people with similar interests and a shared sense of humor, while managing to make them distinctive people with different reactions to the same events. Their relationship also humanizes Daria, as Jane challenges her and forces her to confront her flaws and figure out why she feels certain ways. Without Jane, Daria could easily be that silent girl, observing and judging a world she is unattached to, but Jane gives her reasons to care. Jane also worries less about fitting into a certain image; instead she wants to experience every opportunity she can, believing it will make her a better artist and drags Daria along to house parties, school dances and other parts of teen life she would otherwise ignore. Moreover, Jane doesn’t see being intelligent and sarcastic and joining the track team, getting a boyfriend or auditioning for the cheerleading squad as mutually exclusive. Her attempts to get involved force Daria to attempt to reconcile her contempt for their peers as a group with the existence of Jane, one of her peers who she really likes and respects. It is perhaps Jane’s humanizing influence that make Daria feel guilty about making a video that paints Quinn in the worst possible light and so edits it to be more flattering.
Daria’s best friend Jane is a humanizing influence
Certainly Daria is someone that needs humanizing. In one episode, she confesses to Jane that she often feels superior to other people, sometimes thinking to herself, “You can see things that other people can’t. You can see better than other people.” This reminded me of the first episode of Girls, where Hannah Horvath memorably told her parents she thinks of herself as the voice of her generation. It was an audacious statement, that led many to hate the character, but it was also really unique for a young woman to express grandiose thoughts, to think of herself as great and significant, rather than suppress herself with (often false) modesty as many of us have been taught to. Jane is a great friend for Daria because she takes her confession seriously, values Daria’s opinions, and disarms her, joking (though with a kernel of truth). That this is why she’s proud to be Daria’s friend. It’s great to see characters who are allowed to be audacious.
As she grows up, Daria is able to recognize how difficult she was as a child and how much her parents struggled to raise her. She learns that when she was in elementary school her parents’ marriage was strained as they were frequently called in by the principal to talk about her lack of friends, her refusal to participate and her depressive nature. Toward the end of the series, when she volunteers at a summer camp, she meets a young boy who reminds her of her younger self and is able to see some of her character flaws for herself. She quickly becomes invested in his growth, realizing that she really cares whether she gets through to him. She helps him avoid some of her mistakes, particularly missing out on life by pretending to be uninterested. It’s plain that Daria as she was when the show began would never have been able to see herself so clearly and to connect on this level.
Using a short story Daria imagines the future for her family
We see a glimpse of the future Daria expects (and most will most likely get) when she writes a short story imagining herself and Quinn as adults visiting their parents. Both are happy and have learned to get along and step out of their comfort zones. The story makes Daria’s mother cry and reveals she is more sentimental than even she realizes.
If you’ve never seen Daria, or you haven’t seen it in years, it’s worth a watch to see one of the most memorable and realistic teenage girls I’ve ever seen on TV.
Instead what we have is a movie that presents us with a tired pseudo “Girl Power!” line and expects us to swallow it hook line and sinker. Many times the movie presents us with tropes about female friendship and then pretends like it is subverting them in a clever way. But it doesn’t. Instead we have a movie about female friendship that is all about talking about a man (again) and involves shaming him by trying bring question to his masculinity (again), while simultaneously throwing women of colour under the bus (again).
I have a lot of complex feels about The Other Woman (firstly should it not be Women not Woman?!). I am really glad that a comedy starring two women and featuring a third has been so successful – it is currently sitting in the No. 2 spot for box office takings under The Amazing Spiderman. I think it just goes to show how thirsty people are for movies with more than one woman in them. Despite its box office takings, The Other Woman has a score of 24 percent on the critic aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes; this is extremely low. This movie is not amazing but it is not the D-grade movie that this rating makes it out to be. In comparison the Seth Rogen and friends comedy vehicle This is The End rated a healthy 83 percent despite in my opinion being decidedly average and verging on terrible for its heavy reliance on rape jokes.
The plot centres on three women: Cameron Diaz, Leslie Mann, and Kate Upton who play Carly – high powered lawyer and accidental other woman, Kate – quirky wife who talks a lot and has forgotten the grooming required by all women necessary to maintain a man, and Amber – the boobs (they actually refer to her as this in the movie). I’m not sure if you can actually say that Kate Upton actually stars in this movie as she has barely any dialogue.
