‘Ellie Parker’ offers a knowing, humorous take on Hollywood. The routines, processes, and lifestyle of its performers–male and female–are mocked but the film never satirises the professional anxieties and ambitions of Hollywood actresses in a punishing, misogynistic fashion. Ellie is considerably self-conscious, self-absorbed, and kind of nutty, but this is unsurprising, if not pardonable, as her psyche and spirit have been impacted by countless frustrations and disappointments. Really, God knows what it’s like to be constantly appraised and objectified at work.
Written and directed by Scott Coffey, Ellie Parker (2005) is the tale of a talented Australian actress struggling to survive, and get ahead, in one of the strangest places on the planet. Naomi Watts is charismatic, fearless, and entirely credible in the title role. Interestingly, the story is partly autobiographical. Coffey and Watts were in David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive (2001) together, and they both produced Ellie Parker. The film is all the more curious, of course, to those familiar with the career of the Australian actress. It is said that Watts had a difficult, frustrating time in Hollywood before landing her break-through role in Mulholland Drive–as a very different aspiring Hollywood actress–and gaining great reviews for her tour de force performance. Her charged acting in Ellie Parker resonates too–and has perhaps been more celebrated than the film itself. I want to, however, appreciate not only Watts’s performance but also Coffey’s Hollywood story. This entertaining tale by insiders about the acting profession offers a satirical and perceptive take on the movie industry and it deserves greater consideration.
Another unsuitable mate
Coffey adopts a somewhat naturalistic, slice-of-life approach in Ellie Parker. We see the actress go on auditions, perfect her craft in acting lessons, visit her therapist, hang out with her best friend (another ambitious Australian performer), break up with her cheating slacker-musician boyfriend, and meet another unsuitable mate. The somewhat harsh look of the film–it was shot on digital video–gives it a naturalistic, immediate feel as well. Coffey, however, marries the everyday with the incongruous and wacky. His satirical comedy is not without incongruous and bizarre images and moments. We are, after all, talking about Hollywood. This self-reflexive tale, most crucially,provides insightful and sympathetic insights into the professional and personal lives of female performers. Sometimes realistic and sometimes surreal, they are, for the most part, telling and convincing.
Ellie Parker, 2005
Ellie Parker offers a knowing, humorous take on Hollywood. The routines, processes, and lifestyle of its performers–male and female–are mocked but the film never satirises the professional anxieties and ambitions of Hollywood actresses in a punishing, misogynistic fashion. Ellie is considerably self-conscious, self-absorbed, and kind of nutty, but this is unsurprising, if not pardonable, as her psyche and spirit have been impacted by countless frustrations and disappointments. Really, God knows what it’s like to be constantly appraised and objectified at work. Ellie explains to her therapist that “pleasing people” has been a particular problem all her life. Hollywood also, of course, encourages self-estrangement. Ellie feels disconnected in the city: “You can’t be yourself because you’re always being judged.” In conversation with her best friend Sam (Rebecca Rigg), she observes, “I don’t know who I am.” Sam, for her part, steals stuff from chic stores and lies about her sense memory examples in acting class. The women may be somewhat unhinged and self-regarding–they are products of Hollywood too–but it is the city’s men who come across as particularly deluded, narcissistic, and foolish in Ellie Parker. Along with the cheating, dopey boyfriend and the “cinematographer” suitor who invents a twin brother to cover his lies, we have Ellie’s surgically improved, philandering agent (Chevy Chase) and a pretentious peroxide blond filmmaker who gives the actress the precious call back.
Hanging out with Sam
Coffey’s portrayal of Ellie is candid and benevolent at heart. The constant bullshit refrain that she delivers at auditions–“I love the script”–should be understood as an endearing, thinly veiled plea. The insecurities of female performers regarding industry ageism are quite eloquently articulated too. “I remember when the future was a promise. Now it’s a threat,” Ellie says to Sam. Coffey also satirizes the breath-taking stupidity, sexism and mediocrity of Hollywood story-telling. Ellie and Sam’s scripts are crammed with both silly and offensive female characters and impossible story-lines.
Having a smoke
There’s a driving scene in Ellie Parker that amusingly encapsulates the life of the aspiring Hollywood actress. Singing along to Blondie en route to yet another audition for yet another crap movie, Ellie negotiates traffic, applies make-up, changes clothes and shoes, takes calls on her cell, does vocalization exercises and gets into character. In her best New York accent, she screams, “I sucked your cock, I sucked Vinnie’s cock, I sucked them all.” Ellie is trying for the part of a “junkie whore” mob girlfriend in a movie called The Cruel City. She has, of course, no illusions about the future masterpiece. “It’s a piece of shit, anyway. But, you know, it’s a good part,” she reasons.
Perfecting her craft
Fitting, of course, for a Hollywood-set movie, the car scene serves as a vivid illustration of her personal and professional commitments and pressures. Ellie’s life is a juggling act and, as she tells Sam at one point, it can also be likened to “a big rehearsal for something bigger.” Playfully self-reflexive, the scene also idiosyncratically and magnificently showcases Watts’s exceptional versatility. It is, moreover, one of the most entertaining examples of multi-tasking in movie history.
Preparing for an audition
Ellie Parker does not deliver a darkly funny view of Hollywood. Nor is it a politically charged critique of the industry’s often degrading treatment of actresses. The satirical comedy does, however, recognize the specific stresses and anxieties of female performers as well as acknowledge that Hollywood’s story-tellers do not generally serve women well. The story should not be dismissed as a navel-gazing insider joke. A funny, observant movie about movies, featuring a fantastic performance by a gifted actress well-acquainted with both disappointment and opportunity, Ellie Parker very much deserves a second look.
When I saw Disney was making a movie about Walt Disney convincing P.L. Travers to sign over the rights to Mary Poppins, I was expecting to come away at least slightly annoyed. As much as I adore Emma Thompson, who plays Travers, I thought this was going to be a story about a stubborn artist who’s convinced by the magic of Disney to stop being so up-tight.
Surprisingly, it wasn’t quite that simple and I found a lot to like about the movie, Saving Mr. Banks.
When I saw Disney was making a movie about Walt Disney convincing P.L. Travers to sign over the rights to Mary Poppins, I was expecting to come away at least slightly annoyed. As much as I adore Emma Thompson, who plays Travers, I thought this was going to be a story about a stubborn artist who’s convinced by the magic of Disney to stop being so uptight.
Surprisingly, it wasn’t quite that simple and I found a lot to like about the movie, Saving Mr. Banks.
First off, both Disney and Travers are portrayed as complicated and imperfect human beings, though obviously she’s got more serious issues to resolve here than he does. The film moves back and forth between her trip to Los Angeles to see Disney, having been pushed into it by financial need; and her childhood in Australia struggling with an alcoholic, big-dreaming father (Colin Farrell).
And the film pokes fun at the whole candy-coated Disney empire, mostly through Thompson as a delightfully bitter, acerbic, stiff Travers, who’s appalled at the mountains of cakes and donuts brought in for lunch and the way her hotel room is crammed full of stuffed Disney cartoon characters.
Second, the supporting actors, particularly the women, are outstanding. Ruth Wilson plays Travers’ mother in her flashbacks and every single facial expression and word out of her mouth shows her internal conflict and struggle to get by taking care of three children and worrying about her husband. Disney’s female staffers–Kathy Wilson as Tommie and Melanie Paxson as Dolly–also make a lot out of their relatively small roles.
– Spoiler alert –
Third, while I wouldn’t call it a feminist film on the whole (there’s not a single person of colour to be found, and ultimately it’s still about a woman whose life is defined by men), there are some feminist scenes. In one, Disney asks his staffer, Tommie, to help him decipher what’s really going on with Mrs. Travers.
“You’re a woman, aren’t you?” he asks. Tommie basically responds that he’s wrong to think all women have some innate inability to decipher one another, and he’s wasting his time trying to figure out Travers.
In another scene Travers gets angry at the writers for making Mrs. Banks a suffragette. The choice to portray Mrs. Banks as a suffragette has been debated by feminists. Some see the very mention of the suffrage movement as feminist, while others (including myself) see the ending, where Mrs. Banks gives up her “Votes for Women” sash for her kids’ kite tail, as a refutation of women working and campaigning outside the home.
In Saving Mr. Banks, the writers tell Travers they felt they needed Mrs. Banks to have a “job” or occupation outside the home to justify there being a nanny there. One of the songwriters outright says he feels Mrs. Banks is neglectful. But Travers snaps at them that “being a mother is a job. It’s a very hard job.” The audience knows she’s talking about her own mother as much as Mrs. Banks, and it’s a really poignant moment to see that solidarity.
Oh! And the film actually passes the Bechdel Test, since Tommie and Dolly talk about Travers’ temper, and Travers talks to Dolly about the ridiculous food she keeps bringing in.
On the down side, I found the use of flashbacks a bit over-done, like we were being spoon-fed all the connections. That said, the visuals and acting were enough to keep you hooked in.
There’s a satisfying ending but thankfully it’s not overly simplified or magical. Travers might be satisfied with the new ending that redeems the character of Mr. Banks (and thus her father), but she’s still never going to approve of everything about the movie, especially not the silly, cartoon dancing penguins.
Overall, if you’re looking for a film to see over the holidays, you could do a lot worse than Saving Mr. Banks.
So if I knew all that, why did I even bother? Shame on me, right? Well, I try to keep an open mind when it comes to Scorsese. He’s a brilliant director capable of surprising his audience and expanding our sense of what a cinematic experience can be. He’s so good that I can even forgive him for making films that consistently fail the Bechdel test. The Wolf of Wall Street, though, is not Scorsese at his best. It might even be at his worst. And that’s because we all know how great he can be.