The premise is that Carly is dating a guy and finds out by chance that he is actually married to Kate. The two of them then go on to plot their revenge against him and discover that he is cheating on them with a third woman, Amber, who is devastated to discover his lies and teams up with them to make him suffer. One of the nice parts of the movie is it’s overarching premise is that even though these three women discover that they have been sleeping with the same man they band together and become friends rather than falling into that old trop of competitive womanhood and trying to “steal” him from each other. However this is not terribly original as this also neatly sums up the plot of John Tucker Must Die, a teenage movie where they do a lot of the same things as this one.
Linda Holmes at NPR calls The Other Woman “a terrible movie that has happened to funny actresses” and it is hard not agree. I think what annoys me most about The Other Woman is what it could have been. I was hoping that this was going to be a funny female-driven comedy that is fundamentally about friendship, something akin to Bridesmaids or The Heat, or maybe even Mean Girls. Sadly that was not to be the case. Instead what we have is a movie that presents us with a tired pseudo “Girl Power!” line and expects us to swallow it hook line and sinker. Many times the movie presents us with tropes about female friendship and then pretends like it is subverting them in a clever way. But it doesn’t. Instead we have a movie about female friendship that is all about talking about a man (again) and involves shaming him by trying bring question to his masculinity (again), while simultaneously throwing women of colour under the bus (again).
How does the film throw women of colour under the bus you ask? Well firstly, we are, as so often happens in film and television, treated to a hilariously white-washed version of New York City. I’m pretty sure even all the extras are white. The only person of colour who speaks is Nicki Minaj, who plays assistant to Cameron Diaz’s high powered lawyer character Carly. Fortunately unlike Jennifer Hudson’s character in the first Sex and the City movie, her role isn’t to teach Carly about love and show her the error of her ways with her earthy Blackness and down home wisdom. She mostly wears killer outfits and provides sardonic commentary in a New York accent.
Secondly, there is a pivotal-to-the-plot scene where Carly has lunch with her father to ask him what he would do if he wanted to hide money. This makes no sense as Carly is a lawyer for a large New York City firm so it seems likely she would know what people do with their money if they are trying to hide it. Even worse, however, is that this scene takes place in a bar/restaurant called No Hands ,where Asian women massage them and hand feed them. The message is pretty clear: empowerment, even such pale empowerment as this is only for white women.
Overall, the movie toes the line of Sex and the City faux empowerment where everything in a woman’s world centers around a man. Its “LADEEZ ON TOP” message comes heavily watered down by the fact that the movie barely passes the Bechdel test and the conversations not relating to Mark (the cheating husband) are about such thrilling topics as how hot Amber is.
I think part of the problem is that the movie relies heavily on physical comedy rather than clever writing and this is often hit or miss. Some parts are genuinely hilarious but many others fall quite flat. I’m not sure why, because Diaz in particular has certainly proven herself to be a gifted at physical comedy, but many of the gags tend toward feeling too forced and unnatural. This is especially true of Leslie Mann’s batty housewife act.
Despite all of this there is a lot of lovely imagery of women enjoying each other’s company, something that is STILL woefully lacking in the movie world where most big budget movies only have one named woman in them. Some of the best scenes are the ones where you don’t really get to hear any dialogue but just view the women hanging out. The fact that these scenes have no dialogue that we can hear sends the message that the only types of conversations that are worth hearing from women.
I don’t regret going to see The Other Woman because I think it was passably funny and it was really nice to have a movie where women are the stars of the show for a change; but it could have been so much better. The starring women were certainly not used to their full potential and the movie was definitely not as subversive as it pretended to be.
Though beautifully shot with surprising and genuine performances, Joss Whedon’s ‘In Your Eyes’ disappoints with its lazy storytelling and ultimately trite plotline.