If you’re thinking about going to see The Wolf of Wall Street, you might just consider staying home and watching Goodfellas, which you’re sure to catch on TV (because it’s never not on TV). Or get The Departed on Netflix. Or Raging Bull. Or Taxi Driver. Even better, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. There are numerous other fixes to sate a Scorsese appetite without forking over your holiday cash to this three and a half hour slog through wealth, uppers, downers, hookers, orgies, scumbags, and more scumbags. Let me first say that I went into the film expecting to be disgusted. About all I knew was that the story was based on the memoir The Wolf of Wall Street, written by Jordan Belfort, a former stockbroker convicted of securities fraud and money laundering. Throughout most of the 1990s, Belfort ripped off stock buyers to the tune of $110.4 million dollars. He trafficked in penny stocks, and founded a brokerage house called Stratton Oakmont, and as a result of his scams many people suffered—and continue suffering. So if I knew all that, why did I even bother? Shame on me, right? Well, I try to keep an open mind when it comes to Scorsese. He’s a brilliant director capable of surprising his audience and expanding our sense of what a cinematic experience can be. He’s so good that I can even forgive him for making films that consistently fail the Bechdel test. The Wolf of Wall Street, though, is not Scorsese at his best. It might even be at his worst. And that’s because we all know how great he can be.
Let’s set aside that there are many, many, more beautiful naked women than men in this film, and that they are often acting out porn fantasies for the delight of devastatingly unattractive males (sorry Jonah Hill and Henry Zebrowski!). There’s also much casual misogyny expressed in small talk about women’s shaving habits and a lengthy explanation of the three types of hookers, “classified like publically traded stocks,” which Scorsese couldn’t seem to help but dramatize in particularly cringe-worthy scenes. Worse than all that, though, are the thinly drawn relationships between Jordan (Leonardo DiCaprio) and the women in his life. First, there’s his first wife Teresa, played by Cristin Milioti. When we first meet the couple, Jordan is nowhere near as addicted to drugs, sex, and money as he’ll soon become, and we see them both as young upstarts trying to make their way. Once Jordan gets his penny stock racket under way, so follows the debauchery. Surely, we think, Teresa must know at least some of what the audience knows: that Jordan’s “working late” is not motivated by the pure drive to provide superior service to his customers. Surely there are more than a few popular culture instances of wives being fully aware of the compromises they’re making with their high-powered husbands (Mellie Grant, anyone?). If Teresa knows the score, Scorsese never tells us. It’s not until Naomi, played by Margot Robbie, enters the picture that Teresa finds out Jordan is a dog. Then she disappears from his life and the narrative.
If there was a ever a woman who should know the deal she’s making with a man like Jordan it’s Naomi. She’s every bit as materialistic and entranced by wealth as her husband, yet Scorsese give us nothing like the fire or toughness that Sharon Stone’s Ginger had in Casino or that Lorraine Bracco’s Karen had in Goodfellas. And it’s not Robbie’s fault—she’s tremendous and does the best she could with the role—it’s Scorsese’s for missing the opportunity to go beyond the trope of the trophy wife to a create a character with just a touch a more depth.
The real kicker for me comes in the film’s final act. During the Jordan’s last speech to his staff—and there are more than a few speeches—he turns his attention to a woman named Kimmie, a character we have never met before this scene. He tells the staff Kimmie’s story: she came to him as a desperate single mother in need of a job and a $5,000 cash advance to pay her son’s tuition. She tells everyone that Jordan gave her $25,000, changed her life, made her rich, and tearfully says, “I fucking love you, Jordan!” Is this just another moment of dark comedy, or are we supposed to be manipulated into believing our main character has a generous soul, especially when it comes to women?
I will say there are two good things about this film: 1) Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings are on the soundtrack and make a cameo at Jordan and Naomi’s wedding, and 2) Fran Lebowitz makes an appearance to set Jordan’s $10 million bail. But make no mistake: that’s not a reason to see this film. Just stay home and watch Scorsese’s documentary about her, Public Speaking, a couple of times. That’s just enough to cleanse the palette.
Heather Brown lives in Chicago, Ill., and works as a freelance instructional designer and online writing instructor. She lives for feminism, movies, live music, road trips, and cheese.
My question is: why? Why can’t women be part of his quest instead of the cookie at the end of the road? The message is that women can’t have quests or journeys or adventures for themselves. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty depicts women as love objects (romantic or familial) with their place at home, not on the road.
I went to see The Secret Life of Walter Mitty on Christmas Day, which turned out to be appropriate because Ben Stiller‘s film is an ode to embracing life, living kindly, and seeking meaningful adventure (all useful messages for a theatre full of Americans sitting on our asses). The movie is sweet, humorous, and light-hearted. It deals in fantasy and a fantastical reality. It begs us to value each other for whatever our contributions may be no matter how small those achievements may initially seem. It asks us to see art and beauty in everything. I enjoyed the film, but I was saddened by the lack of female involvement in Mitty’s quest.
There are several women who play prominent roles within Walter’s life. His mother and his love interest are portrayed with the most integrity (his sister mainly seems like a selfish woman who takes advantage of her brother). Walter’s mother Edna Mitty, played by the illustrious Shirley MacLaine, proves to be an integral part of setting him on the right path in his journey.
Mitty mother and son.
Edna’s clementine cake (Walter’s favorite) is an important clue as well as currency that gains him access into territory guarded by an Afghan warloard. Her piano, a memento of her late husband, is another clue Walter follows on his search for the elusive photographer Sean O’Connell (Sean Penn). Edna encourages her son to do whatever he feels like he must do, and she remains at home, holding many of Walter’s forgotten treasures, waiting for a time when he may need them. Though Walter clearly loves and respects his mother, she isn’t much more than a symbol of motherhood and the home to which he will return after his journey is done.
Walter’s love interest, Cheryl Melhoff, performed by the talented and versatile Kristen Wiig, is a single mother who is kind, intelligent, and encouraging.
Cheryl Melhoff, Walter’s love interest.
Cheryl is the first person who tells Walter that he must follow Sean O’Connell’s trail and that he must go on this journey himself. Many of Walter’s fantasies center around Cheryl, and in one, she even coaxes him to take a risky helicopter ride with a drunken pilot because that is the path on which his quest lies. Much of his quest is about proving himself and making himself worthy for the woman he has put on a pedestal. When she falls off that pedestal, he turns to his mother who gently pushes him to finish what he started.
Walter & Cheryl connect over coffee.
Both Cheryl and Edna exist to spur Walter into action. Neither of them take action themselves. Instead, they are gentle forces that compel Walter into creating a true life for himself while they wait for him to come home. Walter’s quest becomes independent of the women in his life as he strives for confidence, self-worth, worldly experience, and a sense of purpose.
Walter skateboards to an Icelandic volcano.
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty doesn’t pass the Bechdel Test. No women are featured on his journey. In fact, the only woman we see during Walter’s travels is a bartender in Greenland. No women are pillars in his quest who either help or obstruct his progress. He doesn’t create amazing memories with them as he does with the men who rescue him from a shark or a volcano or even the men who play soccer with him. The women are all at home. The women themselves represent home. They are settled and stand for things like comfort, security, and love. There is no place for them on Walter’s harrowing, invigorating journey to self-actualization.
Walter climbs a mountain with his male guides to find Sean.
My question is: why? Why can’t women be part of his quest instead of the cookie at the end of the road? The message is that women can’t have quests or journeys or adventures for themselves. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty depicts women as love objects (romantic or familial) with their place at home, not on the road. Men take action on behalf of the “home” ideals for which women are receptacles. While I enjoyed the movie and thought it had important things to say about the value of the “little man”, missing from it are women of action and agency, women who have their own agenda and adventures. Seeing the paths of women on their own quests intersect with that of Walter, however briefly, would have gone a long way to establishing women as autonomous actors in their own tales of becoming.
—————— 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.
However, the tomboy was a prominent figure in two well-loved films of the period aimed at young girls, though both presented her as a transitional stage in development. My Girl (1991), is the story of precocious 11-year-old Vada Sultenfuss (Anna Chlumsky) who grew up in a funeral parlor and is obsessed with death, while in Now and Then (1995) four childhood friends reunite as adults and remember (in flashbacks) the summer they were 12.
This guest post by Elizabeth Kiy appears as part of our theme week on Child and Teenage Girl Protagonists.
Young girls have little power.
Controlled by their parents and teachers as well as financial and societal restrictions, often their only agency is the refusal to obey and to fit into standard gender roles. In early adolescence, they mature physically and socially but have yet to assume real adult responsibility.
A clear example of the the transitory nature of this period is the frequent presence of the tomboy character in coming-of-age films.
Though in real life many girls maintain masculine identities into adulthood, in these films as in much of society, the tomboy is a temporal figure tied to early adolescence that girls are expected to grow out of it order to be a healthy, happy (and inevitably heterosexual) adult. And in coming-of-age films, a genre where characters go through moral tests and life-changing tragedies and emerge stronger and wiser, the proof of her growth is her adoption of a female identity.
Because of female liberation movements in the 1970s, media scholars tend to see the decade as the heyday of the tomboy character in popular culture, with stars such as Jodie Foster, Christy McNichols, and Tatum O’Neal. Female-focused narratives gradually tapered off at the end of the decade, with a rise in powerful male protagonists, effects-driven blockbusters and action heroes in the 80s. In the 90s, “Girl Power” movements brought about an increase in female-directed media, but with a different framing. Gay and lesbian films encouraged positive portrayal of masculine women, but were directed exclusively to adults and others in the community.
Tomboy Roberta in her element, the lone girl who can challenge the boys
However, the tomboy was a prominent figure in two well-loved films of the period aimed at young girls, though both presented her as a transitional stage in development. My Girl (1991), is the story of precocious 11-year-old Vada Sultenfuss (Anna Chlumsky) who grew up in a funeral parlor and is obsessed with death, while in Now and Then (1995) four childhood friends reunite as adults and remember (in flashbacks) the summer they were 12. The girls each fill a particular character archetype, with Christina Ricci and Rosie O’Donnell playing child and adult versions of tomboy Roberta Martin.
As adolescents, both characters are depicted as going through the early stages of puberty, where their female body and nascent sexuality are becoming impossible to ignore and they must come to terms with their gender identities.
Their tomboyism is only a cause for fear or treatment, when the girl appears to have extreme male identification or her tomboyism threatens to extend into adulthood. In this vein, it is acceptable for Roberta and Vada to climb trees, play sports and dress like the boys, but fear of puberty is a step too far.
Roberta pushes the limits of acceptable tomboyishness by binding her breasts
Roberta is panicked about the growth of her breasts and regularly measures them and binds them. Although it is not explained exactly why she is sensitive about them, the film portrays her anxiety as irregular. The other girls, all more acceptably feminine, tease her about their size and tell her she is lucky because men will like them. In this discussion, Roberta is clearly uneasy and disgusted by the idea.
Similarly, Vada is horrified when she learns about her period rather then feeling pride at becoming a woman as girls often do in coming-of-age narratives. She tells her father’s girlfriend Shelly (Jamie Lee Curtis) that it isn’t fair because nothing happens to boys and kicks her friend Thomas J (Macaulay Culkin) out of the house until it is over. As with Vada, a girl’s crisis of gender is because of her difficulty reconciling her view of herself with that of her new sexualized body and differences from male playmates. In both cases however, unease with the tomboy’s female body is portrayed as transitory or naiveté, rather than indication of transsexuality, while her lack of interest in boys is because of her youth, not lesbianism.
Both girls are also established as outsiders who are different from their peers and attempt to be independent from them. Roberta is the only one of her friends who is not feminine and who isn’t interested in romance. Likewise, Vada is neurotic and is a hypochondriac who always feels she is sick. In both cases, they have lost a parent, which leaves a gulf between them and their friends that they cannot possibly understand. As such, the masculine girl often functions as a lone outsider rather than as part of an elaborate subcultural group.
Hotheaded Roberta leads the group to fight the local boys
In both films, the tomboy takes on a leadership role within their group as well. Roberta constantly places herself in the front and distributes things to the other girls; she is also the first to act and suggest new ideas. In this fashion, My Girl begins with Vada selling tickets to a tour of the funeral home, attempting both to scare the boys and make money off them. Vada goes a step further, not only being the protector in her group but the protector of a more feminine boy. Tomboy characters are often paired with effeminate male characters, as it reinforces the binary of masculinity and femininity, suggesting there is no grey area between them.
Vada’s tomboyishness is balanced by effeminate Thomas J
Roberta also transgresses into what is consider boy’s territory by placing herself in direct conflict with the boys, most notably after they steal the boys’ clothes. Later at the baseball game, she gets in a physical fight after one of the boys tells her she needs to remember to act like a girl and says she needs a mother to teach her how to be one. She tries to defend her right to be present in the masculine space, but her friends restrain her, supposedly to keep her dignity.
Moreover, both girls grew up without mothers or a feminine influence on their lives. Instead, each has a father who encourages her tomboyishness rather than attempting to suppress it. Vada’s father (Dan Aykroyd) is portrayed as well meaning but incapable of raising her properly alone. The film suggests he has done a fine job to this point, but he does not know what to say about as she is going through puberty. Likewise, Roberta grew up with a father and three older brothers.
This familial structure suggests their tomboyism is acceptable because they have no female role models. It is suggested, at least in Vada’s case, that her tomboyism is because she doesn’t know how be a woman, rather than a conscious decision.
Shelly acts as Vada’s mother, comforting her and teaching her a beauty routine.
That the film begins with the introduction of an older woman to become Vada’s female role model/motherly influence suggests she couldn’t go on living this way without it.
Shelly is the epitome of femininity–she is a makeup artist, well-versed in fashion and romance. Vada sees Shelly as fascinating and exotic and allows her to take on a motherly role, showing her how to put it on lipstick and reassuring her boys will think she is pretty. In the next scene Vada, wearing full makeup, is trying to walk in an exaggerated impersonation of a movie star’s walk and posing for Thomas J. His next line, asking where her bike is, subtly suggests she will begin to abandon her tomboy qualities as she discovers femininity.
The transformed Vada in a party dress and pretty hair
Both Thomas’s death and Shelly’s influence bring her to a point where, by the end of the film she has nearly abandoned her tomboyishness. At the film’s end, she shows up at her last writing class with her hair out its ponytail, having abandoned her t-shirt and jeans for a frilly dress. Yet she retains some of her old self, still riding bikes, even in her dress.
In contrast, Roberta receives no new mother figure or female role model and could be viewed as what Vada might have become with Shelly. The adult Roberta, though straight, is portrayed as a stereotypical lesbian, a doctor who wears masculine clothes, drinks beer, and plays softball.
Adult Roberta continues to dress in a masculine style, while Chrissy is overtly feminine
Despite this, in the scene where Roberta finds the newspaper with her mother’s death notice in it, she remarks at how beautiful she was. Though she is usually portrayed as strong, this makes her cry and because she keeps repeating the comment, it seems as if she is yearning to be like her mother, but she does not know how to get there without her.
The film uses Chrissy (Ashleigh Aston Moore), Roberta’s childhood friend, as her “mother figure.” Chrissy is naïve and sheltered, to the point where most of what she says is clearly something parroted from her mother. She reminds Roberta to “be a lady” rather than fight and reminds her to “act like a girl” when she is splashing in the mud. In a sense, Chrissy’s mother, though not present in these scenes, is sort of a mother figure to Roberta.
Though best friends, Chrissy and Roberta seem to be opposites. While Roberta is a tomboy, Chrissy is the most stereotypically feminine in the group, easily scared and weak. In the future scenes, where Chrissy is having her baby, they are coupled, with Roberta taking on the husband role. While Chrissy’s actual husband only arrives to hold the baby after its born, Roberta drives her to the hospital and delivers the baby. After it is born, rather than sharing a look with her husband, Chrissy and Roberta are shown looking at each other mouthing “I love you.”
Furthermore, in both films, their first hint of romance is used to suggest a softening of their personalities and movement into a feminine disposition. Early on, Roberta is disgusted by the love quiz her friends are completing.
Roberta and Scott bond over basketball
Her kiss with Scott Wormer plays on her need to question masculinity as he tells her she is good at basketball, not just for a girl but for a guy. Though she threatens to beat him up after if he tells anyone about their kiss, it is revealed later that she has stopped taping her breasts as a result.
Likewise, Vada has a crush on her teacher, an impossible object with no real hope of a future. At the same time, she is disgusted by Shelly’s romance novels and doesn’t understand why people have sex and get married.
When she kisses Thomas J, it is approached as an experiment to see what it is like. Magical sounding music plays as they kiss, as if this kiss will result in a big moment where a spell is broken. Though nothing happens immediately afterward, the kiss marks a change as she is now able take him, someone her age, as a realistic love object.
Vada and Thomas J’s kiss and her first step into a feminine adulthood
His death soon after suggests that his function was merely to pull her out of her tomboyishness and introduce her to heterosexual romance. Indeed, only after Thomas J’s death is she able to make her first female friend. In this sense, the kiss could be seen as breaking a spell.
Though these films make no mention of links between tomboyism and lesbianism, as tomboy characters are given romantic subplots in films where more feminine characters are not; it is suggested that these romances are included as proof they are heterosexual.
Though Now and Then shows the adult Roberta as a fairly masculine woman, it reinforces her heterosexuality as she is referred to as “living in sin with her boyfriend.” Interestingly, this character was based on a real person who did grow up to be a lesbian, but all references to this were edited out at the last moment. This inadvertently serves to tell viewers that even the most masculine girl can grow up heterosexual.
As such, these tomboy characters emerge at the end of their respective films with more submissive feminine gender identities, the experience of their first love, and close female friends or role models. Due to this, the young girl viewer is meant to assume they fit comfortably into society and are no longer outsiders or ostracized. As such, she is give the message that she too, can only grow up straight and feminine.
Hopefully she realizes it is in her power to question it.
Elizabeth Kiy has a degree in journalism with a minor in film from Carleton University. She lives in Toronto, Ontario and is currently working on a novel.
In Pretty In Pink, Andi is a self-sufficient, seemingly self-aware teenage girl who lives in a little cottage with her single father. Andi isn’t the type of girl who goes gaga for cocky, linen suit-wearing Steff (James Spader). She’s too busy at home sewing and stitching together her latest wardrobe creations. To her fellow girl students, she’s just a classless, lanky redhead who shouldn’t dare be caught dead at a “richie” party. So, she spends her time at TRAX, a record shop she works at, and a nightclub that showcases hip new wave bands like Ringwald’s real-life fave, The Rave-Ups. Her best friends Duckie (Jon Cryer) and Iona (Annie Potts) admire and envy Andi.
Blaine, Andi, and Dickie in Pretty in Pink
This guest post by Kim Hoffman appears as part of our theme week on Child and Teenage Girl Protagonists.
Molly Ringwald was to John Hughes what strawberry jam is to sliced bread. As a forever fan of Hughes and his muse, it took me a long time to warm up to Pretty In Pink, in part because I’ve always played favorites for my first love, Sixteen Candles, followed by the untouchable Breakfast Club. That said, I’m a prideful observer of all Hughes films, having watched each countless times over the years—the aesthetics constantly taking new shape despite knowing the plot will end the same each time. Hughes wasn’t a particularly public man, but his genius mind left traces of secret suburbia and the endless topic of teenagers. Ever since I first watched a Hughes film at summer camp, I’ve been hovering over the wide shots of gymnasium school dances, yuppie keg parties, and high school girls with pink drapes covering their bedroom windows.
In Pretty In Pink, Andiis a self-sufficient, seemingly self-aware teenage girl who lives in a little cottage with her single father. Andi isn’t the type of girl who goes gaga for cocky, linen suit-wearing Steff (James Spader). She’s too busy at home sewing and stitching together her latest wardrobe creations. To her fellow girl students, she’s just a classless, lanky redhead who shouldn’t dare be caught dead at a “richie” party. So, she spends her time at TRAX, a record shop she works at, and a nightclub that showcases hip new wave bands like Ringwald’s real-life fave, The Rave-Ups. Her best friends Duckie (Jon Cryer) and Iona (Annie Potts) admire and envy Andi.
Andi’s style
The divide between the protagonist and the antagonist in Pretty In Pink isn’t among clear-cut stereotypes (i.e. cheerleaders, football players, nerds, rebels) but between the size of your house and the make of your car, or the price tag on your pastel peach prom dress. Steff comes off like this unreachable asshole who will never be able to grasp real feelings, but does somehow sense Andi’s pure nature and wants to squash the blossom so as to feel just an inch more powerful on his gross social high school hierarchy tree. Subconsciously, I used to think about this dark versus light dynamic between Andi and Steff when I was a teen warding off unwanted boys.