As a dedicated fan of much of writer/director Joss Whedon‘s work (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Cabin in the Woods, and Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog to name a few), I looked forward to watching Whedon’s latest film: Vimeo’s video on demand indie flick In Your Eyes. The film is a supernatural love story, featuring a man (Dylan) and woman (Becky) who live on opposite sides of the country and discover they’ve been psychically linked since adolescence when Becky had a sledding accident.
Young Becky steels herself to face a fearful, snowy descent on her sled
In Your Eyes is beautifully shot with rich colors that starkly contrast Dylan’s arid New Mexico home with Becky’s snowy New Hampshire location. Not only that, but I enjoyed the hip, indie soundtrack, featuring songs from Iron & Wine, Santigold, and The Lumineers (among others). The concept of having a couple telepathically fall in love when separated by great distances poses unique challenges to filming, and those were all handled surprisingly well: mainly the conceit of the characters seeming to carry on conversations with and by themselves while evincing chemistry and a growing affection. This is the equivalent of green screen acting where the performers can’t feed the scene with one another’s delivery or energy. Unlike, say, the new Star Wars trilogy where all the acting was wooden (in part) because of the green screen challenge, In Your Eyes managed to convey a warmth and liveliness to Becky and Dylan’s interactions that are missing from the flatness of their real-life encounters with others in their day-to-day lives.
Through Dylan’s eyes, Becky watches a breathtaking New Mexico sunset.
Interestingly, the vibrancy of Becky and Dylan’s love brings these two oft misunderstood loners together but further isolates them from the outside world. Though both characters evolve as a result of this new intimacy, we find them even further withdrawing from the potential for interdependency in aspects of their “real” lives like work, marriage, and social interactions. Neither of them are happy with their lives, but using a secret, long-distance romance and fantasies of escape as lifelines are not particularly healthy or sustainable solutions. As a writer, I also find this to be lazy storytelling. So many scenes are of our lead characters alone in rooms talking to themselves. Not only that, but the more interesting story is what life looks like once Becky and Dylan don’t have the obstacles of distance and unhappy lives between them. Do they integrate better into the world as a unit? Do they continue to feel compelled to speak to each other telepathically all day, every day if they see each other daily? Is this connection all it really takes to heal each other them? We’ll never know.
Dylan sabotages a date because he’s busy telepathically communicating with Becky
Speaking of lazy storytelling, the psychic premise of In Your Eyes is never fully explored. Why are these two linked? Does this make them soulmates? Do they have other yet undiscovered abilities? Are there others like them in the world? Even the boundaries of their telepathic link are haphazardly explained. For example, we learn that they can hear, smell, and feel things in each other’s environments (as evinced in an awkward mutual masturbation session), but can they physically control things in each other’s environments, too? Does distance matter, i.e. does their communication get stronger when they’re closer and fainter when they’re further apart? Not only that, but Dylan and Becky are simply not that curious for answers. If I discovered a psychic link between myself and a stranger across the country, you can bet your ass I’d be obsessed with understanding the why and how of it.
Becky’s piss-poor friend thinks her isolation is due to an affair
My final and greatest critique of In Your Eyes is how damned trite the story is at its core. When you take away the gimmick of the unexplained and unexplored psychic connection, we have a pretty tame hetero, long-distance love story about two white people who conform to traditional gender roles. Dylan actually hops a plane and ends up in a standard car chase with the cops because he’s white knight’ing it up, on a mission to rescue Becky, the imprisoned/institutionalized damsel in distress. Frankly, that’s boring and uninspired. Simply reversing the gender roles, making Becky the ex-con and Dylan the kept trophy spouse, would have made this story more compelling. I’ve come to expect a lot more from Joss Whedon. At the very least, I expect him to have a more racially diverse cast, amazing dialogue that delights, plotlines that subvert expectations, and, most importantly, empowered female characters.
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.
You wouldn’t be entirely mistaken to assume ‘Barefoot’ is a light-hearted romcom centering on a free-spirited hippie who doesn’t like to wear shoes, instead of the story of a naive mental patient falling in love with an inveterate womanizer and gambler. The former certainly seems to be what the movie is trying to be.
‘Barefoot’ is emotionally manipulative, full of unchecked exploitation, sexism and ableism and worst of all, portrays a woman who supposedly has severe mental illness as something akin to a fairy tale princess.