Andi’s the girl I’m sure an impassioned Cher Horowitz modeled her Daddy care-taking after. Andi’s father, whose wife has since left him, wants so much to please his daughter, to reinventing himself as a stable middle-aged man who can and will support his Andi and not the other way around. Many of the men in Andi’s life are floundering without her guidance—like Duckie. The Duckman is a ball of energy, an equal match in his fashion ingenuity, pining after Andi though it’s pretty clear she’ll never bat an eye back at him. Duckie has this gender queer vibe that feels free and unapologetic. His childlike abandon is admirable—endlessly riding past his crush’s house on his bike. He may not appear buff like the other popular dudes, but he’s stronger than each of them, especially insecure Blaine.
Iona reminisces about her prom
Blaine is a popular guy with rich parents, a BMW, a similar wardrobe to his sucky best friend Steff, and he is totally smitten over Andi. He wants to take her to prom. He kisses her. She melts and buckles. But there are glimpses of deception. Is Blaine just bored with his uppity lifestyle and his judgmental friends? Is he trying to get revenge on his parents who he thinks still believe in “arranged marriage”—and by that he means “date someone rich, Blaine.” Frankly, there’s nothing cheaper than Blaine. He has everyone on his back about being seen with Andi. She is seen as an outsider based on the geographical location of her house. Forget how Blaine feels—what about Andi? He can yo-yo back and forth between what’s acceptable and what his heart is telling him to do, but Andi is dealing with a ball of feelings to. She doesn’t have her mother to talk to about these kinds of things. All of her roles as a teenage daughter have been repurposed.
In many of John Hughes’ films, the girls at the party draped over their boyfriends are never the role models. A teenage girl like Andi is supposed to show young girls watching Pretty In Pink that you can be pretty, but only if you’re proud. Like so many teens—especially the ones laced up in 1980s Hughes films–pride isn’t something that’s understood in the first act. Andi has to feel betrayed first. She has to confront Blaine in the hallway after he doesn’t return her calls and claims he is taking someone else to prom. She has to have a heart-to-heart with her dad on the couch about whether or not he’s doing his best to be both a dad and a mom. Her dad somehow has to tell her that being with Blaine and suffering from the ebb and flow of love is all worth it, even from where he’s sitting. And Andi has to let Blaine drop her off at her front door. Most importantly, she has to just be a teenager—a girl who will make mistakes, need to rely on other people, and can’t always be there to pick up the broken pieces at home. She has to experience this moment, even if it’s a stupid prom. But she has to experience something true to this time in her life.
Andi begins to make her prom dress
Andi also has to have a kick-ass comrade who she can look up to, vent to, and play dress-up with. That girl is Iona, owner of TRAX. Oh, rockin’ beehive babe Iona. She’s a sassy broad and she doesn’t believe in wasting lip-gloss after 7 o’clock. She plays a chameleon of personalities through her wardrobe and she’s drenched in nostalgia, always. But, it seems Iona’s sense of the world is a little bit dreamy and drippy like a push-pop creamsicle on a hot afternoon. Iona, being the older girlfriend who still swoons hard over her prom, convinces Andi she needs to go to prom, warning her: “I have this girlfriend who didn’t go to hers, and every once in a while, she gets this really terrible feeling—you know, like something is missing. She checks her purse, and then she checks her keys. She counts her kids, she goes crazy, and then she realizes that nothing is missing. She decided it was side effects from skipping the prom.”
Let’s set one thing straight—I never went to my own prom. Sure, it’s this American classic, but it’s so patriarchal—a prom queen and a prom king to rule the ball. There’s so much emphasis on prom in teen films. Will her crush ask her? Will she find a dress in time? Will she be humiliated when and if he ditches her? Iona kind of becomes a sell-out when she starts dating a rich, preppy looking guy, and you can see the next ten years of her life like a moving picture in front of her—a kid, a house, certainly not her chic Chinatown studio. I had higher hopes for Iona. Does she know how to be Iona? Or is it easier to play a new role each day? She was better off smooching Duckie (and pondering if he practices on melons). But it’s also clear that she could learn a thing or two from Andi. And who knows, maybe she snapped out of it and eventually did.
Duckie and Andi at the prom
So, Andi gives into the brouhaha of prom. It’s true. However, she makes her own dress, she decides to still go alone, even after Blaine dumps her, and when she arrives—there’s Duckie, looking dapper as ever. “May I admire you?” Andi asks Duckie, a question Duckie frequently adorns Andi with. Inside prom, Blaine has showed up after all—and dateless. He looks like a baby deer in headlights, but he’s finally pieced together that his buddy Steff, who’d been calling Andi “lowgrade” behind her back but kept insisting she give him a chance when he hounded her in private, was just mad he couldn’t have her—mad because he gets whatever he wants. Blaine does have good intention, but he doesn’t know how to break the cycle, because then he tries getting Andi back. He should have left it alone. But that’s the hunk of the meat in Hughes films—characters realizing important lessons.
Andi won’t let anyone tell her what’s best, make her feel cheap, dumb, used, or objectified. And when she’s standing under the prom lights while OMD’s “If You Leave” swells in the background, her broad shoulders finally fill with pride. Should Andi have stayed with Duckie? Why did she chase Blaine out to the parking lot—because he told her he loved her and looked so sad and regretful? For one, this is high school—we all know she and Blaine didn’t end up getting married and settling down. We know that Duckie remained her best friend long after the corsages came off. We know that Andi drove home at a reasonable hour and made sure her dad was OK. Andi taught me that it’s cool to just be yourself—however that looks, inside and out. If people think you’re weird or different—that’s honorable. If a lover doesn’t know your worth—that’s because they can’t possibly reach your higher self. Not everyone can be pretty in pink, just the ones who are proud to wear it.
Kim Hoffman is a writer for AfterEllen.com and Curve Magazine. She currently keeps things weird in Portland, Oregon. Follow her on Twitter: @the_hoff
Power dynamics mean something in comedy. Making fun of someone less powerful than you is sort of like beating up someone who’s small, or taking advantage of someone naive. It’s not very sporting, and it makes you look mean. The problem is that the same person can be powerful in some contexts and not in others. A rich, white 17-year-old girl, for example, might be very powerful in contexts where she’s bullying her classmates at school, but less powerful in contexts where she’s trying to meet the demands of a sexist culture. If you’re an adult man nearing 40, it’s hard to make fun of the way a teenage girl dresses, flirts, and moons over boys without starting to look kind of petty.
This guest post by Katherine Murray appears as part of our theme week on Child and Teenage Girl Protagonists.
Ja’mie: Private School Girl features a drag performance from Australian comedian Chris Lilley that’s sometimes funny and sometimes uncomfortable to watch. Join me as I do the least funny thing in the world, and try to explain how a joke works.
Power dynamics mean something in comedy. Making fun of someone less powerful than you is sort of like beating up someone who’s small, or taking advantage of someone naive. It’s not very sporting, and it makes you look mean. The problem is that the same person can be powerful in some contexts and not in others. A rich, white 17-year-old girl, for example, might be very powerful in contexts where she’s bullying her classmates at school, but less powerful in contexts where she’s trying to meet the demands of a sexist culture. If you’re an adult man nearing 40, it’s hard to make fun of the way a teenage girl dresses, flirts, and moons over boys without starting to look kind of petty.
Currently airing on HBO, Ja’mie: Private School Girl has plenty of funny moments as well as plenty that seem more mean-spirited, and the combination creates an uncomfortable viewing experience. Ja’mie, portrayed by Lilley, is a narcissistic and socially tone-deaf villain who was previously featured in We Can Be Heroes: Finding the Australianof the Year and Summer Heights High. Like The Office’s David Brent before her, Ja’mie craves admiration from others, but rarely does anything commendable. Instead, she inadvertently reveals herself to be racist, snobbish, bullying, and homophobic, while trying to sing her own praises. Private School Girl is the first series to focus exclusively on Ja’mie, following her through her day-to-day life as she prepares to graduate from the exclusive Hillford Girls Grammar School, and attempts to win the coveted Hillford Medal.
Ja’mie is one of Lilley’s most popular characters, and it isn’t hard to see why. A quick YouTube search returns some really funny clips from Heroes and Summer Heights High, where most of the comedy comes from Ja’mie’s hypocrisy. In Heroes, Ja’mie tries to gain recognition for her charity work—sponsoring African children through a World Vision analog—but reveals herself to be shallow and racist as soon as she tries to explain the project. She admits that she doesn’t know the names of any of the children she sponsors, because their names are “weird,” but she sings to their pictures “in their language” by making up words and clicking her tongue. When she learns that most of the children she sponsors were killed in a horrible flood, she’s devastated by the idea that this might hurt her chances at winning Australian of the Year, and calls the charity to make a customer complaint.
In Summer Heights High, Ja’mie is an exchange student at the titular public school, and she continually insults her classmates for being poor and ugly under the guise of finding common ground. She introduces herself by giving a prepared speech about how private school students are more likely to go to university and earn more money, whereas wife-beaters and rapists are statistically more likely to come from public schools. “People always go, ‘Private schools create better citizens,’”she says, “But I would say they create better quality citizens.” Later, when she campaigns for an end-of-year dance, she begins by telling everyone that dances give poor people (or “povos”), like them, something to live for. Under her leadership, the dance then becomes so expensive that no one can afford to buy tickets.
As of this writing, four of Private School Girl’s six episodes have aired, and the funniest moments rely on the same type of humour—scenes where Ja’mie congratulates herself for being nice to everyone, juxtaposed with documentary-style footage of her bullying other students. Fittingly, her nemesis at Hillford is an unpretentious girl named Erin who seems genuinely nice, and cares about helping others. Ja’mie recoils in disgust whenever Erin says or does anything heartfelt, and hypocritically accuses her of faking kindness in order to be admired. Though one might wish there were more characters for Ja’mie to play against, those scenes work really well, as do most of the scenes where we see Ja’mie whiplash between the falsely humble face she wears around people she wants to impress, and the vicious, Eric Cartman-like monster within.
Unfortunately, there are other scenes in Private School Girl where it seems like the joke is just “Ha! She’s a girl!” which makes things a little uncomfortable. Chris Lilley also gave this cringey interview where he said that straight guys love the show, because “The show is sort of like making fun of girls. It’s doing all the annoying things that our girlfriends do.” Unless the annoying things their girlfriends do include grossly misusing charity outreach programs and tyrannizing strangers at school, I’m not sure that “annoying things girls do” is an awesome target for a grown man’s comedy—especially when the annoying things aren’t otherwise hurting anyone else.
For example, there are lot of scenes where Ja’mie and her friends talk over each other excitedly, dissolving into a wall of noise and screeching for seemingly endless minutes. In the first episode, there’s a scene where they goof around, taking a long time to say goodbye to each other, yelling back and forth about how they’ll miss each other SO MUCH, and how they’re best friends, before running back for hugs. There are scenes that are just about Ja’mie being excited because a cute boy accepted her friend request on Facebook, or because she gets to throw a party. In most of these instances, the events aren’t exaggerated to the point that they become absurd and therefore funny — instead, they feel like a fairly true-to-life impression of a certain type of teenage girlhood, and it feels like the show takes for granted that it’s OK to just make fun of that.
From a practical standpoint, the scenes aren’t particularly funny — they feel too much like watching a real reality show, where people you don’t particularly like have conversations that aren’t particularly important. At the same time, there’s an uncomfortable undercurrent, since the inclusion of most of these scenes tells us that they were supposed to be funny—that there’s supposed to be something inherently laughable in the way that (some) teenage girls talk to each other, or the way they express their emotions—so laughable that you don’t even need to make up a joke for the scene; you just have to show it. As satire, it’s a far cry from the wicked hypocrisy of Ja’mie’s charity mission in Africa.
There are other jokes, though, that cut a little closer to the bone, and most of them involve Ja’mie’s brazen but awkward sexuality. Mistakenly believing herself to be a good dancer, she repeatedly tries to gain attention by performing sexually charged (or “slutty”) choreography and undoing the top buttons on her uniform to show her bra. She flirts with her school principal and, when a boy stays over at her house, she makes sure to casually pass by his room wearing only a towel. She constantly seeks reassurance that she’s not fat, while obsessing over the idea that her breasts are too small, and there’s an ongoing plot about the etiquette of sexting. Internet spoilers assure me that the ongoing discussion of Ja’mie’s breasts, and whether or not she should flash them, is building toward conflict in the final episodes, but, as others have pointedout, it isn’t always clear whether the show is making fun of Ja’mie or of the culture that’s placed her in this position.
When it comes to sex, teenage girls are at a disadvantage. They’re subject to conflicting demands, telling them both that the need to be sexually available and that sexual availability is not OK—they inhabit a world where developing a sexual identity is a Choose Your Own Adventure that always ends in scorn. Although I’ll withhold judgement about the finale until I’ve seen it, there’s an uncomfortable sense that Private School Girl has so far treated Ja’mie’s conflicted sexuality as another instance of her personal hypocrisy—that she’s pretending to be modest when really she’s the kind of girl who wants to flash her tits, or she’s pretending to be sexually experienced when really she’s too frigid to get it on—rather than a relic of a culture that would shame her both for wanting and not wanting sex.
Altogether, Private School Girl works really well when its satire is aimed at racists, bullies, and snobs, but significantly less well when it’s aimed at the more diffuse target of “girls.” Watching it, you come away with the sense that Chris Lilley has gotten a little bit too good at playing this character; that he’s revelling in his ability to imitate a certain set of mannerisms, while the point of the joke has been lost.
Katherine Murray is a Toronto-based writer and couch potato who yells about TV on her blog.
Initially the girls of Troop Beverly Hills are portrayed as clueless and privileged, but they are allowed to grow and transform themselves over the course of the movie. The film writers don’t do it unrealistically by turning them into tomboys overnight or at all. The girls retain their femininity, which they are made fun of for by the Red Feathers, throughout the film.
This guest post by Phaydra Babinchok appears as part of our theme week on Child and Teenage Girl Protagonists.
Sometimes revisiting a favorite film as an adult can be disappointing, but more often than not it isn’t. I find that I still very much enjoy my childhood favorites.
Troop Beverly Hills was released in 1989. If for no other reason, watch this film for the 80s fashion. It is absolutely fab and you can thank me now. I must confess that I watched it on the original VHS that my family has owned since it was released. And I must confess that I still absolutely love this film. Enough gushing though, let’s get into the nitty gritty.
That fabulous 80s fashion
Shelly Long is the driving force in this movie. She plays a spoiled socialite who is getting a divorce from her rich husband. In an attempt to bond with her daughter and prove to her husband that she can finish what she starts she decides to become her daughter Hannah’s Wilderness Girls troop leader. I find myself identifying with Hannah because my mom was my Girl Scout troop leader. I however cannot identify with the Beverly Hills mansion.
Back to the plot. This is a classic story about the underdogs, who happen to be fabulously wealthy girls, triumphing over mean girls. I was curious about the background of this movie and discovered that it was written and produced by women. This definitely makes sense since it is almost entirely a female cast. The girls of Troop Beverly Hills are the outcasts of the Wilderness Girls troops. They are not taken seriously and made fun of because they are into fashion and don’t know how to camp. A hilarious scene ensues when they attempt to go camping. After being driven to the campsite and each girl bringing tons of luggage–I repeat luggage, as in suitcases instead of camping gear even though it is for only one night–it starts pouring rain. This is just too much for anyone to handle so they pack up and head to the Beverly Hills Hotel where roughing it is sharing one bathroom amongst nine of them.
Troop Beverly Hills’ mean-girl nemeses are the Red Feathers. The Red Feathers are real Wilderness Girls who have earned badges whereas the girls of Troop Beverly Hills don’t have any badges. They didn’t even have uniforms until Hannah’s mom took them shopping, because as a rich Beverly Hills housewife shopping is the one thing she knows how to do. She is also determined to help the girls earn badges in their own way. She teaches them how to survive in Beverly Hills. They earn badges in such varied activities as jewelry appraisal, shopping, sushi appreciation, and gardening with glamour.
Initially the girls of Troop Beverly Hills are portrayed as clueless and privileged, but they are allowed to grow and transform themselves over the course of the movie. The film writers don’t do it unrealistically by turning them into tomboys overnight or at all. The girls retain their femininity, which they are made fun of for by the Red Feathers, throughout the film.
Oh and those Red Feathers are a mean bunch led by a mean leader who happens to be one the mother of one of the girls. They are out to get Troop Beverly Hills because they don’t think they belong or deserve to be Wilderness Girls because they are too girly and spoiled. So what do the Red Feathers do? Instead of encouraging or mentoring Troop Beverly Hills they set out to sabotage them. They laugh and make fun of the Troop Beverly Hills craft project, which is a camping clothing rack. Troop Beverly Hills were the pioneers of “glamping” way before the term “glamping” even existed.
Would anyone like to go glamping?
The Red Feathers’ troop leader is in a position of authority and strips Troop Beverly Hills of their badges because they aren’t “real” wilderness badges. However, this is not a devastating moment for the girls of Troop Beverly Hills. Instead they graciously surrender their badges. Their new goal is to sell the most cookies and make it to the Wilderness Jamboree competition. Being the mean girls that they are, the Red Feathers’ attempt to sabotage Troop Beverly Hills’ cookie selling by going into their neighborhood and selling cookies to all the rich folk in Beverly Hills first. This is devastating to the girls, but they manage to rally together and come up with some great cookie selling tactics like having a mini concert and a fashion show. Troop Beverly Hills is triumphant and sells enough cookies to go on to the Wilderness Jamboree competition.
They took a creative chance on a song and dance to sell cookies.
It is during the Wilderness Jamboree competition that the girls of Troop Beverly Hills are challenged and prove themselves as real Wilderness Girls despite the fact that they still like fashion. Again the Red Feathers do not try to win fairly, but instead try to sabotage Troop Beverly Hills. Their mean girl move is to switch the direction of the flags that help guide the troops to the finish. However, Troop Beverly Hills triumphs and finishes before the Red Feathers do. This infuriates the Red Feathers because Troop Beverly Hills does not deserve to win because they are spoiled and still too into fashion to be taken seriously as Wilderness Girls. So they bust out their biggest mean girl move yet and their troop leader who mapped the course is going to lead them on the course the following day to guarantee that they win.
Troop Beverly Hills is continuously sabotaged by the Red Feathers, but they remain optimistic and never give up. They learn to believe in themselves, how to be strong-willed and not give up, and how to work together as a team. When it seems as though the Red Feathers will win because of their cheating schemes, Troop Beverly Hills perseveres and wins the competition. And not in a ruthless way, but in a compassionate way. Troop Beverly Hills stops to help the injured Red Feathers’ leader who was abandoned by her own troop. Her troop abandoning her is a classic mean girls maneuver–when the going gets tough is each for her own–is the reason the Red Feathers lose. Of course the Red Feathers were sore losers and ran away with the trophy, but even that doesn’t upset Troop Beverly Hills. They have earned what is most valuable to them and can’t be taken away: self-confidence.
Proving in the end that you can be into fashion and be a Wilderness Girl.
Phaydra Babinchok is a feminist activist and comedy writer based in Chicago. She is chapter leader of WAM! Women, Action, and the Media Chicago. She tweets about cats and feminist porn @PhaydraAnnette.
Terri sets out to explore the luxury of male privilege disguised as a young man. Just One of the Guys smacked us straight in the face with the unspoken universal knowledge that sexism was real, it existed and the film gave us tangible proof. Terri decides to use her parents’ trip out of town to switch things around for herself by getting another shot at the newspaper internship with another article, an expose of sorts. She switches high schools and uses her brain, and as much as she can, is herself.
Just One of the Guys movie poster
This guest post by Shay Revolver appears as part of our theme week on Child and Teenage Girl Protagonists.