You wouldn’t be entirely mistaken to assume Barefoot is a light-hearted romcom centering on a free-spirited hippie who doesn’t like to wear shoes, instead of the story of a naive mental patient falling in love with an inveterate womanizer and gambler. The former certainly seems to be what the movie is trying to be.
Jay falls for Daisy, enchanted by her unique view of the world
Directed by Andrew Fleming (of The Craft ) and adapted from the 2005 German film, Barfuss, Barefoot is emotionally manipulative, full of unchecked exploitation, sexism and ableism and worst of all, portrays a woman who supposedly has severe mental illness as something akin to a fairy tale princess. As Daisy Kensington, Evan Rachel Wood spends most of the movie wandering around slack-jawed and amazed by everything she encounters. She’s scared of airplane toilets, thinks driving a car gets you pregnant, is flattered to be asked to perform a hand job (“I’ve never had a job before!”), and on one occasion, asks her companion and pretend boyfriend if she can “go potty.”
Though she tells her doctor in an early scene that she hears voices, the extent of her mental instability as portrayed in the film appears to be panic attacks and extreme naivete caused by being raised in isolation, only interacting with her recently deceased mother for her entire life. Instead, she’s quirky, she knows how to dance because she watched hours of VH1 growing up, she doesn’t like to wear shoes because they hurt her feet, she has no qualms announcing at a fancy dinner, that foie gras looks like cat food. It’s no wonder, Jay Wheeler (Scott Speedman), the estranged son of a wealthy family falls in love with her. Like any manic pixie dream girl worth her salt, she makes his life better, teaches him to take responsibility for her actions and learn how to love. As a free spirit, she strips away from pretentious facade of his family’s extreme wealth and teaches them to value small moments.
Daisy spends most of the film wandering around amazed by everything she sees, it’s all new to her
And of course, right at the end of the movie, it’s revealed that Daisy isn’t crazy after all, so she and Jay can ride off into the sunset together, any complications from her total lack of knowledge of the world or of literary any other person besides him be damned. Watching it, I wasn’t sure to what degree a movie that suggests a character is mentally ill, yet portrays her illness inaccurately for most of the film is redeemed by a last minute revelation of her sanity. Indeed, the revelation comes about from an investigation of Daisy’s past, not from an analysis of her behavior.
Right from the start, Jay is always saving her. Their “meet cute” occurs when he swoops in to rescue her from an orderly who is attempting to molest her, under the pretense of a secret exam. He has no sympathy for Daisy’s innocence or the real issue of abuse suffered by powerless mental patients, instead telling her she needs to learn to take care of herself. Shell-shocked, she escapes the hospital and follows him home, already acting like he is her messiah.
But Jay’s certainly no prize. He’s on probation for assault, holds down a job as janitor at the mental hospital and regularly gives alcohol and pornography to the most catatonic and psychotic patients. He owes thousands of dollars in gambling debts and believes his only option to get the money is to attend his brother’s upcoming wedding with a serious girlfriend, so his family see he’s got his act together.
Originally, he tries to hire a stripper to pretend to be his girlfriend. He’s stunned she considers it degrading and tells him the idea of pretending to be a nurse (used as a fetish object) makes her uncomfortable. A choice quote: “You hump a pole naked for money and this makes you uncomfortable?” Throughout the film, Jay speaks to women like they are children, here insisting the stripper owes him a favor because he is a loyal patron and insinuating that she is unintelligent. After this rejection, Jay sees an opportunity in Daisy, a woman he can easily manipulate.
Jay dresses Daisy in revealing clothing, including “stripper shoes” she can’t walk in
In the film’s world, Daisy’s mental illness gives him permission to talk to her like a child, instructing her that they’re not lying, only pretending and he’ll explain the difference to her later. He is allowed to tell her anything, ordering her to be quiet, to go to sleep, even telling her what to say and how to dress, like his doll. It seems incredibly abusive that he gives her low-cut and revealing clothes borrowed from a stripper to wear on the trip, given that she does not understand their sexual undertones and did not chose to wear them. In one scene, a maid is shown unpacking her suitcase, which included several pieces of sexy lingerie and corsets.