The 80s were a confusing time for young women. Not only were we bombarded with all of these images of female strength and the dawn of the power suit, but we also had the opposite images of bikini-clad bodies bombarding us in film. While adult women were being objectified on film just like their teen counterparts, they still managed to also emit an air of (albeit limited) power. But, the teen female set was still stuck in the role of object or trophy. There were a few stand-outs that bucked the trend, but usually the female role–if she wasn’t the trophy–was never front and center and was some typecast girl playing the role of the quirky best friend. Sure, you could be a cool , confident, different, smart girl, but you couldn’t be the star.
In 1985 a new kind of teen flick came out. A film that handed us a smart teenage female protagonist who acknowledged and called out sexism and wasn’t used as background noise or the social conscience of the group. Just One of the Guys was an eye-opening surprise for me. Usually when films had a woman being diminished for being attractive it was a grown man doing the the diminishing and if a young woman was present she was being set straight by her strict father who was out to save her virtue. This film was unique in its portrayal of teen life and the perceptions that society has in regard to young women. It quickly became one of my favorite films when I was a child.
Terry and Buddy having a heart to heart
If you weren’t lucky enough to see it or just don’t remember it, Just One of the Guys is the story of high school student Terri Griffith played by Joyce Hyser. Terri is a stunner. She’s beautiful and everything that 80s teen movies led us to believe was the ideal when it came to popular girls. But, unlike most of these 80s poster girls she had dreams beyond moving to New York and becoming an actress or escaping their small town. Terri wants to be a reporter and no, not your typical eye-candy TV reporter but a hard-hitting journalist and she has no reason to believe that these dreams won’t come true because she’s smart and works hard. This is where the story takes a turn for the real, Terri doesn’t get what she wants. In fact the only thing that Terri gets is rejection. Her ideas are passed over for the school paper in favor of more simplistic ones that the male reporters have pitched. After her article for a coveted internship at the local Tuscan paper is passed over and her slime-ball adviser hits on her, Terri begins to come to grips with her reality. Seeking someone to vent to besides her supportive best friend, Denise, she tries to lean on her boyfriend, who continues the cycle of male dismissiveness that has permeated every bit of her life. She realizes that her problems stem from more than just her good looks–most of her problems stem from her being a girl in general.
Terri and Kevin in their traditional gender roles
This is the point in most 80s movie where a man would come in and save her or where she would wallow in her sadness and fall into a pit of despair. Or worse, try and change herself into an “unattractive” woman to perpetuate the myth that looks are the only thing that matter. She instead does something more proactive, daring, and wonderful. She acknowledges the and goes after the bigger-picture story. With the help of her best friend, Denise, and her younger brother, Buddy, she transforms herself from a beautiful teenage girl into a teenage boy. The thing that makes this decision so great is its intersectionality. It doesn’t just shed light on looksism, it calls out gender inequality and sexism.
Terri sets out to explore the luxury of male privilege disguised as a young man. Just One of the Guys smacked us straight in the face with the unspoken universal knowledge that sexism was real, it existed and the film gave us tangible proof. Terri decides to use her parents’ trip out of town to switch things around for herself by getting another shot at the newspaper internship with another article, an expose of sorts. She switches high schools and uses her brain, and as much as she can, is herself.
From Terri to Terry
It’s interesting to watch the female-socialized Terri try and interact as a male-socialized teenage boy. She pulls a lot of typical stereotypical teenage boys moves. Her interactions with other teenagers in her new school are often comical but they’re understandable. Most (young) women, especially in the 80s, saw men through a very specific gaze and gender roles were clearly , even if often incorrectly, defined. Terri’s portrayal of a what she believed most teenage boys were like coupled with her feminine (female-socialized) tenderness and compassion created an interesting mix.
As expected in every teen 80s movie, our female teenage protagonist falls for a guy. In this case it is her new (as a teenage boy) best friend Rick. Rick, played by typical too-old-to-be-in-high-school Billy Jacoby, is as nerdy as they come and he offers Terri and this movie something different. Their relationship follows some of the same guidelines that most 80s films followed: nerdy teen gets made over by attractive teen and becomes instantly popular and they fall in love. The difference here is that the nerdy guy gets made over by the attractive girl in disguise and she falls for him. The love story in this film adds an extra layer of drama to the lighthearted teen fare that was usually thrust upon us. In the beginning of the film Terri starts out with a boyfriend–the sexist college guy dating a high school girl who he expects to become his trophy wife. But at some point she comes to terms with who she is and accepts it. She realizes that she wants more than to be someone’s arm candy. She no longer wants to rest on pretty or be someone’s cookie cutter ideal. Once she gets a taste of the freedom that being a teenage boy is, she finds herself wanting to be her own person even more than being a journalist.
Terri’s journey isn’t just an exploration of gender roles, it becomes her exploration of who she is as a person, what she wants in life, and on some levels, realizing what she wants and who she deserves to be with. Is it the super macho sexist guy like her boyfriend, who belittles her ambition and calls her babe? Or the “nerdy” Rick who despite not knowing that she is a she, supports her journalistic ambitions? After a lot of missteps and a scene after a fight during the prom that ends with Terri kissing and then flashing Rick and some awkward banter about how she’s not a homosexual because she’s a she, they part ways. Terri doesn’t let the loss of the guy she’s in love with, or the fact that she’s now single, hold her back from turning in her story and getting the internship she wanted. She writes her article and sheds light on her experience as a teenage girl pretending to be a teenage boy and essentially, gender inequality. She uses the pain of heartbreak to fuel an article about all of the good and the bad, the gender bias, and the rules that we’re all expected to follow.
Terri falls for Rick
The thing that makes Just One of the Guys so amazing is that the hero is a heroine and does, in fact, after a long hero’s journey, get everything she wanted. Outside of some minor humiliation at her unmasking, the honesty of her article helps her achieve her goals in the long run. She gets her internship, she finds herself, and she moves on to the next phase of her life. Rick even comes to terms with the whole situation and his feelings for her. There is a hint in the last scene of a possible first date and the thing that makes it even better is that there is no loss. The movie doesn’t punish Terri, or make her change to have it all. It doesn’t make her dreams seem unattainable or destined to fail. It just causes her to grow and it proved to a generation that the teenage girl can have it all. Society and gender roles be damned.
It was one the first films of the decade to bring feminist issues to light and the teenage feminist wasn’t portrayed as a yappy unlikable side character–she was a lead. They even cast a young woman who was the antithesis of every other mean spirited , stereotypical (save for the short haircut) caricature of what a feminist was supposed to look like. It showed her journey of self discovery and called out gender roles and society’s expectations for and biases toward young women. The film combats the myth that “pretty” girls can’t be smart or that young women can only fit into certain roles or that feminists are all man-hating bitches. It tore apart the typical movie idea that either you’re the smart, driven unpopular girl who isn’t pretty until someone changes you or you’re her hot best friend who doesn’t have enough of a brain to calculate change but all of the guys want to claim her. It showed that looks really don’t matter and women can be just as strong, determined, and focused as our male counterparts. It cracks open the shallowness that radiated from most 80s teen flicks and holds a mirror up to and then smashes that mirror. And for a teen movie to take this stance so early in the 80s, years before we saw grown up women take this stance on film, was a pretty awesome thing.
Shay Revolver is a vegan, feminist, cinephile, insomniac , recovering NYU student and former roller derby player currently working as a New York-based microcinema filmmaker, web series creator and writer. She’s obsessed with most books, especially the Pop Culture and Philosophy series and loves movies and TV shows from low brow to high class. As long as the image is moving she’s all in and believes that everything is worth a watch. She still believes that movies make the best bedtime stories because books are a daytime activity to rev up your engine and once you flip that first page, you have to keep going until you finish it and that is beautiful in its own right. She enjoys talking about the feminist perspective in comic book and gaming culture and the lack of gender equality in main stream cinema and television productions. Twitter: @socialslumber13
So, these are the important things in Sixteen Candles: Samantha’s family forgets her birthday; she’s in love with a hot senior who’s dating Caroline (the most popular girl in school); and there’s a big ol’ geek (Farmer Ted) from Sam’s daily bus rides who won’t stop stalking her. Oh, and Long Duk Dong exists [insert racist gong sound here]. Seriously, every time Long Duk Dong appears on screen, a fucking GONG GOES OFF on the soundtrack. I suppose that lines up quite nicely with the scene where he falls out of a tree yelling, “BONSAI.”
Since the entire movie is like a machine gun firing of RACIST HOMOPHOBIC SEXIST ABLEIST RAPEY parts, the only way I know how to effectively talk about it is to look at the very problematic screenplay. So, fasten your seatbelts and heed your trigger warnings.
The 80s were quite possibly a nightmare.
Movie poster for Sixteen Candles
This repost by Stephanie Rogers appears as part of our theme week on Child and Teenage Girl Protagonists.
Holy fuck this movie. I started watching it like OH YEAH MY CHILDHOOD MOLLY RINGWALD ADOLESCENCE IS SO HARD and after two scenes, I put that shit on pause like, WHEN DID SOMEONE WRITE ALL THESE RACIST HOMOPHOBIC SEXIST ABLEIST RAPEY PARTS THAT WEREN’T HERE BEFORE I WOULD’VE REMEMBERED THEM.
Nostalgia is a sneaky bitch.
I wanted to write about all the wonderful things I thought I remembered about Sixteen Candles: a sympathetic and complex female protagonist, the awkwardness of adolescence, the embarrassing interactions with parents and grandparents who JUST DON’T GET IT, crushing hard on older boys—and yes, all that stuff is still there. And of course, there’s that absolutely fantastic final wedding scene in which a woman consents to marry a dude while under the influence of a fuckload of muscle relaxers. OH WAIT WHUT.
Ginny Baker getting married while super high
Turns out, that shit ain’t so funny once feminism becomes a thing in your life.
The kind of adorable premise of Sixteen Candles is that Molly Ringwald (Samantha Baker) wakes up one morning as a sixteen-year-old woman who still hasn’t yet grown the breasts she wants. Her family, however, forgets her birthday because of the chaos surrounding her older sister Ginny’s upcoming wedding; relatives drive into town, future in-laws set up dinner dates, and poor Samantha gets the cold shoulder. It reminded me of the time my parents handed me an unwrapped Stephen King novel on my sixteenth birthday like a couple of emotionally neglectful and shitty assholes, but, you know, at least they REMEMBERED it.