She has to trust him, because he knows things that she doesn’t. When he fleetingly calls her his girlfriend to explain their relationship, she takes him seriously, believing they have an actual relationship. She says it’s always been her dream to be someone’s girlfriend, something her mother told her would never happen. Note that she never refers to the dream of having him as her boyfriend, it’s all she’s ever wanted to be the object, his possession.
When Jay finds Daisy cleaning his parents’ house, he teaches her that she doesn’t have to do favors to earn love
Later on, Jay starts to feel romantic feelings towards Daisy only after she brags about his accomplishments to his family, expanding on the script he gave her. They bond over not being understood, she never went to school and he think of no reason.
After knowing her for only a few days, Jay believes (and is proven right) to have a better knowledge of her condition than her doctor and they quickly become a happy couple, driving around holding hands.
He seems to truly fall in love with her when she tricks a suspicious cop into leaving them alone with her charm, explaining she did it so they can be together. When she despairs that she “can’t do the things other people can do,” he patronizingly explains that by escaping the hospital and helping him lie to his family and evade arrest, she’s been learning how to become a responsible person in the real world.
Near the end, the film flirts with the notion of real consequences when Daisy admits that she was in the hospital because she killed her mother. But alas, she’s only hyperbolic and misunderstood, she didn’t go help her mother when she heard her screaming and thought that meant she killed her. In addition, Daisy never heard voices–her mother did, and kept Daisy isolated because of it.
As Jay spends time with Daisy, he becomes convinced she is perfectly sane and refuses to listen to her doctor
So everything ends up fine. The girl Jay took from the mental hospital isn’t crazy, she shouldn’t even be in the hospital. By taking her, he saved her from misdiagnosis.
Their love is held up as true love. She has no frame of reference, but she knows its’s love because “you just know.” This opinion, which she tells her doctor, is taken as true wisdom. In the end, Daisy is released to begin her real relationship with Jay, instead of going to a group home where she can learn basic skills. In the last scene, her bare feet are highlighted, a sign that she’s still a quirky, free-spirit, even though she’s officially sane.
In Barefoot, Daisy is othered as a mental patient. She and Jay are introduced as being from two different worlds, he has a job and an apartment and responsibilities and she is a patient, unable to take care of herself. Her instability is used as a way to create division between her and Jay and to give him authority over her. It’s used as a way to create a bright-eyed innocent who believes every interaction between a man and a woman is true love and is fully ignorant of the modern world and social mores without entering fantasy dimensions. It’s probably an unsuccessful attempt to avoid being considered sexist: she’s not stupid or childish or an alien fetish object, she’s mental unstable. However, the decision to make this sort of character mentally ill makes an already tired love story truly uncomfortable.
Jay’s mother gives Daisy a makeover, which allows he to fit in at the wedding. That is, until she takes off her shoes
When she has a panic attack at the wedding and Jay’s family learn who she really is, her condition paints her as inhuman, someone that everyone needs to talk to in hushed tones, stop everything they were doing and coddle and stare at her. In one scene, a flight attendant loudly asks Jay while Daisy is present, what is wrong with her, highlighting that she is not an independent person but his charge.
When she is briefly returned to the hospital, Daisy contrasted with the other more patients who present more cinematic markers of mental illnesses, such as delusions, paranoias, unkempt appearance and strange voices, to make it clear that she doesn’t belong there. Only by separating Daisy from the idea of mental illness, does the film gives her back her humanity and develop her. To become no other, a person viewers can identify with, she has to become “not crazy.” We’re only meant to sympathize with her, when the hospital becomes a nightmare she is wrongly trapped in.
Just once, I’d like to see a movie where a person falls in love with someone with a mental illness and realizes their partner is actually ill and needs help they cannot provide alone. Or their partner makes an informed decision to support them and becomes educated in strategies for helping them cope. In Barefoot, mental illness is just quirkiness, a lack of social graces that makes a person honest and selfless, it requires no real adjustment. And as with Daisy, it might not even be real.
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Elizabeth Kiy is a Canadian writer and freelance journalist living in Toronto, Ontario. She recently graduated from Carleton University where she majored in journalism and minored in film.