Anyway, she rides the bus to school (with all the LOSERS), and in her Independent Study “class” the hot senior she likes, Jake Ryan, intercepts a note meant for her friend Randy. And—wouldn’t you know it—the note says, I WOULD TOTALLY DO IT WITH JAKE RYAN BUT HE DOESN’T KNOW I’M ALIVE. Well he sure as fuck knows NOW, Samantha.
Samantha and Randy, totally grossed out, ride the bus to school
So, these are the important things in Sixteen Candles: Samantha’s family forgets her birthday; she’s in love with a hot senior who’s dating Caroline (the most popular girl in school); and there’s a big ol’ geek (Farmer Ted) from Sam’s daily bus rides who won’t stop stalking her. Oh, and Long Duk Dong exists [insert racist gong sound here]. Seriously, every time Long Duk Dong appears on screen, a fucking GONG GOES OFF on the soundtrack. I suppose that lines up quite nicely with the scene where he falls out of a tree yelling, “BONSAI.”
Since the entire movie is like a machine gun firing of RACIST HOMOPHOBIC SEXIST ABLEIST RAPEY parts, the only way I know how to effectively talk about it is to look at the very problematic screenplay. So, fasten your seatbelts and heed your trigger warnings.
The 80s were quite possibly a nightmare.
Long Duk Dong falls out of a tree (BONSAI) after a drunken night at the homecoming dance
The first few scenes do a decent job of showing the forgotten-birthday slash upcoming-wedding fiasco occurring in the Baker household. Sam stands in front of her bedroom mirror before school, analyzing her brand new sixteen-year-old self and says, “You need four inches of bod and a great birthday.” I can get behind that idea; growing up comes with all kinds of stresses and confusion, especially for women in high school who’ve begun to feel even more insecure about their bodies (having had sufficient time to fully absorb the toxic beauty culture).
“Chronologically, you’re 16 today. Physically? You’re still 15.” –Samantha Baker, looking in the mirror
While Samantha laments the lack of changes in her physical appearance, her little brother Mike pretends to almost-punch their younger sister. When he gets in trouble for it, he says, “Dad, I didn’t hit her. I’d like to very much and probably will later, but give me a break. You know my method. I don’t hit her when you’re just down the hall.” It’s easy to laugh this off—I chuckled when I first heard it. But after five seconds of thinking about my reaction, I realized my brain gave Mike a pass because of that whole “boys will be boys” thing, and then I got pissed at myself.
The problem with eye-rolling away the “harmless” offenses of young boys is that it gives boys (and later, men) a license to act like fuckers with no actual repercussions. The “boys will be boys” mantra is one of the most insidious manifestations of rape culture because it conditions both boys and girls at a young age to believe boys just can’t help themselves; violence in boys is inherent and not worth trying to control. And people today—including political “leaders”—often use that excuse to justify the violent actions of men toward women.
Mike Baker explains to his dad that he hasn’t hit his younger sister … yet
Unfortunately, Sixteen Candles continues to reinforce this idea throughout the film.
The Geek, aka Farmer Ted—a freshman who’s obsessed with Samantha—represents this more than any other character. The film presents his stalking behavior as endearing, which means that all his interactions with Samantha (and with the popular kids at school) end with a silent, “Poor guy!” exclamation. Things just really aren’t going his way! And look how hard he’s trying! (Poor guy.) He first appears on the bus home from school and sits next to Samantha, even though she makes it quite clear—with a bunch of comments about getting dudes to kick his ass who “lust wimp blood”—that she wants him to leave her alone. Then this interaction takes place:
Ted: You know, I’m getting input here that I’m reading as relatively hostile.
Samantha: Go to hell.
Ted: Come on, what’s the problem here? I’m a boy, you’re a girl. Is there anything wrong with me trying to put together some kind of relationship between us?
[The bus stops.]
Ted: Look, I know you have to go. Just answer one question.
Samantha: Yes, you’re a total fag.
Ted: That’s not the question … Am I turning you on?
[Samantha rolls her eyes and exits the bus.]
POOR GUY! Also homophobia. Like, all over the place in this movie. The words “fag” and “faggot” flood the script and always refer to men who lack conventional masculine traits or who haven’t yet “bagged a babe.” And the emphasis on “Man-Up Already!” puts women in harm’s way more than once.
Samantha looks irritated when her stalker, Farmer Ted, refuses to leave her alone. Also Joan Cusack for no reason.
The most terrifying instance of this happens toward the end of the film when Ted ends up at Jake’s party after the school homecoming dance, and the two of them bond by objectifying women together (and subsequently creating a nice little movie template to last for generations). The atrocities involve a very drunk, passed-out Caroline (which reminded me so much of what happened in Steubenville that I had to turn off the movie for a while and regroup) and a pair of Samantha’s underwear.
This is how we get to that point: After Jake snags Samantha’s unintentional declaration of love during Independent Study, he becomes interested in her. He tells a jock friend of his (while they do chin-ups together in gym class), “It’s kinda cool, the way she’s always looking at me.” His friend responds—amid all that hot testosterone—that “maybe she’s retarded.” (This statement sounds even worse within the context of a film that includes a possibly disabled character, played by Joan Cusack, who lacks mobility and “hilariously” spends five minutes trying to drink from a water fountain. Her role exists as nothing more than a punch line; she literally says nothing.)
Joan Cusack drinking water (queue laughter)
Joan Cusack drinking a beer (queue laughter)
Jake’s girlfriend, Caroline, picks up on his waning interest in her and says to him at the school dance, “You’ve been acting weird all night. Are you screwing around?” He immediately gaslights her with, “Me? Are you crazy?” to which she responds, “I don’t know, Jake. I’m getting strange signals.” Yup, Caroline—IT’S ALL IN YOUR HEAD NOT REALLY.
Meanwhile, in an abandoned car somewhere on school premises (perhaps a shop lab/classroom), Samantha sits alone, lamenting Jake’s probable hatred of her after their interaction in the gym where he said, “Hi!” and she freaked out and ran away. Farmer Ted stalk-finds her and climbs into the passenger seat. Some words happen, blah blah blah, and a potentially interesting commentary on the culture of masculinity gets undercut by Ted asking Samantha (who Ted referred to lovingly as “fully-aged sophomore meat” to his dude-bros earlier in the film) if he can borrow her underwear to use as proof that they banged. Of course she gives her underwear to him because.
Ted holds up Samantha’s underwear to a group of dude-bros who each paid a buck to see them
Cut to Jake’s after-party: everyone is finally gone; his house is a mess; Caroline is passed out drunk as fuck in his bedroom; and he finds Ted trapped inside a glass coffee table (a product of bullying). Then, at last, after Jake confesses to Ted that he thinks Samantha hates him (because she ran away from him in the gym), we’re treated to a true Male Bonding Moment:
Ted: You see, [girls] know guys are, like, in perpetual heat, right? They know this shit. And they enjoy pumping us up. It’s pure power politics, I’m telling you … You know how many times a week I go without lunch because some bitch borrows my lunch money? Any halfway decent girl can rob me blind because I’m too torqued up to say no.
Jake: I can get a piece of ass anytime I want. Shit, I got Caroline in my bedroom right now, passed out cold. I could violate her ten different ways if I wanted to.
Ted: What are you waiting for?
C’MON JAKE WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR GO RAPE YOUR GIRLFRIEND. Or wait, no, maybe let’s let Ted rape her?
Jake: I’ll make a deal with you. Let me keep these [Samantha’s underwear, duh]. I’ll let you take Caroline home … She’s so blitzed she won’t know the difference.
Ted carrying a drunk Caroline to the car
And then Ted throws a passed-out Caroline over his shoulder and puts her in the passenger seat of a convertible. This scene took me immediately back to the horrific images of two men carrying around a drunk woman in Steubenville who they later raped—and were convicted of raping (thanks largely to social media). This scene, undoubtedly “funny” in the 80s and certainly still funny to people who like to claim this shit is harmless, helped lay the groundwork for Steubenville, and for Cleveland, and for Richmond, where as many as 20 witnesses watched men beat and gang rape a woman for over two hours without reporting it. On their high school campus. During their homecoming dance.
Jake and Ted talk about how to fool Caroline
People who claim to believe films and TV and pop culture moments like this are somehow disconnected from perpetuating rape need to take a step back and really think about the message this sends. I refuse to accept that a person could watch this scene from an iconic John Hughes film—where, after a party, a drunk woman is literally passed around by two men and photographed—and not see the connection between the Steubenville rape—where, after a party, a woman was literally passed around by two men and photographed.
Caroline looks drunk and confused while Ted’s friends take a photo as proof that he hooked up with her
And it only gets worse. Caroline wakes up out of nowhere and puts a birth control pill in Ted’s mouth. Once he realizes what he’s swallowed, he says, “You have any idea what that’ll do to a guy my age?” Caroline responds, “I know exactly what it’ll do to a girl my age. It makes it okay to be really super careless!”
It makes it okay to be really super careless.
IT MAKES IT OKAY TO BE REALLY SUPER CARELESS.
So I guess the current anti-choice, anti-contraception, anti-woman Republicans found a John Hughes screenplay from 30 years ago and decided to use this cautionary tale as their entire fucking platform. See what happens when women have access to birth control? It makes it okay to be really super careless! And get drunk! And allow dudes to rape them!
Of course, believing that Caroline is raped in Sixteen Candles requires believing that a woman can’t consent to sex when she’s too “blitzed to know the difference” between her actual boyfriend and a random freshman geek. I mean, there’s forcible rape, and there’s not-really rape, right? And this obviously isn’t REAL rape since Ted and Caroline actually have THIS FUCKING CONVERSATION when they wake up in a church parking lot the next morning:
Ted: Did we, uh …
Caroline: Yeah. I’m pretty sure.
Ted: Of course I enjoyed it … uh … did you?
Caroline: Hmmm. You know, I have this weird feeling I did … You were pretty crazy … you know what I like best? Waking up in your arms.
Fuck you, John Hughes.
Caroline wakes up, unsure of who Ted is, but very sexually satisfied
And so many more problems exist in this film that I can’t fully get into in the space of one already long review, but the fact that Ginny (Sam’s sister) starts her period and therefore needs to take FOUR muscle relaxers to dull the pain also illustrates major problems with consent; her father at one point appears to pick her up and drag her down the aisle on her wedding day. (And, congratulations for understanding, John Hughes, that when women bleed every month, it requires a borderline drug overdose to contain the horror.)
Ginny’s dad drags her down the aisle on her wedding day
The racism, too, blows my mind. Long Duk Dong, a foreign exchange student living with Samantha’s grandparents, speaks in played-for-laughs broken English during the following monologue over dinner: “Very clever dinner. Appetizing food fit neatly into interesting round pie … I love, uh, visiting with Grandma and Grandpa … and writing letters to parents … and pushing lawn-mowing machine … so Grandpa’s hyena don’t get disturbed,” accompanied by such sentences as, “The Donger need food.” (I also love it, not really, when Samantha’s best friend Randy mishears Sam and thinks she’s interested in a Black guy. “A BLACK guy?!?!” Randy exclaims … then sighs with relief once she realizes the misunderstanding.)
Long Duk Dong talks to the Baker family over dinner
And I haven’t even touched on the problematic issues with class happening in Sixteen Candles. (Hughes does class relations a tiny bit better in Pretty in Pink.)
Basically, it freaks me out—as it should—when I watch movies or television shows from 30 years ago and see how closely the politics resemble today’s anti-woman agenda. Phrases like “legitimate rape” and “forcible rape” shouldn’t exist in 2013. In 2013, politicians like Wendy Davis shouldn’t have to stand up and speak for 13 hours—with no food, water, or restroom breaks—in order to stop a bill from passing in Texas that would virtually shut down access to safe and legal abortions in the entire state. Women should be able to walk down the street for contraception in 2013, whether it’s for condoms or for the morning after pill. The US political landscape in 2013 should NOT include talking points lifted directly from a 1984 film about teenagers.
I know John Hughes is a national fucking treasure, but please tell me our government officials aren’t using his screenplays as legislative blueprints for the future of American politics.
Added on is the fact that American Hustle is less about the hustle and more about the American dream; each character portrays ambition and insecurities in the quest for more: a better community, more money, security, power, fame, recognition, leading to that great American end, excess.
The Fabulous Five: Bradley Cooper, Amy Adams, Christian Bale, Jennifer Lawrence, Jeremy Renner
Go and see American Hustle, the latest from director David O. Russell. Go and see it not just for the fantastically eclectic seventies soundtrack, but for the amazing acting by Jennifer Lawrence, Amy Adams, Christian Bale, Bradley Cooper, Jeremy Renner, and for surprise roles from Louis C.K. and Robert De Niro. Go especially for Jennifer Lawrence and Amy Adams in brilliantly funny and evocative character studies.
I didn’t grow up in the 70s, but perhaps that’s why Russell’s larger than life film about the FBI ABSCAM sting is infinitely more interesting and more colorful than your average con film. Added on is the fact that American Hustle is less about the hustle and more about the American dream; each character portrays ambition and insecurities in the quest for more: a better community, more money, security, power, fame, recognition, leading to that great American end, excess.
In a film where everyone is ridiculous and almost a caricature, there is no true hero or protagonist, and the women of American Hustle are no exception; their big hair and red nails reveal a character just as selfish and flawed as any male counterpart. And the fact that the film exposes the deep insecurities and physical vanities of its male cast is an amazing reversal; in fact, they hold perhaps a larger role than female vanities–the opening sequence of the film featured three minutes of Bale’s morning hair routine, with his combover as the star, ending in one of the most amazing introductions to a character I’ve ever seen.
Jennifer Lawrence and Amy Adams gave brilliant performances; while the film doesn’t pass the Bechdel test, within the context of the plot, the female interactions cover material relevant to the characters, so it makes sense. And in their few interactions, the two women were volatile and terse, and captivatingly emotional.
Two women, amazing and emotional.
Jennifer Lawrence was especially fantastic, at turns both hilarious and sad, a vain, silly woman on the surface, depressed and angry and confused at the core. It’s especially impressive since Lawrence just emerged from a very different role for The Hunger Games, and here showcases her skills as the best kind of actress and comedienne: sad hiding behind funny. Some are calling Adams and Lawrence’s performances Oscar-winning, and I’m inclined to agree; in fact, the entire cast was fantastic. While I find Christian Bale in some serious need of anger management, the man is a chameleon, becoming startlingly physically different for each role. And I’ve been a fan of Bradley Cooper since his Alias days, but this is his first film role that I found especially powerful, even more so than Silver Linings Playbook. Obviously Lawrence and Bradley have found a fantastic director in David O. Russell, and hopefully this collaborative pairing will continue.
In American Hustle, Cooper, more than anyone, embodies the prime theme of the film, the need for more, and in that endeavor, becomes erratic, sexy, lustful, arrogant, angry.
Adams and Cooper’s interactions are built on a sickening chemistry that becomes more and more messed up as the film progresses; in the spirit of not spoiling the film, I’ll stop there,; but in one scene, Cooper loses control in front of Adams, and becomes terrifying and dangerous in just a few moments, with Adams attempting to calm him and keep herself safe.
While the film is a little heavy handed in its use of the “something rotten is necessary to make something even more beautiful” metaphor, the focus on re-invention, survival, power, ambition, vanity and mostly, wanting a better life, are what take this con movie to the next level: an expose of the black comedy that is the American life.
Go see the film, and listen for the amazing soundtrack and its fabulous augmentation of the characters and watch for all that was bad and good of 70s fashion.
There is an empowerment to seeing women use their bodies to intently serve their character’s purpose. There is honest recognition of the female form in all of its glory and trust in the actress, director, or writer to create that honesty. There is also a young little lady, up way past her bedtime, copying your every move as you high-kick your way into Saturday night.
Molly Shannon on SNL as Mary Katherine Gallagher
This is a guest post by Jessie Jolles and Tracy Soren.
When Molly Shannon threw herself into a pile of chairs as Mary Katherine Gallagher on Saturday Night Live, funny girls whose parents let them stay up past 11:30 p.m. were, from that point on, changed. Cheri Oteri as a Spartan Cheerleader, kicking her legs up high during an uncomfortable routine, or Ana Gasteyer, stiff but still dancing as Bobbi Moughan-Culp, one part of the trying-to-be-hip-music teacher duo, were telling us our bodies are for us.
As women, we are told we are meek and frail; we should be smaller, thinner, and able to fit in a spoonful of sugar so a man can put us in his coffee and swallow us down. There’s nothing new here that we are saying. I believe there’s an Upworthy post on your Facebook that’s exhibiting the notion right now (as they should be!). How many times have you watched a film or TV show where the woman is in some well-shaven, acrobatic position for the male gaze. So for us, Jessie Jolles and Tracy Soren, comedians and creators of the web series, DIBS, we enjoy nothing more than a woman allowing herself to transform her body for the sake of a well-earned laugh.
We should point out that we met in an improv class at the Upright Citizens Brigade and were improvisers before we decided to create something on camera. We are now on all-lady improv team named Gulf Oil, kickin’ ass, takin’ names, getting suggestions. This past weekend, we had a show where Tracy ended up with a bruised knee and Jessie actually flew across the stage in an all out physical improv fight. We had a blast! There is something very interesting that happens though when you are a woman very physical in your comedy… the audience becomes your collective mother. They are laughing BECAUSE WE ARE FUNNY (right?!) sure, but there is also a gasp of breath as if our lady bodies will disintegrate into Tinkerbell’s fairy dust. It is sometimes a shock to them when we get down and dirty on a down and dirty theatre floor in the East Village. We are guilty of this reaction too, I’m sure. I mean, boobs hurt when they are sliding across the ground but in improv, you can’t think, you just do. And that’s how we want to see filmmakers treat ladies when they are making funnies or not. Because the question really is: what would the character’s body actually do in this moment?
Tracy and Jesse “being physical” on the set of DIBS
Now that we are writing and preparing for the Season 2 of DIBS, we know the characters Joey and Emily deeply and we are excited to use the entire range of our physical comedy to get the laugh. But this doesn’t only apply to comedy of course. We want to see filmmakers and content creators let female actresses and female characters use their true range. Indie films and content respond to this more so then mainstream media (again, nothing new here). Imagine what it takes to decide you want to be an actress or a creator and go for your dream; the skin is already tough, we don’t need our character to be one-dimensional in their physical abilities. Of course, if the character calls for a delicateness then I’m sure the actress playing her can master delicate. But we women can take it! Molly Shannon threw herself into a bunch of fold-out chairs, than she made a movie doing it. Trust us to know our abilities.
The physicality of women cannot be spoken about without the sexualization and oppression of women’s bodies in media which is of course cyclical. They tell us our bodies are supposed to look like x (x can be thin, hairless, light-skinned, small, etc…). We think our bodies are supposed look one way so we then make our bodies look like that and people go, ah yes, that’s what women look like or what women want to look like so we will put out another film/ad/show/beer bottle representing women as x. So then our female characters are widely represented as x. But then there’s that special moment when we see Maya Rudolph shit her pants in a wedding dress on the street in Bridesmaids and it’s amazing, hysterical, and women go “See! That’s what America needs!”
There is an empowerment to seeing women use their bodies to serve intently serve their character’s purpose. There is honest recognition of the female form in all of its glory and trust in the actress, director, or writer to create that honesty. There is also a young little lady, up way past her bedtime, copying your every move as you high-kick your way into Saturday night. So audiences, filmmakers, friends, families, dentists, healthcare workers, Bugs Bunny, let’s let women get down already. We promise, you’ll laugh.
Jessie Jolles and Tracy Soren make up the comedic duo, Soren & Jolles. They are in pre-production for the second season of their web series DIBS and are crowdfunding here on Seed & Spark! They both study at the Upright Citizens Brigade and are on a wonderful improv team, Gulf Oil.
